In the world of archaeology, advancements in technology have enabled discoveries that may never have happened otherwise, including that of an ancient Maya city. Located under dense jungle canopy in the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche, the lost city was rediscovered in October 2024 using lidar, a laser radar technology.
Lidar works by sending out laser light pulses from an aircraft and measuring how long they take to bounce back — not unlike how some animals use echolocation. The information helps create detailed maps of the Earth’s surface, showing things such as land shapes and structures. The site was discovered by researchers at Tulane University, but they didn’t deploy the radar themselves; they found a 2013 lidar survey of the area several pages deep into a Google search. The survey was initially done to measure carbon in Mexico’s forests, and the results had never been studied by archaeologists before. Once the research team processed the data, it was clear to them what they were looking at.
The city, which the researchers named Valeriana after a nearby lagoon, had all the markings of a capital city. It’s thought that upwards of 50,000 people may have called Valeriana home at its peak between 750 and 850 CE — a population second only to that of Calakmul, one of the largest ancient Maya sites. The researchers determined that Valeriana was once home to pyramids, ball fields, dense housing, causeways connecting distinct districts, and amphitheaters. The exact reason for its eventual abandonment isn’t clear, but archaeologists suggest that, not unlike other Maya cities, its dense population could not be sustained when faced with challenging conditions such as drought.
The people that have been put forth as possible heads of departments within our government seem to be some of the worst qualified and most deviant of individuals. The report so far has named 3 that were or are sex abusers, one with a drinking problem and two with drug problems. Trump is so unconnected from th job he was elected that he seems to believe that all these positions are just gifts for friends and that there is no need to be capable to do the job. There so many reason to keep him out of the White House. I keep hoping that something will happen that shuts him down. Don't want Vance either but that also goes for Johnson and probably for who ever is after him. This has to be the election with the worst possible outcome you can think of.
It is known that Trump has no respect for laws, he has been violating them all his life and getting away with it because he has money. The fact that he is willing to surround himself with people of low or no character should come as no surprise, he may even think of these issues as assets to be expoloited. The intended use of the Department of Justice to go after his enemies is just another example of a reason he should not have been elected. The half of the nation that put him back in office have an awful lot of penence to pay when this 4 years is up, if we survive that long.
President Biden needs to explore every option he has as a setting President to insulate the nation from what can only be described as a full frontal assault of gross stupidity. For all that voted that way thinking that the changes he is going to make will somehow benefit them they need to be in the top 1% to see that happen. Again we are at the point of asking, when you have so much that you cannot begin to spend it in a 1000 lifetimes, why do you need more, and how is paying a fare amount of taxes going to hurt your bottom line?
Biden has accomplisheed many things in the last 4 years, far more than the previous person who will be the next person to hold the office of President. Somehow all that he has done is negated by his commuting death sentences. This is a narrow minded position of someone that has revenge not thought on their agenda. Yes the crimes committed were terrible and punishment is due, but death is a release from punishment. The body is gone and those that feel they got revenge have not considered the consequence of living everyday in a cage with little more than their own thoughts to keep them company. To not walk free and see the people you care about or enjoy anything at all has got to be punishment, far more punishment than having the life taken from your body, because that will happen at some point anyway.
More of the consequence of the new administration. Some of the choices for cabinet members are obvious no goes, others are turning out to be very much the oppisite but not better choices for our national well being. When they are aligned with Trump and his programs and have no problem doing whatever he asked they are just dangerous. Trump is after revenge of those that have opposed him. He feels that they should be locked up, and yet he has been convicted of crimes and has yet to be locked up. If he makes it through this term hopefully what awaits will be what he dreads the most, if not time in jail, then the inability to do anything at all. The first thing that he should lose physically is the ability to talk, his lies are incessant and his voice is irritating.
The billionares have successfully lied their way back into the positions of power that they believe are rightfully theirs. We, the poor or middle class citizen have less rights than we had before. That begins on the day Trump or Vance get sworn in. The US is at a turning point and because of the absolute stupidity that prevailed in Nov we are on the verge of having a rigid class society with the rich having all the priveleges and the rest of us being treated as servants or slaves.
Putting known felons in charge of cabinet positions, or people that know nothing of the job they are being given, it is just a pay off for supporting a fool. The person nominated for head of the FBI wants to gut the program and open the doors for more terrorist activity. He feels that the agency is much to big, bigger than he can manage. Zeor qualifications, zero knowledge of the job, and a oh so superior attitude, just like Trump.
These events that have occurred recently may not be linked but there is still a concern that the message they are sending is not being received by the people that can do anything about it. Two veterans dead and in one incident seeveral others as well. It has to mean something but what. Were these two supporters of the MAGA movement or were they opposed to the idiocy of the movement.
If anyone is paying attention Trump is always holding up his fist as a sign of what, like Hitler and the outstretched arm, or the raised fist of Black Power. Why is it necessary to make such a movement, does it come from his days of being the bully on the playground at school and when he made the sign those that responded indicated they were on his side? Another way to separate the loyal from the intelligent.
So let's move on to the economic reality of what has been going on for years. Since we had the mass betrail of our economic stability by those that were only interested in personal wealth we as a nation have been in decline. We have denied this as truth and looked to the hope that we are going to be saved by the convicted felon, sex abuser, liar that got elected for the second time. He isn't going to save anything except self as that is the only item he is concerned with. Our fortunes have been in decline for at least the last 50 years. The people that have been in charge of our nation all had the idea that if we prop up the wealthy somehow that will benefit the lower part of our society. It didn't, doesn't and won't do any such thing. The only way we can possibly get back into the game is to start making deals with the countries that our wealthiest citzens sold out to years ago. Minimum wages have not kept up with the rise in prices of anything. In the 1950's and through the 60's minimum wage was one dollar an hour. You could buy a loaf of bread for 20 cents or less and a gallon of gas for about the same price. My first tour of service in the Army began with basic pay for a recruit being less than 90 dollars a month. The basic pay now is around 3000 a month and gas is over 4 dollars a gallon. One of my fellow recruits was upset when the price of cigarettes went to 19 cents a pack, today the prices are more like a dollar per cigarette. The minimum wage is now 7.25 per hour which is way behind the cost index. Just using the cost of cigarettes as an example, then they were 1 cent each, now they are 1 dollar each which is a 100 times greater cost, wages are way behind on this score. So our economy is going down hill and will continue to do so unless someone gets very smart and starts cooperating with our competion instead of what we are doning today. Trump wants to build walls both literally and finacially and neither effort is going to stop anything. The wall on the border may slow some down but it won't stop all from crossing and the tariffs will only cost us money with higher prices that what we are paying now. The anger and frustration that has and is being demonstrated by Trump is in large part a result of him being caught at the crimes he has committed and being held accountable for some of them. He is the ever present victim, just like most of the people that voted for him. Someone is always picking on them, they have it in for me, I never get a break, or stand a chance. Victim mentality produces many things, none of them positive. We have had to watch what we say because the words of yesterday are offensive. We have stopped trying to get society to defend our children from idiots entering schools with guns blazing and killing teachers and students. This has been brought about by the victims that claim the right to have those guns and with the help of the NRA and the purchase of Congressinal support and that of the Supreme Court, also bought and paid for by the gun lobby. The denial of global warming, the value of vaccines, the right to determine our personal health, and common sense in general not to mention the decline of our economic worth keeps us in the tailspin of decline and ultimately we will crash. Empires have fallen before and we have the proof of that in Greece, in Rome, from the Egyptains and the Aztecs and others from around the globe. Most of the nations of Europe have tried to be mighty at one time or another and all have lost. We went through Manifest Destiny and once we had gone from sea to sea decided to stop, and now Trump wants to put that back in play to annex Canada, and Panama and Greenland, and we can only guess at what else he has his eye on.
The Korean War is nicknamed “the Forgotten War,” but the War of 1812 — fought between the United States and Great Britain just a few decades after America won its independence — certainly rivals it in terms of its lack of place in the collective national memory. Maybe it’s because the war took place two centuries ago; maybe it’s the placement between two major American wars that largely overshadow it (the Revolutionary War and Civil War). Maybe it’s the relatively nondescript name. Whatever the reason, asking the average American for details about the War of 1812 is likely to be met with a shrug. Let’s make some sense of this obscure yet formative conflict.
What Caused the War?
The roots of the War of 1812 were in the Napoleonic Wars between Great Britain and France. The neutral U.S. ended up as a shipping supplier to both warring nations, an economically advantageous position that saw the total U.S. exports increase from $66.5 million in 1803 to $102.2 million by 1807. But later that year, both France and Great Britain enacted trade embargoes in an effort to strain each other’s economies. Since the U.S. was such a shipping hub for both nations, it was included in these embargoes, despite being neutral in the Napoleonic Wars.
The United States responded by placing its own embargo on foreign trade, in an attempt to apply pressure on France and Great Britain to honor its neutrality. The embargo was ineffective, as it weakened the American economy much more than it impacted the European countries. In just one year, U.S. exports fell to $22 million. Attempting to stem the tide in the final months of his presidency, Thomas Jefferson repealed the embargo and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed trade with all foreign nations except France and Great Britain. The United States was essentially in a trade war.
Meanwhile, Great Britain was suffering from numbers shortages in its navy, and took to stopping American merchant ships in order to check for deserters. Britain also engaged in a practice known as impressment, a bizarre combination of military draft and kidnapping. Impressment was particularly infuriating to the United States, as British ships would capture American merchant ships and force its sailors to join the Royal Navy. U.S. President James Madison made it a core issue stateside and pushed for war, regardless of the fact that by this point in time, the British had already agreed to end the practice.
There was yet another factor in the start of the war, one that largely defined the 19th century for the United States: expansion. Despite its relative manpower shortages, Great Britain’s military strength was largely at sea, so the logical strategy to expand the United States was to invade British-occupied land to the northeast and southeast of the U.S. border at the time. To add further motivation, President Madison accused the British of promoting hostility toward the United States from Indigenous peoples in those territories. With all of these factors converging, Congress declared war against Great Britain on June 17, 1812.
The War of 1812 Lasted More Than One Year
Battles comprising the War of 1812 stretched into 1815, so if the war had a more literal moniker, it would be the War of 1812-15. Though the conflict is not as famous as other American wars, many battles from the war became U.S. military lore. The sight of cannonballs fired at the USS Constitution ricocheting off the ship’s hull during its battle with the HMS Guerriereon August 19, 1812, earned the ship its famous nickname “Old Ironsides.” The June 1, 1813, loss of the USS Chesapeake to the HMS Shannonincluded Captain James Lawrence’s memorable battle cry, “Don’t give up the ship!” And Naval Commander Oliver Hazard Perry’s report of the September 10, 1813, victory at the Battle of Lake Erie contained the classic line, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”
The United States Tried to Invade Canada
In 1812, the United States Navy had only 16 ships, while the Royal Navy had somewhere around 500, an insurmountable advantage. To remedy this, the U.S. moved forward with its strategy to capture British land in Canada, and use that land to negotiate maritime conflicts. Thomas Jefferson called a successful invasion of Canada “a mere matter of marching” in an August 1812 letter. That confidence was misplaced, as a three-pronged invasion in 1812 failed at all three points, ending in surrender at Detroit and Queenston Heights, and retreat from the Canadian border with New York. Another attempt on Lake Erie the next year was more successful (the battle with Oliver Hazard Perry’s famous quote) and led to victory in Upper Canada. But the following year, Great Britain’s victory over France enabled it to shift military resources to North America. Canada was not taken.
The British Burned Down the White House and Capitol Building
On August 20, 1814, the British sent a convoy of soldiers to the town of Benedict, Maryland, 50 miles outside Washington, D.C. Out on reconnaissance, Secretary of State James Monroe observed the troops’ advancement northward and concluded that they were intending to invade the nation’s capital. Monroe sent a message to President Madison, warning, “The enemy are in full march for Washington. Have the materials prepared to destroy the bridges. You had better remove the records.”
Two bridges across the Anacostia River were destroyed in order to force a single rallying point at Bladensburg, 5 miles from Washington, but the British had already advanced too quickly. Though there was strength in numbers to defend the capital, the American troops were poorly organized, deployed too late, or in improper positions. The Battle of Bladensburg ended up a rout, and the British advanced on Washington. Once there, British Major-General Robert Ross ordered his troops to “complete the destruction of the public buildings.” That destruction included “the capitol, including the Senate-house and House of Representation, the Arsenal, the Dock-yard, Treasury, War-office, President’s Palace, Ropewalk, and the great bridge across the Potomac.” The estimated damage totaled around $1 million, and it took nearly four years to rebuild the city. In one of the few points of common knowledge about the War of 1812, it was the only time the United States capital was ever captured.
The War Gave Us “The Star-Spangled Banner”
After the British left Washington, they boarded their ships and sailed up Chesapeake Bay in an advance to Baltimore. They expected a similarly quick battle as at Bladensburg, but Baltimore had been fortifying its coast for more than a year, with Fort McHenry guarding the city at the south of the harbor entrance. On September 13, 1814, 16 Royal Navy ships approached the fort and began a bombardment that lasted 25 hours. Watching in detainment on a British ship during the attack was Francis Scott Key, an American attorney. On the morning of September 14, 1814, he saw that the American flag remained flying at Fort McHenry, indicating that the fort stood, and he was inspired to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry.”The poem was later set to music as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States.
The End of the War of 1812
After three years of back-and-forth battles and overall inconclusive results that threatened to render the conflict a war of attrition, the U.S. and Great Britain looked for peace. The two countries signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, marking the end of the war. The terms of the treaty were status quo ante bellum, literally “the state before war.” Any conquered territory was to be returned, and prewar borders restored. In a strange quirk that could only happen in an era of slower communication, one more major battle was fought two weeks after the signing of the treaty: the Battle of New Orleans. Though it was considered a rousing victory for the United States, it didn’t matter due to the treaty and its terms. The War of 1812 was essentially a tie.
There are currently around 8 billion people living on Earth — more than quadruple the global population in 1920. But before the planet hit its first billion people at the beginning of the 19th century, population growth tended to be slower. At the beginning of the Common Era (CE) — the year 1 — Earth was home to as few as 170 million people, according to a widely cited 1978 source, Atlas of World Population History by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones. That’s about the population of Bangladesh today. Of course, estimating a worldwide head count from 2,000 years ago isn’t an exact science; researchers suggest it could be as high as 400 million, and the United Nations typically puts the estimate at 300 million.
Around 1 CE, the world was at the tail endof a population growth cycle that started around 5000 BCE, when only about 5 million human beings roamed the Earth. Population growth then accelerated with the expansion of agriculture. According to McEvedy and Jones, the rate of growth peaked around 1000 BCE with the beginning of the Iron Age. The world population doubled between 1000 and 500 BCE, and nearly doubled between 500 BCE and 1 CE. Growth then slowed to a rate of 12% between 1 CE and 500 CE.
Population growth continued to be slow during the Middle Ages. The bubonic plague killed around 25 million people in Europe alone, and Mongol invasions in China killed around 35 million people and wiped out agricultural infrastructure. Growth rates picked back up around 1700, and continued to increase until the 1960s. While it may seem like the population is expanding at a breakneck speed, annual growth rates have actually been on the decline since then. The United Nations expects the population to stabilize around 10.4 billion and even start declining again around 2086.
Perhaps because of the universally uplifting feeling of starting anew, you can find similarities between the lively New Year’s celebrations found in many countries today and those of the oldest recorded civilizations. The ancient Egyptians, for example, shared huge meals and partook in music and dancing to commemorate the pending flooding of the Nile with the festival of Wepet Renpet, meaning “opening of the year.” And the Babylonians of Mesopotamia enjoyed their own extended gala some 4,000 years ago with rituals that may have included a prototype of our modern-day New Year’s resolutions.
Held in March to mark the start of the planting season, the 12-day Babylonian festival of Akitu —which began on the first new moon of spring — was a time to honor the supreme god Marduk, his son Nabu, and the other deities who watched over the people. For the king, this included a humbling ceremony in which he was stripped of his regalia, struck across the face, and dragged by the ears by the high priest to atone for any sins committed. It’s believed the rest of the common folk, spared of such physical punishment, instead engaged in prayer, promising that they would repay their debts and otherwise conduct themselves in sterling fashion to please the gods.
While the Babylonians may have been the first to introduce these promises to a celebration marking the start of the year, the Romans were the first to deliver theirs in January. For that we can thank the wide-reaching Roman calendar, which moved the first month of the year from March to January. Named for the two-faced god Janus, who both looked back at the past and faced the unknown future, the first month became a time for officials to pledge their vows of loyalty to Rome — a custom that continues in the less urgent but no less earnest tradition of the countless people who pledge to get off the couch and hit the gym in the new year.
The concept of time has been described as many things: an arrow, a river, a march, anything that moves inextricably forward at a constant, unalterable rate. However, aging doesn’t flow at such a uniform speed. Instead, humans age in fits and starts. A 2024 Stanford University study shows that our bodies age faster around our mid-40s and early 60s than during other stages of life.
The study analyzed data from 108 people who donated blood and other biological samples over several years. By tracking 135,000 different molecules, creating 250 billion data points, scientists discovered that roughly 81% of the studied molecules showed age-related fluctuations, and those moments of rapid aging tended to coalesce around the ages of 44 and the early 60s. According to the scientists, the most surprising data point was rapid aging in the mid-40s. At first, they theorized that menopause or perimenopause could be playing a role in these changes, but they found the molecular changes impacted men just as much as women.
The affected molecules also differed between those two aging periods. Both age groups reported changes in molecules related to cardiovascular disease, caffeine metabolism, and skin and muscle growth, but the mid-40s cohort also recorded increased alterations in alcohol metabolism, while people in their early 60s underwent changes to immune regulation and kidney function. Of course, a lifetime of healthy eating, exercise, and plentiful sleep can curtail some of the effects of these periods of aging, so it may be worth paying extra close attention to your health when those milestones arrive.
It’s time again to turn the calendar, it’s hard for me to project a ‘happy’ year coming. All I can do is reflect ln the past year and hold my head up and hope that things don’t get worse. 2024 was a disappointment in so many ways , I lost a cousin that was way to young to leave this mortal coil… I hope his young son has only fond memories of his father.
As a country we has put our future back in the hands of a man that did his best to dismantle our democracy from 2016-2020 and I hope was can survive as a nation until we can change the direction of entitlement and hate that we are currently experiencing.
My goal for myself is to improve me, touch the lives directly around me, maybe, just maybe enough of us can do that and that will in itself effect the change we all need.
Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void 
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