January 2023
An Afternoon of Rainbows
25/01/23 10:22 Filed in: Photography
We traveled down to Eugene on a recent Saturday afternoon to visit with Dr. Patricia Shea. We usually have lunch at Ta Ra Rin near Cat Care hospital. A good place for Thai food.
On the way home and after reaching home we were treated to some interesting displays of rainbows. One as we traveled up I-5 freeway with a peak through the clouds. The other was in the direction of Green Peter Mountain to the east.
Along Interstate 5 near exit 228 to Lebanon
Looking to the east and Green Peter Mtn.
On the way home and after reaching home we were treated to some interesting displays of rainbows. One as we traveled up I-5 freeway with a peak through the clouds. The other was in the direction of Green Peter Mountain to the east.
Along Interstate 5 near exit 228 to Lebanon
Looking to the east and Green Peter Mtn.
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Newberry Volcano
22/01/23 13:20 Filed in: Travel
Have you ever heard of the Newberry Volcano?
The shield-shaped stratovolcano is located about 20 miles south of Bend, Oregon, and is one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in the United States.
It is designated as a “very high threat” volcano in a recent assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey, as are the Big Island volcanoes of Mauna Loa and Kīlauea.
Newberry Volcano has been active for more than 530,000 years, most recently 1,300 years ago.
Lava flows erupted at Newberry cover an area larger than Rhode Island. Powerful explosive eruptions sent volcanic ash into Idaho and the San Francisco Bay Area. A deep caldera indents its summit, hosting a flow of obsidian and thick beds of explosive pumice…
Newberry Volcano formed at the western end of the High Lava Plains, a broad volcanic region of basalt and rhyolite in southeastern Oregon that forms the northern sub-province of the extensional Basin and Range Province, best known in Nevada.
A link to the story is here.
Paulina Lake and caldera
Newberry caldera and lava flows
The shield-shaped stratovolcano is located about 20 miles south of Bend, Oregon, and is one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in the United States.
It is designated as a “very high threat” volcano in a recent assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey, as are the Big Island volcanoes of Mauna Loa and Kīlauea.
Newberry Volcano has been active for more than 530,000 years, most recently 1,300 years ago.
Lava flows erupted at Newberry cover an area larger than Rhode Island. Powerful explosive eruptions sent volcanic ash into Idaho and the San Francisco Bay Area. A deep caldera indents its summit, hosting a flow of obsidian and thick beds of explosive pumice…
Newberry Volcano formed at the western end of the High Lava Plains, a broad volcanic region of basalt and rhyolite in southeastern Oregon that forms the northern sub-province of the extensional Basin and Range Province, best known in Nevada.
A link to the story is here.
Paulina Lake and caldera
Newberry caldera and lava flows
Rug Hooking
19/01/23 11:26 Filed in: Personal
I am trying to catch up and work on different craft projects I have accumulated over the years. I enjoy crafting, not that I am proficient at any of them. I usually have done more in the line of crochet or embroidery over the years. I'd like to get better at knitting or quilting.
I recently started working on a rug hooking kit I ordered through a company on Facebook. This is not an expensive piece and relatively small. It is of a tabby colored cat laying curled up with head raised. Vada thinks it looks like Spice so we shall call it Too Spice(y). Let's see how long this project will take me to finish it. Yikes!
I recently started working on a rug hooking kit I ordered through a company on Facebook. This is not an expensive piece and relatively small. It is of a tabby colored cat laying curled up with head raised. Vada thinks it looks like Spice so we shall call it Too Spice(y). Let's see how long this project will take me to finish it. Yikes!
Smallpox New Discovery
15/01/23 09:48 Filed in: History
Smallpox has been a scourge and major source of human deaths in recent history or centuries. It is one of the most lethal and frightening viral diseases known to humans. Amazingly, smallpox has been eradicated across the planet and is now only found within Level 4 containment facilities. There has been a recent discovery that the virus has been present among humans longer than previously believed.
"While the origins of smallpox has remained a mystery for centuries, researchers now believe that it dates back 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Until recently, the earliest genetic evidence of smallpox, the variola virus, was from the 1600s. And in 2020, researchers found evidence of it in the dental remains of Viking skeletons, pushing its existence 1,000 years earlier.
Now, Italian scientists have used a mathematical equation to pinpoint the beginnings of smallpox, and coupled with pox scarring seen on ancient Egyptian mummies, they have pushed the emergence of the virus back 3,800 years."
A link to the article.
"While the origins of smallpox has remained a mystery for centuries, researchers now believe that it dates back 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Until recently, the earliest genetic evidence of smallpox, the variola virus, was from the 1600s. And in 2020, researchers found evidence of it in the dental remains of Viking skeletons, pushing its existence 1,000 years earlier.
Now, Italian scientists have used a mathematical equation to pinpoint the beginnings of smallpox, and coupled with pox scarring seen on ancient Egyptian mummies, they have pushed the emergence of the virus back 3,800 years."
A link to the article.
Audiobooks
11/01/23 11:45 Filed in: Personal
I am a big reader and am usually reading a book on the IPad with the Kindle app or read a physical book instead. I like audiobooks in the car though I tend to get restless and fade out of listening with audiobooks. I do like Jeff Jacoby's article about how much he has come to enjoy audiobooks and why he does enjoy them so much…
"All my life I have been an avid book reader, but for the last 25 years I have been an increasingly enthusiastic audiobook listener, too. I don't recall either of my parents reading aloud to me when I was a child, probably because I began reading insatiably on my own early on, so it was only as an adult that I discovered what John Colapinto, in a 2012 New Yorker essay, called "the pleasures of being read to."
Chief among those pleasures is how rich the experience of taking in words can be when they engage the brain through the ear and not the eye.
When you read a book for yourself, in silence, there are no cues outside the text as to how the words ought to be taken. But listen to a well-read recording of a book and you are enveloped in aural cues — inflection, emphasis, animation, accent, tone — that deepen and illuminate the experience of encountering the author's words."
https://jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby010923.php
"All my life I have been an avid book reader, but for the last 25 years I have been an increasingly enthusiastic audiobook listener, too. I don't recall either of my parents reading aloud to me when I was a child, probably because I began reading insatiably on my own early on, so it was only as an adult that I discovered what John Colapinto, in a 2012 New Yorker essay, called "the pleasures of being read to."
Chief among those pleasures is how rich the experience of taking in words can be when they engage the brain through the ear and not the eye.
When you read a book for yourself, in silence, there are no cues outside the text as to how the words ought to be taken. But listen to a well-read recording of a book and you are enveloped in aural cues — inflection, emphasis, animation, accent, tone — that deepen and illuminate the experience of encountering the author's words."
https://jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby010923.php
Jewish Trove Found in Lodz Poland
10/01/23 08:57 Filed in: History
One of the most heartbreaking and evil acts was the removal and extermination of Jews by the Nazis during World War ll from long established Jewish population centers. Man's inhumanity to other men or what they believe is an inferior culture. Have we move past this sort of behavior? I doubt it. What is called othering is still occurring today and will in the future.
Construction workers renovating an old tenement house in Lodz, Poland, unearthed a surprising find: an untouched cache of hundreds of Jewish artifacts believed to have been hidden in advance of the Nazi occupation of the city.
The trove — which included menorahs, kiddush and ritual washing cups and items from everyday life, all wrapped carefully in newspaper — was buried next to a building just beyond the ghetto in which Lodz’s Jews were imprisoned during the Holocaust. Only about 10,000 Lodz Jews survived until the end of the war, out of a prewar population of about 230,000.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-728088
Construction workers renovating an old tenement house in Lodz, Poland, unearthed a surprising find: an untouched cache of hundreds of Jewish artifacts believed to have been hidden in advance of the Nazi occupation of the city.
The trove — which included menorahs, kiddush and ritual washing cups and items from everyday life, all wrapped carefully in newspaper — was buried next to a building just beyond the ghetto in which Lodz’s Jews were imprisoned during the Holocaust. Only about 10,000 Lodz Jews survived until the end of the war, out of a prewar population of about 230,000.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-728088
Oldest Projectile Points
08/01/23 11:50 Filed in: History
In the local news today from Oregon State University…
OSU archaeology teams have carried out expeditions in west central Idaho for more than a decade, unearthing clues about life at Cooper's Ferry, along the Salmon River canyon.They have uncovered tools that add to a new understanding of the timeline of human life in the Americas - projectile points (or arrowheads as we call them).
The projectile points, or spear tips; razor sharp and ranging from half an inch to two inches long, that are so telling about the people who came here to hunt, to fish and to gather. They are about 3000 years older than what had been found before.
“This record is notable because now we realize it extends back to 16,000 years ago or probably a little earlier,” said OSU Anthropology Professor Loren Davis who has led expeditions of students to Cooper's Ferry for the duration of the project.
In 2019 they found bones and other items that gave them evidence of human life arriving here roughly 3000 years sooner than was previously believed.
Now carbon dating of these sharp hunting tools confirms it — and shows how advanced those native peoples were early on.
“Something in your hand that's that old, and to think about somebody actually took a block of rock through a series of steps, turned it into a spear point that I have in my hand is really pretty amazing,” said Davis.
In collaboration with the Nez Perce Tribe and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Davis and more than 200 students have spent thousands of hours carefully clearing the dirt, discovering signs of the first human life in the Americas, right here in the Pacific Northwest.
OSU archaeology teams have carried out expeditions in west central Idaho for more than a decade, unearthing clues about life at Cooper's Ferry, along the Salmon River canyon.They have uncovered tools that add to a new understanding of the timeline of human life in the Americas - projectile points (or arrowheads as we call them).
The projectile points, or spear tips; razor sharp and ranging from half an inch to two inches long, that are so telling about the people who came here to hunt, to fish and to gather. They are about 3000 years older than what had been found before.
“This record is notable because now we realize it extends back to 16,000 years ago or probably a little earlier,” said OSU Anthropology Professor Loren Davis who has led expeditions of students to Cooper's Ferry for the duration of the project.
In 2019 they found bones and other items that gave them evidence of human life arriving here roughly 3000 years sooner than was previously believed.
Now carbon dating of these sharp hunting tools confirms it — and shows how advanced those native peoples were early on.
“Something in your hand that's that old, and to think about somebody actually took a block of rock through a series of steps, turned it into a spear point that I have in my hand is really pretty amazing,” said Davis.
In collaboration with the Nez Perce Tribe and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Davis and more than 200 students have spent thousands of hours carefully clearing the dirt, discovering signs of the first human life in the Americas, right here in the Pacific Northwest.
Genetic Ancestry of Scandinavians
07/01/23 09:39 Filed in: History
In a new international study, researchers found that DNA from archeological remains reveals exceptional immigration to Scandinavia during the Viking era.
Researchers say that the Viking Age left an imprint on the genetics of present day Scandinavians. The authors analyzed 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes dating back two millennia with the genomic data of 16,638 present-day Scandinavians. Women from the east Baltic region and, to a lesser extent, the British and Irish isles contributed more to the gene pool of Scandinavia than the men from those regions during that time.
"With this level of resolution, we not only confirm the Viking Age migration. We are also able to trace it to the east Baltic region, the British-Irish Isles, and southern Europe," Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela of the Centre for Palaeogenetics said in a statement.
"But not all parts of Scandinavia received the same amounts of gene flow from these areas. For example, while British-Irish ancestry became widespread in Scandinavia, the eastern Baltic ancestry mainly reached Gotland and central Sweden." The study also found that British-Irish ancestry was widespread in Scandinavia starting during the Viking Age, which extended from about 750 to 1050 A.D. The authors said that eastern Baltic ancestry was found to be more localized to Gotland, Sweden's largest island, and central Sweden. "The increase of eastern Baltic ancestry in these regions during the Viking Age is consistent with historical sources attesting to contacts such as tributary relations and treaties," Rodriguez-Varela, one of the study's leaders, said. "Therefore, we don't see any evidence with the present data to support that women were abducted and brought back during raids."
While ancestry from southern European locations like Sardinia was concentrated in people in southern Scandinavia, the group determined that modern Scandinavians have less non-local ancestry than Viking Age samples.
Researchers say that the Viking Age left an imprint on the genetics of present day Scandinavians. The authors analyzed 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes dating back two millennia with the genomic data of 16,638 present-day Scandinavians. Women from the east Baltic region and, to a lesser extent, the British and Irish isles contributed more to the gene pool of Scandinavia than the men from those regions during that time.
"With this level of resolution, we not only confirm the Viking Age migration. We are also able to trace it to the east Baltic region, the British-Irish Isles, and southern Europe," Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela of the Centre for Palaeogenetics said in a statement.
"But not all parts of Scandinavia received the same amounts of gene flow from these areas. For example, while British-Irish ancestry became widespread in Scandinavia, the eastern Baltic ancestry mainly reached Gotland and central Sweden." The study also found that British-Irish ancestry was widespread in Scandinavia starting during the Viking Age, which extended from about 750 to 1050 A.D. The authors said that eastern Baltic ancestry was found to be more localized to Gotland, Sweden's largest island, and central Sweden. "The increase of eastern Baltic ancestry in these regions during the Viking Age is consistent with historical sources attesting to contacts such as tributary relations and treaties," Rodriguez-Varela, one of the study's leaders, said. "Therefore, we don't see any evidence with the present data to support that women were abducted and brought back during raids."
While ancestry from southern European locations like Sardinia was concentrated in people in southern Scandinavia, the group determined that modern Scandinavians have less non-local ancestry than Viking Age samples.
Starting 71
02/01/23 08:21 Filed in: Personal
Today is my 71st birthday. We are heading over to the coast and Lincoln City around late morning to midday. It will likely rain there yet it is away and one can hope for a relaxing few days over there. It does not feel like a birthday yet, just another day in the string of many.
Happy 2023 Year
The start of a new year, 2023. We are home and staying quiet as we often times do.
Here is a wish for the new year - it will be happier and better than the last three years.
Here is a wish for the new year - it will be happier and better than the last three years.
