The article’s headline essentially tells you everything you need to know: Ancient Roman coins, thought to be from around 300-400 A.D., were discovered under the ruins of Katsuren Castle in Japan. Ottoman Empire coins, from the late 1600s, were also found on the site.
The question, of course, becomes: How did these ancient coins find their way there?
Watch the video or read the full article in the link above.
Nothing like a stormy Monday. Somehow fits the mood.
And then I get a message that there’s a Windows update. I go ahead and do it, thinking it’ll take no more than fifteen or so minutes as I’d already done a large update a few days before.
2016 will likely be remembered as the year far too many people in the entertainment business died.
The year started with the shocking news of the passing of David Bowie, though fans of the singer long suspected he suffered from health issues following the abrupt ending of the Reality Tour, due to a heart attack, in 2004, and his subsequent 10 year sabbatical. He would release two more albums, the second of which, Blackstar, was clearly meant to be a “goodbye” album.
More recently we’ve had the passing of accomplished (and extremely talented) actor Gene Wilder.
There are other things one notices when one gets older.
When I saw the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I was somewhat taken aback by how old both Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford looked in the film but, let’s face it, the last time they were in a Star Wars feature it was Return of the Jedi and that film was released in 1983 (for those counting, thirty three years ago).
Today came this bit of sad news in an article written by Scott Eric Kaufman and presented on salon.com:
One of the startling things one realizes with the passage of time is that the many people out there you hold in high esteem, be they musicians like David Bowie or actors such as Gene Wilder or comedians like Terry Jones, are all too human.
As high a pedestal as we may place them upon, we all carry the same flesh and blood and are thus just as susceptible to the passage of time.
In my mind, I picture David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust or as The Thin White Duke, or that too-cool Let’s Dance crooner. I see him older, too, yet holding up remarkable well during his final full tour, The Reality Tour…
Gene Wilder, as well, sticks in my mind for his acting in The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Silver Streak…he’s forever frozen in those features. Forever frozen during those more youthful years.
Like many, I love the Monty Python troupe and their absurdist humor. The original show was great (well, except for the final John Cleese-less season). I loved the first two Monty Python films, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Life of Brian. Life of Brian, in particular, is along with Airplane! one of my all time favorite comedies ever. Not only was Terry Jones a writer and actor in both films, he was also the co-director of one, The Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam co-directed) and sole director of the other.
According to the article, the Terry Jones’ disease is such that…
(It) affects his ability to communicate and he is no longer able to give interviews.
Incredibly, incredibly sad to read.
When news like this hits I can’t help but think we should take a moment to appreciate what time we have on this planet and, further, appreciate the works of others who entertain us with their hard work.
Not to end the week on such a down note, but there will inevitably come a day when we cannot do so anymore.
The article, written by Nick Squires and found on The Telegraph, is self-explanatory. I don’t want to steal too much of the article’s thunder (you should read it!) but I will give away a few details:
The show is thought to be 5800 years old, meaning it was used in and around 3800-3700 B.C.
What is really fascinating is that it was found close to where the famous “Oetzi” body was found. This is the mummified hunter discovered 25 years ago..
Though its tempting to think the snowshoes might have belonged to Oetzi, this is very likely not the case as he died in the snow perhaps five hundred years after the snowshoe was made.
Still, it indicates there were people in and around the area during that time and, “thanks” to Global Warming, other artifacts long buried in the glaciers might surface.
Waaaaaaay back in 1984 there appeared a “new” and, at that time, most restored version of Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 movie Metropolis. While some didn’t like the use of then popular music to accompany the colorized film, I was blown away…
So much so that I started working on what would be my first complete and eventually published (though nearly ten years later and in graphic novel form) story The Dark Fringe.
When I first produced this book, steampunk didn’t exist except in the works of Jules Verne and when he wrote his science fiction, it was just that. Along with my head-spinning amazement at Metropolis, I was also intrigued with the original Tim Burton directed Batman movie. It came out a few years later and introduced what would eventually be termed “retrofuturistic” fiction.
Not to toot my own horn, but when The Dark Fringe was finally released back in the mid-1990’s, it was among the first books to combine the 1940’s look of a film noir mystery with a retrofuturistic ideal (1982’s Blade Runner clearly merged sci-fi with film noir, but it wasn’t “retrofuturistic” in nature). In effect, I was trying to create a work that melded The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon or Kiss Me Deadly with a setting that shared technologies like those found in the forward thinking of 1927’s Metropolis. And one of the instructions I kept giving John Kissee, the incredibly talented penciller of that series, was to always show a zeppelin or two in the sky. I was -and remain- crazy about zeppelins and this was, along with the clunky computers and villains with metal hands, a short-hand way of telling people this setting, while clearly looking old and featuring technologies that were for the most part older (I did have him design computers for the book as if they were second cousins to the old radios of the 1940’s) was a reality divorced from any “real” past.
While I haven’t pursued the world of The Dark Fringe for a while now (who knows, I may circle back to it eventually), I remain intrigued with zeppelins.
Which is why when I was on reddit this morning I was delighted to find this photograph:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a zeppelin flying over one of the Pyramids at Giza, circa 1931. Seeing the picture intrigued me and reminded me there are a wealth of fascinating photographs of zeppelins out there. A quick google search revealed the following beauties:
First, the Graf Zeppelin over Montevideo, circa 1930…
Over Buenos Aires…
A few others:
And of course there’s this one, perhaps the most iconic photograph(s) involving the best known -and for all the wrong reasons- zeppelin ever. In 1937 the German airship The Hindenburg was on its way to land in New York…
It horrifically exploded while attempting to dock. This tragedy ended the era of the zeppelins…
This photograph, which shows the Hindenburg already hitting the ground and half gone, is also quite iconic:
What was intriguing was finding some other photographs of this tragedy which I hadn’t seen. Such as this one, which takes place seconds before the first, most iconic image above:
And this…
And this…
And, the end…
A Hindenburg movie was made in 1975 (I don’t recommend it) and the legend of the Hindenburg, and questions about what exactly happened to it, remain to this day although many feel the glue used to put the airship’s out shell together was the likely chief culprit in this tragedy.
Anyway, nothing much to add to this. Zeppelins were a fascinating part of a fascinating era. The idea of lazily flying on a zeppelin across the ocean has, to me anyway, a romantic appeal. Perhaps one day we may again see something like them in the air and used for actual tourism instead of for sporting events.
I’ve posted frequently about self-driving vehicles. It is my belief they’ll be here very, very soon and with their arrival, society will inevitably change.
The very bad news is that many people who have jobs driving vehicles, from taxis to Ubers to public buses to trucks, etc. etc. will find themselves out of those jobs.
This is sadly inevitable.
On the plus side: Vehicular accidents will drop, injuries and deaths will drop, traffic jams might become a thing of the past (self-driving cars, I’m assuming, won’t rubber neck), and people will have more money to use on other things.
About that last item I listed: With the arrival of self-driving vehicles, I envision a future where people won’t need to buy cars. Instead, they will use an app on their phones (or whatever) and summon a self-driving vehicle to take them to wherever they want to go and, once they’re finished at the place they were taken to (their job, the mall, etc.), they again summon a self-driving car to take them back. They will obviously pay for the use of the self-driving vehicles but I suspect the price will be quite low given the self-driving vehicles look to be small and very efficient.
With no need to buy a car, you obviously don’t need to spend money on insurance or fuel or car service (from oil changing to fixing a flat/replacing a tire, etc. etc.).
So, what’s keeping us from this future?
Regulation.
As with almost all new technologies, especially those that could potentially cause a person’s injury/death, the government has to look in on the matter and determine it is safe and reliable.
Already there are self-driving vehicles being tested all across the country and it is well known the Tesla electric cars have self-driving features people use even today.
The United States, however, isn’t the only country investing in self-driving vehicles. The below article, written by Annabelle Liang and Dee-Ann Durbin for AP, notes…
It would appear each passing day edges us closer and closer to this big technological shift. What I found most fascinating in the article were these quotes, from Olivia Seow, who tested one of these vehicles:
“It felt like there was a ghost or something,” (Ms. Seow) said.
But she quickly grew more comfortable. The ride was smooth and controlled, she said, and she was relieved to see that the car recognized even small obstacles like birds and motorcycles parked in the distance.
“I couldn’t see them with my human eye, but the car could, so I knew that I could trust the car,” she said. She said she is excited because the technology could free up her time during commutes or help her father by driving him around as he grows older.”
Couple of interesting articles which, in these days of depressing news regarding global warming and the main cause, the use of fossil fuels, highlight the fact that progress on moving away from these dirty fuels is happening.
First up, Ian Johnson at the Independent offers the following article:
The headline is self evident, but a few details: Scotland experienced heavy gale-force winds on that day and, being summer, electricity demands were low to begin with. Nonetheless, the end result was that wind energy amounted to 106% of the energy used by Scotland that day.
Meanwhile, the always fascinating Elon Musk offered the following in an article by Seth Feigerman and found on CNNmoney:
Living in Florida as I do, I’ve long wondered why the use of solar power -a no-brainer given the amount of sunshine we get- wasn’t even more popular.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that until recently solar panels were prohibitively expensive and, frankly, not all that good. This is changing.
What I like most about Mr. Musk is that he’s a futurist with an eye on many things, not least of which is developing cleaner, more efficient forms of energy.
His Tesla electric cars are, to date, the gold standard for these vehicles and I’m incredibly eager to see if his company can fulfill the promise of electric cars with a 250 mile range (he says this will happen with his next, inexpensive model).
But I’m equally intrigued by his ideas of putting, in essence, a large electrical storage battery in a person’s home and the above idea, creating solar panels that are essentially your home’s new roof.
Again, because I’m in sunny Florida, I’d jump at the chance to have a solar roof. Given the amount of money I spent last month cooling this place down, I’d be most welcome to the idea of using the blistering sun to -ironically- cool me down.
There’s been plenty of -mostly bad- press regarding Brazil in the build up to the Olympics. The focus on the pollution, crime, etc. present in that country have been depressing.
However, the Olympics themselves appear to be, at least so far, well presented with only a minimal amount of “bad” news regarding the venue.
One of the stranger things to come was reported in this article:
There is some question as to the validity of this story, that a kayaker on a practice run capsized after bumping into a submerged sofa, but it was a weird/amusing story so there you have it.
If the above isn’t true, the following most certainly is:
Yesterday, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump had another speech and, wouldn’t you know it, again said something stupid and/or idiotic and/or dangerous and/or ill-informed and/or all the above:
CNN, among other news outlets, were quick to point out the fact that in his words above, Mr. Trump sure does appear to suggest 2nd Amendment (read: Gun folks) can “solve” the Hillary Clinton “problem” and/or her Supreme Court appointees.
How should “gun folks” solve the problem, one wonders?
Joe Scarborough, a conservative TV personality (and former congressman), wrote the following for The Washington Post regarding Mr. Trump’s latest comments:
I’ll give Mr. Scarborough credit: He doesn’t mince words like far too many Republicans have done. From the article:
The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the “Second Amendment people” among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.
While current polls show support for Trump cratering, we are still a mind-boggling 89 days from the election and, sadly, there is still time for the race to tighten or *gasp* for Trump to possibly/maybe make a race of this yet…
Then again, given the way Mr. Trump habitually self-immolates every other day, perhaps there is nothing to fear.
I’ve written plenty of times regarding interest in self-driving car technology. Of the car manufacturers out there, electric-car maker Tesla is clearly one of the companies most interested in bringing such technology to the masses.
Their vehicles already have self-driving technology on them, though drivers are warned to use this tech as an aid and to be aware/in control of their vehicle even when using this system.
Despite this, my understanding is the system is quite advanced and it doesn’t surprise me that Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, feels the self-driving cars will be a reality for everyone in just a few more years.
He should know.
Anyway, I bring all this up to present the following fascinating story which appeared on BBC…
