Thanks for all your great writing, Jim, it's very much appreciated.
fwiw I tried the link to the RAS paper identifying the seven stars and got the following: "Your session has timed out. Please go back to the article page and click the PDF link again." Also no luck trying to find it via sci-hub or libgen.
Well, how delightful that the gate keepers preventing access to scientific information are timing sessions. Presumably for thoroughly evil purposes based on past experiences. Here is the Oxford "university" link to the paper.
Comments on the multitude of interesting points in this essay:
1. "Jeffrey Rogers Hummel does a reasonably good job of detailing the objectives Lincoln had for the war in his book Emancipating Slaves and Enslaving Free Men,..."
There is a never-ending argument about the root cause of the 1860s War. The popular opinion has been shaped to believe that it was over slavery. Yet Lincoln's campaign arguments with Douglas indicates that he was not opposed to slavery. It wasn't made an issue in his campaign. What occupied Lincoln's mind was keeping the Union together.
Rogers seems to be arguing (and I agree) that economics and financial greed emanating from the large financial centers such as in New York led to laws made by Union-majority Congress to divert money to themselves from the lucrative cotton industry that the South had going in its trade with Britain, the leading clothing manufacturer of the time. Britain, back then, was still "the enemy".
The leading Freemason in America at the time was Albert Pike, and he was from South Carolina. I don't know how that factors in, but it is an interesting factoid.
2. "There is only one star in our immediate vicinity, about 93 million light years from Earth."
Oops, a mind-typo. Light from the sun takes about 8 to 9 minutes to reach earth. Instead of light-years, miles would be correct. No problem; even Donald Rumsfeld has admitted DoD mistakes.
3. "The people involved in archaeology and palaeontology are a bunch of strange and quirky individuals. "
I concur from my reading of the history of Maya archaeology. None of the archaeologists that I have eoncountered down here in Belize seemed quirky, but when Lisa Lucero of the U. of IL, Champaign-Urbana, put me onto Michael D. Coe's book Breaking the Maya Code, it was extraordinary to me that one dominant Brit in the field, Sir Eric Thompson, insisted that of the three writing systems, the Maya petroglyphs were of a kind that turned out to be wrong. All along, in the Soviet Union, Yuri Knorosov, having a dusty desk at the U. of Lenningrad figured out the correct system, but his ideas were not accepted in the West; these "Communists" - you can't trust them. Anyway, it took 50 years - a full half century - before Thompson died and Canadian anthropologist David Kelley, who was the leading American champion of Knorosov's work prevailed. Maya research was also revolutionized, according to Coe, by a Russian woman, Tatiana Proskouriakoff. Russians have been major contributors to research on the Maya civilization.
4. I have a somewhat different take on the origin of us (homo sapiens sapiens) from homo sapiens, but these comments are already too long; I'll keep it for later. Hint: the apostle Paul says that there are only two people, Adam and Christ, in their own category. I would argue that both resulted from some genetic modification to become differently human.
Thanks for all your great writing, Jim, it's very much appreciated.
fwiw I tried the link to the RAS paper identifying the seven stars and got the following: "Your session has timed out. Please go back to the article page and click the PDF link again." Also no luck trying to find it via sci-hub or libgen.
Well, how delightful that the gate keepers preventing access to scientific information are timing sessions. Presumably for thoroughly evil purposes based on past experiences. Here is the Oxford "university" link to the paper.
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/531/1/695/7665761?searchresult=1
Thank you for your kind words and for testing out the link.
Comments on the multitude of interesting points in this essay:
1. "Jeffrey Rogers Hummel does a reasonably good job of detailing the objectives Lincoln had for the war in his book Emancipating Slaves and Enslaving Free Men,..."
There is a never-ending argument about the root cause of the 1860s War. The popular opinion has been shaped to believe that it was over slavery. Yet Lincoln's campaign arguments with Douglas indicates that he was not opposed to slavery. It wasn't made an issue in his campaign. What occupied Lincoln's mind was keeping the Union together.
Rogers seems to be arguing (and I agree) that economics and financial greed emanating from the large financial centers such as in New York led to laws made by Union-majority Congress to divert money to themselves from the lucrative cotton industry that the South had going in its trade with Britain, the leading clothing manufacturer of the time. Britain, back then, was still "the enemy".
The leading Freemason in America at the time was Albert Pike, and he was from South Carolina. I don't know how that factors in, but it is an interesting factoid.
2. "There is only one star in our immediate vicinity, about 93 million light years from Earth."
Oops, a mind-typo. Light from the sun takes about 8 to 9 minutes to reach earth. Instead of light-years, miles would be correct. No problem; even Donald Rumsfeld has admitted DoD mistakes.
3. "The people involved in archaeology and palaeontology are a bunch of strange and quirky individuals. "
I concur from my reading of the history of Maya archaeology. None of the archaeologists that I have eoncountered down here in Belize seemed quirky, but when Lisa Lucero of the U. of IL, Champaign-Urbana, put me onto Michael D. Coe's book Breaking the Maya Code, it was extraordinary to me that one dominant Brit in the field, Sir Eric Thompson, insisted that of the three writing systems, the Maya petroglyphs were of a kind that turned out to be wrong. All along, in the Soviet Union, Yuri Knorosov, having a dusty desk at the U. of Lenningrad figured out the correct system, but his ideas were not accepted in the West; these "Communists" - you can't trust them. Anyway, it took 50 years - a full half century - before Thompson died and Canadian anthropologist David Kelley, who was the leading American champion of Knorosov's work prevailed. Maya research was also revolutionized, according to Coe, by a Russian woman, Tatiana Proskouriakoff. Russians have been major contributors to research on the Maya civilization.
4. I have a somewhat different take on the origin of us (homo sapiens sapiens) from homo sapiens, but these comments are already too long; I'll keep it for later. Hint: the apostle Paul says that there are only two people, Adam and Christ, in their own category. I would argue that both resulted from some genetic modification to become differently human.
Epic and totally interesting post!