I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Yep, they just decided one day to stop being hunter gatherers and to start a collective community level mass construction project in stone relying on structured organisation and farming that didn't exist yet immediately after we exited the last ice age.
Edit - they had help or early human history is very wrong
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
I think the percentages are off too - the likelihood of two brown-eyed parents having a blue eyed child is higher than the likelihood of two blue-eyed parents having a brown-eyed one.
Incidentally, I believe all iris colours are actually the same eye colour anyway - just more or less. It goes black, brown, hazel, green, blue, grey, white, according to how much or little pigment you have.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
All this assumes the parents are the biological parents. Call me cynical.
Can’t remember the stats but rather more people are not the child of the person they think is their dad than would be expected.
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.
The Northern Ireland Secretary has already ruled out granting a border poll and Unionist parties still won more seats than Nationalist parties at Stormont even if SF came first
I'm struggling with this one @HYUFD but I'm not an expert on how it calculated but surely it is as follows although I am not confident I have this right:
You forgot Independent Unionist Alex Easton elected in North Down and Independent Unionist Claire Sugden elected in East Londonderry. That makes 37 Unionists in total ie more than the 36 Nationalists (though PBP designate as socialist not nationalist anyway)
Cheers. Yep I saw 4 in the Other column but only counted 2 of them. Silly me.
PBP are pro a unification so should be in the nationalist column, but are you saying that as they haven't designated as such that doesn't count? Silly of them if that is the case if that is what they stand for.
With respect to People Before Profit position on Irish unity, this from wiki (two sources):
>Both the PBP and the Socialist Party (SP) are all-Ireland organisations but do not form part of a single electoral alliance in elections in Northern Ireland. The PBP contests elections under its own name, while the SP is part of the Cross-Community Labour Alternative. The electoral alliance between the PBP and Solidarity supports anti-capitalism, democratic socialism, and eco-socialism, and promotes Irish reunification through a socialist European federation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Before_Profit/Solidarity
> Solidarity believes that Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales should merge and form a socialist federation, which should aspire to be part of a Socialist Federation of Europe. The Phoenix has opined that this position is a "bizarre fusion of Trotskyism and British Unionism" that "articulates a unionist outlook dressed in socialist rhetoric" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Ireland)
SSI - note that Cross-Community Labour Alternative (CCLA) did field a candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Donal O'Cofaigh
So would seem that lumping PBP with nationalist contingent is problematic?
Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies. I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please. Thanks.
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
Or ukelele: I salute you, I really do. Truly remarkable.
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies. I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please. Thanks.
Hooray, but the question is or rather are: did your mum, dad, and or milkman have blue or brown eyes at the relevant time?
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
I have literally posted the statistics table, and the probability of blue/brown resulting in a blue eyed child is very, very far from unusual.
It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS
If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.
A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Even now, kiosks in Sanliurfa and on the way to Gobekli Tepe are selling eager tourists six-fingered gloves "modeled" on those actually worn by ancient alien invaders. Or were they just holiday campers?
If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
I expect the French would allow Russia, the US and UK to destroy each other and Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe and then hope to emerge as the new superpower in their place leading a Federal EU on foreign policy and military matters with Germany providing the money. Remember in WW2 half of France was happy to collaborate with the Nazis in Vichy France while the other under De Gaulle led the resistance and De Gaulle also withdrew France from NATO
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
I guess if it was really big and offended your newer religion, it might be easier to bury than destroy? Makes you wonder what else is out there in less hospitable locations for peaceful archeology
It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS
On topic, wasn’t this the side in the early days of the scandals with the Conservatives when there were the headlines and a good number claimed (including myself probably) that the voters didn’t care about this issue? Until they did.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
I guess if it was really big and offended your newer religion, it might be easier to bury than destroy? Makes you wonder what else is out there in less hospitable locations for peaceful archeology
Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies. I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please. Thanks.
Hooray, but the question is or rather are: did your mum, dad, and or milkman have blue or brown eyes at the relevant time?
I'm the only blue eyed member of my immediate family. Make of that what you will.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
No, he can just say, if Durham Police say I committed an offence, I will resign regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not. How about that?
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
He did that by becoming Labour leader.
To an extent, but that's strictly business.
If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Even now, kiosks in Sanliurfa and on the way to Gobekli Tepe are selling eager tourists six-fingered gloves "modeled" on those actually worn by ancient alien invaders. Or were they just holiday campers?
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
He did that by becoming Labour leader.
To an extent, but that's strictly business.
If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
Well indeed. But. At some point someone has to draw a line. I'm astonished SKS was the one with the balls. It probably won't end well. But it needed to be done. The next time it won't be novel.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
I have literally posted the statistics table, and the probability of blue/brown resulting in a blue eyed child is very, very far from unusual.
You aren't trying to move the goalposts are you?
I didn't see the table. And I am not trying to move any goalposts. If we take the table at face value, it does indeed demonstrate that a brown eyed baby is the likelier outcome of a mixed eye colour couple. But 'unusual' is perhaps overstating the case.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
I heard he was a less successful Dan Brown. And has a legendarily small penis. Hence knowledge of the Singapore sling or whatever it was.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
I’m a bit of a comics nerd.
What most folk furth of Scandinavia probably don’t know is that we are a thriving hub of talent in the comics world. Not quite in the Franco-Belgian league, but definitely a notable social phenomenon. Norway in particular has an extraordinary number of amazing cartoonists, comic artists and writers, and graphic novelists. Mind-bogglingly good stuff.
If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
I expect the French would allow Russia, the US and UK to destroy each other and Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe and then hope to emerge as the new superpower in their place leading a Federal EU on foreign policy and military matters with Germany providing the money. Remember in WW2 half of France was happy to collaborate with the Nazis in Vichy France while the other under De Gaulle led the resistance and De Gaulle also withdrew France from NATO
Which is what we used to be good at, letting the continent get on with its wars and standing behind our Navy.
Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.
A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.
It is being sped into EU candidate status, which is not nothing (even if nations can then just sit in there). If they retain the political will to want to join the EU, then with the influx of foreign help they will hopefully receive, and a burning desire to move quickly on the quesiton, then it seems possible to me that Ukraine could rapidly transform and this make faster progress than Macron currently predicts.
That's not guaranteed, decades seems like a cautious prediction to reflect that, but hopefully Zelensky and his successors can marshal the country into achieving what they need to in a way which they might not have been able to before.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
They had to. Having randomly given up hunter gathering to engage in this community level multi decade/century stone construction effort someone noted they were 4 to 5000 years or so early. Real face palm moment
...BBC News at 10 erring towards the notion Starmer should already have resigned. A Conservative MP called Pow, who I have never heard of said he is a hypocrite and should have gone. Did she not get the memo?
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
Lousy made up name. Should be something fancier, french sounding, that's how you get acclaim.
Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.
So many questions about that photo, and also surely they should have a spare title for NI and go as the Mcgillycuddies of Armagh or sinilar?
You're much more au fait with that kind of thing than me but is that St Kilda?
No
Its the Pitons of St Lucia, I think.
Smells a bit sulphorous from the volcano, but very pretty. Best food in the Caribean too.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
He did that by becoming Labour leader.
To an extent, but that's strictly business.
If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
Well indeed. But. At some point someone has to draw a line. I'm astonished SKS was the one with the balls. It probably won't end well. But it needed to be done. The next time it won't be novel.
SKS needs to give them a narrative to salve their butt-hurt. Something about coming back from being on the ropes.
Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.
So many questions about that photo, and also surely they should have a spare title for NI and go as the Mcgillycuddies of Armagh or sinilar?
You're much more au fait with that kind of thing than me but is that St Kilda?
No
Its the Pitons of St Lucia, I think.
Smells a bit sulphorous from the volcano, but very pretty. Best food in the Caribean too.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.
Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
I think the percentages are off too - the likelihood of two brown-eyed parents having a blue eyed child is higher than the likelihood of two blue-eyed parents having a brown-eyed one.
Incidentally, I believe all iris colours are actually the same eye colour anyway - just more or less. It goes black, brown, hazel, green, blue, grey, white, according to how much or little pigment you have.
Also, iris colour changes with age. If you look at 80 year old white people near 80% have blue eyes. Like skin and hair pigmentation, eye pigment fades with the years.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.
A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.
The Macron proposals were quite interesting in allowing a form of looser membership and this would allow Ukraine to join that much more quickly before full membership .
If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
No, he can just say, if Durham Police say I committed an offence, I will resign regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not. How about that?
If Keir Starmer pledged, that he not only resign as LOTO if the cops give him as much as a hard stare, but also quit the House of Commons, rend his garments in Trafalgar Square, don sackcloth and ashes, and hurl himself from atop the Marble Arch (or Millennium Dome) - the Daily Mail would STILL say, it's NOT enough!
If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?
I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.
Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
Thanks, I googled him and I got this.
It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.
FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.
* Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
OK. Let's build a very simply model.
Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.
Does that sound reasonable?
Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
Don't blue eyed people carry two copies of the blue eyed gene, so two blue eyed parents should both pass on a copy of the gene and their children should therefore also have blue eyes? In other words if two blue eyed people have a kid with brown eyes, the "father" should probably have a word with the mother? Whereas two people with brown eyes could each have a copy of the blue eyed gene and so could have a child with blue eyes?
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.
Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
Wow! You get that he’s just posting shit that runs through his head don’t you? He doesn’t really want to do those things. He also loves to wind people up and stir the pot.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.
Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
Alternatively, I was joking and you are as stupid as you are humourless. I understand humourlessness is not unknown in the ranks of Scottish Nationalism, in the same way that mange is not unknown in the stray cats of Cairo
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
Lousy made up name. Should be something fancier, french sounding, that's how you get acclaim.
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XIV. Then I can die a happy man.
I have been softening up my kid for London Bridge, given how barmy the country is likely to go. “The queen is a very old lady, when she dies we will have a King etc…”.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
I’m a bit of a comics nerd.
What most folk furth of Scandinavia probably don’t know is that we are a thriving hub of talent in the comics world. Not quite in the Franco-Belgian league, but definitely a notable social phenomenon. Norway in particular has an extraordinary number of amazing cartoonists, comic artists and writers, and graphic novelists. Mind-bogglingly good stuff.
Yes but why did I pick Mills and Boon that is the question that is bothering me?
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch. I am not looking forward to it when it comes.
It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS
My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day
I used to live near St Kilda and adopted the Saints AFL team as the team I supported while I lived there. Don't recall it being that dangerous.
I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!
Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.
I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.
I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that
1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote. 2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like. 3. Artists made it up. 4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house. 5. Er .... that's it.
In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.
My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.
That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).
I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.
But did he win?
Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.
Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.
I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.
Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No
Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No
Could this... "No, no no"
He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.
Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
It's very much all in or not at all, yes. Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.
I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons
Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.
Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
To be honest I was just going for the gentle leg pulling of @leon
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XIV. Then I can die a happy man.
I have been softening up my kid for London Bridge, given how barmy the country is likely to go. “The queen is a very old lady, when she dies we will have a King etc…”.
My daughter is 7.
I mention the Queen occasionally so that London Bridge will have some meaning for her, and she’ll be able to carry that memory into her own old age.
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch.
Macron talking about not humiliating Putin was in relation to when an eventual peace deal has to happen . He said trying to humiliate Putin at that point would be counter-productive. This seems pretty obvious and sensible .
The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.
It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch.
Succession planning must have been a nightmare.
Well quite! The idea that Henry the 8th was desperate for an heir at the same time as never intending to die seem particularly challenging.
Macron talking about not humiliating Putin was in relation to when an eventual peace deal has to happen . He said trying to humiliate Putin at that point would be counter-productive. This seems pretty obvious and sensible .
No, it doesn't. Any deal that is acceptable would be classed as a "humiliation to Putin" by apologists.
It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS
My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day
As (apparently) the resident PB St Kilda expert perhaps you could suggest a good point on N.Uist from which to view the islands?
Comments
https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw
Edit - they had help or early human history is very wrong
https://www.babymed.com/tools/baby-eye-color-calculator-predictor?p1=Brown&p2=Brown
"The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.
(If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
>Both the PBP and the Socialist Party (SP) are all-Ireland organisations but do not form part of a single electoral alliance in elections in Northern Ireland. The PBP contests elections under its own name, while the SP is part of the Cross-Community Labour Alternative. The electoral alliance between the PBP and Solidarity supports anti-capitalism, democratic socialism, and eco-socialism, and promotes Irish reunification through a socialist European federation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Before_Profit/Solidarity
> Solidarity believes that Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales should merge and form a socialist federation, which should aspire to be part of a Socialist Federation of Europe. The Phoenix has opined that this position is a "bizarre fusion of Trotskyism and British Unionism" that "articulates a unionist outlook dressed in socialist rhetoric"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Ireland)
SSI - note that Cross-Community Labour Alternative (CCLA) did field a candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Donal O'Cofaigh
So would seem that lumping PBP with nationalist contingent is problematic?
I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please.
Thanks.
South Scotland MSP Craig Hoy to take over as chair and Central Scotland MSP Meghan Gallacher becoming the deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
Departing chair Rab Forman said it is "time to move on".
You aren't trying to move the goalposts are you?
My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day
A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.
Make of that what you will.
In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens
It’s as good a theory as any
Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
But. At some point someone has to draw a line.
I'm astonished SKS was the one with the balls.
It probably won't end well. But it needed to be done.
The next time it won't be novel.
The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.
What most folk furth of Scandinavia probably don’t know is that we are a thriving hub of talent in the comics world. Not quite in the Franco-Belgian league, but definitely a notable social phenomenon. Norway in particular has an extraordinary number of amazing cartoonists, comic artists and writers, and graphic novelists. Mind-bogglingly good stuff.
That's not guaranteed, decades seems like a cautious prediction to reflect that, but hopefully Zelensky and his successors can marshal the country into achieving what they need to in a way which they might not have been able to before.
Had she had a curry?
Smells a bit sulphorous from the volcano, but very pretty. Best food in the Caribean too.
A morsel about tax cuts might help too.
Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
Also he got arrested for a campaign brawl, which was excellent value
How's about you?
Whereas two people with brown eyes could each have a copy of the blue eyed gene and so could have a child with blue eyes?
Then I can die a happy man.
I mention the Queen occasionally so that London Bridge will have some meaning for her, and she’ll be able to carry that memory into her own old age.
It really is a despicable paper .