StumbleUpon | cheaphits's blog posts

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/24202568/

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:36:48 -0700

Yeah, well...I'm havin' waaay too much fun & workin' way to hard & if at all possible...I advise y move to Canada - BUT, dammit, I do miss yawl...I'm still answerin' emails here now (there ARE a lot!)(, but will write a little politics & stuff A.S.A.P.

Thanx for yer patience & luv...I'll try to sober up & do better in the future, maybe.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/22015922/

Fri, 30 May 2008 20:01:21 -0700

I don't even remember how to do all the fancy HTML shit anymore...I gave up electronics...more or less...email, cell phones, T.V., vids, et. al., for the last few months...a VERY wise choice.

But, goddammit, I missed S.U.

I'm gonna answer my email first...talk to a couple close friends here...try to finds wuz up...wuz nu, ect. (maybe, go ta skul on HTML & & shit) & get back ta ya...maybe.

I'm thinking a movin' to Saskatoon.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/16944216/

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:20:54 -0800

Yeah, it's been a busy time...workin' a bit more than I should...gettin' to know Toronto (a wonderful place!) and had a relationship with a lady friend go south, so -

I have a little more time now...we shall see, I have some email to answer here and I'm gonna be gone for two weeks, but my thoughts are with my my friends at S.U. tonight and I will be more active here soon.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15474677/

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:21:46 -0800

I, my friends, was grabbed by the Homeland Security people and taken to Gitmo because of what I have written here at S.U. - after I was released and then almost immediately captured by a band of gypsies and on top of that I been really busy....that's why I been gone.

I'm tryin' to answer emails, it may take a while ta get back to ya - see exchange below with one of my ol' friends here -

" cheaphits
12:13am I heard your hair is getting whiter...is this true?

I been busy, but life is good...hope this is true for you and yours?

I plan to visit NYC...just been busy...stay alive...I'll be there...stay alert!

You are always welcome to the city of the future (Toronto...and it is.,..we welcome immigration, have natural resourses, a sound dollar and expect the 21st Century to be the Century of Canuckistan...you are always welcome here...think about it, OK?

P.S. I ain't really that bright.

chaimke

Oct 27, 8:47pm I'll confess I missed you too. Son, I never fought against you you, in your "cheaphits" incarnation. I do not always agree with you but I happen to think you are an intelligent individual and your SU pages are, as always, very interesting. I am still waiting for appearance in NYC so I can meet you face to face while I try to remember why I should not send you to kingdom come. Seriously, when will you alight around this place?

cheaphits
Oct 25, 9:05pm Enuff passin' by wifout even sayin' "Hello", you ol' fart!

How ya doin'...does the truce hold?...or did you read my posts? I do miss ya, when ya get time say "Hi", OK?"

...visit friends and make new ones...I'm gonna be tryin' harder & doin' better.

I have a story to tell you Stumblers soon...(by the way...what is this "187" stuff...somebody email me an' let me know , OK?)...It did get a little drunk out last nite (Canadian beer is 37 times stronger than American beer...well, maybe that's 37%, but don't quibble with me this morning) and I had a friend who had some hash...wonderful stuff. So as you can plainly see - I am just a victim of circumstances, well that and having some dangerous friends...anyway, write me and let me know if it's OK if I marry your daughter, OK?

This already looks like those posts I delete...but the "Neantherthals" below is better (maybe) - I'm gonna do some politics again soon..if Jesus hadn't died, he'd be 2007 on Tuesday...more or less.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15311315/

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:22:55 -0800

Shortly after the Reformation in 1517, when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg and founded the Protestant Church, there was a succession of five generations of Protestant Ministers each called Joachim Neumann. We don't know when the first was born, but he died in 1556, so it is more than probable that he would have met Martin Luther. The third Joachim Neumann changed his name from Neumann (which means 'New Man' in German) to Neander (which means 'New Born' or 'Re-born' in Greek).

The fifth Joachim was born in 1652 (with surname Neander from birth) and became Minister in a number of places including Varik, Sluis, and Amersfoort in the Netherlands. Joachim Neander (Neumann) (1650 - May 31, 1680) was a German Reformed (Calvinist) Church teacher, theologian and hymn writer whose most famous hymn, "Praise to The Lord, The Almighty, the King of Creation" is generally regarded as one of the greatest hymns of praise of the Christian church and appears in most major hymnals.

Joachim Neander was born in Bremen, the son of a Latin teacher. His grandfather, a musician, had changed the family name from the original "Neumann" ("New man" in English) to the Greek Neander following the fashion of the time. After the death of his father he could not afford to study at a famous university. He therefore studied theology in his home town from 1666 to 1670. At first, his heart was not in it. It was only when he heard a sermon of Theodor Undereyk (shortly before the end of his course) that his beliefs became serious.

In 1671 he became a private tutor in Heidelberg, and in 1674 he became a teacher in a Latin school in D�sseldorf, one step before becoming a minister. While living there, he liked to go the nearby valley of the D�ssel, nature being the inspiration for his poems. He also held gatherings and services in the valley, at which he gave sermons. The valley (German thal modernized to tal) was renamed in his honor in the early 19th century, and became famous in 1856 when the remains of the Homo neanderthalensis were found there.

In 1679 Neander became a pastor in Bremen, as his popularity with the common people had caused problems with the church administration in D�sseldorf. One year later, at the age of 30, he died of tuberculosis.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Neander"

This Joachim Neander seems to have been caught up in the tensions that existed between various fractions of the early Protestant Church (Lutherans, Calvinists, etc.). He used to seek rest in a nearby cave, away from the busy town, to grapple with his beliefs, to compose hymns, and to hold Bible studies and discussions with his fellow believers.

Joachim Neander died at the age of 30, two years after becoming Minister in Bremen. Even after his death he was very highly regarded in D�sseldorf and the Rhein Province. Many stories survived of how he used to retreat to his cave to hold discussions and to write hymns. So much so that the cave was named 'Neander Cave' and the entire valley became known as the 'Neander Valley', or "Neandertal" in German (there is still controvesy as to the spelling http://www.sfwriter.com/hotal.htm). And it was in this same cave that the first prehistoric human bones were found which were then named after Joachim Neander's valley, Neanderthal Man!

For over 150 years, scientists have struggled to unravel the mystery of the Neanderthals. The first significant discovery was made in August 1856. A partial skeleton was found at the Feldhofer Cave in the Neander Valley, near Dusseldorf in Germany. This was the find that gave the species its name.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15311291/

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:21:57 -0800

In 1908, French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule wrote about an almost complete Neanderthal skeleton from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. He published one of the first illustrations of Neanderthals alongside his scientific findings. His words were far from flattering, depicting a shuffling, bent-kneed, and hairy creature capable of "rudimentary intellectual abilities". The Neanderthal image was born.

Since Boule's beastly description, scientists have worked hard to rejuvenate the Neanderthal image. Neanderthal fossils have now been unearthed from over 80 sites in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Western Asia. The total remains represent less than 500 individuals and around half of these are children. As well as these bones, several hundred thousand stone tools have been found.

These discoveries, and the application of new investigative techniques, have cast a fresh light on the physical, social and cultural aspects of Neanderthal life. The infamous 'Old Man of La Chapelle', like the species as a whole, has largely been redeemed. The Neanderthal from La Chapelle is now known to have suffered from arthritis, his bent posture a product of the disease. Other discoveries have shown that Neanderthals cared for the sick and elderly; hardly the brutes of popular myth.

Michael Bolus, a pre-historian at T�bingen University, is convinced that Neanderthals made plans and considered events in advance. Stone tools have been discovered during mining for brown coal in eastern Germany that are over 100,000 years old and upon which the remnants of oak bark extract still adhere: A material still used today for tanning leather and making waterproof shoes. The Neanderthals must have developed the technique themselves because modern man was still not yet there.

Archaeologists have discovered bone awls bearing geometric patterns near Arcy-sur-Cure in France. These are about 34,000 years old and served for attaching jewelry to clothes. Ivory rings and teeth drilled though were found that were used as chain links. The Neanderthals even used �pencils� for body painting, since lumps of black pigment were also found in France. They buried their dead during ritual ceremonies. Graves and even cemeteries in Israel and France - at places well apart from one another - lay testament to this. http://www.the-neanderthal-tools.org/?p=45

"During the Pleistocene, the polar ice caps were locked in a cycle of retreat and advance. When they retreated, temperatures climbed and deciduous forest covered Europe. When the ice caps advanced, temperatures plummeted and the landscape turned into snowy tundra. In order to survive these ice ages, heidelbergensis evolved physical adaptations to the cold, and became the Neanderthals.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15311266/

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:21:04 -0800

The Neanderthals lost the tall, strapping physique of heidelbergensis and developed a short, stocky body that was an ideal shape for conserving heat. They were also extremely muscular in order to cope with the demands of a gruelling Ice Age lifestyle. This physique developed early in childhood.

"An eight-year-old Neanderthal is at the same developmental stage as a 12-year-old modern human," says Christoph Zollikofer, an anthropologist at the University of Zurich. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/ice_people1.shtml

This site showa how closely related human and Neanderthal brains were. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/skul_vrs.html At the center of the debate on the emergence of modern humans and their spread throughout the globe is the question of whether archaic Homo lineages contributed to the modern human gene pool, and more importantly, whether such contributions impacted the evolutionary adaptation of our species. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/48/18178

Homo neanderthalensis, who, with his giant hands and powerful ankle joints, had previously dominated the continent, suddenly found his dominance being challenged. While his slimmer adversary was busy inventing the flute and the sewing needle, as well as more advanced weapons, the Neanderthal stumbled steadily into decline, and by 30,000 years ago was extinct almost everywhere. Whether a conflict between the two species led to his decline remains an unanswered question to this day -- although some say it was the result of "genocide" and a "war of the first human beings."

It seems that something much more random could have played a significant role. About 45,000 years ago, the climate of Europe went through a burst of very sudden switches between warm and cold conditions that would have transformed the Neanderthals' environment. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/166869.stm

The forests on which they depended began to recede, giving way to open plains. On these plains, Professor Shea believes, the Neanderthal thrusting spear and ambush strategy wouldn't have worked. So Neanderthals retreated with the forests, their population falling as their hunting grounds shrank. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/neanderthal_prog_summary.shtml

In this view, Neanderthals weren't Cro-Magnons who left Africa got on rather well with the natso much driven to extinction as seduced. "Over time, more and more genes came into Europe and mixed with Neanderthal genes," says Wolpoff. "And the proportion of Neanderthal genes became lower and lower." researchers have never found any signs of warfare between the groups. "If there was a lot of fighting, you'd think there would be evidence of violent death," says Kuhn. "But there's not." In the Middle East, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons seem to have occupied much of the same territory for 60,000 years. So far, their cultures there are indistinguishable.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15311251/

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:20:22 -0800

That could mean relations between our relations were more stable and more equitable than anyone had envisioned. Kuhn has even suggested that interactions between Neanderthals and early moderns may have inspired the flowering of Upper Paleolithic culture in both groups, either by competition or by collaboration. http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/510666/

But the out-of-Africans remain unpersuaded. Tattersall calls multiregionalism "wishful thinking." "Quite simply, Homo sapiens appears to be inherently--and probably inherently savagely--intolerant of competition from its relatives," he writes in The Monkey in the Mirror. "It's always possible that some hanky-panky may have occurred," he allows. "But it wasn't evolutionarily significant."

Tattersall says studies that use DNA from contemporary populations to reconstruct human genealogy support the idea of a single, small source of Homo sapiens. Unfortunately, the DNA that's best preserved in ancient remains is from cellular components called mitochondria that aren't representative of the larger human genome. The mtDNA extracted from Neanderthal bones doesn't match anything in the modern world. But last year, when geneticists compared mtDNA from an early modern Australian with contemporary mtDNA, it didn't match either.
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/mar/featworks

In April 1999 Professor Trinkaus of Washington University announced that fossil finds in Portugal some 25,000 years old proved conclusively that Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man had interbred. That of course had long been obvious to anyone with eyes in his head--`you can observe Neanderthal at any public gathering' as Oswald Spengler remarked.
But now it is official. What the scientific establishment had for so long implacably denied is true--we are a hybrid species. We are not simply the descendant of Cro-Magnon man.

A hybrid skeleton showing features of both Neanderthal and early modern humans has been discovered, challenging the theory that our ancestors drove Neanderthals to extinction.
The skeleton of a young boy was found in Portugal.

Scientists say it shows for the first time that Neanderthals, who became extinct tens of thousands of years ago, mated with early members of our own species. Remember "Clan of the Cave Bear"?

Dr Trinkaus says the Portuguese skeleton provides powerful evidence for the interbreeding theory.

"This find refutes strict replacement models of modern human origins - that early modern humans all emerged from Africa and wiped out the Neanderthal population," said Dr Trinkaus.

The scientists believe that raises the possibility that people alive today could have some genes inherited from Neanderthal ancestors.

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15059489/

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:15:22 -0800

Above from imorgen, http://imorgen.stumbleupon.com

We are living in interesting times...as I noted in the post below, the United States is fightin' about half a dozen wars (that we know of...against diverse foes like, Crime, Poverty, Afganistan, Terror, Drugs and, of course, Iraq.

"The Iraq war has entered a new phase. It started at least a year ago, before the surge, with the decision of some Sunni tribes in the west--followed by some nationalist insurgents--to make a tactical alliance with their American enemies against Al Qaeda in Iraq. From its beginning, the war has been so complex, fast-moving, and elusive to foreign observers that it often takes several months for outsiders to notice new developments, let alone understand them. By now, the war is already moving on to yet another phase, which we'll begin to grasp sometime next year...

I've always believed that anyone who seems certain about the state and direction of Iraq, for better or worse, shouldn't be trusted. Caveat lector." http://newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2007/11/the-kaleidoscop.html

Vice President Cheney yesterday predicted Iraq will be a self-governing democracy by the time he leaves office, calling the current U.S. surge strategy "a remarkable success story" that will be studied for years to come.

By concluding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, the national intelligence estimate released yesterday undermined a key element of President Bush's foreign policy. It raised questions about whether the president and vice president knowingly misled the public about the danger posed by Iran. And it added to Bush's profound credibility problems with the American people and the international community.

But to hear Bush talk about it at the White House press conference, the new NIE vindicated his beliefs and makes his warnings about Iran more potent.

Quote:

"We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole -- or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked -- at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so -- whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself." http://www.chimpsternation.com/forum?c=showthread&ThreadID=1671

http://cheaphits.stumbleupon.com/review/15059453/

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:14:15 -0800

"Some believe that this will prove no setback for plans to bomb Iran. The complete absence of evidence that Iran has hostile intentions towards the West is the most conclusive evidence we have yet seen that Iran has hostile intentions towards the West," said the President, adding that the NIE's lack of any indication that Iranians are working on long-range delivery systems for their non-existent nukes can only mean that they are. He warned that all fifty states of the homeland are in dire peril, including the state of Israel. "We Americans are not a war-like people" he went on somberly. "We are patient. We are slow to anger. But once our righteous wrath is roused, we will kick the crap out of your sorry brown ass."

Israel itself has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons which don't exist. Questioned about the difference between weapons which don't exist and non-existent nuclear weapons, Bush said non-existent nuclear weapons are far more dangerous because they're so hard to locate. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-hendra/bush-vows-to-take-out-ira_b_75876.html

"Bush is incompetent and Iraq is likely the greatest foreign policy blunder in two-plus centuries of American history. But to say that - and particularly to say that alone - does not truly do justice to either disaster, Bush or his war. The truth about this president and his motives for war are far, far uglier than the words 'incompetence' or 'mistake' imply."

Europeans have a more mature politics than Americans do - let's just come right out and say it. You can see it in their attitudes toward sexuality, drugs and crime. You can see it in their wholesale rejection of nationalism and religion, humanity's worst mythologies and twin curses, wherever they arise. You can see it in their rejection of the juvenile selfishness that characterizes the American style of raw capitalism and obsessive consumption. And you can see it, especially, in their foreign policies and attitudes toward war. In large part because they so heavily and repeatedly paid the consequences of their own prior immaturity about war, their understanding and approach to it today are far more advanced than that of Americans." http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11434

"The Bush administration's impending attack on Iran has always been about Saudi Arabia, Israel, oil, and regime change. Iran's supposed nuclear program was just a convenient excuse for the attack.

America's disintegrating economy, the plunging dollar, and a probable blowout by the democrats in '08 make a Bush administration attack on Iran an almost certainty, Bush will attempt to create his own scapegoat to blame for the mess his policies have created by attacking Iran.

What I expect to happen now that he can no longer use Iran's nuclear program as an excuse is that we will get a new round of propaganda from the administration; "Iran is arming Iraqi militias with Explosive Formed Penetrators and they're killing our soldiers" or a false flag incident which "America must respond to protect our honor." Either way there is no way Bush is going to give up on attacking Iran...Halliburton wants it." http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11408

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.