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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: The Best Thing About Communism Was The Jokes

Harrison Koehli, Carolyn MC, Elan Martin
Sott.net
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
hammer tickle
A judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off. A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing.

"I just heard the funniest joke in the world!"

"Well, go ahead, tell me!" says the other judge.

"I can't. I just gave someone ten years for it."

With the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the world lost one of humanity's greatest cultural productions: the communist joke. Crossing cultures and borders, the jokes were unique, ubiquitous, and jam-packed with information. They were funny too. The mix of totalitarian power, propaganda, censorship, and ineptitude created the perfect climate for an underground joke-telling tradition.

In his book, Hammer and Tickle, Ben Lewis tracks down all the best jokes from the era, providing not only a handy compendium, but a cultural history of communism in the process. As communism changed, so did the jokes, revealing the different experiences and attitudes of the people during the times of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and then into the stagnation of the Brezhnev years and finally the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Note, MindMatters will be back in January. Merry Christmas, everyone!


Running Time: 01:22:14

Download: MP3 — 107 MB

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Info

'Epilepsy demon' discovered on 2,700-year-old clay tablet in Iraq


University of Copenhagen
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 18:15 UTC
A 2,700-year-old cuneiform tablet from ancient Iraq describing medical treatments has suddenly revealed a secret - a hitherto overlooked drawing of the demon that the ancient Assyrians thought caused epilepsy. It is the earliest illustration of a demon that can be associated with epilepsy.
Clay Tablet
© University of CopenhagenThe demon can be spotted at the bottom of the image, horns and face to the left and legs to the right- See also the researcher's drawing below.
When Assyriologist Troels Pank Arbøll was studying a 2,700-year-old cuneiform tablet with ancient medical treatments at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin four years ago, he accidentally discovered a partially damaged drawing on the reverse of the tablet. A drawing that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a demon with horns, tails and a snake's tongue which, according to the text, was the cause of the dreaded illness Bennu-epilepsy.
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Pistol

Operation Fast and Furious: Forgotten history of the ATF's gunwalking scandal

Sam Jacobs
ammo.com
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
OperationFastFurious
© ammo.comEric Holder, former AG during the Obama presidency
The ATF* isn't all bad. In fact, they had a policy of letting illegal gun purchases go between 2006 and 2011. It ended up getting U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry killed on December 14, 2010, and let Mexican criminals get enough guns that they were found at over 150 crime scenes where Mexican citizens were either killed or maimed. And some of the guns were used in the November 2015 terrorist attack in Paris at the Bataclan. But other than that, it turned out just fine.

(In case you're not picking up on it, we're laying on the sarcasm very thick right now.)

You probably know what was officially called "Project Gunrunner" as "Operation Fast and Furious." Started under George W. Bush, this ATF policy audaciously grew under President Obama and became indicative of the perceived attack on American gun owners by both policy makers and their friends in the establishment media.

It's one of many scandals of the Obama Administration that was never given as much press attention as, for example, Russia buying Facebook ads about NoFap and Pizzagate. Given that the guns run by the ATF were allowed to kill hundreds and that subsequent Congressional investigations resulted in Eric Holder, President Obama's Attorney General, becoming the first sitting cabinet member to be held in criminal contempt of Congress ever, this is shocking. At least for anyone still under the illusion that the establishment media is a fair and impartial source of information.


Comment: * US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms

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Dig

Early human species may have survived long enough in Indonesia to have interbred with Denisovians


New Scientist
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Excavations of Homo Erectus remains Ngandong Java
Excavations of Homo Erectus remains in 2010 in Ngandong, Java
An early human species may have survived in Java, Indonesia, until 108,000 years ago. Homo erectus endured so long that individuals may have interbred with more recent hominins, like the mysterious Denisovans.

It has long been unclear when H. erectus died out. Now a reanalysis of the youngest known remains may have pinned down the extinction date.

H. erectus was one of the first species in our genus, Homo. It evolved in Africa about 2 million years ago, then spread across Europe and Asia. Compared with earlier species, H. erectus had relatively large brains and used tools skilfully - although it was surpassed in both respects by later groups like Neanderthals and modern humans. H. erectus may be our direct ancestor.

H. erectus died out before modern humans reached Java, so it is unlikely the two species crossed paths. That means our species isn't in the frame for its extinction.

Comment: See also:

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Rewriting human history through our DNA

Tom Garlinghouse
Princeton University
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:45 UTC
For most of our evolutionary history — for most of the time anatomically modern humans have been on Earth — we've shared the planet with other species of humans. It's only been in the last 30,000 years, the mere blink of an evolutionary eye, that modern humans have occupied the planet as the sole representative of the hominin lineage.

But we carry evidence of these other species with us. Lurking within our genome are traces of genetic material from a variety of ancient humans that no longer exist. These traces reveal a long history of intermingling, as our direct ancestors encountered — and mated with — archaic humans. As we use increasingly complex technologies to study these genetic connections, we are learning not only about these extinct humans but also about the larger picture of how we evolved as a species.

Joshua Akey, a professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, is spearheading efforts to understand this larger picture. He calls his research method genetic archaeology, and it's transforming how we're learning about our past. "We can excavate different types of humans not from dirt and fossils but directly from DNA," he said.
Ancient Map
© Illustration by Michael Francis ReaganJoshua Akey, a professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, uses a research method he calls genetic archaeology to transform how we’re learning about our past. Fossil evidence illustrates the spread of two long-extinct hominin species, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Modern humans carry genes from these species, indicating that our direct ancestors encountered and mated with archaic humans.
Combining his expertise in biology and Darwinian evolution with computational and statistical methods, Akey studies the genetic connections between modern humans and two species of extinct hominins: Neanderthals, the classical "cave men" of paleoanthropology; and Denisovans, a recently discovered archaic human. Akey's research divulges a complex history of the intermixing of early humans, indicative of several millennia of population movements across the globe.
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Christmas Tree

World's oldest known fossil forest found in New York quarry


The Guardian
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 16:21 UTC
Trees would have been home to primitive insects about 150m years before dinosaurs evolved
new york oldest forest
© William Stein/Christopher Berry/PAThe find dates to about 2-3m years older than the previously oldest known fossil forest.
The world's oldest known fossil forest has been discovered in a sandstone quarry in New York state, offering new insights into how trees transformed the planet.

The forest, found in the town of Cairo, would have spanned from New York to Pennsylvania and beyond, and has been dated to about 386m years old. It is one of only three known fossil forests dating to this period and about 2-3m years older than the previously oldest known fossil forest at Gilboa, also in New York state.

"These fossil forests are extremely rare," said Chris Berry from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences. "To really understand how trees began to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we need to understand the ecology and habitats of the very earliest forests."

The forest would have been quite open and its ancient trees would appear alien to the modern eye. A walker would have encountered clusters of Cladoxylopsid, a 10m-tall leafless tree with a swollen base, short branches resembling sticks of celery and shallow, ribbon-like roots. The fossils also revealed a tree called Archaeopteris, something like a pine, but instead of needles the branches and trunk were adorned with fern-like fronds, giving it an almost hairy appearance. "It's not something we can immediately recognise as a modern tree," said Berry.
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2 + 2 = 4

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker: The life and death of a bogus legend

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 14 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Paul Volcker with Jimmy Carter
Paul Volcker with President Jimmy Carter
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve during the 1980's, has died at age 92. Major media are writing words of praise for the banker who "killed inflation" in the wake of the 1970's oil crises and food price crisis. Volcker's true legacy is far less positive. No one person did more to bring about the dysfunctional debt-bloated financial system we have today than the former Chase Manhattan Bank economist who spent most of his life in the employ of America's most powerful oligarch family.

Two major events define the true Volcker legacy. First was in August 1971 when he was a senior official in the US Treasury under Nixon. The second was as Jimmy Carter's Fed chairman beginning in October 1979. These define the events that led to the deindustrialization of the United States and the economic collapse of most of the once-developing world beginning four decades ago.

The Break with Gold

During the 1960's the US economy began a serious crisis of under-investment. The world-class industries built up during and just after World War II, from steel to aluminum to Detroit cars were all badly in need of modernization and investment. Europe had rebuilt its industry after the devastation of the war and especially Germany and France were competing with US on the world market with often more advanced state-of-the-art industry. Their economies were earning dollar surpluses for their exports. The problem was that those US dollars were no longer backed by the world's strongest economy.
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Christmas Lights

"The great god Kronos": Dazzling 1,600 year old "Mithraeum of colored marbles" discovered in Italy

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
Mithraeum
© G. AlbertiniIn this reconstruction of the "Mithraeum of Colored Marbles" the spelaeum, the most important room in the mithraeum, is shown on the bottom level.
Some 1,600 years ago, ancient Romans would have worshipped the god Mithras, possibly in an altered state of consciousness, within the "Mithraeum of Colored Marbles," said archaeologists who found the remains of this temple in Ostia, Italy.

Artifacts and inscriptions found in the mithraeum suggest that the worshippers venerated both Mithras, a popular god in the Roman Empire, and other gods.

The mithraeum's "spelaeum," its most important room, has a stone marble floor decorated with a dazzling array of colors. Also in this room, archaeologists found a bench, a ritual well and a flower bed for some sort of sacred plant, wrote the research team leader Max Victor David, a professor of history and cultures at the University of Bologna in Italy, in a paper published in the journal Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.
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Boat

30-metre 16th-century shipwreck found amidst Stockholm


Sputnik
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 11:37 UTC
The find has been described as an important link between older and newer methods of shipbuilding, as well as a crossover between a transport ship and a warship.
stockholm shipwreck
© Arkeologikonsult/facebook
A shipwreck from the late 16th century discovered in a Stockholm yard has turned out to be a naval cargo vessel capable of bearing up to 20 guns.

The large 30-metre shipwreck was first discovered during the summer by Arkeologikonsult, Sweden's oldest archaeological company. Based on the analysis of the annual rings in the timer, it was dated back to the 1590s, immediately after the Spanish Armada failed to conquer England. Based on the provenance and dates of the timber as well as the size and construction of the ship, it was concluded that it is one of the crown's ships built in Hälsingland. The Samson is the only known alternative.

Large swaths of Stockholm were underwater long into the modern era and were not drained until the middle of the 18th century. The ship was likely abandoned on the shore, only to be filled with debris and garbage from the local area.

"We have found everything from coins and pipes to ceramics and glass, but also a small ball of clay, possibly dropped by a child who played in the wreck during the early 1600s," archaeologist Philip Tonemar said in a statement.
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Pharoah

Artifacts in gold-lined tombs hint at ancient Greek trade relationships

Katherine J. Wu
Smithsonian.com
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:38 UTC
The gilded graves, built some 3,500 years ago, likely housed high-status individuals who displayed their wealth with objects from abroad
pylos gold pendant
© Vanessa Muros/University of Cincinnati ClassicsRecent excavations in the ancient Greek city of Pylos revealed a gold pendant featuring the likeness of Hathor, an Egyptian goddess who was a protector of the dead
Archaeologists have uncovered two 3,500-year-old gold-lined, beehive-shaped tombs in the ancient city of Pylos in southern Greece. Though the tombs, dubbed Tholos VI and Tholos VII, were looted in antiquity, they are still strewn with thousands of pieces of gold leaf that had once adorned their walls and floors, reports Nicholas Wade for the New York Times.

But the tombs' true treasures may actually be the foreign-looking ornaments and jewelry found within. These artifacts suggest that the ancient residents of Pylos were more interconnected with other parts of the world, including Egypt and the Near East, than previously thought.

"What is emerging ... is that Pylos was a real powerhouse in the early Mycenaean period," Jeremy B. Rutter, a Mycenaean archaeologist at Dartmouth College who wasn't involved in the excavation, tells Wade.

Comment: As more and more artifacts come to light through new excavations and discoveries, we get a better perspective and a clearer picture of the relations of the people of those times. The ancient world appears to have been way more connected than previously thought:

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