A 6,000 year-old set of household gear, including crockery and two wood-fired ovens, has been found in the buried ruins of a prehistoric farmhouse in northern Greece, officials said Thursday.
A Culture Ministry statement said the discovery "provides invaluable, unique information" on late Neolithic domestic architecture and household organization.
"This is a very rare case where the remains have stayed undisturbed by farming or other external intervention for about 6,000 years," the ministry statement said. "The household goods are in excellent condition."
The rectangular building, which covers some 624 square feet, was discovered during work to lay water pipes earlier this year at the village of Sosandra near Aridaia, some 360 miles north of Athens.
Archaeologists who excavated the site between March and July found a large number of clay vessels for cooking and eating, stone tools, mills for grinding cereals and two ovens.
The house was separated into three rooms.
It had walls made of branches and reeds covered with clay, supported by strong wooden posts.
The building was destroyed by fire, which baked the clay, preserving impressions of the wooden building elements, as well as the post holes.
Archaeologists believe the inhabitants managed to escape the fire, taking with them their valued stone blades and axes.
"They left behind the large stone tools which would have been difficult to move away," the ministry statement said.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Daily Funny
A Carolina farmer is overseeing his herd in remote mountain valley when suddenly a brand-new Dodge advances out of a fog bank towards him. The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer, 'If I tell you exactly how big your herd is, will you give me one of your calves?'
The farmer looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The yuppie then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within seconds he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says the farmer.
He watches as the yuppie selects one of the animals and looks on, amused, as the yuppie stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the farmer says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'
The yuppie thinks about it for a second, smirks and then says, 'Okay, why not?'
'You work for the Federal Government', says the farmer.
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required,' answered the farmer. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all kinds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are even though you don't know a thing about cows - this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.
The farmer looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The yuppie then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany .
Within seconds he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'
'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says the farmer.
He watches as the yuppie selects one of the animals and looks on, amused, as the yuppie stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the farmer says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'
The yuppie thinks about it for a second, smirks and then says, 'Okay, why not?'
'You work for the Federal Government', says the farmer.
'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'
'No guessing required,' answered the farmer. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all kinds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are even though you don't know a thing about cows - this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.
Carolina Naturally is read in ...
Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Raleigh and Shelby, North Carolina
As well as
Prattsburgh, New York; Big Bear Lake, California;
Scottsdale, Arizona; Thibodaux, Louisiana; Highwood, Illinois;
Mountain Home, Arkansas; Mora, Minnesota;
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
Hays, Kansas; Providence, Rhode Island
As well as
Prattsburgh, New York; Big Bear Lake, California;
Scottsdale, Arizona; Thibodaux, Louisiana; Highwood, Illinois;
Mountain Home, Arkansas; Mora, Minnesota;
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
Hays, Kansas; Providence, Rhode Island
Matt Damon 'honored' by Joe the Plumber's shout-out
Matt Damon is honored that the most recent celebrity of the presidential campaign - "Joe the Plumber" - dropped his name in an interview.
"That was a surprise. I hadn't heard that Joe the Plumber dropped my name," Damon said.
"I'm honored to be in the little passion play, to be an extra."
The plumber, whose real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher, became an overnight media sensation after he was referred to constantly in the final presidential debate.
When the press arrived at his Ohio home, Wurzelbacher, a Republican, said he hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself with all the attention, "I don't have a lot of pull. It's not like I'm Matt Damon."
Damon - a hardcore Democrat who has spent as much time campaigning for Barack Obama recently than he has acting - was in San Francisco promoting a charity, OneXOne.
Along with hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, Damon was promoting the group's work to end hunger and suffering for children in poverty in the U.S. and Africa.
The actor said he's headed to Florida this weekend to work with the Obama campaign on getting out the vote in a key battleground state.
After that, Damon is off to Morocco to finish shooting a movie, but he said he would stay engaged with the Obama campaign."I'm sure I'll be on the phone over there after filming every night," he said.
"I'll do telephone interviews or whatever they'll have me do. I want to sprint to the finish with the millions of us who really have been desperate for this change."
Damon previously had been openly critical of John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, calling the campaign's pick for the vice presidency "a disaster."
On Thursday, Damon said he would not comment on the Republican ticket.
"The Obama campaign has decided to focus on the positive, and I should be a bigger man and be able to do that with them," Damon said.
"That was a surprise. I hadn't heard that Joe the Plumber dropped my name," Damon said.
"I'm honored to be in the little passion play, to be an extra."
The plumber, whose real name is Samuel Wurzelbacher, became an overnight media sensation after he was referred to constantly in the final presidential debate.
When the press arrived at his Ohio home, Wurzelbacher, a Republican, said he hoped he wouldn't make a fool of himself with all the attention, "I don't have a lot of pull. It's not like I'm Matt Damon."
Damon - a hardcore Democrat who has spent as much time campaigning for Barack Obama recently than he has acting - was in San Francisco promoting a charity, OneXOne.
Along with hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, Damon was promoting the group's work to end hunger and suffering for children in poverty in the U.S. and Africa.
The actor said he's headed to Florida this weekend to work with the Obama campaign on getting out the vote in a key battleground state.
After that, Damon is off to Morocco to finish shooting a movie, but he said he would stay engaged with the Obama campaign."I'm sure I'll be on the phone over there after filming every night," he said.
"I'll do telephone interviews or whatever they'll have me do. I want to sprint to the finish with the millions of us who really have been desperate for this change."
Damon previously had been openly critical of John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, calling the campaign's pick for the vice presidency "a disaster."
On Thursday, Damon said he would not comment on the Republican ticket.
"The Obama campaign has decided to focus on the positive, and I should be a bigger man and be able to do that with them," Damon said.
Woman with 8-foot-long dreads hopes to set record
Asha Mandela has hair that could rival Rapunzel's.
The South Florida woman who started growing her hair 20 years ago now has locks longer than she is tall.
The South Florida woman who started growing her hair 20 years ago now has locks longer than she is tall.
Mandela has submitted her hair, which measure 8-feet, 9-inches long, to the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Dreadlocks, the first entry in a new category.
It takes one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of conditioner every time she washes her hair and can sometimes take days to fully dry after she washes it.
Mandela, 46, said she "used to wash it three times a week. Now I do it once a week. It's very tiring. Sometimes I don't have the energy."
Woman gets into tussle with an aggressive deer
A 61-year-old woman got into a tussle with an aggressive deer after it attacked one of her poodles at her home on Monday.
Carol Lince said she let her three dogs outside, then heard one "screaming bloody murder." She went outside her home and saw a doe attacking her smallest dog.
Carol Lince said she let her three dogs outside, then heard one "screaming bloody murder." She went outside her home and saw a doe attacking her smallest dog.
Lince kicked at the deer's hind legs to try to get the animal off her dog, but she said the doe began to ram her with its head, pushing her into a fence.
Lince started walloping the deer's head with her fists until it eventually jumped the fence and ran off.
Lince said she sustained bruises after the deer rammed its head into her abdomen.
The dog was pronounced OK by a veterinarian.
Raccoon unfazed by cop's Taser during wild chase
DALLAS Police learned something during a frenetic burglary call to an elderly couple's home: Tasers don't work on raccoons. Police arrived with guns drawn after receiving a 911 call from an 85-year-old man who heard noises near his front door Tuesday night. Officers surrounded the house but pretty quickly - in the words of the police report - "determined the suspect was a raccoon."
In the meantime, the masked burglar apparently made its way into the house through the chimney. And that's when things got really interesting.
With officers in pursuit, the raccoon took off through the house, ripping up Venetian blinds, pulling down drapes, knocking over a lamp and toppling a flowerpot. Finally, Officer Daniel Ek tried to let it out the back door when the suspect apparently turned threatening.
"While unlocking the back door, the suspect ran at Officer Ek," the police report says.
Ek used his taser, but the raccoon ran up the chimney with the stun gun's prongs in its back. An animal control officer tried unsuccessfully to flush it out with ammonia, homeowner Bill Hyde said in Thursday's editions of The Dallas Morning News.
A neighbor helped secure the front of the fireplace to keep the raccoon from returning. The next morning, when the neighbor returned to put a cap on the chimney, the raccoon had escaped.
"He got away clean," Hyde said.
As of this moment ...
549 Brave men and women will not be returning from Afghanistan
ALIVE!
Support OUR Troops ... Bring them home now!
ALIVE!
Support OUR Troops ... Bring them home now!
Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote
What McCain Has Lost Our Vote
By CC Goldwater
Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics ...Read the rest of what she has to say here.
Oldest toy in Britain?
The carved animal figure above may be the oldest child's toy in Britain. Archaeologists from the University of Bristol found it last month near Stonhehnge and think it's at least 2,000 years old. They dug it out of a young child's grave. There is some debate about whether the toy is a pig or hedgehog. The Bronze Age figurine was likely made as a toy or in memory of the baby being stillborn or dying in infancy, archaeologist (Joshua Pollard) said...
Evidence of toys during this period in British history is "extremely scant," Pollard said.
"In fact, it's very rare to find any kind of representational art in British prehistory—almost to the extent where you get the impression there's a bit of a taboo on making images of animals or people."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tokyo store has not had a customer since 1972
Must have on helluva game of Solitaire going on then!
According to Tokyo Times, this broom shop hasn't sold anything since 1972.
A store that, perhaps due to a niche that’s not exactly necessary nowadays, unfortunately hasn’t had the pleasure of a patron since 1972 — Saturday, September 2nd, to be precise. And even then the customer in question was after a hand brush that unfortunately they didn’t have.
People over 55 dream in black and white?
Psychology researchers have suggested that if you grew up on black and white TV, you are more likely to dream in monochrome than people who have watched color TV all their lives.
Dundee university psychology student Eva Murzyn studied data on the color (or lack-thereof) of people's dreams dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. Then she ran her own survey on more than 60 people, half older than 55 and half under 25.
From The Telegraph:
Not to be a party-pooper, but this old man's dreams are in vivid Technicolor.
Dundee university psychology student Eva Murzyn studied data on the color (or lack-thereof) of people's dreams dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. Then she ran her own survey on more than 60 people, half older than 55 and half under 25.
From The Telegraph:
Only 4.4 per cent of the under-25s' dreams were black and white. The over-55s who had had access to colour TV and film during their childhood also reported a very low proportion of just 7.3 per cent.
But the over-55s who had only had access to black-and-white media reported dreaming in black and white roughly a quarter of the time.
Even though they would have spent only a few hours a day watching TV or films, their attention and emotional engagement would have been heightened during this time, leaving a deeper imprint on their mind, Miss Murzyn told the New Scientist.
"The crucial time is between three and 10 when we all begin to have the ability to dream," she said.
"Television and films which by their very nature are interesting and emotionally engaging and even dreamlike. So when you dream you may copy what you have seen on the screen.
"I have even had a computer game player who dreams as if he is in front of a computer screen."
Not to be a party-pooper, but this old man's dreams are in vivid Technicolor.
Global Warming on TV ... in 1958!
Hum ... I wonder why some are still claiming all this "Global Warming" is new stuff thought up by Liberals to con 'Real Americans'?
This election cycle
Gordon Smith had this to say today over at Scrutiny Hooligans about the atmosphere around the Asheville, North Carolina area this election cycle ...
"Full applause and genuflection to everyone who’s been out there registering voters. The Obama team, MoveOn, Buncombe County Democratic Party, and all the folks I don’t know diddly about have been out there making it happen. A 9% increase in voter registration?!?! Since February?!?! Absolutely amazing.
The local Republicans are wandering a static wilderness, caught between equally powerless factions, hovering in a power vacuum, and it’s going to be years before they get their acts together to do anything approaching what’s been accomplished by Democrats this election cycle."
What makes this statement relevant outside of the immediate Asheville area is that it could almost be said verbatim by anyone in any area of the country right now.
Now as to how many years it will take them to get their act together - I for one am looking at decades before the repugicans are even approaching the status of a viable political party.
They have always been a 'third party' party who have through machinations of all types attempted to rig and steal every election they have been in since the mid-1800s.
They have never had the numbers to win outright and the numbers have held pretty much constant from the beginning so that if every registered repugican voted the party line while only one-third of the Democrats voted the party line and no other votes were cast the repugicans would lose and lose by a landslide.
The only hope they have ever had has been to mislead, misinform, beguile, distract, divert and any means of suppressing the vote they think they can get away with.
This time, T'aint working McGee.
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