09:00 Lois and I can luxuriate a bit in bed today, because our usual Sunday early morning zoom call with Sarah, our daughter in Perth, Australia, was moved forward to yesterday - Sarah and Francis's 7-year-old twins Lily and Jessie are going to a birthday party today with a friend. The party is probably in full swing right now, which seems incredible, but it's actually 5 pm over there - what a crazy planet we live on !!!!
chart illustrating some of the different times that apply around the world -
what a crazy planet we live on !!!!!
10:30 A busy few hours starts for Lois, because the first of her sect's 2 worship services is starting on zoom. But I can have more of a lazy day, luckily.
I look at my smartphone, and try to sort out what's happening with the pandemic - it's my duty haha! I see that Lois and I are dead lucky to have received our first dose of coronavirus vaccine: not everyone in Europe is so lucky.
The Mail on Sunday blames the EU's poor performance on Angela Merkel's past involvement with the Stasi when she was growing up in communist East Germany. I don't buy that explanation at all - how ridiculous! - but it's strange to see pictures of Merkel as a young woman: I've never before seen any pictures of her from that time. What on earth was it like to grow up under communism? I don't really have the first idea about that. And what did she think about the system at the time, I wonder.
Lois and I discuss this - is it logical? Scientists have been saying that the way to discourage coronavirus mutations is to vaccinate as many people as possible. Won't the same thing work for "ordinary flu"? If people aren't catching it, it's not going to get the chance to mutate, surely? Lois and I don't know, but we think we should be told haha!
Lastly, here's a thoughtful article in "The Atlantic", sent me by Steve, our American brother-in-law, about how far people have the right to refuse vaccination when refusal makes them a potential danger to others.
The writer advocates not taking a black or white approach, above all emphasizing public health goals rather than looking to punish anybody. Secondly he believes that arrangements should be made to allow the unvaccinated to have reasonable alternatives available to the activities they perhaps for the time being should not be allowed to indulge in freely: online or socially distanced shopping or other activities for example. Thirdly he thinks we should avoid applying the same rules to people or jobs with different circumstances. Lastly he says we should always remember to go by the science. Simples - makes sense to me!
I know that some members of Lois's sect have made up their minds to refuse vaccination, for various reasons. At the moment the sect is holding its meetings online but these non-vaccinated members may become an issue if and when the sect starts holding traditional meetings again. Oh dear!
However I think the last word on this should go to one of my favourite commentators, screw sorter Rich Guglieri, quoted as part of Onion News's regular insightful surveys of popular opinion. I always check Rich's "take" on things first - I've found over the years by long experience that Rich always "has his finger on the pulse".
I think all the archaeologists featured in this series have been guilty of some degree of misrepresentation of the facts, but to be frank, Lois and I don't really care about all that - we just want to know what they really dug up, and what it all really means.
This was an amazing find from the early 1960's. Everybody had thought that the so-called "Fertile Crescent" of Mesopotamia and its surrounds were where civilisation and urbanisation began, but the buried city of Catalhoyuk in Turkey proved to be older still - radiocarbon evidence dated it to 9.5 thousand years ago, far back in the "uncivilised" Stone Age, and over twice the age of the Pyramids, Stonehenge etc.
It was a weird city because it didn't have any streets - the houses were built 100% contiguously, in one great array, like cells in a honeycomb. The houses didn't have any space between them nor any doors: the only way in and out was through a hole in the roof, which doubled as a smoke vent - simples! So people got around the city by climbing over their neighbours' roofs - what madness!!!!
And thanks to the kind of clay that the city was buried in, archaeologists also recovered some of the inhabitants' skeletons, as well as some of their belongings and furniture. These belongings included ovens, fireplaces, astonishing wall murals, mini-statues, human figurines etc.
The inhabitants obviously had the custom of burying their dead under the floors of their houses - something which must have been an extremely comforting thought, both for those facing death, and for the bereaved family members that they left behind - what a great idea !!!!
There was clearly a population of several thousands living here on this 34 acre site, but there were no indications of a hierarchical society. And surprisingly the skeletons of both the men and the women revealed that they led similar lives of equally hard labour, and that they became physically worn in the same way as each other, suggesting a degree of equality between the sexes.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment