A Glimpse Into the Past

      It's time once again to post some art work.  And once again the art work is photography.  You might think after this that photography is my favorite medium, but in reality my favorites are oil paintings, and various forms of sculpture, and various media of drawing - all equally.  Then comes using different printing processes for the sake of art, and oftentimes utilized in abstract compositions.  For me photography falls somewhere after that. 
      This art work today is from a collection of photos that is very special to me.  They were taken by my grandma's brother.  Uncle Chuck had always wanted to get into professional photography, but a lack of funds prevented him from going to school for it.  Nevertheless he created a dark room in their house and started to practice.  He was seld taught in the basics, and he proved that he did have "the eye" for it. 
      Then WWII broke out, first in Europe, and then its rages finally reached America.  Uncle Chuck signed up.  This was both for patriotic reasons, and because he wanted to choose his branch of service, rather than wait to be drafted and leave it all up to chance.  He chose the Army, and specifically the Army Air Force. 
      His self taught photography skills were just enough to get a formal education in the subject for free.  I think it was a poster on base that he answered after his basic training that said something like "Photographers Needed."  He went in and applied.  As I have been kind of appointed as the "family historian and records keeper" (unofficially - I'm not sure how that happened, but when a family member dies, I end up with a lot of his or her stuff), After Uncle Chuck died I ended up with a huge box of his old photos - complete with negatives.  Having to wait to get this stuff till after they die is a bugger though, as I find so many things then that I would love to ask them questions about.  I end up looking through their artifacts, and am then forced to play "History Detective." 
      During the war, Uncle Chuck was assigned to a reconnaissance unit that ended up being based in the Indian Ocean, and specifically on the Irrawaddy River in what was then called Burma (Myanmar).  I have hundreds of these pictures he took while on assignment.  There are some pictures of downed US aircraft, such as a series from the smoking remains of a "Flying Fortress."  There are others he took while still on base in Tennessee of a field full of the gliders that were used on D-Day.  Another interesting series was when his unit was out in the jungle on assignment with an "Aussie" unit (ANZAC's).  And since he was their base's best photographer he was assigned to take a ton of pictures of a USO show that came there.  There are pictures of stars and starlets whom I have no idea who they are.  If people would actually start commenting on this blog I would post some of them some day, so that I could get feedback from you all as to who these people might be.  Unfortunately, the people who would recognize them are becoming more and more scarce every day. 
      While a regular soldier would have had his letters intercepted, and the photos confiscated, Uncle Chuck had high level security clearance, and was able to send many photos home, along with their negatives.  That fact blesses me with an awesome collection today. 
      I have only chosen to post a few of the pictures here.  If you like what you see and/or want to see more of these you will have to ask for them in a comment.  I'm not sure what kind of camera he used, but the negatives are almost as big as the photos themselves.  That and his skill makes them absolutely crystal clear. 

This picture and the next one was taken while still on base in Lebanon Tennessee.  Note: you can even see the pilot's face in the cockpit of the other plane.  The same goes for the next picture. 

This picture is absolutely awesome.  I know that some Military history painter (not Don Troiani, but someone like him) has painted this picture and sells prints of it for a hundred bucks or so.  I think I have also seen it as an official poster for the Army Air Force (which became the USAF after the War).  But,... I have the negative.  I saw that someone has given this picture a title of some kind that I can't remember.  We just call it "The Picture Uncle Chuck Took of All the the Planes Flying in Formation." 

Reconnaissance units often had to go out behind enemy lines over enemy held territory.  Armed with only a camera, they had fighter escorts that went with them, just in case something happened.  One night something did happen, and Uncle Chuck took this picture of the event. 

                             This picture is just plain great. 

      This is enough for now.  If you want to see more of these you will have to ask for them in a comment below. 

Visiting the Homeland

      I was listening to an extended news report about people wanting to go visit the land of their ancestors.  They saved up a lot of money, so they could spend the extra time it would take to look up long lost relatives, and maybe even see the houses their grandparents or great grandparents were born or raised in, and things like that.  Then I smiled.  Being part Native American, if I want to visit the land of my ancestors all I have to do is step out the back door.  
      I would, however like to see the place where my German (or rather Pomorski - a race of Prussian German-Polish half breeds in northwest Germany)  Great-Grandfather was born.  I have seen the place in plenty of pictures in encyclopedias, history books, and on the internet, but I would like to see the building in person someday.  
      I've also read plenty of the history from that side of the family, especially in German history books and German encyclopedias.  I also heard tales from my German professor about that branch of the family.  For instance, I heard that during his terms of office, President Hindenburg had people searching all through America looking for us.  When my family came here though, they did such a good job of hiding and blending in, that Hindenburg's people never found us. 
      I am descended of warriors, it turns out.  On my white side, from people who had been soldiers and were recorded as such as far back as the early middle ages.  On my Ojibwe side I am descended of the warriors (ogichidaag) who chased the Iroquois all the way back to New York after the battle of Ashland and Bayfield in the late 1680's.  They ended up settling in the western side of the Ottawa River region and took Ottawa wives.  The Ojibwe branch of my family also has a very thin strain of Scottish running through it (from one Dr. Samuel Adams [not the brewer-revolutionary, but a loyalist relative of his who went to Canada and took an Ojibwe wife] whose line can be traced all the way back to knight named Adam of Gordon).  

      Finally in the 1890's the Ojibwe branch of my family came back "home" to Northern Minnesota, at just about the same time that my Prussian branch came here.  I grew up here in these woods, as did my father (my Prussian descendency), and his father before him.  In fact, even my white family after being here for five generations has become as much a part of the forest as the deer we hunt.  
      Due to the complicated nature of my family's European history, visiting the "Heimatsland/home land" in the way other people do, and looking up relatives would be way too difficult.  We've been gone too long, and we destroyed our "paperwork," so our relatives there wouldn't really welcome us with open arms.  In fact, in many cases security staff would never let us near them.  I think that for the time being anyway, I will be content with visiting the land of my ancestors by going out the back door. 

Do You Know What a "Newman Bar" is, and How to Use One? 

      Here's a subject I haven't talked about yet on here, other than in passing reference.  I am a NASCAR fan.  Yes, I like watching rednecks turning left.  My blog is called the Journal of SUNDRY Wonderments, after all, and this is just one of many sundry subject matters.  I don't watch it for the crashes, as people would accuse NASCAR fans of doing.  I do however like watching how a good driver can thread his way through a crash when they do happen.
      One driver that seems to be good at threading though a crash unscathed is Ryan Newman.  He is one of the good drivers.  He doesn't start crashes.  Sometimes though, being caught up in a crash is unavoidable.  Being one of the better drivers he is often right up in the thick of the action.  This also means that sometimes he is right there within only a few car lengths of where a crash happens.  In the past he has had a car in front of him flip over and land right on top of his car.

         One of Newman's earlier crashes that caused the invention of the "Newman Bar"

      For the safety of all NASCAR drivers, NASCAR officials have required extra reinforcement on the roof of their cars, particularly around the windshield, because of this.  This is appropriately called the "Newman Bar."
      At today's race at Talledega Ryan Newman unfortunately got to see just how good his "Newman Bar" worked.  It started during the last few laps of the race when a rookie got anxious and tried to go out and pass at four wide.  With all the wind these cars create, going three wide isn't always a good idea, and going four wide is just plain reckless (and wreck-ful).  The drivers need that cushion around them for air flow.  As fellow racer, Denny Hamlin pointed out in the booth (he was covering for Michael Waltrip, who was on the track today), "these drivers aren't turning into each other, but are being pushed into each other by the air flow."  And at 190-210 mph when that happens all heck breaks loose.
      After the rookie bumped another driver, that driver spun out of control, and into another, who in turn caused another to go sideways and flip through the air, landing right on top of Ryan Newman.  And poor Ryan, who is ranked 12th for the season, was doing so good at weaving through today's crashes and avoiding trouble.  He was right up in the top ten for a good finish, along with his team mate Danica Patrick who was also due for a good finish, maybe also in the top ten.  As a  result of the crash, he didn't even get to finish, and Danica, who was also involved in the crash, ended up at 33rd place.  At least she got to get another finish on her points record.  By the way, she is doing real good this year, and proving that she is a good driver, and not just a pretty face (but she does have that pretty down pretty good).  I didn't see how their benevolent overlord, leader, and owner of their team, Tony Stewart did through all this.  Oh, and Michael Waltrip - he was far enough back in all this, that he was able to thread himself through the carnage like the pro he is.

In this video of the crash, Ryan Newman is being interviewed, and he is NOT happy.  You can see the rookie on the left of the screen causing the whole domino effect.  He crosses the track infront of everybody, hitting Kurt Bush, who flips on top of Ryan Newman.  In the resulting chain reaction, you can see Danica Patrick's (green Go-Daddy #10) car being pushed sideways through the mess.  I'm sure that by the time many of you read this post, there will be other videos uploaded and available to watch.  

      Because the crash turned the whole race upside down a couple people not normally considered front runners took first and second.  It was David Ragan followed by David Gilliland
      Now you know what a "Newman Bar" is, and you don't want to use one. 

Tiny Techs

Science Fridays

      I was going to write about globular clusters today, particularly the largest, most compact one known to astronomers.  This one is called Omega Centauri, and is in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud.  However, the tech reports for this week are too good to pass up.  Omega Centauri will have to wait a week.  No problem, because this is freaking amazing.

      We are talking about nanotechnology.  About fifteen or so years ago (maybe longer) we got introduced to futuristic nanotechnology in science fiction programs such as the Twilight Zone.  Nano-robots were injected into a man and they began to direct the molecules of his body in order to transform it according to what the little computers (working as a collective) perceived as a need for the man's survival.  The first thing they did was attack the man's cancer cells and rebuild them right.  He eventually had gills so he could swim better, and all kinds of other weird and creepy things.
      Then a few years later nanobots were a semi-regular recurring cast member on Stargate SG1.  The Goa'uld Nirrti was using them all the time.  She was injecting them into humans, trying to improve on the design, and create a better host for the race of "snake heads," As Col. O'Neil would say.  The nanobots were used in one episode to speed up human development so that their entire life span was 100 days.  Nirrti used them to create a deadly disease that wiped out an entire planet, to turn a little girl into a human bomb, and to create a bunch of ugly mutants with telekinetic powers who finally turned on her and killed her with the powers her nanobots gave them.  And then of course there were the replicators.  The ones in the Asgards' galaxy that moved into the Milky Way were actually kind of huge, but the ones in the Pegasus Galaxy were the size of a cell.

                                 Nirrti, Long time user of Nanobots

      Well folks, that day has arrived.  Little computerized robots smaller than the size of a blood cell have been created already.  These real life nanobots can be injected into a person's body and directed to deliver medicine to a specific set of cells.  Using nanobots in this way means a person can get cell specific Chemotherapy without losing all their hair, their immune system, and most of what they eat.  Nanobots can also be used to intercept electrochemical signals from the brain to do everything from easing pain to preventing seizures.  I suppose that this application in the wrong hands could be used to actually control a person's actions against their will.  Maybe they already have.  I'm sure that the conspiracy theorists think so anyway.  Weirdos.
      The next tech story is even more amazing.  There are people who think that nanobots are so last month, too huge and bulky.  IBM is playing with single atoms.  Yes, you read that right.  To prove their point they made a movie using five thousand carbon monoxide molecules.  The animation is actually quite cheesy, and has the entertainment value of a quartet of a calliope, accordion, harmonica, and a didgeridoo (shudder).  But what would you expect?  This was created by geeks, very smart geeks, however.  Seriously, what kind of movie would you expect from people like the cast of the Big Bang Theory?  Nevertheless, I must be just geeky enough to think that just the fact that they did this is absolutely awesomely cool.  

                                  A still from the movie "A Boy and His Atom"

      In the picture above what you re seeing are actual, individual atoms.  In each pair, the larger dots are the oxygen atoms and the smaller ones are the carbon atoms (outer shell of six versus an outer shell of four).  The movie is called "A Boy and His Atom."  The boy is appropriately called Adam.  Adam and His Atom (this of course also increases the geek factor by a hundredfold).

Look Who's Talking

      I think it's time to discuss language a bit.  I find the concept of languages fascinating.  It is actually just plain odd - seriously.
      When you observes the animals, you can not deny that they communicate with each other, and quite well too.  They don't just use their voices as we mostly do.  Their languages use sniffing, a certain type of walk, and sometimes even peeing along with an array of snorting, whining, barking, and so forth.  Rabbits communicate with each other without ever making a sound.  One thing is clear though, and that is the fact that they perfectly understand each other.  They can even insult one another.  Dogs can be going about their combination language of sign and voice, when suddenly one of the dogs will get all peed off at the other one.  "Was it something I said?" 
      What is also interesting is that you can take a dog from the heartland of mid-west America or Canada, and put him together with a dog from Beijing, and another one from Germany, and they will have no problem speaking to each other.  All dogs in the world speak dog, no matter where they are from.  You can do the same thing with horses.  Granted, they don't have as big of a working vocabulary as a dog, but they can still communicate with each other, no mater where they are from.  A horses speak horse.  Cows - it's the same thing.  Pigs, goats, monkeys - they all speak their own language.  Each species has its own language that is spoken/communicated all around the world.
      That's what makes humans odd - oddly unique.  We can't automatically communicate with people.  The people we talk to must also know our particular idiomatic version of speech in order to successfully communicate.  The fact that we actually have such a concept as foreign language is very odd indeed, since the animals don't have such a thing.  Of all the created beings, only humans have separate languages within their species.  You can't say that's because animals don't talk, because indeed they do.  Just something to think about.
      Anyway - within human languages, there are language families.  These are groups of languages that are all related one to another, and came from some parent language.  Languages within a family have similarities, and even cognates, and they continually, dynamically evolve - first into what are called dialects, and eventually into what are called separate languages.  There is even history to back up the changes.  I will use the Germanic languages as an example.  When I learned German, after a while I stopped seeing German as a "foreign language", but instead as just a dialect with a funny accent (actually the accent sounds more British to me - when I catch it on the radio or something, at first it sounds like a broadcast from the BBC, until I listen to the words).  And in reality, they are just dialects - dialects that separated a long time ago (Dr. Johnathon B. Conant - 1990).  The dialects are just farther apart than Northern Minnesota Finnish-American is from Deep South Mississippi.
      While getting a degree in German (one of my degrees - I decided to get another major rather than get a minor), I also took classes in various historical stages of German.  Among those was Anglo Saxon.  There are many words that are cognate to modern German and modern English.  But of course there are - back then they were the same language.  After college I went on to learn Swedish, and again, there were cognates to both languages, as well as forms of words that weren't seen since the Anglo-Saxon times.  They are all just dialects.  When I went on to one day learn Greek what did I see?  Cognates - not as many as there were among the Germanic languages, but there were still lots of them.  Polish and Russian have a lot of cognates between them, and they also have some cognates with the Germanic languages, and some with Greek.  When I see things written in Latin, as I look up their meaning, I see how many of those words are also cognates.  When I learned some Ghaidhlig, again I saw the same thing. 
      Outside of a language family though, there is absolutely no connection.  There is no "macro-parent" language to all people.   The language families are 100% different from each other.  When I learned some languages from outside of the Indo-European language family though, the cognates were missing entirely. When I learned some Hebrew there were zero cognates.
      I have been devoting the last twelve years to finally learning a language that is NOT a foreign language.  That language is Ojibwe.  Ojibwe came from the Algonquin branch of the Algonkian language family (also known as the Annishinaabe language family).  Other branches of the family are Lenape (Delaware)-Central East Coast, High Plains Annishinaabe, and Southern Great Lakes Annishinaabe.  And there are more.  Because of the relatedness of the languages, I can understand a lot of what Chingachgook is saying in the 1991 movie of "Last of the Mohicans."  This is because what he is really speaking is Lenape (Delaware).  There are many cognates between the two languages.  Annishinaabe is not related in the slightest to either Siouxan, or to Iroquoian.  Those are separate families.
      What has taken me twelve years and counting is the fact that I don't have enough people I can speak it with, and the fact that there is not one single cognate to anything at all resembling an Indo-European word.
      Below is a short list of some Ojibwe words. 

Makwa - Bear
Ma'ingan - wolf
Megizi - bald eagle
Gegoo - fish
Waawaashkeshi - deer
Omashkooz - Elk
Mooz - Moose (the only reason that is a cognate is because English borrowed the word from Ojibwe)
Shib - duck
Mashkode Bezhiki - buffalo (lit. wild cow)
Ishkode waboo - beer or booze (lit. fire water)
Makade mashkiki waboo - coffee (lit. black medicine water)
Manoomin - wild rice
Zinziibakwaad - maple sugar
Wiigwaaswi 'gaming - birch bark wigwam 
Wiigwaaswi jiiman - birch bark canoe
Giziz - sun
Misko - red
Ozaawi - yellow
Ozhawaashko - blue
Makade - black
Waabi - white

Just a Few Snippets 

    For the tech side of things, automakers have been working overtime to try and figure out a way out of all the congestion on the inter-city freeways.  They state the statistic that only 25% of the freeway is being used, even during traffic jams.  I've been stuck in those, and I don't even live in the city, but have experienced them while visiting Minneapolis-St. Paul.  I don't have to deal with them on a regular basis, but only a few times a year and I find it frustrating.  I can't imagine going through it on a daily basis.  During a traffic jam, you get some people who are trying to go faster than the cars in front of them, and then thye have to hit the brakes.  This in turn causes the other people behind Mr. Leadfoot to have to brake too, until you have that going on for two or three miles behind him.  Now the So. Cal. freeways are 100's of times more crowded thatn whimpy little Mpls-St. Paul, and the freeways around Bombay are even more of a parking lot.  
    It was while considering these facts concerning Bombay's freeway congestion, that researchers came up with a solution.  Stop letting humans with poor driving habits drive their cars.  Yes.  Let the cars drive themselves.  Just like the cars that will park themselves so people who can't do it well will stop crunching the fenders of other parked cars, use the same sensor and driving program, but in a more enhanced way.  Besides this, the developers say, the cars can communicate with each other so that they won't get all bunched up, and the traffic will flow smoothly.  Mr. Leadfoot will be out of a job.  He won't be able to cause backups anymore.  With that, there will be one more responsibility that people won't have anymore.  They can just plug in the address to where they are going, and get in the back seat and text all they want.  Maybe the more geeky of them can even play World of Warcraft on their laptops during their daily commute.  

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      In St. Cloud, Minnesota a man was apprehended by the law, after he went to the hospital for treatment of some kind.  He didn't have any insurance or money on his person, but convinced the hospital staff there that he was good for it, because he convinced them that he was David Gilmore from Pink Floyd.  Wow, can you say gullible?  
      St. Cloud has an interesting reputation.  It is a college town, but not for the serious kinds of students.  They have some great schools there and some great programs, but by and large it is a town for intense college partying.  They attract students from smaller towns (the 600 or so population kinds of towns) who want to party day in and day out, they attract drug dealers from those same towns who want to sell the "stuff" to the kinds of kids that were always a lot smarter than they were, and they also have a reputation for attracting weirdos.  
      Through the 2000's they had the "St. Cloud Superman."  Actually he's still around there, but isn't the sensation he once was.  The guy actually is fairly harmless.  He stands out in front of a Dairy Queen there in costume and waves at traffic and talks about truth, Justice, and the American way to whoever will listen.  He has a Facebook page, and if you look it up there are a few videos of him on Youtube.  The people of St. Cloud either love him or hate him )it seems that more of them hate him.  He was arrested for disturbing the peace, and was actually asked in court if he used his X-ray vision to look at women's underwear (some women complained to police that he had been doing that - seriously).  Way to go St. Cloud justice system.  For a while he had attracted others to him like bugs to a light.  For instance there was a Spiderman that hung out with him for a while.  Amazing, DC and Marvel getting together in a cross franchise Justice League (or is it S.H.I.E.L.D?).  

      If your kids tell you they want to go to college in St. Cloud, check their bedrooms for pot pipes and booze bottles. 
      ___________________________________________________________   

      I also heard a story today about one of the victims of the Boston Bombing.  They were interviewing one woman who ended up losing both of her legs (like so many there that day - I don't have words to describe the tragedy of that day).  Her daughter ended up in the same hospital, and the staff let them recover in the same room.  While the woman was feeling especially despondent, they were visited by a pair of Iraqi War vets, one of whom himself is a double amputee.  He showed here that she can still live a normal and fulfilling life.  She was cheered by this.  The two vets have continued to visit daily.  
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That's all the snippets for today. 

Don't Jump to Unfounded Conclusions - Know All Your Facts First

      Due to the length of yesterday's post, and the fact that it will actually take several viewing sessions to go through all the videos (which are a must, because they are awesome), I will attempt to have much shorter posts for a few days.  Unless something comes up that requires that I do otherwise, that will be the plan for most of this coming week. 

      I feel I need to say a few things again about the Solutreans.  If you remember, they are the people who lived on the shores of western France in the Gascone Region, and sailed out along the ice flows to hunt seals.  Many of them ended up going to North America, and there is the possibility that eventually they were crossing back and forth across the Atlantic.  These were the first Americans; the original ancestors of all the Native Americans. 
      I have seen some things written by some people concerning this subject, and I find what they write as quite disturbing.  White supremacists and other racists love this information, and they run their mouths off without even considering some very key and obvious facts.   They say stupid things like, "See, the first people in America were white."  They feel this information makes the takeover of North America, and the subsequent poisoning, and germ warfare with infected blankets and other acts of genocide were justified.  In their wee little brains they think they didn't steal the land, but that they were just taking back what was stolen by the Indians first.
      Those who think like this are so wrong - they are ninety kinds of wrong.  I combat this moronity with several facts.
      The first fact is that the Native Americans were a combination of the Solutreans and the Asians who crossed over from Beringia about five thousand years later.  I'm sure that the influx of new genetic material helped this isolated race, and probably even saved it.  With the small numbers they began with after five thousand years they were genetically hurtin' for certain.  Genetic degradation and corruption would have been inevitable.
      Asians grow facial hair, not much but they do grow it.  A Native American (full blood) is absolutely devoid of facial and body hair (except for those in the Northwest who have a much higher Asian content to their bloodline - and there are many reasons for that, but that is a different post).  Where did this trait come from then?  From the Solutreans.  These were the same people who made the cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira.  Their depictions of animals show great detail, including the hair patterns of the animals, such as the wooly mammoths, rhinoceri, shaggy wild horses, and the aurochs.  In their depictions of themselves, curiously, they did not show any facial hair.  Why would they skip this if they were into the details?  Because they had no facial hair, that's why.  The Solutreans were not "white."  They would have looked just like your average Native American.  They weren't blonde haired with blue eyes, and didn't look like the poster child for the Hitler Youth.

       Solutrean painting - note hair on the Aurochs, but none on the man being gored by it

                                              Asians with beards

                                Salish man from the west coast - with facial hair

                                      Another west coast, bearded Native

             Typical Native from central to eastern North America - devoid of facial hair

      "If that's true," the racist might ask, "then why aren't there any 'Indians' running around Europe today?"  Because the same thing that happened to them in North America about 10,000 years later also happened to them in Europe during the late Mesolithic.  They got overrun by settlers from another continent - specifically by the Natufians.  The first Europeans were hunter-gatherers and remained that way until they virtually disappeared.  The Natufians were originally hunter-gatherers too, but after they started gathering wild grains they went through a transformation.  This is all in one of the video series from yesterday so I won't elaborate much on that here.  I'll just simply say that due to a climate catastrophe, and their new addiction to grain they became farmers.  Their success at this eventually caused overcrowding in their homeland, and they traveled off to find new places to farm.  They went east across the Steppes, and they went into Europe.  As they settled and spread out there was less room for the original hunter-gatherers.   Physical evidence shows that the hunter-gatherers didn't adopt the farming ways of the invaders, nor was there much mingling between them.  They basically just vanished, and their specific gene types are only found among individuals in the far west, and are very diluted.
      The Natufians inherited Europe.  Every European carries their bloodline.  They came from Israel (long before Abraham and his descendants lived there).  They were Palestinians, or would have been called Canaanites in a later period.  They are related genetically to the Egyptians, and originally came out of south-east Africa (chromosomal hap-halo group E1b1b with the African group VI mutations M172 and M201).  So they weren't what you would call "white" either.  They were Afro-Semitic.  Take that news you racist bast freaks!
      As long as I'm destroying your white bread, purist fantasies, remember that even the Indo-Europeans were originally Asians.  They didn't turn "white" until some genetic mutation caused a loss of skin, hair, and eye pigment in some individuals (again, theories on how or why that happened are for another post someday).
      So the conclusion is that Europeans aren't really "white" after all.  They are Africans, Semites, and Asians, with a little bit of Native American thrown in, and the Native Americans are definitely not white.  Hah!