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n2doc's JournalMaya 'snake dynasty' tomb uncovered holding body, treasure and hieroglyphs
Archaeologists have uncovered what may be the largest royal tomb found in more than a century of work on Maya ruins in Belize, along with a puzzling set of hieroglyphic panels that provide clues to a “snake dynasty” that conquered many of its neighbors some 1,300 years ago.
The tomb was unearthed at the ruins of Xunantunich, a city on the Mopan river in western Belize that served as a ceremonial center in the final centuries of Maya dominance around 600 to 800AD. Archaeologists found the chamber 16ft to 26ft below ground, where it had been hidden under more than a millennium of dirt and debris.
Researchers found the tomb as they excavated a central stairway of a large structure: within were the remains of a male adult, somewhere between 20 and 30 years old, lying supine with his head to the south.
The archaeologist Jaime Awe said preliminary analysis by osteologists found the man was athletic and “quite muscular” at his death, and that more analysis should provide clues about his identity, health and cause of death.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/06/maya-snake-dynasty-tomb-belize-ruins
Yeah, About That 'Mysterious' $400 Million...
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
AUG 3, 2016
Here is how The Stupid starts.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran lost his job in 1979. He died a year later in Cairo. That's 37 years ago, if you're keeping score at home. For 37 years, the United States and Iran have been dickering at the Hague over the settlement of an arms deal that this country cut with the Shah when he was our boy in that part of the world. (Saddam Hussein was our boy, too. Life was complicated back then.)
In January, possibly because everybody involved got tired of windmills and tulips and really good beer, the two countries finally settled matters. As Agence France-Presse reported at the time, the U.S. agreed to pay $400 million in cash and $1.3 billion in interest to settle the claim first filed on behalf of a government that had been overthrown for nearly four decades.
The repayment, which settles a suit brought under an international legal tribunal, is separate from the tens of billions of dollars in frozen foreign accounts that Iran can now access after the end of nuclear sanctions. But the timing of the announcement, one day after the implementation of the Iran nuclear accord, will be seen as pointing to a broader clearing of the decks between the old foes. US President Barack Obama defended the settlement in a televised statement from the White House, saying it was for "much less than the amount Iran sought." "For the United States, the settlement could save us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran. There was no benefit to the United States in dragging this out," he said.
At the time of the settlement, obvious anagram Reince Priebus stomped his little feet and complained, probably because the settlement came hard on the heels of the Iranian nuclear deal and coincided with the release of four Americans who had been in Iranian custody. But the story faded from view until Wednesday, when The Stupid started in earnest, thanks to The Wall Street Journal
more
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47304/iran-400-million-prisoners/
This fraudster tried to steal my vote! (Sort of)
By Brian DickersonJames O’Keefe is a professional liar.
He just isn’t very good at it.
For the last four years, O’Keefe has been on a crusade to convince Americans that voter fraud poses a mortal threat to their democracy.
This week, the 32-year old conservative activist brought his social media circus to Southeast Michigan, where, in a whirlwind day of political theater, he and a female associate attempted to obtain primary ballots while posing consecutively as Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Wayne State University Law School Dean Jocelyn Benson, and three members of the Free Press editorial board, including yours truly.
I wish I could muster some righteous indignation over this outrage. But the thing is, O'Keefe didn't get very far.
And as it turns out, he never does.
more
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/brian-dickerson/2016/08/03/dickerson-voter-impersonator/87993508/
GOP Senator: It Has Been 'Proven Scientifically' That Globe Is Not Warming
ByTIERNEY SNEED
PublishedAUGUST 3, 2016, 1:37 PM EDT
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) compared those mounting the efforts to address climate change to Joseph Stalin and Hugo Chavez, while claiming that it has been "proven scientifically" that the climate is not in fact warming. He suggested in a radio appearance that progressives' concern about climate change was driven by their desire for government control of Americans lives.
"The whole climate change debate gives, and there are all kinds of quotes from adherents of and promoters of climate change, the reason they're doing it is it's such a great opportunity to control, you know, pretty much, government, and control your lives," Johnson said Monday, on the Glenn Klein Show on the WRJN radio show. "There's an arrogance of power there that they're utopians, that they really think they can create heaven on earth, and where it's failed in the past, those people like Stalin and Chavez and the Castros, the nutcases in North Korea--by the way, if you want equal results, go to North Korea, you have equal misery."
Johnson also suggested that the shift in use of the term climate change over global warming was because the climate was not actually getting warmer
"First of all, the climate hasn't warmed in quite a few years. I mean, that is proven scientifically. So, that's why they've changed the terminology from global warming to climate change--that covers everything," Johnson said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/johnson-climate-change-stalin-science
Donald Trump’s Campaign Might Actually Implode
By Jonathan Chait
Over the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has insulted his party’s former presidential nominee (former prisoner of war John McCain, for allegedly turning his back on veterans!), its current Republican speaker of the House, the parents of a slain war hero, the capital city of the state that is the linchpin of his electoral strategy, and a baby. None of these statements would make a list of Donald Trump’s 50 worst campaign gaffes. And yet their cumulative impact may be reaching a tipping point that causes his party to abandon him.
Trump’s wild unfitness for elected office, let alone the highest one in the land, has been manifest for years. Evidence continues to pour forth at an astonishing pace. Last night, his still-loyal aide Corey Lewandowski revived the conspiracy theory that President Obama has hidden a secret foreign birth that would disqualify him as president. Joe Scarborough reports that, in foreign-policy briefings, Trump has repeatedly asked why it is that the United States can’t use nuclear weapons.
We already knew Trump was an ignorant, manically aggressive conspiracy theorist, which has caused a handful of them to withhold endorsements. What has especially pained Republicans is his lack of political acuity. His mishandling of Khizr Khan’s speech to the Democratic National Convention has reportedly caused grave misgivings among his staff. The Khan speech was an extraordinarily moving expression of the moral case that Trump’s ethno-nationalist ideology betrays the American idea. On a purely political level, though, the speech may not have amounted to much — it was delivered before network coverage of the conventions began, and might have lived on only in social-media circulation if Trump hadn’t responded with a series of deranged attacks on the parents of an American war hero.
From the standpoint of the staffers working to make Trump president, this behavior was worse than immoral. It was downright unprofessional. John Harwood reports that Paul Manafort, the supposed adult in charge of the campaign who can curtail the candidate’s self-destructive impulses, is “not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in,” and the other staff is (metaphorically, one assumes) “suicidal.” Ali Vitali confirms Harwood’s report, and adds that the situation is “way worse than people realize.” According to Dana Bash, these staffers “feel like they are wasting their time.”
more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/donald-trumps-campaign-might-actually-implode.html?mid=facebook_nymag
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