This is a good overview of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, why it happened, why it both succeed and failed and the eventual cost of the war in the Pacific. Worth the six minutes to click and view.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
Here is the lede plus two:
As far as years go, you could do a lot better than 536 CE. By some historians' standards, it may have well been 'the worst year to be alive in human history'. Depending on where a person lived around the globe, those cold, bleak times kept on truly sucking for many years to come.To understand the climate issue, consider that reports were of a sun performing like the moon, due to an atmosphere obscuring the sun due to volcanoes:Now, it seems it might not have been the worst thing, at least for the Ancestral Puebloan communities who occupied the southwestern US. In fact, the darkness of this brief, global ice age might have heralded a bright new day for their culture.
A study conducted by a team of archeologists and anthropologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Colorado State University in the US has uncovered signs that the population spread across the Four Corners region not only recovered from a catastrophic climate shift in the mid-6th century – in some ways they came back stronger than ever.
Today, it appears this sun-shielding fog had its origins in a series of volcanic eruptions across the Americas, which spewed enough ash into the atmosphere to turn summer into winter across much of the Northern Hemisphere.So, are we as a society ready to meet the new social challenges that would be posed by a rapid climate change or some other environmental or economic change? Not some gradual climate change, but rather a rapid onset, one that included major challenges in food production and in other activities, including new diseases and a gloomy atmosphere?Just five years later, a good chunk of the Roman population would fall beneath a plague like no other. Oh, and another colossal volcanic event, this time in El Salvador, churned out even more ash to top it all off.
Life in North America wasn't much better. Measurements of tree rings from northern Arizona reveal a drop in temperature and precipitation that lasted for decades.
Yet archaeological records show that in spite of these challenging times, the Ancient Puebloans would go on to develop a rich, complex culture that would thrive for centuries.
I am not sure the Biden Administration and the "Green New Deal would be what we would need in such a crisis. I suspect we would benefit most from decentralized empowerment.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by Reporter Salena Zito, 21 November 2021, 4:00 AM.
Here is the lede plus two:
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Reggie Canal began the process of moving from New York City to this Cambria County city this past July. The Queens native is a financial adviser who has spent much of his life working in the five boroughs as well as various places abroad. He was lured here for a number of reasons, including quality of life, affordability and the ability to start his own business in the main business district of a city, without breaking the bank.I applaud the County of my birth. Those of us in smaller governmental units need to think smarter.The kicker, though, was the remote worker incentive, a pilot program that offered a cash motivation — $2,500 to be exact — to attract people to move to the county and take up residence.
The brainchild of local civic and business leaders with a boost from the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies, the program required applicants to agree to live here for a year.
In Lowell we don't need more residents, per se, but se do need more and better jobs, and less homelessness.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
Here is the lede plus two:
It’s hard to believe that all this is happening in the United States. First, secret police chief Merrick Garland directed the FBI to monitor parents who protested at school board meetings against the imposition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools. Then there was the Justice Department’s raid of the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe because of Ashley Biden’s diary. After that came the arrest of harsh Biden critic Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress, the first such arrest in decades, for his refusal to cooperate with the Democrats’ Jan. 6 pseudo-insurrection show trials.From my understanding it seems that there is a campaign to shut down Project Veritas. I don't think this is good for Press Freedom. For Press Freedom for all press outlets.Then today came news of FBI raids of the homes of Colorado’s Elections Clerk and Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) campaign manager. It looks as if the Justice Department has become an authoritarian tool of Biden’s handlers in their quest to criminalize dissent from their agenda — and this corruption is advancing so rapidly that even the Washington Post, a reliable mouthpiece of the Deep State, is now wondering if it is all going too far.
When you’re on the left and lose the Post, you’ve really gone too far. It’s abundantly clear at this point that the Post is fully on board with the authoritarian Biden/Garland agenda. Its coverage of the Attorney General siccing the FBI on law-abiding anti-CRT parents included such Orwellian headlines as “Faced with Republican criticism” — which all good Post readers know is something that is always wrongheaded, ill-advised, cynical, opportunistic, and on the wrong side of history — “Attorney General Garland defends school board memo”; “A man gave a Nazi salute at a school board meeting to oppose mask rules. Ted Cruz defended it as a form of protest”; and “Garland asks FBI to address recent ‘disturbing spike’ in threats against educators.” Nonetheless, if you go too far too fast, you risk waking up the sleeping populace, and so the Post is now calling for the Injustice Department to slam on the brakes.
In addition, there is the appearance that the Department of Justice, as an institution, has become a partisan supporter of the Democratic Party side of many cultural issues. This kind of perception on the part of a fair sized part of the Citizenry is not a good thing in a Democracy. The Department of Justice should work hard to not only be impartial, but to appear impartial.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
Here is the lede plus one:
Our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences is one of the most difficult language skills to acquire. In 2019, research had revealed a correlation between being particularly proficient in tool use and having good syntactic ability. A new study, by researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon and Université Lumière Lyon in collaboration with Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, has now shown that both skills rely on the same neurological resources, which are located in the same brain region. Furthermore, motor training using a tool improves our ability to understand the syntax of complex sentences and—vice-versa—syntactic training improves our proficiency in using tools. These findings could be applied clinically to support the rehabilitation of patients having lost some of their language skills. This study is published in November 2021 in the journal Science.I am hoping that the Lowell School Committee can illuminate the answear to this question.Language has long been considered a very complex skill, mobilizing specific brain networks. However, in recent years, scientists have revisited this idea.
Research suggests that brain areas, which control certain linguistic functions, such as the processing of word meanings, are also involved in controlling fine motor skills. However, brain imaging had not provided evidence of such links between language and the use of tools. Paleo-neurobiology has also shown that the brain regions associated with language had increased in our ancestors during periods of technological boom, when the use of tools became more widespread.
When considering this data, research teams couldn't help wondering: what if the use of certain tools, which involves complex movements, relies on the same brain resources as those mobilized in complex linguistic functions such as syntax?
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
Here is the lede plus three:
Mayor-elect Eric Adams won on a common-sense platform of making critical city services more efficient. Nowhere is the need clearer than in Gotham’s school system, which under outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio has drifted aimlessly, sowing parental discontent.The COVID-19 Pandemic has been a disaster for Public Schools and for the leadership of such schools, be it Administration or Labor Union. Suddenly, parents were seeing, live, what was going on in the classrooms. Parents got to see what was going on in the classroom and some of them, many of them, were unimpressed.Last week, the system released its annual student headcount, much anticipated after last year’s huge drop, particularly in the early grades, due to COVID-related school closures and the city’s uneven remote-learning performance. Did some students who left return this year or has the Department of Education irrevocably lost them to public charter and private schools?
We have no way of knowing: In an incredibly cynical act, the DOE released a single number, total students enrolled in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. With that restricted accounting, the news didn’t seem so awful: Enrollment was down 17,000, a much smaller drop than last year’s 43,000. But that comparison says little because year-to-year changes often look very different at different grade levels.
What is the city hiding? A close look at State Education Department numbers shows parental confidence in de Blasio’s stewardship was already dwindling pre-pandemic, before the disastrous 18-month shutdown of most DOE schools.
I think that Mayor Bill de Blasio only added to the distrust and distaste. Then along came Virginia Gubinatorial Candidate Terry McAuliffe, with his assertion: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” I hope that as we go forward together, schools will be receptive to the desires of the parents, working with all parents.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
Here is the lede plus one:
The widely used phrase “All gave some, Some gave all.” is mostly related to the United States military members who were wounded or killed in action. You will probably hear it more often around Memorial Day every year, and it’s not for Veterans Day. Many Americans get this confused, and we’ll be honest — it can be a little annoying to all of the living veterans out there.I think the author is a little picky here. This morning I greeted my wife, the widow of an Air Force pilot killed while flying a training mission, with "Happy Veterans Day" because she was deprived of her husband while he was on active duty. Fortunately for me she had room in her heart for an additional person.Memorial Day is a time to remember those who gave their lives for our country, particularly in battle or from wounds they suffered in battle. Veterans Day honors all of those who have served the country in war or peace — dead or alive — although it’s largely intended to thank living veterans for their sacrifices.
I think it is fine to remember the fallen, the wounded, in body and in mind, on both Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day started as Decoration Day, the day folks put flowers on graves. Veterans Day started out as Armistice day, the day in 1918, 11/11, at 11:00 that an Armistice went into effect. It was about the Western Front of The Great War, when the fighting stopped and the Butcher's Bill had been paid. On both days we honor those who served, as we should.
And thank you to all those who served, and all those who gave us support while we served.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
