Is sandpaper a tool or a consumable?

Euletidde Eve, 9:08 PM. 
Out of sandpaper. 
Stores closed. 
Disaster looms.

goddamn fungibles!


Unexpected DNA Corroboration of a Doc Savage Adventure!!

Okay, the exclamations points are unnecessary,but they really felt needed. As a poet, I feel free to (ab)use language to suit myself. After all ,it worked for the hot-sheets*.
In the Secret of the Su , an adventure I have tentatively dated as occurring in April 1942, Clark Savage and his gang of Merry Men encounter a remnant of the long-lost Mayan civilization...living in the Everglades.
They speak a language which Doc can partially understand and identifys as 'Yucatan Basic...pre-Mayan.'.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that Doc himself speaks two forms of 'Mayan': a formal version used by the priesthood of the Lost Valley, and a common version. While the Lost Valley language is usually referred to as 'Mayan' (ignoring the 'Incan' from 'Incan in Gray') , we have to be mindful that these labels were assigned nearly a century ago, and may not accurately conform to the real tongues spoke by the Mayans or the 'pre-Mayan Yucatan people'.

So where am I going with this?
Well, the report of Purepecha DNA found in Georgia / North Carolina!
The Purepacha were one the of the major pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica, a high-technology people with copper smelting and stepped pyramids. Their language Tarascan is spoken today by about a quarter-million people (according to Wikipedia) and is part of the Chibchan family of languages...and yes, the Chibchan languages seem to have pre-dated the Mayan.

Of course, there is a lot of 'Mayan' variants, which makes the 'High 'and "Low" versions spoken by Doc difficult to pin down without any examples. If we could just identify Hidalgo...

Now to add to the fun, its been argued for a while that the rock terraces found at Brasstown Bald in Georgia is the ruins of the fabled city of Yupaha. People are willing to argue that the ruins date from around 1000 AD, which would put them at the end of the Mayan civilizations peak. Problem is, nothing has been dug up that looks definitively Mayan; or for that matter, Purepacha.
But its hard to argue with the DNA.

The deportation/genocide that befell the Creek Confederation could certainly have provided the impetus for  Purepacha descendants to flee deep into the 'impassable' Everglades. Their home is described as being dug into a natural coral mound, within hiking distance of the town of Everglades.

Everglades (now 'Everglades City') is on the coast, up against the edge of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and the Everglades National Park. Its billed as the tourist entrance to the Ten Thousand Islands. Population of 479 people in 2010, and the jungle is still tangled and secluded enough to be a major drug smuggling hub through the 1970's and 1980's.

Secluded enough that the Su may still live in their tunneled homes, keeping themselves hidden away from the Global Village.



*Weekly World News. Thank you, MiB.

"...but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men..."

"...It is in the interest of the mortal to keep secrets, but it is not in the interest of the secrets to be kept." ---Kevin Dunn



Humanity Baffled Axiom #2

Protasis: Two billion kilograms* of insecticide are used globally; spread universally but largely across croplands, much of which are fertilized by bees ( a beneficial insect). Many of the compounds used do not readily break down, allowing the background quantity to accumulate.
Apodosis:Bees are suffering a mysterious decline, known as 'Colony collapse disorder'; no obvious reason can be found.
Humanity Baffled.



*Wen Jun Zhang, et al (2011) argue that this is 4.6 billion kg.
 Donaldson D., et al(1999) "Report No. EPA-733-R-02-OOI"** argue 5.6 billion kg. It seems difficult to get a good figure: data sets prefer to discuss dollar value. This author is aware that this is comparing apples to lobsters; that different insecticides have different toxicities, and hence a 'tonnage' figure is largely meaningless for any purpose beyond a sence of scale.


**No longer seems to be available.

"The Clone Chamber is heating up!"

I just watched 'Scavengers'.
Its junk.
Bad guys named things like 'Jekyll' and 'Black Divert'.
Laser beams that turn into solid rods. Wildly inappropriate emotional reactions to situations; actors acting according to very divergent ideas of  the movies tenor and scope. The movie ends on a down note, and without any resolution. message to directors: read your goddamn scripts carefully: if you are too goddamn high or stupid to notice things like a character using the word 'interesting' five goddamn times in twenty goddamn lines, get a high schooler read it for you.
I have never listened to a script that used the term 'protocol'  as many times as this film. They should have called this movie 'Protocol'.
"...We have achieved targeting protocol...'
( 'Scavenge' and 'Scavenger' run close seconds.)

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Louise Linton is pleasant on the eyes, but she is just not enough icing to make this cake edible.

Humanity Baffled

Protasis: It is discovered that a constant low dose of antibiotics fed to cattle caused them to gain weight dramatically.
Apodosis: The resultant meat is fed to humans, who also gain weight dramatically.
Humanity Baffled.