July 2011

“Lost Continent” Sinks Beneath the Ocean

An entire lost continent, which used to exist next to Scotland, has recently been discovered by scientists. The continent was created around 10 million years after the dinosaurs died out, caused by a sea floor eruption. The resulting continent neighbored Scotland sank two kilometers below the surface later, after being around for at least a million years.

 This is a huge piece of news—as incredible as it is scary. Imagine how the continents that we live on could someday simply follow this lost continent into lack of existence. If you click on the link, you can read about some scientific theories about how the continent sank—but nothing is known for sure. Had it been around today, the lost continent would have been covered with mountains and flowing rivers—quite a magical looking place. I wonder what lived there? I wonder if any species were native to the continent alone and died out along with it?

The actual rise of the continent itself, say scientists would have been considered a huge natural disaster at the time. The lost continent was located with sound waves, which is another incredible piece of news. Keep searching the world with these waves, I say—imagine what other magnificent finds we could discover.

New Triceratops Find Validates Apocalyptic Asteroid Theory

New dinosaur bones may give credence to the theory that an asteroid ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

    

We all remember the elementary school videos showing the animated dinosaurs all foraging, going about their rather Disney-like lives (even T-Rex looked kind of friendly). There's a streak in the sky, all of the harmless-looking creatures look over their shoulders, mild curiosity registering on their lip-less faces. There's a flash of white and then a  pleasant narrator explains what's happened without actually having to show the placid dinosaurs incinerated. Of course, the truth is that the age of the dinosaur was incredibly violent, natural selection more at play than at any other time in history; biodiversity being a fraction of what it was after the last ice age (of course, we're working on changing that, too). What's much less certain is how, and why the age of the dinosaurs came to a close. A recent discovery in Montana, may have unearthed the answer.

Codex of Calixtinus Stolen from Spanish Cathedral

One of the most widely-known illuminated codices has been stolen, just like in the movies!

    

The Codex of Calixtinus, a unique illuminated book from the 12th century under the auspices of Pope Calixtinus II from which it gets its name. The book describes the life of St. James the Apostle, whose remains supposedly washed up on the shores of northwestern Spain near the town named for the Saint, Santiago de Compostela (Santiago means "St. James" in Spanish). The Codex, which related the life and times of St. James, turned up missing from a safe in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela on July 5th. However, clergy did not report the theft publicly until July 11th.

Linda Burfield Hazzard and her "Starvation Heights"

 

At the house that has been dubbed “Starvation Heights” in Olalla, Washington, seven identical evergreen trees stand on the spot where seven bodies are supposed to be buried.  Vanilla bottles that the good doctor’s husband drank to get drunk during this time of Prohibition lay littered and broken in the woods behind the house.  Cutlery, they say, is moved from the kitchen’s cabinets to sit in the center of the kitchen room by the people who starved to death here.  The myths and the facts about this place swirl together until you can’t tell who are the ghosts and who are the real people, just like you couldn’t tell then.  

 

Doctor Linda Burfield Hazzard was an anomaly among physicians.  First, she was a woman, but she also claimed that she had a revolutionary cure for all types of diseases.  Fasting. Hazzard claimed that fasting, or specifically tailoring one’s diet to the limitations of one’s body, could cure all types of disease. Most doctors of this era called fasting cures quackery. She believed that other men in the field of science were too linked to giving drugs or other popular remedies, rather than letting the body heal itself, her own method. 

 

Hazzard provided tailored eating regimes at her home, which she called “Wilderness Heights.” Her method was supposed to rid the body of its toxins.  Hazzard’s patients, who stayed at her sanitarium for weeks or months, would only be given tomato, asparagus and orange juice. From the beginning, Hazzard’s methods were criticized, or in her words “persecuted.” 

People's History of the United States: Part 7

Chapter 6: The Intimately Oppressed

    

In Chapter 6 of A People's History, Howard Zinn devotes time to articulating the plight of the unacknowledged in history; that of women. In fact, he states that, "the very invisibility of women" in the annals of history is a sign of their submerged status.

     In fact, Zinn points out one very important distinction between societies that seem to make women subservient in their roles as wife, child-bearer, and custodian to the home and offspring, and those societies that seem to place women in nearly equal standing to men in a more egalitarian family unit. That distinction is the concept of private property. "Societies based on private property and competition, in which monogamous families becom practical units for work and socialization, found it especially useful to establish this special status of women."(103)