- What was the secret of the Incas, who built the largest empire ever to exist in the Americas? How did their society excel where others fell short and expand beyond all reasonable bounds? According to research published in the June issue of the journal Antiquity, the answer is simple: llama poop. The study found that as human populations expended and developed into complex societies focused on agriculture instead of the hunter-gathered approach, llama droppings were the key to the Incas’ success. "This leap occurred 2,700 years ago and was made possible by a huge availability of animal excrement. Organic fertilizers enabled corn to be cultivated at very high altitudes, allowing the Inca to settle and flourish," Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeoecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru and leader of the study. His team probed the practices of the Inca as they ruled the largest empire on Earth -- stretching from the present-day southern border of Colombia to central Chile -- right up to their demise after e their last emperor, Atahualpa, was executed by Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Unfortunately, the Inca language has no written form and much of the empire’s artifacts were destroyed by the Spanish. As a result, much of Inica lore has remained a mystery. Chepstow-Lusty searched far and wide for credible experts to reconstruct the "extraordinary plant-breeding event" long believed to be at the center of the Inca Empire’s rise to prominence. He and his team tracked down pollen and mites buried in layers of mud on the floor of Lake Marcacocha in the Cuzco region of the Peruvian Andes, near the site of famed architectural marvel Machu Picchu. Researchers dug up 20.6 foot-long sediment core from the lake bottom and radiocarbon-dated organic material from six layers for a thorough analysis of a 4,200-year-old sediment record. In the sediment samples, maize pollen appears for the first time in the lake muds around 700 B.C., showing that the crop could be cultivated at high altitudes of at least 10,990 feet above sea level. Prior to that time, other Andean people were eating potatoes and quinoa, a grain-like plant similar to spinach. When the Incas and their llama poop came along and began growing maize, the world as Andean people knew it changed. Because maize is more suitable for long-term, controlled storage and easier to transport than potatoes, it was quickly embraced as the go-to crop. Still, it was only with the help of llama herds that maize truly took off. The llamas provided ample fertilizer for the crop and with a brief period of warming between two major droughts coming at the same time the llamas showed up on the scene, the Inca had everything they needed to launch their very own food revolution……….
- Casualties abound now that the NFL lockout has passed the two-month mark. The rush to sign undrafted free agents fresh out of college that ensues in the hours after the league’s April draft was among the first to fall, followed by rookie minicamps at team training facilities. Yet the presence of the NBA and NHL playoffs and Major League Baseball season have taken some of the sting out of the lockout so far……until now. News came down Thursday that the league has canceled next month's rookie symposium because of the ongoing lockout, meaning hundreds of rookies will not be cramming into some cookie-cutter hotel ballroom or an oversized conference room somewhere and listening to warnings about all the perils of the NFL lifestyle they need to avoid - hangers on, gambling, etc. League spokesman Greg Aiello announced the decision, citing "the uncertainty of the labor issues we are facing and the logistical challenges of conducting the symposium." The event was to begin in Canton, Ohio, on June 26, teaching rookies life lessons on dealing with football, finances and their new lifestyle. Oddly enough, many current players have credited the symposium as a positive first step in their transition to the NFL. As such, the league held off on canceling it for as long as possible but with the NFL and NFLPA at an impasse -- and with both sides waiting for a June 3 court hearing before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the ongoing lockout -- the time had come to pull the plug. "The symposium is a large, complex event involving many professionals and others," Aiello stated. "In fairness, we could not continue to keep their commitment on hold." Teams and their draftees have been barred from communicating with one another since the NFL gained a stay in court upholding the lockout, meaning all but a few first-round draftees who made it to their team’s facility before the lockout was reinstated haven’t received a playbook or any other communication from their new team. Additionally, the league has canceled programs focused on financial education that were to be held in March at Wharton, Harvard and Northwestern. Some agents laughed off the cancelation of the symposium as a formality because technically, the NFL isn't doing business right now anyway and couldn’t really hold the symposium anyhow. The real question remains who is going to tell these incoming rookies not to bet on games, solicit hookers or by a luxury whip for everyone in their crew the instant their signing bonus is direct-deposited into their checking account…………
- The final few episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" have consumed the entertainment world, going beyond mere entertainment options and morphing into full-fledged cultural events. For most, watching the last episodes of the show on television is as close as they’ll get, but a fortunate few have scored tickets for a four-hour, star-studded "Farewell Spectacular" that is Winfrey's final show. Perhaps expecting Winfrey to take her habit of giving away free swag to the nth degree in her final chance to do so, fans have been scrapping, clawing and brawling for tickets and not stopping until they got them. And that’s not brawling in a metaphorical sense; there have been actual fights over the tickets and in the peculiar case of one Canadian man, a fight with himself. Seems Robert Spearing of Ontario, Canada, drove his wife to Chicago last week with a promise that they would see the taping of Winfrey’s last show. Why he made the promise, I don’t know. Dudes have been promising their ladies insane and impossible things for centuries in the hopes of impressing them, but Spearing really went all-out in his attempt to wow his special lady friend. They showed in up in Chicago, tried to get tickets and failed miserably - only Spearing couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife the bad news. Instead, he did what any sane, reasonable man in the same spot would do: he beat the living sh*t out of himself. That’s right, due beat himself up. He inflicted the wounds by cutting his own forehead with a rock and scraping his hands on the pavement. After sufficiently bloodying himself, he told his wife and police the Oprah tickets had been stolen from him when two men -- one African-American, one Hispanic -- had attacked him on the street. Making the mistake of actually believing an alleged crime victim, police searched for the assailants. When they could find no witnesses to or evidence of the alleged attack, they questioned Spearing again and he allegedly admitted it was all a fabrication. According to a document filed in a Cook County court, the entire charade was done "so he would not disappoint his wife for not getting the tickets.” Spearing spent the night in jail before being released the next day on a $2,000 bond posted by a relative. No word on how his wife feels about having a brain-dead moron for a husband instead of a husband who simply couldn’t deliver on a promise to secure tickets to the taping of a daytime talk show…………
- Smokers, we have you on the run - sort of. New York City has officially expanded its non-smoking section by some 9,000 acres -- an area roughly the size of The Bronx - by making it illegal to light up in parks and on beaches. Eliminating one of the greatest health hazards known to man is always a wise choice, but skeptics question how effective the ban will be since enforcement of the new ban will be done mostly through posted signs and dirty looks. Defiant smokers have vowed to continue smoking in these newly banned locations on account of being tax-paying citizens who reserve the right to kill themselves and others around them who have to inhale the toxic secondhand crap wafting from their death sticks. In Bryant Park, several smokers were spotted the day the ban went into effect, puffing away in plain sight of several police officers. Asked by local media members why they weren’t enforcing the law, which allows the Parks Department's 125 Park Enforcement Patrol officers to write $50 tickets to offenders, one officer explained that he and his colleagues had “more important things to worry about. Even Health Commissioner Thomas Farley didn’t seem especially optimistic about the new law’s potential impact. “We don't expect many of those tickets to be written," Farley said. "What we have found from other communities with smoke-free parks and beaches is that if there are good signs and an awareness of what the rules are, in general this can be self-enforcing.” Self-enforcing……he’s kidding, right? Sadly, no. A toothless, ceremonial law is going to be ignored by New Yorkers the same way they ignore jaywalking laws and pretty much any other statute they don’t deem necessary or legitimate. Expecting even a bold New Yorker to tell another Manhattan dweller to put their cancer stick out seems like a stretch, so the law is effectively a hollow shell of itself before it even has a chance to take root…………
- How tied are people to the places they call home? The answers vary depending on where around the world you are, but the proud people of Louisiana’s bayou region definitely have as strong a tie to their home region as anyone in the United States or beyond. Having been pelted by one natural disaster after another and facing a rising, raging Mississippi River that could wash away their homes and lives once more, many Cajuns have simply had enough and are refusing to budge even before their local parish decides to call a mandatory evacuation. Several residents of the small town of Butte LaRose are among the defiant souls refusing to back down from nature’s fury and eight locals have decided that the word fleeing just isn't in their vocabulary. With 48 hours to go before the mandatory evacuation was to be declared, people like a man who identified himself to a local reporter only as C.J. insisted they are tied to their land and no one can make them leave. "This is supposed to be a national disaster that's unfolding and I'm not just going to put my tail between me legs and run off," C.J. vowed. He is one of eight residents who signed a waiver to stay, a waiver informing the person signing it that sheriff’s deputies will not willingly be put in harms way even if it is to save a life. "This is kind of like a call to arms. You just have to sometimes draw the line where we have to help ourselves. We can't just rely on this other people helping us. Right now it's kind of like every man for himself," C.J. proclaimed. Lest anyone think he’s a foolhardy old man who is expecting to ride out the floods in his attic, C.J. admits that he expects water to reach his second story window and is loading enough supplies in his houseboat to last him for two months. His signature is on a waiver form and once the evacuation is called, anyone who signs such a waiver to stay must stay on their property unless they plan to leave at the last minute. C.J. and his seven fellow Butte LaRose nature-opposers are pledged to do just that and in the words of Tom Petty, they won't back down…………
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