You know the story. But here’s the most comprehensive look I’ve yet seen of this critical period in WWII. A PBS/BBC co-production. Rez to 720p. Very well done.

The ‘Easter’ celebrated by Christians as the resurrection of Jesus Christ really began with the Jewish ‘Passover’ – remembrance of of the ‘Exodus’ from Egypt – and more particularly with the ‘passing over’ of the Jewish abodes while killing all of the Egyptian ‘firstborn sons’ (including Pharoah’s) in the 10th, final and most severe plague of Moses visited upon Egypt for its recalcitrant refusal to ‘Let My People Go!’. The Jews had sacrificed lambs to this mysterious ‘Yaweh’ fellow and smeared the blood over their doorways to warn the ‘Angel of Death’ to ‘pass over’ those houses. The Passover story is also why Jesus is often called the ‘Lamb of God’ by the way. In Jerusalem on ‘Good Friday’ it was HE (Jesus) who became the sacrifice!

Most of the world calls Jesus’ resurrection ‘Pascha’ after the ‘Passover’ (Hebrew Pesach [פֶּסַח]) holiday. Only English-speakers use the term ‘Easter’. Why? It’s actually rather interesting in a pagan, etymological sort of way…

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‘Angelcynn’ (pronounced ‘Angle-kin’) means ‘Angle relatives’ (kin)
The dragon is in ‘rampant’ posture (on hind legs), standard in Heraldry.

The original English people (as distinct from the other peoples of the British Isles), were believed until recently to be the Angles (‘Anglii’ or ‘Angeln’) and the Saxons, Germanic tribes from the Jutland (whence ‘Jutes’) Peninsula (now Denmark). The Saxons supposedly settled in the south, creating the kingdoms of ‘Wessex’, ‘Sussex’ and ‘Essex’ for west, south and east Saxons respectively. Meanwhile, the Angles, Jutes and Frisians settled to the north and east in ‘Northumbria’, ‘Mercia’ and ‘East Anglia’.

But, as I argued in my ‘Into our distant Past… dimly’ post, there are serious difficulties with the standard story…

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At precisely 11:02 UT/GMT (04:02 PDT) this morning, our Sun crossed the equator, heading North, exactly halfway between the two solstices – the Vernal Equinox.

Spring has officially sprung!

Up here (where there are real seasons!), the daffodils are blooming enthusiastically. Another very mild winter with almost no (lowland) snow has passed – and though a bit the worse for wear perhaps, I have survived to enjoy this Spring-ish music – and the morphing greenery…

The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball.
– Bill Veeck

I’ve posted (below the fold) an interesting programme on the Hisatsinom (‘Anasazi’) people of the Four-Corners region of the American Southwest, featuring ASU Prof. (emeritus) Christy Turner and his theory of cannibalism in the area. The evidence is pretty clear and conclusive by my lights (see also biblio below).

What chaps my hide are the very negative reactions of many modern-day Pueblo people (and sympathetic archaeologists who should know better) to Turner’s evidence… claiming that he is somehow out to post-humously smear their parent-culture’s reputation. My response is “Too bad. Get over yourself. It’s not as if I’m accusing YOU of cannibalism!” The facts are the facts. People do weird and terrible things. Stuff happens. And political ‘correctness’ has no place in science. Besides, I hear ‘Long Pig’ (or ‘Man Corn’) is quite tasty con salsa y cerveza!

In the context of the Southwest, this was nothing more or less than intimidation through terror. Terror squads. Sheesh – Some shit just doesn’t change. It makes me wonder if the ‘Mexican Connection’ isn’t even more profound than my own hypothesis and Turner’s rather similar one (see my ‘Hisatsinom’ post and the New Yorker article below). That society finally shuddered to a violent halt by mid-late 12th century [CE]. Is it coincidence that the ‘Mexica’ suddenly showed up in the Valley of Mexico several years later… after an ‘exodus’ from ‘Aztlán’ in the north to rise to empire as the bloodthirsty Aztecs? Hmmm. Remember, I theorised that the Anasazi ‘Lords’ were outcast Toltecs from that area in the first place. Hmmm. Was ‘Aztlán’ actually Chaco Canyon? Hmmm…

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This a follow-on and was inspired by byronius’ 4000 Year Old Mind-Blowing Sci-Fi post below. I’m a big fan of ancient rock art, just as I am of the even more ancient cave paintings in Europe. The shamans who painted/engraved these images were certainly in an ‘alien’ state of mind when the pictures were executed. Whether they were representations of actual ET’s is more problematic.

I think these images all spring from the same impulse to illustrate the ‘other world’. They show us that human mental structures are very similar over both time and space. These beings are meant to be weird and a bit scary. They are from ‘the beyond’ after all – just as are the surrealist paintings from a much later era. Shamans (like painters and artists of all ilks) are set apart from ‘normal’ people and are supposed to be strange and somewhat forbidding persons…

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All right, this spooked me.

Best viewed in High Definition. Panther Cave, named after the giant panther at the far end of the site, contains Pecos River and Red Linear style pictographic imagery dating back approximately 4,000 years. Figures range in size from less than 6 inches (~10 cm) to over 10 feet (~3 m) in height. The larger Pecos River style figures are the most prominent, and include colorful human- and animal-like figures. The portion of the shelter shown in this model is approximately 130 feet (~40 m) long, 35 feet (~12 m) deep, and 32 (~11 m) in height.

This site is accessible only by boat, and co-managed by Seminole Canyon State Park and Amistad National Recreation Area. This site is endangered by flooding related to the construction of Amistad Reservoir. The 3D modeling was part of a 3 year rock art documentation project conducted by SHUMLA Archeological Research and Education Center, Amistad National Recreation Area, Seminole Canyon State Park, and Geo-Marine Inc. to digitally preserve the site for future generations.

I just watched a 2010 film called ‘Centurion’ which purports to portray the mysterious demise of the Roman IX Legion in 117 AD at the hands of the Picts of Caledonia. While it’s a fun yarn (if a bit blood-spattered) with lots of Scottish landscape and suitably ferocious if overdressed Pictish warriors (both men and a couple of rather hot women), the tale is hopeless from a historical perspective. It is loosely based on a 1954 novel by Rosemary Sutcliff called “The Eagle of the Ninth”. The 2011 film “The Eagle” was based more closely on the same book.

The story of the annihilation of the Roman IX Legion is true enough, but it took place in the south and half a century earlier. Also, it was tribes of Celtic Britons under the Iceni warrior queen Boudica who ambushed and massacred the Romans, NOT the Picts…

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G_μν = -(8πG/c²)T_μν

This elegant symbolic formulation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity cannot be used for actual calculations, but it clearly shows the principle that “matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move” (John Wheeler, Princeton University and the University of Texas at Austin) . The left side of the equation contains all the information about how space is curved, and the right side contains all the information about the location and motion of the matter. General relativity is beautiful and simple (to a physicist), but mathematically it’s very complicated and subtle.

Of course, General Relativity as formulated by Albert Einstein is an approximation. It says nothing for instance about ‘dark’ matter or energy, which make up the bulk of the ‘stuff’ our Universe is made of. It is also mathematically incompatible with Quantum theory. But I think you’ll agree that Herr Doktor Einstein made a pretty decent stab at the problem!

An interesting and pretty accurate historical survey of our changing views of the Universe over the centuries:

So begins series two of BBC Cymru’s (Wales) “Torchwood”. As I recall, Demonweed doesn’t hate TV and gets BBC America, so he’ll likely be aware of this extraordinary television series.

A spin-off from the revived ‘Doctor Who’ franchise, my former wife and current friend Wendolyn told me about ‘Torchwood’ a couple of years back and I hunted down some episodes – becoming an immediate fan. Revolving around the charismatic ‘Captain Jack Harkness’, Torchwood is ‘outside the government, beyond the police’.

Sort of like a ‘UFO’ for grownups, it’s a difficult show to categorise – based in Cardiff, Wales, Captain Jack and his team hunt down and stop alien and temporal miscreants. Sometimes funny, sometimes highly emotional, always interesting…

Sky Harbor gives it an enthusiastic “Two Fins Up!”