Thursday Things: Hearts for no Reason Edition
18 March 2021. Vol 3 No 11 By Dan McGirt. #84
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You never know what you’ll find at the bottom of the Savannah River. Crews were dredging the river. Instead of muck, they pulled up three cannons and a mystery
How about three cannons that may date to the American Revolution, an anchor and a likely piece of ship's timber?
The Army Corps of Engineers halted work in the vicinity after the late February discovery east of the Georgia city's famous River Street. Then it sent out feelers to maritime experts, historians and those who have worked on wreck sites in the river, asking for their insight into the finds.
The leading hypothesis is that the cannons are from the HMS Rose, a British warship deployed to U.S. waters during the American Revolution.
Who watches the dark watchers? For centuries, Big Sur residents have seen 'Dark Watchers' in the mountains. This is a bit unsettling, but I love these kinds of localized legends. Are the dark watchers mysterious beings, or merely some trick of the light or the mind?
As the sun begins its descent behind the waves, look to the sharp ridges of the Santa Lucia Range, the mountains that rise up from the shores of Monterey and down the Central California coast. If you are lucky, you might see figures silhouetted against them. Some say the watchers are 10 feet tall, made taller or wider by hats or capes. They may turn to look at you. But they always move away quickly and disappear.
For centuries, tales of the Dark Watchers have swirled in the misty Santa Lucia Mountains. Most stories begin with the local native tribes, which allegedly spoke of the shadowy figures in their oral traditions. When the Spanish arrived in the 1700s, they began calling the apparitions los Vigilantes Oscuros (literally “the dark watchers”). And as Anglo American settlers began staking claims in the region, they too felt the sensation of being watched from the hills.
Accounts vary, although everyone agrees the beings are more shadowy than human and more observant than aggressive. They took their most solid form in the first half of the 20th century, when two legendary writers memorialized them.
Researchers discover deep sea microbes invisible to human immune pattern recognition
A collaborative study among the Rotjan Marine Ecology Lab at Boston University, the Kagan Lab at Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, the government of Kiribati, and others has found that there are some bacteria so foreign to humans that our immune cells can't register that they exist, overriding the long-held belief of universal immunity, or that our cells can recognize any bacteria they interact with. Rather, the study found, some bacteria are solely defined by their local habitat or surroundings. Their findings were published Friday, March 12, in Science Immunology.
"Our team discovered and cultured novel microbes that are completely immunosilent to human immune systems," says Randi Rotjan, meaning that the bacteria triggered no reaction or response from our innate immune system.
Come on, researchers! Stop messing with things like “bacteria from the bottom of the sea that are invisible to the human immune system” That never ends well.
I’m all about maximum gain with minimal effort. Science Says You Only Need to Work Out for 13 Minutes to Make a Difference
The solution: recent research suggests that exercising just 13 minutes, three times a week, can be enough to make a difference if you’re looking to feel stronger. In the study, 34 people did a strength-training routine consisting of seven exercises three times per week, and did each exercise either once (approximately 13 minutes long), three (approximately 40 minutes long), or five times (approximately 68 minutes long). Those who did the shorter session had similar gains in strength after two months as those who did the longer ones.
It’s Thursday, so people are being wrong on the Internet. This Is Not A Picture Of The 'Distracted Boyfriend' Models Ten Years Later. It hasn’t been 10 years and they aren’t even the same people: ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ And ‘Jealous Girlfriend’ Share The Life Of Stock Photo Models
Moral: Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.
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