Sunday 25 February 2018

The Neanderthal Story

This past week, a number of PhD folks in Europe decided to go ahead and agree that ancient cave paintings that were found in Spain a number of years ago with 'art'....were drawn by Neanderthal folks....approximately 64,000 or more years ago.

It's been a problem to admit this because they had this image of the Neanderthal folks as.....well....not quiet intellectual enough to draw fancy art like this, in this period 64,000 or more years ago.

The thing is....we aren't talking about vast numbers of paintings, which would lay out to 4,000 different Neanderthal folks over a period of time.

When you go and look at the different caves involved.....it's not that many.  So you come to this moment of pondering.  With a caveman group of forty-odd members, it's possible that you had only one single guy in some period of time, who seemed to be showing some flair for art.  Maybe as he matured and got ready to pass on....some Neanderthal kid took up the art idea and continued on....drawing on another wall of the cave.

As time passed, maybe two less than accomplished guys.....Joe and Marty....talked at length one afternoon about the stout nature of some wild cattle in the region, and each felt the muscular dimensions were something worth admiring. Eventually, they retreated into the cave....took some fire along to light the way, and spent an hour drawing up their image.  After that evening....each of the cave group would come by at various times and admire the art.....comparing Joe's rendition against Marty's rendition.  Joe's art probably was criticized a bit, while Marty's art was viewed as 'modern' and looking more like the intended subject.  This probably set off a feud between Joe and Marty.....with one knocking the front teeth out of the other guy.

The thing is.....I doubt if Joe, Marty, or the sixty-other odd artists ever thought much over future admiring of their art.  The idea that 10,000 PhD guys now look daily over the art and render judgements would probably make Joe, Marty and rest a bit dazed of the admiration.

The other curious thing which you eventually start to think about.....this is simply the caves found so far.  There could be another thousand caves existing....where Joe and Marty drew nude pieces with Wanda and DeeDee....rather than animal pictures.

Talk over Guns and Stuff

Prior to 1965....for a five-year period....there were between 600 and 700 murders a year in California.  In 1965...the numbers jumped 10-percent.  By 1970, they were up to 1,376 murders per year.  By 1980....3,411 murders per year.  By 1990, there were just over 3,500 murders per year.  In 1993, they finally peaked out just over 4,000 murders a year.  In 2016, they finally slipped back down to around 1,930 murders per year.

Why?  No one really discusses much on the trend line going up, or the trend line going down.  There's a fifty-year trend at work.

Part of the 1965 story could be GI's returning from Vietnam with drug issues and simply more prevalent drug use in California. 

Why did the 1993 number peak out and drop by half in a twenty-year period?  Again, no one says much.  My humble guess is that prison sentences went to the extent that you took a fair number of guys and removed them from the system.  Yes, oddly....the three-strikes rule started in 1994.  Journalists probably hate to admit that the law had that much affect but it does appear to represent part of the trend.

I came to this one odd topic in my reading today....a fair number of journalists want to use the term 'gun-death' when talking about individual states. They often want to put out low gun-death in states like California and New York....attributing their low numbers to strong gun laws. 

But you sit there and start to ponder.....if you had five-hundred assault-minded or threat-mined criminals who approached some house....attempted to enter or threaten harm.....and the five-hundred were shot dead....they fall onto this gun-death routine.  But obviously, they pretty much eliminated their desire to live by attempting a threat or harm to the innocent home-owner.  Does the gun-death statistic take that into consideration?  No.  That's an odd feature of this statistic. 

In the words of my brother on one moment of farm logic....some folks are just destined to die because of stupidity or bad behavior.  I would offer to that logic....we ought not be collecting statistics over such folks because it really won't lead to anything. 

Gone and Disappeared

It's a case which interests me.

Highly educated black guy....PhD in the medical field. Works for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention out of Atlanta.  Promoted last year to 'commander'.  Thirty-five years old. 

He felt sick....apparently leaving in the middle of the day around 12 Feb.  Then?  He disappears.

It's been two weeks.  Timothy J. Cunningham.

His parents flew down from the northeast to Atlanta.  He did drive home after stating the sick excuse for leaving, and parked the car in front of the house.  No evidence of a fight or such in the house.  Dog is sitting there.  Billfold is there.  Smartphone is there.  Keys here.  Car is out front.

Other than that....nothing else. 

No notes.  No suggestion of leaving the house.  Most dog owners would be dedicated to their pet and not leave the dog like this.  Same with walking out of the house without your keys....it just doesn't happen to most guys.

Cops?  They've put out pictures of the guy.  That's about it.  You would think phone calls would be checked and reviewed over the twenty-four hours before he disappeared.

My guess?  I would suspect that some neighbor took him in when he had a serious bout with the flu, and has quietly been nursing the guy back to health.  But you would be wondering about the dog, and the lack of keys.  Several things about this story don't fit.  It's like he stepped out the front door and just kept walking.  One other odd part to the story?  There are two windows in the open position as the family members arrived to check on his status.  This being winter, that makes it awful suspicious.