Negev Rock City
04/12/2008
![World’s oldest marijuana stash totally bustedNearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.They apparently were getting high too.[An] international team analyzed the cannabis, which was excavated at the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China. It was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45.](http://media.tumblr.com/5o053g7ech39vxkyYLaUKRnko1_400.jpg)
World’s oldest marijuana stash totally busted
Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.
A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.
They apparently were getting high too.
[An] international team analyzed the cannabis, which was excavated at the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China. It was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45.
Photo posted at 20:15
Meet The Israeli Cosmetics Pushers
Shalom, Christmas Shoppers: Israelis Sell Cosmetics, Toys at the Mall
Ana Guembes made a quick trip to the Westfield Fashion Square mall in Sherman Oaks, Calif., one recent morning to pick up some face powder at Macy’s.
But before she could get to the department store, she was accosted by a salesman at a cosmetics cart in the middle of the mall corridor. “Hello, miss. I want to show you something,” he called out to her, brandishing a tube of lotion with Dead Sea minerals. Soon the salesman was applying eye gel, salts and creams to Ms. Guembes’s skin while chatting away about their cleansing and beautifying properties.
“I didn’t mean to buy anything,” said Ms. Guembes, a 40-ish nanny. But after 45 minutes at the cart, she’d spent $129 on a container of eye gel and two nail-care kits. “They know how to catch you.”
At malls across the country, shoppers are being besieged by a determined crop of salespeople: young Israelis who man mobile carts and have a no-holds-barred selling style.
Text posted at 20:10
|Welcome To The Territories
Jewish settlers in West Bank to Ethiopian Israeli soldiers: “Niggers don’t expel Jews”
Not only do they serve long and tiring hours in the reserve forces, and not only are they forced to deal with violent clashes with settlers, but now, Border Guard officers of Ethiopian descent are also faced with rising racism.WTF.
“Niggers don’t expel Jews! This isn’t what we brought you to Israel for!” are just some of the degrading slurs Border Guard officers reported hearing from masked settlers.
During the violent clashes between Israeli forces and settlers in Hebron on Tuesday “a bunch of veiled people started yelling at us: Who are you to expel us from our home? An Ethiopian does not expel a Jew! A nigger does not expel a Jew!” one Border Guard officer of Ethiopian descent recounted.
“I just didn’t know what to do with myself,” he said.
Text posted at 13:54
|02/12/2008
Photo posted at 18:32
Quote Of The Day II
Dwelling on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again because the West Bank’s 10 miles from my house. This is from the right-wing Jerusalem Post, of all places:
The dysfunction and confusion in Palestine make a conflict-ending agreement almost impossible. The divisions between Hamas (itself divided) and Fatah (even more divided) are now geographic, political and hard to bridge. Until the Palestinian national movement finds a way to impose a monopoly over the forces of violence in Palestinian society, it cannot move to statehood. The hallmark of any state’s credibility (from Sweden, to Egypt, to Poland) is its control over all the guns. Criminal activity is one thing; allowing political groups to challenge the state, or its neighbors, with violence is quite another. What Palestinian leader can claim to speak for all Palestinians or negotiate an agreement against the backdrop of a separate entity which controls 1.3 million Palestinians, possesses a different view of governance and nation-building and often attacks its neighbor? And what Israeli prime minister could ever make concessions to a Palestinian leader who doesn’t control all of the guns? There is no solution to this problem now. Only by restoring unity to the Palestinian house will a conflict-ending agreement be possible. And that agreement will have to take into account the needs of both Israel and a unified Fatah-Hamas negotiating position which doesn’t reflect Hamas’s extreme views and irredentism.
Text posted at 18:23
|Quote Of The Day
From Roger Cohen over at the Times/IHT:
I am fiercely attached to Israel’s security. Everything depends, however, on how that security is viewed. Israel can continue humiliating the Palestinians, flaunting its power with a bully’s braggadocio. It will survive that way — and be desperately corroded from within. Neither domination nor demography favors Israel over time.Amen. If only Hamas wasn’t lobbing rockets at working class towns with the bad luck to be near Gaza…
Its moral authority is already compromised by a 40-year occupation. The Diaspora Jew did not go to Zion to build the Jew among nations.
Text posted at 18:19
|Hamas Shoots Themselves In The Foot Again
Dude, Jeffery Goldberg nails it with the quickness about well-known Israeli journalist Amira Hass - the only Israeli journalist in Gaza - being kicked out by Hamas for no real reason:
I mean, when you kick Amira Hass out of Gaza — that would be Amira Hass, Robert Fisk’s favorite Israeli journalist — you really are mismanaging your press relations. Dion Nissenbaum has the details. By the way, the dire state of journalism in Gaza is not only the fault of Hamas; Israel has refused to let foreign journalists into Gaza for nearly a month.
Text posted at 18:09
|Comparing Rupert Murdoch To Satan
I owe Jack Shafer a beer for this review of Wolff’s new Rupert Murdoch biography:
By accepting Murdoch on his own terms, Wolff tilts his focus toward the sympathetic, but it’s the sort of sympathy John Milton rewards Satan with in Paradise Lost. Murdoch, like Satan, is simply the most interesting character in the larger story and therefore the most deserving of our understanding. This doesn’t mean that Wolff turns Murdoch’s negatives into positives but that he suspends judgment as he records his subject’s many “signature” acts of betrayal, double-dealing, and skulduggery. In a lesser writer’s hands, this would have turned into a “warts and all” biography; Wolff is shrewd enough to know that Murdoch is all warts.
Text posted at 17:56
|» My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-11-30)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Link posted at 13:58
|01/12/2008
This Is Terrorism
Words fail me:
“Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing,” a doctor said.Someone please tell me how Israel got mixed up with Kashmir again.
Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.
Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.
Text posted at 23:16
|Link posted at 23:03
|Afghani Nightmare
From The National: The situation in Afghanistan is not as bad as you’ve heard – its worse. Nir Rosen reports from Kabul and its surrounding provinces as the Taliban attempt to wrest control from Hamid Karzai’s government.
“I’m not optimistic,” a longtime NGO official with more than a dozen years’ experience in the country told me. He said the confidence of the Taliban today is beginning to resemble the swagger of the mujahideen he knew during the war against the Soviets. “You can’t help getting this increased uncomfortable feeling that you are waiting for something terrible to happen.” Another senior NGO staffer with decades of experience in Afghanistan told me there was “a loss of hope.” “Afghans with money,” he said, “want to move their families to Dubai or India; they’re looking at an exit strategy.” Perhaps, he suggested, America and its allies should start doing the same: “We’re not up to the task of success in Afghanistan.”
Text posted at 23:02
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Moon Over Beersheva.
In the skies over Israel tonight, you can see the crescent moon with Jupiter nestled inside it. My camera’s broken, but this picture taken nearby in Rehoboth captures the gist. (via guyatar)
Photo posted at 22:40
|Ancient Jews Liked Treif Too
Note to the non-Jews: Treif = The Hebrew word for non-Kosher foods. This includes cheeseburgers, pork, shrimp, mussels and all sorts of deliciousness. Among the list of non-Kosher foods is catfish. It’s due to some theological argument in the Bible that I’m not even going to pretend to understand. But catfish bones have been found in ancient Jewish villages in Israel. Just like us, the ancient Israelites were happy to throw off the theological strictures for some good eats. Or, maybe, despite the idea that the Kosher laws never changed, they evolved and aren’t really divine:
Herein lies the problem: Jewish tradition assures us that the Levitical kosher laws were dictated by God to Moses around 1200 BCE, who in turn passed them down to the people. And yet we are faced with a ubiquity of unkosher fish remains at Jewish sites from a period when Jews should have been thoroughly familiar with these statutes for more than four centuries, and would have presumably shunned them. This implies two alternative possibilities: One is that ancient Jews were brazenly violating kosher laws, literally under the noses of the Temple clergy. If this is the case, the general silence of the biblical prophets on this crucial matter is strange, to say the least. The other possibility is that despite the contentions of ancient tradition, kosher laws had not yet been fully promulgated by the ninth-eighth century BCE - the late Iron Age period to which the City of David animal bones have been dated. Either way, the implications leave a great deal of… seafood for thought.As for me, I’m looking forward to my next spaghetti carbonara.
Text posted at 22:32
|» Is Afghanistan Going to End Badly?
Nir Rosen thinks so, in a long piece in The National that’s worthwhile even though it is a lot of outtakes from the reporting he did for his recent Rolling Stone article. An excerpt:
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Link posted at 22:10
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