A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

I just can't muster up any concern over . . .

Game of Thrones.  I'm totally disinterested.  It strikes me, frankly, as just flat out silly and a little dim.

Why watch a pseudo Medieval England when you can read about the real one?

Alfred the Great's father AEthelwulf.  Why did his young son take office over his elders?  Why did Alfred go to Rome as a boy?  Why did Alfred's parents name him "Advised by Elves".  Why do people watch a goofball television show with an actress who is hopelessly clean in a Medieval setting and looks like an albino?

I also can't muster up any real interest over UW's most recent president Laurie Richards being demoted back to professor.

I really ought to. And I did care when Sternberg was demoted.  It seems to me that Richards did a good job, but I really can't muster up a snit about it.

Old geology lecture hall at the University of Wyoming.  I've noted before that I have an ambivalent relationship with my two time alma mater that I don't have with my first one, a community college.  Indeed, post public schooling warm feelings, I have stronger ones for that college and the Field Artillery training school at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, for some reason.  I really have no idea why.  Perhaps that's why I recall can't muster up a snit about the current UW president situation.

And I'm also disinterested in the scandal in which Felicity Huffman and Lori Loghlin are accused of paying bribes to get their children into competitive private universities.  I'm generally disinterested in actors and actresses anyhow, and frankly I have always simply assumed that baksheesh is an element of getting into the big dollar schools.  Wasn't this always obvious?  It seems to me to be pretty clear, but perhaps I was naive in thinking this was a scandal as society at large is. . . well apparently naive.

Mabel Normand, actress.  She died at age 37 in 1930.  I just like the photo.