With Father’s Day just around the corner, we all want to treat these special men in our lives with creativity and kindness.

A proposed National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025 would require women to register with Selective Service, according to the Senate Committee on Armed Services' executive summary.The NDAA would amend "the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service," according to the summary, which also notes that the "Committee voted 22-3 to advance the NDAA for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 to the Senate floor."'Almost all male US citizens and male immigrants, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service.'GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas registered his staunch opposition, responding to the provision by tweeting, "You can go straight to hell. Over my dead body." — (@) Currently, men are required to register with Selective Service and could be conscripted in the event of a draft."Almost all male US citizens and male immigrants, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service," according to sss.gov, which notes that the agency's mission is "to register men and maintain a system that, when authorized by the President and Congress, rapidly provides personnel in a fair and equitable manner while managing an alternative-service program for conscientious objectors."The House passed an NDAA proposal on Friday that includes a section to require the automatic registration of men with Selective Service. The House-passed NDAA would amend the Military Selective Service Act by inserting language stating, "Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System."Roy was one of the 211 House Republicans who voted in favor of passing the NDAA on Friday.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

While Pukwudgies are said to be good-hearted if treated kindly, they can become lethal when slighted — and they can use their magical powers to kill. The post Inside The Legend Of The Pukwudgies, The Cunning Cryptids Of Native American Myth appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The sweet smell of strawberries and other fruits is thanks to a chemical compound called ester, which is also found in many fats and polyesters. The ubiquitous compound can be broken down to produce desirable alcohols and other chemicals for use across industries, including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, but the process can be costly, both financially and in terms of the environment.

The excavation of the cellar of George Washington’s Virginia mansion Mount Vernon has uncovered 35 glass bottles from the 18th century stored in five different pits. An astonishing 29 of them are still intact and, like the two bottles found earlier this year, they contain preserved fruit. There are cherries and some smaller berries, likely gooseberries or currants. It was already a significant find when two intact, sealed glass bottles of European manufacture were found in the cellar in April. The contents turned out to be cherries, stems and pits included, preserved in a liquid. They were so well-sealed that the cherries were still fragrant. “Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine this spectacular archaeological discovery,” said Mount Vernon President & CEO Doug Bradburn. “We were ecstatic last month to uncover two fully intact 18th-century bottles containing biological matter. Now we know those bottles were just the beginning of this blockbuster discovery. To our knowlege, this is an unprecedented find and nothing of this scale and significance has ever been excavated in North America. We now possess a bounty of artifacts and matter to analyze that may provide a powerful glimpse into the origins of our nation, and we are crossing our fingers that the cherry pits discovered will be viable for future germination. It’s so appropriate that these bottles have been unearthed shortly before the 250th anniversary of the United States,” Bradburn said. The bottles have been underground since before the American Revolution. They were left behind when George Washington left his estate in a rush in May 1775 after the first of the American Revolutionary War were fired at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Wearing his military uniform, he joined the Second Continental Congress which just over a month later created the Continental Army and appointed Washington as its “General and Commander in chief.” Obviously the pickled and preserved fruits in his cellars were not foremost on his mind, nor, oddly enough given the deprivations of war, on the minds of the family he left behind and the phalanx of enslaved people who grew, harvested, cooked, preserved and managed the estate’s food. Mount Vernon Principal Archaeologist Jason Boroughs said, “These extraordinary discoveries continue to astonish us. These perfectly preserved fruits picked and prepared more than 250 years ago provide an incredibly rare opportunity to contribute to our knowledge of the 18th-century environment, plantation foodways, and the origins of American cuisine. The bottles and contents are a testament to the knowledge and skill of the enslaved people who managed the food preparations from tree to table, including Doll, the cook brought to Mount Vernon by Martha Washington in 1759 and charged with oversight of the estate’s kitchen.” Examination under a microscope has already revealed interesting details, like that the cherries were harvested by being cut off the branches with shears and the stems left attached for bottling. Analysis has found that these were tart cherries; the higher acid contents likely aided in their preservation. Researchers believe they are good candidates for DNA retrieval, and hope to compare them against a database of known heirloom varieties to identify their species. They’re also looking at the pits to see if any of them might actually be capable of germinating. I wonder if George Washington’s resurrected cherries would sell out as quickly as his resurrected whiskey did. Those are just preliminary results. The contents of the bottles will be analyzed thoroughly by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Here is a cool timelapse of the excavation of one of the groups of bottles. 

Subway Surfing Tragedy: 13-Year-Old Killed, Teen Critically Injured in Bronx

A particularly idiotic aphorism touted by our mindless culture is this cliché: Wait until you have enough money to have kids.  This nugget serves as secular wisdom, courtesy of the noxious winds of the zeitgeist. It always frustrates me. When I hear it regurgitated by young couples, I calmly ask them questions like these:  How many kids did your grandparents have? How about your great-grandparents when they came to America dirt poor on packed ships headed to Ellis Island? When they acknowledge that those ancestors had a bunch of kids, I then ask this conversation stopper: How much money did they have? The guy and gal are usually taken aback. This isn’t what they’ve heard from the culture. Yes, they know that their ancestors had no money and raised large, intact families — and stayed married. They wouldn’t be alive today without those ancestors bestowing multiple gifts of life. Their grandparents gave life freely and lovingly. Money was not the object. Life was. Kids were. (READ MORE: Forget Cats and Dogs — There Aren’t Enough Kids) Conversations like these are how you reach young people distorted by the culture. You take the lid off and ask common-sense questions. Get them thinking. A few follow-up observations likewise leave them baffled. I’ll ask: How much money will be “enough” before having that kid? How much cash should be shoveled into this child’s materialistically ideal existence? What are you planning to buy for the kid? Any concerns about spoiling little Timmy or Suzie? People singularly focused on having “enough” money for kids will find that there’s never “enough.” At least not within their current value system. If they do mercifully set aside these financial constraints and go for it and have babies, they will soon find that kids really aren’t that expensive. Children can be raised cheaply and happily. The big financial hit usually doesn’t come until college, if college is the objective. Even then, parents will be shocked to find that the more money they have, the less financial aid they’ll get. Sometimes, having more money costs you more. The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Child Is a Sibling Young parents will say in astonishment to my wife and I: “You have eight children? One kid has been hard enough for us!” My response is that, yes, one kid is harder. Two kids, however, are easier, because the one gets a playmate other than you. When we had only one child and I came home after a long day, I didn’t want to play Legos for several hours. When the second boy came along, he was all in. Little Paul now had little Mitch to join him at his level, both running around with boundless energy, enthralled by their new worlds in ways that I could not fake. Our first boy now had someone genuinely fascinated by his Hot Wheels. And then came a third for us, a girl. And she was likewise over-the-moon excited when our fourth, another girl, arrived. They played together.  The cycle continued. Each new arrival was a new brother or sister, with each sibling ecstatic about the next. Doubt me? Try this experiment: Ask a five-year-old if he wants another sibling. Go ahead. A kid doesn’t say no to that. I’ll never forget when my wife got the phone call from our adoption agency explaining that the mother of our previously adopted child had just given birth and was putting the child up for adoption. They preferred to find a family in which the infant had a birth sibling. That would be ours. Were we interested? This would be our eighth. (READ MORE: The Human Disappearing Act: Why Are We Not Reproducing?) I was driving the family van when that call came in. All eyes fixed on me as I expressed doubts about whether I could personally handle another baby. But the van of nine voices erupted into jubilant chants of “Yes! Yes! Yes! Do it! Do it! Do it!” I was shouted down and outvoted. The oldest girls assured their old man that he wouldn’t have to change diapers anymore.  That infant, Benedict, turns 10 next week. He’s my little buddy. He’s the baby of the family, adored by all. Children bring joy. To that end, last week someone sent me a post from the inane “Instagram.com/facts.” This “Facts” post was headlined, “People without children tend to be happier than parents.” The post was eviscerated in a snappy 11-point takedown by Dr. Jordan Peterson. It made me angry. I wanted to know which faceless 22-year-old twit was responsible for that drivel. Sure, some people without children are happy. That’s fine, totally good. But we should encourage parenting rather than discourage it. 1. Says who?2. Measured how?3.Over what time span?4. Compared to who and when?5. Happier or more hedonistic and immature?6. Who funded the "research"?7. Lies, damned lies and statistics 8. One phrase: "replication crisis"9. Meaning and happiness are not the same thing but… pic.twitter.com/fHHv7gKwxQ — Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) June 10, 2024 And I’ll bet this: Twenty years from now, if this twit is married without kids, there’s a good chance he or she will not be happy, and perhaps miserably and unwittingly childless because of a lack of fertility after contracepting too long. That person may well be single right now, and 20 years henceforth might regretfully remain so after years of heartaches, breakups, STDs, and possibly aborted children. My sincere prayer is that the person gives up the self-centered pleasure-seeking, finds a caring spouse, that the two become one flesh together, and gives the gift of life. (READ MORE: Abortions Are on the Rise, Planned Parenthood Proudly Reports) I can assure her that she would find infinitely more fulfillment in a little boy with Legos or a little girl with dolls than in their dogs and hiking boots. Mother Teresa once said, “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.” Personally, I don’t care about flowers (though I make sure my wife gets flowers every Mother’s Day), but I do care about children. We’re called to fill the world with them. You can never have enough — of them. To all fellow dads out there, Happy Father’s Day. The post You Can Never Have Enough Kids appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.