Folk songs are those special little ditties we know without having to think, humming them as easily as breathing. For how popular they are, though, it wasn’t until the Animals put together their version of “The House of the Rising Sun” that we got a true, certified folk rock hit of unprecedented commercial success, scoring a big win for the band and us music lovers. The Animals, who reigned as kings of the jungle during the British Invasion, took a risk when they pursued “The House of the Rising Sun.” Fittingly, everything about their journey to make this narrative-driven folksy song part of their repertoire is unorthodox. But every unusual, daring step they took helped the Animals compose a revolutionary version of the song that to this day has listeners marveling at just how long we’ve been enjoying it without fail. The Animals listened to their guts working on “The House of the Rising Sun” Like plenty of folk songs out there, the original “The House of the Rising Sun” has origins steeped in mystery, with some stories pointing to 1930s Appalachia and others asserting it’s a direct relative of English folk music tradition. But one thing’s for sure: when Eric Burdon heard it song by Northumbrian folk singer Johnny Handle at a Newcastle, England club, he was smitten. RELATED: “Ain’t No Sunshine” By Bill Withers Is A Love Song Unlike Any Other So, while they were on tour with Chuck Berry, the Animals started getting real acquainted with the cautionary tale, rolling beat, and homey feel. Bereft of the gift of foresight, producer Mickie Most was completely unimpressed—wary, even—of the Animals getting so attached to the song. So, they made a point in the grandest way possible: they closed a joint concert with “The House of the Rising Sun.” Normally, bands would close with the real bangers, the stuff that sent already-high adrenaline levels rocketing off the charts, just like their album sales, hopefully. The feel from “The House of the Rising Sun” was something totally different—and concertogers fell head over heels in love with it. Even better, it cleared Most’s doubts and the Animals finally got approval from dad to produce something from it in earnest. Time flies when you have great tunes to listen to The band received some pushback but was determined to try this song / Everett Collection Their little concert closer experiment proved the best use of the scientific method known to music. Then, on one magical day on May 18, 1964, they did it, the Animals composed “The House of the Rising Sun” in just one take. It took just one round of music magic to make something that has fans fawning over this subdued yet enduringly catchy tune 60 years later. Over on YouTube with a modest 59 million views, “The House of the Rising Sun” has fans wondering things like “Who is listening in June 2024?” To this, another user fittingly summed up, “Stop asking if somebody still there We are always here.” But perhaps the best summary comes from a comment that puts it all into perspective, saying, “Its weird to think. This song is 60 years old. In 40 years, it will be 100 years old. If we are still listening 60 years later, we will be listening 100 years later.” The Animals made The House of the Rising Sun a classic beloved by all generations / YouTube screenshot That’s because they did something really special with this version of the song. Us listeners can easily tell that Burdon’s lead vocals are rugged as the English countryside and we know this would never sound quite the same sung by anyone else. It helped the four-and-a-half-minute-long song defy the odds that said pop hits couldn’t be that long. That’s where the trends were so very wrong; “The House of the Rising Sun” reminded us that the best things in life ask us to stop for a bit and bask in what they have to offer. Despite the trends of the time, bask we did, making “The House of the Rising Sun” the first folk rock hit. Burdon once said “We were looking for a song that would grab people’s attention,” and it just takes one listen to see—and hear—that the band achieved exactly that. To this day, fans know there will be listeners coming back to this track for decades to come / Everett Collection Click for next Article The post “The House of the Rising Sun” By The Animals Is Still The Definition Of Timeless appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Dana Daly

How can young galaxies in the early Universe have ancient stars? That’s the question a team of astronomers set out to answer using JWST as a probe. They first spotted the massive objects in 2022 and are still working to explain what these things are. The infrared-sensitive recently JWST zeroed in on three of these objects. Interestingly, it found them emitting light from stars that appear to be mysteriously old. The galaxies themselves were seen as they appeared about 700 million years after the Big Bang. They look nothing like the spirals and ellipticals we see in the more “modern” universe. “We have confirmed that these appear to be packed with ancient stars — hundreds of millions of years old — in a universe that is only 600-800 million years old. Remarkably, these objects hold the record for the earliest signatures of old starlight,” said Bingjie Wang, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State University and lead author on a paper describing the find. “It was totally unexpected to find old stars in a very young Universe. The standard models of cosmology and galaxy formation have been incredibly successful, yet, these luminous objects do not quite fit comfortably into those theories.” In addition to ancient stars, the data from JWST also reveal the existence of unexpectedly large supermassive black holes in the galaxies. “It’s very confusing,” said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. “You can make this uncomfortably fit in our current model of the Universe, but only if we evoke some exotic, insanely rapid formation at the beginning of time. This is, without a doubt, the most peculiar and interesting set of objects I’ve seen in my career.” What Gives with Such Galaxies and Ancient Stars? Since JWST can easily see back to extremely early epochs of cosmic time, these results reveal what the earliest objects were like. It doesn’t yet explain how such old stars exist so soon after the birth of the Universe. If they truly are several hundred million years old, then they started forming extremely early in cosmic time. It’s possible they were born much sooner than astronomers think. Their formation, for now, is hidden from our view. So, it’s tough to know exactly when the process of star birth first began. An artist’s representation of what the first stars to light up the universe might have looked like in the Cosmic Dawn when early stars and galaxies were coming together. Image Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team That’s one challenge JWST’s infrared abilities should help explain, particularly as astronomers use it to probe deeper into the earliest cosmic epochs. It shows objects emitting non-infrared light (UV) stretched by the expansion of the Universe into the infrared. This so-called “ancient” light streams from numerous objects, including stars, galaxies, and the active hearts of galaxies. As Wang notes, it’s not clear what bits of the emitted light comes from different objects. It could be coming from early galaxies appearing unexpectedly old and more massive than our Milky Way Galaxy. If so, then they formed much earlier than astronomers suspect. It’s also possible that the light comes from more normal-mass galaxies with “overmassive” black holes. Those supermassive monsters could be about a hundred to a thousand times more massive than such a galaxy would have in the “recent” Universe. “Distinguishing between light from material falling into a black hole and light emitted from stars in these tiny, distant objects is challenging,” Wang said. “That inability to tell the difference in the current dataset leaves ample room for interpretation of these intriguing objects. Honestly, it’s thrilling to have so much of this mystery left to figure out.” More on those Unexpectedly Big and Early Supermassive Black Holes If the light the JWST detects does come from regions around supermassive black holes, then you have to think about why they’re so bright so early in history. Since these are luminous in infrared, it means the original emissions were in UV light. And, the brightness means there’s a lot of activity going on to emit the light. That implies much more mass in the central SMBH than expected. And, according to co-author Joel Leja, it’s confusing because these objects don’t seem to fit existing models of the early Universe. The epoch of reionization was when light from the first stars could travel through the early Universe. At this time, galaxies began assembling, as did black holes. Why did some early galaxies have ancient stars? That’s a question JWST will help answer. Credit: Paul Geil & Simon Mutch/The University of Melbourne “Normally supermassive black holes are paired with galaxies,” he said. “They grow up together and go through all their major life experiences together. But here, we have a fully formed adult black hole living inside of what should be a baby galaxy. That doesn’t really make sense, because these things should grow together, or at least that’s what we thought.” Need More Data about Ancient Stars and Baby Galaxies By baby galaxies, Leja explained, these systems are only a few hundred light-years across. By contrast, our Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across (give or take). However, those tiny galaxies contain about the same number of stars as the Milky Way—between 10 billion and a trillion stars. “These early galaxies would be so dense with stars—stars that must have formed in a way we’ve never seen, under conditions we would never expect during a period in which we’d never expect to see them,” he said. “And for whatever reason, the Universe stopped making objects like these after just a couple of billion years. They are unique to the early Universe.” Clearly, JWST will need to do some more looking to help explain these anomalous objects in the infant Universe. In particular, astronomers will want to know more about how ancient stars appeared so early in history. Future observations should provide a deeper, longer spectral look at all these objects. That will allow astronomers to differentiate the light from stars and the light from the regions around supermassive black holes. Each of these objects has its own specific light “fingerprint” that tells astronomers what it is. The answers they get will help them understand not only the evolution of early stars and their galaxies but also the continuing questions surrounding the origins and growth of supermassive black holes so early in cosmic time. For More Information Tiny Bright Objects Discovered at Dawn of Universe Baffle ScientistsRUBIES: Evolved Stellar Populations with Extended Formation Histories at z ~ 7–8 in Candidate Massive Galaxies Identified with JWST/NIRSpec The post Galaxies Filled With Old Stars Seen Shortly After the Big Bang appeared first on Universe Today.

Politics Michigan Pot Is Growing Like a Weed Michigan becomes the nation’s largest pot market. Billboards for marijuana dispensaries dot the drive along Interstate 80/90, which runs through northern Ohio and northern Indiana. Until last November, recreational cannabis was illegal in both states, but the billboards have littered the interstate for several years, advertising dispensaries located just north of the Michigan border, to which I-80/90 runs parallel.  Once across the Michigan border, recreational cannabis dispensaries abound, providing a convenient stop along the drive for passers-through or an easy destination for residents of northern Ohio and Indiana. Though Ohio legalized recreational weed with a 2023 ballot initiative, the state’s licensing framework will take some time to implement. So, for now, Michigan holds the monopoly on marijuana in the northern Midwest. Weed has long been a Western problem. The San Francisco activists Harvey Milk and Dennis Peron pushed for the legalization of so-called medical marijuana in California amidst the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late 1990s, and Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Nevada soon followed suit. In 2012, Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize recreational weed. Since California’s legalization measure passed in 2016, the Golden State led the nation in recreational marijuana sales—until now.  For the first time, Michigan dispensaries have overtaken the California weed market, selling more units of marijuana—grams of cannabis, pre-rolls, gummies, and the like—than California dispensaries. California’s market remains larger in terms of dollar sales, selling $5.1 billion in recreational marijuana in 2023, compared to Michigan’s $3 billion in sales. Then again, a one-gram pre-roll joint on sale at a dispensary in Los Angeles costs $17.50, while the same product sells for $7 in Ferndale, a suburb of Detroit.  With one-quarter the population of California, Michigan’s booming cannabis economy has been driven just as much by out-of-state consumers and government incentives as by local potheads.  Dispensaries along Michigan’s border see frequent visits from residents of neighboring states. Just a mile north of the Ohio border, Morenci is Michigan’s southernmost town. Six marijuana dispensaries operate within a half-mile radius, serving the local population of 2,200—and customers from across the border. Morenci city administrator Jeff Hall said there was “quite a lengthy list” of cannabis dispensaries that wanted to obtain an operating license.  Farther east, about half of the customers at dispensaries in Monroe Township, just across the border from Toledo, are Ohio residents. Township supervisor Alan Barron said that out-of-state customers are responsible for 70 percent of cannabis sales in Monroe Township. Even though medical marijuana has been legal in Ohio since 2016, customers can buy cannabis for one-quarter the price in Michigan.   Communities along the state’s northern border with Wisconsin have seen the same boom in cannabusiness. Dispensaries have sprung up in towns like Ironwood, Iron River, Iron Mountain, and Menominee, eager to capitalize on close proximity to Wisconsin consumers. Local shops estimate that 85 percent of sales are to out-of-state customers. Transporting marijuana across state lines remains illegal, but cops lying in wait over the Wisconsin border isn’t enough to dissuade “pot pilgrims” from crossing into the Upper Peninsula for pot. Out-of-state customers aren’t the only people frequenting Michigan’s dispensaries. In 2020, one in five Michigan residents used cannabis, a 75 percent increase from 2010. And though only about 10 percent of municipalities in the state allow recreational sales, the state is home to nearly one thousand dispensaries—8.2 percent of the nation’s pot stores—according to Cannabiz Media. But the communities that have opted to license recreational sales are rewarded by the state.  Though excise taxes are levied to discourage consumption, Michigan’s recreational marijuana scheme directly rewards communities that permit the sale, possession, and use of recreational marijuana. Municipalities and counties are awarded nearly $60,000 for each licensed dispensary within their boundaries, and the state increased the amount awarded per license by $7,000 over the past year.  In 2024, the state awarded a record $87 million to local and county governments, with five cities and 14 counties collecting more than $1 million from the state treasury, drawing from over $290 million in the Marihuana Regulation fund. For instance, Monroe Township, the marijuana mecca for Toledo residents, budgeted for $500,000 in kickback for fiscal year 2023 but received nearly double that amount.  The state has a stake in the continued growth of the marijuana economy. Two public universities in Michigan offer undergraduate degrees in cannabis studies. Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie offers degrees in both cannabis chemistry and cannabis business. Three hours west in Marquette, Northern Michigan University is home to a major in Medicinal Plant Chemistry and the Cannabis Studies department.  Demand in Michigan for recreational marijuana hasn’t grown naturally since legalization in 2018. The state’s licensing framework effectively undermines the excise tax by subsidizing the counties and municipalities that license dispensaries. Between thousands of out-of-state consumers and millions of dollars poured into weed-friendly communities, it’s no surprise that Michigan’s cannabis industry has ballooned into the nation’s largest market. And just like the weed they’re selling, the demand is far from organic.  The post Michigan Pot Is Growing Like a Weed appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Trump Should Say ‘Yes’ to ‘Just Say No’ The once and perhaps future president can be a temperance leader for our time. Among all the sayings, mantras, witticisms, digressions, and occasional song lyrics that Donald Trump has recited at rallies, press conferences, and media appearances over the last eight years, there’s one that he ought to use more often: “No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.” This sharp, stern warning against the use and abuse of mind-altering (and health-diminishing) substances never exactly became part of the Trump hit parade, but, during the 2016 presidential campaign, the then-candidate trotted it out fairly regularly. It may be hard to picture today, but back then, Trump did not feel the need to project the outlaw persona that he has been forced to adopt amid the countless court battles of recent years. Instead, Trump seemed comfortable dispensing parental advice, since, as even Hillary Clinton had to admit during one of her debates with the eventual president, Trump and his assorted spouses had raised an upstanding brood.  In late 2015, at a campaign event in Waterville Valley, N.H., that opened to the sounds of Twisted Sister rather than the now-ubiquitous Lee Greenwood, Trump framed his opposition to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes chiefly in fatherly terms. “Since when they were little—since they could barely speak—I’d say, ‘No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes,’” Trump said, referring to his kids. “If you don’t drink and if you don’t take drugs, your children . . . are going to have a tremendously enhanced chance of really being successful and having a good life and having a happy life.”  Here, the future president sounded like he was channeling Dr. Benjamin Spock more than Al Capone. In fact, one senses that Trump’s personal abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes—and his counsel to his children, and the children of America, to refrain from partaking in the same—is one of a fairly limited suite of positions in which he genuinely, completely, and unwaveringly believes. (His commitment to tariffs, opposition to unwinnable foreign wars, and tough border policy may be lumped in the same category.) As far back as December 2014, more than six months before he even announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, Trump managed to get on the topic while being interviewed at the Economic Club of Washington DC. Interestingly, he characterized his opposition to vices like alcohol as a form of self-knowledge and self-protection: If we are aware of just how weak we really are, we ought to avoid those things that prey on our weaknesses.  “I went to the Wharton School,” Trump said in a characteristic blend of bragging, reminiscing, and advice-giving. “I had a friend who hated the taste of scotch—hated it—but he tried to develop a taste for scotch. And I saw him recently—he’s a total alcoholic. He developed a taste for scotch. And all he had to do was stay away from it.” Trump also often referenced the sad example of his late elder brother Fred, whom, he said, was laid low and brought to an early grave by a love for drink. Sometimes Trump’s evangelism against alcohol could pop up at surprising moments. Although then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was subjected to shameful, disgracefully unfair Senate confirmation hearings, Trump’s bafflement at someone who made beer a centerpiece of his existence had a certain undeniable integrity. “I can honestly say I’ve never had a beer in my life,” Trump said during the Kavanaugh firestorm. “It’s one of my only good traits.” The former president can still drift into this topic, but at least during his first administration, his strongly held convictions never cohered into a program with the consistent messaging and visibility of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. This was a missed opportunity. Never before in modern American history has there been a greater need for a high-profile public figure to push back against our seemingly society-wide acceptance of casual alcohol consumption and recreational drug use.  We see anecdotal evidence for this ho-hum acceptance all around us. Witness the huge increase in the popularity and numbers of microbreweries, brewpubs, and taprooms, or the conspicuous placement of the accouterments of a bar on the set of Bill Maher’s popular Club Random podcast. Marijuana legalization and commercialization is no longer restricted to bastions of hippie culture but has spread, like an uncontrolled garden weed (so to speak), to seemingly middle-of-the-road states like Ohio. From The Big Lebowski up to and including this year’s Bob Marley biopic, Hollywood has rendered marijuana use normal, amusing, and even salutary.  A disturbing assumption is implicit in our casual consent to this state of affairs: that it is perfectly OK for wide swaths of humanity to become prisoner to substances that exist only as tonics from reality. Even if the abuse of alcohol and use of marijuana was not dangerous, what good can ever come of a society that encourages people to become, at minimum, mildly drunk or slightly high?  “One of the things that’s turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that appear so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a ‘good’ trip,” Stanley Kubrick, whose film 2001: A Space Odyssey had been unfairly adopted by drug users, once said in a clear-headed interview with Playboy. “Perhaps when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful.” Even tobacco use—perhaps the least compelling of Trump’s proposed triad of bad behavior—involves an unacceptable diminution of autonomy and increase in gluttony within the smoker: The nicotine in the cigarette will forever chip away at the smoker’s willpower and demand its continued use. Our leaders can either celebrate indulgence or promote restraint. Trump is better positioned than many to do the latter. Remember: “No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.” The post Trump Should Say ‘Yes’ to ‘Just Say No’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

"Play stupid games…win stupid prizes" - Brevard County Sheriff, Wayne Ivey

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"The allegations are certainly some of the worst that I've seen in the almost 25 years that I've been doing this." - Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West