Plague

Weird Al Yankovic has nothing on DJ Thatch. OK, maybe he has a little more finesse in the vocal department, but Schoo Middle School teacher Cody Thatcher has Yankovic's talent for parody, which he combined with his skills as an educator and took to YouTube. And, man, the Crusades and the Black Plague have never been so much fun. Ariana Grande might have "No Tears Left to Cry," but according to DJ Thatch, "Everyone Starts to Die." FLASH SALE! Unlimited digital access for $3.99 per month Don't miss this great deal. Offer ends on March 31st! #ReadLocal The Chainsmokers tell listeners "We ain't ever getting older," in their hit "Closer," but for DJ Thatch's students, "The Crusades are getting started." Thatcher teaches seventh-grade social studies, where students dive into world history. The curriculum, focused on helping students sharpen their thinking skills by analyzing original documents in the co

Since he was a kid Dr. Daniel Kalla has had a bit of a thing for the Black Death . “We grow up as kids with nursery rhymes and stories about it. I was fascinated by it,” Kalla recently told Postmedia. “It still remains the biggest natural disaster in terms of lives lost. “That’s how a disastrous of an event it really was. I was culturally aware of it.” For the record the most common estimate is that the deadly disease killed off one third of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Kalla, who is the head of the Emergency Medicine Department at St. Paul’s Hospital in B.C., has taken that long running curiosity of the plague that flattened Europe in the mid 14th century and put it front and centre in his new, just released, novel "  We All Fall Down ." “I learned so much of my history growing up by reading James Michener and these people who take real history and put a couple of characters you can relate to behind it and I’m trying to do the same thing in this case with some history of

I t was Europe’s deadliest ever import. A particularly virulent form of the bubonic plague travelled westwards from China across the steppes of Asia and ended up at Black Sea ports. As far as can be established, rats carrying diseased fleas were on ships that set sail from the Crimea to Mediterranean ports. Between 1348 and 1350, the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe’s population, with mortality rates as high as 60% in some parts of the continent. Europe has not since witnessed anything remotely like the depopulation of the mid-14th century. It took hundreds of years in some regions for the population to regain its pre-Black Death level and the economic effects were profound. A shortage of labour meant wages went up. Land was left untilled and fell in price. The gap between landowners and workers narrowed. Incentives to develop labour-saving devices meant productivity rose. Roll the clock forward 670 years and there are those who think the world is about to discover what

For some, the appeal of the Society for Creative Anachronism is easy to identify. “I get to hit my friends with sticks, and I won’t go to jail for it,” Russell of Chelsea said Saturday, during the Vices and Virtues Festival at the Etowah County Fairgrounds. Russell and Malinda – the names they go by in the SCA realm – set up tent for first festival of its kind in the Attalla-Gadsden area. The festival was hosted by the College of Phoenix Rising, a local and fairly news SCA chapter. Malinda said she’s drawn more to the craft side of the gatherings, working in textiles. But she enjoys the atmosphere of the festivals. “It’s like big-kid make believe,” she said – getting to dress up and play make believe without anyone making fun of you. The SCA promotes learning and preserving many aspects of the medieval life. “We skip the bad parts, like the Black Plague,” Mike Little, autocrat of the gathering in Attalla, said. He said the time period was from the fall of the Roman Empire to the

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Weird Al Yankovic has nothing on DJ Thatch. OK, maybe he has a little more finesse in the vocal department, but Schoo Middle School teacher Cody Thatcher has Yankovic's talent for parody, which he combined with his skills as an educator and took to YouTube. And, man, the Crusades and the Black Plague have never been so much fun. Ariana Grande might have "No Tears Left to Cry," but according to DJ Thatch, "Everyone Starts to Die." The Chainsmokers tell listeners "We ain't ever getting older," in their hit "Closer," but for DJ Thatch's students, "The Crusades are getting started." Thatcher teaches seventh-grade social studies, where students dive into world history. The curriculum, focused on helping students sharpen their thinking skills by analyzing original documents in the context of the events they're learning about, gives teachers a lot of latitude in how they teach, Thatcher said. So he&

CHICAGO -- After years of escalating political corruption, gang violence and racial tensions, voters in Chicago appear likely to elect an outsider promising wholesale change to a city where the gaps between those with means and those without are growing dramatically. Chicago voters face a historic choice in Tuesday's runoff between Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, and Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who has held several positions in the last two mayors' administrations. Whoever wins will become the city's first black woman mayor -- and only the second black person and the second woman to lead the nation's third-largest city. Some in this city's African American communities see the choice as momentous, an opportunity to refocus attention from the prosperous Loop and the growing South Side to the impoverished West Side, where in some wards unemployment rates look more like the depths of the Great Depression tha

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Weird Al Yankovic has nothing on DJ Thatch. OK, maybe he has a little more finesse in the vocal department, but Schoo Middle School teacher Cody Thatcher has Yankovic's talent for parody, which he combined with his skills as an educator and took to YouTube. And, man, the Crusades and the Black Plague have never been so much fun. Ariana Grande might have "No Tears Left to Cry," but according to DJ Thatch, "Everyone Starts to Die." The Chainsmokers tell listeners "We ain't ever getting older," in their hit "Closer," but for DJ Thatch's students, "The Crusades are getting started." Thatcher teaches seventh-grade social studies, where students dive into world history. The curriculum, focused on helping students sharpen their thinking skills by analyzing original documents in the context of the events they're learning about, gives teachers a lot of latitude in how they teach, Thatcher said. So he&

Red All Over is a weekly newsletter covering University of Utah athletics. Subscribe here. Utah’s softball team scored in every inning Sunday at Arizona State, taking a 17-9 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning. Then the Utes lost, 18-17. The Sun Devils’ comeback occurred on the campus where the ASU women’s basketball team scored the last 20 points of a February game against Utah, winning by two. What are the odds of that combination of events happening? With an NCAA skiing championship, a Pac-12 South football title and some great individual performances, it has been a memorable school year in Utah athletics. But the Sun Devil Curse is part of the Utes’ story of 2018-19. The twist is the Utah men’s basketball team staged a rally from 17 points behind to win at ASU in January. These are good ASU teams; the Sun Devils are playing in the women’s basketball Sweet 16 and the softball team is ranked No. 13. But those two defeats remain stunning. Utah led 17-10

PUBLISHED: 12:01 31 March 2019 Will Self Illustration by Martin Rowson Archant In the concluding part of his Brexit diary, WILL SELF reflects on how Britain became a Marie Celeste of a Western democracy. Tuesday, March 26, 2019 I worry this is beginning to seem like Harold Nicolson’s war diaries – especially those sections where he’s writing about the period when he’s travelling up from Sissinghurst every day, to track the progress of the Churchillian revival in the Tory party. May = Chamberlain, which implies Bojo = Churchill. Johnson! A man who actually published a book in which he asserted that the Germans took Stalingrad!41 Anyway, where do I get off with comparing myself to Nicolson, who as well as actually being an MP at the time of his principled support of Churchill, went on to be a minister in the wartime coalition government. The answer is this: the Commons having seized control of the parliamentary agenda last night, they’ve effective replaced the elected govern

Botox, experts believe, blocks a very specific type of neurotransmission that sends a signal from a neuron to a muscle and releases pain transmitters, Dr. Ravitz said. "Botox completely paralyses this whole process, so that neuron can’t talk to the muscle," she explained. "It’s like that whole process of pain-pain-pain is sort of quieted down." But again: This is just a theory as to how it works, she said. When injected into the scalp, neck, shoulders, temples, and forehead every three months, Botox can reduce the number of migraines people get by up to 50%. https://ift.tt/2OyMZMG

TECHSOMED'S SYSTEM removes the ‘blindfold’ in the thermal ablation cancer treatment, a minimally invasive procedure that basically ‘burns’ the cancer until it dies. (photo credit: Courtesy) X Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. As one of our loyal readers, we ask you to be our partner. For $5 a month you will receive access to the following: A user experience almost completely free of ads Access to our Premium Section Content from the award-winning Jerusalem Report and our monthly magazine to learn Hebrew

It's the same sad refrain — a predictable funeral dirge — that we hear after most of the mass shootings that have covered America like a plague of deadly locusts. Whether the carnage was at a school, a church, a nightclub or a workplace, we hear it from people who knew the shooter: We knew something like this was going to happen. If only we'd said something. If only. Over and over, we hear it. At least some of the people around the shooter — a few friends or family members or co-workers — saw the signs of emotional turmoil, knew the shooter also was obsessed with firearms, feared he (it's always a he) might do something terrible. And they did nothing, told no one. In truth, sometimes it seems telling "someone" wouldn't do much good anyway. Laws in many states make it difficult to intervene, impossible to put distance between a disturbed person and his guns. Gun owner rights groups warn that separating a would-be shooter from his guns is unconstitutional — a

FLORENCE — The night was not off to a good start when North Alabama starting pitcher Chase Best grabbed his bicep in the first inning, seemingly in pain. After a talk with the staff, Best left the game in the middle of the fourth Stetson plate appearance. A parade of Lion relievers could not keep the hosts in the game, and UNA (4-20, 0-4 ASUN) lost 12-1. Through an understandably challenging transition into Division I baseball, North Alabama baseball coach Mike Keehn has been patient as his team has worked through good moments and bad against tough competition. But he has less patience for players not performing to the program’s standards regardless of competition, and that clearly bothered him Friday night. UNA used six pitchers in relief of Best, and only Kaleb Barnes, Keegan Foge and Colton Teal weren’t charged with an earned run. “Not much you can do about (the Best injury), but the other guys have got to step up and do much better,” Keehn said. Though Stetso

In conjunction with MCAS Beaufort, the Burton Fire Department extinguished a brush fire on Saturday, March 23 that had spread to a shed and was endangering a home off Simmons Family Road. The fire began after a resident finished burning leaves and believe the fire to be extinguished. The resident then went inside. Four fire trucks, 3500 gallons of water, and an hour and a half later fire fighters defeated the blaze and saved the residence. https://ift.tt/2JVv0RZ

Since he was a kid Dr. Daniel Kalla has had a bit of a thing for the Black Death . “We grow up as kids with nursery rhymes and stories about it. I was fascinated by it,” Kalla recently told Postmedia. “It still remains the biggest natural disaster in terms of lives lost. “That’s how a disastrous of an event it really was. I was culturally aware of it.” For the record the most common estimate is that the deadly disease killed off one third of Europe from 1347 to 1351. Kalla, who is the head of the Emergency Medicine Department at St. Paul’s Hospital in B.C., has taken that long running curiosity of the plague that flattened Europe in the mid 14th century and put it front and centre in his new, just released, novel "  We All Fall Down ." “I learned so much of my history growing up by reading James Michener and these people who take real history and put a couple of characters you can relate to behind it and I’m trying to do the same thing in this case with some history of

VIRGINIA KEY, FLA. (WSVN) - Transportation trouble plagued the 2019 Ultra Music Festival for a second consecutive night, hours after organizers said they would take steps to avoid a repeat of early Saturday morning’s Rickenbacker Causeway debacle. Revelers on Saturday enjoyed the pulsating beats of some of the world’s most renowned electronic music DJs at the festival’s new Virginia Key location. But when asked whether the event was flowing smoothly, their answer was loud and clear: no. The logistics issues irking party goers Saturday night involved delays in getting to Ultra on buses that picked them up at various spots in Miami. When asked how long it took her to arrive at the event, a woman said, “At least three hours, yeah. I mean, we wanted to just leave and get to this festival, and we missed half of the festival tonight.” “This is terrible,” echoed a man moments after he arrived. “I got on that bus at 5:30. It’s 8:30, and I just got here. I paid $400.” Another reveler said