More Science and the Graveyard of Empires

 That video was pretty cool, but I found a cooler one below it:

The Truth Why We Can't Travel Faster Than Light - YouTube

I don't really care about traveling faster than light, but I have wondered for some years now how the speed of light can be absolute and constant for all observers, regardless of their position or state of motion.  The answer is so simple that I'm surprised I didn't figure it out for myself:  While the speed of light is absolute and constant, the speed of time is not.  I knew that, but I never considered it as being relevant to my question.  Duh!

 The latest edition of National Geographic contains an article about Afghanistan.  There is some history in it, although the events of the last few weeks occurred after the issue went to the printers.  It seems that Afghanistan was ruled by monarchs from 1747 to 1978, when the last king was overthrown by a military coup.  During the monarchal period, Britain tried unsuccessfully to annex the country to keep the Russians from getting it.  They were only able to break part of it off and attach it to Pakistan, which was then part of India, which was then ruled by the British.  Five years after the 1978 coup, some local communists assassinated the coup general and seized power.  The Soviets soon moved in to support their comrades and, a decade later, were sent home with their tail between their legs.  There was some scuffling around after that until the Taliban clawed their way to the top of the pile in 1996.  The U.S. arrived on the scene in 2001, so the Taliban were only in power for about five years and have been out of power for 20 years.  This hardly qualifies them as the historical rulers unless you count the fact that most of them are of the Pashtun tribe, which has been more of less of a ruling class throughout much of Afghanistan's history.