Andre Willers
26 April 2008
Complexity as discussed by Jared Diamond in “Collapse” refers
Discussion.
The problem is not complexity , but reserves .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes"
This calculates the optimum reserves for internal chaotic events as between 27% and 37% , depending .
Globalization forces reserves below 27% . Like now .
The societal response is contraction , followed by war . The first WW is a good example .
Humans will adapt .
The things to watch out for are unrestricted bio-nuke wars .
Humans have evolved several institutions to deal with societal collapse .(Ie organised religions).
If the external insult is far outside the 38% range , the species goes extinct .
Concerns by LC :
I am not so sure that humans will/can always adapt… a lot of patterns of behaviour is hard wired into us. Witness the way the stock market behaves….yes we change our structures…like the new network model as illustrated in one of those articles…..but some had to give for that to happen…I am still of the opinion we will eventually reach breaking point in this civilization… fewer and fewer people will have the knowledge to understand and make a very complex world continue..
Also a lot of what they say in those articles appears to be happening in the very systems we have here at work. They are getting to breaking point and it is taking forever to change them/add new functionality.
Not all humans adapt… there are those who are still stuck in a 70/80’s paradigm of system development….
Over all the human race will adapt…but only the fast learners…
I don’t think the human race will ever go extinct (unless of we get nuked by man man bombs or a natural disaster such as supanova explosion etc etc)…but I certainly think social structures can collapse… wait until there are just on 10billion people in the world!
Leslie
PS. I prefer my females a little but thinner..
Reply :
The Concept of Reserves .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com "Infinite Probes"
What reserves buy is time .
Time to fix the problems .
Of course civilizations reach breakpoints . The last century had three major breakpoints :
W W I (the destruction of aristocracies) , W W II (the destruction of fascism , which can be seen as nascent aristocracies forming in the vacuum left by WWI) and the Collapse of Communism (W W III) . Another viewpoint is that fascism and communism were both fall-back positions to earlier paradigms , but could not compete against capitalism .
The present world position might appear superficially as a victory for the capitalist camp , but in real fact the two major power blocks (EU , China) are an amalgam of socialist and capitalist systems . Even the US has major socialist elements , and is having serious problems with its unregulated capitalist components .(Cf Enron)
Complicating things are the JIT (Just In Time) camp .
"Time is Money" is a concept not in the ancient lexicons . There were no time-and-motion studies on building Stonehenge or the Pyramids . The very question is meaningless .It took as long as it took .
"Time is Money" derives from the circular velocity of money . Institutions takes a cut everytime a buck passes . In ancient societies the buck only passed once . It then vanished into a value sink (the Royal Coffers usually , or simply buried) . They were well aware of the dangers of a middle class .Note previous posts on treasure burial (not meant to be recovered) in Ancient Egypt . China allowed merchants only on the class slightly above warriors .The currency was very tightly controlled .The idea was not to maximise the slice of each transaction , but to stabilise the society .
The price was stagnation of innovation .
The aristocracy's major function was to regulate long-term things (hence Senate or House of Lords) . The loss of aristocracy must be the most deletrious effect of W W I . Short term gain then gets control of societies assets . Populists and liars have a heyday .
Historically this has happened over and over . The systems have learned to a certain extent . Organised religions are systems regulating long-term things . (Nothing gets longer term than death) Hence the influence of the Roman Catholic Church , Islam , Buddhism ,etc . These systems have evolved to carry over civilization after a catastrophic collapse .
What has this to do with today?
Short-term concentration on profits has led to a massive run-down of society's reserves . Food reserves , maintenance of infrastructure (which a form of wealth) , zero-sum hedging (which is plundering future wealth) , bubbles here and bubbles there .Like a bunch of children playing in a soap-bath and crying to adults to fix it when the water dries out .
Will populations decrease drastically ?
Almost certainly yes . Probability 85%
It is happening as we speak . The food riots have been long predicted . These are not from systemic problems . The world has simply run out of enough food to supply everybody , especially those making no effort to control their numbers or to do even subsistence farming .
The children have been fed only on sweets , and now is stomach ache time .
You see, if there are sufficient reserves , when if the system breaks down due to over-complexification , there is sufficient time to reconfigure the system . Humans are very good at emergency systems if they can survive long enough .
What is happening now is a perfect storm scenario . Nations that export food (like Vietnam to Filipines) are putting panic export bans in place . They are not sure of getting paid , because of the global credit limitations caused by futures market activities .
This is reminiscent of the Great Depression , when exports came to halt for the same reason . If trade ceases , millions will starve . Literally . I have discussed this ad nauseam before . The overpopulation belts (Africa , Middle East , India , Indonesia , Filipines , Mexico , South America - mostly Roman Catholic or Islamic countries which have not made the least effort to curb their population growth .)
Pockets of survivors form in various countries .
Why do I rate the probabilty of drastic population decrease as only 85% ? The Club of Rome and other interested organizations would rate it at 99.9% .
Because the horse might learn to sing .
Because of the unsung heroes who keep the civilization going . The guys at NSA who prevented nuclear war in 1991 . The teachers and healers . The best of the species , who are actually the majority . Things could be much , much worse . You would not believe the time-lines that hive off after 1815 .
But , mainly because humans are lucky . Lucky to survive the leopards . Lucky to survive the other homonins . Lucky to survive Toba . Lucky to survive the various plagues . Especially lucky with the 1918 flu epidemic , a real show-stopper . By rights , it should have exterminated humans . A cynic might say that God is looking after them.
That's the good news . The bad news is 90% extermination levels are acceptable . But , hey , remember , the human mortality rate is 100 % . 6 billion alive now , 6 billion dead in a few years . What counts is the gene and meme transmissions to give the illusion of meaning to the flickering lives .
Humans are social animals , defining themselves by the herd .Hence solitary confinement is considered a harsh punishment . But many humans (hermits , mountainmen ) fancy a lonely life . Yet the knowledge of the species outside remains . How many could maintain their sang-freud if they were the last and only of the species ? This question has been answered on a large scale : This is the Norse religion , where Gotterdammerung awaits and everybody ceases to exist .
In one of those delicious human ironies , one would expect them to be extremely short-term in outlook . But in real life , they thought in terms of lineages and dynasties . The conservation of game and forests in England was due to this outlook , compared to the Roman exploitation in Gaul . If this was the only real life , your influence can only be felt through your descendants . A Christian or Buddhist would try to buy his way into heaven by actions . A Norman only hoped to give his descendants an easier life . They had no salvation . No wonder the Christians won . But they kept the conservation principles .
Would you keep on fighting , even knowing for certain that you will lose ? Keep on when there is no hope ?
Even if you are the last of your species in some alien zoo ? and no belief in afterlife?
Can humans have a balanced ecology ?
Yes .
We know this because it has been done very successfully on at least three occasions:
1.Egypt .For about 3 000 years the narrow strip around the Nile has nurtured a civilization that gave us the alfabet and the compund bow , plus other goodies . Hi-tech.
2.Holland : Population remained stable during collapse of the Western Roman Empire . Nobody messed with them either (the Huns steered well south .) Masters of the Knights and Castles defence . Even 1000 years later the super-power of the time (Spain) , powered by literally thousands of tons of gold and silver , could not reduce them .
3. Let us not forget China . They have been farming the same strips for at least 3 000 years . Even an immediate collapse will still leave some survivors . That is if the major rivers are not poisened by radioactive pollution .
Others like Papua-NewGuinea and some obscure islands have been nominated . But they survived by contraction , not what we would call a worthhile existence .
Andre
PS
Females and fat : the generally accepted range for healthy female aged 20-59 is 21%-34% . The reason is that woman are at the choke point of human reproduction . Human males of the same age are 8%-22% . But of course , males are throw-away . The evolutionary choke-point are the females . And every extra erg helps .
Zaftig wins as far as reproduction goes .
An interesting note here is the "giow" of an expectant mother . This is actually a symptom of sulfur deficiency . The body extracts sulfur from the skin and hair to construct the cells of the foetus . The skin gets thinner and seems to be translucent(glowing) . The same effect is seen in TB , to construct lung tissue coughed up . All that material does not come from nowhere , you know . If somneone has TB , pump in large amounts biologically active sulfur compounds . The body can usually repair itself if it has the raw materials . else it deserves to die .
There is a double whammy if the female then is exposed to UVB (sunlight) . The skin is too thin to prevent folic acid breakdown . The result is spontaneous abortion as foetus abnormalities trigger rejection mechanisms. The answer is to stay out of the sun . Even taking MSM or Folic Acid supplements are not sufficient .
Why ? Because even minor fluctuations of folic acid below the right level results in in spontaneous abortions . Hence all the kappies . For women without artificial protection (read native blacks) , the skin pigmentation gave some protection but it was still part of the eco-system's protection mechanism preventing runaway population growth of a too-successful organism .
Bah . Sometimes evolution can be quite depressing .
.
xxxxxxx
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Combs
Andre Willers
24 April 2008
The oldest profession .
Hair Dressing and Grooming .
The time-traveller with hairdressing and grooming skills can get a job anytime back to hominid days . Beats plumbing any day .
This partially explains the queer gene : Faux-queer . A cunning stratagem to get close to females without the usual male chest-beating .
Discussion:
Grooming is built-in to the hair of mammals .
Hairs get tangled and knotted ( see Theory of Knots) . Your personal experience is that after day’s activity and a night’s sleep , your hair gets tangled and knotted . The theory shows that it is nearly certain that this will occur in any system with three degrees of freedom .
Tangled hair is a bit of no-no to our homonin . It shows that it cannot get a grooming partner . Parasites also have access to unprotected skin .
Chaos first did the weaving with knots and tangles .
Un-weaving was then invented .
Initially fingernails , then a sharp , hard pointed stick ( a one-toothed comb) to tease the knots apart ..
When a favourite stick was kept , it became a tool .
A one-toothed comb .
Found all over in old sites , but usually called something else .
Plaiting of hair followed . Then some unsung woman genius inverted it and plaited grasses and other fibrous growths . Ropes and nets were invented .
Physical strength became unnecessary .
Mk I humans followed .
MkII humans followed after Toba , when weaving was invented as insulation (clothes) . So was fashion , and the world was never the same .
From the evidence , fashion seems to be a more powerful driver than anything . I would like to put an “except” here , but from the Greenland evidence where people starved to death because eating abundant fish around them was “out of fashion” with some old bishop I cannot .
What is of interest is that un-weaving was invented first , then weaving .
Note the correlation of Peace being invented before War .
Multiple-tooth combs .
An invention so ubiquitous that every human on the planet today has one and uses it at least once a day .
It enables an individual to self-groom . You can comb out the tangles in your hair or pelt by your own , without help .
This had an enormous effect on the development of civilization . The very concept of individualism is predicated on the existence of combs .
It frees the individual from the tyranny of the group .
An unkempt individual is excluded . No ifs or buts . Look around you at the homeless people . Once grooming is lost , so is social acceptance and survival . Hence the large number of spaza-hairdressers . It is not an affectation , but sheer survival .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Super Refugee”
Note the insistence of disciplined groups like the military or police to hair grooming . Or the inverse , the trust civilians have for anybody with a taut haircut .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Old Age Markers”
Note the hairstyles of the Mandarin class in China : shaven in front , denoting wisdom from survival , and extravagant hair (plaits) at the back , denoting humanity .
Hence , a monk will shave his head denoting a divorce from human concerns .
If someone obviously not in a religious order shaves his head (like bouncers , etc) they signal an indifference to the grooming order . They are essentially doomed . An extremely interesting feedback cycle is initiated that ends in the marginalization of such individual . They tend not to have children .
It must be noted that these are universal hominin markers , operating at well below conscious perception .
Andre
Andre Willers
24 April 2008
The oldest profession .
Hair Dressing and Grooming .
The time-traveller with hairdressing and grooming skills can get a job anytime back to hominid days . Beats plumbing any day .
This partially explains the queer gene : Faux-queer . A cunning stratagem to get close to females without the usual male chest-beating .
Discussion:
Grooming is built-in to the hair of mammals .
Hairs get tangled and knotted ( see Theory of Knots) . Your personal experience is that after day’s activity and a night’s sleep , your hair gets tangled and knotted . The theory shows that it is nearly certain that this will occur in any system with three degrees of freedom .
Tangled hair is a bit of no-no to our homonin . It shows that it cannot get a grooming partner . Parasites also have access to unprotected skin .
Chaos first did the weaving with knots and tangles .
Un-weaving was then invented .
Initially fingernails , then a sharp , hard pointed stick ( a one-toothed comb) to tease the knots apart ..
When a favourite stick was kept , it became a tool .
A one-toothed comb .
Found all over in old sites , but usually called something else .
Plaiting of hair followed . Then some unsung woman genius inverted it and plaited grasses and other fibrous growths . Ropes and nets were invented .
Physical strength became unnecessary .
Mk I humans followed .
MkII humans followed after Toba , when weaving was invented as insulation (clothes) . So was fashion , and the world was never the same .
From the evidence , fashion seems to be a more powerful driver than anything . I would like to put an “except” here , but from the Greenland evidence where people starved to death because eating abundant fish around them was “out of fashion” with some old bishop I cannot .
What is of interest is that un-weaving was invented first , then weaving .
Note the correlation of Peace being invented before War .
Multiple-tooth combs .
An invention so ubiquitous that every human on the planet today has one and uses it at least once a day .
It enables an individual to self-groom . You can comb out the tangles in your hair or pelt by your own , without help .
This had an enormous effect on the development of civilization . The very concept of individualism is predicated on the existence of combs .
It frees the individual from the tyranny of the group .
An unkempt individual is excluded . No ifs or buts . Look around you at the homeless people . Once grooming is lost , so is social acceptance and survival . Hence the large number of spaza-hairdressers . It is not an affectation , but sheer survival .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Super Refugee”
Note the insistence of disciplined groups like the military or police to hair grooming . Or the inverse , the trust civilians have for anybody with a taut haircut .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Old Age Markers”
Note the hairstyles of the Mandarin class in China : shaven in front , denoting wisdom from survival , and extravagant hair (plaits) at the back , denoting humanity .
Hence , a monk will shave his head denoting a divorce from human concerns .
If someone obviously not in a religious order shaves his head (like bouncers , etc) they signal an indifference to the grooming order . They are essentially doomed . An extremely interesting feedback cycle is initiated that ends in the marginalization of such individual . They tend not to have children .
It must be noted that these are universal hominin markers , operating at well below conscious perception .
Andre
Friday, March 28, 2008
Flamenco Combat
Flamenco Combat
Andre Willers
28 March 2008
Flamenco Dancing as a Combat style .
Stochastic resonance of the rapid foot-taps , combined with the fingertip-pressure feedback of the castanets ensures a very good realization of the body image .
Note that the very rapid foot-taps are so quick that nervous impulses do not have time to travel up and down the spine . In other words , local rhythm nervous networks in the feet do all the work . Together with fingertip pressure (castanets) , this activates very old body-image networks . (As discussed before)
Evaluation of this is equally ancient . A flamenco dancer who is better than his opponent , does not have to fight . His opponent realizes immediately that he is outclassed . This is the perfect fighting style .
The style evolved in India , and was transmitted by the Gypsies . The Spanish took it up for the same reason the gypsies did : it is a method of settling disputes between insanely aggressive males without bloodshed . It became formalized , but a good flamenco dancer will still kick the bejasus out one not so good (or slice him to ribbons) . Note that fingertip knife-control is built into the dance .
A hominin who can outdance his opponent on a shaky bough obviates the costly alternative of actual combat . Hence the in-your-face aggression of flamenco dancing . It is dance of dominance and submission . And the dominance-submission is established very quickly , within the first 5 taps . The evaluation mechanisms are very old and sophisticated .
Note the dominance of movie tap-dancers like Fred Astaire until cutting-room techniques became good enough to edit out the dominance . But also why tap-dancing was (and is) still required for a stage career . The sense of the body-image on the stage is essential .
Karate , kung-fu and related methods have a watered down versions of stochastic resonance on the feet . But no correlation with hand movements .
It is ironic to note that a Flamenco Combat Dancer is the only hominin who could best a chimpanzee in unarmed combat .
Refer to my previous posts about finger- and toe tapping . Flamenco dancing does it all and should be recommended for all wanna-be combat artists , as well as old folk who do not want to fall over .
It is also ideal therapy for diabetics , especially those with peripheral neuropathic feet problems . The independent tapping of the feet would not only increase blood supply , but ladder local nerves to bypass long-nerve neuropathic damage .
The Ultimate Combat System .
A subject of long debate .
But suppose we find such a system . Like lethal diseases , it would soon evolve into milder forms , or it will die out . The devolution would be into mock-combat forms . Flamenco dancing would only be one of these subsets . And a requirement is that it must be able to beat a hominin (like a chimpanzee) .
Flamenco dancers danced with the bulls at Knossos .
Hence the tambourines . (See the frescoes)
Some remnants can still be seen in bullfights , where the toreador taps his foot .
But why women dancers ?
Male-male led to insane dominance fights . Male-female ameliorated the effect . (Ask any night-club bouncer) .
But a human male beating a hominin would be equivalent to a woman beating a man . Females kept the system alive . Note tambourines , which is a fingertapping system . Hence , in a male-female flamenco dance , the female is the dominant one , never mind what it looks like .
The Ultimate Combat System .
This can now be re-assembled , because of fire-arms . (The lethality is relatively less)
Combine flamenco dancing with kung-fu and aikido for an approximation of the original Indian system . An actual case where the ancients were really better !
Andre
Andre Willers
28 March 2008
Flamenco Dancing as a Combat style .
Stochastic resonance of the rapid foot-taps , combined with the fingertip-pressure feedback of the castanets ensures a very good realization of the body image .
Note that the very rapid foot-taps are so quick that nervous impulses do not have time to travel up and down the spine . In other words , local rhythm nervous networks in the feet do all the work . Together with fingertip pressure (castanets) , this activates very old body-image networks . (As discussed before)
Evaluation of this is equally ancient . A flamenco dancer who is better than his opponent , does not have to fight . His opponent realizes immediately that he is outclassed . This is the perfect fighting style .
The style evolved in India , and was transmitted by the Gypsies . The Spanish took it up for the same reason the gypsies did : it is a method of settling disputes between insanely aggressive males without bloodshed . It became formalized , but a good flamenco dancer will still kick the bejasus out one not so good (or slice him to ribbons) . Note that fingertip knife-control is built into the dance .
A hominin who can outdance his opponent on a shaky bough obviates the costly alternative of actual combat . Hence the in-your-face aggression of flamenco dancing . It is dance of dominance and submission . And the dominance-submission is established very quickly , within the first 5 taps . The evaluation mechanisms are very old and sophisticated .
Note the dominance of movie tap-dancers like Fred Astaire until cutting-room techniques became good enough to edit out the dominance . But also why tap-dancing was (and is) still required for a stage career . The sense of the body-image on the stage is essential .
Karate , kung-fu and related methods have a watered down versions of stochastic resonance on the feet . But no correlation with hand movements .
It is ironic to note that a Flamenco Combat Dancer is the only hominin who could best a chimpanzee in unarmed combat .
Refer to my previous posts about finger- and toe tapping . Flamenco dancing does it all and should be recommended for all wanna-be combat artists , as well as old folk who do not want to fall over .
It is also ideal therapy for diabetics , especially those with peripheral neuropathic feet problems . The independent tapping of the feet would not only increase blood supply , but ladder local nerves to bypass long-nerve neuropathic damage .
The Ultimate Combat System .
A subject of long debate .
But suppose we find such a system . Like lethal diseases , it would soon evolve into milder forms , or it will die out . The devolution would be into mock-combat forms . Flamenco dancing would only be one of these subsets . And a requirement is that it must be able to beat a hominin (like a chimpanzee) .
Flamenco dancers danced with the bulls at Knossos .
Hence the tambourines . (See the frescoes)
Some remnants can still be seen in bullfights , where the toreador taps his foot .
But why women dancers ?
Male-male led to insane dominance fights . Male-female ameliorated the effect . (Ask any night-club bouncer) .
But a human male beating a hominin would be equivalent to a woman beating a man . Females kept the system alive . Note tambourines , which is a fingertapping system . Hence , in a male-female flamenco dance , the female is the dominant one , never mind what it looks like .
The Ultimate Combat System .
This can now be re-assembled , because of fire-arms . (The lethality is relatively less)
Combine flamenco dancing with kung-fu and aikido for an approximation of the original Indian system . An actual case where the ancients were really better !
Andre
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Origin of the Rule of Law
Origin of The Rule of Law
Andre Willers
22 march 2008
Definition:
The Rule of Law is that there at least some Laws(Rules) which bind everybody , even the rulers and the enforcers of law .
The Law of a Third .
(As described by Caesar and Tacitus .)
When a Celtic tribe or group of tribes became overpopulated , they gathered and divided into three equal parts . This division was by individual choice .
The leaders and shamans then decided by lot (chance ) which group had to leave for fresh territories .
Once the lot had been cast , nobody was allowed to change group . The Rule was inflexible , applicable from the lowest to the highest . Everybody knew the Rule , thus could not be changed by interpretation or appeal .
Otherwise , it would not have worked . ( People emigrate into a hostile environment only if they have no choice .)
And work it did .
It has been traced back to the collapse the Bronze Age Civilization . The peoples of Central Europe (like the Unetice) , the Urnsfield cultures leading to the Hallstadt Iron age all faced the same problem . Better technology and farming practices increased their wealth and population , but they were hemmed in by population groups at near-parity as far as warfare techniques were concerned .
So , expansion by gradual population pressure was a no-no , especially against the remnants of the old Bronze-Age Empires . So they sent forth a third of their number in a combination of invasion force and volke-wanderung . These were the waves (then also known as Gauls or Germans by the Romans) that swept over North-Western Europe to Ireland and to the East as far as Armenia . They nearly conquered the Italian peninsula as well .
Even as late as 105 BC Marius had his work cut out to massacre an invasion force of about half-million at Six Springs near Marseille . Caesar treacherously massacred another tribal group on the Rhine , also about half a million strong .
Future groups (about one every 50 years according to the climatic and historical evidence) decided that the Roman nut was too hard to crack . So they struck out eastward in search of Lebensraum .
Plus-la-change . Later they would return , as the Hun Confederacy .
Population Control .
The Romans were not sitting on their hands either .
Augustus knew that uncontrolled population growth would lead to wars of expansion , thus larger armies and rebellious generals . Civil wars and fragmentation of the state would be inevitable (as did happen) . Maybe he had some Chinese help (see previous posts) .
The Romans had a workable herbal general contraceptive (Sulphicium) which originated in North Africa . Augustus classified it as a state resource , eradicated it in the wild (to maintain control) and cultivated it on high-security state latifundia . This was then added to the state-controlled water supply . (All those fancy aqueducts) .
The low Roman birthrate has been ascribed to lead poisoning , but the poisonous effect of lead had been known since Egyptian times . Lead was usually only used in non-acidic environment (like water plumbing) , where it had no effect .
The one proof is the ripple effect on the population figures : Italy’s population remained steady at about 7 million from 1AD to 200AD . This was the heyday of the Roman Empire (Source : Atlas of World Population History by McEvedy and Jones p106 , the primary source for this type of figures.) . The population of the whole Roman empire only increased from 50 million to 55 million .
This beggars belief .
In equivalent circumstances , the English-speaking peoples doubled their population every 15-20 years .
This was during a time of peace and plentiful food . Even the Antonine plagues could not have had this effect unless another factor was present . Remember , low birth rates affected poor people too , who used ceramic utensils .
But everybody used water from the public fountains .
Another is the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude to contraception . It goes back to those days .
They inherited this dirty little secret when they took over the Roman State . They destroyed the farms and set up laws not to allow it again . These laws ossified .
But at the time they dare not let it out , as the mobs would have destroyed the water supply on which all depended .
There was one part of the Roman Empire where the population figures did not change from 1 AD to about 800 AD . The Netherlands and Belgium/Luxembourg (about 3 million each ) . There was no massive depopulation after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , but for a further 200 years after the collapse , the population did not increase either . This suggests that they continued to cultivate Sulphicium , and probably still do . (Note their skill at bulbs) . Their population figures remain at suspiciously small slopes until 1800 AD (note : other countries’ population slopes start rising at 1700 AD)
This goes a long way to explain Roman Catholic hostility to these countries and their support of Protestantism . By this time , the Roman Catholic Meme had frozen on the center of it’s attractor basin : keep the masses poor via overpopulation , leach out the smart kernels of revolt via schools and the confessional , with an aristocracy as armed back-up . Something similar happened to Islam . In the West , though , the Black Death broke the meme .
The Dutch has to join the Old Kingdom Egyptians as a group that figured out a way to run a modern , zero-growth , sustainable civilization . So , it can be done .
Note that Egypt probably used Sulphicium as a population control , but after the eradication of the plant in North Africa (and presumably Egypt) , Egyptian population rose from 4 million in 1 AD to 5 million in 200 AD . The Egyptian peasants drank water from the Nile , not aquaducts . But the cities did .
Some other advantages to The Law of a Third .
1, It did not depend on literacy ( usually the big problem with illiterate legal systems).
2, The chosen third could not renege , as two-thirds were standing by to kick them out.
3, Nobody was exempt . The essence of the Rule of Law .
Note that the Greeks and Romans did not have a concept of Law applicable to everyone . The Emperor was a God , and thus defined Law (a-la-Nietzche) . Even the Republic had the concept of Dictator (only for emergencies , y’know) who was above the law . The Greeks had the concept of Dictatorship of the Masses (general democracy) .
Anybody in the Celtic third lotted to go had to go , and no weaseling out either .
This discouraged dynasties and inherited wealth .This led to the Western idea of representative democracy and no fixed leadership . No big cities with arts and culture parasites formed . But technology remained an individual effort , highly prized and innovative . But small . Smiths .
Serious R&D needs above all dissemination of ideas (like an University) , supported by some general fee structure . War production of armour , weapons and professional soldiers needs a state with taxes . This is where the Romans wiped everybody . A Roman soldier’s armour cost about a years earnings of a skilled artisan . Training him took about 2 years , during which he was totally unproductive . The logistics to supply him (food , etc) could only be run by a state with a tax based on general economic activity , not on loot . Garrison troops do not even gather loot . Which is why Augustus strictly limited the number of legions . As long as the state is prosperous and can afford the taxes , then there is Pax Romana . When the money dries up , there is a silent coup and the Army takes over the State . As happened in the late Roman Empire .
A healthy system would break up into sustainable pieces ( as some emperors tried to do) , but the Army would not allow it . You then have an Army with a state . An unsustainable state .
4, Why a third?
I refer to http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Infinite Probes”
The optimum reserve for any system is about a third of its value . In essence , the society is “swarming” , sending out its reserve .
The fascinating question is how does it know it is time , and how and who decides ?
This has direct relevance in today’s overpopulated world .
The quorum mechanism in bacteria springs to mind . Mind-altering bacteria and viruses abound . Bacteria uses two different biochemical signaling systems to switch on lethal genes .
Humans have an analogue system , called media . With the Celts it would be troubadours , poets etc . If they started espousing the glories of combat to the exclusion of everything else , the canny shaman would know it is time to hive off .
Unfortunately , today there is nowhere to go that is not defended . But some areas are less defended than others . The same situation as in 200 BC .
So , the solution would be to hive off a third of the planetary population (about 2 billion) to the future , and the remaining 4 billion kill themselves off in the orgy of violence they all crave . This fits in with the estimated casualties of a general conflict (see previous posts)
One way of looking at it is that bacteria are cultivating certain species to unsustainable levels , then harvesting them .
So , when population densities are low , everybody is lovey-dovey . As densities grow , conflict increases until a threshold is reached and insensate violence breaks out . Sounds familiar ? The only civilizations that last are the ones that control their numbers . This is not just ecological , but inherent in the nature of humans as composite beings .
We can interrupt this bacterial dialogue leading to the sociological lethality switch-on.
From this viewpoint , every slave-cellar in Roman latifundiae and every slave-ship from Africa to the Confederate American States pumped its load of quorum violence markers into the population .
Hence the present desperate need to get away , to have refuge away from all humans .
Get away from the genetic markers activating stress-inducing aggressive responses .
Ie hiking , holiday homes , safaris . Unluckily , humans drag others along . They do not get rid of their problems , they just select some .
Bah!
Tell everybody to F*** Off and do a Greta Garbo . It is the only way to keep your sanity (literally) .
Can we mimic this technologically ?
Yes .
UVB will break down the biochemical markers . ( It is not magic , you know , or telepathy. ) A simple bare room with UV lights (commercially available) . Preferally a stone sitting place . Switch on the UV for about an hour before you go in . Needless to say , do not expose yourself to the UV . An air ionizer would be a good idea .
Remember auto-infection . You carry and generate these markers .
Initially , zap the room with UV , go in for about 10 minutes (long-term neural exponentiating period .) Go out and zap the room with UV (half-hour or less depending on the strength of the UV lamps . The markers would have evolved to resistance to sunlight UV , so the lamps would have to stronger than that .
Go back in after UV has been switched off .
Repeat.
Doing this a number of times should be the equivalent of a two-week holiday away from any human . The number of times would depend on your stress levels .
Air-fresheners :
These have been developed specifically to lock onto molecules like the markers we are talking about . The markers evolved from pheromones , which is a scent-type molecule . A goodly percentage of them should be inactivated by something like “Oust” .
So , if you have a panic attack , go into an enclosed loo , whip out your can of air-freshener and spray .
Note that tobacco smoke plays a similar agglutinative effect . Hence its popularity in neutralizing depression or aggression pheromone markers . And they thought nicotine was the active ingredient !
Smoke-filled caves and huts .
An open fire where the smoke veers has the same effect . One of the reasons of the popularity of open-air braais . Note that a proper barbecue chimney where the smoke cannot get in your eyes does not have the same effect .
Churchill’s cigars and the smoke-filled backroom are legendary . What is not realized is that they are essential .
African or Celtic huts with a smoke-filled interior was thus essential to civilization .Likewise air-pollution in moderate degree for big cities . It is ironic to note that if they put smoke-pots in London , the crime rate will drop .
South African crime rates increased dramatically when they electrified the townships and the wood-smoke haze disappeared ..
Andre
Andre Willers
22 march 2008
Definition:
The Rule of Law is that there at least some Laws(Rules) which bind everybody , even the rulers and the enforcers of law .
The Law of a Third .
(As described by Caesar and Tacitus .)
When a Celtic tribe or group of tribes became overpopulated , they gathered and divided into three equal parts . This division was by individual choice .
The leaders and shamans then decided by lot (chance ) which group had to leave for fresh territories .
Once the lot had been cast , nobody was allowed to change group . The Rule was inflexible , applicable from the lowest to the highest . Everybody knew the Rule , thus could not be changed by interpretation or appeal .
Otherwise , it would not have worked . ( People emigrate into a hostile environment only if they have no choice .)
And work it did .
It has been traced back to the collapse the Bronze Age Civilization . The peoples of Central Europe (like the Unetice) , the Urnsfield cultures leading to the Hallstadt Iron age all faced the same problem . Better technology and farming practices increased their wealth and population , but they were hemmed in by population groups at near-parity as far as warfare techniques were concerned .
So , expansion by gradual population pressure was a no-no , especially against the remnants of the old Bronze-Age Empires . So they sent forth a third of their number in a combination of invasion force and volke-wanderung . These were the waves (then also known as Gauls or Germans by the Romans) that swept over North-Western Europe to Ireland and to the East as far as Armenia . They nearly conquered the Italian peninsula as well .
Even as late as 105 BC Marius had his work cut out to massacre an invasion force of about half-million at Six Springs near Marseille . Caesar treacherously massacred another tribal group on the Rhine , also about half a million strong .
Future groups (about one every 50 years according to the climatic and historical evidence) decided that the Roman nut was too hard to crack . So they struck out eastward in search of Lebensraum .
Plus-la-change . Later they would return , as the Hun Confederacy .
Population Control .
The Romans were not sitting on their hands either .
Augustus knew that uncontrolled population growth would lead to wars of expansion , thus larger armies and rebellious generals . Civil wars and fragmentation of the state would be inevitable (as did happen) . Maybe he had some Chinese help (see previous posts) .
The Romans had a workable herbal general contraceptive (Sulphicium) which originated in North Africa . Augustus classified it as a state resource , eradicated it in the wild (to maintain control) and cultivated it on high-security state latifundia . This was then added to the state-controlled water supply . (All those fancy aqueducts) .
The low Roman birthrate has been ascribed to lead poisoning , but the poisonous effect of lead had been known since Egyptian times . Lead was usually only used in non-acidic environment (like water plumbing) , where it had no effect .
The one proof is the ripple effect on the population figures : Italy’s population remained steady at about 7 million from 1AD to 200AD . This was the heyday of the Roman Empire (Source : Atlas of World Population History by McEvedy and Jones p106 , the primary source for this type of figures.) . The population of the whole Roman empire only increased from 50 million to 55 million .
This beggars belief .
In equivalent circumstances , the English-speaking peoples doubled their population every 15-20 years .
This was during a time of peace and plentiful food . Even the Antonine plagues could not have had this effect unless another factor was present . Remember , low birth rates affected poor people too , who used ceramic utensils .
But everybody used water from the public fountains .
Another is the Roman Catholic Church’s attitude to contraception . It goes back to those days .
They inherited this dirty little secret when they took over the Roman State . They destroyed the farms and set up laws not to allow it again . These laws ossified .
But at the time they dare not let it out , as the mobs would have destroyed the water supply on which all depended .
There was one part of the Roman Empire where the population figures did not change from 1 AD to about 800 AD . The Netherlands and Belgium/Luxembourg (about 3 million each ) . There was no massive depopulation after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , but for a further 200 years after the collapse , the population did not increase either . This suggests that they continued to cultivate Sulphicium , and probably still do . (Note their skill at bulbs) . Their population figures remain at suspiciously small slopes until 1800 AD (note : other countries’ population slopes start rising at 1700 AD)
This goes a long way to explain Roman Catholic hostility to these countries and their support of Protestantism . By this time , the Roman Catholic Meme had frozen on the center of it’s attractor basin : keep the masses poor via overpopulation , leach out the smart kernels of revolt via schools and the confessional , with an aristocracy as armed back-up . Something similar happened to Islam . In the West , though , the Black Death broke the meme .
The Dutch has to join the Old Kingdom Egyptians as a group that figured out a way to run a modern , zero-growth , sustainable civilization . So , it can be done .
Note that Egypt probably used Sulphicium as a population control , but after the eradication of the plant in North Africa (and presumably Egypt) , Egyptian population rose from 4 million in 1 AD to 5 million in 200 AD . The Egyptian peasants drank water from the Nile , not aquaducts . But the cities did .
Some other advantages to The Law of a Third .
1, It did not depend on literacy ( usually the big problem with illiterate legal systems).
2, The chosen third could not renege , as two-thirds were standing by to kick them out.
3, Nobody was exempt . The essence of the Rule of Law .
Note that the Greeks and Romans did not have a concept of Law applicable to everyone . The Emperor was a God , and thus defined Law (a-la-Nietzche) . Even the Republic had the concept of Dictator (only for emergencies , y’know) who was above the law . The Greeks had the concept of Dictatorship of the Masses (general democracy) .
Anybody in the Celtic third lotted to go had to go , and no weaseling out either .
This discouraged dynasties and inherited wealth .This led to the Western idea of representative democracy and no fixed leadership . No big cities with arts and culture parasites formed . But technology remained an individual effort , highly prized and innovative . But small . Smiths .
Serious R&D needs above all dissemination of ideas (like an University) , supported by some general fee structure . War production of armour , weapons and professional soldiers needs a state with taxes . This is where the Romans wiped everybody . A Roman soldier’s armour cost about a years earnings of a skilled artisan . Training him took about 2 years , during which he was totally unproductive . The logistics to supply him (food , etc) could only be run by a state with a tax based on general economic activity , not on loot . Garrison troops do not even gather loot . Which is why Augustus strictly limited the number of legions . As long as the state is prosperous and can afford the taxes , then there is Pax Romana . When the money dries up , there is a silent coup and the Army takes over the State . As happened in the late Roman Empire .
A healthy system would break up into sustainable pieces ( as some emperors tried to do) , but the Army would not allow it . You then have an Army with a state . An unsustainable state .
4, Why a third?
I refer to http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “Infinite Probes”
The optimum reserve for any system is about a third of its value . In essence , the society is “swarming” , sending out its reserve .
The fascinating question is how does it know it is time , and how and who decides ?
This has direct relevance in today’s overpopulated world .
The quorum mechanism in bacteria springs to mind . Mind-altering bacteria and viruses abound . Bacteria uses two different biochemical signaling systems to switch on lethal genes .
Humans have an analogue system , called media . With the Celts it would be troubadours , poets etc . If they started espousing the glories of combat to the exclusion of everything else , the canny shaman would know it is time to hive off .
Unfortunately , today there is nowhere to go that is not defended . But some areas are less defended than others . The same situation as in 200 BC .
So , the solution would be to hive off a third of the planetary population (about 2 billion) to the future , and the remaining 4 billion kill themselves off in the orgy of violence they all crave . This fits in with the estimated casualties of a general conflict (see previous posts)
One way of looking at it is that bacteria are cultivating certain species to unsustainable levels , then harvesting them .
So , when population densities are low , everybody is lovey-dovey . As densities grow , conflict increases until a threshold is reached and insensate violence breaks out . Sounds familiar ? The only civilizations that last are the ones that control their numbers . This is not just ecological , but inherent in the nature of humans as composite beings .
We can interrupt this bacterial dialogue leading to the sociological lethality switch-on.
From this viewpoint , every slave-cellar in Roman latifundiae and every slave-ship from Africa to the Confederate American States pumped its load of quorum violence markers into the population .
Hence the present desperate need to get away , to have refuge away from all humans .
Get away from the genetic markers activating stress-inducing aggressive responses .
Ie hiking , holiday homes , safaris . Unluckily , humans drag others along . They do not get rid of their problems , they just select some .
Bah!
Tell everybody to F*** Off and do a Greta Garbo . It is the only way to keep your sanity (literally) .
Can we mimic this technologically ?
Yes .
UVB will break down the biochemical markers . ( It is not magic , you know , or telepathy. ) A simple bare room with UV lights (commercially available) . Preferally a stone sitting place . Switch on the UV for about an hour before you go in . Needless to say , do not expose yourself to the UV . An air ionizer would be a good idea .
Remember auto-infection . You carry and generate these markers .
Initially , zap the room with UV , go in for about 10 minutes (long-term neural exponentiating period .) Go out and zap the room with UV (half-hour or less depending on the strength of the UV lamps . The markers would have evolved to resistance to sunlight UV , so the lamps would have to stronger than that .
Go back in after UV has been switched off .
Repeat.
Doing this a number of times should be the equivalent of a two-week holiday away from any human . The number of times would depend on your stress levels .
Air-fresheners :
These have been developed specifically to lock onto molecules like the markers we are talking about . The markers evolved from pheromones , which is a scent-type molecule . A goodly percentage of them should be inactivated by something like “Oust” .
So , if you have a panic attack , go into an enclosed loo , whip out your can of air-freshener and spray .
Note that tobacco smoke plays a similar agglutinative effect . Hence its popularity in neutralizing depression or aggression pheromone markers . And they thought nicotine was the active ingredient !
Smoke-filled caves and huts .
An open fire where the smoke veers has the same effect . One of the reasons of the popularity of open-air braais . Note that a proper barbecue chimney where the smoke cannot get in your eyes does not have the same effect .
Churchill’s cigars and the smoke-filled backroom are legendary . What is not realized is that they are essential .
African or Celtic huts with a smoke-filled interior was thus essential to civilization .Likewise air-pollution in moderate degree for big cities . It is ironic to note that if they put smoke-pots in London , the crime rate will drop .
South African crime rates increased dramatically when they electrified the townships and the wood-smoke haze disappeared ..
Andre
Mongols of the Serengeti
Mongols of the Serengeti
Andre Willers
27 March 2008
An Alternate History .
In our timeline:
Mongke , the last Mongol kha-khan died in 1259 . Hulagu , his brother and grandson of Chingis Khan had just conquered Baghdad and Damascus . A large portion of Hulagu’s army was withdrawn for the succession fighting . Nevertheless , Hulagu pressed on . His much reduced force was stopped ( a draw) at Ayn Jalut (Goliath’s Spring ) , near Nazareth . Names redolent with myth .
This was without a doubt one of the critical battles of recent history .
Consider what would have happened if Hulagu had won at Ayn Julat .
Alternate timeline:
The Mongols conquer Egypt .
Christians and Shi’ite muslims are not exterminated in the near-east .
Crusaders are invited in as surrogate troops .
The Ottoman Empire never arises .
Constantinople does not fall (well , not to the Muslims , but nearly certainly to the Mongols .)
Mongol exploration sorties discover the plains of Africa . A Mongol paradise . Endless grasslands , teeming with game . The only opposition has no horses or compound bows .
The Khanate of Serengeti would soon stretch from the highlands of Kenya to the Karoo of South Africa . (The central plains of Southern Africa are almost identical to the Mongolian steppes .)
Raw materials such as gold (known since biblical days ) , iron (even earlier) and diamonds were available in abundance .
And game , game , game , such as no Mongolian lord could dream of . All the adventurous young men of the Mongol Empire would flock to Africa to make their fortune .
The Mongols had no use for unskilled slave-labour and no qualms about genocide . Replacement of local blacks by eastern and middle-eastern slave labour seems unavoidable (it nearly happened under the British in our time-line)
The Khanate of Serengeti would have evolved into the Sultanate of Serengeti , as the various regions of the mongol empire degenerated (as happened)
The religion would have been Muslim . All previous Mongol dominated areas eventually became Muslim in our timeline , and there is no reason to think it would be any different in this timeline . The major difference would be that it would be more tolerant , as the majority muslims would be Shi’ites , some Christians and Mongols being the overlords .
What about Europe ? The Knights-and-Castles defence would have seen off the northern Mongols (like it did the Ottomans in our timeline) . But a Sultanate with Africa’s resources and Chinese know-how is a different proposition .
But consolidating in Africa would have taken time . Events there would have little effect on events in China except weaken them , as their best emigrates . By 1620 AD , Admiral Hu’s fleet would still be on its way . But now it will not stop , but launch an invasion of the Sultanate of Serengeti .
Western European states by this time would be hard-pressed by aggressive pressure from North-Africa . Constantinople would probably have fallen to the Serengeti Sultanate . The Mongols were much better at adopting technology than the arabs were .
Most of the East would be Chinese , as the Middle Kingdom expands the middle . Lines of warfare would be the coastal regions of the Med basin .
The Americas . Many more Amerindians would survive . Infectious diseases were the main depopulation agents in the Americas . Sad to say , while Western states might not have actively abetted this , they definitely did not do their best and only counter , even today , namely quarantine . But this would be old hat to Mongols . After all , bubonic plague originated with the eastern asian marmosets . Cortez and Pizarro would have been in competition with Mongols at the courts of the local rulers . The Americas would have been a quadrangular theatre of conflict : The Chinese from the West , the Western Europeans and Serengeti Caliphate from the East and the Amerindians in the center .
It is delicious to think that in this timeline the EU and Chinese are contesting the Serengeti Sultanate for the Texas oil-fields .
Would science be as advanced by 2008 AD ? Yes , probably even more so in technology . As long as the Western European states had some autonomy , the wellsprings of innovation would flow . Sadly , in our timeline this has nearly dried up due to the demise of the independence of universities . When they did away with tenure , they killed the goose that laid the golden eggs .
Draka’s : would the Serengeti Sultanate be analogue drakas? No , the population is too diverse , the territory too large and there are too few Mongols . The only known example where this has been attempted with some success( Japan) , ended in tears as the system could not compete with freedom-systems .
Any central command system cannot compete with local autonomy . This has been proven over and over again in history . But still humans do not learn . The moan is always : but what mix ? What portion local control , what central ? Yet this answer has always been known . The maximum you can risk are your reserves . And this is about a third . See previous arguments about “Infinite Probes” . The killer is that humans do not re-evaluate the third after a big success . They try to keep the gains , and wonder why it all crumbles . It is because they are then risking more than a third of the new dispensation .
Would this timeline be better than our own ? Yes . The continual conflict would have necessitated greater efficiency . Maximization of efficiency is not achieved by size (except in special cases like steel production , etc) . Food production is a good example . The most efficient food production was in the 18th century in Europe and Asia . Efficiency being measured by the ratio of energy in to energy out . Factors of about 30 were achieved , compared to present day factors of about 2 to 3)
In our timeline , population growth without check (ie exponential) was driven by two factors: Cheap food from the plains of Americas and Europe , driven by subsidised cheap energy (oil) and medical advice and techniques to more primitive peoples that did not include contraception . It is like giving unlimited sweets to children . And now it is stomach-ache time .
The Serengeti Sultanate timeline might have fought a number of nuclear conflicts , but at least they would have a large presence in space . The population would have been much lower and social mobility better .
Social mobility outside the upper middle classes in the west is just about nil in our timeline . And it is about to get much worse as the implications of globalization works its way through the system . The middle class is being squeezed out of existence . The present mortgage crisis in the US is but a symptom . Analogous to the Roman peasants being forced off their land while they were off fighting .
It is my considered opinion that (in our timeline) the US system is approaching a paroxysm equivalent to the French or Russian revolutions .
History does not repeat itself , but it rhymes . The concentration of capital , a legal system that allows a minor entity to be sued into oblivion and legislature that is dominated by lobby-groups has made everybody either very rich (a tiny minority) , or working for somebody else . The middle class has been destroyed , even though most people in the US will describe themselves thus . Yet , they are one or two paychecks away from being homeless . It is these homeless that will lead the revolution . Like the Romans never called any Caesar “Rex” , they will not call it Communist . But it will be . One of those ironies of history . That Russia becomes capitalist , and America Communist . If not this , then the Union will fragment into three . Sic transit Gloria .
Without the Pax Americana , small states will have to resort to nuclear weapons for survival . Then bio . It is doubtful any humans will survive . This timeline will pinch out .
Oh well .
Andre
Andre Willers
27 March 2008
An Alternate History .
In our timeline:
Mongke , the last Mongol kha-khan died in 1259 . Hulagu , his brother and grandson of Chingis Khan had just conquered Baghdad and Damascus . A large portion of Hulagu’s army was withdrawn for the succession fighting . Nevertheless , Hulagu pressed on . His much reduced force was stopped ( a draw) at Ayn Jalut (Goliath’s Spring ) , near Nazareth . Names redolent with myth .
This was without a doubt one of the critical battles of recent history .
Consider what would have happened if Hulagu had won at Ayn Julat .
Alternate timeline:
The Mongols conquer Egypt .
Christians and Shi’ite muslims are not exterminated in the near-east .
Crusaders are invited in as surrogate troops .
The Ottoman Empire never arises .
Constantinople does not fall (well , not to the Muslims , but nearly certainly to the Mongols .)
Mongol exploration sorties discover the plains of Africa . A Mongol paradise . Endless grasslands , teeming with game . The only opposition has no horses or compound bows .
The Khanate of Serengeti would soon stretch from the highlands of Kenya to the Karoo of South Africa . (The central plains of Southern Africa are almost identical to the Mongolian steppes .)
Raw materials such as gold (known since biblical days ) , iron (even earlier) and diamonds were available in abundance .
And game , game , game , such as no Mongolian lord could dream of . All the adventurous young men of the Mongol Empire would flock to Africa to make their fortune .
The Mongols had no use for unskilled slave-labour and no qualms about genocide . Replacement of local blacks by eastern and middle-eastern slave labour seems unavoidable (it nearly happened under the British in our time-line)
The Khanate of Serengeti would have evolved into the Sultanate of Serengeti , as the various regions of the mongol empire degenerated (as happened)
The religion would have been Muslim . All previous Mongol dominated areas eventually became Muslim in our timeline , and there is no reason to think it would be any different in this timeline . The major difference would be that it would be more tolerant , as the majority muslims would be Shi’ites , some Christians and Mongols being the overlords .
What about Europe ? The Knights-and-Castles defence would have seen off the northern Mongols (like it did the Ottomans in our timeline) . But a Sultanate with Africa’s resources and Chinese know-how is a different proposition .
But consolidating in Africa would have taken time . Events there would have little effect on events in China except weaken them , as their best emigrates . By 1620 AD , Admiral Hu’s fleet would still be on its way . But now it will not stop , but launch an invasion of the Sultanate of Serengeti .
Western European states by this time would be hard-pressed by aggressive pressure from North-Africa . Constantinople would probably have fallen to the Serengeti Sultanate . The Mongols were much better at adopting technology than the arabs were .
Most of the East would be Chinese , as the Middle Kingdom expands the middle . Lines of warfare would be the coastal regions of the Med basin .
The Americas . Many more Amerindians would survive . Infectious diseases were the main depopulation agents in the Americas . Sad to say , while Western states might not have actively abetted this , they definitely did not do their best and only counter , even today , namely quarantine . But this would be old hat to Mongols . After all , bubonic plague originated with the eastern asian marmosets . Cortez and Pizarro would have been in competition with Mongols at the courts of the local rulers . The Americas would have been a quadrangular theatre of conflict : The Chinese from the West , the Western Europeans and Serengeti Caliphate from the East and the Amerindians in the center .
It is delicious to think that in this timeline the EU and Chinese are contesting the Serengeti Sultanate for the Texas oil-fields .
Would science be as advanced by 2008 AD ? Yes , probably even more so in technology . As long as the Western European states had some autonomy , the wellsprings of innovation would flow . Sadly , in our timeline this has nearly dried up due to the demise of the independence of universities . When they did away with tenure , they killed the goose that laid the golden eggs .
Draka’s : would the Serengeti Sultanate be analogue drakas? No , the population is too diverse , the territory too large and there are too few Mongols . The only known example where this has been attempted with some success( Japan) , ended in tears as the system could not compete with freedom-systems .
Any central command system cannot compete with local autonomy . This has been proven over and over again in history . But still humans do not learn . The moan is always : but what mix ? What portion local control , what central ? Yet this answer has always been known . The maximum you can risk are your reserves . And this is about a third . See previous arguments about “Infinite Probes” . The killer is that humans do not re-evaluate the third after a big success . They try to keep the gains , and wonder why it all crumbles . It is because they are then risking more than a third of the new dispensation .
Would this timeline be better than our own ? Yes . The continual conflict would have necessitated greater efficiency . Maximization of efficiency is not achieved by size (except in special cases like steel production , etc) . Food production is a good example . The most efficient food production was in the 18th century in Europe and Asia . Efficiency being measured by the ratio of energy in to energy out . Factors of about 30 were achieved , compared to present day factors of about 2 to 3)
In our timeline , population growth without check (ie exponential) was driven by two factors: Cheap food from the plains of Americas and Europe , driven by subsidised cheap energy (oil) and medical advice and techniques to more primitive peoples that did not include contraception . It is like giving unlimited sweets to children . And now it is stomach-ache time .
The Serengeti Sultanate timeline might have fought a number of nuclear conflicts , but at least they would have a large presence in space . The population would have been much lower and social mobility better .
Social mobility outside the upper middle classes in the west is just about nil in our timeline . And it is about to get much worse as the implications of globalization works its way through the system . The middle class is being squeezed out of existence . The present mortgage crisis in the US is but a symptom . Analogous to the Roman peasants being forced off their land while they were off fighting .
It is my considered opinion that (in our timeline) the US system is approaching a paroxysm equivalent to the French or Russian revolutions .
History does not repeat itself , but it rhymes . The concentration of capital , a legal system that allows a minor entity to be sued into oblivion and legislature that is dominated by lobby-groups has made everybody either very rich (a tiny minority) , or working for somebody else . The middle class has been destroyed , even though most people in the US will describe themselves thus . Yet , they are one or two paychecks away from being homeless . It is these homeless that will lead the revolution . Like the Romans never called any Caesar “Rex” , they will not call it Communist . But it will be . One of those ironies of history . That Russia becomes capitalist , and America Communist . If not this , then the Union will fragment into three . Sic transit Gloria .
Without the Pax Americana , small states will have to resort to nuclear weapons for survival . Then bio . It is doubtful any humans will survive . This timeline will pinch out .
Oh well .
Andre
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Amphorae – Roman Containerization
Amphorae – Roman Containerization
Johan and Andre Willers
19 March 2008
Synopsis:
Roman ships and stevedoring was standardized to use large amphorae as containers .
When the containers were cheap to manufacture , they were smashed at the destination and used as reinforcing in Roman concrete constructions (cf Roman houses . ) The rough curvilinear shape of amphorae fragments in a concrete matrix gives a better compression-strength than steel reinforcing .
It was the lack of commercially viable lifts that limited the height of Roman apartments , not the strength of materials . (Cf walk-up flats in New York circa 1800’s)
Discussion:
Literally millions of tones of olive oil , grain , wine , garum , cement , metals (small iron ingots ) , charcoal etc was shipped in the late Republican and Empire period . The Globalization period of Rome . Equally , millions of tons of amphorae .
Production specialized in the regions most suitable for a certain product .
Olive oil : Iberia , North Africa .
Grain : Egypt and North Africa .
Wine : Italy and France .
Garum : initially everywhere , but later on the Lowlands of Holland .
Cement from Egypt and Italy .
Metals and charcoal were strategic materials for manufacturing weapons and armour . Initially the smithies and armouries were in Italy , but later in the Empire shifted them to the northern provinces of Gaul . This was closer to the iron deposits in Germany and still available forests for charcoal . But charcoal was still imported on a large scale to the cities of the Roman Empire for fuel .
Amphorae : where the right clay and sufficient fuel (wood) was available . Like aluminium in modern times , or charcoal in any time , ceramics is condensed energy . An amphora transported from North Africa to Rome represented a certain amount of wood burnt .
For instance , Italian hills were deforested to plant vines as the most profitable cash-crop (on the latifundiae). This wine was exported at a huge mark-up . Charcoal was then imported . Hence the deforestation of North Africa , Levant , Turkey and France .
Note the effect on history : with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire circa 500 – 600 AD , wine-trading routes to the West collapsed , mainly due to piracy . Byzantium kept the eastern trade routes relatively pirate-free . Desperate wine-producers in Italy dumped their wine in the Middle East , especially Arabia . This flood of cheap wine caused a wave of drunkenness in the Middle-East , resulting in Mohammed’s stricture against “the fruit of the vine” . Beer and kumiss were not affected , as the low alcohol concentration was essential as sterilization agent of water.
Alcohol Concentrations .
Wine can be made to about 14% alcohol per volume . Strong beer is about 5% . Medieval beer and wine was about 2%-3% . A modern spirit with a mixer (25 ml spirit with 175 ml mixer) is about 6% alcohol .A wine drinker imbibes a drink that is 2 to 3 times as potent as that of a spirit drinker .
Hence the Symposium Master that controlled the mixing of wine and water in a krater in ancient Greece . Only barbarians drank wine neat .
Humans can drink 2% alcohol solutions indefinitely .Indeed , present stress-management techniques recommend some alcohol .
Over 1 500 years of rigorous selection in the West might have made alcohol de-rigeur on a neuronal level .
Forget Prozac ! Drink 1% – 2% watered wine .
Dosage :
Very little . 1% of 200 ml (a glass) is 2 ml . At 50% alcohol concentration , this means that about a teaspoonful(5 ml or 10 drops) of vodka per glass will give about 1.25 % alcohol concentration . This will get metabolized almost immediately , but not before tripping some neurochemical switches . Serotonin and dopamine springs to mind . Remember the evolutionary background . Western genetic neuronal systems have evolved to get antsy if there are no alcohol switches being activated . The amount of alcohol does not matter , but the transient concentration does .
Now do you see why so many patent medicines in alcohol solutions have been so effective for anxiety .
In medieval times , western Europeans who did not drink mild beer died of water-borne diseases . Note the uneven distribution of alcohol-tolerance genes between East and West . The East had tea for thousands of years . This required boiling of water , giving a measure of protection against water-borne diseases .
One would expect this from evolutionary grounds , since there is no reason for homonins to develop a tolerance of alcohol ( a systemic poison) in the wild state .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Some commentators have advanced the theory that the caffeine stimulation of coffee and tea led to the advances of the industrial revolution in the west . It seems more likely that reduction in alcohol intake plus the better nutrition from grain previously used for brewing would have a bigger effect . This last effect is not negligible . To produce a 2% alcohol beer , about 15% – 20 % of the grain/barley crop would be needed . This would have had significant effect on child nutrition and subsequent brain development .
Not to mention the civilization-wide withdrawal effect !
The Hubbert effect.
Hubbert was an American oil-man who used his technique to predict the peak of US oil production . He did his prediction in the early 1950’s . He predicted a peak in 1972.
This happened . The methodology has been extrapolated to any non-renewable resource .
Essentially , you graph annual production (y-axis) against sum of production-to-date (x-axis) .
For oil and coal this has given a straight-line graph over periods of about 150 years . In other words , a fair degree of confidence in the extrapolation of the straight line .
It means that easily exploitable deposits are used first , then more difficult and costly and so forth until it becomes too difficult and costly to continue . It seems to be insensitive to any technological advances .
The essential point is that any finite resource in the ancient world had to follow this pattern . The clay to make amphorae was one such resource .
The Romans used this resource as if there was no tomorrow .Eventually , the easy resources were exhausted and only a few places manufactured increasingly expensive amphorae . Eventually they ran out . When the trading routes broke down , charcoal could not be imported anymore to fire the amphora kilns . The workers dispersed and the skills were lost and never re-established .
Barrels replaced amphorae , but they could never replace amphorae , since they were expensive , difficult to make and of limited storage .
The Garum Catastrophe .
Garum was a fermented fish sauce that contained essential fats and amino-acids normally found in meat . Normal Romans ate very little meat . But with the disappearance of amphorae , garum disappeared . (Oak barrels gave a funny taste and let in oxygen ) . Only the Dutch persevered , (eg “garing”) , eventually evolving into the herring trade . But that took a whopping 600 years .
The effect was deficiency diseases on top of all the other disasters .
Note the Roman Catholic fishy Friday attempt to compensate .
Andre
Johan and Andre Willers
19 March 2008
Synopsis:
Roman ships and stevedoring was standardized to use large amphorae as containers .
When the containers were cheap to manufacture , they were smashed at the destination and used as reinforcing in Roman concrete constructions (cf Roman houses . ) The rough curvilinear shape of amphorae fragments in a concrete matrix gives a better compression-strength than steel reinforcing .
It was the lack of commercially viable lifts that limited the height of Roman apartments , not the strength of materials . (Cf walk-up flats in New York circa 1800’s)
Discussion:
Literally millions of tones of olive oil , grain , wine , garum , cement , metals (small iron ingots ) , charcoal etc was shipped in the late Republican and Empire period . The Globalization period of Rome . Equally , millions of tons of amphorae .
Production specialized in the regions most suitable for a certain product .
Olive oil : Iberia , North Africa .
Grain : Egypt and North Africa .
Wine : Italy and France .
Garum : initially everywhere , but later on the Lowlands of Holland .
Cement from Egypt and Italy .
Metals and charcoal were strategic materials for manufacturing weapons and armour . Initially the smithies and armouries were in Italy , but later in the Empire shifted them to the northern provinces of Gaul . This was closer to the iron deposits in Germany and still available forests for charcoal . But charcoal was still imported on a large scale to the cities of the Roman Empire for fuel .
Amphorae : where the right clay and sufficient fuel (wood) was available . Like aluminium in modern times , or charcoal in any time , ceramics is condensed energy . An amphora transported from North Africa to Rome represented a certain amount of wood burnt .
For instance , Italian hills were deforested to plant vines as the most profitable cash-crop (on the latifundiae). This wine was exported at a huge mark-up . Charcoal was then imported . Hence the deforestation of North Africa , Levant , Turkey and France .
Note the effect on history : with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire circa 500 – 600 AD , wine-trading routes to the West collapsed , mainly due to piracy . Byzantium kept the eastern trade routes relatively pirate-free . Desperate wine-producers in Italy dumped their wine in the Middle East , especially Arabia . This flood of cheap wine caused a wave of drunkenness in the Middle-East , resulting in Mohammed’s stricture against “the fruit of the vine” . Beer and kumiss were not affected , as the low alcohol concentration was essential as sterilization agent of water.
Alcohol Concentrations .
Wine can be made to about 14% alcohol per volume . Strong beer is about 5% . Medieval beer and wine was about 2%-3% . A modern spirit with a mixer (25 ml spirit with 175 ml mixer) is about 6% alcohol .A wine drinker imbibes a drink that is 2 to 3 times as potent as that of a spirit drinker .
Hence the Symposium Master that controlled the mixing of wine and water in a krater in ancient Greece . Only barbarians drank wine neat .
Humans can drink 2% alcohol solutions indefinitely .Indeed , present stress-management techniques recommend some alcohol .
Over 1 500 years of rigorous selection in the West might have made alcohol de-rigeur on a neuronal level .
Forget Prozac ! Drink 1% – 2% watered wine .
Dosage :
Very little . 1% of 200 ml (a glass) is 2 ml . At 50% alcohol concentration , this means that about a teaspoonful(5 ml or 10 drops) of vodka per glass will give about 1.25 % alcohol concentration . This will get metabolized almost immediately , but not before tripping some neurochemical switches . Serotonin and dopamine springs to mind . Remember the evolutionary background . Western genetic neuronal systems have evolved to get antsy if there are no alcohol switches being activated . The amount of alcohol does not matter , but the transient concentration does .
Now do you see why so many patent medicines in alcohol solutions have been so effective for anxiety .
In medieval times , western Europeans who did not drink mild beer died of water-borne diseases . Note the uneven distribution of alcohol-tolerance genes between East and West . The East had tea for thousands of years . This required boiling of water , giving a measure of protection against water-borne diseases .
One would expect this from evolutionary grounds , since there is no reason for homonins to develop a tolerance of alcohol ( a systemic poison) in the wild state .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Some commentators have advanced the theory that the caffeine stimulation of coffee and tea led to the advances of the industrial revolution in the west . It seems more likely that reduction in alcohol intake plus the better nutrition from grain previously used for brewing would have a bigger effect . This last effect is not negligible . To produce a 2% alcohol beer , about 15% – 20 % of the grain/barley crop would be needed . This would have had significant effect on child nutrition and subsequent brain development .
Not to mention the civilization-wide withdrawal effect !
The Hubbert effect.
Hubbert was an American oil-man who used his technique to predict the peak of US oil production . He did his prediction in the early 1950’s . He predicted a peak in 1972.
This happened . The methodology has been extrapolated to any non-renewable resource .
Essentially , you graph annual production (y-axis) against sum of production-to-date (x-axis) .
For oil and coal this has given a straight-line graph over periods of about 150 years . In other words , a fair degree of confidence in the extrapolation of the straight line .
It means that easily exploitable deposits are used first , then more difficult and costly and so forth until it becomes too difficult and costly to continue . It seems to be insensitive to any technological advances .
The essential point is that any finite resource in the ancient world had to follow this pattern . The clay to make amphorae was one such resource .
The Romans used this resource as if there was no tomorrow .Eventually , the easy resources were exhausted and only a few places manufactured increasingly expensive amphorae . Eventually they ran out . When the trading routes broke down , charcoal could not be imported anymore to fire the amphora kilns . The workers dispersed and the skills were lost and never re-established .
Barrels replaced amphorae , but they could never replace amphorae , since they were expensive , difficult to make and of limited storage .
The Garum Catastrophe .
Garum was a fermented fish sauce that contained essential fats and amino-acids normally found in meat . Normal Romans ate very little meat . But with the disappearance of amphorae , garum disappeared . (Oak barrels gave a funny taste and let in oxygen ) . Only the Dutch persevered , (eg “garing”) , eventually evolving into the herring trade . But that took a whopping 600 years .
The effect was deficiency diseases on top of all the other disasters .
Note the Roman Catholic fishy Friday attempt to compensate .
Andre
Friday, February 22, 2008
How to Really Drastically Improve your Balance .
How to Really Drastically Improve your Balance .
Andre Willers
22 Feb 2008
Benefits : Drastic balance improvement for
1. Sports : any sport , but especially golf , baseball , cricket , tennis
2. Old age : prevent falls in old age .
3. Peripheral Neuropathy : regain feeling .
4. CNS impairment . Regain motor effect .
Method :
Put a strip of bubblewrap on the ground and place your bare feet on it while you are seated . Your toes and heels must touch the bubblewrap .
Play dancing music .
Tap your fingers together (the best) , or air-tap , or tap against a solid surface .
Notice that your feet start tapping almost irresistibly . It requires an effort of will to stop .
Continue for about 10 minutes at first (fatigue sets in) . Sleep on it (for long term-potentiation to fix . ) Continue for about 3 days , then increase the frequency .
The effect will be very drastic at first ( expect about 20% return of feeling) , then logarithmically growing less .
What is going on ?
See previous posts about the evolutionary history of the sensitivity of fingertips , toetips and soles to vibrations on branches .See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
There is a very , very strong synergy between neurological correlations in the brain regarding fingertip and sole-toe tap rhythms . This happens at a very basic levels . The brain learns very quickly using very old mammalian evolutionary pathways . Even your fingertapping gets better .
I was surprised to find that fingertapping became very much better when the bubblewrap foot-tapping was included . An order of magnitude .
Fingers-and-toes learn much , much better and faster than either separately .
The bubblewrap acts like the slightly rough surface of branches or ground , but with a regularity that makes learning easier .
You have to sit , because the bubblewrap is not strong enough to take your full weight without bursting .
In any case , a gentle , rapidly varying , predictable and rhythmic pressure variation on the sole-toes seems to be a better mechanism for learning correlation with fingertaps and musical input .
Even air taps (ie opening the finger(s) to full extent works , because this puts stress on the pressure receptors at the fingertips .
Dancing music is best because this is already optimized for human neurological systems .
Fatigue .
At first , long-term potentiating factors play a role . Do not continue for more than 10 minutes for three successive periods . Leave a day’s gap at first .
Bubblewrap :
Your attention is drawn to numerous balance studies involving studs stimulating the soles . Commercial products (very expensive) are available .
Synergy
Once again , the synergy between musical fingertapping and rough sole and toe tapping is extremely strong . It is based on survival mechanisms about 30 million years old .
The Ladder Effect .
Your attention is drawn to recent studies that have shown that even interruption of long-nerves (like spinal nerves , foot-nerves) can be compensated for by numerous smaller nerves bypassing the damaged area . The problem is in integrating the signals of the lesser nerves to compensate . This is where the above method works well . Both on afferent and efferent level .
Speed.
The effect is very rapid , since it is a reorganization in the brain . You are retraining a part of the brain , not the body at first . Regaining 20% of feeling from neuropathy after the first try has been my experience .
Long term effects .
Repair of diabetic or acrylamide nervous damage seems possible once the underlying causative factors have been removed . If sufficient underlying repair factors (like alpha-lipoic acid , essential fatty acids , HGH , etc are present ), the nervous damage is repaired using growth-hormone factors steered from the ladder-neurons .
Scar tissue can be repaired the same way .
Fat tissue repair .
Overloaded fat cells whose cell-walls are not strong enough (due to lack of enough sulfur) , rupture or overflow and merge with their neighbours . The dreaded dimples . Cellulite .
The female body mobilizes resources once a month for the baby , and the chief resource needed is sulfur . The baby initially is just a mass of connective tissue , increasing exponentially .It needs sulfur , and it needs it now! .
Hence the “glowing “ look of pregnant women . The body scavenges sulfur from the biggest organ which can spare sulfur , namely the skin . The skin seems to glow because it is thinner . Note the similar effect with TB , when the patient is spitting out its reserves of sulfur . The fine alveoli needs a lot of sulfur for the scaffolding . This suggests massive doses of sulfur (MSM , or something similar) for XDR-TB .
Cellulite prevention :
Take enough MSM before menstruation .
How to repair Fat cells .
The major culprit is oestrogen . (Some Oestrogen gets worked to testosterone in males) .
Surges in oestrogen (ie sexual activity or menstruation) increases mobilization of sulfur . This reduces sulfur available for bounding fat-cells . Hence cellulite ( external for females , internal for males . Typical internal fat is globulous (ie fat cells that have overflowed) . Males’ cellulite is internal .)
The trick is to train the body . Normally , surplus fat is encapsulated and excreted . The problem is that the capsule requires sulfur , and if that is in short supply , the fat has to be “temporarily”stored in already existing cells .
The body knows that gross excess fat is bad for it’s survival . But it has no choice . Even if there is enough sulfur , the apoptosis mechanism of fat cells has to be trained .
Just pumping in a lot of sulfur is not sufficient . It has to be associated with a rapid-learning mechanism .
The trick:
Use the music-fingertip and toe-tap to reprogram the fat-cell mechanism .
The idea is to establish training at the neural level .
We know that the finger-toe system trains very rapidly at a very basic level . Associate this with oestrogen-production and sulfur intake .
The body wants to lose the excess fat cells , but it cannot use its excretory mechanism unless it is assured of a sufficient sulfur supply .
This is probably tied into some epigenetic control system , that takes about three generations to change .
Hence our need of a fast reprogramming system .
Initially , things are a bit exaggerated to reinforce the learning mechanism .
The Recipe for fat loss :
1. Take a pulse dose of MSM (about 3 gms MSM + 1 gm VitC above your normal dose ) This is to let your body know something is going on .
2. Do the fingertapping , toetapping , bubblewrap music thing . The Method is as described above . (Not more than 10 minutes initially)
3. While doing this , watch a porn show (without sound) to pulse the oestrogen/testosterone . For males , lesbian shows are recommended to reduce testosterone production .
4. Repeat this for at least three days and not more than 2 weeks .
5. Check your body fat .
You should see apoptosis of fat cells , as well as a runny tummy as encapsulated fats are excreted .
Diabetics should watch their sugar levels as insulin resistance decreases with decreasing fat-cell sizes and decreasing number of fat cells .
MSM dosages should be kept high initially to prevent recidivism .
Porn and Fat .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
In the absence of sufficient sulfur , porn and fat is in a positive feedback cycle .
All that sexy advertising stimulates oestrogen production . Without enough sulfur , even normal eating goes into fat . This makes the populace feel unworthy , and go to the super-images of advertising and porn . So they turn into fat , wanking couch potatoes .
Oh no!
Gun Powder war involves pumping large amounts of sulfur into the biosphere , while burial practices sequesters it . Now you know why everybody was so lean after WWI and WWII . They were well fed (especially the Americans) , but they were still lean .
They were normal . Present humans are abnormal , because they suffer from a deficiency disease , namely a lack of sulfur . And some military genius is going to decide to solve this problem with a tried and proven recipe : a war .
And so it goes .
Andre .
Andre Willers
22 Feb 2008
Benefits : Drastic balance improvement for
1. Sports : any sport , but especially golf , baseball , cricket , tennis
2. Old age : prevent falls in old age .
3. Peripheral Neuropathy : regain feeling .
4. CNS impairment . Regain motor effect .
Method :
Put a strip of bubblewrap on the ground and place your bare feet on it while you are seated . Your toes and heels must touch the bubblewrap .
Play dancing music .
Tap your fingers together (the best) , or air-tap , or tap against a solid surface .
Notice that your feet start tapping almost irresistibly . It requires an effort of will to stop .
Continue for about 10 minutes at first (fatigue sets in) . Sleep on it (for long term-potentiation to fix . ) Continue for about 3 days , then increase the frequency .
The effect will be very drastic at first ( expect about 20% return of feeling) , then logarithmically growing less .
What is going on ?
See previous posts about the evolutionary history of the sensitivity of fingertips , toetips and soles to vibrations on branches .See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
There is a very , very strong synergy between neurological correlations in the brain regarding fingertip and sole-toe tap rhythms . This happens at a very basic levels . The brain learns very quickly using very old mammalian evolutionary pathways . Even your fingertapping gets better .
I was surprised to find that fingertapping became very much better when the bubblewrap foot-tapping was included . An order of magnitude .
Fingers-and-toes learn much , much better and faster than either separately .
The bubblewrap acts like the slightly rough surface of branches or ground , but with a regularity that makes learning easier .
You have to sit , because the bubblewrap is not strong enough to take your full weight without bursting .
In any case , a gentle , rapidly varying , predictable and rhythmic pressure variation on the sole-toes seems to be a better mechanism for learning correlation with fingertaps and musical input .
Even air taps (ie opening the finger(s) to full extent works , because this puts stress on the pressure receptors at the fingertips .
Dancing music is best because this is already optimized for human neurological systems .
Fatigue .
At first , long-term potentiating factors play a role . Do not continue for more than 10 minutes for three successive periods . Leave a day’s gap at first .
Bubblewrap :
Your attention is drawn to numerous balance studies involving studs stimulating the soles . Commercial products (very expensive) are available .
Synergy
Once again , the synergy between musical fingertapping and rough sole and toe tapping is extremely strong . It is based on survival mechanisms about 30 million years old .
The Ladder Effect .
Your attention is drawn to recent studies that have shown that even interruption of long-nerves (like spinal nerves , foot-nerves) can be compensated for by numerous smaller nerves bypassing the damaged area . The problem is in integrating the signals of the lesser nerves to compensate . This is where the above method works well . Both on afferent and efferent level .
Speed.
The effect is very rapid , since it is a reorganization in the brain . You are retraining a part of the brain , not the body at first . Regaining 20% of feeling from neuropathy after the first try has been my experience .
Long term effects .
Repair of diabetic or acrylamide nervous damage seems possible once the underlying causative factors have been removed . If sufficient underlying repair factors (like alpha-lipoic acid , essential fatty acids , HGH , etc are present ), the nervous damage is repaired using growth-hormone factors steered from the ladder-neurons .
Scar tissue can be repaired the same way .
Fat tissue repair .
Overloaded fat cells whose cell-walls are not strong enough (due to lack of enough sulfur) , rupture or overflow and merge with their neighbours . The dreaded dimples . Cellulite .
The female body mobilizes resources once a month for the baby , and the chief resource needed is sulfur . The baby initially is just a mass of connective tissue , increasing exponentially .It needs sulfur , and it needs it now! .
Hence the “glowing “ look of pregnant women . The body scavenges sulfur from the biggest organ which can spare sulfur , namely the skin . The skin seems to glow because it is thinner . Note the similar effect with TB , when the patient is spitting out its reserves of sulfur . The fine alveoli needs a lot of sulfur for the scaffolding . This suggests massive doses of sulfur (MSM , or something similar) for XDR-TB .
Cellulite prevention :
Take enough MSM before menstruation .
How to repair Fat cells .
The major culprit is oestrogen . (Some Oestrogen gets worked to testosterone in males) .
Surges in oestrogen (ie sexual activity or menstruation) increases mobilization of sulfur . This reduces sulfur available for bounding fat-cells . Hence cellulite ( external for females , internal for males . Typical internal fat is globulous (ie fat cells that have overflowed) . Males’ cellulite is internal .)
The trick is to train the body . Normally , surplus fat is encapsulated and excreted . The problem is that the capsule requires sulfur , and if that is in short supply , the fat has to be “temporarily”stored in already existing cells .
The body knows that gross excess fat is bad for it’s survival . But it has no choice . Even if there is enough sulfur , the apoptosis mechanism of fat cells has to be trained .
Just pumping in a lot of sulfur is not sufficient . It has to be associated with a rapid-learning mechanism .
The trick:
Use the music-fingertip and toe-tap to reprogram the fat-cell mechanism .
The idea is to establish training at the neural level .
We know that the finger-toe system trains very rapidly at a very basic level . Associate this with oestrogen-production and sulfur intake .
The body wants to lose the excess fat cells , but it cannot use its excretory mechanism unless it is assured of a sufficient sulfur supply .
This is probably tied into some epigenetic control system , that takes about three generations to change .
Hence our need of a fast reprogramming system .
Initially , things are a bit exaggerated to reinforce the learning mechanism .
The Recipe for fat loss :
1. Take a pulse dose of MSM (about 3 gms MSM + 1 gm VitC above your normal dose ) This is to let your body know something is going on .
2. Do the fingertapping , toetapping , bubblewrap music thing . The Method is as described above . (Not more than 10 minutes initially)
3. While doing this , watch a porn show (without sound) to pulse the oestrogen/testosterone . For males , lesbian shows are recommended to reduce testosterone production .
4. Repeat this for at least three days and not more than 2 weeks .
5. Check your body fat .
You should see apoptosis of fat cells , as well as a runny tummy as encapsulated fats are excreted .
Diabetics should watch their sugar levels as insulin resistance decreases with decreasing fat-cell sizes and decreasing number of fat cells .
MSM dosages should be kept high initially to prevent recidivism .
Porn and Fat .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
In the absence of sufficient sulfur , porn and fat is in a positive feedback cycle .
All that sexy advertising stimulates oestrogen production . Without enough sulfur , even normal eating goes into fat . This makes the populace feel unworthy , and go to the super-images of advertising and porn . So they turn into fat , wanking couch potatoes .
Oh no!
Gun Powder war involves pumping large amounts of sulfur into the biosphere , while burial practices sequesters it . Now you know why everybody was so lean after WWI and WWII . They were well fed (especially the Americans) , but they were still lean .
They were normal . Present humans are abnormal , because they suffer from a deficiency disease , namely a lack of sulfur . And some military genius is going to decide to solve this problem with a tried and proven recipe : a war .
And so it goes .
Andre .
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Great Undiscovered Treasures .
Great Undiscovered Treasures .
Andre Willers
18 Feb 2008
The Tomb treasures of Genghis Khan and Gaiseric the Vandal have never been found
These were looters who looted other looters on a grand scale . Most of the loot was spent on their armies , but they took about 27% for themselves ( a prudent reserve)
Timujin , Chingis Khan (AKA Genghis Khan)
Son of Heaven ( by Tibetan dispensation .) He saw himself as primus-inter-pares with the Chinese Emperors , all deriving Sons of Heaven status by descent from Tibetan nobility .
Hence , the Chinese see the Mongol period as a civil war , not a foreign conquest .
It helps explain the puzzling reversal of Chingis’ decision to turn northern China into a grass plain for Mongolian riders after killing all northern Chinese .
(This was in his power and his interest at the time of the great Kuriltai near Beiing . Without being able to consolidate in the North , he was too weak to conquer the much stronger South China . So he was forced to strike East at the Kwarezm and other Middle Eastern Empires , who were individually weaker and divided . He could not afford to leave strong forces in his rear , so he simply killed everybody . The Mongol forces at this stage numbered about 20 tumen (200 000 horsemen) , far smaller than any of his opponents . Speed and ruthlessness were the key to his success .)
Even today , China regards Mongolia as part of China . The legitimacy dates back from this act of forebearance , creating a de-facto and de-jure tie between Mongolia , China and Tibet .
The title Chingis (Genghis in our terms) has no certain derivation . Timujin created it when he made himself Kha-Khan . It is delicious to speculate that it derives from Caesar . Chingis’ grandmother was a slave from the Byzantium areas (hence his red hair . Viking blood was in the area , and the slave’s red hair must have made her an exotic item to the Mongols . His grey eyes were and are common in the Altai region) .
He must have been brought up on stories of the splendours of the Roman Caesars (by this time pronounced “Seza” in Constantinople . (Soft “C” , elision or “r”)The morphing of the sounds follow standard rules . Gutterilization of the “z” followed. And voila! Chingis Khan = Caesar Khan .
If you asked Chinghis what his greatest treasure was , he would have answered that it was his Law (The Yasul) . It was a recipe of how to turn scattered bands of nomads into an unbeatable force . A Meme if you like . Lots of other people agreed . (Portions of it was used by Timurlane and Babur . ) Only fragments are known to us .
Don’t you find it strange that only a few lines have survived of the most successful meme in history ?
The answer is that the Chinese hunted down and destroyed all copies .
The great fleets of Admiral Hu
(circa 1421) . It was always strange that , after 40 years of ferocious war against the Mongolian dynasty , the Chinese spent enormous effort and treasure to send out fleets armed to the teeth .
And they were armed to the teeth , with more than a 100 000 vengeful , hardbitten veterans of 40 years of war . It is no wonder that the locals gave no trouble . The only recorded trouble was in Ceylon . It is not clear whether it was a Mongol base , or just the usual warring locals .But it did not last long .
The destruction of actual Mongol bases were written up as “suppression of bandits in aid of the local rulers” (The exact terms) . The subsequent prompt withdrawal of Hu’s forces earned the Chinese a reputation that lasts till this day (especially compared to the Japanese variety of “co-prosperity” .) Chinese traders and settlers did move into the areas visited by Hu , but they were welcomed and seen as non-threatening . A text-book example of non-aggressive colonization that benefited everybody .
Hu’s fleets then returned and were dismantled . Mission accomplished .
Their entire purpose was to root out and destroy any Mongol outposts , and especially any copies of the Yasul . Remember , the Mongols were all over the Malaysian and Indonesian Archipelagoes . This fact is not always appreciated . Some of the first instances of gunpowder usage was in these areas . Without supply bases these Mongol Expeditionary forces were handled by locals . But the Hu fleets destroyed the bases .
Special strike forces (call them Ninjas of Light) searched out copies of the Yasul and destroyed them . These were “fire-and–forget” forces . Descendants of these organizations are still found in all these areas .
The Japanese case is interesting , as the Mongols ( Kubilai Khan) used variants of Ninjas to infiltrate Japan via the criminal classes , and later “white” variants were sent in to ferret them out . A war that is probably still going on.)
The Chinese fear was that the Mongols would trade in their ponies for pirate ships , and that some enterprising chief would use the Yasul to weld them into a Sea Power .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
They were right to fear it , because this is exactly what happened . Only the pirate Sea Power came from Western Europe .
And they had their own equivalent of the Yasul .
Roman Law plus Roman Catholicism .
A Mongol and a Conquistador would have understood each other perfectly .
An interesting Alternate History .
Say Hu’s fleet was destroyed by a cyclone . The Mongols regroup under a Timurlane or Babur (as what happened in Middle Asia) and a Mongol Sea Power arises in the Malaysia , Indonesia , Australian region . It is doubtful whether they could have reconquered China , but the Western exploration efforts would have been blocked and channeled to North-America . The Sea-Mongols would have colonized the Americas’ from the West and the Europeans from the East .
The power-blocs would have been Europe-EasternAmericas , SeaMongol –MiddleEast-India-WesternAmericas , China-Japan . The usual free-for-all no-mans land down the middle of the America’s .
So where’s the treasure?
The Mongol tradition was that the corpse was buried without any regalia in the person’s favourite spot on the steppe , and a herd of horses chased over it to hide the spot forever . This was reputedly done with Chingis to the northeast of Karakorum .
While Timujin couldn’t care a Mongolian marmoset’s poxy tail about gold , he knew his grandchildren did . And Mongolians loved the hunt above all else . His succession was firmly fixed . But the Mongolian court was a snake pit . The Yasul forbid the spilling of royal blood , so poisoning was the national sport . The Chinese courtiers joined into the merry sport . Everybody watched everybody else . An ideal sport for emperors . For the last 20 years of his life he gleefully sequestered about 18% of the best riches in Asia , leaking careful hints .A really , really , large treasure .
False little treasure spots were planted in all the likely places .
Something only he could have gotten away with as absolute ruler with a wicked sense of humour .
Do not forget that he was the best strategic and tactical mind the human race has produced (from a purely performance level) .
Is there a central treasure ?
Yes . He would have thought it beneath him to hold a hunt with no prey .
Has it been found ?
No . The ripple effects all indicate that everybody was looking .
The frantic rush to Karakorum after the death of a kha-khan (like the one that saved Western Europe) was a typical treasure-hunt . Each regional khan did not need the central authority . What they did need was the money . They suffered from Imperial Overstretch . Without money or plunder , their armies were disintegrating . The Western Castles and Knights defense meant that their net gain was negative . They were winning the battles , but losing the wars .
So where did he hide it ?
The highest probability ?
With his brother , of course . Who had already hidden his own treasure successfully , passively and actively , for more than a 1 000 years . And it is still hidden today .
Where else to hide a treasure than where another treasure is successfully hidden and guarded ?
The Tomb of the first Chinese Emperor , the First Son of Heaven .
The peasants in the area , who must have known , protected the secret then and now . Of course , Chingis funded them . The pockets of funding alone must be worth trillions . But they could only keep it if they kept it secret . I can hear Chingis laughing in his cough-cough way , while twirling his beard . They had to acknowledge him a Son of Heaven to keep their Son of Heaven inviolate (and the money , of course.)
It worked . Even the Communists did not violate the tomb .
Even knowing where it is , will make no difference . Anybody trying to do some grave-robbing will have to take on about one billion Chinese and the Chinese Red Army . Never mind the local Ninjas.
Now that is what I call hiding a tomb . Note that his grave is exactly where it is supposed to be : near Karakorum , near the mountains and the springs , where the new grass peeps out first after the winter snows . Where nobody knows .
His Money ?
Everybody knows where his tomb is . You can see photos of it in books . But nobody dares touch it .
And even if they dig it up . It still will be national treasure in a museum where nobody dare touch it .
Now you see why he conquered half the world with a raggedy bunch of tribesmen .
Why allow the Yasul to be vulnerable ?
Chingis could have replicated the Yasul beyond all possibility of suppression , yet he did not . He thought that he might have been a bit too successful . His descendants were not creating wealth . A strategic reserve in the future might be useful . Hence his little treasure hunt . The Mongols never found it . One wonders if it would have made any difference . Doubtful .It is an incredible amount of money (trillions in todays terms) .Focussed on one thing it can achieve miracles (and has in terms of hiding) , but spread all over ? Hardly .
That is why he sided with the First Son of Heaven . When he decided not to exterminate the North-Chinese , he sealed the fate of the Mongols . And he knew it too . Any amount of plunder cannot compete with annual generation of wealth .
Gaiseric the Vandal
He plundered the Italian Peninsula and sacked Rome . He looted at least 400 years of accumulated loot . Hence the term vandal . They were so surfeit with loot that they destroyed anything they could not carry with them . And this was after four passes . They had this tiny little problem of fitting everything onto ships , since they were based on Carthage . So they could only carry gold and silver .
Gaiseric hated Romans (an unfortunate experience with a Roman on the East Coast of Iberia in his youth rendered him lame .) He kept at least 38% of the really good loot for himself .
When he shuffled off the mortal coil , a river was supposedly diverted , he was buried with his treasure in the middle , and then the river was diverted back over the spot and all the workers killed .
The translation is that a few terrified slaves dammed a little stream , they buried him and a few bits of treasure . By this time the guards were drunk and the slaves had run away . The guards kicked the little dam to pieces . The same night all and sundry descended on the site and plundered it . The next day the bards sang a big spiel about it . All standard , as Gaiseric knew very well .
To move serious treasure quickly requires serious and noticeable manpower and animal power . Hide the heavy items slowly over time in the catacombs of old Carthage . Shift light dummies out .
From an eyewitness account:
“Gaiseric was a mean , avaricious little SOB who was always whining about his foot . He delighted in being carried around the forum (during the sack of Rome) , carrying a knobby stick , delighting in knocking off the noses off senators’ statues . Why I don’t know , since he had a huge snozzle himself .Lucky for him there were no girls about , otherwise his carriers would have dumped him in a heartbeat .Not even slaves were left . Everybody else with any sense had left long ago . But there was so much stuff . Everybody was draped in silk . The big gold and silver pieces were taken by Gaiseric and his chums , but we peeled away yards and yards of gold foil from the statues and buildings . Later on we sold them for some grain to some Irish traders . “
In any case the upshot is that a large portion of the Roman plunder is hidden under old Carthage , a fitting rest . But a really , really large treasure ?
Look at the ripple effects . If this treasure had been found or fed into the North-African economic system , ripple effects would have been seen . Either then or later during the Byzantium reconquest (which was fuelled by the expectation of getting hold of this treasure) .
There is a suspicious high-density cluster of monasteries on the Carthage peninsula .
Well , either the monks stole it all , or it is still lying waiting in the catacombs of old Carthage .
Andre
Andre Willers
18 Feb 2008
The Tomb treasures of Genghis Khan and Gaiseric the Vandal have never been found
These were looters who looted other looters on a grand scale . Most of the loot was spent on their armies , but they took about 27% for themselves ( a prudent reserve)
Timujin , Chingis Khan (AKA Genghis Khan)
Son of Heaven ( by Tibetan dispensation .) He saw himself as primus-inter-pares with the Chinese Emperors , all deriving Sons of Heaven status by descent from Tibetan nobility .
Hence , the Chinese see the Mongol period as a civil war , not a foreign conquest .
It helps explain the puzzling reversal of Chingis’ decision to turn northern China into a grass plain for Mongolian riders after killing all northern Chinese .
(This was in his power and his interest at the time of the great Kuriltai near Beiing . Without being able to consolidate in the North , he was too weak to conquer the much stronger South China . So he was forced to strike East at the Kwarezm and other Middle Eastern Empires , who were individually weaker and divided . He could not afford to leave strong forces in his rear , so he simply killed everybody . The Mongol forces at this stage numbered about 20 tumen (200 000 horsemen) , far smaller than any of his opponents . Speed and ruthlessness were the key to his success .)
Even today , China regards Mongolia as part of China . The legitimacy dates back from this act of forebearance , creating a de-facto and de-jure tie between Mongolia , China and Tibet .
The title Chingis (Genghis in our terms) has no certain derivation . Timujin created it when he made himself Kha-Khan . It is delicious to speculate that it derives from Caesar . Chingis’ grandmother was a slave from the Byzantium areas (hence his red hair . Viking blood was in the area , and the slave’s red hair must have made her an exotic item to the Mongols . His grey eyes were and are common in the Altai region) .
He must have been brought up on stories of the splendours of the Roman Caesars (by this time pronounced “Seza” in Constantinople . (Soft “C” , elision or “r”)The morphing of the sounds follow standard rules . Gutterilization of the “z” followed. And voila! Chingis Khan = Caesar Khan .
If you asked Chinghis what his greatest treasure was , he would have answered that it was his Law (The Yasul) . It was a recipe of how to turn scattered bands of nomads into an unbeatable force . A Meme if you like . Lots of other people agreed . (Portions of it was used by Timurlane and Babur . ) Only fragments are known to us .
Don’t you find it strange that only a few lines have survived of the most successful meme in history ?
The answer is that the Chinese hunted down and destroyed all copies .
The great fleets of Admiral Hu
(circa 1421) . It was always strange that , after 40 years of ferocious war against the Mongolian dynasty , the Chinese spent enormous effort and treasure to send out fleets armed to the teeth .
And they were armed to the teeth , with more than a 100 000 vengeful , hardbitten veterans of 40 years of war . It is no wonder that the locals gave no trouble . The only recorded trouble was in Ceylon . It is not clear whether it was a Mongol base , or just the usual warring locals .But it did not last long .
The destruction of actual Mongol bases were written up as “suppression of bandits in aid of the local rulers” (The exact terms) . The subsequent prompt withdrawal of Hu’s forces earned the Chinese a reputation that lasts till this day (especially compared to the Japanese variety of “co-prosperity” .) Chinese traders and settlers did move into the areas visited by Hu , but they were welcomed and seen as non-threatening . A text-book example of non-aggressive colonization that benefited everybody .
Hu’s fleets then returned and were dismantled . Mission accomplished .
Their entire purpose was to root out and destroy any Mongol outposts , and especially any copies of the Yasul . Remember , the Mongols were all over the Malaysian and Indonesian Archipelagoes . This fact is not always appreciated . Some of the first instances of gunpowder usage was in these areas . Without supply bases these Mongol Expeditionary forces were handled by locals . But the Hu fleets destroyed the bases .
Special strike forces (call them Ninjas of Light) searched out copies of the Yasul and destroyed them . These were “fire-and–forget” forces . Descendants of these organizations are still found in all these areas .
The Japanese case is interesting , as the Mongols ( Kubilai Khan) used variants of Ninjas to infiltrate Japan via the criminal classes , and later “white” variants were sent in to ferret them out . A war that is probably still going on.)
The Chinese fear was that the Mongols would trade in their ponies for pirate ships , and that some enterprising chief would use the Yasul to weld them into a Sea Power .
Ho! Ho! Ho!
They were right to fear it , because this is exactly what happened . Only the pirate Sea Power came from Western Europe .
And they had their own equivalent of the Yasul .
Roman Law plus Roman Catholicism .
A Mongol and a Conquistador would have understood each other perfectly .
An interesting Alternate History .
Say Hu’s fleet was destroyed by a cyclone . The Mongols regroup under a Timurlane or Babur (as what happened in Middle Asia) and a Mongol Sea Power arises in the Malaysia , Indonesia , Australian region . It is doubtful whether they could have reconquered China , but the Western exploration efforts would have been blocked and channeled to North-America . The Sea-Mongols would have colonized the Americas’ from the West and the Europeans from the East .
The power-blocs would have been Europe-EasternAmericas , SeaMongol –MiddleEast-India-WesternAmericas , China-Japan . The usual free-for-all no-mans land down the middle of the America’s .
So where’s the treasure?
The Mongol tradition was that the corpse was buried without any regalia in the person’s favourite spot on the steppe , and a herd of horses chased over it to hide the spot forever . This was reputedly done with Chingis to the northeast of Karakorum .
While Timujin couldn’t care a Mongolian marmoset’s poxy tail about gold , he knew his grandchildren did . And Mongolians loved the hunt above all else . His succession was firmly fixed . But the Mongolian court was a snake pit . The Yasul forbid the spilling of royal blood , so poisoning was the national sport . The Chinese courtiers joined into the merry sport . Everybody watched everybody else . An ideal sport for emperors . For the last 20 years of his life he gleefully sequestered about 18% of the best riches in Asia , leaking careful hints .A really , really , large treasure .
False little treasure spots were planted in all the likely places .
Something only he could have gotten away with as absolute ruler with a wicked sense of humour .
Do not forget that he was the best strategic and tactical mind the human race has produced (from a purely performance level) .
Is there a central treasure ?
Yes . He would have thought it beneath him to hold a hunt with no prey .
Has it been found ?
No . The ripple effects all indicate that everybody was looking .
The frantic rush to Karakorum after the death of a kha-khan (like the one that saved Western Europe) was a typical treasure-hunt . Each regional khan did not need the central authority . What they did need was the money . They suffered from Imperial Overstretch . Without money or plunder , their armies were disintegrating . The Western Castles and Knights defense meant that their net gain was negative . They were winning the battles , but losing the wars .
So where did he hide it ?
The highest probability ?
With his brother , of course . Who had already hidden his own treasure successfully , passively and actively , for more than a 1 000 years . And it is still hidden today .
Where else to hide a treasure than where another treasure is successfully hidden and guarded ?
The Tomb of the first Chinese Emperor , the First Son of Heaven .
The peasants in the area , who must have known , protected the secret then and now . Of course , Chingis funded them . The pockets of funding alone must be worth trillions . But they could only keep it if they kept it secret . I can hear Chingis laughing in his cough-cough way , while twirling his beard . They had to acknowledge him a Son of Heaven to keep their Son of Heaven inviolate (and the money , of course.)
It worked . Even the Communists did not violate the tomb .
Even knowing where it is , will make no difference . Anybody trying to do some grave-robbing will have to take on about one billion Chinese and the Chinese Red Army . Never mind the local Ninjas.
Now that is what I call hiding a tomb . Note that his grave is exactly where it is supposed to be : near Karakorum , near the mountains and the springs , where the new grass peeps out first after the winter snows . Where nobody knows .
His Money ?
Everybody knows where his tomb is . You can see photos of it in books . But nobody dares touch it .
And even if they dig it up . It still will be national treasure in a museum where nobody dare touch it .
Now you see why he conquered half the world with a raggedy bunch of tribesmen .
Why allow the Yasul to be vulnerable ?
Chingis could have replicated the Yasul beyond all possibility of suppression , yet he did not . He thought that he might have been a bit too successful . His descendants were not creating wealth . A strategic reserve in the future might be useful . Hence his little treasure hunt . The Mongols never found it . One wonders if it would have made any difference . Doubtful .It is an incredible amount of money (trillions in todays terms) .Focussed on one thing it can achieve miracles (and has in terms of hiding) , but spread all over ? Hardly .
That is why he sided with the First Son of Heaven . When he decided not to exterminate the North-Chinese , he sealed the fate of the Mongols . And he knew it too . Any amount of plunder cannot compete with annual generation of wealth .
Gaiseric the Vandal
He plundered the Italian Peninsula and sacked Rome . He looted at least 400 years of accumulated loot . Hence the term vandal . They were so surfeit with loot that they destroyed anything they could not carry with them . And this was after four passes . They had this tiny little problem of fitting everything onto ships , since they were based on Carthage . So they could only carry gold and silver .
Gaiseric hated Romans (an unfortunate experience with a Roman on the East Coast of Iberia in his youth rendered him lame .) He kept at least 38% of the really good loot for himself .
When he shuffled off the mortal coil , a river was supposedly diverted , he was buried with his treasure in the middle , and then the river was diverted back over the spot and all the workers killed .
The translation is that a few terrified slaves dammed a little stream , they buried him and a few bits of treasure . By this time the guards were drunk and the slaves had run away . The guards kicked the little dam to pieces . The same night all and sundry descended on the site and plundered it . The next day the bards sang a big spiel about it . All standard , as Gaiseric knew very well .
To move serious treasure quickly requires serious and noticeable manpower and animal power . Hide the heavy items slowly over time in the catacombs of old Carthage . Shift light dummies out .
From an eyewitness account:
“Gaiseric was a mean , avaricious little SOB who was always whining about his foot . He delighted in being carried around the forum (during the sack of Rome) , carrying a knobby stick , delighting in knocking off the noses off senators’ statues . Why I don’t know , since he had a huge snozzle himself .Lucky for him there were no girls about , otherwise his carriers would have dumped him in a heartbeat .Not even slaves were left . Everybody else with any sense had left long ago . But there was so much stuff . Everybody was draped in silk . The big gold and silver pieces were taken by Gaiseric and his chums , but we peeled away yards and yards of gold foil from the statues and buildings . Later on we sold them for some grain to some Irish traders . “
In any case the upshot is that a large portion of the Roman plunder is hidden under old Carthage , a fitting rest . But a really , really large treasure ?
Look at the ripple effects . If this treasure had been found or fed into the North-African economic system , ripple effects would have been seen . Either then or later during the Byzantium reconquest (which was fuelled by the expectation of getting hold of this treasure) .
There is a suspicious high-density cluster of monasteries on the Carthage peninsula .
Well , either the monks stole it all , or it is still lying waiting in the catacombs of old Carthage .
Andre
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Coffins
Coffins .
Andre Willers
16 Feb 2008
Why is the coffin shape recognizable and in use for at least 10 000 years ?
(See wikipedia images) .
Why is it central to the Third degree initiation (the highest) of Freemasons ?
(Reminiscent of Chod in the Tibetan Book of the Dead .)
The reason is the deep esoteric and number significances .
Remember we are dealing with myths .
The coffin is essentially a kite truncated at the top and bottom according to the Golden Ratio .
I took the standard coffin ( 17.3” at top by 28” at widest , 14” at bottom , with about 21” from the top to middle and about 53.5 inches from middle to the bottom . Extend the lines at the top and bottom to get the kite shape for further analysis .
To design a perfect coffin
Measure the corpse’s shoulder width (typically 28 inches) of say W inches .
Draw a horizontal line of width W and mark the middle as M .
Draw a vertical line of length L = W * 7 * 1.618 through M so that the top length is a third of L . Denote the top of the kite by A and the bottom by B .
Connect the top of L (ie A) , the two shoulders of W and the bottom of L (ie B) . This gives a kite shape .
Truncate the top portion of the kite at the point P so that AM / AP =1.618
Truncate the bottom of the kite at half of MB . (ie MB/2)
Now you have the standard coffin , thousands of years old .
This gives a Coffin with deep esoteric significance .
Note that the top of the kite has an angle of 30 degrees and the bottom half of that , namely 15 degrees . The various lengths are ratios of the Golden Ratio .
There are all sorts of delicious numerical titbits
Like Tan(15) + tan (7.5) = 0.4 = 1/25 .
Note L = W * 7 * 1.618 . This is deliberate . Seven is Sacred Number .
It derives from the mind-blowing
Tan(90 – 15) + Tan(90 – 7.5) = 7* 1.618… nearly exactly .
A really elegant formulation .
I doubt whether they had Seven Zombies against Tombs in mind ,
This is why the ancients loved it and why it is still a symbol .
It hints at mysteries .
You might as well be buried in a container that contains our underlying concept of restful beauty .
The Golden Ratio .
This is a very important constant (also called phi) .
It plays a fundamental role in describing growth processes where the increments cannot be decreased to infinitesimal . If they can , we use Euler’s constant e .
It is derived from the Fibonacci series
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,… where every term is the sum the previous two terms . The ratio of succeeding terms approaches a limit , which is called phi . Also the Golden Ratio .
Iteratively :
Any term A(n) can be expressed as :
A(n+1) = A(n-1) + A(n)
Divide by A(n) . This gives
[A(n+1)] / [A(n)] = [A(n-1)] / [A(n)] +1
We know that the ratio of successive terms quickly approaches a limit
phi = [A(n+1)] / [A(n)]
Thus ,
Phi = 1/phi +1
Phi^2 – phi –1 =0
Solving this quadratic equation (school maths) gives
Phi = 0.5( 1+-Sqrt(1+4))
Phi= 1.618033… (the Golden Ratio) or 0.618033…)
This number pair has the extremely significant property that 1/1.618… = 0.618… .
Also , since the square root of 5 is involved , phi can be measured with a string (Pythagorean triangle 1,2,Sqrt(5) ) Thus ,phi can be measured by strings or strings and a square . This is important from a Freemason viewpoint . (For string read compass)
The meaning of phi .
It crops everywhere where non-infinitesimal growth processes are described mathematically .
Each element is dependant on two preceding elements . In essence , a two-dimensional coupled array .
Visually , the retina and brain operate mostly in a two-dimensional mode . Depth modalities are usually a function of nervous-system processing . Forward jittering is extensively used . The most predictable images are the lowest resource-intensive , and usually the most pleasing (restful , least-energy) .
In other words , a horizontal rectangle of phi ratio takes the least time and energy to process .
Phi can be seen directly where cells grow from a single point , where there has already been previous growth . Obviously , the new cell cannot take up the space of previous cells . Hence the spiral effects in sunflowers , shells , etc .
Why go to all this trouble ?
A coffin is more expensive than a casket (ie a box) . The extra labour involving all the carpentry must easily double the costs .
I draw your attention to the Golden Ratios in the volume where the head lies . Many people believed (and still believe) that this gives the corpse , well , a head start in the afterworld .
(Remember , I have only cursorily touched upon all the interesting numerical things flowing from the 30 degree top and 15 degree bottom relationships of the kite-shape . )
The Pyramids .
There is reason to believe that the truncation of the kite-shape was a degenerate form of interment . The first pyramids (Saqqara) were originally designed to have a top apex of 30 degrees . These were supposed to have been vertical coffins (maybe even the original design) . Unfortunately , the stone they used collapsed under the weight and we ended up with the Bent pyramid and later pyramids with a top apex of 23.5 degrees .
But what is interesting , is that at depths of 0.618 , 1 and 2 times the height of the pyramid , there should be chambers filled with goodies .
Why should these still be filled ?
The gods of light of Egypt were recycling gods . This is how they kept their tiny little eco-system going for 5 000 years . But the nether gods (Seth , etc) represented the inevitable entropy loss . So buried wealth above ground was deliberately lightly guarded to encourage recycling (note their really good recycling of copper) .
But the bribes for the nether gods were simply rendered unreachable to their technology . Underground passages deliberately left with mud-forming aggregates and flooded after depositing the treasures spring to mind . These would be under the Nile-water table (ie below the pyramids) . Even with our technology , it is doubtful whether these items could be recovered economically for the value of the gold alone . Archeological value is another matter .
Value Sink .
In the Old Kingdom , the value of this unrecyclable wealth must have been calculated to a nicety . Too much silver and gold , and they would have serious inflation problems . Note what happened to Spain after 1492 . So they buried all the surplus gold from Africa (Niger , Congo , Zimbabwe , etc) in sludge and ooze under the pyramids .
It worked too .
After the collapse of the old kingdom , they turned their backs on the rest of Africa . In retrospect this does not seem to have been the wisest decision . One wonders whether it was an individual that made the decision (ie is an alternate history possible where an Egyptian and Phoenician led African civilization conquered Europe and the Middle East . It nearly happened with Carthage under Hannibal . )
The crux decision seems to have been a failure of altruism . Egypt did not help parent Abyssinia to recover after the big Drought . They could have done it . But they refused and in shame buried their heads . The whole continent paid a dreadful price .
Think Europe without the Marshall-plan . The US would now be fighting WW4 or WW5 , with Russians , Germans and English as enemies instead of the present bunch of piss-willies who have to buy their weapons from their enemies .
Egypt ended up fighting the Greeks and Romans without any significant help from Abyssinia or the rest of Africa . Even gold from trade would have enabled them to do their old trick of hiring mercenaries . But they did not have the money .
The lesson seems clear : When moving into a negative climate change , be selfish . When moving into a positive , recovery phase , be altruistic .
If there is no recovery phase , tough .
Andre
Andre Willers
16 Feb 2008
Why is the coffin shape recognizable and in use for at least 10 000 years ?
(See wikipedia images) .
Why is it central to the Third degree initiation (the highest) of Freemasons ?
(Reminiscent of Chod in the Tibetan Book of the Dead .)
The reason is the deep esoteric and number significances .
Remember we are dealing with myths .
The coffin is essentially a kite truncated at the top and bottom according to the Golden Ratio .
I took the standard coffin ( 17.3” at top by 28” at widest , 14” at bottom , with about 21” from the top to middle and about 53.5 inches from middle to the bottom . Extend the lines at the top and bottom to get the kite shape for further analysis .
To design a perfect coffin
Measure the corpse’s shoulder width (typically 28 inches) of say W inches .
Draw a horizontal line of width W and mark the middle as M .
Draw a vertical line of length L = W * 7 * 1.618 through M so that the top length is a third of L . Denote the top of the kite by A and the bottom by B .
Connect the top of L (ie A) , the two shoulders of W and the bottom of L (ie B) . This gives a kite shape .
Truncate the top portion of the kite at the point P so that AM / AP =1.618
Truncate the bottom of the kite at half of MB . (ie MB/2)
Now you have the standard coffin , thousands of years old .
This gives a Coffin with deep esoteric significance .
Note that the top of the kite has an angle of 30 degrees and the bottom half of that , namely 15 degrees . The various lengths are ratios of the Golden Ratio .
There are all sorts of delicious numerical titbits
Like Tan(15) + tan (7.5) = 0.4 = 1/25 .
Note L = W * 7 * 1.618 . This is deliberate . Seven is Sacred Number .
It derives from the mind-blowing
Tan(90 – 15) + Tan(90 – 7.5) = 7* 1.618… nearly exactly .
A really elegant formulation .
I doubt whether they had Seven Zombies against Tombs in mind ,
This is why the ancients loved it and why it is still a symbol .
It hints at mysteries .
You might as well be buried in a container that contains our underlying concept of restful beauty .
The Golden Ratio .
This is a very important constant (also called phi) .
It plays a fundamental role in describing growth processes where the increments cannot be decreased to infinitesimal . If they can , we use Euler’s constant e .
It is derived from the Fibonacci series
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,… where every term is the sum the previous two terms . The ratio of succeeding terms approaches a limit , which is called phi . Also the Golden Ratio .
Iteratively :
Any term A(n) can be expressed as :
A(n+1) = A(n-1) + A(n)
Divide by A(n) . This gives
[A(n+1)] / [A(n)] = [A(n-1)] / [A(n)] +1
We know that the ratio of successive terms quickly approaches a limit
phi = [A(n+1)] / [A(n)]
Thus ,
Phi = 1/phi +1
Phi^2 – phi –1 =0
Solving this quadratic equation (school maths) gives
Phi = 0.5( 1+-Sqrt(1+4))
Phi= 1.618033… (the Golden Ratio) or 0.618033…)
This number pair has the extremely significant property that 1/1.618… = 0.618… .
Also , since the square root of 5 is involved , phi can be measured with a string (Pythagorean triangle 1,2,Sqrt(5) ) Thus ,phi can be measured by strings or strings and a square . This is important from a Freemason viewpoint . (For string read compass)
The meaning of phi .
It crops everywhere where non-infinitesimal growth processes are described mathematically .
Each element is dependant on two preceding elements . In essence , a two-dimensional coupled array .
Visually , the retina and brain operate mostly in a two-dimensional mode . Depth modalities are usually a function of nervous-system processing . Forward jittering is extensively used . The most predictable images are the lowest resource-intensive , and usually the most pleasing (restful , least-energy) .
In other words , a horizontal rectangle of phi ratio takes the least time and energy to process .
Phi can be seen directly where cells grow from a single point , where there has already been previous growth . Obviously , the new cell cannot take up the space of previous cells . Hence the spiral effects in sunflowers , shells , etc .
Why go to all this trouble ?
A coffin is more expensive than a casket (ie a box) . The extra labour involving all the carpentry must easily double the costs .
I draw your attention to the Golden Ratios in the volume where the head lies . Many people believed (and still believe) that this gives the corpse , well , a head start in the afterworld .
(Remember , I have only cursorily touched upon all the interesting numerical things flowing from the 30 degree top and 15 degree bottom relationships of the kite-shape . )
The Pyramids .
There is reason to believe that the truncation of the kite-shape was a degenerate form of interment . The first pyramids (Saqqara) were originally designed to have a top apex of 30 degrees . These were supposed to have been vertical coffins (maybe even the original design) . Unfortunately , the stone they used collapsed under the weight and we ended up with the Bent pyramid and later pyramids with a top apex of 23.5 degrees .
But what is interesting , is that at depths of 0.618 , 1 and 2 times the height of the pyramid , there should be chambers filled with goodies .
Why should these still be filled ?
The gods of light of Egypt were recycling gods . This is how they kept their tiny little eco-system going for 5 000 years . But the nether gods (Seth , etc) represented the inevitable entropy loss . So buried wealth above ground was deliberately lightly guarded to encourage recycling (note their really good recycling of copper) .
But the bribes for the nether gods were simply rendered unreachable to their technology . Underground passages deliberately left with mud-forming aggregates and flooded after depositing the treasures spring to mind . These would be under the Nile-water table (ie below the pyramids) . Even with our technology , it is doubtful whether these items could be recovered economically for the value of the gold alone . Archeological value is another matter .
Value Sink .
In the Old Kingdom , the value of this unrecyclable wealth must have been calculated to a nicety . Too much silver and gold , and they would have serious inflation problems . Note what happened to Spain after 1492 . So they buried all the surplus gold from Africa (Niger , Congo , Zimbabwe , etc) in sludge and ooze under the pyramids .
It worked too .
After the collapse of the old kingdom , they turned their backs on the rest of Africa . In retrospect this does not seem to have been the wisest decision . One wonders whether it was an individual that made the decision (ie is an alternate history possible where an Egyptian and Phoenician led African civilization conquered Europe and the Middle East . It nearly happened with Carthage under Hannibal . )
The crux decision seems to have been a failure of altruism . Egypt did not help parent Abyssinia to recover after the big Drought . They could have done it . But they refused and in shame buried their heads . The whole continent paid a dreadful price .
Think Europe without the Marshall-plan . The US would now be fighting WW4 or WW5 , with Russians , Germans and English as enemies instead of the present bunch of piss-willies who have to buy their weapons from their enemies .
Egypt ended up fighting the Greeks and Romans without any significant help from Abyssinia or the rest of Africa . Even gold from trade would have enabled them to do their old trick of hiring mercenaries . But they did not have the money .
The lesson seems clear : When moving into a negative climate change , be selfish . When moving into a positive , recovery phase , be altruistic .
If there is no recovery phase , tough .
Andre
Ancient Egyptian Pharmacopia
Ancient Egyptian Pharmacopia
Andre Willers
14 Feb 2008
See article in 15 Dec 2007 p40 New Scientist “The Pharaohs’ Pharmacists”
www.newscientist.com/channel/health
Synopsis:
Dr Jackie Campbell of the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester has painstakingly deciphered four papyri dated between 1850 BC and 1200 BC for medical effectiveness . These contain hundreds of recipes for complaints.
They seem to be on par with treatment you would have gotten from a medical practitioner in Britain circa up to 1850 AD (before general asepsis and theory of germs ) .
Some points of interest:
The papyri date after the interregnum caused by the collapse of the Old Kingdom . One suspects that these are memorized recipes written down on perishable papyrus by medical practitioners who could no longer rely on a steady flow of students to hand down hoarded knowledge . More permanent records (like copper tablets – melted down by the neo-barbarians for weapons , or stone – too expensive in man-power . Not clay , like Sumeria , since fuel to bake the tablets would have been too expensive in fuel-poor Egypt . )
The interesting point here is that Campbell compared these recipes with present Bedouin healers in the Sinai and found an nearly identical correspondence .
This strongly suggests that the Papyri recipes written down were already oral remnants . If they survived a few centuries , a few millennia more is no sweat . The more complicated bits got lost .
Dentistry seems to be one of these bits . From archeological evidence (cf “History Today” ) , the Old Kingdom seems to have had a fairly sophisticated dentistry , but this had vanished completely in the New Kingdom , and never recovered .
If this sounds strange , consider the step-child relationship of present-day dentists to doctors .
The answer is in the home-remedy nature of dentistry . Even a toothless human can get nourishment by using an external gut (ie a soup pot) . So a painful tooth is removed without too big a penalty . (Pull it out , home remedy . You do not need dentistry to survive . )
Gum disease is a different kettle of fish . It has been directly correlated with heart-disease on a cause-effect basis . There is also statistical correlations with metabolic diseases like diabetes .
So where are the gum-disease epidemics in history ? Were they documented ? Perhaps they were written as something else .
Gingivitis epidemics must have been ( and must still be ) rife . Kissing is an old hominid custom .
2. Sailing ships , scurvy and gingivitis epidemics .
One of the puzzling aspects of medical history is why it took so long for the importance of fresh vitC bearing fruits to be realized . The reason lies in the confusion between gingivitis (a germ caused disease) and scurvy (a deficiency of vitC) .
In the confined space of a sailing ship on a voyage of six months , the food is not cooked thoroughly . The +-200 passengers are in touching contact daily . If at the start , one passenger had (say) 10 forms of gingivitis of various degrees of virulence , then the most virulent will tend to colonise the other passengers the most . There they mutate (remember that the bacteria monitor the density of themselves and other bacteria , so-called quorum mechanisms ) . Over certain thresholds , they switch on deletrious mechanisms .
Now , gingivitis is an old , old fellow-traveller with hominids . They don’t kill outright , but spin out the decomposition process to maximize their chances .
The ship becomes a hotbed of gingivitis activity , breeding into ever more virulent forms . Death rates of 90% were not uncommon .
These little bubbles of virulence on ships had little effect on Western societies in Europe as a whole . There was a tendency for immigrant populations in sailing ship days to have very good genetics as far as teeth are concerned (cf South African boers vs Europeans)
The effect on native societies was disasterous . Native here includes the Europeans who had immigrated previously . The bubbles of virulence of diseases like measles , whooping cough , etc brought by the ships hit even the Europeans hard , but devastated the locals who had no traditions of quarantine .
Of course , it worked in reverse too . Waves of infection spread from the European ports as ships went back and forth .
Ho ! Ho! Ho!
3. The White Man’s Grave .
White men survived quite happily in areas where they had little or no contact with ships . It was the ports that brought in diseases from all over the world , bred to a new virulence on the long voyages on the sailing ships . It must be said that most of these diseases were also variants of well-known European diseases .
4. The Boer War Concentration Camps .
The Boers were relatively isolated from the pathogen gene-pool in Europe . Ever wondered why such a hardy lot succumbed in droves to diseases in circumstances which were not much different from what they were used to ? Most of them were bywoners , used to a hard-scrabble life . A few big landowners had swallowed up most of the land , due to the Boer habit of partitioning inheritances equally amongst very large families . ( Work it out yourself . They arrived around 1840 . By 1900 , 60 years had passed . Three generations . Each generation had about 7 surviving males .The families were large . This gives 7x7x7x14 =4802 people that had to wrest a living out of grazing land that was originally good for a comfortable living for 2+14 . This does not include the black servants who were also merrily multiplying .
As you can see , this was not tenable . Even in 1900 , most of the whites were poor whites , scrabbling a living as bywoners or in the towns as dependants (clients in the Roman sense) of the wealthy large landowners . (The same thing happened in South America) . These were the guys who were the bitter-enders . The well-off landowners made accommodations with the British (the Hendsoppers) . Some of the poor joined the British (the Joiners) . The rest kept on fighting . The life on commando was for most better than what they had before .
These were landless men with no prospects . Like Roman soldiers circa 80 BC until Augustus strictly limited the number of legions , condottieri up until Napoleon , German mercenaries like Von Stutterheim .
It is interesting to note that one of the reasons for the success of the US model is that they never paid their troops directly in land . This can be traced back directly to Washington , when he prevented the coup by the officers of the Continental Army to force Congress to pay their arrears . Even today , US mercenaries (called Contractors) like Black River get paid in money , not in promises of land . In a general collapse this will not hold , as the only real wealth will revert back to the food production of land .
To get back to the Boer War , when the relatively isolated population of Boer women and children came into contact with English disease carriers of things like measles and whooping cough , especially the children were vulnerable . The overcrowding and malnutrition did not help , but the Boer population would died in large numbers even if they well-fed and housed . The critical factors were the close contact on a daily basis with carriers of disease . Not only the English soldiers , for whom these were childhood diseases , but each other once they became infected . The Boers had no tradition of quarantine . The survivors clustered around , trying to aid and care for each other . They took pride in the fact and considered it a Christian Virtue . Exactly like the Amerindians did in North America . They can thank the elements of immunity in their systems that their mortality was only about 25% . Emily Hobhouse traipsing around , trailing infection in her wake probably killed more than she helped .
The situation was as bad in the Boer prisoner of war camps on Ceylon , St Helena ,etc . The equivalent of Guantanamo Bay today . The death statistics are still classified , or unavailable today . But about 25% seems likely .
Notice the importance of quarantine . As discussed before , even a new disease in a virgin population can be contained with about 30%-40% death rate (Black Death) , but without quarantine (like colonial territories in Americas or Africa , where the community tried to care for the sick) , the death rate is 95%-99% . The Black Death natural immunity was about 1 in 40 000 . As near as 100% death rate without quarantine .
5. To get back to ships:
So , even ships with vitC supplies usually ran into teeth disease problems . Hence the tardy recognition of the importance of vitC . Scurvy only stopped after the bacterial nature of most diseases became known . Hygiene improved . The length of voyages also decreased dramatically (steam) , with changeover of personnel .
Even so , lately super-tankers voyage for months on end with the same crew isolated from the general gene-pool of pathogens . NASA should examine them for the effects of prolonged isolation from rapidly evolving pathogen pools .
6. To get back to Ancient Egyptians :
The Old Kingdom of Egypt was brought to a catastrophic end by climate shift . There was a prolonged drought (about 80 years ) in the Nile catchment areas in Abyssinia . Humans had populated the Egyptian area of the Nile up to carrying capacity . 80 years of failure of the Nile floods reduced the whole area to a fraction of it’s population . Cannibalism has been hard-documented in the archeological remains of many towns in the delta . Significantly , these town-sites were shunned , which is why their remains are still there after about 4000 years . Of course , more strategic sites were simply built over . (“I can’t stand it . Pass me that brick.”) .
7. What must be understood is that Abyssinia (Ethiopia) is the Holiest Land on the planet as far as humans are concerned . This is where it all started .
After Toba , this is where the survivors created a new relationship between themselves and the gods . Whether the Matriarchy Mythos is valid or not , Egyptian aristocracy traced their claim to nobility to their descent from Abyssinia. Tibetans were also offspring , with maybe a soupcon of other Homo species , judging from the evidence of human body-lice .
Note the equivalent in Asia : Han-Tibetan and Mongolian-Tibetan are the majority population groups . Genghis Khan took pride in tracing his lineage to Tibet , even though his beard was red and his eyes grey .
Peking lap dogs have been genetically analyzed . They are not only directly descended from Tibetan lamasery dogs , but there has been continuous genetic interchange for the last 2000 years .
Han Chinese are Tibetans .
Abyssinia is not where old religions come to die .
It is where they return to their roots . It is the only place where all the major Western Religions ( Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Communism) have living temples . If one scratches around , I would not be surprised to find Mithraism , Roman and Greek , Celtic , Buddhist , Hindu remnants (maybe not Shintu) or older . It is a large , really rugged country that has seen more human history than all the rest put together . It has seen climate shifts come and go . It has seen the ice-ages in and it has seen them out in the long-ago memory of humans .
8. Myths .
It is why the Ark of the Covenant is rumoured to be there . Note that the rumour is more important than the fact . We are dealing in myths .
“We deal in hot lead , friend.” - Colt and Kalashnikov .
“We deal in misty myth , friend.”- Christ and Buddha .
Who’s winning ?
Why did the Italians attack Abyssinia in the 1930’s ?
It made no logical sense in terms of European politics .
It was on the instigation of Hitler ( actually the Ultima Thule group ) , who saw it as one of the key religious and esoteric points on the planet . They also had their eye on Tibet . The SS launched an exploratory mission (documented). They were rumoured to have imported several hundred initiates of the left-hand path who supposedly committed suicide before the fall of Berlin .
9. Sigh .
Anybody who knows Tibet can tell you that the only reason they do not rule the planet is that you cannot find any three that can agree to follow any path , right , left , center or any other direction . Their world-view allows not only that the end justifies the means in one single time-line , but in all possible time-lines . Calculus of any type only clumps various time-lines together . There remains a very large (which can be infinite , depending) number of time-lines .
Various lamaseries meddled ( and still meddles ) incessantly with surrounding cultures . But all are rife with factions . The Chinese are in the position of exasperated children trying to keep some check on their madcap parents .
Tibetans are tourists , in other words . Surfing the time-lines .
10 .To get back to Ancient Egyptians :
One of the major reasons (some would say THE reason) why Egyptian Civilization lasted millennia in balance with the environment was that funny religion of theirs with all the animal-headed gods . Their religion was in a one-to-one correspondence with their environment . Each animal had its sect of human protectors . Significant percentages of the human priests had a vested interest in protecting their tutelary deity .
Kill too many jackals , and you had the priests of Anubis on your neck .
Do you see how it went?
If we had had a god of birds , we might still have some passenger pigeons in the sky .
The point is , it worked .
11. Ho , Ho , Ho !
There is no reason why this cannot be reinvented . There is no reason to suppose that the priests of various Egyptian gods really believed in them . But they had a vested interest in them . Cf Gaia .
Note that the thin little strip of land next to the Nile is extremely vulnerable to human population growth and concomitant extermination of wildlife . Yet the ancient Egyptians kept it going for more than 5 000 years . The only major interruption from climate was at the end of the Old Kingdom . Yet the survivors managed to struggle on for a further 2 000 years until overwhelmed by the Romans , Christians , Muslims , Ottomans , English , etc .
It was not just hanging on either . They created writing , including the alphabet , the compound saw and bow , lathes , fine metallurgy , good medicine , ships , etc and exported these ideas throughout the their north via mercenaries (what we would today call contractors) . Some of the greatest art originated in this period .
12. The Top Kingdom .
We have to ask why such a vital , powerful civilization did not move deeper into Africa . The clue lies in their name for themselves . Egypt was divided into the Upper Kingdom and the Lower Kingdom . The Upper Kingdom was the part nearer to Abyssinia (past the cataracts) .
Note : not the Top Kingdom . The Top Kingdom was Abyssinia until the catastrophic drought that brought all the kingdoms to disaster .
( Cf Chinese Middle (ie Center) Kingdom . The hierarchies and worldviews were different . The Himalayas were at the center of the Chinese world , from which many rivers flowed , while Abyssinia was at the top of world , from which only the Nile flowed .)
The climate change and drought that brought the Egyptian Old Kingdom to a crash was seen as a massive betrayal by the gods . Ironically , the ones with the biggest sense of grievance were the upper classes , starting with the Pharaoh .
Hence the Anhknaton rebellion . A significant fraction of the priesthood must have participated in the new rejection of the old gods . Interestingly , the reason why the counter-reformation (cf Tutankhamun) succeeded was the environmental degradation that went with the suppression of the old temples . The Nile riparian areas are very fragile ecosystems , and deficiency diseases (notably lack of protein as birds and fish were over-hunted) would quickly have shown that the new ways were demonstratively worse than the old ways . Note that teeth from this period were excessively worn by grit , indicating turbidity of the Nile due to environmental disturbance . (Intervening just about anywhere in the Nile’s eco-cycle would screw things up , resulting in turbidity , low fish and crop yield and starvation . Very quickly too . )
A more vicious round of religious civil wars erupted .
All ties with Abyssinia were severed , and the tradition of erasing politically non-correct previous rulers started .
Abyssinia was in pretty poor shape as well . Huge influxes of refugees from Egypt and the Arabian peninsula swept over the land . The genetic evidence of this is now being traced . Some has been found as far as Zimbabwe (refugees from the collapse of the Saba dam in Yemen , in three stages .The ruins of the dam and the huge irrigation works are still there . Cf Queen of Sheba .)
In any case , Egypt had problems of its own . Their equivalent of the refugee influx was the Sea Peoples , which they survived by the skin of their teeth .
After that it was the relentless pressure from barbarians from the hills and desert who took over the productive land in the Middle East as rainfall recovered . They were militaristic and expansionist , being survivors of a process where only these characteristics were selected .
13 . Knowledge not essential to survival was lost .
The verbal equivalent of an emergency clinic was transmitted , and later written down by some despairing medical practitioners lamenting the past and making the best of a bad situation .
Remember , this was not overnight . It took decades to get worse and worse .
14. Dung .
A fascinating aside is feral ass dung , which is used by the Bedouin as a tea for stomach complaints . This is reminiscent of the Nguni use of fresh cow dung to slap on open wounds (like with circumcision) .
The keys here are
14.1 Free range animals
14.2 Animal self-medication .
14.3 Enlightened altruism (now called pre-adaptation)
Animals that can roam freely and are not overgrazed , self-medicate . This is a well-documented phenomenon . The dung not only has anti-bacterial properties , but has large populations of indifferent or even benign bacteria that out-compete harmful bacteria . The cow-food is deliberately not optimally utilized , so that at every process of digestion there is sufficient energy and nutrients for commensal bacteria not harmful to the host , as well enough left over for grass to grow on .
It can even be utilized as a building material .
But only if the animals are free-ranging and not over-populated . Hence the flight to the cities (or a major reason) . Traditional huts became unhealthy as the dung became unhealthy . Something similar happened in Europe with the Celtic tribes .
Elephants utilize only about a third of their food . This was seen as a handicap , but it is actually the key to their survival as the most successful large animal in
Africa . See below .
In other words , the ecology optimizes , not the species .
“The Selfish Gene “ and “Kin selection “ is out and “Pre-adaptation” is in . The human monkeys have undergone a “paradigm-shift” (ie some common-sense has seeped through the leafy boughs of academe) , and gone screaming after the new troop-direction .
See E.O. Wilson’s “Superorganism” . He was the father of sociobiology , but has now done a u-turn . Selfishness is not good anymore .
It would be funny if not so much damage has been done by business schools like Harvard and Yale using these half-baked ideas as templates and excuses for short-sighted greed .
We know the exact limits of greed as well .
15 . How much of available resources must we use and how much must we leave for others to exist ?
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “ Infinite Probes” .
The boundaries of instability are 27% - 37% of usage of resources .
Things get more unstable as you approach 27% . There is turbulence and singularities around 27% . Between 27% and 37% things appear more stable , but steadily grow tougher . At 37% , turbulence becomes extreme . Extinction looms .
It usually takes some fancy co-operative footwork around the 27% boundary to survive . Most competitive species go extinct here in a welter arms-races for diminishing and ever more specialized resources .
Please note that humans are now utilizing at least 25% of photosynthesizing biomass on the planet . They are already deep into the instability zone , and being very competitive , it is doubtful whether they will survive the boundary . Numbers mean nothing . It is actually the numbers that drive the extinction process .
Recent Chinese demand has probably pushed this into the real instability zone .
There was only a 2% margin to uplift them to start with .
16 .The Coal Instability .
Humans think of coal like the ancient Egyptians thought of the Nile .
Old Faithful .
When all else fails , coal will see us through .
Most of the energy generation on the planet is still coal-based .
Ho , ho , ho !
Rutledge of Caltech has analyzed coal reserves using Hubbert’s Linearization technique . Google it , or see “The Great Cole Hole” in New Scientist of 19 Jan 2008 p38 . I have checked the numbers for UK production , and the argument seems solid .
(This is the same technique used to successfully predict Hubbert’s oil peak .)
We are close to global peak in coal production , and rapidly nearing zero production in some of the older regions . By 2030 we will have used 70% of remaining exploitable coal reserves . (ie in 20 years time electricity will be a very expensive luxury if present population numbers are maintained .
The UK is an old region . By about 1015 it will produce no coal . Zero . Oh , there is a lot of coal left . Here and there .Thither and yon . Poor quality stuff . Nothing for a large power station .
South Africa is a semi-old region . The richer , easily accessible regions have been mined . The deposits are in seams (ie discontinuous) . In South Africa they are also “complex” . Geology-speak that they suddenly vanish due to folds and faults . The coal does not peter out . It suddenly vanishes . Then a new mine of poorer quality has to be dug (if you can find the coal ) . Can you see where this is going ?
The present Eskom coal crisis will never get better . Coal will only get scarcer and more expensive . South Africa is already past it’s coal-peak . Every new large power station will require a large coal mine to fuel it , and they do not exist . The coal does not exist in sufficient concentrations .
The politicians lie and do more of the same .
The only energy source that has sufficient capacity is nuclear power .
As you can see , the 27% instability has come to bite us from the one direction in which we thought we were secure : coal .
Water and sewerage are next , then food , then air (hopefully only storms , but oxygen dead-spots are possible as climatic instabilities concentrate oxygen-poor zones from the oceanic deserts .)
New you know how the old Egyptian medic felt .
Get your papyrus and scribble !
But best is verbal paring down . Oral knowledge seems to have survived as long as humans have . Lock in using meme-engineering .
Andre
Andre Willers
14 Feb 2008
See article in 15 Dec 2007 p40 New Scientist “The Pharaohs’ Pharmacists”
www.newscientist.com/channel/health
Synopsis:
Dr Jackie Campbell of the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester has painstakingly deciphered four papyri dated between 1850 BC and 1200 BC for medical effectiveness . These contain hundreds of recipes for complaints.
They seem to be on par with treatment you would have gotten from a medical practitioner in Britain circa up to 1850 AD (before general asepsis and theory of germs ) .
Some points of interest:
The papyri date after the interregnum caused by the collapse of the Old Kingdom . One suspects that these are memorized recipes written down on perishable papyrus by medical practitioners who could no longer rely on a steady flow of students to hand down hoarded knowledge . More permanent records (like copper tablets – melted down by the neo-barbarians for weapons , or stone – too expensive in man-power . Not clay , like Sumeria , since fuel to bake the tablets would have been too expensive in fuel-poor Egypt . )
The interesting point here is that Campbell compared these recipes with present Bedouin healers in the Sinai and found an nearly identical correspondence .
This strongly suggests that the Papyri recipes written down were already oral remnants . If they survived a few centuries , a few millennia more is no sweat . The more complicated bits got lost .
Dentistry seems to be one of these bits . From archeological evidence (cf “History Today” ) , the Old Kingdom seems to have had a fairly sophisticated dentistry , but this had vanished completely in the New Kingdom , and never recovered .
If this sounds strange , consider the step-child relationship of present-day dentists to doctors .
The answer is in the home-remedy nature of dentistry . Even a toothless human can get nourishment by using an external gut (ie a soup pot) . So a painful tooth is removed without too big a penalty . (Pull it out , home remedy . You do not need dentistry to survive . )
Gum disease is a different kettle of fish . It has been directly correlated with heart-disease on a cause-effect basis . There is also statistical correlations with metabolic diseases like diabetes .
So where are the gum-disease epidemics in history ? Were they documented ? Perhaps they were written as something else .
Gingivitis epidemics must have been ( and must still be ) rife . Kissing is an old hominid custom .
2. Sailing ships , scurvy and gingivitis epidemics .
One of the puzzling aspects of medical history is why it took so long for the importance of fresh vitC bearing fruits to be realized . The reason lies in the confusion between gingivitis (a germ caused disease) and scurvy (a deficiency of vitC) .
In the confined space of a sailing ship on a voyage of six months , the food is not cooked thoroughly . The +-200 passengers are in touching contact daily . If at the start , one passenger had (say) 10 forms of gingivitis of various degrees of virulence , then the most virulent will tend to colonise the other passengers the most . There they mutate (remember that the bacteria monitor the density of themselves and other bacteria , so-called quorum mechanisms ) . Over certain thresholds , they switch on deletrious mechanisms .
Now , gingivitis is an old , old fellow-traveller with hominids . They don’t kill outright , but spin out the decomposition process to maximize their chances .
The ship becomes a hotbed of gingivitis activity , breeding into ever more virulent forms . Death rates of 90% were not uncommon .
These little bubbles of virulence on ships had little effect on Western societies in Europe as a whole . There was a tendency for immigrant populations in sailing ship days to have very good genetics as far as teeth are concerned (cf South African boers vs Europeans)
The effect on native societies was disasterous . Native here includes the Europeans who had immigrated previously . The bubbles of virulence of diseases like measles , whooping cough , etc brought by the ships hit even the Europeans hard , but devastated the locals who had no traditions of quarantine .
Of course , it worked in reverse too . Waves of infection spread from the European ports as ships went back and forth .
Ho ! Ho! Ho!
3. The White Man’s Grave .
White men survived quite happily in areas where they had little or no contact with ships . It was the ports that brought in diseases from all over the world , bred to a new virulence on the long voyages on the sailing ships . It must be said that most of these diseases were also variants of well-known European diseases .
4. The Boer War Concentration Camps .
The Boers were relatively isolated from the pathogen gene-pool in Europe . Ever wondered why such a hardy lot succumbed in droves to diseases in circumstances which were not much different from what they were used to ? Most of them were bywoners , used to a hard-scrabble life . A few big landowners had swallowed up most of the land , due to the Boer habit of partitioning inheritances equally amongst very large families . ( Work it out yourself . They arrived around 1840 . By 1900 , 60 years had passed . Three generations . Each generation had about 7 surviving males .The families were large . This gives 7x7x7x14 =4802 people that had to wrest a living out of grazing land that was originally good for a comfortable living for 2+14 . This does not include the black servants who were also merrily multiplying .
As you can see , this was not tenable . Even in 1900 , most of the whites were poor whites , scrabbling a living as bywoners or in the towns as dependants (clients in the Roman sense) of the wealthy large landowners . (The same thing happened in South America) . These were the guys who were the bitter-enders . The well-off landowners made accommodations with the British (the Hendsoppers) . Some of the poor joined the British (the Joiners) . The rest kept on fighting . The life on commando was for most better than what they had before .
These were landless men with no prospects . Like Roman soldiers circa 80 BC until Augustus strictly limited the number of legions , condottieri up until Napoleon , German mercenaries like Von Stutterheim .
It is interesting to note that one of the reasons for the success of the US model is that they never paid their troops directly in land . This can be traced back directly to Washington , when he prevented the coup by the officers of the Continental Army to force Congress to pay their arrears . Even today , US mercenaries (called Contractors) like Black River get paid in money , not in promises of land . In a general collapse this will not hold , as the only real wealth will revert back to the food production of land .
To get back to the Boer War , when the relatively isolated population of Boer women and children came into contact with English disease carriers of things like measles and whooping cough , especially the children were vulnerable . The overcrowding and malnutrition did not help , but the Boer population would died in large numbers even if they well-fed and housed . The critical factors were the close contact on a daily basis with carriers of disease . Not only the English soldiers , for whom these were childhood diseases , but each other once they became infected . The Boers had no tradition of quarantine . The survivors clustered around , trying to aid and care for each other . They took pride in the fact and considered it a Christian Virtue . Exactly like the Amerindians did in North America . They can thank the elements of immunity in their systems that their mortality was only about 25% . Emily Hobhouse traipsing around , trailing infection in her wake probably killed more than she helped .
The situation was as bad in the Boer prisoner of war camps on Ceylon , St Helena ,etc . The equivalent of Guantanamo Bay today . The death statistics are still classified , or unavailable today . But about 25% seems likely .
Notice the importance of quarantine . As discussed before , even a new disease in a virgin population can be contained with about 30%-40% death rate (Black Death) , but without quarantine (like colonial territories in Americas or Africa , where the community tried to care for the sick) , the death rate is 95%-99% . The Black Death natural immunity was about 1 in 40 000 . As near as 100% death rate without quarantine .
5. To get back to ships:
So , even ships with vitC supplies usually ran into teeth disease problems . Hence the tardy recognition of the importance of vitC . Scurvy only stopped after the bacterial nature of most diseases became known . Hygiene improved . The length of voyages also decreased dramatically (steam) , with changeover of personnel .
Even so , lately super-tankers voyage for months on end with the same crew isolated from the general gene-pool of pathogens . NASA should examine them for the effects of prolonged isolation from rapidly evolving pathogen pools .
6. To get back to Ancient Egyptians :
The Old Kingdom of Egypt was brought to a catastrophic end by climate shift . There was a prolonged drought (about 80 years ) in the Nile catchment areas in Abyssinia . Humans had populated the Egyptian area of the Nile up to carrying capacity . 80 years of failure of the Nile floods reduced the whole area to a fraction of it’s population . Cannibalism has been hard-documented in the archeological remains of many towns in the delta . Significantly , these town-sites were shunned , which is why their remains are still there after about 4000 years . Of course , more strategic sites were simply built over . (“I can’t stand it . Pass me that brick.”) .
7. What must be understood is that Abyssinia (Ethiopia) is the Holiest Land on the planet as far as humans are concerned . This is where it all started .
After Toba , this is where the survivors created a new relationship between themselves and the gods . Whether the Matriarchy Mythos is valid or not , Egyptian aristocracy traced their claim to nobility to their descent from Abyssinia. Tibetans were also offspring , with maybe a soupcon of other Homo species , judging from the evidence of human body-lice .
Note the equivalent in Asia : Han-Tibetan and Mongolian-Tibetan are the majority population groups . Genghis Khan took pride in tracing his lineage to Tibet , even though his beard was red and his eyes grey .
Peking lap dogs have been genetically analyzed . They are not only directly descended from Tibetan lamasery dogs , but there has been continuous genetic interchange for the last 2000 years .
Han Chinese are Tibetans .
Abyssinia is not where old religions come to die .
It is where they return to their roots . It is the only place where all the major Western Religions ( Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Communism) have living temples . If one scratches around , I would not be surprised to find Mithraism , Roman and Greek , Celtic , Buddhist , Hindu remnants (maybe not Shintu) or older . It is a large , really rugged country that has seen more human history than all the rest put together . It has seen climate shifts come and go . It has seen the ice-ages in and it has seen them out in the long-ago memory of humans .
8. Myths .
It is why the Ark of the Covenant is rumoured to be there . Note that the rumour is more important than the fact . We are dealing in myths .
“We deal in hot lead , friend.” - Colt and Kalashnikov .
“We deal in misty myth , friend.”- Christ and Buddha .
Who’s winning ?
Why did the Italians attack Abyssinia in the 1930’s ?
It made no logical sense in terms of European politics .
It was on the instigation of Hitler ( actually the Ultima Thule group ) , who saw it as one of the key religious and esoteric points on the planet . They also had their eye on Tibet . The SS launched an exploratory mission (documented). They were rumoured to have imported several hundred initiates of the left-hand path who supposedly committed suicide before the fall of Berlin .
9. Sigh .
Anybody who knows Tibet can tell you that the only reason they do not rule the planet is that you cannot find any three that can agree to follow any path , right , left , center or any other direction . Their world-view allows not only that the end justifies the means in one single time-line , but in all possible time-lines . Calculus of any type only clumps various time-lines together . There remains a very large (which can be infinite , depending) number of time-lines .
Various lamaseries meddled ( and still meddles ) incessantly with surrounding cultures . But all are rife with factions . The Chinese are in the position of exasperated children trying to keep some check on their madcap parents .
Tibetans are tourists , in other words . Surfing the time-lines .
10 .To get back to Ancient Egyptians :
One of the major reasons (some would say THE reason) why Egyptian Civilization lasted millennia in balance with the environment was that funny religion of theirs with all the animal-headed gods . Their religion was in a one-to-one correspondence with their environment . Each animal had its sect of human protectors . Significant percentages of the human priests had a vested interest in protecting their tutelary deity .
Kill too many jackals , and you had the priests of Anubis on your neck .
Do you see how it went?
If we had had a god of birds , we might still have some passenger pigeons in the sky .
The point is , it worked .
11. Ho , Ho , Ho !
There is no reason why this cannot be reinvented . There is no reason to suppose that the priests of various Egyptian gods really believed in them . But they had a vested interest in them . Cf Gaia .
Note that the thin little strip of land next to the Nile is extremely vulnerable to human population growth and concomitant extermination of wildlife . Yet the ancient Egyptians kept it going for more than 5 000 years . The only major interruption from climate was at the end of the Old Kingdom . Yet the survivors managed to struggle on for a further 2 000 years until overwhelmed by the Romans , Christians , Muslims , Ottomans , English , etc .
It was not just hanging on either . They created writing , including the alphabet , the compound saw and bow , lathes , fine metallurgy , good medicine , ships , etc and exported these ideas throughout the their north via mercenaries (what we would today call contractors) . Some of the greatest art originated in this period .
12. The Top Kingdom .
We have to ask why such a vital , powerful civilization did not move deeper into Africa . The clue lies in their name for themselves . Egypt was divided into the Upper Kingdom and the Lower Kingdom . The Upper Kingdom was the part nearer to Abyssinia (past the cataracts) .
Note : not the Top Kingdom . The Top Kingdom was Abyssinia until the catastrophic drought that brought all the kingdoms to disaster .
( Cf Chinese Middle (ie Center) Kingdom . The hierarchies and worldviews were different . The Himalayas were at the center of the Chinese world , from which many rivers flowed , while Abyssinia was at the top of world , from which only the Nile flowed .)
The climate change and drought that brought the Egyptian Old Kingdom to a crash was seen as a massive betrayal by the gods . Ironically , the ones with the biggest sense of grievance were the upper classes , starting with the Pharaoh .
Hence the Anhknaton rebellion . A significant fraction of the priesthood must have participated in the new rejection of the old gods . Interestingly , the reason why the counter-reformation (cf Tutankhamun) succeeded was the environmental degradation that went with the suppression of the old temples . The Nile riparian areas are very fragile ecosystems , and deficiency diseases (notably lack of protein as birds and fish were over-hunted) would quickly have shown that the new ways were demonstratively worse than the old ways . Note that teeth from this period were excessively worn by grit , indicating turbidity of the Nile due to environmental disturbance . (Intervening just about anywhere in the Nile’s eco-cycle would screw things up , resulting in turbidity , low fish and crop yield and starvation . Very quickly too . )
A more vicious round of religious civil wars erupted .
All ties with Abyssinia were severed , and the tradition of erasing politically non-correct previous rulers started .
Abyssinia was in pretty poor shape as well . Huge influxes of refugees from Egypt and the Arabian peninsula swept over the land . The genetic evidence of this is now being traced . Some has been found as far as Zimbabwe (refugees from the collapse of the Saba dam in Yemen , in three stages .The ruins of the dam and the huge irrigation works are still there . Cf Queen of Sheba .)
In any case , Egypt had problems of its own . Their equivalent of the refugee influx was the Sea Peoples , which they survived by the skin of their teeth .
After that it was the relentless pressure from barbarians from the hills and desert who took over the productive land in the Middle East as rainfall recovered . They were militaristic and expansionist , being survivors of a process where only these characteristics were selected .
13 . Knowledge not essential to survival was lost .
The verbal equivalent of an emergency clinic was transmitted , and later written down by some despairing medical practitioners lamenting the past and making the best of a bad situation .
Remember , this was not overnight . It took decades to get worse and worse .
14. Dung .
A fascinating aside is feral ass dung , which is used by the Bedouin as a tea for stomach complaints . This is reminiscent of the Nguni use of fresh cow dung to slap on open wounds (like with circumcision) .
The keys here are
14.1 Free range animals
14.2 Animal self-medication .
14.3 Enlightened altruism (now called pre-adaptation)
Animals that can roam freely and are not overgrazed , self-medicate . This is a well-documented phenomenon . The dung not only has anti-bacterial properties , but has large populations of indifferent or even benign bacteria that out-compete harmful bacteria . The cow-food is deliberately not optimally utilized , so that at every process of digestion there is sufficient energy and nutrients for commensal bacteria not harmful to the host , as well enough left over for grass to grow on .
It can even be utilized as a building material .
But only if the animals are free-ranging and not over-populated . Hence the flight to the cities (or a major reason) . Traditional huts became unhealthy as the dung became unhealthy . Something similar happened in Europe with the Celtic tribes .
Elephants utilize only about a third of their food . This was seen as a handicap , but it is actually the key to their survival as the most successful large animal in
Africa . See below .
In other words , the ecology optimizes , not the species .
“The Selfish Gene “ and “Kin selection “ is out and “Pre-adaptation” is in . The human monkeys have undergone a “paradigm-shift” (ie some common-sense has seeped through the leafy boughs of academe) , and gone screaming after the new troop-direction .
See E.O. Wilson’s “Superorganism” . He was the father of sociobiology , but has now done a u-turn . Selfishness is not good anymore .
It would be funny if not so much damage has been done by business schools like Harvard and Yale using these half-baked ideas as templates and excuses for short-sighted greed .
We know the exact limits of greed as well .
15 . How much of available resources must we use and how much must we leave for others to exist ?
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com “ Infinite Probes” .
The boundaries of instability are 27% - 37% of usage of resources .
Things get more unstable as you approach 27% . There is turbulence and singularities around 27% . Between 27% and 37% things appear more stable , but steadily grow tougher . At 37% , turbulence becomes extreme . Extinction looms .
It usually takes some fancy co-operative footwork around the 27% boundary to survive . Most competitive species go extinct here in a welter arms-races for diminishing and ever more specialized resources .
Please note that humans are now utilizing at least 25% of photosynthesizing biomass on the planet . They are already deep into the instability zone , and being very competitive , it is doubtful whether they will survive the boundary . Numbers mean nothing . It is actually the numbers that drive the extinction process .
Recent Chinese demand has probably pushed this into the real instability zone .
There was only a 2% margin to uplift them to start with .
16 .The Coal Instability .
Humans think of coal like the ancient Egyptians thought of the Nile .
Old Faithful .
When all else fails , coal will see us through .
Most of the energy generation on the planet is still coal-based .
Ho , ho , ho !
Rutledge of Caltech has analyzed coal reserves using Hubbert’s Linearization technique . Google it , or see “The Great Cole Hole” in New Scientist of 19 Jan 2008 p38 . I have checked the numbers for UK production , and the argument seems solid .
(This is the same technique used to successfully predict Hubbert’s oil peak .)
We are close to global peak in coal production , and rapidly nearing zero production in some of the older regions . By 2030 we will have used 70% of remaining exploitable coal reserves . (ie in 20 years time electricity will be a very expensive luxury if present population numbers are maintained .
The UK is an old region . By about 1015 it will produce no coal . Zero . Oh , there is a lot of coal left . Here and there .Thither and yon . Poor quality stuff . Nothing for a large power station .
South Africa is a semi-old region . The richer , easily accessible regions have been mined . The deposits are in seams (ie discontinuous) . In South Africa they are also “complex” . Geology-speak that they suddenly vanish due to folds and faults . The coal does not peter out . It suddenly vanishes . Then a new mine of poorer quality has to be dug (if you can find the coal ) . Can you see where this is going ?
The present Eskom coal crisis will never get better . Coal will only get scarcer and more expensive . South Africa is already past it’s coal-peak . Every new large power station will require a large coal mine to fuel it , and they do not exist . The coal does not exist in sufficient concentrations .
The politicians lie and do more of the same .
The only energy source that has sufficient capacity is nuclear power .
As you can see , the 27% instability has come to bite us from the one direction in which we thought we were secure : coal .
Water and sewerage are next , then food , then air (hopefully only storms , but oxygen dead-spots are possible as climatic instabilities concentrate oxygen-poor zones from the oceanic deserts .)
New you know how the old Egyptian medic felt .
Get your papyrus and scribble !
But best is verbal paring down . Oral knowledge seems to have survived as long as humans have . Lock in using meme-engineering .
Andre
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