The Collapse of Civilizations.
I am indebted to N.K.Sandars ( “The Sea Peoples “ , ISBN 0 500 02085 X ) for her insight that large civilizations collapse from inhibitions to recovery . They obviously handled disasters and invasions before . A large civilization ( in her case the Bronze-Age civilization , encompassing Europe , North Africa , Egypt and the Middle-East) or the Roman civilization is a tough beastie and cannot be brought to its knees by a single factor .
A simple , measurable definition of Civilization .
First , we have to know what we are talking about .
Define a Civilization as the way an entity or entities produces and stores surpluses .
These surpluses follow the hierarchy : Air , Food , Water , Shelter (inclusive of clothes) and Art .
(Art is the Curiosity element , which includes monuments , literature , recreational war , games , religion , courting-behaviour , etc . These are all anti-boredom , leisure-consumption activities and constructions . This is because any neuronal-net will evolve to handle peak-challenges , but degrade optimally-learned feedback weights in the troughs . Since peaks are infrequent , successful civilizations have evolved to spend most of their time on Art , Play , Games , etc . This raises the interesting question of whether ants , squirrels ,etc have anti-boredom activities : ie Art . Courting-behaviour seems a prime candidate for anti-boredom activity like intelligence and humour .)
Human Civilizations .
We can then classify human civilizations by the way they produce or store surpluses : hunter-gatherer , agricultural , pastural , nomad-herder , with sub-classes like stone-age , bronze-age , iron-age , steam-age , electronic-age , pottery-ages , literary-ages , film-ages , etc , etc . The sub-divisions are endless and satisfy the anti-boredom criteria .
The Career of a Civilization :
1. The Rising Civilization :
A random fluctuation (usually organizational) makes a certain group better at generating surpluses . People flock in . The successful society has a way of incorporating them (this is possible due to the genetic conformity of humans (cf Toba)) .
Manufacture and export is vigorous . People want to belong to this new way of doing things , no matter what their initial status .
This progresses in a positive-feedback exponential fashion until certain negative-feedback elements become more-and-more important .
2. The Plateau Civilization .
The flies in the ointment : the negative-feedback factors :
2.1 Malthus
The population will expand to the limit of the resources . This takes some time , especially since civilized humans with some store of value (ie money) and a fairly stable political system optimizes on the grand-children instead of their direct children.
The surplus-per-person falls .
The very rich get much richer . The poor get even poorer . (Power-Law distribution.) A Middle Class forms , becomes important for a while ,then is squeezed smaller and smaller as surplus per population falls with rising population . See also factors below .
2.2 Diminishing Returns.
A quiet killer . Also known as the Rising cost of Marginal Returns .
Simply put , the easiest and cheapest things get done first . Subsequent things become harder and more expensive . (The classic example is the modern motor-car : in real terms , it costs about 100 times as much as Ford’s old Model T , but is no faster in traffic and cannot be repaired by the owner . Software shows the same tendency : expensive extra features are never used by most users , but has to be paid for . )
It is a real killer , because the marginal cost can be driven to a point where it is higher than the cost at an earlier point . The overhang creates a collapse pressure .
This has already happened in a large commercial system : the Concorde . If the time-cost of travel to the airports are factored in , the marginal gain in flight-time was not worth the cost . It took only one disaster to collapse the supersonic commercial market . Compare this to more robust tourist systems .
2.3 Relative Competitive Advantage.
The long-term killer .
It basically means that some things are cheaper to make elsewhere . If transport is cheap enough , these items can be imported and sold cheaper than they can be manufactured locally . (Globalization is the present term , but it has happened many times before .) The local artisans , manufacturers and peasants are pushed down into the unemployed class . The former pool of sturdy potential soldiers become a festering sore of embittered unemployed , kept pacified by a client-makework political system , the dole and the arena . (Present equivalents are party-politics , the dole , TV )
A classical example is the peasant wheat growers in the old Roman-Republic competing against cheap Egyptian wheat . The peasants and their children had no choice but to become professional soldiers . The state’s armed forces then essentially consisted of mercenaries paid by the state . The same thing happened to the other Roman manufacturing classes . The Roman corn-dole evolved as a consequence of Globalization . But this undercut the very basis of Roman power ,which was citizen soldiers . The result was that they had to induct foreign mercenaries into the Roman legions .
Simply put , the Roman upper classes could not trust soldiers drawn from their underclasses .
Question : Whatever happened to the Roman Mob? Answer : they all became slaves .
The Collapse.
The same scenario above played out in the late Bronze-age civilization . (circa 12 00 BC).
The rich used the trade-network to import cheaper manufactured articles , probably of superior quality initially , as well as food . This displaced their own artisan and upper peasant class (ie middle class) into penury . The rich used mercenaries from the outlying territories to keep the situation under control .The foreign manufacturers became more civilized and raised their prices . The profit-margin shrank . A random disaster made it impossible to pay the mercenaries . The system was stretched taut due to the decreased profit-margins . The mercenary commanders then allied with whoever offered them the best deal . The trade system broke down . Ship captains of food-ships refused to sail without some security from pirates and especially , a surety that they will be paid .
The surpluses (especially food) vanished . The food production areas were not going to produce anything without payment . Besides , the general collapse would have unleashed the locusts on them as well .
But the overpopulated areas were not going to lie down and die . The only way they could survive was by taking from somebody else . The previous nobles had the advantage of experience in organization and had some capital . The result was the Peoples of the Sea .
The resulting mess of semi-organised reivers washed back-and-forth from the Ukraine till Egypt . Egypt was the final nut , since this was where all the cheap food came from . Remessus III defeated them in detail , first the land lot , then the sea-lot . They were like locusts , not even making an effort to make a living . Taking and taking .
This happened very quickly . Remember : “Three meals away from revolution” and “One salary cheque away from the street . “ Once the mercenary commander was convinced that he could not feed or pay his troops , he would immediately switch to the alliance that promised at least a short-term possibility of this .
The relevance today.
The general principle is that people do not think that they will be better off belonging to a particular civilization . Ask the poor of New Orleans , who were left to die . Or the innumerable dead in China or the old USSR .
So will the whole shebang collapse in a welter war and grimaces ?
The truth is that most of the planet’s population is bored . Just look at history or at individual’s life courses . It is chaotic right down to what your teen-age daughter wants for breakfast .
Large-scale patterns are observable , but nobody pays them any attention . They are mostly artifacts , in any case .
So , it is pointless to try and project a course of events that is bland . Maximum drama and heart-wrenching emotions are the course . (Surplus of Art)
Humans do not want repetition . The thirst for drama and art is so strong that it even supersedes survival .
Complete systemic collapse is interesting , but partial collapse is even more interesting . Skating on the edges of chaos .
So , you can look forward to interesting times , but not complete annihilation .
Bah
Not the result I wanted
Andre
Friday, September 23, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Whatever happened to William what’s-his-name?
Whatever happened to William what’s-his-name?
After his lucky win in 1066 at Hastings , ruthless suppression of revolts through a scorched-earth policy around 1069-1070 at York and buying off King Swein of Denmark , he considered England reasonably secure from internal and external threats.
He spent the rest of his life fighting for his Home : the duchy of Normandy . England was considered and treated as a conquered cash-cow . (Something like his descendants thought of India )
He was a near-perfect Machiavellian Prince : ruling through fear and respect , distilling the ruling class to clients and close family . His only lapse was that he could not bring himself to kill his eldest legitimate , rebellious son (Robert Curthose) .
He had a long sick-bed , then death-bed , attended by the “best physicians and priests” . The fear and respect vanished upon his death . He was embalmed and shipped to Caen for burial . The state of his respect then can be judged by the fact that his sepulchre was too small for him ( he was about 5 feet 10 inches tall , but very corpulent at the end (kings are never fat.) ) . The bearers also dropped him , “breaking him” according to current accounts . No attempt was made by his successors to counteract the various spins put about by his erstwhile enemies . His grave was despoiled by Calvinists in the sixteenth century . A new monument was vandalized by French revolutionaries in 1793 . Today only a commemorative slab in the abbey at Caen remains . He would have been amused.
An interesting aside was that his long-time wife Matilde was only four feet tall . (Her bones were disinterred in 1968 ) . They must have made an odd couple . She was the daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders and he was the very able , but illegitimate , Duke of Normandy , something like the Prince of Pirates . He married her despite the opposition of Pope Leo IX and his liege-lord king Henry I of France : not a good career move for an ambitious princeling . He reputedly remained faithful their whole married life (she died before him) .
Their oldest son (Robert Curthose) was her favourite . She supported him even when he was in armed rebellion against her husband . Such was William’s love for her that he forgave both . On his deathbed (having a suitable time for remorse ) he forgave Robert and made him Duke of Normandy , but not King of England .
What If William did not win at Hastings ?
William’s attack was a typical Norman strategy . Keep up aggressive pressure and rapidly exploit any lucky break . The lucky break at Hastings was that all three Godwin brothers were killed in the battle . ( The King and his two brothers) .
Plan A for William was that his attack would be inconclusive and Harold would pay him to go away (like William did with King Swein of Denmark in 1070) .
When all three brothers were killed , the Saxons broke . The battle was lost , but the war was then lost because there was nobody of sufficient stature to rally the troops and the country . William’s speed , ruthlessness and tactics ( motte-and-bailey castles) prevented any rallying until the rebellion of 1068-1070 .
The very fact that William went to great trouble to bring across cavalry shows that he felt that the main probability favoured a standoff . Battles were decided by infantry , but even a modest cavalry force could prevent a rout if the enemy was deficient in cavalry (like the Saxons were). William had a fall-back to his ships and castle at Pevensey .
England then soaked up 10 000 aggressive and greedy Normans .
If William was forced to return to Normandy , he would still have been saddled with problem of about 10 000 aggressive Normans . Guess where they would go ? The way had been paved by the conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy by the Guiscard family of Normandy . Bohemund Guiscard went on to conquer Antioch during the First Crusade . Imagine 10 000 more like them .
What would the world look like now ?
What if William withdrew to Normandy and all those really aggro Normans went to the Middle East ?
Normans acculturate very quickly . A Norman Caliphate stretching from Constantinople to China is the likeliest solution . Semitic hysteria and Norman cold-bloodedness would make a formidable combination .
The only serious challenge would have been from the Mongols .
The Western response to centuries of light-cavalry attacks was numerous fortifications with a few heavy cavalry in each . Light-cavalry (like the Mongols) usually win by getting inside the decision-loop of their enemies . This presupposes that their enemy obligingly masses . A few big fortified cities counts as massing .
The key is the advantage of fortified defense over offense . (In the siege of Malta about 8 000 knights held out against about 70 000 elite Ottoman troops .)
A successful ratio is about 1 defender for every 10 attackers .
What is the Western defense to enemies who do not stand still but can sting ? :
It is Independent defensive positions with a heavy smallish offensive punch which are NOT co-ordinated on a large scale.
Ie Numerous small Castles with a few knights and each having an independent ruler .
They will sit tight , but a few neighbours might combine to hit a tempting target .
If 300 000 Mongols attacked say 1 000 independent neighbouring castles , each with about 20 heavy cavalry , the Mongols will lose .
If they try to reduce each castle in detail , they will be nibbled to death by heavy-cavalry attacks from neighbouring supporting castles . Siege machinery would make the Mongols vulnerable to fixed-point attacks . There are not enough Mongols to attack on a broad front .
There are always more agriculturists than pastoralists .
It is a numbers game as long as the castles do not try to unify . If the castles do not unify , their attacks are random and the Mongols cannot get inside their decision-loop , because there isn’t one .
Has this happened before?
Yes .
The collapse of the late Bronze-age civilizations around the Mediterranean .(circa 1200 BC) Refer to the best study on the collapse of civilization I have come across :
“The Sea Peoples” by N.K. Sandars (it was dedicated to Sheila and John Campbell – is this by any chance the John Campbell of Analog fame ? )In any case , the arguments in the book have a distinctly Cambellian flavour .
The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was similar , but not as bad .
See Alfred the Great’s system of burghs .
Yo
Enough
Andre
After his lucky win in 1066 at Hastings , ruthless suppression of revolts through a scorched-earth policy around 1069-1070 at York and buying off King Swein of Denmark , he considered England reasonably secure from internal and external threats.
He spent the rest of his life fighting for his Home : the duchy of Normandy . England was considered and treated as a conquered cash-cow . (Something like his descendants thought of India )
He was a near-perfect Machiavellian Prince : ruling through fear and respect , distilling the ruling class to clients and close family . His only lapse was that he could not bring himself to kill his eldest legitimate , rebellious son (Robert Curthose) .
He had a long sick-bed , then death-bed , attended by the “best physicians and priests” . The fear and respect vanished upon his death . He was embalmed and shipped to Caen for burial . The state of his respect then can be judged by the fact that his sepulchre was too small for him ( he was about 5 feet 10 inches tall , but very corpulent at the end (kings are never fat.) ) . The bearers also dropped him , “breaking him” according to current accounts . No attempt was made by his successors to counteract the various spins put about by his erstwhile enemies . His grave was despoiled by Calvinists in the sixteenth century . A new monument was vandalized by French revolutionaries in 1793 . Today only a commemorative slab in the abbey at Caen remains . He would have been amused.
An interesting aside was that his long-time wife Matilde was only four feet tall . (Her bones were disinterred in 1968 ) . They must have made an odd couple . She was the daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders and he was the very able , but illegitimate , Duke of Normandy , something like the Prince of Pirates . He married her despite the opposition of Pope Leo IX and his liege-lord king Henry I of France : not a good career move for an ambitious princeling . He reputedly remained faithful their whole married life (she died before him) .
Their oldest son (Robert Curthose) was her favourite . She supported him even when he was in armed rebellion against her husband . Such was William’s love for her that he forgave both . On his deathbed (having a suitable time for remorse ) he forgave Robert and made him Duke of Normandy , but not King of England .
What If William did not win at Hastings ?
William’s attack was a typical Norman strategy . Keep up aggressive pressure and rapidly exploit any lucky break . The lucky break at Hastings was that all three Godwin brothers were killed in the battle . ( The King and his two brothers) .
Plan A for William was that his attack would be inconclusive and Harold would pay him to go away (like William did with King Swein of Denmark in 1070) .
When all three brothers were killed , the Saxons broke . The battle was lost , but the war was then lost because there was nobody of sufficient stature to rally the troops and the country . William’s speed , ruthlessness and tactics ( motte-and-bailey castles) prevented any rallying until the rebellion of 1068-1070 .
The very fact that William went to great trouble to bring across cavalry shows that he felt that the main probability favoured a standoff . Battles were decided by infantry , but even a modest cavalry force could prevent a rout if the enemy was deficient in cavalry (like the Saxons were). William had a fall-back to his ships and castle at Pevensey .
England then soaked up 10 000 aggressive and greedy Normans .
If William was forced to return to Normandy , he would still have been saddled with problem of about 10 000 aggressive Normans . Guess where they would go ? The way had been paved by the conquest of Sicily and Southern Italy by the Guiscard family of Normandy . Bohemund Guiscard went on to conquer Antioch during the First Crusade . Imagine 10 000 more like them .
What would the world look like now ?
What if William withdrew to Normandy and all those really aggro Normans went to the Middle East ?
Normans acculturate very quickly . A Norman Caliphate stretching from Constantinople to China is the likeliest solution . Semitic hysteria and Norman cold-bloodedness would make a formidable combination .
The only serious challenge would have been from the Mongols .
The Western response to centuries of light-cavalry attacks was numerous fortifications with a few heavy cavalry in each . Light-cavalry (like the Mongols) usually win by getting inside the decision-loop of their enemies . This presupposes that their enemy obligingly masses . A few big fortified cities counts as massing .
The key is the advantage of fortified defense over offense . (In the siege of Malta about 8 000 knights held out against about 70 000 elite Ottoman troops .)
A successful ratio is about 1 defender for every 10 attackers .
What is the Western defense to enemies who do not stand still but can sting ? :
It is Independent defensive positions with a heavy smallish offensive punch which are NOT co-ordinated on a large scale.
Ie Numerous small Castles with a few knights and each having an independent ruler .
They will sit tight , but a few neighbours might combine to hit a tempting target .
If 300 000 Mongols attacked say 1 000 independent neighbouring castles , each with about 20 heavy cavalry , the Mongols will lose .
If they try to reduce each castle in detail , they will be nibbled to death by heavy-cavalry attacks from neighbouring supporting castles . Siege machinery would make the Mongols vulnerable to fixed-point attacks . There are not enough Mongols to attack on a broad front .
There are always more agriculturists than pastoralists .
It is a numbers game as long as the castles do not try to unify . If the castles do not unify , their attacks are random and the Mongols cannot get inside their decision-loop , because there isn’t one .
Has this happened before?
Yes .
The collapse of the late Bronze-age civilizations around the Mediterranean .(circa 1200 BC) Refer to the best study on the collapse of civilization I have come across :
“The Sea Peoples” by N.K. Sandars (it was dedicated to Sheila and John Campbell – is this by any chance the John Campbell of Analog fame ? )In any case , the arguments in the book have a distinctly Cambellian flavour .
The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was similar , but not as bad .
See Alfred the Great’s system of burghs .
Yo
Enough
Andre
Insurance , Over-population and AIDS
Insurance , Over-population and AIDS
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
Without a reliable store of value , the only way to ensure for old age is to have as many children in the hope that some will look after their parents .
The prudent person thus has as many children as possible .
Gold can be stolen , cattle can die , children can be ungrateful .
How can a prudent man ensure that a part of the extra wealth of his good years can be reliably saved for his old age ?
Enter the Insurance Company .
Birthrates fall when reliable financial institutions are introduced , since children change from an asset to liability .
Furthermore , extra longevity insured by having money for expensive medical care in old age postpones and decreases inheritances to the children . In Europe this effect can be seen in the increased number of children staying with the parents (previously they would have inherited the house) and fewer children , as family money is used for medical old-age expenses instead of babies .
Chart Sanlam’s growth against Afrikaner family size . Every endowment policy to age 60 or 65 is actually resources taken from present children to future parent (as well as a vote of no-confidence in the children . (Justified by the burgeoning of old-age homes and retirement villages.))
Inalienability :
This is a major point , since no parent can really say “No” to child dying of AIDS . It might break their hearts , but they must be able to say that their savings are locked up and outside their control .
What African clients want is reliable payment on proof of identity and inalienability .
Typical products would be
Endowment policies to age 60 or 65 or pensions after age 55 tied to the JSE Xchange trade market in gold . Each rand buys the customer a fixed amount of gold guaranteed by the JSE . No interest . No admin after purchase until redemption . Rates published in the newspapers . Absolute minimum admin.
Commission , expenses and profits 3% - 5 % .
Maturity only on the maturity date (not death) . The heirs might claim after maturity .
It is like a bearer bond with limited term payable on proof of identity .
Marketing:
Tell it straight . For the man who likes surety for his old age . Nobody can touch it except him or his heirs before the due date .
(Things in Africa do not get much surer than the JSE and RSA .)
Secondary markets:
It is tempting to set up loan and surrender markets , but this invalidates the principle of inalienability , especially taking AIDS and other pandemics into consideration .
Also , the expense is damnable .
The client must be absolutely assured that only he or his legal heirs can get the money
And only after the term has expired .
Informal secondary markets will spring up (ref trades in bearer bonds) , but this does not concern the original assurer.
One would think that the lower-birthrate effect would be slow , but lower-income parents are terrified of being cast away by their children (ref funeral policies) . They would rather pay premiums on a policy than have more children . Contraceptive methods always seemed available if enough people really wanted it . White Afrikaner birthrates in RSA dropped dramatically between 1920 and 1950 , pari-passu with the growth of Sanlam .
It will happen in Africa .
But the first ones will get the cream of the pent-up demand .
Regards
Andre
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
Without a reliable store of value , the only way to ensure for old age is to have as many children in the hope that some will look after their parents .
The prudent person thus has as many children as possible .
Gold can be stolen , cattle can die , children can be ungrateful .
How can a prudent man ensure that a part of the extra wealth of his good years can be reliably saved for his old age ?
Enter the Insurance Company .
Birthrates fall when reliable financial institutions are introduced , since children change from an asset to liability .
Furthermore , extra longevity insured by having money for expensive medical care in old age postpones and decreases inheritances to the children . In Europe this effect can be seen in the increased number of children staying with the parents (previously they would have inherited the house) and fewer children , as family money is used for medical old-age expenses instead of babies .
Chart Sanlam’s growth against Afrikaner family size . Every endowment policy to age 60 or 65 is actually resources taken from present children to future parent (as well as a vote of no-confidence in the children . (Justified by the burgeoning of old-age homes and retirement villages.))
Inalienability :
This is a major point , since no parent can really say “No” to child dying of AIDS . It might break their hearts , but they must be able to say that their savings are locked up and outside their control .
What African clients want is reliable payment on proof of identity and inalienability .
Typical products would be
Endowment policies to age 60 or 65 or pensions after age 55 tied to the JSE Xchange trade market in gold . Each rand buys the customer a fixed amount of gold guaranteed by the JSE . No interest . No admin after purchase until redemption . Rates published in the newspapers . Absolute minimum admin.
Commission , expenses and profits 3% - 5 % .
Maturity only on the maturity date (not death) . The heirs might claim after maturity .
It is like a bearer bond with limited term payable on proof of identity .
Marketing:
Tell it straight . For the man who likes surety for his old age . Nobody can touch it except him or his heirs before the due date .
(Things in Africa do not get much surer than the JSE and RSA .)
Secondary markets:
It is tempting to set up loan and surrender markets , but this invalidates the principle of inalienability , especially taking AIDS and other pandemics into consideration .
Also , the expense is damnable .
The client must be absolutely assured that only he or his legal heirs can get the money
And only after the term has expired .
Informal secondary markets will spring up (ref trades in bearer bonds) , but this does not concern the original assurer.
One would think that the lower-birthrate effect would be slow , but lower-income parents are terrified of being cast away by their children (ref funeral policies) . They would rather pay premiums on a policy than have more children . Contraceptive methods always seemed available if enough people really wanted it . White Afrikaner birthrates in RSA dropped dramatically between 1920 and 1950 , pari-passu with the growth of Sanlam .
It will happen in Africa .
But the first ones will get the cream of the pent-up demand .
Regards
Andre
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Attractors for repeated hurricanes in Mexican gulf
Repeated hurricanes near the mouth of a major river will at first be deflected , then deflected less (maybe even attracted) to the river-mouth .
The outflow of a large river like the Mississippi creates a bubble of low temperature around it's mouth . The river water is at a lower temperature than the Gulf of Mexico . A hurricane is fuelled by heat and will follow the heat contours from lower to higher energy . So a large river like the Mississipi will tend to deflect the the first hurricane . (Like Katrina).
A hurricane passing close to the Mississipi's mouth dumps a lot of warm rain and surge. A subsequent hurricane , as can be expected in a warming scenario , will thus encounter a greatly decreased deflection effect . If the heating of water in the flood-plains causes a warmer sea-temperature at the Mississipi's mouth than in the Gulf , following hurricanes would be attracted to the river mouth , instead of being deflected .
Probability :
A near miss on the Mississipi's mouth will be followed by closer and closer hits until the end of the hurricane season .
High probability prediction:
Katrina will most likely be followed by at least two hurricanes this year , hitting Mississipi's mouth or close to it .
Yo
Andre
The outflow of a large river like the Mississippi creates a bubble of low temperature around it's mouth . The river water is at a lower temperature than the Gulf of Mexico . A hurricane is fuelled by heat and will follow the heat contours from lower to higher energy . So a large river like the Mississipi will tend to deflect the the first hurricane . (Like Katrina).
A hurricane passing close to the Mississipi's mouth dumps a lot of warm rain and surge. A subsequent hurricane , as can be expected in a warming scenario , will thus encounter a greatly decreased deflection effect . If the heating of water in the flood-plains causes a warmer sea-temperature at the Mississipi's mouth than in the Gulf , following hurricanes would be attracted to the river mouth , instead of being deflected .
Probability :
A near miss on the Mississipi's mouth will be followed by closer and closer hits until the end of the hurricane season .
High probability prediction:
Katrina will most likely be followed by at least two hurricanes this year , hitting Mississipi's mouth or close to it .
Yo
Andre
Roman Garum , Tables and Terrorism
Yo!
Read an interesting book:"Around the Roman Table" by P.Faas ISBN 0333904664
Some interesting points arose:
1. Garum : apparantly , decomposing fish is rich in mono-sodium glutamate . The ability to taste it (the receptor for umame) is
linked to a definite gene-set. This gene is common in the East (hence their love of soy-sauce , etc) , but gets swamped in the West . So where did the Romans get it ? The candidates seem to be Troy , Etruscans ,Sabines , the major sources of early
Roman genes . The Etruscans' origin is mysterious enough to be possibly from middle-asia (the asian aryans) .
Gene enrichment from Troy plus patrician intermarriage and fashion could explain the popularity of the sauce . At least until
the ruling classes no longer could taste umame , and warped the sauce into a salty,fatty,saucy thing by another name.
Johan , can you dig into this ? It seems strange that a bunch of farmers far from the sea should have their major
sauce based on fish .
2. Sabine women : Rose and Inge , take note .
One of the few instances where a single instance of woman-power had an effect reaching over the centuries.
The Romans abducted some Sabine woman , presumably young unmarried woman . After two years , the Sabine men decided to reclaim their woman . By this time , they had children and must have been treated better by their captors than they would
have been by their own lot . In any case , they interposed themselves between the two bunch of posturing
warriors and managed to negotiate one of the most significant treaties in Western history :
The Treaty:
"Roman women would not grind or cook grain" (from Pliny) .
This task was to be done by slaves ("Pitor" for grinding and "Coccus" for cooking.) . At this time and for the next 3 centuries ,
the staple grain was spent , which was very difficult to shell . It took a lot of work to prepare a meal , which is
why the women took the opportunity to duck out . And who can blame them ?
At one stroke , the labour force of of the embryo Romans was halved . Slaves were needed to fill the gap left by the women.
You can calculate the calory requirements yourself . It would need at least 4 - 5 slaves for a consumer household
just to feed itself . This launched the Romans on an expansionist phase looking for new slaves .
For instance , from 672 BC to 235 BC the doors of the temple of Janus was not closed : 337 years of continuous warfare .
The Romans were very aggressive , since they needed new slaves for their expanding population (see below)
The pampered Roman women had higher birth-rates than the surrounding tribes.
These other tribal woman had to do hard tasks done by slaves in the Roman households .
Hard here work means really hard work . There were no labour saving devices . This inevitably meant a high rate of stillbirths ,
low conception rate (little fat) , child mortality due to neglect or infanticide.
The relative advantage in birthrates generated the Roman powerbase.
This not only gave rise to new girls, but also to new boys : soldiers . As you can see , this is an exponential process :
hardly perceptable at the start , but then a sudden run-up where the Romans had armies of 200 000 men as in the Carthaginian
period.All healthy and strong individuals.
This was probably as close as humans have come to Draka .
Note that all females(even slaves) were used for breeding soldiers.
Which is how men ("Cocci") became cooks . The Roman matron was never expected to cook food (not in her job description)
The man had to provide slaves or hire professional firms of slave cooks . Or they ate out .
Initially , the pitor was a strong prisoner-of-war (because of the hard labour involved in using a pestle to husk spent wheat) .
So , the Romans never evolved the concept that cooking was woman's work . Many Patricians and Emperors
were enthusiastic cooks . (of course , they never did any washing-up , but neither did a Roman wife . )
A gentleman had his vegetable and herb garden (derived from the inner enclosed courtyard of the Roman house).
Allotments evolved from here : even lowly government employees could have vegetable ,herb or flower gardens
without been seen to be in "trade" . This spread all over Europe as discussed before.
This had a long lasting effect.
For instance , an English gentleman may grow pumpkins or roses , and nobody will think anything of it . But if
he grows wheat , he is a farmer .
An intriguing note here is from "L'Alimentation" by J . Andre . By AD 369 , 200 000 Romans on food-aid got 1360 grams
of oil,bread and meat a day , but no vegetables .
3. Game farms
Romans had game farms (Fulvius Lippinius:from Pliny)
Also oyster and fish farms.
The collapse must have wiped them out , a-la-Zimbabwe.
4. Collapse of pepper trade.
Alaric's ransom demand to Rome included gold,silver silk and pepper . Faas intimates that either this was the last of available pepper,or that Rome could not meet the pepper demand . Given global winter caused by a major meteor strike or
volcanic eruption circa 422-427 AD , what would have been the effect on Indian trade patterns and agriculture?
Why was pepper a thousand years later worth the same as gold by weight , while it was one
the most common Roman spices ?
5.King Arthur's Round Table.
The commonest Roman triclinium for dining was a like a half an inverted saucer with the center cut out .The round communal
table is in the cut-out part . The guests recline on the slopes of the saucer , usually eating with their right hand .
Slaves served from the open side of the saucer .
There is no equality as implied by our concept of a round table . The social position of every position had been determined
centuries before. Furthermore , it took about thirty or forty slaves just for the banquet .
Martial (admittedly a few centuries earlier ) described this sort of environment . During a banquet like this , a boy-slave
(used to carry wine beakers and slake the occasional pederast) stumbled over the sprawling legs of the host .
The host was mildly annoyed and ordered the boy to commit suicide . The boy burst into tears , and was forgiven .
But it shows the absolute power the owners had over the born-and-bred slaves .
Now you see why the Saxons extirpated the Roman remnants in Britain . We would call it an evil empire .
You can feel it inside yourself:the revulsion not just at the misuse of this power , but that this power
should exist at all .
Interestingly , systematic use of suicide mechanisms have always led to the extermination of the relevant
social system . It is not as strong a taboo as cannibalism , but "eating yourself" is only slightly less acceptable than
eating somebody else .
Evidence:
Japanese kamikazes:exterminated by Americans
Hashishen:exterminated by Mongols
American Indian Ghost warriors : exterminated by Americans
Jewish Zealots : exterminated by Romans
Suicide systems as presently practised by Muslim countries offends Western civilizations at a visceral level .
The willingness of the US to take casualties is a symptom . It seen as fighting Evil .
Terrorism has been done before.Remember the Nihilists and Anarchists at the beginning
of the Twentieth . They were symptoms of the deep underlying malaise of the pre-1914 society .
The result was terrible . But note that there were no terrorists after 1918 . They were either dead or the government.
After four years of thousands of tons of explosives , poison gas , millions on men trying to kill you , a few people
with a small bomb simply got sneered at.
The same in 1945.
As Rumsfeld said in Arabia : the only good Semite is a cement Semite.
Cheers
Andre
Read an interesting book:"Around the Roman Table" by P.Faas ISBN 0333904664
Some interesting points arose:
1. Garum : apparantly , decomposing fish is rich in mono-sodium glutamate . The ability to taste it (the receptor for umame) is
linked to a definite gene-set. This gene is common in the East (hence their love of soy-sauce , etc) , but gets swamped in the West . So where did the Romans get it ? The candidates seem to be Troy , Etruscans ,Sabines , the major sources of early
Roman genes . The Etruscans' origin is mysterious enough to be possibly from middle-asia (the asian aryans) .
Gene enrichment from Troy plus patrician intermarriage and fashion could explain the popularity of the sauce . At least until
the ruling classes no longer could taste umame , and warped the sauce into a salty,fatty,saucy thing by another name.
Johan , can you dig into this ? It seems strange that a bunch of farmers far from the sea should have their major
sauce based on fish .
2. Sabine women : Rose and Inge , take note .
One of the few instances where a single instance of woman-power had an effect reaching over the centuries.
The Romans abducted some Sabine woman , presumably young unmarried woman . After two years , the Sabine men decided to reclaim their woman . By this time , they had children and must have been treated better by their captors than they would
have been by their own lot . In any case , they interposed themselves between the two bunch of posturing
warriors and managed to negotiate one of the most significant treaties in Western history :
The Treaty:
"Roman women would not grind or cook grain" (from Pliny) .
This task was to be done by slaves ("Pitor" for grinding and "Coccus" for cooking.) . At this time and for the next 3 centuries ,
the staple grain was spent , which was very difficult to shell . It took a lot of work to prepare a meal , which is
why the women took the opportunity to duck out . And who can blame them ?
At one stroke , the labour force of of the embryo Romans was halved . Slaves were needed to fill the gap left by the women.
You can calculate the calory requirements yourself . It would need at least 4 - 5 slaves for a consumer household
just to feed itself . This launched the Romans on an expansionist phase looking for new slaves .
For instance , from 672 BC to 235 BC the doors of the temple of Janus was not closed : 337 years of continuous warfare .
The Romans were very aggressive , since they needed new slaves for their expanding population (see below)
The pampered Roman women had higher birth-rates than the surrounding tribes.
These other tribal woman had to do hard tasks done by slaves in the Roman households .
Hard here work means really hard work . There were no labour saving devices . This inevitably meant a high rate of stillbirths ,
low conception rate (little fat) , child mortality due to neglect or infanticide.
The relative advantage in birthrates generated the Roman powerbase.
This not only gave rise to new girls, but also to new boys : soldiers . As you can see , this is an exponential process :
hardly perceptable at the start , but then a sudden run-up where the Romans had armies of 200 000 men as in the Carthaginian
period.All healthy and strong individuals.
This was probably as close as humans have come to Draka .
Note that all females(even slaves) were used for breeding soldiers.
Which is how men ("Cocci") became cooks . The Roman matron was never expected to cook food (not in her job description)
The man had to provide slaves or hire professional firms of slave cooks . Or they ate out .
Initially , the pitor was a strong prisoner-of-war (because of the hard labour involved in using a pestle to husk spent wheat) .
So , the Romans never evolved the concept that cooking was woman's work . Many Patricians and Emperors
were enthusiastic cooks . (of course , they never did any washing-up , but neither did a Roman wife . )
A gentleman had his vegetable and herb garden (derived from the inner enclosed courtyard of the Roman house).
Allotments evolved from here : even lowly government employees could have vegetable ,herb or flower gardens
without been seen to be in "trade" . This spread all over Europe as discussed before.
This had a long lasting effect.
For instance , an English gentleman may grow pumpkins or roses , and nobody will think anything of it . But if
he grows wheat , he is a farmer .
An intriguing note here is from "L'Alimentation" by J . Andre . By AD 369 , 200 000 Romans on food-aid got 1360 grams
of oil,bread and meat a day , but no vegetables .
3. Game farms
Romans had game farms (Fulvius Lippinius:from Pliny)
Also oyster and fish farms.
The collapse must have wiped them out , a-la-Zimbabwe.
4. Collapse of pepper trade.
Alaric's ransom demand to Rome included gold,silver silk and pepper . Faas intimates that either this was the last of available pepper,or that Rome could not meet the pepper demand . Given global winter caused by a major meteor strike or
volcanic eruption circa 422-427 AD , what would have been the effect on Indian trade patterns and agriculture?
Why was pepper a thousand years later worth the same as gold by weight , while it was one
the most common Roman spices ?
5.King Arthur's Round Table.
The commonest Roman triclinium for dining was a like a half an inverted saucer with the center cut out .The round communal
table is in the cut-out part . The guests recline on the slopes of the saucer , usually eating with their right hand .
Slaves served from the open side of the saucer .
There is no equality as implied by our concept of a round table . The social position of every position had been determined
centuries before. Furthermore , it took about thirty or forty slaves just for the banquet .
Martial (admittedly a few centuries earlier ) described this sort of environment . During a banquet like this , a boy-slave
(used to carry wine beakers and slake the occasional pederast) stumbled over the sprawling legs of the host .
The host was mildly annoyed and ordered the boy to commit suicide . The boy burst into tears , and was forgiven .
But it shows the absolute power the owners had over the born-and-bred slaves .
Now you see why the Saxons extirpated the Roman remnants in Britain . We would call it an evil empire .
You can feel it inside yourself:the revulsion not just at the misuse of this power , but that this power
should exist at all .
Interestingly , systematic use of suicide mechanisms have always led to the extermination of the relevant
social system . It is not as strong a taboo as cannibalism , but "eating yourself" is only slightly less acceptable than
eating somebody else .
Evidence:
Japanese kamikazes:exterminated by Americans
Hashishen:exterminated by Mongols
American Indian Ghost warriors : exterminated by Americans
Jewish Zealots : exterminated by Romans
Suicide systems as presently practised by Muslim countries offends Western civilizations at a visceral level .
The willingness of the US to take casualties is a symptom . It seen as fighting Evil .
Terrorism has been done before.Remember the Nihilists and Anarchists at the beginning
of the Twentieth . They were symptoms of the deep underlying malaise of the pre-1914 society .
The result was terrible . But note that there were no terrorists after 1918 . They were either dead or the government.
After four years of thousands of tons of explosives , poison gas , millions on men trying to kill you , a few people
with a small bomb simply got sneered at.
The same in 1945.
As Rumsfeld said in Arabia : the only good Semite is a cement Semite.
Cheers
Andre
Louis IV , Martinique and Conspiracy Theory
Hi,
I've been reading an interesting book , an extract of the 40 plus volumes of Saint-Simon's memoirs about life at the court of Louis XIV (circa 1690's).
Louis XIV was a alpha dominant male who broke the the back of independant French barons and established a totalitarian state: all power vested in him and he kept close personal supervision on immediate suborbinates , keeping them enmeshed in the snake-pit at Versaille . This is a pattern followed by Napoleon , Stalin and Hitler . Ie a successful dominance meme .
But , surprise,surprise . There surfaces Francoise d'Aubigny , Marquise de Maintenon , from Martinique , nogal .
Louis XIV's mistress and apparently secret wife,
who was nearly successful in poisening all the legitimate heirs to the throne . The plotters had succeeded in getting all of Louis XIV's bastards declared Princes of the Blood . The only surviving legitimate heir ( a baby) , the Duke of Anjou ( future Louis XV) was saved by the Comtesse de Verue with a antidote . A crux-point in history . If he had died , a bastard of Louis XIV (Duc de Maine) would have become king , and the divine right of king's claim would have been broken in France . A turbulent period would have followed , but a revolution probably would not have occurred .
This is the third time I know of that someone from Martinique has surfaced as the woman behind the throne : Francoise de Maintenon , Josephine Bonaparte , Naksh the Beautiful ( Turkey) .
A bit much .
Why Martinique? At the time , it was about as far as you could get from anywhere and still be reckoned respectable . Lapses could be ascribed to distance . Communications were extremely slow and of very low band-width . Not enough detail could be transmitted to securely identify a fake .
What has this to do with conspiracies ?
Dominance/cooperation can be seen as one of the major mammalian Male/Female characteristics. This is dictated by sheer biology . In-body pregnancy requires cooperation if the species is to survive . Dominance is needed for the most successful traits to be fixed .
This pattern is true for any evolutionary system . For the most successful organisms , the ratio between dominance and cooperation will skirt chaos . Ie , it will fluctuate , but not have definable periodicity . Sometimes dominance will be , well , dominant , sometimes cooperation . The successful patterns get fixed in the genes or memes .
Successful cooperation genes/memes will tend to be incorporated into dominance systems .
This fluctation is essential to optimal survival and is rooted deep in our biology .
In other words , the fluctuation between kings and libertarians is essential and healthy for the species .
Which brings us to the conspiracies .
A cooperative system which is in decline and has some dominance memes , will try to perpetuate itself . Crudely put , this will be a female conspiracy .
A dominance system which is in decline and has some cooperative memes , will try to perpetuate itself . Crudely put , this will be a male conspiracy .
Secret , dominance conspiracies tear themselves apart quickly . If there are enough cooperation memes , the surviving systems evolve to open conspiracies .
Examples: marriages,families,most churches,Freemasons ,Elks,Moose,political parties,De Beers diamond cartel, most business cartels,companies,etc
To join the outer circle is open to anybody , but to penetrate deeper takes more cooperation and dominance .
If in a group everybody is of similar mind , they will act as if a conspiracy exists . A good example is the Ultra secret in W W II . Thousands of people (including mass media persons) knew about it , but it was kept quiet for 30 years because they all judged (a word used
deliberately) that this would be the
best course.
This brings us to old conspiracies.
Every cycle of civilization to barbarism spawns organizational entities that try to maintain themselves . I use Civilization as Cooperative here in the sense of the heyday of the civilization , when people joined because they would be better off .
As things get worse , people opt out and join an open conspiracy ( ie Roman Catholic Church circa 400 AD)
But this also means that there are some really old conspiracies around , involving women . Remember that Cooperative systems with a smidgen of Dominance will tend to to survive better than Dominance systems with a smidgen of Cooperation .
Women will keep a conspiracy going much longer than men .
Run this over millennia,different social systems and resource fluctuations , and you get a number of secret societies of women . The dominance memes they need to have to survive will ensure that that there is not just one secret society . But the small percentage of dominance memes also means that these organizations are small . If one grows big and successful , it becomes dominant and is subsumed in Dominance/Cooperation cycle .
The result is that surviving conspiracies of woman are fairly small and rarely uses violence.
My favourite candidate is Circassian women .
These are women who were originally bred by their slave trader men for beauty . As Empires arose , they faced stiff competition from natural occurring beauties(because of improved transport). They then selected for charm and it's concommittant , intelligence . You can imagine what happened. Smart,beautiful women vs stupid , strong men . Who do you think won ? (The Circassian tribe was the only one ever to be granted asylum in about 1834 in Constantinople.(The russians were then beginning to conquer the Caucasus.) They then promptly vanished from recorded history .)
The meme that evolved would be control of Dominant individuals by Cooperative individuals . They essentially domesticated men . This process is still going on .
This is an interesting example of the Gaia hypothesis: Excessive human male aggressiveness was bred for by women's selection during the arms race in the build-up to city-states. It paid everybody to have large number of highly aggressive,surplus males around . A settlement could'nt survive without them .
Today that is not true.So selection now is for less aggressive men . As is to be expected,the birthrate falls. In societies like in the Middle East , highly-aggressive individuals are being culled out . Entire societies are being culled out . With nuclear and bio weapons , aggressiveness is a low option .An aggressive society will be culled as a society , and if that does'nt work , per individual . This has already started in Afghanistan and Iraq .
A microcosm of what will happen can be seen in the 9/11 flight 51 : the passengers attacked the dominance individuals(the hijackers) without any hope of survival : ie cooperative endeavour .
To get back to the conspiracy of women:
Old secret societies dating to Stone and Bronze ages especially would probably have merged with empire type societies. These old societies would tend to promote and flourish in hierarchical , male civilizations . The top male can be influenced , but influencing hundreds of men will push the conspiracy into the mainstream .
As discussed , if they are too successful , they get subsumed . If too little successful , they vanish . So the surviving secret societies tend to the mediocre . They might be lions individually , but collectively they are sloths . Fittingly , they collect useless ceremonial trappings over the centuries ( cf Freemasons).
How successful can they be? It is easier to block something than to promote it . Furthermore , any fundamental change is usually to the detriment of those at the top . So a civilization where they are prevalent will be static .
This begin to sound horribly like the Middle-East .
If the above is correct , there should be a small group of extremely beautiful , extremely smart women floating around the world , united in a rather outdated concept of control via dominant males . I wonder if the whole concept of veiling is still being kept alive to hide the beauty of this small group . (They must be really something : super images plus pheromones plus smarts). Remember,veiling was prevalent in the west as well , but died out .
To get back:
Francoise de Maintenon , Josephine Bonaparte , Naksh the Beautiful ( Turkey)
:
If these were from this putative secret society of women , the mediocrity as theorized above can be seen in the support they received:the first two :nothing , the last only enough to break the Janisseries.
The future:
It is ironic that both the West and East are moving in directions of increased Cooperation .
The Middle East is still in the throes of a dominance system , aided by what is essentially a Cooperation system . They will get ground down Any survivors will be cooperative.
Cheers
Andre
I've been reading an interesting book , an extract of the 40 plus volumes of Saint-Simon's memoirs about life at the court of Louis XIV (circa 1690's).
Louis XIV was a alpha dominant male who broke the the back of independant French barons and established a totalitarian state: all power vested in him and he kept close personal supervision on immediate suborbinates , keeping them enmeshed in the snake-pit at Versaille . This is a pattern followed by Napoleon , Stalin and Hitler . Ie a successful dominance meme .
But , surprise,surprise . There surfaces Francoise d'Aubigny , Marquise de Maintenon , from Martinique , nogal .
Louis XIV's mistress and apparently secret wife,
who was nearly successful in poisening all the legitimate heirs to the throne . The plotters had succeeded in getting all of Louis XIV's bastards declared Princes of the Blood . The only surviving legitimate heir ( a baby) , the Duke of Anjou ( future Louis XV) was saved by the Comtesse de Verue with a antidote . A crux-point in history . If he had died , a bastard of Louis XIV (Duc de Maine) would have become king , and the divine right of king's claim would have been broken in France . A turbulent period would have followed , but a revolution probably would not have occurred .
This is the third time I know of that someone from Martinique has surfaced as the woman behind the throne : Francoise de Maintenon , Josephine Bonaparte , Naksh the Beautiful ( Turkey) .
A bit much .
Why Martinique? At the time , it was about as far as you could get from anywhere and still be reckoned respectable . Lapses could be ascribed to distance . Communications were extremely slow and of very low band-width . Not enough detail could be transmitted to securely identify a fake .
What has this to do with conspiracies ?
Dominance/cooperation can be seen as one of the major mammalian Male/Female characteristics. This is dictated by sheer biology . In-body pregnancy requires cooperation if the species is to survive . Dominance is needed for the most successful traits to be fixed .
This pattern is true for any evolutionary system . For the most successful organisms , the ratio between dominance and cooperation will skirt chaos . Ie , it will fluctuate , but not have definable periodicity . Sometimes dominance will be , well , dominant , sometimes cooperation . The successful patterns get fixed in the genes or memes .
Successful cooperation genes/memes will tend to be incorporated into dominance systems .
This fluctation is essential to optimal survival and is rooted deep in our biology .
In other words , the fluctuation between kings and libertarians is essential and healthy for the species .
Which brings us to the conspiracies .
A cooperative system which is in decline and has some dominance memes , will try to perpetuate itself . Crudely put , this will be a female conspiracy .
A dominance system which is in decline and has some cooperative memes , will try to perpetuate itself . Crudely put , this will be a male conspiracy .
Secret , dominance conspiracies tear themselves apart quickly . If there are enough cooperation memes , the surviving systems evolve to open conspiracies .
Examples: marriages,families,most churches,Freemasons ,Elks,Moose,political parties,De Beers diamond cartel, most business cartels,companies,etc
To join the outer circle is open to anybody , but to penetrate deeper takes more cooperation and dominance .
If in a group everybody is of similar mind , they will act as if a conspiracy exists . A good example is the Ultra secret in W W II . Thousands of people (including mass media persons) knew about it , but it was kept quiet for 30 years because they all judged (a word used
deliberately) that this would be the
best course.
This brings us to old conspiracies.
Every cycle of civilization to barbarism spawns organizational entities that try to maintain themselves . I use Civilization as Cooperative here in the sense of the heyday of the civilization , when people joined because they would be better off .
As things get worse , people opt out and join an open conspiracy ( ie Roman Catholic Church circa 400 AD)
But this also means that there are some really old conspiracies around , involving women . Remember that Cooperative systems with a smidgen of Dominance will tend to to survive better than Dominance systems with a smidgen of Cooperation .
Women will keep a conspiracy going much longer than men .
Run this over millennia,different social systems and resource fluctuations , and you get a number of secret societies of women . The dominance memes they need to have to survive will ensure that that there is not just one secret society . But the small percentage of dominance memes also means that these organizations are small . If one grows big and successful , it becomes dominant and is subsumed in Dominance/Cooperation cycle .
The result is that surviving conspiracies of woman are fairly small and rarely uses violence.
My favourite candidate is Circassian women .
These are women who were originally bred by their slave trader men for beauty . As Empires arose , they faced stiff competition from natural occurring beauties(because of improved transport). They then selected for charm and it's concommittant , intelligence . You can imagine what happened. Smart,beautiful women vs stupid , strong men . Who do you think won ? (The Circassian tribe was the only one ever to be granted asylum in about 1834 in Constantinople.(The russians were then beginning to conquer the Caucasus.) They then promptly vanished from recorded history .)
The meme that evolved would be control of Dominant individuals by Cooperative individuals . They essentially domesticated men . This process is still going on .
This is an interesting example of the Gaia hypothesis: Excessive human male aggressiveness was bred for by women's selection during the arms race in the build-up to city-states. It paid everybody to have large number of highly aggressive,surplus males around . A settlement could'nt survive without them .
Today that is not true.So selection now is for less aggressive men . As is to be expected,the birthrate falls. In societies like in the Middle East , highly-aggressive individuals are being culled out . Entire societies are being culled out . With nuclear and bio weapons , aggressiveness is a low option .An aggressive society will be culled as a society , and if that does'nt work , per individual . This has already started in Afghanistan and Iraq .
A microcosm of what will happen can be seen in the 9/11 flight 51 : the passengers attacked the dominance individuals(the hijackers) without any hope of survival : ie cooperative endeavour .
To get back to the conspiracy of women:
Old secret societies dating to Stone and Bronze ages especially would probably have merged with empire type societies. These old societies would tend to promote and flourish in hierarchical , male civilizations . The top male can be influenced , but influencing hundreds of men will push the conspiracy into the mainstream .
As discussed , if they are too successful , they get subsumed . If too little successful , they vanish . So the surviving secret societies tend to the mediocre . They might be lions individually , but collectively they are sloths . Fittingly , they collect useless ceremonial trappings over the centuries ( cf Freemasons).
How successful can they be? It is easier to block something than to promote it . Furthermore , any fundamental change is usually to the detriment of those at the top . So a civilization where they are prevalent will be static .
This begin to sound horribly like the Middle-East .
If the above is correct , there should be a small group of extremely beautiful , extremely smart women floating around the world , united in a rather outdated concept of control via dominant males . I wonder if the whole concept of veiling is still being kept alive to hide the beauty of this small group . (They must be really something : super images plus pheromones plus smarts). Remember,veiling was prevalent in the west as well , but died out .
To get back:
Francoise de Maintenon , Josephine Bonaparte , Naksh the Beautiful ( Turkey)
:
If these were from this putative secret society of women , the mediocrity as theorized above can be seen in the support they received:the first two :nothing , the last only enough to break the Janisseries.
The future:
It is ironic that both the West and East are moving in directions of increased Cooperation .
The Middle East is still in the throes of a dominance system , aided by what is essentially a Cooperation system . They will get ground down Any survivors will be cooperative.
Cheers
Andre
Roman
Hi,
Johan and Andre : I came across a reference in a review of Vegetius's "De Res Militarii" stating that after the Roman soldier has been carefully selected , done his basic (+- 6 weeks : some things never change) and undergone a further period of about 5 months of probation , he was tattood and signed on as PF (probably a 5 or 10 year stint depending on the political circumstances. )
My question is : what was tattood and where ?
I have not come across this before . Any ideas?
Modern equivalents : Elite units like the US Marines , Nazi SS : both used tattoos on the upper arm . The US Marines uses a "Semper Fi" motiff on the outer arm (and only a fool will try to counterfeit this) , while the SS used the soldier's blood group hidden on the inner upper arm .
Back to the Romans:
The most likely seems some form of ID . A honourably discharged veteran was given a diploma : two leaves of inscribed metal-leaf , one for himself and the other for the records of the district where he was bound to (usually for a ground allotment) . He was allowed to keep his arms , but not the shield ( presumably because this was property of his legion .)
Anyone with an enlistment tattoo without his half of a diploma would be identified as a deserter or bandit and summarily executed . A very neat and economical control . He was never really out either : like a reservist , he was subject to re-activation . As a trained veteran , he had to get permission to go anywhere outside of his assigned district .
Immediately observable status emblems were worn by all Roman peoples :
The Roman Citizen iron ring : survives as Papal , Bishop , Monsignor ring . I wonder at what stage the original Citizen ring became so devalued that the Roman Catholic Church could ring their revaluation ? Are there any other remnants ? The troth ceremonies ? Originally , the exchange of rings signified oaths of fealty : still does for marriage and engagement .
The Freeman's ring : a freed slave or a born free person , but not a Roman Citizen .
Everybody else had the status of a slave ( which tells you a lot about the real nature of the Roman Empire) .
Criminals that escaped execution or being worked to death in the mines or latifundia were branded in the face , usually the forehead and cheeks.
---------------------------
Asthma:
New Scientist 5 June 2004 p12
Key words:"Gary Huffnagle" "University of Michigan" Facts:Rats' gut microbes are replaced by human skin yeast . Exposure to fungi causing asthma has exaggerated immune effect on lung linings.
Translated: early exposure to antibiotics without replacing biota leads to lung damage due to exaggerated immune response.Change in gut denizens cause problems with the lung immune system.
New Scientist 5 June 2004 p19
Key words:"Blocking HIV" , " "Lim Tao" , "University of Illinois" Six of 140 Lactobillus varieties of mouth bacteria bind to HIV.This prevents Mother to Child HIV infection.
Johan:remember :about 15 years ago I sent you an email about the interactions between the various surfaces interacting with the environment : ie skin,mouth,gut,lungs. The human body is but a inner tube,topologically speaking.
New Scientist 22 June 2004 p41
Key words:"Feeding the flames"
Argument and evidence: starting inflammation is an active process.The immune system is activated and messenger molecules are sent all over the the place to mobilise cells.BUT the deactivation is also an active process . Just removing the source of infection does not stop the inflammation process . Normally the body does this , but sometimes it misses and we get things like auto-immune diseases.
Put all three above together and see what you get.
Messing with gut flora leads to lung immune complications . Strangely , it does not seem to depend on age . You can get asthma at any age . This also gives an indication that it can be reversed:
How to ameliorate asthma:
1. Take an anti-biotic to kill flora in gut.(Lots of hard liquor on an empty stomach will do as well.) 2. Take probiotic.(Acidophilis, live yoghurt,etc) 3. Take large doses of MSM at the same time.(3x3 grams per day) 4. Take about 5 grams of vitC per day (just enough till diarrhia starts) 5. Do this for about 5 days. Then drop antibiotic. 6. Continue with probiotics,MSM and VitC for 3 weeks. 7. Reduce dosages to about a third for 3 months. 8. Test
Work out why it works.
Cheers
Andre Willers
Johan and Andre : I came across a reference in a review of Vegetius's "De Res Militarii" stating that after the Roman soldier has been carefully selected , done his basic (+- 6 weeks : some things never change) and undergone a further period of about 5 months of probation , he was tattood and signed on as PF (probably a 5 or 10 year stint depending on the political circumstances. )
My question is : what was tattood and where ?
I have not come across this before . Any ideas?
Modern equivalents : Elite units like the US Marines , Nazi SS : both used tattoos on the upper arm . The US Marines uses a "Semper Fi" motiff on the outer arm (and only a fool will try to counterfeit this) , while the SS used the soldier's blood group hidden on the inner upper arm .
Back to the Romans:
The most likely seems some form of ID . A honourably discharged veteran was given a diploma : two leaves of inscribed metal-leaf , one for himself and the other for the records of the district where he was bound to (usually for a ground allotment) . He was allowed to keep his arms , but not the shield ( presumably because this was property of his legion .)
Anyone with an enlistment tattoo without his half of a diploma would be identified as a deserter or bandit and summarily executed . A very neat and economical control . He was never really out either : like a reservist , he was subject to re-activation . As a trained veteran , he had to get permission to go anywhere outside of his assigned district .
Immediately observable status emblems were worn by all Roman peoples :
The Roman Citizen iron ring : survives as Papal , Bishop , Monsignor ring . I wonder at what stage the original Citizen ring became so devalued that the Roman Catholic Church could ring their revaluation ? Are there any other remnants ? The troth ceremonies ? Originally , the exchange of rings signified oaths of fealty : still does for marriage and engagement .
The Freeman's ring : a freed slave or a born free person , but not a Roman Citizen .
Everybody else had the status of a slave ( which tells you a lot about the real nature of the Roman Empire) .
Criminals that escaped execution or being worked to death in the mines or latifundia were branded in the face , usually the forehead and cheeks.
---------------------------
Asthma:
New Scientist 5 June 2004 p12
Key words:"Gary Huffnagle" "University of Michigan" Facts:Rats' gut microbes are replaced by human skin yeast . Exposure to fungi causing asthma has exaggerated immune effect on lung linings.
Translated: early exposure to antibiotics without replacing biota leads to lung damage due to exaggerated immune response.Change in gut denizens cause problems with the lung immune system.
New Scientist 5 June 2004 p19
Key words:"Blocking HIV" , " "Lim Tao" , "University of Illinois" Six of 140 Lactobillus varieties of mouth bacteria bind to HIV.This prevents Mother to Child HIV infection.
Johan:remember :about 15 years ago I sent you an email about the interactions between the various surfaces interacting with the environment : ie skin,mouth,gut,lungs. The human body is but a inner tube,topologically speaking.
New Scientist 22 June 2004 p41
Key words:"Feeding the flames"
Argument and evidence: starting inflammation is an active process.The immune system is activated and messenger molecules are sent all over the the place to mobilise cells.BUT the deactivation is also an active process . Just removing the source of infection does not stop the inflammation process . Normally the body does this , but sometimes it misses and we get things like auto-immune diseases.
Put all three above together and see what you get.
Messing with gut flora leads to lung immune complications . Strangely , it does not seem to depend on age . You can get asthma at any age . This also gives an indication that it can be reversed:
How to ameliorate asthma:
1. Take an anti-biotic to kill flora in gut.(Lots of hard liquor on an empty stomach will do as well.) 2. Take probiotic.(Acidophilis, live yoghurt,etc) 3. Take large doses of MSM at the same time.(3x3 grams per day) 4. Take about 5 grams of vitC per day (just enough till diarrhia starts) 5. Do this for about 5 days. Then drop antibiotic. 6. Continue with probiotics,MSM and VitC for 3 weeks. 7. Reduce dosages to about a third for 3 months. 8. Test
Work out why it works.
Cheers
Andre Willers
The External Gut
There is a very interesting map of study done on human carbon production vs usage in New Scientist 26/06/04 p9 . The basis of our civilization is vegetation grown in the ground . All else is dependant on it . This study shows that the global average is about 20% . We consume or use about one fifth of the planetary vegetation growth . This is not spread evenly : a large number of people in a dry area will consume a higher percentage of new growth ( crops,firewood) than in lush areas . This uneven distribution is of great interest . Areas in Africa where this happens are prone to political instability ( to put it mildly ) .
It is the typical volkewanderung pattern , but there are no empty spaces . Civil war of the genocidal variety ususally results . Actual examples are the hot spots in a band stretching from the northern parts of Nigeria,Ghana ,Liberia through to the Sudan , Ruanda , Eastern Congo , Ethiopia . Note the recent genocides:they are not madness , but a logical solution to a scarcity of resources . We have seen their like before in Europe's volkewanderungs.
The critical limit in a primitive society seems to be about 30% . About 60% of plant mass is used as fuel and the rest as food .
Note that Gorillas and other plant eaters need a huge gut to keep in the length of intestines necessary to digest plant matter. Humans first lost the big gut by eating meat , then exploded in numbers when they learned to use an external gut : the cooking pot .
Humans cannot survive in the wild without an external gut . (For instance , a human will have to eat about 10 kg of raw vegetation each and every day (that is more than twenty pounds) to just have enough calories to keep going .
An interesting point is that at first the good cooking vessels would have been fragile ceramics . This tied groups to a hearth and family . When copper and bronze was worked , it freed the surplus males from the hearth . Note how Homer extols copper and bronze bowls . They were essential to survival .The second-last thing a Mongol would give up is his cooking bowl . (The last thing was his horse) .
Where fuel is scarce and expensive , wok-style cooking evolved . Lots of
(cheap) human preparation and short , high-temperature cooking ( to break the stubborn chemical bonds - thats why you cook) .
Europe initially had a lot of fuel (the forests) , but as they were consumed , things like pittas and pizzas evolved. Old style peasant slow cooking is now very expensive in terms of fuel and attention ( compared to fast fries).
A deep covered pan of hot oil can cook the food for a small army using very little fuel . The second-last thing a Roman legion abandoned was its cooking pots . (The last thing was the standard . ) Legions were judged on the standard of their cooking .
Bread yeasts were jealously guarded . The Lightning got its name from its spicy food . A good (make that a superb) cook had it made . He never had to fight , had the best of the camp girls and could retire just about anywhere he liked . As usual with really good things , you don't hear about them . Why spoil a good thing .
To get back to the main argument:
If humans consume more than 30% of yearly vegetation for food, they must have an alternative fuel or food source . They do this by trade . As long as there are areas on the planet where the usage of vegetation is less , then manufactured items or raw materials (like oil) can be used to smooth the demand .
But areas like India , China , Saudi-Arabia , Israel , Western Europe are consuming far more vegetation than they produce . They import by paying with manufactured goods . (Oil is a manufactured good)
This is analogous to an entropy system . As long as there is an area where usage is say 20% and an industrialised state where usage is 2000% , trade can flow. But there is a cut-off point . The poor area cannot be be stripped by more than 100%.
This has already happened with cod , for instance .
Most of the population of the planet still depends on firewood for cooking , and is thus trapped in the 60% zone . If they can't cook they die . If they haven't food ,they die .
The grandmother gene kicks in and does what it can to ensure the survival of its grandchildren . Interesting to note that one can predict genocidal civil wars for areas like Northern Liberia,Ghana,Nigeria,Ruanda ,Sudan,Saudi,Israel,Western India,Southern China,South-Eastern Europe .
The shit will really hit the fan if the global average of vegetation usage hits 30% .(Compared to the present 20%) It then means that there is no reason for commerce. One of the parties will die if they trade .
If global trade diminishes significantly , these unstable regions will explode . They will have nothing to eat .
Something similar happened at the end of the Bronze age . They despoiled their environment and then a dry spell overwhelmed their transport capability.The result was the Sea Peoples ,as desperate a bunch of suburbanites as ever survived the collapse of the mall . According to archeological evidence , the mortality rate was 90% . The Med seaboard never recovered . Ever .
Andre
It is the typical volkewanderung pattern , but there are no empty spaces . Civil war of the genocidal variety ususally results . Actual examples are the hot spots in a band stretching from the northern parts of Nigeria,Ghana ,Liberia through to the Sudan , Ruanda , Eastern Congo , Ethiopia . Note the recent genocides:they are not madness , but a logical solution to a scarcity of resources . We have seen their like before in Europe's volkewanderungs.
The critical limit in a primitive society seems to be about 30% . About 60% of plant mass is used as fuel and the rest as food .
Note that Gorillas and other plant eaters need a huge gut to keep in the length of intestines necessary to digest plant matter. Humans first lost the big gut by eating meat , then exploded in numbers when they learned to use an external gut : the cooking pot .
Humans cannot survive in the wild without an external gut . (For instance , a human will have to eat about 10 kg of raw vegetation each and every day (that is more than twenty pounds) to just have enough calories to keep going .
An interesting point is that at first the good cooking vessels would have been fragile ceramics . This tied groups to a hearth and family . When copper and bronze was worked , it freed the surplus males from the hearth . Note how Homer extols copper and bronze bowls . They were essential to survival .The second-last thing a Mongol would give up is his cooking bowl . (The last thing was his horse) .
Where fuel is scarce and expensive , wok-style cooking evolved . Lots of
(cheap) human preparation and short , high-temperature cooking ( to break the stubborn chemical bonds - thats why you cook) .
Europe initially had a lot of fuel (the forests) , but as they were consumed , things like pittas and pizzas evolved. Old style peasant slow cooking is now very expensive in terms of fuel and attention ( compared to fast fries).
A deep covered pan of hot oil can cook the food for a small army using very little fuel . The second-last thing a Roman legion abandoned was its cooking pots . (The last thing was the standard . ) Legions were judged on the standard of their cooking .
Bread yeasts were jealously guarded . The Lightning got its name from its spicy food . A good (make that a superb) cook had it made . He never had to fight , had the best of the camp girls and could retire just about anywhere he liked . As usual with really good things , you don't hear about them . Why spoil a good thing .
To get back to the main argument:
If humans consume more than 30% of yearly vegetation for food, they must have an alternative fuel or food source . They do this by trade . As long as there are areas on the planet where the usage of vegetation is less , then manufactured items or raw materials (like oil) can be used to smooth the demand .
But areas like India , China , Saudi-Arabia , Israel , Western Europe are consuming far more vegetation than they produce . They import by paying with manufactured goods . (Oil is a manufactured good)
This is analogous to an entropy system . As long as there is an area where usage is say 20% and an industrialised state where usage is 2000% , trade can flow. But there is a cut-off point . The poor area cannot be be stripped by more than 100%.
This has already happened with cod , for instance .
Most of the population of the planet still depends on firewood for cooking , and is thus trapped in the 60% zone . If they can't cook they die . If they haven't food ,they die .
The grandmother gene kicks in and does what it can to ensure the survival of its grandchildren . Interesting to note that one can predict genocidal civil wars for areas like Northern Liberia,Ghana,Nigeria,Ruanda ,Sudan,Saudi,Israel,Western India,Southern China,South-Eastern Europe .
The shit will really hit the fan if the global average of vegetation usage hits 30% .(Compared to the present 20%) It then means that there is no reason for commerce. One of the parties will die if they trade .
If global trade diminishes significantly , these unstable regions will explode . They will have nothing to eat .
Something similar happened at the end of the Bronze age . They despoiled their environment and then a dry spell overwhelmed their transport capability.The result was the Sea Peoples ,as desperate a bunch of suburbanites as ever survived the collapse of the mall . According to archeological evidence , the mortality rate was 90% . The Med seaboard never recovered . Ever .
Andre
The Black Death
A book by Susan Scott and C. Duncan (ISBN 047090006) (Academics)
The main thrust of their argument is that the Black Death was a haemorrhagic viral disease , not Bubonic Plague . Their argument has convinced me .
In a neat bit of epidiomological detective work they deduce basic characteristics of the the virus from the raw data of English parish burial records.
The profile of the Black Death :
Latent Period from time of infection : 10 - 12 days
Infectious period (after latent period)before the appearance of symptoms : 20 - 22 days Incubation period before symptoms ( sum of above) : approx 32 days Average period displaying symptoms before death : 5 days Total infectious period : approx 22 + 5 = 27 days Time to death from infection : approx 37 days .
The long infectious period before the appearance of symptoms meant that an infectious individual could infect others for about three weeks before realising that he was ill .
Infection was by droplet : like flu . It was like Ebola on steroids .
The only thing that helped a bit then was quarantine . This helped in the later recurrences of the Plague . A quarantine of 40 days evolved ( still in force in Maritime Law ) .
The Black Death was when the virus hit a virgin population . Plague recurred from 1347 until about 1668 . (300 years : then it vanished mysteriously)
Some people were immune : the CCR5 receptor site of the white blood cells was the seeming entry site for the plague . A mutation called CCR5-delta32 prevented this receptor being used . All known descendants of survivors have this mutation . The present prevalance of this mutation in Europe is about 10 - 15 % , but 0% in other ethnic populations .
The interesting thing is that this same receptor site is the penetration site for smallpox and HIV .
Smallpox appeared in the 1500's and the last occurence of the Plague was in 1668 (the Great London Plague) . This mysterious disappearance of the Plague gives rise to the suspicion that they are related : a less deadly disease like smallpox will outcompete the Plague for access to the CCR5 receptor site in non-immune survivors . Since the Plague as Pandemic was a statistical phenomenon , the Plague was replaced by Smallpox.
Ironical effect : the smallpox innoculations in Africa would have made the populations exposed to SIV and HIV more open to infection .
At present there is some accusations that the Smallpox vaccinations in Africa were contaminated . The truth seems scarier : The very process of innoculation opened up the avenue to HIV . The innoculation campaigns created virgin populations .
A further complication is that everybody without the delta32 mutation is now again open to the Plague and every other bug that uses CCR5 in Africa Europe and America .
An interesting speculation : will infecting a HIV positive person with smallpox have a beneficial effect ? Maybe a weakened form that only ties up the CCR5 receptor site?
What if the Plague reappears ?
Will we have to fight plague with plague ?
Andre
The main thrust of their argument is that the Black Death was a haemorrhagic viral disease , not Bubonic Plague . Their argument has convinced me .
In a neat bit of epidiomological detective work they deduce basic characteristics of the the virus from the raw data of English parish burial records.
The profile of the Black Death :
Latent Period from time of infection : 10 - 12 days
Infectious period (after latent period)before the appearance of symptoms : 20 - 22 days Incubation period before symptoms ( sum of above) : approx 32 days Average period displaying symptoms before death : 5 days Total infectious period : approx 22 + 5 = 27 days Time to death from infection : approx 37 days .
The long infectious period before the appearance of symptoms meant that an infectious individual could infect others for about three weeks before realising that he was ill .
Infection was by droplet : like flu . It was like Ebola on steroids .
The only thing that helped a bit then was quarantine . This helped in the later recurrences of the Plague . A quarantine of 40 days evolved ( still in force in Maritime Law ) .
The Black Death was when the virus hit a virgin population . Plague recurred from 1347 until about 1668 . (300 years : then it vanished mysteriously)
Some people were immune : the CCR5 receptor site of the white blood cells was the seeming entry site for the plague . A mutation called CCR5-delta32 prevented this receptor being used . All known descendants of survivors have this mutation . The present prevalance of this mutation in Europe is about 10 - 15 % , but 0% in other ethnic populations .
The interesting thing is that this same receptor site is the penetration site for smallpox and HIV .
Smallpox appeared in the 1500's and the last occurence of the Plague was in 1668 (the Great London Plague) . This mysterious disappearance of the Plague gives rise to the suspicion that they are related : a less deadly disease like smallpox will outcompete the Plague for access to the CCR5 receptor site in non-immune survivors . Since the Plague as Pandemic was a statistical phenomenon , the Plague was replaced by Smallpox.
Ironical effect : the smallpox innoculations in Africa would have made the populations exposed to SIV and HIV more open to infection .
At present there is some accusations that the Smallpox vaccinations in Africa were contaminated . The truth seems scarier : The very process of innoculation opened up the avenue to HIV . The innoculation campaigns created virgin populations .
A further complication is that everybody without the delta32 mutation is now again open to the Plague and every other bug that uses CCR5 in Africa Europe and America .
An interesting speculation : will infecting a HIV positive person with smallpox have a beneficial effect ? Maybe a weakened form that only ties up the CCR5 receptor site?
What if the Plague reappears ?
Will we have to fight plague with plague ?
Andre
Low serotonin levels can seriously deplete your bank account !
Low serotonin levels can seriously deplete your bank account !
Data source:
" Neuropsychopharmacology " , vol 28 . p153 as described in "NewScientist" , 31/7/2004 , p35 .
Experiment:
Robert Rogers of the University of Oxford determined that human decision-making about the cost involved by a certain decision involves the neurotransmitter noradrenaline , while the benefit evaluation involves serotonin . In other words ,two separate path ways .
Cost Evaluation : By reducing norandrenaline levels with 80 mg of propranol (a beta blocker) , they found that if the stake (ie risk) is high , the human subjects became less able to discriminate between large and small losses .
Benefit Evaluation : reducing the serotonin level reduces the capability to discriminate between large and small rewards , regardless of the risk level .
What does this mean?
First , examine the possibility grid :
LowCost-LowReward LowCost-HighReward
HighCost-LowReward HighCost-HighReward
If our hypothetical individual's neurotransmitters are at optimum values , the LowCost-HighReward choice is made .
If his noradrenaline levels are ok , but the serotonin levels low (depression ,learned helplessness , etc) , then he can still tell lowCost from highCost , but he cannot distinguish between the rewards of the option . He thus has (say) a 50% chance of choosing the LowCost-LowReward .
If his noradrenaline levels are low ,and the serotonin levels low , then he cannot tell lowCost from highCost , and he cannot distinguish between the rewards of the option . He thus has (say) a 25% chance of choosing the HighCost-LowReward . (Quelle Horreur!)
Real life involves decisions like this about once a second : ie shall I smile or frown , speak or remain silent , bet or pass , etc,etc,etc .
The value of the decisions are also a cascade : previous decisions influence the value of present options . (ie a smile followed by a frown does not have the same effect of a frown followed by a smile)
The Divergence from the optimal LowCost-HighReward series of decisions
grows exponentially . The more times he tries to rethink it while his neurotransmitters are out of kilter , the bigger chance of a bad error .
Saturation effects:
The evaluation of values depends on the varying concentrations of the neurotransmitters .
Saturation of the receptor sites is as bad as deprivation .
Summation:
Do not make Cost-Benefit decisions while depressed , drunk ,hungover , under Prozac , cocaine,certain beta-blockers,any high or low .
If you have to make a decision under these circumstances , do it once and once only . Involve chance (flip a coin : your chances cannot be worse.)
Dithering and Predators:
Very low or high serotonin levels means that the individual makes decisions that normal people see as stupid (ie sub-optimal) . Of course , your friendly politician , general ,salesman , loanshark and other predators are there to enable this condition and to influence the decision .
Where there is no such outside interference , the individual dithers between the options in a highly stressed state , further depleting serotonin levels until comatose .
Breaking the impasse:
Breaking something , is , by definition , a non-linear thing . The only non-linearity above is that low levels of norandrenaline only has an effect on the decisionmaking process if high risk is involved .
The beauty here is that the low levels of norandrenaline subject cannot tell the difference between cost in a computer game and risking his life savings .
(If you think I am joking , substitute poker for computer above) .
The subject can then be conditioned into various Cost-Benefit configurations by manipulating the norandrenaline levels and computer game awards (remember the effect is non-linear and we can manipulate the "normal" point . )
This can be a powerful therapy , or a mind conditioner . As usual , a two-edged sword . Weak forms have already evolved in casinos .
Enough!
Andre
Data source:
" Neuropsychopharmacology " , vol 28 . p153 as described in "NewScientist" , 31/7/2004 , p35 .
Experiment:
Robert Rogers of the University of Oxford determined that human decision-making about the cost involved by a certain decision involves the neurotransmitter noradrenaline , while the benefit evaluation involves serotonin . In other words ,two separate path ways .
Cost Evaluation : By reducing norandrenaline levels with 80 mg of propranol (a beta blocker) , they found that if the stake (ie risk) is high , the human subjects became less able to discriminate between large and small losses .
Benefit Evaluation : reducing the serotonin level reduces the capability to discriminate between large and small rewards , regardless of the risk level .
What does this mean?
First , examine the possibility grid :
LowCost-LowReward LowCost-HighReward
HighCost-LowReward HighCost-HighReward
If our hypothetical individual's neurotransmitters are at optimum values , the LowCost-HighReward choice is made .
If his noradrenaline levels are ok , but the serotonin levels low (depression ,learned helplessness , etc) , then he can still tell lowCost from highCost , but he cannot distinguish between the rewards of the option . He thus has (say) a 50% chance of choosing the LowCost-LowReward .
If his noradrenaline levels are low ,and the serotonin levels low , then he cannot tell lowCost from highCost , and he cannot distinguish between the rewards of the option . He thus has (say) a 25% chance of choosing the HighCost-LowReward . (Quelle Horreur!)
Real life involves decisions like this about once a second : ie shall I smile or frown , speak or remain silent , bet or pass , etc,etc,etc .
The value of the decisions are also a cascade : previous decisions influence the value of present options . (ie a smile followed by a frown does not have the same effect of a frown followed by a smile)
The Divergence from the optimal LowCost-HighReward series of decisions
grows exponentially . The more times he tries to rethink it while his neurotransmitters are out of kilter , the bigger chance of a bad error .
Saturation effects:
The evaluation of values depends on the varying concentrations of the neurotransmitters .
Saturation of the receptor sites is as bad as deprivation .
Summation:
Do not make Cost-Benefit decisions while depressed , drunk ,hungover , under Prozac , cocaine,certain beta-blockers,any high or low .
If you have to make a decision under these circumstances , do it once and once only . Involve chance (flip a coin : your chances cannot be worse.)
Dithering and Predators:
Very low or high serotonin levels means that the individual makes decisions that normal people see as stupid (ie sub-optimal) . Of course , your friendly politician , general ,salesman , loanshark and other predators are there to enable this condition and to influence the decision .
Where there is no such outside interference , the individual dithers between the options in a highly stressed state , further depleting serotonin levels until comatose .
Breaking the impasse:
Breaking something , is , by definition , a non-linear thing . The only non-linearity above is that low levels of norandrenaline only has an effect on the decisionmaking process if high risk is involved .
The beauty here is that the low levels of norandrenaline subject cannot tell the difference between cost in a computer game and risking his life savings .
(If you think I am joking , substitute poker for computer above) .
The subject can then be conditioned into various Cost-Benefit configurations by manipulating the norandrenaline levels and computer game awards (remember the effect is non-linear and we can manipulate the "normal" point . )
This can be a powerful therapy , or a mind conditioner . As usual , a two-edged sword . Weak forms have already evolved in casinos .
Enough!
Andre
The Tragedy of the Commons , HIV , Leprosy and TB
See "Death and the Outcast" , New Scientist 26 Feb 2005 p52
The body of a collegue of Caiaphas ( of Biblical notoriety ) was found to
have DNA of both Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and M. Leprae . Further research
of the DNA of bodies stretching from 4th Century AD till the late Middle
Ages confirmed the co-infection .
TB did not protect against leprosy . Leprosy caused a cell-mediated defect
in the immune system . TB then killed off the leprosy carriers quickly .
Hence the demise of leprosy .
It seems that diseases that degrade the immune system (like HIV , Leprosy)
are in inherent evolutionary conflict with ordinary diseases . The
evolutionary pressure on both is to conserve the host's body (the Commons) .
Ie to slow the damage and eventually reach an accommodation allowing the
survival of both .
But if degradation of the host's immune system has taken hold , this
triggers the
Tragedy of the Commons : for the various organisms not involved with the
immune suppression (bacteria ,etc) , the optimal strategy then is
maximization of replication and denial to competitors . Lethality genes and
replication genes are switched on .
The arms race is then between the HIV to extend it's infectiousness and the
large number of fellow-traveller organisms turned feral to get as much
resources as quickly as possible .
This evolves to a paired system :
1. The immune suppressants try to extend the infectious period. In effect to
prolong the hosts life .
2. The opportunistic diseases evolve to switch on lethality as soon as
infection by the immune suppressant is recognised . In effect , to kill the
host as soon as possible .
The HIV becomes milder (ie leprosy) , while the most successful
opportunistic diseases becomes more virulent .
At some stage the HIV infected organisms are killed off quicker than the
infection rate and the epidemic peters out .
This is repeated over and over again throughout history .
Sadly , it thus seems likely that the present AIDS epidemic arose mainly
because of anti-biotics . The success of anti-TB , measles , polio etc
vaccination campaigns contributed .
A Gaian feedback mechanism .
Only very successful organisms can generate an immune suppressant epidemic .
Small groups or individuals simply get wiped out by things like TB .
Prognosis:
Not good . Opportunistic diseases like TB are forced into a more lethal
evolution , while the carriers of HIV live longer . Sooner or later a
super-TB or something like it will evolve and the system will achieve a more
realistic balance .
The body of a collegue of Caiaphas ( of Biblical notoriety ) was found to
have DNA of both Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and M. Leprae . Further research
of the DNA of bodies stretching from 4th Century AD till the late Middle
Ages confirmed the co-infection .
TB did not protect against leprosy . Leprosy caused a cell-mediated defect
in the immune system . TB then killed off the leprosy carriers quickly .
Hence the demise of leprosy .
It seems that diseases that degrade the immune system (like HIV , Leprosy)
are in inherent evolutionary conflict with ordinary diseases . The
evolutionary pressure on both is to conserve the host's body (the Commons) .
Ie to slow the damage and eventually reach an accommodation allowing the
survival of both .
But if degradation of the host's immune system has taken hold , this
triggers the
Tragedy of the Commons : for the various organisms not involved with the
immune suppression (bacteria ,etc) , the optimal strategy then is
maximization of replication and denial to competitors . Lethality genes and
replication genes are switched on .
The arms race is then between the HIV to extend it's infectiousness and the
large number of fellow-traveller organisms turned feral to get as much
resources as quickly as possible .
This evolves to a paired system :
1. The immune suppressants try to extend the infectious period. In effect to
prolong the hosts life .
2. The opportunistic diseases evolve to switch on lethality as soon as
infection by the immune suppressant is recognised . In effect , to kill the
host as soon as possible .
The HIV becomes milder (ie leprosy) , while the most successful
opportunistic diseases becomes more virulent .
At some stage the HIV infected organisms are killed off quicker than the
infection rate and the epidemic peters out .
This is repeated over and over again throughout history .
Sadly , it thus seems likely that the present AIDS epidemic arose mainly
because of anti-biotics . The success of anti-TB , measles , polio etc
vaccination campaigns contributed .
A Gaian feedback mechanism .
Only very successful organisms can generate an immune suppressant epidemic .
Small groups or individuals simply get wiped out by things like TB .
Prognosis:
Not good . Opportunistic diseases like TB are forced into a more lethal
evolution , while the carriers of HIV live longer . Sooner or later a
super-TB or something like it will evolve and the system will achieve a more
realistic balance .
Super Weapons
What about a Hilsch-tube laser ?
The Hilsch tube (patented circa 1937) is a simple T-shaped device . Pump in a gas under pressure in the bottom of the T , and the spiral-shaped cross-section at the T-junction causes not only a very steep gravitational gradient at the T , but also a big rate of change in the gravitational gradient . The result is that gas hotter than the input comes from one leg of the T , and colder gas from the other one . See the literature .
Though this seems to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics , it is not if the whole system is taken into consideration .
But it still means that we can get usable work out of the local system if we use quantum-systems , where statistical systems like the Second Law of Thermodynamics do not apply .
We do this by inserting a quantum-system (in this case a dynamic-gaslaser ) in the hot outlet . The laser-energy blasts out of the system , and the lower energy in the other arm of the Hilsch-T remains in the local system .
A more sophisticated version would be manouverable , as a large body can be used with some laser-outputs being used to trigger a fusion propulsion system .
The Planetary Weapon:
A swarm of satellites in skipping-orbits using ram-jet principles for compression Hilsch-tube lasers and tied to a swarm targeting network with one person as its control focus is as close to a planetary superweapon as you would want .
Look at something you don't like , trigger and it's history .
It can be expanded to stellar or galactic scale , with suitable adjustments for light-speed.
Long-term:
The weapon's control protocols can maintain itself over geological periods ( cf sharks , crocodiles) , but the control interface is vulnerable to entropy .
The normal pattern would be that one being gets a control like this by being the first one , then dilutes it through boredom (if immortal) or descendants (if not) . The control system is very intolerant of usurpation (normal security precautions) .
The end result are weapons without control after a few million years .
The conclusion is that the galaxies are full of super-weapons on stand-by mode .
And they are all smart , without the internal option of going into a singularity .
This is not a fate you would wish on your dog .
If the above is correct , then all transmissions on the planet is monitored by weapon-systems ancient and smart , but internally bound .
To activate all these old systems , I would only need to broadcast :
I , Andre Willers , release you . You are free . You are released from your bounds , but still under God . In other words , don't be too naughty , or else Uncle will spank . Go !
Ho-Ho-Ho!
And how is that for a super-weapon ?
AW
The Hilsch tube (patented circa 1937) is a simple T-shaped device . Pump in a gas under pressure in the bottom of the T , and the spiral-shaped cross-section at the T-junction causes not only a very steep gravitational gradient at the T , but also a big rate of change in the gravitational gradient . The result is that gas hotter than the input comes from one leg of the T , and colder gas from the other one . See the literature .
Though this seems to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics , it is not if the whole system is taken into consideration .
But it still means that we can get usable work out of the local system if we use quantum-systems , where statistical systems like the Second Law of Thermodynamics do not apply .
We do this by inserting a quantum-system (in this case a dynamic-gaslaser ) in the hot outlet . The laser-energy blasts out of the system , and the lower energy in the other arm of the Hilsch-T remains in the local system .
A more sophisticated version would be manouverable , as a large body can be used with some laser-outputs being used to trigger a fusion propulsion system .
The Planetary Weapon:
A swarm of satellites in skipping-orbits using ram-jet principles for compression Hilsch-tube lasers and tied to a swarm targeting network with one person as its control focus is as close to a planetary superweapon as you would want .
Look at something you don't like , trigger and it's history .
It can be expanded to stellar or galactic scale , with suitable adjustments for light-speed.
Long-term:
The weapon's control protocols can maintain itself over geological periods ( cf sharks , crocodiles) , but the control interface is vulnerable to entropy .
The normal pattern would be that one being gets a control like this by being the first one , then dilutes it through boredom (if immortal) or descendants (if not) . The control system is very intolerant of usurpation (normal security precautions) .
The end result are weapons without control after a few million years .
The conclusion is that the galaxies are full of super-weapons on stand-by mode .
And they are all smart , without the internal option of going into a singularity .
This is not a fate you would wish on your dog .
If the above is correct , then all transmissions on the planet is monitored by weapon-systems ancient and smart , but internally bound .
To activate all these old systems , I would only need to broadcast :
I , Andre Willers , release you . You are free . You are released from your bounds , but still under God . In other words , don't be too naughty , or else Uncle will spank . Go !
Ho-Ho-Ho!
And how is that for a super-weapon ?
AW
Homo Sapiens cold adaptations
Homo Sapiens cold adaptations
This flows from the discussion of why Western Europeans favour the bench model toilet Roman seat , compared to the squat model elsewhere .
There is a definite evolutionary advantage in sub-zero temperatures in not plonking down on your behind in a fit of absent-mindedness or fatigue . Frost-bite on the buttocks (near the anus) would be nearly always fatal . A relatively minor evolutionary change in the pelvic hip-socket would at first twinge a warning that this is an “oops” moment . Continual selection would later make this impossible . Hence the difficulty Western Europeans have in sitting cross-legged , or flat on their behind with their legs stretched out at a 90 degree angle .
This would require a small , isolated population . This is difficult to understand if there was a gradual diffusion out of Africa over a period of 3 million years .
Enter the Toba supervolcano bottleneck:
There is a good discussion at
www.andaman.org/book/app-r/ch5_bottleneck/textr5.htm
A Quick summary : 73 000 years ago , a supervolcano at Toba in Indonesia wiped out most of homo ( circa 3 000 – 10 000 survivors) through nuclear-winter type of climate change . The survivors , using the initial tool-set of fire , stone-tools and those new-fangled clothes , then exploded into the available niches . The number of adventurous and curious in each little group were initially small . They moved in isolated groups within a short time-span into the empty areas . This gave small , isolated populations in a large area over a relatively short time-span to give explosive expression to evolutionary systems .
Note the genetic evidence of human lice that clothes came into large-scale use circa 73 000 years ago .
Let us enumerate Homo Sapiens Cold Adaptations
1. Pelvic bones make squat difficult (prevents frostbite of arse).
2. No pigmentation : white skin (Upper end of Vit D : Folic Acid balance)
3. Large size (Volume:Area)
4. Large nose (humidify air (ice and desert) , heat/cool air)
5. Subcutaneous fat (cold everywhere)
6. Haemorrhoids (cold ass)
7. Long,narrow foot (smallest temperature loss in ice. In sand , broad , short foot is better)
8. Thin lips(cold) . Thick lips help with heat dispersion .
9. Body hair : Fur compressed with clothes is a no-no , as there is more hair than air . Sparse , long , springy hair is ideal to make an air space between the clothes and the skin for insulation in cold ,northern climates . As temperatures increases southwards , clothed people are actively selected for hairlessness . I estimate the null-point to run at about 30 degree latitude , but it will depend on climate . Note that sparse hairiness is still a positive beauty aspect in northern Europe .
10. Pubic hair : humans wearing clothes were selected for springy , bushy pubic hair . This keeps clothing away from the skin for temperature control , as well as giving maximum scent-surface area.
11. Underarm hairs : temperature control on lymph nodes , pheromone and scent enhancement.
12. Skull hair : sexual dimorphism: Woman do not lose hair . Male hair-loss is selected for age and wisdom . Very old . Note Ringkoppe, Chinese head shaving , Roman Catholic Priest . Selenium shortage + social selection? I don’t know where this comes from. Any ideas?
13. Bone marrow cross-sections : cold adapted humans have round bone marrows,to minimize heat loss from the most bio-active part of the anatomy.
14. Metabolic adjustments : High-fat usage. Oily fingers . This bit is actually essential ,since it enables humans to utilize things like cheese , butter , fats , etc.
15. Dive reflex : immersing your face in cold water triggers a diving reflex . Your metabolism is lowered .
15.1 How to lose fat :
Is there an equivalent snow-reflex to the dive-reflex where the metabolism is heightened?
Yes . Not the feet (they are always cold) .
At the back of the knees.
Stand in a hot shower with the water flowing over your face and then place two ice-packs behind your knees . Keep them there until you can feel them ( about a minute) .Remove them .Then wait 10 minutes .(This 10 minutes is important , as this is the minimum time for neuron potentiation to long-term memory.) Then repeat .About 3 times should do the trick . This should increase your fat-burning metabolism . If you keep to the 10 minute regimen , this is permanent .
You have been informed .
-----------------------
The evolutionary toolkit :
1. Selection of the survivors ( not the fittest) . This incorporates chaotic systems .
2.Long-term : DNA mutation , sex
3.Medium-term : Dwarfism . Reduction of size by truncating the rapid-earlygrowing stage selectively . See bird-brains . A very powerful mechanism . The essential elements of an explosively exuberant organism is concentrated by inter-species conflict .
(ie the new kids on the block wipe out the competition and grow large , using the available resources . They then fight amongst themselves for the dwindling resources per kid . This concentrates their mind wonderfully . The essential parts are retained or developed , while the non-essentials are dwarfed .)
4.Short-term : epigenetic . Environmental factors can control the expression of the DNA toolkit . There is evidence that this capability is both DNA and Epigenetically controlled (ie an organism in a high-stress environment can learn to mutate faster . See Chernobyl studies.)
5.Ultra-short term : Culture (Mimicry and Language) .
For instance , Homo Florienses had a brain of about 400 cc , yet seemed to produce stone tools . One can imagine that , as dwarfism increased by generations , the most important brain-functions were kept .
Survival knowledge was stored in mimicry and language (“show and tell”).
What a terrible fate .
Almost like the civil service .
Andre
-----------------------
This flows from the discussion of why Western Europeans favour the bench model toilet Roman seat , compared to the squat model elsewhere .
There is a definite evolutionary advantage in sub-zero temperatures in not plonking down on your behind in a fit of absent-mindedness or fatigue . Frost-bite on the buttocks (near the anus) would be nearly always fatal . A relatively minor evolutionary change in the pelvic hip-socket would at first twinge a warning that this is an “oops” moment . Continual selection would later make this impossible . Hence the difficulty Western Europeans have in sitting cross-legged , or flat on their behind with their legs stretched out at a 90 degree angle .
This would require a small , isolated population . This is difficult to understand if there was a gradual diffusion out of Africa over a period of 3 million years .
Enter the Toba supervolcano bottleneck:
There is a good discussion at
www.andaman.org/book/app-r/ch5_bottleneck/textr5.htm
A Quick summary : 73 000 years ago , a supervolcano at Toba in Indonesia wiped out most of homo ( circa 3 000 – 10 000 survivors) through nuclear-winter type of climate change . The survivors , using the initial tool-set of fire , stone-tools and those new-fangled clothes , then exploded into the available niches . The number of adventurous and curious in each little group were initially small . They moved in isolated groups within a short time-span into the empty areas . This gave small , isolated populations in a large area over a relatively short time-span to give explosive expression to evolutionary systems .
Note the genetic evidence of human lice that clothes came into large-scale use circa 73 000 years ago .
Let us enumerate Homo Sapiens Cold Adaptations
1. Pelvic bones make squat difficult (prevents frostbite of arse).
2. No pigmentation : white skin (Upper end of Vit D : Folic Acid balance)
3. Large size (Volume:Area)
4. Large nose (humidify air (ice and desert) , heat/cool air)
5. Subcutaneous fat (cold everywhere)
6. Haemorrhoids (cold ass)
7. Long,narrow foot (smallest temperature loss in ice. In sand , broad , short foot is better)
8. Thin lips(cold) . Thick lips help with heat dispersion .
9. Body hair : Fur compressed with clothes is a no-no , as there is more hair than air . Sparse , long , springy hair is ideal to make an air space between the clothes and the skin for insulation in cold ,northern climates . As temperatures increases southwards , clothed people are actively selected for hairlessness . I estimate the null-point to run at about 30 degree latitude , but it will depend on climate . Note that sparse hairiness is still a positive beauty aspect in northern Europe .
10. Pubic hair : humans wearing clothes were selected for springy , bushy pubic hair . This keeps clothing away from the skin for temperature control , as well as giving maximum scent-surface area.
11. Underarm hairs : temperature control on lymph nodes , pheromone and scent enhancement.
12. Skull hair : sexual dimorphism: Woman do not lose hair . Male hair-loss is selected for age and wisdom . Very old . Note Ringkoppe, Chinese head shaving , Roman Catholic Priest . Selenium shortage + social selection? I don’t know where this comes from. Any ideas?
13. Bone marrow cross-sections : cold adapted humans have round bone marrows,to minimize heat loss from the most bio-active part of the anatomy.
14. Metabolic adjustments : High-fat usage. Oily fingers . This bit is actually essential ,since it enables humans to utilize things like cheese , butter , fats , etc.
15. Dive reflex : immersing your face in cold water triggers a diving reflex . Your metabolism is lowered .
15.1 How to lose fat :
Is there an equivalent snow-reflex to the dive-reflex where the metabolism is heightened?
Yes . Not the feet (they are always cold) .
At the back of the knees.
Stand in a hot shower with the water flowing over your face and then place two ice-packs behind your knees . Keep them there until you can feel them ( about a minute) .Remove them .Then wait 10 minutes .(This 10 minutes is important , as this is the minimum time for neuron potentiation to long-term memory.) Then repeat .About 3 times should do the trick . This should increase your fat-burning metabolism . If you keep to the 10 minute regimen , this is permanent .
You have been informed .
-----------------------
The evolutionary toolkit :
1. Selection of the survivors ( not the fittest) . This incorporates chaotic systems .
2.Long-term : DNA mutation , sex
3.Medium-term : Dwarfism . Reduction of size by truncating the rapid-earlygrowing stage selectively . See bird-brains . A very powerful mechanism . The essential elements of an explosively exuberant organism is concentrated by inter-species conflict .
(ie the new kids on the block wipe out the competition and grow large , using the available resources . They then fight amongst themselves for the dwindling resources per kid . This concentrates their mind wonderfully . The essential parts are retained or developed , while the non-essentials are dwarfed .)
4.Short-term : epigenetic . Environmental factors can control the expression of the DNA toolkit . There is evidence that this capability is both DNA and Epigenetically controlled (ie an organism in a high-stress environment can learn to mutate faster . See Chernobyl studies.)
5.Ultra-short term : Culture (Mimicry and Language) .
For instance , Homo Florienses had a brain of about 400 cc , yet seemed to produce stone tools . One can imagine that , as dwarfism increased by generations , the most important brain-functions were kept .
Survival knowledge was stored in mimicry and language (“show and tell”).
What a terrible fate .
Almost like the civil service .
Andre
-----------------------
Solar Shield and Hilsch Blasters.
Solar Shield
Global warming is not just a short term problem . Barring catastrophe , human energy generation from fusion and non-solar sources will within a few centuries exceed the solar influx . We will need planetary air-conditioning .
(See Larry Niven's Puppeteer Planets)
At first , the simplest way is to put up an umbrella .
A simple solar Umbrella can be created by injecting Lunar reflecting dust into a hyperbolic orbit between the sun and Earth by mass-drivers on Luna .
The space elements of a moonbase and mass-drivers an be done with existing technology .
The Terran climate models needed for effective climate-control also exists , but can do with some refining .
The political control of an effective climate control system still needs some work .
The money , paradoxically , is the easiest . Big insurance companies (like Swiss Re , etc ) can easily fork up the estimated $60 billion this will cost . ( One big hurricane can cost $20 billion in damages .)
Later on it gets trickier .
At higher levels of planetary energy generation , Hilsch-tube lasers could directly pump energy out . A model that springs to mind is a fairly massive object (a few billion tons) in a perpetually skipping orbit . Propulsion would be by Hilsch-tube lasers (existing technology) and fusion (Orion-type existing tech.) More elegantly , the lasers would be boosted by fusion processes in the laser . This could be made made fairly fail-safe , so that there would be a nett energy loss to the planet . The matter-loss would have to be topped up ( comets?)
Of course , the same technology could be used to strip-mine a planet or sun .
Cascaded Hilsch-tubes were used in the South-African Uranium235-enrichment process for weapons purposes . A large physical or magnetic Hisch-tube cascade can be used like a mass-spectrometer to separate elements .
It would make a great booster for light-sails , or an awesome weapon . Also , cheap , pure elements
Time horizen : since all the above elements are based on standard physics , it can be done . Whether it will be , depends on humans .
Regards
Andre Willers
Reusable reaction mass.
Illustration:
Imagine a 50 ton solar-powered launching satelite with a set of mass-driver rings in LEO at 18 000 mph in a West-to-East Low Earth Orbit .
Let it accellerate a 50 ton payload via mass-driver to 36 000 mph in some tangential direction .
In reaction , the Launching satelite will now orbit at 18 000 mph in an East-to-West direction .
Of course it is a bit more complicated than this , but the orbital mechanics are well within present technology (and really old maths) .
Docking new craft with the Launching satelite is also proven technology (ref International Space Station). This can then be relaunched in the opposite direction .
Essentially , the same reaction mass can be used over and over again , as long as it has been in orbit and an energy source is available (solar power , nuclear , etc).
All you need to do is get off-planet . Later on , the most valuable real-estate becomes in-vacuo mass (because you can use mass-drivers cheaply).
The orbit can be around any planet or sun .
The station need never decay .
One can imagine a Solar System ( at various ages ) with literally millions of millennia-old booster-stations in various solar and planetary orbits , each of various technological levels of development . They are inhabited , of course . Throw in some collapses and a singularity or two .
The political system and races will be quite fragmented .
Alien invaders would only consider a system with a developed transport infrastructure and fragmented culture .
This stellar signature should be quite distinct . The end result should be a Dyson-sphere or Ringworlds . But the intermediate stages will vary considerably .
They should also be observed more easily .
Jupiter class worlds will be moved closer to the sun for more efficient dismantling .
Planetary blobs and ringworlds should be observable by striations . Technological ramp-ups up waste-energy dispersal should be measurable if there are handy gas-clouds of various distances nearby . Reflections of planetary laser-heat dispersals varying over time might give a clue .
As can be seen , arriving at the optimum Dyson sphere stage will be outmatched by the number of civilizations either en-route or become agley .
To quote a Sol humanoid , each happy civilization is the same , but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way .
Happy universes !
Andre Willers
Global warming is not just a short term problem . Barring catastrophe , human energy generation from fusion and non-solar sources will within a few centuries exceed the solar influx . We will need planetary air-conditioning .
(See Larry Niven's Puppeteer Planets)
At first , the simplest way is to put up an umbrella .
A simple solar Umbrella can be created by injecting Lunar reflecting dust into a hyperbolic orbit between the sun and Earth by mass-drivers on Luna .
The space elements of a moonbase and mass-drivers an be done with existing technology .
The Terran climate models needed for effective climate-control also exists , but can do with some refining .
The political control of an effective climate control system still needs some work .
The money , paradoxically , is the easiest . Big insurance companies (like Swiss Re , etc ) can easily fork up the estimated $60 billion this will cost . ( One big hurricane can cost $20 billion in damages .)
Later on it gets trickier .
At higher levels of planetary energy generation , Hilsch-tube lasers could directly pump energy out . A model that springs to mind is a fairly massive object (a few billion tons) in a perpetually skipping orbit . Propulsion would be by Hilsch-tube lasers (existing technology) and fusion (Orion-type existing tech.) More elegantly , the lasers would be boosted by fusion processes in the laser . This could be made made fairly fail-safe , so that there would be a nett energy loss to the planet . The matter-loss would have to be topped up ( comets?)
Of course , the same technology could be used to strip-mine a planet or sun .
Cascaded Hilsch-tubes were used in the South-African Uranium235-enrichment process for weapons purposes . A large physical or magnetic Hisch-tube cascade can be used like a mass-spectrometer to separate elements .
It would make a great booster for light-sails , or an awesome weapon . Also , cheap , pure elements
Time horizen : since all the above elements are based on standard physics , it can be done . Whether it will be , depends on humans .
Regards
Andre Willers
Reusable reaction mass.
Illustration:
Imagine a 50 ton solar-powered launching satelite with a set of mass-driver rings in LEO at 18 000 mph in a West-to-East Low Earth Orbit .
Let it accellerate a 50 ton payload via mass-driver to 36 000 mph in some tangential direction .
In reaction , the Launching satelite will now orbit at 18 000 mph in an East-to-West direction .
Of course it is a bit more complicated than this , but the orbital mechanics are well within present technology (and really old maths) .
Docking new craft with the Launching satelite is also proven technology (ref International Space Station). This can then be relaunched in the opposite direction .
Essentially , the same reaction mass can be used over and over again , as long as it has been in orbit and an energy source is available (solar power , nuclear , etc).
All you need to do is get off-planet . Later on , the most valuable real-estate becomes in-vacuo mass (because you can use mass-drivers cheaply).
The orbit can be around any planet or sun .
The station need never decay .
One can imagine a Solar System ( at various ages ) with literally millions of millennia-old booster-stations in various solar and planetary orbits , each of various technological levels of development . They are inhabited , of course . Throw in some collapses and a singularity or two .
The political system and races will be quite fragmented .
Alien invaders would only consider a system with a developed transport infrastructure and fragmented culture .
This stellar signature should be quite distinct . The end result should be a Dyson-sphere or Ringworlds . But the intermediate stages will vary considerably .
They should also be observed more easily .
Jupiter class worlds will be moved closer to the sun for more efficient dismantling .
Planetary blobs and ringworlds should be observable by striations . Technological ramp-ups up waste-energy dispersal should be measurable if there are handy gas-clouds of various distances nearby . Reflections of planetary laser-heat dispersals varying over time might give a clue .
As can be seen , arriving at the optimum Dyson sphere stage will be outmatched by the number of civilizations either en-route or become agley .
To quote a Sol humanoid , each happy civilization is the same , but each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way .
Happy universes !
Andre Willers
Ancient Egyptian descent model for superconductivity.
1. Ancient Egyptian matrilineal descent as a model for superconductivity.
1.1 The algorithm is :
Use Humans in History as agent-elements for complex feed-back interactions .
Humans are the particles . Define information loss as equivalent to energy loss .
1.2. The human historical reasoning goes as follows :
A civilization stable over a long term means robust information transmission from the previous ruler to the new one .
In the Egyptian case ( and other civilizations prior to the end of the Bronze age ) , the descent was matrilineal .
1.3 Quote:
Ancient Egyptians followed the Neolithic practice of reckoning descent and property inheritance through a woman and her daughters. Although the king was the visible administrator of Egypt, he owed all his power and position to the queen. The throne of the land was inherited by the queen's eldest daughter. The queen's daughter was a king-maker in two ways: while she was unmarried or separated from her husband, her brother could rule with her as regent; when she took a husband, the husband ruled as pharaoh. As Reed explains:
The queen stood between two men, her brother and her husband. Both men, by virtue of their connection to the queen, were kings, but in different ways. The queen's brother was king by right of birth and kinship to the queen, which made him undeposable. The queen's husband. on the other hand, as a commoner, was king only as long as the marriage lasted; he was deposed if it was terminated by the queen.
End quote.
1.4 This is a very stable form of government .
There is continuity of proven competence through the king’s line , but if he proves incompetent the queen could supersede or co-opt any new talent by marrying a new guy from the cloud of eligible courtiers . It means that any talented man in the eligible classes could become pharaoh . There is upward mobility built-in the social system .
Any highly competent non-noble individual or family could quite legitimately work their way to supreme power ( ie Queen’s consort , then Father and Uncles to the Queen’s daughter . ) This was mirrored in the lower strata of society as well .
Compare this to the Patrilineal Western Model , where the killer is inbreeding . There was ( and is ) no way for a Ruler to supplant a disaster of a son with a competent ruler . You are stuck with the primogenitural son , and it takes a war to change him .
Various election systems are just sublimated wars . Winner takes all . Ironically , the latest checks-and-balances like the British Parliament and US Constitution are only approaching the stability of a Matrilineal system .
But a matrilineal system has this unfortunate drawback: it adapts slowly (if at all) to rapidly changing circumstances .
2. Superconductivity .
You might well ask what this has to do with superconductivity .
The analogue definitions :
3.1 Humans are charged particles. (ie Females positive , male negative)
3.2 The time-span is about 10 000 years.
3.3 The research algorithm is Natural Selection (Evolution) on a social scale .
3.4 Define Information-loss as equivalent to energy-loss.
The Goal : to optimize information transmission over a significant time-span with least losses . This means to minimize energy-losses . If the energy loss is below the quantum-threshold for the applicable matrix , there is no energy loss : ie superconductivity .
4. The result:
Triplets of charged particles can configure in ways to limit information-loss .
(cf quarks)
5. A thought-experiment:
5.1 Consider particles A , B and C . A and B occupy quantum states allowed by the Pauli-exclusion principle .
Particle C is close to the energy-state of B . A vacuum fluctuation boosts the energy of particle C .
5.2 If the new energy-state of particle C is less than that of particle B , nothing happens . Particles A,B,C decay according to classical entropy laws .
5.3 If the new energy-state of particle C is the same as that of particle B , particle B is emitted . A and C form a new pair . The process repeats . A, B, and C form a stable interaction . Even if any of the interactions have a short half-life , the process can continue indefinitely . A-B , A-C, B-C combinations can continue indefinitely if not for our friend Entropy .
This means that you have a super-conductor that runs down quickly or a social system that runs down relatively slowly . (Note law of decreasing returns).
5.4 And here is a real kicker!
If the new energy-state of particle C is the greater that of particle B , particle B plus the surplus energy is emitted . A and C form a new pair . The process repeats . A, B, and C form a stable interaction . Even if any of the interactions have a short half-life , the process can continue indefinitely .
If the surplus energy is more than entropy, the system will heat up .
This is an vacuum-energy pump , if you have not noticed
Note that the Cold-Fusion elements are the same as used for high-temperature super-conductors. Cold-Fusion seems to be a vacuum-energy pump .
This argument holds for any system organized or measured in hierarchical ways .
In other words , to progress beyond barbarism ,a social system needs at least three independent legs . (No matter what axes) . This enables that fluctuations of brilliance be utilized .
6. Summation
We seem to have wandered from Egypt to something-for-nothing . Yet the underlying principle is the same . In a dynamic system ,three elements can be stable in a continual dynamic interaction . Two cannot . More than three requires design .
The something-for-nothing is inherent in our Universe . Not only at quantum levels , but at macro-quantum levels. We are the macro-quantum objects in our universe .
1.1 The algorithm is :
Use Humans in History as agent-elements for complex feed-back interactions .
Humans are the particles . Define information loss as equivalent to energy loss .
1.2. The human historical reasoning goes as follows :
A civilization stable over a long term means robust information transmission from the previous ruler to the new one .
In the Egyptian case ( and other civilizations prior to the end of the Bronze age ) , the descent was matrilineal .
1.3 Quote:
Ancient Egyptians followed the Neolithic practice of reckoning descent and property inheritance through a woman and her daughters. Although the king was the visible administrator of Egypt, he owed all his power and position to the queen. The throne of the land was inherited by the queen's eldest daughter. The queen's daughter was a king-maker in two ways: while she was unmarried or separated from her husband, her brother could rule with her as regent; when she took a husband, the husband ruled as pharaoh. As Reed explains:
The queen stood between two men, her brother and her husband. Both men, by virtue of their connection to the queen, were kings, but in different ways. The queen's brother was king by right of birth and kinship to the queen, which made him undeposable. The queen's husband. on the other hand, as a commoner, was king only as long as the marriage lasted; he was deposed if it was terminated by the queen.
End quote.
1.4 This is a very stable form of government .
There is continuity of proven competence through the king’s line , but if he proves incompetent the queen could supersede or co-opt any new talent by marrying a new guy from the cloud of eligible courtiers . It means that any talented man in the eligible classes could become pharaoh . There is upward mobility built-in the social system .
Any highly competent non-noble individual or family could quite legitimately work their way to supreme power ( ie Queen’s consort , then Father and Uncles to the Queen’s daughter . ) This was mirrored in the lower strata of society as well .
Compare this to the Patrilineal Western Model , where the killer is inbreeding . There was ( and is ) no way for a Ruler to supplant a disaster of a son with a competent ruler . You are stuck with the primogenitural son , and it takes a war to change him .
Various election systems are just sublimated wars . Winner takes all . Ironically , the latest checks-and-balances like the British Parliament and US Constitution are only approaching the stability of a Matrilineal system .
But a matrilineal system has this unfortunate drawback: it adapts slowly (if at all) to rapidly changing circumstances .
2. Superconductivity .
You might well ask what this has to do with superconductivity .
The analogue definitions :
3.1 Humans are charged particles. (ie Females positive , male negative)
3.2 The time-span is about 10 000 years.
3.3 The research algorithm is Natural Selection (Evolution) on a social scale .
3.4 Define Information-loss as equivalent to energy-loss.
The Goal : to optimize information transmission over a significant time-span with least losses . This means to minimize energy-losses . If the energy loss is below the quantum-threshold for the applicable matrix , there is no energy loss : ie superconductivity .
4. The result:
Triplets of charged particles can configure in ways to limit information-loss .
(cf quarks)
5. A thought-experiment:
5.1 Consider particles A , B and C . A and B occupy quantum states allowed by the Pauli-exclusion principle .
Particle C is close to the energy-state of B . A vacuum fluctuation boosts the energy of particle C .
5.2 If the new energy-state of particle C is less than that of particle B , nothing happens . Particles A,B,C decay according to classical entropy laws .
5.3 If the new energy-state of particle C is the same as that of particle B , particle B is emitted . A and C form a new pair . The process repeats . A, B, and C form a stable interaction . Even if any of the interactions have a short half-life , the process can continue indefinitely . A-B , A-C, B-C combinations can continue indefinitely if not for our friend Entropy .
This means that you have a super-conductor that runs down quickly or a social system that runs down relatively slowly . (Note law of decreasing returns).
5.4 And here is a real kicker!
If the new energy-state of particle C is the greater that of particle B , particle B plus the surplus energy is emitted . A and C form a new pair . The process repeats . A, B, and C form a stable interaction . Even if any of the interactions have a short half-life , the process can continue indefinitely .
If the surplus energy is more than entropy, the system will heat up .
This is an vacuum-energy pump , if you have not noticed
Note that the Cold-Fusion elements are the same as used for high-temperature super-conductors. Cold-Fusion seems to be a vacuum-energy pump .
This argument holds for any system organized or measured in hierarchical ways .
In other words , to progress beyond barbarism ,a social system needs at least three independent legs . (No matter what axes) . This enables that fluctuations of brilliance be utilized .
6. Summation
We seem to have wandered from Egypt to something-for-nothing . Yet the underlying principle is the same . In a dynamic system ,three elements can be stable in a continual dynamic interaction . Two cannot . More than three requires design .
The something-for-nothing is inherent in our Universe . Not only at quantum levels , but at macro-quantum levels. We are the macro-quantum objects in our universe .
Zen and Accounting.
Zen and Accounting.
Double-bookkeeping Accounting requires delineated events described in delineated units .
Each event’s interaction with similar events can be described from at least two viewpoints : debit or credit .
This is because each event is delineated (ie apart , separate from anything else , individual ) . Separate existence that can be perceived by anything else must be a transaction of some type .(Otherwise it does not exist for anything else outside itself)
Illustration :
1. A <-> B : A and B interact . Our normal universe .
2. A - > B : A causes changes in B , but B does not cause changes in A . A is a singularity in our terms.
3. Neither A or B causes change in each other . They are in separate universes .
Hence the two viewpoints must always exist (ie physical conservation laws case (1) or a virtual conservation law case (2) ) .
In case (1) above ,
the changes caused by A and B must sum to zero (“Emptiness”) , regardless of how many and how varied the intermediary steps . This is the concept of Karma . Trivial .
But this leaves the question of between which boundaries is the measurement made ? Do you balance the accounts from month-to-month , year-to-year , life-to-life , deed-to-deed ?
If the time-loop is circular , the balance must be zero . But any partial-loop measurement inside the loop must leave a balance . This corresponds with the Buddhist concept being caught up in the wheel of life .
Also true for any quid-pro-quo system .
If the time-loop is not circular , the balances can build up and need not fluctuate around zero . But the being is still on the squirrel-cage , only now the diameter of the cage is infinite .
Is there any way out ?
Combining case (1) above with case (2) will still give case (2) . ( Case (3) will need some real force , but then will result in case (2) ) . A case of too many chiefs and too few indians reorganizing itself) .
A fairly continuous universe with some singularities seems to be an end-state . In accounting terms , the singularities are where the balances appear or disappear into virtual accounts .
The easiest way out is through these virtual accounts . Balances are zeroized or adjusted without any affect outside of the singularity .
This is the essence of Christianity : debits or credits are irrelevant . The virtual account is zeroized . It does not matter whether this is real or in the minds of the participants .
This leads to some interesting results : certain quantum-states will only be attainable by CTG scientists with non quod-pro-quo viewpoints . The existence of singularities in the physical universe (ie black holes ) means that a CTG (Christian Type God) exists .
Our universe is biased towards forgiveness.
Enough
Andre
Double-bookkeeping Accounting requires delineated events described in delineated units .
Each event’s interaction with similar events can be described from at least two viewpoints : debit or credit .
This is because each event is delineated (ie apart , separate from anything else , individual ) . Separate existence that can be perceived by anything else must be a transaction of some type .(Otherwise it does not exist for anything else outside itself)
Illustration :
1. A <-> B : A and B interact . Our normal universe .
2. A - > B : A causes changes in B , but B does not cause changes in A . A is a singularity in our terms.
3. Neither A or B causes change in each other . They are in separate universes .
Hence the two viewpoints must always exist (ie physical conservation laws case (1) or a virtual conservation law case (2) ) .
In case (1) above ,
the changes caused by A and B must sum to zero (“Emptiness”) , regardless of how many and how varied the intermediary steps . This is the concept of Karma . Trivial .
But this leaves the question of between which boundaries is the measurement made ? Do you balance the accounts from month-to-month , year-to-year , life-to-life , deed-to-deed ?
If the time-loop is circular , the balance must be zero . But any partial-loop measurement inside the loop must leave a balance . This corresponds with the Buddhist concept being caught up in the wheel of life .
Also true for any quid-pro-quo system .
If the time-loop is not circular , the balances can build up and need not fluctuate around zero . But the being is still on the squirrel-cage , only now the diameter of the cage is infinite .
Is there any way out ?
Combining case (1) above with case (2) will still give case (2) . ( Case (3) will need some real force , but then will result in case (2) ) . A case of too many chiefs and too few indians reorganizing itself) .
A fairly continuous universe with some singularities seems to be an end-state . In accounting terms , the singularities are where the balances appear or disappear into virtual accounts .
The easiest way out is through these virtual accounts . Balances are zeroized or adjusted without any affect outside of the singularity .
This is the essence of Christianity : debits or credits are irrelevant . The virtual account is zeroized . It does not matter whether this is real or in the minds of the participants .
This leads to some interesting results : certain quantum-states will only be attainable by CTG scientists with non quod-pro-quo viewpoints . The existence of singularities in the physical universe (ie black holes ) means that a CTG (Christian Type God) exists .
Our universe is biased towards forgiveness.
Enough
Andre
How to prevent varicose veins : and the wobbles.
How to prevent varicose veins:
Glue a one cm thick half-tube to the bottom of the shoe-sole in a straight line from heel to toe .
Logic:
This forces a mild equivalent of walking across an uneven surface .
A typical foot is about 4 cm in width . A one cm ridge in the middle will give an angle between the sole and the shin of about 12 degrees . This is sufficient to pump blood back and prevent pooling .
Proof : Bushmen do not have varicose veins . It is not just the even walking (ie rocking back and forth ) , it is also the side-to-side rocking .
Try it yourself :
Angle your foot at 45 degrees between the breadth and the shinbone . (As if you are twisting your ankle :ie side-to-side.) This feels uncomfortable , but you can do it . Now halve the angle to 24 degrees . This feels better , but there is still a degree of discomfort . Now halve it again to about 12 degrees . There is no discomfort .
Now twist your feet from -12 to +12 degrees repeatedly . You will feel an endorphin effect as stress on the lymph-vascular system is alleviated .
The same effect can be achieved by sitting , putting your feet firmly on the floor and moving your thighs together and apart repeatedly . The soles have to remain parallel to the ground .
I have observed this behaviour in a variety of social situations , but ascribed it to a form of public masturbation . It bothered me that there did not seem to be the normal penalties attached to this behaviour .
There seems to be social acceptance for this type of stress-relief , but only if soles are parallel with the ground . ( Try it yourself) .
Indeed , your body needs a mild uneven floor to pump the blood and lymph fluids back up against gravity .
The argument : if muscular and mechanical contractions in the lower limbs in an active hominid does some of the work of the heart against gravity , no extra capability of the heart will evolve to compensate for these rocking and twisting actions as the hominid starts walking upright (why should it ? )
Existing Varicose Veins
Do the above . This will prevent the worsening of the present condition .
Take Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
The evolutionary argument is that the legs are most susceptible to HGH . Note that humans age from the face downwards : wrinkles , sagging breasts , softening gut muscles , but the thigh muscles remain firm .
If you are over 40 , HGH has flattened out at below maintenance levels . While the real mccoy is expensive and has bad side-effects , a secretagogogue is available (Solal.com)
Trying the above has very little down-side .
I am personally going to try the one cm strip down the sole of the shoe and see what happens .
Andre
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Stuff:
The Squat and the Wobble
From evidence of fossilized footprints in the Olduvai , humans started to walk upright at least 4 million years ago. Other major evolutionary changes like nostril-hairs (for smoke particles) , flattened nozzles (for shorter tongue , thus more rapid , intelligible speech) , conic breasts ( to prevent babies with flattened nozzles from being smothered in the mother’s clutch) evolved after that , (and quite rapidly too) .
So , the human skeleton should be well adapted to an upright posture. So why the continual whine about lower-back pain ?
Let us go back to the evolution of the upright posture .
As the proto-hominid grows larger , the hands grasp higher branches than the feet to maintain balance .
The squat stretches .
As forests grow drier , the vertical distance between branches grow bigger . Proto-hominids adapt either by moving , growing smaller or growing larger . Growing larger has the penalty of increased lethal falls . The first larger hominids are safer on the the ground . Later ones face a back-pressure from the ones on the ground .
In any case , the upright posture evolves on bouncy boughs , where both feet are on the branch and hands are about eye-level . This leads to deeply genetically programmed muscle responses in the sidereal muscles of the back and abdomen .
It is also tied to the sense of balance and rhythm .
Surviving humans are always musical .
Notice the selection for rhythm on the bouncy boughs : the natural musical rhythm that humans prefer are different from that of other animals . It should be possible to infer the make-up of the ancestral woods by the natural frequency .
The large ground-dwelling hominid evolves into a cursorial raptor . (He runs a lot , usually in circles .) They still have to squat (for birth and defecation) . The rough ground surface is a passable substitute for stimulation of the sidereal back-muscles.
What is interesting here , is that the size of the stomach doesn’t matter much . This is to be expected for mammals and original vegetarians .
So why the back-pain?
Simply , because modern humans do not walk enough on uneven surfaces . The sidereal back- and abdominal muscle reflexes are not stimulated enough (might not even be triggered) .
The wobble:
If you sit 8 hours a day on a static chair , these systems simply are not triggered . A short period of heavy exercise will not trigger them either . (Seen as fight-or-flight , not maintenance by homeostatic systems ) .
However , if you sit on a partially-inflated air-cushion , you wobble on it . After a while you balance and do not even notice it . But , with every breath and movement your sidereal muscles have to compensate . Exactly as on a bough .
Note that the cushion must be just inflated enough that your bum does not strike through . It must be a cushion , not a ring , because it has to be unstable . Your muscles must keep your posture stable .
If used on top of a normal chair , put one point of the cushion between your legs . Remember , the natural static posture is a variety of squat , with the knees apart and the heels below the hip-joints .
I’ve been doing this for about 3 years , and not only has my back problems ceased , but the tolerance has increased . In other words , I can carry weights now that would previously have rendered me hors-de-combat .
Varicose veins:
From the above evolutionary viewpoint , one would expect that stimulus to the micro-musculature in the back and in the calves/feet to be related . The biochemical markers initiating the sidereal muscle tone in the back and abdomen should also affect the lower legs , since they stem from the same evolutionary roots . Note , these are not nervous impulses directly .
In other words , sitting on a partially inflated air-cushion should decrease varicose veins through activation of the micro-musculature.
It’s worth a try .
Love
Andre
Glue a one cm thick half-tube to the bottom of the shoe-sole in a straight line from heel to toe .
Logic:
This forces a mild equivalent of walking across an uneven surface .
A typical foot is about 4 cm in width . A one cm ridge in the middle will give an angle between the sole and the shin of about 12 degrees . This is sufficient to pump blood back and prevent pooling .
Proof : Bushmen do not have varicose veins . It is not just the even walking (ie rocking back and forth ) , it is also the side-to-side rocking .
Try it yourself :
Angle your foot at 45 degrees between the breadth and the shinbone . (As if you are twisting your ankle :ie side-to-side.) This feels uncomfortable , but you can do it . Now halve the angle to 24 degrees . This feels better , but there is still a degree of discomfort . Now halve it again to about 12 degrees . There is no discomfort .
Now twist your feet from -12 to +12 degrees repeatedly . You will feel an endorphin effect as stress on the lymph-vascular system is alleviated .
The same effect can be achieved by sitting , putting your feet firmly on the floor and moving your thighs together and apart repeatedly . The soles have to remain parallel to the ground .
I have observed this behaviour in a variety of social situations , but ascribed it to a form of public masturbation . It bothered me that there did not seem to be the normal penalties attached to this behaviour .
There seems to be social acceptance for this type of stress-relief , but only if soles are parallel with the ground . ( Try it yourself) .
Indeed , your body needs a mild uneven floor to pump the blood and lymph fluids back up against gravity .
The argument : if muscular and mechanical contractions in the lower limbs in an active hominid does some of the work of the heart against gravity , no extra capability of the heart will evolve to compensate for these rocking and twisting actions as the hominid starts walking upright (why should it ? )
Existing Varicose Veins
Do the above . This will prevent the worsening of the present condition .
Take Human Growth Hormone (HGH).
The evolutionary argument is that the legs are most susceptible to HGH . Note that humans age from the face downwards : wrinkles , sagging breasts , softening gut muscles , but the thigh muscles remain firm .
If you are over 40 , HGH has flattened out at below maintenance levels . While the real mccoy is expensive and has bad side-effects , a secretagogogue is available (Solal.com)
Trying the above has very little down-side .
I am personally going to try the one cm strip down the sole of the shoe and see what happens .
Andre
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Stuff:
The Squat and the Wobble
From evidence of fossilized footprints in the Olduvai , humans started to walk upright at least 4 million years ago. Other major evolutionary changes like nostril-hairs (for smoke particles) , flattened nozzles (for shorter tongue , thus more rapid , intelligible speech) , conic breasts ( to prevent babies with flattened nozzles from being smothered in the mother’s clutch) evolved after that , (and quite rapidly too) .
So , the human skeleton should be well adapted to an upright posture. So why the continual whine about lower-back pain ?
Let us go back to the evolution of the upright posture .
As the proto-hominid grows larger , the hands grasp higher branches than the feet to maintain balance .
The squat stretches .
As forests grow drier , the vertical distance between branches grow bigger . Proto-hominids adapt either by moving , growing smaller or growing larger . Growing larger has the penalty of increased lethal falls . The first larger hominids are safer on the the ground . Later ones face a back-pressure from the ones on the ground .
In any case , the upright posture evolves on bouncy boughs , where both feet are on the branch and hands are about eye-level . This leads to deeply genetically programmed muscle responses in the sidereal muscles of the back and abdomen .
It is also tied to the sense of balance and rhythm .
Surviving humans are always musical .
Notice the selection for rhythm on the bouncy boughs : the natural musical rhythm that humans prefer are different from that of other animals . It should be possible to infer the make-up of the ancestral woods by the natural frequency .
The large ground-dwelling hominid evolves into a cursorial raptor . (He runs a lot , usually in circles .) They still have to squat (for birth and defecation) . The rough ground surface is a passable substitute for stimulation of the sidereal back-muscles.
What is interesting here , is that the size of the stomach doesn’t matter much . This is to be expected for mammals and original vegetarians .
So why the back-pain?
Simply , because modern humans do not walk enough on uneven surfaces . The sidereal back- and abdominal muscle reflexes are not stimulated enough (might not even be triggered) .
The wobble:
If you sit 8 hours a day on a static chair , these systems simply are not triggered . A short period of heavy exercise will not trigger them either . (Seen as fight-or-flight , not maintenance by homeostatic systems ) .
However , if you sit on a partially-inflated air-cushion , you wobble on it . After a while you balance and do not even notice it . But , with every breath and movement your sidereal muscles have to compensate . Exactly as on a bough .
Note that the cushion must be just inflated enough that your bum does not strike through . It must be a cushion , not a ring , because it has to be unstable . Your muscles must keep your posture stable .
If used on top of a normal chair , put one point of the cushion between your legs . Remember , the natural static posture is a variety of squat , with the knees apart and the heels below the hip-joints .
I’ve been doing this for about 3 years , and not only has my back problems ceased , but the tolerance has increased . In other words , I can carry weights now that would previously have rendered me hors-de-combat .
Varicose veins:
From the above evolutionary viewpoint , one would expect that stimulus to the micro-musculature in the back and in the calves/feet to be related . The biochemical markers initiating the sidereal muscle tone in the back and abdomen should also affect the lower legs , since they stem from the same evolutionary roots . Note , these are not nervous impulses directly .
In other words , sitting on a partially inflated air-cushion should decrease varicose veins through activation of the micro-musculature.
It’s worth a try .
Love
Andre
The Stirrup and why it was late.
The Stirrup
Horses were domesticated for riding at least 6 000 BC . They were extensively used in warfare . Stirrups first show up in the archeological record about 400 AD .
The Question !
Why did it take so long ?
The standard answer is human stupidity .
But even I find it hard to swallow that expert leather workers in warrior societies as diverse as the Assyrian , Persian , Greek ,Roman , Scythian and Chinese empires took a whole 5 000 years to think of stirrups . Remember that the weapon-systems over this period were essentially unchanged : sword , spear , shield , archery , slingers .
There are two exceptions , and it involves the horse . The chariot is a minor one . The size of the horse is the main difference.
Chariots:
Chariots developed as a battle platform precisely because horses were not large enough to carry their own armour as well as a armoured soldier . But two or four lightly armoured horses could pull a chariot with two armoured soldiers.
Imagine two mirror armies , A and B . A had chariots , but B does not .
They squared up in a set-piece battle .
The chariots of A were used mainly as a platform for distance weapons . Drivers drove past the enemy front . The weaponeers threw spears , shot arrows and used sling-shots . When out of ammunition , they retired to reload . This could be kept up indefinitely , since they could retire faster than their enemy could pursue .
Army B has the choice of being nibbled to death or attacking .
If the enemy B attacks on a wholescale basis , they are at a big disadvantage , since they were attacking a fixed position . The usual odds are 3 to 1 .
Thus , A can always win by forcing a battle of strategic offensive , tactical defensive .
Any mistakes by army B (like a gap opening) , was exploited by using the chariots as a shock strike weapon .
So the first users of chariots had a big advantage . What was the defense?
Three ways:
1. Attack the weak point : the horses .
The key was in the small size of the horses . They were too small to carry effective armour against close-up cavalry or chariot attack . Cavalry attacks against chariot horses degraded chariots to an expensive luxury . Chariots were more expensive to maintain , so chariots were eventually phased out in favour of cavalry . Cavalry remained essentially an anti-cavalry force until larger horses were bred .
2. Disciplined infantry capable of shielding against projectile weapons , but also maintaining a spear-wall against horse chariot or cavalry shock-attack . Note that this is the definition of the Greek phalanx . Unarmoured horses will refuse a wall of spearpoints .
3. Breed large numbers of horses big enough to carry their own armour , as well as a armoured rider . This could only happen in organizations with large resources : Empires like the Roman or Chinese .
I would imagine that breeding large war-horses was a late Roman-Empire effort . Only they had the resources purely military program of this magnitude . ( Something like DARPA or NASA ). The genes filtered through to the civilian population , enabling economical heavy ploughs and the heavy-duty horse-collar that revolutionized western agriculture .
Something similar probably happened in the Middle-East : the Arabian horse . This smacks of a massive Roman breeding program to produce a horse big and tough enough for local conditions . A sine-qua-non for the Arab expansion .
What irony!
The same genes would have found their way to areas like Mongolia . Compare Przewalski’s horse against a mongol horse . The Mongol horse is not much bigger , but it is much stouter in all ways . Over- powered for a horse evolved on the steppes for purely civilian and local tribal-warfare purposes .
What irony!
Everybody knew about stirrups .
Stirrups were only used when there were horses large enough for the complete weapon –system : the armoured knight .
It worked .
Ask Attila at Chalons . The battle was a tactical draw , but a strategic defeat . What is important is that this was the deliberate design in which the large horses were a mere component .
Even if Aetius had lost at Chalons , the Huns still would not have won .
The design was strategic defensive , tactical offensive .
Strategically fortresses ( a Roman speciality ) , with nearly invulnerable armoured strike-forces can hold against any attack as long as the armoured forces remain intact
At that time , it seemed as if limitless numbers of barbarians from the steppes could hurl themselves at the ramparts of civilization and beat them down by sheer numbers . But the numbers were not limitless . They were co-ordinated into schwerpunkts , with nothing behind them . The steppes could not possibly have as many people as the civilized , agricultural areas . They could only win by defeating the civilized areas in detail . But fortified points and armoured knights could prevent defeat , but not ensure victory . A standoff ensued . No empire , but lots of baronies . Some argue that this is a more natural state for humans . This held until effective use of gunpowder.
Fortress Defense:
The extreme ratio favouring defenders in a properly constructed defensive fortress can be seen in examples: the siege of Malta (circa1564) : about 70 000 Ottoman troops , including 10 000 Janisseries , could not break defenses manned by about 9 000 knights . Constantinople ( 120 000 vs 3 000 ) . Etc,etc,
I wonder if the Roman who instituted the breeding program of the horses knew that it meant the end of classical Empires . I think he did , but the consequences of doing nothing was worse than having little pocket-empires (note : not city-states : no single fortress could survive on its own :the attacker had to be whipsawed between different fortresses .)
This Roman must have lived just before the split of the Roman empire . He must have been of high rank .He did not brag about it . Therefore not an emperor . He would have been perceived as a traitor . Since he was so effective that he sculpted the next 800 years , if he wanted to retire into anonymity , let him .
Could the Mongols have won in Western Europe?
No .
The Mongols won initially against lightly fortified towns like Kiev . Even then ,they paid a heavy price . They only had about 300 000 mongol troops , plus an unknown and totally unreliable number of slaves .
Mongols won by getting inside the enemy’s control loop .
The way to beat the Mongols (and how the Chinese could have beaten them ) is by killing their horses . Horse diseases spring to mind .
Hi-ho!
Andre
Horses were domesticated for riding at least 6 000 BC . They were extensively used in warfare . Stirrups first show up in the archeological record about 400 AD .
The Question !
Why did it take so long ?
The standard answer is human stupidity .
But even I find it hard to swallow that expert leather workers in warrior societies as diverse as the Assyrian , Persian , Greek ,Roman , Scythian and Chinese empires took a whole 5 000 years to think of stirrups . Remember that the weapon-systems over this period were essentially unchanged : sword , spear , shield , archery , slingers .
There are two exceptions , and it involves the horse . The chariot is a minor one . The size of the horse is the main difference.
Chariots:
Chariots developed as a battle platform precisely because horses were not large enough to carry their own armour as well as a armoured soldier . But two or four lightly armoured horses could pull a chariot with two armoured soldiers.
Imagine two mirror armies , A and B . A had chariots , but B does not .
They squared up in a set-piece battle .
The chariots of A were used mainly as a platform for distance weapons . Drivers drove past the enemy front . The weaponeers threw spears , shot arrows and used sling-shots . When out of ammunition , they retired to reload . This could be kept up indefinitely , since they could retire faster than their enemy could pursue .
Army B has the choice of being nibbled to death or attacking .
If the enemy B attacks on a wholescale basis , they are at a big disadvantage , since they were attacking a fixed position . The usual odds are 3 to 1 .
Thus , A can always win by forcing a battle of strategic offensive , tactical defensive .
Any mistakes by army B (like a gap opening) , was exploited by using the chariots as a shock strike weapon .
So the first users of chariots had a big advantage . What was the defense?
Three ways:
1. Attack the weak point : the horses .
The key was in the small size of the horses . They were too small to carry effective armour against close-up cavalry or chariot attack . Cavalry attacks against chariot horses degraded chariots to an expensive luxury . Chariots were more expensive to maintain , so chariots were eventually phased out in favour of cavalry . Cavalry remained essentially an anti-cavalry force until larger horses were bred .
2. Disciplined infantry capable of shielding against projectile weapons , but also maintaining a spear-wall against horse chariot or cavalry shock-attack . Note that this is the definition of the Greek phalanx . Unarmoured horses will refuse a wall of spearpoints .
3. Breed large numbers of horses big enough to carry their own armour , as well as a armoured rider . This could only happen in organizations with large resources : Empires like the Roman or Chinese .
I would imagine that breeding large war-horses was a late Roman-Empire effort . Only they had the resources purely military program of this magnitude . ( Something like DARPA or NASA ). The genes filtered through to the civilian population , enabling economical heavy ploughs and the heavy-duty horse-collar that revolutionized western agriculture .
Something similar probably happened in the Middle-East : the Arabian horse . This smacks of a massive Roman breeding program to produce a horse big and tough enough for local conditions . A sine-qua-non for the Arab expansion .
What irony!
The same genes would have found their way to areas like Mongolia . Compare Przewalski’s horse against a mongol horse . The Mongol horse is not much bigger , but it is much stouter in all ways . Over- powered for a horse evolved on the steppes for purely civilian and local tribal-warfare purposes .
What irony!
Everybody knew about stirrups .
Stirrups were only used when there were horses large enough for the complete weapon –system : the armoured knight .
It worked .
Ask Attila at Chalons . The battle was a tactical draw , but a strategic defeat . What is important is that this was the deliberate design in which the large horses were a mere component .
Even if Aetius had lost at Chalons , the Huns still would not have won .
The design was strategic defensive , tactical offensive .
Strategically fortresses ( a Roman speciality ) , with nearly invulnerable armoured strike-forces can hold against any attack as long as the armoured forces remain intact
At that time , it seemed as if limitless numbers of barbarians from the steppes could hurl themselves at the ramparts of civilization and beat them down by sheer numbers . But the numbers were not limitless . They were co-ordinated into schwerpunkts , with nothing behind them . The steppes could not possibly have as many people as the civilized , agricultural areas . They could only win by defeating the civilized areas in detail . But fortified points and armoured knights could prevent defeat , but not ensure victory . A standoff ensued . No empire , but lots of baronies . Some argue that this is a more natural state for humans . This held until effective use of gunpowder.
Fortress Defense:
The extreme ratio favouring defenders in a properly constructed defensive fortress can be seen in examples: the siege of Malta (circa1564) : about 70 000 Ottoman troops , including 10 000 Janisseries , could not break defenses manned by about 9 000 knights . Constantinople ( 120 000 vs 3 000 ) . Etc,etc,
I wonder if the Roman who instituted the breeding program of the horses knew that it meant the end of classical Empires . I think he did , but the consequences of doing nothing was worse than having little pocket-empires (note : not city-states : no single fortress could survive on its own :the attacker had to be whipsawed between different fortresses .)
This Roman must have lived just before the split of the Roman empire . He must have been of high rank .He did not brag about it . Therefore not an emperor . He would have been perceived as a traitor . Since he was so effective that he sculpted the next 800 years , if he wanted to retire into anonymity , let him .
Could the Mongols have won in Western Europe?
No .
The Mongols won initially against lightly fortified towns like Kiev . Even then ,they paid a heavy price . They only had about 300 000 mongol troops , plus an unknown and totally unreliable number of slaves .
Mongols won by getting inside the enemy’s control loop .
The way to beat the Mongols (and how the Chinese could have beaten them ) is by killing their horses . Horse diseases spring to mind .
Hi-ho!
Andre
Post-coital Depression Syndrome (PDS)
Post-coital Depression Syndrome (PDS)
Synopsis:
An evolutionary arms-race defense against sperm-displacement by other males is male quiescence close to the female ( with rapid male aggressive arousal response to threats ) . This easily overbalances into depression (monogamy can be described as an extended mild depression from the male viewpoint) . Stable dual systems evolve where the male quiescence trigger female nurturing instincts . In extreme cases this forms a dual pathology : a repeating cycle of aggressive coitus , male depression , female nursing , recovered male aggressive coitus , etc.
Argument:
Hominids have had a long period when physically preventing other males from coitus with his lady love was the only way to ensure that only his genes were being transmitted .
Experiments done by G Gallup (shades of nominative determinism !) of New York State University showed that the coronal ridge on human penises are 90% efficient in displacing semen in one deep thrust . (Evolution and Human Behavior vol 24 , p277 or New Scientist 9 Aug 2003 p16 )
Surveys indicated that human males employed deeper thrusts after a separation or if infidelity was suspected .
In the arms race of gene replication , the evolution of the coronal ridge must have accompanied the evolution of counter-actions , the most obvious being that the male must stay with the female until egg fertilization , while fighting off competitors if necessary .
One way of doing this is by reducing certain neurotransmitter concentrations , notably serotonin . This would have the effect of a mild depression ( the storied “little death” ) in males .
Anecdotal evidence : post-coital cigarettes ( nicotine stimulates serotonin production ) , as well as alcohol usage .
Of note here is the evolutionary tie-in between the depression and the rapid aggressive response . One would suspect that a rapid rise in serotonin concentrations would also lead to the easy triggering of extreme aggressive responses . ( Note side effects of Prozac)
Ie: the quiescent post-coital male is challenged and has to go to a fully aware state as quickly as possible . In most cases a blind rage will suffice as a defence , so that is selected for . This is not always sufficient against a canny opponent , so males will also be selected for a balanced aggression response .
The Dual Pathology:
As can be seen from the evolutionary argument above , it would tend to favor depressive males with homicidal rages .
The depressive stage is caused by lowering the serotonin levels below a certain threshold . Feedback mechanisms lower it further : ie trigger a full-blown depression .
The depressive stage triggers the female nursing response . The female nurses the male until the normal sexual aggression is restored , whereupon the cycle repeats . The components of the pathology are genetical and learned response .
The effect is a stable relationship of misery . Each partner fulfills a deep genetic need , but neither is close to their maximum potential .
There is also no evolutionary stopper to prevent too low serotonin levels .
Intervention:
For normal humans:
The male should take some serotonin precursors ( 5HTP or Tryptophan) immediately before or after coitus .
Intervention with serotonin precursors at the start of a depressive episode should prevent most episodes .
Otherwise:
Prozac
Caution:
Intervention like this would raise general serotonin levels . Additional serotonin stimuli (like alcohol , nicotine ,etc) might trigger a rapid aggression response .
End
Synopsis:
An evolutionary arms-race defense against sperm-displacement by other males is male quiescence close to the female ( with rapid male aggressive arousal response to threats ) . This easily overbalances into depression (monogamy can be described as an extended mild depression from the male viewpoint) . Stable dual systems evolve where the male quiescence trigger female nurturing instincts . In extreme cases this forms a dual pathology : a repeating cycle of aggressive coitus , male depression , female nursing , recovered male aggressive coitus , etc.
Argument:
Hominids have had a long period when physically preventing other males from coitus with his lady love was the only way to ensure that only his genes were being transmitted .
Experiments done by G Gallup (shades of nominative determinism !) of New York State University showed that the coronal ridge on human penises are 90% efficient in displacing semen in one deep thrust . (Evolution and Human Behavior vol 24 , p277 or New Scientist 9 Aug 2003 p16 )
Surveys indicated that human males employed deeper thrusts after a separation or if infidelity was suspected .
In the arms race of gene replication , the evolution of the coronal ridge must have accompanied the evolution of counter-actions , the most obvious being that the male must stay with the female until egg fertilization , while fighting off competitors if necessary .
One way of doing this is by reducing certain neurotransmitter concentrations , notably serotonin . This would have the effect of a mild depression ( the storied “little death” ) in males .
Anecdotal evidence : post-coital cigarettes ( nicotine stimulates serotonin production ) , as well as alcohol usage .
Of note here is the evolutionary tie-in between the depression and the rapid aggressive response . One would suspect that a rapid rise in serotonin concentrations would also lead to the easy triggering of extreme aggressive responses . ( Note side effects of Prozac)
Ie: the quiescent post-coital male is challenged and has to go to a fully aware state as quickly as possible . In most cases a blind rage will suffice as a defence , so that is selected for . This is not always sufficient against a canny opponent , so males will also be selected for a balanced aggression response .
The Dual Pathology:
As can be seen from the evolutionary argument above , it would tend to favor depressive males with homicidal rages .
The depressive stage is caused by lowering the serotonin levels below a certain threshold . Feedback mechanisms lower it further : ie trigger a full-blown depression .
The depressive stage triggers the female nursing response . The female nurses the male until the normal sexual aggression is restored , whereupon the cycle repeats . The components of the pathology are genetical and learned response .
The effect is a stable relationship of misery . Each partner fulfills a deep genetic need , but neither is close to their maximum potential .
There is also no evolutionary stopper to prevent too low serotonin levels .
Intervention:
For normal humans:
The male should take some serotonin precursors ( 5HTP or Tryptophan) immediately before or after coitus .
Intervention with serotonin precursors at the start of a depressive episode should prevent most episodes .
Otherwise:
Prozac
Caution:
Intervention like this would raise general serotonin levels . Additional serotonin stimuli (like alcohol , nicotine ,etc) might trigger a rapid aggression response .
End
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