subject: Re: exercise

text:
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:29:02 -0400, [email] (Lee Hobeck)
wrote:

Oh, the articles about how to avoid straining your back?  Yes, they're
very good, especially for moms who have to pick up progressively
heavier kids and those doing laundry or lifting packages in the
workplace.  These things can all be done safely by those in average
condition who are under 60.  And probably those over.

Until you talk to your doctor and get your DEXA and his / her advice,
continue your present way of doing things.  Ask him to recommend a
physical therapist for you so you can learn how to do bending safely?
Meantime I'd (maybe not you, but me) be doing any of the gym machines
that require some lifting (as light as possible to start, maybe even
with no weight to get the movements right) with the shoulders and
pushing with the legs while keeping the back steady.  Look into the
weight room when you're around the gym and see how the lifters do
weights.  They do not bend forward much or twist at all.  Not any of
the ones who are still able to lift.  If they lift something from the
floor, they squat down until their buttocks are almost on the floor,
then reach for the weights and straighten up by straightening out
their legs.

And I don't see how it can possibly do you any harm (if you can see
any harm, don't do it) to lie on the floor and pull your heels back
into your buttocks.  This will help to give you a slightly different
exercise than walking, it'll keep your spine straight, and it'll give
your abs some exercise.  Start slowly, increase gradually and stop if
it hurts.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen.  Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email:  [email] (strip the .invalid to email)


author: Art S

subject: Re: exercise

text:
"Cyli" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

I agree with the warnings to keep the back straight.  The ones that say
to keep the back vertical are not realistic.  As an example, sit down on
a chair.  Hold your arms and hands next to you (or clasp them to your
chest).  Try to stand up without leaning forward.  If you are in a
normal sitting position, it is physically impossible - your center of
gravity isn't above your feet.

I agree with the part above.

Not completely accurate.

There are many knowledgeable lifters who bend over.  They don't,
however, twist, and they keep their back straight (just not vertical).
And they practice doing it without weights before they do it with
weights.

In addition, proper form depends on the exercise, amount of weight,
and body dimensions.  When someone is doing a deadlift (which
involves stooping down, grabbing a weight, and standing up), some
people are able to use the form you describe.  Others must lean
forward to some degree.

I'm not following this exercise.  Could you please provide more
detail?  (Do you start on your stomach, or back?  Are the legs straight,
bent, or what?  How are the heels pulled into the buttocks?)

Thanks,

Art


author: Cyli

subject: Re: exercise

text:
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:41:09 -0500, Cyli <[email]>
wrote:

(snipped for addition / correction)

That second to last sentence _should_ have ended :  If done properly.

There are many more ways to do those things incorrectly than
correctly.  Which is one reason I suggested that you watch weight
lifters.  Who either do it correctly or aren't able to lift weights
any more because of the back injuries they can get by doing it badly.

Not that I expect you to be doing the 300 pound clean and jerk, but
just picking up a 10 pound bag of groceries from the floor is best
done with good technique.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen.  Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email:  [email] (strip the .invalid to email)


subject: Re: exercise

text:
On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 05:03:26 GMT, "Art S" <[email]>
wrote:

(snipped)

Lie down flat on your back and pull the feet toward the body by
bending the knees.  It's very mild.  It could probably be done on a
bed, for those who have difficulty getting on and off the floor,
though that'd be a little soft and might make moving the feet up
harder or stranger.  It's not an exercise that anyone who's getting
much ab exercise needs, but it's a lovely warm up and will pull the ab
muscles, particularly if the arms are put straight out over the head.

It's something I sort of came up with as a variation on the
Feldenkrais (SP?) exercises that I was able to do in a tanning booth
before going into the gym.  Found that some of those, and other mild
stretches, got me more ready to do my wimpy workout.  You can't get
the knees up in a tanning booth, btw, but you can while lying on the
floor watching TV.   Trying various arm positions with it or varying
one leg and then the other can make you more aware of your body and
give you something to do while waiting to see if a sit com is going to
be as predictable as ever.  (Tanning booth was because I tend to
Seasonal Affective Disorder and because I like having a mild tan.
Stretching while tanning was because just lying there for 15 to 30
minutes bored me sillier.)

Cyli
r.bc: vixen.  Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email:  [email] (strip the .invalid to email)


author: Thomas Palm

subject: Re: If Global Warming is a sham

text:
Harold Lindaberry wrote:

Great, now just explain where we should store all those hyacints so
that they do not decompose and release the carbon again. If you
plan on some human controlled project you might also add an
explaination as to why we shouldn't burn this biomass rather than
oil/coal to get energy.


author: kT

subject: Re: House wants to "internationalize" NASA

text:
On May 17, 7:46 am, Cosmic Ray <[email]> wrote:

In other words, the Russians, Europeans, Chinese and Indians, who
unlike America, have a rational approach to the development of space.

Ares I is a radical shift in a 50 year old rocketry paradigm. It's a
failure.

Ah ahha hahahahhaha hahahah ahha hhahah ... get a grip, man.

Ha hahah ahhaha hahahahha ahhahahah ... get a grip, man.

The next administration is going to scrap VSE, ESAS, Ares and
Constellation completely, Udall is testing the temperature of the
water.


author: [redacted]

subject: modal analysis of simply supported beam

text:
i have done experimental, analytical and numerical modal analysis of
simply supported beam. the analytical and experimental results are in
corellation.

i have a problem with numerical analysis. i modeled the beam in ansys
and solved the problem with the follong boundary conditions:
1. restricted the DOF's along the length at both ends
2. restricted the DOF's along the thickness of the beam at both ends

the modal analysis of the above model gave me 0 Hzs as the first
natural frequency which is not the case with exp and analytical
methods.

can some one help me in this regard
are my boundary condition's wrong ???


subject: Re: modal analysis of simply supported beam

text:
On Jan 15, 11:45 pm, [email] wrote:

A few questions........

How did the higher modes correlate?  Did oyu animate the mode shapes?

What were the BC's for the experimental work?   Clamped at both
ends?   A knife edge or roller with a clamp a one end?

The BC's described for the ANSYS model do not strike me as BC's for an
SS beam

Each end of the beam has 6 DOF's  in 3D model   ...Is this a 3D model
or a 2D model?

Which DOF's did restrian?    for a 2D model........one end gets two
fixed DOF's....the other only one

For a 3D model you need more restraints.

A    "zero"  Hz model can indicate a rigid body mode.....inadequate
restraints.

I would suggest a simplier program than ANSYS to double check your
work.

cheers
Bob


text:
the corellation was between theoritical and experimental work. i used
a FFT analyser to find the transfer function. and using that function
i found the first 3 natural frequencies. i used the formulas given in
harris hand book and found the same. the values are in correlation.

i clamped the beam on both the sides using knife edges. thus i was
able to constrain 5 dof except the rotation about the axis
perpendicular to the thickness at both the ends


text:
mr bob

after reading ur post i came to know the mistake with regards to the
dof.
this time i solved the problem with 5 dof constraied (simulating the
experimental conditions) and i was sucessful this time.

thank u bob.


text:
btw u are talking about some simpler method to cross chk my work !!!
wht's that ??


text:
On Jan 21, 12:07 am, [email] wrote:

You are welcome.  Its been  a long time for me since any ANSYS work

but I has been my experience that a 0Hz mode and bad correlation is
usually a BC problem.

With complex computer codes & 3D models it is easy to get the BC's
wrong.

ANSYS is a very powerful complex FEM code ...over kill for a 2D beam.

I was thinking of a beam analysis program like Multiframe.......again
my experience is that the simpliest tool that will do the job is
better but

if you're just testing out ANSYS until you try a more complicated
model then you have other reasons for using ANSYS.

Multiframe has a free demo version for download.

cheers
Bob

I hope my English isn't too hard for you to understand.  Where are you
posting from?


subject: A Short Introduction to the Study of Holocaust Revisionism

text:
Watch how the anti's are unable to refute this post with calm and
reasoned responses. Read and learn.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism

By Arthur R. Butz

[This article was originally published in the Daily Northwestern of
May 13, 1991, corrected May 14.]

I see three principal reasons for the widespread but erroneous belief
in the legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World
War II: US and British troops found horrible piles of corpses in the
west German camps they captured in 1945 (e.g. Dachau and Belsen),
there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland, and
historians generally support the legend.

    During both world wars Germany was forced to fight typhus, carried
by lice in the constant traffic with the east. That is why all
accounts of entry into the German concentration camps speak of shaving
of hair and showering and other delousing procedures, such as
treatment of quarters with the pesticide Zyklon. That was also the
main reason for a high death rate in the camps, and the crematoria
that existed in all.

    When Germany collapsed in chaos then of course all such defenses
ceased, and typhus and other diseases became rampant in the camps,
which quartered mainly political prisoners, ordinary criminals,
homosexuals, conscientious objectors, and Jews conscripted for labor.
Hence the horrible scenes, which however had nothing to do with
"extermination" or any deliberate policy. Moreover the west German
camps involved were not the alleged "extermination camps", which were
all in Poland (e.g. Auschwitz and Treblinka) and which were all
evacuated or shut down before capture by the Soviets, who found no
such scenes.

    The "Final Solution" spoken of in the German documents was a
program of evacuation, resettlement and deportation of Jews with the
ultimate objective of expulsion from Europe. During the war Jews of
various nationalities were being moved east, as one stage in this
Final Solution. The legend claims that the motion was mainly for
extermination purposes.

    The great majority of the millions allegedly exterminated were
east European, not German or west European, Jews. For that reason
study of the problem via population statistics has been difficult to
impossible, but it is a fact that there are no longer large
communities of Jews in Poland. However the Germans were only one of
several parties involved in moving Jews around. The Soviets deported
virtually all of the Jews of eastern Poland to their interior in 1940.
After the war, with Polish and other Jews pouring out of the east into
occupied west Germany, the Zionists moved large numbers to Palestine,
and the US and other countries absorbed many Jews, in most cases under
conditions making impossible a numerical accounting. Moreover the
Polish borders were changed drastically at the end of the war; the
country was literally moved west.

    Historians generally support the legend, but there are precedents
for nearly incomprehensible blindness on the part of scholars. For
example throughout the Middle Ages even the Pope's political enemies
conceded his false claim that the 4th century Emperor Constantine had
ceded rule of the west to the Pope, although all knew very well that
Constantine had been succeeded by more emperors. Near unanimity among
the academics is especially suspect when there exist great political
pressures; in some countries Holocaust revisionists have been
prosecuted.

    It is easy to show that the extermination legend merits
skepticism. Even the casual reader of the Holocaust literature knows
that during the war virtually nobody acted as though it was happening.
Thus it is common to berate the Vatican, the Red Cross and the Allies
(especially the intelligence agencies) for their ignorance and
inaction, and to explain that the Jews generally did not resist
deportation because they did not know what was in store for them. If
you add all this up you have the strange claim that for almost three
years German trains, operating on a continental scale in densely
civilized regions of Europe, were regularly and systematically moving
millions of Jews to their deaths, and nobody noticed except for a few
of our Jewish leaders who were making public "extermination" claims.

    On closer examination even those few Jewish leaders were not
acting as though it was happening. Ordinary communications between the
occupied and neutral countries were open, and they were in contact
with the Jews whom the Germans were deporting, who thus could not have
been in ignorance of "extermination" if those claims had any validity.

    This incredible ignorance must also be attributed to Hans Oster's
department in German military intelligence, correctly labelled "the
veritable general staff of the opposition to Hitler" in a recent
review.

    What we are offered in evidence was gathered after the war, in
trials. The evidence is almost all oral testimony and "confessions".
Without the evidence of these trials there would be no significant
evidence of "extermination". One must pause and ponder this carefully.
Were trials needed to determine that the Battle of Waterloo happened?
The bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The
slaughter in Cambodia? Yet this three year program, of continental
scope, claiming millions of victims, requires trials to argue its
reality. I am not arguing that the trials were illegal or unfair; I am
arguing that such historical logic as the legend rests on must not be
countenanced. Such events cannot happen without generating
commensurate and contemporaneous evidence for their reality, just as a
great forest fire cannot take place without producing smoke. One may
as well believe that New York City was burned down, if confessions to
the deed can be produced.

    Detailed consideration of the specific evidence put forward in
support of the legend has been a focus of the revisionist literature
and cannot be undertaken here, but I shall mention one point. The
claim of the legend is that there were no technical means provided for
the specific task of extermination, and that means originally provided
for other purposes did double duty in improvised arrangements. Thus
the Jews were allegedly gassed with the pesticide Zyklon, and their
corpses disappeared into the crematoria along with the deaths from
"ordinary" causes (the ashes or other remains of millions of victims
never having been found).

    Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical.

-- Arthur R. Butz is an associate professor of electrical engineering.
-------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: Re: A Short Introduction to the Study of Holocaust Revisionism

text:
Laura Bush murdered her boy friend wrote:
who
they

Ah, so the US government purchased a bunch of Japanese Zeroes and
bombed Pearl Harbor with them? Oh, it makes so much sense now! Thank
you for the clarification; without you and the National Enquirer I
would be so clueless.


author: Laura Bush murdered her boy friend

text:
Whenever something controversial happens, it's important to ask  - who
benefits?  The holocaust story benefits the allies.  Their urban
bombing policy of WW2 killed millions of civilians in japan and
germany. So after the war truman asked "how are we gonna spin our way
of this"?  His solution was to create the holocaust myth and convince
the world that the allies had to fight this horrible enemy anyway they
could.


author: tim gueguen

text:
"Laura Bush murdered her boy friend" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
I knew you were a nutter, but you're a denial kook as well?

tim gueguen 101867


text:
Once again Jacobson you waste bandwidth by posting nothing relating to
the thread.

As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?

On Sun, 8 May 2005 20:13:59 +0000 (UTC), [email] (Ron
Jacobson) wrote:


author: Dan

subject: New way to fight lies about vaccines

text:
http://skep.li/143ajWs

MALCOLM HOLLAND From: The Daily Telegraph May 16, 2013 12:00AM

SPURIOUS and unscientific claims about the dangers of vaccines can now
be tracked as soon as they appear on social media.

British and American scientists have developed a computerised monitoring
system that alerts experts to rumours being spread, outright lies and
misinformation about vaccinations in 144 countries, including Australia.

"Recent measles outbreaks in the UK, stemming from children not
vaccinated due to fears prompted by now-discredited research over a
decade ago, is one example of the long-term consequences of broken
public trust in vaccines," said Heidi Larson, from the London School of
Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Join our #NoJabNoPlay campaign and sign our vaccination petition to make
yourself heard

"The internet has speeded up the global spread of unchecked rumours and
misinformation about vaccines and can seriously undermine public
confidence, leading to low rates of vaccine uptake and even disease
outbreaks."

Dr Larson said the new application builds on the ability of the
HealthMap, an online surveillance resource that detects and maps early
signs of outbreaks from electronic data sources.

The researchers devised a system to identify the types of concerns found
on electronic media and prioritise reports according to their potential
to disrupt vaccine uptake.

Of the negative reports, almost half were associated with the health
impacts of vaccines and people's beliefs, either associated with
religion or ideas about the supposed risks.

Join our #NoJabNoPlay campaign and sign our vaccination petition to make
yourself heard http://skep.li/19tj9Pw


author: John H. Gohde

subject: Re: New way to fight lies about vaccines

text:
Here in the States, I am being bombarded with vaccine advertisements
on the radio constantly.

If vaccines actually worked, then there would be no need for these
advertisements.   The use of advertisements by the vaccine industry
speaks well of the fraudulent nature of the vaccine industry.

They figure that if you repeat the same lie long enough and and often
enough some uninformed people might actually buy it.


text:
On Jun 1, 10:02 am, Happy Oyster <-*-*.@.*-*-> wrote:

Sorry to see that you are a Slow Learner.

Your rather obvious mental impairments have my condolences.


text:
On Jun 1, 5:48 pm, Happy Oyster <-*-*.@.*-*-> wrote:

Disinformation Vaccine Alarmists Alert!


text:
On May 31, 11:49 am, Dan <[email]> wrote:

Surely, YOU cannot be serious?

Your Science Psycho ilk has my condolences.

I say that the pushers of vaccines should be prosecuted under the
conspiracy to commit consumer fraud, statutes.

Who says so?  I do.  :)


author: Reg Griswold

text:
On Fri, 31 May 2013 23:49:06 +0800, Dan <[email]>
wrote:

And this is our taxpayer dollars at work, more and more being used to
support big brother enforcement of corporate interests.

Democracy is for the people where the people have a say in what they
do and do not agree with.
However, corporate interests are taking over governments to an ever
increasing level, resulting in taxpayer dollars being spent on this
sort of oversight and mainstream propaganda.

Reg

"Trust us, we're experts!"


text:
On May 31, 7:04 pm, Happy Oyster <-*-*.@.*-*-> wrote:

Moi

Now are you not glad that I was able to clear that little detail up.

Now, the Happy Oyster can work on not being so slippery, and slimy,
all the time.


author: Happy Oyster

text:
On Sat, 1 Jun 2013 12:17:25 -0700 (PDT), "John H. Gohde"
<[email]> wrote:

Ah, the same type of lunacy Satan Andrew Ben Hua Chung is obsessed with:
repeating the same shit endllessly.
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


text:
On Jun 4, 1:57 pm, Bob Casanova <[email]> wrote:

Science Imbeciles Identifying Themselves Alert!


text:
On Sun, 2 Jun 2013 04:29:57 -0700 (PDT), "John H. Gohde"
<[email]> wrote:

Oh, John H. Gohde was bitten by something? Does not seem to be curable.
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


text:
Disinformation Vaccine Alarmists Alert!

Vaccination - What the CDC Documents and Science Reveal, 2003, in a
one hour 47 minutes long detailed presentation of the anti-vaccination
evidence by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.

http://tinyurl.com/kk5hwjf

It is called video.  This is the New Millennium, after all. There is
NOT a damn thing wrong with using video to communicate to the public.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has dozens of shorter videos around the Internet
on essentially the same subject.


text:
On Fri, 31 May 2013 14:22:48 -0700 (PDT), "John H. Gohde"
<[email]> wrote:

Who cares?
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


text:
On Sat, 01 Jun 2013 09:57:13 +1000, Reg Griswold <[email]>
wrote:

Yes, that is something which is not needed. I were better invested in a
law enforcement group putting the anti-vaxx fetishists in prison.

That is paranoia.

Well, the bad thing is that the majority decided to have vaccination.
The majority also should have decided to beat up the anti-vaxx
fetishits.

Ah, yes, the usual bullshit by Carole Hubbard, the laxative-driven
orchid-killer from downunder.
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


text:
On Jun 3, 9:51 pm, Happy Oyster <-*-*.@.*-*-> wrote:

Science Imbeciles Identifying Themselves Alert!


text:
On Fri, 31 May 2013 18:56:57 -0700 (PDT), "John H. Gohde"
<[email]> wrote:

Who cares?
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


author: Bob Casanova

text:
On Fri, 31 May 2013 18:56:57 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in sci.skeptic, posted by "John H. Gohde"
<[email]>:

He misspoke; it should have been "Who has a brain and
cares?", which would have made your response invalid.

<snip idiocy>

BTW, why do you insist on trying to sound like Miss Piggy?
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
 the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov


text:
On Tue, 4 Jun 2013 13:13:01 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in sci.skeptic, posted by "John H. Gohde"
<[email]>:

You've gotten boring, which added to your usual imbecility
makes you no longer even vaguely interesting.

HANL
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
 the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov


text:
On Mon, 3 Jun 2013 06:05:25 -0700 (PDT), "John H. Gohde"
<[email]> wrote:

But not for all. Some are stuck in 1800. Homeopaths are too bloody
stupid to understand anything newer than that.

And critters like John H. Gohde are too stupid to undderstand anything
at all. They only follow their leaders.
--

Crowd-funding is for money, crowd-publishing is for mankind.

http://www.supermanpost.com/


text:
On Tue, 4 Jun 2013 02:47:43 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in sci.skeptic, posted by "John H. Gohde"
<[email]>:

We know. That's why we don't accept your imbecilic
assertions.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
 the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov


author: Charles Crawford

subject: Re: Help with proving a certain identity??

text:
In trying to work this out I discovered an identity that isn't one of
the many I had to prove back in high school.

 tanA + tanB + tanC = tanA*tanB*tanC + sin(A+B+C)/(cosA*cosB*cosC)

-- Chuck Crawford, Toronto


author: Wim Brosens

subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
What's Optical SETI@Home ? Please explain ...

Wim.

"Henri Heinonen" <[email]> wrote in message
news:9t6b3p$3dr$[email]...


author: JML

subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
I must say I'd like to know too.

JML
"Wim Brosens" <[email]> wrote in message
news:3bf6b42a$[email]...


author: Gary Heston

subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
According to Wim Brosens <[email]>:
  [ ... ]

Looking for visible light signals using conventional telescopes.

Of course, "visible" is a earth-centric term...

Gary


author: Jonathan Silverlight

subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
In article <[email]>, Gary Heston
<[email]> writes

I don't think the optical SETI people are looking for the same sort of
signal, much less producing the amounts of data Arecibo does.
Some amateurs are trying their own optical SETI projects, though, so you
can get much more "hands on" than with radio.

But what's BETA@home?


author: Henri Heinonen

subject: Vs: BETA@home

text:
Optical SETI tries to find laser light flashes. But why cannot we do that at
home?


author: Alfred A. Aburto Jr.

subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
Check out:

http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/BETA/default.html

"Jonathan Silverlight" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...


subject: Re: BETA@home

text:
Well, there is no BETA@home, but there is a project BETA at Harvard
conducting a SETI survey.
Al

"Jonathan Silverlight" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...


author: Monty Brandenberg

subject: Re: Vs: BETA@home

text:
Henri Heinonen wrote:

You can do it at home.  Detector and amplifier schematics are online
if you want to build one yourself.  Spectral analysis isn't part of
the project so distributed signal processing isn't part of the big
scheme.


author: White Trash

text:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011Science & Life

Microbial universe within us

Occasionally harmful microbes invade the body and cause diseases.The
human body is teeming with life, harboring friendly microbes.
Md. Riajul Hossain
We are what we eat. In fact, our bugs are also what we eat. There is a
unique universe of microorganisms in our body residing on skin and
inside our gut. The number of bacteria in our gut actually exceeds the
number of cells in human body by 10 fold. This complex ecosystem plays
immense role for maintaining good health in individuals. They are
called commensals. The gut microbial community is effectively an
“organ within an organ”, says microbiologist Jeffrey Gordon of
Washington University at St. Louis. The mix of microbes inside affects
how we metabolize food and probably has substantial impact on our
health.

Scientists observed how the teeming tide of microbes inside the body
plays an essential role in human health and how it might be fine tuned
to address illnesses such as diabetes, obesity and inflammatory bowel
disease. The kinds of microbes in our intestine are affected by our
dietary preferences. The intestinal tracts of individuals who
typically ate a high fat; high protein diet harbor a high number of
one kind of bacteria. On the other hand, those who favored
carbohydrates and vegetables had higher number of another type. “ This
is really interesting and tantalizing science. It is sort of like you
have the carnivore gut and herbivore gut.” says Weinstock, a genetics
professor at Washington University at St. Louis and a leader of the
ongoing Human Microbiome Project. Previous research had shown that
people can be grouped into different categories by their intestinal
bacteria. In 2010, one study revealed the differences in gut
microflora between children in Europe and rural Africa, who have a
markedly different diet. Although diet controls this flora inside the
body, it comes to this stabilized position gradually from the birth.
“Everyone is born sterile”, says Andrew Gewirtz of Emory University,
noting that colonization starts during birth. The flora depends on the
method of delivery of the baby (vaginal versus caesarian), place of
delivery (home or hospital), maternal diet etc and, later, exposure to
antibiotics and steroids. Moreover, intestinal bacteria patterns
change during stress and diseases. The harmful bacteria or pathogens
compete with the good ones and if their number is large, they
eventually win over the good ones. At times of stress and adverse body
conditions, the pathogens emerged and may cause problems in digestion.
Mostly, they come from the intake of food and drinks, especially when
these are stale and contaminated.

Indeed, the interaction between the friendly bacteria and the
pathogens are of immense interest to the scientists due to their
effect on human health. The beneficial bacteria help in digestion,
producing vitamins for the host (such as biotin and vitamin K) and
even producing hormones to direct the host to store fats. However, the
harmful ones are involved in developing diseases like diabetes,
obesity etc. As discussed earlier, the diet is responsible for the
patterns of microbes in individuals with people on high protein-fat
diets tending to have more the type of bacteria called Bacteroides,
and others, the vegetarians, having more microbes from the genus
Prevotella. And everyone is different in terms of the composition of
their microflora, “It's almost sort of like a fingerprint”, Weinstock
says. It is a curious, mutually convenient relationship that has
emerged over thousands of years between the tiny bugs and their flesh-
and-blood hosts and they influence host's activity and health even by
turning on or off certain genes in them and they are unique. Recently,
scientists are taking genomic approaches to analyze the gut microbe
genes and already completed a catalogue of some 3.3 million human gut
microbe genes. More study with the genes will, hopefully, help us to
get a better insight of the interaction between the microbes and human
and how they are associated with our health. They, indeed, are our
friends, especially, the good ones.

http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=203142


author: montygraham

subject:
Re: We are what we eat. In fact, our bugs are also what we eat. There
 is a unique universe of microorganisms in our body residing on skin and
 inside our gut.

text:
Generally-speaking, it's not an issue of an "invasion," but rather an
immune/inflammatory response.  That is, if your body is biochemically
stable, you are much more resistant to "infectious disease."  When
there is too much lipid peroxidation in your body, for example, it
seems that bacteria will be more likely to get "clingy" and set off an
immune/inflammatory response, and when that happens you get the
symptoms of the "disease" in question.


author: Zrupfter

subject: Re: We are what we eat. In fact, our bugs are also what we eat. There is a unique universe of microorganisms in our body residing on skin and inside our gut.

text:
In a nutshell, it's all in the terrain; if you change
the terrain, you change the bacteria, and with it,
its effect on the host.
We harbor strep or staph in the oral cavity at all
times, without causing any problems.  Introduce a
virus, or any other "stress" factor (allergen, sleep
deprivation, unhealthy diet...), and you change the
terrain, and with it you trigger an immune response
that will result in inflammation.

The same applies in the gut.  By changing your diet,
or by introducing a "stress" factor, you change the
terrain, and with it the type of bacteria populating
your gut, or you disturb the balance between the
"good" or "bad" bacteria, resulting in inflammation.


author: [redacted]

subject: Re: Mac science software query

text:
Roger:

Take a look at our home pages. Argus Numerical Environments. Will do some
of the things you asked for. Works on Mac/PowerMac, Windows, Unix,
cross-platform file compatibility, and works great with Matlab.

http://www.argusint.com

Joshu


author: Henry Spencer

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
In article <[email]>,
 <[email]> wrote:

Nonsense.

For a planet-sterilizer that's going to arrive in the next year or two,
yes, we're pretty much screwed.  But that's an unlikely extreme.

With a decade of warning, there is quite a bit we could do about
deflecting even a pretty big one.

And for a smaller object, evacuating the impact zone and making proper
preparations for both direct and indirect effects could greatly reduce the
death toll.  A Tunguska-sized rock, in particular, is basically the
equivalent of a medium-sized hydrogen bomb:  even if you live at Ground
Zero and have no transportation except your feet, a few days of warning
will get you clear of most of the danger.  (You can cover a lot of
kilometers on foot in that time, if the alternative is death.)

Nonsense.  The MIT student study of 1967 estimated a 71% chance of
successful deflection of a 1.5km asteroid, with various lesser
probabilities of fragmentation plus successful deflection/destruction of
some of the fragments, and under a 2% chance of having no useful effect...
with 16 months' warning, given a declaration of national emergency and the
commandeering of the resources of Project Apollo.

Now admittedly, our technology has backslid some since then.  That's why I
said "a decade" up above.

What experimental gigawatt lasers?

There are no laser systems now in existence or anywhere close to being
developed that could do that.  Nuclear-tipped missiles are simpler and
much more effective.  (The MIT study used Saturn Vs carrying 100MT bombs.)


author: Derek Lyons

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Henry Spencer) wrote:

Bovine end product :)

The technology still exists, but the hardware and assembly facilities
no longer do.

D.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
In article <[email]>,
Derek Lyons <[email]> wrote:

This is a matter of definitions.  The sorts of things that could be done
on a few months' notice in 1968 would now take several years to prepare
for.  Building a Saturn V or equivalent now is not a simple exercise;
there were things that never got written down properly, specialized
pockets of expertise which are now gone and would have to be rebuilt at
some length.  (People have looked into this in some detail.)  While the
technology for most big-rocket *subsystems* is still around, in a very
real sense, the technology of the big rockets *themselves* has been lost
and would have to be reconstructed.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Henry Spencer) wrote:

Yes, it's a matter of misusing the word technology by using the modern
marketdroid definitions.

Nor was it a simple exercise in 1968.  Just because something is in
serial production does not make it simple or easy. The ability to do
something 'on a few months notice' doesn't equate to 'easy', just to
'fast' and the availability of funds to pay for the object desired.

The first is a matter of poor management, the second is true of almost
any production or creation.  Both are losses of details of the art,
not of the technology.

Except that is no such thing as the 'technology' of big rockets.  They
could be built today with no new technology, processes, or
methodologies, just the money to design and test the beast.

D.


author: Shardrukar

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
In article <[email]>, [email] (Henry Spencer)
writes:

The salient point being that we would have no reason to duplicate a Sat5.
Since it would essentially be an out-dated lift system (I imagine it would
also a a year or so to set up for a production run vintage V-2 --or for that
matter
classic spit-fires--missiles). That's of little relevance to what we'd actually
try to do if we had a need for HLVs in a year or two. Bundling of existing
lower capacity lift vehicles or cargo varients of the current STS, could
probably
fill the needs with the proper need(funding).


author: Brian Thorn

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 20:04:23 GMT, [email] (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

Would it really be that hard for a "crash program" to get a
Shuttle-C-type vehicle ready? ET, SSMEs, and SRBs are all still in
production, and it could use LC-39 more or less as it is. Launching
two Shuttle-C's would get you to roughly Saturn V-class payloads. That
would have to be easier than rebuilding Saturn V.

Brian


author: Kevin Willoughby

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
Derek Lyons said:

It may not have been simple, but it was orders of magnitude simpler
than today. "That booster has been requisitioned; it will no longer be
used for Apollo 9, it will be used for an anti-astroid project" really
is much simpler than reestablishing a production line for the Saturn V.

Not necessarily. Take, for example, solving the combustion instability
of the F-1. This wasn't really engineering as we usually think of it.
It was "try a bunch of things until you find something that works".
Luck and accident play a role. That kind of thing can't be written down
particularly well -- it is art, not science.


author: John R. Campbell

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On Sat, 29 Jun 2002 12:35:11 -0500,
	Brian Thorn <[email]> wrote:

	I suspect the term "crash program" for a space launcher would
	not be an approved term;  More like a "rush program" or, to
	steal a 50+ year old reference, a "manhattan project".

	The problem is that you'd need to yank it out of NASA's hands
	and get big shovels full of money so that the lift oligopoly
	will put the components together.

	We _could_ recover and rediscover the full technology we'd need
	but there'd be folks profiteering from it (anybody remember
	Enron and WorldCom?) and that'll take a *lot* of money.

	We also need the _will_ to spend the money-  And I'd bet against
	any residual infrastructure left over (the Kennedy timetable was
	a boon to the aerospace industry since no cheap launch capability
	would be retained and no expectation of "economy of scale").

	We need the infrastructure as an enabling technology.  If we, as
	human beings, see no need for this as a whole then perhaps we
	_should_ be extinct.  If we don't have an "everyday" presence
	in space and the technology drops out of the leading-edge (I've
	once commented that making steel was incredibly high-tech and
	look where it is now.  We need the same progression for lift
	technologies) and becomes so commonplace (i.e. "cheap", are any
	of you old enough to remember what the "jet set" was really
	implying?  And I'm not talking the mile-high club either.) that
	it's pervasive.  Only when it's cheap and plentiful can we ever
	consider asteroidal mining/cometary deflection as a practical
	procedure.

	Of course, if it were that "cheap" then there'd be other things
	that would keep us from storing ALL our ova in one basket-  as
	we are now.


author: Gordon D. Pusch

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
Brian Thorn <[email]> writes:

The problem with "crash" programs is that they tend to produce

1.)  Sub-optimal, overly expensive systems;
2.)  Crashes.

The fact is, currently, there simply is no =DEMAND= for heavy-lift
capacity --- even from the gov't. Therefore no one cares to fund it.

We will not see a "Shuttle-C" developed by the state unless the bureaucrats
perceive a need for it (which currently they do not). Quite bluntly, an
asteroid impact is not perceived by sitting bureaucrat or politician to be
a serious threat to either their term of office or their power-base.

Neither will we see a "heavy lift" booster developed by industry unless
there is suddenly a demand to lift something heavy, and at a sufficiently
high profit --- and currently, no such demand exists; neither is such a
demand likely to materialize in the near future. Corporations exist for
profit, not charity --- and under the current tax-structure, their managers
have =VERY= strong dis-incentives against thinking beyond the next quarter.

-- Gordon D. Pusch

perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
In article <[email]>,
Brian Thorn  <[email]> wrote:

Depends on whether the payload is something that subdivides easily, with
one piece able to tolerate a lengthy wait in orbit.  (The shuttle
facilities are not well set up for salvo launches, although something
might be improvised in a pinch.)

Even so, Shuttle C is not a trivial thing to build.  The thrust structure
is long out of production, as are the OMS/RCS pods and assorted odds and
ends, and various electronics and subsystems would have to be repackaged
to fit in the new tail section.  If you treat it as a pure expendable (no
attempt to recover the tail section and engines), it's a straightforward
shuttle derivative, but it's still a sizable engineering job.

Whether this is preferable to building a large expendable -- from scratch,
reviving an old design, or attempting to cluster existing hardware --
depends on what you want to do with it.  There is a large difference
between wanting one launch and wanting ten, for example.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (John R. Campbell) wrote:

Why?

ROTFLAMO.  No matter who or what method is used, there 'll be people
making money off of it.  The cases you cite have nothing to do with
the topic at hand.

Ah.  Just like no infrastructure was left at the Cape.  No VAB, no
LC-39.  No mission control at Houston either...  We must all be
imagining things

Hmmm....  Given that the Kennedy timetable was about a government
scientific and political mission, not about commerce, you can hardly
blame the cat for not being a cow.

D.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Gordon D. Pusch) wrote:

Blatant Bovine End Product.  Try reading the business news sometimes
and you'll routinely see businesses (including those in the aerospace
industry) make announcements of projects that won't pay for themselves
for many quarters.  (Any given quarter must show a profit, or at least
not too great a loss, but thats a rather different matter from what
you are implying.)

D.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On 30 Jun 2002 21:21:44 -0500, [email] (Gordon D.
Pusch) wrote:

Uh, yeah but I thought this discussion was about the "instant demand"
for heavy lift in the event of an asteroid impact forecast.

If LINEAR next week reported that an asteroid has been discovered with
a 99% probability of impacting the Earth in 2005, the politicians
would be tripping over themselves to get part of the action and be
able to say "I helped save the world!"

Politicians don't get to put that in campaign ads very often. :-)

Brian


author: Greg D. Moore (Strider

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
"Henry Spencer" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

The best I think you could possibly do would be 3 launches inside of a week.

Your biggest constraint (in an emergency situation) here is most likely the
number of available MLPs.

Assuming one on each pad and the 3rd waiting, you launch two, and move the
3rd into place, do a minimal checkout and launch.

In the meantime it's going to take you probably one to two weeks to stack a
4th stack on one of the now free MLPs.

[email]


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 17:15:56 -0500,
	Brian Thorn <[email]> wrote:

	No, they'd hem and haw over the 1% miss probability since
	that'd mean there'd be no need to spend money.  Also, it'd
	need to be during their _present_ terms (two years for each
	member of the U.S. House of Representatives) in order to be
	willing to spend money on a 100% strike.

	Mind you, if the strike was gonna be somewhere with high
	property values, say, California's SF bay area, then we'd
	see whether Calif politicos would have any umph.

	Of course, if the strike predictions impacted in someplace
	the politicians didn't particularly care about, well, kiss
	that place goodbye.  It'd be hard to explain the collateral
	effects of a strike in, say, the mid-pacific, to _any_ of
	the US political leadership.

	So don't look to the US for any leadership.  Heck, if the
	US gov't could make the money for LINEAR disappear into
	someone's pocket they would-  except that the money is too
	small for anyone to want to bother with.  It's pretty short
	in funding.

	And only Senators would really have an opportunity.  The HR
	folks can't care since they're fighting too much to get
	elected and most of the money spent is during a term BEFORE
	the strike can occur.

	And don't look at any corporations either;  They have enough
	problems looking more than 3 months into the future.

	The soviet system _could_ have done this since they tried to
	look forward 5 years.  Granted, they had other structural
	problems (myopia, better hindsight than foresight, etc) but
	there at least was some _effort_ towards the future.

	So if there's gonna be a major strike by an asteroid or comet
	3-5 year hence, kiss humanity good-bye.  Long term survival is
	no more important in politics than it is in economics.  It's
	amazing that anyone bothers to have children since they are
	"economically unproductive" for too many years.  I guess the
	near-term costs of universal sterilization is too high in the
	less industrialized nations despite it's much lower costs
	elsewhere.

	*SHEESH*

	I can't believe how depressing the above now sounds to me.  I
	wasn't expecting this kind of message when I first started
	replying.


author: Jan C. Vorbrüggen

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
It would be _very_ easy to explain a Pacific hit to the US: Kiss all of
the west coast - California, Oregon and Washington (includes Intel and
Microsoft 8-|) - goodbye. California alone just is the world's sixth-
largest economy, IIRC, and without Silicon Valley things will be a little
difficult for a few years...

But the important point is that at the time decisions must be taken - as
soon as possible after detection - you cannot accurately predict where it
will hit. So any decision making based on impact point is futile anyhow.

	Jan


author: Neil Gerace

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
"John R. Campbell" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Does Lex Luthor still own that area? :-)  Costa del Lex here we come, and he
won't even have to lift a finger.

rgds
Neil
Perth


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
"Jan C. Vorbrï¿½ggen" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Costa del Lex anyone?

rgds
Neil
Perth


author: Bill Bogen

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
"Neil Gerace" <[email]> wrote in message news:<3d25ae42$0$[email]>...

A slightly more realistic scenario:
A venture capitalist reads how low funding is for Near-Earth Asteroid
searches and what the discovery rate is.  He decides to fund a
secretive search for Earth-impacting rocks.  His team discovers a
city-buster that will strike somewhere (location to be pinpointed as
more data is gathered) in two years.  He invests in appropriate areas
of the economy and then releases the news.  Whether or not the rock is
stopped, he profits by the reaction to the immediate news.

The question is: not knowing the exact location of the hit, what might
he invest in?  This is a purely theoretical question.  Really.


author: Lou Scheffer

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Bill Bogen) wrote in message news:<[email]>...

With the current state of technology it's hard to tell (with the
certainty needed by a venture capitalist) if the asteroid will impact
at all, much less where.  So if you see a venture capitalist investing
in the following subjects, maybe you should start to worry (from the
JPL asteroid prediction paper):

(A) Building a private planetary radar
(B) Computing and/or measuring the Galactic tide
(C) Improving Numerical integration
(D) Investigating the rate of Solar mass loss
(E) Measuring the Solar oblateness (J2)
(F) Adding additional asteroids to existing numerical integration
codes
(G) Trying to reduce the Planetary mass uncertainty
(H) Measuring asteroid albedos to compute Solar radiation pressure
(I) Measuring the Yarkovsky effect on discovered asteroids

It would take a Moriarty class mastermind to complete this agenda in
secret.  Come to think of it, Holmes gives as his example of
Moriarty's brilliance his paper "On the Dynamics of An Asteroid."
Maybe Moriarty was secretly doing this research with his ill gotten
gains in the late 1800s.

    Lou Scheffer


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Bill Bogen) wrote in message news:<[email]>...
  Costa del Lex here we come, and he

With current technology, the time of inpact is very accurate, but the
location is not.  So one hemisphere will surely be safe, and the other
might be in danger.  With optical sightings that's about all you can
say.  With improved technology (or maybe even existing radar
technology), you might be able to narrow it down.  Uncertainties are
typically ellipses, so if you know it's hitting for sure, the
uncertainty will be a lot less than a hemisphere.

I remember seeing a web site (JPL NEA site?) that showed the error
ellipses and the earth to scale.  It's clear increased technology
would be needed to predict impact locations.

So if the venture capitalist is investing in optical interferometry
and a private planetary radar, maybe he/she could target specific
locations and sell companies based in those locations short.
Otherwise he/she would probably just want to invest in the usual space
launch suspects in hope they'll get some big contracts for the
deflection work.

   Lou Scheffer


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
In article <[email]>,
Bill Bogen <[email]> wrote:

And he promptly goes to jail for insider trading.


author: David Johnson

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Bill Bogen) wrote in
news:[email]:

I doubt you could "pinpoint" the impact location with a two-year lead
time.  Heck, with it two-years away, even "hit the Earth/not hit the
Earth" would be a prediction of probabilty.  Best you can probably do is
pick which side of the planet it's going to hit - if it hits.

David


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On Wed, 17 Jul 2002 23:38:12 GMT, Henry Spencer <[email]> wrote:

	Well, no, not promptly.  Look at Polaroid, Enron, WorldCom (and
	the list goes on).  By that time there'd be enough money amassed
	to have a better defense system (using lawyers) than the world
	would have building up rocketry systems.

	It's a pity we can't deflect asteroids using lawyers (or Auditors).

	I should ask my brother in law (and actuary) if they normally
	factor in these smaller impacts (according to spaceref.com, see
	this story: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=8834 ).


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Henry Spencer) wrote in message news:<[email]>...

He has no privileged insider information re: any of the
industries/areas he is investing in.  Only 'outsider' information,
available to anyone willing to search for it.  If I lived at ground
zero, I'd be happy to let him have all his profits, as long as I could
get out in time.  If he stalled too long, so that we couldn't deflect
the rock in time, he might go to jail for... negligent destruction of
property?


author: James Logajan

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Henry Spencer) wrote:

As a humorous comeback, that is mildly amusing. Of course, since such
action isn't remotely insider trading according to either the case law or
common sense definition of the word, the humor-factor is limited.

But to try and get back on topic: I have now seen a number of posts on this
and other threads that bash politicians. Now I'm a bit baffled by this,
because governments and politicians aren't going away any time soon - you
either adjust your space plans and actions accordingly, or you move on to
other pursuits. Insulting "politicians" may seem like great fun, but isn't
such activity analogous to throwing stuff at the lion in his den just
before you need go into the den to grab a water bucket you urgently need?

Is a defense against asteroid impact going to come about quicker if we all
start pissing off the people who control the purse strings? If so, I'd like
to be enlightened on just how that approach works better than the
alternatives.


author: John Schilling

subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
[email] (Henry Spencer) writes:

Not unless he is an insider, which has a specific legal definition and is
not simply "someone who knows things other people don't".  If he sticks
to buying stocks in companies to which he has no professional relationship
and/or fiduciary responsibility, he should be OK.

Well, OK, he may be lynched, but he won't be convicted.


subject: Re: Asteroid near miss

text:
On 19 Jul 2002 16:52:43 GMT, James Logajan <[email]> wrote:

	Yes, miniscule, Ensign.

	The problem is that political systems based upon voting are
	limited to short-term goals since they will (over time) only
	be interested in perpetuating themselves and never looking
	_past_ the next election.  In the US the Senate has 6-year
	terms which seems to maintain some sense of continuity, but
	remember that Senators were originally intended to be _appointed_
	by the states rather than directly elected.

	Other countries with more authoritarian governments often look
	further ahead, trying to stay in power for as long as possible
	via force, if necessary, and allowing the leadership to acquire
	vast sums of money.  They are capable of looking further ahead
	but humans aren't well equipped to look far into the future.

	Of course, it could be argued that females were under evolutionary
	pressure to look further forward than their next meal because
	they needed to be picky about who (or what) traits they'd favor
	for their young.  Unfortunately, my oldest daughter, as a teen-
	ager, tended to select people well below her on the evolutionary
	ladder (calloused knuckles from walking on them, sometimes they
	still had gills on their necks) so perhaps females aren't that
	much better evolved to be proactive as many seem to claim.

	No, for long term action you need someone who's going to profit
	from taking advantage of those resources coming within reach of
	an orbit;  Instead of deflecting it, it'll be mined until there's
	nothing but a wee bit of gravel that could impact the atmosphere.

	Impactors aren't a problem if we can "eat" them first and make
	money from it.  There's money to be made but no one can afford
	to take any long-term risks since the sums of money would be
	eyed as something to steal (despite the fact that most of the
	money is spent HERE on labor;  the raw materials bill is way
	below the labor costs) rather any hope for the future.  Too many
	people will take a $1,000.00 "sure thing" before a $1,000,000.00
	5 (or 10) year long shot.

	So the political capital is a nice idea but has no real relevance-
	the there's only so long you can coast on past actions.  It's a
	case of "what have you done for me lately?".

	And, from an article on SpaceRef.com, focussing on BFI (Big
	"Fast" Impactors) is not going to help with the smaller ones
	that can trigger a nuclear war.

	We're sitting on a big target and until we spread out as widely
	as possible, we'll be extinct soon enough.  We'll do it ourselves,
	too, since we're making a (collective) decision to play the game
	of denial so we can die out.

	My Dad used to tell me about being an officer in the Army:  "You're
	not allowed the luxury of indecision.  You make a decision and act
	on it.  If it's wrong, you work your ass off to reach a new decision
	point.  Not making a decision is making a decision."

	So there's no real incentive to make a decision.  When our time
	comes there will be _no_ magic solution since there will be no
	infrastructure in place to cope with it-  one way or another.

	We can't do it as a defense system since that's not sustainable.

	We need to be out there.  A _LOT_ of us.  Perhaps MOST of us.
	Not for defense, since defense doesn't win wars (even against
	nature) but to grow AND THRIVE both biologically and economically.

	Any other choice is a path to extinction.  But at least it'll
	be cheap that way.


author: Karl Roenigk

subject: Benchmarks for Unconstrained Optimization Needed

text:
Is there an on-line source for the most common array of benchmark tests
of unconstrained optimization, where equation forms and starting values
are provided?  Thank you for any help on this.


author: Peter Spellucci

subject: Re: Benchmarks for Unconstrained Optimization Needed

text:
In article <[email]>,
 Karl Roenigk <[email]> writes:

http://plato.la.asu.edu/guide.html

a good suite of standard testcases for unconstrained optimization is
http://www.netlib/org/toms/709a resp 709b

hope this helps
peter


author: Brian Webb

text:
"Karl Roenigk" <[email]> wrote

A good place to start is the "Decision Tree for Optimization" site.

http://plato.la.asu.edu/guide.html

- Brian


author: [redacted]

subject: Re: Understanding the Phaistos Disk

text:
In article <hgzY5.364$[email]>,
  [email] (Steve Whittet) wrote:

No. The photography I have of Face B is not as enlarged as the one of
Face A, but clear enough to assert that the rosette has only 6 petals.

I agree with that.

No. On the Narmer Palette, the ear is visible, plus what appears as the
edge of a cap. On the Phaistos Disk, only the ear is indicated.
But one may, of course, advocate that the edge of an eventual cap has
been omitted because of the small size of the drawing ...Or that the line
on the Narmer's Palette is only indicating the hair (normally colored in
Egyptian paintings)... So I would, personally, not draw a definite
conclusion from that. The "tatooing" seems to me more important...
I don't know this book. It seems interesting. Could you give the exact
title of it ?

Surely not! The enlarged photos show beyond any doubt that the tattooing
has the shape of an 8 . This being said, it could be only a
"face-painting", not a real tattoo... But the important thing is these
type of "tattooings" or "face-painting" are well attested in the later
GREEK civilization, what goes Faucounau's way : as you know, he
attributes the Disk to a "Troyano-Cycladic Proto-Ionian Civilization" and
considers those "Proto-Ionians" as the "First Greeks" arrived in the
Aegean. Whence, therefore, a strong controversy with scholars who believe
that the Mycenaeans/Achaeans were the "First Greeks" !.. J.F. has for him
all the Ancient authors, who wrote that the Ionians "were Pelasgian",
i.e. "the first inhabitants" in some areas of Greece ...The idea that
this is just a "legend" (as J. Chadwick wrote it) is due to the
enthousism suscited in the 5Oies by Ventris' decipherment of Linear B...
Remember that, at that time, Evans thought that Greeks had come VERY
LATELY in the Aegean !.. Considering the Achaeans/Mycenaeans as the
"First Greeks" was already a progress !..
On the other hand, J.Faucounau also considers that the Proto-Ionians
LEARNED how to write from the Egyptians, thanks to their contacts with
Egypt during the Vth and VIth Dynasties...

Best regards

grapheus

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.


author: Steve Whittet

subject: Re: Understanding the Phaistos Disk (long)

text:
In article <9101uh$amv$[email]>, [email] says...

Thanks for the response sans caps.

"Atlas of Ancient Egypt" John Baines, Jaromir Ma'lek Equinox, New York, 1987
ISBN 0-87196-334-5

Where the Egyptians portray a side profile wearing a cap, the cap
leaves the ear exposed.

Facial tatooing is an interesting subject. Among Greeks there are those
who like the warlike Thracians wore caps and tattooed their faces.
The Peleset are not among them.

Lets also be clear that the Phaistos Disk is dated to c 1700 BC
almost immediately before the development of Linear A.

We should ask ourselves whats going on it the world back then?
Egyptian inscriptians are a good source of information on
what their neighbors and visitors looked like.
I don't see a lot of evidence of tattoos.

c 1700 BC, is about the time of the decline of Mari.

c 1650 we have the emergence of the Hittites in Anattolia,
and an end to Old Babylon.

c 1628 BC we have the explosion of Santorini in the Aegean.

This is about the time of the invasion of the Hyksos in Egypt
and or the arrival of Abraham and Sarah.

We can see Egyptian portrays of "Asiatics" coming into Egypt.
Interestingly the Biblical reference to "a cloak of many colors"
seems to be a good link to the area around Sidon and Byblos

The Dothans have provided many good archaeological linkages
to Mycenean Greek proto-geometric pottery, hearths and
architecture from Sidon south to Dor.

Is there any evidence that Mycenean "Sea People" are already
engaged in trade across the eastern Mediterranean this early?
A quick look at either Bass or Casson will confirm this.

Lets mention these sea people for a moment, we have lots of
information about them and we can see them portrayed on the
walls of Medinet Habu. (No facial tattooing is evident)

We can see that the Peleset do have the round shields and
mohawk hairdos or headresses we see on the Phaistos Disk
and on the Philistines later.
.

======================================
http://www.phoenixdatasystems.com/goliath/c3/c3a.htm

"Attacks on Egypt1

Most of the biblical stories that mention the Philistines
are found in the Old Testament books of Judges and 1 Samuel.

Who were these enigmatic people? Where did they come from?

Were the biblical Philistines related to the Sea People invaders
mentioned in the Egyptian histories of the period?

Some Egyptian court records of the twelfth century B.C. mention
the Philistines specifically as part of a group of invaders from the sea
who were repulsed and then were settled in Canaan.

Were the Egyptians referring to the same people we read about
in Judges and 1 Samuel?"

[I think that may be a reasonable hypothesis. In particular the
Biblical description of the sharing out of the lands in the north
coresponds well to the Egyptian records of battles around Beth Shean
in the Time of Ramesses II.]

"These questions will be addressed by first examining the Egyptian records
concerning the Sea People invaders to see if we can determine from them
the origins of the Philistines.

After having done so, we will look at the intriguing plague account
in 1 Samuel 5 and 6 and compare it with a parallel account in the Iliad,
book 1. The ritual ascribed to the Philistines in the 1 Samuel account
may provide another clue to their origins. In addition, our investigation
will lead us to the Aegean, to Anatolia, to Egypt, and to Cyprus to examine
ancient Near Eastern literature and archaeological remains."

[Crete was also a part of equasion. Linked by the sea trade in copper
tin, and other metals; both as raw materials and worked objects the
Myceneans spread out across the Aegean.

In the west they spread across the Tyrehenian Sea to Southern Italy,
Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, the Balerics, and Libya.

In the east they carried their trade routes and raids of cities to
the Black Sea, Anatolia, Cyprus, the Palestinian coast, Syria, Lebanon,
Caanan, Egypt, Crete and all the islands of the eastern Mediteranean sea.]

"According to the Egyptians, the Philistines were just one tribe of a
confederation of tribes who invaded Egypt and settled on the coastal plain
south of Mount Carmel.

[here a review of Judges 4 may be of interest as it names some of the
peoples the Israelites lived among and gives some mention of what was
going on in this area c 1285 BC]

"They evidently became the dominant group in this confederation,
because the writers of the Old Testament seem to use the word Philistine
as a generic term to describe all the people who were moving onto the
coastal plain at the time that the Israelites were carving a niche
for themselves in the hill country of Canaan under Joshua and the
succeeding judges."

[During this period the region from Hazor south to Caanan was part
of a power shift. Initially powerful and independent states were
forced into alliance with Egypt. Beset by warlords and seeking
protection of their borders they became territories governed
and protected by Egypt.]

"The Egyptians tell of two great movements against them of people
scholars have dubbed "the Sea Peoples." The Egyptians themselves
do not use the phrase Sea Peoples, however, nor do they have a
single generic name for all of the invaders, as found in the Bible.

Instead, they refer to the invaders as "foreigners from the sea"
coming from the "northern countries" or "their islands" beyond the sea,
that is, the Mediterranean. The first invasion, recorded at Karnak
in Upper Egypt, was in the fifth year of Pharaoh Merneptah, during
the final third of the thirteenth century B.C. (See pp. 90-91 for
an explanation of this dating.) The Karnak record lists five
specific groups as part of that invasion (Barnett 1975, 366-69):

Other spelling/

pronunciation

1. A-qi-ya-wa-sa/ A-qi-wa-sa/ Ekwesh

(`-k-w'-s')

2. Ta-ru-sa (Tw-rw-s'/ Tw-ry-s') Tursha

3. Rw-ku (Rw-kw)

4. Sa-ra-d-n/ Sa-ar-di-na (S'-r'd-n) Sherden

5. Sa-k(a)-ru-su (s'-r'-rw-s') Sheklesh

Not all scholars agree about the relationships that exist between these names
and known sociopolitical groups or places, but let us focus on the more popular,
probable, and accepted associations. The first name is generally linked to the
Homeric Achaeans, the second to the Trojans, the third to the Lukka/Lycians of
southwest Anatolia, the fourth to settlers from Sardis in western Anatolia who
moved to the area of Akko north of Mount Carmel and eventually to Sardinia in
Italy, and the fifth to the Sheklesh who may have moved later to Sicily.

This Karnak list does not include the Philistines, who are named some forty years
later in a record of a second attack on Egypt.2

This second attack of the Sea Peoples by land and sea occurred during the reign
of Pharaoh Ramesses III, years five and eight, around 1175 B.C. The battle scenes
and names of the invaders are recorded at Medinet Habu, near Thebes in Upper Egypt
(Pritchard 1969, hereafter ANET, 262):

Other spelling/

pronunciation

1. Pe-ra-sa-ta/ Peleset (Pw-r-s-ty) Philistine

2. Tjikar (T-k-k[-r]) Tjekker

3. Sa-k(a)-ru-su Sheklesh

4. Danuna (D-y-n-yw-n) Danaoi

5. Wasasa (W-s-s) Weshesh

The first on the list are the Philistines; the second are the Tjekker,
who may have settled on Cyprus at the end of the thirteenth century B.C.
and who later settled in Dor, south of Mount Carmel on the Palestinian coast,
according to a late twelfth- and an eleventh-century b.c. Egyptian document;
the third are also in the Merneptah list and are the only ones to be mentioned
in two records; the fourth are the Homeric Danaans; and the fifth possibly are
Carians of western Anatolia.3 All the Sea Peoples, according to Albright, came
from the Aegean orbit (1975, 508). At Medinet Habu the Philistines and the names
of the other Sea Peoples occur together, probably because the Egyptians knew them
to be related geographically. The following words on the walls at Medinet Habu
attest to the Sea People alliance:

The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands.
All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray.
No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode,
Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on. . . .

They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was
prepared before them. Their confederation was the Philistines,
Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denye(n), and Weshesh, lands united.

They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit
of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting:
"Our plans will succeed!" [ANET, 262]

The reliefs on the temple walls at Medinet Habu give us excellent portrayals
of civilian and combatant dress, weaponry, ships, chariots, wagons to move people
and supplies, and military tactics. This depiction of the Sea Peoples has much
in common with descriptions of the Aegean peoples from other sources.

For example, the Philistines at Medinet Habu are pictured wearing "feathered headdresses"
very similar to those pictured on the Phaistos Disk, a round, baked clay disk discovered
on Crete at Phaistos and dated to the Middle Minoan IIIB period, circa 1600 B.C.

The disk was found with a tablet inscribed with Linear A, which is the earliest
form of writing found on Crete and is not yet deciphered. The clay and firing of
the disk are not similar to what is generally found on Crete; it is possibly an import
from Caria or Lycia in southwest Anatolia (Barnett 1975, 362-63; Pendlebury 1965, 170).

The feathered headdresses, according to Herodotus and a late Assyrian text, are typical
of Caria and Lycia during the Bronze Age. Later, the same style of headdress is also
worn by "Ionian and Karian warriors in an Assyrian relief, and by a Lycian contingent
in Xerxes' fleet" (Burn 1930, 143). Herodotus states that "the Greeks are indebted to
them [Carians] for three inventions: fitting crests on helmets, putting devices on
shields, and making shields with handles" (Rieu 1954, 82). The Iliad, however,
does not describe a feathered helmet similar to that of the Sea Peoples,
though it describes various other types of helmets.

The feathered headdress also appears on a ceramic, anthropoid coffin uncovered
at Beth-shean in Israel. The coffin may date to approximately 1040 B.C., roughly
the time of King Saul's reign and his death in the area by Philistine hands
(T. Dothan 1982a, 274-76). According to 1 Samuel 31:10, Saul's body was hung
by the Philistines at Beth-shean. Anthropoid coffins have been found at other
sites associated with Egyptian rule in both Egypt and Canaan.

In addition, feathered headdresses appear on Sea People warriors pictured
on a twelfth-century ivory game box and on a conical seal from Cyprus.
The distinctive feathered headdress clearly seems to belong to the
Sea Peoples, the Philistines in particular.

In addition to showing feathered headdresses, the Phaistos Disk links
Crete and Anatolia in other ways. The disk also pictures beehive-type
structures (probably huts),

[shrines accoring to Egyptian and Mesopotamian iconography]

which have features similar to those of Lycian architecture in southwest Anatolia.
As well as mentioning the huts, Pendlebury cites the type of bow pictured on
the disk as having an Asiatic origin (1965, 170). He believes that Anatolia
played an important role on Crete in both the Early Minoan (before 2000 B.C.)
and Middle Minoan (ca. 1800 B.C.) periods (1965, 53, 121-22).

Nearly five hundred years separate the Phaistos Disk and the Egyptian reliefs
at Medinet Habu (T.Dothan 1982a, 13), pointing to long-standing ties between
Crete and Anatolia.

Other arms pictured at Medinet Habu, such as long, tapered swords, spears,
javelins, shields, and corselets, are similar to those described in the Iliad
(Wainwright 1956, 203). "It will be noted that in spite of differences in detail,
the general resemblance of the Achaean equipment to that of the Shardena and Pulesati
[Philistines] is marked" (Lorimer 1950, 201). Further, the ships of the Sea Peoples
at Medinet Habu and on the Phaistos Disk are similar to those shown on a Mycenaean
Greek vase found on Skyros, an island in the Aegean between Athens and Anatolia
(Raban and Stieglitz 1991, 38-39; T. Dothan 1982a, 7, 11; Barnett 1975, 373).

The kilts worn by the Philistines at Medinet Habu also have Anatolian affinities:
"such a tasselled kilt is worn by a Southern Anatolian god on a stele from near Cagdin"
(Barnett 1975, 372). In addition, the chariots of the Sea Peoples contain three men with
spears, following the Hittite, rather than the Egyptian custom of only two men with bows.
Also, the wagons and hump oxen of the Sea Peoples pictured on the reliefs are strictly
Anatolian (T. Dothan 1982a, 5-13; A. Mazar 1990, 302-6; Sandars 1978, 121-31;
Yadin 1963, 2:249-51).

The scholars referred to above make numerous other comparisons between
the Sea Peoples pictured on the Medinet Habu reliefs and the Greeks from the
Mycenaean and Anatolian world. These comparisons of modes of dress, weapons,
and means of travel cannot be considered as conclusive evidence that the Sea
Peoples, of which the Philistines were a part, were from the Aegean and from
Anatolia, since these various modes could have been adopted through travel and
trade. However, any study of these characteristics will reveal that the Sea People,
including the Philistines, have much in common with the Mycenaean world and
with Anatolia, especially the west and southwest sector.

[No mention or portrayal of facial tattoos among any of these]

As Ramesses III prepared for battle, according to the reliefs at Medinet Habu,
he stated, "the Peleset (Pw-[r']-s'-t) are hung up, [ -- ] in their towns . . ."
(Breasted 1906, 4:41).

[After the Hyksos (who may themselves have been Mycenean Greeks)
were defeated and ejected from their emporia in Armana and Sais
both the Peleset and Tjeker (who may have come in with the Hyksos)
were used as mercenaries by the Egyptians and settled at fortified
wells in the deserts along their borders and in their territories
as buffers against foreign invaders such as the Hyksos had been.]

"It would appear that some of the Peleset/Philistines were in Palestine
even before Ramesses III defeated them. Perhaps some of the Sea Peoples
had settled at a few sites in Canaan as conquerors or as Egyptian mercenaries,
and due to a problem with them, Ramesses III put down their towns
(Albright 1975, 511; Stiebing 1980, 14).

It is possible that there was a pre-Ramesses III settlement of Sea Peoples
at Ekron, according to T. Dothan, but not at Ashkelon, according to Stager
(see pp. 97-101). Ramesses III used his warships, troops, and chariotry to
overpower the invasion on both land and sea:

Those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and
their soul are finished forever and ever. Those who came forward
together on the sea, the full flame was in front of them. . . .
They were dragged in, enclosed, and prostrated on the beach, killed,
and made into heaps. . . . [ANET, 262-63]

The northern countries quivered in their bodies, the Philistines, Tjekk[er,
and . . .]. They cut off their (own) land and were coming . . . on land;
another (group) was on the sea. [ANET, 263]

Ramesses III boasted that he not only defeated the Peoples of the Sea,
but also forced them to settle in citadels in what today we call Palestine
or Israel (see also B.Wood 1991, 44-52, 89-90).

I extended all the frontiers of Egypt and overthrew those who had attacked them
from their (lxxvi 7) lands. I slew the Denyen in their islands, while the Tjeker
and the Philistines were made ashes. The Sherden and the Weshesh of the Sea were
made nonexistent, captured all together and brought in captivity to Egypt like
the sands of the shore. I settled them in strongholds, bound in my name.

Their military classes were as numerous as hundred-thousands. I assigned
portions for them all with clothing and provisions from the treasuries and
granaries every year. [ANET, 262]

Ramesses even recorded that the vanquished Peleset/Philistines said to him,
"Give us the breath for our nostrils thou King, son of Amon" (Sandars 1978, 132).
That is to say that, according to Ramesses, the Philistines recognized him
as a god, for the gods give life, give breath.

The reign of Ramesses III at the beginning of the twelfth century coincided
with the period of the judges in the Bible. Ramesses boasted that he settled
the Peoples of the Sea in Palestine, and their presence there is also noted
in another Egyptian document, the Onomasticon of Amenope, which dates to the
end of the twelfth century. This document lists the Sea Peoples living in
Canaan within the Egyptian sphere of influence: the Sherden, the Tjekker,
and the Philistines. It also mentions the Philistine cities on the coast:
Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Gaza. These cities were on the Egyptian line of defense,
according to the Egyptian record. As will be detailed in later chapters,
the material culture of the Philistines at Ashdod, Ekron, and other sites
clearly displays Egyptian influence, corroborating the written
evidence (A. Mazar 1990, 305; T. Dothan 1982a, 3-4; 1982b, 26).

Two earlier lists, which have not yet been mentioned, are also significant
to our study: first, the list from Pharaoh Ramesses II of the Hittite allies
that fought against him and, second, the Hittite list of the Assuwa League
of allies (in western Anatolia) who struggled against them.

Pharaoh Ramesses II fought against the Hittite king Hattusili III at Kadesh
of the Orontes in northern Syria around 1285 B.C.

[Compare the description of the Egyptian chariot battle at Kadesh with the
Judges 4 description of the chariot battle at Kadesh. Kadesh in both cases
is described as being in the mountains. It lies at the natural border of
watersheds where the waters of the Jordan and Orontes spring from a single
source. From one pool we have the Orontes flowing north and the Jordan South.
When Ramesses II crosses the Orontes he crosses the border into Syria and
is ambushed. The Egyptian inscriptions which record the battle show the
chariots fighting uphill]

He recorded the names of the Hittite allies who opposed him; among them
are the following: 1) Pi-da-sa, 2) Da-ar-d(a)-an-ya, 3) Ma-sa,
4) Qa-r(a)-qi-sa, 5) Ru-ka, and 6) Arzawa.

The first name has been associated with Pedasos in Mysia of the Troad
south of Troy, the second with the Dardanoi of the Troad, the third with
southwest Anatolia, the fourth with Caria, the fifth with Lukka/Lycia,
and the sixth with Arzawa in western Anatolia (Barnett 1975, 359-62;
Breasted 1906, 3:123ff.; Gardiner 1961, 262ff.).

The Assuwa League was defeated by the Hittites around 1250 B.C.
It had been formed to fight against the collapsing Hittite empire.
The list of its members contains the names of twenty-two allies
from western Anatolia. Three of these names are immediately familiar:
Luqqa (Lycia), Ta-ru-i-sa (Troy), and Karkija (Caria).

Also mentioned are Wilusiya (Ilios) and Warsiya (Lycia) (Albright 1950, 169;
Gurney 1952, 56-58; Stubbings 1975, 349-50). A few years after the defeat
of the Assuwa League by the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV, Lycia, Caria,
and possibly a few others showed up among the Trojan allies fighting
against the Achaeans, according to the Iliad.

[Imagine the Greeks loosely organized as families, clans, tribes,
brotherhoods and crews joining together to become a nation in fighting
against the Anatolian Trojans and their Hittite allies. After ten
years of specializing in the seige of cities and their plunder
they win.

What do their warriors do then? They go to ply their trade elsewhere.
Menelaus goes to Egypt. Odysseus wanders widely. These are the groups
we are talking about]

There is some disagreement among scholars about the identities
 of the members of the Assuwa League. Garstang and Gurney agree
that Wilusiya is probably Ilios (Troy) and that Warsiya may be
associated with Lukka (Lycia).

However, they do not equate Luqqa with Lukka (Lycia), for that
would put the Assuwa League both north and south of Arzawa,
in west central Anatolia. For them, the Assuwa League was
strictly in northwest Anatolia, stretching north of Arzawa
to the Troad (1959, 105-7). It should also be noted that
Homer in the Iliad seems to refer to two Lycias.

In book 2.876-77 and book 5.479, Sarpedon is a leader of the
Lycians from "distant Lycia" by the river Xanthus in southwest
Anatolia. Pandarus is another leader of Lycians, but they are
from the region of the Anatolian Mount Ida near Troy
(2.824ff. and 5.105, Rieu 1950, 61, 95).

Lycians are also mentioned in the royal Egyptian Amarna letters
of the fourteenth century B.C. as raiders of Alashiya
(Cyprus or parts of it) and Egypt; the king of Alashiya
is said to have sent out ships to watch for their approach.

The chart on page 64 demonstrates how names on the Egyptian
and Hittite lists just described compare with the Trojan and
the Achaean groups and allies named in the Iliad.

Note especially the similarities between the names of the Sea Peoples,
on Ramesses III's and Merneptah's lists, and of the allies of the Trojans.

Most Near Eastern scholars agree that the Sea Peoples came from
the Aegean-Anatolian orbit (Stiebing 1980, 14). As can be seen
from the list of Ramesses III, the Egyptians considered the
Philistines to be one of these invading Sea Peoples.

It appears then that the Philistines can be associated with
the Trojans of western Anatolia and with the Achaeans.
The best areas to search for the specific point of origin
of the Philistines seem to be western Anatolia, Crete,
and the Greek peninsula in the locale of Athens and Mycenae.

The Near East of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C.
witnessed the decline and near collapse of the Egyptian and
Hittite empires. The Aegean world was also in turmoil.

Countless cities besides Troy were sacked, and the Sea Peoples
migrated as a result of the economic, environmental, social,
and political upheaval in the Aegean at this time (Stiebing 1980, 15).

Greek writers such as Aeschylus, Euripides, Herodotus, and Thucydides
spoke along with Homer of the revolutions and ferment of the thirteenth
century B.C., which, as we have seen, seem to have provided the momentum
for the Sea Peoples' attacks on Egypt.

The late return of the Greeks from Troy caused many revolutions,
and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the citizens thus
driven into exile who founded the cities. [He cites examples in Greece,
Ionia, the islands, and Italy] . . . many years had to elapse before
Greece could attain to a durable tranquillity undisturbed by migrations
[emphasis mine]. . . . All these places were founded subsequent to
the war with Troy. [Thuc. 1.12 (Livingstone 1972, 40)]
=====================================================
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9659/dbmthran_main.htm

Yes, I put it at the top of the page.

I generally procede by doubting and testing everything,
lets initially agree there may be a mark.

I don't see that it has the shape of an 8.
I don't know that it represents a tattoo
or what its significance would be
if it were a tattoo.

Yes and No. it depends on the period and the clan or brotherhood.
Its more common among women than men. Generally women who tattoo
their faces do so as sacred witches, prophetesses or temple prostitutes...
Among Men the Celts, Thracians and other barbarians tattoo their faces

I think we want to limit the snapshot to c 1700 BC +/- 5 centuries
If we go much beyond that we dillute our data irreparably.

This is a good area to stick to just the facts. Early Greeks are
organized *very* loosely as families, clans, tribes, brotherhoods
and crews. It is almost meaningless to talk about them as a people
let alone a civilization.

They are more likely to fight or migrate  as groups in the hundreds
rather than the thousands until well after c 1700 BC.

There is evidence of invaders speaking a version of what later
became Greek coming into the Aegean from the north c 2000,-1900 BC.
After c 1600 BC the influence of the Minoan civilization based on
Crete and Santorini is notable. Our period of c 1700 BC comes
sometime after the initial influx but before the explosion of
Santorini c 1628 BC.

Micael Grant "The Rise of the Greeks" Charles Scribner, New York, 1988

Its fair to describe the "Greek" civilization as a work in progress
and subject to some disruption during this period so the word "proto"
is fair in that regard. To describe it as in any way geographically
determinative in this period goes too far.

There were some Egyptian influences transfered to Greece along
with their scripts by the Phoenicians c 800 BC.

As an Indo-European language Greek probably dates
to after c 1650 BC and can be divided as follows

Epic Greek - Homers Illiad and Odyssey c 1200 BC
Classical Attic Greek dates to the 5th century BC.
There was also:
Ionic Greek - Herodotus
Doric Greek - the choral songs in Attic tradgedies
Aeolic Greek - Sappho's poetry

Koine or common Greek was used from the 3rd century BC
to the 6th century AD

"From Alpha to Omega" Anne H Groton ISBN 0-941051-38-2

To return to the issue of the associative identity of the
Phaistos Disk with a civilized culture possessed of a system
of pictographic writing c 1700 BC I think we need to either
exclude Greek as not yet a written language and look to Egypt
or Mesopotamia for the precedent grammatical forms or consider
the Disk as the first and earliest evidence for a written Greek
and again look to Egypt or Mesopotamia for the necessary precedent
grammatical forms .

regards,

steve


text:
In article <NSPY5.385$[email]>,
  [email] (Steve Whittet) wrote:

Steve, I cannot comment, point by point, such a long message !... You
have ABSOLUTELY to read Jean Faucounau's book and main papers !.. I've
contacted him, mentioning our discussion, and giving him your e-mail
address. I am pretty sure he will get in touch with you : he loves
serious people who are genuinely interested in the Phaistos Disk...

So, I'll limit my comments to a few points :

1)- Date of the Disk : The date you gave is only a "TERMINUS ANTE QUEM".
Following JF, the Disk must be dated c.1750/1800 BC. He has also
explained its presence into a Minoan Temple Depository belonging to the
First Minoan Palace at Phaistos. The Disk is a bit anterior to the Thera
explosion (c.1628 BC). It comes from "an island situated North East of
Crete" (See my post of 12/02/00  "Re :radiating,shining" about that).

2)- About your Historical Reconstruction :
I see nothing wrong with it, except that it follows the "generally
accepted ideas" IGNORING JF's "Proto-Ionian Theory". For instance, you
wrote : "Is there any evidence that MYCENAEAN "Sea People" are already
engaged in trade ..this early?" : Not THEM, but the Proto-Ionians !..

3)- About the Peleshet :
Following JF's theory, they are the "Hald-bread Heirs" of the
Proto-Ionians (lost of the Ionic language, adoption of Foreign Gods,
etc.) About 600 years SEPARATE the Phaistos Disk from the Peleshet.. (and
two natural catastrophies !)

4)-About the "People of the Sea". You have to read JF's papers on the
subject, in which he explains the ethnic origin of each of them, why they
attacked Egypt under Merneptah and Ramses II, what was the link uniting
them,  etc..

Best regards

grapheus

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.


author: HippaTP

subject: HippaTP.com -- HIPPA parody site

text:
We at HippaTP.com know you have a lot of HIPPA #&%! to deal with, and
we can help clean it up. Don't let the HIPPA police catch you with your
pants down!
       Go to http://HippaTP.com now!
With warmest regards,
Dr. I.C. Smiles


author: Matt H.

subject: Re: HippaTP.com -- HIPPA parody site

text:
I was going to tell you something about HIPPA, but due to new HIPPA
regulations I can't or I'll will be dealt with and terminated
damn hippa,
matt
.
"HippaTP" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...


author: linda-renee

subject: Re: HippaTP.com -- HIPPA parody site

text:
"HippaTP" <[email]> wrote in message

Too bad it's HIPAA, not HIPPA...


author: DVH

subject: Monbiot brutally assaults the anti-nuclear lobby

text:
"Over the last fortnight I've made a deeply troubling discovery. The
anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about
the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are
ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged, and wildly wrong. We
have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.

I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen
Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the world's foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She
has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for
a Nobel peace prize. Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate
she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did
what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for
the sources. Caldicott's response has profoundly shaken me.

First she sent me nine documents: newspaper articles, press releases and an
advertisement. None were scientific publications; none contained sources for
the claims she had made. But one of the press releases referred to a report
by the US National Academy of Sciences, which she urged me to read. I have
now done so - all 423 pages. It supports none of the statements I
questioned; in fact it strongly contradicts her claims about the health
effects of radiation.

I pressed her further and she gave me a series of answers that made my heart
sink - in most cases they referred to publications which had little or no
scientific standing, which did not support her claims or which contradicted
them. (I have posted our correspondence, and my sources, on my website.) I
have just read her book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. The scarcity of
references to scientific papers and the abundance of unsourced claims it
contains amaze me.

For the last 25 years anti-nuclear campaigners have been racking up the
figures for deaths and diseases caused by the Chernobyl disaster, and
parading deformed babies like a medieval circus. They now claim 985,000
people have been killed by Chernobyl, and that it will continue to slaughter
people for generations to come. These claims are false.

The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear) is
the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Like the
IPCC, it calls on the world's leading scientists to assess thousands of
papers and produce an overview. Here is what it says about the impacts of
Chernobyl.

Of the workers who tried to contain the emergency at Chernobyl, 134 suffered
acute radiation syndrome; 28 died soon afterwards. Nineteen others died
later, but generally not from diseases associated with radiation. The
remaining 87 have suffered other complications, including four cases of
solid cancer and two of leukaemia.

In the rest of the population there have been 6,848 cases of thyroid cancer
among young children - arising "almost entirely" from the Soviet Union's
failure to prevent people from drinking milk contaminated with iodine 131.
Otherwise "there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect
in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure".
People living in the countries affected today "need not live in fear of
serious health consequences from the Chernobyl accident".

Caldicott told me that Unscear's work on Chernobyl is "a total cover-up".
Though I have pressed her to explain, she has yet to produce a shred of
evidence for this contention.

In a column last week, the Guardian's environment editor, John Vidal,
angrily denounced my position on nuclear power. On a visit to Ukraine in
2006, he saw "deformed and genetically mutated babies in the wards .
adolescents with stunted growth and dwarf torsos; foetuses without thighs or
fingers". What he did not see was evidence that these were linked to the
Chernobyl disaster.

Professor Gerry Thomas, who worked on the health effects of Chernobyl for
Unscear, tells me there is "absolutely no evidence" for an increase in birth
defects. The National Academy paper Dr Caldicott urged me to read came to
similar conclusions. It found that radiation-induced mutation in sperm and
eggs is such a small risk "that it has not been detected in humans, even in
thoroughly studied irradiated populations such as those of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki".

Like Vidal and many others, Caldicott pointed me to a book which claims that
985,000 people have died as a result of the disaster. Translated from
Russian and published by the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
this is the only document that looks scientific and appears to support the
wild claims made by greens about Chernobyl.

A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry points
out that the book achieves this figure by the remarkable method of assuming
that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases - including many
which have no known association with radiation - were caused by the
Chernobyl accident. There is no basis for this assumption, not least because
screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and,
since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The
study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence
of disease.

Its publication seems to have arisen from a confusion about whether Annals
was a book publisher or a scientific journal. The academy has given me this
statement: "In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or
the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its
publication do we intend to independently validate the claims made in the
translation or in the original publications cited in the work. The
translated volume has not been peer reviewed by the New York Academy of
Sciences, or by anyone else."

Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking
studies, scorning the scientific consensus, invoking a cover-up to explain
it: all this is horribly familiar. These are the habits of climate-change
deniers, against which the green movement has struggled valiantly, calling
science to its aid. It is distressing to discover that when the facts don't
suit them, members of this movement resort to the follies they have
denounced.

We have a duty to base our judgments on the best available information. This
is not only because we owe it to other people to represent the issues
fairly, but also because we owe it to ourselves not to squander our lives on
fairytales. A great wrong has been done by this movement. We must put it
right."


author: The gods have made us mad

subject: Re: Monbiot brutally assaults the anti-nuclear lobby

text:
On 05/04/2011 11:11, DVH wrote:

People say whatever they're paid to say.

What's new?


author: abelard

text:
On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:11:08 +0100, "DVH" <[email]> wrote:

at least the boy has integrity which is more than rare enough
    among socialists...

but much worse, he's a traitor to the cause!

just because he no longer believes in islam is not the slightest
    reason to publicise his doubts...

he should be stoned...and i know just the readers to do it!

regards


author: joeh

text:
On Apr 5, 1:11 pm, "True Blue" <[email]> wrote:

Right twice a day?


text:
"The gods have made us mad" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Could you be more specific.

Are you saying the anti-nuclear lobby are paid to campaign against nuclear?


author: sutartsorric

text:
On Apr 5, 11:35 am, "DVH" <[email]> wrote:

Monbiot is an idiot; something he has proved time and time again in
his regular Guardian columns. At least he admits to being in awe of
someone who has 21 honorary degrees (which is almost as many as Phil
The Greek but I doubt that many take his scientific ramblings
seriously).


author: True Blue

text:
"joeh" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
On Apr 5, 1:11 pm, "True Blue" <[email]> wrote:

Imagine if clocks had only one hand, and went from 1st Jan - 31st Dec,
instead of 12 o'clock - 12 o'clock.


text:
On 05/04/2011 11:35, DVH wrote:

Do you remember Nationwide building society and the saga of 'The Valet'?

For those who do not, 'The Valet' was the name given by the press to a
society member who was strongly in favour of de-mutualisation, and who
was standing for election to the board on that basis.

He used to be a 'Gentleman's gentleman' - hence his nickname, and he was
seldom out of the financial sections of the papers as he expounded the
undoubted benefits of the society converting to a bank.

His arguments were unassailable - the shares that members would receive
would be of a value that would take years to recoup (if ever) from the
paltry interest paid by Nationwide on accounts.

He began to attract a huge following - so much so that most people
(Nationwide staff included) were fairly sure that he would be elected
and that his motion would be carried.

Then, about three weeks before the crucial vote, The Valet suddenly
announced that he had been utterly and completely wrong.  He had studied
the matter further, and was now of the opinion that it was in everyone's
interest of Nationwide remained a mutual society.

I remember thinking at the time how sorry I was that I had not been
standing for election on his platform - then the fat brown envelope
stuffed with cash would have come to me....

The Valet was an excellent talker - but one feels that Nationwide's
riches had a louder and more persuasive voice.

Genuine Damascene conversions are rare - usually, an abrupt volte-face
is an indication that someone has suddenly come into money.


text:
"sutartsorric" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
On Apr 5, 11:35 am, "DVH" <[email]> wrote:

He seems to have outbreaks of intellectually honesty that make people feel
uncomfortable.


text:
"The gods have made us mad" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Are you sure about that?

Hardern did withdraw his candidacy for the board of the Britannia, but did
he say anything against its demutualisation?


text:
"DVH" <[email]> wrote in message
news:YYCmp.17176$[email]2...

I've yet to witness one of these outbreaks that makes me feel uncomfortable
or otherwise. He's just seeking attention. Only this time, he's like the
proverbial stopped clock.