Count Like An Egyptian

The Bizarre Fractions of Ancient Egypt
Wrath of Math From Wikipedia:

The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP; also designated as papyrus British Museum 10057, pBM 10058, and Brooklyn Museum 37.1784Ea-b) is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics.

It is one of two well-known mathematical papyri, along with the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus. The Rhind Papyrus is the larger, but younger, of the two.

In the papyrus' opening paragraphs Ahmes presents the papyrus as giving "Accurate reckoning for inquiring into things, and the knowledge of all things, mysteries ... all secrets". He continues:

This book was copied in regnal year 33, month 4 of Akhet, under the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Awserre, given life, from an ancient copy made in the time of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Nimaatre. The scribe Ahmose writes this copy.

Several books and articles about the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus have been published, and a handful of these stand out. The Rhind Papyrus was published in 1923 by the English Egyptologist T. Eric Peet and contains a discussion of the text that followed Francis Llewellyn Griffith's Book I, II and III outline. Chace published a compendium in 1927–29 which included photographs of the text. A more recent overview of the Rhind Papyrus was published in 1987 by Robins and Shute.

Farther down the Wikipedia page is this image:

Ancient Egyption Units of Measurement in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus

The image on Wikipedia contains some text, but the lines are very long which makes it difficult to read. Printing the image large enough to make the text legible requires two sheets of paper. I used Windows Paint. I had completely forgotten about this program, but it is around, at least on my Windows computer.

Anyway, I thought the text in this image ought to be converted to text, so I used OCR Online to extract the text and then edited it to correct the errors. The only words OCR had trouble with were the  highlighted words in color. Other than that it was perfect. Then I went ahead and chopped it up to make it more readable, at least in my mind. Here it is:

The present table is a concordance of ancient Egyptian units of measurement which are used throughout the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian document which is a record of elementary mathematics. The papyrus consists of four sections:

1. a title page with historical information,
2. a table of fractional calculations for 2/3 - 2/101, or the "2/n table" (where n is always odd),
3. a much smaller table of fractional calculations for the nine fractions 1/10 - 9/10, or the "1-9/10" table, and finally
4. a series of 91 "problems" or numbers, which are numbered from 1-87 (a modern convention imposed on the document to differentiate the problems) and include four additional items designated by moderns as 7B, 59B, 61B, and 82B.

Many of the latter problems make use of certain ancient Egyptian units of measurement, whether of length, volume, time, or otherwise, and this is what the present table summarizes. It happens that none of the 2/n table, the 1-9/10 table, or even most of the first several problems 7, 7B, 8-34 make any mention of units, and they are therefore not included in this table.
Almost all usage of units of measure is confined to the later problems in the papyrus (with some early exceptions, also listed), being the title page, problems 1-6, and problems 35-87, which include three additional items designated as 59B, 61B, and 82B.
For the title page and numbers 86-87, the context of the usage of units is not mathematical, but historical.

The units are grouped by unit type, and color-coded. From top to bottom, the unit types are:

• length,
• area,
• volume (deben),
• monetary (sha'ty),
• trigonometric (seked),
• food/manufacturing (pefsu), and finally
• "foodstuff" (loaves, des-measure).

The seked is not strictly speaking a trigonometric item, but its context is so close to our modern understanding of trigonometry that we identify it with that word.
The pefsu is also a kind of derived unit of measure relating to food preparation and manufacturing.
Finally, the "loaf' is not really a standard unit of measure within the papyrus as such, but it is mentioned so frequently in related contexts that it merits its own entry. In any one problem, it can be interpreted as a measure of solid food.
Likewise, the "des-measure", mentioned in only a few problems, can be interpreted as a volume unit of liquid measure (especially in the context of food and drink) which is not immediately related to the other volume units.

Entries in black indicate that a given unit of measure is explicitly named or entailed in the problem, in the original document.
Entries in gray indicate that although the unit's word is not expressly stated in that problem, the context of the document makes clear that the unit is implicitly being used in the course of the problem's calculation, statement, etc.
Note that neighboring groups of problems often tend to entail similar units, although in some cases the units are merely strongly implied by context, as opposed to being explicitly stated in the original document.

In the Rhind Papyrus, units of a given type have precise, exact, simple relationships to one another, which conversion factors we can and therefore do easily express in modern terms, using only integers.
Although there is historical evidence that certain units of measure can be "concretely" compared with modern units, these exact specifications are not essential to reading the Rhind Papyrus as a mathematical document.
Indeed, one can read the papyrus has having an internally consistent system of units of measure, which is all that is presented in this table and explanation.
The reader is cautioned that ancient Egypt had a very long history, and that the present information about units pertains directly to the Rhind Papyrus only.
At other periods of ancient Egyptian history, certain units were taken to have different conversion factors relative to other units.

Among units of length, 1 khet = 100 cubits = 700 palms = 2800 fingers.
Among units of area, one square khet is called one setat, and 1 setat = 100 cubit strips, where one cubit strip is a rectangular strip of area being 1 cubit by 100 cubits (or any other sector of equal area).

Among units of volume, the following holds:

2 cubic cubits = 3 khar = 60 heqats = 600 hinu = 19200 ro.

Furthermore as one might expect, the somewhat redundant "hundreds/multiples" versions of the heqat and the ro can be equated with those same "base units" in the following wise:

1 hundred quadruple heqat = 2 hundred double heqats = 4 hundred heqats = 100 quadruple heqats = 200 double heqats = 400 heqats = 128000 ro = 64000 double ro = 32000 quadruple ro.

Combining these two chains of equalities, rearranging their terms, and expressing all of the units' conversion factors in the simplest terms of integers yields the following comparison among all of the standardized units of volume measurement in the Rhind Papyrus:

3 hundred quadruple heqats = 6 hundred double heqats = 12 hundred heqats = 300 quadruple heqats = 600 double heqats = 1200 heqats = 40 cubic cubits = 60 khar = 12000 hinu = 384000 ro = 192000 double ro = 96000 quadruple ro.

Among time units, since the Egyptian month is always exactly 30 days, then 6 years = 73 months = 2190 days. The remaining units, being of different types and not having simple or relevant conversion factors into other units of like type (at least as far as the papyrus itself is concerned) are therefore not expanded upon here.

More posts about fractions.

Another post about ancient mathematics: the Babylonian Plimpton 322 clay tablet. It dates from 1800 BC, so roughly the same era the Rhind Papyrus.

Temples

A rendering of the eastern approach structure from the 2014 report shows the complications involved with the massive project. OGS Project S6574

A story in the New York Post caught my eye yesterday. New York wants to rebuild the steps leading up to the entrance to the capital building. There are 77 steps, which is like four big stories, so it's substantial, and it's outside in the weather, so it needs to made of stouter stuff than your typical indoor staircase. However, rebuilding these stairs, which is essentially what they are doing, on account of they have been neglected for decades and were even fricking condemned back in 2015, rebuilding these stairs is going to cost like $80 million dollars, which is like a million dollars a step. So I had to look into a bit to see just what the deal was. As you can see in the above drawing, it's big and complicated, and it's all made of rock. So it's gonna cost.

Isaac Perry staircase drawing, ca. 1892

The building was originally built in 1899 for a cost of twenty-five million dollars. Back then gold was $20.67 an ounce. Gold is somewheres around $3,500 an ounce now, which means in today's money that building would cost four billion dollars, so maybe that $80 million isn't out line.

Fancy government buildings, built out of stone, from a hundred years ago are very impressive, especially if you consider all the work that went into cutting, hauling, finishing and fitting all those big stone pieces. Well, I'm impressed. Don't particularly like being in them, they frown on spitting on the floor.

Why would anyone do this? Because we're building temples, that's why, and we believe in what we are doing. What we believe in is not so important as the fact that we believe in something. In addition most everybody also needs to hold the same beliefs. How do you get a large population to all believe the same thing? You make sure everybody goes to a state school, and if the church and state are in cahoots, all the better.

Look at the pyramids. I wonder how they got all those people to work together for all that time, and now I think primary school indoctrination in their belief system is the answer.

I was looking at the pyramids recently, and I'm reading about all these passages, tunnels and secret compartments, both verified and speculative, and I'm having a hard time making a mental model of this thing (I guess most of this is about the big pyramid), and I got to thinking a scale model would be a big help. It would need to be a big one, like 4 or 5 feet across. Some of those passages are pretty small. A larger model would mean you would be able to see them, they wouldn't  be just pixelated into oblivion. Great idea, but I haven't gotten anywhere with it.

Ark of the Covenant

Laura Loomer with Ark of the Covenant replica

Rumor has it that Trump has a replica of the Ark of the Covenant at his home in Florida. Near as I can make out, it is copy of the prop from the Harrison Ford movie Raiders of The Lost Ark. I dunno, maybe it is the original prop. Another rumor says the replica was on tour and one of the stops it made was at Mar-E-Largo.

I got onto this from a story in Modernity News about a CIA Cold War project to use 'remote viewing' to locate the the original. Criminently, 'remote viewing'? Well, I guess, if you are locked in a life or death struggle with godless commies, and you've got money to burn, sure, go ahead and try some crackpot schemes, see if anything pans out. I mean, how many valuable innovations in weapons and tactics started as a crackpot scheme?

Construction of this replica consumed 2700 hours of labor and six pounds of gold. Gold is currently around $3,000 an ounce. Figuring $100 an hour for labor, means this replica cost around $500 thousand.

I didn't not find any solid information on this, it's all just rumor.

Kill Me Love Me - Netflix Series

[Official Trailer] Kill Me Love Me | Liu Xueyi / Wu Jinyan / Bi Wenjun / Zhao Xiaotang | YOUKU
YOUKU English-Get APP now

Chinese historical drama / fantasy. Pretty people, fabulous clothes, elaborate sets, but most importantly a horribly convoluted plot involving political intrigue and treachery. That last part is what makes it compelling - the plot is a puzzle and the subtitles only give you clues, so your job is to figure out just what is happening.

Overview from TMDB:

In a land torn by war, the three kingdoms of Dayan, Xiyan, and Nanyue have battled for years. Prince Murong Jinghe of Dayan, renowned for his military prowess, suffers a devastating betrayal, leading to the annihilation of his army. Determined to uncover the truth behind the treachery, he seeks justice while navigating the treacherous court politics. Amid this turmoil, Mei Lin, a warrior presumed dead, becomes Murong’s only ally in his quest for revenge. As they fight together, a complex bond forms between them, blending love and sacrifice, as they both struggle to survive and seek justice. 

Vowing to avenge her parents, Mei Lin becomes an assassin and infiltrates the life of a ruthless prince—until startling revelations derail her revenge.

A city [whose name I have forgotten] is destroyed by an army. Mei Lin lived in that city with her parents. Her parents were killed when the city was destroyed. Prince Murong Jinghe gets blamed for the destruction and the murder of the inhabitants and is banished for ten years. His older brother who is in line to become Crown Prince was jealous of his younger brother's military success and so organized the destruction of the city and caused it to be blamed on his younger brother. All this happens before the show starts. The show begins when the younger brother returns to the capital.

A marriage is arranged between the children of the leaders of two neighboring nations in order to cement a peace treaty. The bride and her entourage journey to the neighboring nation. Her entourage includes 100 beauties and Mei Lin has managed to get herself included in this group. When they get to the capital the 100 beauties are handed out to big shots, presumably for their sexual gratification, though the show pretty much glosses over that part. Prince Murjong Jinghe manages to snare Mei Lin for himself, which is great because Mei Lin is now right next to the target of her revenge.

Of course, about the same time she finds out that he was set up, but she is in league with a secret band of assassins and their leader has decided this Prince must die, so she has to fake a public assassination attempt. Evidently what goes on in public is completely divorced from what goes on in private because they carry on in private like nothing happened.

I dunno why it is, but I enjoy watching these cute, hundred pound women take on a squad of big hulking goons and kicking their asses. It's ridiculous, but the girl is good looking and watching her move is just a pleasure.

Heroes

Stolen entire from The Orthosphere.

Are Your Heroes Worthy? by JMSmith

“To teach us reverence, and whom we are to revere, should ever be the chief aim of education.” - Thomas Carlyle, “Review of Goethe’s Works” (1832)

Commenter Ian objects to my irreverent opinions of some heroes of the Old Testament.  I understand his unease because I long read the OT with the pious presupposition that these characters were indeed heroes.  But then one day my pious presupposition was not working and I just read the words.

What is admirable about Abraham?  What kind of man pimps his wife and then plays the jealous husband for cash and prizes?  Abraham pulls this stunt twice!  What is admirable about Jacob?  What kind of man steals his brother’s birthright and goes on to embezzle his father-in-law’s sheep and goats?  What is admirable about Joseph?  What kind of man exploits his government post and a famine to expropriate and enslave the nation he governs?  What is admirable about Rahab the harlot?  What kind of a woman helps foreign spies so that she and her family can escape a massacre of her own people?

When a pious presupposition is not whispering Hero! Hero! in your ear, your lying eyes begin to see a shifty rat.

Recall that the soul of a people is revealed in its heroes.   Whom they reverence and teach their children to reverence (not always the same person) is supremely important.  One way to understand a people is therefore to read their legends and folktales and histories and ask, Who are the heroes?  Are they brave warriors?  Pious saints?  Patient scholars? Or are they, as in these cases, shrewd and devious tricksters?

Are they men who outwit unwary yokels with sharp dealings and shrewd fraud?

When I say sharp dealings and shrewd fraud, I do not mean simple intelligence.  I believe simple intelligence is in every culture admired.  I mean craft; I mean guile; I mean devious design.  I mean a man, for instance, who would set another man up to hit on his wife in order to extort cash and prizes.

Imagine that you knew a man in real life who, with his snaky wife, made millions with this loathsome scam.  Would you tell your son, “That man is a hero, my son”?  Would you say, “Son, I hope you will grow up to be just like him some day”?

All of this makes me wonder what happens to our souls when we read the legends and folktales and histories of a profoundly alien race, and then stifle our natural revulsion with a pious presupposition.  “That sure seems rotten, but I guess it must be alright.” What sort of confusion enters into our souls when our hearts recoil from some outrageous roguery, but our heads say, “No, no, this is really a man (or woman) to whom all honor and glory are due?”

Whatever happens, I very much doubt that reading about rascals with a pious presupposition is a hermeneutic conducive to spiritual health.

Note: hermeneutic is a method or theory of interpretation.

Many (most? all?) politicians operating on the national level have snaky wives and have made millions with loathsome scams. That seems to be the nature of the beast, or maybe it's just a contagious disease. Still, we vote for them because they are the ones who have climbed to the top of the pile. We don't vote for them because they are paragons of virtue, we vote for one because the other is much worse. The lesser of two weevils as it were.

The Lesser of Two Weevils - Master and Commander
Dinerboy11

Maximal Violence

The Rape of Dinah by Sebastiano Ricci, 1700, via Bremen Museum

JMSmith retells a tale from the bible.

The Rape of Dinah and Annihilation of Shalem

I'm not big on reading the bible myself, but I used to go to bible study after church. We had a very sharp pastor leading the class and he did a lot of back filling on some stories. Stories in the Bible can be very spare and if you don't know the situation they may not make much sense or seem very significant. But add a little back story and now you can understand just what's happening. Anyway, JM does the same thing here. The fact that we have any kind of civilization at all is pretty amazing. We should do what we can to preserve it.

Cave Tech

Eurocopter AS-350 AStar (PR-TNG)

The AStar is a popular helicopter, over 10,000 have been produced since 1975. They can carry five people and fly about 150 MPH. New they cost pert near two million, used ones can be picked up for about half that. All in, they cost about a thousand dollars an hour to operate. You must really want to get somewhere to pay that kind of money.

The airport code attached to this picture is SSPF. Mouse over the code and we get a popup that says Fly Village (Altos/PL). There is a Fly Village in northeast Brazil. However, SSPF is the code for an airport closer to Sao Paulo, way farther south.

Teresina, Fly Village & Natal, Brazil

Fly village is not far from Teresina, and we got another photo of a military plane in Teresina. Alexandro Dias took both photos, so we're probably in Teresina. Natal used to be the jumping off point for planes flying across the Atlantic to Africa.

Rock art at Serra da Capivara National Park in Piauí state, one of the largest and oldest concentrations of prehistoric sites in the Americas

Fly Village is located in the Brazil state Piaui. Looking at Piaui I find this cool photo of ancient rock art. The rock art might be 20,000 years old. They figured that out using optically stimulated luminescence. Wait, what? Optically stimulated luminescence? Never heard of it.

I looked. Optically Stimulated Luminescence is some real Star Trek shit. It sounds like complete bullshit, but evidently it works. Not only are they using to date cave paintings they use it with dosimeters. It sounds insane.

King Tut

Nickel, sulfur, and chlorine elemental distribution maps of one side of King Tut's dagger, analyzed with portable XRF spectroscopy.

Got onto this from a YouTube video short. Another example of a special kind of spectrometry. This one is X-ray fluorescence. Previous posts about spectroscopy. Spectroscopy and spectrometry are two different words. ATA Scientific Instruments explains them both. The difference might matter to some people, but to me it's more like the difference between either and either.

Previous post about King Tut.

Deadwind Season 3 - Netflix Series

DEADWIND Season 3 Trailer
Original versions

Sofia Karppi (Pihla Viitala), the lead detective, and Sakari Nurmi (Lauri Tilkanen), her sidekick, are investigating a series of gruesome murders that are happening on a daily basis. Plus we have drug dealers,  an evil pharmaceutical company, family problems as well as a cold case involving Karppi. There are also some bits about the history of medicine, so there is plenty to keep our little minds occupied.

A mosaic of Hippocrates on the floor of the Asclepieion of Kos, with Asklepius in the middle, 2nd–3rd century

The killer leaves a symbol with the bodies of the people he has killed. Eventually they discover that it is a predecessor to the Caduceus that medical-industrial establishment uses today. So they go back to Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC), who lived on the island of Kos, the same island that a couple of people in the story visited. Turns out the symbol is sold as a tourist trinket all over the island. So things are getting tied together. I did not find any evidence of this symbol being a real thing, but does it matter? It works in this story.

Helsinki to Kos - 1,600 miles

In Episode 7, just after the 5 minute mark, Nurmi quotes Paracelsus (1493 – 1541) , father of toxicology, from the 16th century, saying "the dose is the poison", which leads Karppi to look at the problem in a new way. Supposedly the pharmaceutical company is trying to develop a new drug to help drug addicts break their addiction. But now Karppi wonders if maybe they were working on a new, undetectable poison. Might be a lot of people interested in something like that. Might also explain the rash of dead bodies that have been showing up.

Flak tower in Rajamäki

In the course of their investigation they pay a visit to a Flak tower. It might be the only one in Finland. It's 30 miles north of Helsinki. Rumor has it that it was built to protect a nearby distillery that was busy producing Molotov cocktails. Never heard of anyone producing Molotov cocktails on an assembly line before.

Porsche Tacyan Turbo

Nurmi has new fancy car - an electric Porsche. Never mind the Turbo name, it has no turbocharger, it's all electric. Scenes with the car include whining electric motors. I wonder how realistic that is. It could be spot on or it could be amped up for effect. Sounds are funny, sounds you normally ignore can wreak havoc with audio recordings.

Somewhere in there is a scene where our heroes are in a bar having a beer, and the beers are Coronas. Struck me as funny. Ooo, look at us drinking imported beer. Kind of like drinking Heineken over here. There is also a nightclub called Kansas. Over here it sounds absurd, why would anyone want to name a nightclub after the middle of nowhere? To the Finns, the state of Kansas might seem like a dreamy fantasyland.

Season 1 post. Season 2 post.

Focus

I keep trying to understand what is going on with our government on the world stage. I have several simple theories like incompetence, stupidity and greed. There is a chance that all this mayhem is part of some well thought out strategy, but if this strategy is to crush, or at least deflate Russia, well, I think the first three theories can be applied here as well.

Since I'm still not sure whether there is some master plan or not, I guess I'm falling back on psychology. So now I'm working on brain detection. A person may be able to spout a lot of information, but that doesn't make them smart. If they're smart they start piecing that information together and they're going to start seeing connections.

What makes these jackasses act like jackasses? What the heck is it? Is it a disease, a genetic upbringing, a lax upbringing, a harsh unbringing?

JMSmith lights the way:

When Hypocrites are Put to the Test, They are Exposed, Found Wanting, and Fail

“The long-awaited Texas House report into the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde  . . . noted a massive but inept response from heavily armed local, state and federal law enforcement.”

Jim Vertuno “Uvalde Report: Huge Response, Little Action,” Associated Press (July 19, 2022)

“Some have considered the larger part of mankind in the light of actors, as personating characters no more their own, and to which in fact they have no better title, than the player hath to be earnest thought the king or emperor whom he represents.  Thus the hypocrite many be said to be a player; and indeed the Greeks called them both by one and the same name.” 

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1747)

The words “massive” and “inept” seem to fit just about everything Americans do nowadays.  Our response to covid was certainly massive, and it was mostly inept; much of it amounting to hugely expensive “covid theater.”  Our response to radical Islam was massive, and if not always inept, it was very far from deft or dexterous.  Out response to the Ukraine War has so far been very costly and a complete failure.  The bungled response to the Uvalde shooter is of a piece with this melancholy pattern.  The Keystone cops who dithered and fretted outside the deadly classroom lacked nothing in the way of weaponry; but they lacked—egregiously lacked—the requisite virtues of courage, intelligence and resolution. 

Weaponry without these virtues is just costly tinsel and toys.

Money does not make clowns into cops.  Gear does not make wimps into warriors.  Books do not make simpletons into scholars.  Stained glass and surplices do not make mediocrities into men of God.  But extravagant expenditures can disguise the clowns, the wimps, the simpletons, and the mediocrities—disguise them until they are put to the test.

And when such impostors are put to the test, they are exposed, found wanting, and fail.

* * * * *

Hypocrisy is as old as humanity, the first hypocrite being Cain when he acted as if he did not know the whereabouts of his brother Able.  When Jesus excoriated the scribes and pharisees for hypocrisy, he meant they were actors who were playing the parts of pious men.  The priests in the temple were likewise pretending to be priests.  Herod’s children were pretending to be kings and queens.  Scripture does not tell us if Jerusalem cops of were pretending to be cops, but I suspect they may have been when I read:

“Again they tried to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands” ( John 10: 39).

Clowns! It seems that everyone in ancient Judea was a hypocrite, a phony, a fraud.  Cashing paychecks was the only thing they did in earnest and for real.

Well, it seems that modern America has picked up where ancient Judea left off.  Who knows how many Americans are only pretending to do their jobs?  And the illusion of industry is everywhere sustained by a surfeit of costly gear.  This is not just the weaponry that we see everywhere toted by clowns that are pretending to be cops.  It is all the stage props and stage sets with which professional posers create their illusions of industry and their simulacra of skill.

Until, that is, they are put to the test, found wanting, and fail.

Who Rules The World

【且试天下 Who Rules The World】Trailer | 终极预告：杨洋赵露思执子之手，品春赏夏，看秋经冬
Tencent Video

A very silly, totally over the top, Chinese historical drama. It's nuts, but every once in a while it is very funny. We've seen a bunch of these and they're pretty great. Lavish sets, lavish costumes, beautiful people, beaucoup de schemeing and royal court intrigue, and of course there is a chaste love story. If you are lucky you might seen the leading couple kiss. The fight scenes, and there are always fight scenes, are sometimes realistic and sometimes very stylized. Here they are stylized, so stylized they look like they were choreographed for by a ballet director. Our leading couple has no problem using their superior abilities / magical talents to vanquish a dozen bad guys at one fell swoop. And like I said, it's sometimes very funny.

I used to try and figure out just what historical period / event was being portrayed, but there is so much history and so many characters, characters with names I cannot remember for more than a few seconds, that I've given up. Sometime between 0 AD and 1000 AD I expect.

On Netflix, 40 episodes, 40 minutes each.

There Be Dragons

A view of Mariupol as war in Ukraine rages, on April 9, 2022 [Leon Klein/ Anadolu Agency]

That's odd, an apparently untouched sculpture of a Chinese dragon in a scruffy looking street in Mariupol, Ukraine. I was going to say a bombed out street, but looking a little closer at the image the only damage seems to be the trash lying on the ground and the fallen tree branch.

But it's a Chinese dragon. The East and the West seem to have very different versions of what a dragon should look like. The Chinese seem to prefer a snake-like body with a couple of tiny arms, while the West seems to prefer one that is structured more like a horse or bear, but with scales and wings. Some people think stories of dragons come from far away encounters with crocodiles.

A statue of Zmey-Gorinich in Lipetsk region, Russia

There's a more Western model a couple of hundred miles northeast in a family theme park. MY MODERN MET has a page devoted to this concrete monster.

Kudykina Gora theme park is about 350 miles north of Mariupol

A-10 Warthog

I prefer to think the dragon legends come down to us from a previous civilization that had mechanized, flying war machines like the A-10 Warthog. After that civilization collapsed and the art of heavier-than-air aircraft was lost, how would you explain something like an A-10 to your kids? "There were fire breathing monsters that flew through the air and destroyed everything in their path". That's how.

Ajax, Emperor Ming's War Rocket

Ajax, Emperor Ming's War Rocket

Fantastic Plastic is offering a model kit of Ajax, Emperor Ming's War Rocket. Well sort of, they have a web page describing it but it's on backorder. Via The Unwanted Blog.

Flash Gordon Official Trailer #1 - Max von Sydow Movie (1980) HD

This rocket is from the movie Flash Gordon which was released back in 1980. I loved that movie. I mean it was silly and nonsensical, but as long as you didn't let that bother you it was a great story. I remember wishing we could see more of this rocket, but like most science fiction movies it was just background to the story. There was one very cool / silly scene where this rocket glides up to a landing platform much like a limousine glides up to deliver celebrities at a red carpet gala. It even made burbling exhaust noise like a Cadillac. Totally ridiculous but totally cool.

A different model of Ajax

Chronicle Collectibles built 100 larger, display models (I can't tell when) and sold them all for $1500 each.

Reflecting Ajax. Reconstruction from plaster cast. Glyptothek, München.

I imagine the rocket was named after Ajax, the Greek hero from the Trojan War in ancient Turkey. Arch villains always are up on their history. Surprisingly I couldn't find any images of Ajax being heroic or warlike. Everyone seems to want to focus on his suicide, which is supposedly what he is contemplating in this sculpture.

Glyptothek Museum

The sculpture was evidently constructed by Glyptothek, a museum in München. I couldn't find anything about how it came to be. I suspect they took a couple of old pieces and then imagined the rest. The museum was built by King Ludwig I. His grandson, Ludwig II, built Neuschwanstein Castle, the famous fairytale castle.

Richest People in History

Visual Capitalist has an infographic of the The Richest People in History. It might be useful if you want to print it and hang it on the wall where you can see the whole thing, but it's too big to fit on my computer display. If I shrink it down, the text is too small to be legible. There isn't a whole lot of information there, so I copied it into the spreadsheet you can see above. You can see the spreadsheet on Google Drive here.

I had heard of half of these people, but not the other half. Also, I now understand the phrase 'rich as Crassus'.

Via ZeroHedge

This too shall pass

Dolazak Hrvata Na More - Oton Iveković - 1905
[The arrival of the Croats at the Adriatic]

Liz Hinds got me started by noting that Abraham Lincoln used the title phrase in a speech. Well, I gotta check that out because after all, didn't Abraham also say "You can't believe everything you read on the internet"? Well, according to our great oracle of the internet (Wikipedia), it's true.

The Wikipedia article also claims that the phrase 'this too shall pass' originated with medieval Persian Sufi poets. Something about the Sultan wanting a timeless phrase engraved on his ring. So I go looking for pictures of medieval Persian Sufi poets, and the painting at the top turns up. That web page claims that Croats are of Iranian origin. I don't know it that's true, but it would certainly go a long way to explain why that part of the world has such a hard time getting along. I mean I suspect Slavs and Persians have very different cultures.

A couple of medieval Persian Sufi poets have shown up here before:

• al-Ghazali
• Avicenna Ibn Sina

Knowledge is Ephemeral

Linear A tablet from the palace of Zakros, Archeological Museum of Sitia
We have plenty of examples, but we can't read any of it.

“Always”: Unspoken & Clueless Assumptions by Joseph Moore. Joseph is one of my favorite thinking writers. He links this video:

Why Can't we Remake the Rocketdyne F1 Engine?
Curious Droid

The Thirty Tyrants

Leonidas I, King of Sparta, Commiefied

The Thirty Tyrants

The deal that the American elite chose to make with China has a precedent in the history of Athens and Sparta

BY LEE SMITH

Opening paragraphs:

In Chapter 5 of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli describes three options for how a conquering power might best treat those it has defeated in war. The first is to ruin them; the second is to rule directly; the third is to create “therein a state of the few which might keep it friendly to you.”

The example Machiavelli gives of the last is the friendly government Sparta established in Athens upon defeating it after 27 years of war in 404 BCE. For the upper caste of an Athenian elite already contemptuous of democracy, the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War confirmed that Sparta’s system was preferable. It was a high-spirited military aristocracy ruling over a permanent servant class, the helots, who were periodically slaughtered to condition them to accept their subhuman status. Athenian democracy by contrast gave too much power to the low-born. The pro-Sparta oligarchy used their patrons’ victory to undo the rights of citizens, and settle scores with their domestic rivals, exiling and executing them and confiscating their wealth.

The Athenian government disloyal to Athens’ laws and contemptuous of its traditions was known as the Thirty Tyrants, and understanding its role and function helps explain what is happening in America today.

This essay explains a great deal of what's been going on in America. Some might feel Lee is being too cynical, but everything he says agrees with what I've been hearing. The American elite don't care about the country or the people who live here. All they care about is making more money. 

You could argue that they wouldn't be making money if they weren't providing a valuable service, and they might be improving the lives of people living in Asia, but if you are destroying your country you are still a dirt bag.

Note:

"$2 billion for a five-year oil supply of 130,000 barrels a day" works out to $42.14 per barrel which is probably a pretty fair price. Oil from the Urals is about the same, other oil is around $60 a barrel today.

Wikipedia articles:

• Sparta
• Leonidas I
• Helots

Via The Feral Irishman

OMG we're all gonna die!

History of Pandemics
Click to embiggenate enough to make the text readable

Via Borepatch, who got it from Al Fin.

Cosmic Clock

Incoming: The Chicxulub Impactor By Stephanie Osborn

By way of promoting Incoming: The Chicxulub Impactor By Stephanie Osborn, Sarah A. Hoyt has posted a timeline of how the disaster unfolded.

I recently connected the rotation of our galaxy to the ages of long ago events. If you look at the galaxy as a clock face, each hour of galactic time consumes about 19 million Earth years, so this event, that happened 66 million year ago happened about 5:30 this morning, galactic time, assuming the current galactic time is the same as my local time.

Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub impact structure. The coastline is shown as a white line. A striking series of concentric features reveals the location of the crater. White dots represent water-filled sinkholes (solution-collapse features common in the limestone rocks of the region) called cenotes after the Maya word dzonot. A dramatic ring of cenotes is associated with the largest peripheral gravity-gradient feature. The origin of the cenote ring remains uncertain, although the link to the underlying buried crater seems clear. - Wikipedia

Northwest portion of the Yucatan Penninsula, site of Chicxulub impactor
Not much evidence of the event on the satellite map, though you there seem to be some semi-circular swaths of clear areas surrounding Merida, which is pert near the center of the impact.

Dinosaurs

Milky Way Rotation

Never thought of it that way before. Kind of puts the invention of lignin (360 million years ago) and the development of lignin eating bacteria (300 million years ago) in perspective.

If the Milky was actually rotating, you might think that all the stars in the Milky Way would just head off into the great beyond. Pictures of spiral arm galaxies sure look like they are rotating, though I can never decide whether they are winding up the spiral arms (clockwise in the above picture) or flying apart (counter-clockwise). But then there is gravity. Hard to believe that it could exert any noticeable force over a distance of 25,000 light years.

All of which got me to wondering how fast the Sun is traveling, so off to the spreadsheet.


Satellites in low earth orbit, like the International Space Station, travel around 5 miles per second. The earth is traveling around the sun at 19 miles per second, so the sun traveling at 130 miles per second has got the hammer down. Except all our neighbors are going the same way at the same rate. Except for Barnard's Star, which is hustling along at 57 miles per second relative to the sun, going who knows where.

Via dad's deadpool blog