The Girl from Oslo - Netflix Series

What Happened in Oslo (Bortført) - Trailer - Netflix
FanCat

Norwegian girl goes to Sinai for fun in the sun with a couple of Israeli friends and they all get kidnapped by ISIS terrorists. Chaos ensues.

The show is about evenly divided between what's going on with the kidnappers and what's going on on the home front, both is Oslo and Israel, which is mostly politics and emotional caterwauling. Israel won't take direct action because that would mean crossing the border into Egypt, and that would offend the Egyptians. That's weak (fuck the Egyptians), but we get to see drones and spy satellites at work trying to keep track of the kidnappers and their victims.

Some of the details are a little weak, and there is the usual Netflix claptrap, but overall the show does a good job of telling the story.

City of Gaza
Area shown is about five miles across.

Gaza is like a big city. ISIS and Hamas are bitter enemies and would love to kill each other.

CIA map of the Sinai Peninsula, 1992

The Sinai is a desert. The northern edge is on the Mediterranean Sea. The southeastern edge borders the Gulf of Aqaba. 

We prefer to watch shows in their native language with English subtitles, even when the show is in English. It doesn't work here because it only shows the subtitles when they are not speaking English, so to get subtitles all the time you have to switch to English, which means much of it is dubbed and the dubbing sucks.

Bortført translates as abducted.

This New Pyramid Theory

This New Pyramid Theory Explains the Missing Evidence
DamiLee

I ran across the internal tunnel theory once before and it seemed pretty good then. Muon post here.

1923 Dunelt 499cc Supercharged Two Stroke Motorcycle

1923 Dunelt 499cc Two Stroke Motorcycle

Everything here comes from Historic Vehicles' page about Dunelt Motorcyles and their unusual supercharged, two-stroke engine:

Dunelt two-stroke cylinder with stepped piston – Montagu Cars and Motor Cycles

The patented Dunelt 499cc engine had a cylinder barrel with different upper and lower bore diameters, in which slid a ‘stepped’ piston with two matching diameters.

The pistons were double diameter and also bi-metallic, with an iron/steel section cast in for the ring grooves – not cheap to make.

Where a standard-bore engine had 499cc-limited mixture induction and transfer ability, the Dunelt engine could suck into its crankcase and transfer into the cylinder about 770cc of charge petrol-air mixture.

A deflector piston ensured that most of that mixture remained in the combustion chamber.

This basic form of supercharging had the desired effect and, in conjunction with a heavy flywheel, earned the Dunelt a reputation for being a torquey, ‘slogging’ engine that lent itself to sidecar applications, including commercial service and delivery tasks.

That wasn't the only unusual feature of the engine. It also had a one piece, forged crankshaft and a one piece connecting rod. Go read the whole thing. 

Also, a Dunelt motorcycle was the first to cross the desert from Cairo to Siwa Oasis and back in 1924.

Siwa Oasis

Siwa Oasis is 350 miles from Cairo as the crow flies.

The oasis is in a deep depression that reaches 62 ft below sea level. . . . The depression is fertile due to both natural flowing artesian wells and irrigation. . . . The oasis supports the cultivation of thousands of date palms and olives. - Wikipedia

Echoes of The Past - Netflix Series

Echoes of The Past | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Very engaging story about rich folks telling lies, hiding the truth about a fatal scuba diving accident. The patriarch convinces the dead girl's brother to plead guilty to manslaughter, telling him he'll only serve one year in prison. Something goes sideways, it's never explained why, and he is sent to prison for 15 years. Now he is out and he is looking for revenge, so we get to go digging through everyone's vague and distorted memories of what happened. Everyone is a suspect, but confusion is your only real clue.

Seems that the scuba diving accident should not have been fatal, the girl wasn't that deep, maybe 15 or 20 feet down, and her air hose sprung a leak. Seems like she should have been able to easily surface, but then who knows what actually happened. I mean, scuba diving is inherently risky, so maybe she got a mouthful of water and choked. Who knows? 

There are a number of fight scenes including a confusing one in a hotel hallway with the fire sprinklers going off and all the other guests trying to evacuate their rooms while our two guys try to take out the hired killer.

The finale is perfectly tragic - three of the principles, two of whom were suspect, but none of whom were guilty, all kill each other and the girl who caused all this trouble finally realizes what she has done.

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.

Exercise Bright Star - Egypt 1983

U.S. and Egyptian aircraft over the Pyramids during Exercise Bright Star '83
Click to embiggenate

I came across this photo while skimming the news this morning. It was at the top of a story on Geopolitics about Egypt. I glanced at it and thought 'cool, a bunch of jet fighters flying over the pyramids', but then I looked closer and realized that all of the airplanes were different. Left to right we have:

• McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom
• General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon
• Dassault Mirage 5
• Grumman F-14 Tomcat
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21
• Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19
• Vought F-8 Crusader
• Grumman EA-6B Growler

This photograph is phenomenal. Whoever managed to get all these aircraft to fly together and then managed to capture this photo as they flew over the pyramids deserves a medal.

The Bright Star exercises started in 1981 and are still going on every couple of years.

The Middle East is Complicated

Several places posted stories, but they don't show much more light on the matter than what's in the video clip:

• The National - Egypt-Russia relations reach new heights in Ukraine war aftermath
• DW - Egypt's difficult balancing act between the West and Russia
• The Atlantic Council -Egypt is cozying up to Russia. It’s time for the US to step in.
• Arab Center Washington DC - The Fallout of Sisi’s Gambit with Russia

But I did find this pic:

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El Sisi in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. Reuters

The Monks of the Thebaid

A Thebaid: Monks and Hermits in a Landscapeabout 1505
Lorenzo Costa (Italian, about 1460 - 1535)

The Commondore by Patrick O'Brian. On page 266 we find the doctor sitting down to breakfast:

". . . being no more particular about washing, shaving and brushing than the monks of the Thebaid."

Thebaid? Getty Museum gives us this explanation of the above image, though it doesn't say anything about their personal grooming habits:

Using only pen and ink, Lorenzo Costa portrayed the cradle of Christian monasticism, the Thebaid, a Roman division of the upper Nile River valley. Beginning with Saint Paul of Thebes and Saint Anthony of Egypt in the 200s, Christian monks retreated to this region, to live a solitary life of ascetism and prayer. Over time, these monks, also known as "desert fathers," organized into communities.

Costa's scratchy, energetic draftmanship created a bustling composition filled with monks and a landscape riddled with the grottoes, huts, and caves they used for prayer and shelter. He portrayed an imaginary scene, incorporating a variety of monastic saints and spanning different periods. In the upper left background, Saints Paul and Anthony are shown seated, receiving bread from a raven through which God provided nourishment. Mary Magdalene, who supposedly lived her later years alone in the desert, stands near the river to the right. The landscape itself appears more European than Egyptian, perhaps reflecting Costa's native countryside around Bologna, Italy, rather than the real Thebaid.

A thousand years later there was also a Northern Thebaid in Russia. Now I wonder which one Stephen was referring to. Personal preference says the Egyptian ones as they were in the domain of the known world. Russia was like beyond the pale.

P. S. In the book, Thebaid has two dots over the i, not one, but every reference I saw on the net has just one.

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.

Straits of Tiran

Ship passing through the Straits of Tiran - Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Al Reuters

Aljazeera tells us that the UN is withdrawing their peacekeeping force from the Straits of Tiran and installing cameras to keep an eye on things, so maybe things have calmed down here. But just where are the Straits of Tiran? So off to Google Maps we go.

Gulf of Aqaba

The Straits of Tiran are at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba where it joins the Red Sea. It's not a vital shipping lane, unless you are Israel or Jordan who both have ports at the northern end of the Gulf. Jordan has a large oil terminal there, which might be where the ship in the first photo is coming from.

I was surprised by Jordan's presence there. I shouldn't have been, Jordan forms Israel's entire eastern border except the most northern portion, but you never hear anything about Jordan, it's like it doesn't exist.

Straits of Tiran, Tiran and Sanafir Islands

The Straits of Tiran are narrow, only about two miles wide and there are reefs in the middle. The islands look pretty desolate, but on the western (Egyptian) shore we have a bunch of resorts.

Party at Jackson Reef
Island in the background is the same one as in the first photo

I am looking at some street view images hoping to find a view of the pier that is in the first photo on this post, and this pops up. At first glance it looks like a typical drunken boat party, but if you take in the whole 360 degree view you see that the boats are almost entirely empty.

Divers at Jackson Reef

Turns out they are dive boats for tourists from the resorts and all the people are underwater. The sea life on the reefs is pretty spectacular.

Piers

I wasn't able to locate the pier on Google Maps until I realized that there were lines crossing a large green area adjacent to the shore and I realized that it was shallow water, not land, and those lines were light duty piers suitable for people to walk on, not for freight.

P.S. I thought I had looked at this part of the world once before but I couldn't remember why. Then I clicked on the place mark on the resort and all was revealed. The Super Tucanos stopped there on their round the world delivery flight.

1956 Suez Crisis

Sunk ships Blocking the Suez Canal

Distinguished daughter wanted to take a look at a Foreign Service Officer practice test, so we did. Part of the test was to correct a piece of text. The piece they chose was a short summary of the 1956 Suez Crisis. We really didn't know anything about it, but we kind of expected the typical kind of diplomatic bullshit we read about in the news today. But that's not what we got. This bit of text contained a big surprise. Seems the Brits and the French really put their foot in it. It starts on page 32 of the PDF file, page 29 if you looking at the printed page numbers.

In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal and nationalized the British- and French-owned company that managed it, threatening both British and French stock holdings and Europe's access to Middle Eastern oil. The ensuing crisis had important consequences for U.S. relations with its European allies and the Middle East. Not surprisingly, a crisis transpired. Previously, the United States and Britain had agreed to finance Egypt’s Aswan Dam, which was to be both a symbol of modernization and a source of electricity. However, after Nasser made several moves that appeared friendly to the Communist bloc, the United States and Britain reneged on the agreement and withdrew financing. Belatedly, Nasser realized that the building of the Aswan Dam was important to Egypt’s future. 

The United States regarded Nasser's nationalization of the Canal as a problem and pursued a diplomatic solution. Britain and France, however, viewed it as a threat to their national interests. They secretly contacted the Israeli government and proposed that Israel invade the Sinai Peninsula and march toward the Suez Canal zone. Then Britain and France would warn both Egypt and Israel to stay away from the Suez Canal and land paratroopers in the zone on the pretext of protecting it. In October 1956, Israeli forces crossed the border to defeat the Egyptian army in the Sinai. Britain and France then issued their warning and landed troops as planned. 

Both the United States and the USSR responded by demanding a cease-fire to these events. In addition, the United States also called for the evacuation of Israeli, French, and British troops under the supervision of a special UN force. This force arrived in mid November and by the end of the year the last British and French troops had withdrawn. 

The Suez conflict was a military defeat for Egypt, but Nasser’s status as the defender of Arab nationalism grew in the Arab world. The United States had improved its relations with Egypt, but fundamental disputes between Israel and its neighbors remained unresolved. Israel withdrew from Egyptian territory gained in the fighting but regained access to the Straits of Tiran.

Before the Egyptian forces were defeated, they had blocked the canal to all shipping by sinking 40 ships in the canal. It took the Brits five months to clear them out.

 

Ancient Aliens

Egypt's New Ministry Of Defense "Octagon" Complex

Egypt has built a new complex of office buildings 20 miles east of Cairo. I have to agree with The Drive, it does look like an alien base. And then it struck me that this just like flying a virtual starship from Star Trek. Here I am looking down on an alien planet from outer space, zooming in to examine whatever I like. I have banks of powerful computers that can render structures in 3D. Okay, this is not an alien planet, although it sure looks like one, but we can go to Mars or the Moon just as easily.

Via ZeroHedge

MANPADS are the new Stingers

Egypt seeks to shut economic pipeline to Gaza:

Security forces said Sunday that tens of thousands of forces have pushed into Sinai and its villages near Egypt's volatile border with Israel and the Gaza Strip, seizing vast stockpiles of weapons, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, known to the US intelligence community as MANPADS.

MANPADS? What happened to Stingers? Seems MANPADS (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems) is the new catch-all term for Russian and American hand carried, anti-aircraft missles. The FAS (Federation of American Scientists) has a page on the subject. The first 20% of this page gives a brief overview of the existing weapons, the threat they pose, and some blather about what can be done. The remaining 80% is a list of documents that also talk about the subject, which is kind of telling all by itself. Typical bureaucrats, one fact can generate a whole encyclopedia of discussion.
    Talk about a Pandora's box. We give the infantry these weapons to counter the threat from enemy aircraft, but if you let even one slip out of your control, everyone who ever flies is at risk of being shot out of the sky by a crazy person, i.e. a Jihadist. And we were handing these things out to the Taliban back when they were fighting the Russians.
    Even if we could corral all the loose anti-aircraft rockets, that isn't going to eliminate the threat. Terrorists are building their own rockets and bombs and it probably won't be too long before the technology trickles down to the point where amateurs could build these things in the garage.
    Which makes me wonder: what makes a person so crazy that they would want to shoot down a civilian airliner?

Giant Hot Air Balloons

Disasters seem to be the topic this week. I was talking to Jack on Monday and he mentioned the hot air balloon crash that happened in Egypt earlier this year that killed 19 people. I vaguely remember hearing about it, and while 19 is a lot of people for a balloon crash, it could have been a freak accident that involved a bus or something, and I didn't think any more about it. Turns out that all of the people who died were riding in the same balloon.

Some random group of tourists.

I didn't know they made such large ones. All I have ever seen is the small baskets that hold three or maybe four people. A balloon big enough to lift three people is huge, a balloon big enough to lift two dozen must be ginormous! I spent some time trying to find chart that would illustrate the different sizes of balloons, but all I could find was this chart from the Red Bull record setting high altitude parachute jump from last year.

Eventually I realized that a balloon's lifting capacity goes up by the cube of the diameter, so a balloon that is twice as big in diameter as a normal 3 or 4 person balloon would be able to lift 8 times as many people (2 x 2 x 2), or 24 to 32. One of these giant tourist balloons would not be as big as number 2 on this chart. Spreadsheet of popular commercial balloon sizes and capacities here.  It takes about 64 cubic feet of hot air to provide one pound of lift.

Quote of the Day

Just read a story about the rise of the Nour Islamic Party in Egypt by Wendell Steavenson in The New Yorker. The link just goes to an abstract, you have to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, though I don't how long that will last. Maybe it will become available for free in a week, when next week's issue comes out, or maybe this is some new policy. I dunno. At first I thought Wendell, the author, was a man. I used to know a man in Ohio by that name, but evidently this Wendell is a woman. It figures. Of course a liberal rag like The New Yorker would want a woman's point of view on Islam. Anyway, it's a pretty good story about what's going on in Egyptian politics these days. Some people in Egypt are trying to implement a democracy, and some people are trying to implement Islam's Sharia Law, and that's a bit of a problem. Wendell explains:

WWII Will Never Die

Shades of TinTin!

This WWII vintage fighter was discovered in Egypt last month. It's been sitting there for nigh on 70 years. It's a P-40 Kittyhawk. Pictures and story here. More pictures here. From Scott.

Jack Goes To Egypt

I was talking to my friend Jack at lunch today about Mubarak and Egypt, and this little bit of information fell out. Jack visited Egypt back in 1997, fourteen years ago. His visit was just about a month after some terrorists shot up a bus load of tourists and about a month before another bunch of terrorists shot some tourists at one of the ancient temples. He was with a group, and the group had a couple of private security guys with them at all times. They were dressed in plain clothes, not uniforms, and carried guns (with bullets). There were military guards with guns at most tourist locations, though it wasn't always clear whether they had any bullets. He saw one guard with what appeared to be a stainless steel AK-47, but when he got a little closer he saw that it wasn't stainless, it was a regular blued steel gun that been worn and/or polished so much that all of the bluing had been worn off.

Secrets of the Pyramids

My friend Jack was telling me about a new theory a Frenchman (Jean-Pierre Houdin) has come up with to explain how the pyramids were built. I, for one, never worried too much about it. I figure a bunch of guys got a bunch of rocks and piled them up and presto, there you go: a big pile of rocks. But for some people, that wasn't good enough. Seems they found some really big rocks very high up in the pyramid. That along with the huge volume of rock involved overall caused them to wonder just how did these ancient (ignorant, unskilled, third world peasants) people get those big rocks in place? Just how would you would build such a massive stone edifice using only sticks and stones and strong backs?

A number of theories have been put forth over the years, but none have stood up to scrutiny. Now along comes this wiseguy Frenchie, and he's got a new theory. The best part is that this theory involves secret tunnels that no one has actually seen. Dassault Systems has a web page with a 3-D graphics presentation that explains the whole thing. It's kind of a CPU/Memory hog, but I was able to run it on my four year old Dell. All this make my conspiracy antennae just quiver with anticipation.

One of the clues that led Jean-Pierre to his theory was this image. It was generated from a set of gravity measurements taken in the 1980's. The less dense areas are indicated by the green color, and correspond to the idea of having an internal spiral tunnel.

I did a little looking to see just what kind of equipment would be needed to measure gravity accurately enough to be able to detect a tunnel. I found things like:

Tests run using Sundstrand vibrating beam accelerometers to sense microgravity are described. Lunar-solar tidal effects were used as a highly predictable signal which varies by approximately 200 billionths of the full-scale gravitation level.

and

Spring Gravimeters and Other Alternatives

Even now it seems to fall in the realm of scientific research, not a practical technique for which you can just buy a meter and go at it. Interesting that the two companies names I came across in all this are both big aerospace contractors: Hamilton Sundstrand and Groupe Dassault.

Pharaohs, Part 2

I have a couple of pet theories about Egypt.

1. In ancient times, before the pyramid building craze got started, say 10,000 years ago, Egypt was covered with trees. Then the Pharaohs came along with their crazy pyramid schemes. Some smart aleck came up with a way to make concrete, so instead of having to cut all those blocks of stone, you could just stir up a batch of concrete and your army of hod carriers could haul it up the hill to dump it in the form. Problem is that making concrete requires heat. Western Europe got into a glass making craze in the middles ages and destroyed many of their forests in their quest to fuel the glass making fires. I think a similar thing happened in Egypt. Their pyramid craze went on for thousands of years, causing them to search out all of the firewood in North Africa. The were so hungry for firewood they even dug up all the stumps, and that is why Egypt and the rest of North Africa is a desert today.
2. This one is even better. All those hieroglyphics found on the walls of the tombs? They are actually advanced flat panel displays that were frozen when the power went south. Ancient Egyptians actually had an advanced semiconductor / nanotechnology industry. Silicon is made from sand (sand, and most rock, is made of oxidised silicon). They used to have an alphabet and a written language, but then they invented computers, and some prehistoric Bill Gates came up with Windows and those stupid icons, and the foolish Egyptians liked the pretty pictures so much they started using those and abandoned their alphabet and their written language and relied entirely on their pretty icons displayed on their advanced flat panel displays. Abandoning their alphabet was the downfall of their civilization. All the technical knowledge was lost, since no one could read the old documents anymore. All they had to do was point and click. Then one day the power failed and that was it for the pharaohs. And where are the remains of their fancy computers? Well computer chips are made from silicon, and silicon oxidizes and becomes sand. And what does Egypt have a surplus of? Sand! What more proof do you need?