According to just-released findings, the pyramids of Egypt were not built by slaves, but by free workers. Which begs the question, how the !^@!* did they motivate people to carry those blocks of their own free will? Promises of eternal life? Drugs and debauchery on weekends? Gift certificates? Fuuuu….
CAIRO (Reuters) - New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt’s chief archaeologist said on Sunday.
Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.
“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.
“If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”
He said the collection of workers’ tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.
Bomb your opponent and your brain back to the stone age at the same time! It’s… beer battleship!
Just before Christmas we had a “hedgehog in the fog” themed party (just because we had a smoke machine). Some of fellow sharenators were here too - Ensx, Darius and BongoMan. Since BongoMan is studying architecture, he had some sheets of paperboard. So we figured we can use it to make a battleship table.
How to always win at battleship
1. Make a big battleship table. Use beer bottles/cans/etc as your ships. (Bonus: if you have a smoke machine, use it to create a feeling of a real battle!)
2. The rules of the game are simple - if you hit your opponent’s ship (beer), he has to drink it.
3. ???
4. No matter if you win or lose, you always win.
Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of Philip K. Dick, who wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which Blade Runner is based on (although the title itself comes from William S. Burroughs), is claiming Google is using names taken from her father’s work to brand its Nexus One telephones. She is threatening to sue Google for infringement of intellectual property rights. Something tells me there is going to be a nice payday in this for her. Google IS using names from her father’s work:
She has sent a letter to Google demanding that the online giant changes the name of its new phone, which was launched as a direct rival to the iPhone.
She said: ‘Google takes first and then deals with the fallout later.
‘In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel. People don’t get it. It’s the principle of it.
‘It would be nice to have a dialogue. We are open to it. That’s a way to start.’
The new product is based on Google’s Android technology, launched two years ago as a way of gaining a share in the mobile phone market.
Family of sci fi author Philip K. Dick to sue Google over name of Nexus One phone (Daily Mail)
Sunday night at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angles, Cinefamily has invited showbiz great Neil Hamburger to pay tribute to one of heroes. Read on:
Now that James Brown (R.I.P.) has hung up his crown, legendary stand-up comedian Neil Hamburger has surely earned the title of “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.” For the past thirty-seven years, Hamburger has logged thousands of shows in all four corners of the world, appearing in engagements everywhere from the prestigious “Fire & Ice” room at the Doubletree Inn in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to the Phoenix Greyhound Park racetrack in Phoenix, AZ. One of Hamburger’s idols and mentors has been one of the celebrity offspring greats and an enigma in the world of popular music, Frank Sinatra Jr. Hamburger says: “Frank Jr. has an intense stage presence unlike any I have ever encountered. Like his father, there is a lifetime of regret, disappointment, and longing in every note that comes out of his mouth—but with a career shattered by unjustified critical malevolence and public indifference, Frank Jr.‘s experiences are drawn from a completely different well. To hell with today’s slovenly singer-songwriter scam-artists! If you’re looking for an amazingly gifted vocalist who puts every ounce of his experience into every word he sings, Sinatra Jr. is your man.” In honor of Frank Jr.‘s birthday, Hamburger has assembled this evening of rare, vintage Frank Jr. TV variety specials and film appearances!
Via Treehugger, check out these potential design solutions for solar powered EV stations. In the (non-Skynet, non-Halliburton) future, you’ll plug your electric-powered bike or car into these at convenient times to fuel up and keep going. Much needed here in gas-godawful southern California…
Sanyo thinks its joint strengths in solar and in batteries make solar charging stations an obvious market to pursue. Here’s one solar station - Sanyo is unveiling its HIT prototype charging station at CES this week and plans a more modest canopy to be unveiled in Portland within the first quarter of this year.
The idea of solar-powered charging stations is enticing. Sanyo, one company preparing many solar canopies and parking lot panel solutions, believes a 10 ft. by 20 ft. solar canopy parking space cover can generate enough electricity to run the electric vehicle annually. Here are three other visions for implementing solar charging for electric vehicles either in the works, or already out on the streets.
io9 reports that scientists have created an algorithm so complex that no computer on earth is capable of solving it. This is, at present, likely our best insurance policy against the future sending back Terminators to kill John Connor, let alone sequels set in set future featuring those weird Godzilla, motorcycle and snake-Terminators. Damn future, always plotting to make new robots who hate man!
Quantum computers, which would rely on quantum mechanical concepts like superposition and entanglement to perform operations of unimaginable complexity, remain a pipe dream. But physicists have nevertheless come up with an algorithm that only quantum computers could use.
The newest algorithm, developed by Aram W. Harrow of the University of Bristol in England and Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd of MIT, tackles linear equations, which is something many students run across in high school or college. An example of such an expression is 3x + 4y = 12, with the variables and the constants on each side of the equation. Although it’s relatively easy to solve an expression with only two unknown values, it is another matter entirely to solve systems with billions of unknown values.
Such scenarios are hardly unusual; weather scenarios frequently involve just that many variables and equations. These so-called “N by N” systems, which have N linear equations and N unknown values, can be solved relatively easy with current algorithms, but time is a factor. Say it takes a computer one second to solve one linear equation. If the system has a billion variables, then it will take a billion seconds to figure out every value. That’s almost 32 years.
The Lambdoma Keyboard is a large-scale harmonic tone generator based on Pythagorean theory. This looks fantastically crunk and likely a source of almost infinite mayhem for the more, um, esoterically inclined reader. Check out the video demonstration by Barbara Hero, its inventor, below. (They can be purchased from the site.) Here’s Barbara on her invention (bolds mine):
The Lambdoma Matrix is attributed to the philosopher Pythagoras (500 bc) who spent over twenty years as an Egyptian initiate. The concept of the Lambdoma Matrix in the present age is relatively unknown, and is not cited in most dictionaries. On the surface, it appears to be nothing more than a mathematical multiplication and division table. On a closer look however, it bears a one-to-one relationship to musical intervals in a very specific harmonic series. Because of its numerical framework of ratios, it can be translated into frequencies of audible sound. The Lambdoma bears relationships to aromatics, chemistry, crystallography, cybernetics, art, music, geometry, all of which may be explored by those interested in the above disciplines. The Lambdoma bears mathematical relationships to Issac Newton, the Diophantine equations and the Farey series, as well as in the present century to Georg Cantor…
Players of these keyboards have experienced increased physical comfort and spiritual awareness within which they were able to learn answers to their questions including their life’s purpose and how to become more spiritually aware. The diamond-shaped Keyboard, with 64 keys, produces harmonic stereo intervals, with the second tone relating to the player’s chosen fundamental, based upon the whole-number ratios of the Lambdoma Matrix. When accompanied by a PC (not included) the keyboard may used as a device for sound therapy, musical composition and performance. The keyboard is fully software programmable and is both DOS/Windows and Amiga compatible. Additional software will be available for programming the midi interface. The unit comes with a user manual. Eight color-coded overlays placed over the keys provide visual cues on musical notation, frequencies, harmonics and solfegio encoded into the keys. The versatile electronic keyboard is constructed in an attractive and durable diamond-shaped, aluminum encasement suitable for on-the-road use.
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