Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Hurricane Isaac drenched Miami

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48808328

There was a tropical storm Isaac in 2006 that followed the gulf stream, but this Isaac went west of Miami into the Gulf and towards New Orleans, on the anniversary of Katrina.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-27/us/us_tropical-storm-isaac_1_hurricane-strength-hurricane-center-deputy-director-ed-rappaport

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/26/hurricane-isaac-florida-photos-pictures_n_1831782.html#slide=more246806

Miami was hit by Hurricane Andrew directly several years ago.
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Physical fitness & home electrical/hydraulic power production (good for short-term emergencies eg. blizzards when the grid is down.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/bike-powered-electricity-generators.html
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/05/history-of-pedal-powered-machines.html

--- The Limits of Pedal Power
Of course, pedal power can only make a difference if we drastically reduce energy consumption. While athletes can produce a power output of over 2,000 watts on a bicycle, they can only sustain this over a period of a few seconds. The power that can be delivered by the average person over a sustained period of time is much less impressive than that: 75 watts or 1 "hup". This unit of measurement (short for human power) was proposed in 1984, and tells us that an average person can sustain one hup for all day, 2 hups (150 watts) for roughly two hours, 3 hups (225 watts) for about 30 minutes and 4 hups (300 watts) only momentarily.

Are modern people "energy slaves" (aka petroleum "addicts")? Do we want to remain so?
http://www.pbs.org/fmc/book/14business8.htm

http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/events/black-creativity-family-day-january/

Monday, August 20, 2012

cellulo

from goddess of chess, tletlt, math etc.

"the number of the goddess is 5/coatl=snaca/snake/nacatl(N)=flesh. they've found
the 5th arch at chauvet pont d'arc painted cave where she was worshipped as regent of the tonalamatl/tonatiuh(N)=sun, tonalli(N)=soul(tone/tune). her animal is the ocelotl/
ocelome/(oc)elo(hi)m=elohim, a hebrew god(in plural), also, cell(E/biology). " by Carlos
http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2009/05/tletl-and-mathematics-and-number-of.html

under=enter=endura=duna=tuna
endura BaMbuti pygmy congo: mongolu hut structure enc(u)loses space called endu/ra just as forest includes openings!

---

I noticed the overlap of BaMbuti mongolu-endura (dome enclosure-space) and Nauatl ocelotl-Hebrew (oc)elo(hi)m cat-god, and related cell, cf cellulose, kell, shell.

enj/ch/sh/g/cel/u/lo-se

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Timber! From wicker domes to wittle pole tipis to wood box homes

"Intensive woodworking and tree-felling was a phenomenon that only appeared with the onset of the major changes in human life, including the transition to agriculture and permanent villages," says Dr. Barkai, whose research was published in the journal PLoS One. Prior to the Neolithic period, there is no evidence of tools that were powerful enough to cut and carve wood, let alone fell trees. But new archaeological evidence suggests that as the Neolithic age progressed, sophisticated carpentry developed alongside agriculture.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/afot-nmt080912.php

Evolution of axes

The use of functional tools in relation to woodworking over the course of the Neolithic period has not been studied in detail until now. Through their work at the archaeological site of Motza, a neighbourhood in the Judean Hills, Dr. Barkai and his fellow researchers, Prof. Rick Yerkes of Ohio State University and Dr. Hamudi Khalaily of the Israel Antiquity Authority, have unearthed evidence that increasing sophistication in terms of carpentry tools corresponds with increased agriculture and permanent settlements.
The early part of the Neolithic age is divided into two distinct eras — Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). Agriculture and domesticated plants and animals appear only in PPNB, so the transition between these two periods is a watershed moment in human history. And these changes can be tracked in the woodworking tools which belong to each period, says Dr. Barkai.
Within PPNA, humans remained gatherers but lived in more permanent settlements for the first time, he says. Axes associated with this period are small and delicate, used for light carpentry but not suited for felling trees or other massive woodworking tasks. In PPNB, the tools have evolved to much larger and heavier axes, formed by a technique called polishing. The researchers' in-depth analysis of these tools shows that they were used to cut down trees and complete various building projects.
"We can document step by step the transition from the absence of woodworking tools, to delicate woodworking tools, to heavier woodworking tools," Dr. Barkai says, and this follows the "actual transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture." He also identifies a trial-and-error phase during which humans tried to create an axe strong enough to undertake larger woodworking tasks. Eventually, they succeeded in creating a massive ground stone axe in PPNB
.
Home makeover

Whether the transition to an agricultural society led to the development of major carpentry tools or vice versa remains to be determined, says Dr. Barkai, who characterizes it as a "circular argument." Whatever the answer, the parallel changes led to a revolution in lifestyle.
Beyond the change from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural economy, a new form of architecture also emerged. Not only did people begin to live in permanent villages, but the buildings in which they lived literally took a different shape. The round and oval structures of earlier domiciles were replaced by rectangular structures in PPNB, explains Dr. Barkai. "Evidence tells that us that for each home, approximately 10 wooden beams were needed. Prior to this, there were no homes with wooden beams." In addition, humans began to produce limestone-based plaster floors for their homes — which also represented a growing use of wood, since plaster is manufactured by heating limestone.
These architectural developments, along with building pens and fences for domesticated animals, also necessitated the felling of trees in large quantities.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

20,000 year old pot = Wok

20,000 year old pottery found in China.
 http://www.eutimes.net/2012/



06/ancient-chinese-pottery-


confirmed-as-the-oldest-yet-

found/
Also see:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/



2012/06/20000-year-old-


pottery-from-china.html

Or:

http://tinyurl.com/888dnmc

From the above blog, here's some info on the Science article from which
the EU Times story was taken:

------------------------------



-------------------
Science 29 June 2012:

Vol. 336 no. 6089 pp. 1696-1700

DOI: 10.1126/science.1218643

Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China

Xiaohong Wu et al.

ABSTRACT

The invention of pottery introduced fundamental shifts in human
subsistence practices and sociosymbolic behaviors. Here, we describe the
dating of the early pottery from Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province,
China, and the micromorphology of the stratigraphic contexts of the
pottery sherds and radiocarbon samples. The radiocarbon ages of the
archaeological contexts of the earliest sherds are 20,000 to 19,000
calendar years before the present, 2000 to 3000 years older than other
pottery found in East Asia and elsewhere. The occupations in the cave
demonstrate that pottery was produced by mobile foragers who hunted and
gathered during the Late Glacial Maximum. These vessels may have served
as cooking devices. The early date shows that pottery was first made and
used 10 millennia or more before the emergence of agriculture.
------------------------------



---------------
Here's a link to a short NY Times article on the find:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/



07/03/science/oldest-known-


pottery-found-in-china.html?_

r=1

 Oldest Wok. See the pix. Shallow thin-wall pre-metal clay bowl, both for fast frying (oily fish?) and slow-simmering soups (soybeans/millet/wild rice?).

"The ceramics probably consisted of simple concave vessels that were likely used for cooking food" NYT

Consider this:
a) oldest pottery found, So. China 20ka, (bowl form), Glacial maximum period
b) 20ka China coasts are today submerged post-ice age
c) Wok is ancient Chinese cooking bowl, fry, boil & steam chopped foods
d) requires sharp flake/blade; wood/horn spoon/ladle; bamboo/ivory chopsticks
e) oldest writing: Chinese CHARacters on turtle shell (bowl form)
f) Before black ink was made from scraped char, bone pen scrawled on charred bowl
g) cher (Rus black) char (Eng burnt), carve/scarify (Eng), carbon, bakar (Malay burn)

In Mandarin wok is guo (city walls ~ (mon)golu/bungalo/anglo = enclose), dialects: kwok, wok
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo
"The Guo family is one of the well known Hui clans around Quanzhou in Fujian, they are examples of these Hui who identify as Muslim by nationality but do not practice Islam.
Compare Khan/Cohen/Cohn/Guo/Kwok/

http://www.heosemys.org/names.php names of turtles in many languages
Malay, Indonesian: kurakura
Mali Bambara: koorakaara
Afrikaans, Dutch, Danish: skilpad
So. Af. Xhosa: i-sikolopati, ufudo
So. Af. Tswana: khudu
Sicilian: tartuca
Japanese: kame
Chinese: uguei (cf guo/wok)
Bulgarian: kostenurka
Hebrew: zav, tsav
Iraqi dial: ragga, kashf

Bow, bagel, bend: [C15: probably from Low German boog ; related to Dutch boeg , Danish bov ship's bow, shoulder; see bough ]


DDeden