1,611 karma · joined October 2, 2007
This is required to make Penrose's end state Conformal i.e. scale invariant, so that it can arbitrarily Cycle to a small scale to make a new Bing Bang Cosmology (CCC).
The church chose a mildly ridiculous, astronomically difficult and contentious definition of Easter: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox.
So it combines 3 complex systems: sun, moon and calendar.
Religious extremism and pedantry increased the priority of accuracy and agreement. For some reason, Christians argued (fought wars) over the definition of Easter, and then regarded anyone picking the wrong day as a malevolent heretic.
I imagine Easter could be one of the issues that led Swift to write the Lilliputian egg dispute in Gulliver's Travels.
I prefer The Ginger Man to both. Glad to see it make the cut.
I was wondering if some naturally occurring copper ores could give a hardness advantage over pure copper, before the true copper-tin Bronze Age kicked off.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mashrabiya&ia=images&iax=images
Historically, the screens were quite simple, with more complex patterns reserved for ceramic tilings (symmetry groups, colorings, knots and intertwinings). Now there are good modern screens with more innovative patterns, made with computer-controlled laser cutters.
In a quick search for Kumiko examples, I very much like the irregular patterns that add or remove various symmetrical elements across the piece, often in an irregular macro-pattern. Similar pattern evolutions are possible with Islamic designs, but are not yet common - perhaps an opportunity.
- artificially low interest rates (since 1990, and esp. since 2007)
- exemption from capital gains tax for primary residence, which is the main reason why property is used as a pension scheme
- mortgage interest tax relief which makes debt tax efficient; phased out in the UK, but still available in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_mortgage_interest_deducti...
Inca (1438-1570), Wari (600-1100) or Tiwanaku (300-1100)? Or some previous civilization?
Some of the columns, obelisks and statues are very large and heavy. Moving them would be a serious challenge, but not impossible. Some weigh 100 tons, one or two are much heavier again. The unfinished obelisk in the Aswan quarry is 1,000 tons, which begins to stretch credulity.
Consider that many columns and obelisks were stolen by the Romans: most squares in Rome seem to have an Egyptian obelisk; the Pantheon has single-piece granite columns from Egypt (topped with Roman capitals). However, the Romans did have iron, capstans and pulleys.
But there are several unexplained aspects of ancient Egyptian artifacts:
- Lower casing stones, facing on nearby 'temples' and internal chambers (often below the actual pyramid or mastaba), are built of precise megalithic granite. The granite blocks often fit together with surprising precision, and have features such as 'turning the corner' which require extra, strictly unnecessary, work (interestingly, also seen in Andean megalithic building).
- Granite boxes in lower chambers are large, heavy and precisely machined to high tolerances (flatness, parallelism).
- Vases found in lower tunnels and chambers (esp. under Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara) are very precisely machined granite (circles, curves, symmetry, thinness) often to a few 1/1000 inch. They usually have two handles, meaning they cannot be simply lathed - and dynastic Egyptians did not even have the lathe.
- There are many single-piece statues and columns made from granite, with precisely machined curved surfaces and remarkably accurate symmetry.
- There are no known tools from dynastic Egypt which can reproduce precise curved surfaces in granite. Copper chisels and sand-lubricated copper saws or tube drills can work cylindrical holes and planar cuts in granite - but they take a very long time, and consume huge quantities of valuable copper. They cannot cut precise curved surfaces, or hollow out vases. Tube drill cores from ancient Egypt show spiral grooves, which cannot be made by copper+sand tools. The dynastic Egyptians did not have the wheel, the lathe, the potter's wheel, pulleys, capstans or any iron tools.
- No lower-level granite chambers, granite boxes or granite vases, have any decoration or writing. No bodies or mummies have been found in pristine boxes, although one or two have been found in chambers known to be opened in later periods. There are no hieroglyphics. Some perfect granite statues do have hieroglyphics carved into them, but these are clearly later and lower quality than the original work (the hieroglyphics are usually just a royal cartouche 'claiming' the artifact).
- It is strange that the most perfect granite artifacts are presumed to be the oldest artifacts. Later dynastic Egyptian periods did not reproduce that level of technique and precision. They worked in softer limestone, and their jars are all soft alabaster. However the oldest artifacts were created, the skills to make them were somehow lost.
- There is no solid dating of the oldest chambers, boxes, vases, obelisks or statues. There is no organic material for carbon dating. The lower chambers are often subterranean, and could have existed before the pyramids. Most archaeological timelines assume that a rough scratched royal cartouche means the whole artifact or building was created by that pharaoh. There is no doubt that dynastic Egyptians used, repaired and extended older structures, but there's no evidence they originated all of them.
- Finally, I tentatively mention the most famous controversy: weathering on exposed limestone surfaces, esp. Sphinx enclosure, but also pyramid temple complexes; and astronomical alignments that make most sense for prehistoric configuration of the equinoxes.
* [Here the word 'granite' means usually red granite, but also quartz, dolerite, andesite, basalt or other very hard igneous rocks.]
** [There is one caveat about their copper, sourced from Sinai and Red Sea coast, which had high impurities of arsenic and nickel that may have made it harder than pure copper, but not as hard as later copper-tin bronze.]
The final 'modern mystery' is why simple questions about known sites are not answered by non-intrusive scanning and excavation. Two of many examples:
- Chambers under the Sphinx and tunnels under the causeway from the Sphinx. There are openings of shafts clearly visible. A drill was put down in front of the Sphinx, it hit red granite, but nothing was done to investigate.
- The labyrinth at Hawara, which has several Greek/Roman eyewitness accounts, and even an old GPR survey validating the story, but it has not been excavated.
The result is that recent surveys are attempted using satellite sensing or other remote techniques that do not require sanctioned presence on the sites themselves. The results are somewhere between fanciful and ridiculous, but a simple GPR/seismic survey would be an obvious corrective to any misinformation.
It's also not a question of money. Firstly, plenty of rich donors and crowd-sourcing would sponsor such work, and secondly, any uncovered sites and artifacts would generate tourist revenue.
Solar energy electrolysis can turn water into rocket fuel.
In an emergency, you could burn that rocket fuel to get energy and water.
As many as 30 percent of such stars
may quietly collapse into black holes
no supernova required.
Is that a significant contribution to 'dark matter'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_checkerboard
and the work of David Hestenes:
Zitterbewegung in Quantum Mechanics
https://davidhestenes.net/geocalc/pdf/ZBWinQM15**.pdf
Zitterbewegung structure in electrons and photons
https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.11085
Zitterbewegung Modeling
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tuned-mass-damper-of-tai...
Some cities closer to the epicenter, such as Chiang Mai, are also on floodplains, but have many fewer high-rise buildings. Some smaller condo blocks there have been deemed unsafe after the earthquake.
https://www.chiangmaicitylife.com/citynews/general/following...
The students in central Washington have a knowledgeable, eloquent and charismatic teacher. So glad the internet was invented, so that I can also watch NZ.
Yes, it is book length, but every page is a joy.
Here are some quotidian introductory references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca_plate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1700_Cascadia_earthquake
P.S. TLDR; TLDW (video below); I live near the coast in Washington state, should I be worried? - Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/th...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_(1919%E2%80%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr...
Most vividly, it was covered by journalist Ernest Hemingway for the Toronto Star:
A Silent, Ghastly Procession Wends Its Way from Thrace (20 Oct 1922)
Refugee Procession is Scene of Horror (14 Nov 1922)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Quai_at_Smyrna
Some telling quotes here:
https://www.neomagazine.com/2022/04/on-the-quay-at-smyrna-er...
You can find these works in many collections of his journalism and short stories (e.g. "Byline"). I am very glad his early work is now coming out of copyright (and the journalism in Canada too? - if someone has links to his original articles, please post them).
Here is an out-of-copyright paragraph of "In Our Time", which recollects the refugee columns passing through Thrace, to and from Salonika, in 1922:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61085/pg61085-images.ht...
There are similar scenes in our world today. Not being played out today, but really happening.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-...
Also see the work of John Baez:
html https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/octonions.html
1. JoGo's OBJ and Maude: algebras on a rewrite engine
https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/sys/obj.html
2. SPECWARE: a Category Theory approach from SRI Kestrel Institute
https://www.specware.org/research/specware/
https://github.com/KestrelInstitute/Specware/blob/master/Lib...
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/faq-gold-en...
Every wriggle of the weasel needs a good 3-letter acronym. Perhaps they knew what might happen :)
Yes, paper promise. Sometimes promises can be kept, but not always.
https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/bullionstar/gold-silver-sh...
It seems the deliveries for Feb are now approaching 200 tonnes:
https://x.com/TFMetals/status/1889708073930919967
P.S. Gold is just under $100k/kg (~= 1 BTC :) So 1 tonne is ~$100m.
https://www.apmex.com/gold-price/1-kg-gold-price
P.P.S. The original JPM delivery of $4bn mentioned above is ~40 tonnes share of the 93 tonnes (3m troy oz).
London has paper transactions, but is also a delivery market, where large quantities of real gold change hands. The gold may not actually leave the vaulting system: the transfer can often be accomplished with a warehouse receipt.
However, since November last year, clients of the COMEX (often acting through JPMorgan bullion bank) have been standing for delivery, e.g. 62 tonnes in the 2 weeks after Thanksgiving 2024:
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/massive-comex-deliveries-...
Now JPMorgan is standing for delivery of 93 tonnes in February 2025 (3m troy oz, $4bn):
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-plans-4-billion-gold...
COMEX has had to scramble to find the physical gold to deliver. The US price went up, creating a spread with London and an arbitrage opportunity. Physical deliveries from the LBMA vaults in London were flown to the COMEX vaulting system in and around New York.
If the deliveries cannot be made in New York, there is a rather murky process called Exchange For Physical (EFP), where the client is given a paper promise for gold delivery in London. Not sure if there is client discretion, or if they can be forced to accept EFP by the COMEX T&Cs.
I think that COMEX does have the right to cash settle delivery requests, but that would be seen as a soft default, and seriously damage its reputation as a physical market grounded in delivery.
Apparently on the old avionics in the helicopter, the altimeter is calibrated by manual entry of barometric pressure to the nearest 0.1 inch Hg. So a rounding error could cause a 100 ft altitude discrepancy.
It is postulated by the linear unitary time-reversible Schrodinger/Dirac equation, and assumed by the Many Worlds Interpretation, but contradicted by the non-linear probabilistic time-irreversible Measurement Axiom of conventional QM.
Some people (esp. Penrose) postulate that gravity can collapse the wavefunction, and hence destroy information (esp. Black Holes). The Black Hole Information Paradox is a hotly contested current topic.
Render a 2D orthographic view from 'above' the apexes.
The z-buffer will preserve pixels from the nearest apex.
(Yes, I now there are shadery ways to do this, but the classic 3D cones demo is trivial to understand and implement).