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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Have you read Mick's 'Prime Mover Movie', Aurelius? It's in the Geophysics thread.
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| Hatty wrote: | | Have you read Mick's 'Prime Mover Movie', Aurelius? It's in the Geophysics thread. |
No, there's so much to find on here - and in my limited free time I am really enjoying reading The Megalithic Empire which is beautifully written and by force of argument, very persuasive. I've got to the 'paying for' section...
Thanks!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| aurelius wrote: | | Or is it that, before the Flood, it had simply not rained in living memory in the region where the OT story is set...? |
It happens today in coastal areas that are officially desert for lack of rain, yet are rich in plant life. The Bible says that in antediluvian times, "a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground." Indeed, such areas are called "fog deserts" as the moisture in the air is from a mist, not from rain.
However, other translations of these verses give this alternate meaning; "but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground."
Some suggest this is meant only as a very short, post-creation state for the Earth but it is interesting that the rainbow makes its appearance only after the flood. As a principle of physics, it would be impossible to have rain never any rainbows. It seems implied that the quantity of water on the Earth was greatly increased after the flood.
This has long been one of those mysterious details of the bible that have stuck with me. This one particularly as the detail seems superfluous. Why would it have been included if invented from whole cloth? Is it possible that there was an antediluvian world, inhabited by human beings, that was without rain?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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I should add that the Bible appears to imply that the existence of rain is the very thing that prevents the Earth from flooding!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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 Ok. Now this is just getting silly.
Dinosaurs Mingled with Cousins of Ducks and Chickens
Evolutionary cousins of chickens and ducks roamed the Earth with dinosaurs more than 65 millions years ago, according to a new study that runs counter to a key assumption about when birds got their footing on the planet.
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Knowledge based on the fossil record has always been, and remains patchy. This is due to the circumstances in which a fossil can form - they have to be ideal (e.g. tar pits) or extraordinary in the way they have been revealed (e.g. Burgess Shale).
If one took the standard 'family tree' of all living things, and threw a few darts at it randomly, the nearest species - or even genus, to where the darts stuck would then constitute a very incomplete representation of the full tree. I suggest this illustrates the central difficulty of palaeontology.
It is made worse by available fossils, though formed under ideal conditions, being obscured or destroyed by subsequent geological upheaval, glacial action and human settlement.
Many species are 'identified' by just a few bones and we all know how extrapolations based on minimal remains have fooled scientists in the past.
We are still joining up the dots. That Avian fossils have been assigned to Cretaceous times is not new,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cretaceous_birds
but these latest discoveries to which you have drawn attention are still interesting and fill in some more of the detail.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Stunned by the absence of imagination.
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Stunned by the absence of imagination. |
Imagination and consolidation of what has previously been imagined both have their place in developing understanding.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It's not just here that they are instantly recognisable......
| They may be an ocean apart, but dinosaur footprints found in South America and Africa are so similar that their discovery suggests dinosaurs may have roamed a narrow corridor that connected the two continents before they split. |
Perahaps they liked to holiday?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I just read that too. It is incompatible with Plate Tectonics but axiomatic if Slop Theory is true. It is the one Great Harper Paradigm that hasn't been immortalised in book or YouTube. (Along with the Five Great Powers thesis but that's more a vanity project.)
I ought to get round to it but the thought of spending a year or two or three for the benefit of an audience of one or two or three is just too dispiriting. I'd do it if I could find someone willing enough, reliable enough and rich enough to do the donkey work but that's never likely to happen. So the world will have to manage without knowing its own Prime Mover. Serves it right.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Though by coincidence I posted this up a coupla hours ago
Climate change: nothing to report
It’s old news rather than good news
We have now had long enough — fifty years — to be able to use normal historical and statistical methods to discern trends. They are
* A successful transition of world opinion from ‘there’s nothing to worry about’ to ‘there’s everything to worry about’
* A constant, even a mildly accelerating, implementation of programmes to address the problem
* A constant, even a mildly accelerating, exacerbation of the problem despite the implementation of the programmes
* Nothing new in prospect likely to radically alter this.
In short, we’re heading for the cliff because the actions that put us on this course remain greater than the efforts to alter course, and there is nothing on the horizon to suggest anything will change between now and the cliff.
| So the least we can do is consider theoretically whether there is anything feasible that can be done in the time available. |
It would seem not. We have had fifty years experience and not only has the overall methodology—domestic and international exhortation — remained unchanged but there are no proposals either on the table or in the think tanks to try anything else. It has been fifty years of ‘Not working? More of the same then.’
That leaves the applied epistemologists. They may not be experts on climate change, but they know all about ‘careful ignoral’ and how to deal with it. The first step is obvious, even axiomatic
| Give up on exhortation. That means everything from individuals dutifully putting rubbish in colour-coded bins to nation states meeting in solemn conclave to tell one another what they must do. Just stop doing it. |
Compulsion would clearly be better but is not available. The trend is all the other way. Stronger countries are more, not less, reluctant to force weaker countries to do the right thing, and all countries — to a greater or lesser extent — are answerable to citizens who won’t make sacrifices if they know they can avoid it without making any overall difference. Which is always the case.
(China’s advance may be sufficiently rapid to allow them to become a de facto world government and in a position to save the planet by mandation but that has to be set aside. The possibility is not only remote, it would be a ‘que sera’ situation and no business of applied epistemologists.)
| That leaves actions that require neither exhortation nor compulsion. |
In other words policies that go with the grain, not against it. Or at any rate, not against it sufficiently that people en masse will take exception. They may not do it voluntarily but they will do it.
This is not quite the same as — but does often include — the so-called technical fixes. For example, the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy has been continuous and successful. Within its own purview. It has not noticeably slowed down global warming but the point is it is being accomplished as a matter of practical politics.
However, like I say, applied epistemologists are not qualified to judge these things, much less propose them. All we can say is
1. Give up all those silly things you currently support and which have, for fifty years, proved to be be complacently futile.
2. Support other stuff which will probably go against your personal grain but not humanity’s in general. |
Since you personally will qualify for a lifeboat when the time comes, you won’t bust a gut doing either. In fact, thanks to careful ignoral, you won’t even know you’re a selfish bastard. That’s the real problem: you think you’re a good person. You probably are, but trying not to be a stupid person is more important at this particular moment in time.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The common shape of track is remarkably uniform: a middle or heel-like prominence and three “toes,” the central one being always the longest...these were the ones found in the 1850's, where else but on the south coast, and overwhelmingly they remain the most common discovery.
It is thought that the three toes correspond to the second, third, and fourth toes of humans.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I'd do it if I could find someone willing enough, reliable enough and rich enough to do the donkey work |
It occurs to me that maybe technology has advanced far enough that I could arrange for a 'bot lecturer' to deliver my words from a mock lectern in an imaginary lecture hall and the whole thing put on a YouTube. Then only the maps, diagrams etc would have to be outsourced for real. Does anyone know anything about this?
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