Tag: history

Pyramids built with concrete blocks

This makes me wonder if the whole pyramids business was really a japanese-style ploy to bolster the economy 🙂
2022-07-04: Evidence of highly skilled workers

On a summer afternoon 4600 years ago, near the end of the reign of the pharaoh Khufu, a boat crewed by some 40 workers headed downstream on the Nile toward the Giza Plateau. The vessel, whose prow was emblazoned with a uraeus, the stylized image of an upright cobra worn by pharaohs as a head ornament, was laden with large limestone blocks being transported from the Tura quarries on the eastern side of the Nile. Under the direction of their overseer, known as Inspector Merer, the team steered the boat west toward the plateau, passing through a gateway between a pair of raised mounds called the Ro-She Khufu, the Entrance to the Lake of Khufu. This lake was part of a network of artificial waterways and canals that had been dredged to allow boats to bring supplies right up to the plateau’s edge.

Based on the contents of the papyri, at least some workers in the time of Khufu were highly skilled and well rewarded for their labor, contradicting the popular notion that the Great Pyramid was built by masses of oppressed slaves. In several instances, Merer and his team were awarded gifts of textiles. In addition to a diet including poultry, fish, fruit, and a variety of breads, cakes, and beers, the men were also provided with dates and honey, delicacies that were extremely scarce and generally reserved for those within the royal entourage. In fact, the laborers may have been quite close to the royal family. During their several months working at the Giza Plateau, Inspector Merer’s phyle—and possibly other phyles that were part of the same group—appears to have taken turns guarding and helping to provision a royal institution called Ankhu Khufu, which likely referred to Khufu’s valley temple. In the papyri, Merer’s men are called the setep za, “the chosen phyle” or “the elite,” a phrase that can denote a royal guard force. “I think these boatmen were a very special category of workers because their activities were really vital for the royal project. I think the monarchy had an interest in being fair to them because it was essential to have them working well.”

State of the World

A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious.

these are the best of times, ever. some good material to give balance to developmental discussions

Gates plays Petals Around the Rose

The game does work well with real dice. Comex reports that one major convention was largely disrupted when they arranged for the gift shop at the hotel to stock a large supply of dice, then introduced Petals Around the Rose to many conference attendees. “It was amazing, distinguished looking ladies and gentlemen in neat business clothes could be seen crawling on their hands and knees in little working groups all over the hotel. While speakers were saying important things on lecture platforms, the rattle of dice and mutterings about answers almost drowned them out from all over the dimly lit halls. We don’t like to do this too often. Makes enemies.”

Even the Microsoft guys agreed that Petals Around the Rose offers a good excuse for doing a bit of applications software. Indeed, Bill scratched out a program for the game on a napkin and passed it over the seat so that it could see daylight in Personal Computing.

heh. took me 2 min

Anshe Chung, SL tycoon

Anshe Chung Studios is a company that emerged from inside a virtual world. Driven by curiosity, our founder Anshe Chung decided to test in early 2004 if working in the economy of Second Life could sustain the real life of a person – a young boy in a developing country. She supported him by selling Linden dollars earned by providing services for other residents. In 2006 Anshe Chung became the first avatar with a net worth exceeding 1M US$. She has lead a new wave of virtual reality entrepreneurs who have demonstrated to the world the very real profit-making opportunities that exist within virtual world economies. Today Anshe Chung Studios maintains offices in the real world where it employs more than 80 people full time, and is extended by a huge network of virtual reality freelancers worldwide. It hosts 1000s of residents on more than 40 square kilometers of gated communities in virtual worlds, and in terms of sheer magnitude Anshe Chung Studios has developed more virtual property than any other Metaverse development company.

signpost: anshe is now a millionaire from her SL speculation.

London Wreck-diving

talk about ‘long now’: london is sinking into the soft clay as a result of the disappearance of the ice age glaciers on england.

Short of capping the Highlands in new glaciers of lead, however, or attaching gigantic hot air balloons to the spires of churches to pull the city skyward, London will eventually flood: its undersea fate is geologically inevitable. Whether this occurs in a 100 years or a 100 centuries, London will become a city of canals – before it is lost to the sea entirely. It is a new Atlantis, sinking deeper each day into the oceanic embrace of hydrology.