Ancient Technology Secrets

Most people assume that today represents the most advanced level of technology in every aspect of human endeavor on the planet. They feel that all technology now is superior to all earlier forms of technology, and they feel this because by and large, the technology of today is the further refined versions of technologies from days gone by. So they naturally assume technologies from hundreds or thousands of years ago were simpler and less developed than today’s technology.

And they would be wrong.

Well, let’s be clear, here. To a large extent they are correct. Almost all technology of today is superior to the corresponding technologies of hundreds or thousands of years ago. Almost. But not all. That is to say that there are some few things that were once possible but that are no longer possible to create. The secrets to these amazing technologies have been lost somewhere along the way.

One example is a legendary sword-steel called “Damascus Steel”. Swords made from this special steel could cut through a ladies silk handkerchief floating in mid-air. They could cut through the best sword steel made in Europe, and they could even cut through stone – all without dulling the edge. They could hone to an edge finer than a razor blade, yet have the strength to cut stone or resist blows from other sharp hard steel blades in a swordfight. It had the strange property of being both extremely hard and yet flexible at the same time. Swords were made of this amazing steel in Damascus, Syria from 900AD until 1750AD, and now they are made no more – and cannot be reproduced. We no longer have the technology to reproduce them. Some of these legendary swords do still exist though and have been examined. They appear to have carbon nanotubes or carbon nanowires, which is the strongest structure known to modern materials scientists, but it is inconceivable to modern metallurgists how they may have created these carbon nano-structures. Especially in the quantities needed for sword steel making. Another theory is that they somehow used a small amount of Vanadium to make them harder.
The steel itself has a telltale highly figured surface that looks almost like a paisley pattern. It is a result of the metallurgical process of creating these so-called wootz steel ingots, whose earliest roots date back to 300BCE in Sri Lanka. There have been some modern imitations that attempt to re-create Damascus steel, but none of them have been able to do it fully and properly.

Another ancient-but-now-lost technology is the so-called “ever-burning-lamps”. These were used in many places in the ancient world, including some say, in Solomon’s mines in deepest Africa. They are essentially a small lamp that burns, creates light, but it never burns out. People have opened tombs that have been shut for centuries and found it lit with these ever-burning lamps. It is said that in Solomon’s temple, these ever-burning lamps were hung high up in the ceilings to light the halls at all times.
"Now the House of Solomon the King was illuminated as by day, for in his wisdom he had made shining pearls which were like unto the sun, the moon and the stars in the roof of his house."

During the Middle Ages a number of ever-burning lamps were discovered in ancient tombs and temples. Based on ancient records we learn that these mysterious objects were found all over the world, in India, China, South America, North America, Egypt Greece, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, France and many other countries. Unfortunately, over the centuries, they have all been destroyed – usually by those who felt such things were either evil, or the devil’s work, or magical. The middle-ages was not an enlightened time for discovering amazing new technologies. In all cases – they were against the religious beliefs of the people who later found them, and so they destroyed them. Thus there are none now to examine to allow modern day scientists to try to reverse engineer the technologies and techniques used in creating them in the first place.

In ancient times, the mythological texts tell us that the Gods felt that the secret to everlasting light and perpetual fire was the property of the Gods and should not be shared with humans. Allegedly, Prometheus broke that rule and did share the secret with men, and suddenly the eternal flame was found on virtually every sacred altar around the known world. Ancient Egyptians felt that the noblemen and noblewomen of their time needed light in the afterlife so they could find their road, and so the eternal flames were set up in those ancient tombs.

Approximately 170 authors from medieval times have written about the discoveries of these ever-burning lamps in their era. Plutarch described one that burned over the door of the temple dedicated to Jupiter/Ammon. The priests there said that it burned without fuel for over 1500 years and neither wind nor rain could extinguish it.
At Edessa, Syria, in 527AD, the soldiers of emperor Justinian discovered one of these lamps in a niche over a gateway. It was protected from wind and water, but the soldiers read the inscription which stated that it had been lit in 27AD, and they realized it had been burning for 500 years, so they destroyed it. Also in the tomb of Prince Pallas, son of King Evander, in the year 140AD, a lamp was found that had been burning for over 2000 years since the tomb had been sealed. They tried to put it out with water, and by blowing it out, but that didn’t work. Eventually they had to pour out the strange liquid in the lamp in order to put it out.

In England in later years, they were still discovering these ever-burning lamps. In 1534, King Henry VIII wanted to create the Church of England to suit his purposes, and so he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. In that process, he ordered all Catholic monasteries to be destroyed or taken over and repurposed. When they went to the tomb of Constantius Chlorus, the father of Emperor Constantine the Great, they found one of these lamps burning there which had been burning undisturbed since his death in 300AD.

I suppose you could choose to simply dismiss these stories. But there are a lot to dismiss. There are hundreds of accounts stretching across thousands of years from many countries and from many authors. Are they all delusional? Are they all hoaxes? Or are they merely describing a technology that we simply have lost and have not gotten around to re-creating? Just because we don’t understand the principle of how something works, is that a good enough reason to deny it outright? Doesn’t that put us in the same category of prejudiced mentalityas those medieval church officials who discounted them as ‘Devil’s work” and destroyed them all?

Keeping an open mind then, since we have none left to examine, we can only speculate as to the nature of these lamps. Tombs may have been sealed from human entrance, but they are not, I think, air tight, so a lack of oxygen would not put a light out. Or what if it was not actually a ‘flame’ in the traditional sense? They did describe it as a flame, but what are the other options? Was it a radioactive light that lit the room, like uranium, or some other radioactive isotope, which they called “fire” because that was their simple interpretation of anything that was lit from within? Or could it be some form of liquid electricity-based light that we have not discovered yet?

Speaking of electricity, it seems that electricity was discovered and used somehow by ancients as well. Even ‘pre-ancients’. Specifically, there was a French Rabbi named Jechiele, a court advisor to Louis IX in the 13th century, who apparently used electricity to light a ‘magical’ lamp in the front of his house day and night with no flame, no wick, no burning fluid. He also had rigged up his door-knocker to a source of electricity and when an unwanted visitor came to his door, he touched a nail to the wall in his study and delivered a shock of respectable voltage to the would-be visitor.
Thousands of years before that, in the Zorostrarian faith, in the region which was later known as Persia, the Magi of that faith apparently had electricity and could control it to produce light and power for various effects in their temples.

But then in a much, much MUCH older case, the Leonard Nimoy narrated show from the 1970’s called “In Search Of” showed a story where researchers in California’s Death Valley were examining the area of some caves that were inhabited 800,000 years ago by people who had some remarkable technology and had drawn pictures of flying craft on the cave walls, and they discovered a curious rock that was round, but flattened, like a smartie, and circumscribing the edge was a string of apparently 'drilled' holes. The researcher picked it up as a curiosity and then took it back to the lab. They x-rayed it and then cut it in half to be certain, and sure enough, inside was a strange manufactured device. A metal coil embedded inside a porcelain core, embedded inside the rock. As it turned out, after analyzing it, the scientists concluded that this was an 800,000 year old spark plug. I guessed that it may have been used to ignite flames in a pot to impress others with apparent “magic” effects. But it was a technology. And, you’ll note, this is technology we don’t have today. Our current spark plugs have wires to deliver the electricity to make them work. These didn’t.

Also, on the theme of electricity, we cannot leave out a more recent marvel of lost technology. In the early 1900’s a scientist by the name of Nikola Tesla distinguished himself by creating electromagnetic fields, which became the basis for motors, and by inventing the concept of AC electric power which you are using right at this moment to run the computer you are reading this on, and he had invented a number of further advances which no one has been able to recreate since he died.

Specifically, he could deliver electricity through the ground or through the air without wires from his plant in Colorado Springs. Like controlled lightning. He had created something called a ‘death ray’. He had created something he called an ‘electricity tap’ which was an inexhaustible source of clean electric power which could be set up cheaply anywhere – even in the middle of deep space. But his main benefactor/sponsor George Westinghouse would not fund these projects to put them out to the public because he could not make money from them. In fact, AC power was very useful – he made a fortune building electric plants, but then to give people the means to make their own power – well, that would significantly undermine his profits. So he stopped Tesla from bringing those plans out.
Tesla eventually took the secrets to his grave, and he died a poor man living in a flat in New York City. Government agents raided his room afterward and took all his papers. Who knows where the secrets of those technologies might be now.

What Will Happen in Iraq? What We Need to Do.

People are wondering why president Bush is acting against the obvious will of the American People in the case of the Iraq war. The message of the public will is clear and strong, and even the other politicians on both sides of the aisle agree with the public and yet he denies that and chooses to go in the opposite direction. He must have some pretty powerful reasons. Let's look at those reasons. Then let's look at a possible solution to the whole Iraq war.

First, I think there are some basic key factors to keep in mind here in order to understand what is really happening and what will probably happen in Iraq. Specifically:

1) When you pull your hand out of a bucket of water, the water rushes in immediately to fill the hole as you leave. Similarly, as soon as we leave Iraq, the insurgent forces will rush in to fill the space, and we will then be perceived to have failed. It doesn’t matter whether we leave 5 years from now, 2 years from now, next month, or next Tuesday. It doesn’t matter. We can’t stay there indefinitely. We must leave eventually. And when we do – at that moment – we will be perceived to have lost this war.

2) Further, it also doesn’t matter what the disposition of the violence is when we leave. It can be completely quiet at that point. But as soon as we go, the violence erupts back again and suddenly we appear to be weak losers.

3) If one man kicks the bear and gets away with it, all of a sudden, all the men want to kick the bear. It is the trait of predators. Lions can kill any gazelle they want – but they always pick the weakest, slowest one. Less effort, less risk, I suppose. Once we are seen to be weak, and losers of the war, then all the terrorists will want to come and have a kick at us. They will feel they can win. We don’t seem invulnerable anymore. We may be Superman – but they have kryptonite.

4) Bush knows by now he made a terrible mistake invading Iraq. He could win an initial invasion, but could never calm and rebuild a nation of 26 million people with 150,000 troops. Especially when 22 million of them hate us and want us out and 10 million of them are willing to kill themselves to accomplish that end.

5) Clearly then, given Bush’s mentality, he does not want to pull out on his shift. Because then history will blame him for a massive failure. He does not want that. As long as he stays in there fighting, then he hasn’t failed yet. Even setback is just one more setback along the way. But as soon as we pull out, then we lost the war. He will avoid that at all costs.

6) Therefore, I think it is reasonable to assume that he will keep the forces in Iraq until he leaves office in 2 years. That way, the next president will be the one to pull out the troops and will then be perceived to be the one who lost the war.

Since I have offerred some criticism, I should also offer a suggested solution and here it is in point form:

Einstein said: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Along those lines, I will say this:
1) We should get out of Iraq as soon as possible, but not sooner.

2) If we get out too soon, then we will be perceived as weak cowards and those forces who like to take advantage of that weakness will attack us at every opportunity. We will have no peace on our own soil or anywhere else, for that matter. Everyone will be taking pot-shots at us with impunity, knowing that we cannot fight back, and that the American public has no appetite for more war.

3) Therefore, we have to leave , not as an impulsive run from a difficult situation, but rather as a part of a large, public strategy planned in advance and announced with a schedule of dates.

4) Specifically, our problem with leaving the situation in Iraq is just that the Iraqi forces seem unprepared to take over primary combat duty, and as long as we remain there in that mode, they never will be. So we need to switch 100% to training Iraqi forces immediately, and spend no more than 3 months on this.

5) Then I believe we need to move our forces to the borders. The biggest problem we have in fighting the terrorists inside Iraq is that they have a steady stream of supplies and manpower coming over the border to refill their needs for food, fuel, ammunition, and manpower. We need to sever those supply lines, and stop that outside influence, and once that is cut off, then the Iraqi forces can clean up the problems in the inner country areas. The insurgent forces will weaken quickly without food, fuel and ammunition being constantly supplied.

6) We continue this until the end of this year, but no more. The vast bulk of our troops should be home by Christmas. And we clean up after ourselves. No messy residue left behind as a negative reminder of our presence there.

7) Then, once we are out, we take 1/10th the budget we are currently paying to keep fighting the war in Iraq, and we split that amongst the fighting factions and offer it as an ongoing bribe for peace. If they stop fighting, they get the money or the equivalent in goods and services - we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars per month here. If they attack the other faction, then we deduct financial penalties from their payment and pay it to the other side as compensation.

Suddenly it will become VERY expensive for them to keep fighting. Right now, it is very cheap for them to fight us and everyone else. But then, the threat of witholding significant subsidies - that will make it very expensive to keep on fighting. Also, every attack they make takes money away from them and gives it to their enemy. They certainly don't want THAT!!!
Some might argue that giving them money only gives them the money to buy more weapons to fight us better. But why would they fight against us if we are giving them money? Why would they want that to stop? And since we would take their allotment and give it to their enemy, that would end up making our friends much stronger than our enemies. So it becomes a self-governing, self-levelling peace mechanism.


So here is the bottom-line, net effect of this path:
1) We are out of there and home within this year
2) We cut our current expenditures by 90%
3) We will have provided the Iraqi government with both the means and the incentives to protect themselves and maintain the peace
4) We will have provided incentives to keep the peace after we are gone.
5) We will have significant DISincentives for either sectarian faction to continue or resume fighting.
6) Since we will be gone, there is no more Islamic justification for Jihad against us. We are no longer an 'occupying force" That takes the wind out of the sails of those who would try to build support for a fight against us on any significant scale. Right now, our presence there is itself a rallying cry to allow them to build forces against us. That will all be gone.
7) None of theose groups will have incentives or reasons to come here to attack us. They would not want to have their subsidies cut off.
8) They can go back to work producing oil and we can get our oil supply back. Lowering our costs for oil.
9) Our running deficit is decreased because 90% of our spend is eliminated. Gradually, over time, we reduce the subsidies, and back out gracefully over the next few years.
10) Many many many lives are saved. Ours. Theirs. Children's.

There. Now I have criticized, but I have also offered a short-term and long-term strategic solution. And I think it is a viable one.

More...More...MORE!!! We MUST HAVE MORE!!!

There seems to be a trend over time where people want more than what there was before. More money. More stuff. More responsibility in their jobs. More fun. More TV, more games, more technology. more sex. more violence - just more!

It used to be enough to have a single TV in the house. Now, many houses have 4 or 5 TV's and one or two of them are flat-screen plasma or LCD TV's! Houses are bigger with more stuff inside them. It's almost as if, as a society, we've been driven into a consumer feeding frenzy.

I look at the movies and I see an escalation over time. They are just getting more more MORE - of violence, horror, drama, sex, explosions, car chases, tension, motion, action - MORE MORE MORE!!! The producers are competing for the attention of a public who has seen it all, so they keep trying to shock us with ever more escalated triggers. Nothing is subtle - everything seems over the top nowadays.

Cars used to be considered powerful if they had close to 200 hp. In 1985, I had a 300ZX Turbo that had about 210 hp, and that was considered a fast, powerful sports car. Now, they start at 300 hp and go up. The current corvette has two versions - a 400hp and a 500hp (the Z06 option).

My last car, a Jaguar sports car, had about 290 hp. That was considered a lot of power 9 years ago when it was new. But now it was getting old and needed repairs so I just replaced it with an SUV and even that has 270hp! In fact, I had the option of getting the higher version which has 507hp!! on an SUV!

Aside from sheer power increases over the years - think about all the features on vehicles today. I remember when power windows and air conditioning were expensive luxury options - and cruise control was only for airplanes. Now, viturally all cars have these things - even the least expensive of vehicles.

And as I learn about my new SUV that I bought last week, I am simply amazed as I read through the two owners manuals. One is 586 pages, and the other - strictly for the COMAND center console system, is another 280 pages! It is not just a vehicle - it's an automotive system now with menus within menus within menus on the three computer screens in the vehicle. The features are so sophisticated now!
For example, not only does it have intermittent wipers, but there is a rain sensor that determines just how wet it is outside and adjusts the speed of the wipers to match the amount of rain. And if the car is stopped and one of the front doors is opened, then they assume a person may be standing beside the car so it stops the wipers so they don't splash you. And if you put it in reverse, it automatically turns on the rear wiper because they know that if it's raining at the front of the car, then it must be raining at the back of the car too! And the sunroof is not just a little opening above the 2 front seats - it's a complete glass roof stretching from the front all the way to the back of the vehicle. There are three different zones for climate controlled heating and air conditioning - driver, passenger, and rear seating - and it holds 6 people in executive jet comfort and has full-time 4 wheel drive and accelerates and handles like a sports car AND still has to get over 20 miles per gallon! And then of course, 4 of the 6 seats all fold down so I can carry my music gear to the next concert!

And there are menus to set the timing of the headlights after turning off the engine, and the timing of the interior lights after the door is closed, and the opening height of the power-operated rear hatch door, and readouts for the outside temperature, and which seek functions on the radio you might feel like wanting to adjust. And brakes that tell how hard you are pushing and take appropriate action assuming an impending crash, not to mention airbags in every part of the vehicle front, side - everywhere. And if those airbags DO deploy, the car automatically calls the Teleaid service who notifies the emergency vehicles and gives them your precise location. And a roadside assitance service that you call through the car system in case you get a flat tire or get stuck or something.

And of course a Harmon Kardon Logic7 surround sound system, with satellite radio and CD player that also plays MP3's and a navigation system that not only shows you and tells you where to go, but also slightly turns down the stereo system every time she talks to you, and even suggests restaurants to eat at, by the type of food you feel like! And an integrated bluetooth telephone that detects the phone in your pocket and if it rings, it automatically mutes the stereo and navigation while you answer the phone right from the steering wheel (heaven forbid you should reach over to touch the console to answer it) and talk to them through the built-in microphone and speaker system. And let's not forget the portable DVD players for each passenger....
If that isn't and over-the-top vehicle I don't what is! This one is a Mercedes, but I've seen some of these features even on Kia and Hyundai. Many new vehicles have a lot of these features, not just the more expensive ones. It's as if all the automotive manufacturers are trying to one-up each other to get our attention - just like the movie producers. And I didn't even get the Parktronic system - a color rear camera for reversing! (imagine that!)

A few decades ago, sex was exciting if the teenage boy touched the girls breast while they were kissing. It was called 'feeling her up', and it was very risque at the time. Now, looking around at sex sites on the internet even just for 5 minutes, one gets the impression that it's not even interesting to people anymore unless sex involves 6 or 7 people, half of whom are tied up and tortured by the other half, all doing multiple insertions in every orifice including dildoes the size of bedposts, and somehow combined with 2 dogs, a chicken, a llama, and a shetland pony.

Incest used to be taboo to even mention. Now it's an entire category of websites when shopping for porn! BDSM was an anomaly, now it's a whole almost mainstream category of websites with thousands of websites dedicated to it. There is even an entire Japanese artform that involves the artful ways the women are tied up and left hanging and ready for sex. Even beastiality is a competitive category for porn now with horse sites trying to one-up the dog sites, and some sites with more exotic animals from gorillas to zebras to snakes and ostriches. It's not enough that women have sex with horses - they have to have anal sex with horses in order to get attention now! The ante keeps going up!

Some people I have read about need to attach electronic equipment (called e-stim) to deliver electric shocks to metal rods inserted into the urethra of the man's penis and labia rings of the woman in order to feel anything sexual at all. They are so numbed by years of over-the-top sexual adventure that they cannot enjoy normal sex anymore. They need electrical apparatus attached to metal piercings in their genitalia! I read one story written by a woman who wanted to have sex with 50 men in one night. Fifty. A football team and all their friends. And she did. And the story of what she did and how she did it was amazing. One was not enough - it wasn't even getting started! She was barely warmed up from the first guy. It seemed that it took her about 30 or so before she began to feel fulfilled sexually. So she was tired and worn out after 50.

And it's all accessible immediately. You don't have to spend hours and weeks poring over porn sites. This much you can find out using google within 5 minutes.

A few decades ago, they could make a movie exciting with having a murder. Someone is poisoned, and they try to figure out who did it. Now they seem to have to have elaborate gory beheadings, and stakes driven through bodies. Body parts have to be severed and flying and blood splattering everywhere. It has to be an explosion of body parts and blood. Or else people burning on fire, or some other horrific nightmarish vision of ways for people to die. Last night the ad on TV was for a new movie called Hannibal Rising. Of course - cannibalism. Why not. It's Sunday. These are things that would not have even occurred to the sickest minds 50 years ago, and now they are commonplace on regular TV every night.

Car chases use to be just that. A police car chasing the bad guy's car through the streets. Think of the old James Bond movies in the 60's and 70's. Now - it's dozens of cars crashing, exploding, flying through the air, etc. Nothing so tame anymore!

Everything is way over the top now. Where does this all lead? What's next? Can it really just keep escalating out of control? Or is there a breaking point? A point where people just say - enough. And reject it all and go back to the solitude of a quiet life without all the noise and screaming and explosions.

What do you think? Have you noticed this too? Or is it just me?