Comment Re:Remember Hypatia (Score 1) 494
As far as history rhymes Islam goes through its version of the 30 years' war right now.
As far as history rhymes Islam goes through its version of the 30 years' war right now.
A bunch of workers hanging their body weight on the lever end would raise the stone a foot or two. You prop the stone with some timbers, shorten the lifting rope, and repeat. When the stone gets to the next level of the pyramid, you rotate the lever arm horizontally and pivot the stone to the next step.
Sounds plausible, except how does that lever get the stones to the top of a 455' structure? The widest "step" doesn't seem like it would allow room for enough guys to exert 800 lbs on a lever, much less for the lever itself. And we're talking a pretty long lever by the time you get halfway up. Then, you've got all the limestone sheathing to put up and you have to make sure the inside chambers are there, and accessible..
However they did it, it's pretty remarkable. I got to see it once up close and it's amazing.
I left off the most important part of the Baldwin quote, the second half:
This perpetual justification empties the heart of all human feeling. The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes.
In the words of the great James Baldwin:
The world has never lacked for horrifying examples; but I do not believe that these examples are meant to be used as justification for our own crimes.
The clueless naivety of some slash posters can be hilarious.
The "Runaway Galaxies" was the name of my garage band in the 70s.
Hell, I won't even use digital thermometers out of concern that they'll upload my body temperature to the internet. I'm not going to be uploading my vitals to some app developer in Mencino.
Honestly, I think we're seeing late-stage Apple at this point. Each new product announcement makes a smaller and smaller blip on the radar, and Apple is entirely a company whose fortunes are tied to the faddish vitality of a brand name. Every year Apple does less and less to differentiate itself, and their older products are starting to whither a bit. The people who were excited about OSX 16 years ago have less and less to be excited about with each passing year and those aren't the same people who are going to get excited over a watch or something that will tell them they need to exercise more.
I'm not saying Apple is going to crash and burn or disappear, but when a company's capitalization is their biggest news don't make the mistake of thinking the future is a foregone conclusion. (see: IBM).
I suspect Islamic religious conservatism was behind this. These cowardly idiots shoot a middle school girl in the head because she blogs. When is Islam going to experience the equivalent of the Enlightenment which softened and matured the Christian world? How long must we wait.
"It's the biggest one", cook said when Lamont asked to borrow $100. "I'm coming Louise".
But you didn't eat it
Well...
To quote a commenter above:
reality is there will be collateral damage in fighting terrorists sometimes
if you travel to the middle east, don't be surprise if terrorists grab you and hold/torture/behead you
This shouldn't have been let out of the firehose. WTF is nerdy about this?
You're joking. Liquid mercury? Come on, show of hands: Who among us has not at some point in our lives broken open a thermometer in order to play with the mercury inside? That's a nerd rite of passage.
Hell, I'm old enough to remember when they made little maze puzzles with a blob of mercury inside that you'd try to get from one corner to the other. Those were the days before parents raised kids like veal. We had pocket knives, for chrissake. Can you imagine millennial parents giving their precious offspring pocket knives? I had my own
What's strange about any of that?
The carved shells? They were from a Mossberg 500 Tactical Persuader pump action shotgun.
Fuck your aliens.
I know, right? It wasn't aliens that built the pyramids, or anything supernatural. It's stupid to think that.
Everybody knows it was Anunnaki, our ancestors, the Shining Ones, who gave this technology to humans over 250,000 years ago.
Variables don't; constants aren't.