He's basically right about the pyramids.
I am not sure we can any longer understand what Old Kingdom Egyptians were.
They were the first nation, in the divine because they recognized themselves as a nation, surviving and immortal in the person of the King. They did not worship, they lived and died in the divine. Yet this was not pantheism.
These are people who sat down, every time they sat, in the lap of Eset/Isis.
Teo beat me! Teo is mean like a snake.
4: You can brag that you wouldn't have been so presumptuous about gender. Even if it's a lie, no one will really know.
I think she/Teo is wrong, and the concept of paid labor is an anachronism.
Huh. I suppose I was misled by "chauvinist."
I think she/Teo is wrong, and the concept of paid labor is an anachronism.
There's no fucking way I'm going to let myself get sucked into an argument about this, but "paid labor" and "slavery" are not the only options for the organization of labor, anachronistic or not.
9:was built by tens of thousands of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary ...quote from the linked Wiki article at 1
I think they worked for a food coupon, probably simply to keep track of who was working where. This was not a currency.
Here is a comparison of Egyptian Law* and Babylonian
"Egypt had no law or judges or cops. They did have guards.
They didn't even have a morality. They had Maat, which was Truth.
I have no particular knowledge of the accuracy of the wikipedia article I linked; the part about the labor force is apparently from "A.Altenmüller, A. M. Moussa, in Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 18 (1991), p. 36" if anyone wants to look that up and see what it says.
but "paid labor" and "slavery" are not the only options for the organization of labor
WalMart hit the middle ground between the two, so there's that.
My impression is that the Egyptian labor system was basically along the lines of corvée labor, with the Pharaohs demanding a certain amount of work per year from the peasants who spent the rest of their time working in their own fields, rather than chattel slavery. I have admittedly not found much to back this up in cursory googling, but I'm sure there's plenty of research on this, whether or not it's available online.
13: Why go read stuff when we could speculate wildly?
14: I'm pretty sure the pyramids, like Greenfield Bridge, were built by aliens anyway.
15: As far as I know, it hasn't been disproven that squirrels with lasers were the architects.
15: Does Egypt have squirrels?
Anyway, I reassure myself that, despite the fact that the city crews had to do restoration work to fix the nets that catch the chunks of concrete* that fall from the Greenfield Bridge, it is safe to drive over because aliens built it the concrete was applied as a government cover-up.
*There is also a steel cage over an interstate highway to catch whatever slips by the net.
Does Egypt have squirrels?
Right? And if not, where did they go after drawing up the plans for the pyramids? It all makes sense.
I learned recently (thanks, Celebrity Jeopardy!) that Jefferson's likeness was blown up and re-positioned on Mount Rushmore. That just screams conspiracy.
The other week I went to the Lincoln Children's Zoo and they had naked mole rats. I just wanted to kill them with fire, but we had to go and feed the goats instead.
...lines of corvée labor, with the Pharaohs demanding a certain amount of work per year from the peasants
God doesn't have to actually make demands on his...like I said, it's hard to explain. They did not have a "relationship" to the King, they lived inside him (He was Egypt, not a representation or personification but physical and social Egypt itself).
I don't ask my feet to walk.
Not really a hive-mind, but close enough to be tough for us to work with. And I am talking mostly Upper Egypt, 3rd-4th dynasties
Vole news. Know what they need? Wolves.
well, squirrels are just mice with bushy tails, so it makes sense they are the smart enough
re: the pyramid builders
I watched a recent BBC [or mebbe Ch.4 documentary], and yeah, according to recent research the now-orthodox view seems to be that they were very well-fed, and medically cared for, and basically were farmers and others tithing a certain amount of annual service to the state. In other words, what 13 said. The Egyptians being the Egyptians there are apparently written records of the "300 goats, and 400 beef cattle for pyramid brigade A", type.
Well then, they were not slaves but just people who knew they were going to be starved to death, when they did not put their supreme muscle in service of the boss-man.
re: 29
And you know this how? And this differs from basically everyone in the history of the world, ever, how?
In other words, as teo says above, there are many more categories of worker than 20th century salaried bourgeoisie and slave. And if you conflate everything that isn't the former with the latter that's a piece of anachronistic ignorance.
They--the Egyptians--were the first to figure out that the world was round--then everyone forgot.
Is there any evidence that anyone forgot? The Greeks - in Egypt - were measuring the circumference of the earth pretty accurately in the 3rd century BCE, and that knowledge was never lost either AFAIK. Flat earthers were always a minority of cranks.
Egypt had squirrels, but not in a way we can understand anymore. They lived and breathed squirrels, yet this was not a squirrelocracy.
I don't get all the hatred for naked mole rats. Yeah, they're pretty ugly, but they're the only eusocial mammals, which makes them pretty fascinating.
They probably don't think you're any oil painting either.
30 It doesn't differ at all, unfortunately, but there is more legislation on labour conditions than then.
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Things I learned noodling around on ancestry.com because it is free today. 1) The "race" of my grandparents and aunts and uncles is listed as "Irish" in registry of the ship on which they came over. My grandfather's "calling" is "coal miner." It just spoke to him, you know? 2) 1920s-era Jersey City must have been crazy. The form is filled out by address so all the people surrounding my (Italian) grandparents on the form are their neighbors. The "place of birth" listing looks something like: Italy, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Finland, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Sweden. Oh, and one "Texas" (?!?!).
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re: 32
Yeah, there's a sort of erroneous folk belief that, for example, people doubted Columbus' plans to circumnavigate the globe because they thought the world was flat [rather than because Columbus got his size estimates utterly wrong].
38: American grade schools frequently perpetuate the myth that Columbus discovered that the earth was round, as a bit of patriotic propaganda. Pretty soon I'm going to have to start actively fighting this shit with my kids' education.
28's fulltime farmers parttime pyramid workers seems to wildly underestimate the skills and knowledge required, and if it does admit that there actually might have been artisans and professionals involved in the stonework and painting, or simply the water transport of large blocks of stone, overestimates the market for those skills in Old Kingdom Egypt. It also seems to think Pharonic construction projects were seasonal (farmers tithing time). It also has a mid-latitude attitude toward agriculture. There was only one "downtime" for farmers, floods, and the floods had their own demands.
Permanent communities of professionals with skills passed down generations built the pyramids. Or the agricultural surplus from an insanely rich nation, all surplus funneled to the King.
And there was no "state" in 2800 BC. Just a nation.
re: 39
Yeah, there's nothing like a bit of history of science to kick all that shite in the arse.
41: There are also a lot of good kid books about ancient science, etc.
re: 40
Oh fuck off. No-one's claiming that there were no full-time professionals involved.
American grade schools frequently perpetuate the myth that Columbus discovered that the earth was round, as a bit of patriotic propaganda.
Why? He was an Italian financed by the Spanish and he never set foot on any part of what would eventually become the United States.
44: Yeah, I was certainly taught this* in school, but I never thought of it as "American" propaganda.
*Or rather, it was just awfully vague. Columbus decided to go the opposite way, because he knew the earth was round! He convinced I & F to fund his plan (plan=going the other way round), but golly his men were terrified they would fall off the edge of the earth!
re: 45
Yeah, it's all bullshit. They knew how big the earth was to quite a high degree of precision, and it's not as if sailors didn't know the earth was round. You can _see_ it's round, when at sea, ffs.
I think it was in my first or second ever philosophy tutorial that the tutor asked the class, appropos of some discussion of received wisdom, at what time people it became received wisdom among reasonably informed people that the earth was round. The majority of answers were for some date in the middle ages, through to the late-15th or early 16th centuries. His point, of course, was that it was a trick question.
34: I didn't say I hated them, just that my first reaction on seeing them was to want to kill them.
I seem to recall that the "Columbus myth" was invented by Washington Irving in a novel (which might be seen as a clue...) My completely unsupported speculation is that he knew Portuguese fishing captains who were sailing to the Newfoundland Grand Banks for cod (they were), so he knew roughly how wide the north Atlantic was and felt it was a good bet that the landmass, which he honestly believed to be Asia, stretched far enough south to risk a voyage at that latitude. The intellectuals who advised Isabella wouldn't have been plugged into the mariners' fraternity and therefore assumed open water all the way to China.
43:seems to be that they were very well-fed, and medically cared for, and basically were farmers and others tithing a certain amount of annual service to the state. is what you said
You fuck off, or try to get it right.
Incidentally, the Old Kingdom itself was a civilization that rose and fell. In the 3rd and 4th dynasties, a few nobles and courtiers were buried at the Pyramid Complexes. By the 5th and 6th Dynasties, the nobles had become independent enough to build their own separate tombs, thereby providing separate employment for the craftspersons (so that the idea of "tithing time" to the King might make some sense.)
My completely unsupported speculation is that he knew Portuguese fishing captains who were sailing to the Newfoundland Grand Banks for cod (they were)...
I only the Portuguese were a bit more ambitious, they could have discovered the new world and invented the chip shop.
43, 49: We must pull together or the Hittites will come and fuck-up everything.
re: 48
There's a popular 'conspiracy'/crypto-history* book of a few years back that basically makes the point that people had been voyaging to North America for centuries.** The English (allegedly) as well as the Portuguese had been going there for fish for a few decades and it was hardly unknown in the sailing/navigating community.
re: 49
Seriously, Bob, go fuck yourself. If you can find anywhere where I claimed that the workers were exclusively part-time labourers tithing labour to the state/king then that'd be well and good, but since that's not what I wrote, nor what was the central claim of the documentary, or the current apparent historical accuracy, looks like you are shit the fuck out of fucking luck, you ignorant opinionated bloviating know-nothing arsehole. Happy now?
* although not all that wacky or unhinged by the usual standards of the genre...
** the first place I read the various Ameryk theories for the naming of the continent, for example.
And it seems like being annoyed has broken my grammar. Anyway, in summary, Bob, you can fuck off.
15: Does Egypt have squirrels?
My Egyptian acquaintance was horrified when he saw squirrels being fed in the park. "Are those rats?, he asked. So I think not.
54: Your Egyptian acquaintance is very quick at picking out the salient features of a new animal.
51: too late, we need to concentrate on expunging the Hittites that are already amongst us!
we need to concentrate on expunging the Hittites that are already amongst us!
Get me that Israeli guy, what's his name... David, that's it! He's got a solid record on expunging the Hittites among us. Don't let him meet your wife, though.
Don't let him meet your wife, though.
Just remind her to keep the curtains drawn when she's in the bath.
52:and basically were farmers and others tithing a certain amount
claimed that the workers were exclusively part-time labourers
Oh, sorry, I didn't catch the vast gulf between "basically" and "exclusively"
Such is the stuff of doctorates and tenure.
But since the permanent construction sites and cities have been excavated finding toys and other evidence of multi-generational dedicated crews, the part-time workers were actually the exceptions rather than the rule, so you are still wrong.
Bob, go fuck yourself... looks like you are shit the fuck out of fucking luck, you ignorant opinionated bloviating know-nothing arsehole. Happy now?
Can't speak for him, but I certainly am.
You pile sixteen tons, what do you get?
A position of a respect craftsman on a multi-generational dedicated construction crew.
This may help you understand the project of the Early Dynastic period, and the ideology and organization of the 3rd and 4th dynasties. There was nothing that did not serve Pharaoh in the Pyramid Dynasties.
Jan Assmann, Agypten. Eine Sinngeschichte 1996, trans 2002
This "patrimonial" form of rule-one that administers the state like a family business and that lacks any system of popular representation-is central to the exercise of government in the first two dynasties, the Archaic or Thinite Period (3100-2670), associated by Manetho with the nome of This (Abydos). Later, the king delegated these administrative functions-collecting taxes, storing harvests, redistribution-to officials and institutions. The king's residence became increasingly important, while the significance of the provinces diminished. In the provinces, royal estates were established and placed in the charge of an overseer, who-like other officials-was recom- pensed via the estates and whose mortuary cult was sustained by those estates. Local administrative action was entrusted to officials dispatched from the royal residence to the provinces. Members of the administrative elite were not recruited from the provinces; rather, they were initially residence officials before being appointed to posts in the provinces. A two-tier structure thus emerged, within which a narrow, gradually expanding residence elite administered a broad provincial stratum about which the sources tell us nothing, for the sym- bolic forms of the residential culture contain no references to family clans or village communities. Such groupings are passed over in silence and were presumably actively clamped down on. The process of internal colonization led to the division of the overall territory into nomes. Formerly, scholars assumed that these nomes were continuations of prehistoric forms of territorial organization. The nautical standards on the Naqada II vases and the standards of the king's entourage on the palettes of the unification period were thought to be predecessors of the later nome ensigns. But more recent studies have shown beyond doubt that there is no continuity between the standards of prehistory and early history and the nome ensigns; rather, the division into nomes represented a thoroughgoing reorganization of the territory, undertaken probably as late as the reign of Djoser (2687-2667 B.C.E.). There is thus no continuity between the rival chiefdoms of the Naqada Period and the nomes of the Old Kingdom. Indeed, the structures that had evolved before the advent of the state were ruthlessly suppressed by the symbolism of pharaonic residential culture. Generally speaking, the administration of the provinces assured supplies to the residence, while the residence assured supplies to the provinces. Administration was thus in the first instance administration of agricultural produce. Taxation, though important, was not as Important as storage. The prime official concern was to ensure against the unpredictability of the Nile floods and against fluctuations in local harvest yields, and to keep the standard of living as consistently high as possible. This administrative interest effected a change in the supply structure across the whole of the land. The individual regions were no longer self-sufficient, but were dependent on a centralized supply system. If this system broke down, major supply crises and famines would result.
60:Typical of "scholars"
Assertions based on personal "authority", supported by exclusive communities. Contempt for that which is not tribally "pure."
And after 52, why doesn't someone complain that "Bob is being hostile and personally insulting."
This Bob/Ttam debate has the biggest ratio of "fuck offs" to comprehensible points of disagreement of any Unfogged discussion I can remember.
We must pull together or the Hittites will come and fuck-up everything.
You spelled Cossack wrong.
Michael Hudson on ancient entrepeneurs
We know from pictorial sources that there were markets, but according to Bleiberg (1995:1382f.) the normal Egyptian state of affairs was a redistributive economy. The hints of entrepreneurial behavior are limited to "intermediate periods," transitions in which the pharaoh's power weakened and economic life became less centralized (as also occurred in Mesopotamia)."One recent exponent of the belief that there was a place for the private merchant in ancient Egypt is Morris Silver," comments Bleiberg. "Not surprisingly, the evidence that he adduces for private traders comes from the First Intermediate Period and the end of the Ramesside period, both times of weak or nonexistent central government. The existence of such traders is never attested in Egyptian sources from periods when the economic apparatus of the central government was functioning well."
Not that the Bleibergs are my most favored authorities, but they are something.
The point being, that in a redistributive society when the Pharaoh "owned*" everything as the exclusive and consensual ideology and "religion", the concepts of slavery, paid labour, or tithing make no sense.
*"Ownership" itself is a weak concept under those conditions.
Again, by the 5th and 6th dynasties, the nobles of the nomes, formerly overseers for the residence, were beginning to assert themselves
The importance of this new conception of "nation" of sharing resources over vast geographical distances, cannot be overstated.
re: 60 and 63
Such is the stuff of doctorates and tenure. and
Contempt for that which is not tribally "pure."
I'm absolutely the wrong person to be playing that particular game with. You really know shit all about me, don't you?
re: 64
Why would I complain about someone being personal and insulting? The person using the most hyperbolic and insulting language here is me, no? Which is fine, I fully intend to be insulting.
My completely unsupported speculation is that he knew Portuguese fishing captains who were sailing to the Newfoundland Grand Banks for cod (they were), so he knew roughly how wide the north Atlantic was and felt it was a good bet that the landmass, which he honestly believed to be Asia, stretched far enough south to risk a voyage at that latitude. The intellectuals who advised Isabella wouldn't have been plugged into the mariners' fraternity and therefore assumed open water all the way to China.
Two things about this; one, Columbus had traveled well north, probably/possibly even to Iceland, so he likely had heard stories from more than just the Portuguese. He certainly did think there was land to the west that was reachable. Two, this was supported - as mentioned my ttam - by his very bad calculations of the size of the earth, which put China/Japan only 3,000 miles away.
I'm finding that the Columbus myths are taught less and less in grade school here* - or at any rate, there is no surprise among my students when I give them the "corrective" lecture. Maybe I should take to informally polling them before I actually start talking to find out for sure.
*I work with a number of elementary teachers. They're the exceptions, but they at least aren't perpetuating the myths.
I'm absolutely the wrong person to be playing that particular game with. You really know shit all about me, don't you?
I know you are ignorant (got your expertise from a Discovery Channel documentary?), wrong, and unwilling or unable to admit it.
I'm finding that the Columbus myths are taught less and less in grade school here
I went to grade school in the early 1960's and we were taught that Columbus was not the first European to travel to North America. Surely it has been a long time since there was confusion on this point.
Bah, they are both Hittites to me.
He was an Italian financed by the Spanish and he never set foot on any part of what would eventually become the United States.
Tell it to the Knights of Columbus.
re: 71
I don't really give a shit, bob. I just think you are blowhard fuckwit whose central purpose in every discussion is to bolster the image you like to have of yourself as a brave and radical thinker. You'll note me not claiming any kind of expertise above, other than reporting something. You'll also notice I'm not offering arguments on behalf of that point of view because I have literally no emotional investment in it. I'm absolutely not an expert on Egyptian history, nor have I made any claims to that effect. I don't give a fuck. I'm happy to engage in good-faith arguments with most people, but not with you.
You know if you want to position yourself as the brave combatant against the forces of ivory tower orthodox, and closed-ranks bourgeois ignorance, mebbe snearing at 'a Discovery Channel documentary' might not be the way to go about it, eh? So, in conclusion, fuck you.
76:28, 30, 31
You'll also notice I'm not offering arguments on behalf of that point of view because although I have literally no emotional investment in it the ignorance of a rock and the arrogance of a Jesuit.
I'm pretty happy about having avoided getting involved in this argument.
Maybe we should just leave it Bob, eh? If you feel I am both ignorant and arrogant that's fine, I can assure you that my view of you is equally low, and that's probably a good place to end matters since endless cycles of name calling are going to be boring for everyone else.
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Does anyone else's public radio station air Speaking of Faith? I just listened to some blowhard explaining that the Jews—but not just the Jews, mind—would have to turn to Christ come the Rapture. Which, yeah, normal end-times claptrap, but this was apparently during their Rosh Hashanah episode. The fuck?!
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Yes, our station airs Speaking of Faith, and I loathe it intensely.
Further to 81: Er, apparently it was the horribly named show Interfaith Voices, not SOF.
I don't care, I still hate SoF. I may hate it more than Marketplace and Talk of the Nation.
Well, I read that there's a Jewish sect that asked a piece of a Jesus-relic in order to clone Jesus, so as to make sure he didn't stray from the straight path this time around.
I didn't check the sources, mind you. In that same article they spoke about a scientistic sect that was planning to clone Hitler to show nurture was able to outperform nature.
Si non é vero ...
84: Oh, me too. I'm currently working on a fiery missive imploring our local affiliate to replace SoF, Interfaith Voices, and The People's Pharmacy with, say, Snap Judgment, which I recently heard on a road trip.
In any case, even though Egypt remained largely a redistributive society after the Old Kingdom, the rise of the nobles and especially the temples (and the two aren't easily separable) as competing centers of collection and distribution is what turns the New Kingdom Pharaohs from gods to politicians.
I have to admit I don't have a strong grip on the Middle Kingdom, but it is awesome and deserves more attention than the New.
Maat = truth, justice was obviously, and admitted as such, an important influence on the early Greeks.
I am more interested in Early Egyptian language, because I don't think they had a active concept of representation. The name, word, image partook of/contained/? the soul of the thing, was the thing itself. Maat/Truth was sentient/sapient, as were "chair" and "sitting."
I know from my homeschool curriculum, which is based on Wikipedia and Texas-approved textbooks, that Columbus claimed the entire Eastern Seaboard in the name of the Hittite Cod Farmers for Christ. His burial mound is somewhere near present-day Hammonton or North Providence.
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SEK on Yggles and academic discourse, with appearances by Farber and Emerson, and a mention of Kos new book American Taliban
I, of course, believe that Kos has gone nowhere nearly far enough, and a detailed analysis of the Taliban practice of boy-raping should be connected to psychosocial conditions and current practices of the American right. I don't need to list useful evidence and examples.
Not, of course, that all Republicans are pederasts, active or repressed. "All" would be going just a bit too far.
(And I haven't read the book, so Kos might have made the connection)
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85. There's no very strong evidence that he strayed from the straight path last time. They might want to think about cloning St Paul if that's their game.
79: If you ever change your mind and want to start an incomprehensible argument*, let me know. I'm usually feeling pretty churlish on Thursdays.
*The "why is this so heated" is the incomprehensible part.
Anyway, in summary, Bob, you can fuck off.
New mouseover text?
I'm chasing sushi and beer with a brownie (frosted) and coffee. So, I'm not feeling very argumentative right now.
That's utter bullshit, Moby. Fucking argue or step off.
Alright. The Old Kingdom can fuck off. The reign of Senusret III was the best.
I'm chasing sushi and beer with a brownie (frosted) and coffee
This is your, what, lunch?
A brownie after sushi strikes me as odd, and I think it's very important that you know that.
It strike me as odd also. Yet that is what I came home with. I also got a shop vac, a CO alarm, and the fixings for my attempt at a slow cooker pot roast.
(I went to more than one store.)
Maybe it was a wasabi-mocha brownie, neb.
But you didn't eat the shop vac, alarm, or pot roast fixings, and you did eat the brownie.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, wasabi brownies are a thing.
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What's the deal with airlines now auto-checking you in and sending emails that say "thank you for using auto-check-in" even though it is them, not you, who have decided to use it?
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101: I am prepping the pot roast fixings right now.
103: The earnestness of your query means you'll never get Seinfeld-famous for asking questions about air travel.
Is it earnest? I guess. I don't really want an answer, though; it's just another one of those "corporation decides it knows what I want, gets it wrong" things. See also: "what just happened to my iTunes interface?"
26: Know what they need? Wolves.
Not everyone agrees. From the sidebar: Sportsmen's groups want wolves killed to protect Bitterroot elk. Montanans are so argumentative.
See also: "US culture ca. 2010".
105: It sounded earnest in my head.
108: You were probably hearing it in the voice of a Jim Varney character.
Something in the sushi, brownie, coffee, beer combination doesn't sit well with the other parts of the meal. I thought you all should know.
His burial mound is somewhere near present-day Hammonton or North Providence.
This is probably the best opportunity I'll ever have to link to the Hammonton Columbus monument.
Since we're discussing archeology, I'd like to note that the best evidence for cannibalism in the late-Anasazi period is a mural that says, "Ohhh noes! We haz a flavor."
OT food question:
As part of semi-random food day, I put 2 pounds of chuck roast and 6 pounds of root vegetables into a slow cooker with broth and some spices. Other than a brief consultation with the butcher, I am working without instructions. Should I stir this stuff or anything? Also, is it going to suck?
Depends on the spices, though. Could still suck!
That's reassuring, since you were right on the sushi and brownie thing. I've got a couple of hours to go, but it smells good.
The spices are pretty common. Bay leaf, thyme, garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of rosemary.
OK, this time I do want an answer: why is Facebook redirecting to Google?
My Facebook works fine. Maybe you tried one of those virus-laden fake log in pages?
No. Must be a local DNS problem. No other webpage is giving me trouble. Maybe this hotel decided its guests shouldn't use Facebook.
You seem to travel an incredible amount, essear. Put another way, I'm keep an eye on you.
"Put another way, I'ma keep an eye on you."
There you go, Ari.
The spices are pretty common. Bay leaf, thyme, garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of rosemary.
That's two spices, if you count garlic as a spice, plus herbs and salt. But I'm sure it'll be delicious.
Since we're discussing archeology, I'd like to note that the best evidence for cannibalism in the late-Anasazi period is a mural that says, "Ohhh noes! We haz a flavor."
That sounds more like archaelology.
Which is actually a brilliant idea that I'm tempted to steal.
I can't be bothered right now, Megan. I'm simultaneously listening to country music, reading People magazine, and watching highlights from the English Premier League.
Since it's your idea, would you really be stealing? [that's deep]
Well, it's kind of Moby's idea, although I apparently came up with the term. (I googled it to see if anyone had thought of it before, but all the hits appear to be typos.)
Archaelology.com does seem to be available. Hmmm.
You seem to travel an incredible amount, essear.
Only 80-odd days so far this year, I think.
I don't think Moby will mind. Just send him some pheasant under glass and a chocolate cupcake or something.
Only 80-odd days so far this year, I think.
[doing math] [still doing math] [gives up on math] Isn't that, like, half of the days of the year so far? And isn't that a lot? For someone who isn't a salesperson of some kind or another?
More like a third of them. I somehow have the impression that most of the physicists I know are traveling much more than I am, but I could be wrong. (Even the ones who teach classes; they pretty much vanish whenever classes are not in session, and take other trips during the semester.)
Also, a lot of it is in big chunks, like ~ 1 month in California when I was renting an apartment and so it wasn't quite so bad. At least I had a kitchen and wasn't doing the whole hotel/restaurant thing.
Still, I am completely sick of it, and it's only going to get worse as I start actually applying for jobs in the near future.
essear is an itinerant physicist. He pulls into town with his little cart and offers to split people's atoms for them.
I'm simultaneously listening to country music, reading People magazine, and watching highlights from the English Premier League.
Strong work. We're totally going to win Pub Quiz this time.
Actually I'm really hoping that I can avoid any more trips to Europe for the next year. That would be nice. (See, work has my priorities all bass-ackwards.)
oudemia, my Air broke again, and they gave me a new one! That happened to you, didn't it? Anyway, I'm torn between loving Mac for having such good customer service (and such high profit margins that they can give shit away for free) and hating myself for adopting early. I suppose there's no reason I can't do both.
10/87: "Maat" is "truth" in the language of Phaeronic Egypt? Interesting. What's the language called? Because in modern Arabic, the word "maat" means "death". (Or "dead" or "dying" or something. It's been years since I studied Arabic and I was never all that serious about it to begin with.)
Sorry for feeding the troll, but I thought the similarity was interesting. If coincidence, funny; if one is actually derived from the other, it's... well, yet another sign of the famous death-fixation in dynastic Egypt.
141: These were both of my thoughts! And I keep them both near my heart! But mostly I am like tralalalala because I have a brand new and better one now, which is nice.
essear is an itinerant physicist. He pulls into town with his little cart and offers to split people's atoms for them
Or maybe he travels around meting out justice. "Have Physics, Will Travel."
Teo, if the combination of LOL cats and cannibalism inspires you, go ahead.
143:Ohhhh, I guess I could tell you to do your own googling
Maat, Ma'at, Maāt or Mayet, thought to have been pronounced as *Muʔʕat (Muh-aht),[1] was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of creation.The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm for nature and society...
After her role in creation and continuously preventing the universe from returning to chaos, her primary role in Egyptian mythology dealt with the weighing of souls that took place in the underworld
When reading articles like this it is important that most understate the roughly 2000 years of history of development of concepts. The Papyrus of Ani is dated to the 1240s.
The "Book of the Dead" was called "The Spells of Coming/Going Forth By Day". I would have to do a little research before I said much about Ancient Egyptians understanding of Death, and it's connection to the Balance.
Five Parts of the Egyptian Soul
I am hesitant to say Egyptians believed in Death in anything close to the way we do.
Wasn't there a time, bob, when you could engage in discussions without giving the impression of spitting bile with every word? Or am I misremembering?
From the links in 149:
Maat, Ma'at, Maāt or Mayet, thought to have been pronounced as *Muʔʕat (Muh-aht),[1] was the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddessI think this is a little lazy. "Concept?" "Personification"
Dude, at the beginning they said she was a goddess, and they believed. Deal.and
Following the death of the Khat, the Ba and Ka were reunited to reanimate the Akh.As a part of the soul, a person's ren (rn 'name') was given to them at birth and the Egyptians believed that it would live for as long as that name was spokenUhh, Sheut (shadow or image) and Ren (name) were really parts of the immortal soul. When they scraped "Hatshupset" from walls, they were not just erasing her from "history", they were killing her.
It's probably a bit late for food advice, but I'd recommend adding a bit of something acidic - wine, vinegar or canned tomatoes. The quality will depend partly on the broth, since what you're doing is making a double stock. That's how those fancy traditional French places get the really amazing, intense broths and broth based sauces.
150:I suggest you study this thread, at least until it devolved.
Was my comment at #2 "spitting bile with every word?"
Archaelology.com does seem to be available. Hmmm.
Brilliant idea: haplolology.
If 151 part deux isn't clear, because it blockquotes two different sections, let me put it this way:
To say "Rameses died" is to formally contradict yourself.
I am trying to work this thru in my head, but to the original questioner, and understanding that the Egyptians had a pretty alien (unless you are Taoist) attitude toward life/death natural order and balance, I can see the Egyptian "Maat" becoming the Arabic "Death".
150: I wouldn't describe 2 that way, agreed, but each one starting with 2 has some allied quality. I'm not sure how to describe it.
Egyptian is an Afroasiatic language, the only known representative of a subfamily comparable to Semitic, so it's distantly related to Arabic, but I don't think there's any relationship between Egyptian Maat and the Arabic "death" word. For one thing, "Maat" is a conventionalized spelling that doesn't necessarily reflect the actual pronunciation, since Egyptian hieroglyphs don't show the vowels. So yeah, probably a coincidence, although there could be some very remote relationship between the two terms.
Brilliant idea: haplolology.
That is indeed brilliant.
In Ancient Egypt was impossible to conceive of a dead squirrel as we understand it, partly because of their culture and language, and partly because slow-moving chariots made roadkill less likely.
156:Quelle surprise, I am not into self-criticism tonight, in this thread. Knock yourself out, looking for subtle bile.
I am sure the nice people around can be helpful.
161 was to relieve minivet of consternation. Yeah, Behold the asshole.
152: It was good, not great. Next time I'll try wine.
164: You can just start with the wine and then not have to spend all that money on meat and root vegetables.
Seems like enough wine normally leads to pursuit of meat and/or root vegetables.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of root vegetables.
167: It seems you really misunderstood the point of Roots.
Roots-Tubers: A Vegetable Cookbook?
Roots-Tubers
A group of people floating down a river listening to Bob Marley?
I find essear's constant travel fascinating. You would think that physics would hardly require any travel at all -- can't physicists just write things in equations and send them by email and figure them out with their megabrains? Why would face to face contact be so important? Maybe they've located different parts of the Doomsday Machine in different cities so that it can't be put together easily.
Also, I love it that Egyptology produced hostility. Right on.
Anything can produce hostility around here. There's a reason I don't spend much time here anymore.
I think that is life lately, not anything particular to unfogged.
More people seem to be intentionally cutting me off in traffic.
My neighbor is selling a used Buick for $1,800. It's been sitting for a couple of weeks so he may go for less.
176: No, but you do have sex now, and, it seems, occasionally listen to music. Doesn't that partly account for your not spending as much time here?
Maybe if I got more sleep, I'd sense less hostility.
172:Spent the evening over at lippsisters.com "Basket of Kisses" posting around twenty comments about Mad Men. They like me well enough, Deborah Lipp has asked to expand comments to front page status.
Thing is, that place, being a feminist blog, does have a shortage of drunken, aggressive, competitive men. I can't deny, I have never gotten along with drunken, aggressive, competitive men, or for that matter, the kind of women who love drunken, aggressive, competitive men.
I do have my flaws, and this is one.
I've quietly and potentially slightly creepily lurked for years now. But I felt moved to say that the hostility that a discussion of ancient Egypt has produced makes everyone involves look like an ass but also serves as the ultimate justification of the whole unfogged enterprise.
A real feminist would know that women can be drunken, aggressive and competitive. I saw it on a cigarette commercial.
182 to 180: Also, whenever I hear somebody say, "My flaw is that I have trouble dealing with people who aren't as perfect as me," I have to restrain myself from slapping that person.
Incidentally, now that I've gotten past the whole first time poster thing; any suggestions for a proper and more regularly used user name?
180:Oh, I meant it more sincerely than you think.
It has definitely limited my social life, and I do wonder why I have never been able to down a few and trade jokes and insults. I am capable of understanding that something I don't like or can't do may not be completely bad.
Of course, I do understand that a drunken, aggressive, competitive man could interpret 180.2 as some sort of challenge to his...never mind.
I've only had two beers, the last one more than a hour ago.
No, but you do have sex now, and, it seems, occasionally listen to music. Doesn't that partly account for your not spending as much time here?
Maybe a little, but I could still easily spend much more time here than I have been lately. I realized a few months ago that arguing on the internet makes me unhappy and that maybe I shouldn't do it. Obviously I haven't given up Unfogged entirely, but I no longer read most of the threads. It has indeed made me much happier.
Obviously this is the sort of thing that different people experience very differently, so I'm not recommending that everyone stop commenting or anything.
I mean, I'm not having that much sex.
This place used to be funny before teofilo started having sex.
But I felt moved to say that the hostility that a discussion of ancient Egypt has produced makes everyone involves look like an ass but also serves as the ultimate justification of the whole unfogged enterprise.
I think it's fair to say, from my point of view, that I had my reasons and they don't step from anything at all to do with ancient Egypt, but yeah, probably should have shut up a couple of comments before I actually did as I wasn't exactly covering myself with glory.
It feels to me like the average hostility level here has decreased since the era when read was commenting. Could be that my memory is skewed by a few of the threads that totally blew up, though. (Plus, even quite strongly-expressed disagreement doesn't usually register as 'hostile' for me, unless it's vitriolic in a personal way.)
I think it's certainly true that there used to be more lengthy threads with lots of people involved in heated arguments about something or other. Ogged was pretty good at provoking them (in a good way), without simultaneously being a dick about it, I think. There are fewer heated threads about feminism, and also, I think, about politics in general. FWIW, strongly expressed disagreement [including lots of swearing] doesn't really register as hostile to me either, but directly personal comments along the lines of some I may have made above (ahem) do.
A former flatmate of mine, whose phone conversations I regularly overheard thanks to a loud voice and poor-quality walls, once told someone that she thought that the reason an ex- of hers, who appears to have been jerking her around from a distance,* kept reappearing to jerk her around rather than falling out of touch with her completely was that he just knew she was going to be a fantastic mother and if they had kids, they'd be great kids. You just know it's true, too.
*About possibly getting back together. In about six months. If he decided to move to where she lived. And first broke up with the woman in France he was then living with. Or maybe not that last part. He's complicated, you know?
Sure Jesus strayed from the straight path. And the Egyptians were all schizophrenic. And I believe I'm getting know why there was mayhem at Discovery Channel: more nature documentaries, yes, but just to make sure there was less contentious stuff on an Egyptian hypothesis.
Going way back to 89, and SEK's post and the linked Yglesias post: Leaving aside the stuff about academics and their incentive structures, are there any incentives for journalists interested in academic research to learn how to use the fucking library?
Both Yglesias and Ezra Klein have complained in the past about paywalled research. I agree with those complaints for the most part. But since those journals are still mostly closed, and since those journalists are in DC, why don't they go down to that giant library on Capitol Hill, not far from the metro lines, where you can get a library card any time the library is open (even when it's open until 9) and then get access to a huge range of political science journals online and off-line. Really, it's not very hard to make the occasional visit. Bring a usb drive. I know people in non-profits and policy work do it. Why not journalists too?
Bonus: You can also go out the Maryland-College Park, connected to the metro by a free shuttle line, and walk into their library and use pretty much anything. (It costs money to get a card as a non-affiliate, so you can't check stuff out, but that's no different than at the Library of Congress.)
Well gee, on preview, the three thousand words on the Osiris myth suddenly seemed inappropriate.
As far as apology, the "aggressive pedantry" of 163 motivated by feelings of inadequacy, discomfort around quickwitted aggressive males, an obsessive tho hopelessly undisciplined and fruitless desire to learn (Richard Seymour's umpteen thousand word response to Henry Farrell about rational choice Marxism Friday was freaking brilliant, and Henry is thrilled by the challenge), a profound despair about even being able to understand most of what I read on blogs (Seymour and Henry share about twenty published sources) let alone participate, and perhaps a concomitant envy, and a certain hostility to the current Unbearable Lightness of Unfogged, and whatever sins, crimes, flaws my enemies think I have omitted, and there is no verb or clause that makes a sentence out of this, and too many commas, but fuck it's almost 3 AM goodnight.
Unbearable Lightness of Unfogged
This is about the recent post about Helium, isn't it? It's important to remember: Strindberg was there, too. August Strindberg was right there the whole time, bob.
They--the Egyptians--were the first to figure out that the world was round--then everyone forgot. They figured it out from shadows, and trigonometry.
Thinking about people trying to get this sorted in much earlier times, last weekend we experienced an illusion/observation that to my mind would have made it very tough to conceive of anything close to the proper Sun/Earth relationship (I'd noticed it before, but was more bowled over by it this time--both kids with me were struck by it as well). We were camped in an open meadow at the very edge of a high plateau which fell away several thousand feet in elevation to the east followed by lower ridges. A short walk from the campsite was a slight rise which had a pretty expansive view to the west as well. After watching the sun go down from there and turning around to the east to head back to camp I was struck by how counter-intuitive it was that the sun would appear on the other horizon in a mere 10-11 hours after taking 13-14 to traverse the visible portion of the sky. It just did not seem reasonable that a continuation of the same process which propelled it across the sky would bring back in view within that time (I think the key is that our perception is of the sun crossing the "dome of the sky" much closer to the earth--something like a missile fired from one horizon to the other, which even in favorable viewing circumstances like we had would be a distance of say 100 miles at most.)
Then I found five rocks on the trail.
194
It feels to me like the average hostility level here has decreased since the era when read was commenting. ...
Perhaps because the conversations have gotten more trivial and boring.
It's true, James: you have been commenting more lately.
It just did not seem reasonable that a continuation of the same process which propelled it across the sky would bring back in view within that time
That's because the space cow that pulls the sun chariot goes faster over Russia ever since Stalin sent fighter planes after it.
195: Ogged was pretty good at provoking them (in a good way), without simultaneously being a dick about it, I think.
Hey, I can provoke them and be a dick about it.
...Suck on that!
"Roots Tubers" would make a good pseud.
"Eats Roots and Tubers" could either be an annoying and stupid book about grammar, or a horror movie about a flesh-eating riverine monster.
Alternatively, there's "Eat, Root, Tuber", a book (then movie) about a woman's sensual and spiritual journey back to wellness after an unfortunate incident involving a blownout turnip truck tire.
They did not have a "relationship" to the King, they lived inside him
Must've been awfully crowded.
And too dark to read, which really depressed literacy rates.
209: I had no idea that the phrase "root hog, or die" had such a history in song.
210,211:It's ok, I never expected y'all to have a clue
1 CORINTHIANS 12:12,14,17-27 NKJ
12 For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
14 For in fact the body is not one member but many.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
18 But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.
19 And if they were all one member, where would the body be?
20 But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.
21 And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."
22 No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary.
23 And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty,
24 but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it,
25 that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another.
26 And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
bob, aren't you just proving that the idea of a community as a single body or unit is hardly unique to the ancient Egyptians? That we might, like, understand it? That it's kind of, you know, a metaphor?
The Egyptian everyday ragamuffin might have understood himself as being part of the Pharoah's "body" while still thinking that all this tomb building was pretty sucky. Or wonderful, or whatever. That they talked about unity didn't actually make them a hive mind.
Don't take this as hatin'.
214:There is a remarkable and almost unique absence of evidence of the usual methods of social control in Old Kingdom Egypt.
It is of course a little difficult to completely understand the mind of ancient Egypt.
But for instance, we have lots of evidence that "Ren" as soul was taken very seriously, so that speaking or breathing his names (as Isis reunited the parts of Osiris by singing his name) to the King was part of the resurrection process. This was not metaphor, it was magic/religion/science by their lights. It was real.
And one of the names of the King was "Egypt"
"Ren" as soul was taken very seriously
"Stimpy" on the other hand? Totally the village laughingstock.
One of the names of the king was also France and England, once upon a time. I think this is often the case, as you have to justify the fact of monarchy in some way. Constant threat of force isn't ever enough.
That they talked about unity didn't actually make them a hive mind.
Of course they were. They were all inhabited by the Goa'uld. I may be clueless, but I learnt that on the TV.
217: well, yes. Look at Shakespeare: Hamlet's father is referred to as "old Denmark".
208: if it eats roots and tubers, it's not really flesh-eating, is it?
"Eats 'Roots' And Tubas" would be about a terrifying monster that tried to wipe out African-American culture in New Orleans. No marching band is safe!
Oh, c'mon, OK Egypt was different than all those other examples, for any number of reasons, including the fact that a case can be made that they invented the ideas of "King" and "nation."
Having said that, I was going to recommend Kantorowicz again, but Chris Bertram has convinced that all that ancient unscientific work is useless, and one should not speak without an understanding of next year's books.
My lips are sealed
220.2: A "tuber" can also refer to someone floating down a river ensconced in an inner tube.
Also, and more pedantically, speaking about the flesh of, for example, potatoes is a pretty common usage.
Hi Alameida! Sorry about your nose, but I'm sure it's as pretty as ever.
Not apropos this question specifically, bob, but have you read Pierre Clastres? If not, I think you might find him interesting.
224:No, I haven't. Maybe I should.
He considered the consequent rise of the state to be due to the power disparities that arise when religion credits a prophet or other medium with a direct knowledge of divine power which is unattainable by the bulk of society. It is this upsetting of the balance of power that engendered the inequality to be found in more highly structured societies, and not an initial economic disparity as argued by the Marxist school of thought.
The 1st sentence seems to beg the question. I don't understand the 2nd, but Marxism presumes technological advances that change the available modes of production and productivity change the social relations.
I might add that early societies had a decent understanding of population control, perhaps especially Upper Egypt with the occasional failure of the flood. Their answer to "What shall we do with the surplus?"..."have a King and build a Wonder" was successful for a very long time, and is being studied by some environmentalists and steady-state economists today.
