Ummm.....how exactly does one try (and fail) to break a parachuting record multiple times. I thought all your jumps had to be successful or......:drop:I made a couple efforts to break the Canadian high altitude record of 35,000 feet, far short of the world record, but I was unable to do so.
References to couching, the earliest form of cataract surgery, can be traced as far back as the Assyrian Code of King Hammurabi in Mesopotamia, around 1700 BC. Couching was a mechanical displacement of the cataract-degraded crystalline lens, commonly accomplished by inserting a sharp metallic instrument into the eye. The Hindu surgeon Susruta is known to have practiced couching on the Indian subcontinent around 700 BC. Archaeological excavations from ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Egypt have uncovered bronze instruments that would have been appropriate for couching.
Ancient medical instruments suitable for couching - http://www.bremseyecenter.com/cataracttrivia.htm.
During the classical period of ancient Rome, hollow needles were being used to break up the cataract and remove it with suction - with the surgeon's mouth being the source of the vacuum.
The first attempt at a systematic description of the cataract and its treatment in the West appears in 29 AD in "On Medicine", the work of the Latin encyclopedist Cornelius Celsus - and physicians used this script for the next 1700 years.
Couching could provide some improvement of vision by removing the cataract from the visual field, but the patient was deprived of the focusing power of the crystalline lens - and corrective spectacle lenses and IOLs were not options in the ancient world.
Couching was the only surgical option for cataract treatment known before the late 19th century.
I will leave it to OptiBoard's professionals to speculate about the success rate and side-effects of this earliest kind of cataract surgery.
Sources:
http://www.bioline.org.br/request?am04039
http://www.aaofoundation.org/what/he.../antiquity.cfm
http://www.alconlabs.com/ca_en/eo/su...tsurgery.jhtml
http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/2854.php
Image hosting: http://imageshack.us/
Poster art: http://www.linotype.com/
"I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that said 'Wanted, Dead or Alive' ..." The President was talking about Osama bin Laden, but there's another suspect still at large, just as elusive or even more so. And they're not looking near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. To join the hunt, just CLICK on the poster art (above).
Last edited by rinselberg; 09-17-2006 at 08:20 AM.
hi, Ory. High altitude parachuting has its own set of precautions beyond the usual. Oxygen must be worn by both the pilot and the jumper, and the jumper must then switch to an oxygen system for the freefall, which must be free of moisture so the equipment does'nt ice up. There are issues with pressure above 30,000 feet as well. The difficulty is accessing suitable equipment, as well as a suitable aircraft. In my attemps, I was able to access a pilatus porter, a light 6 passenger aircraft with an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet. The plan was to drop off other jumpers at 12,000 feet, until I was the only one left, at a time when the gas tanks were nearly dry, then full throttle it to see if we could get to 35. I never even got off the ground, so my "attempts" were organizational ones. I did, however, jump from 16,500 feet one fine day, 4,500 feet above the requirement for on-board oxygen, which we did not have. I was in freefall for nearly a minute and 30 seconds, and probably reached approx 350 kph. I hold only one record, per se, by doing the first BASE jump in Canada, and was one of the first 3 or 4 people in the world to parachute from a hang-glider. This, and 3 bucks, will get me a coffee at Starbucks.:DOriginally Posted by Ory
Real Solar Zodiac: The thirteen constellations, against which the sun moves over the course of a single year, as seen from the Earth. Indo-European cultures developed a zodiac based on the ecliptic, which is the path of the sun independent of the earth's rotation - a path in the sky, traced over the course of a single year, by observing the position of the sun at the same time on each successive day.
Credit: http://www.geocities.com/astrologyzo...olarzodiac.htm.
Ecliptic: Path of the sun on the celestial sphere ... http://www.uccs.edu/~tchriste/course...lecobserv.html.
Constellations are nothing more than figuratively named patterns of stars as we see them from the earth's surface - stars projected onto the celestial sphere. The thirteen constellations of the Real Solar Zodiac are the background in the night sky, against which the ecliptic or yearly path of the sun is seen to progress.
More than a hundred years ago, in 1902, sponge divers recovered parts of an extraordinary mechanism of some kind, from an ancient shipwreck near the Mediterranean island of Antikythera. It baffled archaeologists. Was it an astrolabe? Was it an orrery or an astronomical clock?
For decades after 1902, archaeological investigation failed to yield much insight and relied more on imagination than facts. But then, starting in 1951, more systematic research, drawing on the best of modern scientific techniques, has finally begun to reveal its many secrets.
The Antikythera Mechanism dates from around the first century BC and is the most sophisticated machine ever recovered from the ancient world. Not until the development of precision clocks - over 1000 years later - would Europeans again make scientific instruments of this complexity. The device is now understood to have been a complex analog computer that predicted the celestial positions and movements of the sun, moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and a handful of stars.
A representative, but highly simplified schematic of the sun-moon assembly and zodiac display ... http://www.matrixofcreation.co.uk/ancient-clocks.htm.
A full scale modern reconstruction, just over 12 inches high. The front dial displays the annual progress of the sun and moon through the constellations of the zodiac, against an Egyptian calendar rendered in Greek on the outer annulus ... http://www.grand-illusions.com/antikyth.htm.
The Antikythera Mechanism's differential gear construction predated the common use of this technology by more than 1500 years. There were more than thirty rotating gears. It was remarkable for the miniaturization and complexity of its parts, which were comparable to the workings of an 18th century precision chronometer. When past or future dates were entered using a hand crank (now lost), the mechanism calculated and displayed the corresponding ephemeris data - the celestial positions of the sun, moon and certain planets and stars, against the constellations of the zodiac. The use of differential gears enabled the mechanism to add and subtract angular velocities ... It is possible that the mechanism was based on heliocentric principles ... suggesting that the modern concept of the earth and planets revolving in a system with the sun at its center was more widely accepted in the ancient world than we have previously known.
Another modern reconstruction ... http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ArchimedesGears.htm.
In 2005, as part of the Antikythera Research Project, researchers were able to access the device in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and with the assistance of HP Labs, apply state-of-the-art reflectance imaging techniques to the front and rear surfaces of the seventy-plus corroded bronze fragments recovered from the seabed.
To view some of these remarkable reflectance images online:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/ptm/a...ism/index.html
Parts of the calendar and zodiac dials, engraved with closely spaced calibration marks, are visible in this photo of another recovered fragment ... http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Kythera.htm.
For an extraordinary discussion of the Antikythera Mechanism, there was a report in Scientific American which is reproduced online via An Ancient Greek Computer? Everything that was known or theorized about the ancient device at the time of publication (1959), from its purpose and operation and the astronomical system that gave rise to it, down to its exact construction and manufacture, is detailed at great length, but very readably, in this article.
This one-minute video clip is an artistic (but not very technical) animation of the device, set to "theme" music. I had to download it to my desktop first, in order to play it.
Still frames from video animations ... http://www.etl.uom.gr/mr/index.php?m...ntikythera_ani.
Other sources:
http://www.history.com/shows.do?acti...isodeId=186952
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSc...t/extgreek.htm
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSc...yth/anti60.htm
http://www.red-ice.net/specialreport...ncomputer.html
http://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert...a/kythera3.htm
http://www.rationalinquiry.org/essays/antikythera.html
Image hosting: http://www.imageshack.us/
Are you reading more posts and enjoying it less? Make RadioFreeRinsel your next Internet port of call ...
Last edited by rinselberg; 10-02-2006 at 03:23 PM.
October 13 fell on a Sunday in 1985, but it must have seemed like Friday 13th for the St. Louis baseball Cardinals, who were about to play game four of a best-of-seven series with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League Championship.
A major ingredient of the Cardinals' winning "Rx" was a speedy rookie outfielder named Vince Coleman, who had already stolen 110 bases in his first year in the majors.
Two hours before gametime, the threat of rain in St. Louis prompted the groundskeepers to deploy the infield tarp. The tarp in Busch Stadium was coiled on an electrically powered spool that unrolled at the press of a button, from a recess in the ground in foul territory near the Cardinals dugout. Coleman, who was standing next to the tarp, intent on his pre-game stretching exercises, was trapped. Other players hustled over to lift the tarp, but Coleman had suffered a broken ankle and was lost for the last three games of the playoff series with the Dodgers and then the World Series that followed.
Teammate Rick Horton, a Cardinals relief pitcher, had the most memorable comment on this unique milestone in the history of baseball, posing a conundrum for medical science that is perhaps still unresolved, even to this day:The Cardinals went on to best the Dodgers, but lost the World Series to their cross-state rivals, the Kansas City Royals, in a series that was remarkable for a controversial umpire's call on a close play at first base that opened the door to a Royals rally in game six.It's our leadoff guy, and also it's our friend that may be dead. For a moment we didn't really understand what the human body could handle underneath a tarp ...
Sources: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...2/ai_n15645205 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Na...ionship_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_World_Series http://www.zeprock.com/ColemanGallery.html http://www.covermaster.com/tarpmachine1.asp
Are you reading more posts and enjoying it less? Make RadioFreeRinsel your next Internet port of call ...
Last edited by rinselberg; 10-07-2006 at 10:24 PM.
Did you know that when some falcons lose a primary wing feather, the same feather in the opposite wing drops out? It's to maintain symetry during high speed flying and diving. Is that cool or what?
Say "how d'ya'do" to the Einstein of the dinosaur set. Or so say the paleontologists. Not many Troodon fossils have been discovered, but evolutionary biologists are impressed with its large brain to body size ratio - as high as has ever been discovered among the known dinosuars. With its predatory and possibly nocturnal habits, a head structured for binocular vision, with the capacity for evolving highly accurate depth perception, moderate body size (not real big; not real small), cooperative or pack-hunting behaviors (conjectural) - and last but not least, that relatively large-sized brain cavity, Neo-Darwinists think that Troodon was a real evolutionary "go getter" - a species with exceptional potential for evolving even more remarkable capabilities. To put it in perspective, dinosaur specialists credit it with about the same animal intelligence as today's domesticated farm chicken. Very smart in dinosaur terms, apparently.
Some documentarians have speculated on what might have been, if it were not for certain global impact events that have been dated to the same time or just prior to the K-T extinction 65 million years ago, when the last of the dinosaurs went extinct. One in particular was the Deccan traps - one of the greatest prehistoric volcanic events ever discovered. A huge crack in the earth's crust opened on what eventually became the Indian subcontinent, spewing tremendous quantities of molten rock and rock vapor. Some scientists think this set off a major greenhouse or global warming episode, triggered by the large amounts of carbon dioxide that they believe were released into the earth's atmosphere - and creating unfavorable climate conditions for continued dinosaur evolution. And then there is the Chicxulub crater in Mexico - evidence of a huge asteroid impact that has been dated to the time of the K-T extinction. "The asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs" is now a familiar theory, probably, to the many (the many of the few ...) that may read this post.
The K-T extinction: Did the last dinosaurs see it coming?
Credit: http://faculty.uca.edu/~benw/biol440...e11/sld008.htm
If it weren't for these cataclysmic events in the planet's history, it's been speculated that it might have been the long distant evolutionary descendants of Troodon putting their scaly (or feathered) reptilian hands to the keyboards that animate OptiBoard. And instead of a search for "little green men", SETI@home might be a search carried forward by little green men, scanning the heavens for radio signals from the fabled "hairless, intelligent apes" of contemporary science fiction.
Additional sources:
http://www.biopark.org/troodon.html
http://www.dinosaur-world.com/feathe...n_formosus.htm
More than just a search for little green men
Last edited by rinselberg; 11-27-2006 at 10:20 PM.
This is Bridge 277, spanning the River Kwai in Thailand. It's more commonly known as "The Bridge On The River Kwai", from the famous 1957 movie directed by David Lean and starring Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Hawkins and William Holden. Bridge 277 (actually, there were two of them) was part of the Japanese Army's military railroad that operated between 1943 and 1945. The railroad was part of an even larger project known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which famously involved a certain amount of demolition work by the Japanese Naval Air Force at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941 - making the Co-Prosperity project and its railroad of paramount interest to millions in the United States, as well.
The rounded steel trusses were part of the original bridge construction as carried out during the war. The angular trusses were installed by the Japanese after the war as a goodwill gesture (reparations) to restore the bomb-damaged bridge to serviceable condition. The photograph reveals the bridge as it stands today.
Exactly nine of the labor force that built the two bridges known as "Bridge 277" were permanent casualties of the construction, but the bridge that stands today is symbolic of the roughly 100,000 who were permanent casualties of the entire railroad project. Almost 20,000 were Allied POWs; the other roughly 80,000 a work force of Asians that were impressed by the railroad adminstrators and engineers to carry out the construction work.
The railroad was one of the larger engineering feats of World War Two.
Its construction constituted one of the larger war crimes of World War Two, and like most war crimes, the story includes punishment for the few found criminally responsible, and for the many more who escaped formal justice, a second life of guilt, illusion, denial or forgetfulness - in whatever proportions we can only guestimate.
Most of the railroad's major constructions - bridges and trestles - were destroyed by a weapon called AZON. It was a radio-controlled bomb developed for and used by the US Army Air Force. With AZON, bomber crews were able to drop gravity bombs from an altitude of 5,000 to 10,000 feet and steer them by radio very accurately onto their targets. Based on my "research", I think that was probably the fate of the first Bridge 277 - the wooden one.
To my not quite expert eye, this appears to be a photo taken during the war. In the foreground, the first Bridge 277 - a wooden one. Barely visible in the background, the second bridge that was constructed using concrete piers and steel trusses.
AZON bombs were not powerful enough for the second bridge, which was put out of commission, but not completely destroyed, in a low level attack by B-24 bombers.
At top, the second bridge, before it was bombed in February 1945. At bottom, two of the bridge's bomb-collapsed spans.
For those who have spectacle lenses and frames to dispense or similar tasks at hand, I would be very surprised and also very pleased to realize that you actually read this much. But for the complete "River Kwai" experience, with more photos, narratives, a brief sound clip - and two memorable audio tracks reflective of the original movie soundtrack that you can listen to online - consult these other genuine rinselberg™ posts ... accept no substitutes!
No "hum bridge" was taken!
What was the name of that bridge again?
Hitler's anatomy and a bridge in Thailand
Sources:
http://www.msu.edu/~daggy/cop/bkofdead/obits-t.htm
http://www.atterburybakalarairmuseum..._we_forget.htm
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:...d=3&lr=lang_en
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_kwai/index.html
Image hosting and resizing courtesy of http://www.imageshack.us
Chalk all this up to my habit of watching certain segments on cable channel KQEDH.
Last edited by rinselberg; 12-02-2006 at 03:43 AM.
Rinsel that was truly awesome....I gotta go home tonight and watch my Kwai DVD again now.
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__________________________________
Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
at the age of six, in 1965, I clearly recall watching my Dad say goodbye to all of us and board choppers to fly to Point Mugu, Ca. to head with his Construction Battalion to build an airfield at DaNang, South Vietnam. It was cold and foggy on the grinder that morning and over the loudspeakers was playing the soundtrack from that movie. I can whistle that tune to this day and it makes me choke-up like I'm doing now. Chris.
The movie was a masterpiece. Anyone remember the last two words spoken in the movie?
Last edited by FVCCHRIS; 12-01-2006 at 02:06 PM. Reason: addition
Chris, I was hiking up near Mugu just last week. Camped in Los Padres after Thanksgiving.
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Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
I once did Reyes peak to Fillmore by myself all the way down the Sespe. I was permanently mentally affected by the trip. I could tell you some stories.......Chris.
I'm a native of NorCal, so my camping/hiking experiences are fairly limited down here so far, but I'm getting my wife into it, so we'll be hitting more trails soon.
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Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
My younger (smarter) brother just alerted me to some breaking news on the Antikythera Mechanism - a topic which I posted on this very same "Strange Facts!" thread not too long ago.
The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient analog computer, now dated to about 100 years before the birth of Christ, that predicted and displayed the heavenly positions of the sun, moon and some of the planets.
The machine, recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck over a 100 years ago, has startling implications about the knowledge and sophistication of the ancient Greek civilization that constructed it.
One question that is still unanswered for me: Was the mechanism based on a Copernican model of the solar system, with the earth revolving around the sun - or was it constructed according to the older idea of the earth at the center of the observable universe?
The answer is perhaps revealed in certain research reports that I have not had the time to read (yet) or perhaps cannot gain access to without paying a subscription fee.
But I leave that question for any readers of this post to consider!
For an even more detailed and up to date report, see In search of lost time by Jo Marchant, online at http://www.nature.com/ ...
Part of the Antikythera Mechanism on display. Credit: http://www.nature.com/
Last edited by rinselberg; 12-04-2006 at 01:39 PM.
That is awesome, and I would assume it's based on Copernican, but that's just me.
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Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
Strange fact#100,564,672,000.
Canada has no Northern border.
Huh? you say?
True. Where the Canadian mainland ends, there are a series of large arctic islands that are mostly Canadian territory, although there is still some dispute. Denmark has a claim over one island that Canada claims. The Canadian control and claim over northern arctic areas, including the waters, is still undefined and in dispute, partly by the United States which sent a ship to navigate the waterway a few years back, drawing protests from the Canadian Goverment. The U.S. finally agreed to provide notice to the Canadians when they intend to enter the disputed waterway. The northern border is being disputed more than ever because of the probability that the waterway will remain open to ice for all or a large part of the year due to global warming, and become a major shipping route.
Personally, I'll let you have my share for some pretty beads, and a Timmy's double-double. (If you can tell me what a Timmy's double-double is.:D )
Dave. We've only Starbucks and Peets down here! All the cream and sugar you want for $4.95 :):)
"Always laugh when you can. It is a cheap medicine"
Lord Byron
Take a photo tour of Cape Cod and the Islands!
www.capecodphotoalbum.com
You poor folks who don't have Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf
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Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
Another uniquely Canadian amazing factoid: When a miner named Davis arrived late at the gold rush in the British Columbia interior during the 1880s, all the gold fields were staked. He took a tape measure, and measured some of the claims, until he found one that was 12 feet longer than legally allowed. He then staked out the 12 foot section, took a fortune in gold out of it, and went down in B.C. history as "Twelve Foot Davis."
You probably know what the largest dinosaur looked like (more or less).
But if you are what I estimate as my "typical reader", you probably don't know its precise name, or how big it really was - or when and where its bones were discovered.
The aptly named Seismosaurus - meaning "earth shaker" - as illustrated in this artist's conception - may have been the longest dinosaur from nose to tail, but the most massive one ever discovered was Argentinosaurus. Fully grown, it's estimated to have weighed more than 100 tons. Part of a fossilized skeleton was uncovered in the far south of South America in 1993. In 2000, CNN reported on these excavations under the heading "Dinosaur leviathans of Patagonia come back to life".
If you click on the thumbnail (above), you can see a remarkable photo of its reconstructed skeleton on display at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. And if you look closely enough - perhaps with a magnifying glass - you may also discern some lilliputian representatives of that more contemporary species, homo sapiens, inspecting it.
The people of today are about 65 million years distant in time from the last living specimen of that most iconic of dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, illustrated against a white background and again, with a conifer forest of the late Cretaceous period for a backdrop. But T. rex, among the last of the dinosuars, was even farther removed from the first dinosaur species to emerge - a distance in time of about 130 million years - and testament to the observation that dinosaurs were one of evolution's most successful experiments in survivability and speciation.
Replica of Tyrannosaurus rex at the Senckenberg Museum. Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs.
The photo of the Argentinosaurus skeleton was copyrighted by Pamela Gore in 2001 and was lifted from the website of Georgia Perimeter College. The embedded dinosaur art is from critters.pixel-shack.com. Image hosting courtesy of ImageShack.
rinselberg's long awaited Jurassic Post opened Wednesday to record view counts on OptiBoard's Word of the Day!
Last edited by rinselberg; 06-14-2007 at 08:11 AM.
All the moons of the Solar System are named after Greek and Roman mythology, except the moons of Uranus, which are named after Shakespearean characters.
Wrigley's promoted their new spearmint-flavored chewing gum in 1915 by mailing 4 sample sticks to each of the 1.5 million names listed in US telephone books.
Another amazing story from the wild west. The place: New Hazelton, British Columbia. The time: the 1880s.
The small town silence is broken by the sound of gunfire erupting in the streets of New Hazelton. Three armed men have robbed the bank, and are trying to shoot their way out of town with their loot. Our hero, an ordinary citizen, goes toe to toe in a bloody shootout that rivaled the gunfight at the O.K. corral. (with the theme song from "the good, the bad, and the ugly playing in the background) The smoke and dust settle to reveal the bandits lying dead. The townsfolk slowly walk out into the streets to stare at the hero who shot it out with the bad guys. They are astounded to realize it is the town's Anglican minister.
Astronauts have brought back about 800 pounds of lunar rock to Earth. Most of it has not been analyzed.
When the moon was formed it was 15 times closer to the earth than it is today and actually caused the planet to bulge on the side facing the moon. It created tides that were ten thousand feet high.
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Prognatus ex Alchemy ad Diligo
Eliza Joy Martius VIII MMVIII
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