LawPundit

Barack Obama Speaks in Berlin to "The Berliner" about "This is our moment. This is our time." Berlin, Germany, July 24, 2008

2008-07-25T01:20:00.006+02:00

Click here to go to the video and/or text of Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, in which he spoke to a gigantic throng of maybe about 200,000 people, mostly Berliner, and stated inter alia as follows (it was Obama-mania, the largest crowd he has drawn anywhere, including speeches in the USA) :

"Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof. "

Read the rest at the BarackObama.com website online.

Real Estate : The Zindex and Zestimates at Zillow Provide Nationwide Home Valuations at Estimated Market Value by Geographic Location

2008-07-24T02:11:00.001+02:00

The Real Estate market is in a turbulent period, but modern online information helps to manage the situation. Take a look at the website Zillow.

Zillow provides nationwide maps and listings of real estate, including residential property valuations.

Zillow's Zestimate ® is their home valuation using Zillow's estimated market value. Note that this is not the same as an appraisal.

Zillow's Zindex ® is their home valuation index using the median Zestimate ® valuation - or middle point - for a given geographic area on a given day.

Zestimate and Zindex change every day.

For today, for example, July 23, 2008 (USA time), the Zindex (median Zestimate) is $219,180 for all of the United States, a figure which diverges greatly by State, region, city, and specific location. Today, the Zindex for the State of California, for example, is $412,726, or nearly twice the national Zindex. Showing the effects of the subprime mortgage scandal and the general downturn in the economy, the Zindex for California was over $500,000 only two years ago, so that home prices have plummeted, with California real estate dropping in value nearly 19.6% in the past year, as opposed to about a 6.6% drop for the country as a whole.

To see how your particular State ranks in this regard, see Real Estate by State.

Real Estate valuation is also a matter of specific location. If we look at today's Zindex for Sunnyvale, California, which includes the market created by Silicon Valley and Stanford University, the Zindex there is $850,500 and has increased 3.5% the past year. If you look at Beverly Hills (90210) in Southern California, the Zindex approaches $5 million.

Readers of LawPundit : Hacienda Heights, California : Location of the Hsi Lai Temple : Buddhism and Chinese Culture

2008-07-21T23:28:00.004+02:00

We recently had a visitor at LawPundit from Hacienda Heights, an unusual unincorporated census-designated place in Los Angeles County, which is definitely one of the most interesting communities in the State of California, if not the entire United States. The Wikipedia notes:

"Hacienda Heights is notable for being home to one of the largest Buddhist temples in the United States, the Hsi Lai Temple (meaning "Coming West"). The temple encompasses 15 acres and a floor area of 102,432 sq. ft. The temple's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD) architecture is faithful to the traditional style of buildings, gardens, and statuary of traditional ancient Chinese monasteries. Hsi Lai was built to serve as a spiritual and cultural center for those interested in learning Buddhism and Chinese culture."

Hsi Lai Temple, Photo by Aaron Logan
This file is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 license

The Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights is one of two locations in California which claims to be the largest Buddhist monastery in the Western hemisphere. As written at the Wikipedia:

"Since 1988, members of Hsi Lai and others have claimed that their temple is the largest temple in the Western Hemisphere. However, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas situated in Talmage, Northern California has over 80 acres of built-up land on 488 acres (1.97 km²) of property as compared to Hsi Lai Temples' 15 acres, but rather than a temple complex as is Hsi Lai Temple, the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas is more of an entire community with several large buildings clustered together. Therefore, both organizations lay claim to being the largest Buddhist monastery in the West....

Hsi Lai is a popular venue for tourists interested in learning more about Chinese culture and Buddhism, and has even been coined the "Forbidden City of America."

The former Hsi Lai University in Hacienda Heights moved to Rosemead, California in 1996 and was renamed The University of the West (Hsi Lai means "Coming West"). It is the first Buddhist-funded university in the United States but students need not be of the Buddhist faith.

Facebook Sues German Social Website StudiVZ (Studienverzeichnis, Studentenverzeicnis, "Students Directory") for Intellectual Property Infringement

2008-07-21T21:21:00.005+02:00

Facebook, which has not been successful in establishing itself on the German market for online social networking, has in California federal court filed an intellectual property law suit against the leading German-language (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) social networking website StudiVZ (Studienverzeichnis, Studentenverzeichnis, i.e. "students directory") claiming that StudiVZ is a clone of Facebook. In response, as reported by Reuters:

"The German company sued by Facebook for running a "knockoff" of the social networking Web site said on Sunday it asked a German court to declare that Facebook's claims are without merit....

StudiVZ filed for declaratory judgment at the District Court in Stuttgart, also on Friday.

Facebook's suit also seeks compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

StudiVZ claims Facebook is suing them only because Facebook has failed to transplant its success in the United States and other countries to the German market.

"Their strategy appears to be: 'If you can't beat them, sue them,'" said Marcus Riecke, chief executive of studiVZ, which is owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, a German publishing company.""

We personally know people who use StudiVZ and the reason they chose StudiVZ was because the site was designed suitably to their tastes and wishes in German. Just compare the registration pages of the The Facebook.de website and the studiVZ.de website and you will already see the strong difference in style, with the studiVZ interface much more European in format. Indeed, the German registration page for Facebook is a strict translation of the American version, with no cultural adjustments. Facebook thus has simply been unable to match German tastes, although no one doubts that all the many social networking sites are by nature similar.

It may appear initially curious that the suit is being brought now, several years after Facebook considered buying studiVZ.de and even entered into negotiations with them, but the reason for the suit is clear when one becomes cognizant of the fact that Facebook more recently entered the German market with a German-language version and has made little headway here since then.

We are not fans of Facebook or its management by any means and regard this as a very stupid lawsuit. In our view, Facebook has little prospect of winning here in Germany, and a defeat will give other social networking websites the motivation they need to press forward.

The name of the game is competition and we think that the German courts will so decide. There is very little innovative about Facebook or MySpace, the two leading social networking websites in the US - but not elsewhere, whose origin can be traced back to online development in progress long before these sites existed. As noted at the Wikipedia:

"History of social networking services

The notion that individual computers linked electronically could form the basis of computer mediated social interaction and networking was suggested early on ^[7]. There were many early efforts to support social networks via computer-mediated communication, including Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, bulletin board services (BBS), and EIES: Murray Turoff's server-based Electronic Information Exchange Service (Turoff and Hiltz, 1978, 1993). The Information Routing Group developed a schema about how the proto-Internet might support this.^[8]

Early social networking websites included Classmates.com (1995), focusing on ties with former school mates, and SixDegrees.com (1997), focusing on indirect ties. User profiles could be created, messages sent to users held on a “friends list” and other members could be sought out who had similar interests to yours in their profiles ^[9] Whilst these features had existed in some form before SixDegrees.com came about, this would be the first time these functions were available in one package. Despite these new developments (that would later catch on and become immensely popular), the website simply wasn’t profitable and eventually shut down ^[10]. It was even described by the website’s owner ^[11] as “simply ahead of its time.” Two different models of social networking that came about in 1999 were trust-based, developed by Epinions.com, and friendship-based, such as those developed by Jonathan Bishop and used on some regional UK sites between 1999 and 2001.^[12] Innovations included not only showing who is "friends" with whom, but giving users more control over content and connectivity. By 2005, one social networking service MySpace, was reportedly getting more page views than Google, with Facebook, a competitor, rapidly growing in size.^[13] In 2007, Facebook began allowing externally-developed add-on applications, and some applications enabled the graphing of a user's own social network - thus linking social networks and social networking.^[14]

Social networking began to flourish as a component of business internet strategy at around March 2005 when Yahoo launched Yahoo! 360°. In July 2005 News Corporation bought MySpace, followed by ITV (UK) buying Friends Reunited in December 2005.^[15]^[16] Various social networking sites have sprung up catering to different languages and countries. It is estimated that combined there are now over 200 social networking sites using these existing and emerging social networking models,^[17] without counting the niche social networks (also referred to as vertical social networks) made possible by services such as Ning and KickApps. ^[18].

Facebook did not rise to popularity because of innovation but rather because of investment.

In any case, although we think Facebook has no chance in Europe, what the California court will do in the US suit is unclear as the California courts are prone to aberrations.

The irony of this lawsuit against studiVZ is that Facebook just settled a lawsuit with ConnectU (we posted about this earlier at LawPundit), which claimed that Facebook had "ripped off" ConnectU's original social networking website ideas.

John Palfrey, (former?) executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, is quoted by Michael Levenson of the Boston Globe regarding the merits of the Facebook-ConnectU case, as Levenson writes:

"The case underscores the difficulties in pinpointing the originators of ideas on the Internet, particularly for social-networking sites.

"One thing about the Internet is that most ideas are developed collaboratively in the Internet space, and one thing that was difficult in this matter was trying to parse what was an original idea they had and that somebody else had taken advantage of," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. "That was going to be awfully hard to show."

Palfrey said both sides should be happy the case was settled."

Now, undeterred, Facebook is itself busy cloning the applications of others for its own platform.

The fact that Facebook is now bringing this legal action against a German competitor tells us a lot about this company, which we would not touch with a ten foot pole.

The Up Side of the American Flag : "for the most part, for over 200 years, we've gotten it right"

2008-07-21T02:12:00.004+02:00

We ran across this blog and this piece of thought and we thought it was good, so we are sharing it with our readers, who might otherwise think that we are too critical of America:

Some thoughts on the US of A from momchick at Livin' My Life Like It's Golden:

"Now back to my flag...I think the same thing is true of this country. There are always going to be rough patches and tough times. There are going to be disagreements and there might even be times of great political strife. But at the end of the day, this country remains the greatest democratic experiment of all history. We balance our love of personal liberty against the needs of the greater good and for the most part, for over 200 years, we've gotten it right. We need to constantly work at getting better, but we have much to be proud of when we look at the "up" side of the flag."

Take a look at the "up" side of her flag.

The Morphology of Legal Reality : Form and Structure in a 4% Physical World Suggest Deeper Forces as Roots for the Rule of Law

2008-07-21T01:49:00.003+02:00

Our previous posting on Law, Physics, Legal Theory, Cosmology, Fine-Tuning and the "Useful Parameterization of Ignorance" may at first glance appear to be a rather distanced comparison of two fully disparate conceptual worlds, but in fact our fully justifiable juxtaposition of cosmology and legal theory points inexorably to a much deeper level hidden in the morphology of legal reality.

If we take as a given that our human view of reality is limited at its maximum by the previously discussed mere 4% of the physical universe that is known to us through our cognizance of the atomic world, and if a full 96% of the actual universe is in fact invisible to us, as prevailing cosmological theory would tell us, then what can we know about the true fundamentals of human law?

The famed and now retired advocate Gerry Spence, for example, is grappling with this kind of a problem in his newly begun series of postings that start with What if freedom is a myth?

How, for example, is any "Rule of Law", however described, to prevail against the specter of "Religion", for example, which increasingly calls upon the invisible 96% of the universe's powers. Must the law also call for assistance to the more powerful actors of that universe: the invisible cold dark matter and the dark energy of the primordial underlying forces?

When we speak about the original meaning of the United States Constitution, for example, and when we try to interpret that Constitution in light of the intentions of the original founders of the nation -- as if deeds were to be judged by intentions rather than by results -- are we talking about the 4% of the universe that is known, or are we talking about the 96% of the universe that is invisible to us, thus opening wide the doors to self-serving speculation about what was?

Calling up these invisible spirits of cold dark matter and dark energy is - for certain - a potentially dangerous proposition for all concerned, because no one can be sure where it may lead. It is not without reason that legal theory generally concentrates on the more superficial visible world, avoiding confrontation at the level of fundamental forces, preferring to pick out one group of legal atoms or another as the subject of jurisprudential inquiry, and discussing rationales for the "Rule of Law" in terms of tangible, Newtonian physics, rather than via transcendental Einsteinian forces such as time-warped fields of relativity.

This Newtonian limitation is the vector and engine of motion for our present professed understanding of the nature of "Law", as this understanding is manifested in works of legal scholarship. The visible world of appearances is discussed at length in the peer-reviewed law journals, whereas the deeper nature of law lies submerged beneath the surface.

To some degree, that hidden world is what we call "unwritten law", a concept which gave the philosopher Hobbes so much difficulty.

Alan Cromartie (University of Reading, Department of Politics, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, Reading, UK), British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Volume 2, Number 2, June 2000 , pp. 161-178(18), Blackwell Publishing, DOI: 10.1111/1467-856X.00032) writes about Unwritten law in Hobbesian political thought, a pay-to-view article which is abstracted online as follows:

"In Hobbesian terminology, 'unwritten laws' are natural laws enforced within a polity, by a non-sovereign judge, without some previous public promulgation. This article discusses the idea in the light of successive Hobbesian accounts of 'law' and 'obligation'. Between De Cive and Leviathan, Hobbes dropped the idea that natural law is strictly speaking law, but he continued to believe unwritten laws must form a part of any legal system. He was unable to explain how such a law could claim a legal status. His loyalty to the notion, in spite of all the trouble that it caused, is a sign of his belief that moral knowledge is readily accessible to all."

One aspect of our contemporary "unwritten law" is something which modern philosophy might subsume under the modern concept of egalitarianism, which we find more negatively defined in Nordic countries as Jante Law or in several English-speaking nations as the Tall poppy syndrome.

Such unwritten laws are the antithesis of elitism and are found enshrined as a legal principle in the American concept of equality under the law, a concept which has developed different judge-made levels of legal protection depending on the subject matter in question: 1) strict scrutiny for categorizational violations of equality because of race or national origin; 2) intermediate scrutiny for categorizational violations of equality based on sex (gender); and, 3) a rational-basis test of "reasonableness" for categorizational violations of other kinds.

But how does all of this square with genetics, science in general and Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest? Is this all not in actuality based on a strange kind of "unwritten law"?

For example, The Theist writes at the Friendly Atheist in Can We Have Government Without Faith?:

"Let's say Congress passes legislation on universal health care, and a politician suggests that a certain group be left out of coverage, let's say people with Downs Syndrome.

Now, most people would be appalled at this suggestion. The argument against it would be that everyone is equal, and deserves equal treatment under the law.

But how do you prove this? In fact, science tells us that we are not all equal. Some of us are taller, stronger, faster, and have higher IQ’s. The idea that we are all equal is in contradiction of what science concludes. A person might then argue that we all deserve equal treatment, even if we aren’t equal. But how do you prove this? In fact, science tells us that many species survive by letting the weak or sick die instead of depleting resources for them when they can’t add survival value to the community....

[E]veryone I have met from an atheist perspective believes in certain principles, such as equal worth of all humans, equal treatment of all humans, and autonomy. In fact, people will stand behind these principles like they will the laws of physics....

I will use Richard Dawkins distinction between science and faith as put forth in The God Delusion, where he states: “Religion turns untested belief into unshakable truth, where as science is a process of reason, skepticism, and questioning to draw conclusions.”

Using that definition, it seems the belief in equal worth, equal treatment, and autonomy are more faith based than science. So given that we want these principles in government, is it not necessary to have faith inside government? For people reading this who identify themselves as atheist yet believe in these principles, how is that not faith?"

The blog Winter's Haven has an answer for this quandry:

"It's clear that the theist is confused about Legal Equality; if you read the comments, you’ll see that the atheists are just as confused.

Let’s try to untangle this mess. Firstly, all people are not equal. Individual humans are quite different from each other in a wide variety of ways. But you already knew that.

Yet if people aren’t equal, what does it mean for them to be “equal under the law”, and why is that a good idea? The answer is actually fairly simple. The core idea behind Equality Under the Law is that the law should only treat people differently if there are relevant differences between them....

Of course, sorting out how relevant various differences are can be a complicated business. What the principle of Equality Under the Law objects to are laws which hand out privileges to certain groups arbitrarily and without good reason."

And so, writes Robert Blake at the Foundation for Economic Education:

"According to the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal."

But man is a creature of limitations. He is limited as to height, weight, strength, health, intelligence, beauty, virtue, inheritance, environment, everything. Since these limitations vary from man to man, no man is equal to another, not physically, mentally, morally, or spiritually. In fact, all men are created unequal, except in one sense: All men are created equal under the Law. All men are equally subject to the same physical laws, the law of gravity, nutrition, growth, and so on. And all men are equally subject to the same moral laws: Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not kill, and the like. Since civil law is, or ought to be, an extension of moral law, all men should be equally subject to civil law. Whether a man is rich or poor, strong or weak, black or white, influential or a nonentity, should make no more difference under civil law than under physical or moral law. This is what is meant by the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal under law."

Equality under the law is therefore more like the invisible fields of relativity rather than the precise visible genes of biological genetics, and this brings us full circle to our original juxtaposition of cosmology and legal theory. Even the idea of equality is a "dark field of energy" rather than an identifiable physical component of the brightly lit legal universe.

Accordingly, it is not the US Constitution which is in reality the "law of the land", but rather the underlying forces which created that Constitution. It is thus not the "original meaning" of the Constitution which is therefore determinative but rather the origin of that original meaning. What was decided is not as important as why it was a subject of decision in the first place.

Oil and Gas Prices, Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker) and The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Energy in the USA and Europe, 2008 Truck, Auto and SUV Sales

2008-07-20T17:37:00.010+02:00

We were just watching a CNN interview with US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in which she again advocated opening up the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to deal with the US energy problems created by the soaring price of oil and gas.

Although our political direction is a centrist one, and even though we support Barack Obama in the current Presidential Election campaign, we can only shake our head at the stunningly bad judgment demonstrated by the Pelosi proposal, and we must side with Michelle Malkin on this gaseous issue. How did this woman get to be House Speaker?

Having just returned from three weeks in the United States, where the price of gasoline at the local gas station is in most States still less than half of what we pay here in Germany per gallon (recalculated from litres), we can only marvel at Pelosi pressing the panic button and urging for a very badly advised short-term stop-gap measure which will do absolutely nothing to combat the actual long-term problem.

One aspect of the problem, of course, as we have previously posted at LawPundit in discussing the 2008 automobiles, is that Europe long ago reacted to energy scarcity by switching to smaller cars, whereas America has continued to ignore all the energy warning signs, opting for gas-guzzling pickup trucks, SUVs and large sedans or other over-sized car models.

Understandably, car sales in the US have now plummeted to a 10-year low, and, as written by Bill Vlasic in the New York Times Business section on July 2:

"Even with some factories running at peak capacity, auto companies cannot meet the surging demand for small, fuel-efficient cars. At the same time, manufacturers are slashing production of slow-selling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles."

America, welcome to the real world. I say this as a U.S. citizen. In Europe, you can go everywhere and still find people walking, because you simply do not have to drive everywhere. But in America, who walks, if you can drive? As one first-time visitor asked astonishingly some years ago in viewing the comparatively people-empty streets in the USA: "Where are all the people?" The answer is: they are in their gas-guzzling cars.

Americans who have recognized the true problem now have to see to it that America's leaders, including House Speaker Pelosi, also awaken to the realities of this world. What Pelosi should be addressing are the completely skewed energy attitudes in the country. Opening up the strategic petroleum reserves is no solution to anything.

Greg "The Shark" Norman Leads the British Open at the Royal Birkdale Going into the Final Round

2008-07-19T22:20:00.004+02:00

Tiger Who?

How can we not write about this?

Just when everyone thought that the professional golfing world was going to fall into a deep abyss because of the sudden prolonged absence of Tiger Woods due to a knee operation, a 53-year-old former Number One world golfer has resurfaced with a vengeance and brought an excitement to golf that no one would have thought possible just a few days ago.

Greg Norman, who many viewed as being virtually retired from high-level pro golf and surely far past his prime, has come out of nowhere to lead the British Open by two strokes after three rounds of golf against the best players in the world.

Win or lose in Sunday's last round, what Norman has already achieved in three rounds is great for golf, showing what a tremendous game it is, both for players and spectators alike.

When one champion goes, others take his place.

The King is gone. Long live the (new) King, whoever he may turn out to be.

Update

Australian Greg Norman may have tried too hard in the fourth round and finished tied with Sweden's Henrik Stenson for 3rd as a closing 77 put him out of contention for the win, which went to defending champion Padraig Harrington of Ireland, who stoutly battled a painful wrist but prevailed as the first European in more than 100 years to defend the British Open title. Ian Poulter of England finished second. The best American finisher was Jim Furyk, tied for 5th with English amateur Chris Wood, the world's 6th-ranked amateur, who now surely will move up.

Famed Country Lawyer Gerry Spence Starts a Blawg

2008-07-19T21:20:00.002+02:00

Famed country lawyer Gerry Spence (see our previous posting about him) started a blawg a few days ago which has already drawn a good deal of comment from the blogosphere.

Take a look at his first blog posting, May we get together?

The American Lawyer 2008 A-List of Top 20 US Law Firms based on Revenue per Lawyer, Pro Bono Work, Associate Satisfaction & Diversity Representation

2008-07-19T20:03:00.006+02:00

Looking for The American Lawyer 2008 A-List of the top 20 US Law Firms? The prestigious list is created by ranking 4 criteria: revenue per lawyer, pro bono work, associate satisfaction and diversity representation - with revenue per lawyer and pro bono scores counting double.

Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP of New York City has the 2008 A-List online as a special .pdf.

A Los Angeles law firm topped the US list for the first time ever, as Munger, Tolles & Olsen replaced perennial winner Debevoise & Plimpton of New York City, which had won the award the last four years, but dropped to 5th place.

We are glad to see that our former firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, headquartered in New York City, made the list again (at 17th).

Some of the law firms on the 2008 A-List with various website pages mentioning or commenting on their selection:

Latham & Watkins (2nd)

Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler (3rd) They get our award for using their position on this list to best advantage by means of making a special reprint of the A-List.

Weil Gotshal (4th)

Hughes Hubbard & Reed (6th)

Orrick (7th)

Arnold & Porter (8th)

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (9th)

O’Melveny (16th)

Sullivan & Cromwell (19th)

Morrison & Foerster (MoFo, 20th)

The blawg Above the Law has a nice posting about the A-List.

Moses, Exodus, 10 Plagues of Egypt & Ipuwer Papyrus : A Question of Evidence : Errors in the Chronology of the Ancient Near East, Egypt & the Bible

2008-07-19T14:16:00.008+02:00

People trained in the law have regrettably left the formulation of ancient history to disciplines not trained in evidence, and the current chaos in Biblical and ancient chronology is the pre-programmed result, giving us an erroneous history which has resulted in catastrophic consequences for current-day events in the Middle and Near East.

We have posted previously about this topic at some length elsewhere (also here, here, here and here), but in this posting we point to yet another item of evidence which needs to be brought to bear on this issue, the Ipuwer Papyrus:

"The sole surviving manuscript dates to the later 13th century BCE (no earlier than the 19th dynasty in the New Kingdom). Egyptologist Dr Halpern believed that the papyrus was a copy of an earlier Middle kingdom copy. The dating of the original composition of the poem is disputed, but several scholars, have suggested a date between the late 12th dynasty and the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1850 BCE - 1600 BCE).^[4] The theme of this work has previously been taken either as a lament inspired by the supposed chaos of the First Intermediate Period, or as historical fiction depicting the fall of the Old Kingdom several centuries earlier, or possibly a combination of these.

Ipuwer describes Egypt as afflicted by natural disasters and in a state of chaos, a topsy-turvy world where the poor have become rich, and the rich poor, and warfare, famine and death are everywhere. One symptom of this collapse of order is the lament that servants are leaving their servitude and acting rebelliously. Because of this, and such statements as "the River is blood", some have interpreted the document as an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible, and it is often cited as proof for the Biblical account by various religious organisations^[5]^[6]."

The mass of Egyptologists and Biblical scholars virtually ignore this type of evidence, placing the Exodus and Moses in eras for which there is not one shred of archaeological evidence.

So-called "mainstream scholars" have been interpreting Pharaonic civilization for the last 200 years in what can often only be described as a comedy of errors.

For example, in the last 100 years, the age of the pyramids has been steadily lowered by these "scientists" by about 1000 years. At each stage, these "scientists" are sure that they are right, only to change their opinion down the road. Indeed, only recently have Egyptologists begun to accept that the pyramids were oriented to the stars, whereas for many years previous, they called anyone who made such a claim a pyramidiot. In fact, the true pyramidiots are likely to be found among the Egyptologists themselves.

Even then, as Egyptologists such as David Rohl have pointed out, the entire current chronology of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East is built on sand, because it is quite clear that there are errors in the assignment of solar eclipses which serve as the cardinal dates for the chronology (see LawPundit). Rohl would move the chronology forward, whereas the Moses birth information from Artapanus which Rohl himself published suggests that Biblical chronology should be moved backward.

Under current chronological theory, for example, there is - for the time frame currently assigned to them - no archaeological evidence at all - none - to support the existence of Moses or the Kings David or Solomon of Israel. But there is such evidence about 400 years prior to the accepted date, and Rohl's own evidence points to a birthdate for Moses around 1700 BC. See Ancient Egypt Weblog

I have officially challenged the official chronology of the Ancient Near East, and that challenge was posted by Joan Griffith to the then "authoritative" ANE (Ancient Near East) list, moderated at the University of Chicago, but there has been no answer to my challenge from those in academia who silently acquiesce to the currently erroneous Biblical and Egyptian chronology:

[ANE] Challenge
Joan Griffith despinn@hotmail.com
Tue, 08 Jul 2003 09:37:32 -0400

Previous message: [ANE] BASNY Lecture on Iraqi national heritage
Next message: [ANE] Challenge
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,

Andis Kaulins, who has a website and yahoogroup list called Lexiline, sent this out. I thought I would forward it to this list since he thinks he cannot be challenged. I certainly know too little to answer him appropriately. And just maybe he did not expect any authoritative answers... Please post your comments on the ANE list, and I will forward them to Andis at LexiLine@yahoogroups.com. (You have to be a member to post there.)

Andis Kaulins [wrote later]:

As you can see, there are no mainstream rebuttals forthcoming to my challenge to all of academia regarding the chronological errors made by Flinders Petrie, which is not surprising. There is no probative evidence out there to support the mainstream view.

Worse, world events day by day in the Middle East are guided by a completely false view of the history of this region. It is madness.

I repeat again. Men are sheep, especially in mainstream academia.

Andis

--- In LexiLine@yahoogroups.com, "Andis Kaulins"
wrote:
212 LexiLine Newsletter 2003 Flinders Petrie and Chronology at
Tell El Hesy (Lachish) Copyright © 2001-2003 by Andis Kaulins

[This is a challenge to the mainstream archaeologists. I claim the chronology of the Middle East is flawed - and it is flawed due to errors made initially by Flinders Petrie. My reasons are given
below. Any mainstream archaeologist out there who thinks he can rebut my arguments is invited to submit a contra e-mail - BASED on evidence - not on opinion (WHO you or your cited sources are professionally interests me not a whit - it is the EVIDENCE that counts - ONLY the evidence).]
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Tell El Hesy (Lachish) by W.M. Flinders Petrie, reprinted 1989 by Histories & Mysteries of Man Ltd., London, England, 1989, ISBN 1 854 17 052 X, is the foundation for modern chronology of the fertile crescent. I have read the book in detail, confirming my initial suspicion that Petrie made capital chronological errors in his dating of Tell el Hasy and Lachish - errors which mainstream chronology has blindly followed ever since, leading to a completely erroneous history of the Middle East.
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Since Petrie's dating of Tell El Hesy is the foundation for modern chronology of the fertile crescent, it is all the more remarkable that the book is out of print and virtually unknown - even though its conclusions are uncritically accepted and used to date Biblical and Egyptian history in general. Most men are sheep.
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The fact is that Petrie made critical - if consistent - dating errors, based on his preconceived notion of the chronological history represented at the archaeological sites examined by him.
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1. Tell el Hesy - 16 miles East of Gaza about a third of the distance from Gaza to Jerusalem - is an accumulated "residential" mound ca. 60 feet in heigth (from 278 feet above sea level to 340
feet above sea level).
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The upper layer - at 340 feet - contained "regular black and red Greek pottery" which Petrie dated to ca. 450 BC. The bottom of the tell is at 278 feet.
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There is a layer of a period of great destruction - a stratum of small stones "at the level of 286 to 291 feet" with a large layer of ash above that which Petrie calls "the great bed of ashes"." Massive man-made walls of mud brick lie below the layer of small stones, pointing to a previous high culture.
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Similar mounds in Egypt - as Petrie notes - rise 3 to 4 feet per century or 30 to 40 feet in a thousand years. At 3 feet per century, the earliest dwellings would be ca. 2000 years older than the Greek pottery at the top level and would date to 2450 BC. At 4 feet per century of accumulation, the earliest dwellings would be ca. 1500 years older than the Greek pottery and would date to ca. 1950 BC. Since none of these fit into the preconceived picture, Petrie sets the earliest dwellings at el Hesy at 1670 BC, based on a new proposed rate of accumulation of 5 feet per century, the faster rate allegedly because the "greater rainfall" in Syria would lead to "quicker" destruction of mud walls and thus to a greater rate of tell accumulation.
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Petrie even goes so far as to call certain walls "the Amorite wall", "Rehoboam's wall", "Manessah's wall", "the Wall of Ahaz", etc., trying - in an "unscholarly" Schliemann-type manner - to fit his finds to the Biblical accounts.
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Indeed, there is no evidence for such quicker accumulation whatsoever!
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Rather, Petrie gently and almost imperceptibly "bends" the archaeological facts to fit his view of Biblical history.
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2. Petrie bases his chronology on what he calls "Phoenician pottery". As Petrie writes (p. 40), "The excavations at Tell el Hesy proved to be an ideal place for determining the history of pottery in Palestine. And once settle the pottery of a country, and the key is in our hands for all future explorations." Indeed, as if knowing his error, Petrie writes at page 45 "I have under rated rather than over rated the age of the Tell el Hesy levels". How right he was !
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Pottery called bilbils by the Syrians (thin black vases with long necks) were found at the level of 305-325 feet above sea level on the East side of Tell el Hesy and "black bowls" known to be contemporary to the bilbils were found at the level of 295 to 315 feet at the Southeast side. (Please Note: Assyrian bil-bil means plural bil, i.e. "bowls" and NOT bil-bil !)
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Petrie then states that although this pottery is not dated in Phoenicia, he had seen similar examples in Egypt, the earliest of which were dated to the late 18th dynasty in Egypt (Petrie dated this to ca. 1400 BC on the basis of two similar things of Amenhotep III - whose reign is dated today to ca. 1350 BC).
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To an impartial observer, the bilbils and black bowls would BOTH be seen to span 20 feet of accumulated time - 305-325 feet on the East and 295-315 feet on the Southeast, i.e. a corresponding 20 foot time span, with SLANTING topography probably accounting for the difference.
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Petrie, however, inexplicably puts the the two figures together and expands the Phoenician period to 25 feet of accumulated history at Tell el Hesy, placing the early Phoenician period at the level of 295 feet and running it to 320 feet, although in fact BOTH measured sites at Tell el Hesy point to only a 20-foot accumulated Phoenician time-period. Obviously, Petrie used this calculational "trick" - perhaps subconsciously - to mesh his preconceived notions about Biblical chronology with the chronology of Egypt and fit the Phoenicians in.
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Correctly however, to be consistent in using the measuring rod of the 60 foot heigth of the Tell, the Phoenician pottery period could only have spanned 20 feet or 1/3 of the height of the tell, from the level of 305 to 325 feet above sea level, so that 305 feet above sea level at Tell el Hesy marked the earliest Phoenician pottery and not 295 feet, a difference of ca. 300 critical years (3 feet per century) of chronology! This indeed is the approximate margin of error in Biblical chronology between the correct date for Moses and Exodus (1628 BC) and the date currently assigned to Moses and Exodus by mainstream chronology (ca. 1300 BC).
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If level 305 and not 295 corresponded to Petrie's ca. 1400 BC - then 35 feet of accumulation separated the earliest Phoenician pottery from the top of the Tell, and 35 feet of accumulation would have occurred in ca. 1000 years. This would be a rate of accumulation corresponding to the verified 3 to 4 feet per century evidenced on corresponding Tells in the Egyptian delta.
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The accumulation of 5 feet per century for Tell el Hesy alleged by Petrie is thus clearly erroneous. As he himself suspected, he had in fact VASTLY under rated the age of the levels of Tell el Hesy, simply because he wanted to mesh a Biblical chronology which was far older than he imagined.
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Therefore, NO scholar anywhere in the world today - in any field dealing with ancient history in the fertile crescent - can possibly accept Petrie's chronology and those current mainstream chronologies built upon his conclusions. Such chronologies are nothing other than fictions and must be amended to correct for Petrie's obvious error.
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3. Santorin explodes 1628 BC
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Once the dating of Tell el Hesy has been corrected, the layer of ash (5 feet!) and the layer of stones above the massive walls below take on a new significance since the levels of ash and stones then apply to the period ca. 1628 BC.
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As Petrie himself writes "These ashes were certainly spread by the wind". "No deposit by hands could effect this, the stuff must have been wind-borned, and dropped by the breeze without interference." (p. 16) Lacking any better theory, however, Petrie tries to account for them by the Bedawin (Bedouin) burning of plants for alkali and "the charcoal layers...the result of the sparks and dust of the burning, and the breaking up of the fires; while the white lime layers were the dust blown about after the lixiviation had washed away the alkali. The town must then have been deserted, or almost so, at the time when the alkali burners resorted here, and when their ashes blew about and settled undisturbed over a great part of the hill."
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What Petrie writes above is absolute nonsense of course, but Petrie had to explain the layers of ash somehow.
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Of course, after the event causing these layers of volcanic ash, Tell el Hesy is deserted. Even more, as Petrie himself writes: "Now this we see just corresponds to the great break in the history of Palestine...."
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This "break in the history of Palestine" of course did not happen because of plants being burned for alkali by nomads. This was the great period of conflagration due to the explosion of Santorin,
the volcanic ash, the earthquakes, fire from the heavens, apparently over several years. Petrie places the date for this layer of ash at ca. 1300 BC but of course he has a ca. 300-year error. The year is actually closer to 1628 BC.
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4. Interestingly, Petrie's dating of the so-called "Amorite" comb- face pottery on page 40 of his book as being ca. 1600 BC to ca. 1000 BC meshes exactly with my dating of the Phoenician levels at Tell El- Hesy. Perhaps this was the influence of the Phoenicians on the Amorites. It is Petrie's misdating of the Phoenicians - based on his attempt to mesh historical data of Egypt with the erroneous chronology of the Biblical Jews - which was his undoing. Indeed, it has remained a great chronological problem down to this day.
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The Dating of Tell el Hesy is thus correctly:
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A. Top of mound - 340 feet above sea level = ca. 500 BC (Greek pottery)(after several hundred years of dark ages - - Greek pottery had surfaced ca. 700 BC)
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B. Last Phoenician (comb-face) pottery - 325 feet above sea level = ca. 1000 BC
This is the period of the invasion of the northern Sea Peoples who came to the rescue of the Hebrews, but were turned back by Ramses III = Biblical Shishak and the Assyrian Babylonians. This led to the end of the Pharaohs and was the period of the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews as well as the dark age in the fertile crescent - when building of temples etc. ceased and much was destroyed.
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C. Earliest Phoenician (comb-face) pottery - 305 feet above sea level = ca. 1650 BC
This is the period of ca. 1628 BC, with earthquakes and the explosion of the volcano Santorin on Thera - which was the period of the Biblical Exodus, and also the period at which the Phoenicians become prominent, probably through migration to escape natural disasters. This is the period of the layer of stones and ashes at Tell El Hesy.
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D. Earliest dwellings at Tell el Hesy - 280 feet above sea level = ca. 2500 BC
As Petrie notes, in the N.W. tower of Tell el Hesy, at level 295 feet above sea level (ca. 2000 BC by my corrected chronology of Petrie's data), they found "a cylinder of coarse dull red haematite, now weighing 142.3 grains, probably 144 originally; this is the Egyptian kat weight. Several scraps of bronze were found, wire armlets, hair-pins, a knife, and a sheep bell; and some iron fragments, a knife, and arrow-heads." This corresponds possibly to the building of a fort by the Egyptians here in the 24th year of reign under Amenemhet I ca. 2000 BC, who organized an expedition to Gaza - the northeastern border of united Egypt at that time - against the Asiatic desert dwellers. This corresponds to the position of Lachish.
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Does that above date of 2500 BC seem unusual?
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5. Who were the Phoenicians?
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The mark of a great man of science is not that he always right, but rather that he recognizes the critical issues and adds new methods and insights to knowledge, even if they are not perfect. No one is right all the time.
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My criticism of Petrie's erroneous chronology by no means should take away from the greatness of his manifold achievements.

Also in his book on Tell el Hesy, Petrie shows the enormous breadth of his interests and, in his discussion of the styles of masonry in Palestine, points us toward a proper identification of the
mysterious Phoenicians. The Phoenicians are found referenced in Egyptian hieroglyphs of the Middle Kingdom under the term FENEKHW, which of course is an Indo-European term as in Latvian VEJNIEKI or VEJNIESHE "men of the wind", (VEJNIESHI = PHOENICIANS) i.e. sailors.
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The idea that the (Italian) sailing boat feluca derives from Arabic fulk "ship" is incorrect. It is the other way around, since the root is proto-Indo-European as in Latvian VEJ- "wind". Latin retains this root in VELA "the sail" which is Latvian VELA "cloth, washing hung
up to dry - which resulted in the idea of a sail". In the north of Europe these were probably the WENDs, people of the WIND. The terms BRIT- and PRUS- as in Britain and Prussia (Borussia) thus probably are related to the Latvian term BURAS "sails", which explains another ancient term PRST for the "sea peoples" found in ancient sources.
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The Phoenicians of course are not in any manner the Palestinians - as some claim, for these latter were not sailors but rather landlocked desert marauders, who are otherwise the Hyksos of
history, or the Midianites of the Bible.
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Petrie recognizes in his book on Tell el Hesy that the style of stone dressing used by the Phoenicians was "flaking and pocking" - i.e. flaking by heavy blows and then bruising down the surface with a heavy pointed hammer - and that this style is found:
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1) on the great monolith lying in the quarry in the Russian quarter of Jerusalem
2) in the galleries called Solomon's Stables under the Haram
3) in the stone work of the temple at Hagir Kim in Malta
4) in the wrought stones at Stonehenge - Petrie writes "the best examples of it are on the flat tops of the uprights of the great trilithons.

And another curious formation occurs at Stonehenge as well as at Hagir Kim; the edge of an upright is somewhat raised, so as to form a sort of tray, and a corresponding cutting is made in the cap stone. This is of course in addition to the rough tenons at Stonehenge." (p. 36)
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In other words, Petrie has observed the clear connection between the megalithic cultures of old - certainly one of the first men ever to do so.
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The desert dwellers, i.e. Palestinians, had a different style of masonry, found only in a few places since they were nomads and not ordinarily settled peoples. This masonry style is identified by
Petrie, as "long-stroke picking" - done with an edge or point, with no breadth of cut - and is see on
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1) the great blocks of the first building of the Beit el Khulil near Hebron
2) dressing of the wall at Tell Safi - which Petrie says is probably the old Philistine fortress of Gath,
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3) on the sandstone masonry and steps of Lachish ca. 700 BC, i.e. after the Babylonian captivity and AFTER the days of the Phoenicians, who were the Sea Peoples who had lost their seat of power in the fertile crescent in the days of Ramses III, who was Shishak.
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Interesting is that Petrie regards Jewish style to be a mixture which is neither pure Amorite [Arab] nor Phoenician, but which consists of a mixture of characters of both peoples.
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6. Ashdod, Ashkelon = Kadesh [Thick layer of ash also found here]
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My redating of Tell el Hesy makes it relatively simple to also correctly date ancient cities of the Near East in that same region and correct some major errors of mainstream historical scholarship.

Here are the basic corrections
a. Ashdod was an ancient city on the "curve of the Mediterranean Coast" at the Wadi Lakhish (similar to Indo-European e.g. Latvian LIKS, LICIS "gulf") on a what was probably the northernmost border of Ancient Egypt on a line running toward Lachish (Tell el Hesy).
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The levels of occupation at Ashdod show the same dating errors as Tell el Hesy and are off by about 300 to 350 years. (Ashdod is similar to Greek azotus and Latvian azotis meaning "bosom" [of the Mediterranean], i.e. "gulf", curved part of the Mediterranean).
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There is a very thick layer of ash at Ashdod at the level which corresponds to the thick layer of ash at Tell el Hesy. This layer of ash dates to ca. 1628 BC whereas mainstream scholars date that level of ash erroneously to 1300-1200 BC (without the benefit of Petrie's imagined "alkali burners" theory). Hence, all other levels at Ashdod are correspondingly falsely dated.
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It is only AFTER the volcanic eruption of Santorin that the Philistines occupy the city, including the neighboring Ashkelon.
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Indeed, ALL the cities Jericho, Debit (Tell Bet-Mirsim), Lachisch, Bet-El, Gibeon and Hazor (Tell el Qedaz) were all destroyed by fire and ash at the same time - and - as David Rohl has noted for Hazor, this occurred at least a hundred years previous to any possible destruction by the Israelites - in fact 300 years previous.
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b. Scholars in the 20th century have erred in locating Lachish at Tell ed-Duwer. Rather, Petrie already and correctly identified Tell el Hesy in the 18th century as Lachish, i.e. La-cHish (cHish = Hesy). Tell (k)ed-Duwer is in fact the Biblical site of Kadesh which scholars have unsuccessfully and falsely tried to find in a completely other region. KaDesh was later used as the "reference" city for the battle in the Bible, and the battle here was a battle for the northern border of Egypt. Indeed, there is strong evidence of ancient military battle here, e.g. ancient Assyrian ramps have been found at (k)ed Duwer, i.e. Kadesh.
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c. At the time of King Ramses II (who was King Solomon - the battle of Kadesh took place in the fifth year of his reign, 480 years after Exodus - which is 1147 BC), and the winning of this battle is found inscribed in the reliefs at Karnak, where the battle is said to have been won for Eskarun which is similar to Indo-European e.g. Latvian aizskarin "border, curtain". Assyrian sources refer to Eskarun as Asqualuna and refer to it as a "region" with a definite BORDER, and we retain this term as the historical city name Ashkelon on this border. [end of the Challenge]

A Shambolic Woolly Paper : Baroness Murphy at Lords of the Blog Draws a Bead on Lord Chancellor Jack Straw and his Proposals for Lords Reform

2008-07-19T13:46:00.004+02:00

Imagine if someone called one of your written projects "shambolic".

What would it mean?

Baroness Murphy of the UK House of Lords at Lords of the Blog in her posting Laws are Like Sausages? did just that a few days ago to Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, calling his White Paper proposals for Lords reform "a shambolic woolly paper".

It certainly sounds like something one would not like one's work to be called.

What did Straw write? The BBC tells us:

"Under the proposals most, if not all peers, would be elected and serve terms of between 12 and 15 years.

The Lords would be reduced in size from more than 700 peers to no more than 450. The bishops would stay, but the 92 hereditary peers would be abolished."

Such a reform, if promulgated, is viewed as the virtual abolition of the House of Lords by some.

See the definition of shambolic here.
And woolly is not an appellation of endearment either.

The Law of King Athelstan of England Revisited : Some Wide Speculations about Prehistoric Megalithic Culture

2008-07-19T08:02:00.006+02:00

This crossposting from the LexiLine group is in part a revisitation of the Law of King Athelstan of England about which we posted previously at LawPundit and is intended only for those of our readers who are interested in some relatively wide speculations about the prehistoric megalithic era.

22 LexiLine 2008 Dalarran Holm Stockie Muir & The Whangie

Dear LexiLiners,

One of the readers of my book, Stars Stones and Scholars has drawn my attention to Standing Stone NX639792 at Dalarran Holm, of which I was previously not aware. I have some new discoveries as a result, though let me say that this is VERY speculative and may be quite a stretch. But is quite interesting, nevertheless.

This location of the megalith NX639792 at Dalarran Holm is very close to the White Cairn at Corriedow (probably better called Corriedoo for GPS map purposes), which according to my book Stars Stones and Scholars marked t-Eridani in the ancient survey of Scotland. See also http://www.stonesofwonder.com/dalarran.htm

If the rest of my identifications are accurate, then this megalith at Dalarran Holm must mark the star gamma-Eridani (Zaurak) in the system that I have published.

In 3117 BC (i.e. -3116 by astronomy), Zaurak is exactly on the celestial meridian, i.e. on the line running from the North Pole through the Vernal Equinox to the South Pole, about 30 degrees angular separation from Aldebaran, which I presume was the star which the ancients took to mark the Vernal Equinox in that era.

Pursuant to my system in Stars Stones and Scholars, Aldebaran is marked in Scotland by the cairn at Stockie Muir. We now can also add a bit of color to this location because Stockie Muir is close to a singularly unique location called the Whangie (meaning "slice" [of the Earth?]). Here is where we get onto rather speculative footing....

The Whangie is described shortly at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lidwit/497624327/ as "A strange geological feature that is about 50 ft deep and 300 ft long. and was probably caused by glacial movement way back in the dim and distant past. The more colourful explanation however is the local myth suggesting that it was a crack caused by the devil whipping his tail during a meeting with witches and warlocks. Either way it's an interesting walk and popular with climbers although they were hiding on our visit."

Presuming that the ancients did not carve the Whangie out of solid rock to mark the celestial meridian in ca. 3117 BC (we do not know if this could have been done, given the puzzling geological explanation currently in vogue), they may nevertheless have regarded the Whangie - if it is in fact a natural geological formation - as part of their megalithic survey system. Or they may have used a natural formation and "customized" it. Here is a longer description of the Whangie well worth quoting from ElectricScotland.com at Rambles Round Glasgow New Kilpatrick and the Whangie:

"Descending the farther side of the hill, we soon descry the gray storm-beaten rocks of the Whangie. On approaching the spot the first thing that strikes the visitor is an immense confused heap of jagged trap, piled against the hillside, and threatening in various places to topple over, while countless fragments of every size and shape are strewn about in the wildest irregularity, as if a congregation of demons had been, in some past epoch, engaged here in a diabolical stone-battle. On closer inspection, however, it is seen that a vast section of the hill has been by some means or other wrenched asunder, leaving a lengthened and deep chasm yawning along the line of separation, and that the shattered appearance of the external surface has been produced by the violence of the convulsion which caused the original disunion. Entering the narrow ravine, we proceed as it were into the bowels of the firm-fixed earth. The passage is tortuous and uneven, the projections of one side corresponding with singular exactness to the hollows on the other. In width the Whangie, as this terrible fissure is called, varies from 2½ to 10 feet; its medium depth being about 40 feet, while its length is 346 feet. The external wall, if we may use the term, is fearfully fractured in several places, and on peeping through the crevices and beholding the apparently tottering masses overhanging the steep below, the spectator involuntarily shrinks back as if his touch would send them thundering down. Save a stunted rowan-tree or two, projecting from the rifted summit of the chasm, the Whangie is utterly devoid of sylvan adornment."

It is particularly the length of the Whangie, 346 feet, which captured our attention. Could a part of the Whangie be a man-made "slice" of the Earth? 346 feet is also the length of the outer circumference edge of the ring of Sarsen stones at Stonehenge.

Martin Doutré argues at http://www.celticnz.co.nz/US10.html that :

"The outer ring was based upon two PHI reductions of the Aubrey Circle and was coded to a circumference of 345.6 feet (172.8 X 2). This was 1/378000th of the size of the Earth under the sexagesimal system, which broke the circle of the Earth into degrees, minutes and seconds of arc."

I disagree with Doutré that this length was intended to represent 1/378000th of the circumference of the Earth. Rather, I think the ancients thought it represented 1/360000th of that circumference, which would be a circumference of 124560000 modernly measured feet or 4152000 yards or 23590 miles (ca. 38000 km), which compares well to the modern calculations of the Earth's circumference at the Equator of 24901.55 miles (40075.16 km) as well as the Earth's circumference between the North and South Poles of 24859.82 miles (40008 km).

In terms of ancient measures, I also think it likely that these 346 feet as measured by today's foot would have been 400 feet in ancient days, giving this ancient foot a value of .865 in terms of our modern foot. The ancient 400 feet as 1/360000th of Earth's circumference would have meant that the ancients calculated that circumference as 144000000 of their feet which would make one degree of the Earth equal to 400000 of their feet, which derives from dividing the circumference of the Earth of 144000000 feet by 360 = 400000 ancient feet which equals about 346000 modern feet.

That is pretty close to the Law of King Athelstan of England (see http://www.lawpundit.com/blog/2004/08/law-of-king-athelstan-of-england.htm) which has elsewhere been calculated at 365000 feet for one degree of Earth measure.

346000 feet is about 65 miles.
So how far is Standing Stone NX639792 at Dalarran Holm from Stockie Muir? It is about 65 miles. See http://www.export911.com/convert/distaCaIc.htm

For these coordinates, see
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/5183
Stockie Muir (alternate name: Aucheneck)
Nearest Town: Milngavie (10km ESE)
OS Ref (GB): NS479812 / Sheet: 64
Latitude: 55° 59' 58.2" N
Longitude: 4° 26' 21.26" W

For these coordinates, see
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/7653/dalarran_holm.html
Dalarran Holm
Nearest Town: New Galloway (2km SW)
OS Ref (GB): NX639792 / Sheet: 77
Latitude: 55° 5' 18.09" N
Longitude: 4° 7' 57.62" W

If the ancients were measuring the size of the earth along the celestial meridian in ca. 3117 BC, using, inter alia, Stockie Muir (represented by the star Aldebaran) and Standing Stone NX639792 at Dalarran Holm (represented the star gamma-Eridani (Zaurak)), then the distance between them may have been measured by the ancients as one degree of Earth longitude.

Accordingly, Standing Stone NX639792 at Dalarran Holm could very well be viewed to be an important stone in the ancient astronomical survey by astronomy.

Enjoy,

Andis

Update

As written in Glasgow's Evening Citizen 100 years ago by Hugh MacDonald:

"The Whangie is a vast section of the hill that has by some means been wrenched asunder, leaving a lengthened and deepened chasm yawning along the lines of separation." It must have caught the public's attention, for The Whangie became one of the most popular walks in the Glasgow area, overlooking the Stockiemuir towards Loch Lomond and the hills of the Trossachs."

The Whangie runs virtually East-West. See Edenmill Farm and its walks.

Geologically, The Whangie and Auchineden Hill have been explained as follows:

"The Whangie is a strange geological phenomenon, being the result of “glacial plucking” caused by extreme temperatures which froze the slabs of rock to the glacier. As the glacier moved, it “plucked” the hillside, causing a split, leaving the rock walls rising sheer on either side of the gap."

We might note that a speculative analysis of the name of Stockie Muir near the Whangie might support our speculative interpretation, as Stockie is similar to German Stock meaning "stick" and Gaelic stoc meaning "pillar" while Muir is similar to Greek μοίρα el(el) f meaning "degree", i.e. in this case "one measuring stick as a degree", though we must recall that muir in Gaelic generally means "sea" but can also mean "spear", whereas the modern interpretation of place names has muir meaning "moor" or "hill", both of which fit this wet, boggy location.

There is nevertheless an unmistakeable connection between Stockie Muir and The Whangie. As noted at The Modern Antiquarian, the rocks that form the Stockie Muir Chambered Cairn "undoubtably came from the Whangie".

That Whangie means "thick slice" in Scottish dialect shows that the term is perhaps related to Indo-European terms for "furrow" such as Latvian vaga (*vanga) or the Finno-Ugric Finnish vako or Estonian vagu.

One argument for suggesting some human intervention in creating this stone corridor is the flatness of the path through the rock, as if made for being walked through, and that there is not a one-to-one correspondence of the sides of the Whangie on each side, denying the theory that they walls were split naturally in all cases. Again, man may have helped here or there to make this split the length it is. See, for example, the photos at ScottishSport.co.uk. In addition, there appear to be anthropomorphic figures carved in the sides of part of the Whangie. For more photographs of the Whangie, see the Air na Creagan Mountaineering Club, biotron at Flickr, British Blogs, and Allan Gilliland.

A video walk through the Whangie is found at this YouTube Video but the piercing music attached to the video may not be to your taste, in which case you may want to turn down the sound in the event that you view the video.

Do You Scrobble? Next Generation Makeover at Social Music Website Last.fm

2008-07-18T10:30:00.004+02:00

Do you scrobble?

"Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm, you can scrobble songs you listen to on your computer or iPod automatically. Start scrobbling yourself, and see what artists you really listen to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see.

Millions of songs are scrobbled every day. This data helps Last.fm to organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides."

Last.fm is a free global music service available in 12 languages that became a part of CBS last year.

David Chartier writes at ars technica on July 17, 2008 about Last.fm, "The Social Music Revolution" and its Next Generation makeover:

"Music streaming and social community Last.fm has redesigned for a more mature experience, adding more integration and ubiquity across a variety of devices.

...

Last.fm became a bit more interesting some time ago with the introduction of a plug-in for various software...."

Read that posting at ars technica for more.

Satire and Parody in the US Presidential Campaign 2008

2008-07-17T14:13:00.003+02:00

Shakespeare depicted life as either comedy or tragedy.

Barack Obama, for example, has recently been the subject of a satirical cover at The New Yorker magazine. Laugh or cry.

In case you are not familiar with it through Jay Leno, the website JibJab.com has some videos which parody various subjects, including the US Presidential Campaign:

It is all a matter of taste (or not), but see Time for Some Campaignin' by JibJab.

Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish writes that it is "their best yet".

Hat tip to CaryGEE.