Time for Some Review

Post # 93  

      I was reading an article about the Voyager1 yesterday.  Although this is extremely old news they were reporting that the spacecraft has left the region of the solar winds just beyond the Kuiper Belt.  This is the region where the power of the solar wind has diminished to the point that it can no longer push out the heavy bombardment of inter stellar cosmic rays and particles.  This was reported about a year or more ago.         
     The article reported that the scientists currently involved with the mission have declared that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the Solar System.  I left a fairly long comment on the article  That's why I said it's time for a review. 
      Our Solar System is a lot more huge than just to the end of the planetary orbits.  That's just the beginning.  There are varying views in the astronomical community as to what exactly constitutes the "edge" of the Solar System.  Some say that's it, when you pass the orbits of the eight planets plus Pluto.  To them I say "what about Sedna then?"  (See image below) Sedna is about the same size as Pluto, and its orbit is ten to twelve times as large as Pluto's.  Sedna is a Kuiper Belt orbiting object. 

      That leads to the next group who declare that the edge of the Solar System is the Kuiper Belt and the end of the Solar wind.  The third group (whose camp I am also in) says that the Solar System doesn't end until the sun's gravitational pull is so weak that it can no longer keep objects in orbit.  The Oort cloud objects are orbiting the sun way out past Sedna.  The Oort Cloud is mainly made up of comets.  There are also many asteroids out there too, as well a few planetoids (Pluto sized objects).  New planetoid sized objects are being found out there on a fairly regular basis. 

      These things wouldn't be orbiting the sun if they weren't a part of the "Sol Star System."  To say otherwise would be like telling someone with really curly hair that frizzes way out like about a foot or more that the person stops at the scalp, and that their hair isn't a part of them.  That's just about one full light year out.  Using these criteria, the Voyager 1 has a long way yet to reach the edge of the Solar System.  Heck, it's barely even started. 
      After all these years of traveling it probably sounds good to say that "we" have finally left the Solar System, but that's not the real truth.  On the plus side of this, however, by the time Voyager does leave the Solar System, it might not be long before it enters another system into its own Oort Cloud.  That depends on which direction the Voyagers are heading.  Barnard's Star and Alpha Centari are each about 4 light years away.  Alpha Centari, however is a multiple star system, giving it a much larger gravitational range, thus giving it a much larger Oort Cloud. 

Something Else For the Dutch Oven

Post # 92  

      For a couple weeks in a row I was at a historical reenactment.  This is what seems to be the busy season for me.  Most of the events I attend for the year happen between the end of July to the first week of October.  I have another one coming up in a couple of weeks, and in September I have three in a row, followed a week later by one in October.  
      All this means I have to cook things to eat, and all of that cooking is on the open fire.  Oh, I do try to eat at one of the fine eateries in a tent kitchen once in a while.  There is Doyle's, and there is Baby's.  They both sell great frybread, and concoctions involving frybread.  Baby's has the best fruit filled frybread (and Doyle will even say so too).  She also makes a frybread filled with a wild rice hot dish.  Doyle makes great frybread tacos, but I really like going over to his place on Sunday mornings before the rendezvous church service for his omlettes and all you can eat buckwheat blueberry pancakes.  He also has his own line of home made root beer and sasperilla.  My favorite is his "Red Birch Root Beer."  

      The rest of the time though, We have to cook stuff up ourselves.  There is a couple that camps with me a lot, Barry and Annie.  Barry is one great cook with the dutch ovens.  We often have grilled venison that has been marinated in his special concoctions.  He also makes a lot of stews, voyageur pea soup, dishes containing much manoomin (wild rice), and much more.  He also makes great pies, biscuits,and corn bread in the dutch ovens.  
      There are many events I go to that Barry and Annie don't come to, so then I get to do the cooking.  Having a background in a restaurant that was a 4 1/2 star when I was there (couldn't quite get to the five star status - fresh seafood products don't ship well to this part of the country, so they were missing from our menu, and without them you'll never get that 5 star rating), I like to step up the game a little, while still using foods of the period and the area. 
      A lot of times I just use my experience and make it up as I go.  Then I find someone to help me "test" my recipe.  That's how I came up with the raspberry-wild rice custard.  
      A week ago I made up another.  I knew that I would be camping next to some dear friends of mine, the Southerton Family.  I knew that they would try to just feed me the whole time (because they are just that way - hospitable and kind).  I did play the role of "camp dog" for a couple meals, and it was well appreciated, but I was prepared to treat them as well.  I suggested that we pool our meals for Saturday's dinner. 

Braised Chicken in Raspberry Sauce With Wild Rice

      Even though I just made this up off the top of my head (yeah, That's what I'll call it), I'm sure this recipe is most likely out there already, since all the ingredients have been out there for thousands of years.   I can imagine Jaques Pepin making it on one of his programs ("an zen you pour ze razberry zose over ze shiken").  Either way, here's the recipe: 


Cut up a goodly portion of the Trifecta of Taste; onions, green peppers, and celery.  Cut them up small, and saute it all in real butter, and lots of it.  When done pull it from the fire and set it to the side.  

Then take pieces of chicken (you could also use pheasant or grouse for a wilder flavor), and salt and pepper them, put them into the bottom of a hot cast iron kettle with more butter.  I used thighs, because they have the most flavor as well as enough meat.  Don't crowd the pan - only brown a couple or a few pieces at once. 

Once you've browned all the chicken put it all back in the dutch oven with half of the sauteed mix.  Over that pour enough raspberry sauce to cover the chicken 3/4 of the way up (I make raspberry sauce every year from the berries from my patch - raw berries and boiled sugar water, put in mason jars, 15-20 minute hot water bath - besides cooking with it, or just eating them like peaches or pears, it also makes a great ice cream topping).  On top of that pour a generous splash of wine.  For this dish a blush type of wine works the best (dark meat, red sauce, but you wouldn't want the robustness of a red wine).  

Put on the lid.  Hang the pot low enough to start it boiling, then hang it up high enough to simmer it for about an hour.  

At this same time start some wild rice to boiling.  After the manoomin has been boiling at a low boil for about 20 minutes, take it off the heat, cover it and let it swell for a while.  After it has swollen for about 20 minutes, add the remainder of the sauteed mixture, then boil it again for another 10 to 20 minutes.  This will avaporate the water and pop the kernels that haven't popped open yet. 

The Manoomin is ready to serve now, and so also should be the chicken.  Add one more small splash of wine for flavor.  Let the alcohol evaporate a couple of minutes and serve it all up.  All the flavors really permeate the meat.  

This dish was a hit, and I will be making it again in a couple of weeks. 

Computer-Brain Interface Used to Illustrate Thoughts - In 3D

Post #  92  

      Have you ever had things in your head that you think are great ideas, but you just can't seem to express them, or get them out fast enough to suit you?  I know that I wish there were some way to produce the various symphonies I sometimes hear in my head (don't worry, I never hear weird voices telling me to do things - just symphonies and movie and TV scripts).  Some people can't draw a stick figure, but can imagine all sorts of great images.  A team of scientists in Chile have been working overtime to address this.  
      In May they announced the first ever object created by the mind.  The group called Thinker Thing led by their CTO George Lakowsky have linked two forms of cutting edge technology to accomplish this.  They used a computer-brain interface system in order to read the thoughts of individuals (yes, that part of it all kind of makes me a little uneasy too), and hooked it up to a 3D printer.  

      The first object created from a subject's imagination (above) was a small, three fingered, robotic arm.  “Whilst the first object George created was very simple it’s a breakthrough of epic proportions in our project” said Thinker Things Founder, Bryan Salt. 
      The interface reads the small impulses of the brain and transfers them to the 3D printer.  Through this process they can create real, physical objects directed just by a person's thoughts. 
      The team also wants to use this technology to go out into the countryside and teach children about science and the arts.  They call this the Start Up Chile Program.  This is aimed at educating disadvantaged children.  Using their new technology they want to allow these children a chance to create objects with their minds.  

      So a few things strike me with this.  The first thought is "how cool is this?"  Then I have to think that now the scientists of Kyoto aren't the only ones with the capability to read a person's thoughts.  That leads me then to think about what will the various governments do with this?  Maybe if this thought reading is published twice on one year, then the governments already have had this ability for years.  They wouldn't need to monitor our every phone call and computer click to try and guess what we're thinking, and determine if our thoughts are dangerous or not (that has recently been admitted [after a bunch of leaks], that every single phone call and every single computer click is monitored, and then if any flags are raised, the surveillance becomes more personal).  They could just read the thoughts.  
      At least for now our thoughts can't read any of our thoughts without us knowing about it.  They have to hook up all these things to our brain, and so far there's no stealthy way to do that. As science works to try and turn us into a form of the Borg, there may be new technologies created that would only require a nanobot injection, or even a pill, so that everyone's brain can be connected to a main frame (I'm sure that we would be convinced that it would all be for our benefit - making our brains computer ready so that we could use all the latest apps, keep our money safe from theft, keep us from ever getting lost, and other such things).  
      As you can tell, I have mixed feelings about this.  One thing is for certain.  Bob Dylan was right many decades ago when he said "The times are a changin'." 
      What are your thoughts on this? 

A Couple of Oddities on Mars

Post # 91

      Ever since an astronomer wrongly thought he saw canals on Mars, the Red Planet has mystified everybody.  As late as the early 1970's it was still taught as fact in the schools that Mars had canals, although they were adamant that there was no life on Mars.  Once the pair of Voyagers got there and took a whole bunch of pictures most people knew that the planet was dry and lifeless.  To many others though, and to Hollywood and the world of literature, the damage was done.  In their wee little collective cranium Mars was full of Martians - sometimes scary, and once in a while, mild, friendly, or benevolent.

The War of the Worlds - the 1950's version.  That movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.  

The recent remake of War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise.  Great special effects, and an overall intense film.  

                                             My Favorite Martian - a 1960's sit com

      Actually the world of Sci-Fi has lost their imagination when it comes to Mars.  While they have gotten great in the rest of the realm of outer space, most filmed or written on Mars is just a rehashing of previous hits.  You have to admit though that due to modern special effects these remakes are pretty cool. 

John Carter on Mars - a modern rendition from the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic from the Barsoom Series

      Maybe the romance with the red planet is due to the fact that it is such a close neighbor that with the naked eye we can see it's color.  On those rare years when its closest approach is even closer, you can almost see its ice caps.  Or maybe it all started many ages past when it was associated with its namesake - the Roman war god. 

      After all those Rovers went there and sent back a multitude of cool pictures people have gotten intersted in Mars again.  At least the realm of Geekdom have anyway.  Some of the pictures were taken on sunny days (with no windstorms/sandstorms) and the sky has an undeniable bluish tint.  Other pictures show the routine dusty haze of iron oxide rich dirt (here on Terra Firma when we hold a handful of dirt or describe dirt we call it earth, and we call things made of dirt "earthen."  We also call the colors of dirt "earthen."  We couldn't say that on Mars.  It just wouldn't be right).  The picture below called by NASA "A Rusty Sunset on Mars" shows that normal earth rich mars rich dust, but the thing that makes this picture so other worldly (besides the fact that it is in fact from another world) is that the sun looks too small. It looks half the size it should be at sunset.  Well, it should look half the size, because it is almost twice as far away from the sun as the Earth is. 

      NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive has a lot of great pictures taken by the Rovers showing an almost New Mexico/Arizona looking landscape.  If you install Google Earth, you also get Google Sky, and Google Mars.  There you can see many strange features if you zoom in.  It is some of those features I will write about tonight.
      First up are a couple of pictures showing that huge crack running across the planet.  If you take notice you will see that this crack goes about a third of the way around the globe.

      Some astronomers think this was caused by an impact from a monster asteroid.  According to their theories, it came in at a very low trajectory, hit the planet and ricocheted back out into space.  It was so big that it could have blown the planet into pieces and created another part to the asteroid belt.
      Many scientists agree that there must have been an atmosphere, and even water on the planet.  When Mars cracked open much of its molten core spilled out.  This caused the core to cool considerably.  Without a huge liquid core Mars lost its magnetosphere.  Without a magnetosphere the solar winds continuously blow Mars' atmosphere out into space.  It gets thinner and thinner, and one day there will be no atmosphere of any kind left on the planet.
      In accordance to the impact theory, an impact like that would have vaporized most of the planet's water, however much it may have had.  With most of the planet being comprised of iron, the rest of the water would have gone into the soil during the formation of iron oxide.  That also tells us that there was at one time a lot of oxygen, but again, during the formation of that much rust,......
      The next series of pictures is adored by conspiracy theorists and other weird people.  Forget the so called "Face of Elvis."  This feature is officially called "The Incan Ruins," because it looks so much like the ruins of some ancient city.  It looks a lot like the foundations of a bunch of squarish buildings all stuck together. 

      To me personally, I think they look more like the foundations of a city like Catal Hoyuk, or Asikli Hoyuk.  The ridges that look like foundations are all stuck together in a big clump.  The official explanation is that they were caused by wind.  Well, I don't know about you, but I've never seen wind create something like square ridges.  Honestly, I have no real answer for what I think caused them.  They are just plain weird.  The imagination side of my brain goes off the deep end, and makes suggestions that are so outlandish, that I would not want to write them down - unless, of course I never wanted to have anyone ever take me seriously again.  All I can say for sure is that they are very cool, and I have no freaking idea what they are, or how they got there. The longer I look at them I expect to see Rod Serling pop out around the corner and start talking about them.

      Mars has a myriad of other features that boggle the mind.  It boasts the tallest mountain so far observed anywhere in the solar system, and it happens to also be a volcano.  There are some features, that at just the right resolution look like forests of some alien kind of tree, but are actually rock and black dirt formations.  There is a series of large boulders, rounded by the continual battering from sandstorms that some people think look like the houses on a place like Tatooine.  The Rovers have witnessed giant rocks that appear to move hundreds of yards, and leave a trail behind them in the dust.  They are not self ambulatory, but rather, they slide across the ground on the nightly frost that forms.
      I'd like to say, it is a cool and mysterious place, you should visit it some time, like Rich Steves would say, but that's not really possible right now.  Besides, our present technology is too primitive to make it possible for a weekend getaway, or even a place to go for a fortnight.  Our ships are just too slow.  They are like oxcarts in comparison to what they would need to be.  So until I am able to develop ring magnet propulsion after the technologies of Tesla, I'll just have to tell you to imagine going there. Either that or we need a Stargate.

Who Are the Eastern Ojibwe?

Post # 90  

      As I said in addendum to my last post, I was at another reenactment last weekend.  It was a very small turn out for an event that used to have well over 300 camps.  This year it was only about 20 - 25 camps.  It has dwindled down over the years quite considerably.  Nevertheless I had a great time with good friends.  It took me a couple of hours to set up the wigwam and almost another hour to move everything in and set it all up just right, and then get into my period attire.  Then I headed down to the tavern to play music with the Band.
      I had a great time with old friends, and got acquainted with some new friends.  Throughout Saturday and Sunday I wandered around the site interpreting a slice of history to the public.  I went into the North West Company fur post with a bundle of furs, and set up a trading treaty with the bourgeois and the village I represent.  I only spoke Ojibwe to them, so they required an interpreter.  The public learned a lot by this display.
      Below is my picture.  This is how I appeared in the fur post.  I portray a warrior of the eastern Ojibwe, just like my ancestors were.  This is basically how I always dress at these events.  One thing people often ask me is what "tribe" I am from.  I tell them I am Ojibwe (otherwise known as "Chippewa").  They then say, "well you don't look like an Ojibwe.  You look more like a Huron, or an Iroquois."  Then I reply, "I am eastern Ojibwe, from the area just to the west of  Aadawe-ziibi - the Ottawa River.  We dress very similarly."  There still are some factors though, that stand out as Ojibwe, but they are details that a waabi-dengway wouldn't recognize. 

                                                                A close up

      A people tends to dress like their neighbors, even if they don't like them very well.  It is just one of the quirky facts about human nature.  After I make this point I usually go on to talk about the eastern Ojibwe, and who they are, and how they came to be there.
      I start with an explanation about the early history of the Ojibwe people.  Long before the arrival of the waabi-dengway (white faces) we were workers of misko-waabik - red metal (copper).  The ancestors of the Ojibwe and all the Anishinaabe  people had been working copper for many thousands of years.  We made copper axes, spears, fish hooks, knives arrowheads, and body ornaments and neck armor.  It would make sense even that we were probably working it before those in the old world, here in the Lake Superior region there are huge veins of pure copper.  There is also much shore copper, and a geologic oddity called "float copper."  When the float copper came forth, the earth's fires were so hot and violent that it was actually boiling, and it was filled with many bubbles of air.  This made the copper buoyant.  The crews of Great Lakes ships have talked about seeing it floating out in the lake.  Every so often some of it washes up on shore. 
      The Old World copper was all in the form of an ore.  This means it all had to be smelted.  This also means that the smelting process had to be accidentally discovered.  We, on the other hand had copper in its pure form, all ready to make stuff out of it.  The Europeans often look upon us as primitive and backward.  They should know that at the time the Indo-Europeans entered Europe (about 2000 to 1900 BC) we had already been working the red metal for thousands of years, but they were still just breaking rocks. 
      The Anishinaabe people ended up on the north east coast of North America.  A very long time later, we began to migrate (probably due to harsh weather changes) southward and then westward..  We went to Labrador Island, and the ancestors of the Southern Anishinaabe nations went to Massachusetts.  From there they went down to Virginia, and the Carolinas, and others went westward from the Ohio River Valley to the southern side of the Great lakes.  The northern Anishinaabe moved into Maine, and some went westward across Canada (Cree, Micmac, Naskapi), and the Algonquin went along the St. Lawrence River and the Northern side of the Great Lakes to the northern part of lower Michigan, and into Ontario along the entire Ottawa River watershed.
      One branch of the Algonquin set themselves up as traders.  They started as just trading our copperwork with the other nations, but after a while they became the middle men for all kinds of trading between the various peoples of the region.  This is why they are called the Aadawe or Ottawa, which is the Ojibwe word for trading. 
      After the arrival of the French, and then the other Waabi-dengway we were all able to get things made of biiwaabik (iron).  We were also introduced to the wabowaayan - woven hides (cloth) in its many forms from shirts to blankets.  For both the warrior and the hunter, we really loved the bashkizigan (the musket).  The fur posts had to keep accurate records of all that they traded, and by 1675 we (the Ojibwe) had more guns than the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish combined.  The Iroquois had even more than that.  I'm getting ahead of myself though.
      After the fur trade got into full swing the Iroquois and the Huron broke their treaties with us and combined to attack the Algonquin.  They had gotten infected with the greed of Europe, and they wanted to have all the trade goods for themselves, so they started to attack us in our villages, to try and drive us out.  Many of the Algonquin made the crossing over to Upper Michigan.
      Not long after arriving there we had one of our hunting parties attacked by a band of Sac and Fox.  We brought the wounded back to camp, and then went out hunting again - this time for that war party.  We caught up with them.  It is way easier to just kill people in battle than it is to capture them, but we captured them.  We brought them back to camp, and had them sewed up into green deer hides (wet rawhide).   We did this to all but two of them, who we made watch all this.  Then the ones sewn up were hung over a fire, but high enough that they wouldn't burn.  They suffocated in the same way one does from the coils of a boa constrictor.  According to the two survivors, we left them hang there until they could hear their bones crunch.
      We then let the other two go, but they had to pass through the "gauntlet" first.  when they got back to their people and told them what had happened, the Fox and Sac were horrified.  They called us then "roast until puckered."  (pucker - ojib ; and bwa, which means to roast)  That is how and when we got our name.  By this time we were already primarily a gun powder civilization (from William Warren's book "The History of the Ojibwe People" - written in 1848, finally published in 1885).   
      By 50 or so years later, we were well established along the South Shore of Lake Superior.  Then the explorer Daniel Greysolon seur Duluht, came and established a treaty between us and the Dakota living in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Three Ojibwe boys went to Mille Lacs, and three Dakota boys went to live with us in what today is Ashland Wisconsin in the area near Jean Baptiste Cadeaux's fur post (point of note: Cadeaux married an Ojibwe woman, and so did his sons, grandsons, and so forth all the way down the line.  By the time of the forming of the North West Fur Company, the Cadeaux family was still operating that fur post, and they were by then only French by name.  By that time though, they had changed the spelling of their name to Cadot.  Since then other descendents have changed the name to Cadotte.  They also became "Partners" in the NWCo.  William Warren was one of their descendents.).
      One day a wounded Fox warrior came into an Ojibwe camp, and told them how he had been a prisoner, along with another Fox and two Menominie.  They were prisoners of the Dakota in Mille Lacs, but only he had escaped alive.  He told them there that the three boys had been brutally murdered and brutalized, and their bodies had been desecrated.  This was the last straw for many of the other nations living in the area.  That summer the Ojibwe, the Fox and Sac, the Menominie, the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk), the Pottawatomie, the Ottawa, and the Assiniboine all descended upon the Dakota like wolves onto a deer.  When it was all over the Dakota had been utterly defeated, and pushed out all the way across the Red River into the Dakotas, and south beyond the Minnesota and Wisconsin Rivers.  When Radisson came to the area to do follow up work for DuLuht a short time later, everything he was told to expect had completely changed (this also comes from William Warren's book).
      By this time the Iroquois in their war of greed had already turned on their Iroquoian brothers, the Huron, and had pushed them as far as Lake Pepin (eastern Minnesota).  The next place their greed led them was across to upper Michigan and beyond.  They attacked at both Ashland and Bayfield, Wisconsin.  We, along with the Fox, Sac, Menominie, and a couple others beat them all the way back to the end of the Upper Penninsula, so they retreated across to lower Michigan.  The Fox and Sac, and others were satisfied with this and went home victorious.  Among the Ojibwe however, there were many who were still alive, who had experienced being pushed out of lower Michigan.during the Huron Wars, the first leg of what became known as the Beaver Wars.  While still on a roll, and hyped up from a successful battle many ogichidaag (warriors) decided that wasn't good enough.  We continued the chase, and pushed them all the way across lower Michigan, across lower Ontario, and across and all the way back to New York.  By this time winter was setting in, so we lived with the Ottawa for the winter.  Many of us took Ottawa wives and settled in the region west of the Ottawa River.  That is how a people who became a separate nation in Upper Michigan, came to live also so far east.  This is also the story of my ancestry, and the story of my historical persona.

 Wearing a fancy eastern "gentleman's coat" or "Chief's Coat" and a turban with assorted feathers in the style of Joseph Brandt.

Our Closest Galactic Neighbors

Science Fridays 

Post # 89 

      I live out in the country, in the big woods.  Although I have three neighbors right across the road from me, we are like an island, or rather a small archipelago.  There isn't anyone else near me for at least a half mile one way, and a full mile the other direction.  We're spread out like that here.  Drive about a mile, and then there's a small cluster of houses, go another half mile and then there's the lone cattle or horse farm.  Therefore we consider someone who lives up to five miles away as one of our neighbors. 
      In Minnesota, on a larher scale, the towns and cities are like that too.  You go down the freeway for about fifteen miles or so, and then there's a small cluster of small communities.  There's one larger one, and then smaller ones that are almost like satellite towns.  And then there's the Twin Cities, Rochester, Saint Cloud, and Albert Lea - each of them has smaller communities that turned into suburbs (The Iron Range towns are like a bunch of small suburbs that have no main hub city).  
      On a very much larger scale, a galactic scale, it is the same way.  Most galaxies have satellite galaxies orbiting around them.  Our own Milky Way has several.  The most prominent of these are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Pegasus Galaxy, and Leo I, II, and III.  They are technically separate galaxies, and are therefore our closest galactic neighbors (in Stargate Atlantis they were in the Pegasus Galaxy, and were too far away to get to by gates.  They had to travel there by Asgard ships until the creation of a series of gates known as the Carter/MacKay Bridge).  Looking at things from an urban/suburban viewpoint you could say that they are all just really a part of the Milky Way.  They do orbit us, after all. 

                                                       The Large Magellanic Cloud

      Looking at it that way, we would have to say that the Andromeda Galaxy is our closest galactic neighbor, along with its satellites (suburbs).  But just how close is Andromeda. 
      If I told you how many light years away (a lot), you would have no real concept of how close it is.  It is a concept that is hard to wrap our heads around. 
      The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, and almost twice that distance if you count all our satellite/suburb galaxies.  Andromeda, our giant neighbor is twice that at about 200,000 light years, and counting its orbiting, suburb galaxies it is about twice that at 400,000 light years across.  Presently Andromeda is is about 2,000,000 light years away from galactic center to galactic center.  From edge to edge however, Andromeda is only about 1,700,000 light years away (you're probably thinking, "only?  This Wisenheimer is calling 1,700,000 light years 'only'?")  Looking at it another way Andromeda is only five times its diameter away from us.  That's really close - and it's getting closer. 
      Yes, Andromeda is speeding toward us.  Presently it takes up a huge portion of our night sky.  It takes up about 6 1/2 "moon widths."  Through the naked eye however, it only appears as a fuzzy looking area (on a clear night away from any cities, such as at my place).  NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day web site recently created a composite picture to show Andromeda's size in our night sky (picture below). 

      Astronomers say that in about 1000 to 10;000 years it will be so close that it will take up our entire northern sky.  It will continue to look larger and larger until it collides with our own galaxy.  It will swallow up our own galactic center and take many of our stars with it, leaving the remnant along with our own suburb galaxies to orbit as a new satellite-suburb galaxy.  Talk about consolidation!  That won't happen though, they say until about 3 million years from now.  Various college astronomy departments have published videos of this whole scenario.  

      I'm going to be gone again at another reenactment this weekend, so there will be no more posts again until at least Monday night.  Have a great weekend.  I will.  

Renaissance Era Spanish Fortifications Found in North Carolina

Post # 88

      I have another archeological find to report on today.  This one is Spanish, and dates to about 1567, during the latter part of the Renaissance.  But, before I do I will write briefly about the main tribes of Waabidengwayan (white faces) my people ran into (my native ancestors).  
      There were four main tribes of white people we had contact with, followed by a major fifth.  Although there were German colonists in California and on the Gulf Coast, their time here was short and their influence small, as were the Swedes in Delaware and New Jersey.  The Portugese made quite an impact on the western hemisphere, but their influence was way down in South America (Brazil), so for us they were worlds away and we never even knew about them.  We heard rumours of the people in Alaska (the Russians), but that was also far away from any contact with any of the Annishinaabe nations.  Our early dealings were primarily with the French, Dutch, English, and Spanish, and later on the Americans.  Of course during the Immigrant Period (1860's - 1920's) we had contact with many kinds of Europeans.  These were mostly Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, and Finns, with a few Polacks thrown into the mix.  Unlike them, we made distinctions between their tribes, and had different names for them all, whereas they just called us all Indians, or Injuns.  For instance we called the Finns the "Sweat-Lodge People" and called the talkative, chatty Norwegians the "Gingos" our word for chipmunk.  Bur for the sake of this article I'm talking about the four tribes of early contact. 
      First up I'll talk about the French.  La Francé, we called them, because that is what the Hurons and our brothers the Aadawe (Ottawa) called them as many of them (and us) learned how to speak French.  We also called them the Gookoosh-wisiiniyag, the pork eaters.  The French were by far the friendliest for us.  They sought to understand us, and their people often married into ours.  Their venture in North America, was mainly commercial, for trading.  Other than the area around Quebec City, they weren't bent on settling every place they saw.  
      The Dutch were a complete bomb.  They had bad leaders during their colonial phase.  They first of all viewed all native peoples as being the same - just a bunch of "Indians."  They executed native men and women, for anything they saw a a crime.  When one of their pigs wandered off they accused a Delaware woman of stealing it and had her shot for it.  Later on the pig wandered back.  When the Delaware responded with an attack and a war started.  In the process of the war the Dutch attacked the villages of  other nations, because they made no distinctions between "those Indians."  If the English hadn't beat them off the continent, their colony would have still failed.  About half a century after their failure they came back and only set up various, temporary fur posts.  This time they were better at relations with the native populations.  Even during the time of their colony they were good at trading.  They were the first ones to trade us guns, forcing the other nations to follow suit.  Their 18th Century traders continued in that tradition.  They also traded their silver, rather than trying to force us to trade for whiskey.  They also traded all the other standard trade goods of blankets and kettles, and such.  We sometimes called them the Mazina-ininiwag, the coin people.  
      The next ones are the English.  The Hurons couldn't pronounce an "L", so they called them the Yangees.  That name for them stuck for most other native people.  We all called them the Yangees.  The name Yankee, comes both from that, and the Dutch word Junkers.  They were in the continent just to settle.  Trading for them was a chore they felt they had to do to appease us, while they took up all the land.  Their prices were higher than the French or Dutch (smaller payout for furs), and they didn't like it if their people married native women.  They always wanted the natives to be their scouts, and often assumed that they were.  They made some distinction between various native peoples, but very little.  One good thing to say about them though, is they did uphold their treaties.  For instance The Ohio River valley was off limits to settle, because Kan-Tuk-Kee was a sacred place to all native peoples, and not to be owned by anyone.  When English colonists snuck in there anyway, we would report it and the English soldiers would come and force them back to the accepted lands.  This was one of the sources of contention between the Yangee colonists and the Yangee King, George III, that led to their Civil War over here.  
      When their Civil war was over, and the English colonists became independent from the Crown, they broke every  treaty made by the Yangee Crown.  They broke treaties with people or changed the terms of a treaty faster than the ink could dry.  They enforced these broken treaties with their sabers, which is why we call them the "Gichi-mookoman," the long-knife (today many shorten it to Gichokomo, or Chokomo).  Even so, a higher percentage of our populations enlist into the armed services than the percentage of Americans as a whole.  We also hold the flag with more honor than many white Americans.  I would say it's not so much that they love the country, but that they love the land that the country sits on.  
      Finally there were the Spanish.  In the southern hemisphere they just over ran everything.  On the Eastern Seaboard they didn't do so good though.   In the mid 1500's they tried to settle colonies throughout Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia.  They thought the native people were their slaves.  As such they didn't "exchange" gifts or trade.  They thought that a one time gift sold them into Spanish service   They freely beat or whipped the natives.  They also used the native women and adolescent girls as a tool for their sexual needs.  Viewing them all as slaves, from the minute the Spanish flag was planted on a beach also let them think it was okay every so often grab a few, and bring them to the auction blocks of Spain.  For this reason we sometimes called them the Awaakan-Maji-Manidoowag, the Slave Devils. 
            Almost entirely due to their inability to build relationships with the natives, or even to see us as human, their North American colonies on the Eastern Seaboard came to a quick and violent end.  Most of the colonies were completely massacred.  The difference between their ways though, and ours, is that warriors of those southeast native nations didn't make the killing of the women and children a part of their goal.  They would have been captured, brought back to their villages, and eventually adopted.  Their northern colonies were there and gone, long before the English or French got to the region. 
      The Spanish Fort recently discovered in North Carolina met with the same fate.  It only lasted about two years before its colonists were massacred and carried away, according to archeologist and historian Robin Beck, of the University of Michigan, working at the dig site.  
      This fort, known as Fort San Juan is being considered as the very first one in what is now the US interior.  It was built by a Spanish Capitan by the name of Juan Pardo, and the colony's purpose was to find gold.  That was the usual purpose for Spanish settlements.  This is the largest of the forts that Juan Pardo built.  

      This archeological find wasn't found by construction workers, like so many others lately.  It was found by a dig team from many universities, who were already excavating the site in the foothills of the Appalachian Mts.  It was also the site of an even more ancient Mississippian Mound Builder settlement.  While excavating the mounds, they first found some of the Spanish barracks.  "We have known for more than a decade where the Spanish soldiers were living," another excavator, Christopher Rodning of Tulane University, explained in a statement. 

      It was only about a month ago that the foundations of the fort were found.  They also used magnetronomy to probe down and see what is buried beneath the surface.  Some of the features they found in this way are the entryway to the fort, and a moat, 15 feet across and about 5 1/2 feet deep.  Also by just sheer digging they found an iron clasp of some kind. 

      Soon the dig season will be over, and the various archeologists and historians will go back to their universities and analyze their data, and publish papers on it.  They are, however, looking forward already to coming back next year to continue working on what has now become a multiple dig site. 

Ancient Mansion Uncovered and Discovered

post # 87  

      Since Friday afternoon I was at a reenactment in Danbury, Wisconsin.  I actually got home late on Sunday, but after unpacking I was too tired to be able to write a post.  The event was a Fur Trade era rendezvous.  The site for the event is the same site that had a fur post 200 years ago.  The North West Company built the post there to trade with the local natives who lived there, mostly Ojibwe.  The post was called Fort Folle Avoine, meaning "wild oats" for the wild rice that grew there.  After the NWCo got well established a second company, the XY Company had the gall to build a fur post 50 feet away from the NWCo fur post.  The Burnett County Historical Society along with many hard working volunteers have rebuilt the posts and the accompanying Ojibwe village on the same site.  
      The event was a great time.  We were inflicted with light rain, drizzle and mist for one of the days, but we were able to teach/interpret history to the public anyway.  Besides that, I spent a good deal of time visiting some of my greatest friends, sitting around their fires and hiding under there canvass during the times of the worst rain.  In that way the rains were a blessing.  In the evening a group of us that can play various instruments got together to play blue grass music and gospel songs.  Among them there was some really great talent.  We had a couple of banjos, several guitars, a couple of mandolins, a phenomenal fiddle player, and an equally awesome Dobro player.  Some of them also played for us at the Sunday morning church service.  I still have the sound of that Dobro going through my head two days later.  

                                                          Musicians at Church

                           Rendezvous Church Service.  Note the nicely shining sun.  

      By Saturday night the weather cleared, but was still unseasonably cold for the end of July, and on Sunday it got sunny and warm.  The weather was already nice by the time of the church service.  By the end of the day our canvass was all dry so we didn't have to deal with packing away wet canvass.  It was a necessary and restful weekend.  

      Now onto today's post.

      While building a new housing development in England the remains of a huge mansion were discovered.  The mansion was originally built near Wellington during the mid 12th Century.  By the mid 14th Century it was abandoned for reasons unknown.  According to Bob Davis the senior archeologist for Wessex Archeology, there are also no records of this mansion ever existing.  Everything about the site is a complete mystery.  
      There is a series of stone foundations for a whole series of buildings besides that of the mansion (chateau?).  After the site was abandoned stones and other building materials were cannibalized from the site and used elsewhere locally.  A piece of floor tile depicting a knight on horseback was discovered, and it matches another one in Glastonbury Abbey in nearby Somerset.  

      The researchers use this to point out the historical significance of the newly discovered building site, due to the floor tile being also found in such an important building.  Glastonbury Abbey burned during the 12th Century, and the rebuilding took until the 14th Century.  That corresponds to the same time when the "mystery" mansion was abandoned. 
      Excavation the site will continue for about another month.  
      I have my own simple, but not very detailed theories about the mansion's origins and its demise.  One just has to ask, "what was going on in England during the time it was built, and during the time it was abandoned?"  The mid 12th Century was a time of political and social turmoil.  Anglo-Saxon England had only been taken over by the Normans for a little less than a century.  The two cultures hadn't completely melded yet.  William was hated, and his son William Rufus was hated even more - enough to die in a "hunting accident."  He was followed by Henry, who did pretty good at finally beginning to unite the factions that would become the new nation.  Having no one else he felt was worthy to take his throne, he got the barons and earls to agree to pass the crown to his daughter Mathilda.  

      After his death some outlaw cousin Stephen thought he would make a better ruler, and thus began a civil war.  Yay, more chaos.  The country that was still too young to be connected, was divided, but not nice and neat.  It was spotty.  A cluster of villages would be loyal to Queen Maude, and right nearby would be a few villages loyal to Stephen.  Right on the other side of Stephen's villages would be more villages loyal to Maude, and so forth, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum,  ad nauseum.  

       It finally ended when Maude's son Henry II (of Anjou) came in and *royally* kicked Stephen's butt. (pun intended).  Peace finally reigned over the fledling nation (but not for the Archbishop of Canterbury - but that's a different story).  

      Because Henry II was also the son of Geoffrey the Duke of Anjou, this next series of Kings are called the Angevins.  Henry Married Eleanor of Aquitaine.  As a result of this, as big as England is, the Angevin kings had more land holdings in France than they did in England (or just about, anyway).  They all spoke French and most of them spent most of their time in France.  King Richard Lionheart only spent a total of six months of his reign in England.  That's why the various factions were able to meld into one culture.  They were left alone. 
      During Henry II's reign things like Parliament were established.  So was the policy of setting up totalitarian colonies in other people's lands filled with the baser sort of men and drunk and disorderly soldiers to impose brutality upon the local inhabitants.  By definition they called this latter aspect of occupation "order."  If anyone other than the monks in Angevin England could have read, the definition in their dictionaries would have given that as a definition for the word "order." ["to inflict pain, burden,  and misery until the objects are too scared and beaten to ever raise their eyes above waist level"].  This policy continued and was adopted and adapted until the days of G.A. Custer, when it ultimately failed.  
      The newly discovered buildings and mansion most likely had to have been built then by a supporter of Maude or someone who came over with Henry II, otherwise it would have been torn down.  In the rebuilding period right after the civil war, there was also a lot of unbuilding.  Supporters of Stephen were tried as treasonous dogs, and many were hung and/or drawn and quartered.  They had their lands seized and their building burned down and torn down.  It is possible though, that these buildings were built by a supporter of Stephen, but were viewed as just too nice to be destroyed and were just handed over to a supporter of Maude and Stephen.  

      As to the "mysterious" abandonment of the mansion, that is easier to guess.  In the mid 14th Century (seriously right in the middle of the century), in 1347-51, the Black Death had its European tour.  On third of the population of Europe perished, and the other two thirds were traumatized by it for life.  I'm sure that the neuroses they developed over it were also passed on to their children and grandchildren who had to put up with them.  During this short period of death and mayhem whole villages died out and were abandoned.  This is the most likely scenario here. 

Smart Knife

Science Fridays

Post # 86 

      When I say "smart knife" what I don't mean is "ouch! that knife smarts!" like a friend exclaimed while digging through a wooden box containing a knife made of obsidian.  He just barely grazed the edge and his knuckle was bleeding like a stuck hog.  Nor do I mean that the knife seemed smarter than the person wielding it, like the time a (different) friend used his high carbon steel Scottish dirk to cut a piece of nearly frozen butter for a concoction he was cooking.  He ended up in the hospital, with several stitches and a bad case of humility.  I also don't even mean that there is something new created in Silicon Valley,  or Kyoto, or Samsung or whoever called the "Smart Knife" that can slice, dice, chop, fillet, and let you download movies, check your E-mail, and give you GPS directions to the pantry, for that "very useful" invention hasn't been invented yet.  If it ever is invented, then remember that you saw the idea here first - and let me know, so that I can claim some kind of royalties for it.  And I definitely don't mean "Mac the Knife." 
      What I do mean when I say "smart knife" is a knife, or rather a scalpel, that has its own ability to distinguish between cancerous tissue and healthy tissue while it is being used (by capable doctors, of course).  
      This little gem, called the "Intelligent Knife" was created by researchers at Imperial College in London.  They published their findings in the medical journal, Science Translational Medicine on July 17.  The "iKnife" can't let you check you E-mail, but what it can do is instantly inform surgeons if the tissue they're cutting is cancerous or not.  

      Up until now the best a surgeon could do was make a cut, send a small sample to the lab to be tested, and wait about a half hour for the results to come back.  it's virtually impossible to tell the type of tissue by sight.  Even with the test, surgeons would often cut out a lot of healthy tissue "to make sure that they got it all."  With all that they would also often miss some of the cancer and the poor patient would have to come back for a second surgery.  That's both a sad and surprising shame, because the technology used for the knife was created in 1920.  

      The nearly 100 year old technology employed by the knife is called electrosurgery.  The knife is electrified with enough current to burn the tissue as it cuts, instantly cotterizing it.  Smoke is produced.  

                                          Dr. Zoltan Takats, the inventor of the iPhone
 
      Zoltan Takats, of Imperial College of London, the inventor of the iKnife, understood that the smoke would be rich in chemicals.  Using a mass spectrometer he analyzed the smoke as to its chemical make up.  Using it he analyzed the tissue samples of 302 patients and recorded the results.  While doing so they analyzed and recorded thousands of different tissues, both cancerous and healthy, of everything from the brain and spinal cord, through every organ in the body to the skin, bone, and muscles.  All of these were added to the iKnife's database.  

      The mass spectrometer is hooked up directly to the iKnife.  Using the information in its database it has been able to give results in less than three seconds.  It has an accuracy rating of 100%, and has been used to diagnose tissue from 91 patients.  
      Takats said, "We believe it has the potential to reduce tumor recurrence rates and enable more patients to survive.  The iKnife can determine things other than cancer.  For instance it can also identify tissues with an inadequate blood supply.  

      I will be at a historical reenactment all weekend, so there will be no new posts until after I come back. 

Where's All the Gold?

Post # 85  

      It is one of the most malleable metals.  In fact it is so malleable that it is really kind of useless.  You can't make a usable knife out of it, unless you're going to cut something really soft, like a fungus.  You definitely can't use it to make an axe.  As armor it would be more effective to use a second shirt, or a jacket.  But it's shiny, and people like shiny.  It's shininess alone doesn't give gold its value though, for both brass and bronze can be made to shine (their value lies in their strength).  Silver gleams.  Gold however is rare.  
      It is very rare - not just here on earth, but also in the universe.  Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, silicon, and even iron are found in abundance wherever in the universe you look.  But gold is hard to find.  Because of its rarity people want it.  It makes them stand out.  They can say, "I have something you don't."  When rulers have gold it shows that they have power, for they can have something you don't.  And if you do have some gold, they have more - much more.  They have it in abundance.  Pirates sail the roughest seas to get their hands on some more gold.  Highwaymen held people up for it.  Miners dug and panned for it, politicians lie to get more of it, and we work our butts off every day for it, and we rarely see any of it, and the measly amount of gold substitute we get is spent before it ever arrives.  Everybody wants gold.  

                                            Pirates have always had a fondness for gold

      Why?  Why should everyone want something shiny, yet metallically useless just because it's so rare?  If you knew the full answer to that you would also be able to ponder and know why a bowl of petunias would say, "Oh no, not again" before crashing to the ground.  Face it.  People want that rare crap.  
      A scientific team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics  have just figured out why gold is so rare.  It is rare because of the process by which it is made.  Gold and other heavy elements are produced as the result of a collision between two neutron stars.  Neutron stars aren't the most common thing as it is, but to find them in a pair is truly rare. 
      Neutron stars are what is left after a star explodes in a nova.  All that is left of it is neutrons.  They are so dense that they are only a few miles wide, but a mere teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh 100 million tons.  

      When neutron stars collide it produces an explosive event called a short gamma ray burst.  This is what creates the gold and other heavy elements.  Last month the researchers at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recorded one such event.  They witnessed a glow that lasted for days, which they say would have created a very large amount of heavy elements, including gold.  
      "We estimate that the amount of gold produced and ejected during the merger of the two neutron stars may be as large as ten moon masses - quite a lot of bling!"  lead author Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  Berger presented his team's findings at a press conference on July 17. 

 

 

      Gamma ray bursts are flashes of high level energy produced by massive explosions.  They can be created either by two neutron stars colliding, or by a black hole swallowing up a neutron star, as in the series of pictures above.  

      Berger and his team of researchers from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have submitted their results for publication in the Astrophysical Journal of Letters.  

      Getting all that gold wouldn't be easy.  First of all the Gamma ray burst that was witnessed was 3.9 billion light years away in a "galaxy far far away."  Secondly the ejected material extends over a vastness of space of many, many light years across.  You couldn't exactly pan for it.