Slashdot Mirror
The Riddle of Baghdad's Battery
Jodrell writes "The BBC has an interesting article about a 2,200 year old battery discovered in Iraq in 1938. It is basically a clay pot containing a copper/iron core immersed in an electrolye solution (probably acidic vinegar). The article talks about how this priceless artifact as well as many others, from the same civilisation that invented writing and the wheel, could be threatened by the impending war."
This is just another example of why aggressive archaelology is generally a bad thing. Archaeologists, whose real aim is to 'advance science' which just so happens to translate into not ever having to leave academia and get a job, make it their aim to uproot and document everything.
Once all the evidence and traces, which happened to have survived all the years for various reasons, is housed in steel and glass buildings, we can be assured that within a few generations it'll be reduced to dust.
Two hundred years from now when they've perfected some sort of x-ray telemetry measurement and can 'view' tombs without doing anything at all to disturb their contents, there won't be any tombs left undisturbed.
But Johnny won't have had to go out and get a job after graduating. He's got tenure now.
This must be the most pathetic anti-war stretch to date.
We must stand by and permit the torture and murder of unknown tens of thousands of Iraqis by the Hussein regime, and condemn an entire generation of Iraqis to lifelong misery and terror, because the alternative has the remote chance of destroying an ancient battery!
The priorities of the author are certainly on display.
Now tell me what incentives Germany and Belgium have to oppose war?
Fucking America. One of your commments on some poll expressed the belief that you'd "never want to move to the USA". I'm constantly amazed at how much contempt Europeans have for Americans - it doesn't usually show until the subject of the US government comes up. It's astounding how they can treat you like a friend, but then tell you that you're a tool of a brutal, corrupt state that deserved what it got on 9-11 (or that your president planned it).
Frankly, I'd never move to Europe, because I know I'd be treated like lowlife, uncultured scum there, and told tasteless Bush jokes all the time by morons who elected Chirac and Schroeder.