It is little wonder that both the Bible and Epic of Gilgamesh have many common themes. Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong. There are many themes that are repeated in both Gilgamesh and the Bible.
In Gilgamesh, the walls are made of "...burnt brick and good." (Sandars, 61) In the Bible, people come together, saying "...let us make bricks, and burn them thoughly," in order to create the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:3). The Jews regarded the Ziggarat (Summerian temple/pyramid/great public work) as a bad thing made of burnt brick. This smae structure was at the core of Summerian life. The same thing is described by both Summerians and Jews with very similar language (perhaps the building blocks of an oral tradition cum written document.
The flood is another major theme in both documents. However, the Jews saw the flood as a punishment. People were wicked and corrupt, so they had to be wiped from the face of the Earth. This was not done on a whim. In Gilgamesh, Enlil (one of the gods) says "the uproar of mankind is intolerableand sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel" and the gods decide to wipe out humanity on a whim so they can sleep (Sandars 108).
The Jews migrated out of Summaria, forsaking Summarian civilization to become sheperds. While many of the stories were turned on their heads to better fit the Jewish world view, many elements were taken from the familier Summerian stories. The fact that there are similarities is more likely evidence of common cultural heritage rather than common events in some long forgotton past.
References
Coogan, Michael D.
1991. The NewOxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press:New York.
Sandars, N. K., trans. and ed.
1972. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Books:London.
I not trying to troll or flame you or anything, but could you please tell me where you get the 100 million BP? Also, just because a perception of gravity may have evolved 100 million BP doesn't mean that it can't be "updated" through time to incorporate the new values of g. It seems that the astronaughts adapted in as much as 15 days. Not perfectly, but who knows what 30 day could do; or a year; or a century; or 100 millino years. In addition, it seems to me that the study does not determine that gravity is genetic or in the brain from birth, but that by the time someone is old enough to get on a space shuttle and play around in zero-G, they have some kind of subconscious understanding of gravity.
yeah. while i no longer go there, i did for a couple years. several years ago, one of the stats profs "proved" that all numbers were equal to 47. it caught on. it is now seen as a sacred number there, and as several pomona grads went on to write for star trek: the next generation. in another bit of trivia, the borg are named after oldenborg dorm, a dorm into which people go in, but do not come out.
No, I think that a mega ton sounds much more impresive than a ton, and after you get above three or four zeros, it is all the same: "really big number." 58 Gigatons sounds smaller than either 58,000 Megatons or 58,000,000 tons. However, 58,000 Megatons seems bigger than 58,000,000 tons, because they are both "really big numbers," but megaton has the prefix "mega-", making it seem large. People just can't handle "really big numbers."
Alright! For the last two years, I have been looking for a reason to keep the bomb shelter in good repair. Before I was born, it was there in case of nuclear war. Then, the cold war ended, and there was a time when the shelter served no purpose. Thank the gods for y2k, there was once again a reason to keep it clean. But the computers continued to work, damn it! I damn well want to us my bomb shelter! Now, I have 47 years of anticipation. Well, its better than nothing, I suppose.
"Suckage" may be grammatically incorrect, but in the study of linguistics, it is rather intereting. There is a new use of an old word with an irregular ending in noun form. When the word finds a new use, people, at some level (either conscious (sp) or not) try to regularize to word to common English usage.
Take fly for example. What is the past tense?
Flew, right? As in "the bird flew;" however, if you are playing baseball, it is appropriate to say "the batter flied out."
While it may not be grammatically "correct," suckage seems to be an understood phrase, used by several people, and is thus linguistically correct.
Of course, I assume that the "Language Nazism" in general was meant as a joke, so I'll shut up now.
While I myself am a pacifist, I don't have any illusions about past war fare. The Indians native to the Americas fought when they had to, but most tribes were hunter-gatherers. As I said before, hkunter-gatherers don't have the resources to fight wars. To say that the Aztec, Maya, and Inca are a representative sample is false.
Yes, the Aztec were mean and nasty, but for every Aztec-type group in the new world, I can name two hunter-gatherer or horticulture based groups that did not engage in warfare because the resources (i.e. food, people, etc.) were simply not available.
My point is not that the Indians were "noble savages", but, rather, that the original post claimed that the Indians were on the way to destroying themselves, and that what eventually occured due to the Europeans was bound to happen, so what difference does it make.
just about 2000 years ago, a volcano near the meso-american city state of Cuicuiloco blew its top, covering a large portion of the area in ash. there was apparantly a major influx of people from this city state, leading to a major boom in the population of Teo. The temple of the sun was built about fifty years later, nearly 2000 years ago
"Nomadic warriors?!" Where the hell do you get this phrase? A large number of native groups could have been defined as "hunter-gatherers" (foragers and collectors; travellers and prcessors -- depends on who you read, but I digress). Hunter-gatherers are the most nomadic societies, but they also have the least capacity for warfare. They live in small kin groups, with generally fewer than 50 people. How the hell are you going to wage war with only 50 people!!
Also, these groups don't tend to have a strong sense of personal proporty, so what are they going to fight a war over? Wars are fought by pastroalist and agrarian societies that have the resources to provide a specialized fighting caste/guild/group. Granted, the Aztec, Inca, Maya, Anasazi, Iriquois and a whole mess of others probably reached this level, but hunter-gatherers tend not to fight wars, thus your statement that "most Native American tribes would be classified as nomadic warriors," is just wrong.
Incidentally, the "noble savages" of the Americas were doing quite a good job of eradicating themselves before anybody else came along.
Where are you getting this idea from? What specific groups are you talking about? How were they wiping themselves out? How was this worse than smallpox, as your post seems to imply?
The "truth" is that smallpox and other European diseases wiped out a huge percentage of the native population in the Americas. Blankets, used by sick individuals were traded to the Indians as an early biological weapon. Europeans brought with them weapons that could not be beaten by native warfare, horses that gave them an incredible edge, and vast numbers.
While "genocide" is a bit strong, to not acknowledge the role that Europeans had in subjugating and wiping out a huge population is as equally irresposnible as claiming that the Europeans did commit genocide.
2000 years ago, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the entire world, with a population exceeding 100,000. The Aztec, several hundred years later, created an economic empire that may well have streched from southern Colorado to Panama. The Inca existed in a huge military empire that spanned a large chunck of the Pacific Coast in South America. Granted, the continents on the whole never had the population density of the world, but there were people farming on the Mississippi, hunting in the Apalachians, and making a decent living in the Great Basin as well.
Certified mail does not have to be signed by the recipient. Mail sent with signature confirmation must be signed. Certified mail just means that the last post office that deals with the letter before it is delivered keeps a record that the letter arrived at the post office.
A letter can be sent certified mail and not be signed. If you want the signature of the person you are sending the letter to, use signature confirmation or insured mail.
Actually, as has been posted above, he may not have recieved the letter. It was sent certified mail. I believe that the post office that the letter last went through should have a record of the letter arriving at the post office, but he did not have to sign for it and may never have recieved it. Only if the letter was sent with signature confirmation or return reciept would he have had to sign anything. While legally he is SOL, it is possible that the letter never arrived.
Akh!!! And I was actually paying attention to the spelling! Oh, hell, blame it on dyslexia:) (47 and 74 are, in fact, the same number and, therefore, equal) Also, don't worry about bashing my spelling. I don't take myself that seriously. Now, repeat 1000 times:
Perhaps it is just paranoia, but I am sure that PayPal hates me ^_^
Also, never having actually looked up either word in the dictionary, I had always assumed that "emnity" and "animosity" had the same root, thus "amnity", which is not a word. But, ultimatly, I consider PayPal an enemy, and emnity has a greater aesthetic (please, don't bash my spelling on that one) appeal than animosity. It fit the metre of the line.
Just out of curiosity, is there any compilation of statistics any where? What does the user curve look like? Is it normal? Is it somehow skewed? What do the bottom 3% of users look like? What is the mean number of page loads per user?
Maybe most peolpe don't much care, but I would like to see a statistical analysis of/. reading habit, perhaps in the faq or in a story. It might be interesting.
My other question is then: Do you want to deal with PayPal? Did you actually read the article that was on/. a few days ago? Have you seen the way that PayPal abuses customers, especcially those with large accounts?
I would hate to see/. and/. readers get gyped out of a great deal of money because PayPal is corrupt. They are not FDIC insured, and if something should happen, you have little recourse.
I egarly anticipate other means of paying. However, I think you should seriously reconsider starting a relationship with PayPal. Just my two cents.
Again, I will pay. Have have paid for several "ad-free" sites in the last months. There are other sites that I will pay for. But for the sake of the gods, I will not use PayPal. I don't trust them to deliver my money. I don't really trust them to maintain my privacy. I have had a hell of a time trying to get in touch with anyone there to answer questions I have. I bear a great deal of amnity towards PayPal. I would much rather send cash, taped to the back of a post-card.
Slashdot Mirror
It is little wonder that both the Bible and Epic of Gilgamesh have many common themes. Much of the Bible was written by people who had lived in Summaria, then left, perhaps because they felt that civillization was wrong. There are many themes that are repeated in both Gilgamesh and the Bible.
In Gilgamesh, the walls are made of "...burnt brick and good." (Sandars, 61) In the Bible, people come together, saying "...let us make bricks, and burn them thoughly," in order to create the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:3). The Jews regarded the Ziggarat (Summerian temple/pyramid/great public work) as a bad thing made of burnt brick. This smae structure was at the core of Summerian life. The same thing is described by both Summerians and Jews with very similar language (perhaps the building blocks of an oral tradition cum written document.
The flood is another major theme in both documents. However, the Jews saw the flood as a punishment. People were wicked and corrupt, so they had to be wiped from the face of the Earth. This was not done on a whim. In Gilgamesh, Enlil (one of the gods) says "the uproar of mankind is intolerableand sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel" and the gods decide to wipe out humanity on a whim so they can sleep (Sandars 108).
The Jews migrated out of Summaria, forsaking Summarian civilization to become sheperds. While many of the stories were turned on their heads to better fit the Jewish world view, many elements were taken from the familier Summerian stories. The fact that there are similarities is more likely evidence of common cultural heritage rather than common events in some long forgotton past.
References
Coogan, Michael D.
1991. The NewOxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press:New York.
Sandars, N. K., trans. and ed.
1972. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Books:London.
I not trying to troll or flame you or anything, but could you please tell me where you get the 100 million BP? Also, just because a perception of gravity may have evolved 100 million BP doesn't mean that it can't be "updated" through time to incorporate the new values of g. It seems that the astronaughts adapted in as much as 15 days. Not perfectly, but who knows what 30 day could do; or a year; or a century; or 100 millino years. In addition, it seems to me that the study does not determine that gravity is genetic or in the brain from birth, but that by the time someone is old enough to get on a space shuttle and play around in zero-G, they have some kind of subconscious understanding of gravity.
yeah. while i no longer go there, i did for a couple years. several years ago, one of the stats profs "proved" that all numbers were equal to 47. it caught on. it is now seen as a sacred number there, and as several pomona grads went on to write for star trek: the next generation. in another bit of trivia, the borg are named after oldenborg dorm, a dorm into which people go in, but do not come out.
Just out of curiosity, did you or anyone you know ever go to Pomona College in Claremont, California?
As the AC points out, 58,000,000,000.
My bad.
No, I think that a mega ton sounds much more impresive than a ton, and after you get above three or four zeros, it is all the same: "really big number." 58 Gigatons sounds smaller than either 58,000 Megatons or 58,000,000 tons. However, 58,000 Megatons seems bigger than 58,000,000 tons, because they are both "really big numbers," but megaton has the prefix "mega-", making it seem large. People just can't handle "really big numbers."
Alright! For the last two years, I have been looking for a reason to keep the bomb shelter in good repair. Before I was born, it was there in case of nuclear war. Then, the cold war ended, and there was a time when the shelter served no purpose. Thank the gods for y2k, there was once again a reason to keep it clean. But the computers continued to work, damn it! I damn well want to us my bomb shelter! Now, I have 47 years of anticipation. Well, its better than nothing, I suppose.
There is old Russian sayink:
Church is near, but road is icy.
Pub is far, I will be careful.
:)
"Suckage" may be grammatically incorrect, but in the study of linguistics, it is rather intereting. There is a new use of an old word with an irregular ending in noun form. When the word finds a new use, people, at some level (either conscious (sp) or not) try to regularize to word to common English usage.
Take fly for example. What is the past tense?
Flew, right? As in "the bird flew;" however, if you are playing baseball, it is appropriate to say "the batter flied out."
While it may not be grammatically "correct," suckage seems to be an understood phrase, used by several people, and is thus linguistically correct.
Of course, I assume that the "Language Nazism" in general was meant as a joke, so I'll shut up now.
While I myself am a pacifist, I don't have any illusions about past war fare. The Indians native to the Americas fought when they had to, but most tribes were hunter-gatherers. As I said before, hkunter-gatherers don't have the resources to fight wars. To say that the Aztec, Maya, and Inca are a representative sample is false.
Yes, the Aztec were mean and nasty, but for every Aztec-type group in the new world, I can name two hunter-gatherer or horticulture based groups that did not engage in warfare because the resources (i.e. food, people, etc.) were simply not available.
My point is not that the Indians were "noble savages", but, rather, that the original post claimed that the Indians were on the way to destroying themselves, and that what eventually occured due to the Europeans was bound to happen, so what difference does it make.
just about 2000 years ago, a volcano near the meso-american city state of Cuicuiloco blew its top, covering a large portion of the area in ash. there was apparantly a major influx of people from this city state, leading to a major boom in the population of Teo. The temple of the sun was built about fifty years later, nearly 2000 years ago
"Nomadic warriors?!" Where the hell do you get this phrase? A large number of native groups could have been defined as "hunter-gatherers" (foragers and collectors; travellers and prcessors -- depends on who you read, but I digress). Hunter-gatherers are the most nomadic societies, but they also have the least capacity for warfare. They live in small kin groups, with generally fewer than 50 people. How the hell are you going to wage war with only 50 people!!
Also, these groups don't tend to have a strong sense of personal proporty, so what are they going to fight a war over? Wars are fought by pastroalist and agrarian societies that have the resources to provide a specialized fighting caste/guild/group. Granted, the Aztec, Inca, Maya, Anasazi, Iriquois and a whole mess of others probably reached this level, but hunter-gatherers tend not to fight wars, thus your statement that "most Native American tribes would be classified as nomadic warriors," is just wrong.
Where are you getting this idea from?
What specific groups are you talking about?
How were they wiping themselves out?
How was this worse than smallpox, as your post seems to imply?
The "truth" is that smallpox and other European diseases wiped out a huge percentage of the native population in the Americas. Blankets, used by sick individuals were traded to the Indians as an early biological weapon. Europeans brought with them weapons that could not be beaten by native warfare, horses that gave them an incredible edge, and vast numbers.
While "genocide" is a bit strong, to not acknowledge the role that Europeans had in subjugating and wiping out a huge population is as equally irresposnible as claiming that the Europeans did commit genocide.
2000 years ago, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the entire world, with a population exceeding 100,000. The Aztec, several hundred years later, created an economic empire that may well have streched from southern Colorado to Panama. The Inca existed in a huge military empire that spanned a large chunck of the Pacific Coast in South America. Granted, the continents on the whole never had the population density of the world, but there were people farming on the Mississippi, hunting in the Apalachians, and making a decent living in the Great Basin as well.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of stuffed animals!
Certified mail does not have to be signed by the recipient. Mail sent with signature confirmation must be signed. Certified mail just means that the last post office that deals with the letter before it is delivered keeps a record that the letter arrived at the post office.
A letter can be sent certified mail and not be signed. If you want the signature of the person you are sending the letter to, use signature confirmation or insured mail.
"Certified" doe not mean "Signed"
Actually, as has been posted above, he may not have recieved the letter. It was sent certified mail. I believe that the post office that the letter last went through should have a record of the letter arriving at the post office, but he did not have to sign for it and may never have recieved it. Only if the letter was sent with signature confirmation or return reciept would he have had to sign anything. While legally he is SOL, it is possible that the letter never arrived.
Akh!!! And I was actually paying attention to the spelling! Oh, hell, blame it on dyslexia :) (47 and 74 are, in fact, the same number and, therefore, equal) Also, don't worry about bashing my spelling. I don't take myself that seriously. Now, repeat 1000 times:
...
enmity
enmity
enmity
enmity
enmity
Perhaps it is just paranoia, but I am sure that PayPal hates me ^_^
Also, never having actually looked up either word in the dictionary, I had always assumed that "emnity" and "animosity" had the same root, thus "amnity", which is not a word. But, ultimatly, I consider PayPal an enemy, and emnity has a greater aesthetic (please, don't bash my spelling on that one) appeal than animosity. It fit the metre of the line.
"CEMeNT: the foundation of Microsoft's most stable OS ever."
^_^
Correct. Pardon my speling. EMNITY was the word I was thinking of.
Just out of curiosity, is there any compilation of statistics any where? What does the user curve look like? Is it normal? Is it somehow skewed? What do the bottom 3% of users look like? What is the mean number of page loads per user?
/. reading habit, perhaps in the faq or in a story. It might be interesting.
Maybe most peolpe don't much care, but I would like to see a statistical analysis of
Taco,
/. a few days ago? Have you seen the way that PayPal abuses customers, especcially those with large accounts?
/. and /. readers get gyped out of a great deal of money because PayPal is corrupt. They are not FDIC insured, and if something should happen, you have little recourse.
My other question is then: Do you want to deal with PayPal? Did you actually read the article that was on
I would hate to see
I egarly anticipate other means of paying. However, I think you should seriously reconsider starting a relationship with PayPal. Just my two cents.
zander
Again, I will pay. Have have paid for several "ad-free" sites in the last months. There are other sites that I will pay for. But for the sake of the gods, I will not use PayPal. I don't trust them to deliver my money. I don't really trust them to maintain my privacy. I have had a hell of a time trying to get in touch with anyone there to answer questions I have. I bear a great deal of amnity towards PayPal. I would much rather send cash, taped to the back of a post-card.