Monday, April 30, 2012

Did Mohammad Exist? with Robert Spenser




We know Islam began as a barbarian outburst that overwhelmed the weakly protected parts of the ancient Roman world.  It was purely driven by loot and differed not at all from similar events in the fifth century on the Rhine.

What must also be said is that the Koran is historically a post facto production purportedly inspired by the sayings of Mohammad around a lifeline.  Even more telling is that the sections are then shuffled to obscure the lifeline and it is also apparent that any position is then deliberately countered in another statement pretty well eliminating any absolutes for the ruler.

Think long and hard on the little book of the thoughts of Chairman Mao and you understand the template.  It also was the right time and place.  The new regimes were competing directly with the state religion of Roman Christianity and its scriptures.  To be a real empire, scripture was mandatory.  That was not a problem in the fifth century.

It is completely credible that a seventh century scholar was tasked with providing a proper scripture to compete with the underlying challenge of Christianity which was certain to overtake any barbarian ethos as did happen in Europe.

There is also little that is easier to write than a string of short sayings cribbed from centuries of similar collected material and translated into excellent Arabic.  It nicely disposes of the historical problem of the source education of Mohammad.

It is also completely plausible that this could occur and that it even would occur as a post imperial event. The lack of actual historicity is telling when the prophet and his family acted on the largest stage.  The entirety of the ministry of Jesus was in the shadows during his life, while the emergence of his followers was almost immediate and visible to the point that inside of a few short years the emperor Nero acted against them.  The movement remained almost unled until Constantine four centuries later.

If so, then Islam is one of the most successful of founding myths that honored the ambitions of a founding family.





Did Muhammad Exist? With Robert Spenser

Posted by Bruce Thornton on Apr 23rd, 2012



Editor’s note: Robert Spencer’s acclaimed new book, Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins, is now available.

One of the jihadists’ most potent psychological weapons is the double standard Muslims have imposed on the West. Temples and churches are destroyed and vandalized, Christians murdered and driven from the lands of Christianity’s birth, anti-Semitic lunacy propagated by high-ranking Muslim clerics, and Christian territory like northern Cyprus ethnically cleansed and occupied by Muslims. Yet the West ignores these depredations all the while it agonizes over trivial “insults” to Islam and Mohammed, and decries the thought-crime of “Islamophobia” whenever even factual statements are made about Islamic history and theology. This groveling behavior confirms the traditional Islamic chauvinism that sees Muslims as the “best of nations” destined by Allah to rule the world through violent jihad.

Even in the rarefied world of academic scholarship, this fear of offense has protected Islam from the sort of critical scrutiny every other world religion has undergone for centuries. Some modern scholars who do exercise their intellectual freedom and investigate these issues, like Christoph Luxenberg or Ibn Warraq, must work incognito to avoid the wrath of the adherents of the “Religion of Peace.” Now Robert Spencer, the fearless director of Jihad Watch and author of several books telling the truths about Islam obscured by a frightened academy and media, in his new book Did Muhammad Exist? challenges this conspiracy of fear and silence by surveying the scholarship and historical evidence for the life and deeds of Islam’s founder.

As Spencer traces the story of Muhammed through ancient sources and archaeology, the evidence for the Prophet’s life becomes more and more evanescent. The name Muhammad, for example, appears only 4 times in the Qur’an, as compared to the 136 mentions of Moses in the Qur’an. And those references to Muhammad say nothing specific about his life. The first biography of Muhammad, written by Ibn Ishaq 125 years after the Prophet’s death, is the primary source of biographical detail, yet it “comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and thereby preserved additional sections.”

Nor are ancient sources outside Islam any more forthcoming. An early document from around 635, by a Jewish writer converting to Christianity, merely mentions a generic “prophet” who comes “armed with a sword.” But in this document the “prophet” is still alive 3 years after Muhammad’s death. And this prophet was notable for proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Jewish messiah. “At the height of the Arabian conquests,” Spencer writes, “the non Muslim sources are as silent as the Muslim ones are about the prophet and holy book that were supposed to have inspired those conquests.” This uncertainty in the ancient sources is a consistent feature of Spencer’s succinct survey of them. Indeed, these sources call into question the notion that Islam itself was recognized as a new, coherent religion. In 651, when Muawiya called on the Byzantine emperor Constantine to reject Christianity, he evoked the “God of our father Abraham,” not Islam per se. One hundred years after the death of Muhammad, “the image of the prophet of Islam remained fuzzy.”

Non-literary sources from the late 7th century are equally vague. Dedicatory inscriptions on dams and bridges make no mention of Islam, the Qur’an, or Mohammad. Coins bear the words “in the name of Allah,” the generic word for God used by Christians and Jews, but say nothing about Muhammad as Allah’s prophet or anything about Islam. Particularly noteworthy is the absence of Islam’s foundational statement “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Later coins referring specifically to Muhammad depict him with a cross, contradicting the Qur’anic rejection of Christ’s crucifixion and later prohibitions against displaying crucifixes. Given that other evidence suggests that the word “muhammad” is an honorific meaning “praised one,” it is possible that these coins do not refer to the historical Muhammad at all.

Related to the issue of Muhammad’s historical reality is the date of the Qur’an, supposedly dictated to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel. Yet Spencer’s analysis of the inscriptions inside the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, with their mixture of Qur’anic and non-Qur’anic verses along with variants of canonical Qur’anic scripture, suggests rather that the Qur’an came into being later than 691 when the mosque was completed. Indeed, the inscriptions could be referring not to Muhammad but to a version of Jesus believed in by a heretical sect that denied his divinity. At any rate, the first historical inscription that offers evidence of Islamic theology dates to 696 when the caliph Abd al-Malik minted coins without a representation of the sovereign and with theshahada, the Islamic profession of faith, inscribed on them. At this same time we begin to see references by non-Muslims to Muslims. Before then, the conquerors were called Ishmaelites, Saracens, or Hagarians. This evidence, Spencer suggests, raises the provocative possibility that al-Malik “greatly expanded on the nascent Muhammad myth for his own political purposes.” Likewise the Hadith, the collections of Muhammad’s sayings and deeds that form “the basis for Islamic law and practice regarding both individual religious observance and the governance of the Islamic state.” They also elucidate obscure Qur’anic verses, providing “the prism through which the vast majority of Muslims understand the Qur’an.” Yet there is no evidence for the existence of these biographical details of the Hadith before their compilation. This suggests that those details were invented as political tools for use in the factional political conflicts of the Islamic world.

Spencer casts an equally keen critical eye over the early biographies of Mohammad to find the same problems with source authenticity and origins, and their conflicts with other Islamic traditions. These problems, along with the miraculous and folk elements of Ibn Ishaq’s biography, suggest that the latter arose long after the collection of the Qur’an. As Spencer concludes, “If Ibn Ishaq is not a historically trustworthy source, what is left of the life of Muhammad?” The history of Islam and Mohammad recalls the statement of the reporter in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” particularly when the legend was so useful for conquest and the consolidation of power during factional rivalries among Muslim rulers and sects.

So too with the integrity of the Qur’an, the supposedly unchanging and uncreated words of Allah dictated to Mohammad, the perfect copy of the eternal book transmitted in its purity without alteration or addition. Yet apart from fragments, modern Qur’ans are based on manuscripts that date no farther back then the medieval period. The first mention of the Qur’an appears in 710, decades after it allegedly inspired Muslim conquests from Persia to North Africa. Nor is it true that the book has not changed: “Even Islamic tradition shows this contention to be highly questionable, with indications that some of the Qur’an was lost and other parts were added to or otherwise changed.” Such textual variants, revisions, lost passages, numerous influences from Jewish and Christian writings and doctrines, and the presence of words in the Syriac language (likely including the word “Qur’an” itself), along with the fact that about one-fifth of the book is simply incomprehensible––all call into question the idea of the Qur’an’s purity unchanged since it was divinely dictated to Mohammad.

Spencer’s careful, detailed, well-reasoned survey and analysis of the historical evidence offer strong evidence that Muhammad and Islam itself were post facto creations of Arab conquerors who needed a “political theology” delivered by a “warrior prophet” in order to unify the vast territories and diverse religious and ethnic groups now subjected to Muslim power, and to provide a potent basis for loyalty to their new overlords. As Spencer explains, “the empire came first and the theology came later.”

“The full truth of whether a prophet named Muhammad lived in seventh-century Arabia,” Spencer concludes, “and if he did, what sort of a man he was, may never be known. But it would be intellectually irresponsible not to ask the question or consider the implications of the provocative evidence that pioneering scholars have assembled.”  The great service Spencer provides goes beyond popularizing the critical study of one of the world’s largest religions in order to advance our knowledge and establish historical reality. At a time when the threat of jihadist violence has silenced many people and intimidated them into voluntarily surrendering their right to free speech and the pursuit of truth, Spencer’s brave book also demonstrates the importance of those quintessential and powerful Western ideals.

Irish Giants Have Genetic Basis




This helps us put this all together.  We have a source population in Ireland of red haired giants that plausibly became common and even became part of a tribal group possibly sought after for military prowess.  This population is indicated in Scandinavia and Scotland also.  Most important they were certainly present and extant adjacent to the Irish Sea which was part of the return route for the annual Minoan/Atlantean Copper fleet that passed every year from 2400 BC through 1159BC.

It is also plausible that independent Irish expeditions sailed to take advantage of the Hudson river - Great Lakes Route to the Copper fields.  We have extensive Bronze Age evidence along the environs of this route including the report today on red haired giants located near Niagara Falls.  Slowly but surely the evidence has been adding up since the early 1980’s when Berry Fell drew attention to it and was roundly ignored.

The giants though are very important simply because they are absolutely alien to North America including confirmation that the DNA is effectively British.  Now deniers must get past the existence of hard evidence that includes extraordinary bones and DNA.  They simply cannot have it both ways.

For the record, there are several reports and apparent sources of hard evidence to police up for a complete study once the archeologists decide to accept the plausibility of the Bronze Age Minoan – Atlantean global trade culture.

It is a really good bet that these giants were prized by the Minoans to have along to impress opposing forces.  The tale of Goliath is the tale of only one man with the Philistine army which was a Minoan colony at least.  Yet that was enough to dishearten the Israelites.

Bronze Age European presence in Eastern North America is shaping up to be persuasive.  Most likely it led the mound building Hopewell culture in its entirety.  After all, the commonality for this 1300 year presence world wide appears to be the building of some form of pyramid.  This was mostly done initially at least with individual sacks of soil and rock.  In the Mississippi, the use of earth and gravels may well have been the only option.

This includes the Nile Delta, then Minoan in culture in all likelihood as well as locales wherever they established a sizable presence.

Legends of Irish Giants Are More Than Tall Tales

Ariel Marshall sent me the link to this article and we both feel it is sure to have a bearing on the matter of the Giant Early Americans....
FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2012

LEGENDS OF IRISH GIANTS ARE MORE THAN TALL TALES

David Moye Contributor Feb 20, 2011 – 9:16 AM

http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.ca/2012/04/legends-of-irish-giants-are-more-than.html

Although the Irish legend of leprechauns [Cobbling shoes forever] is probably just a load of blarney, there's scientific evidence suggesting that the fabled stories of giants living on the Emerald Isle aren't just tall tales.

According to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, it seems that Northern Ireland is a hot spot for people with pituitary adenomas -- tumors that can cause the pituitary gland to pump out 50 times more growth hormones than normal, often leading to enormous growth spurts.

Familiar with Ireland's folkloric history as a home to giants, researcher Dr. Marta Korbonits, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Barts and the London School of Medicine, looked to the past and found a genetic link connecting four modern-day Northern Ireland families with one of the nation's most famous titans.

Korbonits and crew used DNA extracted from the teeth of Charles Byrne, a 7-foot-7 giant who made a big impression in London during the 18th century, to discover a genetic mutation for the pituitary problem.

In addition, they were able to connect that mutation with four modern-day Northern Ireland families, including Brendan Holland, a 6-foot-9 giant who, according to the "Today" show, would have grown to 8 feet had his tumor not been treated with radiation at the age of 19.

"I consider myself extraordinarily lucky," Holland told "Today" show correspondent Michelle Kosinski.

Holland and Byrne's inherited gene mutation for gigantism has even deeper roots: a common ancestor who lived an estimated 1,425-1,650 years earlier -- or 57-66 generations ago.

But the findings have Holland more interested in the future than the past.

"I know that my children or my grandchildren could be screened for this rogue gene and if they are sufferers (of familial isolated pituitary adenoma), they can be given early treatment," he told MSNBC.

Charles Byrne (1761-1783), known as the Irish Giant, is depicted with various Edinburgh notables.

Korbonits hopes this new evidence can lead to a better understanding of pituitary adenomas.

"These people are not weirdos or freaks, but just ordinary ill people, as anybody else who inherits an increased chance to get a disease from their parents, as many of us do with other diseases, such as heart disease or diabetes," she said.


Meanwhile, the news that gigantism is genetic and, if discovered in time, can be minimized is big news to the folks at Ripley's Believe It Or Not -- a company famous for celebrating and promoting various anomalies of nature, including giants.


"I wonder if the NBA could be in trouble," said Ripley's spokesman Tim O'Brien. "Still, gigantism is not something we wish upon anyone. Robert Ripley himself was very attuned to freaks of nature -- as are we -- and medical science has taken care of many problems, such as if a person has an extra leg or excessive obesity, so if this discovery can relieve people of suffering, that's a good thing."   


Families that run to gigantism are independantly known from Scotland and Scandinavia, so this very likely could be a valuable clue to follow up on--Best Wishes, Dale 


Red Haired Giants of England and America




This mass of reports were put together by Dale Drinnon and are an important addition to the two prior reports that I posted on. A lot of additional information is added and a few remarks can now be made.

My original conjecture was that the giants are European descended from the era of the Bronze Age (2400 BC to 1159BC) when it was possible for tribal groups to ship into the Americas. I also made the conjecture that the the tribe was likely a hybrid species formed from European humanity and the Neanderthals.

I see nothing in the material here that refutes that conjecture and plenty to support the plausibility and direct further work.

I continue to be astonished at the failure of researchers to come to the table when hard evidence arises. This work reports on what is really a mass of evidence of which some at least is quietly sitting in collections somewhere. Follow up is also completely possible and if these reports can be refuted, the task is bone simple. It is even worth an appropriate note in the correct scholarly journal to prevent other scholars from wasting their time.

It is also worth an appropriate note to confirm that the objects were eyeballed and remained unexplained.

We now have two serious sites in the watershed of Lake Erie that were both on a secondary route into the copper mines of Lake Superior. It is noteworthy that this route is associated with Northern Europeans and included the Hudson valley and another portage route through Peterborough in Ontario. The Grand river did supply an easy portage route to Lake Huron if it was necessary to by pass the choke point by Detroit.

The first report here is of a massacre and it appears that we have a cultural history of this right across the Americas. As important, they were metal workers and certainly linked to the groups who operated the mines.

This tribe is certainly the source of the Goliath story in the Bible and it is apparent that the giants had a far greater presence in the Americas than I had ever guessed. It appears that the tribe was wiped out by the hostility of their surrounding tribes. This may have meant that the men were killed as indicated in the evidence while the women were simply taken as slaves. In that case the genetically dominant characteristics would have been diluted and suppressed.

At least we now

Redhaired Mummies and Giants of the United States


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012

European Dark-Age Warrior Giant, used to illustrate the "Grendel”" of Beowulf



Burlington News

NEW YORK
Ref: Steve Quayle
Niagara's Ancient Cemetery of Giants


I respected the spelling used in the text. Fredenburg is first used and later it is spelled "Fredinburg." The site was about 40 miles west of Niagara Falls, according to recent maps; Dunnville is at the mouth of the Grand River which flows into Lake Erie. A "Six Nations First Nation Territory" is along the Grand River today, but I cannot say if the site was in it, or out of it. More information is needed to flesh out any veracity to this story, which 21st Century readers may take with a grain of salt.

Headlines: "A REMARKABLE SIGHT-- Two hundred skeletons of ANAKIN [sic] in Cayuga Township; A singular discovery by a Torontonian and others -- A vast Golgotha opened to view -- Some remains of the 'Giants that were in those days.' From our own correspondents."

Cayuga, August 21-- "On Wednesday last, Rev. Nathaniel Wardell, Messers. Orin Wardell(of Toronto), and Daniel Fredenburg, were digging on the farm of the latter gentleman, which is on the banks of the Grand River, in the township of Cayuga. When they got to five or six feet below the surface, a strange sight met them. Piled in layers, one upon top of the other, some two hundred skeletons of human beings nearly perfect -- around the neck of each one being a string of beads.

"There were also deposited in this pit a number of axes and skimmers made of stone. In the jaws of several of the skeletons were large stone pipes -- one of which Mr. O. Wardell took with him to Toronto a day or two after this Golgotha was unearthed.

"These skeletons are those of men of gigantic stature, some of them measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than seven feet. Some of the thigh bones were found to be at least a foot longer than those at present known, and one of the skulls {Skullcaps, or incomplete skulls opened at the base, obviously} being examined completely covered the head of an ordinary person. These skeletons are supposed to belong to those of a race of people anterior to the Indians.

"Some three years ago, the bones of a mastodon were found embedded in the earth about six miles from this spot. The pit and its ghastly occupants are now open to the view of any who may wish to make a visit there."

Later: Dunnville, August 22, "There is not the slightest doubt that the remains of a lost city are on this farm. At various times within the past years, the remains of mud houses with their chimneys had been found: and there are dozens of pits of a similar kind to that just unearthed, though much smaller, in the place which has been discovered before, though the fact has not been made public hitherto. The remains of a blacksmith's [Metalworker's?]shop, containing two tons of charcoal and various implements, were turned up a few months ago.

"The farm, which consists of 150 acres, has been cultivated for nearly a century, and was covered with a thick growth of pine, so that it must have been ages ago since the remains were deposited there. The skulls of the skeletons are of an enormous size and all manner of shapes, about half as large again as are now to be seen. The teeth in most of them are still in almost perfect state of preservation, though they soon fall out when exposed to the air.

"It is supposed that there is gold or silver in large quantities to be found in the premises, as mineral [dowsing] rods have invariably, when tested, pointed to a certain spot and a few yards from where the last batch of skeletons was found directly under the apple tree.
Some large shells, supposed to have been used for holding water, which were also found in the pit, were almost petrified [This has got to be a mistake. Shells are already "Petrified" as in "Mineralized"]. There is no doubt that were a scheme of exploration carried on thoroughly the result would be highly interesting. A good deal of excitement exists in the neighborhood, and many visitors call at the farm daily.

"The skulls and bones of the giants are fast disappearing, being taken away by curiosity hunters. It is the intention of Mr. Fredinburg to cover the pit up very soon. The pit is ghastly in the extreme. The farm is skirted on the north by the Grand River. The pit is close to the banks, but marks are there to show where the gold or silver treasure is supposed to be under. From the appearance of the skulls, it would seem that their possessors died a violent death, as many of them were broken and dented.

"The axes are shaped like tomahawks, small, but keen, instruments. The beads are all of stone and of all sizes and shapes. The pipes are not unlike in shape the cutty pipe, and several of them are engraved with dogs' heads. They have not lost their virtue for smoking. Some people profess to believe that the locality of Fredinburg farm was formally an Indian burial place, but the enormous stature of the skeletons and the fact that pine trees of centuries growth covered the spot goes far to disprove this idea."

Ancient American Volume 6, Issue 41, p. 9
Researched and submitted by Benoit Crevier
Originally published in The Daily Telegraph (Toronto, Ontario), Wednesday, August 23, 1871, page 1 Reprinted with permission

OHIO Reference: greatserpentmound.org Our related science's present understanding of the pre-Adena (Archaic) inhabitants of the greater Ohio River valley is yet somewhat sketchy, what to say of the Adena themselves. However, many pieces to the puzzle are now thought to be in place. The timeline for the Adena begins around 1000 B.C.E. according to the carbon dating of Dragoo and others. The Archaic populace is not believed to have constructed mounds in the Ohio Valley region, although this is not known for certain due to several factors, including widespread destruction of the earthworks, without content cataloging, over the last 250 years. Most understanding is based upon the dating and trait-grouping of materials found in the diminished number of mounds and village sites yet existing after a formal discipline in archaeology and anthropology finally took over excavation and detailed record keeping.

There are Archaic era mounded structures, often intricate and complex, in the deep southern U.S., including Watson Brake, Poverty Point, Fig Island, and Sapelo. For this reason, theories have been put forth that the mound building tradition came into the Ohio Valley around the time of the Adena from the southern Mississippi, thereby tentatively associating the Adena people with older cultures from the south. In one way of looking at this idea, it supposes that mound building was a phenomenon peculiar to
only one geographical source, necessarily having been passed on. Unlike the Adena mounds however, the more ancient southern earthworks did not poignantly suggest a very specialized "cult of the dead."

By their skeletal remains in the earlier studies, the pre-Adena people were known to have had slender or thin bodies, and been "long-headed," with "narrow" skulls (dolichocranic), i.e., having a breadth of skull small in proportion to length from front to back. The Adena people weren't physically akin to these Archaic people. Generally the Adena had more massive bone structure, according to these same studies. The pre-eminent theory of Adena origin at the time was that their ancestry had come from
Mexico or even further south. However, the Adena body bone structure type was unusually difficult to trace with surety south of the Rio Grande where another distinguishing Adena-resonant trait was found practiced from earlier times. That practice was "cradleboard" head deformation.



ARIZONA/CALIFORNIA/NEVADA Ref: Steve Quayle...


The internet site of radio talk show host Jeff Rense (http://www.rense.coin/general15/hiss.htm) has unearthed a mysterious, unexplained, but very provocative clipping from the August 5, 1947 edition of the San Diego Union. According to the clipping, explorers had unearthed, near the Arizona-Nevada-California line, the mummified remains of strangely costumed giants which the discoverers dated to around 80,000 years ago.[8000 is probably meant]

The Union reported that a Howard E. Hill of Los Angeles was recounting the work of Dr. F. Bruce Russell, a retired Cincinnati physician who had originally located the first of several tunnels near Death Valley in 1931, but had not been able to return to the area until 1947. With the help of Dr. Daniel S. Bovee, who with Hill's father had once helped open up New Mexico's cliff dwellings, Russell had recovered the remains of several men of 8 to 9 feet in height.

"These giants," said Hill, "are clothed in garments consisting of a medium length jacket and trouser extending slightly below the knees. The texture of the material is said to resemble gray dyed sheepskin, but obviously it was taken from an animal unknown today."

Hill also said, according to the Union, that in another cavern was found the ritual hall of the ancient people, together with devices and markings similar to those now used by the Masonic order. In a long tunnel were well-preserved remains of animals, including elephants and tigers. So far, Hill added, no women have been found.

He said the explorers believe that what they found was the burial place of the tribe's hierarchy. Hieroglyphics, he added, bear a resemblance to what is known of those from the lost continent of Atlantis. They are chiseled, he added, on carefully polished granite.

[this sounds like a hoax]

TRACE OF GIANTS FOUND IN DESERT [the same story told over again]LOS ANGELES, Aug 4. (AP)-- A retired Ohio doctor has discovered relics of an ancient civilization, whose men were 8 or 9 feet tall in the Colorado desert near the Arizona-Nevada-California line, an associate said today.


Howard E. Hill. of Los Angeles speaking before the Transportation Club, disclosed that several well-preserved mummies were taken yesterday from caverns in an area roughly 180 miles square, extending through much of southern Nevada from Death Valley, Calif. across the Colorado River into Arizona.

Hill said the discoverer is Dr. F. Bruce Russell, retired Cincinnati physician, who stumbled on the first of several tunnels in 1931, soon after coming West and deciding to try mining for his health.


MUMMIES FOUND


Not until this year, however, did Dr. Russell go into the situation thoroughly, Hill told the luncheon. With Dr. Daniel S. Bovee, of Los Angeles -- who with his father helped open up New Mexico's cliff dwellings -- Dr. Russell has found mummified remains together with implements of the civilization, which Dr. Bovee had tentatively placed at about 80,000 years old.


"These giants are clothed in garments consisting of a medium length jacket and trouser extending slightly below the knees." said Hill. "The texture of the material is said to resemble gray dyed sheepskin, but obviously it was taken from an animal unknown today."

MARKINGS DISCOVERED


Hill said that in another cavern was found the ritual hall of the ancient people, together with devices and markings similar to those now used by the Masonic order. In a long tunnel were well-preserved remains of animals including elephants and tigers. So far, Hill added, no women have been found.

He said the explorers believe that what they found was the burial place of the tribe's hierarchy. Hieroglyphics, he added, bear a resemblance to what is known of those from the lost continent of Atlantis. They are chiseled, he added, on carefully-polished granite.

He said Dr. Viola V. Pettit, of London, who made excavations around Petra, on the Arabian desert, soon will begin an inspection of the remains.

Atlantis Rising

January / February 2002, Number 31, p. 11

Reprinted with permission

Ancient Chambers Span Across Beneath Northern ArizonaSaturday, April 27, 1991

ARIZONA DAILY SUN,
Flagstaff, Arizona


New Orleans (AP) -- Three young archaelogists came to Northern Arizona and crept through sacred rooms, over rocky precipes and by dangerous rattlesnakes to discover a huge complex of catagombs that could rewrite theories about the Indians of the southwestern United States.

"It's absolutely mind-numbing. We would have never believed it could have existed," John W. Hohman, one of the three archaeologists, said Friday during the meeting of the 2,000 member Society of American Archaeology. "It will change a lot of what we believed about Indians in the Southwest. They may have been far more advanced than we believed."

Hohman admitted to feeling a bit like Indiana Jones, the archaeologists-adventurer from the movies. Armed with a flashlight and a pistol, it was Hohman who rapelled down the steep fissures, frequently dotted with rattlesnakes sunning themselves on rocky outcrops, into the catacombs.


The catacombs his expedition found are the first reported in the United States, officials at the conference said. "It's very exciting to have it announced at this conference. It's one of the few times we can say this is a first. Anytime you have a first in our business, it's exciting," said Dr.James Schoenwetter, professor of anthropology at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz. "The idea of a very elaborate form of ceremonial chamber being built underground hundreds of years ago is surprising."


Indians of the southwest United States were not believed to have built underground, Hohman said. For many of the cultures the underground held special connotations, both good and bad, he said. Burials were also done much as they are done now, he said, in graves dug into the earth. The catacombs, which Hohman and colleagues say are about 700 to 800 years old, were discovered at a known prehistoric Indian settlement about two miles west of Springerville. The Mongollon Indians occupied the site sometime between A.D. 1250 and 1400, Hohman said. "There had been some suspicion that there was something underground there," Adams said, "When we actually entered the catacombs though, it just blew us away."


Getting there wasn't easy. "Everytime I'd get halfway down one of the others would find the entry way, Hohman said. The carefully hidden entrances to the catacombs varied from the size of doorways to small crawl spaces. Once inside, Hohman and his colleagues found three to four acres of catacombs, ranging from small chambers to huge rooms 50 feet high and 100 feet long. "It's obvious that they were to protect the cattacombs," said White. ""The average person living at the site would not have had access to the area. It was probably entered only by certain people."

Hohman, Diane E. White and Christopher D. Adams were investigating the area for the town with an eye toward developing it as a recreation area. Hohman expects the site to produce at least one more major find. "We think there is something else underground there. We're working in an area that we think will produce another major surprise," he said.

The area, but not the catacombs, is open to the public, and will be developed into a recreational area, Hohman said. The park is expected to be opened within two years, he said. Called Casa Malpais, the site represents one of the largest and most complex ancient Mongollon communities in the nation, Hohman said.



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CALIFORNIALovelock, Nevada, is about eighty miles northeast of Reno. in 1911, in a cave near Lovelock, Nevada guano miners found mummies, bones, and artifacts belonging to a very tall people - with red hair.

ThelPaiutes had legends about the "Si-Te-Cah." According to them the redheads were a warlike people, and a number of the Indian tribes joined together in a long war against them. Eventually, the Paiutes and their allies forced the Si-Te-Cah back to their home acres, near Mount Shasta in California.

Archeologists seemed to take a negative approach to this 'history changing' discovery. . According to reports, two archeologists  were sent to the scene to investigate this remarkable discovery. . One was from the University of California, and the other from New York. Rather than unearthing facts, they seemed more interested in burying them - literally; we are told the New Yorker ordered a mummy reburied on at least once occasion. Nor was anything published about the anomalies until 1929, seventeen years after their visit.

Paiutes says that the Si-Te-Cah literally lived on a lake in the basin overlooked by the cave. The lived on the lake to avoice harrassments from the Indians, living on the rafts made of a fibrous water plant called tule. The name Si-Te-Cah means "tule eaters."

The Paiutes and the long-legged redheads did not get along well. The Indians accused the Si-Te-Cah of being cannibals, and waged war against them. The Si-Te-Cah fought back. After a long struggle, a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in what is now called Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aflame. The Si-Te-Cah were annihilated.

The local Indians tell stories of how the tribe exterminated those that had reddish hair.
All of this could be dismissed as another tall tale, but the case for the Si-Te-Cah does not rest on one man's research, or on remains found in one guano-filled cave. In 1931, mummies wee discovered in the Humboldt Lake bed. Eight years later, a mystery skeleton was unearthed on a ranch in the region. In each case, the skeletons or mummies were exceptionally tall and appeared to be connected with the strange lost race of redheads.

According to the Indians, the Si-Te-Cah built a pyramidal stone structure in New York Canyon, some miles away in Churchill County. Unfortunately, the area is riven with earthquakes and the rocky ruins have largely tumbled over the years.

Not much has survived from the Si-Te-Cah. When the archeological establishment refused to take their existence seriously, a number of small, private museums arose to fill the gap. A fire in one of these destroyed an irreplaceable collection of bones, mummified remains, feathered artifacts, and shells carved with mysterious symbols. Today there is a museum in Lovelock with a display describing the cave finds, but it ignores allegations that the Si-Te-Cah were anything other than Indians.

The Nevada State Historical Society has some artifacts from the cave, but again, there is not even a hint of controversy.

NEVADA




A Nevadan who died more than 10,000 years ago is at the center of a battle over who will control the ancient history of North America.

In about a month, the Bureau of Land Management is expected to decide if a partially mummified skeleton will be given to Indians for secret burial or if scientists can retain the 10,630-year-old remains called Spirit Cave Man for further scientific testing.The conflict already has fallout. Some of the scientists closest to the issue refused to discuss the strained relations with Indian tribes. State officials last year pressured one Worldwide Web page creator to erase links pertaining to ancient human remains found in Nevada. The state museum this year agreed not to display busts created by a Reno artist that may show what two ancient Nevadans looked like.

In a two-day series, reporter Frank Mullen explores this controversial issue whose outcome may very well change the history of this continent

Source: The Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper.

West VirginiaAncient European Skeleton Recovered In West Virginia Cave

Cave Skeleton is European, 1,300 Years Old, Man Says

Sept. 29, 2002

MORGANTOWN - The man who first advanced the theory that markings carved on in a Wyoming County cave are actually characters from an ancient Irish alphabet has found human remains at the site, which tests indicate are European in origin and date back to A.D. 710, he maintains.

Robert Pyle of Morgantown says that a DNA analysis of material from the skeleton's teeth roots was conducted by Brigham Young University. That analysis, he says, shows that the skeleton's DNA, when compared to samples from Native American groups and an array of European sources, most closely matches samples from the British Isles.
Pyle says the DNA test, plus a radiocarbon test that dates the skeleton to 710, suggest the presence of a European visitor to the North American continent nearly 800 years before the arrival of Columbus, and nearly 300 years before Viking Leif Erickson.
[This is not too entirely unusual in that there are several sites with purported "European" affiliations in various parts of Eastern North America dating to supposedly about 800 AD, at the very beginning of the Viking age, and the date is in a sort of a cultural vaccuum after the Hopewell period otherwise-D

Sonic Screwdriver?




The promise here is generating mechanical action using first ultrasonic energy and then even photonic energy.  Right now the potentialities may only be imagined but with the door now open development will swiftly follow.

It may become possible to disturb biology without entering.  How about disturbing plaques in the arteries in a clinical setting?  That may become an option.  Or even introducing a small cutting device that slowly works to remove cancer cells in situ.  Both are clumsy solutions but far less so than present practice.

The point is that it has become possible to apply mechanical energy at a distance that is forceful and effective.  We are not that far away then from truly effective tools. 

How about gently separating flesh along cell wall boundaries?  Easy to imagine and now to contemplate and in time to investigate.  The potential is there.

Is The Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver for Real?

Email Author, April 20, 2012


The Doctor and His Trusty Sonic Screwdriver. ©BBC

A team of research physicists at the University of Dundee in Scotland have created an ultrasound array that can effectively be used as a sonic screwdriver, right out of Doctor Who. The Dundee researchers were able to lift and spin a free-floating 10cm diameter rubber disk with an ultrasound beam.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a video of it in action:

Ok, so maybe this isn’t as portable as the good Doctor’s favorite tool of choice, but the implications could be staggering. According to Dr. Mike MacDonald, of the Institute for Medical Science and Technology (IMSAT) at Dundee, “This experiment not only confirms a fundamental physics theory but also demonstrates a new level of control over ultrasound beams which can also be applied to non-invasive ultrasound surgery, targeted drug delivery and ultrasonic manipulation of cells.”

The theory, which had been proven separately, is used in topics from quantum communications to biophotonics, but had not previously been proved in a single experiment. It creates angular momentum in a vortex beam using a number of intertwined helices similar in shape to DNA. The team showed how they could generate vortex beams with many intertwined helices, using a 1000-element ultrasound transducer array as an acoustic hologram. These beams are powerful enough to levitate and spin the 90g disk.

But wait, there’s more! According to Dr. MacDonald, “… [W]e are already starting to push the boundaries of what ultrasound can do in terms of targeted drug delivery and targeted cellular surgery. Like Dr. Who’s own device, our sonic screwdriver is capable of much more than just spinning things around.”

And, according to the same news release, though, the theory being applied to sound here, is also valid for light. So, watch out: the Master’s laser screwdriver may not be far behind.


Saturday, April 28, 2012

Polyurethane System Density Below Water




It is good to see someone working on this problem.  Changing out the mineral fillers has needed to be done forever. 

I would like to see a system for producing polyurethane fiber that is hollow.  Then using polyurethane as a binder one should be able to control strength and weight.  There are expensive ways to do this but a cheap method is needed.

The advent of the electrical vehicle has made weight reduction a huge necessity and the protocol is likely to maintain weight sensitivity even after we have good batteries. After all you will know continuously the effects of your loading.

Lighter than water - Bayer MaterialScience develops polyurethane system for even more energy-efficient vehicles

Tuesday - April 17, 2012


Maastricht, April 17, 2012 – Demand for lightweight construction systems in the automotive industry is now at an all-time high, with the aim being to cut fuel consumption, costs and CO2 emissions. According to VCD Verkehrsclub Deutschland, reducing the weight of a vehicle by 100 kilograms lowers fuel consumption by 0.5 liters over a distance of 100 kilometers and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 1.2 kilograms over the same distance. Lightweight structures are now more important than ever given the trend toward future-oriented drive technologies such as electric mobility.

Bayer MaterialScience has already developed a wide range of energy-efficient polyurethane materials for the automotive sector. At UTECH 2012, it is going one step further with the presentation of the Bayflex® RIM Light Weight polyurethane system that can be used to further reducing the weight of finished components by up to 30 percent. With a density of just 0.9 kilograms per liter, this material is even lighter than water.

This solution owes its lightweight design to the high-grade Bayflex® polyurethane system in tandem with a clever combination of fillers that replace the usual mineral fibers,” explained Dr. Birgit Meyer zu Berstenhorst, who was responsible for developing the material. “The excellent mechanical properties remain intact,” she added. The material enables a considerable reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions and, with certain vehicle models, also improves driving dynamics. In electric cars, this better compensates for the still considerable weight of the battery and helps extend the vehicle's range.

This compact material offers great design freedom for vehicle construction and can be used to make components with a Class A surface that are to be finished with a high-grade coating. It is processed using tried-and-tested RRIM  technology.
(Reinforced Reaction Injection Molding)


In addition to car components, Bayflex® RIM Light Weight can be used for applications in other forms of mobility such as trucks, buses, trains, aircraft and ships. Bayer experts believe it is also suitable for use in the leisure and furniture sector, the construction industry and the IT segment. 

About Bayer MaterialScience:

With 2011 sales of EUR 10.8 billion, Bayer MaterialScience is among the world’s largest polymer companies. Business activities are focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are the automotive, electrical and electronics, construction and the sports and leisure industries. At the end of 2011, Bayer MaterialScience had 30 production sites and employed approximately 14,800 people around the globe. Bayer MaterialScience is a Bayer Group company.

This news release is available for download from the Bayer MaterialScience press server at
www.press.bayerbms.com.
Find more information at www.materialscience.bayer.com.

Nanotube Arrays Alternative to platinum




It appears that a carpet of nanotubes can be used to replace platinum in situations needing catalytic activity.  Early days of course but still very promising.

Over the past few years, physics has been winkling out a whole new tool box that while once only imagined was also pretty unattainable but imaginable.  Now the tricks keep coming and the promise keeps expanding.

I had anticipated rapid knowledge expansion after the advent of the internet but no one can ever imagine the details.  A lot of it is expanding slowly but generally every hand on board is continuing to find ample work.

This will be known as the golden age of physics.

Nanotube electrodes improve solar cells

by Staff Writers

Houston TX (SPX) Apr 18, 2012

Pei Dong, a graduate student at Rice University, holds a lab-built solar cell that combines a carbon nanotube current collector and a sulfide-based electrolyte. The combination could make such solar cells more efficient and less expensive than current dye-sensitized units. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University). 



Forests of carbon nanotubes are an efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), according to new research by collaborators at Rice University and Tsinghua University.

The single-wall nanotube arrays, grown in a process invented at Rice, are both much more electroactive and potentially cheaper than platinum, a common catalyst in DSCs, said Jun Lou, a materials scientist at Rice. In combination with newly developed sulfide electrolytes synthesized at Tsinghua, they could lead to more efficient and robust solar cells at a fraction of the current cost for traditional silicon-based solar cells.

Lou and co-lead investigator Hong Lin, a professor of materials science and engineering at Tsinghua, detailed their work in the online, open-access Nature journal Scientific Reports this week.

DSCs are easier to manufacture than silicon-based solid-state photovoltaic cells but not as efficient, said Lou, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

“DSCs are sensitized with dyes, ideally organic dyes like the juices from berries - which some students have actually used in demonstrations."

Dyes absorb photons from sunlight and generate a charge in the form of electrons, which are captured first by a semiconducting titanium oxide layer deposited on a current collector before flowing back to the counter electrode through another current collector.

Progress has been made in the manufacture of DSCs that incorporate an iodine-based electrolyte, but iodine tends to corrode metallic current collectors, which "poses a challenge for its long-term reliability," Lou said.

Iodine electrolyte also has the unfortunate tendency to absorb light in the visible wavelengths, "which means fewer photons could be utilized," Lou said.

So Tsinghua researchers decided to try a noncorrosive, sulfide-based electrolyte that absorbs little visible light and works well with the single-walled carbon nanotube carpets created in the Rice lab of Robert Hauge, a co-author of the paper and a distinguished faculty fellow in chemistry at Rice's Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology .

"These are very versatile materials," Lou said. "Single-walled carbon nanotubes have been around at Rice for a very long time, and people have found many different ways to use them. This is another way that turns out to be very well-matched to a sulfid-based electrolyte in DSC technology."

Both Rice and Tsinghua built working solar cells, with similar results. They were able to achieve a power conversion efficiency of 5.25 percent - lower than the DSC record of 11 percent with iodine electrolytes a platinum electrode, but significantly higher a control that combined the new electrolyte with a traditional platinum counter electrode. Resistance between the new electrolyte and counter electrode is "the lowest we've ever seen," Lou said.

There's much work to be done, however. "The carbon nanotube-to-current collector still has a pretty large contact resistance, and the effects of structural defects in carbon nanotubes on their corresponding performance are not fully understood, but we believe once we optimize everything, we're going to get decent efficiency and make the whole thing very affordable," Lou said. "The real attraction is that it will be a very low-cost alternative to silicon-based solar cells."

Pei Dong, a graduate student in Lou's lab, and Feng Hao, a graduate student at Tsinghua, are lead authors of the paper. Co-authors include Rice graduate students Jing Zhang and Philip Loya, Yongchang Zhang of Tsinghua and Professor Jianbao Li of Hainan University, China.

The project was supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China, the Welch Foundation and the Faculty Initiative Fund at Rice. Read the paper here.

One in Five Kids Report Hearing Voices




I am uncomfortable with this items linkage of auditory hallucinations with the blanket phrase of psychiatric disorder.  ADD in particular is grossly over diagnosed and may also be driven by dietary imbalances associated with our food regime.  Thus this linkage may be a very bad idea that allows a practitioner to diagnose mental disorder with impunity.

Auditory hallucination sounds more like a common connective flaw in the brain that is typically over come by the growing brain.  It may even be something useful.  It deserves to be studied.  It certainly is physical.  Thus it may be associated with other physical oddities in the brain.  Our imaging technology is now becoming refined enough to investigate this type of problem.

We also note that children of this age group are more successful at achieving results from meditation methods.  These include both a predictable auditory content and visual content.  Separating these effects from what is discussed here needs attention.

RCSI study finds that over 20% of children report hearing voices

Updated: 11:56, Friday, 13 April 2012
Hearing voices may affect over a fifth of schoolchildren aged 11 to 13, a psychiatric study has found.


In most cases, the auditory hallucinations stop with time, the findings show. But children who continue to hear voices could be at risk of mental illness or behavioural disorders.

Researchers carried out psychiatric assessments of almost 2,500 children aged between 11 and 16 in Dublin.

They discovered that 21%-23% of younger adolescents, aged 11 to 13, had experienced auditory hallucinations.

Of this group, just over half were found to have a non-psychotic psychiatric disorder such as depression.

Just 7% of older adolescents aged 13 to 16 reported hearing voices - but almost 80% of those who did had a diagnosable psychological problem.

Lead researcher Dr Ian Kelleher, from the Department of Psychiatry at the Royal College of Surgeons, said: "We found that auditory hallucinations were common even in children as young as 11 years old." 

"Auditory hallucinations can vary from hearing an isolated sentence now and then, to hearing 'conversations' between two or more people lasting for several minutes.

"It may present itself like screaming or shouting, and other times it could sound like whispers or murmurs. It varies greatly from child to child, and frequency can be once a month to once every day.

"For many children, these experiences appear to represent a 'blip' on the radar that does not turn out to signify any underlying or undiagnosed problem.

“However, for the other children, these symptoms turned out to be a warning sign of serious underlying psychiatric illness, including clinical depression and behavioural disorders, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

"Some older children with auditory hallucinations had two or more disorders. This finding is important because if a child reports auditory hallucinations it should prompt their treating doctor to consider that the child may have more than one diagnosis."

The findings are published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Co-author Professor Mary Cannon, also from the RSCI's Department of Psychiatry, said: "Our study suggests that hearing voices seems to be more common in children than was previously thought.

“In most cases these experiences resolve with time. However in some children these experiences persist into older adolescence and this seems to be an indicator that they may have a complex mental health issue and require more in-depth assessment."

Kiwi Dairy Lessons




New Zealand does provide us a look at the pitfalls and successes of producer groups that struggle to manage their markets and to find a balance that retains profitability.  No one has really solved it yet.  It is clear that producer size and impact must be regulated somehow.  If you do that you must be able to also impose your standards across the spectrum of potential suppliers or you get the unpleasant situation in which a hundred thousand hogs are raised in Mexico in order to dump pork into the US market.

Canada’s dairy industry reflects a Canadian cost structure and a herd size of around one hundred.  Even that requires a farm size of several hundred acres to absorb all the cow manure produced.  New Zealand herd size is around three times that and it provides better cost structure.

If Canada were to adopt the US system instead, and provide government guarantees, we could quickly jump our herd sizes three fold and produce ample milk, butter and cheese to dump into the US market.  In fact it would permit a massive expansion of the Canadian Dairy industry to perhaps equal to the total volume now produced in the USA.  We certainly could dominate the Great Lakes basin and the Ohio valley.  It quickly becomes a business of going big or going home.

In any event the Kiwi success suggests that a complete rethink of industry strategy is both timely and healthy.  The conditions of two generations ago have ended and most of the industry is professional in terms of management and finance.  As we learned through our experience in the free trade agreement change is actually very profitable.


Kiwis put Canada’s dairy supply scheme to shame

NEIL REYNOLDS
OTTAWA

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Last updated Tuesday, Apr. 24, 2012 8:17PM EDT



Holstein cows outside of the Saugeen County Dairy in Grey County, Ont. Canada (population: 33 million) exports $250-million in dairy products a year. New Zealand (population: four million) exports 10 times as much, $2.5-billion. (Steve Jenkinson for The Globe and Mail)



In the worldwide food shortages that developed at the end of the Second World War, tiny New Zealand grew fabulously rich. The country fed Britain, New Zealand dairy farmer Thomas Lambie recalled years later in an essay published by the Cato Institute. “[We] had the second-highest per-capita income in the world. … Farmers had it made.”

In the ensuing years, New Zealand’s government moved decisively to protect the country’s farmers from marketplace risks – supply fluctuations, declines in prices, foreign competition. It didn’t hurt that, as Mr. Lambie put it, almost every cabinet minister was a farmer. The country adopted supply management in all its forms: marketing boards, controlled prices, import tariffs and import quotas.

When finished protecting dairy farmers, governments proceeded to protect everyone else. “We locked out the foreign competition,” Mr. Lambie wrote. “We ‘protected’ people’s jobs and we had virtually no unemployment.”
Fortress New Zealand, as it was dubbed, did well for more than 20 years. In 1973, however, Britain entered the European Economic Community – and New Zealand farmers lost their primary market. In 1979, the first of the oil shocks struck. The country was compelled to borrow to sustain its protectionist devices. Huge deficits followed, accompanied by spiralling debt. The country hit the wall early in the 1980s with simultaneous financial crises in public and private sectors.

New Zealand had no choice but to dismantle the Fortress, and farming was the first industry liberated. An industrial revolution followed. Rather than please government, Mr. Lambie said, farmers realized that they needed to please consumers. Rather than pass along price increases, they realized that they needed to operate more efficiently. With supply management, sheep farmers tended 70 million sheep; after supply management, they produced the same amount of meat with 40 million sheep. With supply management, productivity increases averaged 1 per cent a year. After supply management, they averaged 4 per cent.

Within six years, moribund New Zealand was ready to take on the world. “We now live in one of the most open and unregulated economies in the world. Other than a few tariffs … we are completely open at the border for everything.” So it remains to this day. The Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Economic Freedom lists New Zealand as the fourth-freest country in the world (behind Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia). Canada is sixth.

This difference in ranking comes down to supply management, the means by which Canadian dairy farmers (and others) are permitted to fix the prices of their products – actions that, in any other industry, could land them heavy fines or imprisonment. It’s a big difference. Canada (population: 33 million) exports $250-million in dairy products a year. New Zealand (population: four million) exports 10 times as much, $2.5-billion. Canada exports only a marginal percentage of its production of milk and milk products; New Zealand exports 95 per cent.

Many countries protect their dairy industries through one form of supply management or another. Only 7 per cent of the world’s production of dairy products is traded on the global market. Yet these closed-door restrictions make New Zealand’s global success all the more impressive.

It isn’t only Canada that can’t compete with New Zealand. Neither can the United States or Europe. U.S. milk producers are now lobbying hard for an exemption from the pending negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade zone that would include countries from North America, South America and Asia, including New Zealand and Australia.

But even 7 per cent of the global dairy market is an enormous amount of milk. New Zealand, the first country to sign a free-trade agreement with China (in 2008), now holds preferred trading status in many (actually, 90) goods and services in China, including dairy products. New Zealand is a truly global leader, as its statistics show.

New Zealand has five million dairy cows; Canada, 1.4 million. New Zealand’s average dairy herd is 336 cows; Canada, 72 cows. New Zealand sells almost half of the global trade in butter; with 80 per cent of Canadian dairy production, Ontario and Quebec “export” butter only to the rest of Canada – where, though heavily subsidized, it is largely considered, and priced, as a luxury product.

In Canada, incidentally, the price of butter increased 9 cents per kilogram this year – the supply management “support price” rising to $7.28 per kilogram from $7.19. In New Zealand, the open-market price fell 44 cents, to $3.86 per kg from $4.30. So much, exchange rate fluctuations aside, for Canada’s biggest protection racket.