History Forum / General / Archaeology / January 2007

This is rediculous. What a load of bull.

    One has to be curious and ask what is 3D astronomy? I only see two dimensions
RA and Dec without using parallax and other very modern methods to estimate
absolute distance from us. Nor do I see what interest the third dimension of
distance would be in this case.

    I have heard a lot about "alignments" but what I never hear or see at the same
time are actual diagrams of these alignments showing how they work in practice.
in this case it is difficult to imagine how a structure can be big enough be
much better than a Mk 1 eyeball.

    Which was the ancient method of certifying the ladder was of the minimum height
as required by tribal law.

    Obviously those clever ancient plumbers chose oval sinks to be certain their
wisdom would not be lost.

On Jan 26, 2:26 pm, Doug Weller <dwel...@ramtops.removethis.co.uk>
wrote:

<snip>

So, a little horizon astronomy. Why then the business about the '3D'?

Also, what is privileged about June 11, 2006? The moon rises and sets
at different heights at the same time of the year over a long cycle.
And, IIRC, the cycle is not exact. At least according to this year's
"Old Farmer's Almanac". So what exactly is the value of this
two-window-and-a-ladder-of-a-certain-height alignment? Was it
foreshadowing a Democratic victory several months later? The week of
the loon seven months later?

Perhaps the guy has an explanation for all this. And, of course, the
OFA could be wrong, or I might be mis-remembering it. OTOH, perhaps
when one is looking for zebras, hoofbeats are proof enough.

<snip>

Pi is encoded in the wax ring which the toilet sets on. Phi is the bad
smell it keeps in the sewer (along with its cousin Phew). And of course
we can assess the size and spin of the earth by the swirl the water
takes when it flushes.

 a = k * M/D^2 all you have to do is watch the rate at which the water
spins down the tube, know the density of the earth and you can determine
D/d = V = 4/3 pi D^3 therefore k * 4/3 pi D^3/5000*D^2 = 9.8 M
Solving for 4/15000 pi D k = 9.8 M/sec2, since C = 2pi D then solving
4/15000 pi C/2pi k = 9.8 M/sec2  .'. 4/30 Ck = 9.8 M/sec 98/10-4/30
3.3/2,500 .00132 = Ck therefore C = 1.32k and since k = 6.67 x 10-11 =
39,800,000 meters of ~ 40,000 km. Of course the rate of fall is at
equilibrium between the hydrostatic drop and the friction on the sides
of the walls, all you have to do is encode the distance from the
Tank (watercloset) to the water surface of the toilet, calculate the time
of fall, d = 1/2 aT2 however a is modulated by friction.. BS, BS, BS which
you can adjust to get psuedo T which allows for "a" and with a you can
calculate C.
 In Japan, the toilet will wash your butt for you, dry it and give you a
little lolipop when you're done. So calculating Pi and Phi and circumferane
should not be to much of a problem.

 For any two objects in the universe there is a set of points that form a
circle that are exactly the same angle between the two lines that connect
those points to the other two points. As it turns out that is an infinite
number of points. This is true except when one considers space time.

Corollary for this is that for any two points in the universe there are an
infinite number of fools who will find meaning in the angle between those
two points, in order to match the number of points which can satisfy the
angle.

The number of fools is directly proportion to the number of individuals who
have too much free time on their hands.

Ah, hello Coincidence, my old friend.

Let me tell you a story...

More years ago than I care to remember I was entranced (who wouldn't
be?) by the idea of ley-lines. I got out the excellent 1:25000 scale
Ordnance Survey maps of my local area and turned them black with
graphite as I linked up ancient sites (including a few that I knew
existed but weren't marked on the map). I found lots of lovely
alignments stretching for miles across what looks superficially like a
fairly modern industrialised landscape (I come from just outside
Liverpool). One of my best alignments took in an ancient beacon hill,
a couple of early crossroads, a holy well and three hilltop mediaeval
churches, all in circular churchyards indicative of an early, possibly
pre-christian site, at Huyton, Prescot and Childwall, and doubtless
(if I had checked) aligned to the rising or setting sun on one day or
other. Imagine my delight when I discovered (in, IIRC, John Heywood's
"Lancashire Legends", 1882), *after* finding the "ley", a rhyme,
popular in the district in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
which ran -

"Huyton and Prescot and merry Childo
Three parish churches all in a row
Prescot for mugs, Huyton for ploydes
Childo for singing and ringing besides"

(Prescot was noted as a centre for pottery manufacture, "ploydes"
apparently means cheerful greetings)

Confirmation if ever there was of the folk-memory of an ancient
alignment!

Then I thought I'd better do a "control" experiment. So I drew rings
round all the schools marked on the map, none of which dates from
before 1800, and most of which are on twentieth-century sites. They
produced better alignments than any of my "ancient" leys, one
stretching through twelve sites across fifteen miles.

I have to allow the possibility that the county education department
was a front for a pagan cult. But I am more convinced that the
alignments, though impressive, were coincidental. If they were for the
modern schools, why shouldn't they be coincidental for all the other
sites I had enthusiastically linked? The fact that the three churches
line up wasn't, in itself, all that remarkable  - just interesting
enough to be noticed and turned into a rhyme by someone with too much
time on their hands in about 1750.

Unless the Newport Tower alleged alignments all work, simultaneously,
from a single observer's realistic (ie not up a stepladder) viewpoint,
and all relate to demonstrably important dates or events, then they
are worthless as "proof" of any significant astronomical purpose for
the Tower.

If there are half-a-dozen reasonably significant alignments that work
from a single viewpoint, then the matter is nothing more than
coincidence and belongs in the "face on Mars" category.

Gareth