Croton Aqueduct Westchester County New York

Lecture 24: The Modern Legacy of Ancient Technology

Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From the Catapult to the Pantheon

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

The fall of Rome ended imperial sponsorship of big construction and military projects, as well as the rigorous training provided for Roman engineering students.

The museum at Alexandria was the primary Macedonian and eventually Roman (when Egypt became a colony) technological think tank. However by the third century AD, Roman rulers were deliberately suppressing its work. It burned down in 273 AD, possibly on the order of Emperor Aurelian.

This ended the work of Hero of Alexandria. One of Rome’s most prolific experimenters, Hero wrote treatises on pneumatics-powered catapults, optics and geometry. He also created the aeolopile (the world’s first steam engine), the syringe, the vending machine and the world’s first wind-powered organ.

In this final lecture, Ressler demonstrates a working aeolopile he has built.

Technologies Lost During the Middle Ages

Following the Roman empire’s collapse, concrete construction and urban planning were lost. Fortunately metallurgy, water power and glass making persisted into the Middle Ages. These technologies survived mainly in monasteries, in some cases undergoing further development.

Surviving Technologies

We have continued some classical technology (hydroelectric power production, steel manufacture and fiberoptics) to the present day.

Some construction technology (especially the arch and tie beam trusses) survived Rome’s collapse when the Roman basilica became the predominant model for medieval churches.

In the 17th century, French engineers made an inventory of surviving Roman roads and built new roads based on ancient technology. Many modern water systems use Roman aqueduct technology.*

The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire also preserved some Roman structural engineering technologies. Charlemagne’s Aechon Cathedral (built 805 AD) employed Roman construction technology, as did the Los Angeles public library (1925) and the Cathedral Basilica in St Louis (1914).

After a monk found it in a Swiss monastery, the Italian Renaissance revived Vetruvius’s 30 BC De Architechtura, which became the engineering Bible of the Western world. In 1499 Domincan friar Giovan Giocondo revived the use of pozzolana-based concrete for the Piers of Notre Dame Bridge in Paris. Urban planning and construction cranes were also revived around this time.

Archimedes screw pump is still used in Holland for reclaiming swamp land, in wineries for moving grapes, combine harvesters and snow blowers. It’s also used for hydroelectric generation in London, because unlike turbines it allows fish to swim through safely.

In the US, the neoclassical school of architecture saw the revival of Roman Doric columns at Monticello, the Virginia state capital and the rotunda-based library at the University of Virginia. The original Penn Stations in New York City is modeled on the Baths of Carcala, and the Lincoln Memorial, National Gallery and Jefferson Memorial all demonstrate this style.

In New England, the federal architectural style combined Roman columns with red brick walls as a symbolic manifestation of democratic freedoms.

Somewhat later, Greek Revival architectural styles reappeared (in the Brandenburg Gate and the British Museum) after the Ottoman Empire opened Greece to the West in the early 19th century.

*Including the 1840 Croton aqueduct that crosses the Harlem River to supply water to New York City.

**See Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome

***See Ancient Greek and Roman Pumps

Film can be viewed free with library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/146678/146726

By Robert Kogan

Brownstone Institute

A BioNTech-“Pfizer” Vax Project Timeline

The bizarre Project Veritas “sting” videos that have gone ultra-viral on Twitter have undoubtedly confused the public even more. But the actual developer and owner of the so-called “Pfizer” Covid-19 vaccine is the German company BioNTech. The underlying mRNA technology belongs to BioNTech and – supposing this has been happening at all – if any company has been modifying mRNA to encode for a homebrewed variant of the virus, it would have to be BioNTech.

Be that as it may, as discussed in my last article, although BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin claims in the book The Vaccine that BioNTech launched its Covid-19 vaccine project on January 27, 2020, we know this is not true: a BioNTech study report released in response to an FOIA request shows that the company had already in fact begun preclinical (animal) testing on January 14.

This is already astonishing enough, since January 14, 2020 was only 2 weeks after the first report of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan. On that very day, moreover, the WHO was saying that there was no “clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission. (See WHO tweet here.) Why in the world would BioNTech begin work on a Covid-19 vaccine without clear evidence of human-to-human transmission?

At this point, Pfizer was not part of BioNTech’s C-19 vaccine project. As narrated in The Vaccine, the small German company, which had never had any product on the market, only succeeded in recruiting the American multinational as partner three months later (p. 156).

So, we know that BioNTech began preclinical testing on January 14. But, of course, this means that the project as such must have been launched even earlier. The formulation being tested had to be produced first. In this case, that meant first manufacturing the mRNA and then formulating it in lipid nanoparticles.

As touched upon in my last article, this was in fact the purpose of the study: to test the performance of BioNTech mRNA formulated in lipids made by the Canadian company Acuitas. BioNTech was not yet able to manufacture mRNA encoding for any element of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – the full genome had only been published the day before – and instead used mRNA encoding for a proxy antigen (luciferase).

So how long would it take to get the formulation ready for testing? Thankfully, Sahin’s book, which is coauthored by his wife Özlem Türeci and the journalist Joe Miller, provides relevant technical and logistical details. According to the book, manufacturing the mRNA – a process involving “tens of thousands of steps” (p. 182) – takes five days (pp. 170 and 171).

Five days brings us then to January 9. But the mRNA had still to be wrapped in the lipids, and this involved a particular logistical problem: BioNTech could not do this itself at its headquarters in Mainz, Germany.

BioNTech had its own in-house lipids, but they were found not suitable for purpose. To get the mRNA wrapped in the Acuitas lipids, the mRNA had to be shipped to an Austrian subcontractor by the name of Polymun outside Vienna.

The mRNA was transported by car – an 8-hour drive, according to Sahin and Türeci – then formulated in the lipids by Polymun, and then the formulation was driven back to Mainz. In the book, Sahin and Türeci describe a batch of mRNA for a subsequent animal study being completed on March 2, being shipped to Polymun, and then returning to Mainz wrapped in the lipids on March 9 (pp. 116 and 123).

So, this adds another 5 days, which would bring us now to January 4. But, as it so happens, BioNTech did not conduct the animal testing itself. This too was subcontracted and conducted at testing facilities elsewhere. In The Vaccine, Sahin and Türeci note that the later preclinical study began on March 11, 2 days after delivery of the lipid-encapsulated mRNA.

Adding another 2 days to our timeline brings us now to January 2. January 2, 2020 was not two weeks, but merely two days after the first report of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan on December 31, 2019.

But before it could be manufactured, needless to say, the formulation to be tested had first to be conceived and designed; and contact had to be made with Polymun and Acuitas to obtain the required permissions and arrange for the required collaboration. All of this takes time.

There is no avoiding the conclusion that BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine project must in fact have started before any Covid-19 cases had even been reported! The obvious question is: How is this possible?

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/biontech-pfizer-vax-timeline/

(Natural News) The cost of food continues to rise in the UK, and the country’s food retailers have warned that price inflation will continue into the foreseeable future. The latest figures show grocery prices are now increasing at their fastest rate on record.

Figures provided by retail analyst Kantar found that grocery price inflation in the country reached a new record high of 16.7% in the four weeks that ended on January 22. This amounts to a nearly £800 pound increase on a typical yearly shopping bill. This is a notable increase from the 14.4% recorded in December and the highest level since figures were first tracked in 2008.

Some categories of food that have noted particularly sharp rises recently include eggs, milk and dog food. However, fruit, vegetables, sugar and alcohol have also noticed steep rises in the past month. According to Kantar, the price of basics such as cheese, milk, butter and bread is up 16.7% in a year over year basis. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that olive oil has risen by nearly 40% in the last year, while low-fat milk is up 46% and sugar is up 38.5%.

People are turning to store label products, cheap carbs and expired food to feed their families

In response to record-setting inflation, some supermarkets are expanding their store label ranges to provide customers with more value. In January, sales of store label products climbed by 9.3%; sales of branded alternatives only rose by 1%.

Four out of every 10 British families with children under the age of 12 have been replacing meat in their diet with carbohydrates such as pasta and bread to bulk out their meals and get more out of their money. 18% of Brits are buying fewer vegetables and fruits, and almost a third are purchasing less meat, according to Red Tractor.

Another way some people are making ends meet is by eating food that is well past its use-by date. According to the ONS, almost one in five adults say they have eaten food that was beyond its use-by date, which indicates when perishable food can safely be consumed. This is despite the Food Standards Agency warning that individuals should never eat food after this date – even if it smells or looks acceptable – because it could result in serious illness.

The ONS also found that 15% of adults are somewhat or very worried that they will run out of food before they can afford to purchase more. It also revealed that Brits are struggling to stay warm amid the higher costs of energy, with nearly a quarter of those polled saying that they struggled to stay comfortably warm during the previous two weeks.

Discount grocery chains like ALDI and Lidl have noted rising sales. For the fourth month in a row, ALDI was the country’s fastest-growing grocer, noting sales that were 26.9% higher year on year and taking a 9.2% share of the market. Sales at Lidl climbed by 24.1%; they took a market share of 7.1%. Meanwhile, the sales at bigger rivals like Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco only saw increases of 6%; sales at Morrisons dropped by 1.9%.

It’s bad news for Brits who are already struggling with inflation across the board. The Bank of England recently raised interest rates for the 10th time in a row, which is pushing monthly mortgage payments higher; its 0.5 percent rise places rates at 4%, which is the highest level seen since the financial crisis of 2008. A further rise to 4.25% is widely expected next month.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund forecasts that the British economy will shrink this year and experience the poorest performance out of all developed countries, including Russia. The news isn’t much better in the U.S., where the prices of many foods have risen exponentially as well.

Via https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-02-03-brits-cope-meteoric-rise-food-prices.html

By Dmitry Orlov

A major development seems to be underway on the Ukrainian side of the slow-moving frontline. For months now the only reason the Ukrainians have been able to hold their own against the Russians is because their access, via mobile internet, to NATO satellite data and analytical information has been allowing their artillery and rocket systems to precisely target Russian equipment and troops. This forced the Russians to act quickly: roll to a position, fire a salvo ata Ukrainian target and scoot away before that position can be targeted.

The data feed is provided by Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet terminals, some 20000 of them, spread out across the entire 1000km frontline. As often happens, and as I pointed out in my 2017 book Shrinking the Technosphere, often the most efficient and cost-effective form of technology is counter-technology: cheap but effective devices that turn very expensive, advanced technology into a useless heap of junk. This is precisely what is happening now thanks to the efforts of brilliant young Russian engineers and scientists working at the Sestroretsk military factory.

They have done something that the American designers of Starlink terminals thought was impossible. Their new truck-mounted system, Borschevik https://mkpborshchevik.ru/, is able to pinpoint the locations of active Starlink terminals within a 180º sector and a 10km radius to an accuracy of 5m. It is a passive system, meaning that it cannot be discovered using the signal it sends because it doesn’t send any. The truck is a small, moving target and the system does its job in two minutes if stationary and in 15 minutes if moved from point to point, targeting a maximum of 64 Starlink terminals at a time. The targeting information is then transmitted to artillery and missile batteries automatically.

So far, the results have been very positive: Borshchevik has been able to locate not just carefully camouflaged artillery emplacements but also gatherings of foreign mercenaries (who are, no doubt, internet addicts) and detachments of Ukrainian infantry (who can’t fight without NATO telling them where to go and in which direction to direct their fire). These positions were flattened then either using multiple-launch rocket systems of guided missile systems such as Krasnopol.

With the help of Borschevik, the Russian tactics will change. Whereas up until now they had to “shoot and scoot” to avoid return fire, now they’ll be able to take out all Starlink terminals in the area first, then roll up to the frontline with trucks full of ordnance and just keep firing until nothing on the Ukrainian side still moves, and only then move in with infantry, mop up and establish new positions.

Without Starlink, the Ukrainian troops will simply sit there waiting for NATO orders, not knowing where to go or where to fire and hoping for a chance to surrender. Once enough trucks with Borschevik are in place all along the front, the Ukrainians will have no choice except to keep their Starlink terminals off most of the time and just turn them on periodically to receive new orders, although by then it may be too late to carry them out or they might get targeted and destroyed before they have a chance to do so.

This is the Achilles’ heel of the American plan of attacking Russia using a proxy army of, essentially, remote-controlled puppets, and the Russians have found it and found a way to exploit it: cut its communications to NATO, and it’s pretty much over.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/ac7124b4-1efe-4b41-9887-376514854f63

State Senate Elections Committee hearing testimony from election integrity groups alleging maladministration of elections in Maricopa County.

Natalia Mittelstadt

Just he News

The Arizona Court of Appeals held a private conference Wednesday in Kari Lake’s election challenge, as a state Senate panel is hearing explosive allegations of 2022 election failures in Maricopa County, and the Democrat Secretary of State seeks to have Lake, the 2022 GOP nominee for governor, prosecuted for tweeting evidence from the public Senate hearings of mismatched ballot signatures.

The appeals court’s conference was regarding Lake’s appeal of a December decision in Maricopa County Superior Court rejecting her election lawsuit against county election officials and Gov. Katie Hobbs. Lake’s suit alleged that numerous irregularities in the 2022 gubernatorial election, including election machine issues in nearly 60% of the county’s 115 vote centers, effectively suppressed heavily Republican Election Day vote.

The court reviewed Lake’s case two days after she was separately referred for criminal prosecution by Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to Attorney General Kris Mayes regarding a Lake tweet about Senate testimony on the improper counting of ballots with mismatched signatures.

“Today’s Senate Testimony CONFIRMS nearly 40,000 ballots illegally counted (10% of the signatures reviewed),” Lake tweeted on Jan. 23. “I think all the ‘Election Deniers’ out there deserve an apology.”

Lake included a graphic displaying a sampling of ballots that were counted despite being signed in a hand that appeared to differ sharply from the voter’s signature in the voter registration database.

The signatures that Lake posted were shared in a presentation to the Arizona state Senate Elections Committee the day she tweeted them.

On Monday, Fontes wrote in a letter to Mayes that Lake may have committed a class 6 felony by posting voter signatures online.

“This is becoming all too common in politics — another attempt to weaponize the justice system with a phony allegation against a Republican,” Lake attorney Tim LaSota fired back on Wednesday. “Adrian Fontes selectively quotes the statute in an attempt to distort the law and smear Kari Lake in the process. Kris Mayes should immediately say that she will have no part in this shameful, disgusting effort.

“This information came from the Arizona Senate investigation on acceptance of clearly mismatched signatures on early ballots, and Kari Lake has an absolute right under the First Amendment to republish the information presented to the Senate.”

The Arizona state Senate Elections Committee, chaired by Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, has been hearing testimony since last week from election integrity groups regarding the administration of elections in Maricopa County.

During a hearing last week on 2022 election irregularities, Shelby Busch, the cofounder of We the People AZ, testified before the committee that 47,366 of verified voter signatures reviewed by her group didn’t meet the basic Arizona Secretary of State standards, showing pictures of the signatures in her presentation.

Busch’s group was commissioned by outgoing state Senate President Karen Fann to submit public records requests to the Maricopa County Elections Department. We the People AZ investigated both the 2020 and 2022 elections in the county.

Busch also reported that 217,305 ballots of the 464,926 ballots fed into tabulators on Election Day in Maricopa County in 2022 were rejected.

On Monday, Busch told the committee that her group found multiple violations of state election law by the county. The alleged infractions include excessive ballot adjudication; the effective disenfranchisement of thousands of (mostly Republican) voters on Election Day; and around 300,000 ballots that didn’t have chain of custody.

Busch found, for example, that the number of ballots referred to a bipartisan board for adjudication due to missing information or an overvote jumped sharply in the last two election cycles. While the normal rate of adjudication isn’t greater than 4%, the percentage rose to 11.9% in 2020, then 14.36% in 2022.

She testified that 64% of the 4,021 people waiting in lines of 85 or more people when the polls closed at 7 p.m. never got to vote.

Heather Honey, the founder of election integrity watchdog Verify Vote, testified that there was a lack of chain of custody for around 300,000 Early Voting ballots dropped off in drop boxes on Election Day. Honey previously gave similar testimony during Lake’s election trial in December.

Technical problems at vote centers on Election Day are a central focus of Lake’s lawsuit. At her rally in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Sunday, she revealed more on what her team has found.

Lake showed a heat map that hangs in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center that represented 2020 Republican in-person Election Day and early voting turnout and overlaid it with pins indicating where vote centers experienced major election machine malfunctions on Election Day in 2022. Most of the problematic vote centers were in deep red, or Republican, areas of the county.

“Coincidence??” Lake tweeted with pictures of the map with the pins on Wednesday. “Look how perfectly Election Day Polling FAILURES on November 8th match up with the REPUBLICAN heat map.”

[…]

Via https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/amid-kari-lakes-legal-fight-az-senate-election-committee-hears-testimony

Lecture 23: Reconstructing the Greek Teireme

Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From the Catapult to the Pantheon

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

Reaching its peak with the trireme in the 5th century BC, Greek long ship construction subsequently declined. When wrecked, triremes could be swamped but not sunk (owing to their light weight and buoyancy). Thus none were left on the ocean floor for future archeologists to discover. Thus historians and engineers have relied on ancient texts and artwork to reconstruct what they looked like.

The first Greek long ships appeared during the 3rd millennium BC. By the time of the Trojan War (12th century BC), they were fully evolved. Homer writes about them in the 8th century BC as the primary vehicle for troop transport. By that time the bireme (with oarsmen on two levels) emerged (late 8th century BC) the long ship had become an offensive weapon used to ram other ships.

Early in the 7th century BC, either the Phoenicians or the Corinthians added a third level of rowers (creating the trireme). Essential for any regime wishing to assert their political dominance, the Persians used them to suppress the Ionian Revolt, the Greeks to defeat. The Persians used them to suppress the Ionian Revolt, the Greeks to defeat the Persians in the first Greco-Persian war and the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War despite their ultimate defeat. Ressler believes the golden age of Athens would have been impossible without them

Classical Greeks also designed a quadrireme, employing two banks of oars with two men per oar and a quinquireme. It had three banks of oars with two men per oar on the two upper levels and one per oar on the lowest level.

Under Alexander the Great, the purpose of naval vessels changed from ramming other boats to boarding and capturing and capturing. His long ships became heavier to carry more soldiers and and artillery.

The Romans opted for triremes and quadriremes as standard warships to carry their seaborne warriors. However they built nothing to compare to the Hellenic trireme of the 3rd century BC. The Hellenic Empire built thousands over three centuries in Greece, Egypt and the Levant.

A tireme’s standard crew consisted of

• 1 captain
• 1 helmsman
• 10 infantry
• 4 archers
• 1 purser
• 1 shipwright (to make repairs)
• 1 piper to help keep the rowing rhythm
• 10 deckahnds
• 170 rowers

Rowers were highly trained specialists forbidden to serve as warriors because they were too valuable.

Triremes carried two sails, which were used for long voyages. However when vessels were cleared for battle, the masts and sails were left ashore. They had a maximum speed of 7-8 knots (8-9 mph).

All triremes had a hypozoma, a  loop of heavy rope anchored near the bow and stern to prevent hogging.* It used a windlass to twist and tighten the hypozoma.

In June 1987, the Greek government commissioned the Olympias Project to reconstruct a fully operational reconstruction of the trireme (top image).

*Hogging is the stress a ship’s hull or keel experiences (on op of a wave) that causes the center or the keel to bend upward.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/146678/146724

Albert Bourla. Photo credit: World Economic Forum/flickr.