Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows of sustainable paper

By David Biello

I promise not to give anything away, just wanted to highlight a few facts about the impending mega-release: its first printing will consume 16,700 tons of paper (which, depending on whose estimates of tree per piece of paper you believe, equals roughly 400,800 trees), according to Scholastic.

Ah, but the printers have performed a little wizardry of their own, using wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. 260,520 of those trees were "sustainably harvested," which means the companies that harvested it took into account environmental and social factors (though it doesn't mean they didn't come from a plantation, just that this tree farm set aside some acreage for "natural forest cover." Oh, and the plantation species don't have to be native if "their performance is greater than that of the native species," according to the FSC website.)

Because the printing industry in the U.S. alone consumes at least 24 million trees a year, according to the Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies at Georgia Tech, any steps in this direction are to be lauded. After all, preventing the loss of forests could go a long way towards avoiding catastrophic greenhouse gas levels.

But any book that has sold millions of copies before it even hits the shelves (and despite leaks) is probably better suited to recycled paper--and a "deluxe" edition printed on recycled paper will be available. But why only 100,000? Granted, China is eating up the supply of waste paper at a galloping pace--preventing 65 million metric tons of the stuff from hitting landfills, according to a recent report--but surely there are a few sheaves left somewhere. And it shouldn't take wizardry to find them, nor cost an arm and a leg (though I hear wizarding might.) Zhang Yin, the "Queen of Trash" seems to be making a good living at it, muggle or not.

Useful links on the original article site, the Scientific American blog.

Floods threaten Silbury Hill and Rotherwas Ribbon

By Maeve Kennedy The Guardian

Rain was falling remorselessly on Silbury Hill yesterday, pooling on the sodden fields at its foot, and dangerously seeping down into the core of the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe. The entire hill near Avebury in Wiltshire is artificial, built around 4,500 years ago by stupendous human effort with an estimated 35m baskets of chalk. Yesterday, archaeologists and engineers were engaged in urgent discussions on how to save Silbury, after the torrential rain caused further damage to a structure already weakened by earlier floods. [snip]

In floods five years ago, a chasm opened at the top of the hill, where a poorly filled 200-year-old shaft collapsed, and water poured down into the structure, seeping into voids left by generations of later diggers, including the tunnels from a major excavation in the 1960s. The plan, now left in chaos by the weather, was to empty those tunnels completely of their previous loose fill, and then pack them solidly again with chalk. Instead rain is still seeping into the mound, from the summit where the earlier domed repair has already partly washed away, causing damage which can't even be fully assessed until the rain stops.

Silbury is not alone. As well as the human tragedies, the floods have been washing away thousands of years of history, across a swath of central and southern England. Silbury has been unmissable for millennia, but in Hereford, rain has been scouring away parts of a mysterious structure uncovered only a few weeks ago: the Rotherwas Ribbon, a serpentine path surfaced with deliberately burned stones, winding up a shallow hill - slap in the path of an unpopular new road plan.

FULL ARTICLE

I posted about the Rotherwas Ribbon several weeks ago.

Part 2: Military Helicopters Over East Field Wheat Formation

Linda Moulton Howe's continuation of the crop circle article I posted July 20th.


Part 2: Military Helicopters Over East Field Wheat Formation

By Linda Moulton Howe

"There was a terrible smell from the helicopter.
I can describe it as being a sulfurous smell – very powerful!
It made my eyes burn. I noticed half a dozen other people as well –
they were quite severely affected. I saw one man throwing up
into the crop.... and my dosimeter shot up very high between 300 and 500 ...
which means get out of the place. It’s dangerous!"
- Andrew J. Buckley, U. K. Graphic Designer

FULL ARTICLE

Aggressive swarming by unmarked black helicopters, possible infra-sound, significant yet transitory radiation levels. Very disturbing.

Crop Circle Connector -- the primary British crop circle resource. They provide a valuable service, and membership wil give you access to their archives. Please show your support for them.
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/interface2005.htm

Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients' Deaths

By Ray Allen

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"He doesn't make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. [snip]

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

FULL ARTICLE

The quote by the animal behaviorist Dodman calling the cat a "furry grim reaper" was a bit much. Though I guess it's better than "silken-furred psychopomp" would have been.

God, a woman growing older

By Rabbi Margaret Wenig

God is a woman and she is growing older. She moves more slowly now. She cannot stand erect. Her face is lined. Her voice is scratchy. Sometimes she has to strain to hear. God is a woman and she is growing older, yet she remembers everything.

On Rosh Hashanah, the anniversary of the day on which she gave us birth, God sits down at her kitchen table, opens the Book of Memories, begins turning the pages, and God remembers.

"There, there is the world when it was new and my children when they were young." As she turns each page she smiles, seeing before her, like so many dolls in a department store window, all the beautiful colors of our skin, the varied shapes and sizes of our bodies. She marvels at our accomplishments: the music we have written, the gardens we have planted, the stories we have told, the ideas we have spun.

"They now can fly faster than the winds I send," she says to herself, "and they sail across the waters which I gathered into seas. They even visit the moon which I set in the sky. But they rarely visit me. . ."

COMPLETE PIECE

Thanks to The Back Room

Harry Potter: the economics

By Megan McArdle

But there have to be generally accepted rules. Characters can't get out of the predicament the author is sick of by having the car suddenly start running on sand. Similarly, if your characters will be using magic, they must do so by some generally believable system.

Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary. A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old. Rowling can only do this because it's thoroughly unclear how magic power is acquired. It seems hard to credit academic labour, when spells are one or two words; and anyway, if that were the determinant, Hermione Granger would be a better wizard than Harry. But if it's something akin to athletic skill, why is it taught at rows of desks? And why aren't students worn out after practicing spells?

The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Thanks to Chas Clifton

Crop Circle: Alton Priors

1,033-Foot-Long East Field Wheat Formation "Happened Within 90 Minutes." Investigators presented video and eyewitness evidence

Linda Moulton Howe has a presentation on a recent crop circle formation at Alton Priors, Wilts. July 7. This is part 1 of 2, second is not up yet. Aside from the witnesses, and the tantalizing bits of documentation, what I find particularly interesting is this:

The East Field is not a totally flat pancake field. It actually curves up and down. When you look at the formation from up above from an aerial photo, you see that the circles are absolutely 100% correct circles. To make circles look 100% from the air in a field that has up and down hills, you cannot create 100% perfect circles on the ground. You have to create ovals. And that’s the case here. All the circles that are lying on a hill more than flat surface, they are ovals. To construct 100% correct oval in total darkness – everything you do is extremely difficult because you can’t see anything.

So, to construct not just one, but several ovals and large ones – the largest one is like 50 meters, or 160 feet. Under those dark conditions, I would consider that impossible and everyone I have spoken to among the researchers down here and also civil engineers who are used to land surveys – they say that to do that under those conditions and also within that limited time frame (90 minutes), they regard it as absolutely impossible for humans to do.

Photo is by Lucy Pringle (more on site). I felt this one shows the slope of the land fairly well.

Viking treasure hoard uncovered

Viking treasure hoard uncovered

The most important Viking treasure find in Britain for 150 years has been unearthed by a father and son while metal detecting in Yorkshire. David and Andrew Whelan uncovered the hoard, which dates back to the 10th Century, in Harrogate in January [snip]

The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe.

The hoard contains 617 silver coins and 65 other objects, including a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel.

Dr Jonathan Williams, keeper of prehistory in Europe at the British Museum, said: "[The cup] is beautifully decorated and was made in France or Germany at around AD900.

"It is fantastically rare - there are only a handful of others known around the world. It will be stunning when it is fully conserved."

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Series of pictures of the cup and its contents

Thanks to BoingBoing

Strange Creatures Seen In San Luis Argentina

Translated by Scott Corales for UFO Updates

Residents of Merlo claim having seen imps near a hundred year
old eucalyptus tree. A strange story from Valle de Conlara.

The Municipality trimmed the tree because its large branches were jeopardizing motorists traveling along Avenida del Inca. After work, some residents reportedly saw "little men coming out [of the tree] in single file from that location." [snip] Most witnesses did not offer details, but one woman described their clothing as having a brownish hue," said Cecillia de Gabrele, an employee at the library. The article continues

Cerne Abbas Giant and Long Man of Wilmington

Twenty-first century crassness collides with the ancient monuments, as Cerne Abbas gets hooked up with Homer Simpson and the Long Man gets an obnoxiously goofy gender change. I'm afraid it won't be the last time we see such witless hijinks, as more people decide they need to make their own pranks on this theme more daring and edgy.

The Modern Antiquarian has put together a round-up of the coverage:

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/60668/news/long_man_of_wilmington.html

Thanks to The Wild Hunt.

Manhattanhenge: A New York Sunset

Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) shows the sun setting straight down the middle of 34th Street, as it does twice a year.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070713.html

Moby Click by David Rothenberg

[Terra Nova] • Last month I told the tale of one scientist who thought my idea of learning the music of whales by playing along with them was the worst kind of egotistical folly. But recently I met a scientist with quite a different approach.

Michel Andre is one of the world's great experts on the acoustics of the sperm whale. He had long been vexed by the problem of how to tell one whale from another when recording a cacophony of clicking noises made by groups of these Moby Dick-type whales foraging under water.

Andre heard layers of overlapping rhythms that made no sense to him. He remembered that European musicologists, when first visiting Africa, could not understand how the large groups of drummers in countries like Senegal could keep their own part going in the midst of so many other contradictory beats. In fact these drummers have maintained their own signature rhythms in the din of the crowd since childhood. From these years of practice, each drummer knows how his pattern sings out in the spaces between all the other patterns. You must be an expert in the discernment of rhythms to successfully play this music.

With this in mind, Andre invited a Senegalese drummer, Arona N'Diaye Rose, to listen to his recording of a four-member unit of vocalizing sperm whales. The sabar master was immediately able to distinguish the beat of each of the four clicking whales from the others. He also believed that what the scientists heard as cacophony was actually an organized rhythm, based on a dominant beat coming from one of the whales, which Rose felt was analogous to the signature rhythms marking the social structure of an African tribe.

"I couldn't believe it," said Andre to me at a café in Barcelona last week, close to his laboratory. "We knew there were four whales because we took notes during the recording, but all we heard was a confusion of clicks. I asked Arona how he could tell there were four different animals. He said 'I don't know how – but I know.'"

Since that listening session ten years ago, Andre has been seeking funding to continue his research. But his story is the same as I've heard from many scientists: it is invariably difficult to get support for descriptive work. Applied science, especially work towards managing whale "stocks" or populations, is always easier to fund. An approach that combines biology with music – for all its intercultural promise – is the hardest to support. Should the funders be research agencies or cultural exchange groups? Neither wants to touch anything so firmly on the charged border between one approach and the next.

Andre has been developing more mathematically rigorous, or "objective," ways of categorizing whale clicks. Building this system is a prelude to being able to study the relationship between clicks that come from different whales with greater accuracy. It would also be a method that takes account of the precise rhythm that goes on between the clicks, how they fit into a larger patterned context. This complexity is what Rose heard in the recordings, and Andre feels we should not ignore it.

"We need to study the whales' perception, not our own perception," he said. "Scientists are more used to counting, so we count. We have to learn from the insights of polyrhythmic drumming to perceive the value of rhythm at work in the clicks themselves." So at the same time as trying out wild ideas, like collaborating with drummers, Andre is also applying more sophisticated mathematics, for more rigorous results.

Andre believes it is the relationship between the clicks that is most important. He also thinks that "reading" the clicks as music might help figure out what's really happening. But it's going to take musicians, scientists, and whales spending a whole lot of time together to get meaningful results.

"Sure, it's subjective if a drummer just listens once," said Andre. "But if I ever get to work with Rose for several months at a time, learning his perception and his approach toward analyzing the combinations, then I hope to learn something of his rhythmic intelligence that has been passed down through many generations. Yet we still don't have the funding to bring a drum master onto our team. Rose was certainly on to something. He immediately sensed an organization to these whale sounds that none of us in my lab could hear."

Perhaps one day the powers that grant funds to make science possible might see fit to support musicians and scientists working together more deeply. But at the moment, only about ten people in the world have even the slightest understanding of the code-like tappings produced by these legendary, mammoth beasts. How will we figure them out? The problem with whale science is the same as the problem Brian Eno pointed years ago regarding digital communication: "It's got to have more Africa in it."


Michel Andre's websites:

http://www.lab.upc.es/
http://www.sonsdemar.eu/

Source: Reality Sandwich

Thanks to The Daily Grail

The Weasley Family's Arthurian Names

There is a running theme of Arthurian legend in some of the Weasley family names. The father is named Arthur; the daughter is named Ginevra, which is the Italian form of Guinevere; a son is named Percy, which is a shortened form of Percival, and the youngest son is named Ron, the name of Arthur's spear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and in the "Brut" poems of Wace and Layamon[3][4] (it was originally "Rhongomynyad" in Welsh legend).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasley_family

Elements of the Arthurian Tradition in Harry Potter
by Phyllis D. Morris

Elements of the Arthurian tradition are woven throughout Rowling's Harry Potter series. Both Arthur and Harry are heroes; both were taken from their parents and hidden for their own safety; both have wise, aged mentors; both are on a quest to fulfill their destiny and both have the potential to become immortal. This paper explores the parallels between the themes and characters in Arthurian legend and those in the Harry Potter series. Article

Last night (this morning?)I took my daughters to see the midnight opening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the local mall. While they've been deeply involved with the books for years (we'll go to the midnight sale of the 7th book as well), I just haven't been terribly interested in reading any of them. I appreciate that JK Rowling manages to tell a good story, and I think it is fantastic to see how many kids have been turned on to reading because of the series. But I'm afraid the books are just too English boarding school fiction for me.

As we walked through fields of prayer

Just west of Aberdeen, a forgotten megalithic landscape could contain written evidence of an ancient Mediterranean connection. But it definitely contains memories of a once sacred landscape, which became the Pictish heartland. ARTICLE

Philip Coppens explores the Scottish megalithic features which hang onto their integrity precariously, as civilization spreads over the ancient lands of the River Don.

Thanks to The Daily Grail

Unique Bronze Age site discovered in England

Raphael G. Satter Associated Press Jul. 8, 2007

The stones were likely heated in a fire and quickly doused in cold water, cracking before being placed along the serpentine earthen mound. The result: a curving paved structure possibly used in a ritual by Britain's Bronze Age inhabitants.The archaeologist who announced the discovery of the 65-yard-long "Rotherwas Ribbon" in western England said so-called "burnt stones" that cover the 4,000-year-old mound could shed more light on early civilization.

Mounds of burnt stones litter northern Europe and some experts believe they were once used in cooking.

But their presence on the snakelike mound also suggests the stones were used in rituals, Herefordshire County archaeologist Keith Ray said Wednesday.

"It's the only structure we have from prehistory from Britain or in Europe, as far as we can tell, that is actually a deliberate construction that uses burnt stones," Ray said. "This is ... going to make us rethink whole chunks of what we thought we understood about the period."

AP article continues

BBC News article with aerial photograph

Bob Widdowson, Chair of Herefordshire Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), said: "I am bemused by the plan to 'preserve' the site beneath the road. How comforting to know that this extraordinary find is there but no one can see it until a more enlightened generation tears up the road! A site of 4000 years and apparently of major international importance is to be preserved (buried) so that a road that most sensible people agree is in the wrong place and not needed can be finished 'on time'." link

Thanks to Pagan Nation

Keywords: megalithic, archeology, England, UK, Herefordshire, road, ritual, stone, fire, Rotherwas, Rotherwas Ribbon

'Living goddess' has deity status stripped after US trip

By Michael Savage

A 10-year-old Nepalese girl who is one of the country's most important living goddesses is to have her deity status removed after she defied tradition and left her homeland to promote a documentary.

Sajani Shakya angered local religious leaders when she travelled to the United States last month to publicise a British-made film about Nepal's living goddesses. Sajani, who was based at the city of Bhaktapur's Taleju Temple in the Kathmandu valley, was worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists. As one of the kingdom's three highest Kumaris, or living goddesses, she was forbidden from leaving Nepal.

Jai Prasad Regmi, the head of a trust that manages the affairs of the Kumari tradition in Bhaktapur, said that the girl's deity status would be revoked on her return from the US this week. "It is wrong and against the tradition for her to go on a foreign tour without any permission," he said. "This is impure in our tradition. We will search for a new Kumari and install her as the living goddess."

More at The Independent

Military Spooks employing street witches?

Former Green Beret John Alexander was involved in the US government Remote Viewing program. He tells Sharon Weisberger of Wired News about how the program at one point brought in witches who were street psychics.

Danger Room: So, tell me about the witches [who were brought into the Remote Viewing program].
John Alexander: It was a group of women. They were not doing remote viewing. They were doing palmistry, crystal ball kinds of stuff. This was very different from the guys who were the remote viewers, who were following very strict protocols.
DR: Then who were the witches?
JA: They were more like storefront psychics.
DR: Like you have all over in Washington, D.C.?
JA: Yeah.
DR: What year are we talking about?
JA: Must have been the 1990s. I’m not sure exactly what year, by 1995, [the remote viewing program] was dead.
DR: Were the witches successful?
JA: Not terribly. They lacked discipline and protocols.

Thanks to The Daily Grail for today's links

Midnight Sun Witchcraft Conference 2007

The three day Heksekonferansen was held last week in Varda, Norway.
Ronald Hutton was one of the keynote speakers, lecturing on "The Status of Witchcraft in the Modern Age." Some of the other lectures were on
"The Northern Encounter of Shamanhood and Christianity," "Rituals and Male Witches in Icelandic Witchcraft," " The Changing Understanding of the Witch in Russia at the time of Peter the Great," and " Witch-trials in Finnmark and Scotland – Torture and confession."

http://www.heksekonferansen.no/prog.htm

New Stone Circle Revealed in Shetland Islands

A team of archeologists from Bath University has uncovered an early Bronze Age or late Neolithic stone circle on the island of Foula, one of the Shetland Islands. The circle is oriented to the midwinter sunrise. Foula (population 30) has the world's largest colony of Great Skuas, known locally as "bonxies."

Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society (BACAS)
http://www.bacas.homecall.co.uk/

Foula (Visit Shetland site)
http://www.visitshetland.com/area-guides/foula/