Regarding the Ramey memo

The New Yorker magazine for November 16, 2015 has an article by John Seabrook: The Invisible Library: Can digital technology make the Herculaneum scrolls legible after two thousand years? [Page 62 ff

The piece unravels the process being used to decipher the scrolls, buried in Herculaneum when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. also burying Pompeii.

The scrolls were discovered in 1752, encrusted and battered beyond any ability, at the time, to decipher the contents of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, works of Epicurus, Ovid, Tacitus, Aristotle, Gorgios, Sappho, and other greats of the Golden Age of antiquity.

Writer Seabrook takes readers through the vicissitudes of the work by a team of specialists (Daniel Delatte, David Sider, Daniel Mendelsohn,Vito Mocella, Brent Seales et al.) using devices called “synchrotrons” which are used in particle accelerators to observe quantum data (if I’m reading that correctly).

The men wrote an article – Revealing Letters in Rolled Herculaneum Papyri by X-Ray Phase-Contrast Imaging – which was published in Nature Communications, January 2015.

The New Yorker article is replete with suggestive offerings that the Ramey memo devotees might find helpful. (David Rudiak, are you listening?)

Go to the New Yorker site – NewYorker.com – to see if you can access the piece.

It’s enlightening, abstruse, and interesting.

Wikipedia has information about the scrolls here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri

RR

Unrefined extraterrestrials?

I’ve noted, a few times in the past, that if UFOs contain alien (extraterrestrial) visitors, those visitors are semi-barbaric, unrefined and lacking cultural aesthetics.

One of the reasons I’m hung up on Zamora’s Socorro “thing” is the symbol he saw – no matter which one.

That symbol indicates a hint of metaphoric sentience.

If the “thing” Zamora saw came from an Earthly construct (Hughes Aircraft/Toolco), the symbol is understandable.

If the “thing” Zamora saw is from outside the Earth, it’s an indication of a species with a sense of a linguistic taxonomy.

But this is one of only a few instances where UFOs (or flying saucers) show any sign of  an artistic or metaphorical reference.

UFOs usually portray a rough-hewn phenomenon or, if containing “beings,” a species devoid of refinement, reserve, or dignity.

The flight gyrations in such incidents as the Gorman dogfight [1948], the Coyne helicopter “assault” (1973), or the Iran episode (1976) show a willingness for UFO “occupants” to challenge, without cause, other craft in Earth’s airspace, something akin to outlaws invading the space of others and assuming the space is theirs for occupancy.

And in all the UFO landing events, as bizarre as they are, none reflects a species flush with decorum or refined behavior.

Aside from the silly antics in such incidents, there is a palpable indication of a psychotic, by human standards, mind-set.

Betty Hill’s bookish alien (with a “star map”) would bespeak a culture or species with a sense of intellectual acumen or aesthetic values, but since her and her husband’s “kidnapping” seems a mental contrivance rather than a real UFO/human contact event, one has to discount the “abduction” as imaginary, but it would have been nice to find, in her account, a semblance of an alien species with an iota of refinement and good taste, diminished, unfortunately by the alleged examination of Betty and Barney.

There are no UFO tales or sightings that tell us extraterrestrials come from a cultured civilization.

Even humans, as barbaric as they often are, leave evidence of a cultured civilization, even when some members are slaughtering others, as outlined in Homer’s opuses.

No, if aliens are visiting Earth, they re doing so like tourists visiting Yellowstone Park and mucking up the natural environment and ruining the vacations of more reserved visitors.

Yes, aliens, should they exist and are coming here, are as barbaric and crude as some humans, and not a species to get excited about.

RR