The Riddle of Baghdad's Battery 1808
Jodrell writes "The BBC has an interesting article about a 2,200 year old battery discovered in Iraq in 1938. It is basically a clay pot containing a copper/iron core immersed in an electrolye solution (probably acidic vinegar). The article talks about how this priceless artifact as well as many others, from the same civilisation that invented writing and the wheel, could be threatened by the impending war."
Not the "same civilization" (Score:3, Interesting)
Our lack of history preservation is apalling (Score:1, Interesting)
Think back when Al Queada destroyed the Buddhist monuments in Afganistan, where was the public outrage then?
Unfortunately, everytime I see some ground breaking artifact that gains new insight, I think of Futurama, and how 1,000 years from now ancient artifacts will show us that whalers were on the moon...
Which is better? (Score:2, Interesting)
So we either (possibly) lose some priceless artifacts, or we lose priceless lives when the next terrorist strike comes.
I know which one is more important. Do you?
Re:Not the "same civilization" (Score:2, Interesting)
You could say the same for Egypt, except they care for and maintain the pyramids and their heritage. Why should the people of Iraq be denied the same?
Saddam wasn't too concerned about artifacts.... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/i
Tom
Re:Our lack of history preservation is apalling (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, the Dalai Lama called for restraint after the fact, saying that despite their great historical value, they were only statues - and the impermanence of things is central to Buddhist doctrine.
9 volt battery on the tongue (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how they can assume these are batteries when there is no evidence of wires or mechanical devices that would use the electricity.
A few months ago I saw something on the Discovery Channel talking about all of this. They found similar things (bowls/pots with acid in them) in South America too. They said all of these most likely were for magical purposes (cool shock or possibly even coating/electro-plating jewelry), but not batteries.
"Archeological Shields" (Score:2, Interesting)
Innovative.
Here everyone was wringing their hands at the potential for Saddam Hussein to use Iraqi civilians as "human shields" in the event of U.S. attack.
Now we're moving on to "archeological shields", as if prospect of humans casualities weren't enough.
[I'd say the U.S. mistimed its Afghanistan venture, though, since the Taliban had enough time to actively seek out and destroy that giant Buddha relic.]
This area has been under so much war. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:eletroplating (Score:3, Interesting)
I also enjoyed the speculation that the batteries were used as religious icons. Get a little jolt touching the sacred statue... Now I've got great ideas for D&D adventures!
All in all, an interesting read -- I consider my mind expanded by Slashdot. And here everyone thought Slashdot was only good for MS-bashing!
Re:Iraqi lives and future vs an ancient battery. (Score:3, Interesting)
It is interesting to see what the archeologists have dug up next. We are all curious about what happened in ancient times past. It would be regretful to lose parts of the story.
But we should never place the ancient over the present. They are not going to discover anything of real value to us now. Certainly nothing more valuable than the lives of thousands of people living in the present.
Cheney says it is (Score:5, Interesting)
Excerpting:
Policy Review: It is now two years after the spectacular victory of the United States and its allies in Desert Storm. What objectives were achieved during this war?
Cheney: The best way to evaluate Desert Storm is to consider what the world would be like today if we hadn't fought and won this war. If we had taken a pass on Saddam's occupation of Kuwait, by today he would have the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and would sit astride about 50 percent of the world's oil reserves, which he could control directly when you add up Kuwaiti, Saudi, and Iraqi oil reserves. He'd be able to dominate the rest of the reserves in the Persian Gulf. And he'd have nuclear weapons. We had to stop this from happening. And we did.
--
Notice how the nukes are clearly a secondary consideration.
--
P.R.: You got out of Iraq without going all the way to Baghdad. Are you worried that Saddam Hussein is still in power today?
Cheney: I'd rather he were not in power, but I don't see him at this point as a threat to any of his neighbors. In that part of the world, I'm more concerned about Iran. Saddam is unable to sell oil; without selling oil, he can't generate the revenue he needs to rebuild that military machine we destroyed. The Iranians aren't faced with that situation; they have access to the world's markets, they are selling oil, and they are using some of that revenue to regenerate their forces and expand their capabilities. For example, they're buying diesel-powered submarines and MiG-29s from the Russians.
--
Nah, can't be about the oil.
Re:Not the "same civilization" (Score:5, Interesting)
All brown people look alike huh?
Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT THE SAME THING!
As evil and dangerous as Saddam is, he is not a taliban, and in fact Iraq was on the Taliban's list of not-nice-places. Iraq is a modern country (kinda), where women can go to school and work and show their faces in public. Saddam has founded a lot of archeological digs, he even had replicas built of the excavated sites so that the people could go look at their countrie's past glory without damaging the originals.
Try to get this in your head: Saddam and Oussama are NOT THE SAME PERSON, they don't agree on anything except that they both resent the US.
Re:Bad Priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you for the name calling.
There are some of us, thank you very much, who oppose the war on ideological grounds. Some of us believe that the function of the U.S. military should be to defend the citizens of the U.S., not to run around the world "installing" democracies. We should lead by example, not by force.
Unless, of course, you believe that Saddam only poses a threat to his own people, so why should we care?
Um, you really think that Saddam poses a threat to the U.S.? I've followed the administration's incredibly weak attempts to convince us that he does, but I still don't see it.
I don't believe for one second that this is primarily about oil, but it certainly isn't about the national security of the U.S.
Re:Not the "same civilization" (Score:2, Interesting)
actually the US already has said they don't plan on attacking those since it would make rebuilding the country's intrastructure much much harder. Saddam has also said he has no intention of setting fire to them as he did in 1991 since he claims he would not destroy the wealth of Iraq since it wouldn't be in the intrests of his country.
Re:It's all about oil... TO FRANCE!!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
It's about paranoia, America needing to look tough and "kick ass", Bush needing a war to boost popularity and, at this stage most of all, sending back 100,000 troops without a fight would look like a defeat. Oil is a factor in there too.
You also right in that France and Russia and most other countries aren't against the war for humanitarian reasons. Each one has their little political objectives. However, I think the actual people who marched against war around the world, did it because they don't want to see 1000's of lives lost for a worthless cause.
Isn't it technically just a 'cell'? (Score:1, Interesting)
Hey everyone, check this guy out! (Score:3, Interesting)
Whoa! Damn! This dude is on to something! Wow, he must watch Fox TV or read Newsweek, those bastions of pacifism and respect for international law!
I am humbled by such an acute insight, such pithy observation. I would never have noticed by merely reading or watching "the media." Thank God Anonymous Coward has opened my eyes to the truth!
RTFA: Did they throw away 11 others too? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is very interesting in its own right. However,
I think it's likely that the ancients put some vinegar in this metal container, discovered that it corroded badly, and threw it away.
They've found at least 12 such primative batteries, so unless they were throwing away a bunch of defecting jars that all mysteriously resembled batteries far more closely than simple storage jugs, I think the idea that they suffered a little accidental corrosion and threw it away is rather unlikely.
Virtually everyone believes these were primitive batteries, and used as such, but not to drive bronze age equivelent walkmans or the like. Rather, some believe it may have been to imbibe idols with magical "shocking" capabilities to lend credence to local religious cults, an invention that occurred likely by accident, reproduced by trial and error, and then applied (secretively) by the priests of Baal (or whatever cult was popular at the time) as a way to convice people of the divinity of their statue.
That they were batteries designed to deliver a low amperage, fairly low voltage electrical current is pretty widely accepted. Why they were made, and what they were used for, is really anybody's guess at this point
Intellectual Property (Score:2, Interesting)
If the principle and functioning of these batteries and the steam engine had been studied and the knowledge shared, as such things were in the 18th and 19th centuries, science and the industrial revolution could have started around 200 BC.
The patent system was meant to encourage such sharing but it seems that it is helping to keep ideas and methods away from the public instead.
Re:Priorities (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't be foolish: USA has never stablished a democracy anywhere. Maybe that's what Hollywood's always told you, but i'm afraid you have to know that "America" (as USA pretentiously names itself, as if there weren't 32 other countries in the continent) doesn't really care about human rights, democracy or whatsoever. What "America" exports is terrorism. Ask Chile, Nicaragua, Brasil, Guatemala, Paraguay, Bolivia, Palestine about the terror America supports as a government. America has always supported terror regimes as long as they are "allies". They don't really care about the "friendly regimes" of Saudi Arabia or Egypt being FAR from democracies. They didn't really care Saddam being just as crazy as today when they sold him chemical weapons to fight Iran, because in that moment, u know, the bad guys were Ayatollah's fellows. They really didn't care about Osama being just as terrorist as today when they supported and trained his men, because he was fighting against USSR, because, u know, USSR was the enemy then.
You know, human rights and democracy in other countries were never, and never will be, a priority for USA. Can you take it?
Re:Not the "same civilization" (Score:2, Interesting)
What the fuck are you talking about? Egypt's current president-for-life, Hosni Mubarak, pretty much banned all of his opponents in the last "election". He's been running the country since Sadat was assassinated in '81. His regime regularly engages in suppression of political dissent, both from progressive elements and Islamist radicals. Protests take place on occasion, usually only if the cause is something Mubarak's government agrees with or can take advantage of.
No evidence... (Score:5, Interesting)
Israel ? And what was Donald "lets invade" Rumsfelds job during the 80s... err selling chemicals to Sadam.
We know, beyond any reasonable doubt that the US has helped Israel get WMD, we also know its sold them to Britain as well.
So there are two official cases where it has happened. And officially the US and Britain supplied billions of dollars of arms equipment to Iraq during the Iran v Iraq war.
What else do we know
1) CIA trained Bin Laden and many people in Afghanistan against the USSR, many of these became the Taliban.
2) The US supplied weapons to terrorists in the Iran/Contra scandal.
So yes, apart from these cases and lots more there is no evidence at all to say that the US has potentially the dirtiest hands on the block.
Lots of reasons (Score:3, Interesting)
I would feel a little more comfortable with this war if the US plan for post-war Iraq didn't boil down to basically the same sentiment you make above: "gee, that'd be nice".
In other words, we really have no idea how to bring about democracy or a representative republic in Iraq, as the country has so little experience with those forms of government. Furthermore, they're basically composed of a large number of different ethnic and religious groups who have remained unified only due to ruthless oppression. The Administration's plans don't really lay out much in the way of a road-map, beyond (possibly) letting Turkey "deal" with the Kurds and leaving a lot of Saddam's oppressive government in place.
Furthermore, according to Gen. Eric Shinseki (who is, allegedly, fairly credible), the rebuilding and occupation will require several hundred thousand troops-- essentially the entire deployable US army. One hopes that we'll be able to get some international support for this effort, so our forces aren't totally hamstrung for an indefinite duration. (Of course, we could just pull back and let the heart of the middle east become a power vacuum.)
There's a reason Bush the first didn't go into Iraq, and we'll find out a lot more about it in the coming years.
Re:Priorities (Score:2, Interesting)
If you really want to save the people of the world, what about all the other people in totalitarian regimes, which we wholeheartedly support? There are many, and most obvious is North Korea, which is a total humanitarian disaster, as well as a diplomatic one. The United States does not care about people. It's leaders may defend their actions by making absurd connections (by them suffering, they will in the future be happy), and whatever other thinking methods they use. But in the end, it's all just a big game to them, with the little pawns moving on the board. That is what power does. It makes people objects.
Re:No evidence... (Score:4, Interesting)
How does that make your argument feel?
indole
Re:typical liberal responses (Score:5, Interesting)
The current application has no relation to the actual meaning of those words, which have been bent to political ends. The truth is lies and lies are the truth. A studio apartment is "spacious."
Political Conservatism in America means conserving traditional American political values. The values of Ashcroft are not those of America's traditions. He wishes to change those values. That is a liberal stance. The fact that he may have convinced some that his values are traditionally conservative is a bit of flim flam. Not the truth. Such is the nature of politics. Such flim flam is the polititions stock in trade, as it were.
Aggresively engaging in a war, in the Orient, against a nation that has made no attack on us, is making no attack on anyone else, and *cannot* make any direct attack on us is not a traditional American political act. It spits in the face of said American traditions.
What is the philosophy of conserving the enviroment called, and has been called since the early 1800's? *Conservationsim.* It is conservative. Conservatism is that which *conserves.* Yes. Conserving the human dignity of American citizens is conserving the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. A rather conservative stance.
Removing the protections accorded by the Bill of Rights is a *liberal* stance, and unamerican.
What is labeled as liberalism today has no relation to what was labeled liberlism a mere few decades ago. In fact, they are nearly polar opposites, and the same is true of conservatism.
Such is the true result of the modern political philosophy *falsely* labeled as "political correctness" ( a term which has a conservative definition dating back to 1798).
The true word for what is currently refered to as "political correctness" is fascism.
Fascism means "to follow the flag as ordered" (the fascia being the banner presented at the front of a column of Roman Centurians, thus its current meaning of a "facing").
Following the flag as ordered, Fascism, is most distinctly NOT American conservatism. No matter what they tell you on the television.
KFG
Re:American re-education (Score:3, Interesting)
If you get a chance, read this book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong [amazon.com]
funny you should bring that up (Score:3, Interesting)
The archeologists naturally refused to provide any funds except to protect the statue, and the taliban were pissed off at an attitude that valued old lumps of rock above starving children, so they blew them up in a fit of pique. [Dont get me wrong.. there will always be starving children, and those were pretty cool rocks, but it doesnt hurt to know the arguments]
Now we have a situation where we're preparing to go to war to... [sorry, I forget which excuse is in vogue at the moment, it changes too fast for me] and we're horrified that some artifacts might get blown up along with Iraqis.
Same as The Arc of the Covenant (Score:2, Interesting)
I remembered reading a while back a theory that the Arc of the Covenant [crystalinks.com] was actually a battery. This (so the article claimed) was the reason that when people touched it they died. It was an interesting theory.
I did my best to find a link [google.com] to such a writeup, but Google keeps sending me to sites about UFO's. I can't speak for the validity of the site, but here [corlucis.org] is a mention of the theory. Right down to him referring to the Arc as 'Old Sparky'.
Re:No! (Score:4, Interesting)
I just think it funny how people assume Bush is a moron, when he always seems to outwit his political opponents. He got the democrats to vote on giving him authority to attack Iraq, and though he has taken fire from the world for being a 'cowboy' he has got inspectors back in Iraq (by forcing the UN), and now Iraq may take apart its missles. Bush has done more on Iraq in 2 years than Clinton did in 8 and he has not fired a shot. I hope a bomb never falls on Iraq, I have a sister in law over there right now and a brother who might have to ship out in the event of a long war, but I agree with them when they say the right, not the easy or popular thing, has to be done.
Right now the Democrats are killing themselves in the senate with regards to Estrada, a philibuster, I welcome the government doing nothing for awhile, keep it up.
2200 years ago, time travel (Score:3, Interesting)
it was a mistake made in the future when someone went back to the past. They're probably laughing at us right now in another timeline because we don't get it.