phyllostachys 51: Minute Tech 36 show notes

36 - Who were the Minoans?

Good morning, this is the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

We take a few minutes to talk about technology
----
This is Alex Landefeld with minute tech 36 - Who were the Minoans?

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

Also by:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.

A couple of Show Notes for today: Due to my traveling during America's Thanksgiving holiday, I may not have a chance to produce or publish a Friday 11/23/07 show...but should be back on the digital airwaves for the Saturday/Sunday edition. Also, I'm glad I've gotten over the issues from two days ago regarding an overly general topic...I think you may find today's a bit more conversational.




Tech items:

Amazon's Kindle reading device has apparently sold out...but the noise about what it brings to the technology table is just rising. People say: it's wireless is too weak, it's wi-fi is gelded, it's keyboard is silly, it's screen is not useful enough (being the same "E-Ink" screen tech that the Sony Reader uses), that its too expensive ($399) and numerous other things. Wait! stop the presses...or turn off the mic! Go read David Pogue's review of the Kindle in the New York Times technology section. You can google this phrase:
"An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On" He reports some interesting stuff, including that kindle sports an SD card reader and can get to g-mail...hmmmm.

I don't talk much about politics or sports...those aren't areas of life that much interest me, so I have not spent unholy amounts of time learning and retaining useless sports statistics or political platforms of various candidates, so you won't hear me talk much about those things here...unless they pertain to technology. In the Tuesday 11/20/07 Wall Street Journal, page D2, an article titled "New Drive for Fuel Efficiency" the author notes Hillary Clintons "plans to push to double the fuel economy of U.S. cars and trucks to 55 miles per gallon by 2030". Much of the auto industry feels that they cannot increase fuel efficiency much, because "America demands more powerful engines". We do?? I would love to have a smaller engine in my car if it meant getting 40 or 50 MPG. Currently I drive a year 2000 Saturn coupe, the 1.9 litre 4-cylinder engine of which gets 35-40 MPG. The newer Saturns have at best a 2.4 litre 4-cylinder which provides 32 or 33 MPG at most...although the Sky two-seater Redline (top power unit) has a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine...but that's still only 26-28 highway MPG. Why couldn't GM/Saturn have focused on improving smaller engines like the 1.9 litre? Does anyone have thoughts about that? I'll do some web research to see if I can find discussion on that point.

In the same WSJ article, GM's Bob Lutz says the idea of just "re-tooling" the manufacturing process to accomodate better fuel economy is naive...that there's too much high-tech wizardry needed in each car to achieve much higher fuel efficiency. Perhaps that's true...but before we jump into hydrogen fuel cells and Mr. Fusion flight devices, wouldn't it be fairly easy to add kinetic-energy generators (to gather energy from slowing the vehicle down) and photovoltaics on each roof to provide electric assist to every automobile?


Tech Question:

This morning's tech question, "who were the Minoan's?" points to one of two pre-historic cultures that predated the Classical Greek and Roman cultures in the Mediterranean - but was contemporary with various Egyptian dynastic periods, namely the MInoans and the Myceneans. Finally, an ancient culture that I can speak with some familiarity, as I studied these things way back in my college days.

Suffice it to say that my college experience itself is fading into the historic past, but my studies of these two early Mediterranean cultures is what turned me on most to early ancient cultures. We know so much about classical Greece and Rome, down to the political intrigues, drinking parties and the various ways they found to amuse themselves - other than drinking or talking their gymnasium colleagues into corners, a la Socrates. But what do we know about the Minoan and Mycenean cultures? Very, very little. Part of this is due to the fact that the writings that have been found from those cultures have not been fully translated yet, even a century after finding such clay tablets.

The Linear A and Linear B tablets and artifacts show the tabulations and fragmentary writings of both the Minoan and somewhat contemporary or later Mycenean. Archaeologist Arthur Evans, during the early part of the 20th century discovered and helped to catalog the early Minoan and Mycenaen sites and artifacts, finding some 3000 clay tablets at the site of the Knossos palace in Crete. From his excavations we see that the Minoans had a very lively culture, including a very interesting activity known as bull-dancing, which could well be a cultural pre-cursor to such activities as the running of the bulls in the festival of San Fermin, Pamplona Spain. We don't know what the significance of the bull-dancing is, other than that the bull is a very powerful symbol of power: Europe is named for a woman who mythologically road a bull (Europa) and America's stock market has popularized the reference to a Bull Market as a time when a powerful upsurge is occuring in prices...much like the running of the bulls.

podcasting/blogging tidbit:

As this is purported to be a daily podcast, I'm beginning to research (listen to, that is) other daily podcasts - the first that comes to mind is Christopher S. Penn's Financial Aid podcast. Why do people do this on a daily basis? How can they do this on a daily basis? If you know of any other daily podcasts, please send me a note about them to the minutetech@gmail.com address.

The Pittsburgh woman for today:

Mary Cassatt, born in Allegheny City (now the Northside neighborhood of Pittsburgh) in 1845, was one of America's first great female artists. Check out wikipedia's article on Mary Cassatt - the article describes her education and her life-long shift in focus from impressionism to a "more straightforward approach", and shows five of her paintings: Self-portrait (1878), The Boating Party, Tea (1880), Summertime (1894) and The Bath (1893). Mary served as a role model for young female artists, and was a supporter of America's women's suffrage movement, bringing more attention to a woman's right to cast a ballot, as a any other citizen of the country.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- David Pogue's Kindle review & MPG;
- Who were the Minoans?
- daily podcasts; Mary Cassatt.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.