Notes From All Over -- Are We Having Fun Yet? -- October 24, 2018

Slammed: Equity markets. 

CBR, future: link here. Might write about it later. Probably not. 

Massive earthquake stops fracking operation in England! Wow, talk about coincidental. I just talked about this frack yesterday -- implied that most Brits thought it was a bad, bad thing. Another link here. Screenshot from twitter ...

Playlist. Speaking of bad, bad things. This song is longer on MbS's playlist -- the title says it all, but the  lyrics don't fit ... whatever ... they did a bad, bad thing; I feel like crying ..

Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing, Chris Isaak
Weather report: another downpour in north Texas. Wow. Two weeks of rain. Fourteen days? Noah -- 40 days of rain or something like that, but in those days people lived to be 700 years of age, or something like, so I assume a 14-day rain in north Texas is the same as a 40-day rain in Genesis.

The flood --> the Ark --> Mt Ararat --> Turkey --> Catalhöyük. Howard Bloom, The God Problem, 2016, introduced me to the latter. A huge, long-researched, multi-national-archaeological team-site in south-central Turkey, near Konya. Catalhöyük changed the way that you and I think -- at least that's what Howard says on page 81. Instead of building a walled, circular city like Jericho -- the first city ever with manmade walls, they say -- the citizens of Catalhöyük did something completely different. First, they used mud -- a local natural resource to make mudbricks and then built a "city" of straight lines, right angles, and flat surfaces. From wiki:

The population of the eastern mound has been estimated to be, at maximum, 10,000 people, but the population likely varied over the community’s history. An average population of between 5,000 and 7,000 is a reasonable estimate. The sites were set up as large numbers of buildings clustered together. Households looked to their neighbors for help, trade, and possible marriage for their children.

The inhabitants lived in mudbrick houses that were crammed together in an aggregate structure. No footpaths or streets were used between the dwellings, which were clustered in a honeycomb-like maze. Most were accessed by holes in the ceiling and doors on the side of the houses, with doors reached by ladders and stairs. The rooftops were effectively streets. The ceiling openings also served as the only source of ventilation, allowing smoke from the houses' open hearths and ovens to escape. Houses had plaster interiors characterized by squared-off timber ladders or steep stairs. These were usually on the south wall of the room, as were cooking hearths and ovens. The main rooms contained raised platforms that may have been used for a range of domestic activities. Typical houses contained two rooms for everyday activity, such as cooking and crafting. All interior walls and platforms were plastered to a smooth finish. Ancillary rooms were used as storage, and were accessed through low openings from main rooms.

All rooms were kept scrupulously clean. Archaeologists identified very little rubbish in the buildings, finding middens outside the ruins, with sewage and food waste, as well as significant amounts of wood ash. In good weather, many daily activities may also have taken place on the rooftops, which may have formed a plaza. In later periods, large communal ovens appear to have been built on these rooftops. Over time, houses were renewed by partial demolition and rebuilding on a foundation of rubble, which was how the mound was gradually built up. As many as eighteen levels of settlement have been uncovered.

The Turks have "known" honey since antiquity. One wonders ...