h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently there are temples that pre-date the Pyramids.

One of them was a heavily modified natural cave.

The theories I read last night about the reasons for and the purposes of the various temples are just speculation. Most of the temple sites were tampered with in the 1820s and 40s by idiots and we don't know what happened to what they found, but it wouldn't make any difference because they didn't catalog it...
There used to be a cave painting like the ones at Lascaux(sp?) but it got erased...fortunately after it was photographed...

But everybody and his brother has controlled that island at one time or another. Grand Central Station of civilization. So the place is cluttered with junk. I mean Malta.

Actually, the Isle of Wight has junk, too...and speculation...
They even have department of Industrial Archeology! To investigate ancient factories! And paper-making mills...

Over here we have a Channel 4 programme called the 'Time Team' which spends three days on archaeological digs at sites where they are likely to find stuff and they've done industrial archaeology. Ironmaking and tilemaking come to mind and those episodes were fascinating. It's not on at the moment, but it's one of the few TV programmes that I actually make time for!

What a shame about the lack of care. The one thing the Time Team rattle on about (rightly) is that recording and documentation is everything on a dig. It's not all about 'finds'.

The age is quite impressive. Mind you, the Sphinx pre-dates the pyramids by quite a long way too. What speculation is being bandied about or is it nothing tangible?

Mindless college dribble about Death Cults and concubines and similarities between biblical accounts of the temple and early Mithratic Solar Temples of the mediterr....whatever...
No proof. Just noise, kinda like the druids or what the actual rules in effect were at the time of Christ's trial.
We live in an age where certainty is supposed to exist.
It don't.
Various invaders over the last 2000 years have wiped the slate clean and all we have left is clean ruins...
That's part of the deal with the Isle of Wight, too. The original inhabitants are untraceable and several times most of the population has either been slaughtered or moved elsewhere.
So, as one of the alternate sites for IOW history warns, "Beware of plaques bearing 'facts', cause you don't know whose 'facts' they are."

The older I get, the less use I have for the industrial revolution.

Breaks off to sort out child who has scribbled in permanent pen all over my sofa! Ugh!

ahhh...a budding Picasso...
The spousal unit and the offspring have been slaughtering oranges in the same place on the couch and I keep finding bits scattered everywhere, including between the cushions.
They have a basket of pecans in the bathroom, under the wall-mounted sink and they are always cracking the shells and leaving them on the floor and the carpet...
As bad as I am, I am positively neat next to them...

Definitely!

On the furniture, on the carpets (especially on *new* carpets) and on the wallpaper. No amount of chastising seems to make any difference. He's rubbish at drawing as well - just scribbles, unlike his verbal ability, which is wonderful.

Almost off, but the last bit won't quite come off!

What kind of fabric is it?

I know...you get him white t-shirts and let him draw on himself!

It's a sort of linen damask. Now the area I have cleaned is much lighter than the surrounding area and you can still see the pinky red from the felt tip. I'm toying with the idea of taking them off and washing them, but I'm terrified they will shrink. The instructions say they can be washed, but have a sort of caveat about them, so I'm very hesitant.

The white T shirt is a good idea, however he's likely to get the ide that he can draw on anything. He tends to generalise like that.

So do I.
Drove my mother nuts for years drawing in ballpoint on my blue jeans.
And my, um, trainers, though what I had then were actually Converse Chuck Taylors or just canvas deck shoes.
My mother had this thing about "new" clothes regardless of how ill-fitting or bad-looking they were. Oddly enough, she dressed my brother and I in 'hand-me-downs' from relatives and rummage sale bargains for years and expected us to treat those like royal robes, too.
To this day, she has the fashion sense of a prison guard.

Not that I'm any prize, but I tend toward practicality.
Linen damask...has it been pretreated in any way, like Scotchgard?
The ink can often be removed with non-acetone finger polish remover, unless the fabric is polyester, in which case a baking soda paste might be interesting.
I tend to get furniture with a highly figured pattern, kind of camouflage...

The furniture came with a label saying 'do not remove', so he tore it off. I keep putting it back, but he keeps removing it. It should say what it's made of and how fire resistant it is.

The stain removal stick I got from Boots the Chemist seemed to do best on it. Other stuff (a foamy thing especially) flattered to deceive. I think I'll live with the result and wait until it fades, or get a throw to put over it.

There's always jello fights in the parlour.
That dye is pervasive.
We've got some Tupperware that was used once years ago (I insist on their using the steel bowls now) for Jello that still has little red and orange bubbles around it at the setting level...I don't think the boiling water helped much...
I don't think I've had brand new upholstered furniture in my entire life...
One of the benefits we used to enjoy of having a pickup truck...

Yes, I have Tupperward (or similar) that has been coloured red, not by jelly, but by tomato sauce or curry.

My sofa-bed once was new. Half price in the Co-op closing down sale. A pale yellow (almost, but not quite cream) with a green (acanthus?) leaf pattern. Darker would have been more practical - but it was half price.

How "Laura Ashley"!
Is there a Green Man hidden in the pattern?

Patterns rather too large for Laura Ashley.

Green man -not so far!

Good Green Man site here (though you have to get past Mike Harding to get at it - I remember him as I was growing up, singing at my local folk club, by the way).

http://www.mikeharding.co.uk/

See what you think!

Thanks! I'll look at it in a bit. I have to go paste it in a thread.
Jwf's trying to put together and entry or an issue on the subject.

I included it in my Rochester Sweeps entry, which has just been Subbed, as should (hopefully) hit the front page any time now.

This is a subject I am interested in, so I shall keep a lookout for it.

I am interested in intercultural connections.
I found a fascinatingly frustrating site when I first got on the web about a linguistic (possible) connection between the Basques and the Ainu! The author managed to avoid the rather boring hogwash I keep encountering taking tongues that don't fit into the linguistic tree and giving them to the neanderthals... I'm not saying it couldn't be true, just that it is built on so little evidence. People are so caught up with the language of their youth that they don't really care where it comes from, let alone languages they don't understand or care for....

Ainu? I've heard of them, but can't readily bring them exactly to mind at present. Is it a tongue of the people formerly known as Eskimos?

The Aboriginal Northern Japanese, before the Korean invasion.
Tall, white-skinned, mongol features, hairy!
Bear worshippers, hunters and fishers.
The Japanese have been doing their best to either wipe them out or assimilate them for centuries.
Some of the Ainu islands have been in Russian control since the forties.