The Pyramids, and how they were (probably) built.

It was two years ago this month that I read of how the pyramids in Giza, Egypt, were probably built. No one knew how the three main pyramids at Giza were built, because no records were left to tell us. More on that later.

The emphasis was always on 'How did the ancient Egyptians move those big stone blocks that weigh over 200 tons?' How did they do it? Scholars, historians held the ancients in awe, thinking that they had special skills or technology to build the pyramids. All sorts of answers have cropped up to explain how they did something that we could not do. Those big stone blocks were pushed into place, pulled into place. Or maybe something unusual like sound waves were used, or that extraterrestrials helped them.

I always believed that it was not that complicated. If they could do it, so could we. It's like those magic tricks used by magicians; if you found out how they did what they did, you could see that it wasn't that special.

Over 30 years ago a Frenchman visited the pyramids and took one look at them and knew right then and there how those big stones were lifted...they weren't! This Frenchman was a stone mason, an expert in building and fixing stone castles. What he saw with his trained eye were very tiny bubbles. The kind of tiny bubbles you get when you mix water and cement together. The stones were never lifted. Instead, bags of water and cement were lifted up to the sides of the pyramids and mixed right there on the spot.

He was surprised to find that no one could figure this out, it was so obvious. He was even more surprised to find the hostility we would get from Egyptologists who believed otherwise. According to Egyptologists, "We know the stones were lifted, we just don't know how". No, they don't know the stones were lifted, there were never any records or proof to show that they were lifted. Nothing.

One other thing. The three main pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx were built from different blueprints that the other dozens of pyramids in Egypt. It seems that the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx were not built by King Tut and his kind but by others who were there thousand of years earlier. That's why they never left us any records of how they were built, because they didn't know themselves.

Ripping off the Government

Ripping off the Government.

Last month, the government of Lithuania had found out that they were charged more than three times the price for telecommunications. Whereas it costs 4 cents a minute for phone calls, the govt was charged 16 cents a minute. And whereas text messages costs 6 cents, the govt was charged 18 cents. They suffered a loss of 8 million Euros. And if that is not enough, the Russian national gas company, Gazprom, is accused by the Lithuanian govt of overcharging them too.

The American government alleges that Oracle, a software company, was overcharging them millions of dollars from 1998 to 2006. The company gave discounts to all of its customers but seemed to have forgotten the feds. But someone remembered though and that someone was Paul Frascella, a senior director of services at Oracle. And for being a whistle-blower, he can get 20% of any damages awarded in the case.

Here in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, the provincial government is going into the paving business. There are 12 asphalt companies in the province and the local govt feels that it is not getting a fair deal from any of them. The govt feels that they can do a cheaper and better job if they do it themselves. Although most of the paving will still be done by outside contractors, the contractors are very upset about it. It's their own fault. They have no one to blame but themselves. If some of these guys had given the govt a fair deal, none of this would be happening.

NASA has sent two rovers to the planet Mars; they are called Spirit and Opportunity. They were suppose to last only for a few months; instead they lasted for a few years. Everyone thinks they got their money's worth; I don't know about that.

NASA will send another rover to Mars this fall. They have been working on it for the last couple of years and say it will cost 2.5 billion dollars. I think NASA has also been working in fleecing their own govt. I don't believe for one second that that contraption costs 2.5 billion dollars. It's not a battleship, it's a machine about the size of a volkswagen car. For 2.5 billion dollars, you should be able to build a whole fleet of them. This will be the most expensive mission to Mars. NASA may have some of the best scientists in the world, but they certainly don't have some of the best accountants in the world.