.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hi, I'm caddo_grrrl a.k.a. Rsnic
Since this page is titled "My Things", that is just what you will find here. A collection of all sorts of things. Some everyday things and some not so everyday things. As time goes on there is no telling what might get put in this space. I hope you find it interesting nonetheless.
Being Native American I am interested about many things concerning the history of my peoples. A little known segment covers a period in the northwest called The Mordoc War.
<<<< The above page on "The Mordoc War" is under construction but can still be visited by you. >>>>
Lame Deer is a medicine man of the Lakota people. He relates a story of the wakinyan, the sacred flying-ones, the thunderbirds.
Let me tell you about them.
We believe that at the beginning of all things, when the earth was young, the thunderbirds were giants. They dug out the riverbeds so that the streams could flow. They ruled over the waters. They fought with unktegila, the great water monster. It had red hair all over, one eye, and one horn in the middle of its forehead. It had a backbone like a saw. Those who saw it went blind for one day. On the next day they went witko, crazy, and on the third day they died. You can find the bones of unktegila in the Badlands mixed with the remains of petrified seashells and turtles. Whatever else you may think, you know that all this land around here was once a vast ocean, that everything started with the waters.
When the thunder-beings lived on earth they had no wings, and it rained without thunder. When they died their spirits went up into the sky, into the clouds. They turned into winged creatures, the wakinyan. Their earthly bodies turned into stones, like those of the sea monster unktegila. Their remains, too, are scattered throughout the Badlands. There you also find many kangi tame ---bolts of lightning which have turned into black stones shaped like spear points.
High above the clouds, at the end of the world where the sun goes down, is where the wakinyan dwell. Four paths lead into that mountain. A butterfly guards the entrance at the east, a bear guards the west, a deer the north and a beaver the south. The thunderbirds have a gigantic nest made of dry bones. In it rests the great egg from which the little thunderbirds are hatched. This egg is huge, bigger than all of South Dakota.
There are four large, old thunderbirds, The great wakinyan of the west is the first and foremost among them. He is clothed in clouds. His body has no form, but he has huge, four-jointed wings. He has no feet, but he has claws, enormous claws. He has no head, but he has a huge beak with rows of sharp teeth. His color is black. The second thunderbird is red. He has wings with eight joints. The third thunderbird is yellow. The fourth thunderbird is blue. This one has neither eyes nor ears.
When I try to describe the thunderbirds I can?t really do it. A face without features, a shape without form, claws without feet, eyes that are not eyes. From time to time one of our ancient holy men got a glimpse of these beings in a vision, but only a part of them. No man ever saw the whole, even in his dreams. Who knows what the great thunder-beings look like? Do you know what God looks like? All we know is what the old ones told us, what our own visions tell us.
These thunderbirds, they are wakan oyate---the spirit nation. They are not like living beings. You might call them enormous gods. When they open their mouths they talk thunder, and all the little thunderbirds repeat it after them. That?s why you first hear the big thunder clap being followed by all those smaller rumblings. When the wakinyan open their eyes the lightning shoots out from there, even in the case of the thunderbird with no eyes. He has half moons there instead of eyes, and still the lightning is coming out.
These thunderbirds are part of the Great Spirit. Theirs is about the greatest power in the whole universe. It is the power of the hot and the cold clashing way above the clouds. It is lightning---blue lightning from the sun. It is like a colossal welding, like the making of another sun. It is like atomic power. The thunder power protects and destroys. It is good and bad, as God is good and bad, as nature is good and bad, as you and I are good and bad. It is the great winged power. When we draw the lighting we depict it as a zigzag line with a forked end. It has tufted feathers at the tips of the fork to denote the winged power. We believe that lightning branches out into a good and a bad part.
The good part is the light. It comes from the Great Spirit. It contains the first spark to illuminate the earth when there was nothing---no light, just darkness. And the Great Spirit, the Light God, made this light. Sometimes you see lightning coming down in just one streak with no fork at the end. This light blesses. It brightens up the earth; it makes a light in you mind. It gives us visions. This lightning is still another link from the sky to the earth, like the stem and the smoke of our sacred pipe. That light gave the people their first fire. And the thunder, that was the first sound, the first word, maybe. Long before the first white man came, we had this vision of the light and knew what it represented.
The lightning power is awesome, fearful. We are afraid of its destructive aspect. That lightning from the south spells danger. It heads against the wind. If it collides with another lightning---that?s like a worldwide car smash-up. That kills you. A lawyer, a judge or preacher can?t help you there. That flash from the south, that?s tonwan, the thunderbolt---the arrow of a god. Sometimes it hits a horse. You see all the veins burn up, like an X ray. Afterward you find one of these black stones embedded in the earth where the lightning struck. The old people used to say that the damage caused by the lightning was done by the young, inexperienced thunderbirds. They did all the mischief. They were like pranksters, clowns. The old thunderbirds were wise. They never killed anybody.
At least that?s the story.
We swear by the thunder powers, by the wakinyan. You tell a story and somebody doesn't believe you, doubts your words. Then you say, "Na ecel lila wakinyan agli---wakinyan namahon." That settles it. Everyone knows then that you are telling nothing but the truth. Otherwise lightning would strike you dead. Likewise, if you swear by the sacred pipe, holding it in your hands, you cannot lie, or the thunder-beings will kill you.
X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXfrom
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXLame Deer
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXSeeker of Visions
.
A fractal is a mathematical representation of all the shapes of all things found in our universe. I find them to be wonderous and appealing to something deep within myself. Not only do I find fractals interesting, but I just find mathematics facinating. And as such, I find the important women in Mathematics facinating also.
In addition to using an excellent program like Ultrafractal to create some of the fractals on this site, I also use another extremely fine program called Blender. This is a three dimensional rendering and animation program which gives excellent results. Below are two examples I have done. In the very near future I will create another page with further examples of my work with this program.
.
This is an exercise in free hand form. The object just happens to look alot like a raygun. It is a smooth grey object with red, yellow and white lighting sources. This object is floating above a sea green square slab of marble with gold tone veins throughout
.
This is a picture of a single red pawn sitting on a cobalt blue and white chessboard with beveled edges, multiple lighting sources and a low camera angle with a black background.
.
This is a picture of a single transparent green wine glass sitting on a square of pink marble with green veins. It has multiple lighting sources and a camera angle looking from the front and just above the rim of the glass with a black background.
I am an author and as such find other writings very intriguing. Recently, I have found a portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls quite fascinating and to be very revealing of human nature. I have created a page with this excerpt on it. In addition, thru out the Scrolls I found references to Flavius Josephus and have included on this page excerpts from his series on WAR. These descriptive accounts came to life for me as I read them for the first time. I hope they do the same for you.
By JULIE CART
Los Angeles Times
A Little Rodent Gumbo May Save Wetlands
NEW ORLEANS ? Here comes another in a long and raggedy line of scamps and scalawags, pirates and privateers who have profited in Louisiana while the state suffered.
This latest invader is straining Louisiana?s traditional tolerance of scoundrels. He?s an outsider who?s made himself at home, his gluttony is laying waste to the state?s southern half, and his self-serving agenda is changing the border?s shape.
Previous troublemakers have been called dirty rats or even weasels. This new marauder is, in fact, a member of the rodent family. He?s a nutria: a nearsighted, ratlike South American import that for 50 unimpeded years has been reproducing wildly and flourishing in the Louisiana wetlands, all the while eating all the vegetation he could get past his pronounced overbite.
Nutria ? several million of them, officials estimate ? are destroying the coastal wetlands that are crucial to Louisiana?s water-control efforts, vital to the fishing and trapping industries and home to scores of protected species. Environmental and wildlife experts have for decades been stumped at how to rid the swamps and bayous of this damaging creature, whose rampant feeding threatens to destroy an all-important buffer zone for hurricanes sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico.
Now the state is striking back.
Officials with the Wildlife and Fisheries Department have launched a five-year program aimed at downsizing the nutria population and reclaiming denuded wetlands by tapping into what people in Louisiana do exceedingly well: eat.
Officials have recruited the state?s top chefs to create dishes to entice citizens to devour nutria. There?s an abiding faith that they can saut�, braise and fricassee their way out of this crisis.
?We?ve tried other approaches, and they haven?t worked,? said Noel Kinler, project manager of the state?s nutria project. ?We don?t have much choice at this point.?
So far, it?s been a tough sell. People here may be famous for their adventurous eating habits, but they appear to have drawn the nutritional line at nutria. Call it what you want, it still looks like a rat.
The environmental problem grew out of the ruthlessness of the nutria?s eating habits, which treats the Mississippi Delta as its personal salad bar. It feeds by paddling around a heavily vegetated marsh and seeks out the tender roots of aquatic plants, chewing its way up to the leaves, which it ignores. Biologists call the damaged sections ?eat outs.?
?The rule of thumb is they eat only 10 percent of what they destroy,? said zoologist Bob Thomas, a professor at Loyola University here. ?Ninety percent of the plant floats away.?
At one point, officials estimated there were 20 million nutria in Louisiana, but the current population may be half of that. The creatures have popped up elsewhere n the country but nowhere else on this scale. One natural population control is the alligator, which is happy to include nutria in its diet but is dormant four months a year.
State officials began the new nutria-control program, which got under way this year, as a response to the damage to what they conservatively estimate is 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands. Forty percent of the nation?s coastal wetlands lie within Louisiana, where 80 percent of the total national wetland loss occurs.
If the population is not controlled, tens of thousands of acres of wetlands are in jeopardy, Kinler said.
Officials would like nutria to join blackened redfish and alligator meat as part of Louisiana?s must have cuisine. They are spending $2 million to develop a market for a meat that has been tested as highly lean, low in cholesterol and rich in protein.
The key to the program is to add incentive for nutria to be harvested. The state will essentially subsidize the hunting and processing of nutria meat. There is only one licensed nutria processor in the state, Tommy Stoddard of Hackberry. He says the animal is difficult to dress and takes a trained person five minutes to clean. He has processed about 5,000 pounds of nutria meat this year.
Before there is a steady supply of meat, there must be a demand. That?s where chef Philippe Parola comes in. Parola is the director of the Louisiana Culinary Institute and the man chiefly responsible for developing enticing nutria recipes.
At his restaurant he offers nutria fettuccine, marinated nutria salad, nutria ?a l?orange, culotte de? nutria ?a la moutarde? and, for the health conscious, heart-healthy crock-pot nutria. Parola was dispatched to Japan in March to test the waters for the product. ?Look, I am French; I know about eating odd things,? Parola said. ?I would like to met the chef who first went outside, picked up a snail, cooked it, put it on a table in front of someone and said, ?This is snail. Eat it.??
The chefs report that when they can lure anyone to try nutria, they like it. The tender meat tastes like rabbit, it is said. But getting anyone to take the first bite is difficult.
?Here?s the deal,? said Thomas. ?The problem here is that we see them dead and puffed up on the road all the time. It?s a road kill issue.?
Now that you are hungry here is a link to some really great food. Really...EPICURIOUS.
A ?Star Trek? moment: Scientists claim to teleport a light beam
WASHINGTON ? They may to be able to ask Scotty to beam them up yet, but California researchers said Thursday they had completed the first ?full? teleportation experiment.
They said they had teleported a beam of light across a laboratory bench. They did not physically transport the beam itself, but transmitted its properties to another beam, creating a replica of the first beam.
?We claim this is the first bona fide teleportation, said Jeff Kimble, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Kimble thinks the experiment shows quantum teleportation can eventually transform everyday life.
Scientists hope that quantum computers, which move information about in this way rather than by using wires and silicon chips, will be infinitely faster and more powerful then present-day computers.
?I believe that quantum information is going to be really important for our society, not in five years or 10 years, but if we look into the 100 year time frame it?s hard to imagine that advanced societies don?t use quantum information,? Kimble said.
?The appetite of society is so voracious for the moving and processing of information that it will be driven to exploit even the crazy realm of quantum physics.?
Quantum teleportation allows in formation to be transmitted at the speed of light ? the fastest speed possible ? without being slowed down by wires or cables.
The experiment depends on entanglement, a property of atomic particles that mystifies even physicists. Sometimes two particles that are a great distance apart are somehow twinned, with the properties of one affecting the other.
?Entanglement means of you tickle one the other one laughs,? Kimble said.
What Kimble?s team did was create two entangled light beams ? streams of photons. Photons, the basic unit of light, sometimes act like particles and sometimes like waves.
They used these two entangled beams to carry information about the quantum state of a third beam. The first two beams were destroyed in the process, but the third successfully transmitted its properties over a distance of about a yard, Kimble?s team reported in the journal Science.
Last December a team of physicists in Innsbruck, Austria, and a month later another team in Rome said they did a similar thing, with single photons. But Kimble said his team was able to verify what they had done, and also used full light beams as opposed to single photons.
Kimble thinks teleportation could be applied to solid objects. For instance, the quantum state of a photon could be teleported and applied to a particle, even to an atom.
?Way beyond sex change operations and genetic engineering the quantum state of one entity could be transported to another entity.? Kimble said. ?We think we know how to do that.?
In other words, an object?s individual atoms would not be transported, but transmitting its properties could create a perfect replica.
Could this mean the transporters of the science-fiction series Star Trek, which beam people and objects huge distances, could one day be a reality?
?I don?t think anybody knows the answer,? Kimble said.
Amorous emu finds her Mr. Right is already married?and he's a guy
MOBILE, Ala. ? A 6-foot-tall, 150-pound emu that fell in love with an Alabama man and staked him for days was turned loose Thursday on a farm populated by her own species.
"It was mating season and she took a fond liking to him," said Diane Roberts, director of the Animal Rescue Foundation in Mobile. "He had to ward her off with a boat paddle, she was absolutely intent that this was her mate."
The giant bird showed up at the home of Ed and Ann Stuardi last month, drinking from a bird bath and eating berries in their yard. They fed it dog food.
Last week the emu began following Ed Stuardi around. Then it became aggressive, chasing their cats. Stuardi tried to frighten the bird away by shooting his gun into the air. The emu just stood there, looking at him forlornly, he said.
By Monday, it was making noises deep in its throat, a mating call Stuardi failed to recognize as the bird approached him. Ed Stuardi, who was shorter than the bird, held it off with a paddle.
The sheriff said deputies didn't have the equipment to catch the bird. That's when Animal Rescue Foundation got involved.
"They had been feeding her, and when mating season hit, he almost got it, " Roberts said. "She had her heart set on this man.
"He wasn't aware what the bird wanted, or why she was stalking him. I've never seen one stalk a human with procreation in mind."
Animal Rescue had been looking for the bird since Aug. 22, when it heard that a man had moved away from the area, abandoning three emus. The other two birds still have not been found.
It took several hours for the rescue team to persuade the bird to get into a horse trailer so it could be taken to a farm that cares for injured wildlife. Roberts said the emu's only injury was a broken heart.
"Hopefully, she will meet another fellow and forget all about Mr. Stuardi. After all, he is a married man," Roberts said.
Everyone has some links, so here are some of mine.
This is kewl, broadcast.com.
This could be helpful, Companies Online Channel.
The same reservation system the airlines use, Sabre.
Excellent, Interactive Weather Information Network.
The little house on the lane, The White House.
Everyone needs a search engine, right? Well once again here is on of the best around. It is a conglomeration of different specialized engines and also has meta engines, Evans, Keane LLP - Search Engines. Near the top of the page below the legal search engines is a meta called SavvySearch. Everytime I have needed to find something and have gone there, I found it. Usually on the first try. It uses at maximum, about 25 different major engines at one time.
.
.
You may e-mail us at: [email protected]
I would also invite you to:
Please come back soon and visit us again.
Live Long & Prosper...
.
.
| Opening Page |
| My Self |
| My Wolf |
| My Stories |
| My Site Map |
.
.
.
Last update: 30 Jan 01
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THESE PAGES ARE STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.
.
.