Since I was getting married I missed the opening day at Wagrain, but my friends went down there and Mr.Dent got some nice photos.

World oil production peaked in July 2008 at 74.82 million barrels/day (mbd) and now has fallen to about 71 mbd. It is expected that oil production will decline slowly to about December 2010 as OPEC production increases while non-OPEC production decreases. After 2010 the resulting annual production decline rate increases to 3.4% as OPEC production is unable to offset cumulative non-OPEC declines. The forecast from the IEA WEO 2008 is also shown for comparison.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) should make official statements about declining world oil production now to renew the focus on oil conservation and alternative renewable energy sources.

Full article here..

We did a 6 and a half hour hike yesterday from the bottom of the valley to the top of Schafberg at 1783m. The views were stunning, but coming down was kind of painful by the end. We had the wrong socks on so were both limping from our blisters by the time we got back to the car. I thought it was definately worth it, but Jule wasnt so sure.

I tweaked the gallery code a bit, so when you click a small thumbnail below, within the gallery you now just have to click the photo to go to the next one which makes it a easier to use. I also cleaned the page code a little.

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U.S. public health community begins discussing peak oil

• Awareness: Our federal officials to this day do not seem to comprehend that the world is at the end of the era of oil.
• Scope: Solid evidence demands that we stop our denial about the seriousness of the energy problems ahead: global peak oil represents an unprecedented risk management problem.
• Disruption Potential: Peak oil is likely to have significant impact on our most important existing systems, including transportation, building operations, and industrial agriculture.
• Regional Vulnerability: The United States is highly vulnerable because of our import-dependence and our spread-out infrastructure, with some regions more at risk than others, including cities with urban sprawl.
• Trend: However bad our economic problems are today, it is likely we will experience greater problems in the near future as oil supplies decline.
• Sector-specific Impacts: We are likely to experience peak oil first as a liquid fuels crisis and to feel its impact primarily in the transportation sector, where there is no ready liquid fuel substitute for oil.
• Limited Mitigation Options: There are no “silver bullets” that can substitute for oil (“Maybe there are a few rusty bb’s” Congressman Bartlett joked).
• Scarce-resource Allocation: We should begin to devote the remaining oil to ramping up a transfer to renewable energy infrastructures.
• Triage: Meanwhile prudence requires us to begin planning for shortages by developing protocols for rationing oil, by means other than price, to key sectors and priorities.

The pyramid texts are the oldest known religious texts in the world. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved on the walls and sarcophagi of the pyramids at Saqqara during the 5th and 6th Dynasties of the Old Kingdom.  They form the basis of much of the later religious theology and literature of ancient Egypt. The oldest of the texts date to between 2400-2300BC and were a surprising discoverey since the earlier Pyramids, despite being bigger and more precise, contained no texts. There is much speculation regarding their origin because they emerge, as a fully-fledged collection of mortuary texts, without any precedent in the archaeological record.

The Old Kingdom Of Egypt reached it’s zenith under the Fourth Dynasty, in the years 2613–2589 BC with the building of the Pyramids of Giza. What is intriguing is that the pyramids which came after them in later Dynasties, despite their builders presumably having the knowledge from the previous pyramids to support them, were of significantly poorer quality. Many of the later pyramids, such as the Pyramid Complex of Unas, where the Pyramid texts were found, are today mounds of rubble whilst the Earlier and far larger pyramids despite having been around much longer, display far superior workmanship. Instead of a progression through the ages after Giza, there was decline.

Mesopotamian mythology is the collective name given to Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian mythologies from the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq.

The Sumerians practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic gods or goddesses representing forces or presences in the world, in much the same way as later Greek mythology. According to said mythology, the gods originally created humans as servants for themselves but freed them when they became too much to handle.

Many stories in Sumerian religion appear similar to stories in other Middle-Eastern religions. For example, the Biblical account of the creation of man as well as Noah’s flood resemble the Sumerian tales very closely. Gods and Goddesses from Sumer have distinctly similar representations in the religions of the Akkadians, Canaanites, and others. A number of stories and deities have Greek parallels as well; for example, it has been argued by some that Inanna’s descent into the underworld strikingly recalls (and predates) the story of Persephone.

According to Sayce:^[1] Don “In historical Babylonia the gods were in the form of man. Man was created in the image of God because the gods themselves were men.”

Like the Pharaohs of Egypt or the emperors of Rome, the early kings of Semitic Babylonia were deified. And the deification took place during their life-time, in fact, so far as we can judge, upon their accession to the throne. In the eyes of their subjects they were incarnate deities, and in their inscriptions they give themselves the title of god.”

Doom’s new album is sick, so I dug out my battered CD of his old Doomsday release to hear it back to back with the new one and man, it sounds as fresh as the day I first heard it. Doomsday seemed appropriate after reading this too.

MF Doom Operation: Doomsday

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Best Doom rhym in Gazillion Ear:
We need some more oil for the machines to burn, learn

Drove down to Italy for the weekend to hang out with some old friends. It was pretty chill and really nice to catch up with them. I love the air down there, warm, humid and smelling of pine trees. Brought back a lot of memories of my 4 years there. Forgot my camera so I only got a few blurry bb photos.

Click the picture to make it bigger.
From left to right, the view sweeps across the Galactic Center in Sagittarius, bright stars in the tail of Scorpius, the South Celestial Pole above and right of the gap in the sugar canes, the dark Coalsack Nebula, and the Southern Cross. The closest star system, Alpha Centauri, and the giant Omega Centauri globular star cluster also shine in the starry night.