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Subject: ----New Future DAZ Character--The Millenium Hobbitt!
Attached Link: http://www.philc.net/freestuff_archive.htm
PhilC has already created a male and female hobbit -- and they're FREE!!
The remains do not indicate evolution in Asia. The best guess at the moment is that it's a population of remnant Homo erectus (or associated species) that was isolated on the island and, like many mammals, evolved a smaller size to handle the restricted environment. The thing they do indicate is that other species of humanoids did exist a lot more recently than had been imagined. Until now the latest a separate branch was believed to have lived was the Neanderthals.
One of the funniest things of today is to observe how scientists in their urge to reduce facts to the axioms of their religion become completely unscientific. Yet it is a fact that economy pays science and therefore Darwinism, being more close to capitalism, is the generally accepted theory. More at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1331905,00.html
I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now I'll be mad. (Rumi)
Also, I think that even though PhilC may have Free Hobbitts, DAZ will wnat to create their own in order to have the benefits of a vast clothing franchise... -Hobbitt Catsuit -Hobbitt Hairstyles -Hobbitt Morphing Fantasy Dress plus all the third party- -Hobbitt Lingerie -Hobbitt Poses -Hobbitt facial expressions -Hobbitt armor It's also possible they may SCALE-DOWN the Freak and Freakette and use them so you can re-use your Freak mats. But not the clothes- unless they have a Hobbitt-Freak UVS that allows using Freak clothes on the Millenium Hobbitt...
How about, capitalism supports science because science makes testable axioms that can be translated into working machinery? I really do not wish a priest to design the brakes on the car I drive to work every day, and I'd prefer my mechanic use a shop manual rather than a bible to figure out if the left front wheel bearings are shot. We may read certain assumptions into evolution (like the discredited "Social Darwinism" you seem to allude to), but the currently understood processes of evolution are remarkably effective tools to understand the geologic record (such as, where to drill for oil), immunology (the adaptation of disease organisms to our current pharmacopia), physiology (the origin of the cocyxx and its current function in the human body), and so forth. Leaving out evolution, as pleasant as it might be, would be like leaving out organic chemistry, or Newtonian physics, or...well, a great many people still wish that Quantum Physics would go away, but it supports the machine I am currently typing on! And as the thread is shut down quickly.....cute idea, Veritas. Of course, DAZ would call it the Millenium Hafling and that would make it All Okay (Gary Gygax might froth a bit, but who's he?)
would daz, or anybody else for that matter, be able to use the name Hobbits though? would probably have to be a more generalized name like 'little people'. i dont see why this is so surprising. extremely fascinating yes but not surprising. and, religion has no place in the true scientific mind. E.D.
Tolkien Enterprises have non-literary uses of "hobbit" nailed down by Hollywood lawyers bearing trademarks. Note that the outfit has nothing to do with the Tolkien Family, and hold the movie rights. They licensed both the Bakshi animation and Peter Jackson's version. In British law, at least, "hobbit" may not be quite so secure as a trademark, as I know that Tolkien Enterprises were using "hobbite", and PBI Cambridge had a trademark on a wheat variety called "Maris Hobbit".
DAZ will wnat to create their own in order to have the benefits of a vast clothing franchise... -Hobbitt Catsuit -Hobbitt Hairstyles -Hobbitt Morphing Fantasy Dress plus all the third party- -Hobbitt Lingerie -Hobbitt Poses -Hobbitt facial expressions -Hobbitt armor But only for the Hobbitette.
docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider
Is this a little like the printers at TSR accidentally putting a TM after "Nazi?" Tolkien didn't invent many of the names...they were drawn from mythology and old languages. Question is whether you can now have a Gandalf (wand-elf) who is old, grey, and with a pointy hat, without crossing some sort of trademark issue. There's a reason why many trademarks are a word that did not exist before; "Kodak," "Xerox," "Kleenex" (and, yes they haven't all managed to hold on to their status.) On the other hand Apple Computers paid good money to Apple Records, although the MacIntosh and the Beatles are fairly easy to keep seperate.
i was going to mention something about giants, but didn't feel like it at the time. hobbit might occur here and there prior to tolken but i bet you if somebody came along trying to pass off their dwarfish character as a hobbit whoever owns the rights to the tolken gig would have something to say about it. they might not win, but there'd definately be some feathers flying somewhere. on a more scientific approach, i think finding things like that skeleton in indonesia is great. i love when something new about our past is discovered that changes what we think is fact. i've never believed that all the answers to where humans came from are burried in africa. for some reason that's just where somebody decided that's where we're gonna look for them. i'm actually kind of surprised that they let the news out so quickly. in a lot of cases in the past, when something has been discovered that goes against what all the "experts" say, it gets shot down and shut up and whoever found it gets threatened with having their funding taken away. maybe now that sort of thing isn't happening as often as it use to. if the right people started looking in other places for pieces to our past we'd probably find all kinds of new stuff that would completely overturn the way we currently think. like, right here in the u.s. for example. there's truth burried beneath most any myths and legends. i think there's a ton of beings and creatures from the fantasy realm that went from existence into legend. mermaids, dragons, giants, vampires, demons, etc. there's too many accounts of the same kind of creatures existing all over the world in the legends of cultures that were too far removed from one another to simply be sharing the same stories. and, way back when, people were too busy trying to survive to really have time to sit around and think up these fanciful creatures just because they had active imaginations. E.D.
Um...there is a grain to truth to what you say, E.D. It was bandied around the physics circles that to get a new idea accepted first you waited for all the old scientists to die. Planck presented his first paper on Quantum Mechanics in 1900. It was the forties before the mainstream properly accepted it, and much later physicists were still quite uncomfortable (Einstien's "God does not play dice with the Universe.") In the field in which we speak -- paleo-anthopology -- the fossil record is so fragmentary that competing hypothesis are still plausible enough to be actively debated. Not to say in any way that the overall picture is not very, very clear! Preconception of how the fossil record should look is what got Piltdown Man accepted so readily, despite it being a fairly crappy forgery. However. Science shows not its weakness but its strength over this affair, because as more and better evidence was collected and tighter and more careful hypothesis were made it became obvious that something smelled of fish and it wasn't served with chips. At that point the bones were pulled from what was extraordinary protectionism by the British Museum and investigated with a more jaundiced eye. However, even if they had been a flawless forgery they would have been left outside of the curve as a wild datum, as there is simply too many other fossils telling too clear a story to make them fit. One has to think in terms of proponderance of evidence. Say your car just stalled on the freeway. It's been a week since you got gas and the needle is on empty. All good evidence that you are out of gas. You would be correct in trying to siphon some fresh gas into the tank. If someone stops by to help and suggests you look for a flat tire, you are right in rejecting that as a profitable course in action; a flat tire would not fit the known data (tires rarely effect fuel gauges). However, if the passing motorist suggests you have a dead battery that is indeed a profitable angle of investigation. The new working hypothesis is "Battery is dead, leading to observed data that car stopped and gas gauge shows no reading. The datum of it being a long time since we gassed up does not have to be included; we might very well be out of gas but we might just as well have several gallons left in the tank." Working from this new hypothesis, we design an experiment to test it; we turn on the headlights. The new datum; headlights work, headlights don't work, will lead us to favor one of the competing hypothesis over the other. Thus does science work, cross-wise, building upon previous data, going back to re-investigate data when it does not fit the curve, working up a new hypothesis if the errant datum is tested and proven to be solid. And for that sad, old argument that scientists get good money (grants, et al) for supporting the status quo and spouting the party line....? Ahem. Scientists get grants for showing something NEW. Scientists get renoun and the aclaim of their peers for shaking up the established structure. I don't know about you, but given the choise between pleasing my boss or taking a chance at the Nobel Prize....
I don't know anything about "Piltdown Man." I'm sure there are tons of things that have been claimed to be discovered by various flakes through the ages that were actually plants and forgeries. magazines like the national enquirer were at one time very well respected printings where you could read about controversial but true stories. now its nothing but a gag mag. i think the last cover story i saw on it was 500 lb model gives birth to 40 lb baby. i remember one where they claimed to have brought abe lincoln back to life for 90 seconds or some crap like that. the sad thing is that there are people out there who read those magazines and actually believe it. not that some of the stories aren't amusing, anyone who really believes it, really needs help. i dont argue the point that when something new is presented it should be thoroughly investigated before drawing any conclusions or rewriting any text books. but at the same time there have been several cases in the not too distant past where archaelogists have prestented hard evidence that clearly defied the current belief system of "how things are and what happened when" and those are the ones who get shot down and their fundings cut off because they dare prove otherwise. Not always, i know, but it does happen. I wish i had a clear cut example to give you right now but i'd have to take some time to look up some of those that i've read about and watched documentaries on in the past. it does bring to mind though, a story that i was discussing with someone not too long ago (within the last year or so) about a woman who discovered a specific type of plant or herb in egypt that dated back thousands of years. but at the time that this substance was being used in egypt, it didn't grow there naturally. the only other place in the world that it did grow was south america, which in her findings (more than just this plant) she proved that there was trade going on between the two, yet everybody else swears they didn't have trade (maybe now trade between the two is accepted, i'm not sure, but at the time this happened it was not believed to have ever happened). So because this woman faught for what she'd found, she was chalked up to being a fraud. There's more to the story than what i can currently remember, but that is what it all boiled down to. I wish i had more details about the case to give you but i don't at the moment. its just an example of the point i brought up in my previous post. Not to mention all the other unexplainable instances around the world. the pyramids for example. "Experts" claim they're only something like 4,000 years old and were built by the egyptians who lived there at the time. right... built by a group of people who were barely more than cavemen (no offense), so precisely that even with today's technology and machinery no one can replicate any of the 3 great pyramids. not to mention their astrological alignment, which they don't line up with anymore, but they DID, 10 to 12,000 years ago. but wait, that can't be because the people they think built them 4,000 years ago weren't capable, or didn't exist, 10 to 12,000 years ago. then there's the water erosion on the pyramids and the sphinx that took thousands of years to happen, but wait. its not water erosion, those nearly perfect horizontal erosion and water marks that a body of water would leave after several thousands of years of the water levels slowly falling are actually wind and sand erosion, with some water mixed in, from all the times that the nile overflowed (even though it didn't overflow far enough to reach the pyramids very often, or stayed there very long, but we'll just ignore that minor detail because 4,000 years is more comforting and fits better with our current narrow-minded theory of what happened and when).
there's always going to be a skeptic in every group. it just irks me when there's so many other logical paths that something could take but no one wants to pay attention to them because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the picture the way they want the picture to be. so they waste their time trying to paint it the way they believe it should be instead of the way it really is, or could possibly be.
E.D. P.S: And I know this has gotten WAY off base of poser, or daz creating hobbit-type figures. Sorry. Having always been fascinated by egypt and the rest of the ancient world, far more so than i am fascinated with the present world, i'll say that it'd be nice to see some of our fellow poser artists create more egyptian, greek and other acient era art. i think the daz studio has some packs available for this. I will look into it.
Message edited on: 10/29/2004 03:52
Attached Link: http://www.poserpros.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=3368&start=0&selcat=236&selsub=-1
BTW - Dodger's Raphael at PoserPros already has a halfling morph built-in along with some other nifty features if anyone's interested...http://www.poserpros.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=3368&start=0&selcat=236&selsub=-1
The trick is to watch the money. If the scientific theory appears in a peer-reviewed journal then it probably comes from a working researcher who is, dispite claims to the contrary, probably making less than a dentist does. They are getting paid by universities, by the government, and by business to do a job. On the other hand, if said theory appears in a tabloid newspaper, in a paperback book, or a video you buy online, then the money comes from YOU. And, in fact, the entire purpose of Von Daneiken or Striber or Hoagland and their ilk is not to challenge the status quo and produce good science. Their purpose is to convince YOU that you can only get "the real truth" by buying their book. Oh... Personally, I find the lack of imagination is in the "Space Aliens" approach. So space aliens for no discernable reason, using no describable technology, stopped in one day and built the pyramids. Ho, hum. That's about as good as the motivation behind the serial killer of a B-movie...."Um...because he's crazy!" I find it a great deal more exiting, and more credible to the memory of a creative, intelligent, and witty people, to look at how they may have done the work themselves.
As for a Hobittette, I always thought that the GIRL, with her big hands and feet, was a really pretty female hobbit (with shaved feet). As for the man of Piltdown, there is a theory that it was a false discovery forged by Teilhard De Chardin, a renowned paleontologist. A sort of student's joke that went totally overboard, if you will.
Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1952219
there's also an insufferable poser newbie with delusions of grandeur working on a hobbit....
...and anybody who has studied the Vikings knows how they went from strapping 6-7 footers to 4-5 footers in Greenland once the colonies were cut off by the Little Ice Age and the people starved for generation after generation until they died out. 300 years of malnutrician. It works in reverse, too. We are quite a bit taller on average than the Victorians because we get more vitamins during development. Carolly
I posted another reply the other night, but it seems it got lost in cyberspace. Grrr...
Oh... Personally, I find the lack of imagination is in the "Space Aliens" approach. So space aliens for no discernable reason, using no describable technology, stopped in one day and built the pyramids. Ho, hum. That's about as good as the motivation behind the serial killer of a B-movie....<<
Aliens would not have built them "just because", because they were bored, or wanted to test out their new particle displacement mechanism. BUT.. there is evidence all over the world and especially in the middle east, that there were at some point in the past, advanced civilizations that had the ability do to things we can't do today. The proof of the pyramids aligning with astrological patterns 10 to 12k years ago was not conjured up by some flake trying to sell a book or docudrama. It was researched by another group of archaeologists and scientists that don't agree with the idea of them being merely 4,000 years old, or being built by the egyptians who lived there 4,000 years ago. The same group who pointed out that the erosion on the pyramids and sphinx was WATER erosion, NOT sand and wind erosion. Egypt was not always a dessert. They know that way way way back (a lot further back than 4,000 years), egypt and much of the middle east was more tropic and jungle-like, as is the majority of africa today. The people that refuse to beleive or even do any investigation into the idea of the pyramids being much more than 4000 years old, are the ones who claim the erosion is from wind and sand and the occasional flooding of the nile. (the nile floods - or did - every year, around the same time each year, which is how the egyptians lived, and grew their crops along the banks of the nile, and created an irrigation system that allowed the flooding river to help their crops grow better). The erosion that the others are talking about is from thousands of years of standing water, a lot further back than 4.
I think there are far too many archaeologists and scientists who allow their religious beliefs to interfere with their studies. If you go along with the xian bible, then man is only about 6,000 years old, which gives them about 2,000 years to come up with the mathematics and technology it took to build the pyramids. The same pyramids that we can't reconstruct today, after 6,000 years of math and technology, and computers that you can hold in the palm of your hand... There are tons of pyramids all over egypt that are much smaller and much more poorly built, many of them in ruins. Supposedly those are the "practice runs" that gave them the experience to build the main 3. Riiiiggghhht. Why is it so difficult to accept the idea that maybe, just maybe, the egyptians weren't the ones who did it? Ever heard of the Sumarians? They're origins are a complete mystery to anybody whose ever done any research into them. They know a lot about what their accomplishments were, but they have no factual data as to where they came from OR where they went. They were around for a few hundred years, were way more advanced than any other civilization of its time, and then suddenly they were just gone. Of course there's tons of theories and hypotheses about it all, but when its all said and done, they really don't know squat. And what about Atlantis? There's tons of written works that talk about atlantis from various parts of the world, but no actual proof that it ever existed. Does that mean it didn't exist? No one believed that the city of Troy ever existed either, until an archaeologist in the 18-1900's decided he was going to find it. Then whad'yaknow, he didn't just find one troy, he found seven, each one burried beneath the next.
E.D.
Message edited on: 10/31/2004 19:21
Message edited on: 10/31/2004 19:27
I'd also like to point out a couple other things. back in the mid 90's when i went with my family to visit rome and florence (italy that is), to meet other parts of my family and see the art and architecture there, my mom pointed out something about how high the arches and doorways were in various buildings that are centuries old. She led her statements to the concept of giants, not trying to imply that they were built by or for giants, cause that'd just be silly. A lot of the architecture has to do with art, symbolism and royalty. But it may also stem from other concepts and histories. Maybe at some point in the distant past giants weren't so uncommon. I'm not saying they lived in italy, but who knows. point #2: have you ever looked at some of the ancient symbols, carvings and drawings? there was a photograph of an egyptian carving that i remember from elementary school, symbolising the soul's travel from earth to the heavens. (I think it was egyptian, not really sure all these years later). the figure was surrounded by various things. i can't really describe it right now, but it was suppose to be the insides of his sarcophagus. it looked a hell of a lot more mechanical than a sarcphagus though. point #3: the egyptians of ancient times are not the same race of people as the egyptians of today. no one's too clear on what race they were - Nefertiti being an example of that. she's often portrayed as being african, but a lot of people argue that she was more caucasian or arabic. today's egyptians are a blend of various arabian tribes that migrated into and envaded egypt over the centuries, choking out the older bloodlines. Point #4: egyptians developed one of the first forms of photography, using intense flashes of light behind a pinhole, which burned a shadowy image onto another surface, usually rock. they also had batteries made from clay pots, grapejuice and metal conductors (copper, i think it was), and they used electroplating rather commonly. point #4: sometime in the 17 or 1800's a tomb in egypt was excavated and its contents examined, then warehoused along with tons of other findings from various places. among the contents was a small model of a war plane, made of bronze or gold. at the time it was found no one knew what it was and figured it to be a child's toy. much later on the artifact resurfaced and was identified as being a nearly exact replica of a plane used in ww1 or 2. a fossil of something that resembled a spark plug was also found burried in thousands of years of rock (i'm not sure when though). which, leads me to point #5... if the concept of extra-terestrial beings is too far fetched for some people, what about the concept of time-travel? People have been trying to figure that one out for how long now? Maybe at some point in our future time travel is in fact developed and used, and some or several decide to take a trip to the past. maybe they like it better and stay there and leave behind some of these things that we can't explain today because they don't fit in with all the other findings. I could go on and point out a number of other curious things, but for now I wont. I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my, err, the air, either. You can look it up and read the facts for yourself if you'd like. I just wish more people would approach our origins and our histories with a more open mind and stop shooting down everything that's discovered that doesn't fit in with the greater picture we've been trying to paint. i think then we'd find out a whole lot more about all of it. In so many ways, we're still living in the dark ages. E.D.
I have seen photographs of your "spark plug" and my pattern recognition abilities must be much worse or much better than yours. Either that or I've seen a lot of REAL old, rusty, spark plugs. I can match you with a stone statue of a guy in a space suit (unfortunately, I can also tell you about the culture and artistic traditions under which the goggle-eyed "dogyu" came about). I have read much of what you talk about, in both the theories, the real archeology, and what is still up for question. I prefer not, however, to bandy about "facts" that I can not find and present a primary reference for -- and I'm just too lazy to go back to some of the sources I have looked at and provide documentation. You might, however, be interested in this link critiquing the "aligned in 10500 BC" argument: http://www.antiquityofman.com/Orion_Fairall.html I would like to point out that any college astronomy textbook or one of the modern star-finder software packages so common these days would allow you to check the assertations made yourself (with the exception of, of course, of making your own survey of Kufu. But you could check several indpendent sources to verify the actual measurements -- which I strongly recommend, as von Danieken, for isntance, outright lies about them). This is all in illustration of my main point, to wit; this isn't a question of "my authority is better than your authority" it is, simply, that my authority gives me numbers I can verify independently. Psuedo-science is generally recognized by the way it only points back at itself. Solid science integrates with, if you follow any thread long enough, the totality of human knowlege. Let's go back to Thor Heyerdahl for a moment. You are right; keeping an open mind, indeed, giving a space for flights of fancy is useful and good. Thor was, basically, wrong. But he inspired a great many people to think about the pan-Pacific migrations in new ways, inspired many others to go into anthropology and ancient studies, and provided hard experiential data on whether long-range voyages were possible using early technology. He (and Margaret Mead, and even Desmond Llewelyn) have an honored place in anthropology. So we agree on this much; there is much to be learned, and unusual theories should not be condemned outright. However, I must underline that many of the unusual theories you will be exposed to come from people who want something from you; who are trying to sell you wine clips and magnetic CD enhancers, books and videos, or a saffron robe. Keep an open mind, sure -- but keep a hand on your wallet. http://www.randi.org/
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Can't be too far off- now that scientists have discovered that humans maybe didn't originate in Africa-- but are actually evolved from very ancient Hobbitt-size creatures that lived in tropical Indonesia! Hmmm- think I'll go back and re-read those "Lost Continent of Lemuria" and peoples of "Ancient Mu" books... THE N E W S.... "In an astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, scientists say they have found the skeleton of a new human species, a dwarf, marooned for eons in a tropical Lost World while modern humans rapidly colonized the rest of the planet."