New Device Offers A Peek At Our Deeply Buried Past

The Miami Herald of Miami, Florida ^ | June 22, 2003 | Martin Merzer

[RightWhale]

a very sure, no-leak joint

My guess:
Lead, or plumbum from which the word for plumbing, is very malleable, which means joints between lead pipe sections or lead pipes and fixtures can be hammered or compressed until they seal reasonably well. Lead corrodes and leaches, however, so lead plumbing will need repair eventually as joints reopen. It was as good a joint as could be had until copper, solder, and teflon tape for threaded joints in brass or iron pieces or welding of steel pipes.

[RightWhale]

Like a CAT scan. Imagine what will be found when the entire surface of the planet is scanned 20 feet deep.

[SamAdams76]

I could use this guy in my backyard. A couple of years ago, a bolt from my lawn mower fell off (one of the ones that holds the handle together) and it's been missing ever since. Really annoys the heck out of me. For now, I have a regular bolt with a nut holding the handle in place but I cannot put the plastic wing nut on it because it doesn't thread right. I think it's a different size. So now I must suffer with the nut and bolt (requiring tools to get it apart) until either I find the bolt or I get a new lawn mower.

[Old Professer]

I believe it comes from the use of a solder-type material (lead/tin alloy) that, when slipped over a wire rope and then pulled back over a loop made in the rope and crimped forms a "cinch."

Tip: look at your keychain, there's a good chance it resembles this.

[blam]

"Is this quest for the origins of "lead pipe cinch" a new one, or did I get you going? "

You got me started. I suspected it had something to do with plumbing. When I was a kid, my dad would use flax and melted lead to seal cast iron drain pipes. I liked playing with the melted lead.

[Old Professer]

E-mail me your address and I will send you a replacement screw with the wingnut, gratis (used, of course).

My e-mail addy is in my profile.

[Old Professer]

I believe the rope-like material was called oakum.

[SamAdams76]

Wow, that's very kind of you. I will send you my address. But I don't need the wingnut, I still have that. What I need is just the bolt.

[plusone]

They probably already know...

[stands2reason]

LOL!! Your comment brings to mind an Eddie Izzard bit:

"Yes, and, um, I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from. ... You tell your history, “Damn, man! 30 years old, let’s smash her to the floor and put a car park here!” I have seen it in stories. I saw, you know, something in…a program on something in Miami. And they were saying, “We’ve redecorated this building to how it looked over fifty years ago!” And people were going, “No, surely not, no. No one was alive then.”

[blam]

I'm re-reading James Burke's book, The Day The Universe Changed. I'm amazed at the number of things we still say and do that go back a thousand years or more.

For example: Our 'reading of the will' has it's origins in the king's court where no-one knew how to read and all written documents were read out loud in the court. The king employed a reader and a writer and (According to Burke) the reader could not write and the writer could not read. All reading in those days were read out loud and when a monk was seen reading something without moving his lips, people were astonished.

My grandad used to sit on his porch in the swing and read his bible out loud...even when no-one was present.

[blam]

"I believe the rope-like material was called oakum."

LOL, I'm sure you're correct, dad called it flax. (It was rope like)

[Ditter]

Years ago my husband found something explaining old nursery rhymes. The only one I can remember now was "Ring around the rosey pocketful of poseys, we all fall down". It came from the middle ages in Europe & it refers to dying of the plague.

[blam]

"Years ago my husband found something explaining old nursery rhymes. The only one I can remember now was "Ring around the rosey pocketful of poseys, we all fall down". "

"Ring around the Rosy, pocket full of posies, upstairs, downstairs, we all fall down." I tracked this down also. I knew it was related to the plague but could not figure out the 'upstairs-downstairs' part.
"Upstairs - Downstairs" relates to economics...the more affluent lived upstairs (out of the muck/garbage/refuge, stench on the street) and the poor lived downstairs. That statement implied that the plague affected everyone equally...the rich and the poor.

[Phsstpok]

Whatever happened to the HAARP project which was capable of looking very deep into the earth? I think they used atmospheric heating to create a lens on the order of 30 miles wide they could bounce radar off to look down anywhere they wished.

Well, that's one of the tin-foil hat stories about HAARP. The most persistent is that it's actually a weather control program, based on Nikolai Tesla's work. The site linked elsewhere as a reply to you maintains that HAARP is a research project on the ionosphere. I also heard that it was actually part of the ELF (extreme low frequency) system for broadcasting messages to submerged subs.

NASA flew a penetrating radar system on the shuttle some years ago that was able to detect long buried canals, roads and even villages. According to Tom Clancy (as well as other sources) this mission wasn't about archaeology, it was meant to demonstrate our capability to pick out hidden hardened sites, therefore making Soviet attempts to build hidden missle silos moot and thus encouraging them to negotiate at the START talks. They have continued to fly the radar, as well as one adapted to an airplane (see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980216073822.htm for an article about archaelogical discoveries at Angkor Wat).

I still have this funny feeling that we know where the WMD are buried and we're holding off for our own reasons. Part of it may be giving the dims and the European appeasers enough rope to hang themselves. We may also be watching the sites to see who goes there. I can only hope.

[ALS]

The link I provided is Alaska University. I don't know how you connect your tin-foilness to me via that link, but atmospheric heating has been around for quite ahwile now. At least as far back as 1958, and it wasn't from tin-foilers. It's from the scientific community.
Atmospheric heating using RF is a fact. It was a fact before it became a "conspiracy".

Do a search on "ionospheric heaters".

[UpToHere]

RATS!! Better go dig up Jimmy Hoffa and plant him deeper. Can't afford to have him found yet..

[Phsstpok]

It was a fact before it became a "conspiracy".

Agreed. The tin foil comment is about how persistent the extreme versions of the related rumors, particularly the Tesla/"weather control as a weapon" version. Doesn't mean the tin-foiler's can't take it, run with it and make all related "knowledge" subject to review.

[Rebelbase]

"Part of it may be giving the dims and the European appeasers enough rope to hang themselves. "

By George, I think you've got it!

[ALS]

They may have a point though. There was a treaty drawn up between us and Russia that included the use of atmospheric heating as a weapon for weather control. It was in the 70's under Nixon. I'll have to look it back up again. Haven't perused it in years. I think the treaty was mainly about space weaponery.