by: Geoff Ficke
In early 20th century America the vast majority of people living in rural areas eked out a living in agriculture. Farms were small, often sharecropped. The planting and harvesting was labor intensive and horses provided the only source of energy for mechanized tilling. The vagaries of weather and drought have always made farming difficult. Crops were mainly grown for consumption by the farmer’s family, with any extra produce bartered for needed goods.
We are all aware of the history of Henry Ford and his invention of the production line to mass-produce Model-T’s. Ford did not invent the automobile, he simply invented a method to produce cars in mass volumes and make them available for virtually anyone wishing to purchase a horse-less carriage. He also revolutionized the agriculture business with totally unforeseen consequences.
The Ford Motor Company was always seeking new avenues of distribution and business opportunities. Ford had grown up in then-rural Michigan and was immersed in the farm world of the age. In the 1920’s Ford introduced the first mass-produced farm tractor, the Fordson. The machine sold for under $400 and revolutionized farming. It quickly became cheaper and less costly to own and maintain a Fordson tractor than a horse.
Farmers quickly gravitated to the Fordson tractor. Crop yield per acre expanded exponentially. Farmers produced so much crop yield per acre that by the middle of the 1920’s we were growing far more food than the country could consume. Prices plummeted. The need for day laborers declined precipitously and rural unemployment exploded.
The collapse of crop prices, unemployment, and the Great Plains drought were significant contributors to the start of the Great Depression. The Fordson was an amazing improvement in the productivity and ability of farmers to lead more comfortable lifestyles. However, the “Law of Unintended Consequences” reared its ugly head in this instance. The creative disruption caused by this product was thrust on a market that could not adjust efficiently or quickly to its significance.
We have a seemingly similar situation occurring today. We constantly read headlines about the dying manufacturing sector in the United States. Politicians love to visit deserted factories and decry the decline of manufacturing in a wide range of formerly profitable industries. And yet, manufacturing in America is setting records for volumes produced, shipped and invoiced. How can this dichotomy exist?
As with the Fordson tractors 1920’s introduction to farmers, today’s manufacturing has evolved dramatically and created disruptive technologies. Robots, software, customized computer models, computer assisted design and modern communications mean that we produce ever more sophisticated products, in greater volumes, and at lower prices, while needing fewer workers per unit of production. The workers that are needed today require better education, and skills than the production line workers of yore.
When I was growing up in an industrial area of America in the 1960’s many of my contemporaries went to work with their fathers at the local mill or factory. These were overwhelmingly union jobs. Each of my buddies at that time thought they would be employed for life like their fathers had been. It has worked out that none are where they started, not one.
The displacement is as painful today as it was on the farm of the 1920’s. However, the benefits to society accruing from modern manufacturing technologies and systems, just like the advances in farming owing to mechanization, cannot be denied. Only the Luddites of the 19th century and there modern adherents believe life is not more comfortable today and more people have more access to more goods and services at lower prices that at any time in history.
Change is hard and often inconvenient. We live during an age of massive change unlike any time in history. The understanding of and acceptance of modern realities insure that most people will benefit from advances in technology. Those that do not want to change and accept the new order of things will be left behind.
Henry Ford did not sell the Fordson tractor to instigate the Great Depression. The product was a small, inadvertent contributing factor. The inability of markets of that day to allocate resources and find markets for the massive increases in crops harvested was a systemic failure. Today, we manufacture products that are consumed quickly and create the thirst for more inventions and technologically advances. We are all better off as a result.
Geoff Ficke has been a serial entrepreneur for almost 50 years. As a small boy, earning his spending money doing odd jobs in the neighborhood, he learned the value of selling himself, offering service and value for money.
After putting himself through the University of Kentucky (B.A. Broadcast Journalism, 1969) and serving in the United States Marine Corp, Mr. Ficke commenced a career in the cosmetic industry. After rising to National Sales Manager for Vidal Sassoon Hair Care at age 28, he then launched a number of ventures, including Rubigo Cosmetics, Parfums Pierre Wulff Paris, Le Bain Couture and Fashion Fragrance.
Geoff Ficke and his consulting firm, Duquesa Marketing, Inc. (www.duquesamarketing.com) has assisted businesses large and small, domestic and international, entrepreneurs, inventors and students in new product development, capital formation, licensing, marketing, sales and business plans and successful implementation of his customized strategies. He is a Senior Fellow at the Page Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Business School, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
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Historical source for
behaviour adaptation
to modern 7-tone music
By Wendell W. Solomons
__________________________________________________
Do you recollect ABBA saying it this way?
Thank you for the music,
Thank you for the joy its bringing,
Thank you – for giving it to me.
Whom should we thank for our first musical instruments? From which geographic area did waves of sound first ring out? Stones and wood could make a sound but perhaps bells, xylophone slats and frets of metal provided for the distribution, modulation and standardisation of musical scales and music?
The metal first put to wide use by men was copper. Mixed with a little tin, it produced the more resilent substance bronze.
Regarding sources for copper, Gunakar Muley says:
“Presently the site Tal-i-Iblis near the Kerman range in south-east Iran is regarded as the earliest known centre of copper metallurgy. The smelting equipment discovered from this site is datable to circa 4500 BC. From here the knowledge is believed to have spread to the west and the east. Towards the east Mundigak in Afghanistan and some pre-Harappan sites from Baluchistan provide evidence of copper and bronze metallurgy.”
<www.vigyanprasar.com/dream/august99/AUGUSTArticle1.htm>
Among those first copper mines seem to have been mines in the Kheeveri mountains which fall within the borders of modern Afghanistan. Western European names for copper come probably from this region _1/ .
As for Eastern Europe, the commonest Slav name for copper is `med.’ That name leads us to the Median people (living in Persia,) once again in this region. The name of the fabled Magi appeared here and from them we derive the terms `magic’, `magistrate’ and `majesty’. The Hungarians believe they arrived from that homeland and they call themselves `Magyar’ to this day.
An encyclopaedia entry now:
“The Bronze Age occurred at different times in different parts of the world. In most areas, the development of bronze technology was preceded by an intermediary period when copper was used. This stage, sometimes called the Copper Age, did not occur in some areas, including ancient China and prehistoric Britain, where the transition was made directly from stone to bronze technology. In certain ancient cultures in Africa and elsewhere, stone was replaced directly by iron technology, and the Bronze Age was bypassed completely.” (Grotelier Encyclopedia)
Later, in the Biblical era of West Asia, Ur of the Chaldees, the traditional birthplace of Abram and Sara and a river port, imported the metal. The island of Bahrain (Dilmun) served as a transit point for the metal to the Euphrates river from whence the metal was moved westwards by overland caravan.
IMPACT OF METAL INSTRUMENTS AND TOOLS
The Bronze Age permitted the creation of more accurate measuring instruments. So the first sophisticated calendars for agricultural work appeared in areas incorporating the Indus Valley. The first metal tools (including metal plowshare) enhanced man’s agricultural productivity.
An increased food surplus could physically support the mental work of a larger population share of sages, healers, scribes, artisans, artists and musicians.
Much later in Rome, calendar makers still followed the count of fingers of the hands and had ten months ending in December. Then, Julius Caesar was advised to implant two months in the middle of the year and he named the months for himself and his chosen successor, Augustus. Still later, with the arrival of lenses and telescopes, planets Neptune and Pluto were discovered. With these changes, Napoleon Bonaparte is among those who attempted metrification now of the week, to ten days.
However, the seven heavenly bodies known before Caesar to Mesopotamian and Vedic astronomy continue to serve as the base for the seven-day week in our times. Even the names of days describe that (in many languages Saturday means Saturm’s day.)
Sabbath’ comes directly from the Semitic word `seba’a', which means seven’. Similar syllables occur in the Indo-European word stream. There is the Greek `septa’ for seven.
THE SET OF 7 HEAVENLY BODIES
If we go by early Greek, Chinese and Japanese civilisations, many early musical scales were pentatonic (5 “main notes;” still a feature of Gamelan music in Bali). In the pentatonic, the octave was divided by the simple means of counting the figures on one hand. Russian composer Borodin noticed it in folk song and used it in “Prince Igor” (it was represented in the modern production `Kismet’ by the song `Stranger in Paradise’.)
The earlier scale was tri-tonic (3 “main notes”) if we judge by fisherman/sailor hauling chants (take the `Volga Boatmen’ shanty sung by greats such as Paul Robeson) and the music of Native Americans and existent pre-Bronze Age tribesmen.
If the piano did not accomplish the task, two millennia later the world’s population is in the process of behavioural conditioning to the `major’ key of Western Europe. That comes about through the use in network media of the 7-tone scale of the electronic organ now factory-created by corporations such as YAMAHA in the Far East.
Instruments such as the violin and cello can produce half-tones and quarter tones between each of the seven tones, but the piano and Western fretted instruments are set to reproduce only five half tones. That gives a total of twelve that is – no more than the number of houses of the Zodiac used by early astronomers in making calendars.
This set scale seems to have percolated via traditional merchant settlements. In Cochin, India, alongside the Mattancherry synagogue (visible on the Net) still exists an ancient spice market that served rich trading houses in Genoa and Venice. After a day of taxing their wits, merchants would rejuvenate with entertainment and thence came aggregated commercial demand of the human faculties for music.
A variant based on the same number of tones and called the `minor’ key had become basic to the Eastern Slavs (it must be noted that in the late 19th and 20th Century composers such as Borodin, Mousourgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky contributed to a wave of the `minor’ key in Western Europe.)
Both the `minor’ and `major’ and scales of Western and Eastern Europe respectively seem to be gypsies, which took off from Asia somewhere adjacent to India.
So we seem to deal with the possibility that besides orienting with Bronze Age astronomy and mathematics, Europe seated itself on an Asian musical carpet.
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR EXTRAVAGANZA
The `Magical Mystery Tour’, an album title of the Beatles, could reflect this journey on a magic carpet.
The Beatles had began like Elvis Presley with boogie-woogie and be-bop adopted from Fats Waller and other performers in harmonic progressions such as `Hound Dog’. This was served up like hot potatoes in the late 1950s by music distributors. In short, using White American performers, music distributors sold Black American staples.
After a repackaging enterprise far across the breadth of the Atlantic in Liverpool, the Beatles turned their electric guitars and seemed to stumble into something else with manager Brian Epstein – into music academy.
Britain was historically known to be long on shop-keepers (even military man Napoleon has a quip) and on puns, immortalised by Shakespeare,
At the same time the country was known to be short on composers.
Howver, the electric guitars of the Beatles roamed into Slav music in academic archives. The English words in their song `Those Were the Days’ were set note for note to the Russian traditional ballad `Dorogoj dlinnoju’. Only the tempo was altered from the original 6-beat, the same as in the gypsy airs `Two Guitars’ and `Dark Eyes’ (the rhythm resembles the later `Blue Danube’ waltz, which Strauss made famous in Vienna.) Most Russian ballads are pitched in minor key (in contrast to the episodic minor transition, say in, in time-honoured English favourites such as `Ash Grove’ or `Greensleeves’.)
From the `Swan Lake’ ballet, the haunting harmonic progression of Tchaikovsky’s main theme became for Les Beatles the main chorus in their song `All my loving.’
Then there was Rimsky-Korsakov’s famed `Song of the Guest from India’ in the opera `Sadko’. The song is based on a wafting between major and minor scales because the composer’s objective was to let India dialogue with Russian audiences (he intended a multicultural event.) In the repertoire of Les Beatles , a waltz rhythm was introduced and the problem of song title resolved by calling the melody `Norwegian Woods’. However, it remains a give away. In the mind of a musicologist still constrained in the 1960s by `Britannia Rule the Waves’, Norse would represent multiculturalism too.
So whether John Lennon and lads took their `Magical Mystery Tour’ together with consultant musicologists from OUTSIDE the erstwhile British Empire is a question for us to resolve.
For circumstantial evidence in the matter we observe that extraordinary happenings had aroused the universal (that is also the meaning of `Catholic’) in Liverpool-born Irishman John Lennon. Catholic Ireland does not call itself England’s oldest colony without cause and we observe Lennon setting aside `Britannia Rule the Waves’ with an other-worldly universality which stretched to Transcendental Meditation in India.
For attire, Lennon had discarded the tie. He was now discarding his designer polyester/wool Kommisar attire and adopting the customary habit of commonfolk Asia, called in India or Pakistan the Salwar Khamiz (compare `chemise.’) He adopted Yoko Ono as mother for his child instead of camp-following blonde or brunette debutante, the choice of a hundred Western venue’s wealthy entertainers.
Viewing all the events in the prism of statistical probability, cause and effect become more explicable if something had really got under Lennon’s skin by his surmising more than the average about the laboratory of behaviour control.
This great Les Beatles musical extravaganza was soon to lead a huge number of pop groups to follow the revealed cosmopolitan lode. The trend also led Ravi Shankar’s sitar to world fame.
As events proceeded apace, music distributors began to fear a Pandora’s box effect of sponsoring through music, an unnecessary hyper-world consolidation. So by the 1990s, distributors put on blinkers and switched to bankrolling (i) lyrics that dumb down or debilitate. The same bankrolling was to follow for (ii) rhythm too.
Yet, it proved difficult to rub out the full effect of the Beatles. For the part of (iii) harmony their influence became ineffaceable in pop music. Of late TIME magazine (on July 1, 2002) complains that compact disk buyers are switching from the common coin of AOL-TIME-WARNER, EMI and the three other top music distributors to recordings sold thanks to the Internet, by small, outsider companies.
The Beatles extravaganza amused when it did not distract the anti-war protest rallies that plagued the Establishment in the 1960s. Such historical dovetailing of music and rallies waits repeating.
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How could we round off a discussion of the subject of social behaviour adaptation in music and time?
We know that the West had absorbed monotheism, Judaism `fulfilled’ in Christ’s words in the New Testament. Its birthplace was in the city cultures of the East. “History Begins in Sumer” is the name of an illustrious book. Here, a change had taken place from tribal, nomadic life.
A changed behaviour and ethic had emerged in cities with organised housing (right down to the size of bricks), organised streets, organised water supply systems, organised weights and measures for ease of sales of goods stocks. This change was firmly established before 2000 BC in cities of the Indus Valley civilisation. This civilisation deserves our attention because archaeologists have learnt that the territory exceeds not only the extent of deservedly famous Sumer but of the river civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt taken together.
_____________________________________________________________
_1/ Gene Matlock tells us: “About 5,000 BC or earlier, a brilliant deified Phoenician Naga king and philosopher named Kuvera (also Kubera) learned how to smelt copper, gold, and other metals. These activities took place in the kingdom named after him, Khyber (“Kheeveri”), which consisted of a group of craggy mountains in what are now Southeastern Afghanistan and Northeastern Pakistan (i.e. the Khyber Pass). According to Hindu mythology, Kuvera and God Shiva lived in the totally barren, mineral-poor, goldless, frigid, lofty, bell-shaped or pyramidical peak of Kailasa in Western Tibet …’
“We derived our word `copper’ from Kuvera’s name. Eventually, the Nagas extended their influence over all of India. If you’ve intuited that Afghan Khyber (Kheever), Hebrew Heber (pronounced Kheever), Egyptian Khepri, Greek Khyphera, Cabeiri, Cypriotic Cip’ri (Kheep’ri) … ad infinitum, are somehow linked, you’ve intuited correctly.” Excerpted from <http://www.mondovista.com/baboquivari.html>
For mathematics and computing, it helps to travel onwards on our journey with Gene Matlock.
In Europe, mathematical calculation was once difficult. With the count of fingers on the hands, Latin used symbols such as VIII. Multiplication and further computation were held up until the decimal system was completed with the use of zero. Webster’s modern dictionary confirms that the term ‘zero’ is related to ‘cipher’ and Arabic ‘tsifr’.
Webster’s year 1828 dictionary helps us with a further bridge.
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CIPHER, noun
1. In arithmetic, an Arabian or Oriental character, of this form 0, which, standing by itself, expresses nothing, but increases or diminishes the value of other figures, according to its position. In whole numbers, when placed at the right hand of a figure, it increases its value ten fold …
2. A character in general.
3. An intertexture of letters, as the initials of a name, engraved on a seal, box, plate, coach or tomb; a device; an enigmatical character. Anciently, merchants and tradesmen, not being permitted to bear family arms, bore, in lieu of them, their cyphers, or initials of their names…
4. A secret or disguised manner of writing; certain characters arbitrarily invented and agreed on by two or more persons, to stand for letters or words…
CIPHER, verb intransitive. In popular language, to use figures, or to practice arithmetic
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In general, the Russian-speaker uses ‘tsifra’ for numbers somewhat in the manner of the contemporary term ‘cyber’ (e.g. ‘cyberspace’). Also, Russian ‘kibernetika’ is ‘cybernetics’ (in robotics.)
Records in cuneiform set in baked clay tablets tell us that Mesopotamia did not have a symbol for zero. Therefore the completion of our decimal notation seems to have been achieved thanks to the Khyber areas of the Indus Valley civilisation. At the end of the day Harvard’s attempt to construct its iron curtain around that civilisation with a funded 25-odd year research project turns out to be a waste of social resources. That had also been in the case of the 1947 to 2001 delay in the release into public domain of the Dead Sea Scrolls, government property kept under lock and key primarily in the Rockefeller Museum and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem .
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Skid steer loaders can make your landscaping projects done in no time. Just put the bucket on or fix the attachment in the arm and it will help you perform the operation needed for the job. There are many companies that manufacture this win machine.
Local Industries call skid steer loaders simply as bobcat. It is a heavy-duty engine-powered machine that performs a number of operations, depending on the attachment placed in its lifting arms. If you will look at it, it looks like a midget robot with arms that can be lifted along with 4 wheels that serve as its rolling feet.
It can be used to load heavy instruments to a truck, push equipments from one place to another or carry materials from place to place. It can also replace an excavator, mower, sweeper, snow blower, mixer and even a wood chipper machine. This is vey ideal for any construction, farming, industrial and landscaping activities.
A conventional skid loader used to be a three-wheeled machine.
Although it performs the same way as any other of its kind, it turns around only within its own length. This makes it harder to maneuver in limited spaces. Aside from that, the conventional type puts the operator at risk since the moving booms are very close to the operator.
Manufacturers then greatly made refinements and came up with a new type. The new one has a four- wheel drive for easy maneuvering and an enclosure that keeps the operator safe as he performs the operation.
It is flexible and very functional depending on the accessories you attach. Find the right attachment to perform a specific task will make the job efficient because it will save you time and labor costs as well.
The most practical tools usually attached to the bobcat include the tree shear, grapple fork, lift boom, seeder and the brush cutter, concrete mixer, snow brush as well as the roller, tiller, sweeper, pallet fork, stump grinder and wheel saw. You can contact the best skid loader manufacturer for your loading needs.
John Deere
Their products include agricultural, residential, commercial, golf, construction, and forestry equipment. The company offers retail, lease financing and wholesale to customers. For over a hundred years now, the company has been known to practice integrity, commitment, quality and innovation.
The company provides products that improve the life and make customers more productive. Most of the tractors now, including skid steer loaders, are given 0% interest for a 42 – month special financing contract.
You can ask for a dealership thru their main office at 65 Mitchell Rd McMinnville, TN 37110. Their phone# is 9319342281 and their office is open from 7am -5pm central time. On Saturdays, they are open from 7am to 12 noon.
Caterpillar
The company has been providing services for over 80 years now and it still commits to excellence. Their line of products includes financial, engine, and machinery. Caterpillar has become a leader in building the world’s infrastructure. With their international trade practices, they have provided jobs for a huge number of employees and suppliers.
The company offers after sales support including discounts on parts, warranties, inspections and even recommendation for repair services. Dealers also offer used equipment and can order parts quickly for you. For your product specification and quote, you can call toll free at 1-309-675-1000. You can also visit their main office at 100 North East Adams St. Peoria, Illinois 61629.
Bobcat
The company takes pride in having served and continuously serving the industry for 62 years. The company’s thrust includes continuous innovation, quality products and great workmanship in order to earn a good business relationship amongst its customers, employees, suppliers and dealers. Bobcat has already made a name in the fields of agriculture, landscaping, government projects, mining, construction and even for the maintenance of personal property.
It offers a high level of reliability, durability, maneuverability, versatility and serviceability. They offer power lease programs and a 0% interest thru their 24-month financial scheme. For information on any skid steer loader, parts and attachment information, you can contact Burkeen Corporation at P.O. box 605 Winder Georgia. You may also call toll free at 8773070513.
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With the advent of science and research, technology plays an important role in our life, touching every aspect of it. Biotechnology is no exception to this. Biotechnology, is a research based stream of science that covers biological sciences like genetics, microbiology, animal cell culture, molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology, cell biology and other fields like chemical engineering, bioprocess engineering, information technology and bio-robotics, which are beyond the purview of biological sciences. Continuous research, development and the need for betterment is an integral part of Biotechnology. Scientists, researchers, students of medicine, and pharmaceutical firms are always in pursuit of inventions and modifications that will simplify lives further.
Biotechnology has revolutionized agriculture with application of genetic engineering, animal cell culture, plant cell culture and other categories of science. Better production in terms of quality and quantity has been achieved. The nutritional value has been enhanced by modification; spoilage of perishable items like vegetables and fruits has been minimized. Going further, even the taste, appearance and texture can be altered through biotechnology. It also enables farmers to reduce fertilizers, pesticides and other agrochemicals to protect crops from pests and weeds. For this purpose scientists introduce herbicides that do not damage crops. Currently, studies on developing vaccines and insulin from plants, is being carried out. Such cost-effective measures will surely be a boon for developing countries of the world.
Formerly, Biotechnology was restricted to agriculture, but now it has expanded to other fields like medicine. From discovery of drugs to determining methods of drug usage, Biotechnology plays an important role. Genetic diseases and other illnesses like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, cancer, arthritis, hemophilia, bone fractures, multiple sclerosis, and cardiovascular disorders can be treated through Biotechnology. With its aid, you can manufacture effective and inexpensive medicines.
Another branch of Biotechnology is Genetic Testing that has helped researchers in decoding DNA, studying its structure and so forth. Prenatal diagnostic screening, Cancer Screening and Carrier screening is facilitated by genetic testing. Forensic labs are now equipped with the latest devices and testing equipments, that help resolving criminal cases. Many experiments and clinical studies undertaken, have further thrown light on DNA, RNA and other complex molecular structures.
Apart from that, Biotechnology also helps in the conservation and protection of environment. An ever-increasing demand for fuel has caused depletion of oil resources. Biotechnology has also resulted in the evolution of Biofuels that are derived from sugarcane, plant vegetable oils, animal fats and recycled greases, thereby providing a cleaner and greener environment.
With each passing day, Biotechnology with its innovations and applications improves quality of life. Environmental degradation, over-dependence on natural resources and other issues that are grappling the world today, are steadily being resolved. With better medicines, finer treatments and sophisticated medical centers, the average life expectancy has also increased.
In a nutshell, Biotechnology has widened the horizons of modern science and improved every aspect of human life.
Susan Parker is an experienced medical writer, specializing in writing on how biotechnology and pharmacy are partnering to develop the best in medication. Know more on Pharmacy Research Services and pharmaceuticals from Cirruspharm.
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