Archaeology enthusiasts from around the world are gathering in Marquette this weekend to discuss the ancient civilizations of America.

The fourth annual Ancient American Preservation Society Conference on Ancient America began Friday and ends Sunday. Judy Johnson, the 2008 conference chairwoman, said the event will raise funds for the purchase of one of the largest known pieces of float copper discovered in the Keweenaw Peninsula.

“It’s over 99 percent pure copper,” Johnson said of the large metal slab left in the area by a glacier. It “is in danger of being acquired by industry for melting down, for smelting, for industrial purposes.”

The society would like to preserve the float copper as a geological specimen and has already invested $10,000 toward securing it, she said.

However, Johnson said the group has only two years in which to raise the additional $340,000 needed to purchase the more than 50-ton slab.

Johnson and others involved with the AAPS believe the copper found in the Upper Peninsula drew Europeans and Asians to the continent before Columbus visited the Americas.

This is something very interesting, America being exploited for resources, especially copper which was the carbon fiber composite of its day.

That in of itself isn’t odd, it’s the 2000 B.C. date that gets to people!

Archeologists Discuss Ancient America

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The Pentagon wants to be able to peer inside your apartment building — picking out where all the major rooms, stairways, and dens of evil-doers are.

The U.S. military is getting better and better at spotting its enemies, when they’re roaming around the streets. But once those foes duck into houses, they become a whole lot harder to spot. That’s why Darpa, the Defense Department’s way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for “external sensing deep inside buildings.” The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: “reverse the adversaries’ advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness.”

By the end of the project, Darpa wants a set of technologies that can see into a 10-story building with a two-level basement in a “high-density urban block” — and produce a kind of digital blueprint of the place. Using sensors mounted on backpacks, vehicles, or aircraft, the HIBR gear would, hopefully, be able to pick out every room, wall, stairway, and basement in the building — as well as all of the “electrical, plumbing, and installation systems.”

Darpa doesn’t come out and say it openly.  But it appears that the agency wants these HIBR gadgets to be able to track the people inside these buildings, as well. Why else would these sensors be required to “provide real-time updates” once U.S. troops enter the building? Perhaps there’s more about the people-spotting tech, in the “classified appendix” to HIBR’s request for proposals.

I discovered this site over the weekend and does this guy do his research!

If you want to get all kinds of skinny on dirty NWO crap, this is a must see site.

DARPA Wants To See Thru Your Walls And Into Your House

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The state of New Mexico hopes to collaborate with two firms to create suborbital vehicles for space tourists. This illustration is one concept for the ship, which will afford passengers a 360° view of space. Armadillo Aerospace plans to build an initial prototype of the vehicle in 2009 and is aiming for crewed suborbital flights in 2010. The reusable vehicles will take off vertically from Spaceport America near Las Cruces, New Mexico. The ships can take two passengers at a time, and tickets will cost an estimated $100,000.

Pretty wild, though I would be spooked by the knowledge that there’s only a few millimeters of film separating me from space.

I wonder what the insurance cost would be for Armadillo Aerospace?

Did I hear someone mention “release forms?”

Fishbowl Spaceships and Giant Stars: Week in Space

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