Text 13736, 127 rader
Skriven 2008-09-14 16:19:00 av bill swisher (1:124/311)
     Kommentar till en text av MICHAEL LOO
Ärende: Re: banking 908
=======================
-=> MICHAEL LOO wrote to BILL SWISHER <=-

 ML> The nastier companies have installed telephone tree mechanisms that
 ML> will get you a dial tone if you do this. I've discovered this the
 ML> hard way: at one 800 number, which one I forget, the 0 trick gets a
 ML> fairly nasty-toned "goodbye" and click, mmmmmmmmm.
 
Dang!  You could always try shouting "Operator".  Sometimes that works.
Just remember to speak "English" instead of one of those really,
really, really southern dialects.  :-)

 ML> Another tip for the frustrated: gethuman.com!

Hmmmm don't recall if I've ever seen this site.  Gonna check it out and
possibly send it off to other mere mortal consumers.  Kind of like
today.  Connie has been having problems with her newsgroups.  I called
ACS Alaska and informed them that when I attempted to access the NNTP
server I got an error message telling me that the license had expired. 
Since it was some sort of "Winserver" software error message I didn't
think my linux box particularly cared.  He said "We don't have a news
server", to which I replied "The address is news.acsalaska.net which is
what your website says it should be".  For the technically inclined I
then pinged and tracerouted it to verify that it was failing to
respond, which is kind of odd since it told me the license had
expired.  Anyhow I told him someone should go down and "trip over the
powercord".  It's still broke, just not as badly...at least it's kind
of responding now.


MM: Newspaper Article About Bronze Age Food
---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Newspaper Article About Bronze Age Food
 Categories: Info
      Yield: 1 servings
 
 
  ARCHAEOLOGIST LEARNS TO BE A BRONZE AGE GOURMET
  
  London--Stinging nettles aren't everyone's cup of tea,
  but archaeologist Mike Corbishley says they make a
  pretty good soup.
  
  He studies the food that Europeans ate during the
  Bronze Age thousands of years ago.  He gathers the raw
  ingredients, cooks the dishes and eats them.
  
  "Nettle soup is delicious and tastes like spinach, but
  the bread made without yeast is rather bland," he said.
  
  An intriguing aspect of the long-ago diet is that the
  ingredients are still around.  The wild plants growing
  in prehistoric Britain are still here, like nettles,
  sow thistle, sorrel, dandelion and lady's smock.
  
  Evidence about foods comes from the work of
  archaeologists digging up graves and settlement sites
  to study the Bronze Age peoples who inhabited Europe
  from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic coast of Spain
  from about 2500 to 700 B.C.
  
  It's called the Bronze Age because in that period tin
  and copper were widely alloyed to make bronze for
  tools, weapons, pots and jewelry. The Bronze Age
  people had no writing so all we know about them is
  what comes out of the ground.
  
  The Bronze Age diet was highlighted at a conference
  put on in late October by the Council of Europe at the
  British Museum in London.
  
  From its headquarters in Strasbourg, France, the
  council's cultural committee has begun a two-year
  campaign to widen knowledge of the Bronze Age because
  it sees in that period the first common pursuits of
  early Europeans.  They had a network of trade routes
  and olive oil and wine were among the products traded
  in the later part of that era.
  
  Corbishley, 50, a former teacher and archaeologist, is
  head of education at English Heritage, the state body
  responsible for preserving historic and
  architecturally important buildings, ruins and sites.
  
  "To help children to better understand the past we
  talk to their teachers about what we have discovered
  of daily life.  The good thing about food is that
  everyone is interested in it," he said in an interview.
  
  "We find seeds or fruits preserved in boggy ground,
  sea shells, fish and animal bones and clues to how
  meat was handled by looking at butchery techniques
  showing in the bones.  The bones also show traces of
  cooking and splitting to extract marrow."
  
  Corbishley said a number of recipes have survived into
  modern times in remote places like the Shetland and
  Orkney islands off the northern Scottish mainland
  where life is harsher.
  
  "Even in the late 20th century people have gathered
  and cooked the same sorts of raw materials," he said.
  
  One recipe still in use is nettle puree, a sort of
  thick soup.
  
  "At demonstrations people have quite a shock when they
  see us grab handfuls of stinging nettles, although we
  put gloves on," Corbishley said.
  
  Andrew Hamilton, press officer at the British Museum,
  said he had tasted the puree.  "It's very good, like
  soup made from lettuce, but the nettle leaves must be
  young."
  
  Bronze Age bread is another story.
  
  "I quite like non-yeast bread, but it wouldn't suit
  everyone," Corbishley acknowledged.  "The barley gives
  it a strong taste."
  
  ~-Inland Valley Daily Bulletin  November 24, 1994
 
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