We are extremely proud of her. In your last post you made an assumption which is factually incorrect.

As to beiing on the same chapter about the deck, I don't think we are in the same gallaxy. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

From the designer's point of view the closest we ever came to discuss the design of the deck were comments about Birdman's butt. Those were priceless, so thanks.

Don,

I don’t know anything about you.
You’ve proven to have a sense of humor, so that’s a good start.

We then agreed that yam was consumed on Easter Island. For anyone interested, the glyph of yam is featured on Queen of Hearts. Do we know that for a fact? Nope, like everything else with RongoRongo, it’s an educated guess, but there is a strong consensus about this glyph, so the Queen of Hearts is most likely surrounded by yams.

My silence on other questions does not speak volumes; we just need to take them one at the time.
That was an example of sarcasm which you promised to avoid.

Going down the list:

Am I an Easter Islander?
No, I am not.

Do I have a connection to glyphs?
Well, I do as a typographer who worked with type for a big part of my life, and as an author of this project. I don’t have a “blood” connection to the island. If your question is about my initial interest in Easter Island then I do have a connection, of sort, to that civilization. My co-pilot’s family came from this Island, and we spent a lot of time talking about the place high above the clouds. His favorite joke was “if my ancestors could find Rapa Nui, I can definitely find the damn airport.” He was indeed a brilliant navigator.

My first name is not Spanish. It’s not French either.

Yes, I am of Easter European origin, living for 30+ years in New York.

No, I am not Polynesian.

The Birdman subject cannot be answered in one line; it requires a long yam-like essay, so maybe that one is a good topic for another day.

The glyphs also require a long yam-like essay to answer your question, so maybe that could be our next topic after Birdman. The short answer is no, those are not my interpretations; I don’t have any interpretations of my own of RongoRongo. They come from work of several people who committed their entire lives to the project of researching RongoRongo. I did study their work extensively.

“I was stating researched facts on the topics of Rapa Nui…” nope, you did not. You presented a result of your 10-minute google binge without actually understanding the subject matter and offering far reaching opinions.

I am not shouting down the links you provided; I am shouting down your assumptions based on a very limited amount of your knowledge in these matters. For the life of me, I don’t understand why you are so compelled to offer such opinions, but you do.

For example, you imply that the “birdman is the name of the winner of the contest… there are some religious elements to it, but overall it sound more like an Ironman competition.” In IronMan competitions the contestants swim, run and bike for an extended period of time. I know quite a lot about the subject because I participated in IronMan event last year after training for months.
On Rapa Nui, the contestants of “IronMan-like competition” never became Birdman. The contestants were young kids called Hopu, which were appointed by Chiefs. So Hopu scaled sheer cliffs and swam with the sharks, and often died in the process. When they won, it was not them, but the Chiefs who appointed them who become Birdman.

Your Holocaust example crosses all lines of decency. Especially when it is directed to a person who’s entire family went through the horrors of concentration camps. My grandmother is a candidate to become a Christian Saint for her activities at Auschwitz. The entry to the Auschwitz Museum is located on a street bearing her name.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Midwife+at+Auschwitz%3A+the+story+of+Stanislawa+Leszczynska.-a0130564530

It is not your sarcasm which was the problem for me. It was the fact that you appeared, from my point of view, to act as a provocateur. It is difficult to engage in any discussion with a person of such attitude; the facts become irrelevant, the science immaterial, and the only goal for such person is to create chaos.

You appeared, from my point of view, to have used methods common for such scenario:

(A)   Take an obvious fact and reverse it, in order to force the other side to spend a lot of time responding to it and reaching, it the best case scenario, the boring conclusion or, in the worst case scenario, the point of exhaustion. Some examples of such behavior are: questioning the existence of gravity or a birth certificate of President Obama.

(B)   Throw an avalanche of questions; totally ignore the answers, repeat. Add some insults for a good measure. A good example would be paparazzi screaming insults at a wife of an actor to take a photo of an actor in rage.

(C)   Use pseudo logic to appear to prove a point. One negative example proves the theory false, many positive examples prove nothing. The theory “all numbers are lower than 10” is easily disproved with the number 11. On the other hand, many examples prove nothing. The theory “all numbers are lower than 10” is not proved with 9 examples from 1 to 9. In your case you use the second method by providing examples of true statements and implying, against the rules of logic, that your theory is correct.

(D)   In a typical discussion, one person would say “the apple is red,” the other would say “the apple is green,” we would look at the photo and conclude that one party was correct and move on to determine the color of a banana. You appear to use a different method: ignoring the arguments of another side, reject the obvious conclusion and continue with other questions.

For all the reasons above I concluded that you appear, to me, not interested in discussing any facts and you only goal appears to be, from my point of view, to create chaos.

So, if you are truly interested in discussing Easter Island and my deck let’s take it one topic at a time, reach some conclusion without making the other person feel like it’s a rectal exam, and move on to the next question.

Topic:
Yam diet on Easter Island.


You commented:
“As far as yams being the most common vegetable "a while back" - that was hundreds of years ago!  Short of making a chemical analysis of the soil and some educated guesses, there's no way to know anything about the vegetation of the time.  It rots, it decomposes, it turns to soil, it becomes lost to time.”

We don’t examine thousand-year old yams; they are, indeed, lost to time. This is an example of (C) – stating the obvious true statement (yams lost to time) and implying, against the rules of logic, that your entire theory is correct. This is also an example of (A).

We have, indeed, precise scientific methods of determining diets of civilizations not only 1,500 years old, but our 10,000 year old ancestors. Large volumes of books were written about the subject of chemistry and hominid fossils.

The protein diet is determined by measuring heavy and light nitrogen isotopes in fossilized bones; the tooth enamel provides us with the measurement of two forms of carbon, 13^C and 12^C, which are markers for specific food types.

So yes, we are absolutely scientifically certain that the population of Easter Island had a diet based mostly on fish before the eco-collapse, and the diet was radically changed to mostly Polynesian rats and yams after the trees and the finishing industry disappeared.

There were several well funded scientific expeditions to Easter Island devoted to this subject. The British Museum, which houses the most famous MOAI in the West, Hoa Hakananai’a, is extremely active in the scientific research of the ancient Easter Island civilization, including their diet.

The diets of ancient civilizations can be precisely determined through the measurements of isotopes and the carbon composition of teeth. When making such measurements using fossilized bones/teeth of children who are still growing, the markers are extremely well defined.

So, when trying to determine the diet of a fossil of a single tooth from millions of years ago, we face real challenges. In our example we have a massive amount of fossils of children and adults on Easter Island available to study and the scientists concluded the exact composition of their diet.

The story of yam does not end there. The civilization of Easter Island, post eco-collapse, had to deal with the lack of fertilizers and they invented an unusual method of farming using “rock gardens.” Huge areas of land were covered with rocks which provided the nutrition for eroded soil. Detailed analysis of these rocks shows that the gardens were used almost exclusively for yam.

HolyJJ

I truly appreciate you backing this project.

Thank you for your comments, I think they go to the core of the issue much better than I expressed before.

I do feel passionate about the subject of Easter Island culture and RongoRongo glyphs and I felt utterly offended by theories presented here. My attempts to give the other party the “benefit of a doubt” failed miserably when the theories escalated beyond any sense and reason. That does not excuse my tone, but maybe explains the reasons for my reaction.

Why is it OK for designers to be subjected to continuous personal attacks but it’s a “foul attitude” when we speak back?

The bigot card is well deserved. Suggesting that the 1,500 year civilization changes the names of their gods to “avoid confusion” with “Early Bird” pricing is the very definition of the word.

Don,

You have been spreading misinformation about this campaign from the day one and you clearly have an agenda to see our campaign disappear.

We are not going anywhere, kid.

I don’t give Polynesian rat’s butt about your bizarre theories and your pompous and bigoted attitude toward other cultures.

The misunderstanding and faking you describe comes from your laziness, not from our campaign. You are the person who refuses to read more than one paragraph of copy before offering pretentious theories about subjects beyond your understanding. We don’t claim any knowledge about RongoRongo. In our second paragraph describing the subject, we clearly state that RongoRongo “continues to evade code breakers and most of it remains a mystery.”

“Any fool can criticize condemn and complain – and most fools do.”
--Benjamin Franklin

darkderp

Not only I completed all work listed in my resume, I completed thousands of projects which are not mentioned there.

On Crown Royal labels and packaging I had to hand design, pixel by pixel, the rope for each label and packaging size.
I think I spent a few days drawing those damn ropes, one strand at the time.
We spent a week selecting the script typeface for the copy.
In the end they were all rejected and I had to hand design a new typeface for use on Crown Royal labels.
This is one of the first tests of the label

sprouts1115,

The culture of Easter Island is often quoted as a striking example of what happens to advanced societies when they push the environment past the breaking point. I’m a huge proponent of renewables; the first campaign featured a t-shirt “go solar,” in RongoRongo and in English.

It is true that the trees were cut. The birds, which provided meat and fertilized the soil, disappeared. The soil eroded, making it very difficult to grow food. The fishing industry disappeared because of the lack of wood.

Popular figures MOAI KAVA KAVA show people at the point of starvation, typically associated with the period before all MOAIs were toppled.

Recent findings change our understanding of this secluded island. Although the use of trees in erecting and transporting huge MOAI statues was probably excessive, it was probably a Polynesian rat, not islanders, which may have been responsible for the destruction of forests.

The rat arrived with the settlers on the canoes and once they landed, with no enemies and lots of palm roots to eat, they exploded in numbers eating and destroying tree after tree. In laboratory setting, Polynesian rat populations can double every 47 days.

Ancient garbage heaps on Easter Island show that 60% of the bones come from introduced rats. It appears that islanders adopted to their eco collapse by substituting typical diet of fish and birds with rats and vegetables (mainly yam) which they grew in the most unusual rock gardens (the rocks provided minerals substituting animal fertilizers which disappeared with birds).
The civilization of Rapa Nui independently developed a system of glyphs, or proto-language RongoRongo. It is an extremely rare event in our entire human history; it happened only a few times. It suggests a highly evolved civilization committing large resources to advance of knowledge.

The largest unfinished MOAI, still attached to the rock at the quarry, weights 270 tons, or 4 Boeing 737s. Moving such colossal structures throughout the island required extreme level of engineering.

The islanders survived the collapse of their environment, but their civilization was never the same. What destroyed the island was the visit from the Europeans, introducing viruses like flu, followed by slave traders from Peru which raided the island on many occasions.

The descendants of this amazing civilization were gathered on a small patch of land; the balance of the island was taken over by a large sheep farm.

The people of Rapa Nui continue to fight for their land which was confiscated on so many occasions. They are extremely proud of their rich heritage, which includes the MOAI status, RongoRongo glyphs, Birdman and MakeMake religion.

The islanders used the word BIrdman exactly in that form, 1000 years ago and continue to use it today. Half bird, half man, birdman. There is no confusion there, it's an accepted transaction in all English history books. We do use the word in the original language - the language is RongoRongo, the glyphs from that Island and the name of the deck. The word is prominently featured on backs - it's a character with a "big butt."

The cult of BIrdman is well documented in English books since 1750, when the term first appeared in the first English book.

What you are suggesting is for people to stop using the names of hybrid creatures like Centaur, Faun or Siren, or using them in their original Greek language to avoid a confusion with a name of a car wash which just opened down the road. English is a West Germanic language, so if we follow that logic all English words would revert back to their original form.

The fan is constructed to show another figure associated with Easter Island mythology, the Sun God. The Easter Island culture was famous for their knowledge of astronomy, so I designed the backs to create a glyph of Sun God in a fan.

Don -- I posted in the wrong section, my bad.

The word BIRDMAN has a completely different meaning in our RongoRongo project.

Any attempt to compare it to “Early Bird” of any type should be avoided, because it’s a pure coincidence that both expressions include the word “bird” in them.

So the $1 BIRDMAN SPECIAL has nothing to do with “Early Bird Special” of any kind.

Our BIRDMAN comes from the cult of BIRDMAN, a religion which was observed on Easter Island after the fall of MOAIs. The BIRDMAN race took place every year on Easter Island and it was an extreme form of IronMan competitions (swim, bike, run) we know today. The racers scaled sheer cliffs and swam in shark infested waters to reach an egg of a bird on another island. Many died during the competition. The winner of the race (actually, the sponsor of the winner) was crowned the BIRDMAN for one year, with an absolute power to rule over all other clans.
We have our own BIRDMAN, who was crowned after a race to solve our RongoRongo puzzle. Almost every day he starts a BIRDMAN RACE for the $1 BIRDMAN SPECIAL, which includes decks of cards and other items. The races start between noon and 1 PM EST – I don’t know the time, BIRDMAN uses the comments section to call for the release of the $1 BIRDMAN PLEDGE.

The future races will take between 12:00 noon and 12:15 PM EST.

Although the fascination with the butt of the Birdman figure should be applauded, the butts themselves are not featured in any type of fans because they are far from the edge of the card.

I'm not sure I understand you.

You stated "No real design changes, from the looks of it."
when the changes are massive: almost all cards were redesigned (except for backs).

That's why I posted new cards from the new deck.
Of course this is a KS project -- the link clearly states that.
I am not reviewing anything, it's my deck.
I am just posting correct pictures to clarify that the decks were completely redesigned.

I don't understand the "ad" comment -- everything we discussed so far was always about KS project.
We discussed at length individual pledges, budgets, etc.
The Birdman Special is a pledge; I thought the participants of this forum would be interested to learn that.

more cards