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Is Atlas Holding Hipparchus' Lost Star Map?
cr0kin0le writes "The Farnese Atlas at the Naples National Archaeological Museum may be holding a celestial globe which accurately depicts the long-lost star catalog of Hipparchus, according to a physics professor at Louisiana State University."
In the NYTimes.com picture, they added a leaf... Is this some American thing? /European
A)bort, R)etry or S)elf-destruct?
That's pretty cool. The scientists/naturalists/etc. of the past may have had a more primitive understanding of the universe, but they weren't stupid. It's amazing to think that they figured out so much about the sky so long ago with so few tools, when today most people don't have a working knowledge that even comes close to matching it.
No matter on how the leaf got there, it's more than likely that the leaf originally was not there. First, the ancient Greek had a different attitude to nakedness (e.g. the Olympic games were done naked), and second, the leaf is derived from the paradise story, and since the ancient Greek were not Jewish, it's highly unlikely that they would have used a leaf even if they for some reason had desired to hide that place.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
speaking as a male reproductive specalist, "growers" typically have much larger member's when in use than any of the types that have the faulty valves that keep their "device" mostly inflated all the time.
so ladies, if he's a grower, you will most certianly get more use and excitement out of him than any of the biological sock stuffers to call them.
From TFA: "The cast of Michelangelo's David, taken from the original marble figure now in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, was an early and unexpected acquisition for the fledgling Museum at South Kensington."
The Victorians were notoriously prudish, making even current America look downright debaucherous..."A letter sent to the Museum in 1903 by a Mr Dobson complained about the statuary displayed: 'One can hardly designate these figures as "art"; if it is, it is a very objectionable form of art.'" Course, some philistine woman in Florida had this to say about David: "'I didn't even know it was art,' said Jeanne Johnson, owner of a nearby barber shop, who complained about the 5ft concrete statue. 'To me, it's just a naked man standing on the side of the road. Once the girls saw it, I found myself in a position where I had to explain what a penis is.'" Talk about a sex-o-phobe...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The rule is that I grew up in a land where nude bathing was considered the norm and wearing clothes was for the tourists. So I remember being at the beach at age 12 with lots of other people around, completely naked, independent of age and gender. Yes, there were complete families there, from little child up to the grand parents sitting together naked and going for a swim.
;)
The most arousing moment for me was when I noticed that a girl didn't take off her pants. I was for at least 20mins wondering how she might have looked underneath. It never occured to me that I should have been aroused by people being naked.
Then there was a lake not far away from my parents home. When I went there the first time, it was uses half of the beach by nude swimmers, the other half by people prefering textiles around them. A year later it was a nude beach only. And this without any regularies around. It just happened.
And then I was partaking at a triathlon competition. The swimming part took place at another lake not far from my parents home. There were ropes around the changing zone and the place at the beach where the athletes entered the lake and left it after the swimming distance. The places behind the ropes were crowded by nude spectators watching intensely the neoprene-clad people fighting for a good starting position at the competition.
Lets put it like this: In it's true sence of word, all about nudity depends on how you look at it
It has been suggested that Newton here was taking a subtle jab at his rival Hooke, who was of short stature (5'0") and self-conscious of it.
The basis of Christian (Catholic and Protestant) ethics concerning sexual behaviour is the concept of "defrauding". In this context, to defraud someone is to arouse desires that cannot be righteously (or practically, for you libertines) fulfilled. Pornography is the ultimate in sexual defrauding, hence it condemned. Solomon puts it more positively, "I adjour you, awake not my love till it pleases." In other words, don't arouse me until the time is right and we can enjoy it to the utmost. (We don't need to be reminded of how Solomon did not exactly set a good example of sexual restraint. He regretted it afterward.)
However, the precise stimuli which result in inappropriate arousal is very culturally relative. A Christian family I know was visited by a Christian family from Russia. They met them at the airport, and the American wife gave all of their visitors a big hug. Later, they discovered that this made the Russians very uncomfortable. (This may reflect a particular subculture in Russia, and not Russians in general.)
My sister spent some years in the jungle in Papua New Gunea. The Christian women there were very few clothes, often going topless due to the climate. This did not seem to provoke the wrong response in the men. (Although I've heard that it does for American boys reading National Geographic.) Strangely, the Papua women were shocked by magazine photos of American women in bikinis. Objectively, the bikinis represented more cloth than what the Papua women wore, but there was something about the facial expression and body language that said "come hither", and thus became pornography.
One more thing, Eros is exclusive and jealous by nature. Promiscuous behaviour does not contradict this. When that special someone says to us, "I love you!", we are thrilled. When we discover that they are saying the same thing to 10 other people, we are not so thrilled. Some people have expressed the idea that pornography might be appropriate within marriage (or whatever you libertines want to use as a substitute). However, because an image rather than the beloved becomes the source of arousal, it diminishes Eros and cheats both partners.
Wow, that's a lot to read into one sentence of mine. Thanks so much for informing me that Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity and enlightening me about Kepler's laws.
I didn't say the ancients were better than Isaac Newton. I said *the story* of the Chaldeans was better. I drew a parallel between the empirical observations they made that led Hipparchus to his models and Tycho Brahe's observations that led to Kepler's and Newton's models. Imagine one man spending his life observing the skies. Now imagine generations doing the same thing for a millenium.
*Now* imagine a world where you reflect on what others say before responding.
That to me seems like a current "loop hole" trend. Once you get a lot of people going a certain way, everyone else kind of gets quiet.
Personally, I'd like to post the principles of "Beezlebub" at all the court houses that have the ten commandments--just to make things fair. It seems that the evangelists are using the "not freedom from religion" as their mantra these days. That seems really reasonable until it's some religion they don't agree with.
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