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Stanford Accelerator Uncovers Archimedes' Text
AI Playground points to a Newsday.com report which reads in part "A particle accelerator is being used to reveal the long-lost writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it in the Middle Ages. Highly focused X-rays produced at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were used last week to begin deciphering the parts of the 174-page text that have not yet been revealed."
The ancient greeks were sodomites like Jacko.
And in all of this, bumbling religious zealots have helped to hide useful knowledge.
Cue their descendents' apologia: we saved that stuff for you, atheist fool! If it weren't for the Christian monks, the books would have been torched by... wait for it, Moslems.
Or Mongols, or something. One horde looks about like another to me.
Yeah, a monk destroying massive amounts of unsurpassed (for many centuries) science in the name of a frigging "prayer book". Who would have thought, the church setting back science to remain in the dark ages?
Next thing you're going to tell me is that religous nuts would rather throw away frozen embryos that couples no longer want to retain, rather than putting them to use saving lives through stem-cell research.
Or worse, you're going to tell me that the church threatened, tortured or killed people who claimed the earth was round or that the Sun was the center of the solar system!
If people knew what they really thought, and more importantly, are actively guided by, there would be open attacks on them.
Though, everyone should have a religion; as it is a great control mechanism on those you indoctrinate with it.
I'm sure that if it had not been the clergy, someone else would have done it.
Religion is the cause of all evil, back then and even today.
Reminds me of an excellent quote by Steven Weinberg -
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
One of these days, there ought to be a showdown getting rid of all those believers in voices in the sky - the only way for science to truly triumph is if religion is taken care of once and for all.
I admit I *am* curious; but I would not mind this money being spent elsewhere. The article was not totally clear, but at least some of the funding is private.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
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Have you ever seen the processes that were done in order to prepare these skins in order to make books? they couldn't use just any ol' skin and it had to be treated differently than what would be used to make leather or clothing (which is where the majority of the all those skins you mention would have went to). If you ever get a chance to visit Trinity College in Dublin. Check out the Book of Kells exhibit. Yes, it's the 4 gospels, and no a sucker of the dick of science like you won't burn for going through the exhibit. You might actually learn something and actually appreciate those men who kept Western Civilisation alive. Gee, ya think any of the barbarians that sacked Rome would have cared about any of Archimedes' works? Nope.
When you pull your head of out your ass, it would be good for you to wander on down to a library and start reading some history.