How About a Friday Night Miscellany - TODAY!

Just because I'm in the mood, and I haven't been in a long time :)

First up, a new article on the Antikythera mechanism. I've posted about the mechanism here many times before.  To find those posts (I'm lazy tonight and not going to provide them for you) scroll down on the left hand column of the blog until you find the little search box and then type in "Antikythera" and voila!  Pop back up to the top of your screen and you will see a list of all posts from Chess, Goddess and Everything that mentions the Antikythera mechanism.

Anyway, darlings, here is a link to the latest, and it sure is interesting. Well, I always figured it wasn't based on what the Greeks knew, it was far too sophisticated for them.  It was the Babylonians who had it all figured out!  Yeah, turns out it was Babylonian astronomical knowledge that was incorporated into the mechanism - and for all we know, it wasn't a Greek "mechanic" who built it, either.  It could have been an immigrant who took a Greek name.Or a Babylonian who built the thing and shipped it to the person who ordered it in Greece.  How do we really know?  We don't.  So let's toss those pre-conceived notions into the Ionian Sea once and for all, shall we?  Yes, let's. 

Ancient astronomy: Mechanical inspiration
The ancient Greeks' vision of a geometrical Universe seemed to come out of nowhere. Could their ideas have come from the internal gearing of an ancient mechanism?
Jo Marchant
Published online 24 November 2010 | Nature 468, 496-498 (2010) | doi:10.1038/468496a

From the same website, but the way scary part of it - geez! - check this out.  The Fountain of Youth stuff is closer than we think, and when I think about what it could mean to mankind, it gives me the heeby-jeebies.  That it might be based upon flawed science - even scarrier, but who gives a hoot about that, heh, when eternal life is at issue...

Telomerase reverses ageing process
Dramatic rejuvenation of prematurely aged mice hints at potential therapy.
Ewen Callaway
Published online 28 November 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.635

Whoa!  For those of you who think that Global Warming (and it's effects, which hardly anyone ever seems to talk about except the real scientist people and now, the people who are actually being affected by it) is a bunch of hooey, this is "The Day Before Tomorrow" for Norfolk, Virginia.  And please don't tell me it's just due to Sun spots and the Moon being in a certain position, har!  In a way, this is even scarier than the "Fountain of Youth" thing I posted about above, because this is here and now. It's not going to go away, folks. It will just get worse and worse and worse. And what will we do about it? What will happen to those people in this area of Norfolk, Virginia, who own homes there? What will happen to all the people who live in areas at sea level? What will happen to my home town, Milwaukee, as sea levels rise and the Great Lakes rise too with influx from the Atlantic Ocean, and get more saline? Ohmygoddess, goodbye drinking water for a third of the USA - and Canada too. But this article is just about the here and now - for now...

From The New York Times, Environment
Front-Line City in Virginia Tackles Rise in Sea
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: November 25, 2010

For those of us who like to lighten the load, so to speak, by partaking in spirits (not religious spirits) and forgetting all of our cares if even for just a little while, hail to the world's most expensive bottle of Tequila:

World’s most expensive bottle of tequila unveiled
Christopher Hooton - 24th November, 2010
Hacienda La Capilla has produced a bottle of tequila that it is expected to fetch £2.2 million at auction, making it the most expensive drink of its kind in the world.

Paradoxes - and are they, or aren't they?  Damned if I know, and I don't give a hoot.  Let the Republicans try and figure it all out, they claim they can, after all.  They're the remedy to what ails America, right?  Right?

Paradoxical Truth
November 28, 2010, 5:30 pm
By GRAHAM PRIEST
Professor Greene is lecturing. Down the hall, her arch-rival, Professor Browne, is also lecturing. Professor Greene is holding forth at length about how absurd Professor Browne’s ideas are. She believes Professor Browne to be lecturing in Room 33. So to emphasize her point, she writes on the blackboard the single sentence:

Everything written on the board in Room 33 is false.


But Professor Greene has made a mistake. She, herself, is in Room 33. So is what she has written on the board true or false? If it’s true, then since it itself is written on the board, it’s false. If it’s false, then since it is the only thing written on the board, it’s true. Either way, it’s both true and false. ...

More Vermont Families Seeking Food Assistance
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 28, 2010
Filed at 6:51 p.m. EST

ENOSBURG FALLS, Vt. (AP) — The extended downturn in the economy is forcing more Vermont families to seek food assistance.

A new federal report says the share of households in Vermont that at times didn't have enough nutritious food rose from 12.1 percent to 13.6 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The Enosburg Food Shelf is feeding more families than it had expected. Three years after opening it now serves an average of 160 families each month. It had predicted it would be serving about 60 families.

******* Heeelllloooooooo! The worst part of the downturn was NOT between 2008 and 2009, it is right now, when all the people who were laid off during 2009 (after the so-called Great Recession was already supposedly OVER)  are suffering because their jobs are gone forever and EVERTHING they were told was true : WORK HARD, GO TO SCHOOL, GET A DEGREE, WORK HARD, SAVE MONEY, BUY A HOME turned out to be LIES. Fricking duh!  Of course there is an increase in need for food from people who have had their livelihoods wiped out by multinational corporations whose profits are not taxed in the USA.  That it is happening in the state where people have historically prided themselves on being self-reliant is - well - see the article above about paradoxical truths.

New Book About the Antikythera Mechanism

From the Huffingtonpost.com Dan Agin Author/Neuroscientist Posted February 14, 2009 11:21 PM (EST) Book Review: Tackling the Mystery of a 2,000-Year-Old Computer The trouble with the history of ancient civilizations is that they've left us debris, and from the piles of bits and pieces we try to reconstruct who the people really were and how they lived. The usual line about the ancient Greeks is that they were good talkers and philosophers and sculptors and sailors but miserable scientists and technologists. Except, of course, for Archimedes, who outclassed everyone of his time in science and engineering. Most popular historical lines about antiquity sooner or later get revised. In 1901, halfway between Crete and the Greek mainland, Greek sponge divers discovered an ancient Greek sunken ship off the rocky island of Antikythera. From that ship came statues, pottery, glassware, jewelry, coins--and also a corroded lump of bronze later separated into three corroded pieces. The pieces lay around for most of the 20th century, until in the 1970s they were subjected to x-ray analysis that shocked archaeologists and historians alike. The pieces contained the remnants of an elaborate device, a system of 30 cogwheels laid on cogwheels, and after much study the consensus decision was that the Antikythera Mechanism, as it came to be called, was in fact an ancient analog computer. Jo Marchant, a British science journalist, has given us a fascinating new book about this ancient Greek device (Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--And the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets. Da Capo Press, 2009.) In ten chapters of clear prose she lays out the background, discovery, and analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism, an intriguing journey into science, archaeology, and history. There are intellectual consequences of the existence of the Mechanism, and some of the consequences may require revisions of certain views of the history of antiquity. Technology and science can never really be separated, since one produces the other. Science produces new technology, and new technology produces new science, which in turn produces new technology, and so on, and so on. It's one reason why it's so difficult to predict the science or technology of the future. It's also one reason why when we look at the technology of the past, we need to ask about the science that had to exist to make that technology possible. The current view of the Antikythera Mechanism is that it was used to predict eclipses and to track the paths of the Sun and Moon through the zodiac--and maybe even to track the movements of the five planets known at that time. The current view is also that no device of such technological sophistication appeared again until a thousand years later. The question that confronts us is simple: Where are the records of the science that had to exist more than 2,000 years ago in order to produce the technology implied by the device? Was Archimedes involved? We don't know. Jo Marchant's book is an intelligent account of what is apparently the world's first analog computer. The book and the story are well worth your time. *************************** Who's to say the mechanism was of Greek manufacture? It could have come from Alexandria, India or China. The knowledge needed to construct the mechanism was probably lost during one of the times the Great Library at Alexandria was burned - or it may have been destroyed thousands of years before with the mysterious artifact surviving as an item of curiosity in some ruler's treasure house. Whenever barbarians take power, they attempt to destroy the knowledge base of those who came before - thus the destruction of libraries and book burning. The saying "knowledge is power" is more true today than ever before. It is the reason the Roman Catholic Church did not want people to learn to read and it was against the laws of several kingdoms to own the Scriptures! It is the reason the Mullahs insist that only they have the authority to interpret the Qoran. It is the reason repressive regimes around the globe attempt to control the internet and do control content in newspapers, magazines, television and radio.

Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.

From The New York Times By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: July 31, 2008 After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games. The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, on Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with Archimedes. Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course. The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C. Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar. In the journal report, the team led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales, said the month names “are unexpectedly of Corinthian origin,” which suggested “a heritage going back to Archimedes.” No month names on what is called the Metonic calendar were previously known, the researchers noted. Such a calendar, as well as other knowledge displayed on the mechanism, illustrated the influence of Babylonian astronomy on the Greeks. The calendar was used by Babylonians from at least the early fifth century B.C. Dr. Freeth, who is also associated with Images First Ltd., in London, explained in an e-mail message that the Metonic calendar was designed to reconcile the lengths of the lunar month with the solar year. Twelve lunar months are about 11 days short of a year, but 235 lunar months fit well into 19 years. “From this it is possible to construct an artificial mathematical calendar that keeps in synchronization with both the sun and the moon,” Dr. Freeth said. The mechanism’s connection with the Corinthians was unexpected, the researchers said, because other cargo in the shipwreck appeared to be from the eastern Mediterranean, places like Kos, Rhodes and Pergamon. The months inscribed on the instrument, they wrote, are “practically a complete match” with those on calendars from Illyria and Epirus in northwestern Greece and with the island of Corfu. Seven months suggest a possible link with Syracuse. Inscriptions also showed that one of the instrument’s dials was used to record the timing of the pan-Hellenic games, a four-year cycle that was “a common framework for chronology” by the Greeks, the researchers said. “The mechanism still contains many mysteries,” Dr. Freeth said. Among the larger questions, scientists and historians said the place of the mechanism in the development of Greek technology remained poorly understood. Several references to similar instruments appear in classical literature, including Cicero’s description of one made by Archimedes. But this one, hauled out of the sea in 1901, is the sole surviving example.

Mysteries of Antikythera "Computer" Solved

Fascinating report on the "computer" dating to 2nd century BCE recovered from Antikythera ship wreck:

Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved
From Thoth Web posted March 10, 2008

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works. The machine was lost among cargo in 65BC when the ship carrying it sank in 42m of water off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. By chance, in 1900, a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck and recovered statues and other artifacts from the site.

The machine first came to light when an archaeologist working on the recovered objects noticed that a lump of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Closer inspection of material brought up from the stricken ship subsequently revealed 80 pieces of gear wheels, dials, clock-like hands and a wooden and bronze casing bearing ancient Greek inscriptions.

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods.

Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparcus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine's construction, the scientists speculate.

Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks.

Some researchers believe the machine, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, may have been among other treasure looted from Rhodes that was en route to Rome for a celebration staged by Julius Caesar.

One of the remaining mysteries is why the Greek technology invented for the machine seemed to disappear. No other civilisation is believed to have created anything as complex for another 1,000 years. One explanation could be that bronze was often recycled in the period the device was made, so many artefacts from that time have long ago been melted down and erased from the archaelogical record. The fateful sinking of the ship carrying the Antikythera Mechanism may have inadvertently preserved it. "This device is extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said Professor Edmunds. "The astronomy is exactly right ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." The research, which appears in the journal Nature today, was carried out with scientists at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where the mechanism is held and the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki.

Copyright: The Guardian