A mechanical brass calculator used by the ancient Greeks to predict solar and lunar eclipses was probably also used to set the dates for the first Olympic games, researchers said on Wednesday.
The Antikythera Mechanism was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, an example of the technological prowess of the ancient Greeks.
This is to me truly amazing and makes me wonder if technology (especially technology used to store and control electricity) might have developed centuries sooner than it did. What took so long? Mythological or magical thinking leading to the imprisonment, torture, or execution of free thinking trouble-makers? Probably.
Little did I know that Truman Metzel would pass away less than a year after I posted just this past fall, on October 27, 2007, my memories of visits to Truman’s Great Expectations Bookstore in Evanston, Illinois. In that post I excerpted from and included links to web postings which contained the reminiscences of others who had the good fortune to have known Truman and his Great Expectations Bookstore. These links included the memories of Robert Birnbaum at Identity Theory (once on the page, search “Metzel”), a Daily Northwesterninterview with Professor Jeff Rice who owned and managed Great Expectations after Truman retired, and an interview with writer and editor Joseph Epstein.
Jeff Rice emailed me yesterday with the news. Here is the Chicago Tribune announcement:
Truman Thwing Metzel Jr., 81, of Evanston, beloved husband, father, grandfather and long-time proprietor of Great Expectations Bookstore, passed away on June 6, 2008. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Anderson; his children, Truman III and Suzanne; and grandchildren Ava, Joanne, Jackson and Suzanne, and brother Jack. An Open House to celebrate his life will be held on June 15, 2008 from 3 to 7 p.m. at the home of Suzanne Metzel and Matthew Gehringer, 1733 Asbury Ave. Evanston, IL. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Illinois Spina Bifida Association or other cause of the donor’s choice. Funeral Info: Wm. H. Scott Funeral Home, 847-251-8200.
Updates:
Here is Larry Finley’s Chicago Sun Times obituary.
Here is the Evanston Review obituary.
Truman Metzel and his Great Expectations Bookstore will be talked about and remembered for many years to come.
Blogs are comparable to the commonplace books that first began appearing among the literate in 15th century Europe. Today millions of bloggers keep their modern day commonplace books for many of the same reasons that 15th century Europeans kept theirs. Easily obtained, inexpensive paper made it possible for 15th century writers to begin recording their observations, notes, and favorite quotes into commonplace books. Today easy access to the broadband internet makes it possible to continue the commonplace tradition in digital form, compiling not only written documents, but documents created in many other types of digital media as well.
McCluhan’s “the medium is the message,” “global village,” and Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” become more relevant with each passing decade. Six centuries after the appearance of the first commonplace books, millions continue the tradition of recording in the paperless, digital blogosphere thoughts, essays, favorite quotations, and miscellaneous observations on art, music, culture, politics, and life in general. But unlike the paper commonplace book, with the internet-based “commonplace book” or blog, we can instantly read each other and leave behind our comments and reactions.
According to the absolute, non-dual teachings of Shankara, Buddha, and Apostle Paul (”not I, but Christ”) there are no elves.
But in the relative teachings of Bahkti, Bodhicitta and Agape—there are indeed elves—suffering and deluded though they may be. This relative view is what motivates the tears and compassion of the human Saints and Bodhisattvas, what motivates them to minister and serve suffering elves.
The Ultimate teaching of the Flower Garland or Avatamsaka Sutra clearly allows for the existence of elves: non-human cosmologies abound in the Avatamsaka—worlds are described as populated not only by elves, but by countless other forms of sentient life as well.
Elf phrases, book titles, and such like:
Me, my elf and I.
Get away with your bad elf.
Are you an elf starter?
Do you talk to your elf?
Kierkegaard suffered from elf-consciousness
The elf and modern society
Don’t lie to your elf.
Do people think you’re elfish?
The Buddha used various images and illustrations to convey a sense of the immense stretch of time — called a kalpa — that might encompass the birth and evolution of universe after universe. Here are a few.
Suppose an eagle’s wing brushes against the top of a high mountain once a century. A kalpa is how long it would take for that action to wear the mountain entirely away.
Suppose a wooden yoke with one hole, is thrown into the ocean to float. If a one-eyed turtle rises to the surface of the ocean once a century, a kalpa is how long it would take before the turtle just happened to rise through the hole of the yoke.
Suppose that every hundred years a piece of silk is rubbed once on a solid rock one cubic mile in size; when the rock is worn away by this, one kalpa will still not have passed.
Suppose, said the Buddha, that there was a huge rock of one solid mass, one mile long, one mile wide, one mile high, without split or flaw. And at the end of every 100 years a man should come and rub against it with a silken cloth. Then that huge rock would wear off and disappear quicker than a Kalpa.
Suppose a celestial woman touched a 10 cubic mile stone with her garments once every three years. A kalpa is longer than the time it would take to wear the stone to a mere pebble.
These images of inconceivable lengths of time - kalpas - are, to me, strangely comforting, liberating, soothing.
I get similar pleasure from looking through my binoculars or telescope at galaxies and star clusters in the Milky Way on a warm summer’s night.
Note: This is an abridged version of the original essay posted on another website. If you want to read the original essay, click here. This abridged version is more to the point and focused, not just because it is shorter, abridged, but because it does not include the distracting spectacle of Wilber hoisting himself by his own petard.
The life and career of Ken Wilber is nothing if not interesting. A google search will reveal that episodes and chapters of recent years involve Wilber losing former fans, readers, followers, and promoters. Why? Ken Wilber is a scholar, critic, teacher, observer, and prolific writer who has written extensively and critically about science, psychology, religion, and philosophy—eastern as well as western. But he is not himself a peer of those whose writings and work he reports and critiques. Not that you have to be an expert, on the cutting edge of a given line of research, to write about that field, but Wilber makes claims and gives critiques that really only experts working in a given field can effectively make.
Wilber’s pretensions to “expertise” mislead those new to his writings into attributing more importance and legitimacy to his models and ideas than they can sustain. Once a reader realizes—often after years of study—that Wilber’s work has not been nor is it ever likely to be rigorously tried and tested through experiment and the peer-review publication process, that reader will likely join the growing number of former fans and followers.
Wilber’s defacto role has been to introduce and popularize various important areas of thought and research in psychology, philosophy, the history of science, and comparative religion. There is a place and a need for someone who can do for philosophy, evolutionary biology, comparative religion, brain research, and consciousness studies what Isaac Asimov did for the subjects he took up. Instead of the Einstein of consciousness—as he has been occasionally called—Ken Wilber might do well to emulate Isaac Asimov, the esteemed writer, teacher, and author of classic works of science fiction—including the short philosophical science fiction masterpiece, “The Last Question.”
If Wilber acts quickly (he is now in his late 50s) there might still be enough time for him to successfully emulate Asimov’s example and become widely known and revered as Ken Wilber, the Isaac Asimov of Consciousness.
That feeling of relief and freedom when the little white figure of the walk-signal lights up. You or a fellow pedestrian or all three of you have already punched the button more times than necessary. Several times already you may have contemplated breaking the law, furtively scanning about for any cops. But then, suddenly, thankfully, you see the yellow light out of the corner of your eye, then red. And predictably you glance at the once red-orange “Don’t Walk” that has now dimmed and been superseded by the blessed Symbol of Walk. And so you go. Free again to live, thrive, and move on with your life.
In the first century C.E. Ovid gave “Mother Earth” an important, dramatic role in his account of the story of Phaëthon and his unsuccessful, presumptuous attempt to assume his father’s place and steer the sun.
As Phaëthon scorches her forests and boils her brother’s seas—as they continue to burn and boil—she cries out in pain and disbelief:
The Earth at length, on ev’ry side embrac’d
With scalding seas that floated round her waste,
When now she felt the springs and rivers come,
And crowd within the hollow of her womb,
Up-lifted to the Heav’ns her blasted head,
And clapt her hand upon her brows, and said
(But first, impatient of the sultry heat,
Sunk deeper down, and sought a cooler seat):
“If you, great king of Gods, my death approve,
And I deserve it, let me die by Jove;
If I must perish by the force of fire,
Let me transfix’d with thunder-bolts expire.
See, whilst I speak, my breath the vapours choak
(For now her face lay wrapt in clouds of smoak),
See my singe’d hair, behold my faded eye,
And wither’d face, where heaps of cinders lye!
And does the plow for this my body tear?
This the reward for all the fruits I bear,
Tortur’d with rakes, and harrass’d all the year?
That herbs for cattle daily I renew,
And food for Man, and frankincense for you?
But grant me guilty; what has Neptune done?
Why are his waters boiling in the sun?
The wavy empire, which by lot was giv’n,
Why does it waste, and further shrink from Heav’n?
If I nor he your pity can provoke,
See your own Heav’ns, the Heav’ns begin to smoke!
Shou’d once the sparkles catch those bright abodes,
Destruction seizes on the Heav’ns and Gods;
Atlas becomes unequal to his freight,
And almost faints beneath the glowing weight.
If Heav’n, and Earth, and sea, together burn,
All must again into their chaos turn.
Apply some speedy cure, prevent our fate,
And succour Nature, ere it be too late.”
She cea’sd, for choak’d with vapours round her spread,
Down to the deepest shades she sunk her head.
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book II, “Phaëthon,” Tr. John Dryden, et al
Or, if you like, a prose version,
Nevertheless, kindly Earth, surrounded as she was by sea, between the open waters and the dwindling streams that had buried themselves in their mother’s dark womb, lifted her smothered face. Putting her hand to her brow, and shaking everything with her mighty tremors, she sank back a little lower than she used to be, and spoke in a faint voice ‘If this pleases you, if I have deserved it, O king of the gods, why delay your lightning bolts? If it is right for me to die through the power of fire, let me die by your fire and let the doer of it lessen the pain of the deed! I can hardly open my lips to say these words’ (the heat was choking her). Look at my scorched hair and the ashes in my eyes, the ashes over my face! Is this the honour and reward you give me for my fruitfulness and service, for carrying wounds from the curved plough and the hoe, for being worked throughout the year, providing herbage and tender grazing for the flocks, produce for the human race and incense to minister to you gods?
Even if you find me deserving of ruin, what have the waves done, why does your brother deserve this? Why are the waters that were his share by lot diminished and so much further from the sky? If neither regard for me or for your brother moves you pity at least your own heavens! Look around you on either side: both the poles are steaming! If the fire should melt them, your own palace will fall! Atlas himself is suffering, and can barely hold up the white-hot sky on his shoulders! If the sea and the land and the kingdom of the heavens are destroyed, we are lost in ancient chaos! Save whatever is left from the flames, and think of our common interest!
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book II, “Phaëthon,” Tr. Anthony S. Kline
The earth again, 2,000 years later, is trembling in fear, pain, and disbelief. Listen carefully, especially at night, do you hear?
Wind-blasted brick buildings spilling out
Out from the steel and glass monoliths of down-town.
Not by the formidable stone of the great museums nor
Standing before the scope of the grand modern sculptures,
But on a weary train, almost empty, heading north
Out of the Warzone,
Here it is quiet enough to hear the city’s music.
Frost-beaten brick tenements the color of dry blood
Sighing steam and warm grey smoke from chimney pipes,
Sad-eyed buildings watch the CTA crawl to and fro
in the flurries.
The city is slow; sleepy neighborhoods like someone
dropped Spain in the snowy north, clad her in bricks,
and announced the two o’clock hour.
Yes, I do like Starbucks. And I hang out in Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstore cafes for hours on end. But there is nothing like a real, independently run coffeehouse. Here are some shots of one of my favorites that I stop in on my way to and from Joshua Tree—The Water Canyon Coffeehouse. Always interesting music on tap too.
Schweitzer Electrifies Convention with Energy SpeechWednesday, 27 August 2008, 3:10 pm This post is from Sierra Club Deputy Press Secretary Josh Dorner, who is also in Denver for the Democratic National Convention. While most of the exci. […]
Denver Dispatch: August 27, 2008Wednesday, 27 August 2008, 12:14 pm There are thousands of stories happening in this city right now. I was at the Pepsi Center last night, way up high, sitting with folks from New York,. […]
Burma Items from Danny FisherWednesday, 27 August 2008, 1:07 pm Several items on Burma from Danny Fisher: UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is returning from his sixth visit to Burma. The Washington Post dryly notes. […]
Getting What You WantWednesday, 27 August 2008, 11:15 am In his teaching of the First Noble Truth, the Buddha asks, “What now is the Noble Truth of suffering?” Answering his own question he cites the for. […]
That feeling of relief and freedom when the little white figure of the walk-signal lights up. You or a fellow pedestrian or all three of you have already punched the button more times than necessary. Several times already you may have contemplated breaking the law, furtively scanning about for any cops. But then, suddenly, thankfully, you see the yellow light out of the corner of your eye, then red. And predictably you glance at the once red-orange “Don’t Walk” that has now dimmed and been superseded by the blessed Symbol of Walk. And so you go. Free again to live, thrive, and move on with your life.
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