superfluidity

Land of the constant sun, gorillas, and ancient Greek adventure

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:14:00 -0400

One of the frustrations and joys of dissertation writing is the tangential research you find yourself undertaking for various reasons. My work on Strabo’s Geography has brought me to a study of earlier geographical writings. By the Alexandrian period at least the Greeks had a sophisticated conception of a spherical earth, a rough idea of its size, and were speculating on the possibility of unknown inhabited landmasses. Despite some strange claims to the contrary, the Greeks occasionally made two-dimensional maps, but as hard as it is to imagine, early Greek geographical writing is mostly envisioned as a linear journey through space, and not as the typical bird’s-eye-view that we instinctively take in a cartographic culture. The tendency for Greek sailors to hug the coastline on long journeys resulted in a genre of writing known as periploi, “sailings around,” which described the landmarks as a ship’s captain might happen upon them during a journey.

Much of the work resulting from Alexander’s conquests in the east is lost, but there is a fascinating tale of a man who went into the North Atlantic beyond the British Isles and reports a land where the sun never sets. His account was treated with skepticism by most ancient scholars. A periplous mistakenly attributed to Skylax records some interesting and otherwise unknown cultures even in the Mediterranean, such as this matriarchy:

And after the Istroi are the Libyrnoi, a community. And in this community there are cities beside the sea, Arsias, Dassatika, Senites, Apsyrta, Loupsoi, Ortopeletai, and Heginoi. These people are ruled by women; and the women are wives of free men, but mingle with their own slaves and with the men of nearby lands.

In the 5th century BC, the Carthaginians were concerned with the Greek presence in the western Mediterranean, and organized a fleet to circumnavigate Africa, to bring people and supplies to fledgling operations on the western coast, and to determine if they could reach their colonies by rounding Africa from the east coast, in case the Greeks gained control of the Pillars of Heracles and thereby access to the Atlantic. King Hanno wrote an account of this journey and part of a Greek translation survives which describes the north-west coast of Africa:

We continued for five days along the coast, until we reached a great bay which according to our translators was the Horn of the West. There was a large island in it, and in it a lagoon [which was salt] like the sea, and on it another island. Here we disembarked. In daytime, we could see nothing but the forest, but during the night, we noticed many fires alight and heard the sound of flutes, the beating of cymbals and tom-toms, and the shouts of a multitude. We grew afraid and our diviners advised us to leave this island.

I love the imagery of an island nested in a lagoon which is itself on an island in a bay. The fears of the crew come out again and again and it’s thrilling to imagine an expedition like this where the crew could expect anything to happen at the edge of the world. A little bit further they see a huge fire reaching to the stars:

Quickly and in fear, we sailed away from that place. Sailing on for four days, we saw the coast by night full of flames. In the middle was a big flame, taller than the others and apparently rising to the stars. By day, this turned out to be a very high mountain, which was called Chariot of the Gods.

It would be interesting to know the details of this mountaintop bonfire, whether it was a festival or a religious practice or a mixture of both. Our version ends with a fascinating and horrifying encounter with primates:

In this gulf was an island, resembling the first, with a lagoon, within which was another island, full of savages. Most of them were women with hairy bodies, whom our interpreters called ‘gorillas’. Although we chased them, we could not catch any males: they all escaped, being good climbers who defended themselves with stones. However, we caught three women, who refused to follow those who carried them off, biting and clawing them. So we killed and flayed them and brought their skins back to Carthage. For we did not sail any further, because our provisions were running short.

The Greek word is actually Γόριλλαι, but strangely many scholars have tried to explain this as a tribe of humans rather than primates, which I think must have been the case. Savage and Wyman described the western gorilla in 1847 and took the name from Hanno’s account.

"I used to work for the factory where they make hydrants, but you couldn’t park anywhere near the..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:14:08 -0400

“I used to work for the factory where they make hydrants, but you couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”

- Steven Wright

“For a long time nobody thought that they would be able to add...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:08:15 -0400

“For a long time nobody thought that they would be able to add this corpus of Greek inscriptions to their personal library.”

"And yet when love-making is not in question, the snail is by no means sociable, although it has been..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:12 -0400

“And yet when love-making is not in question, the snail is by no means sociable, although it has been observed in one branch of the family, snails engaged in mutually polishing a neighbor’s shell with the foot.”

- Snails and Their Houses (1888)

Erland Josephson on Scenes From a Marriage.

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 15:45:09 -0400

Erland Josephson on Scenes From a Marriage.

"Another reason steaks should fall from the sky is because they have protein."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:33:46 -0400

“Another reason steaks should fall from the sky is because they have protein.”

- I’m reading some important essays by a writer named Natalie. This is her strongest point on the theme, “If something other than water were to fall from the sky, what should it be?” She’s the author of another influential article which argues that you should be able to bring your pets to school. It opens, “If you don’t know alot about cats, read the next paragraph and you’ll know ALOT about cats!” I love that she imagines her readership and addresses them.

Workspace 6.10.13

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 10:31:05 -0400

Workspace 6.10.13

"πρωκτὸς καὶ χρυσὸς τὴν αὐτὴν ψῆφον ἔχουσιν· ψηφίζων δ᾿ ἀφελῶς τοῦτό ποθ᾿ εὗρον ἐγώ."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:13:57 -0400

“πρωκτὸς καὶ χρυσὸς τὴν αὐτὴν ψῆφον ἔχουσιν· ψηφίζων δ᾿ ἀφελῶς τοῦτό ποθ᾿ εὗρον ἐγώ.”

- ‘Anus’ (πρωκτός) and ‘gold’ (χρυσός) have the same numerical value: I once discovered this while casually calculating (Greek Anthology 12.6).

The commonest number system for the ancient Greeks assigned numerical values to letters of the alphabet, so it was possible for a word to have a numerical value (i.e. the sum of the values of each letter in the word). I think πρωκτός and χρυσός both have a value of 1570. Some people wrote poems in which each verse or couplet had the same value, and apparently some people calculated the values of words to kill time.

I’m pretty sure she’s faking it: she doesn’t...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:48:03 -0400

I’m pretty sure she’s faking it: she doesn’t even know what words are yet.

So I got this birthday card and I recognized my portrait...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:01:00 -0400

So I got this birthday card and I recognized my portrait immediately. She explained that she got me six presents for my birthday! Then she gave me the first present, the picture on the right of a whole pallet full of presents. Now I know that probably sounds adorable, but it turns out she was just bullshitting about the other five presents. When she realized she was found out she began trying to gift me whatever happened to be nearby like a common scoundrel.

She couldn’t wait to give me this birthday card. I opened...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:58:34 -0400

She couldn’t wait to give me this birthday card. I opened it and thought to myself, wow, she drew me a girlfriend for my birthday, that’s interesting. Five minutes later I sat down in a lawn chair in the sun with a cold beer and behind my sunglasses I worried privately: have I become so pathetic that an eight-year-old can see it and pity me? No, probably not, I thought. I’ll bet she overheard her mother feeling sorry for me; kids pick up on that sort of thing. Then, halfway through the beer, I realized suddenly, no, I’m way off base, none of that ever happened. She was not-so-subtly wearing a “girls rule” t-shirt herself. Already she’s learning that you can communicate indirectly and thereby avoid embarrassment and rejection—one of humanity’s most useful little tricks.

I got a couple sweet birthday cards from a couple sweet sisters....

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:46:48 -0400

I got a couple sweet birthday cards from a couple sweet sisters. I know this probably isn’t unusual, but N. (on the left) really has her own distinct style with crayons. I’ve known a few zilcharian* artists, and they always have distinctive traits, but I don’t think I’ve ever known one to really have a grasp of their own style. I don’t have her other drawings to compare, but that it only seems to be true of crayons makes me think I’m on to something.

On the other hand, V. (on the right) is just getting the hang of reading and writing. Mid-winter she was still struggling to remember all the letters and their shapes and now she’s full on sounding out words. You can see right away that Nick, I Love You, and Violet are words that she writes often, while she was clearly struggling with Happy Birthday. (She still asks me how to spell my name every time, then I tell her that she already knows it, and then she writes it perfectly. She doesn’t make me specify upper or lower case for every single letter anymore.) Whereas N.’s card is marked by extensive symmetry (I especially like the 4-3 pattern of the candles, although note the balloon strings), V. hasn’t quite learned how to plan kerning. I can remember very clearly as a child trying to space out the words Happy Birthday and usually failing on the first try. I’m pretty certain that she was observing N. while she was working, based on the exclamation point, which I’ve never seen her use before, and the looping pattern of the frosting on the cake. I’m seriously considering changing my research to zilcharian art.

*I should admit that I just made this up out of the blue because there doesn’t seem to be a term preceding denarian?

"Remember that physical beauty is evolution’s way of assuring us that the other person..."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:26:16 -0400

“Remember that physical beauty is evolution’s way of assuring us that the other person doesn’t have too many intestinal parasites.”

- Ben Bernanke

They didn’t make a huge mistake!

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:53:01 -0400

They didn’t make a huge mistake!

"Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled."

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:38:11 -0400

“Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled.”

- E.O. Wilson

kateoplis: A reproduction of Archimedes’ Planetarium, Rome

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:28:40 -0400

kateoplis:

A reproduction of Archimedes’ Planetarium, Rome

triglifos-y-metopas: Two bees arranged about a honey comb, gold...

Thu, 30 May 2013 12:32:28 -0400

triglifos-y-metopas:

Two bees arranged about a honey comb, gold pendant with appliqué and granulated ornament.

Mallia, Crete, Greece.

1700-1550 B.C. (Middle Minoan)

[Heraklion Archaeological Museum]

Get it? Hot water.

Wed, 29 May 2013 10:11:58 -0400

Get it? Hot water.

"When Vettius had plowed up his father’s tombstone, Augustus said: “This is truly cultivating your..."

Wed, 29 May 2013 09:38:03 -0400

“When Vettius had plowed up his father’s tombstone, Augustus said: “This is truly cultivating your father’s memory.””

- Vettius cum monumentum patris exarasset, ait Augustus: hoc est uere monumentum patris colere, Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.10. The pun on plowed and cultivated translates well, but notice that tombstone and memory are both monumentum in Latin.

"ἐπ᾿ ἀγορᾶς ποτε χειρουργῶν, εἴθε, ἔφη, καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν ἦν παρατρίψαντα µὴ πεινῆν."

Mon, 27 May 2013 14:46:34 -0400

“ἐπ᾿ ἀγορᾶς ποτε χειρουργῶν, εἴθε, ἔφη, καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν ἦν παρατρίψαντα µὴ πεινῆν.”

- “When behaving indecently in the marketplace, he wished it were as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach,” Diogenes Laertius, Life of Diogenes [the Cynic] 6.46. The translation “behaving indecently” by R.D. Hicks is euphemistic for “masturbating” from the Greek χειρουργῶν, “working by hand” (the LSJ characteristically lists this instance as sens.obsc. without a translation). A nominal form of the same compound (χειρουργός) means surgeon, and in fact the English word surgeon itself is a derivative form of the Greek word coming through Latin (chirurgus) and then French (cirurgien/serurgien).

superfluidity

Land of the constant sun, gorillas, and ancient Greek adventure

"I used to work for the factory where they make hydrants, but you couldn’t park anywhere near the..."

“For a long time nobody thought that they would be able to add...

"And yet when love-making is not in question, the snail is by no means sociable, although it has been..."

Erland Josephson on Scenes From a Marriage.

"Another reason steaks should fall from the sky is because they have protein."

Workspace 6.10.13

"πρωκτὸς καὶ χρυσὸς τὴν αὐτὴν ψῆφον ἔχουσιν· ψηφίζων δ᾿ ἀφελῶς τοῦτό ποθ᾿ εὗρον ἐγώ."

I’m pretty sure she’s faking it: she doesn’t...

So I got this birthday card and I recognized my portrait...

She couldn’t wait to give me this birthday card. I opened...

I got a couple sweet birthday cards from a couple sweet sisters....

"Remember that physical beauty is evolution’s way of assuring us that the other person..."

They didn’t make a huge mistake!

"Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled."

kateoplis: A reproduction of Archimedes’ Planetarium, Rome

triglifos-y-metopas: Two bees arranged about a honey comb, gold...

Get it? Hot water.

"When Vettius had plowed up his father’s tombstone, Augustus said: “This is truly cultivating your..."

"ἐπ᾿ ἀγορᾶς ποτε χειρουργῶν, εἴθε, ἔφη, καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν ἦν παρατρίψαντα µὴ πεινῆν."

"ἐπ᾿ ἀγορᾶς ποτε χειρουργῶν, εἴθε, ἔφη, καὶ τὴν κοιλίαν ἦν παρατρίψαντα µὴ πεινῆν."