#antikythera mechanism
Book review: REALLY thorough explanation of the history and inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism! For anyone who needs a refresher, the Antikythera mechanism is “an ancient Greek analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes decades in advance … retrieved from the sea in 1901 … among wreckage retrieved from a wreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera” [Wikipedia]. I’m a real ancient tech buff, and it was too detailed even for me, so I just flipped through like a magazine, perusing the graphics and reading the parts that caught my eye. Cool stuff! Highly recommend for academic research or just to add to your computer science and/or history libraries.
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I never tire of watching this.
Before I entered the door, holding it open with relief and gratitude, it occurred to me to look straight up, and much to my surprise, there were stars. Stars! I hadn’t thought I would be able to see them, not with the light pollution perpetually wreathing the city, and not on a night on which it had been raining. But the rain had stopped while I was climbing down, and had washed the air clean. The miasma of Manhattan’s electric lights did not go very far up into the sky, and in the moonless night, the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself shimmered. Wonderful stars, a distant cloud of fireflies: but I felt in my body what my eyes could not grasp, which was that their true nature was the persisting visual echo of something that was already in the past. In the unfathomable ages it took for light to cross such distances, the light source itself had in some cases been long extinguished, its dark remains stretched away from us at even greater speeds.
FRAGMENTVM Open City
Prius quam grato animo suspirans in ianuam apertam intrabam, in mentem venit quod caelum est spectandum, et imprudens sidera conspexi. Ecce sidera! Propter magnarum lucum orbem et imbres eodem die fieri posse non credideram, imbres autem quae dissipata me descendente erant puras aeres laverunt nubesque Manhattani lucentis haud alte in altum pertinebant ut caelum defecta luna sicut tectum lucibus perforaretur luceretque. Mirabiles spectatu, cicendelae longinquae! Quod oculis non poteram id meo corpore sentiebam, quod imagines candidae verorum mortuorum mihi semper reddebantur. Lux igne interdum diu exstincto innumeros annos ad nostram terram intendit dum cinis ater celerius fugiunt.
