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Sat Sep 5 07:35:10 EDT 2015
Went to bed a little late last night---after eleven---and woke up a little before seven this morning.
Mid eighties today with a 30% chance of rain.
Couple of things I didn't get done yesterday:
- Read this: http://www.eternallyconfuzzled.com/tuts/datastructures/jsw_tut_linklist.aspx
- Work on ideas for new D&D player stuff (handouts, cheatsheets, portraits, pregens, etc.)
I sort of worked on this a little yesterday, but mainly spent some time reading the 5e PHB.
Make a character sheet (tailored for new players):
- Include dice guide ("Know Your Dice!")
- Include page numbers for rules about thing
- For the spell/ability list, put a space for the page number
- If there's room to include the whole rule, include it. Like, instead of putting a space on each ability score to record the bonus, just include the ability bonus table?
Goals:
- Make 5e character sheet
Minor work. Not finished.
- Grocery
Put off till tomorrow morning.
- Laundry
Done.
I spent a few minutes cleaning up my regular expressions cheatsheet:
http://paulgorman.org/technical/regular_expressions.php
Watered plants, ordered new electric toothbrush, other mundane chores.
Watched Byzantium on Netflix. Good.
Took a short walk.
Ah! Auspice!
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auspices
plural (and now the usual form) of auspice; 1530s, "observation of birds for the purpose of taking omens," from French auspice (14c.), from Latin auspicum "divination from the flight of birds; function of an auspex" (q.v.). Meaning "any indication of the future (especially favorable)" is from 1650s; earlier (1630s) in extended sense of "benevolent influence of greater power, influence exerted on behalf of someone or something," originally in expression under the auspices of.
I recently (https://paulgorman.org/diary/20150820.txt) was surprised that "augury" wasn't clearly etymologically related to birds. Looks like I was conflating it with "auspice".
Hmm. More interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur#Augurs.2C_auguria_and_auspices
"Augurium and auspicium are terms used indifferently by the ancient.[16] Modern scholars have debated the issue at length but have failed to find a distinctive definition that may hold for all the known cases. By such considerations Dumezil[17] thinks that the two terms refer in fact to two aspects of the same religious act: auspicium would design the technical process of the operation, i.e. aves spicere, looking at the birds. His result would be the augurium, i.e. the determination, acknowledgement of the presence of the *auges, the favour of the god(s), the intention and the final result of the whole operation. In Varro's words "Agere augurium, aves specit",[18] "to conduct the augurium, he observed the birds". Since auguria publica and inaugurations of magistrates are strictly connected to political life this brought about the deterioration and abuses that condemned augury to progressive and inarrestable debasement, stripping it of all religious value."
I was coincidently reading this: http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0703213v1.pdf, which put me on the right track.
"The foundation of a new town followed a ritual, which has been described by many Roman writers, like e.g. Ovid and Plutarch. All these authors refer themselves to the foundation of Rome, so that in a sense the foundation of a Roman town might be seen a sort of replica of a primeval foundation. This ritual, as is universally known, comprised th e observation of the flight of the birds and the tracing of the boundaries by ploughing a furrow. The ar t of taking auspices from the flight of the birds was ruled by the Etrusca Disciplina , the collection of writings of the Etruscan religion, which was thought of as having being revealed to humanity by the gods (the books are long lost, but accounts on them have survived, for instance in the work De Divinatione by Cicero). A fundamental part of all the rituals of the aruspexes was the individuation of the auguraculum , a sort of terrestrial image of the heavens ( templum) in which the gods were “ordered” and “oriented” starting from north in the hourly direction (an intact example of auguraculum has been found in the city of Bantia, see Torelli 1966)."
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