20210121

Thu Jan 21 06:00:02 EST 2021 ======================================== Slept from eleven to six. Partly cloudy early in the morning then becoming mostly cloudy. Highs in the upper 30s. West winds 10 to 20 mph with gusts to around 35 mph. Work ---------------------------------------- - 10 AM business team meeting Done. - Work on VS NVR Some. Fucking Ubiquiti. Fifteen-minuet walk at lunch. Partly sunny, windy. Half-moon in the sky. Home ---------------------------------------- Reading the brouhaha over Red Hat killing CentOS, and users migrating to alternatives like Debian, it occurs to me that Red Hat actually made it easier to leave RHEL by pushing for systemd hegemony across Linux distros. https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/category/types/magicicada/<Paste> > Periodical cicada Brood X (10) will emerge in the spring of 2021 in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. > The last time this brood emerged was in 2004. > Typically beginning in mid-May and ending in late June. These cicadas will begin to emerge approximately when the soil 8″ beneath the ground reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit. A nice, warm rain will often trigger an emergence. Back in 2004, people began reporting emergences around May, 13th. > These cicadas will emerge after the trees have grown leaves, and, by my own observation, around the same time Iris flowers bloom. https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2021/01/individualistic-and-imaginative.html > Issue #2 of Lee Gold's famed Alarums & Excursions (July 1975) is well known for having published a letter by Gary Gygax, in which he offers his opinion on a number of topics, the most interesting part of which (to me anyway) is the following: > > Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in D&D. If the time ever comes when all aspects of fantasy are covered and the vast majority of its players agree on how the game should be played, D&D will have become staid and boring indeed. Sorry, but I don't believe that there is anything desirable in having various campaigns playing similarly to one another. D&D is supposed to offer a challenge to the imagination and to do so in many ways. Perhaps the most important is in regard to what the probabilities of a given situation are. If players know what all of the monster parameters are, what can be expected in a given situation, exactly what will happen to them if they perform thus and so, most of the charm of the game is gone. Frankly, the reason I enjoy playing in Dave Arneson's campaign is that I do not know his treatments of monsters and suchlike, so I must keep thinking and reasoning in order to "survive". Now, for example, if I made a proclamation from on high which suited Mr. Johnstone, it would certainly be quite unacceptable to hundreds or even thousands of other players. My answer is, and has always been, if you don't like the way I do it, change the bloody rules to suit yourself and your players. D&D enthusiasts are far too individualistic and imaginative a bunch to be in agreement, and I certainly refuse to play god for them -- except as a referee in my own campaign where they jolly well better toe the mark. https://analog-antiquarian.net/2020/09/25/chapter-1-the-ancients-bucket-list/ > The Processional Way runs alongside the foot of Etemenanki. Said monument is, you can now see, a stepped pyramid of six stages, its sides a riot of colors, its dizzying peak seeming to merge with the sun itself. You have heard many stories of this, the world’s highest ziggurat. You know, for example, that it takes so long to ascend it that there is a shelter at the midway point with water and benches for the weary. You know that a shrine stands at the very top for the suppliants who come there to look down upon the awe-inspiring sprawl of the city while they pray. And you know that a single bed is also perched up there. Every night, so you have been told, one Babylonian woman of exceptional character and grace is allowed to sleep there at the top of this ladder to heaven, where the god Marduk himself visits her and has intercourse with her — some say spiritual intercourse, some say sexual. > On the other side of the Processional Way, you see another splash of color: a bold botanical green this time. Here stands another terraced ziggurat, covered at every level with greenery that has no business growing in this land at this parched season of the year. The king of Babylon ordered it built for his favorite queen, who hails from a far-off land of dripping forests and babbling brooks, where water is plentiful rather than the scarce resource it is here. On its terraces can be found exotic trees and flowers the likes of which almost no Babylonian will ever see in their native habitats. The hydraulic engineering that brings the water of the Euphrates up to the thirsty greenery is a tribute to the sheer know-how of Babylon’s most accomplished men. Up at the botanical ziggurat’s top, which is lower but also much broader than that of Etemenanki, the king’s wives and his royal harem wander without their veils — wearing no clothing at all, some say — through a shady, fragrant paradise that rings with melodious birdsong. These are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. > But then, probably only a decade or two after Callimachus’s list, along comes Philo of Byzantium, an engineer and natural philosopher who lived most of his life in Alexandria. He provides us with the first list of Seven Wonders that has survived, although only five and a half of the more detailed descriptions of the Wonders that originally followed his enumeration of the list remain to us. Among other things, Philos’s list illustrates that the Seven Wonders, like any good tourist guidebook, was a living, changing document; three of the Wonders included on it didn’t yet exist during the time of Herodotus. Indeed, all of the Wonders on Philo’s list existed simultaneously for only about fifty to sixty years. Future listers of Wonders would continue to mix and match a bit to suit circumstances, politics, and personal preferences. > There’s a linguistic quirk here that’s worth noting, not least for the way it connects the ancient idea of Seven Wonders still more firmly to our modern notion of the tourist bucket list. “Theamata,” the Greek word originally used for the Wonders, doesn’t actually mean “wonders” at all. It’s a more grounded word, one that’s difficult to translate pithily into English, but that can be described as meaning “things that are worth seeing.” As usual, German has the more precise word which we poor English speakers lack: “Sehenswürdigkeiten,” things that are “see-worthy.” Or, as my German dictionary describes it: “A building, monument, etc., that is interesting for tourists.” > Still, travel did become, relatively speaking, easier and safer after the era of Roman hegemony began, resulting in the world’s first tourists — i.e., leisured classes who could realistically afford to travel abroad in search of edification and pleasure alone. By the first centuries after Christ, tourists were mobbing some of the more accessible wondrous sites, such as the Giza Plateau in Egypt, almost to the same degree that they do today. (You can still find their graffiti and other leavings all over the pyramids and the Sphinx — vandalism of history which has become history in itself, in that way that all things eventually must if they stick around long enough.) But other, more far-flung Wonders — most notably of all the Hanging Gardens of Babylon — still required long, uncomfortable, dangerous journeys to reach, and thus remained strictly in the realm of the aspirational even among the vast majority of the rich. > Philo of Byzantium, that first explicator of Wonders whose text has come down to us, acknowledged this reality in his introduction with a candor that would be less pronounced among many of those who followed him. > > Everyone has heard of each of the Seven Wonders of the World, but few have seen all of them for themselves. To do so, one has to go abroad to Persia, cross the Euphrates River, travel to Egypt, spend some time among the Elians in Greece, go to Helicarnassus in Caria, sail to Rhodes, and see Ephesus in Ionia. Only if you travel the world and get worn out by the effort of the journey will the desire to see all of the Seven Wonders of the World be satisfied, and by the time you have done that you will be old and practically dead. > > Because of this, education can perform a remarkable and valuable task: it removes the necessity to travel, displays the beautiful and amazing things in one’s very own home, and allows one to see those things with one’s mind if not with one’s eyes. If a man goes to the different locations, sees them once, and goes away, he immediately forgets: the details of the works are not recalled, and memories of the individual features fail. But if a man investigates in verbal form the things to wonder at and the execution of their construction, and if he contemplates, as though looking at a mirror image, the whole skillful work, he keeps impressions of each picture indelible in his mind. The reason for this is that he has seen amazing things with his mind. > The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was built for Mausolus, the Persian ruler of a region of modern-day Turkey, in about 350 BC. > The very name is mysterious on the face of it. Hanging gardens… what does that actually mean? Philo, for his part, took the adjective literally. In fact, his description of the Hanging Gardens — or the singular Garden, as he prefers — is so outlandish that it’s worth quoting in full. > > The so-called Hanging Garden with its plants above the ground grows in the air. The roots of trees above form a roof over the ground. Stone pillars stand under the garden to support it, and the whole area beneath the garden is occupied with engraved bases of pillars. > > Individual beams of palm trees are in position, and the space separating them is very narrow. The wood from palm trees is the only kind of wood which does not rot. When they are saturated and under great pressure, they arch upwards and nourish the capillaries of the roots [of the vegetation], and admit into their own crevices roots that are not their own. > > On top of these beams a great amount of earth is poured to quite a depth. On top grow broad-leaved trees and garden trees, and there are varied flowers of all kinds — in short, everything that is most pleasing to the eye and most enjoyable. The area is cultivated just as happens on ground level. In much the same way as on normal ground, it sees the work of people who plant shoots: plowing goes on above those wandering through the supporting colonnade. > > While people walk along the top, the land on top of the roof is motionless and, as in most fertile regions, remains pure. From above aqueducts carry in running water: along one way the stream follows a downhill course, along the other way the water runs up, under pressure, in a screw; the necessary mechanisms of the contraption make the water run round and round in a spiral. The water goes up into many large receptacles and irrigates the whole garden. It dampens the roots of the plants deep in the earth and keeps the earth moist. This is why the grass is always green and the leaves of the trees grow permanently, nourished by the dew, on tender boughs. > > For, free from thirst, the roots suck up the permeating water and form roaming entanglements among themselves below the ground and, as a unit, preserve the developed trees safe and sound. The masterpiece is luxurious and regal and it breaks the laws of nature to hang the work of cultivation over the heads of spectators. https://www.etymonline.com/word/mausoleum > "magnificent tomb," early 15c., from Latin mausoleum, from Greek Mausoleion, name of the massive marble tomb adorned with sculpture built 353 B.C.E. at Halicarnassus (Greek city in Asia Minor) for Mausolos, Persian satrap who made himself king of Caria. It was built by his wife (and sister), Artemisia. Counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, it was destroyed by an earthquake in the Middle Ages. General sense of "any stately burial-place" (now usually one designed to contain a number of tombs) is from c. 1600. Related: Mausolean. Chatted with Ed and Jay on Jitsi for a while. The Porsche 356 is a neat design. I like the convertibles. Servings: grains 9/6, fruit 1/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 1/2, meat 3/3, nuts 0/0.5 Breakfast: left-over rice and chicken, banana, cucumber, coffee Lunch: corn chips with avocado, egg and sausage wrap Dinner: chips 110/74

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