Posts Tagged ‘Bible’
“ANT: model to cite in front of a spendthrift”*…
We tend to think of ants, and other social insects such as bees and termites, as busy little workers, but it turns out some of them may actually be quite lazy.
A study (paywall) conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona observed five colonies of Temnothorax rugatulus—a common ant species found across western Canada and the United States—and tracked their movements for three random days over a three weeks. Before they began their observations, they painted certain ants so they could track their individual activities. The team recorded five-minute videos of the colonies at four-hour intervals, and categorized the type of work they were doing at a given time.
They were surprised to find that almost half of the ants were actually fairly inactive throughout the day. While their counterparts busied themselves with nest-building or foraging, these ants were “effectively ‘specializing’ on inactivity,” according to the paper…
More at “Scientists say many worker ants are actually super lazy.” See also, “News: Ants Don’t Actually Work that Hard.”
[Image above, from here]
* Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas
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As we learn by example, we might recall that it was on this date in 4004 BCE that the Universe was created… as per calculations by Archbishop James Ussher in the mid-17th century.
When Clarence Darrow prepared his famous examination of William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes trial [see here], he chose to focus primarily on a chronology of Biblical events prepared by a seventeenth-century Irish bishop, James Ussher. American fundamentalists in 1925 found—and generally accepted as accurate—Ussher’s careful calculation of dates, going all the way back to Creation, in the margins of their family Bibles. (In fact, until the 1970s, the Bibles placed in nearly every hotel room by the Gideon Society carried his chronology.) The King James Version of the Bible introduced into evidence by the prosecution in Dayton contained Ussher’s famous chronology, and Bryan more than once would be forced to resort to the bishop’s dates as he tried to respond to Darrow’s questions.
– source
Ussher
“Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way”*…
A few times each decade, the number of acceptable Scrabble words grows. Some sixty-five hundred new words—“lolz,” “shizzle,” and “blech” among them—will officially enter one of the two major competitive Scrabble lexicons on September 1st of this year. The grumbling that results when a word list lengthens is not so much about the inclusion of obscene or offensive words—though a cleaned-up list was controversially published in 1996, after someone protested the inclusion of “jew” as a verb. Instead, it is more about the growing divide between two Scrabble communities: North America and everywhere else…
The history of everyone’s favorite word game– and an explanation of the controversy roiling it today– at “The battle over Scrabble’s dictionaries.”
* Steve Martin
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As we reach for a triple-letter double-word combo, we might recall that, while February 23rd, 1455 is the traditionally-given date of the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable type, the first evidence-based date is this date in 1456: the copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France contains a note from the binder establishing the time of its publication.
(The Jikji— the world’s oldest known extant movable metal type printed book– was published in Korea in 1377. Bi Sheng created the first known moveable type– out of wood– in China in 1040.)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people”*…
If Marx is right, then Tim Holman is doing his bit to fight back: the site pictured above in just one of the myriad one can find at Tim’s The Useless Web.
* Karl Marx
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As we ponder, then pivot from pointlessness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1536 that William Tyndale was strangled then burned at the stake for heresy in Antwerp. An English scholar and leading Protestant reformer, Tyndale effectively replaced Wycliffe’s Old English translation of the Bible with a vernacular version in what we now call Early Modern English (as also used, for instance, by Shakespeare). Tyndale’s translation was first English Bible to take advantage of the printing press, and first of the new English Bibles of the Reformation. Consequently, when it first went on sale in London, authorities gathered up all the copies they could find and burned them. But after England went Protestant, it received official approval and ultimately became the basis of the King James Version.
Ironically, Tyndale incurred Henry VII’s wrath after the King’s “conversion” to Protestantism, by writing a pamphlet decrying Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Tyndale moved to Europe, where he continued to advocate Protestant reform, ultimately running afoul of the Holy Roman Empire, which sentenced him to his death.
“And he made the holy anointing oil, and the pure incense of sweet spices, according to the work of the apothecary”*…
“The Anointing of David,” from the Paris Psalter, 10th century (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).
The Bible includes various plants that are used often and deemed holy. Some of these plants are psychedelic while others have medical qualities. Both the new and old testament mention the use of these plants in religious purpose. Jesus used shamanic techniques to help establish a stable religion in the name of God.
Holy Anointing OilLeviticus 10:6 And Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and Ithamar, his sons, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and wrath come upon all the people. But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord has kindled.7 You shall not go out from the door of the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die, for the anointing oil of the Lord is upon you.” And they did according to the word of Moses. John 12:3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Exodus 29:7 Then shalt thou take the anointing oil, and pour it upon his head and anoint him.
Holy Anointing Oil according to the bible
Pure myrrh, 500 shekels (about 6 kg)
Sweet cinnamon, 250 shekels (about 3 kg)
Calamus, 250 shekels (about 3 kg)
Cassia, 500 shekels (about 6 kg)
Olive oil, one hin (3.7 Liters)The holy anointing oil is a potent psychedelic extract. The 18 kg of plant material that is extracted into 3.7 liters of olive oil yields a potent essential oil. The holy anointing oil is essentially an anxiolytic-hallucinogen…
For more on how Holy Anointing Oil works, and for a run-down of other hallucinogens in the Holy Book, see “Psychoactive Plants in the Bible.”
* Exodus 37:29
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As we study the Scriptures more closely, we might recall that it was on this date in 1582 that Britain’s second-best-known magician, the necromancer Edward Kelley, first met the best-known: the mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, John Dee.
While Dee’s most important legacy was his rich series of contributions to the development of modern science (and his coining of the word “Brittannia” and the phrase “British Empire”), Dee might also be remembered as the man who, while trading on his fame as a sage, served abroad as a spy for the Queen– and signed his reports “007”… thus inspiring Ian Fleming’s trade-naming of James Bond.
Dee and Kelley
God’s Bloodline: all of those “begats”, diagrammed…
From Soul LIberty:
click image above, or here, for larger version
As we try to remember the difference between a first-cousin-once-removed and a second cousin, we might recall that it was on this date in 632, in Medina, that Muhammad, the founder and prophet of Islam, died in the arms of Aishah, his third and favorite wife.
The name “Muhammad” written in Thuluth, a script variety of Islamic calligraphy (source)
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