Happy open-threadiness:
The Boy has been fascinated with planets and outer-space since he was around 3 or 4. Today he turns 8, and his big birthday present is a 6" Dobsonian reflector telescope - Orion Starquest XT6. (Unfortunately it's not arrived in time for the day, but he's getting a picture of it with a card.) Barring major accidents, it should last him through adulthood if his interest continues.
pericat: I have difficulty thinking of any anesthetics which would be detected in the remains of a patient who'd survived the operation, particularly after 7,000 years. The claim sounds to be based on the assumption that there must have been one, and the assumption seems to be based more on ignorance of how amputations were conducted up through the 1800s - speed, usually with several strong assistants to hold the patient's limb motionless. But as always, it's a journalist's interpretation of what the scientists actually said and thought, so who knows; that may all have been the reporter's additions.
Seen via Popurls: Male Villain seeking Female Arch-Enemy
By the way, I forgot to mention that that self-eBaying artwork was the best thing ever.
Some cuteness to lighten the general mood: Rabbit fashion show (in Japan, of course.) (Courtesy of Deb Aoki)
Ginger:
I'm so glad for you that things are going better.
I think I've recommended it on ML before, but probably not to you - Don't Shoot the Dog is a good book on positive behavioral training, and (among other things) how people do crazy things to their relationships in frustration because they can't figure out how to make the positive changes they want. (Weird title from the one limited repertoire many people have to solving problems: Dog barks too much? Put up with it or shoot it. Relationship is having problems? Break up. etc.) It might be that right now, if she's depressed, the small things that you do which drive her crazy - every couple has some of those - seem like intolerable and as insurmountable as mountains, and that she needs to know that you and she can change things as needed to make it work.
Anyway, hope this is not too intrusive, and I truly wish you both (and your son) all the best.
Teresa, re your William Blake's Inn particle, snap up a copy of that book if you get the chance. (I used to have a copy when raising my first child; I should get a new one.) While it disguises itself as a book for children, the illustrations are lovely, and the poetry is simple, beautiful, deep, and moving.
Spam must be deleted. Spammers must die.
Julie: Here's your Scheil translation of the Naram-Sin tablet, in raw OCR text:
http://www.archive.org/stream/recueildetravau05maspgoog/recueildetravau05maspgoog_djvu.txt
Search for "Naram-Sin" until you find the start of the translation.
My French is pretty crummy, but it appears to me that it says this tablet falls into the common format of "I, Naram-Sin, powerful king, beloved of Goddess X, favored of Goddess Y, have constructed a temple. Whoever breaks this tablet or destroys this statue..." That suggests that either this tablet isn't the one actually associated with the Ur-Quote, or if it is the one, that the quote may be something that somebody just made up and stuck in front of it.
While I'm at it, a National Geographic article by Isabel Dodd on Hittite ruins. She's a vivid writer; I wonder if she was a prankster.
Another fruitful avenue to pursue might be contacting the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago: John P. Peters at the University of Chicago was the original head of the 1887-1888 American expedition which Hilprecht joined and was writing about in the earlier part of the article linked above. The Oriental Institute still has a massive collection of artifacts from that expedition and others; they might well have some information on The Quote.
Julie, look at the preceding page of the book you just cited for an interesting possibility as to where the "everyone wants to write a book" meme might have come from. Quoting a Sumerian inscription found on one tablet by a Turkish expedition to Abu-Habba or Sippara:
That is, "Whosoever has distinguished himself at the place of tablet-writing [that is, at the school or university of the Bablylonians] shall [literally "may"] shine as the light.
Perhaps "write a book" = mistranslation of "write tablets", meaning to become a scribe/scholar?
Julie L. @ #429:
Weird compressed version of The Quote, from a 1913 travelogue that describes "a Chaldean inscription in black granite assigned to 3800 BC" in the "Imperial Museum" of Constantinople: "the world is very evil and even children write books!"
This might be your most interesting discovery yet, because the odd transformation suggests to me what you'd get if the traveler - clergyman wandering the Middle East and writing up columns for a magazine from memory and his casual notes - had paused in the museum, jotted down something like "world v. evil, children dis, all write books", confident that he would remember the whole thing, and then tried to reconstruct it from those notes a month later.
It suggests to me there really might have been an Ur-Quote at the museum. We now have two apparent references to forms of the quote appearing there, and other independent references to it containing plaques and tablets dated specifically 3800 BC.
That's definitely blog spam of a common type: pasting boiler-plate text which could apply to any posting or topic whatsoever, with a link to the spammed URL.
Julie: I love what you're digging up on the quote. I'd like to see it shared, especially if you can get back to the actual Case Zero for it. It feels like you've got the makings of a book there, or at least a really interesting magazine article somewhere.
John, I second (third, etc.) the thanks!
As Teresa said in her post, "the past is a foreign country" - it's hard for us to understand what the world was like for our own countrymen and ancestors. Your work to keep these photos alive open another little window on it.
A milestone of sorts in book marketing:
The video-game tie-in re-release of Dante's Inferno
If it actually gets a few (or a few thousand) gamers to read the Inferno and go "Whoa cool!", I'm going to call that a good thing.
(Credit to Penny Arcade & Kotaku for bringing it to my attention.)
Linkmeister:
Could well be, I was thinking of Smith or Maunakea street but didn't see it at first glance.
Lee:
That one isn't bugging me, it's Billy Bragg's 'Between the Wars' which keeps catching me each time I look at the thread. (Fortunately it's a lovely song.) I don't think either of these effects was accidental.
Teresa,
Although of course a lot of buildings from that period look similar, I suspect that 11th photo was taken in Honolulu's Chinatown - the background looks generally familiar. It's possible that the buildings are still standing; I might poke around Google Street View and see if I can find it. The cornice on the left-hand building should be very recognizable if it still exists.
Best wishes for a smooth recovery from this point on. There seem to be a lot of weird/nasty viruses going around this year on top of the usual flu and the H1N1.
Janet: Just wondering, did you succeed in resolving the PC problems?
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