Inventor, explorer of the mind: pyramid mysteries, robot development, garden plots, AI tinkering, musical delights, & geometrical wonders. Ancient Egypt: @Bennu
Australia
Joined September 2008
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Introducing the Synodic Clock. ☀️🌗
Turn the time and date dials to move the Sun and Moon, and see how the Moon’s phase follows. Pick a city for its real sky, watch in real time or fast modes, and view upcoming lunisolar events for the month.
synodicclock.vinbrown.com
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
Dear God, I know I was one
🎧 'The House of the Rising Sun' by The Animals. song.link/https://music.appl…
✍️ Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:
effrontery • \ih-FRUN-tuh-ree\ • noun
Bold shamelessness, or an attitude or way of behaving that is both confident and shocking or rude.
// Holly could not believe the sheer effrontery of the student who asked that her grade be changed.
The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds. It is always present within you. You can use it any way you want. - Tao Te Ching
"Why the sun?
Some need to pray to the sun at high noon.
Need to howl at the midwinter moon."
🎧 I’m currently listening to 'Between Sun & Moon' by Rush. You can too: song.link/https://music.appl…
✍️ Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:
fulsome • \FULL-sum\ • adjective
Fulsome describes someone or something that is generous in amount, extent, or spirit.
// They were fulsome in their praise of her efforts to raise money for the new wing of the children’s hospital.
The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. He lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle. - Tao Te Ching
"Seasons change, the way they always do.
The world is dipped, dancing circles with the moon."
🎧 I’m currently listening to 'Kingdom For a Fool' by The White Buffalo. You can too: song.link/https://music.appl…
✍️ Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:
candidate • \KAN-duh-dayt\ • noun
A candidate is someone who aspires to or is nominated for an office, membership, or award.
// The hiring team will select the best candidate for the job.
Vincent Brown retweeted
The first measurement showing light has a finite speed.
In this paper from 1676 Ole Rømer proved that light doesn't travel instantly using Jupiter's moon Io as a clock in the sky.
Io is eclipsed by Jupiter's shadow about every 42.5 hours. When Earth is moving away from Jupiter, the eclipses show up late. When Earth is moving toward Jupiter, they show up early.
The light carrying the news of each eclipse has a different distance to cover, so it reaches us at a different time.
The delay per orbit is only about 15 seconds, too small to measure with the clocks of the time, but it adds up: over about 40 orbits it reaches several minutes. Rømer estimated light takes about 22 minutes to cross Earth's orbit.
Rømer predicted that the eclipse of 9 November 1676 would come 10 minutes late, and it did.
Paper here: fermatslibrary.com/s/a-demon…
✍️ Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:
satiate • \SAY-shee-ayt\ • verb
To satiate a need, desire, etc., is to satisfy it fully.
// The new restaurant’s menu promises to satiate diners’ cravings for comfort food, offering fresh spins on classic, time-honored fare.
Vincent Brown retweeted
Cats at archaeological sites, an occasional series! #CatsOfTwitter #Epidaurus
Vincent Brown retweeted
Another great resource about ancient Egypt, this time from @FreakinFrick
aegyptuslab.cc
77,000 (thousand) texts in a spatial library. Mind blowing!
Vincent Brown retweeted
I liked this post so much I made a website to teach it to anyone - called Hieroglyphs in a weekend hieroglyphsinaweekend.com/#/
Who would have thought hieroglyphs are easy to learn? While trying, I realized something: Egyptian writing is emoji writing.
Instead of spaces, a little picture goes at the end of each word, the so-called determinative. It isn't pronounced, it just shows what the letters before it stand for.
Take London, following this logic. It would look like this: LNDN🏙️
There are no vowels in Egyptian writing, and the little city picture at the end tells you it's a city.
Here's a full sentence:
"Marcell flies to London": MRCLL👱🏻♂️ ✈️ LNDN🏙️
LNDN in hieroglyphs, with the city sign at the end:
𓃭𓈖𓂧𓈖𓊖
Sign by sign, left to right:
* 𓃭 Lying lion, that's the L.
* 𓈖 Water ripple, that's the N.
* 𓂧 Hand, that's the D.
* 𓈖 Water ripple, the second N.
* 𓊖 Crossroads in a circle, the "city" determinative, i.e. the emoji. Not pronounced, it just tells you it's a city.
Stats:
There are only about 24 plain (single-sound) letters in the hieroglyphic alphabet. Anyone can learn them in a weekend.
True, there are also two-consonant signs (about 100) and three-consonant signs (about 50). Those make the alphabet hard to memorize.
Hard to memorize, but perfectly logical.
Yet nobody could read it for 1,400 years, until Champollion. The last hieroglyphic inscription was carved at Philae in 394 AD.
A people who kept living in the same place forgot their own emojis within a few generations!
What isn't used fades from memory. Like the recipe for casting stone.
"How was it that the Arabs, who consumed copious amounts of coffee, were hardly lacking in sexual vigour?
Their explanation? Dates! The staple of the Arab diet was believed to generate an abundance of spermatic moisture, counteracting coffee's libido-dampening effects."
"It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing
that has ever happened is quite without influence at this
moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and
concentrated in this second of time." - Will Durant.
