The most complex mechanism of antiquity - dating 2,000 or 2,100 years old depending on how you cut it - has been successfully reproduced in stunning order.  The Antikythera Device/Mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator designs to calculate astronomical positions (it not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games), originally discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, in 1901.

Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known.

Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the study of the mechanism said: “This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully.” He added: “…in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.”

A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers.

The new model was demonstrated by its creator, former museum curator Michael Wright, who had created an earlier model based on decades of study. He demonstrates how the more complete device works in a video originally created on the New Scientist Website. (It’s part of an update story by Jo Marchant, author of Decoding the Heavens, an account not only of the device itself but also the century-old scientific quest to recover its meaning.)

Read more here!

He says “You’re the catch anyway.”
She answers “That’s the joke of it though — I can’t be caught!”
“Doesnt mean youre not a good catch.”

She shakes her head.
“I’m a high, hanging ball on its way out of the park. But thank you, you’re sweet.”
“You never know when a stiff wind is gonna keep one in the park,” he offers.
“The weather and I are generally at odds. I’ve made peace with it.”

“Never say never.”

A long, sad sigh. They’ve had this conversation so many times over the years, both knowing where it ends, in some fictional life preserver of promises meant to keep them both from feeling adrift in a sea of coupling bodies, theirs only meeting out of need or chance.

“Oh I wouldn’t,” the answer finally comes, “but I’m also not going to sit around hoping for something that I so regularly and deliberately work to squash anyway. I’m sure there’s a crisis years down the road where I start beating myself up for not being more receptive to some advances/getting married and doing all of that, but for now I’m ok giving myself a pass and not freaking out about a life without a man dwelling inside of it.”
“Its ok,” he answers, “you’re gonna marry me someday.”

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
-from Stephen Hawking’s 1988 book A Brief History of Time

For Hawking, the turtle story is one of two accounts of the nature of the universe; he asserts that the turtle theory is patently ridiculous, but admits that his own theories may be just as ridiculous. “Only time will tell,” he concludes.

Holy shit this girl rocks. At TWELVE. And it’s not just the rapping, it’s choice quips like this (commenting on an outfit she picked up):

The volume thang makes me look wonderfully plump and fat, which I don’t mind at all because there’s no one at school to look attractive to for. When Kevin Arnold starts attending my middle school, then AND ONLY THEN will I resort to non-creepy, flattering outfits. MOVE OVER, WINNIE COOPER.

AND she quotes from the Prisoner series.  Keep it up cutiepie, never stop doing your thing!

LYRICS:
My mom and I woke up at like 5 o clock
While walking to the EL, saw our neighbor down the block
She wanted to know why we were in such a hurry
Didn’t wanna tell her “shoppin” so I said we’d better scurry

When we got down there we rushed into line
Surrounded by us were people of all kinds
Label whores, hipsters, grandmamas, too
Met a professor named Sam, we talked about religious views

Rei Kawakubo (H&M)
Rei Kawakubo (Can I be your friend?)
Rei Kawakubo (stalker fan letters I will send)
Rei Kawakubo (I love you with no end)

At 9 AM they opened the doors
Cue the sound of Marni heels running on the floors
I grabbed what I could, got looks from others shoppin
Though their glares were patronizing, I wouldn’t be stoppin

They were older but my smallness was a plus
Being tiny helped me try and get the things I lust
I slithered on the ground and crawled through the racks
Took the clothing people dropped after I surprise attacked

Rei Kawakubo (H&M)
Rei Kawakubo (Can I be your friend?)
Rei Kawakubo (stalker fan letters I will send)
Rei Kawakubo (I love you with no end)

The jacket I wanted returned from the fitting rooms
A worker put it on the racks, about to end my doom
But an evil man stole it from my grasp with glee
I’m just a poor boy nobody loves me

But my spirits were lifted when I met a girl named Claire
She said she read my blog, put you hands up in the air!
Let me know what you got, in the midst of all the loony
You’re the sweetest person ever, thanks for saying hi to me!

Rei Kawakubo (H&M)
Rei Kawakubo (Can I be your friend?)
Rei Kawakubo (stalker fan letters I will send)
Rei Kawakubo (Readers, is this rap bugging you yet?)

I ended up getting not my favorite things ever
But I got out alive as a soon-to-be ebay seller!
It was a hectic day but worth missing school
No one in class got swagga this cool!

Comme Des Garcons (H&M)
Now you all gone (goodbye, my friend)
But I still love you a ton (for you I would have bled)
I wrote you this song (and now it’s come to an end)
Word

mind = blown.

“I’VE BEEN CALLED FRANK SINATRA.  PEOPLE THINK I LOOK LIKE HIM.  
When Marilyn and I lived in California, I worked at a Shell station in Culver City.  I saw the guy who played Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. I pumped gas for the Indian who always got killed.  I met James Dean and Sal Mineo.

I’ve been clinically dead four times.  I was struck by lightning when I was three.  I was at a water pump when the lightning hit me.  I was out for days.  The next time, my brother pushed me in a swimming pool and I was under for twenty minutes.  The third time, I was driving my ‘48 Plymouth with a ‘52 engine in it, and my left front tire blew out, and I made three complete flips, and I never got a scratch on me.  The last time, a guy pulled me into the water at the power plant.  When they pulled me out, I didn’t have no water in my lungs.

I know how I’m going to die — in fire.  There’s not going to be anything left by then.  Man’s going to destroy everything.

I don’t think man ever landed on the moon.  It was all done on a Hollywood set.  Why would they leave the spaceship and the American flag if it wasn’t rigged?

My theory is that woman came from outer space and man came from the ocean.  Women were brought here in a spaceship.

If I wear a watch, it’ll burn up because of all the electricity in my body.”

ABOUT THE OXFORD PROJECT
In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all of Oxford stood before Feldstein’s lens.

Twenty years later, Feldstein decided to do it again. He invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together they went in search of the Oxford residents Feldstein originally shot in 1984. Some had moved. Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by the passage of time.

This time, they didn’t just pose, they talked—about their lives over the past two decades—about children lost and loves finally found; about living with illness and the wounds of war; about small town values and the promise of an afterlife; about making ends meet and wishing for more; about dreams unfulfilled and simple daily pleasures.