Monday, December 28



My friend sent me this photo of a fishing boat decorated for Christmas, quite unaware that as part of a school wide project we have all been researching and writing about Christmas traditions and customs in our own countries. (And before the thought police get busy - most countries of other faiths have Christian communities and hence Christmas traditions have grown up around them.)

Anyway, the significance as far as Greece is concerned can be gleaned from this article (one of many I explored, please note, concerned tutors!)

ekathimerini.com | Boat vs tree: A conflict of Christmas cultures ...

15 Dec 2004 ... A Christmas tree (left) and a Christmas boat, part of an old Greek custom, are seen in this picture taken in a central square in ...

Monday, November 16

The Summons Stone still putting the stars to flight?

Clusters are streaming at up to 1000 kilometres per second towards one particular part of the cosmos (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 686, p L49).

1400 clusters are part of the flow, and it continues to around 3 billion light years from Earth, a sizeable fraction of the distance to the edge of the observable universe (arxiv.org/abs/0910.4958).

The dark flow appears to have been caused shortly after the big bang (that's what they think!) by something no longer in the observable universe.

Scientists say one explanation for the flow would be the gravity of a huge concentration of matter, but this is very unlikely. Not sure how big they mean, but I reckon the comet we decimated has probably collected to itself a lot of space debris and may well constitute a huge concentration.

Can't help hoping that our stones have somehow returned to this earth - or maybe the Lightbringers have garnered them, ready to use again - for us?

Wednesday, October 14

Waves!

Grigor,a Russian schoolmate, just told me on Facebook I was wrong about the seventh wave. (Also blogged here - Today's Find (Actually it was the day before I started the new blog, but I wanted to be dramatic.)

He had been to an art exhibition in St. Petersburg of this painter (of whom I have to confess, I have never heard) called Aivazovsky. There was a painting called the Ninth Wave and on the notes it said " In nautical lore, the ninth wave is the deadliest."
So I decided to do a bit of online exploring and found this painter has also done a painting called "Tenth Wave" (At the moment I am finding it difficult to see the difference between them, but perhaps they are a series?)

And then I came across Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors VII.xvii: - Of some others No. 2. " That fluctus Decumanus, or the tenth wave is greater and more dangerous then any other, some no doubt will be offended if we deny; and hereby we shall seem to contradict antiquity........ "and he goes on "Which notwithstanding is evidently false; nor can it be made out by observation either upon the shore or the Ocean, as we have with diligence explored in both. And surely in vain we expect a regularity in the waves of the Sea, or in the particular motions thereof..."

So no answers - another one for Bang goes the Theory to ignore?

Wednesday, September 30

Message in a bottle

Well, the Big Bang people seem to be a blowout (or a bleve, as Lexie might say!) I'm disappointed that they are apparently so lacking in initiative, or whatever it takes to get them interested.

Lexie has moved to Hastings and she has just told me that this morning, on the beach (having followed my example and taken up beachcombing) she found a bottle with a note inside.

She took it home and it took her some time to extract the note, which said "If you read this, smile!" So she smiled! But she says she thinks it was probably thrown into the sea from near where she picked it up, so not madly exciting. She will recommit it to the deep at high tide tomorrow, she says. The other somewhat bizarre aspect is that the bottle, a bottled water by 'belu' says all profits go to clean water projects, and we don't feel that throwing bottles into the sea really supports this idea. Still, it is glass.

Thursday, September 10

Bibs & Bobs

  • I have removed the link to the competition that I ran a while ago, but you can still view the entries here.
  • No response from the Bang goes the Theory Team- myabe if you come across this you might like to prompt them as well, see what happens. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang/

Tuesday, August 25

Bang goes the Theory! BBC

I am about to ask the BBC programme Bang goes the Theory to see if they can test my hypothesis. Of course, we know it works - see Epilogue links above!

Maths Plays a Part - excerpts

………………………………….“That’s all very well” Alex complained, as Artemis sank gracefully back onto a rock, “but you still haven’t really explained what and how we are to be the answer too.”

“Grammar, dear boy, grammar. Though I suppose that in the modern form of Greek in which you are used to conversing, it is parsed correctly. The essence of the matter is this. The Darksiders have enmeshed a comet, which draws off power from the vortices, from evil doers and evil thinkers. At a point when Earth and Mars are in conjunction, which I believe I mentioned before, the power of the comet will be at such a point that its magnetic fields and the magnetic fields of the earth will clash, causing the earth to implode. If the linear alignment is right, Mars will receive the energy output, and once again a big bang will have made a planet habitable.”

“And we are supposed to stop that!” Sandy almost wailed, as Lexie said “Big Bang? It sounds a bit weak to call it a big bang, something of such significance. Bleve, that sounds better. Sorry, my Mother works at the Fire Service College, so I know some funny words, although I admit I’m not sure what you are describing really is a bleve.”

Alex was drawing with a stick in the sand. “What do you know, my maths lessons are actually of some use. All that mugging up on speed, velocity, angles, immoveable objects and irresistible force.” He beamed at them.

“Alex, we’re delighted for you” Lexie said, sounding, Sandy thought, not unlike Artemis “but maths is not my strong point and you’ve lost me.” She glanced at Artemis, who didn’t look in the least lost. She looked, it occurred to Lexie, smug.

“I think I’ve got it right “Alex said slowly “I’ve got the theory, anyway and that’s a start. If we can use a force from the earth, here” he pointed to his drawings in the sand, “and send it up against this comet, it should slow the spinning of the earth, irresistible force meets immovable object. I assume the comet is immoveable, you said they had enmeshed it?” He looked at Artemis.

“It’s dangerous to assume, it makes an ass out of you and me, get it?” Sandy declared. You took the stick from Alex’s hand and in her turn, demonstrated in the sand.

“No, I think we can, must assume, that the comet has been fixed in its present location by the Darksiders. If it was following its own trajectory it would be impossible to use it as a storehouse or to ensure that the mathematics of the, erm, what was it Lexie, the bleve are functional.”

“But the comet will still be there” complained Sandy “they’ll be able to start all over again, collecting power, speeding up the earth. And we might be dead by then, who’ll there be to stop it next time?”

“No, Sandy,” Alex explained “because, and this isn’t Maths, it is something I read, might have been on that Vortex theory website, we’re going to be altering the physical states, the magnetic fields and the forces. The comet will probably be attracted to another planet, or even the sun, and will be taken out of earth’s orbit.”

Lexie sounded doubtful “I’m not sure that ‘probably will be attracted etc. is really very reassuring. Don’t we need to be able to guarantee that this can’t happen again?”……………………………………………….

……………………………………………………..

Before Artemis could answer Alex broke in excitedly “See Sandy, you worked that out. Mind you, I did too. But what I thought” he started drawing in the sand again, “near where I live there’s something called a hotspot. Its something I think the Darksiders use to help them. A couple of times I think they’ve used this particular one to scare me. Anyway, my brother told me about them. Sometimes, when they erupt, like a volcano, or an earthquake, they create waterspouts, which are a sort of tornado, a vortex,” He drew a vortex, spinning, in the sand. “I thought maybe, if we could, we could summon up vortices, each of us, and project them towards the comet. The spinning effect will increase the power, or the force, which will help in slowing down the spin of the earth.”

………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………

“Meanwhile, to get back to what Alex was saying” Lexie changed the subject “what happens if we slow the earth down too much….”

“We’ll all fall off” Sandy suggested.

“No, I guess what I mean is, how do we tell when we’ve got it right, how to get it right?”

”There must be a Lighbringer who can work out how long we need to hold it in place for it to have the right effect. Of course, they will have to do it at the time, because I don’t think there is a way for us to calculate exactly how much force we can produce.”

“I’m sure there’s more than one amongst the pantheon who can work out the answers to both those questions. I just hope they all come up with the same answer.”

“The thing is” Alex clearly hadn’t finished, “the things is, I found a map of the world on which someone had plotted suspected hotspots. You probably wont believe this, I know I thought I had spots in front of my eyes” Alex eyed them to make sure they had appreciated his joke “there are three hotspots in conjunction, the one I’ve already mentioned, one off Tasmania’s south coast…”

“Tasmania may not look very big on the map” interrupted Sandy, “but it is roughly the same size as England and I can’t see . . “

“Look” Alex drew what looked like an apple in the sand “this is Tasmania, sort of, and the hotspot I’m talking about is about here. There is another one…”

“No,” said Sandy, “that looks like it could even be about where I live, off Surf Beach even.”

“That’s the thing “Alex said “I bet it is. If all this is meant to be, it would be, wouldn’t it.”

“Err,” Lexie ventured, “I don’t want to spoil things, but I don’t live anywhere near the sea.”

“I know” Alex agreed “that’s been puzzling me. The hotspot off England is near a place called, oh what was it, I had a mnemonic for it, ‘as things go’, asthings…”

“Hastings?” Lexie was amazed.

“Yes, Hastings, that’s it.”

“My Gran lives in Hastings” said a confounded Lexie.

“Then that has to be it. Look, look at the trajectory.” He drew again in the sand.

“That’s fine” objected Lexie “if the comet happens to be sitting there” she pointed to the apex of the three lines” but what if it is over here!” Pointing again.

“But it won’t be, will it?” said Alex firmly, “not if it’s meant to be.”

http://marijsak.googlepages.com/thestonesummons


The Stone Summons (ID #1063661)
http://www.lulu.com/content/1063661

Friday, August 21

Climate change could change Earth's tilt BUT otoh, Changes in Earth's Tilt Control When Glacial Cycles End

"And climate change can also affect the Earth's spin. Previously, Landerer and colleagues showed that global warming would cause Earth's mass to be redistributed towards higher latitudes. Since that pulls mass closer to the planet's spin axis, it causes the planet to rotate faster..." New Scientist

Changes in Earth's Tilt Control When Glacial Cycles End
- Tilt is a 100,000-year Planetary Pacemaker [from Nature]

and then of course,

there is the effect of interfering with the earth's rate of spin as I well know (Please! - Παρακαλώ!)


The Stone Summons (ID #1063661)
http://www.lulu.com/content/1063661


Saturday, June 6

The Winner!

1st


Guido Fawkes, Malaga, Spain

[We chose this one as the winner because it turned the competition on it's head. Here it is the stone itself that is being summoned, rather than doing the summoning.]



Saturday, May 2

New entries!

Sorry, I've fallen a bit behind on this - and I still have more to do.  If you wanted to see the entries full-size, sort of, you could have a look here

I really like Nemo and the cat, I wouldn't have understood the Dr. Who one, but luckily it came with a lengthy explanation.

Monday, April 20

Stone faces galore!

This wasn't supposed to be a competition for stone faces, per se!

But see today's (above in slide show) from Spain for a slightly different take and I really like both the Malaysian and Norwegian entries - see if you can work out which is which!

In case you can't see it, details on entering the Competuition can be found HERE!


Friday, April 3

Aussie Competition entry

Do watchfor this one in the slideshow above. I am almost tempted to post it here because I think it might be my favourite so far!

It uses a stone, but almost it looks as if it could be a koala - meant or coincidence?

Friday, March 20

Competition Update

I've removed the competiton entries I'd posted here, and put them into a slide show - see above.

So I will just acknowledge that Barney was the first to enter. People haven't on the whole, made a clear indication of their origin, so you can try and match them up from the following list (no prizes for this!)

  • Canada
  • Italy
  • Greece
  • England
  • Wales
  • New Zealand

It's interesting how similar some of the entries are - makes it harder to judge. (Hint!)

Tuesday, February 3

Competition! Competition! Competition!

Lexie sent me some photos (taken on the Malvern Hills, near where she lives) and it gave me an idea for a new project;  you've probably heard or read of travelling dwarves, whoops, no, wrong word, travelling gnomes, if not see here:
 http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/3859/ 

This is not exactly the same but it made me think of it - my idea is to have a competition along the lines of Lexie's photos below.  Hopefully we'll get  entries from all over the world, and the competition will end when 50 individuals have entered.  You can enter more than once and you will score higher if it is obvious where your photo was taken.  Me and my panel ("one in three and three in one") will judge it.  And no, we can't be part of the competition.

Email emtries to atheothoros@gmail.com 

Monday, February 2

Hektomori! Also Wow!

Sandy has just pointed out this, and whilst I realise you can all see it when you click on the map, I'd missed it, so maybe you did too.  Iam well impressed, if that doesn't sound pig-headed (that's what Barney called me after I got a distinction for this blog)

Current Country Totals
From 20 Mar 2008 to 23 Jan 2009


United States (US)224
United Kingdom (GB)83
Australia (AU)58
Greece (GR)37
Canada (CA)19
France (FR)12
New Zealand (NZ)10
Germany (DE)8
Cyprus (CY)8
Turkey (TR)8
India (IN)7
Europe (EU)7
Malaysia (MY)7
Singapore (SG)7
Netherlands (NL)6
Switzerland (CH)6
Italy (IT)6
Brazil (BR)4
Thailand (TH)4
Sweden (SE)4
Chile (CL)3
Hungary (HU)3
Ireland (IE)3
Spain (ES)2
Czech Republic (CZ)2
Finland (FI)2
Denmark (DK)2
Poland (PL)2
Belgium (BE)2
Korea, Republic of (KR)2
Japan (JP)2
Colombia (CO)2
Indonesia (ID)2
South Africa (ZA)2
Pakistan (PK)2
Philippines (PH)2
Egypt (EG)2
French Polynesia (PF)1
Peru (PE)1
Mauritius (MU)1
Reunion (RE)1
Argentina (AR)1
Norway (NO)1
Gibraltar (GI)1
Mexico (MX)1
Israel (IL)1
Qatar (QA)1
Slovenia (SI)1
United Arab Emirates (AE)1
Serbia (RS)1
Slovakia (SK)1
Algeria (DZ)1
Romania (RO)1