Et in arcadia ego.

[zotz]

A few months ago there was a news article about some ex-Bletchley park people considering a mysterious inscription on a monument in Staffordshire, reputedly containing information about the Holy Grail. Well, they don't think so. This is entirely unsurprising. The Holy Blood And The Wholly Specious has a lot to answer for, even if it has managed to indirectly pay for the Roslin Chapel's restoration.

There's a page about the Poussin in question here.

Rather more practically, here's an article about a possible treatment for rabies, previously 100% fatal once it became symptomatic (bar one single person in the sixties, I believe).

Comments

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Isn't there some theory about the geometric proportions in the picture creating a map, or something equally insane?

Apophenia still isn't in the OED, you know.
You shock me. It isn't on dictionary.com either; what does it mean?

[zotz]

Isn't there some theory about the geometric proportions in the picture creating a map

Oh, hundreds of mutually-incompatible theories, I would guess.

what does it mean?

Right up your street, I'd have thught. In use since the fifties, apparently, to name the tendency to impute apparently-meaningful patterns and connections to entirely random data.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Good word. I don't know if you remember the Simon Singh book and TV series "The code book" which had a cryptographic challenge and a cash prize. I set about solving them. For one exercise, I assumed that the code was of a certain type and started to break it using that assumption. I'd got about a quarter of a message about A stargate opening, something about the time being right and a message being sent -- apocalyptic stuff. The key with which it was encoded seemed to be a bunch of gibberish three letter words though which made no sense. Eventually I discovered that the code was a different type and I'd been seeing these messages in the random noise. This probably says something about my subconscious but I am not sure what.

[zotz]

Probably just that you're normal, I'm afraid.

Yes, it's an excellent word. recently popularised by Bill Gibson in Pattern Recognition.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Excellent word, I shall try to slip it into conversation whenever possible!
Did you see the recent article about the image of the Virgin Mary on someone's toasted cheese sandwich?

[zotz]

Yes. Case in point, of course.

Whenever I see the photo, I think of those little kitchen blowtorches you use to scorch puddings. Can't imagine why.

$28 000? Excuse me, I have some puddings to scorch . . .

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

*grin* same thing occurred to me, actually.
Some years ago, an ex of mine gave me, as a birthday present, a pen-sized (well, if your pens are large-ish) blow-torch, specifically for the purposes of addressing toast, and cooking steak. I never got round to doing the former, but I did try the latter. It was fine for _one_ steak, but if you're doing two, you have to stop and re-fill it half way through, which is not do good.

[zotz]

Addressing toast? Are we getting back to us posting you stuff? Or did you just mean writing people's names on the toast to make sure they don't steal each other's slices?

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I was intending to send someone some toast, but never got around to it. Although having gone out with childeric for almost four years, I'm amazing that i never thought of addressing food in that way!

[zotz]

You'd have thought that under those circumstances it would be obvious.

[zotz]

He'll be along in a minute to complain about being maligned. But he likes it really.

[darkstones.livejournal.com]

I believe the theory you are referring to is outlined in 'The Holy Place', by Henry Lincoln - co-author of Holy Blood Holy Greed.

Quote form the sleeve blurb - "What is now revealed is an immense geometric temple ..... a sparkling constellation of pentacles, circles and hexagons, whose engineering complexity far exceeds that of the Pyramids "

In other words, a map of the south of France with some triangles drawn on it.

Personally, I much prefer the 'soup line' project of Bill Drummond - he will come and make you soup if your house lies on a straight line drawn through Belfast & Nottingham.
(http://www.penkiln-burn.com/jobs/job7.html).