The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece – line 73

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Notes to a diary, The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece

The Seven Sages found the essence of Stoic thought centuries before it was refined into what we now understand to be stoicism. I like the idea behind line 73, which seems to be to “Enjoy what is easy and natural.” I say seems to be because to put modern words into people’s ideas from 2,500 years ago is presumptuous. And yet, we must proceed in the moment with what we have.

The more famous line from that distant time is “Know thyself.” It seems to be a moving and sensitive thought but it is hard to do and fundamentally unnatural. People have been sitting around for a couple of thousand years now studying every nuance of themselves from their topmost hair through the centermost center of their navel and onto the tippiest of the tip of their toe, and what do they have to report that doesn’t strike the normally sane person as useless nonsense?

However, “Enjoy what is easy and natural” is easy to do and is as natural as eating, pooping, having sex and sleeping. No problem, it’s that easy! And, if you are having a problem with any of those basic natural functions it’s time to reconsider all the time spent on knowing one’s esoteric self and get back to appreciating one’s natural self.

I have interpreted the 147 wisdoms of the Seven Sages as action terms for living a healthy life embedded in a vibrant society which is functioning in harmony with what the world has made available.

It is easy and natural walking along the path to the Way.

Gastrophysics – The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence

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Charles Spence, Gastrophysics, Love Your Life, The New Science of Eating

As background research for my book Love Your Life, I read Gastrophysics – The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence. This isn’t a book about dieting in the usual sense of losing weight but rather about how to enjoy eating. It’s about much more than the simple act of putting food in your mouth, chewing and swallowing. In part, it’s about what restaurateurs can do to make that experience as pleasurable as possible, or in some venues as memorable as possible and damn the shallow definitions of pleasure. “The aim nowadays is to prepare the best-tasting food possible and to complement that with the most immersive and engaging multisensory stimulation ‘off the plate’ as well.”

Spence traces the historical roots for that approach to the table experience of the Italian artistic group of the 1930s known as the Futurists. It was “conducted” by Filippo Marinetti, who introduced natural sound backgrounds, big fans blowing wind across the table, perfumed dishes, textured clothing for your companions to stroke while eating, perhaps with some loud Wagnerian opera engulfing the party. Probably naked girls strutting about with leopards. Who knows? The weirder the better!

This book explores the science that is trying to discover the statistical specifics behind what makes our eating experiences memorable. Would fur-covered dishes and silverware be appealing or repulsive? Would a trout be more appreciated placed vertically or horizontally across the plate? Neither. A diagonal from lower left to upper right is preferred by most people.

The primary aim of the book, which is aimed at the top chefs, is to explore how to create the most robust memories possible. People have great difficulty in remembering the taste of the culinary experience, but they can remember the weird things surrounding those experiences and that helps them to remember how much they enjoyed the food.

Because I am writing a book that is based in part on food and because it has such an impact on human social interactions, his points about memorability are important for me to consider when designing the book. It is to be a strange little book more in the tradition of Epictetus than Spence. No! On second thought, it is a blend of these extremely opposite styles of people and of living. And yet, strangely enough, almost identical. Epictetus was a slave in the infamous Roman Emperor Nero’s court and no doubt personally observed amazing activities that Spence would applaud as his ideal. Spence is promoting strange and extraordinarily expensive dinners and that is exactly what Nero was reveling in, and Epictetus was participating too, in his own way. Read my rendition of Epictetus. He based his theory of Stoicism, without much doubt, on what he had observed in Nero’s personal life of extraordinary luxury.

Spence is heading toward what Epictetus had experienced and was rejecting.

Love Your Life is going through multiple versions.

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Can I save billions from suffering?, Evolution of an idea, Love Your Life diary thoughts, Love Your Life strategy

The cover of Love Your Life has gone through over thirty-eight versions. It has been saved that many times using a new number. I begin new visual projects with a new name with the name ending in a 01 and then save it whenever there has been a significant update. That way I can go back to earlier versions and pick up some detail that might have been eliminated later and reinsert it into the image. When I look at the first renditions it was labeled “Love Our Life” and before the graphic was begun the working title was “Laugh Out Loud” – diet because it was going to be such an easy diet plan that everyone would laugh at how easy it was to follow the plan.

The problem as I saw it then, and still see it, is that there is so much guilt laden into all the diet plans already out there. Also, it was obvious that the billions of overweight people didn’t want to be overweight, but didn’t know how to get their weight under their voluntary control. The various diet plans obviously don’t work or people would simply gravitate to that plan and do it. Ultimately it is simply burning off as many calories as you consume, but that idea isn’t working and the proof is the vast numbers of people who are overweight.

I am convinced that the Love Your Life plan will work because I have been doing it and without the slightest discomfort have been losing two pounds per month for seven months. Losing weight slowly is best and doing it consistently means it is easy to form successful habits. Oprah wouldn’t be yo-yo-ing with her weight if she knew how not to. She must have suffered greatly to have lost 42 pounds since December 22, 2016. It is a coincidence, but that is the date that Debbie and I began our diets. We have each lost 14 pounds and had fun doing it and it is unlikely that we will bounce back up. Also, Oprah is reported to be a partial owner of Weight Watchers so she has a financial interest in losing weight and thus promoting her own company.

I have been writing this book for quite a while but don’t really have very much monetary interest in its success. My interest is in having it become successful in helping people reach their self-perceived ideal health. But, I have come to face the facts that to make things successful they must play the money-driven game. Thus, I have been creating this book with the intent of it having a large circulation. According to Amazon the typical sales of a book is less than 250 copies. From the point of view of helping billions of people with their weight that is unacceptable.

So I am trying to design the Love Your Life book into a billion-sales form. Absurd!

A Crack in Creation by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg

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A Crack in Creation, Book review, Jennifer A. Doudna, Jennifer Doudna, Samuel H. Sternberg

On January 1, 2014 I chose Jennifer Doudna as Probaway Person of the Year 2014. I choose a person who did something so significant the year before that it will be remembered 500 years in the future. At the time I made that prediction Doudna was almost unknown to the general public but her creating a workable CRISPR technology has been picked up by thousands of research scientists since her discovery. It has propelled her into a position of having to make ethical and political decisions and statements so she wrote this book.

A Crack in Creation by Jennifer Doudna & Samuel Sternberg is about the creation of CRISPR and thus the human ability to control the exact DNA of any living, dead, or potential species. It is a significant event, perhaps with even more long-term effects than the creation of life itself. I make that audacious statement because the natural processes of life are limited by natural selection. That process is a blind adaptation to past experiences of a given species. CRISPR is different in that it can be directed by human forethought and even computer forethought to create living creatures to do our bidding. Life now can have a forethought and a preconceived purpose. It is a God-like purpose rather than just a natural selection of some random life form that didn’t die before it reproduced!

Most of the book is about the people, technology, and history of creating the CRISPR technique of modifying DNA. It is valuable having an overview of what these research scientists are doing and discovering. There is a discussion of what technologies are presently being developed that will be making an impact on various living things.

With that background information laid out in terms a general reader can follow but probably not make any personal use of, Doudna explores the immediate future uses of CRISPR. As a scientist, she is eager to explore all the nuances of what nature has provided for us, but as a responsible human being, she is concerned that a technology this powerful will create problems humans may not be able to cope with.

The last chapters of the book deal with the physical and moral implications of how CRISPR may be developed in the near future. She has called high-level conferences of the chief scientists and policy makers in this field to discuss these almost imponderable problems. They are trying to create international guidelines for the development of cures for diseases and especially to go very slow on modifying the heritable parts of human DNA that would be carried forward to descendants. Her thoughts may be noble and responsible, but there are already others with other motivations, like creating descendants with super abilities of various sorts, and of course of making money. With a technology with this power, there are infinite possibilities.

CRISPR is the genie out of the bottle that may prove bigger than humanity.

 

Some women are intriguing. #4 – Mona Lisa

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A quality restoration of Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa magic, Mona Lisa optical illusion

The five hundred-year-old painting of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is considered the most intriguing picture in the world. Strangely very few modern people have been close enough to it to get the magic and know it only by reputation. It is in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, behind extra heavy bulletproof glass and the crowds in front of it make for difficult viewing. Also, five hundred years of aging and other abuses such as many cleanings and over paintings with varnish have interfered with the magic. I spent an enormous amount of time correcting those problems and you may now see the Mona Lisa smile more nearly as Leonardo did.

To get the effect you must resize the picture to normal head height and get your eyes about a foot away from hers. Look into one eye for a minute and then the other eye for ten seconds, then shift from one eye to the other every ten seconds several times. Notice that she will start looking at you. When this illusion is clearly felt, begin slowly moving your head from side to side looking from one eye to the other.

The strange effect this procedure brings to your mind is that her eyes actually move! It is different from the eyes always seeming to be looking at you because you can actually see her eyes shift. What makes this illusion work is that when you are back several feet she isn’t looking at you but over your right shoulder. But, when you get close that angle of her viewing is still within your face so it seems she is looking at your right eye and then into you. Once your mind becomes convinced she is really looking at you then when you move a little to one side your mind makes her eyes jump to keep them looking at you. That’s the Mona Lisa magic and you can get it by following the procedure I’ve outlined above.

Billions of people have looked at the Mona Lisa but few have actually experienced the magic. Now you can.

The Mona Lisa is looking at your soul if you are up close.

If you look at Mona Lisa in the right way your skin will crawl.

 

 

Today I showed off some mockups for the LOL diet.

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LOL diet, LOL diet is a lifestyle, LOL is a lifestyle, LOL is not a diet its some easy habits.

Today I showed a couple of my retired professional friends my current mockups of my LOL diet tchotchkes. One friend was a successful owner of a company whose products you would recognize, and the other a successful professional artist of things you have seen. There was lots of praise at first for the presentation quality, and we talked about the various aspects for two hours, and the upshot was that some of the things that seemed good at first got a little weak after sustained viewing.

The starkness of some of the black and white presentations need to be softened with some colors, probably pastel colors. Also, it was generally agreed that some of the presentations needed pictures of things that should be eaten. It was agreed that everything should be positive in what was out there for purchase and that any negative comments about other diet plans should be put into “campaign” literature.

One complaint I didn’t expect was a challenge to the name “Laugh Out Loud diet”. It was claimed that it has an underlying negative feeling and hostility. It also has a undertone of demanding that we comply with an implied command, that we should laugh at some hidden thing about diets or dieters or fat people. Perhaps Lots of Love diet would be better, or just LOL diet, which would imply lots of love.

These are not trivial thoughts because this method of coping with obesity and the health issues that derive from eating problems of a billion people must have the best possible presentation. Without a fantastic presentation, this whole concept will wither and die. It needs to be attention-getting, and interest-holding, and functionally valid to be successful. There are deeply entrenched people making literally trillions of dollars off the ill health created by the sale of things that cause the problems. There is big money to be made by the sales of sugar, salt, grease and booze.

If the LOL diet doesn’t grab attention it will die. If it doesn’t maintain interest, it will die. If it isn’t functionally effective for a substantial number of people, it will die.

If we don’t get the LOL diet right from the beginning, it will die.

Intriguing lines on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic

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Hot spots of the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic, Seven Sages of Greece in Naples museum, Seven Sages of Greece mosaic, The complete set of Seven Sages of Greece mosaic lines

The strange alignments on this mosaic must have been done for a purpose.

Why would an artist go to the trouble of having alignments within the picture with gargoyle eyes in the border? It would be unusual to have five key points in perfect alignment, as was done from the upper right gargoyle as I’ve shown with a bold red line. I’ve left line gaps to show the eyes are aligned perfectly. It is intriguing that the line goes from the gargoyle’s eye to a sage’s eye on to another sage’s eye and yet to another sage’s eye and then to another sage’s hand holding something. A parallel red line goes from the gargoyle’s eye on the left center border through a limb point up to the sundial’s point.

All of the border gargoyle’s eyes have alignments with multiple significant points like eyes, fingers, toes, box corners, tree points, and the sundial point. Furthermore, each of the gargoyle eye-based lines have parallel lines that also have hits on significant points.

I’ve drawn in enough of these hit lines to make it obvious that they were intentionally aligned. The question becomes, “Why would a Roman citizen in the few years just before Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD go to the trouble and expense of having this strange mosaic created?”

I made the assumption that since the sages we are discussing are interested in a globe with latitude lines drawn upon it that they would be talking about locations on the Earth. If that were the case then the angle of the lines would indicate the latitude of places significant to the wealthy Roman who paid to have the mosaic created. I then took these lines and sought for parallel lines in the mosaic and they were there in abundance for each of the lines. I then flipped the lines so they would form the same angle but coming from the opposite direction. Whoever created the mosaic had created points of interest at the intersection of these two identical angles. Apparently, the crossing lines were created to assure there was no mistake in their intention to emphasize these lines and points. They set these points on the radiant lines coming from the point of the sundial. The sundial is significant because the sun would have been used to measure the angle above the horizon of the sun on identified days to obtain the latitude of the local site. The places that matched all of these strange criteria were the corners of the Roman Empire in 79 AD. Pompeii, (lat/lon 40.75) where the mosaic was buried until 1899, is marked with a black circle but was not indicated on the mosaic.

This map of The Roman Empire is for 54 AD, 25 years before Mt. Vesuvius erupted with the sites inside of colored coded circles.

1. Kom Ombo latitude 24.5° is marked with red lines on the mosaic and a red circle on the map. It is at the south-eastern corner of the Empire.
2. Alexandria blue circle at 31.2° at the mouth of the Nile River, where the circumference of the Earth was first measured.
3. Antioch magenta circle at 36.2° at the eastern border of the Empire,
4. Apsaros pink circle at 41.6° at the north-eastern edge.
5. Purpuraires purple circle at 31.5° at the south-western border.
6. York yellow circle at 53.8° at the north-western border.
7. Rome green circle at 41.9° at the center of the Roman Empire in 79 AD.

It was the lines above that encouraged me to pursue the vast number of parallel lines to be found between significant points on the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece mosaic.

These are the lines I found on the Seven Sages of Greece to be significant enough to pursue.

 

Here are most of the lines I discovered and drew on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic. Click for bigger image.

These are the hot spots that had multiple crossings for a given site. Some spots are overlapped and relate to several sites.

The lines and hot spots on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic are real, but the sanity of the creators and of my pursuit of them is in doubt.

 

Seven Sages of Greece mosaic has strange circles

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Circles of latitude on the globe., Seven Sages of Greece mosaic, The bench forms a circle.

The Seven Sages of Greece mosaic has a globe with latitude circles.

Click the picture for a bigger image so you can see the globe more clearly and you will observe that it has latitude lines with the poles implied drawn upon it. There is a second set of latitude-like lines but these would not match the poles. Modern globes have longitude lines converging on the North and South poles, but the mosaic doesn’t have them.

The lines drawn upon the original globe I have extended into complete circles so their center points could be found and I drew small circles about the point for easy visibility. That turns out to be significant because the center of the smallest circle on the globe is identical to the center of a much larger circle drawn in light gray color following the line of the circumference of the bench the sages are sitting on.

Displayed here are bench-size circles centered on previously found hot spots.

In an effort to find a significance for these circles I repeated them using formerly defined hot spots for centers. There were some random coincidences, but I didn’t find any that satisfied my criterion of multiple significant intersections as found for the lines discussed in former posts.

Another unusual feature that must be commented upon is the leg of the sage under the sundial; that leg is shaped remotely like the Italian peninsula and set at the same angle relative to north. I made an effort to overlay modern maps upon the mosaic but was unsuccessful in finding a comfortable conformity.

The mosaic seems to define the periphery of the Roman Empire between the founding of “York” 71 AD and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Roman Empire is centered on Rome at 41.9° latitude

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Latitudes of Rome and Apsaros compared, Seven Sages of Greece, Seven Sages of Greece mosaic

Rome (lat/lon 41.9, 12.5) in 79 AD was the capital at the center of the still rapidly expanding empire when Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic.

This map of the Roman Empire is for 54 AD, 25 years before Mt. Vesuvius erupted, with the sites inside of color-coded circles.

There is a problem for this analysis based on lines of latitude because Rome is nearly on the same latitude as Apsaros, which is one of the outposts of the Empire. Rome is a large city and its center is about eighteen miles north of Apsaros, which was a fortress on the east shore of the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus). Apsaros is fifteen hundred miles due east of Rome. In the chart below this nearness of latitude is demonstrated by the pink and overlapping green line extending from the lower right corner upward to just below the upper left corner. Apsaros is at 41.6° and Rome at 41.9. The physical distance between the latitude lines is about eighteen miles, and their zero point three degrees separation on the picture is quite small, as is demonstrated by the closeness of the two lines even after being projected corner to corner on the picture seen below.

Rome is located on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic by green lines set left and right at its latitude angle of 41.9°.

Even with this closeness of angle the lines projected for Rome were clearly different in their creation of hot spot intersections with the projected lines coming from the sundial at the top of the picture. The hot spots are created by an overlap of a minimum of three separate lines, with at least two coming from a separate set of three aligned important points such as sages’ eyes or toes etc.. The green circles are hot spots for Rome and they have their lines of latitude shown going from important points to at least two other important points. The Apsaros lines have been omitted because this is a demonstration of Rome’s lines, but the Apsaros hot spots were created using the same criteria as Rome’s and have been shown with their color-coded pink circles.

It was a surprise to me how very different the two sets of hot spot circles were because I had located these two sets of lines and their associated circles without reference to the other. One would think that with the lines being so very close together in their angles there would be similar hot spot hits, but you may observe they are totally different.

Rome latitude lines in green with their hot spot overlaps with the sundial lines in green circles. The Apsaros hot spots are pink circles and are included for comparison.

The gray circle is a foretaste of another set of strange lines. This circle is the center of the bench the sages are seated upon. The center of this circle was also a hot spot for Rome line crossings.

Whoever created the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic had their latitude lines accurate to better than a tenth of a degree.

Roman Empire grows to York at 53.9° in Britain

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The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece, York and the 7 Sages of Greece

York (Eboracum, Britannia) (lat/lon 53.962, -1.080) was founded in 71 AD. It was the northwest corner of the Roman Empire when the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic was buried in the Mt. Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD. At that time the Roman legions were moving up the island of Britannia and by 122 AD were building Hadrian’s wall eighty miles north of modern York.

This map of The Roman Empire is for 54 AD, 25 years before Mt. Vesuvius erupted, with the sites inside of color-coded circles.

York is in the top left of the map above and the green area of Britannia is where the Romans were in control in 54 AD.

York, England, with the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic indicating with yellow lines a latitude of 53.8°

Below is the Seven Sages mosaic picture with the image removed, leaving only the lines at 53.8° and the radiant lines from the sundial showing the hot spots of multiple crossovers for easier visualization of the relationships. Click the pictures for bigger images.

The 53.8° lines for York with the spots of multiple overlapping of the lines.

Note that the vertical center line for the mosaic departs from the top center gargoyle’s nose downward through the top sage’s eye, onto the center of the whole picture where the horizontal dividing line is met, down to the sage’s foot at a point that is a hot spot for other site line crossings; on to another foot that is also a site for other multiple line crossings and down to the bottom gargoyle’s nose.

The Seven Sages mosaic must have been created between the founding of Eboracum in 71 AD and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.