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.

Roman Empire grows to Apsaros 41.6° on the Black Sea

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Apsaros Roman fort, Pliny the Elder, 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 colored coded circles.

Apsaros at latitude 41.6° (lat/lon 41.573, 41.573) is at the easternmost point on the Black Sea. It had a Roman fort at that location and was the furthest east the Empire extended at that time.

Apsaros at 41.6 is revealed in the multiple hot spots found here.

The Seven Sages mosaic with lines drawn at 41.6 degrees latitude from the left and right that intersect with lines projected from the sundial.

Apsaros hot spots shown where there are multiple intersections of predefined lines.

Pliny the Elder wrote of the Apsaros fortress in his book on Natural History. It is a possibility that he was responsible for creating the Seven Sages mosaic which is the stimulus for these inquiries. He was a wealthy man, a prolific author and as knowledgeable as any Roman of geography at that time. 

The Seven Sages mosaic has an astonishing number of multiple overlaps of key points in not just this location but at several other important sites.

 

Roman Empire growing East at Antioch, latitude 36.2°

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

All the sites marked below in the Roman Empire map of 79 AD are indicated on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic. They are identified by the latitude lines revealed by the relationship to the angle of the sun. Those sites’ latitudes are found by finding intersecting hot spots on the radiations coming from the sundial at the top of the mosaic linked to that angle. The sundial plays a key role in indicating the height of the sun and thus the latitude of the physical locations of the sites within the Roman Empire.

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

Antioch was a large fortified Roman city located at the far eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It was used as a staging area for an intended conquest down the Euphrates river of the Parthian empire. The Romans sent a large army down the Euphrates in 53 BC but met with a crushing defeat.Antioch with 7 Sages of Greece indicating a latitude of 36.2°

Antioch depicted in Roman times by kayhankaplan (deviantart.com)

Note the similarity of the city depicted in the background of the Seven Sages mosaic to this depiction of Roman Antioch. There is a river in the foreground with a defensive wall and another defensive wall high above the city. Also, there is a large black area at the base of the hill and an area that seems to symbolize a building.

The 36.2° lines for Antioch with hot spot circled on the sundial lines of the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic.

Note the top line is projected through three of the sages’ eyes and the upper right, a gargoyle’s eye and what appears to be a ball held in the guy on our left’s hand. This alignment of five key items is unlikely to have happened randomly.

Whoever created this mosaic was familiar with the latitude of Antioch and the sphericity of the Earth.

How do I get the lines for the Seven Sages Mosaic analysis?

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Making sense of the Seven Sages mosaic, We must believe what we can see and test.

Last week I posted the Kom Ombo and the Alexandria analysis lines and since then have had several opportunities to explain them to friends. Some people readily agree that the lines clearly form alignments that were obviously created by the artist of the mosaic. Others see only a blizzard of nonsense lines and think I am making up the alignments. Anyone can draw lines between any two points, so what’s the fuss? They say, even if a few spots sometimes do line up, that doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that an artist lined up a few things for an unknown artistic effect.

What I must demonstrate is that each and every line for every one of the geographic locations identified has a minimum of three points of interest accurately forming the line. In fact I have insisted that there be at least three parallel lines and horizontally flipped lines too. Each of these original lines must be meaningfully aligned while standing alone before they are related to anything else that can be linked to them.

In the two posted analyses all those alignments were shown, but they were shown while in relation to many other lines. Before these alignments can be appreciated by a person new to them there must be an unambiguous demonstration of their precision. What I did show with the Kom Ombo and the Alexandria lines on the mosaic, already posted, is that the latitudes indicated in the mosaic were within six miles of the locations of those places important to the Romans in the year 79 AD.

Unfortunately, those alignments on a modern geographic map mean nothing to someone who doesn’t accept the precision of the original alignments on the Seven Sages of Greece mosaic or the necessity of those positions being carefully located on the mosaic for this analysis to work.

Why are the seven sages of Greece interested in a globe?

All the lines in all of the analysis charts are as accurate as is the white line descending from the sundial at the top of the column. That white line is perfectly vertical; it descends exactly from the tip of the sundial. It goes exactly through the eye of the sage wearing the brown shirt. It goes precisely to the tip of the pointing stick, and it goes precisely to the tip of the toe of the sage holding the pointing stick.

At this time I don’t assert anything other than these four points line up over a distance that is more than halfway across the mosaic. So what? That doesn’t mean anything! True enough. Standing alone it only indicates a particular alignment of four points. All I am asking a viewer to do at this time is to agree that those four points line up. If a person is unwilling to admit that those points line up then there is no reason to progress further because this whole analysis is based on the alignment of points on this mosaic.

Some people prefer to believe that extraterrestrials created ancient things rather than humans.

Roman Empire’s intellectual center at Alexandria is at latitude 31.2°

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7 Sages of Greece mosaic, Alexandria Egypt, Library of Alexandria, Seven Sages of Greece, Sundial and Library of Alexandria

This is the basic picture of the 7 Sages of Greece for linking the Roman Empire to many sites.

At the top center of the mosaic is a sundial. It plays a key role in locating the height of the sun and thus the latitude of the physical locations within the Roman Empire.

The city of Alexandria, Egypt, after Alexander the Great founded it at the mouth of the Nile River in 331 BC, became the location for the greatest library in the world. This library was the center of intellectual activity for the Western world for millennia. There is a commemorative sundial (lat/lon 31.2064, 29.9148) 517 meters 117° from the center of the modern Library of Alexandria.

A sundial located near the modern Library of Alexandria.

It was near this library that in 240 BC Eratosthenes measured the sun’s angle above the horizon and compared it to the report of a well near Aswan on the Nile River.

Sunlight reflecting off the water at the bottom of well at Kom Ombo

He knew approximately how far south along the Nile River that well was located and by comparing the distance to the angle of the sun at Alexandria on the same date he was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. Kom Ombo was a fortified location at the south-east corner of the Roman Empire at the time the Seven Sages mosaic was created.

Where the sundial lines intersect the Alexandria latitude lines are hot spot circles.

These lines are precisely parallel at 31.2° above horizontal and flipped horizontally to also be precisely parallel at 31.2°. The lines were drawn through eyes, fingertips, toe tips, scroll tips and horizontal and vertical lines defining the center of the picture.

The 31.2° lines derived from this mosaic and drawn onto it in blue lines.

This map of The Roman Empire is for 54 AD, 25 years before Mt. Vesuvius erupted.

Alexandria is at the north end of the Nile River. It is between here and Kom Ombo at the southern end of this picture that the circumference of the spherical Earth was first calculated and demonstrated.

The Seven Sages of Greece mosaic demonstrates that the Romans knew the Earth was a sphere.