Re: VMs: VMS: OT: Mithraism, Tauroctony (Astrology/Longitude.)

[jporter@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Julie Porter)]

>
>  > [Rene:] I can frankly say that I've never heard of [Tauroctony]
>  > and never seen [Mithraism] in connection with astrology.
>
>See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism (section "Mithraism and astrology").
>
>About longitude and latitude: my apologies for starting another
>off-topic discussion. Rene is right, I should have looked up the
>answer in a book instead of asking here. And I second Elmar's advice.
>Note that if you don't know why finding longitude would be so much
>harder than finding the latitude, you know even less about the topic
>than *I* do. 8-)
>

I was going to repond to this confusion from Jean-yves Artero's Long but
interesting post. This is a better place for my responce.

There is a simple mnemonic for remembering the difference between Logitude
and Lattitude. Lattitude is like a "Ladder" it climes up amd down the earth
from the equator to the poles. Longitude is round like an "O" and has no
start nor does it end as it circles the world east to west.

There is another confusion. Finding longitude on land vs. finding longitude
at sea. Harrison's clock were used to find longtude as sea. The on land
longitude is found by transiting stars at two fixed locations.

I have a whole collection of books on the subject of time. Probably in this
case the most interesting is "A History of Astronomy from Thales to
Kepler." J.L.E. Dreyer (1906) Dover (1953)

I have yet to use Wikepedia. My preference is for older books. Or when I
can afford it travel, to places where I can find the information first
hand.  Until the issue of intelectual property is resolved, there is no
online source what will answer any more that a simplistic overview. Sort of
an epicurian tasting.

I have a disagreement with library science, what says that older books that
are not used should be "weeded out." On the other hand I have a lot of
ex-libro books in my collection. Then again I suspect that over it's
history the VMS has been weeded from a few collections. Again it will be
the tastes and attutudes of the time, what determin the real from the
illusion.

While Proffessor H. E. Wogglebug may have invented the education pill, Even
the  highly educated bug had to admit it was diffucalut to swallow and
sometimes hurt going down.

-julieP



______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list