The heliocentric path of the Moon

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-490
Author(s):  
Jacques Gapaillard

In his Astronomie populaire, Camille Flammarion points out that the heliocentric path of the Moon, which, according to him, has generally been represented as a sinuous curve, is actually concave everywhere towards the Sun. Flammarion’s observation is the starting point of this study which goes backwards in time, via often misinformed authors, to the mathematician who first established this counterintuitive property by means of a purely geometrical proof. The story also includes a heated debate between readers of a British periodical. Beginning in France at the end of the 19th century, the journey finishes in Scotland in the first half of the previous century.

Author(s):  
Stephen R. Wilk

In the years before the 19th century, the options for indoor lighting were limited and sometimes expensive. Yet artisans such as lacemakers, cobblers, and jewelers needed good lighting for their precise and delicate work. But not being very well paid, they needed a solution that would allow as many of them as possible to share the expense of lighting for work. How did they manage after the sun went down, especially in northern countries with long periods of winter darkness? Can the solutions they came up with be applied to present-day problems?


1971 ◽  
Vol 103 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-138
Author(s):  
O. M. Starza-Majewski

The collection of Indian sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum includes a fine relief from Koṇārka. It is about 2 feet 6¾ inches (78·1 cm.) in height and depicts King Narasiṁha I (a.d. 1238–64), the founder of the celebrated Sun temple at Koṇārka in Orissa, sitting at the feet of his spiritual preceptor (Plate I). Acquired in the 19th century, this relief, which is carved in carboniferous shale, was long believed to be Nepalese. Havell, writing in 1911, notes that this sculpture is “said to have come from Nepal. Its date is uncertain. It appears to represent a Vaishnava adaptation of some old Buddhist jātaka story.” Some years later it was realized that the style of this sculpture belonged to that of the Eastern Ganga of the 13th century a.d., and that it represented the conversion of a kṣatriya noble to the worship of Viṣṇu by a Vaiṣṇava priest. The figure of the warrior sitting at the feet of the priest was identified as that of Narasimha I receiving spiritual instruction from his guru. This relief is one of a number showing scenes from the life of Narasimha which come from the great Koṇārka temple dedicated by him to the sun-god Sūrya. Of these, the panel already mentioned and another in New Delhi throw an interesting light on Narasiṃha's religious beliefs.


1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 244-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Krupinskif ◽  
Roma Emmerson

A study has been carried out to determine whether there has been a real increase in violent crime in Victoria or whether the public has been affected by the greater prominence given to violence in the mass media. The rates of violent crime, based on “persons taken into custody or proceeded against” were highest in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century. They, then, showed a steady decline until the mid thirties of the 20th century. Since the fifties, there has been an increase, but, with the exception of assault causing grievous bodily harm, they are still much lower than they were 100 years ago. The content analysis of the four main dailies ( The Age, The Argus, the Herald and the Sun) has shown an increasing coverage of violent crime both in the number, and in the size of articles devoted to it. The authors discuss the reasons for and possible effects of this phenomenon.


Rangifer ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lennart Lundmark

In the middle of the 16th century we get the first opportunity to a more detailed knowledge of reindeerpastoralism in Sweden. At that time the Sami lived in a hunter-gatherer economy. A family had in average about 10-20 domesticated reindeer, mainly used for transport. They could also be milked and used as decoys when hunting wild reindeer. During late 16th century the Swedish state and merchants bought large amounts of fur from the Sami. The common payment was butter and flour. This created a new prosperity, which lead to a considerable increase in population in Swedish Lapland. The population became too large for a hunter-gatherer economy. A crisis in early 17th century was the starting point for the transition to a large-scale nomadic reindeer pastoralism. Up to the middle of the 18th century intensive reindeer pastoralism was successful. But the pastoralism became gradually too intensive and diseases started to spread when the herds were kept too densely crowded for milking in summertime. During the first decades of the 19th century reindeer pastoralism in Sweden went through a major crisis. The number of reindeer herding mountain-Sami decreased considerably, mainly because they went to live permanently along the Norwegian coastline. Intensive reindeer pastoralism started to give way for extensive herding towards the end of the 19th century. In the north of Sweden influences from the Kautokeino Sami were an important factor, in the south extensive reindeer herding started to expand when the market for meat came closer to the Sami. During the 1920s the milking of reindeer ceased in Sweden, except in a few families. At that time Sami families from the north had been removed southwards. They further demonstrated the superiority of extensive herding to the Sami in mid- and southern Lapland. Reindeer pastoralism is basically a system of interaction between man and animal, but it has been heavily influenced by market forces and state intervention during hundreds of years. To a large extent these long-term external influences have made reindeer pastoralism what it is today. That aspect should not be overlooked when assessing the future prospects of reindeer pastoralism in Scandinavia.Renskötseln i Sverige 1550-1950Abstract in Swedish / Sammanfattning: Först vid mitten av 1500-talet finns det källmaterial som ger oss en tämligen detaljerad bild av renskötseln i Sverige. Vid den tiden levde samerna i en jakt- , fiske- och samlarekonomi. En familj hade normalt 10-20 renar som främst utnyttjades vid transporter. Tamrenarna kunde också mjölkas och fungera som lockdjur vid vildrensjakt. Under senare delen av 1500-talet köpte svenska staten och handelsmän stora mängder pälsverk av samerna. Den vanligaste betalningen var smör och mjöl. Detta skapade ett välstånd som ledde till en betydande folkökning i svenska lappmarken. Befolkningen blev för stor för att rymmas inom ramarna för en jaktochfiskeekonomi. En kris i början av 1600-talet blev startpunkten för övergången till en storskalig rennomadism.Fram till mitten av 1700-talet var den intensiva renskötseln framgångsrik. Men renskötseln blev efterhand alltför intensiv. Under senare delen av 1700-talet började det spridas sjukdomar i de tätt sammanhållna hjordarna. De första decennierna av 1800-talet innebar en allvarlig kris i renskötseln. Antalet renskötande fjällsamer minskade kraftigt, främst genom utvandring till norska kusten. Den intensiva renskötseln med mjölkning av renarna började ersättas av en extensiv renskötsel inriktad på köttproduktion de sista decennierna av 1800-talet. I norr var naturförhållandena och influenser från Kautokeino-samerna en viktig faktor, i söder utvecklades renskötseln i extensiv riktning främst därför att marknaden för renkött kom närmare renskötarna. Under 1920-talet upphörde mjölkningen av renar i Sverige, utom i några enstaka familjer. Då hade förflyttningarna av samer från nordligaste Sverige söderut påskyndat utvecklingen och ytterligare markerat den extensiva renskötselteknikensöverlägsenhet. Tamrenskötsel är ett samspel mellan människa och djur, men det är inte bara en fråga om renskötaren och hans hjord. Externa marknadsfaktorer, beskattning och lagstiftning har haft ett betydandeinflytande på renskötselns utveckling under hundratals år. De har till stor del format renskötseln till vad den är idag. Detta bör beaktas när man gör bedömningar av renskötselns framtid. 


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
I.V. Tsykunov

The art of Italian craftsmen Cosmati, who created unique mosaic production at XII and XIII centuries in Rome and its environments, had delighted people over centuries. The filigree technique of the stonework, polychrome, and diversity of geometrical figures and difficulties of composition demonstrate their undoubted ecstatic value. From the beginning of the 19th century, however, the opinions, that craftsmen Cosmati used not only abstract formation but also enciphered language of symbols, were firstly express. Author of this work investigates style elements of Cosmatesque as sole system, trying to answer on the question about the possibility of existence of symbolic Cosmati language, representing important religious meanings, or this is just the part of art of the decoration of space. In addition, if it exist, is it any possibility to read it. By the starting point of work, there was the writing on the mosaic floors of Cosmatesque in Westminster Abbey, creating in 1272 year, which contains the exact date of the end of the world.


Author(s):  
Claudia Carbone

The Danish net of highways forms an ‘H’ connecting the country north-south and east-west. This is the starting point for a discussion of contemporary urbanism. The article points out that the increasing physical and virtual communication blurs well-known distinctions between centre/ periphery and urban/rural. The majority of planning tendencies aims at recreating and emphasising these distinctions by enhancing the public space of historical city centres and keeping the landscape clear of permanent human activities. The article argues against these tendencies. It refers to the Danish ‘golden age’ painters who successfully tried to construct a national identity in the first half of the 19th century. They did so by sampling parts of the existing cultural landscape and combine them to a slightly enhanced reality in their paintings. The article tries to do the same by combining already existing elements and tendencies to a polemical image of a partly existing reality based on hybrids between the urban and rural.  


Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Annelien Rabie-Boshof

Abstract This article explores a probable motivation for the insertion of the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11) in the Gospel of John in consideration of the motive of ‘living/life’ used by the gospel writer. Using John 8:12 as the starting point of this investigation, the article focuses on the warning to the Israelites against idolatry with specific attention to the warning against worshiping the sun, the moon, and the stars (Deuteronomy 4:15–20). It also deals with the Feast of Tabernacles, which is the direct context in which Jesus declared that he is the light of the world. The water ceremony also plays a central role in understanding the bigger picture that unfolds, as well as the Early Church’s struggle against heretical Christological teachings of who Jesus was with regard to his human nature and his divine nature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-367
Author(s):  
Bianca Schumann

In the course of the aesthetic controversy of the 19th century over programme music, which was particularly intense in Vienna, 'conservative' as well as 'progressive' ciritcs, who wrote for the daily press, endeavoured to appropriate Hector Berlioz for their personal aesthetic convictions. Even for reviews written in the 1860s and 1870s, when Berlioz's large-scale works were first performed by leading Viennese orchestras, Robert Schumann's review of the Symphonie fantastique (1835) played a significant role. Schumann's appreciative assessment of the symphony, which was strongly influenced by his misconception that Berlioz was only eighteen years old at the time of composition of the Symphony fantastique, had a decisive influence on the journalistic discourse on Berlioz in Vienna far beyond the first half of the century, for example on Hugo Wolf and Edmund Schelle. Other critics, such as August Wilhelm Ambros and Eduard Hanslick, took Schumann's ambiguity as their starting point to validate their less positive judgements.


2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 58-61
Author(s):  
B. L. Kirkland ◽  
F. L. Lynch ◽  
R. L. Folk ◽  
A.M. Lawrence ◽  
M.E. Corley

Tiny (50-200 nm) spheroids were first discovered by Folk through SEM work on the hot springs of Viterbo Italy. He termed these small, spherical structures “nannobacteria,” and proposed that they may be important agents in precipitation of CaCO3, as needle-like crystals of the mineral aragonite, and as bundles of such needle-like crystals (termed “fuzzy dumbbells”), or as elongated crystals of the mineral calcite.During the past 15 years, nanometer-scale spheroids have been discovered in the geological, medical, and astronomical worlds. There can be no doubt as to their existence, but their significance and origin remain a subject of continuing controversy. Even the spelling (“nanno-“), which has been the standard in biology, geology, and paleontology going back to the 19th century, has been questioned. Whether or not they are truly bacteria or any form of life has been a subject of heated debate.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 303-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Gane

This brief response to Will Davies clarifies and expands a number of the core arguments of the article ‘The Emergence of Neoliberalism: Thinking through and Beyond Michel Foucault’s Lectures on Biopolitics’ (published in TCS 31(4): 3–27). It is argued that it is a mistake to treat Foucault as a neoliberal because his lectures on biopolitics centred on the emergence of different trajectories of neoliberal reason. Instead, Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism can be read as a critical history, one that is partial and incomplete but which nonetheless can be used as a starting point to think historically and critically about neoliberalism. It is suggested that a more nuanced history of neoliberalism, however, can be developed by paying closer attention to the complex relationship between neoliberal reason and the earlier liberal ideas of the 19th century – in particular those of John Stuart Mill. Finally, a claim is made for the value of historical analysis for understanding and responding to the challenges of the post-crisis present, to a situation in which neoliberal ideas appear to have a near-hegemonic grip over popular politics and discourse.


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