The Roman sunrise was slated for 6:15 and the sunset for 20:03. On a weather website, these are listed as 06:18 and 20:00. I supposed that means for the price location of the site, considering elevation etc. That said, in Roman Curia terms the Civil Twilight today would be 05:45 and 20:27, Nautical 05:09 and 21:03, Astronomical 4:31 and 21:41 PM
Tomorrow will be 2 minutes 34 seconds longer. The Moon is at fullest full, tomorrow and tonight it is 99% illuminated.
We celebrate the feast of St. George on this 114th day of the year. I send my best to my dear nonagenarian friend Fr. GW on his name day.
Thank you, Lord, for this day.
This cappuccino was fully illuminated through it resembles more a gibbous Moon than Full.
Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – UK HERE WHY? This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc.. At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.
Barriers have been set up around the fountains in the Piazza Farnese. Later I saw a truck from the office for restoration of ancient fountains. Hmmm…. I wonder what they are going to do?
No chess news today.
I know, I know.
You are sad.
However, The Great Roman™, who misses nothing, passed on something from the newspaper of the CEI, Avvenire. Get this!
The Herculaneum papyri reveal Plato’s burial site
In over a thousand words, corresponding to 30% of the text, read thanks to the cross between modern technologies and philological science, of the carbonized Herculaneum papyrus containing the History of the Academy of Philodemus of Gadara (110-after 40 BC), the Plato’s burial place.
New technologies are progressively making it possible to read the library found charred in the so-called Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. If the Vesuvius Challenge project is the one best known in the news, also because it is a sort of competition with prizes for those who decipher portions of text through artificial intelligence, it is not the only one working on the precious finds. Today in Naples, at the Vittorio Emanuele III National Library, the state of progress of the research of the “GreekSchools” project was presented.
[…]
Among the news that has emerged there is also the information that Plato was buried in the garden reserved for him (a private area intended for the Platonic school) of the Academia in Athens, near the so-called Museion or sacellum sacred to the Muses. Until now it was only known that he was buried generically in the Academia.
[…]
Very cool.
In honor of that coolness, coolly solve this.
Black to move. Hey! Can you find mate in 4?
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
Interested in learning? Try THIS.
Loading ...
My baptismal anniversary. I’m mostly Scottish/Irish Catholic, birthed and educated by the Mercy Sisters during the height of the Troubles. I certainly do enjoy slaying dragons and rescuing damsels in distress.
Last night I was able to snap some nice smartphone pics of the Full George Moon. Thank you again for rekindling my love of heavenly bodies.
Happy name-day to the Holy Father, all the Bush guys and other most excellent Georges who made America/Catholicism great. Especially Georgia the state and the nation, who make us look good by sheer contrast.
As a reluctant young dragon slayer, I was far more interested in Play-Doh than Plato, and my favorite activity was copying comic book images by taking impressions. At that stage I could’ve been learning Greek instead. But I’m a late bloomer!
Someone pointed out the St. George’s Day Google Doodle with its background account to me – with one of the preliminary sketches pitting St. George and the Dragon against each other in a game of chess!
That reminds me of the draft of The Hobbit in which Tolkien had Bullroarer Took knock the goblin king’s “head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed two hundred yards and went down a rabbit hole, and in this way the battle was won by checkmate and the games of Golf & chess invented simultaneously” – I suspect a bit of philological play with the idea that the origin of ‘checkmate’ is in a phrase meaning “(your) King is dead”, which he decided against on further consideration.
The final resting place of Plato puts me in mind of a memorable excerpt I once read about Aristotle in the 13th Book
of Antonio Possevino’s “Bibliotheca Selecta de Ratione Studiorum”:
“Nonnulli, dolore simul ac spe in lachrymas aiunt profusum, Primae Causae misericordiam attentitus implorasse dum moreretur: ut hinc constare possit, quae in homine resideret pietas; quam etiam exeruerit erga Praeceptorem suum Platonem, cui aram excitaverit, statuamque dicaverit, in qua descriptum erat, illum esse, quem probi omnes merito deberent et imitari et commendare.” (Caput XVII)
“Not a few say that [Aristotle] at once with grief and hope wept profusely, attentively imploring the mercy of the First Cause that when he should die, he hence might be with him, the man in whom resided his ‘pietas.’ He raised an altar to Plato, his teacher, and dedicated a statue to him. Upon it was inscribed “It is he, to whom all upright men rightly ought to imitate and entrust.”
Makes me choke up a little bit, honestly.