Closing Another Loop -- Nothing About The Bakken -- April 8, 2020

A reader sent me a long e-mail note regarding "the Antikythera mechanism" with a link to a YouTube video. The reader wrote:

[A]s a machinest in my younger life I used to machine gears and learned how gear ratios were calculated, and created. I used to machine those items using milling machines and turning lathes for steele, brass, etc. Also I have reasonably good mathematics aptitude and could follow all the rather complex calculations the "reinventors" of this analog computer had to discover and solve.

You see, all they had was a completely encrusted wafer like artifact from the deep sea amongst shipwreck debris which sank in a storm circa 60 to 50 BC. The use of sophisticated x-ray technology, computer driven photography, and other devices invented to "see inside" and see through this encrusted artifact is fascinating to watch.

When I received that note from the reader, I remembered having read about the Antikythera mechanism not too long ago, but for the life of me I could not remember where.

Then, wouldn't you know it? I was re-reading The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts, Graham Robb, c. 2013, and remembered where I had about "the mechanism." There on page 87 -- wow.

So, a huge "thank you" to the reader who sent me these new links.

On another note, The Discovery of Middle Earth is one of my top-shelf books. It's not an easy book to read, and there is a lot of esoterica but in the end, it's fun to read through relatively quickly the first time to get an overview and then read it more slowly. There's enough trivia in that book to last several dozen cocktail parties (once they're back in vogue).

I don't think any two people really agree what is meant by "middle earth" and who invented the term,  but this is my current understanding:

• J.R.R.Tolkien may not have invented the term, but he certainly is most responsible for making it fashionable;
• middle earth is simply a place where men live; and,

Beowulf had a middle Earth.

Tolkien had a middle Earth.

And Graham Robb has a middle Earth, the land of the Celts.

***************************************

Texas Wildflower Season (And Allergy Season)