Also Seen: Greek Fire and Damascus Steel
Fringe: A Better Human Being (Hubris and Fidelity in the Multiverse)
Yesterday’s episode of Fringe, “A Better Human Being,” explored a couple of interesting religious and philosophical themes related to modern science and scientific possibilities.
The more obvious of the two relates to the doctor who, when using IVF to help women get pregnant, implanted them with “improved” genetic material to try to make “a better human being,” one in which some of our latent abilities were reactivated. The doctor in question refers to the hubris of “trying to improve upon God.”
That classic sci-fi objection to “scientists playing God” rings somewhat hollow, now that we know so much more about the evolutionary and genetic processes that are directly responsible for the form that human existence now takes. Evolution, a process which cobbles and tinkers, has put us together, and on the one hand, it is not unthinkable that human intelligence could indeed improve upon what evolution has come up with. It is logical to think that real, actual intelligent design would be superior to the products of evolution, at least in theory. Yet on the other hand, as the products of evolution ourselves, we are only at the early stages of grasping the processes that made us and the stuff we’re made from. If evolution is rather like the inferior demiurge of Gnosticism, then we are not yet superior to that creator.
(On the topic of “Scientists Playing God,” see further Alison Bright Macwilliams’ chapter in Religion and Science Fiction.)
A more subtle philosophical and ethical exploration in the episode relates to the increasing degree to which Olivia is remembering the memories of Olivia as Peter had previously known her. It remains to be seen whether this is due to those memories coming from another universe, where “Peter’s Olivia” still exists, or whether this is due to Olivia regaining memories that were once her own, but which were lost when Peter was erased and the timeline rewritten.
But Peter’s dilemma in trying to decide how to respond to this situation provides an interesting philosophical conundrum, and a good opportunity to reflect on human personhood. If this Olivia is a parallel Olivia to the one Peter fell in love with, who has somehow come to remember the memories of that Olivia, then if Peter has a romantic relationship with her, is he being unfaithful to “his” Olivia? This is a somewhat different situation than that in which Peter was tricked by Fauxlivia into thinking that she was his Olivia.
This is not the first time that the show has touched on this topic in some way. Indeed, this episode made mention of the earlier one in which a couple, each of which had lost their spouse, forged a connection with a parallel version of that spouse in a parallel universe.
It is an interesting philosophical issue raised on Fringe. If there is indeed more than one of everything, and everyone, in an infinite universe or in a multiverse, then where does that leave the connections we forge, the love we feel, and the promises we make? Is a parallel version of someone that is 99% the same as the person that you vowed to remain faithful to and love forever the “same” person or a “different” one – or are such questions even meaningful?
The ending of the episode has quite a twist to it. Presumably we are to understand that Nina Sharpe had been replaced with a shapeshifter – providing yet another, somewhat different aspect of the philosophical and ethical problems raised on a show when there is more than one sense in which there is “more than one of everything.”
"Iberos en el Bajo Aragón": exposición itinerante para escolares
Blogosphere ~ Why the Iliad?
languagehat.com: WHY THE ILIAD?.
[on the availability of the Iliad in assorted editions in assorted nations]
Blogosphere ~ Red-Figure Kraters in the Age of Perikles
Blogosphere ~ The Catalogue of Ships
The Homer Multitext: The Catalogue of Ships.
[Pondering the question of why the Catalogue is so controversial ... good stuff]
Blogosphere ~ Latrines at the Agora in Athens
Podcast: Death of Mark Antony
testing …
A teaser on the Kalash
Below you can see the normalized number of "chunks" donated by various populations to the Kalash. First, we normalize including intra-Kalash sharing:
Notice the extreme intra-Kalash haplotype sharing: Kalash individuals are recipient of "chunks" from other Kalash individuals ~5 standard deviations more often than the mean over this set of populations.
However, if we igonore intra-Kalash haplotype sharing, then the donor populations are:
Of particular interest is the fact that all West Asian populations appear higher on the donor list than all Northern European ones, which confirms, using a haplotype-based approach, my previous inference that the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) component is related to West Asians.
Etruskerna 3D – Etruria 3D
Detta inlägg följer på Svenska
Today I visited the exhibit Etruria 3D at the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm. I’m sorry to say this exhibit wasn’t all that good. The 3D part worked on the stills but was a total waste on TV-screens. The other big, BIG, negative is that you need to get some kind of hearing aids/audio guide to understand the films, probably at an extra cost, this wasn’t mentioned when we bought the tickets, we neither go any info where to get them – as the exhibit is based on the audio guide and I didn’t have it, I didn’t get the exhibit at all – and I’m sorry to say for me it was a waste of money!
The new standard exhibit is nice though.
Etrurskerna 3D på medelhavsmuseet i Stockholm var tyvärr inte bra. Uppenbarligen måste man ha hörlurar för att få ut något av denna utställning, även som intresserad arkeolog, vilket det inte informerades om när man köpte biljetten. Detta inser man dock ganska fort då informationsskyltarna är få och filmerna tappar sin mening utan kommentarer. Jag antar att man kan hyra hörlurar och audioguide – men så som utställningen är utformad borde detta ingå i priset, dessutom hittade jag ingen information om var man fick tag i den (även om jag antar att de finns i kassan). 3D filmerna och 3-bilderna på digitala skärmar var mycket svåra att se mednågon skärpa i 3D glasögonen, de fungerade dock bra på de tryckta stillbilderna (dessutom fungerar inte 3D-glasögonen i kombination med glasögon). Personligen ser jag dock hellre fynden verkligheten, och framför allt ge mig vettiga informationsskyltar.
Tyvärr är känslan att man lagt ut 80 kronor i onödan och gör att jag tyvärr är riktigt besviken då jag lämnar utställningen – men jag vill dock framhålla att den nya grundutställningen är trevlig.
Vad gäller Etruskerna – gör om gör rätt – vilket i detta fall tyvärr betyder gör om i princip allt!
Magnus Reuterdahl
Memorizing and Forgetting Facts
This cartoon illustrates well one of the reasons why I’ve moved away from exams that focus on the recall of facts of the sort that can be memorized for a test and then forgotten.
Theft at Olympia
As most readers of rogueclassicism are probably aware, yesterday the press, academic discussion lists, and social media were ablaze with news of a theft at one of the the museums at Olympia. What follows is an attempt to synthesize the various reports in a useful way …
The basic story seems to be thus: at 7:30 a.m. local time, two masked men armed with Kalashnikovs (maybe … reports vary on their level of armament) entered the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games during a shift change and demanded of the only (48-year-old, female) guard on duty at the time that she hand over assorted objects which apparently weren’t even in that particular museum. When she refused, they tied her up and proceeded to do some smashing and grabbing in a display case of bronze and terracotta votive objects associated with the Temple of Zeus. The numbers of objects taken is still unknown, but estimates range between sixty and seventy objects, most of which date from the ninth to fourth centuries B.C., except for a gold Mycenean ring. Outside of the Mycenean ring, which Dr Vassiliki Pliatsika on AegeaNet identified (citing Greek press reports) as one having the catalog number CMS VS1B 135 (not sure which one that is), it has not yet been specified which objects had been taken. In the words of a cultural ministry official:
“They took small objects made of bronze and pottery — figurines, vases and lamps — and the ring,” the official said. “The artifacts were behind reinforced glass panels which fracture like a car windscreen, and the thieves grabbed whatever small objects they could reach through the holes they opened.” (AP)
Another interesting detail:
Officials said the robbers seemed to have poor information on the museum, asking the guard where they could get golden wreaths and a valuable stamp collection — which are not part of the display. (AP)
The various reports are all pretty unanimous in connecting this sad event to cuts Greece made three years ago to various cultural agencies, which also involved cuts to security at museums. Some quotes from the folks involved:
“The cutbacks imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have hurt our cultural heritage, which is also the world’s heritage” said Yiannis Mavrikopoulos, head of the culture ministry museum and site guards’ union.
“There are no funds for new guard hirings,” he said. “There are 2,000 of us, and there should be 4,000, while many have been forced to take early retirement ahead of the new program of layoffs. We face terrible staff shortages. As a result, our monuments and sites don’t have optimum protection — even though guards are doing their very best to protect our heritage. (AP)
“Clearly the museum’s security was insufficient … to guard a global treasure,” Olympia mayor Kotzias later told state television. (AFP)
“The level of security is indeed lacking,” Kotzas told state-run NET television. “These are treasures. A piece of world heritage has been lost thanks to these thieves … I think (authorities) should have been more mindful and the security should have been more serious.” (MSNBC)
“All museums have suffered cuts, both in guards and archaeologists, the staff are no longer enough to operate at full shifts,” said Ioanna Frangou, general secretary of the union of short-term culture ministry staff. (AFP)
Dimitra Koutsoumba, president of the Greek Archaeologists’ Association, said the latest attack was a sad and worrying incident.
“It is the first time that we have an armed robbery at a museum during operating hours. It shows that the cuts the Culture Ministry has made since the crisis hit in 2009 make it easier for such incidents to take place,” she said. “The minister himself had told us that the cuts were ranging between 30% and 35%, and they include cuts in personnel.” (CNN)
Art and archaeological treasures were always poorly guarded here,” said one archaeologist, who did not want to be named, “but now the guards are so badly paid that they do not make much of an effort to protect anything.” (Independent)
In the wake of the theft, Greece’s culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos is said to have resigned, but reports vary as to the accuracy of this (and/or whether the resignation was accepted).
We compile the actual news reports below … for those of you who are more audio-video oriented, Al Jazeera has a very nice video report:
Video reports can also be found in Channel 4 and BBC coverage … the Daily Mail coverage includes a feature on the museum itself …
Dan Diffendale has a flickr photoset from the museum if you need an idea of the sorts of things that were there (I suspect some of the things on the second page are the ones which were taken). Another flickr photoset (I think from the museum itself) is also available.
The coverage (in no particular order):
- Armed robbers raid Ancient Olympia museum (Telegraph)
- Two armed robbers tie up a female guard and loot Ancient Olympia museum stealing priceless Greek antiques (Daily Mail)
- Theft of Olympic treasures piles on misery for Greeks (Independent)
- Armed robbers loot ancient Greek museum(Channel 4)
- Thieves raid Greece’s Ancient Olympia Museum(Guardian)
- Museum robbed at Greece’s Ancient Olympia(AP via Google)
- Armed robbers steal 70 relics from museum in Olympia, Greece(AP via MSNBC)
- Robbers fleece Greece’s Olympia museum(Al Jazeera)
- Greece: Robbers raid Olympia museum, steal artifacts (CNN)
- Greek culture minister resigns over ancient Olympia theft(AFP via Canada.com)
- Thieves loot Greece’s Ancient Olympia museum(BBC)
- Thieves loot ancient Olympia museum, minister resigns (AFP via Yahoo)
- Greek Culture Minister resigns following museum robbery (AGI)
- Greek Minister Offers to Quit After Second Museum Robbery(Bloomberg)
- Robbery at Olympia; minister tenders resignation(Athens News)
Olympia theft: "it will be really difficult to get rid of them"
© David Gill |
This theft from a world-class heritage site is a crime against cosmospolitan society (not least in an Olympic year). Civilised commentators will condemn this act without reservation.
A short statement (in Greek) is available from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.
Blogosphere ~ A Merchant’s Prayer to Mercury
Blogosphere ~ Did Ancient Romans Love Their Children? Infanticide in Ancient Rome
History of the Ancient World: Did Ancient Romans Love Their Children? Infanticide in Ancient Rome.
[definitely have to put this thesis on the 'to read' list ... I had a section in my thesis/dissertation on evidence for this sort of thing in Roman legal codes]
Blogosphere ~ Cleopatra dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963
Blogosphere ~ Coinage and Sulla’s Retirement
History of the Ancient World: Coinage and Sulla’s Retirement.
[interesting article by Ian Worthington]
The Theft At Olympia
The recent armed robbery at the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games has been in the news and discussed on various email lists. Rogueclassicist has a very good summary with lots of links. While some museum robbers seem to know what they are after these guys apparently didn’t. Or if they did, they were in the wrong museum.
Officials said the robbers seemed to have poor information on the museum, asking the guard where they could get golden wreaths and a valuable stamp collection — which are not part of the display. (AP)
In its own way I take this to be good news. The thieves likely didn’t already have a buyer for their booty. I think that increases the likelihood that the stolen artifacts will eventually be recovered. By how much it increases it I'm not sure.
Blogosphere ~ Rites of Passage and their Role in the Socialization of the Spartan Youth
History of the Ancient World: Rites of Passage and their Role in the Socialization of the Spartan Youth.