Journal Entries
Happy Easter!
Posted Mar 27, 2016
Happy Easter to all my friends.
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Latest reply: Mar 27, 2016
Elijah
Posted Mar 24, 2016
Mrs G is singing in a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah this evening. This is a great work with some lovely lyrical pieces along with some really dramatic story telling.
Mendelssohn is often dismissed as writing music which 'too nice' but he sure knew how to write for choirs. He was very popular in theUk during his lifetime and Elijah was one of the most performed choral works in England for about a century after his death.
I love scene where the prophets of Baal and Elijah the prophet of Jehovah have a competition to see who can make it rain, a very valuable power in Israel although not here in Ireland. Being able to stop the rain would be the trick.
The concert starts at 8 in the Trinity Exam Hall.
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Latest reply: Mar 24, 2016
The Great Flood of 2350 BC
Posted Mar 15, 2016
I saw an interesting documentary last night about dendrochronologists, scientists who try to reconstruct ancient history by examining tree rings.
They've shown that the oak trees of Ireland stopped growing for about 20 years in 2350 BC because they were sitting in water. There was apparently a period of very wet weather. The conclusion is that all crops would have failed, there would have been massive starvation and when civilisation started again, it was completely different - this was the transition from Stone Age farmers to the Bronze Age. It's possible that new people came in to restore the population - the details are unclear.
Coincidentally, 2350 BC is the date that Archbishop Usher gave for Noah's Flood in his dating of the events of the Bible.
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Latest reply: Mar 15, 2016
Three Short Weeks
Posted Mar 11, 2016
We've three short weeks coming up here in Ireland. Next week, Thursday is St Patrick's Day. The following week, Friday is Good Friday. The week after that, Monday is Easter Monday. The first and third of these are Public Holidays, while the second is a day off for many people although not everybody.
So most people have three 4-day weeks. Of course because I don't work on Wednesdays, I have three 3-days weeks coming up.
I'll be singing a concert this weekend and next weekend, and I hope to go down to Wexford and open up our mobile home after the winter at the long 4-day Easter weekend.
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Latest reply: Mar 11, 2016
Long Conversations
Posted Mar 8, 2016
I just spotted a conversation on one of my entries which I hadn't noticed before. Polly Math asked me why the letters in the alphabet are in that particular order.
Unfortunately, she asked it in March 2003. That's 13 years ago. But looking at Polly Math's page, I see she was around on h2g2 recently. So I've answered the question and hopefully she'll see it when she pops back again.
The answer is 'we don't know', by the way. Our alphabet is based on the Northern Semitic 22-letter alphabet. We can explain every difference between the two alphabets, but we don't know why they chose the order they did for their alphabet.
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Latest reply: Mar 8, 2016
Gnomon - time to move on
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