Sunday, December 9, 2018
The Search For Jara Cimrman
I haven't heard anything about Cimrman for years, and the character seems to have evolved considerably since then. I'm pretty sure that I posted a summery of his earlier exploits on this forum, but I don't remember when. The Blogger search machine was unable to locate it, so I am trying to manually search the archives. I have gone through 2013, 2014, and 2015 with no luck, and will try 2016, 2017, and 2018 tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I'm pretty sure that I've got it on a CD somewhere. My local files were lost when my last computer died. I have not heard of the Cimrman English Theater, and couldn't find it on Wiki, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was one because that guy really gets around.
Another rabbit hole
Without taking a trip to Wikipedia I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the toddler sister of Dick and Jane was named Sally. Sometimes you just have to trust your memory. As often as I've seen the name Sally in print I've only met one or two girls with that name in my life, one was in college. It's not a bad name, kind of cute in a quaint way, and I wonder why it hasn't been more popular. But the popularity of children's names changes with the times and sometimes I wonder what the parents were thinking.
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If Uncle Ken was an usher at the State/Lake Theater I have to assume he was one of the Andy Frain guys with their spiffy blue uniforms, white gloves, and flashlight. A pal of mine from high school worked for Andy Frain, sometimes at Wrigley Field but most of the time at the Uptown Theater, a huge movie palace long since abandoned. When the balcony was closed our group of goofballs was allowed access; always good to have a connection on the inside. The balcony in the Uptown was like a little club reserved for friends of the ushers; you'd see groups of people spread out all over the place. It was nice, you could have a conversation and not bother anybody because they were too far away to hear you.
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...music should look like music...
Yes, a lot of modern music looks terrible.
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Mr. Beagles hit a home run with his introduction of Jara Cimrman to the halls of Beaglesonia. After reading the Wikipedia entry and seeing the number of videos on YouTube I think I've found another rabbit hole to explore. Why haven't I heard of the Cimrman English Theater until now?
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If Uncle Ken was an usher at the State/Lake Theater I have to assume he was one of the Andy Frain guys with their spiffy blue uniforms, white gloves, and flashlight. A pal of mine from high school worked for Andy Frain, sometimes at Wrigley Field but most of the time at the Uptown Theater, a huge movie palace long since abandoned. When the balcony was closed our group of goofballs was allowed access; always good to have a connection on the inside. The balcony in the Uptown was like a little club reserved for friends of the ushers; you'd see groups of people spread out all over the place. It was nice, you could have a conversation and not bother anybody because they were too far away to hear you.
-----
...music should look like music...
Yes, a lot of modern music looks terrible.
-----
Mr. Beagles hit a home run with his introduction of Jara Cimrman to the halls of Beaglesonia. After reading the Wikipedia entry and seeing the number of videos on YouTube I think I've found another rabbit hole to explore. Why haven't I heard of the Cimrman English Theater until now?
Friday, December 7, 2018
Uncle Ken's Credo
As kids we wanted pop and potato chips every day, but they were parceled out only on Saturday nights, or on the rare occasion when company came over. Oh if only we were adults and had money we would have pop and chips every day. When we went out to a park all they wanted to do was sit around a picnic bench and talk. Grownups. We would never be like that.
Puff indeed was the cat of Dick and Jane and not surprisingly their dog was Spot. They had a younger sister too, a blonde i think, but I don't remember her name. They had parents too but their presence was shadowy like in Peanuts.
As I have previously told I spent one summer as an usher at the State Lake theater when it was showing Cleopatra. I remember a scene where there are flames in the background and Cleo is kvetching at Caesar, who is shrugging his shoulders, can't make an omelette without breaking eggs style. But wiki says it was not completely destroyed and carried on until it was diminished by Roman indifference and finished off by Christian zeal.
I used to write my post as an email because I liked the editing properties there better than blogspot's but anymore I write with the square in one window and the text in the other. I guess I have got used to blogspot's editing, but its vocabulary is pathetic, and I am constantly having to add words.
I live across the street from Mies's last work, which looks pretty much like all his other work. I used to hate the guy because I saw him as the father of all those horrid boxes that litter downtown But over the years, looking across the street I have seen that his buildings are more than the boxes of his imitators and there is a subtle interplay of light and shadow across its face as the day progresses.
But I couldn't disagree more with his pronouncement of less is more. Uncle Ken's credo is: art should look like art and music should look like music and less is not more, it is less!
Sullivan's buildings may be considered fussy in the day of the internationalist style (and again I could not disagree more), but in his day of eclectic bric-a-brac he was seen as quite the smooth modernizer.
By the time of Socrates the Greeks had developed a literate enough society that there are plenty of records of him. I wonder though if he was this great guy that Plato made him out to be. I expect most of his words were put in his mouth by Plato, And that hemlock thing, for the third time I couldn't disagree more, he should have slipped out of that cell when he had the chance.
Puff indeed was the cat of Dick and Jane and not surprisingly their dog was Spot. They had a younger sister too, a blonde i think, but I don't remember her name. They had parents too but their presence was shadowy like in Peanuts.
As I have previously told I spent one summer as an usher at the State Lake theater when it was showing Cleopatra. I remember a scene where there are flames in the background and Cleo is kvetching at Caesar, who is shrugging his shoulders, can't make an omelette without breaking eggs style. But wiki says it was not completely destroyed and carried on until it was diminished by Roman indifference and finished off by Christian zeal.
I used to write my post as an email because I liked the editing properties there better than blogspot's but anymore I write with the square in one window and the text in the other. I guess I have got used to blogspot's editing, but its vocabulary is pathetic, and I am constantly having to add words.
I live across the street from Mies's last work, which looks pretty much like all his other work. I used to hate the guy because I saw him as the father of all those horrid boxes that litter downtown But over the years, looking across the street I have seen that his buildings are more than the boxes of his imitators and there is a subtle interplay of light and shadow across its face as the day progresses.
But I couldn't disagree more with his pronouncement of less is more. Uncle Ken's credo is: art should look like art and music should look like music and less is not more, it is less!
Sullivan's buildings may be considered fussy in the day of the internationalist style (and again I could not disagree more), but in his day of eclectic bric-a-brac he was seen as quite the smooth modernizer.
By the time of Socrates the Greeks had developed a literate enough society that there are plenty of records of him. I wonder though if he was this great guy that Plato made him out to be. I expect most of his words were put in his mouth by Plato, And that hemlock thing, for the third time I couldn't disagree more, he should have slipped out of that cell when he had the chance.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
The Source
"I read a lot of books on the history of religion and most of them deny a historical David and Solomon, well they don't deny it, they just say they can't find them in history outside the Bible." - Uncle Ken (emphasis mine)
Okay, that's the key to this whole dilemma, "outside the Bible". Uncle Ken asserted that there are no historical references to David and Solomon, and I quoted him one. I am sure there are others, lots of them. The problem is all the information that any subsequent book contains about David and Solomon was derived from Biblical sources. That's because the Hebrew scriptures that ultimately became the Old Testament are the only source of information we have about Hebrew history in the BC years. It's not because of any religious significance they have for some people, it's because they are the only written records of the era that have survived to this day. Other ancient civilizations like the Greeks and the Egyptians wrote about their own history, not the history of Israel, probably because they considered Israel to be insignificant, if they were even aware of its existence. Greek and Egyptian historians of the day also spiced up their stories with religious mythology, but nobody today would say that proves the stories are totally bogus. Maybe that's because the ancient Greek and Egyptian religions are no longer practiced, so nobody feels the need to take sides on them one way or the other.
Speaking of the Greeks, consider the case of Socrates. Any writing that Socrates might have done has been lost to the ages, so the only written information we have about him comes from Plato. For all we know, Socrates might be a fictitious character that Plato made up to be a vehicle for his own pronouncements. I have never heard anybody make this claim, yet I have heard people claim that the Bible is just a collection of fairy tales. Again, this may be because, as far as I know, nobody has ever ascribed supernatural powers to Socrates.
Speaking of fictional characters, the Czech philosopher Jara Cimrman was undoubtedly the smartest fictional character who never lived. That's because he was the founder of the Externalist School of philosophy. An Externalist believes that he has no intrinsic existence of his own and only exists in the perception of other people. Other philosophers of the day scoffed at Cimrman's hypothesis but, if he is indeed a fictional character, it just proves that Cimrman was spot on about Externalism. How many other fictional characters do you know that are aware of their own fictionality?
Dick and Jane were characters in the reading textbooks that were used in my first few grades. Funny, the teachers who wouldn't tolerate the use of nicknames in their own classroom had no problem with Dick. I remember John and Mary as being characters in my early arithmetic text books, and it seemed like they were always passing apples back and forth between them. There may have been others, but John and Mary are the only two I remember.
Our teachers had seating plans which they usually kept locked up in their desks. If a teacher knew that she would be absent the next day, she would leave her seating plan in the office for the substitute to use. Substitutes who filled unplanned vacancies would take attendance by passing around a sign up sheet. Kids used this as an opportunity to express their creative writing skills by signing names like Jim Shoe, Claude Balls, Guy Wire, and Regus Patoff. I learned a new one decades later from the radio personality Garrison Keillor: Xavier Onassis. Boy I wish I knew about that one when I was in school!
Okay, that's the key to this whole dilemma, "outside the Bible". Uncle Ken asserted that there are no historical references to David and Solomon, and I quoted him one. I am sure there are others, lots of them. The problem is all the information that any subsequent book contains about David and Solomon was derived from Biblical sources. That's because the Hebrew scriptures that ultimately became the Old Testament are the only source of information we have about Hebrew history in the BC years. It's not because of any religious significance they have for some people, it's because they are the only written records of the era that have survived to this day. Other ancient civilizations like the Greeks and the Egyptians wrote about their own history, not the history of Israel, probably because they considered Israel to be insignificant, if they were even aware of its existence. Greek and Egyptian historians of the day also spiced up their stories with religious mythology, but nobody today would say that proves the stories are totally bogus. Maybe that's because the ancient Greek and Egyptian religions are no longer practiced, so nobody feels the need to take sides on them one way or the other.
Speaking of the Greeks, consider the case of Socrates. Any writing that Socrates might have done has been lost to the ages, so the only written information we have about him comes from Plato. For all we know, Socrates might be a fictitious character that Plato made up to be a vehicle for his own pronouncements. I have never heard anybody make this claim, yet I have heard people claim that the Bible is just a collection of fairy tales. Again, this may be because, as far as I know, nobody has ever ascribed supernatural powers to Socrates.
Speaking of fictional characters, the Czech philosopher Jara Cimrman was undoubtedly the smartest fictional character who never lived. That's because he was the founder of the Externalist School of philosophy. An Externalist believes that he has no intrinsic existence of his own and only exists in the perception of other people. Other philosophers of the day scoffed at Cimrman's hypothesis but, if he is indeed a fictional character, it just proves that Cimrman was spot on about Externalism. How many other fictional characters do you know that are aware of their own fictionality?
Dick and Jane were characters in the reading textbooks that were used in my first few grades. Funny, the teachers who wouldn't tolerate the use of nicknames in their own classroom had no problem with Dick. I remember John and Mary as being characters in my early arithmetic text books, and it seemed like they were always passing apples back and forth between them. There may have been others, but John and Mary are the only two I remember.
Our teachers had seating plans which they usually kept locked up in their desks. If a teacher knew that she would be absent the next day, she would leave her seating plan in the office for the substitute to use. Substitutes who filled unplanned vacancies would take attendance by passing around a sign up sheet. Kids used this as an opportunity to express their creative writing skills by signing names like Jim Shoe, Claude Balls, Guy Wire, and Regus Patoff. I learned a new one decades later from the radio personality Garrison Keillor: Xavier Onassis. Boy I wish I knew about that one when I was in school!
More or less
I think Old Dog's cousin would have done well to invest in a better doctor.
The Coke/potato chip cause of heart problems was not based on any medical opinion. As far as I know it was a sneaky way for my parents to keep what they considered a frivolous expense out of the household food budget, and it worked. As a kid I didn't realize the harsh economic realities of raising a family and, looking back, I think things were pretty tight, money-wise. There was no real deprivation but Mom didn't shop at Marshall Field's; Sears was about as high end as it got.
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Where did the reference to Dick and Jane come from? Those names weren't mentioned in the post by Mr. Beagles but I remember them from the primary school reading books. Run, Spot, run! Another book publisher had a different cast of children, Alice and Jerry, and instead of a dog I think had a cat. Dick and Jane may have had a cat too but I wouldn't bet on it although the name "Puff" is stirring in my memory.
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All I know for sure about the Bible is that parts of it were written thousands of years ago. I suspect that much of it was written after years of an oral tradition and people decided that some of stuff was important enough to write down as part of a "permanent record." And, human memory being what it is, there are embellishments and exaggerations galore, especially with tales passed down through the generations. We will never be able to fill in all the gaps of recorded history and who knows what was lost when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed? Maybe those historic biblical figures were actual human beings, maybe they weren't. They could be composites of numerous people, but who cares? I think the content is more important than determination of the actual authorship but Uncle Ken hints at the same thing. The Bible could also be a complete work of fiction but that's okay with me; it's good enough to have stood the test of time. You can't say it hasn't had an impact, for better or worse.
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I seem to remember that the school culture in those days did not tolerate the use of nicknames like Johnny and Susie.
I don't recall anything like that, Mr. Beagles, but it's not something I've ever thought about. It may have depended on the individual teacher and not an official policy. The teachers I had usually called us by the same names our classmates called us, and not a Jim Shoe in the bunch. Some kids didn't like their full first name and a diminutive form was okay to use, and some even went by their middle name instead. There was a guy in my class in high school whose name was Knute Knusten and it was only at graduation we found out his actual first name was Julius. There were quite a few chuckles when he accepted his diploma.
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I generally don't feel like I am giving a full post if I stop writing before I get to the bottom of the box and begin to scroll down.
Do you compose your posts in the Blogspot window? I use Notepad, with three skinny windows: one window of past posts, one window of notes, ideas, and links that I've accumulated, and one window for the actual post composition. When I'm satisfied with what I've written I copy & paste into the "New Post" window of Blogspot, adding links, italics, and proofreading, making little changes if necessary. Then I do a preview to make sure everything looks right and I'm not adding any extra word or line spacing before I publish the post. And then I close Blogspot and open it up again to make sure the links go where they're supposed to go. It's a fussy system but it works for me. I don't feel compelled to meet any word count minimum although I don't like it when I make very short posts. But if I've said what I wanted to say I'm not going to go on and on if I can avoid it. A famous architect once said "Less is more," and it sure wasn't Louis Sullivan (he wrote, jokingly).
The Coke/potato chip cause of heart problems was not based on any medical opinion. As far as I know it was a sneaky way for my parents to keep what they considered a frivolous expense out of the household food budget, and it worked. As a kid I didn't realize the harsh economic realities of raising a family and, looking back, I think things were pretty tight, money-wise. There was no real deprivation but Mom didn't shop at Marshall Field's; Sears was about as high end as it got.
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Where did the reference to Dick and Jane come from? Those names weren't mentioned in the post by Mr. Beagles but I remember them from the primary school reading books. Run, Spot, run! Another book publisher had a different cast of children, Alice and Jerry, and instead of a dog I think had a cat. Dick and Jane may have had a cat too but I wouldn't bet on it although the name "Puff" is stirring in my memory.
-----
All I know for sure about the Bible is that parts of it were written thousands of years ago. I suspect that much of it was written after years of an oral tradition and people decided that some of stuff was important enough to write down as part of a "permanent record." And, human memory being what it is, there are embellishments and exaggerations galore, especially with tales passed down through the generations. We will never be able to fill in all the gaps of recorded history and who knows what was lost when the Library of Alexandria was destroyed? Maybe those historic biblical figures were actual human beings, maybe they weren't. They could be composites of numerous people, but who cares? I think the content is more important than determination of the actual authorship but Uncle Ken hints at the same thing. The Bible could also be a complete work of fiction but that's okay with me; it's good enough to have stood the test of time. You can't say it hasn't had an impact, for better or worse.
-----
I seem to remember that the school culture in those days did not tolerate the use of nicknames like Johnny and Susie.
I don't recall anything like that, Mr. Beagles, but it's not something I've ever thought about. It may have depended on the individual teacher and not an official policy. The teachers I had usually called us by the same names our classmates called us, and not a Jim Shoe in the bunch. Some kids didn't like their full first name and a diminutive form was okay to use, and some even went by their middle name instead. There was a guy in my class in high school whose name was Knute Knusten and it was only at graduation we found out his actual first name was Julius. There were quite a few chuckles when he accepted his diploma.
-----
I generally don't feel like I am giving a full post if I stop writing before I get to the bottom of the box and begin to scroll down.
Do you compose your posts in the Blogspot window? I use Notepad, with three skinny windows: one window of past posts, one window of notes, ideas, and links that I've accumulated, and one window for the actual post composition. When I'm satisfied with what I've written I copy & paste into the "New Post" window of Blogspot, adding links, italics, and proofreading, making little changes if necessary. Then I do a preview to make sure everything looks right and I'm not adding any extra word or line spacing before I publish the post. And then I close Blogspot and open it up again to make sure the links go where they're supposed to go. It's a fussy system but it works for me. I don't feel compelled to meet any word count minimum although I don't like it when I make very short posts. But if I've said what I wanted to say I'm not going to go on and on if I can avoid it. A famous architect once said "Less is more," and it sure wasn't Louis Sullivan (he wrote, jokingly).
names
I read a lot of books on the history of religion and most of them deny a historical David and Solomon, well they don't deny it, they just say they can't find them in history outside the bible. They say well there is this excavated fort here and mention of some king there and maybe they are the sources of the story of David and Solomon. I guess it really doesn't matter whether they existed or not any more than it matters whether or not Shakespeare wrote those plays. I'm sorry I brought it up. Sometimes I am too argumentative.
I remember Dick and Jane but not John and Mary. I don't remember at all the prohibition on nicknames. I'm not sure if nickname is the proper name for different forms of a name, I always thought of nicknames as something with no relation to the name like Curly or Lefty, and that the diminutive, Kenny, and the short, Ken were just different forms of the same name of equal standing with the formal name, Kenneth. But maybe I missed that because it seems like I spent most of my time in class pretending my pencil was a rocket ship and it was blasting off from its launching pad which was the defunct inkwell. And when I think back to my grade school buddies, Robert McVey, Edward Puls, Michael Weber, they all seem to have formal names
When I was subbing there was usually a seating plan or sometimes the names were written on the desks, but some of them were Hispanic and Black people's names aren't always the same as White people's names, and even White people don't name the kids the same way we were named way back then. And how well are you going to remember the names of thirty kids? In my case not likely at all so early on I gave up on that. I used the expression Hey a lot, so much that at the end of the day I could hear the kids mocking me for it.
I generally don't feel like I am giving a full post if I stop writing before I get to the bottom of the box and begin to scroll down. I would like to go on about math, but the dawgs have indicated little interest in the subject, but then, as Beagles is fond of saying, that has never stopped me before.
The Greeks got the beginning of their math from Egypt and Mesopotamia, but that was all practical stuff like measuring fields and crude commerce. It was just a tool and not a delight. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians knew there was a number that expressed the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle, but they didn't know exactly what it was. They used some expression like 3 1/7 and that was close to enough for their purposes. It took the Greeks to determine what its true value is, and not only that but it was a totally different kind of number, which led the way to a discovery of a whole new order of infinity two thousand years later.
3 1/7 was fine of you are working with the wheel on your ox-drawn cart, but it will never take you to the moon.
I remember Dick and Jane but not John and Mary. I don't remember at all the prohibition on nicknames. I'm not sure if nickname is the proper name for different forms of a name, I always thought of nicknames as something with no relation to the name like Curly or Lefty, and that the diminutive, Kenny, and the short, Ken were just different forms of the same name of equal standing with the formal name, Kenneth. But maybe I missed that because it seems like I spent most of my time in class pretending my pencil was a rocket ship and it was blasting off from its launching pad which was the defunct inkwell. And when I think back to my grade school buddies, Robert McVey, Edward Puls, Michael Weber, they all seem to have formal names
When I was subbing there was usually a seating plan or sometimes the names were written on the desks, but some of them were Hispanic and Black people's names aren't always the same as White people's names, and even White people don't name the kids the same way we were named way back then. And how well are you going to remember the names of thirty kids? In my case not likely at all so early on I gave up on that. I used the expression Hey a lot, so much that at the end of the day I could hear the kids mocking me for it.
I generally don't feel like I am giving a full post if I stop writing before I get to the bottom of the box and begin to scroll down. I would like to go on about math, but the dawgs have indicated little interest in the subject, but then, as Beagles is fond of saying, that has never stopped me before.
The Greeks got the beginning of their math from Egypt and Mesopotamia, but that was all practical stuff like measuring fields and crude commerce. It was just a tool and not a delight. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians knew there was a number that expressed the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle, but they didn't know exactly what it was. They used some expression like 3 1/7 and that was close to enough for their purposes. It took the Greeks to determine what its true value is, and not only that but it was a totally different kind of number, which led the way to a discovery of a whole new order of infinity two thousand years later.
3 1/7 was fine of you are working with the wheel on your ox-drawn cart, but it will never take you to the moon.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
I Disagree
"There are two kinds of biblical scholars, the kind who take the bible and associated writings as true and work from there, and the kind that assume no such thing and use written history backed up by archaeology to look for evidence of biblical figures there. Beagles is a man of the first kind, and the second kind are the guys that have found no evidence of David or Solomon." - Uncle Ken - 12/5/18
I do not consider myself to be a Biblical scholar. I have read all of it at least once, and some of it more than once, but that doesn't make me a Biblical scholar, any more than reading all the works of Shakespeare would make someone a Shakespearian scholar. I do not take the Bible and associated writings as true and work from there. Someone like that would be called a fundamentalist, which is one type of religious person, and I am not even religious. I am a self styled Deist, I believe in God but not religion.
"I'm pretty sure that David and his son are mythical. There is no historical record of him, which there would be if he was some big king. Likewise the Queen of Sheba sadly." - Uncle Ken - 12/4/18
I have in my possession a book, "National Geographic Atlas of World History" by Noel Grove, prepared by the Book Division, National Geographic Society, Washington D.C. This is not a religious publication, but it does talk about religion because religion is a big part of world history. In an article titled "The Rise of Judaism" on page 40 it says, "Battles against the Philistines turned in Israel's favor under three powerful kings: Saul, David, and Solomon. King David united the many tribes into the nation of Israel. His heir, Solomon, built great palaces, fortresses, and the first temple in the capitol city of Jerusalem, and Israel became a political power." I'm pretty sure that the remains of some of Solomon's construction projects have been excavated and studied. Specifically, the famous "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem is generally believed to have been part of Solomon's Temple. That temple was destroyed by Assyrian invaders in 587 BC. and subsequently rebuilt under the sponsorship of Cyrus II (the Great) of Persia after he conquered Babylonia, which had previously conquered Assyria, but Solomon was long gone by then. The Queen of Sheba may indeed be mythical, but several African countries claim to be her birthplace, and I think there's a good chance that at last one of them is telling the truth.
I will take Uncle Ken's word about the mathematical stuff because I'm sure that he knows more about it than I do. One thing, as I searched my memory banks last night, I think it was John and Mary, not Johnny and Susie, who were always passing apples back and forth. I seem to remember that the school culture in those days did not tolerate the use of nicknames like Johnny and Susie. I remember one day we had a substitute teacher who got all upset because somebody signed the attendance sheet "Jim Shoe". She didn't seem to understand that it was a fake name, all she cared about was that he signed "Jim" instead of "James".
I do not consider myself to be a Biblical scholar. I have read all of it at least once, and some of it more than once, but that doesn't make me a Biblical scholar, any more than reading all the works of Shakespeare would make someone a Shakespearian scholar. I do not take the Bible and associated writings as true and work from there. Someone like that would be called a fundamentalist, which is one type of religious person, and I am not even religious. I am a self styled Deist, I believe in God but not religion.
"I'm pretty sure that David and his son are mythical. There is no historical record of him, which there would be if he was some big king. Likewise the Queen of Sheba sadly." - Uncle Ken - 12/4/18
I have in my possession a book, "National Geographic Atlas of World History" by Noel Grove, prepared by the Book Division, National Geographic Society, Washington D.C. This is not a religious publication, but it does talk about religion because religion is a big part of world history. In an article titled "The Rise of Judaism" on page 40 it says, "Battles against the Philistines turned in Israel's favor under three powerful kings: Saul, David, and Solomon. King David united the many tribes into the nation of Israel. His heir, Solomon, built great palaces, fortresses, and the first temple in the capitol city of Jerusalem, and Israel became a political power." I'm pretty sure that the remains of some of Solomon's construction projects have been excavated and studied. Specifically, the famous "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem is generally believed to have been part of Solomon's Temple. That temple was destroyed by Assyrian invaders in 587 BC. and subsequently rebuilt under the sponsorship of Cyrus II (the Great) of Persia after he conquered Babylonia, which had previously conquered Assyria, but Solomon was long gone by then. The Queen of Sheba may indeed be mythical, but several African countries claim to be her birthplace, and I think there's a good chance that at last one of them is telling the truth.
I will take Uncle Ken's word about the mathematical stuff because I'm sure that he knows more about it than I do. One thing, as I searched my memory banks last night, I think it was John and Mary, not Johnny and Susie, who were always passing apples back and forth. I seem to remember that the school culture in those days did not tolerate the use of nicknames like Johnny and Susie. I remember one day we had a substitute teacher who got all upset because somebody signed the attendance sheet "Jim Shoe". She didn't seem to understand that it was a fake name, all she cared about was that he signed "Jim" instead of "James".
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