John Haxby <john.haxby@oracle.com> wrote: |> On 26 Jan 2018, at 07:35, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote: |> On 01/24/2018 10:33 PM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote: |>> Robert Elz said: |>> |>>> Once upon a time, the world was always flat, everyone knew that, |>>> the pope even proclaimed it... |>>> |>> Cite? | |A spherical earth pre-dates a Pope by quite a few centuries. One of \ |the better known Greeks (whose name escapes me) even estimated the \ |diameter of the earth. A flat earth is a relatively new fad. Now i am anything but a christian, yet i would support the philosophical reasoning. |> I doubt whether any Roman Catholic pope proclaimed the Earth flat \ |> as a matter of doctrine. That being said, flat-Earthers are still \ That is my view too. I also doubt that most of these most intellectual of their times ever meant that "flat" literally. At times they just did not know? The question always has been how to civilize the human being and how to make it reflect themselves. There are many many highly intellectual people out there which find things and know a lot, can even clone life itself (and getting better), but at the same time the same people want privileges and unfortunately not only those, but also many many others, and growing. So if all that fantastic knowledge leads to nothing else but the end of biodiversity, and the desire to turn Mars into the "paradise" that we currently destroy right here where we are at, isn't the world flat? You seem to fall off the end. By the way, at that time, here in Germany, with people dying from starvation in years with bad harvest, and thus any single square meter field meaning survival, people with Down-Syndrome were entitled to inherit, and "evil" humans had a legitimized force to fear (the inquisition). Uff. Well! Just imagine how hard life was, no matter whether poor or rich the most "ridiculous" illnesses could cause death, and you sit in an early mass on easter, the sunset will start rising through the coloured glasses in just five minutes from now, and the choir starts singing "Miserere mei, Deus" of Gregorio Allegri. Then it seems much better, even sacred, to stay in the middle of the world, than to fall off the end. I can recommend [1] which is unfortunately no longer available from Germany, the high C of the Westminster Abbey choir is the most beautiful that can be imagined, [2] is also somewhat legendary, but does not reach [1] by far. Happy hacking. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psf5Cqjpt7I [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDOENZediM8 --steffen | |Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear, |der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one |einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off |(By Robert Gernhardt)