Arcadia Discussion Zone

I've often had this conversation with the 'adults' in my family - who came up with the brilliant idea of starting freezing at 32? Surely starting at 0 makes more sense...actually scrap that, I don't want to piss off VAM! I'm sure Ye Olde temperature made sense at the time!

What I do find interesting is the old money, although I do find it hard to get to grips with it, with all the farthings and tuppence and stuff. But like I said, I find it interesting. Am I right in saying there were 12...pennies in a shilling? I always get it wrong!

Rhea

In Canada, where we've been metric for many years, it seems very easy and natural to us now. The temperature scale is very easy to get accustomed to. Basically, 15 to 18 degrees is just about perfect temperature. If it's anywhere between 20 and 25 it's a hot summer day. When it gets up close to 30 it's getting too hot. From 30 up you've got some serious heat problems. 10 degrees is still warm enough to walk around with a light jacket. It makes perfect sense for 0 to be the freezing point. Anything between 0 and -10 is tolerably cold in a winter jacket and gloves. Below that it gets uncomfortable. -15 to -20 is seriously cold.

Why the heck would you want the freezing point to be such a seemingly arbitrary number as 32? Makes no sense.

I think in terms of fahrenheit for hot temperatures and celsius for low ones. For some strange reason.

Do you live near a fat guy in a red suit, with a white beard, strange pets and a quirky mode of transport??

Yeah, how did you know? I think his name is Bob. Weird guy. Goes around on one of those little scooter things. Has a ferret and a daschsund. Works as a Mounty.

In Britain an entire generation (or more) of us grew up with kilometres, metres, and centimetres, grams, Centigrade etc in the Science labs at school, and with feet and inches, stones, pounds and ounces, Fahrenheit, etc etc, in the real world we actually lived in. I can still cope with that fine, and can use either Imperial or metric in, for example, cooking. (Though growing up in my mother's kitchen, it was all cups and tablespoons, far more convenient, and I still use these measures when baking bread. It was further complicated by the fact that my father was Canadian, so several of our cookbooks used Canadian measures.)
But when I'm in France I happily think in kilometres, not miles.

Farthings had just gone out when I was at junior school, but our ancient textbooks still had them, so I had to learn them. Tuppence just meant two pence, and we have a two-pence piece now, though we didn't then; what we did have was the wonderful 12-sided threepenny bit. And though we never used them, I also had to know about rods, poles & perches (all the same thing), chains, furlongs, etc etc. The back cover of school exercise books always had all of these listed, and many more. Sadly long gone -- so if I want a nostalgic "fix" of old weights and measures, I have a couple of brilliant conversion programs on my computer: Quad-Lock Unit Converter and ESB Unit Conv -- and they have ones I've never even heard of.
And what is the point of a metric tonne, when it's 0.9842 of a good old-fashioned proper ton?

VAM, do you keep a bunch of these guys in a little cupboard at the side of your screen, so they can pop out one-by-one whenever you want them? I could cope with that -- but not with having to go off somewhere obscure, deep within the bowels of my machine, to drag them out kicking and screaming. Or miaowing...

No little cupboard I'm afraid, only deep bowel stuff but having been blessed with an obsessive nature, I find that more fun!

We can call them VAMs ....... Varietudinous Anthropomorphic Magnificences

Sorry, couldn't resist it - thought you might have been reading a dictionary in the post above!!

Happy Christmas to you too, by the way.
(do your thingies come with music?)

Let's get our facts straight, shall we? In 1459, as a young man Columbus served in a Genoese squadron that formed part of a large flotilla commanded Jean d'Anjou, Duke of Calabria that sailed (unsuccessfully) against the armada of Alfonso V of Aragon for the recovery of Sicily. There is nothing in the historical record to suggest that Columbus ever met Jean d'Anjou or his father René. As for the phrase Et in Arcadia Ego it is found in Virgil's Eclogues written fifteen centuries before Columbus.



While it is accurate to state that Spanish ships were traditionally christened with religious names, these names could refer to saints, Marian manifestations, Christian symbols, or events taken from the New Testament. Niven Sinclair has made hay of this coincidence for years, ignoring the fact that it was the ship's owner, Juan Niño de Moguer, who named the Niña after his own patron, Saint Clare of Assisi.

TCP

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Hi Sandy,
Welcome back to the forum. In answer to your question I do not believe that the phrase 'et in arcadia ego' can be traced to any classical source. The is a tomb in Arcadia described in the Eclogues but not the phrase 'et in arcadia ego.'
Best,
A. Nesos

The phrase "et in Arcadia ego" is nowhere in the Eclogues, though the phrase "sheperds of Arcady" is.

ECLOGUE VII.--MELIBOEUS

Shepherds of Arcady, deck with ivy your rising poet, that Codrus may burst his gall with envy; or, if he praise beyond my need, bind my brows with foxglove, lest an evil tongue harm the hard to be.

The only tomb mentioned is that of Bianor, which would be in Madrid.

My bad, it is not the called phrase itself but the Arcadian idyll - the pastoral life of Arcadian shepherds. Check Eclogue V to find the tomb of Daphnis, which served as the inspiration for Poussin's Bergeres d'Arcadie.

TCP

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CORRECT!!!!!

Don't you just love the way TCP started with the phrase "Let's get our facts straight shall we" and then proceeded not to.

"I'm an Arcadia ego" originator TCP

Just like the RUBBISH below, repetition of unfounded claims by De Sede and Mazet:



What were Gerard de Sede's and Nicolas Mazet's SOURCES in relation to this piece of fiction?

What were their SOURCES?

The fact is that Mazet was simply uncritically plagiarising De Sede's claims, and de Sede claimed that his "sources" were not available to be checked - so the claim that the trafficking in masses charge was dropped by the Carcassonne Bishopric in relation to Sauniere is yet another one of de Sede's apocryphal fictions - like some of his other claims.

I guess that explains why the shepherd is pointing to the letter "D" in the first version of the painting. The tree in the background of the second version could be a laurel tree too, which is associated with Daphnis. Being the son of Hermes, he could be a link to Hermeticism.

Yes, now prove it.
Or are you going to admit for once that you were daydreaming again.

Nothing to do with de Sede.

Here is what you ask

Nothing to do with de Sede.

[Here is what you ask[/quote]


Our Trash collector is collecting rubbish again.
Sauniere the Marguillier by Nicolas Mazet used Gerard de Sede as a source, and Roscoe does not know that.

Proof please Bluff called. Where is your proof that one time fake document pusher alongside Jean Luc Chaumeil had anything to do with Mazet's article?

My post Posted: 01 Dec 2008 2:02 pm

your reply Posted: 01 Dec 2008 2:03 pm

In other words one minute apart. You had no time whatsoever to read my response. When I directed you to here

Here's evidence that you aren't interested in the the truth. Am I right Smith?

Plus the fact that you conveniently ignored this whole passage on my first response to your drivel.

A judge made an inventory of Gélis’ wealth after his murder on Halloween:

“4.000 F under the tabernacle, 2,000 F under a ratchet this in the sacristy “buried in the earth in the second cellar” Then in the presbytery were discovered 1,000 F in jaunets (gold coins) in the fireplace mantelpiece in the bedroom; the same amount in the prayer stool, the same amount under a stone in the privy, the same amount under the attic; the same amount in an out building, without mentioning the various sums in the books in the library. There were 11,400 F all over the place, napoléons (coins) of 20 and 10 F contained in odd bits of a stovepipe, or in white iron tubes.”

Although Géllis’ yearly salary was 900 francs per year he had given 1000 francs to a friend in order to buy railway bonds and little more than a month before his death he had invested a further 1200 francs in them.

Are we to assume that Gélis’ was trafficking in masses also?

Source document required.
This debate has occurred before.
You believe in any bullshit without having to provide sources.
That's not historical research.
That's trash collecting.

Please address the query about the source of Gelis' wealth?