Why No Romania

[Kuna]

Hey, Kuna...
Once when I was in London I was taken to see a Cricket Match.  I remember it well because it turned out to be one of the most restful naps I'd ever had.  Maybe they do it better in AU.

    jb,

Cricket is like fishing...

Somedays you can go out and not get excited at all... but every now and then you'll see an incredible 30 seconds that compresses so much action packed excitement that it can be compared with your first experiences with a girl... Yes, I said 30 seconds!   

Of course, if you're really into your fishing you appreciate knot tying, casting, feeling the weight of the tackle dropping through the water and highlights can come from simple nibbles and lost mosters of the ocean.

The Ashes is special though, so I know exactly what I'll be doing this weekend (The first test is in my hometown too, and I just happen to have fluked some tickets for Day 3).

Kuna!!!

[corp]

I Have seen a number of Romanian girls on standard dating sites. Especially Faith based ones. I communicated with a few but nothing ever got off the ground.

[DKMM]

Sandro,

Your books leave out the Almohad Dynasty? 

jb,

Zero as a concept was first used by Ptolemy in 130AD.  It was not widely used in Europe in the medieval age because people used the abacus for calculations, thus making a zero unnecessary.

Also, the common misconception that the Catholic Church believed the earth was flat is a uniquely American myth.  Its like saying ice cubes in your drink will make you sick.  That they burned anybody at the stake for not believing it is malicious fiction.  I wonder how much attention you paid to your Jesuits.

Just clearing up some facts.   

[Bruno]

jb,

Zero as a concept was first used by Ptolemy in 130AD.  It was not widely used in Europe in the medieval age because people used the abacus for calculations, thus making a zero unnecessary.

JB is right...

The Long Count calendar developed in south-central Mexico required the use of zero as a place-holder within its vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. A shell glyph was used as a zero symbol for these Long Count dates, the earliest of which (on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas) has a date of 36 BC. Since the eight earliest Long Count dates appear outside the Maya homeland, it is assumed that the use of zero in the Americas predated the Maya and was possibly the invention of the Olmecs. Indeed, many of the earliest Long Count dates were found within the Olmec heartland, although the fact that the Olmec civilization had come to an end by the 4th century BC, several centuries before the earliest known Long Count dates, argues against the zero being an Olmec invention. Although zero became an integral part of Maya numerals...

Maya_numerals :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/maya/numbers.shtm

2006 in Maya number :

[jb]

Also, the common misconception that the Catholic Church believed the earth was flat is a uniquely American myth.  Its like saying ice cubes in your drink will make you sick.  That they burned anybody at the stake for not believing it is malicious fiction.  I wonder how much attention you paid to your Jesuits.

There is no misconception here, other than you seem not to understand irony. The only people that were tortured and killed by the Church was over matters of faith, (and sometimes politics), that part is true, and it's also true the Spanish seemed to have been better at that chore than the Vatican was.   The irony is, the Church was ruled by a collection of old men who were not well schooled themselves.  These reactionary heads, i.e., Bishops and Cardinals, didn't want to rock the huge boat which held the majority of the illiterate masses.  This was the case even up until Galileo Galilei, who spent his last years, (1642) in house arrest with charges of heresy hanging over him about the notion that the sun didn't revolve around the earth.  The Catholic Church was slow to get on the scientific bandwagon and the world began to evolve without Rome being at it's center.  There were several centuries of this blindness before light began to filter through those dark windows.  While the Church doesn't like to discuss it, that same attitude was probably more responsible for Protestant reformation than anything else.

I really don't need a history lesson.

[SANDRO43]

Sandro, Your books leave out the Almohad Dynasty?

Not really, but considering the times, they do not seem not much worse than their contemporary Christian equivalents :

The Almohad princes had a longer and a more distinguished career than the Murabits (or Almoravids). Yusuf II or "Abu Ya'qub" (1163–1184), and Ya'qub I or "al-Mansur" (1184-1199), the successors of Abd al-Mumin, were both able men. Initially their government drove some Jewish and Christian subjects to take refuge in the growing Christian states of Portugal, Castile and Aragon. But in the end they became less fanatical than the Almoravids, and Ya'qub al Mansur was a highly accomplished man, who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher Averroes. His title of al-Mansur, "The Victorious," was earned by the defeat he inflicted on Alfonso VIII of Castile in the Battle of Alarcos (1195). But the Christian states in Iberia were becoming too well organized to be overrun by the Muslims, and the Almohads made no permanent advance against them. In 1212 Muhammad III, "al-Nasir" (1199–1214), the successor of al-Mansur, after an initially successful advance north, was defeated by an alliance of the four Christian princes of Castile, Aragón, Navarre and Portugal, at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Sierra Morena. The battle destroyed Almohad dominance. Nearly all of the Moorish dominions in Iberia were lost soon after, with the great Moorish cities of Córdoba and Seville falling to the Christians in 1236 and 1248 respectively. All that remained, thereafter, was the Moorish state of Granada, which after an internal Muslim revolt, survived as a tributary state of the Christian kingdoms on Iberia's southern periphery, until it too fell in 1492....The Almohads encouraged the establishment of Christians even in Fez, and after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa they occasionally entered into alliances with the kings of Castile.

(quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almohad for convenience)

[SANDRO43]

Bruno, you forgot to mention a small consequence of the Long Count :

According to the Popol Vuh, a book compiling details of creation accounts known to the Quiché Maya of the colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fifth world. The Popol Vuh describes the first four creations that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fifth world where men were placed. The Maya believed that the fifth world would end in catastrophe and the sixth and final world would be created that would signal the end of mankind...The last creation ended on a long count of 13.0.0.0.0. Another 13.0.0.0.0 will occur on December 21, 2012

JB, how about meeting for a last beer before that ? Would the date below be convenient for you ?

[DKMM]

Sandro,  No argument there.

JB,
I wasn't trying to defend the Catholic Church, I'm not Catholic and I hardly know anybody who is.  I'm only saying that its an American myth that Europeans (or the Church) or whomever at the time of Columbus thought the earth was flat.  That is simply not true.  In fact, it was the church that taught in its universities that the earth was round.

Not trying to pick a fight, just trying to clear it up.  We make fun of Russians for having silly myths so I thought I would swing it back.