Books, Movies and Life its Own Self

Rosh Ha-shanah is both the Jewish New Year celebration and Yom Ha-Din, ‘Judgement Day.’ The celebration marks the birthday of the world and on this day God judges every living creature which has come into the world. As the Day of Judgment, Rosh Ha-shanah is a solemn occasion when God makes a judgment about whether we live or die in the coming year. God writes this down, though it is not signed and sealed until Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Because of this, Rosh Ha-shanah is an occasion of both solemn and celebratory connotations.

Rosh Ha-shanah also marks the first day of the month of Tishri. On this day a ceremonial ram’s horn, the shophar or shofar, is blown to call sinners to repentance. Then begins the Ten Days of Penitence that culminate with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. On Rosh Ha-shanah, those celebrating eat sweet delicacies with ingredients such as honey, apples, and raisins to represent optimism for a sweet future. The apple is particularly crucial to the table as at the commencement of the meal a blessing is said over an apple, symbol of the divine presence, dipped into honey to try to encourage a sweet year.

Sitting outside on a bench and relaxing is great. But sitting on a bench carved to look like a fierce dragon is awesome! Estonian artist Igor Loskutov carved this fantastic dragon bench using a chainsaw. Currently based in Bad Dürrheim, Germany, Loskutov made the bench for a local butcher shop.

Visit Igor Loskutov’s website or Facebook page to check out more of is award-winning creations.

On this thursday is Rosh Hashanna:

- this is the jewish new year, we are entering the year 5778. It comemorates when adam and eve were created.

- If you see someone jewish, or have jewish friends and family, say “L’Shana Tova (Le-Sha-Nah-Toe-Vah). It’s a greeting and a wish for a happy new year!

- We dip apples in honey to remind us of the sweetness of life and to bring sweetness into ourselves for a new year

-We eat a circular challah to symbolize the cycles of time, the challah often has raisins in it to add extra sweetness

-This is a happy holiday, full of joy

Beginning on Friday, September 30th is Yom Kippur:

- This is the jewish day of atonement, when we think about our wrongdoings of the past year and think about how we can commit to doing better in the next year.

- Many Jewish people fast, abstaining from food and water from sundown to sundown. The fast is roughly 25 hours. HOWEVER, if you need to eat, you may. There are lots of reasons that people may not fast, like recovering from an eating disorder, a medical condition like diabetes, or having to take medication with food. The elderly, children, and pregnant people should not fast.

- This is a solemn holiday, many people spend all day in synagogue in deep prayer. 

- On Yom Kippur, wish someone a peaceful or meaningful fast. Some people may take offense to the concept of having an “easy” or “enjoyable” fast because Yom Kippur is not about ease or comfort. 

- There is a breaking of the fast at sundown, this is usually a joyous event

Together, these make up the High Holy Days, the most important week in Judaism. 

Yet there’s also a sense in which [Samuel] Johnson had been talking of balloons for decades. It’s with a fantasy of aerial spectatorship—“Let observation with extensive view / Survey mankind, from China to Peru”—that his poem The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) begins, as though generalizing about the human condition meant taking, almost literally, a bird’s eye view. His philosophical tale Rasselas (1759) uses human flight to address large questions about ambition and power. The hapless inventor of a flying mechanism enthuses to Rasselas about the philosophical pleasure with which he now, “furnished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling beneath him.” Inevitably, the wings then fail to keep him aloft, though when he plunges into a lake—with neat Johnsonian irony—they keep him afloat. This is not only a warning about individual overreach, however. It also lets Johnson consider the implications of flight for global power. Before his embarrassing swim, the inventor assures Rasselas that he will never explain aviation to others, “for what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? … A flight of northern savages [the phrase implies not only ancient Goths but also the powers of modern Europe, then waging war for empire] might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them.”

For Samuel Johnson’s birthday, Google created an enchanting doodle, celebrating Johnson’s dictionary–the first of its kind for the English language (preceding the Oxford English Dictionary by nearly 150 years). 

Fortuna seemed to have a special interest in the fates of the imperial dynasties on 18 September. On this day in 96, Caesar Domitianus Germanicus Augustus, whom we know as Domitian, was assassinated at age 44 by officials of his court who were displeased by the emperor’s less-than-successful military exploits in Dacia and Germanica.

The Roman Senate declared a damnatio memorae upon Domitian, and many images of him since discovered are often deliberately disfigured or broken. Domitian was the last of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire between 69 and 96, including also the reigns of Vespasian (69–79), and Titus (79–81).

Sculptural figures of women from the era are distinguished by replication of ornate, complicated hairstyles of thickly rolled fillets and corkscrew ringlets in rows and waves often plaited into a honeycomb structure. These styles conveyed a religious as well as materialistic significance. Colored stones such as pavonazzetto were similarly used by the Flavians not just for domestic enhancement, but also for temple furnishings and even architectural elements.

Following a two-year stabilizing rule by Domitian’s former advisor, Nerva, in early 98, Caesar Nerva Traianus Divi Nervae filius Augustus – Trajan – rose as the imperator, presiding until his death in 117 over one of the Empire’s last great expansions and earning the reputation he has kept for 1900 years as a thoughtful and fair leader. Coincidentally, Trajan was born on 18 September in 53.

Reference: Harriet I. Flower. “A Tale of Two Monuments: Domitian, Trajan, and Some Praetorians at Puteoli,” American Journal of Archaeology, 1 October 2001, Vol. 105(4), pp.625-648.

Portrait head of the Emperor Domitian idealized as Hercules, c.75. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Accession No. 1978.227

Portrait of a Priestess, c. 50. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, No. 2005.006.001.

Lion-Headed Table Leg of pavonazzetto, c. 50. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, No. 1988.004.002.

Column of Trajan (miniature), 113. Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell University, No. 581.

Trajan’s Market, on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Further Reading:

Andrew Zissos. A Companion to the Flavian Age of Imperial Rome. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016.

Julian Bennett. Trajan: Optimus Princeps. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2001.

– Earl Maize, its project engineer @ JPL

current mood: emotional about a space probe

Cassini is the first spacecraft that was destroyed not from malfunction, or as a necessary end result of its mission… but out of love.

The probe was running out of propulsion fuel, but there’s no reason it couldn’t have been pushed into a stable orbit from where it could collect data and send back pictures for a long while yet.

Except it had detected that one of Saturn’s moons held liquid water and organic compounds: a world that might support life. A world that is, at the least, dreaming of life.

There is no orbit stable enough to be certain that the probe, carrying radioactive batteries and Earth’s bacteria, would never have come into contact with Enceladus. A delicate island of alien life could have been snuffed out or overrun. The sheep could have eaten the rose.

So instead - for the love of this fragile possibility, this potential that might yet never be realized - Cassini was brought into a final, intimate tango with Saturn.

But of course, all space probes are built for the sake of awe, which is nearly love. Science is rational, but scientists are driven to understand the universe just as the religious strive to know the face of God.