Random Neat Stuff

Interweb coolness without any particular point.

Aqua Regia and Alchemy
I had always been under the impression that Gold was more or less impervious to acid; this is apparently not completely incorrect. However, thanks to the work of medieval Islamic alchemy, we have a acidic blend that will dissolve gold, platinum, and so forth with ease. It goes by the charming name Aqua Regia, latin for Royal Water (as it was devised to dissolve the so-called 'noble' metals in the pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone).

Nifty. Though in reality it's an incredibly dangerous mix of nitric and hydrochloric acids that is mad science approved (red or yellow and fuming).

One further cool fact: aqua regia was used to screw over the Nazis.

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation presented new medals to Laue and Franck.[3]

Take that, you goosestepping sons of bitches.

Source: Wikipedia Article

I've Been Meaning to Store This Link Somewhere Forever
An anime series, god I forget how long ago I followed a link to it or why, called Brave Story. I like the concept, and I hope they bring it over on dvd sooner rather than later, to probably crush my dreams.

Plot Summary: When 11 year old Wataru's father leaves home and his mother is taken ill to hospital, he decides to change his fate by travelling through the door shown to him by his friend Mitsuru. In a land of magic and monsters, Wataru must summon all his courage and embark on a journey with several comrades to meet the Goddess of Destiny and change this "mistaken fate".

Apparently in the original manga it was a bit darker; his mother is in the hospital for a suicide attempt, and that is the event he's trying to undo.

I like oracles and the darker heroic quest narratives. It sort of appeals to an innate sense of justice I have, I suppose; it just feels right, dramatically speaking, that you should be able to do *something* outside the bounds of normal causality to change the world, though the price would always have to be absurdly high. In the real world, sadly, we don't have access to such things as oracles or Goddesses of Destiny.

Not effective ones, at least.

Source: Anime News Network

Something to Read my Uncle Brad the Next Time He Rabbits on About Jesus
This particular page of the Epic of Gilgamesh, left up no doubt by the roommate, seems eerily familiar to something I read as a child...hmm...

O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.

Build a boat.. collect living things... no, not sure what it was yet... let's see if there's anything else that sounds familiar.

Six days and seven nights
came the wind and flood, the storm flattening the land.
When the seventh day arrived, the storm was pounding,
the flood was a war--struggling with itself like a woman
writhing (in labor).
The sea calmed, fell still, the whirlwind (and) flood stopped up.
I looked around all day long--quiet had set in
and all the human beings had turned to clay!
The terrain was as flat as a roof.
I opened a vent and fresh air (daylight!) fell upon the side of
my nose.
I fell to my knees and sat weeping,
tears streaming down the side of my nose.
I looked around for coastlines in the expanse of the sea,
and at twelve leagues there emerged a region (of land).
On Mt. Nimush the boat lodged firm,
Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing no sway.
One day and a second Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
no sway.
A third day, a fourth, Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
no sway.
A fifth day, a sixth, Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing
no sway.
When a seventh day arrived
I sent forth a dove and released it.
The dove went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a swallow and released it.
The swallow went off, but came back to me;
no perch was visible so it circled back to me.
I sent forth a raven and released it.
The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.
It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me.

A giant flood... a boat stranded on a mountain... a series of avian scouts to find land... hmmm... definitely rings a bell.

Oh right! Noah's Ark! It's a bible ripoff.

Such blatant plagiarism, why, Christians should be really mad at those ancient Sumerians...When did they steal this anyway?

The earliest Sumerian versions of the epic date from as early as the Third Dynasty of Ur (2150-2000 BCE) (Dalley 1989: 41-42). The earliest Akkadian versions are dated to the early second millennium (Dalley 1989: 45). The "standard" Akkadian version, consisting of twelve tablets, was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BCE and was found in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.

Oh. So, err, they wrote this.. at least 4,000 years ago.

But the Bible's really old, right?

According to recent theories, linguistic as well as archaeological, the global structure of the texts in the Hebrew Bible were compiled during the reign of King Josiah in the 7th century BC. Even though the components are derived from more ancient writings, the final form of the books is believed to have been set somewhere between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD.

Oh. So, err, the Bible comes from 1300 years later.

Yeah. Umm. Hi?

(Yes I know, this was very snarky and unnecessary. I'm aware that the Bible is actually largely sourced from Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, and that many of its big Gotcha stories are blatant ripoffs of earlier mythology. This is hardly surprising, unless you are a biblical fundamentalist. Like my Uncle Brad)

Sources: Wikipedia on Bible (subsection on Historical Research)
Wikipedia on Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh (English version, Flood Section)

Being Royal Seems To Mean Really Big Houses
So I saw this linked from the front of Wikipedia the other day and took a look. Geebus, Portuguese royalty loved their gingerbread mansions.

Some parts of this are really pretty, but others seem either monstrously impractical or just ugly.

Take a look at the King and Queen's rooms, for example. This place is MASSIVE, but the royal family have tiny living quarters. I think my roommate has a bigger bedroom than the King. We definitely have nicer bedding.

I wonder if there was some historical reason they didn't use larger personal spaces, or if it was just a design issue. Me, I need a nice spacious place to make my personal cave, but the rest of the palace is just unnecessary extravangance. Imagine all the dusting and mopping you'd have to have done just to keep it up!

Source: Wikipedia Article on Queluz National Palace