Satie is fascinating, and I don't know of any composer who had so much variety in what he attempted. The Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes are by far his best known pieces, but once you get away from that it gets strange and wonderful. He threw off ideas which seem to have led to different musical movements years later. Minimalism, for instance, was a term first coined in 1968, but some people point to Satie's Vexations of 1893 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKxt4KacRo&list=RDsKKxt4Kac...) - to be played 840 times. One puzzle (at least for me) is to work out whether he had the piano or organ in mind for some pieces. While the instruments look similar, some of the held notes will fade away on the piano, losing harmonies which would otherwise be present.
Not only the "Vexations" is to be played 840 times but he also instructs:
"It would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by staying very still"
I recently listened to a Sati recital by a Dutch pianist. The pianist told us the story, and said, "now I'm going to play this to you". Then played us a compressed recording of it that plays the whole thing in one second.
How so? If you attribute it to an earlier universe, you are just pushing the problem further back. It doesn't seem to be a proof or even a mild indication.
The universe casually didn't follow the laws of physics immediately after the Big Bang, an improbable event directly after an improbable event. No explanation has been found, even according to CERN, why everything that was created was not spontaneously annihilated. Attributing that to a divine intervention is the most probable explanation. CERN attributing this to "Some unknown entity" is humorous.
One theory (which CERN is using) is to argue that almost all matter was destroyed, and that the current observable universe is merely the tiny leftover due to slight differences in behavior, making the Big Bang look more like the Ludicrous Bang. This, of course, just contributes to religious snickering at how all problems are solved by adding another billion years to the timeline, over and over.
Edit to reply: They behave differently; but why there is more of one than the other, remains unexplained; as regardless of how they behave, both should have been initially created in equal numbers. As for Sabine Hossenfelder's quote, that's a religious-faith level cop-out. When science requires faith, should it not be treated as a religion?
> No explanation has been found, even according to CERN
Incorrect.
First, let's be clear, "our understanding of the laws of physics" is not "the actual laws of physics". Every physicist knows this. The universe always follows the real laws, physicists are very excited about the difference because it's a chance to win a Nobel Prize.
For example, the one in 1980 for the discovery (in 1964, they're slow to award the prize) of CP violation in decays of neutral kaons, which is fancy physics language for "matter and antimatter do not behave the same way". This year, the LHCb experiment in CERN also discovered CP violation in baryons.
In fact, this is in your own linked article from CERN: """In the past few decades, particle-physics experiments have shown that the laws of nature do not apply equally to matter and antimatter. Physicists are keen to discover the reasons why."""
That said, personally I like the response from Sabine Hossenfelder: There's nothing to be explained, conservation laws only apply to time-evolution of a system, not to the initial conditions.
We don't look for a reason why the mass-energy was non-zero, why do we even need one for why the baryon number isn't zero?
> Attributing that to a divine intervention is the most probable explanation.
You lost me here. It seems humans have a predisposition to believe in divine beings, so this just sounds like taking human biases as a basis for truth. What's wrong with saying, "I don't know?"
Even with a traditional diesel, you can get a good ride. I took the sleeper train from Istanbul to Pamukalle (Laodicea), and even over the single track sections it was smooth. It might be down to the driver planning ahead - this one was definitely proud of his work!
Picking up on your acre of potatoes: no, you don't need oxen for this. In fact one reason for the importance of potatoes historically is that you can grow them on marginal land with only hand labour. There are various techniques such as the lazybeds used by displaced Highlanders in Scotland, but they don't need oxen. In fact oxen had their heyday before the iron ploughshare, as you needed a team to pull the older wooden plough, and the plough was used for planting grain. Of course these days it is also used for planting potatoes on rich land, but that's not essential.
Revelations is problematic if you attempt to take it literally rather than understanding that it makes heavy use of symbolism and other literary devices. That literalism is largely specific to American society - and I don't just mean American Christians here. It's not particularly easy to understand the way that ancient literature works, but even if you don't want to put in the time, it's important to understand that the writers were often quite sophisticated, and worked in different ways from what you are used to.
That story is only tracked back to the 1400's, so not credible. The currently favoured theory is that this was a translation error. Apparently in Aramaic (the language of Judaea and Galilee), the word for "camel" is very close to the word for "rope". As with all parables (and this does qualify as a parable) it may be intended to reward some thought - e.g. the only way of getting a rope through the eye of needle is to strip away almost all of it, rather than being a flat negation.
Is your source on this that 90s era website I’ve seen passed around for 20 years? You truly think that thousands of theologians over hundreds of years never noticed this one simple coincidence?
Sorry, I don't know which web site you are referring to. However this is a primarily a matter of linguistics. Checking in to it, it wasn't Aramaic that was the issue, but Greek: κάμηλον (kamēlon, “camel”) versus κάμιλον (kamilon, “rope”).
If by theology, you mean the possible interpretation of "strip away almost everything", while it is debatable whether this particular parable actually means that, it is always accepted that a rich person can give up what they have. This is literally the words of Jesus (Mark 19:16-22), the context in which the parable is given.
Francis of Assisi is an example of one person who made this decision.
Much nicer interpretation than the simple impossibility.
Plus takes into account that in text criticism the more difficult spelling is usually the more correct, then rendered into the more common through lapsus calami/scribe error.
thousands of theologians over hundreds of years probably passed it around until the '90s, when a few learned HTML and put it online. I doubt the website's authors were the first.
This meaning seems somewhat contrary to readings in the OT (Ecclesiastes 4:12), about how a person alone is defeated, but two can fight back-to-back, and how three are a braided cord. I think given how other verses speak about not serving God and Mammon (money), that the rich are asked to give their riches to follow Jesus is a direct appeal to that given rich man, so that he could braid his cord with theirs, and have the man and his money work toward spreading the Good News. These braiding metaphors are similar to comparisons of Gentiles being grafted as a new vine onto the covenant with Abraham.
The parable of the talents and the connection between investment skill and being blessed by the master show that being rich or good with money is considered a good thing that can be used poorly or toward evil, not simply evil in itself. It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, not that money is evil in and of itself. Money is simply a tool fit for a purpose, as Jesus shows with the miracle of the fish with a coin in its mouth which was used to pay their temple taxes, so that Jesus could keep the legalistic Pharisee and Sadducee busybodies off their backs for a little while longer.
"Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." Or something like that.
I don't see this as an issue. There are only so many images to use in a subsistence agriculture society, hence sheep and grain coming up over and over. Sometimes similar images will be used to make different points.
If you want something genuinely difficult, have a look at the alternative explanation of the parable of the talents where the man who does not commit usury is the good guy. One of the gospels (Luke) has additional detail about the "nobleman" who goes off to which suggests this is Herod the Great, (bad guy - see Lk 19:27), so the original meaning is up for debate. Personally I believe that a large part of the point of parables was to spark debate, so we should not assume that the meanings are obvious.
I think there are consistent usages and expressions in the OT and NT that show how God understands money to be a tool to be used, and not and asset to be hoarded or an aspect of vice to be indulged in. It's a fine distinction, you could even say it's threading a needle.
So basically it says “you can’t take it with you, so do something good with it while you’re alive instead of hoarding it like you can take it with you.”
Up to a point, but there are other parables which make death explicit, e.g. the rich farmer who tore down his barns to build bigger ones, and was told he would die that night. This parable doesn't link this to having limited time, it's just about "sell everything, give to the poor" to be saved.
The key of the teaching comes after that metaphor, when the disciples ask how one can be saved and Jesus answers that “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
These words eventually became the foundation of Christian charity in an Ancient world that until then despised and rejected the weak and infirm.
Many of our modern day institutions trace their origin to that Christian charity, to those few enigmatic words.
(Peter Brown's “Through the Eye of a Needle” is a great book to know more about this process.)
The low-pressure version from Evrin is not plausible. It's fairly easy to calculate the stored energy in a given volume of compressed air, and it just doesn't give you enough to be useful even assuming 100% efficiency. Theres a lot of "might" in this article that I'm not sure how to remove within Wikipedia rules but probably shouldn't be there.
It's not abstract: that would imply that it was not based on any real form. But it is not intended to be realistic. We know a lot about Celtic art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_art) and it often shows very high skill, and is deliberately non-realistic. That's hardly surprising: historically realistic art has been in the minority, with most cultures choosing to show some aspect of a subject selectively.
Let me give one familiar modern example: logos. If they are graphical, generally you need to put some work in to understanding what they mean.