Week 1: Shape of the Earth notes

Fascinating video! I would embed it here but the video is apparently not at YouTube for embedding... and I have to ask: why not??? If Janux is all about "open content" as they claim, why can't I share the video using YouTube's excellent embedding options...??? Hmmmm.... Anyway, here are my notes as I watch the video:

News of Washington Irving's role in modern storytelling about Columbus is new to me! I like Kerry's term for it: "mischievous nonsense."

Plato, Aristotle, Dante: pretty illustrious company for belief in the round earth! The curve of the earth's shadow sound's like a pretty good piece of evidence that should have been obvious to anyone who saw it!

These illustrations in the books are just beautiful, and I know that Kerry has digitized and put many of these books online for us to use. Is there a list of links somewhere here in the course website that will let me see links to all these images so that I can click. I would also love to read some of the Latin text, like in this wonderful set of illustrations for the effects of a lunar eclipse!

That's another topic where there is so much great overlap between mythological storytelling and the phenomena studied by scientists: eclipses. My favorite is the Hindu myth of the demon Rahu. Maybe I will write about that for my discussion contribution here!

(Rahu poster at Exotic India Arts)