Today, like many other Sundays, we had Sunday School on Twitter. Since the topic was a bit long, a few of my friends suggested that I should preserve today’s stream of tweets for further reference. In fact, their suggestion was rather that I wrote these as a blog post, but my laziness knows no boundaries. My apologies.
So, to make it less embarrassing, let’s say that this is a raw draft of a future post; also, please consider that we have yet some facts that we need to review in our next Twitter Atheist Sunday School.
This is a fascinating story, in my opinion, everyone should have access to learn about these facts.
This is how we make atheists. 😉
Oh! For these tweets to make sense you need to read them from bottom to top. Sorry.
If you remember how much easier it is to remember what you would rather forget than remember, than remember what you would rather remember than forget, then you can’t forget how much easier it is to forget what you would rather remember than forget, than forget what you would rather forget than remember.
– Elmira Gazette, quoted in New York Times, Feb. 13, 1891
California Academy of Sciences: Human Evolution — Tool use by early humans started much earlier. The Academy’s Zeray Alemseged reveals his latest discovery: human stone tool use dating back to 3.4 million years ago. Small-brained human ancestors used stone tools to whack into large mammals some 800,000 years earlier than previously thought.
– The earliest known evidence for stone tool use and meat eating among early humans is found.
– The evidence — butchered, fossilized bones — dates to roughly 3.4 million years ago.
– It’s believed the ancestor Australopithecus afarensis (to which “Lucy” belongs) used the tools.
BBC News: Tool-making and meat-eating began 3.5 million years ago
Researchers have found evidence that hominins – early human ancestors – used stone tools to cleave meat from animal bones more than 3.2 million years ago. That pushes back the earliest known tool use and meat-eating in such hominins by more than 800,000 years.
Bones found in Ethiopia show cuts from stone and indications that the bones were forcibly broken to remove marrow. The research, in the journal Nature, challenges several notions about our ancestors’ behaviour.
Previously the oldest-known use of stone tools came from the nearby Gona region of Ethiopia, dating back to about 2.5 million years ago. That suggests that it was our more direct ancestors, members of our own genus Homo, that were the first to use tools.
But the marked bones were found in the Dikika region, with their age determined by dating the nearby volcanic rock — to between 3.2 million and 3.4 million years ago.
A battery of tests showed that the cuts, scrapes and scratches were made before the bones fossilised, and detailed analysis even showed that there were bits of stone lodged in one of the cuts.
Calacademy’s ‘Science in Action’ strives to make science accessible for everyone and discuss its relevance in our everyday lives. We bring you science news through media screens and live chats on the museum floor, the Science Today website, podcasts, and monthly Nightlife programming. We gather and disseminate content through our partners, local programs, other media and Academy staff.
A story is told of Sheridan, himself an Irishman, that one day, when coming back from shooting with an empty bag, he did not like to go home completely empty, and seeing a number of ducks in a pond, and a man or farmer leaning on a rail watching them, Sheridan said, ‘What will you take for a shot at the ducks?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will take half a sovereign.’
‘Done!’ said Sheridan, and he fired into middle of the flock, killing a dozen. ‘I am afraid you made a bad bargain!’
‘I don’t know,’ said the man: ‘they weren’t mine.’
– Tit-Bits From All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, Oct. 29, 1881
Concerned that the men of 1768 no longer read the Bible, Edward Harwood decided to translate the New Testament into modern language. The result has been called “turgid,” “absurd,” “ridiculous,” and “one of the most discussed and insulted” Bibles of the 18th century. Samples of his work:
Before: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
After: “Since therefore you are now in a state of lukewarmness, a disagreeable medium between the two extremes, I will in no long time eject you from my heart with fastidious contempt.”
Before: “Give us this day our daily bread.”
After: “As thou hast hitherto most mercifully supplied our wants, deny us not the necessaries and conveniences of life, while thou art pleased to continue us in it.”
Before: “We shall not all die, but we shall all be changed.”
After: “We shall not all pay the common debt of nature, but we shall by a soft transition be changed from mortality to immortality.”
And here’s the Lord’s Prayer:
O thou great governor and parent of universal nature (God) who manifestest thy glory to the blessed inhabitants of heaven–may all thy rational creatures in all the parts of thy boundless dominion be happy in the knowledge of thy existence and providence, and celebrate thy perfections in a manner most worthy of thy nature and perfective of their own! May the glory of thy moral development be advanced and the great laws of it be more generally obeyed. May the inhabitants of this world pay as cheerful a submission and as constant an obedience to Thy will, as the happy spirits do in the regions of immortality.
Harwood said his translation “left the most exacting velleity without ground for quiritation.”
Thomas Jefferson writhed under the criticisms of the Continental Congress as it reviewed his draft of the Declaration of Independence. Seeing this, Benjamin Franklin took him aside. “I have made it a rule,” he said, “whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you.
“When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprenticed hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words: John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments.
“The first he showed it to thought the word hatter tautologous, because followed by the words makes hats, which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word makes might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats; if good and to their mind they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words for ready money were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, John Thompson sells hats. ‘Sells hats?’ says his next friend; ‘why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What, then, is the use of that word?’ It was stricken out, and hats followed, the rather as there was one painted on the board.
“So his inscription was ultimately reduced to John Thompson, with the figure of a hat subjoined.”
In 1728, at age 23, Ben Franklin composed his own epitaph:
The Body of
B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an old Book
Its Contents torn out
And shrift of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be lost;
For it will, (as he believ’d) appear once more,
In a new and more elegant Edition
Revised and corrected,
By the Author.
Fifty-six years later, six years before his death in 1790, he wrote these lines:
If Life’s compared to a Feast,
Near Fourscore Years I’ve been a Guest;
I’ve been regaled with the best,
And feel quite satisfyd.
‘Tis time that I retire to Rest;
Landlord, I thank you! — Friends, Good Night.