Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Romans. To the Aztecs, the sun god was Huitzilopochtli, whom they nourished with human sacrifices. Egypt's great pyramids at Giza were built with their sides aligned with the rising sun at the vernal equinox, and the temple complex at Karnak was dedicated to Ra. The ancient circle at Stonehenge, in England, was apparently constructed so that the sun would rise over one of the great stones at the time of the summer solstice...
Through the centuries, few natural phenomena have inspired as much fear and awe as solar eclipses. The ancient Chinese used firecrackers and gongs to drive away the spirit they thought was devouring the sun. Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, aware that a most timely total eclipse was going to occur, escaped being burned at the stake by King Arthur's knights when he predicted that the sun would disappear. A benign form of sun worship continues to this day, not only among beachgoers but also by a group of intrepid American astronomy buffs who have traveled around the world...
...Even in ancient times, however, an occasional hardy soul refused to deify the sun. The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras brazenly claimed that it was merely a ball of fiery stone, and was arrested and banished from Athens for his blasphemy. But his radical concept caught on and was later refined by Aristotle, who proclaimed the sun an unchanging sphere of pure fire, devoid of any imperfections...
...calls living in the present psychotic. Not happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care living in the present, but the real thing. Some individuals by reason of accident or disease (generally alcoholism) suffer from what is called Korsakoff's psychosis: they have no memory. Not that they have forgotten their ancient childhood memories. They often retain these. But they have lost entirely the capacity to establish new memories. Everything they see, everything they hear, everything they think, they forget within seconds. Introduce yourself to a Korsakoffian, leave the room, and return a minute later. He will have no recollection...
...root. The wild energy of the wood, complete with cracks and holes, strains outward, as if it were trying to dissolve back into the ground. But the wood is held together in places with 4-in.-wide butterfly-shaped splints of walnut, Nakashima's signature method of prompting the ancient to new service...