CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-24 21:18:57 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Give the door a yank and it'll open.
Nighty night x

2013-05-24 16:06:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

Drawing of the Acropolis of Athens in the 19th century

2013-05-24 06:27:40 (17 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

In Focus: The Elgin Marbles
Parthenon's sculpture in the British Museum is a very polemic issue.

2013-05-23 10:47:24 (29 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Alright... sigh... I'll try to neither swear nor cuss...
How to Stop Swearing
Because the fucking swearing habit is fucking gross.

2013-05-23 10:23:48 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

You see, Lagarde, fucking bitch, you are offending the people, you are against social policies all over Europe, you have supported the elites against people's rights. And now, the truth is coming for you. I'm so glad, you fucking bitch!!!
Criminals in power
Fraud and embezzlement.
The bitch who has damaged Europe so much, especially the Southern countries, is going to fall at last.
See what sort of scum is driving the most important financial entities.
Fuck off, Lagarde.

2013-05-23 07:38:46 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Knitters want to dominate the world (another stupid conspiracy theory that is in vogue nowadays). A knitting spiral of terror is looming large in cahoots with gays unleashing hurricanes.
The Mechanics of Knitting (And How to Graft Two Circular Pieces Together)
"...when you knit circularly, you are actually creating a spiral. When you graft the toes of socks, you are joining one half of the spiral to the other half"

2013-05-23 09:24:35 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

The tyrant Polycrates of Samos died in 522 BC.
He, Amasis II's letter, his fucking ring and the happy fisherman. The moral of Herodotus' tale is that if someone finds something you've thrown away and give you back then you're fucked and will die an excruciating death because the gods are jealous. Or something like that.
The tale:
http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195397703/student/archives/herodotus_polycrates/

2013-05-22 21:40:17 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

"Taken together, the latest discoveries are starting to reveal that the sense you're consciously in control of everything you do is just an illusion.", he's said lol
Nighty night x

2013-05-22 19:03:14 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

A car
Zaragoza, Spain, Western Europe on Friday, May 17. 2013 AD.
Things that happen on planet Earth.

2013-05-21 13:43:03 (53 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Sexuality in the Victorian era...
Sex & Sexuality in the 19th Century
"Men were vigorously counselled to conserve vital health by avoiding fornication, masturbation and nocturnal emissions (for which a variety of devices were invented) and by rationing sex within marriage. Even when other causes were present, sickness and debility were frequently ascribed to masturbation - the great erotic subject described as vigorously as it was denounced. 'That insanity arises from masturbation is now beyond a doubt', declared one widely read authority, who also claimed that 'masturbators' became withdrawn, flabby, pale, self-mutilating and consumptive."
Another interesting article:
http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/Sexuality%20In%20The%20Victorian%20Era.htm (Sexuality In The Victorian Era by Robert C. Long, M.D.)

2013-05-21 10:56:13 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Excuse me for my untimely intervention.

2013-05-21 05:47:45 (52 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Tax avoidance is a crime still to be legislated
Could Amazon, Apple, Google and a long list of tax avoiders withstand a new, just and reliable control on the frenzy of tax avoidance? I bet they won't. But they'll have to face it, they want fair play, they have to pay. They can try to silence the issue, but they cannot deny the stark unfairness of tax avoidance. We want social justice and social progress, and the giants must be part of it, willy-nilly, and they have become giants (an important factor in the "richest becoming richer and the rest poorer"). In a near future there will be a shift in the market, more proportional. The giants haven't played fair (no matter their sweet faces), maybe it's time for them to face the will of the people. And people are fed up with paying for infrastructures they take advantage of meanwhile taking away enormous amounts of money to... more »

2013-05-21 04:39:29 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Good morning peeps x
Do Whales Have Tongues?

2013-05-20 20:13:25 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

I've just watched the first episode of
The Village (2013 BBC TV series)
I think I like it a great deal. A simple story opens a ton of dramatic possibilities. Summer 1914, Derbyshire.

2013-05-20 05:59:08 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

The Development of Athenian Democracy
http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_democracy_development?page=all&greekEncoding=UnicodeC
A good article of the processes that led to the foundation of the Athenian democracy.

2013-05-19 05:51:14 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Ancient Greece theater.
Aeschylus - The Persians 472 BC
Sponsored by Pericles before coming to power, it narrates the Battle of Salamis (September 580 BC, second Persian war), in which Aeschylus took part 8 years earlier, making of the play an interesting piece, because both of being the oldest play extant and being based on recent historical events.
"The play has some amazing aspects, there is no real plot. No character development takes place at all. Apart from the pageantry and the poetry the chief interest lays in the splendid vividness of the messenger's narrative. Its purpose was to replay what happend at the battle for the interest of the audience a bit like we would watch a movie about an event that happend some years before. Obviously, a cast of thousands could not be organised to show the actual battle, but it is lovingly portrayed from the Persian view point of how... more »

2013-05-18 07:19:01 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

The Achaemenid Empire
"The Achaemenid Empire is also known as the First Persian Empire. Based in what is now Iran, it ruled over a vast expanse of western Asia, southern Europe, and northern Africa in the period between 550 and 330 BCE."
"Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BCE after conquering the Median Confederation. He would go on to defeat the Lydians and Babylonians, famously freeing the Jewish people from their Babylonian captivity along the way. Cyrus began the process of creating a highly-centralized, multi-ethnic state, and his successors continued to build upon this foundation."
"Around 500 BCE it began to use Aramaic as its lingua franca."
"Over the next 100-plus years, the Achaemenid Empire witnessed flourishing cultural accomplishments, and bloody succession struggles for the throne. The tottering Achaemenid power... more »

2013-05-17 12:09:33 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Hippias (fl. 490 BC), Athenian tyrant.
Hippias was the son of the Tyrant Pisistratus.

2013-05-17 05:12:13 (15 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Good morning peeps x with Radium Bromide
Two tablets night and morning.

2013-05-16 20:28:52 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Hope is hard
Radioactive treatment of cancer in the early 20th century.
On a different note, monstrosity in the eye of the beholder is often an inability of understanding others' suffering and not accepting their dignity.
Nighty night x

2013-05-16 14:12:02 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Cleisthenes. (His rise to power and his political reforms in the years 508 - 507 BC)
"Cleisthenes was an Athenian nobleman often credited with having given rise to the first democratic political structure in his native city-state. At the end of the 6th century BC he implemented various reforms that changed politics as well as life in general for the Athenian citizenry."
"By proposing a number of major reforms, Cleisthenes boldly garnered support well beyond the traditional bases of support in the aristocracy. He promised that all citizens would have an opportunity to participate in government and declared them to be his companions, or hetairoi."

2013-05-16 08:01:51 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 17 +1s)

Gundestrup Cauldron detail. It's a flattened image, because the cauldron (27 inches in diameter) is round.
Iron Age silverwork, 1st century BC (La Tène Culture). Found in Denmark.

2013-05-16 06:32:26 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Design basics and readability of fonts
I'm fine with the stupid obsession for changing anything that works great for the sake of the new no matter if the novelty is totally lame. But the font??? In any design it should be important to keep readability in mind. And this very font is quite unreadable. It demands extra effort to read.

2013-05-16 06:17:19 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Beginning of the Protestant Reformation
A timeline with important events about the beginnings of Protestant Reformation (1503 - 1536)

2013-05-16 05:35:28 (8 comments, 2 reshares, 16 +1s)

A Winged Phallus with Legs to Ward off the Evil Eye
Leptis Magna (modern Lybia, north Africa). Bass relief. 1st or 2nd century AD.
Leptis Magna was an important Roman city port.

2013-05-15 08:25:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Solon's Reforms. Solon's Reforms and the Rise of Democracy in Athens.
Solon (ca 638 - 558 BC) undertook deep land reforms.
"Solon, a lyric poet and the first Athenian literary figure whose name we know, came from an aristocratic family which traced its ancestry back 10 generations to Hercules, according to Plutarch. Aristocratic beginnings did not prevent him from fearing that someone of his class would try to become tyrant. In his reform measures, he pleased neither the revolutionaries who wanted the land redistributed nor the landowners who wanted to keep all their property intact. Instead, he instituted the seisachtheia by which he canceled all pledges where a man's freedom had been given as guarantee, freed all debtors from bondage, made it illegal to enslave debtors, and put a limit on the amount of land an individual could own."

2013-05-14 05:13:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Leftkandi
A flourishing center during the so called Dark Ages (1200 BC - 750 BC) that came after the Mycenaean period, when palaces were collapsing and many sites abandoned.
"Lefkandi is hidden away in Euboea, the Greek island that no tourist ever goes to; yet it was from here that many of the earliest Greek colonies went out and it was also from here that the first recorded war in Greek history was fought. Indeed, Lefkandi is the key to the whole story of the transition from Mycenaean to Classical Greece."

2013-05-13 20:41:30 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Attach the nozzle to the garden hose before turning on the water.
Nighty night x

2013-05-13 12:50:33 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Cadmus Fighting the Dragon
Front of a black-figure amphora from Euboea, Greece (ca 560 - 550 BC)
After Zeus kidnapped Europa, her brother, the Phoenician prince Cadmus, was sent out by his father to bring her back. He didn't find her, so he never returned. In his travels he had a lot of adventures, like killing the water-dragon that protected the Castilian Spring. After killing the dragon, he sowed a dragon's teeth, from which there sprang a race of armed men called Spartoi.

2013-05-13 08:18:21 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

As we all use roads, public roads, not private roads, we should have public banks to manage our money and to get rid of the banksters (greedy bastards) once and for all, in order to have that public service covered. Then we should put the banksters on trial and make them give back the stolen money (tax havens and so on) for the sake of public services.

2013-05-13 04:35:04 (10 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

Linear A
Linear A is a writing system yet to be deciphered, thus we don't know which language underlies it. It was found in tablets in Crete (Minoan civilization) and it was used from 1800 BC to 1400 BC.

2013-05-12 05:24:17 (15 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Mitochondria
"Mitochondria are thought to have originated from an ancient symbiosis that resulted when a nucleated cell engulfed an aerobic prokaryote. The engulfed cell came to rely on the protective environment of the host cell, and, conversely, the host cell came to rely on the engulfed prokaryote for energy production."
The leading theory at the moment is that mitochondria originated from alpha proteo-bacteria (purple bacteria).
"Mitochondria cannot be made "from scratch" because they need both mitochondrial and nuclear gene products. These organelles replicate by dividing in two, using a process similar to the simple, asexual form of cell division employed by bacteria. Video microscopy shows that mitochondria are incredibly dynamic. They are constantly dividing, fusing, and changing shape. Indeed, a single mitochondrion may contain multiple copies of its... more »

2013-05-11 11:59:43 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

A US gallon of mercury weighs more than 113 lbs.
A litre of mercury weighs more than 13 kgs.

2013-05-11 05:26:54 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 15 +1s)

Morning peeps
Why is Mercury a Liquid?
"Mercury is the only metal that is a liquid at normal temperatures and pressure. What makes mercury so special? Basically, it's because mercury is bad at sharing... electrons, that is."

2013-05-10 09:51:18 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

A silly and funny presentation of
Paleogene Period (65.5 - 23 million years ago)
During this period North America and Europe separated.

2013-05-10 06:58:14 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

Antisepsis
"A thirteenth-century surgeon, Theodoric of Bologna, recommended dressings dipped in wine to ward off the development of pus in wounds. English physician Sir John Pringle (1707-1782) published a series of papers entitled Experiments Upon Septic and Antiseptic Substances that contain one of the first uses of the word antiseptic. Genevieve Charlotte d'Arconville introduced the use of chloride of mercury as an antiseptic in 1766. After Bernard Courtois (1777-1838) discovered iodine in 1811, it became a popular antiseptic treatment for wounds."
"None of these antiseptics, however, was sufficient to prevent the almost certain infection of wounds, particularly following surgery. Amputations, for example, were common in the 1800s, especially in the case of compound fracture (bone breaks that injure surrounding soft tissue). Amputations had a 40 to 45 percent mortality... more »

2013-05-10 00:00:12 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

You are fetching creatures.
Nighty night x

2013-05-09 06:36:29 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Dung Beetle
"So what’s so great about dung beetles? They are mighty recyclers! By burying animal dung, the beetles loosen and nourish the soil and help control fly populations. The average domestic cow drops 10 to 12 dung pats per day, and each pat can produce up to 3,000 flies within two weeks. In parts of Texas, dung beetles bury about 80 percent of cattle dung. If they didn’t, the manure would harden, plants would die, and the pastureland would be a barren, smelly landscape filled with flies!"
Ancient Egyptians imagined that a humongous dung beetle (scarab) kept the Earth revolving like a giant ball of dung, like a shit pellet.

2013-05-08 22:15:31 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

Crikey!
well, nighty night x
lol

2013-05-08 19:30:31 (13 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Why does hair turn gray?
Hair is dead tissue. The sun burns the melanin in it, thus lightening it. Well, mine keeps being black (with more and more white hairs as time passes by). Melanin is what gives hair its color. But gray hair is not caused by the sun but because the melanocytes don't inject melanin in the hair anymore. 

2013-05-08 05:51:31 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Prometheus
"Prometheus (Forethought) was one of the ringleaders of the battle between the Titans and the Olympian gods led by Zeus to gain control of the heavens, a struggle which was said to have lasted ten years. Prometheus did, however, switch sides and support the victorious Olympians when the Titans would not follow his advice to use trickery in the battle."
"According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Prometheus’ father was Iapetus, his mother was Clymene (or Themis in other versions) and his brothers were fellow Titans Epimetheus (Afterthought or Hindsight), Menoetius and Atlas. One of Prometheus’ sons was Deucalion, an equivalent of Noah, who survived a great flood by sailing in a great chest for nine days and nights and who, with his wife Pyrrha, became the founder of the human race."

2013-05-07 21:17:22 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

School tablet with multiplication table
Old Babylonian Period (19th-17th century BC), Nippur? (present Iraq)

2013-05-07 05:32:33 (15 comments, 0 reshares, 13 +1s)

Not only chocololate, potatoes, tomatoes, corn... but strawberries as well. Europeans got them around 1600 AD.
Strawberry history
"Strawberries are native to North America, and the Indians used them in many dishes. The first colonists in America shipped the native larger strawberry plants back to Europe as early as 1600. Another variety was also discovered in Central and South America, which the conquistadors called futilla. Early Americans did not bother cultivating strawberries, because they were abundant in the wilds."

2013-05-06 20:12:04 (19 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Tastemakers and trendsetters are... yawn.
nighty night x

2013-05-06 17:50:01 (43 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

What could possibly go wrong indeed.

2013-05-06 06:15:35 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Outlaws and Highwaymen
Robbery in English Society and Culture. A Historical Survey.
A short history of highwaymen and outlaws in England.
"In 1572 Thomas Wilson, a Crown servant and diplomat, wrote a dialogue in which one character commented that in England, highway robbers were likely to be admired for their courage, while another suggested that a penchant for robbery was one of the Englishman’s besetting sins."

2013-05-05 05:54:07 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

I'm watching
Beautiful Creatures (2013)
I woke up too early and now it's dawn, so I'm watching a movie at dawn, you see. I've seen only 33 mins, but it's a very compelling&preposterous story, if it keeps on at the same intensity it's gonna be a great movie, but maybe that's to wish too hard or something. Maybe it's that I feel weird this morning... energetic, passionately alive, well, never mind...

She: "We do different things".
He: "So, like, what, you're from Europe?"

A frame of the movie:

2013-05-05 02:48:06 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 10 +1s)

Windfarms break energy record in Spain
Windmills!!!

2013-05-04 11:03:04 (8 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Model of a Pyramid Temple of Late Post-Classic period (1319-1521 AD)
Mexica (Aztec)
"This small-scale model pyramid temple is so finely detailed as to include the complete iconographic program that identifies it as a temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtl"

2013-05-03 22:33:38 (14 comments, 2 reshares, 14 +1s)

Punic wars and Carthaginian sweets lol 
Carthaginians were renowned as master confectioners or makers of sweets
In the 3th century BC Carthage and Rome collided in what is called the Punic Wars (264 BC - 241 and 218 - 201), which ended with the defeat of the Carthaginian empire and the rise of Rome as the dominant Mediterranean power.
In the pic a Carthaginian confectioner's mould used to decorate candies.