Antiquitopia

When a NYTimes article is headlined as "Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman is Found," it is difficult not to read further! May 14, 2009 Ancient Figurine of Voluptuous Woman Is Found By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitalia. Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, says it is at least 35,000 years old, “one of the oldest known examples of figurative art” in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe. Another archaeologist, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge in England, agrees and goes on to remark on the obvious. By modern standards, he says, the figurine’s blatant sexuality “could be seen as bordering on the pornograp...

Venus and the Moon last night (12/31/08):

A follow-up on my last posting about the coincidence of the Moon and Venus from Space.com (although I picked it up from Yahoo! News): Celestial Show Set for New Year's Eve Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director SPACE.com robert Roy Britt editorial Director space.com Tue Dec 30, 11:47 am ET A delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year's Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset. Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky. It'll be visible -- impossible to miss, in fact -- just as the sun goes down, assuming skies are cloud-free. Soon thereafter, Mercury and Jupiter will show up hugging the south-southwestern horizon (just above where the sun went down) and extremely close to each other. Jupiter is very bright and easy to spot; Mercury is faint and harder to see, but it'll be apparent by its location just to the left of Jupiter. Jupiter and Mercury ...

Having been couped up in NYC with all of its light pollution, I had not noticed something in the western sky that has been occurring, it seems, since November for a few hours after sunset. Indeed, while I am currently ensconced in the midwest and a much clearer night sky, I was startled to see an immensely bright object in the western sky very near the moon. At first I wasn't even sure what it was, but had a hunch which was proven correct by later inquiry--it is Venus, the third brightest object in the sky from our vantagepoint (after the sun and the moon). On November 30, you could see it in conjunction to Jupiter. Tomorrow night, December 31, it will be at its closest conjunction to the moon! (So head out and look at the two brightest objects in the night sky next to each other.) On Jan. 22, with the help of binoculars or a telescope, you can see Venus one degree away from Uranus. Venus will continue to appear brighter every evening and reach its brightest appearance, appr...