The Spanish word “ruido” (noise) comes from the Latin word “rugidus”, from where also comes the cultism “rugido” (roar/ roaring noise). The noise is an unpleasant sound to the ear and an annoying sound for the spirit. There are therefore numerous associations and movements that fight against what is also called “acoustic pollution”.
Why the hour’s dividers are called minutes and minute’s dividers are called seconds?
Perhaps some reader has ever asked about so seemingly irrelevant question as the origin of the names “minute” and “second”, the time’s dividers, but any knowledge is valuable.
Library of Alexandria (5) Did the Library of Alexandria disappeared by a grand fire?
According to tradition thousand times repeated, the famous Library of Alexandria disappeared in a great fire. It seems that this is the tragic end sooner or later to which all libraries are doomed.
The Library of Alexandria (4) Scholars, sages, bibliographers and librarians
Every library should be well organized with well cataloged collections. The Library of Alexandria seems that it was organized so and somehow it laid the foundations of the art of librarianship.
The library of Alexandria (3): The Library of Alexandria acquired books in a curious way
The claim of the Ptolemies was to collect “all books of all peoples of the earth” , perhaps following the advice of Demetrios of Falera . Certainly some of the stories that were told in antiquity reveal the passion of the Ptolemies to equip its library of Alexandria with the books which were in the known world. Sources also foreshadow the rivalry between the two great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum.
Library of Alexandria (2): How many volumes had the Library of Alexandria?
We know that the Library of Alexandria had pretensions to store all the universal knowledge of the time, but, how many volumes had actually?
The library is a Greek creation
Alexandria was the spiritual and cultural capital of the world from the third century BC to the fifth or sixth century AD. Under the largest library of Antiquity, which sought to retain all the knowledge stored in books systematically with exemplary sense of intellectual freedom, lived and worked a college or community of wise and educated persons and scholars who developed the physics, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, geography, engineering, medicine, philosophy, literature, grammar, rhetoric … They were the basis of Western knowledge.
Delta
Delta is the name of the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet (Δ, δ), equivalent to the Latin “D, d”. It was derived from the Phoenician letter “daleth”, “the door”.
All that shines is not gold; lapis specularis
The Iberian Peninsula was rich in minerals in Antiquity. Since ancient times minerals were prospected, found and exploited by Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans.
The ancient Romans computed and digitized over two thousand years ago.
Few words are of more contemporary use than “compute, computer, and digital”. Well, “compute, computing” are Latin words meaning of course calculating, counting, computing.