I think we can safely aver that Father Foster has moved to Saturdays:

 Ticking off the Lingo...
"They could, they should but they don't speak the universal language of the Catholic Church", says our "Latin Lover" with a sigh. They are the members of the papal household during their spiritual exercises in the Vatican. But there's more to the story...

Listen ...

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:10:29 AM::

This one seems to come around about once a year ... the mayor of Rhodes has plans to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes. An AFP (via Yahoo) report:

The mayor of Rhodes relaunched an often-delayed project to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Greek news agency ANA reported.

Mayor Yannis Iatridis at a press conference proposed building the gigantic statue of the sun god Helios on a hill near the seaside resort of Faliraki.

The Greek-Cypriot artist Nicolaos Gotziamanis, who has been preparing the project for several years, would erect the statue estimated to cost 100 million euros (129 million dollars) under the plan. It would be made of brass and stand about 33 meters (108 feet) tall.

Gotziamanis has brought together for the project a committee of well-known Europeans, both in politics and in the arts, headed by the former president of Portugal, Mario Soares.

Iatridis said he would try hard to obtain the necessary permits to carry out the project.

Many times over more than 30 years, previous mayors of Rhodes wanted to boost tourism and rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes. Each time the project was halted because of a lack of money or the reluctance of the ministry of culture.

The Colossus was built by Rhodian sculptor Charles of Lindos between 304 and 292 BC at the entrance of the port of Rhodes. A strong earthquake in 225 BC toppled the statue of Helios. In 653, the Arabs took control of Rhodes and sold off what remained of the statue.

Tee hee! I just noticed they made Chares of Lindos into 'Chuck' ... this is a mistake made all over the web. I guess folks don't have a sense of anachronism.

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:08:32 AM::

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:03:25 AM::

The Orlando Sentinel has a lengthy piece on various theories about Atlantis ... here's a bit from the end:

The legend of Atlantis made its appearance about 2,400 years ago when Plato described it in the writings Timaeus and Critias. The philosopher described an island continent, a plain and a city, all of which he called Atlantis. As a whole, Atlantis was a place of immense riches and abundant natural resources populated by a highly developed society.

Although some scholars -- among them, marine biologists, geologists, historians and archaeologists -- say the existence of Atlantis is a bunch of hooey, others devote their lives to finding it.

Brooks, a children's tutor in Honolulu, says he spent 20 years researching Plato's descriptions before coming forth with his theory.

"Every time I'd get away from the equator, it just couldn't happen any way else. That's what kept me concentrating on the Florida area," says Brooks, who posted his theory on his Web site, cramschool.us. "The most baffling part about it was how Harbour Island could be so lush and pristine and shaped just like Plato's description after 11,000 years."

Baffling, indeed, considering present-day Harbour Island was shaped in part with sand dredged from Hillsborough Bay, says Rodney Kite-Powell, curator of the Tampa Bay History Center.

Despite that -- and the fact that Florida's coastline stretched from 60 to 80 miles farther west 11,000 years ago -- Kite-Powell doesn't dismiss Brooks' theory.

"You know, people have kind of unusual ideas about some things. But who's to say? It's probably not true, but no one can say for sure something hasn't happened in a particular place. The thing with history is that there's no proof one way or another exactly; you need documentation."

Robert Sarmast, of Los Angeles, who coordinated a recent expedition to explore the sea bottom near Cyprus, announced in November it had found Atlantis 50 miles southeast of the Mediterranean island. He backs the claim with three-dimensional maps of the sea bottom that depict, according to the expedition Web site, man-made structures such as "a wall, a walled hill summit and deep trenches -- plus old river beds -- in exactly the formation and proportions that Plato himself described for the Acropolis Hill of Atlantis City. . . ."

"It was a year of our lives," says Sarmast, author of Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the Island of Cyprus. "We spent half a million dollars on it, and we're not just pulling it out of thin air."

Plato's cautionary tale?

As a topic, Atlantis is very much a punching bag, the kind of place -- or figment of the imagination -- that sparks the type of verbal combat shared by The X Files' Scully and Mulder.

"I think it's a wonderful fairy tale, treasure-hunt story," says Richard Ellis, author of Imagining Atlantis, which examines the history and literature surrounding the search for Atlantis. "Plato described Atlantis as bigger than Africa and Libya combined, which makes it difficult to lose it."

"I think he [Plato] wanted to make a point of a powerful overextended civilization failing -- something we might pay attention to today," he says.

"To say it didn't exist is ludicrous," counters Sarmast. "These days people think of it as a myth, but they're really unfamiliar with the ancient world."

Ellis says Plato was probably trying to impart a lesson about a high-flying society that went wrong and was punished for it. "We will never know why Plato did this," he says. "But as one of the great thinkers and writers of history, if he wanted to make a point about overextended civilizations, destroying one would be a way to do it."

Sarmast thinks Plato was just passing out information. When you read Plato's works, he says, "it really strikes you because it was not an allegory. Someone has seen the place and tried to explain for future generations what it looked like."

Hartigan, the University of Florida professor, says, "It could be all in the realm of Plato's imagination," but that because archaeology has found evidence of so many ancient civilizations, "we just can't throw it away."

"But if it did exist, most scholars agree that it's in the Aegean," she says. "If it is, it's Thera -- Santorini," a good portion of which was destroyed in a volcanic eruption 3,500 years ago.

Dreams of riches

Michael Smyth, an archaeology professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, says Atlantis' allure can be attributed to "three F words: fame, fortune and faith."

Those who search for Atlantis may dream of becoming rich or capturing the public's attention, he says. "They want to believe it so badly that they have a tendency to overlook what the actual evidence is," Smyth says. "People want to sell books and TV programs . . . so it's always going to be there, these motivations. And some people actually believe it, but these people believe in UFOs, ghosts. The more you want to believe it, the more you will."

As an archaeologist, Smyth says he looks for evidence "that supports such claims. Is there any? Not really."

Sarmast, though, points out that new technology lets us probe places that had been impossible to reach. Until his expedition, "we haven't looked at the sea floor, so you can't say it [Atlantis] is or it isn't there. We're literally the first generation in history to see it. . . . No other generation has been able to look down there."

To naysayers, Sarmast says, "without being rude, I'd just have to tell them they need to do more homework."

But even critics never say never.

"There're always possibilities," says Rollins' Smyth, "but we have to go with the best evidence we have now. I haven't seen anything from anybody that gives any credibility to Atlantis." [the whole thing]

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:01:56 AM::

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 9:59:09 AM::

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 9:58:22 AM::

::Sunday, February 13, 2005 9:57:00 AM::