I actually wrote this up when I watched the episode last week, but I wanted to try and get all the names and dates straight, so a little bit late, but here's some more ancient cool stuff. I doubt it would surprise anyone who reads this that I am all about the Asian history, and the other night they covered, ancient Chinese tech on ( Ancient Discoveries. )

Today my google homepage had an article about the Grande Chartruse Monastary, where they live simple but comfortable lives in almost perfect silence.

At the end of the article he talked a little bit about how nice it would be if there was a little secular community like that, a combination of solitude and community, quiet and focus. And, yeah, right now it sounds completely heavenly. But I can't help imagine that there's at least one person who's got to be the go-between between between the chaotic real world and this peaceful retreat. Someone who haggles on the price of essentials, sells the things that the community makes, yells at kids to keep off the lawn...just generally deals with all the irritants and disctractions we all have to put up with.

It would be interesting to see where you could go with a position like this. Would it be one person, or would the duty rotate? Would it be a position of respect, or of distain? I think you could go a lot of ways with something like this.

Ok...no poodles. I've just been reading too much Project Rungay . But! I have decided to do my own sort of reality television commentary. Only, I'll be doing the History Channel's Ancient Discoveries, and The Discovery Channel's Mythbusters. It's a good way to collect plot bunnies for future reference. I have a notebook where I keep wikipedia articles and newspaper clippings for odd little bits of information like this...and this. So this is really what would just go in my notebook, but I thought I would share...

( Ancient Computers )