Interview with the Segway Guy

He’s apparently gotten a bit weirder since the last interview/visit to his lair that I read. But it’s fun and funny weird. Anyway, he not only has a super-spectacular water filter now, but also a few things to say.

That business started six weeks ago, when the Coast Guard cut the cable to North Dumpling. They only maintained the cable to run the lighthouse and now they’re running it on photovoltaics, so Kamen had the option of crying in his beer or making lemons into lemonade, which is when he decided to deploy the Slingshot.

The “sling” is Lord Dumpling’s revolutionary new version of the Stirling engine, a no-emission power source that engineers have been trying to perfect for almost two hundred years. Instead of the tiny explosions that drive the pistons of a standard internal-combustion engine, the Stirling drives its piston by forcing gas from one chamber to another in a perfectly closed system. He’s pretty much got it nailed, aside from a few tweaks and a few niggling questions about who will pay for it.

The “shot” is his equally revolutionary vapor-compression water distiller, which can make pure medicinal-grade water out of anything that’s wet, even urine or toxic waste — water so clean you could inject it into your arm. Together, the sling and the shot could save millions of lives. That’s why he spent $50 million of his own money developing the prototypes and testing them in Third World villages, and they work, and we have to get the word out because 50 percent of all human illness is caused by waterborne pathogens.

… Here’s the vapor-compression distiller. The vapor goes through this hose and comes into the turbine heat exchangers here and there’s no noise and no consumables and no activated charcoal and no chemicals and no filter and no membranes. It makes a million liters of water in a thousand days with no human intervention. The goal is to get volume up and cost down. Maybe Wal-Mart can help? Coca-Cola?

And here’s the Stirling, handcrafted by some of the most brilliant engineers in the world. It’s running on propane now but a piece of burning cow dung will generate enough power to run a small refrigerator and charge a cell phone and run all the house lights — and remember, more than 20 percent of the people alive today have never used electricity. They need the tools. So who’s going to step up? Who will spend the millions and millions it will take to put this baby into production?

Also, this truism:

if some foreign power came into this country to pervert our kids from doing the things that sustain our quality of life the way sports does, we would find them and prove that they were treasonously undermining our way of life and kill them.

(Naturally, he’s talking about the crazy year-round, seven-day-a-week sports worship by today’s parents and kids, not ‘a sound mind in a sound body’.)

The amusing thing about his private island is that, as I read, I kept being reminded of the folks over at eyrie.net and their elaborate fanfic universe. The ‘okay, let’s build a solution, and let’s do it tonight’ spirit. The acronyms. The emphasis on sharing and education.

Come to find out, he went to the same school in Worcester, Massachusetts as the eyrie.net people did, and apparently managed even more to bend it to his will. Obviously, there’s something in the water in that town.

I’m also strongly reminded of Buckaroo Banzai. 🙂

He designed the house, too, shaping it around a three-story steamboat engine once owned by Henry Ford. He spent fifteen years rebuilding the engine himself, cutting every nut and bolt in the vast machine shop just below his living room. “Eighty-seven thousand pounds of love,” he calls it. Because there’s nothing so soothing as cutting a piece of steel when it’s late and you can’t sleep because you’re trying to work out some problem in your head. Because machines are more than machines, they’re a road map to the people who built them. They tell you what kind of problems they had and what they wanted. Just as Kamen’s inventions are his own autobiography in steel — every one designed to cheat gravity, to declare independence, to make every man the king of his own empire.

…This is why he never got married or had children. He loves being away from everywhere, completely alone. He can watch planes land at the airport. He can watch the weather change. And it doesn’t bother him that he usually comes home at nine or ten and drops into bed exhausted. It’s like the private island he rarely visits, the girlfriend he rarely sees, the vacations he never takes. It’s the idea that counts. Just knowing he has it is enough. Anyway, what should he stop doing? FIRST? Water? Power? Medical equipment? “I can’t stop,” he says. “As a practical matter, I can’t put the world on hold.”

He really can’t. There’s just too much he wants to do.

Unknown Pilgrim Fact

Everybody remembers that the Pilgrims nearly starved the first winter. And honestly, it was no more than they deserved. They left later in the season than was sane, they got there too late to plant, and they were mostly town people with urban trades. They had no clue how to gather or hunt, and the harshness of the climate didn’t help. We also learn that the best way to fertilize fields in that area was to bury fish in the ground where you’re planting. Like codfish, for instance.

But as the book Cod points out, the Pilgrims moved to Cape Cod because it was known to have cod there, and they were hoping to get into that industry. But they didn’t start right away, for some reason, and that was their big mistake. And not for fertilizer, either.

See, right offshore of Plymouth and along the coastline, there’s one of the few places in the world where you can catch large quantities of cod just by rowing offshore in a rowboat and sticking in a line. It’s also possible to catch cod until fairly late in the winter, and cod of course dries and keeps well. (That was how Europe had a cod industry, when the cod were out by Newfoundland and New England.)

Oopsie.

The moral of the story is that perseverance and patient endurance are good, yes. But the other moral is that if you’re prepared and look around, maybe you’ll find something to eat before you start to starve.

Italian Thanksgiving

The Anchoress fills us in about Italian Thanksgiving (in her combox):

[Yankee Thanksgiving is not much different from yours, but ITALIAN Yankee Thanksgiving goes like this: antipasto including cheeses, dried sausages, vegetables, olives, fennel. A nice plate of stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer. Maybe some stuffed clams. Shrimp cocktail. Salad. A pasta dish (usually lasagna, or manicotti or – if they’re keeping it “light” a little pasta primavera, which is penne pasta with veggies). After pasta, the turkey. And a ham or a roast beef, “because sometimes not everyone likes turkey,” or maybe a little bracciola. Sweet potatoes…not usually in a pie, but I’ve gotten them used to the pie, by now…5-6 vegetables, “because maybe someone doesn’t like a few, and you should eat at least four.” Eggplant Parmesan. (I’m making the eggplant tomorrow) Mashed potatoes “because maybe someone doesn’t like sweet potatoes in that pie thing.” Stuffing. Gravy. Cranberries. Italian bread with lots of butter. There might also be some meatballs being passed around. You have to try everything, or someone is offended. Also, drink the wine, the wine is good for you. After the dishes, comes the fruit and nuts. After the fruit and nuts comes the rice pudding, the cookies, the cakes and pastries, and a few pies, but not pumpkin, because only Elizabeth likes pumpkin. With the dessert there is coffee, or espresso, and maybe a little cordial, “oh, watsamatter, have a little drink! You want sandwiches? Anyone hungry? I can bring it all out again for sandwiches!”

I’m not kidding. That’s Italian Thanksgiving. At Christmas it’s pretty much the same, but with more fish. – admin]

I think I’d have to bring along all of Rich’s kids to eat my plate. We used to have some pretty food-filled Thanksgivings when more family members lived closer. But man, I’d never eat manage a bite of all this.

Computer Game Thoughts.

The trouble with puzzle adventure games is that all the puzzles are stuck at the difficulty level first invented by the game designers. So if you blow through the first riddle or matching game but Cousin Bob finds it really hard, they don’t make the next riddle harder for you but easier for Cousin Bob.

And I still say that multiplayer online roleplaying games ought to come with some automatic relationships between characters (subject to severing if your brand new Cousin Ifthalion turns out to be annoying or a stalker). Folks can’t all be orphans who are the sole survivor of their villages.

Piper Saint?

As I predicted, my Porta Ceili picture idea has found favor in the eyes of The Inn at the End of the World. Yes, there’s a real lack of pictures of angels merrily making music to the Lord, and particularly with folk instruments.

As for musician saints, I would add the missionary, composer, and violin/fiddle player St. Francisco Solano, who was Ven. Solanus Casey’s namesake. He was also a polyglot and a prophet, in his copious spare time. 🙂

There are a good number of known saints from Irish poet families, partly because there was a graceful overlap between the poet’s religious and secular functions and the work and education expected of an Irish monk. I’m not really too knowledgeable on saintly bards, harpers, or other professional musicians. However, the vast majority of Irish monks apparently knew and played tiny portable harps, because it was a good way to pass time when walking or singing psalms.

Bagpipes go across a lot of cultures, so logically there’d be some piper saints! I wonder who the McCrimmons had as a patron saint….

However, Sabine Baring-Gould’s Lives of the Saints (the volume on March) notes the story of St. Philemon and St. Apollonius, set in the city of Antinoe in Egypt, during Diocletian’s persecution. (Yes, Egyptians play bagpipes!) It seems that Deacon Apollonius was deathly afraid of torture. So during the persecutions, he went to a local piper, actor, and dancer named Philemon — a guy from the governor’s household — and hired this pagan guy to go sacrifice to the Emperor and claim to be named Apollonius. That way, Apollonius could have his papers saying he’d done his imperial duty, but wouldn’t actually have to lie or apostasize himself. (St. Cyprian wasn’t too hep on this tactic, of course!)

So Philemon said, “Okay,” and went to see the local magistrate, all muffled up in a cloak. And, claiming to be Apollonius the deacon, he refused to sacrifice.

Just then, Philemon’s brother Theonas showed up and recognized him. He told the judge that it was just his brother, playing a joke, and Philemon was decloaked to much laughter. But Philemon insisted that he was serious about not sacrificing, and that he was Christian even though he hadn’t been baptized. He prayed that Christ would baptize him, and a miraculous cloud appeared and sprinkled him.

Unsatisfactorily for pipers, the story then relates that he proved his conversion by breaking his pipes and throwing them away.

(Did I mention that bagpipes and flutes were associated with lasciviousness in the classical world? I get that impression, anyway, from all those flute girls and satyrs….)

At this point, Deacon Apollonius was hauled in, and directly challenged by the magistrate. The deacon, impressed by the Christian bravery of Philemon, said that he now knew better and would die before sacrificing. So the deacon and the retired piper were martyred together, and eventually the evil judge was converted by a miraculous healing and martyred, too. Feast day in the West: March 8.

St. Philemon the Piper on a Greek Orthodox bishopric’s page which describes him as a flute-player. Feast day in the East: Dec. 14.

However, bagpipes did get a better reputation in Christendom. Apparently, bagpipes (and shawms) were regarded as very merry instruments, and thus particularly suitable for keeping up people’s spirits on long pilgrim journeys. Bagpipes were good instruments for weddings. (Still are.) They were an instrument of war also, like trumpets and drums. Also, their reputation was enhanced by an epistle by a Pseudo-Jerome, which claimed that the “chorus” (bagpipe) was used as a liturgical instrument by the Jews in the Temple.
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So logically, angelic and human angels were depicted often in and on churches, particularly on pilgrimage churches like Compostela’s.

Now, of course there are tons of named angel lists and named angel choir lists, so I’m sure your medieval scholar could easily deduce the choir to which angelic bagpipers belong. And there you’ll find a very satisfyingly large group of patron saints for pipers. 🙂

St. Therese Out in Space!

Via Curt Jester, we now know that Colonel Ron Garan, mission specialist on STS-124 in May/June 2008, brought along a relic of St. Therese in his personal allowance, as a favor to and from some Texan Carmelite nuns. This has certain implications.

TOP TEN THOUGHTS ABOUT ST. THERESE’S TRIP TO SPACE

10. As was pointed out, St. Therese’s relics have now traveled around the world just as her message of God’s love has. Seeing as she had wished during her life to be able to travel to her sisters in Hanoi and other far places, but was unable to do so because of health and God’s rigorous training program for her, this is pretty fun!

“The sisters reported that the words of St. Thérèse came to mind: ‘I have the vocation of an apostle. I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach your name and to plant your glorious cross on infidel soil. But oh, my beloved, one mission would not be enough for me, I would want to preach the Gospel on all five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages.’

Likewise, “their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world” (Ps. 18:5), as Dr. Thursday pointed out.

9. Simultaneously, she’s a Teacher in Space and a Doctor (of the Church) in Space!

8. Also from St. Therese’s autobiography: “O my only Friend, why dost Thou not reserve these infinite longings to lofty souls, to the eagles that soar in the heights? Alas! I am but a poor little unfledged bird. I am not an eagle, I have but the eagle’s eyes and heart! Yet, notwithstanding my exceeding littleless, I dare to gaze upon the Divine Sun of Love, and I burn to dart upwards unto Him! I would fly, I would imitate the eagles; but all that I can do is to lift up my little wings–it is beyond my feeble power to soar.”

7. Colonel Garan’s wife is named Carmel. I see a pattern here….

6. Traditionally, the spiritual life is compared to a ladder or stairway. St. Therese compared her “Little Way” to an elevator, because God was doing all the heavy lifting. So a rocketship is even more so!

5. Garan did a ton of spacewalk hours on this mission. If I were going to have to putter around doing work while floating in the depths of space, with very little between me and floating away forever, I think I’d want a relic along for company!

(Even if I were helping to deliver Kibo, a lab whose name means “hope” or “a good sign”.)

(Nothing at all to do with Leader Kibo. They swear.)

4. “When we were on the way home, I would gaze upon the stars which were twinkling ever so peacefully in the skies and the sight carried me away. There was especially one cluster of golden pearls which attracted my attention and gave me great joy because they were in the form of a -T-. I pointed them out to Papa and told him my name was written in heaven. Then desiring to look no longer at this dull earth, I asked him to guide my steps; and not looking where I placed my feet I threw back my head, giving myself over completely to the contemplation of the star-studded firmament!”

3. “God rejoices more in what He can do in a soul humbly resigned to its poverty, than in the creation of millions of suns and the vast stretch of the heavens.”

2. “With enraptured gaze, we beheld the white moon rising quietly behind the tall trees, the silvery rays it was casting upon sleeping nature, the bright stars twinkling in the deep skies… all this raised our souls to heaven.”

1. If the relic the Carmelites gave him was a first class relic, and if our astronaut friend should have happened to touch it to the space shuttle wall, would that mean that the whole space shuttle Discovery would then become a third class relic?

The Eternal Sunshine of the Lime Green Font

Gmail now is available with themes, and most of them are the usual pretty-pretty pictures, blah-blah bland color bars, and chibi-chibi gratuitous ninjas.

But one of them — yes, one — has a black background, bright green font, and the Gmail logo done in ASCII art.

It’s not perfectly like the old days on the BBS or the Internet before the Endless September, but, oh, how calming! How freeing! How easy it is to delete whole pages worth of email, with those friendly, easy-to-read lime green letters motivating you to save space and bandwidth!

National Geographic: New Levels of Tacky or Good Idea?

National Geographic now has licensed a hidden object videogame to go along with one of their overhyped TV specials. Yes, you can now buy and play National Geographic Presents: Herod’s Lost Tomb.

Here’s a couple of the many places offering this game.

BigFish Games

IWin Games

Hidden object games are pretty fun and they’re often based on history or travel stuff, so it’s not the worst fit in the world. And I suppose everybody has to make money these days. But… geez, they don’t know for sure it’s Herod’s tomb yet, and it just seems so trashy….

UPDATE: Okay, so I find it hard to resist hidden object games. Yes, I went and checked out the free sixty minute game preview. I have to say, the hidden object screens are pretty — especially the ones which re-create palatial rooms in ancient Israel. The mini-puzzles are also fun. But the level of difficulty is not high and the number of hints huge. I finished about a third of the game in an hour. The hardest thing was finding the objects on my small laptop screen. (Big screens are much better for this kind of game, unless you want to get eyestrain.) Also, there were some fairly nice “cutscreens” of both real life footage and re-creations of Herod’s time.

But I still find it hard to believe, with all the free promotional computer games available on many TV networks’ websites, that National Geographic is charging more than ten bucks for this game. Especially since it is so easy. OTOH, it is somewhat educational, in an unintimidating way; and this might well spark in players the desire to learn more about Herod the Great, Judea, and the Roman Empire. Also, it’s totally G-rated (unless partially bared Greek and Roman statues offend you) and totally nonviolent (unless pictures of weapons just sitting there offend you).

You Have Fallen to the Bottum of My Estimation.

Joseph Bottum has dared to say that Half Magic, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Misty of Chincoteague basically are mediocre, and people only bought them because there wasn’t anything better.

Look, critic creep. I was reading Lord of the Rings in 3rd grade, and I loved it, but I also recognized Marguerite Henry as the absolute pinnacle of the horse writing genre. Seward and Farley are decent reads, but there’s more real horse information and better pictures in Marguerite Henry. She was somewhat hampered by generally sticking to historical horse fiction or dramatizations of current horse events, but you also feel the ground more securely under your feet. You can’t visit Alec and the Black Stallion’s desert island. You can go visit Assateague and Chincoteague, or Siena, or the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Her evocation of place and excellent illustrators virtually demand that you do go visit. And so her readers do.

As for her skills as a historical writer, I have never caught her out. Again, she is spot on, and you are there and then, living alongside the people and horses of her story. That’s not mediocre; and it’s a skill badly wanted in today’s historical fiction, in any segment of the market.

I don’t feel any need to defend Edward Eager; people keep reprinting him, don’t they? And I surely don’t feel any need to defend E.L. Konigsburg. But honestly, slurs against Marguerite Henry? Obviously this guy was reading the wrong books in third grade. (And no, I won’t give any passes on the ground that only girls like horses, because this is obviously untrue. It was my younger brother who made the pilgrimage to the Spanish Riding School, and he didn’t read The White Stallion of Lipizza until he was an adult.)

Catholic Ladies in Hats. (After Vatican II, Yet.)

Contra all the younger people who think that tradition automatically equals lace veils and mantillas, here’s a picture from 1965 of a typical bunch of American Catholic ladies dressed up for Mass. (They’re welcoming Pope Paul VI to New York in 1965, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; but the level of formality is pretty typical of what I vaguely remember Catholic ladies wearing on Sunday in Ohio in the early 1970’s.) If you click on the photo to see it enlarged, you will notice a lot of nice hats and simple scarves on the female half of the congregation, but not many lace veils at all. Some women don’t seem to be wearing anything on their heads, but they may be wearing gauzy see-through scarves, which were pretty common. Here’s a smaller shot that gives more of a close-up when enlarged; you’ll see some winter hats too. Another crowd shot of the Pope leaving – you can see some faces here.

But before Vatican II, here’s a huge crowd of be-wimpled nuns and be-hatted Catholic ladies at the Budapest Eucharistic Congress in 1938. By Margaret Bourke-White, no less.

This is not to say that it’s wrong to wear veils to church. It’s just modelling another part of tradition than what was done in my part of the US, or in most chunks of Europe.

How Much Is That Doggie in the Cathedral?

Courtesy of that super-cool Time/Life photo archive, here’s some dog carvings from Toledo Cathedral. From his feet, I think one of them is either some kind of weird water spaniel or a mythical sea-dog.

Actually, I’d Love an Illustration of This

What do you call Our Lady as patroness of Irish music and dancing?

Porta Ceili.

(And when I say that I’d love an illustration, I specifically prohibit you giving Mary one of those silly dancer wigs with artificial curly hair. Mary beckoning folks through the gates of Heaven, with tons of angels and saints playing fiddles and tinwhistles and bodhran — that would be awesome. And I bet this guy would like such an illustration, also.)

(Yes, I got this idea by making a typo.)

Some Brief Thoughts about Women and the Fathers

I don’t think modern scholars give the Early Christians a very fair shake, when it comes to the Christian attitudes about women. Or sex either, but we’ll go with women.

1. The prevailing Greco-Roman culture was professionally misogynistic. As a hobby, it might occasionally like and respect women, but mostly only in its own weird way. Of course, if you were a rich woman, you could do pretty much what you wanted.

2. Jewish culture was pretty darned positive about women. Especially the part where women got something of a vacation from normal activities while menstruating. 13-20 weeks a year of vacation, baby! Also, culturally, mothers pretty much ruled and still do. Mwahaha.

3. Christianity mostly took after Judaism, when it came to Jewish mothers, and after rich, free Imperial Roman ladies on the Gentile side. Widows weren’t treated like crud — they got supported by the local church and sat in the front row! And you didn’t have to get married if you didn’t want to, so there. Oh, and matter was a good thing and God invented sex.

So why does early Christianity get ye badde rappe?

1. Celibate men trying not to be tempted to have sex did write a few commercials for themselves about the evil deceptive powers of women. Alas, we do not have commercials about the evils of men from your early Christian female celibates.

Of course, we don’t need to read them, as all you have to do is hang out around the woman at your office whose boyfriend just dumped her. The evil deceptive powers of men and their constant pusillanimity through the ages will be fully outlined for you. But it is only right and proper that men not be allowed to complain about women in such terms. Just ask the woman who just got dumped. 🙂

2. A lot of feminist scholars don’t like reading stuff about Mary. They also assume that any time any man says something nice about a virgin or virgin-martyr, they really are expressing hatred for all _real_ women. Many also are not particularly interested in paeans to maternal love. Or wifely devotion. Or famous women in the Bible. This pretty much gets rid of everything nice ever said by the Fathers about women.

3. Most of the folks with nasty tongues on them were misandrists as much as they were misogynists. Sometimes I start to think that Tertullian only ever liked his wife and Jesus. (Tertullian is probably the early Christian theologian most likely to have a second career as a Bond villain, with a secret lair, and a tendency to pet cats while laughing at the kidnapped Emperor being slowly lowered into a tank full of sharks with frickin’ laserbeams on their heads.)

4. Disconcerting tendency of some of the Fathers to praise specific women, and then commit wordplay on the theme that in Christ there is no male or female, so now I can call this chick a guy or a soldier. (I blame rhetoric classes. Or possibly they were trying to avoid rumors that they were hot for local consecrated widows, and that somehow the nice things they said about Judith and Jael were proof.)

5. Because scholars don’t like Mary, they miss the fact that Eve gets blamed every five minutes just so Mary can be praised in the next breath.

6. Victorian male translators. Maybe I’m being unfair, but it does seem sometimes that they translate with some interesting biases.

So here’s an example of what I mean. St. Ambrose (I think) has a bit where he goes on and on about Mary and Elizabeth and John and Jesus during the Visitation. He points out that Mary and Elizabeth both act as forerunners and teachers to John the Baptist, and also talks about the fellowship of the mothers and babies, and of Mary with John. And he points out that all the miraculous stuff and great prophecies are only what you’d expect, because salvation has started. As a woman brought evil into the world, “so in women all good things have their origin.” And then he points out that souls have no sex, and that women are now to cast off womanly ways and follow Christ no less boldly than men do.

Or you could read it that women saying anything intelligent was a miracle, that they’re only good to carry babies and teach unborn babies, and to be puppets of God’s plan of salvation. And something about women’s souls being inferior — let’s not forget that one. 🙂

I’m not saying there aren’t some problematic things said by the Fathers. But there are problematic things said today, on all sorts of subjects. We don’t give the Fathers enough slack.

And it absolutely made me cry that, as St. Augustine was on his deathbed, he took the time to reiterate, in no uncertain terms, that women did not lose their chastity or commit any sin if they were raped by the Goths and Alans invading North Africa. This was a deeply countercultural pronouncement for someone in Roman culture. (Lucretia.) Both after the Sack of Rome and during the invasion of North Africa, St. Augustine’s pronouncement probably saved many women from killing themselves, or from being killed by their relatives to spare them such “a fate worse than death”.

World’s Oldest Mary Sue?

I’ve been reading Argonautica by Apollonius Rhodius (aka Apollonios of Rhodes) over on my public domain audiobook podcast, Maria Lectrix. Yesterday, there was a pivotal section in which Medea starred.

Now Medea is a princess, who’s also a priestess of Hecate, who therefore knows and uses powerful magic. She’s beautiful. She is also clever — in fact, both Hera and Athene decide that since they can’t think of a good plan to help Jason get the Golden Fleece, their best bet is to get Medea to fall in love with Jason so that she will think of a plan to save him. So yeah, you could argue that she’s a typical exceptionally everything, know-it-all, do-it-all Mary Sue character.

But here’s the really interesting part.

As Medea (now in love with Jason, thanks to Eros and Aphrodite) tries to decide whether she should help Jason and betray her father, or betray Jason and obey her father, she has an dream. A very familiar sort of dream….

Now a deep slumber had relieved the maiden from her love-pains as she lay upon her couch. But straightway fearful dreams, deceitful, such as trouble one in grief, assailed her. And she thought that the stranger had taken on him the contest, not because he longed to win the ram’s fleece, and that he had not come on that account to Aeetes’ city, but to lead her away, his wedded wife, to his own home. And she dreamed that she herself contended with the oxen and wrought the task with exceeding ease. And that her own parents set at naught their promise, for it was not the maiden they had challenged to yoke the oxen but the stranger himself; from that arose a contention of doubtful issue between her father and the strangers. And both laid the decision upon her, to be as she should direct in her mind. But she suddenly, neglecting her parents, chose the stranger. And measureless anguish seized them and they shouted out in their wrath; and with the cry sleep released its hold upon her. Quivering with fear she started up, and stared round the walls of her chamber….

In some ways, Argonautica is startlingly contemporary. (Probably because the Hellenistic Age and our own share certain aesthetic preferences.) This examination of the frame of mind that leads to Mary Sue wish-fulfillment dreams is one such interesting touch.