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Erasmus adage for the month of February:
Cretenses sacrum
The Cretans are making sacrifice
This adage arises from a story. Agamemnon was sailing home from Troy when a storm drove his little fleet to Crete. When the storm abated, Agamemnon prepared to sail, but decided it would be prudent to make a sacrifice to Poseidon to ensure safe sailing. While he was preparing a suitably large sacrifice of sheep, he got word that the Cretans had boarded his ships and were making off with them. Agamemnon frantically abandoned the sacrifice and raced to the shore, where he was able to prevent the departure of one last ship. Furious, he sailed off immediately, leaving the sacrifice unfinished.
Why this adage refers to Cretans making sacrifice instead of Agamemnon, I do not know. What happened to the Greeks who were in the ships when they were seized by the Cretans, I do not know. Exactly who the Cretans were, I do not know – Erasmus refers to them as ‘prisoners’, suggesting that their objective was escape rather than larceny. All in all, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The adage refers to a completely screwed-up situation in which everything goes to hell. Our current version of the adage is ‘SNAFU’, but Erasmus’ version is more elegant, don’t you agree?
Recent additions:
February 3rd: yet another design diary, this time on the complexities of tuning a big simulation; additions to The Greatest Books; and a new Person From History: Reinhold Pabel.
February 2nd: the impact of taxes on the simulation.
February 1st: a design diary for Balance of the Planet concerning the problems of sudden changes in revenues
January 30th: additions to The Greatest Books.
January 29th: another design diary for Balance of the Planet
January 22nd: a new page, The Greatest Books, presenting the books that have most affected me.
January 21st: a new Person From History: Mucius Scaevola, the man who saved Rome by screwing up.
January 20th: an addition to the People Through History section, this on David Atchison. You don’t know who David Atchison was? Then read this!
January 19th: another new feature: a section of the library entitled “People Through History”, presenting tales of interesting people you’ve never heard of.
January 18th: a Skunky to the entire computer industry for spawning a freshet of languages for programming, scripting, and applications.
January 17th: two new Skunkys, the first to Network Solutions for their internal FTP software, and the second for a lousy DVD player program.
January 16th: book review: The Great Divergence, by Kenneth Pomeranz, explaining how the West outran Asian civilizations
January 15th: a design diary about the necessity of simplifying Balance of the Planet.
January 15th: We are all Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, an assault on one of the fundamentals of libertarianism
January 6th: a new feature: Skunkies, design reviews of really badly designed software. First up is Heavy Weather, from Lacrosse Technology
January 5th: musings aroused by John Lennon’s song Imagine
January 2nd: my adventures with Windows 7
January 1st: book review: The Oregon Trail, presenting the adventures of Francis Parkman in the Great Plains in 1846.
My change log, showing what has been added since when.