User:CononOfSamos

Island of Samos - Ruins

Conon Lunar crater

When I heard the learn’d Astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

~ Walt Whitman

Greek God Hermes

Messier 99 in Constellation Coma Berenices

Conon of Samos - Astronomer & Mathemetician

Conon was born on the Greek island of Samos
Court Astronomer to Ptolemy III Euergetes in Alexandria
Named the Constellation Coma Berenices after Ptolemy's wife Berenice II
Conon (possibly) died in Alexandria
The Conon lunar crater was named in his honor
Hermes is the Messenger of the Gods
Hermes Trismegistus is a patron of Astrology and Alchemy

Username CononOfSamos was created on English Wikipedia on October 17, 2009.

User CononOfSamos formerly edited on English Wikiquote as Archimedes.

Berenices II of Egypt

NGC 4565 in Constellation Coma Berenices

Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

~~ Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) ; from The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet.

~~ Lao Tzu ( c. 6th century BC )

It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

~~ Yogi Berra

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

~~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ; from Walden (1854)

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

~~ G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

~~ George Orwell (1903-1950)

The one power a man has that cannot be stripped from him is the power to do nothing.

~~ Morgan Llywelyn (b. 1937) ; from Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish (1987)