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Even though it was a Level 1 class, yesterday's yoga class was phenomenal.

Afterwards, I met with two friends and we talked about chapter six of the book we are studying together. It had an interesting exercise: to write down a list of what we think are our own personal strengths, and then to write down our weakenesses. And then you go back to each one and write down the way that particular strength could be a weakness and and a way each weakness could be a strength.

It was interesting, and sometimes difficult - how could procrastination be a virtue? Or 'intellectual honesty' a weakness? I decided that procrastination can be a form of judgement - to do something at the right psychological time, to think things over carefully beforehand - and intellectual honesty can be arrogance. Guilty as charged. The thing is, you realize when doing this that what you think is a strength can be a weakness, and what you thought was a weakness can be used for a good result - it's rather encouraging.

We all listed procrastination as a weakness.

The Wikipedia...

I have loved the Wikipedia since I first stumbled across it in Esperanto (as the Vikipedia) a while back. Good articles, I thought. A valuable resource when reference books are so expensive, and it's closer than the public library.

Today maboroshimaki phoned me to ask if I knew anything about Henry Sinclair. Actually, what she asked was whether Dorothy Dunnett wrote anything about the Sinclair family in her novels. I cited what passages I could, and mentioned that the building of Rosslyn Chapel was in the Niccolo series. I was getting into my spiel about Rosslyn Chapel, which is one of my favourite topics, when she explained her interest: It turns out that she was reading about the Zeno map and the purported discovery of North America by the Zeno brothers, with Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, in 1398.

Since I once upon a time did some extensive reading (out of curiosity) regarding the Sinclair expedition and the historiography related to it, I was intrigued. Told maboroshimaki what I remembered, and did some web searching.

Learned that the government of Nova Scotia believes in the voyage, and it's recorded in Hansard. Learned that Brian Smith's article refuting the truth of the Zeno manuscript isn't as convincing as I had expected, and is far from thorough, though it makes good points. I learned that a lot of the sites that are excited over Henry Sinclair being the "first" to discover North America had no idea what they were talking about - what about Leif Eriksen, folks? They have a tendency to confuse what facts we do have - mangled dates and misquotes surrounding some valid information. To some extent it's an argument of interpretation and unprovable - or at least unproven - assertions. Of course the Sinclair family believes the story. I would to, if that was my name.

But what about the Scottish-style tower and the 14th century cannon said to have been unearthed in Nova Scotia? Are they apocryphal?

Why would two Italians (who had known him well) name Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Prince Zachmni? The 'prince' part makes perfect sense - surely "Earl" is well translated by the Italian "Principe" - but wouldn't they be likely to call him Enrico de Santa Clara?

I was delighted to read what the Wikipedia has to say on the matter - as with all of their articles, I found it clearly written, up to date, and well linked to related topics, including an actual reproduction of the Zeno map, which resembles... something... rather more than I had remembered.

Thanks also to maboroshimaki I learned that the Wikipedia has an excellent article on Ian McKellen and that led me to pursue with great joy the articles they have on Magneto - one of my favourite comic book characters of all time, both hero and villain - and discovered that it is so up to date that it includes his recent revival and appearance in Chris Claremont's Excalibur #1 and #2. Way to go Wikipedia. They not only explained about Rogue in both movie and comic book, they explained the differences between the movie and the comic book canon. They even have a magnificent entry on Gambit, and a page of links to X-Menmembers. I am most pleased. I can see there is a lot of happy browsing ahead of me.