"I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just stop the machine of thinking"
- Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

Solitaire is a fictional character in the James Bond novel and film Live and Let Die. In the film, she was portrayed by Jane Seymour. At the age of 22, Jane Seymour became the youngest actress ever to play a Bond girl.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2010 Last Speaker of Ancient Bo Language Has Died This is a very sad story (in more ways than one) from a few days ago - here are two reports (many more reports online).

Tycho Brahe to be exhumed THURSDAY, 04 FEBRUARY 2010 09:14 RC CULTURE Body of Denmark’s most famous astronomer will be dug up in Prague to determine true cause of death. The riddle of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's death in 1601 may now have a good chance of being solved. Prague's cultural department has finally given researchers permission to open the tomb of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, which lies in the city’s Tyn Cathedral.
John Dee was a friend of Tycho Brahe and was familiar with the work of Copernicus.[9] Many of his astronomical calculations were based on Copernican assumptions, but he never openly espoused the heliocentric theory. Dee applied Copernican theory to the problem of calendar reform. His sound recommendations were not accepted, however, for political reasons.[13]
The John Dee Society Our primary purpose is to produce a standard edition of the published and unpublished works of Elizabethan England's great polymath, antiquarian and magus Dr. John Dee, to make available to students of Renaissance philosophy and of Dee's Enochian magical system a coherent data base of primary source material for their researches.

The History of Solitaire The origins of solitaire are unknown. Some have speculated that the fanciful layouts in solitaire originated with the layouts of tarot cards, long used for divination and fortune-telling.
Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience by Adelaide Cadogan A downloadable file from Project Gutenberg
Solitaire, also called Patience, often refers to single-player card games involving a layout of cards with a goal of sorting them in some manner. However it is possible to play the same games competitively (often a head to head race) and cooperatively. The term solitaire is also used for single-player games of concentration and skill using a set layout of tiles, pegs or stones rather than cards. These games include Peg solitaire and Shanghai solitaire.

Mahjong solitaire is a solitaire matching game that uses a set of Mahjong tiles rather than cards. It is also known as Shanghai solitaire, electronic or computerized mahjong, MahJong solitaire, solitaire Mahjong and, erroneously, as Mahjong.
This is a list of solitaire or patience card games. Some varieties that are played by more than one player are marked with a plus sign.
This list is marked incomplete because this list below does not list all solitaire games available. Some games may be even variants of existing games.

Solitaire terminology:There are a number of common features in many solitaire (patience) games, such as 'building down' and the 'foundations' and 'tableau', used to simplify the description of new games. Here is a partial list.
Video Description:
1999 Karel Deleeuw Memorial Lecture in Mathematics by Persi Diaconis — a magician, MacArthur Fellow and an expert on the mathematics of card shuffling. Speaker -
Persi Diaconis, faculty in mathematics and statistics, Stanford University
Solitaire Chess - For those who don't know what Solitaire Chess is (I assume this applies to most of the readers), it is simply a method of training where you play over an instructional game, and guess the moves of the winning player. So if Bobby Fischer was White in a game where he won, you try to guess only the White moves.
Book on solitaire chess: From world-renowned chess teacher Bruce Pandolfini comes a collection of the 50 best games from his popular “Solitaire Chess” Column in Chess Life magazine.
Ancient Board Games
and Solitaire Games
From Around the World Copyright © 2008,2009 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E. All Rights Reserved. "During hard times it is very easy to become depressed and melancholy. If you allow yourself to fall into this type of mood then it will quickly spread to the other members of your household. During hard times you and your family will need to have some form of entertainment to help take your minds off the depressing situations that exist all around you.:
Two relaxing musical selections
Tranquility - Time Solitaire. Music United with Nature.
Universal Mother - Ancient Chants, Blissful Grooves

What is Obscura Day? An international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places.
WHEN AND WHERE?
We are celebrating Obscura Day in cities and towns all over the world! Saturday, March 20th 2010. Mark your calendar. Who's Organizing This? The folks behind Atlas Obscura, a compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.
World War II computer Colossus that cracked Nazi code
Retired British spy catcher Tony Sale rebuilt Colossus, the world's first recognisably programmable computer. Colossus was instrumental in the work of code cracking operations at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire during World War II.
It deciphered messages sent by German over the Lorenz Cipher.
Colossus was kept as a state secret until the end of the 1990s.
Stonehenge's secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges... Survey of landscape suggests prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges.
Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks.

Funerary art is any work of art forming or placed in a repository for the remains of the dead. Tomb is a general term for the repository, while grave goods are objects—other than the primary human remains—which have been placed inside.[1] Such objects may include the personal possessions of the deceased, or objects specially created for the burial, or miniature versions of things needed in an afterlife. Our knowledge of several cultures is drawn largely from these sources.
Ancient tomb belongs to top general: scholars Global Times January 29 2010] By An Baijie Chinese scholars reported Wednesday that a large ancient tomb they unearthed earlier in Northwest Shaanxi Province belongs to a high-ranking general that was guarded by hundreds of nude pottery figurines.
Tomb Raider: Charles Fellows in Lycia Robbing graves is a crime almost as old as the practice that unwittingly encouraged it, but taking the tombs themselves is an entirely different matter. In the 1840s, Charles Fellows shipped back to London’s British Museum 105 crates of blocks and sculptures taken from tombs scattered in Turkey…

Getting By On Her Looks "Priestess of Amun"
by Eti Bonn-Muller Using crystal-clear 3-D images from Meresamun's historic scans, two forensic artists reconstruct the face of a 2,800-year-old Egyptian priestess
Digital Karnak - Reconstructing the Karnak Temple Complex in 3D The ancient Egyptian religious site Karnak, one of the largest temple complexes ever constructed... Digital Karnak (Archive) is a three-dimensional virtual-reality model that runs in real time and allows users to navigate 2,000 years of history.