Welcome to Ljubljana, Slovenia!
Being a cultural astronomer and member of SEAC has taken me to places in Europe I have never imagined. Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia until 1992. Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia. It has a river running through it and a castle above it. This time of year there is outdoor dining along the river and last night there was a live performance in the square.
Today was the first day of meetings for the conference. Nick Campion situated the current 2012 phenomena within the apocalyptic tradition that is centuries old. He revealed that certain doomsayers are predicting this to be a spiritual shift rather than a physical one, thus ensuring that when nothing happens...something happens...if you feel it. If you don't feel it, too bad for you! Michael Rappenglück, the current SEAC president, and Barbara Rappenglück, gave lectures on research methods when studying ancient cave art, myths, and folklore. Many novice researcher are guilty of finding astronomy in every alignment, over-interpreting sparse data, and improper sampling. Vito Palcaro reminded us of "Hamlet's Mill" which hypothesized that all of the worlds religions were created to explain the precession of the equinox and other celestial events - a problem with sampling and over-interpretation. The afternoon was about alignments: how to determine an axis to measure, how to determine the significance of measurements, and finally how to interpret the data. Fernando Pimenta and Cesar Gonzalez-Garcia presented nuanced details of how to do alignments without bias and managing error. We were treated to folk music to round out a pleasant day.
Tomorrow the topic shifts from best practices to case studies in Europe mainly focused on alignments: archaeoastronomy.
Picture: The Square as seen over the triple bridge.
Picture: Dessert!
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