astro picture for the day/ Eratosthenes poem Hermes

ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

thought for the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I read in Thomas Heath's "Hisory of Greek Mathematics" volume 2 that Eratosthenes(who first calculated the circumference of the Earth over two thousand years ago) wrote a poem about some Greek god Hermes.  The poem is about Hermes and some twelve constellations and Hermes apparently dies and goes to heaven.  Eratosthenes of course lived two hundred years before the supposed life of Jesus Christ.  But here, with Eratosthenes Hermes poem, we have something analogous to the Gospel story of Jesus Christ, and it's astrotheological. 

I can't find an english translation; it's all in German.  The following is the best I've been able to google.

book review; the Hermes poem is mentioned when talking about chapter five

here's a wiki of the extant Greek manuscript

There's also a Catasterismi, another Eratosthenes poem about the Heavens(a pre Jesus Christ Gospel?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catasterismi

DNA-nanomanufacturing video for the day . . .  . . . .

Eric Winfree dna nanomanufacturing video

I just found this; it's dated to 2008.  He says he's gotten dna-nanomanufacturing to do just about everything; the only problem is speed of self-organising everything.  Of course, just over a month or two ago, two dna-nanotechnology breakthroughs have been reported that has sped up dna-nanomanufacturing from weeks and days to minutes; combine the two(one is to just use short dna pieces instead of one long Paul Rothemund origami style dna; the other basicaly showed that if you just keep the temperature constant, the dna folds up within minutes; combine these two, and we're talking about seconds or less I would think), and dna-nanotechnologists should be able to make a primitive(non-Drexlerian daimondoid nanomanufacturing system) nanomanufacturing system.  Combine this primitive nano-factory with graphene, buckyballs, proteins/peptoids, and one should see that dna-nanomanufacturing can bootstrap to Drexlerian/Feyman daimondoid(or better materials yet) nanosystems. 

There's been no news coming out of the dna guys since the last two major breakthroughs; i can only suspect that they are just having so much fun with it they are too busy to report anything.  It could be that the next dna-nanomanufacturing announcement will be that of a primitive nano-factory.