Evan Prodromou

"Wikipedia says that Aurelian visited the big black stone in Emesa after defeating Zenobia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... That'd be in the 270s, so about 50-60 years after returning from Rome." - Evan Prodromou

"Like Shamshi -Adad or Shamshi-Ilu? Cool. Wikipedia at least thinks this meteorite worship was widespread in Phoenicia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki..." - Evan Prodromou

"It was pretty huge -- about 2 tons is what I've read. Maybe it was valuable as nickel-iron ore, so it could have been melted down, but otherwise someone would have had to crush it up on purpose. If not, it's probably out there somewhere -- big black rock." - Evan Prodromou

"Hi Scott! I'm a big fan of the Ancient World podcast and I really love the "Bloodlines" series. Great work! I think there's something so strange about the temporary ascendency of Elagabalus (mineral), its fusion with Sol Invictus, and the military cult of S.I.'s subsequent entanglement with Christianity. Can't wait to see what comes up." - Evan Prodromou

"Sorry in advance to both the Elagabalus fans out there." - Evan Prodromou

"I guess I was expecting something bigger -- like some evidence that had been inadmissible or some kind of procedural issue involving Adnan and his defence team. Instead, it was a small beef between the lawyer and the judge. It really didn't have a lot to do with the case." - Evan Prodromou

"I would have said that the mistrial, which has been mentioned a few times, happened relatively early over something relatively minor." - Evan Prodromou

"http://diveintohtml5.info/" - Evan Prodromou

"As of right now they've got ~$45K and the stretch goal is $60K with 34 days to go (!?). So I think you're right but that only happens if people contribute." - Evan Prodromou

"ScratchJr is a tablet-based coding environment for kids 5-7. It's based on Scratch, the wildly popular Open Source kids' coding system. This Kickstarter project has currently reached its goal for an iOS release, but they have a stretch goal of $60K to develop a version for Android tablets. My 8-year-old loves the main Scratch program (http://scratch.mit.edu/) and I'd love for my 5-year-old to have an even earlier introduction to programming." - Evan Prodromou

"Clearly, everyone should switch to Chinacoin." - Evan Prodromou

"So, sure, the juvenile reading is there because I have a juvenile sense of humour. I crack up ever single time I look at the list of E14N servers. I think there's a likely point in the distant future where these servers will be shut down for additional registration -- maybe around the 1M user mark. If things ever go past that, it may be that having an @pumpyourself.com or @pumpity.net account will be a mark of pride. "I was there back when..." That all said, the "try it" link on pump.io will likely start going to a PaaS hosting service like AppFog or Openshift sometime in the future. Set up your own cloud site, and if you really like it, assign a domain name and get an HTTPS cert." - Evan Prodromou

"I've been using Gnome Shell since the first releases, and I think it's the best available desktop on any platform. It's simple, straightforward, and doesn't get in my way. But it's also programmable, with an excellent set of extensions available. A+++++++, would compute again." - Evan Prodromou

"I kind of disagree; I think that keeping on the same course would have meant a long, slow decline for identi.ca. I think there's an opportunity for much more growth with the new system." - Evan Prodromou

"So, what you're saying is that hotpump.net and pumpdog.me are embarrassing domains?" - Evan Prodromou