The first law of ecology is that title above, at least as written in Barry Commoner's 1971  The Closing Circle:  Nature, Man and Technology .   A  further searc h indicated that the adage is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, who died in 1519.  But there is very little to support this contention. From German  philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1769: In nature everything is connected, everything is interwoven, everything changes with everything, everything merges from one into another . Close, but what about U.S. jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who wrote: If the world is a subject for rational thought it is all of one piece; the same laws are found everywhere, and   everything is connected with everything else;   and if this is so, there is nothing mean, and nothing in which may not be seen the universal law. And there is an environmental inspiration from U.S. naturalist John Muir in 1869: When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the

Deloitte published their assessment of Rome's 2000 year-old Colosseum, which could well cost from $250 million to $1 billion to build today.  You can  read the details here , but, ta-da, it is worth $79 billion.  It would rank   #14 in the current list of world billionaires . There are moments and experiences, says Mastercard, that are priceless, but many famous historical artifacts are also in that category, especially those of Leonardo da Vinci. Some of his works do have known values.  A prominent one, and most expensive art piece ever sold, is  Salvator Mundi,  which was bought by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman in 2017 for $450 million, some say as a gift to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and today has a value closer to $500 million, or half a billion dollars. To the right is how the Leonardo pictured Jesus Christ, but it is still not clear if he finished it in the 1490s while working in Milan on  The Last Supper , or in Florence after 1500 while painting the  Mona

If you search for any list of the greatest humans of all-time, you will find religious people tend to dominate, and they're all male.   Here is one with Jesus Christ at the top.  Next are scientists/technologists, with world leaders also prominent.  In this list of 100 there are only two females, Queen Isabela at #65 and  Queen Elizabeth I ( not II ) as 94, among 98 men.  A case can be made that it's harder to gain fame these days: Five years ago, I wrote a tongue firmly in cheek posting on   ELON MUSK vs PAT TAKAHASHI .  A few friends thought it was hilarious.  On this Sabbath, I toyed with doing a similar analysis involving Jesus Christ.  Then I thought, nah, it would probably not be taken in good humor by some.  So what about a famous artist-technologist like Leonardo da Vinci? Leo has it all over me in the art department, for he painted the Mona Lisa ( worth $850 million ) and the Last Supper ( only around $100 million ).  I minored in art as an undergraduate and misplace