Clipmarks | invictus's clips

Tablet ignites debate on messiah and resurrection

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:46:05 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"This should shake our basic view of Christianity," he [Israel Knohl] said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. "Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story."

Clip Source: www.iht.com

JERUSALEM: A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

Tags: religion, christianity, messiah, israel, judaism, resurrection, dead sea scrolls

China Earthquake was "Rare And Unexpected"

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:25:37 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A new analysis of the setting for last month's devastating earthquake in China by a team of geoscientists at MIT shows that the quake resulted from faults with little seismic activity, and that similar events in that area occur only once in every 2,000 to 10,000 years, on average.

However, the researchers caution that because earthquakes can sometimes occur in clusters, people should still be wary of another possible large-scale earthquake.

Tags: earthquake, geology

Solar system a bit squashed, not nicely round

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:50:46 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind. You might imagine that if you took a balloon, which is mainly spherical, and pushed it against the wall, it would be blunted on one side," said Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, one of the scientists involved in the research.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a bit squashed and oblong, according to data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system's outer limits, scientists said on Wednesday.

Launched in 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 unmanned probes are now studying the edges of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic "bubble" around our solar system created by the solar wind as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

Voyager 2 in August 2007 crossed this boundary 7.8 billion miles from the sun.

Voyager 1 had crossed the boundary in December 2004 about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles farther from the sun.

Scientists think this indicates that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the heliosphere, which extends well past the distant orbit of Pluto, is not perfectly round, and the solar system is shaped a bit like an oblong.

Tags: space, solar system, heliosphere, voyager, science

GlassGiant: Make your custom blog images

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:28:18 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: A really fun site; you can design your own gadgets/gizmos/graphics to place on your blog or to send to friends. I loved the neon sign generator and the custom snowglobes.

Clip Source: www.glassgiant.com

Make Pictures

St. Patrick's Day
Show some Irish spirit with the St. Patrick's Day button maker!

Easter Eggs
Decorate your own Easter Eggs with your picture or message.

Jumbotron
Put your picture and message on a Jumbotron!

Custom Snowglobes
Put your picture into a custom snowglobe!

Chocolate Bar
Make your own Chocolate Bar!

Rocket
Put your name on a rocket ship!

Back to School
Put your own back-to-school message on the chalkboard!

Keyboard Mods
Want to trick out your system? Make your own keyboard!

Hollywood Sign
Make your own Hollywood Sign!

Giant Cookies
Make a personalized round- or heart-shaped giant cookie and ice it with your message!

Jack 'o Lantern
Like those silhouette pumpkin carvings? Make your own!

Neon Sign UPDATED!
Make your own neon sign! Choose from lots of colors and backgrounds!

Lightning Messages
Spell out a message in lightning bolts.

Romance Novel Cover
Turn your picture into a Harlequin-like romance novel cover!

Family Guy Chart
Make your own Family Guy IQ test result chart.

Tags: images, gizmos, fun, easter eggs, neon signs, snowglobes, graphics, free tools, web, internet

Date set for Odysseus' return from Trojan War

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:30:56 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Although I read this story with caution and I still remain very sceptical about the astronomical references and interpretations, I'm posting it here for those who may be interested.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.

Tags: ancient history, greece, trojan war, homer, odysseus, archaeoastronomy

The tornado nightmare

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:37:44 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: I wouldn't like to be there to take this photo.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

A huge tornado funnel cloud touches down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m. The Globe Gazette and Mitchell County Press News reported that Lori Mehmen of Orchard, took the photo from outside her front door. Mehmen said the funnel cloud came near the ground and then went back up into the clouds. Besides tree and crop damage, no human injuries were reported.

Tags: tornado, photography, disasters, iowa

Mass extinctions? Blame it on the ocean

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:19:31 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

In the course of hundreds of millions of years the world's oceans have expanded and contracted in response to the shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates and to changes in climate. There were periods of the planet's history when vast areas of the continents were flooded by shallow seas such as the shark and mosasaur infested seaway that neatly split North America during the age of the dinosaurs.

As those epicontinental seas drained, animals like mosasaurs and giant sharks went extinct, and conditions on the marine shelves where life exhibited its greatest diversity in the form of things like clams and snails changed as well.

Clip Source: www.nsf.gov

Ebb and flow of the sea is the primary cause of the world's mass extinctions over the past 500 million years

If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits.

But a new study, published June 15, 2008, in the journal Nature, suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions over the past 500 million years.

View a video interview with geoscientist Shanan Peters.

Tags: mass extinctions, geology, ocean, science

Water Shortage: Worst nightmare becoming true

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:55:55 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Amy Goodman interviews Peter H. Gleick and Maude Barlow about "water problems" appearing seriously on the horizon, globally.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

For the longest time, people have taken water for granted. Most people don't think about where their water comes from. They just turn on the tap, and they expect it to be there. Those days are ending.

This notion that we'll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It's got 20-some years of water. New Mexico has got 10, although they're building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five. Arizona, Florida, even the Great Lakes now, there's huge new demand.

The Nile River doesn't reach its end. The Colorado River, the Yellow River in China, they, for the most part, don't flow anymore to the sea.

You know those movies where there's the comet coming at the earth, and all of a sudden the governments of the world say, "Gee, we're not -- our differences aren't so big anymore, because we're about to all die"? That's really where we are. There is a comet coming at us. It's called water shortage.

Tags: water, climate change, earth, resources, water shortage, science

Yahoo-Microsoft talks fail, Google deal expected

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:37:00 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) have failed to agree on a partnership or merger, the companies said on Thursday, sending Yahoo shares down 13 percent.

Instead, Yahoo is close to a search advertising deal with Google Inc (GOOG.O) and an announcement could come later in the day, sources familiar with the matter said.

Tags: yahoo, google, web, internet

The coming famine

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:32:27 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

BARRING NUCLEAR WARS, pandemics and cosmic accidents, there will be about 9.1 billion people living in the world in 2050. Yet they will eat as much food as 13 billion people at today's nutritional levels. So how will we feed them all? The answer to this question could be the greatest scientific challenge of the 21st century – greater even than finding a solution to climate change.

The problem is that humanity is consuming more food, year-on-year, than it produces, especially as demand for high-protein food increases in high population developing countries like China and India.

The world is also moving towards a water crisis: cities are now taking up to half of the water that was once used to grow food, while groundwater levels are declining in every country where it is used for food production.

Tags: food, water, resources, population, economy, production, famine, drought, world

Electric Sheep Revisited (King of Screen Savers)

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:36:52 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: I clipped Electric Sheep back in March 2006. This is a "revisit" after 17 months. There are so many awesome "sheeps" nowadays that I sit back and watch the screensaver for minutes.

Clip Source: www.electricsheep.org

electric sheep

Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. It can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep", the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep". The result is a collective "android dream", an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool.

Kick-start your client
with a sheep pack.

Tags: desktop, screen savers, electric sheep, 3d, fractal, animations

Ancient cave found under church

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:37:13 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Half a dozen sources (including Fox News) used this news story with the headline "First Church In The World". Of course, they also omitted archaeologist Thomas Parker's words:

"It's quite possible that there was a cave with earlier occupation which was later converted to Christian use. But to make the jump that this was actually used by Christians fleeing Jerusalem in the 1st century A.D. seems like a stretch to me."

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

AMMAN, Jordan - Archaeologists in Jordan said Monday they have discovered a cave underneath one of the world's oldest churches that may have once been an even more ancient site of Christian worship.

Archaeologist Abdel-Qader Hussein, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, says the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian rituals.

Thomas Parker, a historian at the University of North Carolina-Raleigh, who led the discovery of the church in Aqaba, said that while he hadn't seen the Rihab site, any such claim should be taken with a degree of caution.

"An extraordinary claim like this requires extraordinary evidence," he said. "We need to see the artifacts and dating evidence to suggest such an occupation in the 1st century A.D."

Parker asked how archeologists could be certain whether the "cave was actually a center of Christian worship."

Tags: archaeology, jordan, amman, christianity, rihab

Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.pretorianews.co.za

Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

Who found Machu Picchu?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:30:27 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An interesting "archaeology story" - reminded me C. W. Ceram's "Gods, Tombs and Scholars".

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

When Peruvian locals led Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu in 1911, it was a discovery which would make the Yale professor famous, highly respected and richer.

Bingham went on to become a governor of Connecticut and member of the US senate, and his book on Machu Picchu became a bestseller. Such was his prominence in early 20th century archaeology, that some have speculated that Bingham was the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.

But Bingham's claim to be the first to discover Peru's lost city of the Incas is looking more than a little doubtful. Detailed investigations by a US historian have revealed that Machu Picchu was, in fact, discovered over 40 years earlier by a German businessman.

Tags: archaeology, peru, inca, machu picchu, south america, hiram bingham, augusto berns

Earth's poles long overdue for reversal

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:56:27 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

SYDNEY: A reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles could happen sooner than we think, according to Dutch scientists who report that the planet's magnetic field is becoming gradually less stable.

A reversal could affect everything from navigation and communications equipment to the composition of the atmosphere, say experts.

The story of the Earth's magnetic field is written in rocks over time. Because these rocks become 'magnetised' at the time of their formation, scientists can discover which direction the poles were facing and how strong the Earth's magnetic field was at that time.

Current records suggest that we are long overdue for our next reversal, he said. "On average, there is a reversal around every 400,000 years, but this varies a lot." The geological record suggests that the last reversal was around 800,000 years ago.

Tags: earth, geology, polar shift, reversal, magnetism, physics, science