Humankind discovered his ancient Kauri in 2011, and other than a non-toxic water-based timber preservative, they left it untouched. Scientists are trying to determine if a volcanic eruption in the Pacific Ocean toppled the tree based on how it fell 120,000 years ago and the charred timber on the surface. This Kauri tree would have lived for around 1,000 years.

 

Why is the trunk flat? After the tree toppled, it sank into the earth, where it remained buried for over 100,000 years. Only the buried part remained preserved in the peat. The elements rotted away the section of the tree that was exposed.

 

HFC_8167

A combination of pouring rain and the evilest strain of man flu known to all humankind confines me to barracks right now, although it's probably not going to deter me from a planned night shoot in Manchester this evening.

 

Anyways, I'm bored and playing with processing. This is Runcorn Bridge, that well known bottleneck of the north. Relief is coming, a second bridge is on the way, less welcome however will be the tolls to pay for it. The words stand and deliver spring to mind...

 

I wanted to emphasise the coating of rust that plagues the metalwork, job done I think thanks to that evil sky and the sun being right over the shoulder.

 

Shot from the Mersey Weaver tour as we lurched behind Runcorn station and onto the Folly Lane branch.

 

30 January 2016

By Richard B. Spence, Ph.D., University of Idaho

 

Cathars believed that the Catholic Church was the tool of the evil god. They vehemently opposed the Old Testament and the idea of Holy Trinity. Did they believe in crucifixion or resurrection? What did they think about Christ?

 

An aerial view of the Cathar castle of Montségur, France.

In contrast to the Catholic Church’s cathedrals and abbeys, the Cathar church had no fixed abodes. (Image: Colibri vision/Shutterstock)

Cathar Beliefs

 

The essence of Cathar belief was that there wasn’t one god but two. It’s called Dualism. This solved that sticky problem of how a good God lets bad things happen. The good god, the lord of light and mercy, rules the world of spirit: the celestial realm from which humankind’s pure, immortal souls had fallen. What they fell into was the material world, a spiritual prison ruled by the evil god, the Demiurge, or more simply, Satan. In other words, we’re trapped in Hell. Everything in the material realm is corrupt, and our pure souls yearn to escape it.

 

But we’re condemned to this eternal rebirth in this cosmic hellhole through the allure of its seductive, but false, pleasures. None of these was more insidious than lust, which caused the creation of more fleshly prisons, babies, to trap more divine souls. The only way to escape the cycle was to reject the physical world and pleasures. If this sounds vaguely like Hinduism or Buddhism, one may be on to something.

 

Gustave Doré's painting depicts the war of heaven.

The Cathars mainly believed that a good god rules the world of spirit while the material world is a spiritual prison ruled by the evil god. (Image: Gustave Doré/Public domain)

By its encouraging of reproduction and wallowing in wealth and privilege, Cathars saw the Catholic Church as a tool of the evil god. Cathars rejected the Old Testament and identified Jehovah with the evil god.

 

To them, the Holy Trinity was a lie. To the Cathars, Jesus was neither god nor man. He was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit sent by the good god to show us the way to freedom. So, naturally, the evil god had him destroyed. But the Cathars didn’t believe that Christ was really flesh and blood. Rather, he was a kind of hologram. So, in their view, there was no real crucifixion or resurrection, or virgin birth because Jesus had no material form. To Cathars, the cross was a hateful symbol, which is why there’s no such thing as a Cathar cross.

 

It’s easy to see why the Catholic Church would object to this. But that wasn’t all. In contrast to the Catholic Church’s cathedrals and abbeys, the Cathar church had no fixed abodes. Worship could take place anywhere, outdoors or in private homes. Nor was there any Cathar pope or rapacious clergy. The highest level was that of a bishop.

 

Learn more about the Islamic Assassins.

 

The Cathar clergy were the perfects. Since foregoing the false pleasures of the world was something most simple souls couldn’t manage, only a chosen few became perfect. Even thinking about becoming a perfect meant a three-year apprenticeship with a current perfect who had to find you worthy. After an initiation called the consolamentum, what you had to look forward to was a life of celibacy and non-violence coupled with a strict vegetarian diet (you couldn’t eat anything born of sexual intercourse) and poverty.

 

A map representing the Cathar castles located in France.

A map of the Cathar castles in France, where the main Cathar belief of Christian dualism was practiced. (Image: Made with Inkscape/Public domain)

One had to wander a lot because the perfecti were both the priesthood and the missionaries of the Cathar faith. It sounds not only like Buddhist monks but also like the dais used by the Assassins, and other Shia sects. Are we looking at the same thing under different names?

 

Most importantly, perfects were role models for rank-and-file Cathars: the credentes, or ‘believers’. In return, the believers supported and obeyed the perfecti just like secret-society underlings should.

 

This is a transcript from the video series The Real History of Secret Societies. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Cathari Rituals

 

Credentes lived more-or-less regular lives and looked forward to receiving the consolamentum on their deathbed. Supposedly, if it looked like a consoled person might recover, they trusted their brethren to smother them to ensure that they departed the earthly realm sin-free.

 

Besides the consolamentum, there was also a ritual suicide by starvation called the endura. The basic Cathar ritual was a simple meal of broken bread, and a mutual greeting between credentes and perfecti called the melioramentum. The mass and the cross played no part in any of this. But remember, much of what we do know about the Cathars has been handed down from their mortal enemies, the Catholic Church.

 

Learn more about the Knights Templar.

 

Cathar Holy Books

 

There are mentions of Cathar holy books like the Book of Two Principles, The Secret Supper, and the Interrogation of John, but the Inquisition zealously destroyed them. Denying the heretics their gospels was seen as key to defeating them. Catholic critics frequently accused the Cathars of witchcraft and sexual perversity.

 

There isn’t any real evidence of witchcraft but there might be something to the perceived perversity. The Cathars’ issue wasn’t so much with sexual gratification as procreation. Thus, masturbation and homosexuality may have been condoned as acceptable—if not desirable—practices.

 

And then there was the fact that Cathars ordained women alongside men, and generally afforded them social and spiritual equality. Still, the Cathars ignored Virgin Mary because the purely spiritual Christ had no mother. Yet they held Mary Magdalene in high esteem.

 

This has led some to propose that the Cathars’ big secret—their Holy Grail—was knowledge of a holy bloodline established by Jesus and Magdalene. A romantic theory, but it makes no sense because the Cathars didn’t believe Jesus was a physical being.

 

Learn more about the Rosicrucians.

 

Common Questions about Cathar Beliefs, Rituals, and Holy Books

 

Q: What did the Cathars think about Jesus Christ?

Cathars believed that Jesus Christ was neither god nor man. He was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit sent by the good god to show us the way to freedom.

 

Q: What was the life of a Cathar perfect?

A Cathar perfect led a life of celibacy and non-violence coupled with a strict vegetarian diet.

 

Q: Why were the Cathars such a threat?

The Cathars were a threat because they rejected the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They believed that the Catholic Church was the tool of a evil god.

 

Keep Reading

Women in the Medieval Society: The Case of Eleanor of Aquitaine

The Commercial Revolution in Medieval Europe

The Status of Women in Medieval Europe

  

The world must have been a different place entirely, if Pilate never crucified Jesus on the cross. Jesus would just be another prophet or another teacher in the eyes of the people. He wouldn’t have the exalted and elevated status that he has today. His importance and significance in our lives transcends from the fact that he was crucified. Without his crucifixion nobody would have believed in him and his teachings.

The importance of his message and the importance of what he taught revolves around his crucifixion; the ultimate sacrifice that he made for humanity.

What if Jesus was not crucified?

 

Source: Crosswalk

Now, what if Jesus did not die on the cross? And what if Jesus did not come out of the grave as promised in the holy scripts? It puts the entire community at the stake of a leap of faith because sinning is humans’ typical habitat and then we are pretty much left with nothing but facing the crisis of the hour. It all seems child play unless you actually have to be questionable on the day of resurrection for your deeds to God directly. Sounds hellish? To me too.

No Crucifixion, No forgiveness?

No crucifixion means no dying for the sins of a mass, and when there is no sin offering, we would automatically be on our own, however inconvenient it may sound. Without Jesus, we will have no forgiveness, and without Jesus, we will have no gospel. One of the scripts says ‘the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” And they pour it on. It does say that of course. But it also says that “law” is no longer applicable.

“The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8:2).

All the supporting statements of the swoon hypothesis lead to the demolition of the basic concept of Christianity. It is yet again just a hypothesis. A tug of war between whether Jesus was put on the cross and died because of our sins or did Jesus remained a part of his mortal body and made no sin offering.

What if the concept of crucifixion seized to exist?

The world must have been another place if the ideology of Jesus’s Crucifixion was never dominantly accepted. Few religious scholars still firmly believe that Crucifixion never occurred and support it with the Swoon hypothesis. However, most believe that Jesus died for our sins on the cross.

The Controversial Gospel

 

The last supper (source: Singulart)

A 1500-year-old scripture of the Bible supports the ideology of Jesus not being crucified such that it was considered the core principle of Christianity. In one of his interviews, a famous Rabbi, Tovia Singer, explained how the Crucifixion of Jesus was not what happened and supported his argument with the scripture’s authentic proofs.

According to Rabbi, it is mentioned in Mathew, Mark, John and Luke that Jesus always had to die. These chapters of the hold bible nullify the ideology of the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Another Syriac script reports that Jesus said, “I confess before heaven, and call to witness everything that dwells upon the earth, that I am a stranger to all that men have said of me I am more than man.

“For I am a man, born of a woman, subject to the judgment of God; that live here like as other men, subject to the common miseries.”

The statements of the controversial gospel, if proven true, can efficiently reject the theology of the holy trinity where God exists as three divine persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus vs Judas: Who was Crucified?

 

Depiction of Judas and Jesus (source)

Scrutiny into the theology literature explains that the Gospel of Barnabas articulately states how the person crucified was not Jesus himself but Judas Iscariot: A look-alike.

These statements from various holy scripts challenge the intactness of the foundation of the religion of Christianity which celebrates Jesus Christ as the saviour of the Christians and dying for their sins. It fails the entire concept of resurrection. If the Crucifixion never existed, then neither will the resurrection. If so, then Christians leap of faith for believing, i.e. Jesus died because of their sins, will bring them at facing God directly for all the sins they have been committing.

So, only verse 16:31 from chapter Acts can justify Romans 8:9 that says, “Belief on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved” - Acts 16:31 (Biblestudytools).

Parting thoughts

The above pieces of evidence happen to be challenging to ‘what could have happened’ situation; however, the good part is that he was put on the cross and took the pain for us. Pilate hanged Jesus on the cross. The matter of fact is that Jesus passed away on the cross and was later shifted to the tomb. The tomb then was found empty, and it has always been accepted that God had our Savior alive and immortal. He chose death to save us from the aftermath of resurrection from our sins.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. — Isaiah 53:4 (biblestudytools)

Sources

“https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Jesus-Death”

“https://ourdailybread.org/resources/if-christ-had-not-died/”

“https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2012/06/42858/jesus-was-mortal-never-crucified-claims-analysis-of-controversial-gospel/”

“https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/first-person-what-if-jesus-hadnt-died-and-risen/”

  

www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/cathar-beliefs-rituals-and-h...

This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before humankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed, and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a young Milky Way Galaxy. Of the 200 or so globular clusters that survive today, Omega Centauri is the largest, containing over ten million stars. Omega Centauri is also the brightest globular cluster, at apparent visual magnitude 3.9 it is visible to southern observers with the unaided eye. Cataloged as NGC 5139, Omega Centauri is about 18,000 light-years away and 150 light-years in diameter. Unlike many other globular clusters, the stars in Omega Centauri show several different ages and trace chemical abundances, indicating that the globular star cluster has a complex history over its 12 billion year age. via NASA ift.tt/1WpI4MP

If we have faith in humankind

And respect for what is earthly

And an unfaltering belief

In peace and love and understanding

This could be heaven here on earth

 

Tracy Chapman... Heaven's Here On Earth

===============================

Tuesday night drummers. Reposted.

From IngallsIdyllGirl

These are the stories we need to sing to our souls as we plant our gardens, as we do the menial labor required to support our own lives with pride and happiness.

Sheep (pl.: sheep) or domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are a domesticated, ruminant mammal typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe (/juː/ yoo), an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb.

 

Sheep are most likely descended from the wild mouflon of Europe and Asia, with Iran being a geographic envelope of the domestication center. One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleeces, meat (lamb, hogget or mutton) and milk. A sheep's wool is the most widely used animal fiber, and is usually harvested by shearing. In Commonwealth countries, ovine meat is called lamb when from younger animals and mutton when from older ones; in the United States, meat from both older and younger animals is usually called lamb. Sheep continue to be important for wool and meat today, and are also occasionally raised for pelts, as dairy animals, or as model organisms for science.

 

Sheep husbandry is practised throughout the majority of the inhabited world, and has been fundamental to many civilizations. In the modern era, Australia, New Zealand, the southern and central South American nations, and the British Isles are most closely associated with sheep production.

 

There is a large lexicon of unique terms for sheep husbandry which vary considerably by region and dialect. Use of the word sheep began in Middle English as a derivation of the Old English word scēap. A group of sheep is called a flock. Many other specific terms for the various life stages of sheep exist, generally related to lambing, shearing, and age.

 

Being a key animal in the history of farming, sheep have a deeply entrenched place in human culture, and are represented in much modern language and symbolism. As livestock, sheep are most often associated with pastoral, Arcadian imagery. Sheep figure in many mythologies—such as the Golden Fleece—and major religions, especially the Abrahamic traditions. In both ancient and modern religious ritual, sheep are used as sacrificial animals.

 

History

Main article: History of the domestic sheep

The exact line of descent from wild ancestors to domestic sheep is unclear. The most common hypothesis states that Ovis aries is descended from the Asiatic (O. gmelini) species of mouflon; the European mouflon (Ovis aries musimon) is a direct descendant of this population. Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated by humankind (although the domestication of dogs probably took place 10 to 20 thousand years earlier); the domestication date is estimated to fall between 11,000 and 9000 B.C in Mesopotamia and possibly around 7000 BC in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley. The rearing of sheep for secondary products, and the resulting breed development, began in either southwest Asia or western Europe. Initially, sheep were kept solely for meat, milk and skins. Archaeological evidence from statuary found at sites in Iran suggests that selection for woolly sheep may have begun around 6000 BC, and the earliest woven wool garments have been dated to two to three thousand years later.

 

Sheep husbandry spread quickly in Europe. Excavations show that in about 6000 BC, during the Neolithic period of prehistory, the Castelnovien people, living around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues near present-day Marseille in the south of France, were among the first in Europe to keep domestic sheep. Practically from its inception, ancient Greek civilization relied on sheep as primary livestock, and were even said to name individual animals. Ancient Romans kept sheep on a wide scale, and were an important agent in the spread of sheep raising. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (Naturalis Historia), speaks at length about sheep and wool. European colonists spread the practice to the New World from 1493 onwards.

 

Characteristics

Domestic sheep are relatively small ruminants, usually with a crimped hair called wool and often with horns forming a lateral spiral. They differ from their wild relatives and ancestors in several respects, having become uniquely neotenic as a result of selective breeding by humans. A few primitive breeds of sheep retain some of the characteristics of their wild cousins, such as short tails. Depending on breed, domestic sheep may have no horns at all (i.e. polled), or horns in both sexes, or in males only. Most horned breeds have a single pair, but a few breeds may have several.

 

Sheep in Turkmenistan

Another trait unique to domestic sheep as compared to wild ovines is their wide variation in color. Wild sheep are largely variations of brown hues, and variation within species is extremely limited. Colors of domestic sheep range from pure white to dark chocolate brown, and even spotted or piebald. Sheep keepers also sometimes artificially paint "smit marks" onto their sheep in any pattern or color for identification. Selection for easily dyeable white fleeces began early in sheep domestication, and as white wool is a dominant trait it spread quickly. However, colored sheep do appear in many modern breeds, and may even appear as a recessive trait in white flocks. While white wool is desirable for large commercial markets, there is a niche market for colored fleeces, mostly for handspinning. The nature of the fleece varies widely among the breeds, from dense and highly crimped, to long and hairlike. There is variation of wool type and quality even among members of the same flock, so wool classing is a step in the commercial processing of the fibre.

  

Suffolks are a medium wool, black-faced breed of meat sheep that make up 60% of the sheep population in the U.S.

Depending on breed, sheep show a range of heights and weights. Their rate of growth and mature weight is a heritable trait that is often selected for in breeding. Ewes typically weigh between 45 and 100 kilograms (100 and 220 lb), and rams between 45 and 160 kilograms (100 and 350 lb). When all deciduous teeth have erupted, the sheep has 20 teeth. Mature sheep have 32 teeth. As with other ruminants, the front teeth in the lower jaw bite against a hard, toothless pad in the upper jaw. These are used to pick off vegetation, then the rear teeth grind it before it is swallowed. There are eight lower front teeth in ruminants, but there is some disagreement as to whether these are eight incisors, or six incisors and two incisor-shaped canines. This means that the dental formula for sheep is either

0.0.3.3

4.0.3.3

or

0.0.3.3

3.1.3.3

There is a large diastema between the incisors and the molars.

 

In the first few years of life one can calculate the age of sheep from their front teeth, as a pair of milk teeth is replaced by larger adult teeth each year, the full set of eight adult front teeth being complete at about four years of age. The front teeth are then gradually lost as sheep age, making it harder for them to feed and hindering the health and productivity of the animal. For this reason, domestic sheep on normal pasture begin to slowly decline from four years on, and the life expectancy of a sheep is 10 to 12 years, though some sheep may live as long as 20 years.

 

Skull

Sheep have good hearing, and are sensitive to noise when being handled. Sheep have horizontal slit-shaped pupils, with excellent peripheral vision; with visual fields of about 270° to 320°, sheep can see behind themselves without turning their heads. Many breeds have only short hair on the face, and some have facial wool (if any) confined to the poll and or the area of the mandibular angle; the wide angles of peripheral vision apply to these breeds. A few breeds tend to have considerable wool on the face; for some individuals of these breeds, peripheral vision may be greatly reduced by "wool blindness", unless recently shorn about the face. Sheep have poor depth perception; shadows and dips in the ground may cause sheep to baulk. In general, sheep have a tendency to move out of the dark and into well-lit areas, and prefer to move uphill when disturbed. Sheep also have an excellent sense of smell, and, like all species of their genus, have scent glands just in front of the eyes, and interdigitally on the feet. The purpose of these glands is uncertain, but those on the face may be used in breeding behaviors. The foot glands might also be related to reproduction, but alternative functions, such as secretion of a waste product or a scent marker to help lost sheep find their flock, have also been proposed.

 

Comparison with goats

Sheep and goats are closely related: both are in the subfamily Caprinae. However, they are separate species, so hybrids rarely occur and are always infertile. A hybrid of a ewe and a buck (a male goat) is called a sheep-goat hybrid, known as geep. Visual differences between sheep and goats include the beard of goats and divided upper lip of sheep. Sheep tails also hang down, even when short or docked, while the short tails of goats are held upwards. Also, sheep breeds are often naturally polled (either in both sexes or just in the female), while naturally polled goats are rare (though many are polled artificially). Males of the two species differ in that buck goats acquire a unique and strong odor during the rut, whereas rams do not.

 

Breeds

The domestic sheep is a multi-purpose animal, and the more than 200 breeds now in existence were created to serve these diverse purposes. Some sources give a count of a thousand or more breeds, but these numbers cannot be verified, according to some sources. However, several hundred breeds of sheep have been identified by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), with the estimated number varying somewhat from time to time: e.g. 863 breeds as of 1993, 1314 breeds as of 1995 and 1229 breeds as of 2006. (These numbers exclude extinct breeds, which are also tallied by the FAO.) For the purpose of such tallies, the FAO definition of a breed is "either a subspecific group of domestic livestock with definable and identifiable external characteristics that enable it to be separated by visual appraisal from other similarly defined groups within the same species or a group for which geographical and/or cultural separation from phenotypically similar groups has led to acceptance of its separate identity." Almost all sheep are classified as being best suited to furnishing a certain product: wool, meat, milk, hides, or a combination in a dual-purpose breed. Other features used when classifying sheep include face color (generally white or black), tail length, presence or lack of horns, and the topography for which the breed has been developed. This last point is especially stressed in the UK, where breeds are described as either upland (hill or mountain) or lowland breeds. A sheep may also be of a fat-tailed type, which is a dual-purpose sheep common in Africa and Asia with larger deposits of fat within and around its tail.

 

Breeds are often categorized by the type of their wool. Fine wool breeds are those that have wool of great crimp and density, which are preferred for textiles. Most of these were derived from Merino sheep, and the breed continues to dominate the world sheep industry. Downs breeds have wool between the extremes, and are typically fast-growing meat and ram breeds with dark faces. Some major medium wool breeds, such as the Corriedale, are dual-purpose crosses of long and fine-wooled breeds and were created for high-production commercial flocks. Long wool breeds are the largest of sheep, with long wool and a slow rate of growth. Long wool sheep are most valued for crossbreeding to improve the attributes of other sheep types. For example: the American Columbia breed was developed by crossing Lincoln rams (a long wool breed) with fine-wooled Rambouillet ewes.

 

Coarse or carpet wool sheep are those with a medium to long length wool of characteristic coarseness. Breeds traditionally used for carpet wool show great variability, but the chief requirement is a wool that will not break down under heavy use (as would that of the finer breeds). As the demand for carpet-quality wool declines, some breeders of this type of sheep are attempting to use a few of these traditional breeds for alternative purposes. Others have always been primarily meat-class sheep.

 

A minor class of sheep are the dairy breeds. Dual-purpose breeds that may primarily be meat or wool sheep are often used secondarily as milking animals, but there are a few breeds that are predominantly used for milking. These sheep produce a higher quantity of milk and have slightly longer lactation curves. In the quality of their milk, the fat and protein content percentages of dairy sheep vary from non-dairy breeds, but lactose content does not.

 

A last group of sheep breeds is that of fur or hair sheep, which do not grow wool at all. Hair sheep are similar to the early domesticated sheep kept before woolly breeds were developed, and are raised for meat and pelts. Some modern breeds of hair sheep, such as the Dorper, result from crosses between wool and hair breeds. For meat and hide producers, hair sheep are cheaper to keep, as they do not need shearing. Hair sheep are also more resistant to parasites and hot weather.

 

With the modern rise of corporate agribusiness and the decline of localized family farms, many breeds of sheep are in danger of extinction. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust of the UK lists 22 native breeds as having only 3,000 registered animals (each), and The Livestock Conservancy lists 14 as either "critical" or "threatened". Preferences for breeds with uniform characteristics and fast growth have pushed heritage (or heirloom) breeds to the margins of the sheep industry. Those that remain are maintained through the efforts of conservation organizations, breed registries, and individual farmers dedicated to their preservation.

 

Diet

Sheep are herbivorous mammals. Most breeds prefer to graze on grass and other short roughage, avoiding the taller woody parts of plants that goats readily consume. Both sheep and goats use their lips and tongues to select parts of the plant that are easier to digest or higher in nutrition. Sheep, however, graze well in monoculture pastures where most goats fare poorly.

 

Ruminant system of a sheep

Like all ruminants, sheep have a complex digestive system composed of four chambers, allowing them to break down cellulose from stems, leaves, and seed hulls into simpler carbohydrates. When sheep graze, vegetation is chewed into a mass called a bolus, which is then passed into the rumen, via the reticulum. The rumen is a 19- to 38-liter (5 to 10 gallon) organ in which feed is fermented. The fermenting organisms include bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. (Other important rumen organisms include some archaea, which produce methane from carbon dioxide.) The bolus is periodically regurgitated back to the mouth as cud for additional chewing and salivation. After fermentation in the rumen, feed passes into the reticulum and the omasum; special feeds such as grains may bypass the rumen altogether. After the first three chambers, food moves into the abomasum for final digestion before processing by the intestines. The abomasum is the only one of the four chambers analogous to the human stomach, and is sometimes called the "true stomach".

 

Other than forage, the other staple feed for sheep is hay, often during the winter months. The ability to thrive solely on pasture (even without hay) varies with breed, but all sheep can survive on this diet. Also included in some sheep's diets are minerals, either in a trace mix or in licks. Feed provided to sheep must be specially formulated, as most cattle, poultry, pig, and even some goat feeds contain levels of copper that are lethal to sheep. The same danger applies to mineral supplements such as salt licks.

 

Grazing behavior

Sheep follow a diurnal pattern of activity, feeding from dawn to dusk, stopping sporadically to rest and chew their cud. Ideal pasture for sheep is not lawnlike grass, but an array of grasses, legumes and forbs. Types of land where sheep are raised vary widely, from pastures that are seeded and improved intentionally to rough, native lands. Common plants toxic to sheep are present in most of the world, and include (but are not limited to) cherry, some oaks and acorns, tomato, yew, rhubarb, potato, and rhododendron.

 

Effects on pasture

Sheep are largely grazing herbivores, unlike browsing animals such as goats and deer that prefer taller foliage. With a much narrower face, sheep crop plants very close to the ground and can overgraze a pasture much faster than cattle. For this reason, many shepherds use managed intensive rotational grazing, where a flock is rotated through multiple pastures, giving plants time to recover. Paradoxically, sheep can both cause and solve the spread of invasive plant species. By disturbing the natural state of pasture, sheep and other livestock can pave the way for invasive plants. However, sheep also prefer to eat invasives such as cheatgrass, leafy spurge, kudzu and spotted knapweed over native species such as sagebrush, making grazing sheep effective for conservation grazing. Research conducted in Imperial County, California compared lamb grazing with herbicides for weed control in seedling alfalfa fields. Three trials demonstrated that grazing lambs were just as effective as herbicides in controlling winter weeds. Entomologists also compared grazing lambs to insecticides for insect control in winter alfalfa. In this trial, lambs provided insect control as effectively as insecticides.

 

Behavior

Sheep are flock animals and strongly gregarious; much sheep behavior can be understood on the basis of these tendencies. The dominance hierarchy of sheep and their natural inclination to follow a leader to new pastures were the pivotal factors in sheep being one of the first domesticated livestock species. Furthermore, in contrast to the red deer and gazelle (two other ungulates of primary importance to meat production in prehistoric times), sheep do not defend territories although they do form home ranges. All sheep have a tendency to congregate close to other members of a flock, although this behavior varies with breed, and sheep can become stressed when separated from their flock members. During flocking, sheep have a strong tendency to follow, and a leader may simply be the first individual to move. Relationships in flocks tend to be closest among related sheep: in mixed-breed flocks, subgroups of the same breed tend to form, and a ewe and her direct descendants often move as a unit within large flocks. Sheep can become hefted to one particular local pasture (heft) so they do not roam freely in unfenced landscapes. Lambs learn the heft from ewes and if whole flocks are culled it must be retaught to the replacement animals.

 

Flock behaviour in sheep is generally only exhibited in groups of four or more sheep; fewer sheep may not react as expected when alone or with few other sheep. Being a prey species, the primary defense mechanism of sheep is to flee from danger when their flight zone is entered. Cornered sheep may charge and butt, or threaten by hoof stamping and adopting an aggressive posture. This is particularly true for ewes with newborn lambs.

 

In regions where sheep have no natural predators, none of the native breeds of sheep exhibit a strong flocking behavior.

 

Herding

Farmers exploit flocking behavior to keep sheep together on unfenced pastures such as hill farming, and to move them more easily. For this purpose shepherds may use herding dogs in this effort, with a highly bred herding ability. Sheep are food-oriented, and association of humans with regular feeding often results in sheep soliciting people for food. Those who are moving sheep may exploit this behavior by leading sheep with buckets of feed.

 

Dominance hierarchy

Sheep establish a dominance hierarchy through fighting, threats and competitiveness. Dominant animals are inclined to be more aggressive with other sheep, and usually feed first at troughs. Primarily among rams, horn size is a factor in the flock hierarchy. Rams with different size horns may be less inclined to fight to establish the dominance order, while rams with similarly sized horns are more so. Merinos have an almost linear hierarchy whereas there is a less rigid structure in Border Leicesters when a competitive feeding situation arises.

 

In sheep, position in a moving flock is highly correlated with social dominance, but there is no definitive study to show consistent voluntary leadership by an individual sheep.

 

Intelligence and learning ability

Sheep are frequently thought of as unintelligent animals. Their flocking behavior and quickness to flee and panic can make shepherding a difficult endeavor for the uninitiated. Despite these perceptions, a University of Illinois monograph on sheep reported their intelligence to be just below that of pigs and on par with that of cattle. Sheep can recognize individual human and ovine faces and remember them for years; they can remember 50 other different sheep faces for over two years; they can recognize and are attracted to individual sheep and humans by their faces, as they possess similar specialized neural systems in the temporal and frontal lobes of their brains to humans and have a greater involvement of the right brain hemisphere. In addition to long-term facial recognition of individuals, sheep can also differentiate emotional states through facial characteristics.[68][69] If worked with patiently, sheep may learn their names, and many sheep are trained to be led by halter for showing and other purposes. Sheep have also responded well to clicker training. Sheep have been used as pack animals; Tibetan nomads distribute baggage equally throughout a flock as it is herded between living sites.

 

It has been reported that some sheep have apparently shown problem-solving abilities; a flock in West Yorkshire, England allegedly found a way to get over cattle grids by rolling on their backs, although documentation of this has relied on anecdotal accounts.

 

Vocalisations

Sounds made by domestic sheep include bleats, grunts, rumbles and snorts. Bleating ("baaing") is used mostly for contact communication, especially between dam and lambs, but also at times between other flock members. The bleats of individual sheep are distinctive, enabling the ewe and her lambs to recognize each other's vocalizations. Vocal communication between lambs and their dam declines to a very low level within several weeks after parturition. A variety of bleats may be heard, depending on sheep age and circumstances. Apart from contact communication, bleating may signal distress, frustration or impatience; however, sheep are usually silent when in pain. Isolation commonly prompts bleating by sheep. Pregnant ewes may grunt when in labor. Rumbling sounds are made by the ram during courting; somewhat similar rumbling sounds may be made by the ewe, especially when with her neonate lambs. A snort (explosive exhalation through the nostrils) may signal aggression or a warning, and is often elicited from startled sheep.

 

Lamb

In sheep breeds lacking facial wool, the visual field is wide. In 10 sheep (Cambridge, Lleyn and Welsh Mountain breeds, which lack facial wool), the visual field ranged from 298° to 325°, averaging 313.1°, with binocular overlap ranging from 44.5° to 74°, averaging 61.7°. In some breeds, unshorn facial wool can limit the visual field; in some individuals, this may be enough to cause "wool blindness". In 60 Merinos, visual fields ranged from 219.1° to 303.0°, averaging 269.9°, and the binocular field ranged from 8.9° to 77.7°, averaging 47.5°; 36% of the measurements were limited by wool, although photographs of the experiments indicate that only limited facial wool regrowth had occurred since shearing. In addition to facial wool (in some breeds), visual field limitations can include ears and (in some breeds) horns, so the visual field can be extended by tilting the head. Sheep eyes exhibit very low hyperopia and little astigmatism. Such visual characteristics are likely to produce a well-focused retinal image of objects in both the middle and long distance. Because sheep eyes have no accommodation, one might expect the image of very near objects to be blurred, but a rather clear near image could be provided by the tapetum and large retinal image of the sheep's eye, and adequate close vision may occur at muzzle length. Good depth perception, inferred from the sheep's sure-footedness, was confirmed in "visual cliff" experiments; behavioral responses indicating depth perception are seen in lambs at one day old. Sheep are thought to have colour vision, and can distinguish between a variety of colours: black, red, brown, green, yellow and white. Sight is a vital part of sheep communication, and when grazing, they maintain visual contact with each other. Each sheep lifts its head upwards to check the position of other sheep in the flock. This constant monitoring is probably what keeps the sheep in a flock as they move along grazing. Sheep become stressed when isolated; this stress is reduced if they are provided with a mirror, indicating that the sight of other sheep reduces stress.

 

Taste is the most important sense in sheep, establishing forage preferences, with sweet and sour plants being preferred and bitter plants being more commonly rejected. Touch and sight are also important in relation to specific plant characteristics, such as succulence and growth form.

 

The ram uses his vomeronasal organ (sometimes called the Jacobson's organ) to sense the pheromones of ewes and detect when they are in estrus. The ewe uses her vomeronasal organ for early recognition of her neonate lamb.

 

Reproduction

Sheep follow a similar reproductive strategy to other herd animals. A group of ewes is generally mated by a single ram, who has either been chosen by a breeder or (in feral populations) has established dominance through physical contest with other rams. Most sheep are seasonal breeders, although some are able to breed year-round. Ewes generally reach sexual maturity at six to eight months old, and rams generally at four to six months. However, there are exceptions. For example, Finnsheep ewe lambs may reach puberty as early as 3 to 4 months, and Merino ewes sometimes reach puberty at 18 to 20 months. Ewes have estrus cycles about every 17 days, during which they emit a scent and indicate readiness through physical displays towards rams.

 

In feral sheep, rams may fight during the rut to determine which individuals may mate with ewes. Rams, especially unfamiliar ones, will also fight outside the breeding period to establish dominance; rams can kill one another if allowed to mix freely. During the rut, even usually friendly rams may become aggressive towards humans due to increases in their hormone levels.

 

After mating, sheep have a gestation period of about five months, and normal labor takes one to three hours. Although some breeds regularly throw larger litters of lambs, most produce single or twin lambs. During or soon after labor, ewes and lambs may be confined to small lambing jugs, small pens designed to aid both careful observation of ewes and to cement the bond between them and their lambs.

  

A lamb's first steps

Ovine obstetrics can be problematic. By selectively breeding ewes that produce multiple offspring with higher birth weights for generations, sheep producers have inadvertently caused some domestic sheep to have difficulty lambing; balancing ease of lambing with high productivity is one of the dilemmas of sheep breeding. In the case of any such problems, those present at lambing may assist the ewe by extracting or repositioning lambs. After the birth, ewes ideally break the amniotic sac (if it is not broken during labor), and begin licking clean the lamb. Most lambs will begin standing within an hour of birth. In normal situations, lambs nurse after standing, receiving vital colostrum milk. Lambs that either fail to nurse or are rejected by the ewe require help to survive, such as bottle-feeding or fostering by another ewe.

 

Most lambs begin life being born outdoors. After lambs are several weeks old, lamb marking (ear tagging, docking, mulesing, and castrating) is carried out. Vaccinations are usually carried out at this point as well. Ear tags with numbers are attached, or ear marks are applied, for ease of later identification of sheep. Docking and castration are commonly done after 24 hours (to avoid interference with maternal bonding and consumption of colostrum) and are often done not later than one week after birth, to minimize pain, stress, recovery time and complications. The first course of vaccinations (commonly anti-clostridial) is commonly given at an age of about 10 to 12 weeks; i.e. when the concentration of maternal antibodies passively acquired via colostrum is expected to have fallen low enough to permit development of active immunity. Ewes are often revaccinated annually about 3 weeks before lambing, to provide high antibody concentrations in colostrum during the first several hours after lambing. Ram lambs that will either be slaughtered or separated from ewes before sexual maturity are not usually castrated. Objections to all these procedures have been raised by animal rights groups, but farmers defend them by saying they save money, and inflict only temporary pain.

 

Homosexuality

Sheep are the only species of mammal except for humans which exhibits exclusive homosexual behavior. About 10% of rams refuse to mate with ewes but readily mate with other rams, and thirty percent of all rams demonstrate at least some homosexual behavior. Additionally, a small number of females that were accompanied by a male fetus in utero (i.e. as fraternal twins) are freemartins (female animals that are behaviorally masculine and lack functioning ovaries).

 

Health

Sheep may fall victim to poisons, infectious diseases, and physical injuries. As a prey species, a sheep's system is adapted to hide the obvious signs of illness, to prevent being targeted by predators. However, some signs of ill health are obvious, with sick sheep eating little, vocalizing excessively, and being generally listless. Throughout history, much of the money and labor of sheep husbandry has aimed to prevent sheep ailments. Historically, shepherds often created remedies by experimentation on the farm. In some developed countries, including the United States, sheep lack the economic importance for drug companies to perform expensive clinical trials required to approve more than a relatively limited number of drugs for ovine use. However, extra-label drug use in sheep production is permitted in many jurisdictions, subject to certain restrictions. In the US, for example, regulations governing extra-label drug use in animals are found in 21 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Part 530. In the 20th and 21st centuries, a minority of sheep owners have turned to alternative treatments such as homeopathy, herbalism and even traditional Chinese medicine to treat sheep veterinary problems. Despite some favorable anecdotal evidence, the effectiveness of alternative veterinary medicine has been met with skepticism in scientific journals. The need for traditional anti-parasite drugs and antibiotics is widespread, and is the main impediment to certified organic farming with sheep.

 

Many breeders take a variety of preventive measures to ward off problems. The first is to ensure all sheep are healthy when purchased. Many buyers avoid outlets known to be clearing houses for animals culled from healthy flocks as either sick or simply inferior. This can also mean maintaining a closed flock, and quarantining new sheep for a month. Two fundamental preventive programs are maintaining good nutrition and reducing stress in the sheep. Restraint, isolation, loud noises, novel situations, pain, heat, extreme cold, fatigue and other stressors can lead to secretion of cortisol, a stress hormone, in amounts that may indicate welfare problems. Excessive stress can compromise the immune system. "Shipping fever" (pneumonic mannheimiosis, formerly called pasteurellosis) is a disease of particular concern, that can occur as a result of stress, notably during transport and (or) handling. Pain, fear and several other stressors can cause secretion of epinephrine (adrenaline). Considerable epinephrine secretion in the final days before slaughter can adversely affect meat quality (by causing glycogenolysis, removing the substrate for normal post-slaughter acidification of meat) and result in meat becoming more susceptible to colonization by spoilage bacteria. Because of such issues, low-stress handling is essential in sheep management. Avoiding poisoning is also important; common poisons are pesticide sprays, inorganic fertilizer, motor oil, as well as radiator coolant containing ethylene glycol.

 

Common forms of preventive medication for sheep are vaccinations and treatments for parasites. Both external and internal parasites are the most prevalent malady in sheep, and are either fatal, or reduce the productivity of flocks. Worms are the most common internal parasites. They are ingested during grazing, incubate within the sheep, and are expelled through the digestive system (beginning the cycle again). Oral anti-parasitic medicines, known as drenches, are given to a flock to treat worms, sometimes after worm eggs in the feces has been counted to assess infestation levels. Afterwards, sheep may be moved to a new pasture to avoid ingesting the same parasites. External sheep parasites include: lice (for different parts of the body), sheep keds, nose bots, sheep itch mites, and maggots. Keds are blood-sucking parasites that cause general malnutrition and decreased productivity, but are not fatal. Maggots are those of the bot fly and the blow-fly, commonly Lucilia sericata or its relative L. cuprina. Fly maggots cause the extremely destructive condition of flystrike. Flies lay their eggs in wounds or wet, manure-soiled wool; when the maggots hatch they burrow into a sheep's flesh, eventually causing death if untreated. In addition to other treatments, crutching (shearing wool from a sheep's rump) is a common preventive method. Some countries allow mulesing, a practice that involves stripping away the skin on the rump to prevent fly-strike, normally performed when the sheep is a lamb. Nose bots are fly larvae that inhabit a sheep's sinuses, causing breathing difficulties and discomfort. Common signs are a discharge from the nasal passage, sneezing, and frantic movement such as head shaking. External parasites may be controlled through the use of backliners, sprays or immersive sheep dips.

 

A wide array of bacterial and viral diseases affect sheep. Diseases of the hoof, such as foot rot and foot scald may occur, and are treated with footbaths and other remedies. Foot rot is present in over 97% of flocks in the UK. These painful conditions cause lameness and hinder feeding. Ovine Johne's disease is a wasting disease that affects young sheep. Bluetongue disease is an insect-borne illness causing fever and inflammation of the mucous membranes. Ovine rinderpest (or peste des petits ruminants) is a highly contagious and often fatal viral disease affecting sheep and goats. Sheep may also be affected by primary or secondary photosensitization. Tetanus can also afflict sheep through wounds from shearing, docking, castration, or vaccination. The organism also can be introduced into the reproductive tract by unsanitary humans who assist ewes during lambing.

 

A few sheep conditions are transmissible to humans. Orf (also known as scabby mouth, contagious ecthyma or soremouth) is a skin disease leaving lesions that is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact. Cutaneous anthrax is also called woolsorter's disease, as the spores can be transmitted in unwashed wool. More seriously, the organisms that can cause spontaneous enzootic abortion in sheep are easily transmitted to pregnant women. Also of concern are the prion disease scrapie and the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), as both can devastate flocks. The latter poses a slight risk to humans. During the 2001 FMD pandemic in the UK, hundreds of sheep were culled and some rare British breeds were at risk of extinction due to this.

 

Of the 600,300 sheep lost to the US economy in 2004, 37.3% were lost to predators, while 26.5% were lost to some form of disease. Poisoning accounted for 1.7% of non-productive deaths.

 

Predators

A lamb being attacked by coyotes with a bite to the throat

Other than parasites and disease, predation is a threat to sheep and the profitability of sheep raising. Sheep have little ability to defend themselves, compared with other species kept as livestock. Even if sheep survive an attack, they may die from their injuries or simply from panic. However, the impact of predation varies dramatically with region. In Africa, Australia, the Americas, and parts of Europe and Asia predators are a serious problem. In the United States, for instance, over one third of sheep deaths in 2004 were caused by predation. In contrast, other nations are virtually devoid of sheep predators, particularly islands known for extensive sheep husbandry. Worldwide, canids—including the domestic dog—are responsible for most sheep deaths. Other animals that occasionally prey on sheep include: felines, bears, birds of prey, ravens and feral hogs.

 

Sheep producers have used a wide variety of measures to combat predation. Pre-modern shepherds used their own presence, livestock guardian dogs, and protective structures such as barns and fencing. Fencing (both regular and electric), penning sheep at night and lambing indoors all continue to be widely used. More modern shepherds used guns, traps, and poisons to kill predators, causing significant decreases in predator populations. In the wake of the environmental and conservation movements, the use of these methods now usually falls under the purview of specially designated government agencies in most developed countries.

 

The 1970s saw a resurgence in the use of livestock guardian dogs and the development of new methods of predator control by sheep producers, many of them non-lethal. Donkeys and guard llamas have been used since the 1980s in sheep operations, using the same basic principle as livestock guardian dogs. Interspecific pasturing, usually with larger livestock such as cattle or horses, may help to deter predators, even if such species do not actively guard sheep. In addition to animal guardians, contemporary sheep operations may use non-lethal predator deterrents such as motion-activated lights and noisy alarms.

 

Economic importance

Main article: Agricultural economics

Global sheep stock

in 2019

Number in millions

1. China163.5 (13.19%)

2. India74.3 (5.99%)

3. Australia65.8 (5.31%)

4. Nigeria46.9 (3.78%)

5. Iran41.3 (3.33%)

6. Sudan40.9 (3.3%)

7. Chad35.9 (2.9%)

8. Turkey35.2 (2.84%)

9. United Kingdom33.6 (2.71%)

10. Mongolia32.3 (2.61%)

World total1,239.8

 

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization

Sheep are an important part of the global agricultural economy. However, their once vital status has been largely replaced by other livestock species, especially the pig, chicken, and cow. China, Australia, India, and Iran have the largest modern flocks, and serve both local and exportation needs for wool and mutton. Other countries such as New Zealand have smaller flocks but retain a large international economic impact due to their export of sheep products. Sheep also play a major role in many local economies, which may be niche markets focused on organic or sustainable agriculture and local food customers. Especially in developing countries, such flocks may be a part of subsistence agriculture rather than a system of trade. Sheep themselves may be a medium of trade in barter economies.

 

Domestic sheep provide a wide array of raw materials. Wool was one of the first textiles, although in the late 20th century wool prices began to fall dramatically as the result of the popularity and cheap prices for synthetic fabrics. For many sheep owners, the cost of shearing is greater than the possible profit from the fleece, making subsisting on wool production alone practically impossible without farm subsidies. Fleeces are used as material in making alternative products such as wool insulation. In the 21st century, the sale of meat is the most profitable enterprise in the sheep industry, even though far less sheep meat is consumed than chicken, pork or beef.

 

Sheepskin is likewise used for making clothes, footwear, rugs, and other products. Byproducts from the slaughter of sheep are also of value: sheep tallow can be used in candle and soap making, sheep bone and cartilage has been used to furnish carved items such as dice and buttons as well as rendered glue and gelatin. Sheep intestine can be formed into sausage casings, and lamb intestine has been formed into surgical sutures, as well as strings for musical instruments and tennis rackets. Sheep droppings, which are high in cellulose, have even been sterilized and mixed with traditional pulp materials to make paper. Of all sheep byproducts, perhaps the most valuable is lanolin: the waterproof, fatty substance found naturally in sheep's wool and used as a base for innumerable cosmetics and other products.

 

Some farmers who keep sheep also make a profit from live sheep. Providing lambs for youth programs such as 4-H and competition at agricultural shows is often a dependable avenue for the sale of sheep. Farmers may also choose to focus on a particular breed of sheep in order to sell registered purebred animals, as well as provide a ram rental service for breeding. A new option for deriving profit from live sheep is the rental of flocks for grazing; these "mowing services" are hired in order to keep unwanted vegetation down in public spaces and to lessen fire hazard.

 

Despite the falling demand and price for sheep products in many markets, sheep have distinct economic advantages when compared with other livestock. They do not require expensive housing, such as that used in the intensive farming of chickens or pigs. They are an efficient use of land; roughly six sheep can be kept on the amount that would suffice for a single cow or horse. Sheep can also consume plants, such as noxious weeds, that most other animals will not touch, and produce more young at a faster rate. Also, in contrast to most livestock species, the cost of raising sheep is not necessarily tied to the price of feed crops such as grain, soybeans and corn. Combined with the lower cost of quality sheep, all these factors combine to equal a lower overhead for sheep producers, thus entailing a higher profitability potential for the small farmer. Sheep are especially beneficial for independent producers, including family farms with limited resources, as the sheep industry is one of the few types of animal agriculture that has not been vertically integrated by agribusiness. However, small flocks, from 10 to 50 ewes, often are not profitable because they tend to be poorly managed. The primary reason is that mechanization is not feasible, so return per hour of labor is not maximized. Small farm flocks generally are used simply to control weeds on irrigation ditches or maintained as a hobby.

 

Shoulder of lamb

Sheep meat and milk were one of the earliest staple proteins consumed by human civilization after the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Sheep meat prepared for food is known as either mutton or lamb, and approximately 540 million sheep are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. "Mutton" is derived from the Old French moton, which was the word for sheep used by the Anglo-Norman rulers of much of the British Isles in the Middle Ages. This became the name for sheep meat in English, while the Old English word sceap was kept for the live animal. Throughout modern history, "mutton" has been limited to the meat of mature sheep usually at least two years of age; "lamb" is used for that of immature sheep less than a year.

 

In the 21st century, the nations with the highest consumption of sheep meat are the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Uruguay, the United Kingdom and Ireland. These countries eat 14–40 lbs (3–18 kg) of sheep meat per capita, per annum. Sheep meat is also popular in France, Africa (especially the Arab world), the Caribbean, the rest of the Middle East, India, and parts of China. This often reflects a history of sheep production. In these countries in particular, dishes comprising alternative cuts and offal may be popular or traditional. Sheep testicles—called animelles or lamb fries—are considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. Perhaps the most unusual dish of sheep meat is the Scottish haggis, composed of various sheep innards cooked along with oatmeal and chopped onions inside its stomach. In comparison, countries such as the U.S. consume only a pound or less (under 0.5 kg), with Americans eating 50 pounds (22 kg) of pork and 65 pounds (29 kg) of beef. In addition, such countries rarely eat mutton, and may favor the more expensive cuts of lamb: mostly lamb chops and leg of lamb.

 

Though sheep's milk may be drunk rarely in fresh form, today it is used predominantly in cheese and yogurt making. Sheep have only two teats, and produce a far smaller volume of milk than cows. However, as sheep's milk contains far more fat, solids, and minerals than cow's milk, it is ideal for the cheese-making process. It also resists contamination during cooling better because of its much higher calcium content. Well-known cheeses made from sheep milk include the feta of Bulgaria and Greece, Roquefort of France, Manchego from Spain, the pecorino romano (the Italian word for "sheep" is pecore) and ricotta of Italy. Yogurts, especially some forms of strained yogurt, may also be made from sheep milk. Many of these products are now often made with cow's milk, especially when produced outside their country of origin. Sheep milk contains 4.8% lactose, which may affect those who are intolerant.

 

As with other domestic animals, the meat of uncastrated males is inferior in quality, especially as they grow. A "bucky" lamb is a lamb which was not castrated early enough, or which was castrated improperly (resulting in one testicle being retained). These lambs are worth less at market.

 

In science

Sheep are generally too large and reproduce too slowly to make ideal research subjects, and thus are not a common model organism. They have, however, played an influential role in some fields of science. In particular, the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh, Scotland used sheep for genetics research that produced groundbreaking results. In 1995, two ewes named Megan and Morag were the first mammals cloned from differentiated cells, also referred to as gynomerogony. A year later, a Finnish Dorset sheep named Dolly, dubbed "the world's most famous sheep" in Scientific American, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. Following this, Polly and Molly were the first mammals to be simultaneously cloned and transgenic.

 

As of 2008, the sheep genome has not been fully sequenced, although a detailed genetic map has been published, and a draft version of the complete genome produced by assembling sheep DNA sequences using information given by the genomes of other mammals. In 2012, a transgenic sheep named "Peng Peng" was cloned by Chinese scientists, who spliced his genes with that of a roundworm (C. elegans) in order to increase production of fats healthier for human consumption.

 

In the study of natural selection, the population of Soay sheep that remain on the island of Hirta have been used to explore the relation of body size and coloration to reproductive success. Soay sheep come in several colors, and researchers investigated why the larger, darker sheep were in decline; this occurrence contradicted the rule of thumb that larger members of a population tend to be more successful reproductively. The feral Soays on Hirta are especially useful subjects because they are isolated.

 

Domestic sheep are sometimes used in medical research, particularly for researching cardiovascular physiology, in areas such as hypertension and heart failure. Pregnant sheep are also a useful model for human pregnancy, and have been used to investigate the effects on fetal development of malnutrition and hypoxia. In behavioral sciences, sheep have been used in isolated cases for the study of facial recognition, as their mental process of recognition is qualitatively similar to humans.

 

Cultural impact

Sheep have had a strong presence in many cultures, especially in areas where they form the most common type of livestock. In the English language, to call someone a sheep or ovine may allude that they are timid and easily led. In contradiction to this image, male sheep are often used as symbols of virility and power; the logos of the Los Angeles Rams football team and the Dodge Ram pickup truck allude to males of the bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis.

 

Counting sheep is popularly said to be an aid to sleep, and some ancient systems of counting sheep persist today. Sheep also enter in colloquial sayings and idiom frequently with such phrases as "black sheep". To call an individual a black sheep implies that they are an odd or disreputable member of a group. This usage derives from the recessive trait that causes an occasional black lamb to be born into an entirely white flock. These black sheep were considered undesirable by shepherds, as black wool is not as commercially viable as white wool. Citizens who accept overbearing governments have been referred to by the Portmanteau neologism of sheeple. Somewhat differently, the adjective "sheepish" is also used to describe embarrassment.

 

In heraldry

In British heraldry, sheep appear in the form of rams, sheep proper and lambs. These are distinguished by the ram being depicted with horns and a tail, the sheep with neither and the lamb with its tail only. A further variant of the lamb, termed the Paschal lamb, is depicted as carrying a Christian cross and with a halo over its head. Rams' heads, portrayed without a neck and facing the viewer, are also found in British armories. The fleece, depicted as an entire sheepskin carried by a ring around its midsection, originally became known through its use in the arms of the Order of the Golden Fleece and was later adopted by towns and individuals with connections to the wool industry. A sheep on a blue field is depicted on the greater/royal arms of the king of Denmark to represent the Faroe Islands. In 2004 a modernized arms has been adopted by the Faroe Islands, which based on a 15th century coat of arms.

 

Religion and folklore

In antiquity, symbolism involving sheep cropped up in religions in the ancient Near East, the Mideast, and the Mediterranean area: Çatalhöyük, ancient Egyptian religion, the Cana'anite and Phoenician tradition, Judaism, Greek religion, and others. Religious symbolism and ritual involving sheep began with some of the first known faiths: Skulls of rams (along with bulls) occupied central placement in shrines at the Çatalhöyük settlement in 8,000 BCE. In Ancient Egyptian religion, the ram was the symbol of several gods: Khnum, Heryshaf and Amun (in his incarnation as a god of fertility). Other deities occasionally shown with ram features include the goddess Ishtar, the Phoenician god Baal-Hamon, and the Babylonian god Ea-Oannes. In Madagascar, sheep were not eaten as they were believed to be incarnations of the souls of ancestors.

 

There are many ancient Greek references to sheep: that of Chrysomallos, the golden-fleeced ram, continuing to be told through into the modern era. Astrologically, Aries, the ram, is the first sign of the classical Greek zodiac, and the sheep is the eighth of the twelve animals associated with the 12-year cycle of in the Chinese zodiac, related to the Chinese calendar. It is said in Chinese traditions that Hou ji sacrificed sheep. Mongolia, shagai are an ancient form of dice made from the cuboid bones of sheep that are often used for fortunetelling purposes.

 

Sheep play an important role in all the Abrahamic faiths; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and King David were all shepherds. According to the Biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, a ram is sacrificed as a substitute for Isaac after an angel stays Abraham's hand (in the Islamic tradition, Abraham was about to sacrifice Ishmael). Eid al-Adha is a major annual festival in Islam in which sheep (or other animals) are sacrificed in remembrance of this act. Sheep are occasionally sacrificed to commemorate important secular events in Islamic cultures. Greeks and Romans sacrificed sheep regularly in religious practice, and Judaism once sacrificed sheep as a Korban (sacrifice), such as the Passover lamb. Ovine symbols—such as the ceremonial blowing of a shofar—still find a presence in modern Judaic traditions.

 

Collectively, followers of Christianity are often referred to as a flock, with Christ as the Good Shepherd, and sheep are an element in the Christian iconography of the birth of Jesus. Some Christian saints are considered patrons of shepherds, and even of sheep themselves. Christ is also portrayed as the Sacrificial lamb of God (Agnus Dei) and Easter celebrations in Greece and Romania traditionally feature a meal of Paschal lamb. A church leader is often called the pastor, which is derived from the Latin word for shepherd. In many western Christian traditions bishops carry a staff, which also serves as a symbol of the episcopal office, known as a crosier, which is modeled on the shepherd's crook.

 

Sheep are key symbols in fables and nursery rhymes like The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Little Bo Peep, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, and Mary Had a Little Lamb; novels such as George Orwell's Animal Farm and Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase; songs such as Bach's Sheep may safely graze (Schafe können sicher weiden) and Pink Floyd's "Sheep", and poems like William Blake's "The Lamb".

Many climate change deniers do not understand the difference between Climate and Weather.

Weather is basically what is happening in the near term, around us. Climate is what is going on overall, across the planet. Global warming is one type of climate change. It impacts us all and even more so over time.

It does not mean local weather ceases to exist. Just because it snows in greater amounts than usual in Boston does NOT mean the planet isn't getting warmer. Instead, it means the cyclical nature of weather is leading to more extremes.

Here is an analogy. We all know there are far more cars on the road today than before, everywhere.

Many popular roads, like the Long Island Expressway (I-495), and I-95 in many places, or I-75 and I-275 in Tampa, Florida, can be like long parking lots. But some times you can be going along with only a few cars there.

You could do 200 mph there (not that You should!). That current local condition does not mean that the number of cars on the road is not increasing and won't lead to longer delays tomorrow or next week or next year.

In this analogy that greater number of cars is leading to more congestion, more smog, more road rage, more potholes, more rocks and pebbles cracking windscreens, and so on. That same way, the extra heat we are generating, from everything we do, is impacting climate. And the change effects us all.

This merely 12-seconds long current world wide weather moving magic movie, showing active Hurricane Jose & Maria in the Atlantic, and several tropical storms, all connected by air streams and ocean currents, shows how connected we all are.

Repeated weather events of 3 or more hurricanes per week just in the Atlantic Ocean are another example in just the last few weeks.

So, enjoy this magical view of our blessed planet, see how, like us, it breathes and lives. See how even the air we breathe is shared by us with others thousands of miles away.

So, let's do what we can to save our planet and humankind. Let's show some love to the atmosphere. Let us also blow some kisses of love and kindness into the air. Because, in time, they will touch everyone else on the planet, and, if we are good, and caring of the planet and to each other, will come back to us amplified with love and compassion from around the world, instead of carrying poison, pollution and hate.

 

© 2017 IMRAN™

During the second step of humankind’s first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) captured this stunning view of Earth. The image covers the northern Pacific Ocean, with North America starting to appear on the right (east) side of the Earth image.

 

The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 00:09 CEST on 21 August 2024, as Juice was heading towards its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025.

 

The Juice monitoring cameras were designed to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, especially during the challenging deployment period following launch.

 

They were not designed to carry out science or image the Moon and Earth. A scientific camera called JANUS is providing high-resolution imagery during the cruise phase flybys of Earth, Moon and Venus, and of Jupiter and its icy moons once in the Jupiter system in 2031.

 

JMC1 is located on the front* of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that sees deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed by Simeon Schmauß and Mark McCaughrean.

 

Find out more

 

Guide to Juice’s monitoring cameras

 

More information on the lunar-Earth flyby

 

Rewatch the livestream of Juice’s first Moon images, including Q&A with the team

 

More images from Juice's monitoring cameras in ESA's Planetary Science Archive

 

*Additional technical information: ‘front’ means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.

 

*Additional technical information: ‘front’ means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.

 

Processing notes: In each case, two images of different exposures have been added to increase the details in the shadows.

 

Credits: ESA/Juice/JMC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Acknowledgements: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrean

Which Religion is the ONLY true one?

 

Because there are so many different religions all with conflicting beliefs, many people find it confusing and difficult to decide which one they should follow.

Would a God really want to make it difficult for us to find the truth? Surely the truth has to be available for all humankind - - - for the simple and humble, as well as the clever, the intellectual and the theologian? So, it makes perfect sense to conclude that it must be possible to discern the truth through simple logic.

 

Firstly, it is easy to see that God has made his existence clear, through reason and logic to those who are open-minded and genuinely desire to seek the truth. [The evidence for the existence of a single creator God, is overwhelming. i.e. an intelligent, single, first cause, itself uncaused, and not subject to the laws of nature (Supernatural), can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of any truly, open-minded person through simple logic and science… for example, the laws of: Cause and Effect, Biogenesis, Thermodynamics, Information Theory and Intelligent Design... all point to a creator.]

Thus monotheism - - belief in one supernatural, eternal, creator God is easy to deduce by those who are open-minded and really wish to seek the truth.

See: (Atheism revealed as false - why God MUST exist:

www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/24321857975

AND

The real theory of everything...

www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/34295660211

 

Once we have used reason and logic to establish that the Creator God can only be: one, supernatural and eternal, we know that all non-monotheistic religions are automatically ruled out as intrinsically untrue.

Of course, polytheistic or pagan religions may have some teachings which appear good, but it is obvious that they are all based on a false premise.

The true religion has to profess belief in only one, supernatural God and Creator.

We are left with only three major world religions that are strictly monotheistic.

They are: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

So the true religion has to be one of these three.

It is a fact that these three religions have many important doctrines which conflict with each other, for example; Christians and Jews believe in monogamous marriage, while Muslims believe in polygamy.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, while Judaism rejects Jesus and teaches that the messiah is still to come.

Likewise, although Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet and a messiah, they reject many of His teachings, including His teachings on marriage, divorce, Heaven, drinking wine, love of enemies etc. and, even more importantly, His Divinity and His Crucifixion.

Muslims believe that Muhammad was an authentic prophet while both Jews and Christians would refute that.

 

God is truth, so as these three religions disagree fundamentally with each other - - - - it is obvious that it is possible for only one of them to be completely true in all its doctrines. So how can we decide conclusively which of these three religions is the only true one?

By asking the following question - - - we know that the Creator of the universe (the first cause of everything) must be infinite (unlimited). So everything about God must be perfect, his love is perfect and without limit (all love existing in the world originated from God), so too is his justice (his justice cannot be cheated).

Therefore if God is infinitely and perfectly just, and we have all offended his infinite majesty by sin, how can anyone hope to be saved?

Only because God is also infinitely merciful and loving.

But here we have an apparent contradiction, perfect justice demands that the full price is paid for every sin, whereas perfect mercy and love demand extreme leniency. - - -

 

HERE IS THE QUESTION: - - -

How can God overcome the apparent contradiction between His perfect justice and perfect mercy?

To clarify ... How can God (who cannot deceive, nor be deceived) satisfy his infinite justice, which demands a price equal to the *offence, yet at the same time enable us to be saved through his infinite, unfathomable, mercy and love?

*[the seriousness of an offence can be judged to be commensurate with the status of the person offended against. In the army, if a private were to insult a fellow private it would not be considered very serious, but if a private were to insult or disobey an officer this would be much more serious and the seriousness would increase the higher the rank of the officer. A sin against a perfect and infinite God (our Creator) is of the ultimate seriousness. Therefore perfect justice demands infinite reparation for an offence against God].

Christianity is absolutely unique. It is the only religion that has a satisfactory answer to this question. And this question is crucial to salvation. Put the same question to the followers of any other religion and they will be unable to give you a credible answer.

 

THE AMAZING ANSWER - - - Jesus Christ said “I am the way the truth and the life” and “no one can come to the Father except through Me.” Jesus backed up His claim by suffering an agonising death on the Cross for the salvation of all humanity.

Why?

Atonement.

Animal sacrifice, as practiced in the Old Testament, was an imperfect, forerunner to the prophesied, perfect sacrifice.

Only God, Himself, in His infinite mercy, was able to provide an acceptable ‘scapegoat’ to fully satisfy perfect, divine justice. A pure sacrifice, both fully human and fully divine.

Jesus, although completely innocent of all sin Himself, suffered for the sins of all humankind.

He was crucified, as an atoning sacrifice, for the redemption of His enemies, as well as His friends. We are all sinners and have all offended the infinite goodness of god. No one deserves heaven entirely on their own merit.

Everyone is defiled by sin, and nothing defiled can ever enter heaven. An offence against the infinite goodness of an infinitely loving, but also an infinitely, just God, can only be redeemed by an infinitely, good sacrifice. So only a Divine sacrifice can satisfy the demands of infinite, Divine justice. only the sacrifice of the true, spiritual Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, incarnated as man (as prophesied in the Old Testament) is sufficient to save us all from the consequences of sin, to open the gates of heaven and restore eternal life to the whole human race.

This was even foreshadowed in the Old Testament (Book of Genesis), when God asked Abraham (as a test of his obedience) to sacrifice his only son Isaac on a pile of wood at Mount Moria. This Mount Moria is believed by some to be in the same place as Golgotha, the site of the sacrifice of God’s only Son on the wood of the Cross. God prevented Abraham from carrying out the sacrifice of his son , at the last minute, But, because of his steadfast obedience, Abraham became the symbolic, earthly father of all who follow God.

Because of the Incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus, God became the spiritual Father of all who follow Him.

The Cross of Jesus now represents the new tree of life, because it has restored the possibility of eternal life to the whole human race. Access to the original tree of life was removed from Adam and Eve and the rest of the human race because of original sin. The Cross of Jesus is a restoration of the tree of life. It promises eternal life to those who accept its saving message. The new fruit is the bread and wine of the holy Eucharist.

Only those whose garments have been ‘washed white by the Blood of the Lamb’ are fit to enter heaven. The debt of our sin has been paid by Jesus - and His saving sacrifice is offered as an unsurpassed, loving and free gift to us all. We simply have to gratefully acknowledge and accept that gift in a spirit of humility and repentance.

By His supreme sacrifice, Jesus atoned for every sin ever committed, and thereby opened the gates of Heaven to the whole human race. Without His unique sacrifice, no one of any religion could ever enter Heaven. It matters not whether you are the most devout Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist or follower of any other faith, ultimately you will rely not on any of the rituals or customs of these various religions, but on the sacrifice of Jesus to enter heaven. All who enter heaven do so only with a passport provided by the merits of Jesus’ sacrifice. Without His sacrifice on the Cross you would never get there, whatever your religion. All other sacrifices or religious offerings, rituals etc. are as dirty rags before the Divine majesty of Almighty God, they cannot pay the price for sin that God's perfect justice demands.

This is the unavoidable truth, whether you like it or not.

Of course, we should all have free choice to follow any religion we choose, but once we know that it is only the sacrifice of Jesus that can make us fit to enter heaven and eternal life, we will surely wish to love and follow Him. It would be foolishness indeed for us to choose to follow any religion which refuses to acknowledge this, but would rather pretend that we can redeem ourselves by following its manmade doctrines and rituals.

 

Death entered the world through the sin of disobedience of one woman and one man (Adam and Eve), but sin was pardoned and eternal life restored through the obedience of one woman (Mary) and the death of one man (Jesus).

 

The ancient Hebrews used the blood sacrifice of an animal as a symbolic scapegoat to bear the punishment for their sins. The old animal sacrifices of atonement ended with the destruction of the temple. Animal sacrifice was simply a precursor to the only acceptable sacrifice of the true Messiah, Jesus. They were intended to show the necessity of atonement, repentance alone is not sufficient. Atonement for sin is essential. There is no atonement for sin in present day Judaism or in Islam.

Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, (true man and true God) became the real scapegoat who bore the punishment (by His Crucifixion) for the sins of the whole world. His death on the Cross was a perfect, holy, once and for all sacrifice, sufficient to atone for every sin ever committed. It is re-enacted in remembrance, with bread and wine, every day, by Christian priests all over the world. It is known as the Holy Eucharist which is part of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. God is reminded at every Mass that Christians trust in the perfect atonement made by Jesus.

 

Only God Himself could pay the enormous price that God's perfect justice demands for sin, but as it is man who is responsible for sin, in true justice, it is man who should pay the price. Therefore only someone who is both God and man (God made man) would be able to pay the price for sin. So the only possibility of salvation for humankind had to be provided by God Himself, and that is exactly what He did. That is why Jesus has to be God incarnated as man. Those who deny that Jesus is God, or deny the Crucifixion of Jesus, have fallen for the lies of Satan, his false prophets and false religions and, sadly, they deny the only possibility of salvation.

 

Abraham (the representative, earthly father of all followers of God) showed he was willing, when asked by God, to sacrifice his only son Isaac to God, as reparation for sin (it didn’t happen, because God stopped it at the last moment). And God, our heavenly Father, (who cannot be outdone in love or generosity) offered His only Son (Jesus) as a sacrifice for our sin.

 

Prophesies from the Old Testament.

Isaiah 53 New International Version (NIV)

 

1. Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2. He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3. He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4. Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.

5. But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

6. We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7. He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

8. By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was punished.

9. He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,

he will see his offspring and prolong his days,

and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

11. After he has suffered,

he will see the light of life and be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,

and he will bear their iniquities.

12. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,

and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death,

and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many,

and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53 New International Version (NIV)

___________________________________________

Psalm 22 New King James Version (NKJV)

The Suffering, Praise, and Posterity of the Messiah

 

22 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

Why are You so far from helping Me,

And from the words of My groaning?

2 O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear;

And in the night season, and am not silent.

3 But You are holy,

Enthroned in the praises of Israel.

4 Our fathers trusted in You;

They trusted, and You delivered them.

5 They cried to You, and were delivered;

They trusted in You, and were not ashamed.

6 But I am a worm, and no man;

A reproach of men, and despised by the people.

7 All those who see Me ridicule Me;

They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,

8 “He trusted[b] in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;

Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”

9 But You are He who took Me out of the womb;

You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.

10 I was cast upon You from birth.

From My mother’s womb

You have been My God.

11 Be not far from Me,

For trouble is near;

For there is none to help.

12 Many bulls have surrounded Me;

Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.

13 They gape at Me with their mouths,

Like a raging and roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water,

And all My bones are out of joint;

My heart is like wax;

It has melted within Me.

15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,

And My tongue clings to My jaws;

You have brought Me to the dust of death.

16 For dogs have surrounded Me;

The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.

They pierced[c] My hands and My feet;

17 I can count all My bones.

They look and stare at Me.

18 They divide My garments among them,

And for My clothing they cast lots.

19 But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me;

O My Strength, hasten to help Me!

20 Deliver Me from the sword,

My precious life from the power of the dog.

21 Save Me from the lion’s mouth

And from the horns of the wild oxen!

You have answered Me.

22 I will declare Your name to My brethren;

In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.

23 You who fear the Lord, praise Him!

All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him,

And fear Him, all you offspring of Israel!

24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;

Nor has He hidden His face from Him;

But when He cried to Him, He heard.

25 My praise shall be of You in the great assembly;

I will pay My vows before those who fear Him.

26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied;

Those who seek Him will praise the Lord.

Let your heart live forever!

27 All the ends of the world

Shall remember and turn to the Lord,

And all the families of the nations

Shall worship before You.[d]

28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s,

And He rules over the nations.

29 All the prosperous of the earth

Shall eat and worship;

All those who go down to the dust

Shall bow before Him,

Even he who cannot keep himself alive.

30 A posterity shall serve Him.

It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,

31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born,

That He has done this.

Psalm 22 New King James Version (NKJV)

____________________________________________

Babylonian Talmud: "The Messiah --what is his name?...The Rabbis say, The Leper Scholar, as it is said, `surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God and afflicted...'" (Sanhedrin 98b)

 

Midrash Ruth Rabbah: "Another explanation (of Ruth ii.14): -- He is speaking of king Messiah; `Come hither,' draw near to the throne; `and eat of the bread,' that is, the bread of the kingdom; `and dip thy morsel in the vinegar,' this refers to his chastisements, as it is said, `But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities'"

 

Targum Jonathan: "Behold my servant Messiah shall prosper; he shall be high and increase and be exceedingly strong..."

Zohar: "`He was wounded for our transgressions,' etc....There is in the Garden of Eden a palace called the Palace of the Sons of Sickness; this palace the Messiah then enters, and summons every sickness, every pain, and every chastisement of Israel; they all come and rest upon him. And were it not that he had thus lightened them off Israel and taken them upon himself, there had been no man able to bear Israel's chastisements for the transgression of the law: and this is that which is written, `Surely our sicknesses he hath carried.'"

 

Rabbi Moses Maimonides: "What is the manner of Messiah's advent....there shall rise up one of whom none have known before, and signs and wonders which they shall see performed by him will be the proofs of his true origin; for the Almighty, where he declares to us his mind upon this matter, says, `Behold a man whose name is the Branch, and he shall branch forth out of his place' (Zech. 6:12). And Isaiah speaks similarly of the time when he shall appear, without father or mother or family being known, He came up as a sucker before him, and as a root out of dry earth, etc....in the words of Isaiah, when describing the manner in which kings will harken to him, At him kings will shut their mouth; for that which had not been told them have they seen, and that which they had not heard they have perceived." (From the Letter to the South (Yemen), quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 374-5)

 

Rabbi Mosheh Kohen Ibn Crispin: This rabbi described those who interpret Isaiah 53 as referring to Israel as those: "having forsaken the knowledge of our Teachers, and inclined after the `stubbornness of their own hearts,' and of their own opinion, I am pleased to interpret it, in accordance with the teaching of our Rabbis, of the King Messiah....This prophecy was delivered by Isaiah at the divine command for the purpose of making known to us something about the nature of the future Messiah, who is to come and deliver Israel, and his life from the day when he arrives at discretion until his advent as a redeemer, in order that if anyone should arise claiming to be himself the Messiah, we may reflect, and look to see whether we can observe in him any resemblance to the traits described here; if there is any such resemblance, then we may believe that he is the Messiah our righteousness; but if not, we cannot do so." (From his commentary on Isaiah, quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, pages 99-114.)

www.chaim.org/rabbis.htm

 

Why the Isaiah 53 prophesy cannot refer to Israel.

www.chaim.org/nation.htm

Why Isaiah 53 cannot refer to the nation of Israel, or anyone else, but must be the Messiah

1. The servant of Isaiah 53 is an innocent and guiltless sufferer. Israel is never described as sinless. Isaiah 1:4 says of the nation: "Alas sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity. A brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters!" He then goes on in the same chapter to characterize Judah as Sodom, Jerusalem as a harlot, and the people as those whose hands are stained with blood (verses 10, 15, and 21). What a far cry from the innocent and guiltless sufferer of Isaiah 53 who had "done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth!"

2. The prophet said: "It pleased the LORD to bruise him." Has the awful treatment of the Jewish people (so contrary, by the way, to the teaching of Jesus to love everyone) really been God's pleasure, as is said of the suffering of the servant in Isaiah 53:10 ? If, as some rabbis contend, Isaiah 53 refers to the holocaust, can we really say of Israel's suffering during that horrible period, "It pleased the LORD to bruise him?" Yet it makes perfect sense to say that God was pleased to have Messiah suffer and die as our sin offering to provide us forgiveness and atonement.

3. The person mentioned in this passage suffers silently and willingly. Yet all people, even Israelites, complain when they suffer! Brave Jewish men and women fought in resistance movements against Hitler. Remember the Vilna Ghetto Uprising? Remember the Jewish men who fought on the side of the allies? Can we really say Jewish suffering during the holocaust and during the preceding centuries was done silently and willingly?

4. The figure described in Isaiah 53 suffers, dies, and rises again to atone for his people's sins. The Hebrew word used in Isaiah 53:10 for "sin-offering" is "asham," which is a technical term meaning "sin-offering." See how it is used in Leviticus chapters 5 and 6. Isaiah 53 describes a sinless and perfect sacrificial lamb who takes upon himself the sins of others so that they might be forgiven. Can anyone really claim that the terrible suffering of the Jewish people, however undeserved and unjust, atones for the sins of the world? Whoever Isaiah 53 speaks of, the figure described suffers and dies in order to provide a legal payment for sin so that others can be forgiven. This cannot be true of the Jewish people as a whole, or of any other mere human.

5. It is the prophet who is speaking in this passage. He says: "who has believed our message." The term "message" usually refers to the prophetic message, as it does in Jeremiah 49:14. Also, when we understand the Hebrew parallelism of verse 1, we see "Who has believed our message" as parallel to "to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed." The "arm of the Lord" refers to God's powerful act of salvation. So the message of the speaker is the message of a prophet declaring what God has done to save his people.

6. The prophet speaking is Isaiah himself, who says the sufferer was punished for "the transgression of my people," according to verse 8. Who are the people of Isaiah? Israel. So the sufferer of Isaiah 53 suffered for Israel. So how could he be Israel?

7. The figure of Isaiah 53 dies and is buried according to verses 8 and 9. The people of Israel have never died as a whole. They have been out of the land on two occasions and have returned, but they have never ceased to be among the living. Yet Jesus died, was buried, and rose again.

8. If Isaiah 53 cannot refer to Israel, how about Isaiah himself? But Isaiah said he was a sinful man of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5-7). And Isaiah did not die as an atonement for our sins. Could it have been Jeremiah? Jeremiah 11:19 does echo the words of Isaiah 53. Judah rejected and despised the prophet for telling them the truth. Leaders of Judah sought to kill Jeremiah, and so the prophet describes himself in these terms. But they were not able to kill the prophet. Certainly Jeremiah did not die to atone for the sins of his people. What of Moses? Could the prophet have been speaking of him? But Moses wasn't sinless either. Moses sinned and was forbidden from entering the promised land (Numbers 20:12). Moses indeed attempted to offer himself as a sacrifice in place of the nation, but God did not allow him to do so (Exodus 32:30-35). Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were all prophets who gave us a glimpse of what Messiah, the ultimate prophet, would be like, but none of them quite fit Isaiah 53.

So what can we conclude? Isaiah 53 cannot refer to the nation of Israel, nor to Isaiah, nor to Moses, nor another prophet. And if not to Moses, certainly not to any lesser man. Yet Messiah would be greater than Moses. As the rabbinic writing "Yalkut" said: "Who art thou, O great mountain? (Zech. iv.7) This refers to the King Messiah. And why does he call him`the great mountain?' because he is greater than the patriarchs, as it is said, `My servant shall be high, and lifted up, and lofty exceedingly' --he will be higher than Abraham...lifted up above Moses...loftier then the ministering angels..." (Quoted in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, Ktav Publishing House, 1969, Volume 2, page 9.)

Of whom does Isaiah speak? He speaks of the Messiah, as many ancient rabbis concluded. The second verse of Isaiah 53 makes it crystal clear. The figure grows up as "a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground." The shoot springing up is beyond reasonable doubt a reference to the Messiah, and, in fact, it is a common Messianic reference in Isaiah and elsewhere. The Davidic dynasty was to be cut down in judgement like a felled tree, but it was promised to Israel that a new sprout would shoot up from the stump. The Messiah was to be that sprout. Several Hebrew words were used to refer to this undeniably Messianic image. All the terms are related in meaning and connected in the Messianic texts where they were used. Isaiah 11, which virtually all rabbis agreed refers to the Messiah, used the words "shoot" (hoter) and branch (netser) to describe the Messianic King. Isaiah 11:10 called Messiah the "Root (shoresh) of Jesse," Jesse being David's father. Isaiah 53 described the suffering servant as a root (shoresh) from dry ground, using the very same metaphor and the very same word as Isaiah 11. We also see other terms used for the same concept, such as branch (tsemach) in Jeremiah 23:5, in Isaiah 4:2 and also in the startling prophecies of Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12.

Beyond doubt, Isaiah 52:13-53:12 refers to Messiah Jesus. He is the one highly exalted before whom kings shut their mouths. Messiah is the shoot who sprung up from the fallen Davidic dynasty. He became the King of Kings. He provided the ultimate atonement.

Isaiah 52:13 states that it would be the Messiah who will "sprinkle" many nations. What does that mean? What was Messiah's ministry to be toward the nations? The word translated "sprinkle" or sometimes "startle" is found several other places in the OT. The Hebrew word is found in Leviticus 4:6; 8:11; 14:7, and Numbers 8:7, 19:18-19. The references cited all pertain to priestly sprinklings of the blood of atonement, the anointing oil of consecration, and the ceremonial water used to cleanse the unclean. Is Isaiah 52:13 telling us that the Messiah will act as a priest who applies atonement, anoints to consecrate, sprinkles to make clean? (This vision of the Messiah as both priest and king is also found in Zechariah 6:12-13). But, priests were to come from the tribe of Levi and Kings from the tribe of Judah! What kind of priest is he? David told us Messiah would be a priest of the order of Melchizedek (see Psalm 110 and Hebrews chapters 7-9).

Isaiah 53 must be understood as referring to the coming Davidic King, the Messiah. King Messiah was prophesied to suffer and die to pay for our sins and then rise again. He would serve as a priest to the nations of the world and apply the blood of atonement to cleanse those who believe. There is one alone who this can refer to, Jesus, whom millions refer to as Christ, which is from the Greek word for Messiah. Those who confess him are his children, his promised offspring, the spoils of his victory. According to the testimony of the Jewish Apostles, Jesus died for our sins, rose again, ascended to the right hand of God, and he now serves as our great High Priest who cleanses us of sin and our King. Jesus rules over his people and is in the process of conquering the Gentiles. The first century Jewish disciples were willing to die rather than deny they had seen the risen Messiah. Only if one has presupposed Jesus cannot have been the Messiah can one deny that which is obvious. Israel's greatest son, Jesus, is the one Isaiah foresaw.

(c) 1997 Fred Klett

___________________________________________

The many paths to God lie.

‘There are many paths to God‘ has become a politically, correct catchphrase, used by the liberal establishment to imply that all religions and beliefs are equally worthy.

 

Of course, you don’t need a degree in common sense to work out that this is illogical.

Everybody is aware that even the major religions disagree on many important issues. Therefore, simple logic dictates that they cannot all be right. Where they all disagree on a particular belief (if any are right) it can only be ONE that is right.

It is obvious then that all those religions that are wrong in any belief cannot be equal in merit, or equal as a path to God, as the one that is wholly right. So to insist they are all equally worthy is to be unjustly biased against the one that is true.

Error should never be given equality with truth.

Therefore it is inexcusable that our society should not to make every effort to discern, and then to officially recognise the truth in this matter.

For anyone to contend that ERROR should ever be entitled to equal endorsement and support by the state as TRUTH is unjust, prejudiced, morally reprehensible and downright stupid.

 

Western civilisation was founded and built on the commendable notion that truth really matters and should be encouraged and supported.

For centuries, it was accepted and agreed by the most learned persons and rulers, that the beliefs of Christianity best represent spiritual truth. Whilst also providing superlative spiritual and social benefits for citizens and society. And therefore it was agreed that Christianity should be entitled to official recognition and special support by society and the state. The traditions, heritage, laws and culture of Christendom were founded on this generally, accepted precept.

It is not hard to understand why?

Christianity really is special.

Jesus Christ taught love, peace and forgiveness.

Jesus is the role model for Christians. Although they are not always completely successful, the teaching and example of Jesus Christ are what every genuine Christian aspires to. Those things are eminently conducive to the moral, spiritual and material good of society. They are the fundamentals of Christianity and a Christian society. We hear a lot today about religious fundamentalism being something bad, but in the case of Christianity the opposite has to be true. The more fundamental a Christian seeks to be, the more like (the Christian role model) Jesus they hope to become.

In a nutshell Jesus taught - love God above all and love your neighbour as yourself. and seek to advance the welfare of all, materially and spiritually - be humble, not proud or envious, be prepared to serve others, not lord it over them - love and forgive even your enemies and do not seek revenge or bear grudges.

 

Saint Augustine.

“Let those who say that the teachings of Christ are harmful to the State find armies with soldiers who live up to the standards of the teachings of Jesus. Let them provide governors, husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, kings, judges, taxpayers and tax collectors who can compare to those who take Christian teachings to heart. Then let them dare to say that such teaching is contrary to the welfare of the State! Indeed, under no circumstances can they fail to realize that this teaching is the greatest safeguard of the State when faithfully observed.” (“Epis. 138 ad Marcellinum,” in Opera Omnia, vol. 2, in J.P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, col. 532.)

 

A major problem today is that the term 'religion' is cynically used by secularists rather than 'religions'. The effect is to lump all religions together and stereotype them as though they are a single entity. Which means if one religion is perceived in some way as not conducive to the public good, people are led to believe that all religions are a problem - that 'religion' is a problem per se. This sort of stereotyping would be unlikely to be tolerated in any other field. But it suits the aims of militant atheists and the liberal, secular, politically correct agenda.

 

There is no question that the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in the history of the world. It was in this century that the major nations of Christendom began to abandon Christian beliefs, principles and heritage. And, in the misguided name of progress, began to embrace a variety of pagan, atheistic, materialist, Darwinian, Marxist and socialist ideologies. As a result we were subjected to 2 world wars, numerous other wars, including the Spanish civil war, and an horrendous, mass murder as a result of the German nation adopting the national, socialist policies of a crazed, Darwinian inspired, anti-Christian, pagan occultist named Hitler. An even greater, mass slaughter was carried out by atheistic, socialist revolutionaries in pursuit of their proposed ‘paradise on earth‘. The historical record of the twentieth century is absolutely horrendous, the atheistic, Marxist, socialist regimes of; Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were together responsible for the brutal slaughter of an estimated thirty six million people. In addition, we have seen millions of war deaths, countless murders carried out by other, atheistic, socialist regimes and various other tyrannies, and millions of unborn babies callously slaughtered in state approved and funded, abortion mills.

 

We hear a lot today about equality, which sounds admirable. And true equality certainly is admirable and a God-given right. However, false equality is not admirable, it can be discriminatory against truth, goodness and, if enforced by the state, can result in an evil tyranny. Error should never be equated with truth and evil should never be equated with good.

So what is true equality?

Every human person is of equal value and should be equally respected and cared for, regardless of gender, colour, race, disability, wealth, influence, intelligence or power. That is true equality.

What is false equality?

False equality is the idea that everything any human person does or believes, is equally valid. The idea that all lifestyles, beliefs, traditions or cultures (that are not against whatever the state decides should be legal) are equally valid and worthy of equal respect.

 

In post Christian, secular society, while it is demanded by supporters of the liberal establishment that all religions, beliefs and lifestyles should be treated by the state as equally worthy, with no preference or special status given to any. In practice, we can see this is completely ignored in one respect, because there is an exception, inasmuch as it is now the beliefs of 'atheism' that actually receive special recognition and status in most, Western nations. This is evident in the state approved and funded, promotion and teaching of the (unscientific) naturalistic beliefs of Darwinian evolution and spontaneous generation of life, as though they are ‘scientific truths’ (they are treated as sacrosanct - with no alternative, scientific views or contrary evidence, permitted in any state funded or approved, educational curriculum).

The modern, secular state's 'enforced' equality demands that all beliefs etc. are treated as equally worthy, regardless of truth or merit. But, in practice, the liberal mind-set is that all beliefs/religions are inferior to the atheist/secularist ideology, which is perceived as the pinnacle of rationality and arbiter of 'scientific truth' which benevolently deigns to grant (a false) equality to every inferior, belief system. And religions should all be grateful that the secular state grants them equality with each other.

All religions and religious beliefs are thus lumped together as

being equal (the crazy with the not so crazy - the logical with the illogical - the true with the patently false) with no intelligent, or logical discernment permitted.

 

And so we are led to believe by a secular state (which doesn't recognise God) that there are:

‘Many paths to God’ -That all religions and beliefs are equally valid.

But are they?

 

Anyone who agrees with this automatically rejects the claims of Jesus Christ, who stated; “I am the way, the truth and the life” and “no one can come to the Father except through Me.”

Uniquely, Jesus backed up his claim by suffering an agonising death on the cross as a sacrifice for the salvation of all humanity. The words of Jesus means you cannot be a Christian if you claim or believe there are many paths to God, or that there is any path to God other than through Jesus Christ.

The fact is that Jesus (although completely innocent of all sin himself) suffered for the sins of all humankind, He was crucified for the redemption of His enemies as well as His friends. We are all sinners and have all offended the infinite goodness of God, no one (not even a saint) deserves heaven entirely on their own merit. Everyone is defiled by sin, and nothing defiled can enter heaven. An offence against the infinite goodness of an infinitely loving, but also an infinitely, just God can only be redeemed by an infinitely, good sacrifice. So only a divine sacrifice can pay the price justice demands for our sins.

 

Only the sacrifice of the true, spiritual messiah, Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, incarnated as man, is sufficient to save us all from the consequences of sin, open the gates of heaven and restore eternal life to the whole human race.

 

Only those whose garments have been ‘washed white by the blood of the lamb’ are fit to enter heaven.

The debt for our sin has been paid by Jesus and His saving sacrifice is offered as an unsurpassed, loving and free gift to us all. We simply have to gratefully acknowledge and accept that gift in a spirit of humility and repentance.

 

Jesus requested that a remembrance of his sacrifice should be celebrated (the Eucharist). This unites us with Him and His sacrifice, and is the only sacrificial ceremony for sin which is truly acceptable to God. All other sacrifices devised and offered by humans are as ‘dirty rags’ before the divine majesty of the almighty creator.

 

Only the sacrifice of the true messiah, God made man

(as prophesied by Isaiah in the old testament), is acceptable to God.

 

By his supreme sacrifice Jesus paid the price for every sin ever committed, and thereby opened the gates of heaven to the whole human race.

Without His sacrifice, no one of any religion could ever enter heaven.

It matters not whether you are the most devout Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist or person of any other faith, ultimately you will rely, not on any rituals and customs of these various religions, but on the sacrifice of Jesus to enter heaven.

All who enter heaven and eternal life do so only with a passport provided by Jesus, without His sacrifice you would never get there.

This is the truth whether you like it or not.

 

Dr James Tour - 'The Origin of Life' - Abiogenesis decisively refuted.

youtu.be/B1E4QMn2mxk

Created by Melbourne stained glass manufacturer Ferguson and Urie in 1880 for the opening of the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church, the triangular epitrochoidal (curved triangular form) rose window is a very unusual example of such a window.

 

It features a number of symbols in small circles of brilliantly painted stained glass. These include:

 

- Alfa and Omega (taken from the statement by Jesus in the Book of Revelations 22 - 13 "I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End")

 

- a set of crossed keys (symbolising the keys to heaven as held by Saint Peter, its traditional gatekeeper)

 

- a sanctuary lamp (which symbolises the presence of the Lord)

 

- an anchor (symbolising hope), an eight pointed start (symbolising resurrection)

 

- the sun (symbolising good shining over evil)

 

- an Ichthys (fish) (symbolising Christ)

 

- a dove (symbolising the Holy Spirit)

 

- a five petal red Tudor Rose (symbolising the five wounds of Jesus Christ from the crucifixion)

 

- crossed palm branches (representing martyrdom)

 

- a chalice (taken from the glass from which Jesus drank with his disciples during the Las Supper

 

- symbolising Christ's power to redeem humankind)

 

- a wheat sheath (also taken from the Last Supper, symbolising the body of Christ and Christ's power to redeem humankind)

 

- a bunch of grapes (symbolising the blood of Christ and Christ's power to redeem humankind)

 

- a harp (symbolising music, musical instruments and the joy and worship in praising God)

 

- a crown (representing immortality, righteousness and the resurrection)

 

- the cross in the centre of the window, which is the principal symbol of the Christian religion, recalling the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the redeeming benefits of his Passion and death. The cross is thus a sign both of Christ himself and of the faith of Christians

 

Together, these circles, along with seven stars form the triangular epitrochoidal (curved triangular form) rose window.

 

The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church, which stands on busy Chapel Street in St Kilda East, is a well known and loved local landmark, not least of all because of its strikingly tall (33.5 metre or 110 foot) banded bell tower which can be spotted from far away. In the Nineteenth Century when it was built, it would have been even more striking for its great height and domineering presence. Designed by architect Albert Purchas, the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is often referred to as his ecclesiastical tour-de-force, and it is most certainly one of his most dramatic and memorable churches.

 

The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was constructed on a plot of land reserved in Chapel Street for the Presbyterian Church of Victoria in 1866. Initially services were held in a small hall whilst fundraising efforts advanced the erection of a church. The architect Albert Purchas was commissioned to design the church and the foundation stone for the western portion of the nave was finally laid in April 1877 by Sir James McCulloch. The first service was held in the church on the 1st of October 1877. The first clergyman of the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was the Reverend John Laurence Rentoul (father to world renown and much loved Australian children's book illustrator Ida Rentoul Outhwaite). However, the swelling Presbyterian congregation of St Kilda and its surrounding districts quickly outgrew the initial Saint George's Presbyterian Church building, so Albert Purchas was obliged to re-design and enlarge the church to allow a doubling in capacity. Robert S. Ekins was the contractor and his tender was £3000.00. It is this imposing church building, reopened in 1880, that we see today. The "Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil" noted that the total length of the building was 118 feet and 6 inches (36 metres), by 40 foot (12 metres) wide and that the striking octagonal tower to the north-west was 110ft 6 in high. It perhaps reflected better the wealth and aspirations of the congregation.

 

The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is constructed on bluestone foundations and is built in an ornate polychromatic Gothic Revival style in the tradition of English designers like William Butterfield and John L. Pearson. Built of red brick building, it is decorated in contrasting cream bricks and Waurn Ponds freestone dressings. It features a slate roof with prominent roof vents, iron ridge cresting and fleche at the intersection of the nave and transepts. The front facade of the church is dominated by the slender, banded octagonal tower topped by a narrow spire. The entrance features a double arched portal portico. The facade also features a dominant triangular epitrochoidal (curved triangular form) rose window. The church, like its bluestone neighbour All Saints Church of England, is built to a T-shaped plan, with an aisleless nave, broad transepts and internal walls of cream brick, relieved with coloured brickwork. The former Saint George's Presbyterian Church was one of the first major church design in Melbourne in which polychrome brickwork was lavishly employed both externally and internally.

 

The inside of the former Saint George's Presbyterian Church is equally as grand as the exterior, with ornamental Gothic Revival polychromatic brickwork, a lofty vaulted ceiling, deal and kauri pine joinery and pulpit and reredos of Keene's cement. The building originally contained a complete set of Victorian stained glass windows by well known and successful Melbourne manufacturers Ferguson and Urie, all of which remain intact today except for one of the non-figurative windows which was replaced by a memorial window to Samuel Lyons McKenzie, the congregation’s beloved minister, who served from 1930 to 1948, in 1949. The earliest of the Ferguson and Urie windows are non-figurative windows which feature the distinctive diaper pattern and floral motifs of Fergus and Urie's work, and are often argued to be amongst the finest of their non-figurative designs. The large triple window in the chancel was presented by Lady McCulloch in memory of the ‘loved and dead’. Another, in memory of John Kane Smyth, the Vice-Consul for the United States of America in Melbourne, has the American Stars and Stripes on the top ventilator above it. An organ by Thomas C. Lewis of London, one of the leading 19th century English organ builders, was installed in the south transept in 1882. It was designed to blend with its architectural setting, with pipework styled to avoid the obstruction of windows. The action of this organ was altered in 1935, but the pipework, and the original sound, have been retained.

 

Over the years many spiritual and social activities were instituted at Saint George’s, Presbyterian Church some of short duration such as the Ladies’ Reading Club which operated between 1888 and 1893. There were segregated Bible classes for young men and women, the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union, formed in 1892, a cricket club and a floral guild. Guilds teaching physical culture for girls, boys and young men began in 1904. They were entirely financed by John Maclellan and the idea extended to other denominations throughout Victoria. John Maclellan died in 1936 and the guilds ceased at Saint George’s Presbyterian church through lack of funds although in 1977 the members of the girls’ guild were still holding bi-annual reunions and raising money for charity. Sadly, the Presbyterian congregations may have been large in the Nineteenth Century, but by St George's Presbyterian Church's 110th centenary, its doors had already closed during the week due to dwindling numbers and an ageing congregation as a result of the general decline in church attendances after the Second World War exacerbated by the changing nature of St Kilda and the decrease in numbers of residents living in the vicinity of the church. So it stood, forlorn and empty and seemingly nothing more than a relic of a glorious but bygone religious past. However in 1990, Saint Michael's Grammar School across the road leased the Victorian Heritage listed building during weekdays, and it was eventually sold to them in 2015. It now forms part of the school's performing-arts complex, and it has a wonderful new lease of life.

 

St George's Presbyterian Church is sometimes hired out for performances, and I had the pleasure of receiving an invitation to hear Handel's Messiah performed there in 2009. The ecclesiastical acoustics made the performance all the more magnificent. I remember as I sat on one of the original (hard) kauri pine pews, I looked around me and admired the stained glass and ornamental brickwork. I tried without success over several subsequent years to gain access to the church's interior, settling for photographs of the exterior instead, but it wasn't until 2018 that I was fortunate enough to gain entry to photograph the church's interior. The former St George's Presbyterian Church was opened up to the public for one Sunday morning only as part of Open House Melbourne in July 2018. It was a fantastic morning, and I am very grateful to the staff who manned the church for the day and watched bemused as I photographed the stained glass extensively and in such detail.

 

Albert Purchas, born in 1825 in Chepstow, Monmouthshire, Wales, was a prominent Nineteenth Century architect who achieved great success for himself in Melbourne. Born to parents Robert Whittlesey Purchas and Marianne Guyon, he migrated to Australia in 1851 to establish himself in the then quickly expanding city of Melbourne, where he set up a small architect's firm in Little Collins Street. He also offered surveying services. His first major building was constructing the mansion "Berkeley Hall" in St Kilda on Princes Street in 1854. The house still exists today. Two years after migrating, Albert designed the layout of the Melbourne General Cemetery in Carlton. It was the first "garden cemetery" in Victoria, and his curvilinear design is still in existence, unaltered, today. In 1854, Albert married Eliza Anne Sawyer (1825 - 1869) in St Kilda. The couple had ten children over their marriage, including a son, Robert, who followed in his father's footsteps as an architect. Albert's brother-in-law, Charles Sawyer joined him in the partnership of Purchas and Sawyer, which existed from 1856 until 1862 in Queens Street. The firm produced more than 140 houses, churches, offices and cemetery buildings including: the nave and transepts of Christ Church St Kilda between 1854 and 1857, "Glenara Homestead"in Bulla in 1857, the Melbourne Savings Bank on the corner of Flinders Lane and Market Street (now demolished) between 1857 and 1858, the Geelong branch of the Bank of Australasia in Malop Street between 1859 and 1860, and Beck's Imperial Hotel in Castlemaine in 1861. When the firm broke up, Albert returned to Little Collins Street, and the best known building he designed during this period was Saint. George's Presbyterian Church in St Kilda East between 1877 and 1880. The church's tall polychomatic brick bell tower is still a local landmark, even in the times of high rise architecture and development, and Saint, George's itself is said to be one of his most striking church designs. Socially, Albert was vice president of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects for many years, before becoming president in 1887. He was also an inventor and philanthropist. Albert died in 1909 at his home in Kew, a wealthy widower and much loved father.

 

The stained glass firm of Ferguson and Urie was established by Scots James Ferguson (1818 – 1894), James Urie (1828 – 1890) and John Lamb Lyon (1836 – 1916). They were the first known makers of stained glass in Australia. Until the early 1860s, window glass in Melbourne had been clear or plain coloured, and nearly all was imported, but new churches and elaborate buildings created a demand for pictorial windows. The three Scotsmen set up Ferguson and Urie in 1862 and the business thrived until 1899, when it ceased operation, with only John Lamb Lyon left alive. Ferguson and Urie was the most successful Nineteenth Century Australian stained glass window making company. Among their earliest works were a Shakespeare window for the Haymarket Theatre in Bourke Street, a memorial window to Prince Albert in Holy Trinity, Kew, and a set of Apostles for the West Melbourne Presbyterian Church. Their palatial Gothic Revival office building stood at 283 Collins Street from 1875. Ironically, their last major commission, a window depicting “labour”, was installed in the old Melbourne Stock Exchange in Collins Street in 1893 on the eve of the bank crash. Their windows can be found throughout the older suburbs of Melbourne and across provincial Victoria.

Welcome To 4 Ingredients Of Accelerated Self-Extinction: Lab-Generated Human Embryos, AI, Nukes, & BioWeapons - IMRAN™

‘Ladies & Gentlemen of humankind, thank you, but your services are no longer going to be needed, sooner than we all thought!’ : Hal 2030.

Yes, I’m being facetious… I love the incredible pace of technology development we are living in the midst of. But you have to admit, there are genuine and growing causes for concern for our survival.

AI’s problem solving skills on one hand, and cures from lab-generated embryonic cells on the other, separately or together, have the power to serve all humankind. But where do we go next? What comes from next generations of generative-AI and lab-generated-embryos from this stream of bio/medical research & development?

These two alone or combined without control are scary enough. But these two technologies along with all the biological and nuclear weapons we stockpile on our planet, in the hands of madmen like Putin, Kim, or Netanyahu, or even egomaniacs like Musk, are guaranteed to be catastrophic.

With our track record as a self-destructive species, where do you think these developments will take us? Could 2023 be the start of our self-initiated extinction?

 

© 2023 IMRAN™

 

#innovation #opinion #IMHO #IMRAN #biology #ArtificialIntelligence #science #regulation #future #humans #humankind #dictators #extinction

 

Here is the news story: www.cnn.com/2023/06/14/health/human-model-embryo

This broadcast is for humankind

In addition to saving humankind from an alien onslaught, Master Chief won the "Most WANT" award in the "Bricks of Character" theme at Bricks By the Bay 2011, taking home a one-of a kind trophy built by Iain Heath (Ochre Jelly) himself.

via Instagram ift.tt/20gXzp6

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

During the second step of humankind’s first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) captured this stunning view of Earth and the Moon. The image was taken after the flyby was complete and Juice was moving away from the Earth-Moon system.

 

The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 02:53 CEST on 21 August 2024, as Juice was heading towards its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025.

 

The Juice monitoring cameras were designed to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, especially during the challenging deployment period following launch.

 

They were not designed to carry out science or image the Moon and Earth. A scientific camera called JANUS is providing high-resolution imagery during the cruise phase flybys of Earth, Moon and Venus, and of Jupiter and its icy moons once in the Jupiter system in 2031.

 

JMC1 is located on the front* of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that sees deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed by Simeon Schmauß and Mark McCaughrean.

 

Find out more

 

Guide to Juice’s monitoring cameras

 

More information on the lunar-Earth flyby

 

Rewatch the livestream of Juice’s first Moon images, including Q&A with the team

 

More images from Juice's monitoring cameras in ESA's Planetary Science Archive

 

*Additional technical information: ‘front’ means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.

 

Processing notes: In each case, two images of different exposures have been added to increase the details in the shadows.

 

Credits: ESA/Juice/JMC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Acknowledgements: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrean

This thing is enormous. Unlike most ancient temples around here, it has columns that still stand from antiquity -- and most of the columns that don't have been lost to the depredations of humankind, not earthquakes. Abridged (though I know it doesn't look it!) from Wikipedia:

 

Construction began in the 6th century BC during the rule of the Athenian tyrants, who envisaged building the greatest temple in the ancient world, but it was not completed until the reign of Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD, some 638 years after the project had begun. During the Roman period, the temple, which included 104 colossal columns, was renowned as the largest temple in Greece and housed one of the largest cult statues in the ancient world.

 

The temple's glory was short-lived, as it fell into disuse after being pillaged during a barbarian invasion in 267 AD, just about a century after its completion. It was probably never repaired and was reduced to ruins thereafter. In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was extensively quarried for building materials. However, a substantial part of the temple remains today, notably 16 of the original 104 gigantic columns.

 

An earlier temple had stood there, constructed by the tyrant Peisistratos around 550 BC. The building was demolished after the death of Peisistratos and the construction of a colossal new Temple of Olympian Zeus was begun around 520 BC by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchos. They sought to surpass two famous contemporary temples, the Heraion of Samos and the second Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

 

The work was abandoned when the tyranny was overthrown and Hippias was expelled in 510 BC. Only the platform and some elements of the columns had been completed by that point, and the temple remained in that state for 336 years. The temple was left unfinished during the years of Athenian democracy, apparently because the Greeks thought it was hubris to build on such a scale. In his treatise Politics, Aristotle cited the temple as an example of how tyrannies engaged the populace in great works for the state (essentially, white elephants) and left them no time, energy or means to rebel.

 

It was not until 174 BC that the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who presented himself as the earthly embodiment of Zeus, revived the project. The building material was changed from the local limestone to the expensive, higher quality Pentelic marble and the order was changed from Doric to Corinthian, marking the first time that this order had been used on the exterior of a major temple. However, the project ground to a halt again in 164 BC with the death of Antiochus. The temple was still only half-finished by that stage.

 

Serious damage was inflicted on the partly built temple by Lucius Cornelius Sulla's sack of Athens in 86 BC. While looting the city, Sulla seized some of the incomplete columns and transported them to Rome, where they were reused in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. A half-hearted attempt was made to complete the temple during Augustus' reign as the first Roman emperor, but it was not until the accession of Hadrian in the 2nd century AD that the project was finally completed.

 

In 124–125 AD, when the Philhellene Hadrian visited Athens, a massive building programme was begun that included the completion of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. A walled marble-paved precinct was constructed around the temple. The temple and the surrounding precinct were adorned with numerous statues depicting Hadrian, the gods, and personifications of the Roman provinces. A colossal statue of Hadrian was raised behind the building by the people of Athens in honor of the emperor's generosity. An equally colossal chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Zeus occupied the cella of the temple. The statue's material was unusual, as the use of chryselephantine was by this time regarded as archaic. Hadrian may have been imitating Phidias' famous statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon.

 

Material from the building was incorporated into a Christian basilica constructed nearby during the 5th or 6th century. Over the following centuries, the temple was systematically quarried to provide building materials for the houses and churches of medieval Athens. In 1436, near the end of the Byzantine period, only 21 columns remained standing. Of those, 15 still stand and the fate of some of the others is known: one was demolished in 1759 under the Ottomans to use the marble to make plaster for a mosque in the city, and one fell in a storm in 1852. The monument is currently under conservation to prevent any further collapse.

 

Impermanence. The folly of humankind. Since childhood the decay of modernity, the passage of all things into history, has fascinated me in a way I can't quite put into words. Something slipping through my grasp. The advance of time. Ethereal vapours of existence. I'm trapped in that fog, wasting away, monocular lens scanning for relics. A pilgrim at the gates of the temple of entropy.

Changed a few details of the design, and decided to go with a monochrome spaced up background.

Roughly translated, the Japanese caption above reads : "Sound (technology) has evolved ... But what about humankind?" This was one of the few voice-overs that Sony used in their award-winning TV commercial in Japan back in the 80's for their Walkman cassette players - viewing the youtube is compulsory!

 

The star of the commercial was a snow monkey called Choromatsu, a.k.a The Sony Ape-man, who passed away in 2007, just a few years before Sony stopped production of the Walkman in 2010. MP3 players may be the norm for portable music players nowadays but the Walkman was one of the first of such devices, selling 220 million worldwide in more than 30 years of production.

 

After doing the Mitsubishi Mirage TV commercial inspired Frilled Lizard, I have been wanting to do this Sony Walkman thingy but I simply couldn't find a Walkman to use in the photo that I had in mind - folks I had approached said they have either thrown away their old players or can't remember where they have stored away their old players. Furthermore, there was also some hesitation on my part as I have always felt that it is irreverent to mess around with Komatsu's designs. So, I am hereby apologizing to him in advance (on the off-chance that he stumbles upon this someday), 失礼致しました！Anyway, I have to fold this macaque again ... properly ... someday.

 

Origami related info :

Model : Japanese Macaque, designed by Komatsu Hideo, folded/interpreted by Cavemanboon. Paper : Elephant Hide, 110gsm, 38 x 38cm (?), acrylic paint applied on one side.

 

Walkman related info :

A million thanks to Philip Lim, for graciously lending me this WM-R707. Btw, I used to own a WM-R202, all those years ago. For folks who miss their old Walkmans (Walkmen?), the Walkman Central site may allow u to take a walk down memory lane. :-)

 

Oh, I need to thank Seng Kai too, for lending me his Discman and for trying so hard to find his old Walkman albeit unsuccessfully. I did take a pic of the macaque with the Discman, but it somehow didn't feel right.

 

And Sifu, if u are reading this, thanks for accompanying me to the flea market at Sungei Road to look for used Walkmans! We didn't find anything suitable but hope that famous Sg Road Laksa was worth the while. :-)

 

Okay, I have probably taken silliness to a whole new level ... time to get back into the cave and hide ... :-)

  

One of the six Days of Creation windows in the north wall of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic church in Bilton, Warwickshire.

 

This was my first scheme of windows installed in 1998-99 and one of my favourite projects, the windows being small in size but rich in subject and detail (and for once unfettered by any desire for something overly traditional which gave me a lot more freedom).

 

Originally built in 1958 on a traditional plan with an oblong nave and chancel in one chamber, the church was dramatically re-organised and extended in the early 1990s under the guidance of Fr Paul Chamberlain, wherein the axis of the church was re-orientated by 90 degrees with a centralised granite block altar in what was the heart of the old nave. The 'south' nave wall was removed to allow an extended aisle and ambulatory on this side. The former main entrance narthex was blocked up to create what is now the Blessed Sacrament chapel.

 

One of the most dramatic innovations in the re-ordered church is the full immersion fount, a cruciform marble pool set into the floor before the altar, evoking the earliest method of Christian Baptism by immersion in the River Jordan.

 

The two main stained glass windows on either side of the old nave were removed and re-sited in truncated form in the new extension, and in the place of the northern one a large crucifix (painted by Fr Chamberlain) has been set up as a focus behind the new altar. The six high windows on this wall are the latest addition to the church and are my own work from 1999.

 

For more detail on my work here see my website via the following link:-

aidanmcraethomsonstainedglass.weebly.com/sacred-heart-bil...

The New York Public Library

 

Libraries are the memory of humankind, irreplaceable repositories of documents of human thought and action. The New York Public Library is such a memory bank par excellence, one of the great knowledge institutions of the world, its myriad collections ranking with those of the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Virtually all of the Library's many collections and services are freely available to all comers. In fact, the Library has but one criterion for admission: curiosity.

  

The New York Public Library comprises simultaneously a set of scholarly research collections and a network of community libraries, and its intellectual and cultural range is both global and local, while singularly attuned to New York City. That combination lends to the Library an extraordinary richness. It is special also in being historically a privately managed, nonprofit corporation with a public mission, operating with both private and public financing in a century-old, still evolving private-public partnership. The research collections (for reference only, and organized as The Research Libraries, with four major centers) resemble the holdings of the great national and university libraries, and the community circulating libraries (organized as The Branch Libraries) resemble classic American municipal libraries.

  

All these features, taken together, make The New York Public Library a unique and complex institution, wonderful to use but not always easy to grasp. A useful way to understand the Library is to consider its beginnings and subsequent evolution. It has been very much a creature of time and place, bearing the imprint of its origins but always, like any living organism, coping with struggles and problems while adapting to an ever changing environment.

  

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - May 18 - Sandy Li and Lindsay Sencenbaugh attend CommonSpirit's Humankindness Gala 2023 on May 18th 2023 at San Francisco in San Francisco, CA (Photo - Devlin Shand for Drew Altizer Photography)

The gathering of all the nations of the earth refers to the uniting of the world's political powers, as a gradual process beginning in 1914 and seen later in manifestations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations following the First and Second World Wars.These political powers are said to be influenced by Satan and his demons in opposition to God's kingdom.Babylon the Great is interpreted as the world empire of false religion, and that it will be destroyed by the beast just prior to Armageddon. Witnesses believe that after all other religions have been destroyed, the governments will turn to persecute them, and that God will then intervene, precipitating Armageddon. One day gather in this city, but instead seems to predict only that "they (will gather) the kings together to .... Armageddon". The text does however seem to imply, based on the text from the earlier passage of Revelation 16:14, that the purpose of this gathering of kings in the "place called Armageddon" is "for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty".The Dispensational viewpoint interprets biblical prophecy literally and expects that the fulfillment of prophecy will also be literal, depending upon the context of scripture. In his discussion of Armageddon, J. Dwight Pentecost has devoted an entire chapter to the subject, titled "The Campaign of Armageddon", in which he discusses Armageddon as a campaign and not a specific battle, which will be fought in the Middle East. Pentecost writes: It has been held commonly that the battle of Armageddon is an isolated event transpiring just prior to the second advent of Christ to the earth. The extent of this great movement in which God deals with "the kings of the earth and of the whole world" (Rev. 16:14) will not be seen unless it is realized that the "battle of that great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14)[13] is not an isolated battle, but rather a campaign that extends over the last half of the tribulation period. The Greek word "polemo", translated "battle" in Revelation 16:14, signifies a war or campaign, while "machē" signifies a battle, and sometimes even single combat. This distinction is observed by Trench, (see Richard C. Trench, New Testament Synonyms, pp.301-2) and is followed by Thayer (see Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 528) and Vincent (see Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, II, 541). The use of the word polemos (campaign) in Revelation 16:14 would signify that the events that culminate in the gathering at Armageddon at the second advent are viewed by God as one connected campaign.— Pentecost, p.340The religion's current teaching on Armageddon originated in 1925 with former Watch Tower Society president J. F. Rutherford, who based his interpretations on the books of Exodus, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Psalms as well as additional material from the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The doctrine marked a further break from the teachings of Watch Tower Society founder Charles Taze Russell, who for decades had taught that the final war would be an anarchistic struggle for domination on earth.[41] Tony Wills, author of a historical study of Jehovah's Witnesses, claimed that Rutherford seemed to relish his descriptions of how completely the wicked would be destroyed at Armageddon, dwelling at great length on prophecies of destruction. He stated that towards the close of his ministry Rutherford allocated about half the space available in The Watchtower magazines to discussion of Armageddon. The end time (also called end times, end of time, end of days, last days, final days, or eschaton) is a future time-period described variously in the eschatologies of several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which believe that world events will achieve a final climax. believe that the gathering of all the nations of the earth refers to the uniting of the world's political powers, as a gradual process beginning in 1914 and seen later in manifestations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations following the First and Second World Wars.[35] These political powers are said to be influenced by Satan and his demons in opposition to God's kingdom.[33] Babylon the Great is interpreted as the world empire of false religion, and that it will be destroyed by the beast just prior to Armageddon.[36][37] Witnesses believe that after all other religions have been destroyed, the governments will turn to persecute them, and that God will then intervene, precipitating Armageddon. The Abrahamic faiths maintain a linear cosmology, with end-time scenarios containing themes of transformation and redemption. In Judaism, the term "end of days" makes reference to the Messianic Age and includes an in-gathering of the exiled Jewish diaspora, the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the righteous, and the world to come. Some sects of Christianity depict the end time as a period of tribulation that precedes the second coming of Christ, who will face the Antichrist along with his power structure and usher in the Kingdom of God. However, other Christians believe that the end time represents the personal tribulation experienced before they become enlightened with the Word of God.[1] In Islam, the Day of Judgement is preceded by the appearance of the Mahdi mounted on a white stallion. With the help of Isa (Jesus), the Mahdi will triumph over Masih ad-Dajjal (the false messiah). Non-Abrahamic faiths tend to have more cyclical world-views, with end-time eschatologies characterized by decay, redemption, and rebirth. In Hinduism, the end time occurs when Kalki, the final incarnation of Vishnu, descends atop a white horse and brings an end to the current Kali Yuga. In Buddhism, the Buddha predicted that his teachings would be forgotten after 5,000 years, followed by turmoil. A bodhisattva named Maitreya will appear and rediscover the teaching of dharma. The ultimate destruction of the world will then come through seven suns. Since the development of the concept of deep time in the 18th century and the calculation of the estimated age of the Earth, scientific discourse about end times has centered on the ultimate fate of the universe. Armageddon is viewed as a spiritual battle or struggle in the present age between the forces of good, i.e. righteousness, purity and virtue, and the forces of evil. The final struggle between the two comes as satanic influence is let loose with the emergence of Gog and Magog. Satan gathers all his powers, and uses all his methods to mislead people, introducing an age where iniquity, promiscuity, atheism, and materialism abound.Theories have included the Big Rip, Big Crunch, Big Bounce, and Big Freeze (heat death). Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as ethical limitations of using such technologies. The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings. The contemporary meaning of the term "transhumanism" was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School in the 1960s, when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman".The assertion would lay the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a futurist philosophy in 1990 and organizing in California an intelligentsia that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement. Influenced by seminal works of science fiction, the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives, including philosophy and religion. Researchers in futures studies and transhumanists investigate how the accelerating rate of scientific progress may lead to a "technological singularity" in the future that would profoundly and unpredictably change the course of human history, and result in Homo sapiens no longer being the dominant life form on Earth Eschatology /ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ (About this sound listen) is a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the "end of the world" or "end times". The word arises from the Greek ἔσχατος eschatos meaning "last" and -logy meaning "the study of", and was first used in English around 1844. The Oxford English Dictionary defines eschatology as "the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind". In the context of mysticism, the phrase refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and reunion with the Divine. In many religions it is taught as an existing future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore. History is often divided into "ages" (aeons), which are time periods each with certain commonalities. One age comes to an end and a new age or world to come, where different realities are present, begins. When such transitions from one age to another are the subject of eschatological discussion, the phrase, "end of the world", is replaced by "end of the age", "end of an era", or "end of life as we know it". Much apocalyptic fiction does not deal with the "end of time" but rather with the end of a certain period of time, the end of life as it is now, and the beginning of a new period of time. It is usually a crisis that brings an end to current reality and ushers in a new way of living, thinking, or being. This crisis may take the form of the intervention of a deity in history, a war, a change in the environment, or the reaching of a new level of consciousness. Most modern eschatology and apocalypticism, both religious and secular, involve the violent disruption or destruction of the world; whereas Christian and Jewish eschatologies view the end times as the consummation or perfection of God's creation of the world, albeit with violent overtures, such as the Great Tribulation. For example, according to some ancient Hebrew worldviews, reality unfolds along a linear path (or rather, a spiral path, with cyclical components that nonetheless have a linear trajectory); the world began with God and is ultimately headed toward God's final goal for creation, the world to come. Eschatologies vary as to their degree of optimism or pessimism about the future. In some eschatologies, conditions are better for some and worse for others, e.g. "heaven and hell".Katechon is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 in an eschatological context: Christians must not behave as if the Day of the Lord would happen tomorrow, since the Son of Perdition (the Antichrist of 1 and 2 John) must be revealed before. St. Paul then adds that the revelation of the Antichrist is conditional upon the removal of "something/someone that restrains him" and prevents him being fully manifested. Verse 6 uses the neuter gender, τὸ κατέχον; and verse 7 the masculine, ὁ κατέχων. the Antichrist will come at the End of the World. Since St. Paul does not explicitly mention the katechon's identity, the passage's interpretation has been subject to dialogue and debate amongst Christian scholars. The term is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 in an eschatological context: Christians must not behave as if the Day of the Lord would happen tomorrow, since the Son of Perdition (the Antichrist of 1 and 2 John) must be revealed before. St. Paul then adds that the revelation of the Antichrist is conditional upon the removal of "something/someone that restrains him" and prevents him being fully manifested. Verse 6 uses the neuter gender, τὸ κατέχον; and verse 7 the masculine, ὁ κατέχων. Since St. Paul does not explicitly mention the katechon's identity, the passage's interpretation has been subject to dialogue and debate amongst Christian scholars.In Nomos of the Earth, German political thinker Carl Schmitt suggests the historical importance within traditional Christianity of the idea of the katechontic "restrainer" that allows for a Rome-centered Christianity, and that "meant the historical power to restrain the appearance of the Antichrist and the end of the present eon." The katechon represents, for Schmitt, the intellectualization of the ancient Christianum Imperium, with all its police and military powers to enforce orthodox ethics (see Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, G.L. Ulmen, trs., (New York: Telos, 2003), pp. 59–60.) In his posthumously published diary the entry from December 19, 1947 reads: "I believe in the katechon: it is for me the only possible way to understand Christian history and to find it meaningful" (Glossarium, p. 63). And Schmitt adds: "One must be able to name the katechon for every epoch of the last 1,948 years. The place has never been empty, or else we would no longer exist." Paolo Virno has a long discussion of the katechon in his book Multitude: Between Innovation and Negation. He refers to Schmitt's discussion. Virno says that Schmitt views the katechon as something that impedes the coming of the Antichrist, but because the coming of the Antichrist is a condition for the redemption promised by the Messiah, the katechon also impedes the redemption.[1] p. 60. Virno uses "katechon" to refer to that which impedes both the War of all against all (Bellum omnium contra omnes) and totalitarianism, for example the society in Orwell's Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four). It impedes both but eliminates neither. Virno locates the katechon in the human ability to use language, which makes it possible to conceive of the negation of something, and also allows the conceptualization of something which can be other than what it is; and in the bioanthropological behavior of humans as social animals, which allows people to know how to follow rules without needing a rule to tell how to follow a rule, then a rule to tell how to follow that rule, and so on to infinity. These capabilities permit people to create social institutions and to dissolve or change them. Wolfgang Drechsler and Vasilis Kostakis have recently interpreted the katechon as Law that in contemporary technological development holds up immediate dangers but also prevent the ultimate e-society; they combine the interpretations by Schmitt, Agamben, and Virno to that end.1 Concerning the coming [the presence: tēs parousias] of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. 3 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion [apostasia] occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed [kai apokaluphthēi ho anthrōpos tēs anomias], the man doomed to destruction. 4 He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is holding him back [to katechon], so that he may be revealed [apokaluphthēnai] at the proper time. 7 For the secret power of lawlessness [to mustērion tēs anomias] is already at work [energeitai]; but the one who now holds it back [ho katechōn] will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed [apokaluphthēsetai ho anomos], whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming [tē epiphaneia tēs parousias autou]. Paul’s letter inaugurates the long and fascinating history of the katechon as a political concept that is still producing its effects today. So many strata of interpretation have accumulated ever since. For Tertullian, John Chrysostom, or Augustine, the katechon is the Roman Empire. In his Apology for the Christians (XXXII, 1) Tertullian thus very clearly states: There is also another need, a greater one, for our praying for the Emperors, as for the whole estate of the empire and the interests of Rome. We know that the great force which threatens the whole world, the end of the age itself with its menace of hideous suffering, is delayed by the respite which the Roman Empire means for us. We do not wish to experience all that; and when we pray for its postponement are helping forward the continuance of Rome. [Est et alia major necessitas nobis orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam saeculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu scimus retardari. Itaque nolumus experiri, ea dum precamur differri, Romanae diuturnitati favemus.] A divergent reading is proposed by John Calvin in his commentary on Paul’s Second Epistle, where he considers it “more probable” [probabilius] that the Apostle declared: “the light of the gospel must be diffused through all parts of the earth before God would thus give loose reins to Satan” [prius circumferendam per omnes terrae partes Evangelii lucem, antequam Deus ita Satanae frena laxaret].4 The katechon would thus be the evangelizing mission itself: “This, therefore, was the delay, until the career of the gospel should be completed” [haec igitur dilatio erat, donec completus esset Evangelii cursus]. According to Calvin, then, we could say that the katechontic deferral is the time the evangelic word needs to unfold its effects. It was Carl Schmitt who passed the concept on to contemporary political theory. In a letter to Hans Blumenberg dated October 22, 1974, Schmitt himself recognizes in the katechon the key to his political theory: “For more than 40 years I have been collecting materials on the problem of the ‘Κατεχων’ or ‘Κατεχον’ (2 Thess. 2, 6); and for all these years I have looked for a human ear that would listen to this question and understand it—for me the crucial question [Kernfrage] of (my) political theology.”5 Indeed, the word keeps recurring in Schmitt’s works from 1942 onward to characterize the most different entities or historical figures: it is used for the first time in an article published in the journal Das Reich on April 19, 1942, in order to negatively portray the United States as a “delayer of world history” [Verzögerer der Weltgeschichte] in front of the Nazi imperial project; it then appears later in the same year, in the essay Land and Sea, to describe the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire (said to have “acted as a rampart, a katechon, as it is called in Greek . . . against the onslaughts of Islam”) and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (depicted as being “not an active hero, but rather a brake, a delaying factor . . . able to delay the Thirty-Years War by several decades”).6 Even Hegel ends up becoming katechontic in a 1950 article where Schmitt, discussing Karl Löwith’s book The Meaning of History, speaks of “a force that defers the end and restrains the evil one” [einer Kraft, die das Ende aufhält und den Bösen niederhält]: This is the katechon of the mysterious passage of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. The medieval empire of the German rulers understood itself historically as the katechon. Luther still understood it in these terms, whereas Calvin takes a significant turn by no longer taking the empire but rather the preaching of God’s words as the katechon. The conception of withholding and deferring forces and powers can in some form probably be demonstrated to be active for every great historian [die Vorstellung haltender und aufhaltender

Kräfte und Mächte lässt sich in irgendeiner Form wohl bei jedem großen Historiker nachweisen]. Nietzsche furiously identified Hegel and the sixth sense of the Germans, i.e., the historical sense, as the great deferrer on the way to expressed atheism [Nietzsche hat voller Wut gerade in Hegel und in dem sechsten, das ist in dem historischen Sinn der Deutschen, den großen Verzögerer auf dem Weg zum offenen Atheismus erblickt]. With Schmitt, the differentiation in the concept’s extension—the pluralizing of its possible embodiments—is well under way, thereby turning the katechon into a metahistorical structure beyond the historically identifiable forces that represent it.8 As Schmitt himself notes in an entry in his Glossarium dated December 17, 1947: The katechon is the only possibility as a Christian to understand history and find it meaningful [er ist für mich die einzige Möglichkeit, als Christ Geschichte zu verstehen und sinnvoll zu finden]. We have to be able to name the katechon for every epoch in the last 1948 years [Schmitt writes in 1947]. The place has never been unoccupied, otherwise we would not be present anymore [der Platz war niemals unbesetzt, sonst wären wir nicht mehr vorhanden] . . . There are temporary, transient, splinter-like fragmentary bearers of this role [es gibt zeitweise, vorübergehende, splitterhaft fragmentarische Inhaber dieser Aufgabe]. In Schmitt’s writings, then, we are witnessing a striking generalization of the katechon. It now becomes possible to consider the katechontic force that withholds as inherent to “every theory of the State, including Hobbes’s,” as Agamben puts it in The Time That Remains. It now becomes possible to ask, as Massimo Cacciari does in a recent book entitled Il potere che frena (“The Power That Withholds”): “Does not every constituted power that is effectively in force belong to the dimension of the katechon? Shouldn’t it have at its disposal a katechontic energy?” Katechon is here abstracted from its initial context, it undergoes a process of “secularization,” as Agamben emphasizes, while obviously retaining something of its original Christian logic (or theologics). With this (quasi-)secularization also comes a shift from the question “quid or quis est katechon?,” as Cacciari formulates it, toward the complex temporality of the katechontic as such.11 For the postponement that the katechon produces or enacts amounts to a double deferral. To borrow Roberto Esposito’s words in Immunitas: “[I]n delaying the explosion of evil . . . it also at the same time delays the final victory of the principle of good. The triumph of evil is held in check, true, but the divine parousia is also delayed by its very existence. Its function is positive, but negatively so.”Withholding the coming of an Antichrist who in his turn precedes the coming of the Messiah, the katechon amounts to a kind of postponement of a postponement. And this is the reason why Agamben goes as far as to identify Derrida as the paradigmatic thinker of the katechontic force of our times: The katechon, suspending and withholding the end [sospendendo e trattenendo la fine], inaugurates a time in which nothing can really happen [or occur: avvenire] because the sense of historical becoming, that has its truth only in the eschaton, is indefinitely deferred [differito] . . . . Schmitt’s katechontic time is a blocked messianism [un messianismo bloccato]: but this blocked messianism reveals itself as the theological paradigm of the time in which we live [il paradigma teologico del tempo in cui viviamo], the structure of which is nothing else than the Derridian différance. Christian eschatology introduced a sense and a direction in time: katechon and différance, suspending and deferring this sense, render it undecidable. Of course, on the one hand, Derrida himself would have protested against this reduction of différance to a mere characterization of “the time in which we live.” The unity or consistence of such a “time” has always been the target or focus of deconstruction’s questioning, from Derrida’s early insistence on the impossible closure of a context to his appropriation of the Shakespearian motto quoted over and over again in Specters of Marx: “Time is out of joint.”But, on the other hand, Agamben’s attempt to historicize différance could very well be supported by some of Derrida’s own statements: suffice it to recall here that even when Derrida defined deconstruction as “what happens” [ce qui arrive], i.e. as what disrupts the very epochality of an epoch or a “time,” he immediately added: “It remains then to situate, localize, determine what happens with what happens, when it happens. To date it.” In other words, even if Agamben’s unashamed historicization of deconstruction seems to be at odds with the latter’s insistence on untimeliness, even if it apparently yields too quickly and easily to Schmitt’s Christian-historical requirement that “we have to be able to name the katechon for every epoch in the last 1948 years”—ours supposedly being deconstruction itself—, he also might be said to further one of deconstruction’s constant concerns or efforts. And this should be a sufficient reason to try to take Agamben’s suggestion seriously, or at least take it as a sign, as a symptom worth analyzing, without procrastinating anymore. Indeed, you might be wondering what I am getting at with this long reconstruction of the history of the katechon, from Paul to Agamben and beyond. You might even be thinking that I keep deferring this very question—“what am I getting at?”—, that I delay the moment when, hopefully, I will finally spell out the political stakes of the katechon for today. In sum, you might be suspecting that I am using the archaeology of the katechon as the very katechon for my political discourse on it. Now, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, I would argue that nothing is more urgently needed than this concept of the katechon as general(ized) deferral, provided we pursue the movement initiated by Schmitt, i.e. its abstraction, the severing of its ties with its original Christian context. (Of course, the name of this abstracting process could well be Christianity itself as globalization, as what Derrida has called “globalatinization,” mondialatinisation.

 

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katechon

  

We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle, 1855

The most powerful and complex space telescope ever created by humankind has achieved its final form as a fully assembled observatory. Reaching a major milestone, technicians and engineers have successfully connected the two halves of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California.

 

To combine both halves of Webb, engineers carefully lifted the Webb telescope (which includes the mirrors and science instruments) above the already-combined sunshield and spacecraft using a crane. Team members slowly guided the telescope into place, ensuring that all primary points of contact were perfectly aligned and seated properly. The observatory has been mechanically connected; next steps will be to electrically connect the halves, and then test the electrical connections.

 

Read more about this major milestone: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-james-webb-space...

 

In this image: Integration teams carefully guide Webb’s suspended telescope section into place above its Spacecraft Element just prior to integration.

 

Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

 

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The most powerful and complex space telescope ever created by humankind has achieved its final form as a fully assembled observatory. Reaching a major milestone, technicians and engineers have successfully connected the two halves of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time at Northrop Grumman’s facilities in Redondo Beach, California.

 

To combine both halves of Webb, engineers carefully lifted the Webb telescope (which includes the mirrors and science instruments) above the already-combined sunshield and spacecraft using a crane. Team members slowly guided the telescope into place, ensuring that all primary points of contact were perfectly aligned and seated properly. The observatory has been mechanically connected; next steps will be to electrically connect the halves, and then test the electrical connections.

 

Read more about this major milestone: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-james-webb-space...

 

In this image: The fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope with its sunshield and unitized pallet structures (UPSs) that fold up around the telescope for launch, are seen partially deployed to an open configuration to enable telescope installation.

 

Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

 

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During the second step of humankind’s first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) captured this stunning view of Earth. The image covers the northern Pacific Ocean.

 

The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 23:48 CEST on 20 August 2024, as Juice was heading towards its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025.

 

The Juice monitoring cameras were designed to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, especially during the challenging deployment period following launch.

 

They were not designed to carry out science or image the Moon and Earth. A scientific camera called JANUS is providing high-resolution imagery during the cruise phase flybys of Earth, Moon and Venus, and of Jupiter and its icy moons once in the Jupiter system in 2031.

 

JMC1 is located on the front* of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that sees deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed by Simeon Schmauß and Mark McCaughrean.

 

Find out more

 

Guide to Juice’s monitoring cameras

 

More information on the lunar-Earth flyby

 

Rewatch the livestream of Juice’s first Moon images, including Q&A with the team

 

More images from Juice's monitoring cameras in ESA's Planetary Science Archive

 

*Additional technical information: ‘front’ means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.

 

Credits: ESA/Juice/JMC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Acknowledgements: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrean

The Baroque facade detail of the church of Santa Maria Assunta is very special. I was particularly taken with the view looking skyward; the symmetry, lines of architrave, columns.

 

Venice abounds in beautiful religious buildings and the Jesuit church of Santa Maria Assunta is one of them - located in the Cannaregio district, in Campo dei Gesuiti.

 

Sources give its origins as 1148, the designer of the current building was Domenico Rossi (1657 - 1737).

 

I learned that the symbol/christogram of IHS came to stand for Jesus Savior of Humankind. Being Iesus (Jesus) Hominum (of humankind) Salvator (Savior).

 

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Despite humankind’s scientific prowess there are still many phenomena that defy explanation or a common agreement on why something happens. A ‘glory’ is a rare optical phenomenon that is mostly seen by pilots and mountain climbers looking down at mists or clouds. Forming a miniature circular rainbow, glories are seen when the Sun shines from behind and interacts with water droplets to refract light back to the observer.

 

This picture is an even more rare example of a glory seen from space. Snapped by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst on 14 September 2018 during his Horizons mission, he commented: “Surprised to see a pilot's glory from the International Space Station, an optical phenomenon that is often visible from aircraft, or on volcanoes when looking down in a foggy crater, with Sun in the back. Our shadow is (theoretically) right in the middle of the rainbow, but we don't have a core shadow due to our altitude.”

 

To see a glory at the International Space Station’s cruising altitude of 400 km is surprising as they require specific atmospheric conditions.

 

Our atmosphere extends to 480 km above the surface of Earth but most of it stays within 16 km, making the boundaries of where “space” begins hardly a defined point.

 

The Kármán line at 100 km altitude is a generally accepted point that represents the boundary between Earth and space, but weather, and space weather, will often take no heed of boundaries defined by humans.

 

In the upper reaches of our atmosphere many more phenomena have been spotted that we know little about, from noctilucent clouds to sprites, blue jets and elves, but the International Space Station offers a great platform to investigate these phenomena.

 

The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) was installed this year as a dedicated facility outside the European space laboratory Columbus. The collection of optical cameras, photometers and X- and gamma-ray detectors are designed to look for electrical discharges born in stormy weather conditions that extend above thunderstorms into the upper atmosphere.

 

This observatory is not designed to investigate glories but space events such as sprites and blue jets are just as awe-inspiring to view from space. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured a sprite on camera from the International Space Station, proving the phenomenon can be observed from space – rare photos of the phenomena were also taken by pilots and researchers from mountaintops.

 

Sometimes a simple photograph can spark scientific investigation or even full-blown scientific research. Alexander’s pictures of aurora from his last mission in 2014 are adding extra information for researchers analysing these beautiful atmospheric displays of light.

 

The International Space Station also hosted ESA’s Solar facility that monitored the radiation emitted by the Sun across the electromagnetic spectrum. For almost a decade it tracked the Sun to measure our star’s energy, delivering the most accurate data on the Sun’s power that influences our climate on Earth but also how satellites operate in space.

 

The phenomenon in this picture is related to atmospheric physics and so strictly speaking not space weather. This week, however ESA is highlighting space weather, from the science behind it and how we study it, to its effect on satellites in space and ESA’s plans for the future. Keep your eye on ESA’s online channels to find out more, or follow these hashtags in social media: #SpaceWeather #SolarHazards #SafeguardingOurPlanet.

 

Credits: ESA/NASA

14-Jan-2021: 1. Death to 2020

Fave! Mockumentary.

 

Tennyson Foss, historian: "Now, of course, all this division, all this intractable conflict, was tearing humankind asunder at the worst possible time. Because, of course, at the very moment that we were preoccupied with fighting each other, the corona virus was steadily bearing down upon us. Now, those who've closely studied the history books, such as myself, knew that this was strongly reminiscent of the time the White Walkers led their army of the dead towards the warring factions of Westeros."

Interviewer: "So you mean like in 'Game of thrones'?"

Foss: "No, no. I am discussing history."

Interviewer: "I'm pretty sure that was 'Game of thrones'."

Foss: "Well, I'm pretty sure that I am the historian here."

Foss: "…"

Foss: "Cut to a map or something."

 

Dr Maggie Gravel, behavioural therapist: "Human beings are social animals, so shutting down social interactions goes against our instinct. I mean, for most folks, not me. I fucking hate people. My god, it was bliss!"

 

Kathy Flowers, soccer mom: "I know criminal behaviour when I see it. Whether it's someone breaking a window or a Black man sitting in a car."

Interviewer: "Wasn't there a video of you haranguing a Black man sitting in a car that went viral this year?"

Flowers: "…"

Man in video clip: "And I'm telling you this is my car!"

Flowers in video clip: "Well, then I'm sure you'll prove that with some ID! Yeah."

Flowers: "First of all, I… I wasn't haranguing. I was politely inquiring. For less than an hour."

Interviewer: "So that was the only time you did something like that this year?"

Flowers: "Um… There was an incident at a pool."

Woman in video clip: "Give it back!"

Flowers in video clip: "Do you have a receipt for this towel? I just need to see a receipt!"

Flowers: "Uh, there was an incident up in the hills."

Man in video clip: "I'm painting a water colour!"

Flowers in video clip: "OK, the way that you're wielding that paintbrush is very unsettling to me."

Flowers: "And at the hospital."

Flowers in video clip: "Sweetie, are you absolutely sure that this is your dialysis machine?"

Girl in video clip: "Mommy, the crazy lady's back again!"

Flowers in video clip: "I was just asking. I'm allowed to ask."

Flowers (voice breaking): "I don't know why people are so quick to judge."

Flowers: "…"

Flowers: *points to boom operator, a black man*

Flowers (mouthing): "Is he with you?"

Interviewer: "That's Mike. He's been here all day."

 

21-Feb-2021: 2. David Attenborough: A life on our planet

Fave! Docu. BRB CRYING

 

David Attenborough: "A marked change in atmospheric carbon has always been incompatible with a stable Earth. It was a feature of all five mass extinctions. In previous events, it had taken volcanic activity up to one million years to dredge up enough carbon from within the Earth to trigger a catastrophe. By burning millions of years' worth of living organisms all at once as coal and oil, we have managed to do so in less than 200."

 

"Rewilding the world is simpler than you might think. And the changes we have to make will only benefit ourselves and the generations that follow. A century from now, our planet could be a wild place again. And I'm going to tell you how. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time – the number that can be sustained on the natural resources available. With nothing to restrict us, our population has been growing dramatically throughout my lifetime. On current projections, there will be 11 billion people on Earth by 2100. But it's possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. Japan's standard of living climbed rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century. As healthcare and education improved, people's expectations and opportunities grew, and the birth rate fell. In 1950, a Japanese family was likely to have three or more children. By 1975, the average was two. The result is that the population has now stabilized and has hardly changed since the millennium. There are signs that this has started to happen across the globe. As nations develop everywhere, people choose to have fewer children. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. A key reason the population is still growing is because many of us are living longer. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to healthcare, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make it peak sooner and at a lower level. Why wouldn't we want to do these things? Giving people a greater opportunity of life is what we would want to do anyway. The trick is to raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world. That may sound impossible, but there are ways in which we can do this."

 

28-Feb-2021: 3. Crush proof

 

1-Mar-2021: 4. Mank

 

2-Mar-2021: 5. The social dilemma

Fave! Docu about social media addiction and stuff. If you need to lock yourself out of the Internet or just specific sites (and a time-locked cookie jar isn't strong enough for you), I strongly recommend the app Freedom. If time = money, Freedom will pay its own way pretty quickly… At least it did in my case. :p Willpower depletion is a thing.

In other news, the docu mentioned the idea of taxing data collection. I approve of this. :q

 

3-Mar-2021: 6. The game changers

Fave! Docu about a bunch of vegan athletes who get insane results. Produced by Arnold, Jackie Chan, and some other people. :)

 

6-Mar-2021: 7. A plastic ocean

Docu. I expected to fave it, of course, but I didn't. For reasons. -_- Anyway, click here for a great video about cute baby birds. Stop making humans.

 

16-Mar-2021: 8. Becoming

Fave! Docu.

 

18-Mar-2021: 9. Ricky Gervais: Humanity

Stand-up show.

 

30-Apr-2021: 10. Eat pray love

 

15-May-2021: 11. The truth about alcohol

Docu. (I do not partake.)

 

20-May-2021: 12. Eurotrip

In honour of the 10th anniversary of my first Interrail trip...

 

9-Jun-2021: 13. The Santa incident

Yeah, that happened. I ordered the DVD in the final week of 2020 and it arrived like 4 months later and… -_-

 

10-Jun-2021: 14. The prom

Fave! And the soundtrack too! x)

 

11-Jun-2021: 15. The intouchables

 

12-2021: 16. Once upon a time in Hollywood

 

14-Jun-2021: 17. Rocketman

Fave! The best non-documentary film I saw this year. I became especially obsessed with the "Saturday night’s alright" scene and watched it OVER 9 BAZILLION TIMES. o_O AAAAAAAAAAAAAA. And several other songs also made me go "Hmm, this sounds pretty nice. I should probably check out more of his music." I'd had a handful of Elton songs in my collection for decades (I first heard him on "The lion king" soundtrack), but now I really started to spend time with ALL THE ALBUMS. (Er, I'm almost done.) Normally, the high point of my week is… the Flickr upload… :B But the Flickr habit had kind of been broken over the summer, for reasons. So the new high point of each week was to sit the fuck down with a new (to me…) Elton album and a can o' energy drink and no distractions. Ahhh. And I've got THREE ELTON SHOWS booked for 2022 and 2023! But I half expect them to get postponed or cancelled. :'( I COULD have started listening to him properly in 1995 or some shit. PS. Fave Elton song: "Live like horses". :'D Never heard it before 2021. D:

 

15-Jun-2021: 18. Bo Burnham: Inside

Comedy special. Funny and catchy songs. xD I put several of them on my iPod, such as "How the world works" and "Sexting". :B

 

19-Jun-2021: 19. Django unchained

 

25-Jun-2021: 20. The mustang

 

27-Jun-2021: 21. Steve Jobs

 

21-Jul-2021: 22. Kingsman: The secret service

Fave!

 

22-Jul-2021: 23. Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Heehee. :B

 

23-Jul-2021: 24. Chernobyl 1986

There’s a scary man in this movie. Oh, and a nuclear meltdown.

 

31-Jul-2021: 25. Harriet

 

11-Sep-2021: 26. Assassin's creed

 

18-Sep-2021: 27. Mammal

 

25-Sep-2021: 28. The big short

 

2-Oct-2021: 29. Deepwater Horizon

 

9-Oct-2021: 30. Late night

Employee Gabe: "I'm in a single-income household. And Jen and I just had our second baby, Taylor. *shows photo* Adorable, huh?"

Boss Katherine: "She takes after you."

Gabe: "Yeah. Thanks. So, there's just a lot of expenses at home right now, and I think it's time for a raise."

Katherine: "I see. This is actually very exciting to me."

Gabe: "Really? Great."

Katherine: "Because what you're describing is the most clear-cut example of the classic sexist argument for the advancement of men in the workplace. You're asking for a raise not because of any work-related contribution you've made, but simply because you have a family. And that's why, in the 1950s, family men were promoted over the women they worked with. I've never encountered it, actually, in such a clean, teachable way."

Gabe: "I don't think that's at all what's happening."

Katherine: "I can't give you a raise, Gabe. It's like giving a raise to a drug addict."

Gabe: "What?"

Katherine: "Well, your situations are virtually identical. A drug addict makes certain decisions outside of work for their sense of self and comfort, and then the addiction demands more time, more energy, more money, just like a child."

Gabe: "My child's like a drug problem?"

Katherine: "Exactly. :D You want special treatment. I'm sure you can see how unfair that would be to a single man, or woman."

Gabe: "There are no women on this staff."

Other employee: "Gabe…"

Gabe: "And the reason there aren't any women is because you hate women. So you can sit there spouting all this pseudo-feminist bullshit, but we all know what's going on here."

Katherine: "We need to hire a woman. [To Gabe] You're fired, obviously."

 

16-Oct-2021: 31. Attack of the Hollywood clichés!

Fave! Docu.

 

23-Oct-2021: 32. Cast away

My biology studies included a course in outdoor pedagogy, during which we had to choose a practical project. My classmate took a bunch of kindergarteners into the woods for a nice day of grilling hot dogs over a campfire and shit like that. A kid had reportedly happened to drop their hot dog in the fire, which caused them to exclaim…

"I HATE NATURE!"

This became a bit of a catchphrase in our class whenever something went slightly or terribly wrong in the great outdoors.

So I heard "I HATE NATURE!" in my head kind of frequently while watching "Cast away". :B

 

13-Nov-2021: 33. No time to die

*nudge* Check out my photos of A CERTAIN BRIDGE! :B I found out during the roadtrip that the new Bond movie would feature the Atlantic Ocean Road… IIRC, it was filmed only a few weeks before my visit! :D (But don't quote me on that.)

 

14-Nov-2021: 34. Eurovision Song Contest: The story of Fire Saga

Fave! It… it made me want to start watching the actual Eurovision Song Contest. o_O THE PEOPLE FROM MY KEWL NINE INCH NAILS CIRCLE MUST NEVER FIND OUT

 

27-Nov-2021: 35. Last Christmas

Kate, re Brexit: "They're not gonna send you back. You live here. This is your home."

Mum: "I know how it start. They point a finger. They say, 'Those people, they are reason your life is bad.' And people believe. They believe."

Kate: "I know. I know."

Mum: *sob*

Mum: "I blame the Poles."

Kate: "OK…"

Kate: -_-

 

If you liked this movie, you may also enjoy "The sixth sense", "Sweet November", and "Truly, madly, deeply". Lastly, thanks to Netflix for spoiling the movie with a poorly chosen still that is shown while the movie loads. YEAH! At least I didn't spot the spoilage right from the start. Nor did I suspect that the very title is kind of spoily. Ahem.

 

11-Dec-2021: 36. En underbar jävla jul (a.k.a. Holy mess)

 

24-Dec-2021: 37. The road to El Dorado

 

25-Dec-2021: 38. Bird box

Music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross! Mad breath-holding skillz and body-heat-preservation skillz by the little birdies in the box. o_O

 

Dec-2021: 39. The square (2013)

Docu.

 

31-Dec-2021: 40. Don't look up

Fave! I'm happy it seems to be so popular. :B Netflix dropped the trailer on me one day. I only read the synopsis and put the movie on my to-see list immediately. :p

 

-------------------------------------

Vegan FAQ! :)

 

The Web Site the Meat Industry Doesn't Want You to See.

 

Please watch Earthlings.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle, 1855

 

Happy Bokeh Wednesday!! :)

 

I took this photo at a place called Boundary Bay. When the tide is out it looks more like a marsh or wetland, strands of seaweed are left behind in the low laying grasses and as they dry in the afternoon sun, some take flight in the breeze and get caught up in frames of winter plants..

 

© Carmen Brown. All rights reserved. Do not use without my permission.

Xerophyta retinervis in habitat at the "Cradle of Humankind" (a World Heritage Site in Kromdraai, Gauteng, South Africa). Spotted Aloes (Aloe greatheadii var. davyana) and Proteas (Sugar Bush) are scattered throughout the grasslands.

 

"Mrs. Ples" (Australopithecus africanus) was found in this area in 1947, and is currently the oldest human fossil found to date. This gave rise to the idea that Africa is the "Cradle of Humankind".

 

In 2008 two fossilised skeletons of a new species of early human "Australopithecus sediba" were discovered.

 

Winter, June 2007.

 

Best viewed LARGE.

 

Martin

-

Administrator of:

Stapeliad & Asclepiad Group

All things beautiful in Nature Group

Succulent Treasures of the Desert Group

The World Up-Close (Nature Macro) Group

confluence (also: conflux) occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join together to form a single channel.

Since rivers often serve as political boundaries, confluences sometimes demarcate three abutting political entities, such as nations, states, or provinces, forming a tripoint. Various examples are found in the list below.

A number of major cities, such as Chongqing, St. Louis, and Khartoum, arose at confluences; further examples appear in the list. Within a city, a confluence often forms a visually prominent point, so that confluences are sometimes chosen as the site of prominent public buildings or monuments, as Lyon, and Winnipeg. Cities also often build parks at confluences, sometimes as projects of municipal improvement, as at Lyon . In other cases, a confluence is an industrial site, as in Philadelphia or Mannheim. Often a confluence lies in the shared floodplain of the two rivers and nothing is built on it, for example at Manaus, described below.

One other way that confluences may be employed by humans is as a sacred place in a religion. Rogers suggests that for the ancient peoples of the Iron Age in northwest Europe, watery locations were often sacred, especially sources and confluences. Pre-Christian Slavic peoples chose confluences as the sites for fortified triangular temples, where they practiced human sacrifice and other sacred rites. In Hinduism, the confluence of two sacred rivers often is a pilgrimage site for ritual bathing. In Pittsburgh, a number of adherents to Mayanism consider their city's confluence to be sacred.

 

The Confluence project aims to double the area of downtown Lyon by urbanizing the area. It was created by Lyon Mayor Raymond Barre, who launched the idea in 1995 by creating the Lyon-Confluence mission. An international definition competition was launched in 1997 and won by the MBM team (Thierry Melot, Oriol Bohigas and Catherine Mosbach), which took over the study contract that led to the elaboration of the first master plan for the operation presented to the public in 19991.

 

This master plan proposes a 30-year vision and provides for the long-term opening up of the peninsula through major infrastructure measures: decommissioning of the A7 motorway into an urban boulevard along the Rhone, creation of the western motorway bypass in Lyon, transformation of the Lyon-Perrache station and creation of a north-south urban continuity through the installation of a railway viaduct, demolition of the interchange centre for the resettlement of the A7. This long-term vision is the support of a phased project in several short term urban operations, sequentially linked and programmed in sequence. Raymond Barre's state of health may not have allowed him to run for a second term as mayor or president of the urban community, even if he had always indicated that he wanted to serve only one term (see his conversation book L' expérience du pouvoir); the election of Gérard Collomb in 2001 led to the eviction of the MBM team in favour of urban planner François Grether and landscape architect Michel Desvigne

 

The developer is the Urban Community of Lyon4. The completion of the operation necessitates the creation of a mixed economy company, SEM Confluence, created in July 1999 to promote and carry out the operation. First chaired by Raymond Barre, it is then chaired by Gérard Collomb, the new mayor and president of the urban community since 2001, and headed by Jean-Pierre Gallet. The SEM was transformed in 2007 into SPLA (Société publique locale d' aménagement) Lyon Confluence; in 2012 SPLA became SPL (Société publique locale d' aménagement). After Mr. Gallet's retirement in 2014, Pierre Joutard was appointed Deputy Chief Executive Officer.

 

The architects and urban planners of the project are for housing, in particular integral Lipsky+Rollet architects, Manuel Gautrand, Massimiliano Fuksas, MVRDV-Winy Maas and for offices, among others, Jean-Michel Wilmotte, Jakob-Mac Farlane, Rudy Ricciotti, Odile Decq.

 

The headquarters of the Regional Council of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is run by Christian de Portzamparc. The museum, known as the Museum of Confluences, designed by the Austrian architectural firm Coop Himmelb (l)au, has been under construction since October 2006 and was arrested in 2007, before being taken over by Vinci in April 2010; it opens to the public on 20 December 20145. In January 2015, the Urban Community (Le Grand Lyon) became a metropolis, and in January 2015, it took over all departmental infrastructures located on its territory, including the museum.

 

The project also provides for the opening up of the district by building heavy infrastructure connecting it to the Gerland district and the Perrache railway station. A first extension of the T1 tramway was inaugurated in September 2005, from Perrache station to Montrochet street, and a second extension was opened in February 2014 to Debourg station. Four bridges over the Rhône and the Saône are also planned: the Girondins bridge overlooking rue des Girondins in Gerland, the Raymond Barre bridge between the Musée des Confluences and Parc des Berges6, and a "transversal modes-doux" bridge with two footbridges, the first on the Rhône and the second on the Saône. On the other hand, the abolition of the A7 motorway is awaiting the western motorway bypass, and the construction of new vaults under Perrache is only partially planned for the 2014-2020 mandate.

In 2011, Greater Lyon and the Japanese para-government agency Nedo, responsible for supporting research and development in environmental technologies, are launching the implementation of a smart community. The demonstrator project consists of the construction of 3 buildings on island P (the last island to be built along the nautical basin), the deployment of a fleet of electric car-sharing vehicles, the installation of energy boxes to assist residents in controlling their energy consumption, and the creation of a community management system for energy audit8. The sub-project, estimated at 50 million euros, is managed by Toshiba.

 

The Confluence is recognised by the French government as an eco-district, a sustainable district by the WWF, and has been awarded the European Concerto label for low energy consumption of buildings9.

 

Companies such as GL Events or Euronews established their global headquarters in the neighbourhood in 2014.

 

As the first phase ends with the Denusière district, at the end of the development, the second phase can begin, on the site of the old "market-station", called the "Quartier du Marché", then the "Quartier du Champ" or "du Campo".

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confluence

When I look for kindness now

Humankind just lets me down

youtu.be/WXwKXouZHFw?feature=shared

 

www.freehavenphotography.com

Pencil on paper

~8.5 X 10 inches

Directly from shadows

A new day breaks in the "Cradle of Humankind" (a World Heritage Site in Kromdraai, Gauteng, South Africa).

 

"Mrs. Ples" (Australopithecus africanus) was found in this area in 1947, and is currently the oldest human fossil found to date. This gave rise to the idea that Africa is the "Cradle of Humankind".

 

In 2008 two fossilised skeletons of a new species of early human "Australopithecus sediba" were discovered.

 

Winter, June 2007.

 

Best viewed LARGE.

 

Martin

-

Administrator of:

Stapeliad & Asclepiad Group

All things beautiful in Nature Group

Succulent Treasures of the Desert Group

The World Up-Close (Nature Macro) Group

…after a long walk, with the threat of heavy rain, you get to spend a good hour or two slipping and sliding, crouching and crawling along one of the oldest tunnels dug by humankind. That mud is sticky…very sticky and I’ll defy anyone to go down there and not come out covered!

 

It’s normal to spend a good couple of hours cleaning your camera equipment once you have been down here!

 

Went with a good friend Jim who, as a postman, you would have thought a long walk would have been no bother…jeez…the moaning !

 

All pictures copyright to www.mckenzie.photos

 

The full history....

  

The idea of a fixed link across the English Channel was first put forward in the early part of the 19th Century but concerns over national security stalled attempts to progress it.

But an Anglo-French protocol was established in 1876 for a railway tunnel under the Channel. South Eastern Railway Chairman Sir Edward Watkin and French Suez Canal contractor Alexandre Lavalley conducted exploratory works on either side of the water, coming together in 1882 under the umbrella of the Submarine Railway Company.

In 1880, No.1 shaft was sunk and a 7-foot diameter pilot tunnel begun below Abbot's Cliff, between Dover and Folkestone, 10 feet above high water level. The driving force was Captain Thomas English's rotary boring machine - 33 feet in length and powered by compressed air - which was capable of cutting 5/16" for every rotation of its cutting head, at a rate of two revolutions per minute and almost half-a-mile per month. It was though hoped that this performance could be improved over time.

In February 1881, with about 800 feet driven and the machine proven, work was refocused at a site further along the coast, accessed via the 160-foot No.2 shaft at Shakespeare Cliff. Here another pilot tunnel was started under the foreshore, progressing through lower grey chalk towards a meeting with the French pilot tunnel - which was extending from Sangatte - 11 miles out to sea. This phase of the work was expected to be complete by 1886. Machinery was being developed which would then have enlarged the heading to 14 feet in diameter before a 2-foot thick concrete lining was inserted. The approach railways would fall on a gradient of 1:80 before reaching a depth of 150 feet below the sea bed. Operational ventilation would be provided by the compressed-air locomotives used to haul the trains.

But 1882 saw the government call a halt, worried about the military implications of a land-link to Europe. Sir Edward's well-reasoned reassurances fell on deaf ears with 2,040 yards of the Shakespeare Cliff heading driven, another 897 yards at Abbot's Cliff and 1,825 yards on the French side of the Channel. Both shafts were later backfilled.

When the idea of a tunnel was revisited in both 1974 and 1988, various remedial works were carried out on the 1880s workings as a result of the new alignments potentially intersecting with them. This work discovered a number of roof falls and broken timber supports. A concrete bulkhead was installed 890 yards into the No.2 heading, effectively entombing the boring machine.

Access to the original heading has been maintained as it meets one of the drainage adits driven from the base of the cliff under the coastal railway. This joins the 1880 tunnel 70 metres from the surface, after passing beneath Shakespeare Cliff Tunnel where it has been reinforced with concrete arches. Adjacent to the junction is a timber-lined passage leading to the base of the shaft where the boring machine would have been assembled.

   

My piece for Cabinet of Curiosities, a group show by Kult.

("Miss Anne Trophy" = Misanthropy, which is defined as a dislike of humankind.)