An astonishing new technology is bringing damaged and faded ancient texts to light. Scientists demonstrated its potential by scanning and translating the Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription during a news conference this morning.
Researchers at MIT have developed the Subatomic Ultra-Parsing Epigraphic Resolving Digital Uranium-Potassium Electrical Rotoscoping Chemical Oscillating Orthographic Laser computer scanner that can reconstruct any ancient inscription whether faded, damaged, or even missing completely.
Broken and faded inscriptions have confounded scholars for generations. Now, a group of graduate students under the supervision of MIT Professor Q. Rutherford “Scotty” Dufenschmirtz have created a machine able to detect microscopic chemical elements in the writing surface. The machine analyzes the variations caused by ink or chiseling marks and displays patterns on a screen, permitting people to “see” the shapes of ancient letters.
The new method is so precise, it even detects tiny particles that originated from missing/broken portions of a writing surface. By studying…
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A HYMN FOR TODAY
Take Thou our minds, dear Lord, we humbly pray;
Give us the mind of Christ each passing day;
Teach us to know the truth that sets us free;
Grant us in all our thoughts to honor Thee.
Take Thou our hearts, O Christ – they are Thine own;
Come Thou within our souls and claim Thy throne;
Help us to shed abroad Thy deathless love;
Use us to make the earth like heav’n above.
Take Thou ourselves, O Lord – heart, mind, and will;
Through our surrendered souls Thy plans fulfill.
We yield ourselves to Thee – time, talents, all;
We hear, and henceforth heed, Thy sov’reign call.
10.10.10.10 – William H. Foulkes, 1918
Tune: HALL – Calvin W. Laufer, 1918
#485 in Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, 2012
Locusts
Shmuel Browns, Israel guide and photographer, has posted the best photo of a locust that I have seen. And the photos of flowers in the Judean Desert are something most tourists never get to see. Look here.
From the top of the Great Pyramid
Carl Rasmussen, at his HolyLandPhoto’s blog, calls attention to some photos made by some Russians from the top of one of the Great Pyramid of Giza here. There you will find links to the Mail Online (British) and English Russia.
I suppose I never wished to climb the Great Pyramid, but I had two men with me in 1978 who wanted to do so. In the photo below you might be able to make out two men (Jim Puterbaugh and Bob Lyman) to the right of the marker showing the original height of the structure. Click on the photo for a larger…
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In the midst of Louisville’s 85-63, Final Four clinching victory over the Duke Blue Devils on Sunday, Cardinal sophomore Kevin Ware suffered quite possibly the most gruesome leg injury in the history of competitive sports.
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A HYMN FOR TODAY
Come, see the place where Jesus lay,
And hear angelic watchers say,
“He lives, who once was slain:
Why seek the living midst the dead?”
Remember how the Savior said
That He would rise again.
O joyful sound! O glorious hour,
When by His Father’s mighty pow’r
He rose and left the grave!
Now let our songs His triumph tell,
Who burst the bands of death and hell,
And ever lives to save.
The first begotten of the dead,
For us He rose, our glorious head,
Immortal life to bring.
What though the saints like Him shall die?
We share our leader’s victory,
And triumph with our king.
No more we tremble at the grave,
For Jesus will our spirits save
And raise our slumb’ring dust.
O risen Lord, in You we live;
To You our ransomed souls we give,
To You our bodies trust.
O ransomed, let your praise resound,
And in your Master’s work abound,
Steadfast, immovable.
Be sure you labor not in vain;
Your bodies shall be raised again,
No more corruptible.
8.8.6.8.8.6 – Thomas Kelly,1806
Tune: PIETY NEW – Funk’s Harmonia Sacra
attrib. C. J. Stanley, 1851
#250 in Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, 2012
Footnote 14 – Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Vintage/Random House, 2008), p. 3
“The fact that slavery is the sole undeniable cause of this infamous rebellion, that it is a war of, by and for Slavery, is as plain as the noon-day sun.” So claimed the farmers, shopkeepers, and laborers who made up the Thirteeenth Wisconsin Infantry Regiment in February 1862. The white Southerners of Morgan’s Confederate Brigade might not have seen eye to eye with the Wisconsin men on much in 1862, but they agreed that “any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks … is either a fool or a liar.” Two years later, black men in the Fourteenth Rhode Island Heavy Artillery reminded each other, “upon your prowess, discipline, and character; depend the destinies of four millions of people and the triumph of the principles of freedom and self-government of this great republic.”
This quotation references, among other sources, the Wisconsin Volunteer (newspaper of the 13th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment), February 6, 1862, p. 3, from Kansas State Historical Society Archives; The Vidette (newspaper of Morgan’s Confederate Brigade, Springfield, TN), November 2, 1862, p. 3, from Tennessee State Library and Archives.
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