Book of the Dead fragment found in Australian museum

Ancient Egyptians created burial manuscripts known as books of the dead and filled them with spells they felt would help them in the afterlife, as well as images depicting the deceased making the journey into the afterlife. The books were typically papyrus scrolls and were placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased. The wealthier the deceased, the longer his or her Book of the Dead.

Papyrus fragments from an Egyptian funerary text known as a Book of the Dead have been discovered in the archives of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia.

Fragments from an Egyptian funerary text known as a Book of the Dead were discovered at Brisbane’s Queensland Museum by a visiting Egyptologist.Fragments from an Egyptian funerary text known as a Book of the Dead were discovered at Brisbane’s Queensland Museum by a visiting Egyptologist. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

“We are incredibly surprised that we had such a significant object in our collection,” museum CEO Ian Galloway told Australian press.

The discovery was made recently during a visit to the museum by British Museum Egyptologist John Taylor.

While on a tour of the Australian venue’s Egyptian collection ahead of its new exhibit Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb (which opened Thursday), Taylor noticed a familiar name — Amenhotep, a well-known ancient Egyptian head of builders — on a fragile piece of papyrus long ago conserved by Queensland Museum curators.

Ancient Egyptians created burial manuscripts known as books of the dead and filled them with spells they felt would help them in the afterlife, as well as images depicting the deceased making the journey into the afterlife. The books were typically papyrus scrolls and were placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased. The wealthier the deceased, the longer his or her Book of the Dead.

Upon further examination of the collection, he confirmed that the ancient scraps were from The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep, an ancient Egyptian official from approximately 1420 B.C.

Portions of this particular manuscript were discovered in the 19th century, though parts were missing. Some is now held at the British Museum, with other segments at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

“This is not the papyrus of just anybody. This is one of the top officials from Egypt at the peak of ancient Egypt’s prosperity,” Taylor told reporters in Brisbane.

According to Galloway, a woman donated the fragments in question to the museum almost 100 years ago. Staffers are now trying to track down her descendants.

The fragments will be scanned and Taylor hopes to start piecing the digital images together with the portions in the British Museum’s collection.

“After over 100 years we’re in a position to reconstruct this really important manuscript, perhaps in its entirety,” he said.

Papyrus fragments from an Egyptian funerary text known as a Book of the Dead have been discovered in the archives of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia.

“We are incredibly surprised that we had such a significant object in our collection,” museum CEO Ian Galloway told Australian press.

The discovery was made recently during a visit to the museum by British Museum Egyptologist John Taylor.

While on a tour of the Australian venue’s Egyptian collection ahead of its new exhibit Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb (which opened Thursday), Taylor noticed a familiar name — Amenhotep, a well-known ancient Egyptian head of builders — on a fragile piece of papyrus long ago conserved by Queensland Museum curators.

Upon further examination of the collection, he confirmed that the ancient scraps were from The Book of the Dead of Amenhotep, an ancient Egyptian official from approximately 1420 B.C.

…”After over 100 years we’re in a position to reconstruct this really important manuscript, perhaps in its entirety,” he said.

via Book of the Dead fragment found in Australian museum – World – CBC News.

Stop Sign Yarn Flowers Must Be Stopped, San Diego Officials Say

A public art controversy is blooming in San Diego thanks to a mysterious man who has turned 100 stop signs into flowers using yarn and wire.

Back in March, the computer programmer who only identifies himself as “Bryan” started a “yarn bombing” project in which he and a dozen others knitted and crocheted green stems and leaves onto 100 stop signs in his neighborhood.

“I went out at night and wrapped scarves that I had already knitted around the signposts and stitched them to the poles and added leaves that I made with yarn and wire,” Bryan told The Huffington Post. “At first, people ignored me, wanting to avoid that guy standing on a step-ladder near a stop sign, but as I got up to 50, 60 signs, people started to stick their heads out of their cars and tell me they loved what I was doing.”

But that love hasn’t bloomed in all corners. Recently, San Diego City official Bill Harris contacted Bryan through his website and told him to stop turning signs into trees.

“The City is forced to announce that the Stop Sign Flowers must come down. Even with the great community spirit this effort has generated, there are just too many restrictions to overcome,” Harris wrote in a letter that was excerpted in San Diego Citybeat. “City staff looked through state law and local policies trying to find some way of allowing the flowers to remain in place. Unfortunately, particularly with traffic control signs and including all other City assets, there is just no way to retain the works where they now are.”

Bryan has 10 days to remove them before city employees do so, and he is currently weighing his options.

“If I remove them, I can repurpose them, but if I leave them, it’s possible they just might stay,” Bryan said. “In January, 2011, I put up five as a test run and they are still there, so I’m hoping it was just the city doing their due diligence. But I’d like to think that if you were a busy city worker and had a whole day’s work ahead of you, removing this might be too much trouble.”

Although he is resigned to fate, others like San Diego City Councilwoman Lorie Zapf are trying to see if they can pull any strings to keep the yarn-coverings on the stop signs by gathering support via Twitter

Meanwhile, the artistic community is also rallying behind Bryan, a.k.a. “Knitter Guy,” according to San Diego arts and culture journalist Enrique Limon, who stitched together the first story on the stop sign flowers for San Diego Citybeat.

“The cool thing about this is that Bryan isn’t trying to be cool or edgy, he’s just trying to do a project to beautify his neighborhood,” Limon said. “I think removing them is detrimental to a city that is not exactly on the cutting edge of public art.”

Bryan would like the stop sign flowers to stay, but realizes that he may not be able to stop their removal. Still, he’s happy that he has a great yarn to tell his kids.

“I have two daughters — 11 and 13 — and this has been inspirational to them,” he said.

via Stop Sign Yarn Flowers Must Be Stopped, San Diego Officials Say (VIDEO).

New York woman fired after donating kidney to help boss

A New York woman who donated a kidney so her ailing boss would move up the transplant waiting list says she was fired shortly after the operation, according to a complaint she filed with the New York State Division of Human Rights.

Deborah Stevens said her former employer, Atlantic Automotive Group, discriminated against her over disabilities brought about by complications from the surgery, and she plans to sue the company for lost earnings and damages.

The company, which runs car dealerships on Long Island, said Stevens’s complaint is groundless.

“My gal is just a good-natured woman who’s trying to save a life and as soon as she did it, everything changed,” said Stevens’ attorney Lenard Leeds on Tuesday.

“When she wanted to take time off, she was scolded, she was yelled at,” he said. “Instead of being sympathetic, they were very hostile towards her.”

Stevens, of Hicksville, New York, said she learned that Jacqueline Brucia, who worked at Atlantic Automotive, was in need of a kidney in November 2010. Stevens had worked there as well but at the time had temporarily moved to Florida.

Stevens said she told Brucia she would donate a kidney.

“Brucia declined, but told her, ‘You never know, I may have to take you up on that offer one day,’” the complaint said.

Stevens learned the company would rehire her following her return to New York and not long afterward, Brucia told her a potential donor had not been approved by the hospital and asked if she was still willing to donate.

2 days ago

2 days ago

Stevens now believes Brucia was “grooming (Stevens) to be her ‘back-up plan,’” the complaint said.

Stevens’s kidney was not a good match for Brucia, but she agreed to donate it to a stranger in St. Louis, Missouri, setting up a transplant chain that enabled Brucia to receive a better-matched kidney from a donor in San Francisco.

Surgeons removed Stevens’s left kidney in August, and she returned to work about a month later. The surgery left her with damaged nerves in her leg, digestive problems and mental health issues, her lawyer said.

At work, Brucia became “curt and dismissive,” the complaint said. Stevens said she was berated for taking sick days and forced to relocate to a less desirable office after she complained to human resources about Brucia’s behavior.

On April 11, the company fired her, citing performance reasons.

Stevens’s lawyer said the complaint filed with the Division of Human Rights last week was a necessary step before a federal lawsuit is filed against Brucia and the company.

Telephone calls to Brucia’s home were not answered on Tuesday.

Atlantic Automotive released a statement saying: “It is unfortunate that one employee has used her own generous act to make up a groundless claim.

“Atlantic Auto treated her appropriately and acted honorably and fairly, at every turn,” it said. …

via New York woman fired after donating kidney to help boss | Reuters.

Saturn’s “UFO Moon”

Strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn’s rings have baffled scientists studying images transmitted by the ESA’s Cassini Spacecraft. Research suggests that the oddly shaped moons, Pan and Atlas, are born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, a discovery that could shed light on how Earth and other planets formerd from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.

Observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed the moons Atlas and Pan, each roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) from pole to pole, have massive ridges bulging from their equators some 3.7 to 6.5 miles (6 to 10.5 kilometers) high, giving them the classic Earthly UFO appearance.

At first glance, one could assume that fast rates of spin might have stretched Atlas and Pan out into such unusual shapes, just as tossing a disk of pizza dough flattens it out. But astronomers discovered that each takes about 14 hours to complete a rotation — not nearly fast enough to cause the flattened, disk-like shape.

Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and her colleagues suspected these peculiar moons could be formed mostly from Saturn’s rings, rather than just from fragments produced in collisions of larger moons. The location of the ridges lined up precisely with the rings of icy particles in which they were embedded.

After analyzing the shapes and densities of the moons from data captured by Cassini, Porco’s team found that Pan and Atlas appear to be mostly light, porous, icy bodies, just like the particles making up the rings. Computer simulations suggest one-half to two-thirds of these bizarre moons are made of ring material, piled up on massive, dense fragments of bigger moons that disintegrated billions of years ago after catastrophic collisions with one another.

Astrophysicist Sebastien Charnoz at University of Paris Diderot, the lead author of a related study suggests that the Saturnian ice-clump moons elongated and bulged out into the flying-saucer shapes in the manner of accretion disks, which “are found everywhere in the universe —around black holes, around stars, around Jupiter.”

Charnoz added that understanding how the icy particles piled up to make these shapes could shed light on how matter in the protoplanetary disks of our Solar System that formed around our newborn sun could have clumped together to make planets. …

via Saturn’s “UFO Moon” –The Odd, Baffling Pan (Today’s Most Popular).

The highest resolution images of Pan (right) and Atlas (left) reveal distinctive “flying saucer” shapes created by prominent
equatorial ridges not seen on the other small moons of Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

How many people per day are eaten by aliens?

Scientist Louis Pasteur collected samples of alien biological material. From his samples it was determined by other scientists that the aliens can survive in a dormant state (without eating) for 70 years

I’ve spent the last hour in bed finally writing this mind bending blog entry and my iPhone crashed 3 times and wiped it out. Very strange!

This has not happened for any other topics I’ve posted. First the google app crashed, then the photo editing app, then the entire iPhone crashed and restarted, wiping out all but the title of this entry in my WordPress app.

It seems someone does not want me to tell you what I’ve learned about aliens eating people. I will post more… if I’m permitted.

For now, I’ll just say that we are, in a way, like cattle for ancient (mostly) unseen aliens.

I don’t expect anyone to believe this at first glance, but I think I can explain my research in enough detail that many people will accept what I’ve found. Yes, it is disturbing in some ways, but I think people should know the truth.

No, sorry, this is not a late April fools joke. The evidence I’ve found includes data from NASA and serious researchers going back to the 1800′s.

They are real. People have seen them, scientists, including Nobel prize winners. They have been here much longer than we have. I can safely say that there are more of them on earth than us right now. Many of them live underground. I can back all of this up with proof.

I’m getting putting the puzzle together piece by piece. Here are the facts I have so far, for which I have evidence.

Sorry if you don’t like these facts. This is just the way it is. People would like them to care about us, but they do not. They don’t communicate with us telepathically, that’s Hollywood crap, but they can directly access our brain cells if they get past our protective barriers. This is often fatal, but some people have survived the experience.

Consider this a riddle, a challenge even. If you get this, you can avoid being eaten by aliens.

• The aliens on Earth outnumber us
• Mostly, they ignore us
• They were on Earth billions of years before we were
• Their ships were likely giant snowballs of ice and dust filled with food and water
• They can survive in radioactive environments, if necessary
• Radioactive Palladium-107 (6 mil yr half-life) would give them heat for a 30 million year journey
• I would not say that they are smarter than us, but they hide much better
• The can live in many places we could not
• The can and do kill and eat people
• Researchers claim they kill an amazing 2 million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa
• There have been gruesome cases where they eat a person who is alive
• Most of the time they won’t eat someone unless the person is dead
• They can and do kill people, but it is usually our fault when they do
• They don’t like us or dislike us. They don’t have human emotions
• One kind was taken by NASA into space and survived 550 days in space, *outside* of the ship
• They can survive in near zero pressures and temperatures
• They don’t have lungs. They can extract oxygen from metals
• They can perform photosynthesis like plants, but they are not plants
• They can live in complete darkness.
• An astounding number of them live underground, here on earth
• Scientists discovered them living half a mile *under* the sea floor.
• Well known scientists have seen them, including Nobel prize winners
• Secret government scientists have worked with them in weapons laboratories
• They help us every day by cleaning up our toxic messes as they go about their business
• They help us inadvertently. They don’t care if we survive as a species or not
• They do have a sort of sex: They share genetic memories and innovations by exchanging DNA through very thin walled tubes
• Under the right conditions, they can glow by producing luciferin. They do this when they interact with squids in the ocean
• They have evolved for billions of years, but they still communicate chemically
• Samples taken in the 1800′s by Louis Pasteur showed that they can live without eating for 70 years
• One kind was revived after being in a dormant stage for 25 million years
• They can be transparent but one type is visible without any special equipment
• Unless you are in a specially secured room, there is at least one in the room with you (totally ignoring you)
• No, they are not in a “parallel dimension.” They are in the same dimension we are
• Our scientists have captured and experimented on a large number of them and we know how to kill them
• Certain chemicals will kill them, but they adapt and become resistant
• They can survive extreme pressures up to 71 tons per square inch
• One of the only things that kills them reliably is extreme heat
• One kind is a fast predator that moves at over 100 times its length per second
• This predator feeds on types that harm us, but they don’t do it for us
• You probably could not kill even the slowest kind with a gun, unless you got amazingly lucky
• If you shoot at one, it won’t stick around to let you know if you hit it, which you probably didn’t

The planet Nibiru mentioned in ancient Sumerian legend could be the icy ship that first brought the aliens to earth. NASA is not hiding the existence of a planet. “Planet X” long ago collided with the Earth and the aliens that arrived contributed their DNA to make us. Not on purpose, it just happened while they were doing other things. They didn’t care then and they still don’t care about us.

Pentagon’s Newest Spy Agency: Defense Clandestine Service

The Pentagon is to create a new spy service to focus on global strategic threats and the challenges posed by countries including Iran, North Korea and China. The move will bring to 17 the total number of intelligence organisations in the US.
The Defense Clandestine Service is supposed to work closely with its counterpart in the CIA, the National Clandestine Service, recruiting spies from the ranks of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and deploying them globally to boost the flow of intelligence on perceived long-term threats to US national interests.
US military news website Insidedefensesaid the defence department had asked Congress for authority for spies to work undercover posing as businessmen when conducting covert operations abroad.
The move by the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, emerged in briefings to US journalists.
“You have to do global coverage,” a senior defence official said, according to the Los Angeles Times. The new service would seek to “make sure officers are in the right locations to pursue those requirements”, the Washington Post quoted the official as saying.
The Pentagon argues that the new service is necessary because the DIA spends most of its time and manpower reporting tactical intelligence about battlefields such as Afghanistan, and not enough time looking at strategic issues.
Obama administration officials have said they want to switch US national security focus away from the Middle East to address long-term issues such as China’s rise and nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran. Pentagon sources suggested the new service would also focus on Africa, where al-Qaida affiliates are on the rise.
The new service will be relatively small, increasing in numbers “from several hundred to several more hundred” over the next few years, according to defence department officials.
The US already has 16 different intelligence organisations scattered around the defence, state, justice, homeland security and energy departments, as well as the armed services.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001 revealed a lack of co-operation and intelligence-sharing among them, the Bush administration restructured the “intelligence community”, putting it all under a director of national intelligence.
Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary for most of the Bush era, attempted to increase the Pentagon’s espionage capability dramatically but the attempt was rebuffed by the CIA, which was at loggerheads with Rumsfeld’s defence department over Iraq.
The Pentagon insisted that this time its new clandestine service would be set up in close collaboration with the CIA, which is led by the former military commander General David Petraeus. The fact that Panetta is a former CIA director is also said to have helped smooth co-operation.
Not all intelligence experts are convinced that the creation of a new organisation will help America’s espionage capacity, however. Some argue that the move reflects turf battles and empire-building.
“I’m not sure what they are supposed to achieve that the CIA doesn’t,” Joshua Foust, a former DIA Middle East analyst told the LA Times. “This seems like a territorial thing: ‘Hey, the CIA has this – why don’t we have it, too?’ … I’m pretty sceptical that it’s necessary or good.”
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