Codex Sinaiticus, the world's oldest Bible, goes online

How wonderful is this?!
Almost 1700 years after scribes in the Holy Land first created it from vellum, one of the world’s oldest Bibles this week makes its debut on the internet. The Codex Sinaiticus is a complete transcription of Christian scriptures in Greek, written by scribes around 350AD. Together with another work, the Codex Vaticanus, it is considered the oldest known Bible in the world. From Thursday, high definition images of the Codex will be available online to all as the first part of a project led by the British Library comes to fruition. According to the library,the Codex is “a treasure beyond price”. “Within its beautifully handwritten Greek text are the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament, and the earliest and best copies of some of the Jewish scriptures.” More than 100 pages of the Bible will go
online on Thursday, including 67 from the British Library and dozens from the University of Leipzig.Within the next year pages will be added to the Codex website as digitisers scan more of its intricately inscribed vellum sheets. Since it was discovered in Egypt more than 150 years ago by a German scripture expert,pages from the Codex have found their way to London,St Petersburg and Leipzig. The remainder is still held by St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, Egypt, where scholar Constantine Tischendorf unearthed it in 1844.Tischendorf returned with parts of the Codex to Leipzig and then presented Russia’s Tsar Nicolas II with much of it in 1869. Half a century later Josef Stalin, the Russian dictator, sold 694 pages to the British Library. The entire Codex comprises 1460 pages. In 2005, a £650,000 digitisation project was launched to reunite the far-flung sections of the Codex. Now, according to Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Leipzig’s library curator, “more than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Library, will be available online at www.codex-sinaiticus.net.”
By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/2439897/Codex-Sinaiticu\
s%2C-the-worldandrsquos-oldest-Bible%2C-goes-online.html

World Youth Day

well, what an incredible time we are in. I know I have said this before but I just must stress this again. Here in Australia we have hit economically difficult times with this and that plummeting, shares loosing ground, property on an all time low ebb and petrol prices like no one's business. Just like America, Europe and Asia our financial situation is being dampened.
But what's this? Pilgrims, from around the world converging on Sydney, bringing traffic to a gridlock. Rejoicing, jubilation in the streets. What intense and immense positive energy from 150,000 participants in World Youth Day.
This positive energy is bound to upstage the negativity and doom and gloom that is being taunted by the media. Even Pope Benedict XVI who arrived in Sydney for the first time yesterday looks happy!
I will quote a few lines that were said at the opening of the WYD by PM Kevin Rudd which ring true and encouraging:
He said the young pilgrims were "so much the light of the world at a time when the world has so much darkness". "Too often in the history of the world, when young people travel in great number to other parts of the world, they do so in the cause of war, but you here today are here as pilgrims of peace.
and from Dr Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney these words: "Don't spend your life sitting on the fence, keeping your options open, because only commitments bring fulfillment.
Such positivity and exhuberance is so terrific and can plant a positive outcome for a nation when times are getting tough.

Telecommunications probs

Is this actually related to the tandem asteroids passing earth at the closest point today July 15? Just ponder...
Queensland is experiencing major communication problems with the entire Optus phone and internet out of action.Optus is blaming the major outage on damage to a fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast. The failure is creating major hardship for business and customers across the State.Brisbane Airports International and Domestic Terminals are also affected, with flight delays of up to an hour. The outage is causing problems for the check-in and baggage handling systems. Queensland Health says it is experiencing major problems as a result of the outage with staff unable to communicate via email, mobile or landline.It is advising customers experiencing problems contacting their local health for MINOR inquires to phone 131-HEALTH.Any life threatening calls should be directed to 000.

Strange rock

This strange rock found near Roswell by a local businessman — inscribed with what appears to be “crop circles” or some intergalactic message — has stimulated a huge amount interest, as experts probe its origins and any message it may bear.
A strange rock with unusual magnetic properties - deeply scored, with what appears to be moon phases, a solar eclipse and the depiction of a supernova -- has been unearthed on the outskirts of Roswell. Its discovery has startled researchers, scientists and all who have examined it.If proven to be of extraterrestrial origin, it will mark the second time in less than a century that the Roswell area has received communications from outer space.Roswell Mayor Sam D. LaGrone, who actually saw and touched the rock over the weekend, said, "It is a very strange looking rock.... I touched it, I felt it, and I just don't see how it could have been produced."The rock, he said, adds another element to "the strangeness of Roswell," 61 years after the purported 1947 UFO crash and alleged cover-up by military authorities.The deep wine-red colored rock, measuring less than two inches across, and weighing about 40 grams, was unearthed in September 2004 by Roswell businessman Robert Ridge, 50 , who said he found it while deer hunting in Cedar Hill, 17 miles "as the crow flies" from the 1947 purported UFO crash site."I saw some fresh tracks and followed them," he said. "That's when I noticed the partially exposed rock on the side of a sand pit. But I didn't pick it up at first because I thought there were deer up ahead, and didn't want to break off the pursuit."When he realized the tracks were just goat tracks, he headed back the way he came, picked up the rock, and put it in his pocket, he said.After showing the rock to family and friends, he decided to keep it in a safe deposit box until last year, when curiosity to discover the truth about it got the better of him."In July 2007, I was introduced to UFO investigators Chuck Zukowski and Debbie Ziegelmeyer, and they were astounded at what they saw," he said.Zulkowski said the investigators where so impressed, they presented the rock to a number of experts, including prominent New Mexico anthropologists, "all of whom claimed they had never seen anything like it.""They said there is no way this rock could have been scored or drilled in the way it was, without sophisticated modern equipment, like lasers and high speed water-fed grinders and drills," Zukowski said.
The artifact's image appears to be literally "pulled" from the surface of the red iron ore rock.Apart from its strange appearance, Zukowski said, the rock has "peculiar" magnetic properties."It retains its magnetic polarity by which it will spin a compass needle and register its magnetic field on meters," he said. The oval rock will also spin, depending on the position of a magnet over the image surface, he added.Zukowski and Ziegelmeyer said that archeologists requested that the rock be submitted for further laboratory analysis, in what they describe as phase two of their investigation.One anthropologist reportedly described the rock as being similar to a "lodestone."Lodestones have been mentioned in literature for centuries as having magical and mystical properties. There are ancient accounts of people reporting that when holding lodestones, their hands and body shook, and that the stones cured a wide range of illnesses, including snake bites and headaches.Native Americans reportedly used lodestones as protection against snakes.Meanwhile, investigators claim the artifact mirrors crop circles that appeared in Liddleton, England, in 1996, indicating a possibility the stone bears a message from space.Priscilla Wolf, of Tijeras, a native American woman known to have "powers," visited the site were the rock was found last weekend, and said she felt a vibration in her hands when she held the rock, and that "light came down from the skies" when the rock was deposited at the site.Although the rock was found partially exposed on the surface, Zukowski said, the sandy area in which it was found is known to erode and shift, possibly uncovering the rock."It appeared to have been buried at one time," said Ridge, who believes the rock represents more than just an interesting object."After I had it a few months, I began to think about it and began to think that it may be a beacon of some kind, or a message," he said."And I believe the message is that if we don't learn to get along with each other, we will be destroyed," he said.
Lucy Pringles photo of a cropcircle in Aug 1996 said to be two suns, crescent moon and a supernova behind them. Both the rock and the crop circle look the same to me. Picture repeated loud and clear, all that's needed now is the correct discifering of it's meaning

Tandem asteriods

What at first was thought by scientists to be a good-sized asteroid currently hurtling past Earth has turned out to be two giant rocks in tandem.The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it.
Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon.It will not strike the planet. But scientists want to learn more about binary asteroids because one day they might find one headed our way. Deflecting a binary off course could be considerably more challenging that altering the path of a single rock.Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6 and 7 "clearly show two objects," said Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.The objects are estimated to be 1,970 feet (600 meters) and 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter. The larger one rotates upon its axis in 3 hours or less.Additional observations from NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert in California are expected to reveal more about the density, shapes and orbit of the pair.Asteroids are often loose rubble piles rather than solid objects, and pairs are common. Scientists announced earlier this month that binaries can be created when energy from sunlight splits a loose asteroid in two.Source:Xinhua/Agencies