A discourse on physics, cosmology, evolution, mathematics and the end of the universe.
Introduction: Ren Magritte believed that the world is a mystery and that it cannot be spoken of in words. I disagree. This talk is intended to be read aloud, but if you are reading this, it is probably in your head. I dont like being told how to read things, but Im going to make a suggestion regardless dont rush. When I mention in passing that sunlight is simply a by-product of the sun, dwell on how vast a statement that really is. I am an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to the matters I introduce, my book library is mostly science based and I attend lectures whenever I am able, but I apologise if I have got anything incorrect, perhaps my enthusiasm might have carried me away. If you notice an error, please let me know. I would also encourage you to start up conversations with friends and acquaintances about the details contained within these pages and to balance your wonder with scepticism - just because its written down, it doesnt make it true, so question everything and dont settle until you are convinced. Even things which are accepted fact can change; this is the beauty and thrill of science! Read about the Higgs boson (which David Britton compared the search to looking for a bit of hay in a haystack) and youll find that scientists minds are equally divided between wanting it to be true and wanting nature to throw something totally unexpected their way. (At the time of writing, the discovery is a strong 5-sigma.) The completion or the overthrowing of the Standard Model are both heavily pregnant with possibility. Incidentally, its the Higgs Field we should really be talking about. I dont explain everything I mention, if I did this talk would be several times longer, but with the internet you can find out about any of these things in seconds - I may not explain in detail about neutron stars or String Theory, but you can search for yourself, and I really think you should - neutron stars are so dense that a handful of the stuff would weigh as much as an expansive mountain range and if dropped on earth (and lets face it, youd be hard pressed to stop this happening) it would cut straight through the ground like a bullet through a cloud, through to the other side of the world and back again before friction slowed it down after many repetitions leaving the Earth looking like a piece of Swiss cheese! Even though they are the size of small city they can still rotate several hundred times a second and if you fell onto the surface from a height of just one metre, youd hit the ground at two-thousand kilometres a second! In String Theory, all particles can be explained by tiny vibrating strings, a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimetre, about a quadrillion times smaller than can be currently probed by physicists. To actually see a string we would need an accelerator the size of the Milky Way galaxy. If an atom were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree! I hope, at some point in these pages, youll be motivated to find out more. Its incredible how strands of information can link together; start reading about Alan Turing, who potentially saved up to twenty-one million lives when he shortened the Second World War by breaking Hitlers codes - where could this person take you? Code breaking, cryptanalysis, Colossus, Tunny, Enigma and the bombes, Bletchley Park, Hitler and Churchill, the NPL, British law and anti-homosexuality, morphogenesis, mathematics, computers, artificial intelligence, robotics, philosophy, logic, inventors, suicide, atheism, long distance running, eccentrics - meeting along the way; Flowers, Tutte, von Neumann, Newman, Gdel, Lovelace, Babbage, Shannon, Hilbert, Russell, Pascal and Cantor, to name just a dozen. Its so easy to stay connected with the science world nowadays, the web abounds with countless videos and lectures, articles and diagrams - all you need to add is a little patience and youll be rewarded with phenomenal knowledge. In retaliation to cries of whats the point? scientists usually bring up computers, advanced communication, GPS, longer healthier lives, you know, the little things, but my response is simple - we have these minds, why not push them? Sean Carroll ends his book The Particle at the End of the Universe with this sentence: if it werent a challenge, it wouldnt be so much fun.
Many thanks to Josh, Kate, Harrie, Elo and Alex for hearing me read the draft. Extra thanks to Daniel Cooper for his specific technical comments and conversation. This talk is for Laonikos Psimikakis-Chalkokondylis who suggested it in the first place.
On Valentines Day 1990, at Carl Sagans suggestion, Voyager I took a picture of Earth from four billion miles away, registering at twelve hundredths of a pixel. Six years later, shortly before his death he made a poignant speech about the pale blue dot, the only home weve ever known, this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. It pains me to see Korans and bibles in plethoric overabundance when Sagans three-hundred and sixty words would suffice. Here is an extract: The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.  How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. I urge you to look up this text, but not just yet.
There will be a time when we dont exist, at all. When there is a zero percent biological connection between us and the future. There will be a time when even the atoms that have constituted our several bodies over a lifetime are indescribably separated, when those things fall apart. For many years now I have deeply considered nothingness and I have enjoyed the paradoxical condition of finding meaning in things meaningless and I confidently believe there is no supreme sense in or for life, which isnt as glum as it sounds. Richard Powers has stated, for every way there is of being here, there are an infinity of ways of not being here, who was no doubt reiterating the brilliant Richard Dawkins who wrote in The Blind Watchmaker, when I was in my first year of life: the essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. We are stowaways on a universal, possibly multiversal ship and it is easy to philosophise and stir drolly or with solemnity on how to live and what to live for, usually making one feel guilty that they are wasting an only chance, but I think E. M. Forster got closest when he wrote that, life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along. In Apocalypse D. H. Lawrence wrote, We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh and part of the living incarnate cosmos. The second word there, ought, is awfully telling. Equal arguments can be made for any view you wish to take, be it that of Camus who said that life is absurd or Gustave what an awful thing life is Flaubert, or simply the words of Robert Frost it goes on. There are things that can give meaning to life, for some this is others, for others it is themselves, and for others still it is the misery of others which gives them energy - for me it is science. What pursuit could bear more fruit, but the study and search for truth around us? The biological task of science, wrote Ernst Mach is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless. Personally, it fascinates and stirs me to awe and creativity, disembodiment and speechlessness, the latter of which I will, with your acquiescence, forget for the next few minutes.
good guesses, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs for short, seem to be the best contender), but Carl Sagan set the law when he remarked: Nothing is the rule, something is the exception, although, he also said: If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. It is my opinion that the dark energy/matter conundrum will be solved before I am thirty-five years old, in 2020, but Sean Carroll is slightly more optimistic, suggesting that a solution could be found as early as 2017. As Dave Goldberg and Jeff Blomquist have written, like it or not, dark matter is running out of places to hide! The most frustrating thing is that it is, right now, pervading the air between my eyes and the computer screen in front of me as I am writing, in fact, its everywhere - youre touching it right now. Head out into space in any direction and you could go straight for billions of years without touching anything. Things are not what they seem. The Earth moves around the Sun, the solar system moves around the Milky Way galaxy, the galaxy in turn moves within the local group of galaxies. Thinking of our galaxy being static is wrong, it moves with a velocity of one-hundred and eighty-five miles per second. So, you might think that once a year in your house, you are in exactly the same place - wrong, you will never be in the same place twice, unless of course, you live for several hundred million years. You are not sitting on that chair, you are hovering a ten-millionth of a centimetre above it, due to the repelling exchanges between the electrons in both your body and the chair. By now, it is common knowledge regarding the absurdities of atoms, their size, wave/particle dualities and their mostly empty space (99.9999999999999% to be precise!), but I do not think the time is far off when we are no longer shocked by it, although, if Im honest, my head hurts when I contemplate that from a photons point of view there is no such thing as time. The truth of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which states that we cannot simultaneously know the location and velocity of a particle with equally high accuracy will become as accepted a fact as Pythagoras theorem in Euclidian geometry. If you are yet to be even shocked, read about the famous Double Slit experiment, or quantum entanglement - both sincerely surprising and staggering in the facts they purport; that single electrons can exist in multiple places at the same time (indeed every position in the Universe at the same time) and that the act of observation fundamentally changes the outcome of an experiment, and that entangled particles can respond to each other at ten thousand times the speed of light - a phenomenon Einstein referred to as spooky. There is no contradiction here; information cannot be exchanged faster than light speed, but for anything else, there is theoretically no limit. Physics shows us that there is no such thing as perfect emptiness - hold your palm close to your face - in your hand, virtual particles in pairs of electrons and positrons (or any other possible pair) are being created through vacuum fluctuations and annihilated quicker than you can say Paul Dirac, a lot quicker - they are gone within twenty-one orders of magnitude below a second. It gets better. If this happens at the event horizon of a black hole, the electron can fall into the black hole whilst the positron is released from its marriage without obligation. This subject alone is dense and knotty and covers much ground: quantum mechanics and general relativity unification (i.e. quantum gravity), Hawking radiation, black hole decay, quantum uncertainty, entropy, the no hair theorem, the Information Paradox, entanglement, black hole thermodynamics, the Holographic Principle, String Theory, Planck scales, singularities and has occupied some of the best minds, Hawking, Penrose, Bekenstein, Susskind and Thorne. Interestingly, if you were to find yourself in a situation where you were watching someone fall into a black hole, youd never see them reach the centre as it would take an infinite amount of time for them to do so! If that doesnt cause you some distress, consider that, hovering at a sufficient closeness to the black hole, you would be able to watch the entire future of the Universe flash by your eyes like a movie in fast forward!
On this mundane ball of rock, orbiting an average star as its inconsequential satellite, a leftover from the initial formation, positioned in a gravitationally bound collection of billions of other stars, planets, moons, gas clouds and trillions of asteroids, being transported on the fabric of spacetime, accelerating to infinity, along with hundreds of billions of staggeringly large galaxies that we know of, are a self-aware species dwarfed by bacteria and insects, in quantity now and history then, among an order of life where most species that have ever existed no longer do so. One-in-atrillion random mutations, cosmological and ecological happenstances, a by-product of the Sun called visible light (of which only one part in two billion we actually greet), feeding photosynthesis with its initially toxic by-product of oxygen which once wiped out most life on Earth, the globes magnetic field and Jupiters protective gargantuan size, both deflective in our favour, our atmosphere keeping us warm and protecting us from harmful ultraviolet light, burning up small objects and allowing for long term evolution. Billions of years of trial and error, numerous fortuitous blind happenings ranging from the atomic to the bacterial to the colossal - run planet Earth a billion more times and you wont get Homo sapiens, search every planet in the universe, you wont find another human being. The feeble strength of gravity on small scales (forty-two orders of magnitude weaker than the other three forces) and the tuning of the nuclear constants, so galaxies could form and stars dont collectively burn their supplies too fast, electrons dont spiral into their nucleons and vaporize matter instantly, the apparent ultra-longevity of subatomic particles, the production of only slightly more matter than antimatter at the birth of the universe, abiogenesis in the Eoarchean Era (or, as there is increasing evidence for it - Panspermia), the arrival of a self-replicating molecule and symbiotic relationships between free-living bacteria, the abundant initial collisions of icy impacts delivering liquid water to create the oceans many times over and the mass extinctions that allowed for future life forms to have their turn and supernovae disseminating newly forged elements outwards into space, spreading their genetic material, ready for a new generation of stars. This is a tiny taster of our statistical improbability.
and vaporised today. The worst humans on Earth may pale in comparison in terms of potential for vitriol and destruction, to another civilization where the reality of Darwinian Evolution is painfully practised, prolonged and imposed, resulting in a world where one could, if one were so inclined, recognise as Hell.
Even sending messages outwards at the speed of light is impractical for any meaningful conversation between civilizations - the very first transmissions ever thrown away from the Earth still havent left our galaxy and wont for some time. Space is big. Wrote Douglas Adams in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. You just wont believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think its a long way down the road to the chemists, but thats just peanuts to space. To the question of there being life elsewhere in the universe, bearing in mind what we know about the apparent ease and speed with which simple life can get going, it should be difficult for any person to say we are alone - the elements in and around us are not exclusive. Even unenthusiastic solutions of the Drake equation can produce numbers in double figures, although it should be said that the answers range wildly from N stating that even we shouldnt really be here, to its hypothesising hundreds of millions of worlds - a problematic ponderousness for some believers. Drake himself crunched the numbers using the Milky Way as a target and calculated that there could be ten civilizations in the same galaxy as us. Civilizations could have come and gone already or yet to have even started on an evolutionary course - equivalent solar systems or dust settlements might still be tens or hundreds of billions of years from being created. It is only very recently that we have achieved the ability to send and receive radio communications, so it would be dangerously ethnocentric to assume that any civilization currently out there is at the same place technologically as us - not just unreasonable, but statistically improbable. It was recently suggested that intelligent life might even reside on the side of black holes, meaning they would be forever hidden from us. Perhaps these unquestionably advanced organisms have a way of hearing the sound waves emanating from a supermassive black hole, a million billion times below the limit of our ears, but this might be just more ethnocentrism again, this time of an auditory nature. If the black hole was about five million times the mass of our Sun, its temperature would be about a million trillionth of a Kelvin, so, make sure you wrap up warm. When we search for life we look for telltale signs based on our own understanding, we discern liquid water and carbon compounds within the Goldilocks Zone, because its a safe bet - liquid water is a great solvent and carbon is unparalleled at forming bonds. However, there may be life existing as pure energy or information, between dimensions, or in the middle of a vast void between galaxies. Would we even recognise new life as life? Just as we cant see higher dimensions, maybe it would be impossible to even identify a new form of life when we see it! Another life form might only be a few hundred atoms thick, many miles across and float through the air, burying itself in dark matter and then passing through twenty-six higher and smaller dimensions in the blink of an eye. There may well be a thousand new technologies to be discovered in our future, each one completely rewriting the science, indistinguishable to magic from the view of any earlier culture. Its possible that in the future, we look back on quantum theory and laugh at its tested accuracy of only one part in a hundred billion. New knowledge is waiting to abound, beyond the wildest dreams of even the most imaginative string theorists and Nobel laureates, new materials that make graphene and carbon nanotubes look like wafers and Hula-Hoops, recall abilities that make Kim Peek look like George Bush.
intelligent life around then, it would probably move the Earth into another orbit or manipulate the material of spacetime and find another solar system or another universe, maybe hijacking one of the bubbles of the space foam. Perhaps by that stage, there will be intelligent life across the entire universe, but anything on the subject has to be wild speculation, as it is difficult to see a hundred years into the future never mind a further seven orders of magnitude. As well as the possibility that we might, due to orbital fluctuations, collide with Mars or Mercury, the Andromeda galaxy, of a trillion suns and perhaps trillions more planets, is on a direct course with our galaxy, (colliding galaxies might well be the status quo), they will perform a cosmic dance, colliding and coalescing over hundreds of millions of years. In spite of this, because of the vast distances between anything, it could be happening now, we wouldnt notice. (Likewise, the universe could be contracting and shrinking back to a point right now and we wouldnt be able to distinguish this our lives would be running in reverse, but we perceive it as moving forwards!) One vast galaxy will be the result as gravity sculpts and carves and joins them together, creating new star forming regions called stellar nurseries. One thing is certain - it will be beautiful. Just look at the currently interacting Antennae Galaxies in the constellation Corvus.
It didnt have to be the way it is. The splendour of endless nebulae, supernovae, (which are responsible for creating the atoms making up our bodies yes, we are all star stuff), superclusters, neutron stars, pulsars, quasars, binary star systems, stars at all stages, galaxies, satellite galaxies, colliding galaxies, moons, gas planets, rocky planets, dwarf planets, giant planets, asteroids, comets, meteors, molecular clouds, supermassive black holes, colliding black holes. These are the things hydrogen atoms do, given 13.82 billion years, a figure now known to within just thirty-seven million years, thanks to the trillions of observations of slight variations in the Cosmic Microwave Background by the Planck Satellite. Consider that number, well within an acceptable margin of error, 0.3 percent of the total figure. There was a time when rocks on Earth were thought to be older than the Earth itself, when the Earth was believed to be older than the solar system, that there were stars older than the Universe - and recently that neutrinos exceeded the speed limit set by light. Getting it wrong, generating discussion, creating self-doubt can be a healthy start to getting it right. We used to think that the splodges of light we saw in the sky were in our own galaxy, but it turned out they were individual galaxies many light years away. We used to think the Earth was flat and that the Sun orbited it - but thanks to people like Nicolaus Copernicus, Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble we now have a better idea of our place. We only know about all these things thanks to an invisible phenomenon called light, only a thousandth of one percent which is available from the electromagnetic spectrum to our eyes in the form of visible light, due to the evolutionary advantage it afforded us. I just said that light is invisible, we only see what it touches and this leads to a perplexing conclusion, that colour does not exist - our eyes chronicle a narrow band of wavelengths and bestow upon them a visual significance. I do not think the universe will ever cease surprising us - Tom Stoppards empty shore does not exist, the mysteries may never be all found. The sole purpose of human existence, according to Carl Jung, is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. There is much to think about in that reflection.
the Holographic principle is correct, then it could be that nothing is real, which is, dont you think, somewhat queerer than we can suppose? Every decision you make involves a mass of chemical and electrical movement, displacement and exchange at the cellular, molecular and atomic level, perhaps each dividing into individual parallel universes (there are several similar theories here, but lets keep things simple) - not just conscious thoughts about which herbal tea to drink or which route to take to work, but the things happening which you are not consciously aware of, like the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system controlling heart rate and respiration making thousands of decisions every second for your entire life. However, neat as this sounds, the concept of universe branching may only apply to atomic events and not our dreams, but who knows, in one universe some atoms may come together to form three people gesticulating and throwing dice across a table - myself, yourself and Hugh Everett. So, the wavefunction might not collapse, but proliferate wildly. Think what that means - some billion billion billion atoms in your body are each changing direction one hundred billion times a second and when multiplied to accommodate for the ninety billion humans that have ever lived, in fact, for any living organism that has ever lived, or indeed for that matter, anything that has ever been the number of new worlds, being created each second on Earth alone, never mind the atoms in the rest of the universe make googols seem undemanding. One outcome is that there may be an infinite number of universes forever outside our view where the constants of nature, the particle masses, charges, spins and force strengths exist in all possible permutations, or even with more components than we can ever dream of. This would make our position seem less confusing; we find ourselves in the Universe which can support us, how could we find ourselves anywhere else? We can only ask questions if we exist to ask them and this is known as the Anthropic Principle. An infinite number of worlds where you exist, where you were never born, where conscious, intelligent or even elementary life never formed, where stars burned out in tens of millions of years, where matter never coalesced and stars and galaxies were never created, where the expansion rate was too fast, or where black holes grew too big too rapidly, where you hair grows at a rate of forty-five instead of 4.5 nanometres per second, or a world where squirrels attained sentience.
the mouses survival rate to a number like a googolplex (a one followed by a googol zeros), because it is so much bigger the odds are much greater than one of the mouses survival and it joins the physicists animal cruelty hall of fame ranks along with Schrdinger's cat. David Hilbert, the mathematician who at the arrival of the twentieth century stated twenty-three mathematical problems which required solutions, has this to say about his own subject, it [mathematics] is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper. I earlier quoted the high functioning autistic savant Daniel Tammet, who has an affinity with numbers and sees them visually in shapes and colours and in multi-dimensional landscapes; he writes - properly understood, the study of mathematics has no end: the things we each do not know about it are infinite. I once read a description of infinity in David Lodges novel The Picturegoers which brought me close to tears. Think of a ball of steel as large as the world, and a fly alighting on it once every million years. When the ball of steel is rubbed away by the friction, eternity will not even have begun. With primes, cyclic numbers, infinite sets of infinities, factorials, conjectures, proofs, number/game/graph/group/decision theories, topology, fractals, geometry, fluid dynamics, calculus, chaos, probability, cryptography - with this minuscule list its little wonder that Paul Lockhart said: There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. You only have to look to the names of some brilliant mathematicians, Gauss, Euler, Erds, Poincar, Leibniz, Fermat, Archimedes, Newton, Ramanujan, Cantor, Pythagoras and my personal favourite - the code breaking, morphogenetic Alan Turing. They all conjure up fantastic stories of the human imagination being pushed over the horizon.
We have no language for 10^80 particles compressed to an infinitely dense singularity, we have no understanding of 1.7 trillion days - the age of the Earth, we are hard pressed to make sense of light in a vacuum, travelling at over four thousand times faster than the fastest thing humans have ever built. More femtoseconds elapse in each second than there have been hours since the Big Bang. An entire lifetime of calculation performed by a human can be executed in a few seconds on a smartphone. David Blatner asks us to imagine a time-lapse film where each frame captures a moment every ten-thousand years. If we started shooting at the birth of the planet, the finished movie would be four hours long, and the entire history of the human species wouldnt show up until well into the final one second of footage. If the age of the universe was compressed into a single day, the average human lifespan would last but one two-thousandth of a second. Edward Kasner asks us to consider how many drops of water pass over Niagara Falls in a century and then think that same number is equal to the number of electrons passing through the filament of an ordinary fifty-watt bulb in a minute. We dont know a millionth of a percent of anything, but if we compared the things we dont know or understand to the things we can grasp, then the latter is but a single member of the worlds smallest fly species, Euryplatea nanaknihali in a swarm of grossly oversized mutant locusts covering the landmass of Africa entirely.
data ever created has been done so in the last two years, with computers that can crunch at a rate of quadrillions of calculations per second. Where this is heading is a hot debate, the end of humanity or the beginning of transhumanity - what do you think?
Before I finish, by talking about the end of the Universe, Id like to present an elegant passage from Richard Dawkins book Unweaving the Rainbow, which incidentally the author would like to be read at his funeral: We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. And here we are. I quote this in full because it says many things succinctly and packs a poetic punch.
In a thousand trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion septillion octillion nonillion years there will be nothing left, all stars will have turned off, black holes will have evaporated and particles of light will all be heading towards the same temperature - maximum entropy will have been reached, the temperature of the cosmos will be absolute zero, it will be the same everywhere, there will be nothing left - the universe will have died a Heat Death because it cannot get any more disordered. As Brian Cox put it nothing happens and it keeps not happening, forever. (Im reminded here of the eternal present in Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four where all information is constantly rewritten to make Big Brother permanently correct, with no way of ever knowing otherwise and also of the Pirah people, who because of their lack of a documented past and no discussion of future aspects told Daniel Everett that history is where nothing happens, and everything is the same). Anyway, at this stage, time itself will die. It was born in the Big Bang and will have had a good innings. (Einstein remarked that the only reason for time anyway is so that everything doesnt happen at once.) There will be no way of measuring or distinguishing between the past, present and future because there will be no change and no change means no arrow of time - which will vanish. Talking about the window of opportunity for life to exist within these boundaries, (the Stelliferous Era), Cox goes onto say: As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from its beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life, as we know it is only possible for one thousandth of a billion billion billionth billion billion billionth billion billion billionth of a percent. And thats why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isnt a star, or a planet, or a galaxy - it isnt a thing at all, its an instant in time, and that time, is now. Optimists among us might suggest that to survive this bleak outlook, the Degenerate Era (or as Penrose calls it, the boring era), any intelligent life will need to work out extra dimensional space travel, violate the first law of thermodynamics, or be able to create their own universes, although they would have to discover it within a few trillion years, as decreasing energy supplies could mean that a single thought may take a thousand or even a billion years to accomplish. Some humbling thoughts there, possibly overwhelming, or bamboozling - they might even make you feel meaningless good. A little humility can go a long way to becoming a noble virtue and besides, where would we be without these mixed complimenting contemplations?
I started by stating that there is no ultimate meaning in life, which I hold to be true, just a happy sequence of fermionic, hadronic, bosonic, baryonic, leptonic and mesonic proceedings. Nevertheless I believe, there are, in this grandeur, things that can deliver meaning, like the odds and ends Ive just briefly presented. Marcus Chown, to encourage his mothers approachability to being taught science once asked his mentor Feynman to write her a letter, which read: Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science - for to fill your heart with love is enough! I wouldnt go that far, but we can all help by, as Stephen Fry so often suggests, being exceedingly lovely to each other. What good is knowledge if we cant share it?
Suggested Reading * represents an exceptional and consistent writing style. ** represents a book which I consider to be important.
*Sagan, Carl **Contact **Cosmos The Varieties of Scientific Exploration Sautoy, Marcus du The Music of the Primes Schrodinger, Erwin What Is Life? *Singh, Simon **Big Bang **The Code Book **Fermats Last Theorem Susskind, Leonard The Cosmic Landscape *Tammet, Daniel Thinking in Numbers Born On a Blue Day Winston, Robert Bad Ideas?


Among some moving stories and great photos as Toys R Us stores close, it's worth remembering that it didn't have to happen the way it did.
Some finals thoughts on the road to Non-Euclidian Geometry.
I still can't believes that is a thing.
A nice analysis of why Hinamatsuri is more than just a dumb comedy.


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Make deep cuts into the meat on both sides, like a cross design-- for marinade to seep through.
Heat enough ghee in a broad pan as will take in the onions comfortably (the onions should be covered with the melted ghee). Add the chhoti elaichi and when it changes colour add the onions in it and fry till brown and crisp. Lift off half of the onions and grind them to a paste along with the laung, badi elaichi, dal chini, jaiphal, javitri, kala jeera, and khus khus.
When tender, add the ground onion paste and the kewra, seal the lid with kneaded dough (which is oiled before applying to the lid) and leave over very low heat over a griddle (tawa) for about ½ an hour.
Alternatively, cook in a moderate oven for ½ an hour.


text:
In Conversation With David Yarrow
Capturing both the animal and human world in unique and compelling ways makes David Yarrow one of the most instantly recognisable fine art photographers today, striving to reinvent and remain relevant while on his search for the 'ground truth' in the worlds remote reaches – most recently, the American Wild West.
No sugar-coating, David Yarrow captured our undivided attention from the moment we appeared on the screen of zoom, delivering a raw account of the wider picture when it comes to his ground-breaking photographs and the emotional process of capturing a moment. Fascinated by his deep connection to the US and his reasons for turning his gaze largely to the Americas, unveiled a world of similarities between David and Jimmy Carroll, following his recent set up of a Pelorus office in Austin.
Thrilled to catch up with David following his series in the American West, we were excited to dig deeper into his interest in the USA and his reasons for making a move away from his heavily wildlife focused photographs, of which we have previously explored. Peaking our interest from the very start, David explains why he doesn't label himself a 'wildlife photographer', suggesting "there can be a little misplaced pompous authority in people that go to the field with long lenses and photograph wildlife; it's not necessarily art, it's more google mapping."
"The idea of being pigeonholed is dangerous." So instead, David photographs whatever interests him. From North Korea to some of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, to American cultural icons and most recently, the Wild West. "I felt that maybe at a time when we're increasingly conscious of the declining biodiversity of our planet, that to photograph animals in a more immersive way than maybe they've been photographed in the past, might be a clever thing to do. I saw an opportunity, but now I have moved on."
To Stay Fresh & Relevant
An increasingly saturated market by those trying to imitate, is a prompt for David to stay fresh. "I think artists should always challenge themselves and always be restless, always be on the move is true music. You don't see musicians, doing the same genre of work time and time again, because you've got to keep alert and not be complacent and want to test yourself."
Into The USA
For the same reasons as Pelorus, David sees the unrivalled opportunity the USA has to offer. From the vast vistas and elements of wildlife, to the characters that make up America – it is no surprise David has moved much of his business across the pond.
"The American economy is so strong and there's so much geographical mobility in terms of culture, money and education. If you're buying a beautiful new home in Austin, maybe a picture of a rhinoceros isn't going to quite cut it for you, because what's a rhinoceros got to do with Austin? From a commercial perspective, and when people want to criticise me -which is fine – they turn around say David, he's a good photographer, but he's a businessman. That's meant to hurt me?"
In response to these points, Jimmy particularly resonates with the creative side. "Every Pelorus project is a new project, because we have to challenge ourselves, we don't sit back on the laurels of the last project."
Supporting this with an interesting comparison, linking both Pelorus' and David's creativity, to Post Malone as an artist. "Here, we have a rapper to begin with, then an acoustic musician. And then you've got this identity of who he is and to which he has given his body to that identity through tattoos. If you keep morphing as an artist and a creative, you adapt all the time. It's a fascinating area."
In agreement, David concludes: "I'm a visual sponge. An artist is going to have visual prompts, and for them to be immunised to those visual prompts would take many questions."
The Push West
"The greatest story ever told, is the push West."
– David Yarrow
Propelled by the vistas and the extraordinary people who make up America, David's fascination with the USA becomes clear, and adds to our excitement having recently expanded our presence on US soil.
"Austin has an extraordinary history, whether it be about the Comanche tribe, whether it be about the Mexican War, whether it be the first settlers, whether it'd be about the Cowboys doing the big runs up to Kansas with the cattle. In the 19th century, and looking at what it is now, what an extraordinary period in history."
"It lends itself to storytelling, because of the visitors, the grandeur of the scenery, and the fact that it was populated by such character rich individuals that were all going for one thing: better lives. This move West was something where people didn't know what was around the corner. It was capitalist cowboys, it was prostitutes, it was drunks, it was felons. It was incredibly free of the rule of law, and then also in the mix, there were people that have lived there for 2000 years. So you have that incredible cocktail smorgasbord of people."
Capturing the essence of America, "It's a big commitment, because you're going down a well-trodden path. So we spent a lot of money; I spent $1 million in three months doing stills in the Wild West."
Similarly at Pelorus, the process behind any bespoke adventure is so important and requires a lot of expertise to capture the essence of a place. "Now building Pelorus in the States, I am learning what that Wild West is about. Although we offer high end luxurious experiences to our clients, we also want to bring it back to reality. We have a relationship with Ranchlands and I went out with them, to see how that ranch in Colorado actually works and how it's protecting the land."
"We are able to allow clients to experience that, not just the beauty of the national parks. This really brings it together and builds them into the heritage and history of it, and the client can learn and feel a part of it. That's what I love about this area, you can live it."
"That's the same with a lot of places you go as a voyeur. Unless you can really get into the roots of it, and very much like you—researching and getting an understanding of who you're meeting, the land, the history—is absolutely important and key to what we do."
Cowboy Culture
Introducing Russell Martin's book Cowboy: The Enduring Myth of the Wild West, David takes a deep dive into his appreciation for the Western lifestyle. "I'm humbled by their culture, and there is an awful lot that I have learned from it. Texans are wonderfully easy people. Our biggest gallery in the world is in Dallas, and this has moved ahead of London which fills us with joy."
"America has is extraordinary breadth, whether it be urban beauty like Chicago, Louisiana, or the John Ford country. It's just been over photographed. The heart of what I'm trying to do is, it's what I call a layer of narrative. You have primary tertiary secondary, and the secondary is always going to be the extraordinary backdrops."
"The theme: American West, was a personal anthology. I focused on the Rockies and mountainous areas: Colorado, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and the desert areas: New Mexico and Arizona. I think, if I had to pick one state that I would live in as a place of beauty, it would be Montana. It's amazing the number of people wo have homes in Montana and Kenya – it doesn't surprise me. For people who know both places, they are about the majesty of the outdoors."
"When people are asked, what is the most geographically spoilt country visually in the world. I think there's only one answer, which is America. Whoever I've taken up there—from Paris Hilton two weeks ago dolled up in a cowboy bar, to shooting with the quarterbacks there soon—there's no one who doesn't leave saying, that was one of my favourite days of my life."
Jimmy raises the encouraging point that "people are really starting to explore their own backyards far more than they ever have done before," to which David responds with the sad truth that since before the crisis, it has remained relevant that "no prophet is accepted in his hometown, it's the familiarity that breeds contempt." We hope that this newfound exploration of home turf continues.
Ground Truth
"I'm very fond of some charity NGOs, and TUSK is one I have been close to for a long time. Ultimately, the future of conservation is about protecting habitat and buying land where animals can live. It's very unglamorous, but that is the only way. I will work to continue raising money for good causes."
Unlike many fine art photographers, David is a philanthropist, respecting and supporting NGOs who understand what it is like on the ground, highlighting the importance of having "ground truth," as identified by Jimmy, relating this to his eight years in a British Army reconnaissance unit, and the overall feeling in Iraq and Afghanistan that you have to have "ground truth", to be able to understand what is going on.
"Unless you are on the ground, you cannot understand what the atmospherics are like, what the energy is like. That will never be replaced by technology, and we try to bring that into Pelorus and our stand-alone Pelorus Foundation. We won't support projects, unless we know what is going on and ideally, taking our clients right into them so they can see first-hand."
Precision, Courage & Time
According to David, what he sees as his competitive advantage is not talent, it's an ability to invest with "precision and courage."
"For me, as an original content person, I don't warm to the idea of photographing an emperor penguin colony with 200 other people. So we're taking our own plane to Antarctica, followed by another plane and we will camp. This will cost me $500,000, but it will mean that me and my film crew are on our own and then home within eight days. This is a disruptive business model, because people haven't been able to do that before.
When asked what sets him apart from the competition, humble in his approach, David suggests "it is for galleries and collectors to decide. I'm never going to criticise my competition. It's not competition because photography shouldn't be competitive. In terms of time allocation I've been fortunate. Having been single for 12 years and having kids at boarding school allowed me to be self-centred in my time, a lot of people don't have that choice. I also have a business background, and I think a lot of photographers don't give enough attention to the business side of their model."
"In the world of photography now, there are a lot of people I have a huge admiration for and I am honoured to work in a gallery on Palm Beach where three of the photographers are Scottish. Harry Benson for example, who has shot the Beatles and multiple US presidents, is a dear friend who taught me something of photography: "A great picture can never be repeated." This is something that resonates with David and he tries to learn from. Similarly to Pelorus' process of delivering a bespoke adventure; no two experiences are the same, each is totally unique.
"You've got to make every inch of the frame sweat. If you have a dinner party for 12 people, all those 12 people have got to earn their place at the dinner table. A picture should be like that; every constituent part has got to pay their dues."
To view David's work, please follow the link: https://davidyarrow.photography
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


That sounds like another way of saying what Ricketts declared at the beginning of spring training: "We don't have any more" money for free agents.
Kimbrel – an All-Star closer for the Boston Red Sox team that won last year's World Series – is not the focus as the Cubs try to slowly dig out of this 3-7 start that featured three blown saves by three different relievers within the first week of the season.
The bullpen will be feeling even more stress now that rotation mainstay Jon Lester (hamstring) is expected to go on the injured list and miss at least one start. But the Cubs mean it when they say they aren't panicking (yet).


as the four young players of the Ferio Quartet demonstrated, it is an immensely versatile instrument and capable of great expression. When used in a quartet formation, the four instruments together can reach the same heights of intimacy as a string quartet.
Any sceptic in the audience wondering how such colourful orchestral music would sound on just four instruments, would soon find their scepticism unfounded. The rhythmic vitality and precision of the playing of Tchaikovsky's Miniature Overture immediately made the piece come alive. What was remarkable in all the movements we heard was how successful and effective these transcriptions were. Even the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, which in the orchestral version uses a celesta to add a touch of individual colour to the main tune, was not diminished when the celesta part was transferred to the saxophone; the oily sound of the baritone sax, replacing the bass clarinet of the original, was equally effective.
The Russian Dance was electrifying as the four players raced through at breakneck speed but with immaculate ensemble and tremendous virtuosity.
Next came two movements from a lovely saxophone quartet by Hugo Reinhart. Although written in 2006 the style was deliberately pastiche, 19th Century, echoing music from the time before the saxophone was invented. The piece again revealed the versatility of the instrument: the long plaintive slow movement was beautifully sustained and was followed by a vigorous presto.
What followed was a revelation: Bach's Italian Concerto, a demanding enough work for two hands on one keyboard with its technical difficulties no less diminished when four instruments are deployed in the composer's contrapuntal masterpiece.
This was a beautifully controlled performance revealing musicianship of the highest order.
In all, this was a hugely enjoyable concert with so much to admire: the technical virtuosity of the four young players, their ensemble playing, but, above all, the beauty of the sound they produced. We look forward to another visit.


Steel Residential House | Hance Construction, Inc.
Every new idea looks crazy at first glance. And some people fail to look past that. Hance Construction is always taking on "crazy projects," but we don't really see them that way. We know that those unique ideas just call for a little out-of-the-box thinking and some nerves of steel!
North Haven, NY is a high-end, residential community in the Hamptons with a particular set of aesthetic requirement codes. Wanting to build a home with a modern, industrial flair and superior efficiency, our soon-to-be clients enlisted the help of Larson and Paul Architects. They envisioned the right combination of materials, defined the direction and recruited the perfect team of experts to make the idea come to life. Larson and Paul contacted ATAS International, recognizing that a metal roof was the ideal choice, and the ATAS representative knew just the Butler Builder® "crazy enough" to take on the job.
A unique, industrial, metal meets wood design and energy efficient requirements called for a tailored hybrid building solution.
Designing a Butler structural system that combined mill shape steel, three plate frames and cold rolled secondary members as a substrate for the structural insulated panels (SIPs).
Installing tongue and groove pine planks over the roof purlins to create a striking interior finish of wood meets metal.
Inserted SIPs with eight-inch thick insulation on the roof and walls of the home, over top of the Butler frame, for ultimate thermal efficiency.
Put up an ATAS Dutch Standing Seam Roof on the main steel house and reroofed another building on the property.
Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you have the courage to imagine. In this case, Hance Construction and Larson and Paul Architects were able to think outside of the limits, while staying within the community's regulations, and utilize a Butler hybrid building solution to create this one-of-a-kind home. Not only did our hybrid solution fit the client's design sensibilities, but it created a strong, highly efficient building worthy of its $6 million dollar price tag! And while other builders might have shied away from this seemingly crazy project, this is just the kind of challenge the team at Hance Construction lives for.
Hance received the MBCEA 2015 Building of the Year for this project.


text:
Thursday, 1st November, 2018 11.00 am
Public minutes PDF 91 KB
Contact: Alistair MacLellan
tel. no.: 020 7332 1416 Email: alistair.maclellan@cityoflondon.gov.uk
Apologies for absence were received on behalf of Simon Duckworth, Christopher Hayward, the Commissioner, Commander Baxter and Commander Gyford.
To consider the public minutes and non-public summaries of the following meetings:
PSI - 180917 - Minutes P , item 3. PDF 56 KB
Police - 180920 - Minutes P , item 3. PDF 104 KB
The Committee noted that the confirmation of the public minutes of the Police Committee on 20 September 2018 would be deferred until agenda item 16.
On matters arising from those minutes, and in response to a question from a Member on item 11 relating to the equality and inclusion update, the Assistant Commissioner confirmed that he would update the Committee on recruitment following concern expressed by the National College of Policing on routes into policing and accessibility. The Chairman asked the Town Clerk to add this to the list of outstanding references.
The public minutes of the Professional Standards and Integrity Sub Committee and the Police Pensions Board on 17 September and 3 October 2018 were received.
A Member referred to the Police reply to the Government cycling consultation and the Town Clerk undertook to circulate the details to the Committee.
City of London Police Museum Governance: clarification of governance arrangements PDF 69 KB
Joint report of the Assistant Town Clerk and Culture Mile Director and the Commissioner.
The Committee considered the joint report of the Assistant Town Clerk and Culture Mile Director and the Commissioner on the City of London Police Museum and clarification of governance arrangements.
RESOLVED – That
(a) the governance structure outlined in the report be approved, namely that the business strategy for the City of London Police Museum and the cost of the staffing, accommodation and business operations sit under the governance of the Culture, Heritage and Libraries Committee for a period of three years (until 14 November 2021); and that ownership of the Museum collection, and costs pertaining to its rotation within the Museum and its conservation, as well as the recruitment of volunteers for Museum business, fall under the governance of the Police Committee;
(b) delegated authority be approved for the Assistant Town Clerk and Culture Mile Director for the management and staffing of the Museum, and to the Commissioner, City of London Police, for the management of the Museum collection; and
(c) the re-establishment of the officer-led Museum Board be approved (with representation from both departments) to manage the day-to-day running of the Museum under the delegated authority approved above, noting major projects, expenditure, or changes to the running of the Museum business will be referred to the relevant committee(s) through the delegated Chief Officers, as appropriate.
Annual Review of Fees and Charges 2018-19 PDF 75 KB
Pol_79-18_Fees and Charges Policy 2018-19 FINAL 17-10-18 , item 6. PDF 249 KB
The Committee considered the report of the Commissioner on the annual review of fees and charges 2018/19.
The Deputy Chairman asked that the Committee receive a report back on details of what income is received from charges imposed. The Assistant Commissioner confirmed that fees and charges are levied in line with the policy, wherever it is felt appropriate to do so with full cost recovery whenever possible.
RESOLVED – That the charging policy and rates for 2018/19 be approved, with a report back to Members setting out details of a) what income is received where charges are imposed and b) where charges are not imposed, along with reasons for this.
Annual update on the Custody of Vulnerable Persons (Young Persons, Children and Mental Health) PDF 456 KB
Joint Report of the Commissioner and the Town Clerk.
Members had before them the joint annual report by the Commissioner and the Town Clerk on custody of vulnerable persons.
A Member raised the issue of local authority transfer arrangements (paragraph 20) and the work burden arising from a child or young person living some distance from London. The Assistant Commissioner confirmed that the issue of overnight custody arrangements and limited availability of supervised care home accommodation in these circumstances was not new. In most cases, the person had to be detained in a cell due to alternatives not being available, although every effort is made to avoid this. The Assistant Commissioner undertook to provide data on these instances.
Quarterly Community Engagement Update PDF 177 KB
The Committee considered the Commissioner's quarterly community engagement update.
Alderman Edhem joined the meeting at 11.20am.
The following matters were raised:-
· In response to a question from a Member on the community engagement review and IAG consultation it was noted that an update would be provided by the Commissioner.
· On anti-social behaviour (ASB), the Deputy Chairman said that this issue was not expressed as a priority in the Policing Plan and that the next review should include details of how ASB was being dealt with. It was noted that officers were aware of vulnerability issues relating to persons sleeping rough, with suitable help made available, and that where criminality was taking place, particularly with repeat offenders, appropriate enforcement measures were available and used. The Assistant Commissioner undertook to consider the ASB issue at the next Plan update and provide further details of action taken.
· Another Member also asked for details of the removal of the two established homeless encampments referred to in the paper and it was noted that this information would be circulated.
Stop and Search Update - Best Use of Stop and Search and Report on the removal of more than jacket, outer clothing or gloves (JOG) during stop search PDF 167 KB
The Committee considered the Commissioner's stop and search update. The following matters were raised:-
· The Chairman asked for an early update on the training roll-out progress. The Assistant Commissioner confirmed this would be available within the next few days.
· A Member raised the issue of additional analysis of data, to ensure the CoLP approach was proportionate, and put forward the view that an understanding of residential addresses of people stopped would be of use. It was noted that better 'identification' is happening and that a dedicated team fully consider the 'niche data' that is captured.
· The Assistant Commissioner confirmed that the intention of the training refresh was to eradicate any disproportionate use of stop and search and reduce the number of complaints being made.
· A Member raised the matter of community engagement patrols, whether businesses are being reached, and whether Members could assist in the dissemination of information. The Assistant Commissioner welcomed this offer.
· The Chairman advised the meeting that the Police would be able to provide some additional context on strip search information provided in the report. A Member asked that future details to the Committee also include comparison with other forces and suggested that graphics to highlight this would be useful.
Congestion Mitigation: Parking, Traffic & Cycling Enforcement Resources PDF 101 KB
Report of the Director of the Built Environment.
The Director of the Built Environment reported on congestion mitigation.
· A Member asked that the department ensure that faded box junction and yellow line markings around the City be repainted where necessary. The Director of the Built Environment undertook to look into this requirement.
· In relation to accreditation to undertake cycling offences enforcement, the Committee was informed that the authority had been 'signed off' by the Commissioner.
· On vehicle loading times causing congestion, it was noted that the 40 minute period is part of a London-wide agreement and that this is being reviewed by the CoL in consultation with London Councils.
Review of Police Authority - Resourcing and Governance Arrangements PDF 88 KB
Appendix 1 - Cost comparison of OPCCs , item 11. PDF 195 KB
Appendix 2 - OPCC Core roles and equivalents in COLC October 2018 , item 11. PDF 53 KB
Appendix 3 - Proposed Organogram for Police Authority October 2018 , item 11. PDF 135 KB
The Town Clerk reported on the review of the Policing authority – resourcing and governance arrangements.
· The Committee noted comments received from a Member regarding concern about the additional grade I post, given the current financial pressures, and whether another two posts were required to perform a function that he considered had normally worked well. The Committee noted the Chamberlain's response confirming his view that the proposals were appropriate.
· The role of other committees in governance of the CoLP was noted and a Member raised the issue of the Committee altering its title to the 'Police Authority Board'. Another Member questioned whether the Police Committee receive all relevant staffing information in view of its oversight terms of reference. The Town Clerk was asked to add the question of a future name change to the outstanding references report.
· Noted that spending in some areas may need to be increased where there was under resourcing.
Deputy Henry Pollard reported to the Committee on the Strategic Policing Requirement Overview and confirmed that he was confident that in respect of national threats across boundaries the Policing Plan actively addressed and was compliant in all relevant areas. In the new year any necessary adjustments would be made to the Plan to ensure it remained robust.
The Committee noted that the update from a Member on equality, diversity and human rights would be made at the January 2019 meeting.
RESOLVED – That under Section 100(A) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public be excluded from the meeting for the remaining items on the grounds that they involve the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in paragraph 3 of Part I of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act.
To consider the non-public minutes of the following meetings:
RESOLVED – That the public minutes, subject to an amendment, and the non public minutes of the Police Committee meeting on 20 September 2018 be confirmed and signed as correct.
The Committee also received the non public minutes of the Professional Standards and Integrity Sub Committee and the Police Pensions Board meetings on 17 September 2018 and 3 October 2018 respectively.
Gateway 6 Progress - Action and Know Fraud Centre - Contract Service
The Committee considered the report of the Commissioner on Gateway 6 progress on the action and know fraud centre service contract.
Non-Public Special Interest Area Updates
Verbal Updates from the Special Interest Area Leads.
The Committee noted that earlier discussions at the meeting had already covered the verbal non public updates.
With the agreement of the Chairman, the Committee received a confidential update on senior staffing roles.
The Commissioner to be heard.
The Committee noted the Acting Commissioner's updates.


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text:
DPR emergency statement: Following Trump call, Poroshenko is preparing for total war
February 6, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
RusVesna – translated by J. Arnoldski –
The deputy commander of the Donetsk People's Republic, Eduard Basurin, stated at an emergency briefing in Donetsk last night that Poroshenko is preparing to unleash a full-scale war and reject the Minsk Agreements.
Basurin announced: "Following the talk between Poroshenko and Trump, Ukraine will in the near future cease to receive financial and military support for its terrorist operation in the land of Donbass. In connection with this, the Ukrainian president has fallen into complete despair and is ready to desperately commit to the most reckless action of unleashing a full-scale and bloody war in Eastern Europe."
"All of this is needed in order to blame their crimes on the unrecognized republics and the Russian Federation and defraud the West of new funds in order to develop their business built on the blood of the ordinary Ukrainian people," Basurin continued.
"The military-political command of Ukraine has refused to implement the Minsk Agreement on withdrawing heavy artillery from the contact line. On the contrary, it has carried out a build up of troop groupings.
"Our intelligence has confirmed the enemy's activeness. In particular, we have recorded the concentration of enemy forces and means on the frontline for the purpose of creating a strike group.
Two Tochka-U tactical missile complexes have been moved from Kramatorsk to the territory of the Avdeevka Coke Plant. Another six Tochka-U's have been unloaded at the train station in Novobakhmutovka…Two companies of nationalists headed by the ex-commander of Right Sector, D. Yarosh, have arrived in the area of the 72nd separate mechanized brigade. Units of the National Guard of Ukraine have arrived in the area of Volnovakha."
The DPR deputy commander reported further: "Under the cover of night, while lighting up the Crimean front in an attempt to disguise their other activities, the transfer of an anti-tank artillery division from the 57th separate mechanized brigade is ongoing to reinforce the UAF's mechanized brigades on the Donetsk and Mariupol fronts. In addition, the fact of the redeployment of the 92nd separate mechanized brigade in full force from the Kharkov region to the zone of Poroshenko's terrorist operation against the civilian population of Donbass, has been established. Three battalions from the nationalist Azov force have arrived from in Mariupol from Urzuf."
Eduard Basurin concluded: "This information allows us to conclude that the UAF command, on the order of the military-political leadership of Ukraine, is preparing offensive combat operations across the entire contact line as well as sabotage against civil infrastructure, imitating the Nazis in 1941.
"In turn, our troops are ready to give the enemy a dignified rebuff and rout Kiev's terrorist troops as before."
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/02/dpr-emergency-statement-following-trump.html
Tagged Basurin, contact line, Donetsk, DPR, front line, Minsk, missiles, offensive, Poroshenko, Tochka-U, Trump
Russian Foreign Ministry: US missiles make Romania a "clear threat" and "outpost"
RT – translated by J. Arnoldski –
With the appearance of elements of the US' "missile defense system" on its territory, Romania represents a clear threat to Russia's security, the director of the the Russian foreign ministry's Fourth European Department, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, says.
"Regarding Romania's position and the position of the leadership of Romania which has turned the country into an outpost, this is a clear threat for us. The Romanian side has been informed of this, including publicly," Botsan-Kharchenko said in an interview.
According to the diplomat's words, the decision to host US missiles is first and foremost directed against Russia. Botsan-Kharchenko asserted that "an openly anti-Russian, even Russophobic line inspired by sanctions and avidly anti-Russian rhetoric" has been observed from Bucharest.
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/02/russian-foreign-ministry-us-missiles.html
Tagged Bucharest, missile defense, missiles, Romania, russophobia
Russia 'prevented' potential NATO launch of 624 cruise missiles against Syria – Defense Minister
From RT
Moscow's actions following the Syrian chemical weapons attack in 2013 could as well have saved the country from a possible massive strike by NATO forces, Sergey Shoigu, Russia's defense minister, said. Such a strike could have involved over 600 cruise missiles, he added.
"What would've happened if our president [Vladimir Putin] failed to be convincing and implement the idea of surrendering and destroying the chemical weapons? If we only talk about cruise missiles … 624 cruise missiles, as far as I remember, were prepared to carry out a massive strike against Syria within 24 hours," Shoigu told state television channel Rossiya-24.
Main results of Syria truces: Terrorists add 7,000 to ranks, get arms & munitions – Lavrov
It would've been "very hard" to restore the Syrian state structure after such a large-scale attack, he said.
Back in 2013, US President, Barack Obama, authorized strikes against Syria, blaming Assad's government for a sarin gas attack on a rebel-held suburb of Damascus.
But Russia's involvement managed to avert NATO attacking the county as Moscow brokered a deal, during which Syria renounced its chemical weapons arsenal and joined the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction.
In terms of current events in Syria, Shoigu said that Russia and the US are in direct talks aimed at the resolution of the crisis in Aleppo.
He expressed hope that this would help to ensure "peace at this long-suffering land and allow the people to finally return to their homes."
https://www.rt.com/news/356054-russia-nato-strike-syria/
Tagged chemical weapons, cruise missiles, missiles, NATO, Obama, Shoigu, Syria
Russia is developing gliders that "guarantee penetration" of any missile defense system
Global Research, June 13, 2016
Zero Hedge 12 June 2016
The launching of the European missile defense system (Aegis) by the United States in May has repeatedly been criticized by Russia as an attempt by the US to take away first mover advantage in the event that the US ever decided to attack.
While Russia has already indicated that the deployment of of Iskander missile systems would be one certain response to neutralize the anti-ballistic missile defense system, Russia has wasted no time in developing future responses.
Russia's new Yu-74 ultra-maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicles may be the next response that will be unveiled. Russia has been developing hypersonic weapons during the past few years, and as Sputnik reports, those weapons would have a speed between 3,840 mph (Mach 5), and 7,680 mph (Mach 10). The system uses sophisticated technologies for maneuvering against a wide range of missile defense systems, and allows precise and rapid delivery of warheads.
Although the system specifications are top secret, reports say that the gliders are developed to be loaded onto onto Russia's RS-28 Sarmat, the state of the art heavy liquid propelled ICBM which is currently being developed for the Russian Army. The RS-28, which has been given the codename "Satan" by NATO, has been in development since 2009 and is alleged to render all current missile defense systems obsolete.
Designed to carry up to 24 nuclear-loaded Yu-74 gliders, each Sarmat ballistic missile will be able to hit any target located within a 6.2 thousand mile radius in one hour. Each glider can be equipped with a nuclear warhead, electronic warfare (EW) applications (disruption of communication systems), or false target simulators.
"These features guarantee penetration of any existing and prospective missile defense system of a potential adversary. By adopting such systems, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces will significantly increase their efficiency" said one analyst.
Last year, Russia conducted a series of tests of the Yu-71 hypersonic attack aircraft. The Yu-71 is part of a secret missile program codenamed "Project 4202″, and the during the tests the glider was said to reach speeds of up to 7,000 mph. Furthermore, Russia has reportedly successfully tested the Yu-74 as well. The glider was launched from the Dombarovsky missile base in the Orengburg region and hit a target located at Kura Missile Test Range in northern Kamchatka region, the Russian far east.
French journalist Victor Ayoli noted that Russia is taking NATO's saber rattling in Eastern Europe very seriously and will do whatever it takes to secure Russia's borders.
"Russians are ordinary people. They are afraid of war and they really want to avoid it. The last one cost [the Soviets] more than twenty-eight million lives. But once lured into war, they fight it to the bitter end. This unique trait of the Russian national character the West has misunderstood countless times in the last 1,000 years," Ayoli emphasized.
As the US led NATO continues to play around with Russia, it is crystal clear that when Russia announced that it will respond to NATO's actions "Totally Asymmetrically", they very well meant it.
The original source of this article is Zero Hedge
Copyright © Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-is-developing-gliders-that-guarantee-penetration-of-any-missile-defense-system/5530622
Tagged Aegis, glider, Iskander, missiles, nuclear war, Sarmat, Yu-71
Obama requests EU support for possible war against Russia
Washington and NATO governments lose patience at Russia and Syria wins in the public polls. The West pushes to achieve their ends by any means possible, and they will do it over the public's dead bodies, if need be. Despite the high-sounding patriotic rhetoric, their ends were never for the public. Those who believe the fear-mongering and the lies are fools. Those driving Western federal policies and in the Pentagon and military establishment are truly mad.
By Eric Zuesse
Global Research, April 24, 2016
According to Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News), on April 23rd, U.S. President Barack Obama is "demanding the active deployment of the Bundeswehr [Germany's armed forces, including their Army, Navy, and Air Force] to NATO's eastern borders" at Poland and the Baltic republics, to join the quadrupling of America's forces there, on and near those borders of Russia. (This is an extreme violation of what Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to when he ended the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirror organization the Warsaw Pact, but it's actually culminating a process that began shortly after he agreed to America's terms, which included that NATO "not move one inch to the east.")
Furthermore, DWN reports that on April 25th, the U.S. President will hold a "summit meeting" in Hannover Germany with the leaders of Germany (Angela Merkel), Italy (Matteo Renzi), France (Francois Hollande), and Britain (David Cameron). The presumed objective of this meeting is to establish in NATO's countries bordering on Russia, a military force of all five countries that are headed by these leaders, a force threatening Russia with an invasion, if NATO subsequently decides that the 'threat from Russia' be 'responded to' militarily.
NATO's surrounding Russia with hostile forces is supposedly defensive against Russia — not an offensive operation. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America's President JFK didn't consider Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev's plan to base nuclear missiles in Cuba to be 'defensive' on the USSR's part — and neither does Russia's President Vladimir Putin consider America's far bigger operation, of surrounding Russia with such weapons, to be 'defensive' and not offensive. The U.S. Government, and NATO, act as if Russia is surrounding them, instead of them surrounding Russia — and their 'news' media transmit this lie as if it should be taken seriously, not as its being a lie; but, in actual fact, NATO has already expanded right up to Russia's western borders.
Obama is thus now adding to the economic sanctions against Russia that he had imposed allegedly because of Russia's alleged 'seizure' of Crimea from Ukraine after Obama's coup overthrew Russia's ally Viktor Yanukovych who led Ukraine until the coup in February 2014.
Right after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, Obama slapped sanctions against Russia (even though Western-sponsored polls in Crimea, both before and after the coup, had shown higher than 90% support by Crimeans for rejoining with Russia), and nuclear weapons were prepared, both on the U.S.-EU side and on the Russian side, for a possible nuclear war.
This is no mere restoration of the Cold War (which was based upon the capitalist-communist ideological disagreement); it's instead getting forces into position for a possible invasion of Russia, pure-and-simple — raw conquest — though no major news-media in the West are reporting it as beingsuch.
That preparation doesn't necessarily mean a nuclear war will result. Russia might accept whatever the demands of 'the West' are, and thus lose its national sovereignty. Otherwise, 'the West' (the U.S.leadership, and the leaderships in its allied countries) might quit their evermore-ominous threats, and simply withdraw from Russia's borders, if Russia stands-its-ground and refuses to yield up its national sovereignty.
Basically, the U.S. leadership decided to take over Ukraine, and refused to acknowledge the rights of the Crimean people to reject being conquered by the U.S. — and Russia's leadership decided toprotect them against the type of invasion that subsequently occurred in Ukraine's former Donbass region, where the opposition to Obama's coup was even more intense.
Supposedly, 'the West' is asserting that Russia is somehow in the wrong here; but, since even the head of Stratfor has called what Obama did in Ukraine "the most blatant coup in history", and since the fact that it was a U.S. coup has been documented extensively on cellphone and other videos, and inthe most thorough academic investigation that has been performed of the matter — and was even acknowledged by Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, a participant in the coup, to havebeen a coup — and since evidence survives on the Internet of the U.S. Embassy's preparations as early as 1 March 2013for the February 2014 coup; and since even the U.S. government's hired polls showed that Crimeans rejected overwhelmingly the U.S. coup and supported rejoining Russia; the question still needs to be answered: What basis of 'the West's' aggressive actions threatening Russia's national security is there, other than such lies by the West, against Russia's President? And, that's a very worrisome basis — worrisome regarding, essentially, dictatorship in 'the West', rather than regardingany dictatorship outside 'the West'. The dictatorship here seems clearly to be coming from the West,against the East.
Back in January, Russian President Vladimir Putin called-out American President Barack Obama on Obama's big lie, that America's "ABM" weapons to disable in-flight nuclear missiles were being installed in Europe in order to protect Europe against Iranian nuclear missiles, but now the U.S. acknowledges that Iran doesn't have, and won't have, any nuclear missiles, and yet Obama is stepping up (instead of ending) those ABM installations — even though the alleged anti-Iranian reason for them is gone. The only actual reason they have been installed, Putin argues, is in order to enable a blitz nuclear attack against Russia, which will include disabling Russia's retaliatory capacity.
Any in-depth news-report about Obama's organizing for a possible invasion of Russia, needs to deal, therefore, with the key question: What basis of 'the West's' aggressive actions threatening Russia's national security is there, other than such lies by 'the West'? And, if there is no honest answer to it, then the only rational response by Western publics, to what Obama and his foreign allies are doing, is to recognize what is actually happening and to take action against their own leaders, before this increasingly high-stakes confrontation — of no benefit but only extremely high costs, to publics around the world — becomes terminal. In that instance, Western publics need to defend themselves against their own nation's leaders. This is a situation that is frequently encountered in dictatorships.
The key questions are not being asked in the Western press; they are being ignored by it. Unless these questions are publicly dealt with — and soon — the answer, to them all, could well be terminal. Consequently, any 'news' medium that fails to address them is less than worthless; it is sheer propaganda that merely parades in the mask of being a 'news medium': the potentially terminal questions are then being ignored, and lies are promoted instead, which distract the public from the most urgent public-affairs issue of them all, in our era, not draw the public's attention to that overriding international-affairs issue.
The closer that things are getting to a nuclear war, the more difficult becomes either side's backing down from it — and this is especially the case with the aggressor (most especially when it falsely claims that it is being aggressed-against, and this is the reason why the lies urgently need to be exposed).
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Global Research, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-requests-eu-support-for-possible-war-against-russia/5521560
Tagged eastern borders, invasion, missiles, NATO, offensive, threat, war
U.S. delivers 3,000 tons of weapons and ammo to Al-Qaeda and Co. in Syria
The United States via its Central Intelligence Service is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.
The British military information service Jane's found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes:
The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command. Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba. … The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.
Screenshot of Jane's Report
The Jane's author tweeted the full article (copy here).
One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which has a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.
We already knew that the "rebels" in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these "rebels" regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):
Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, ..
U.S. and Turkey supported "rebels" took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack.
Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet providence. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by several independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda.
From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of "brown people" in the Middle East, but also attacks on "western" people and interests.
Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not be enough to deter the politicians and "experts" that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people.
The original source of this article is Moon of Alabama
Copyright © Moon of Alabama, Moon of Alabama, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-delivers-3000-tons-of-weapons-and-ammo-to-al-qaeda-and-co-in-syria/5519413
Tagged al Qaeda, Aqaba, CIA, CIA black sites, Constanta, Military Sealift Command, missiles, Nusra Front, Romania, Syria, takfiri, US Navy


text:
«Вознесіння Ісаї» — це псевдоепіграфічний юдео-християнський текст. Наукові оцінки щодо дати написання апокрифу коливаються від 70 до 175 року нашої ери. Багато вчених вважають, що це компіляція кількох текстів, написаних невідомим християнським книжником, який стверджував, що є пророком Ісаєю, в той час як останніми роками все більше вчених стверджують, що твір написаний одним автором, який, можливо, використав кілька джерел.

Багато вчених бачили деяку схожість з гностицизмом і «Вознесінням Ісаї».

Датування тексту
Вважається, що текст складається з трьох різних розділів, написаних у різний час різними авторами.

Найдавніший розділ, що стосується розділів 3:13–4:22, був складений приблизно в кінці I століття нашої ери або, можливо, на початку II століття. Вважається, що це текст єврейського походження, який пізніше був відредагований християнськими книжниками. Дату «Видіння Ісаї» (розділи 6–11) визначити складніше, але вважається, що вона написана не пізніше III століття, оскільки Єронім Стридонський (близько 347—420 рр. н. е.) цитує фрагмент твору в деяких із власних праць, але з внутрішніх свідчень здається, що текст був опублікований в кінці II століття. Уся робота була пізніше зібрана, як пише М. А. Кнібб:Невідомо, коли саме були об'єднані три розділи Вознесіння. Грецький фрагмент (V—VI ст.), палімпсест, що дає текст фрагментів першого латинського перекладу (так само з V—VI ст.), та ефіопський переклад (який був зроблений у IV—VI ст.) — всі передбачають існування повного твору. Але характер помилок у грецькому фрагменті та латинському палімпсесті свідчить про те, що повна робота вже існувала деякий час, коли ці рукописи були скопійовані. Таким чином, здається вірогідним, що три розділи Вознесіння були зібрані разом у III або IV столітті нашої ери, і це підтверджується тим фактом, що Ієронім, здається, знав повну книгу. Можливо, у цьому процесі було два етапи, перший — поєднання 3:13-4:22 із «Мученицькою смертю», а другий — поєднання розширеного «Мучеництва» з «Видінням».Таким чином, Кнібб датує написання тексту між 150 і 200 роками нашої ери, але зібраний воєдино пізніше. Більшість вчених погоджуються, що датування основної частини документа від початку до середини II століття є вірогідним.

Зміст

Структура
Книга складається з трьох основних розділів:

 Перша частина книги (розділи 1–5), яку зазвичай називають «Мученицькою смертю Ісаї», розповідає та розширює події 21 розділу Другої книги Царів. Ісая попереджає вмираючого Єзекію, що його спадкоємець Манасія не піде шляхом батька та не буде жити праведно. Коли Манасія сідає на престол й застереження Ісаї виявляється правдою, Ісая та група інших пророків прямують у пустелю, а демон на ім'я Веліар надихає лжепророка на ім'я Белкіра звинуватити Ісаю у зраді. Отже, цар засуджує Ісаю на смерть, і хоча Ісая ховається на дереві, його знаходять, а Белкіра очолює страту.
 У середині цього (3:13–4:22) є християнський апокаліпсис під назвою «Заповіт Єзекії», який описує бачення приходу Ісуса, подальшого зіпсування християнської церкви, правління Веліара та другого пришестя. Все це сформульовано таким чином, що це, безсумнівно, код переслідування Церкви з боку Нерона і віра в те, що Нерон був антихристом.
 Друга частина книги (розділи 6–11) називається «Видінням Ісаї» і описує подорож Ісаї за допомогою ангелів до подій першої частини книги через сім небес. Він написаний з християнської точки зору, зосереджений на Ісусі (у тексті названий «Улюбленим»), який спускається через кожне з небес, перевтілюючись в ангела, на землю. Також описане його земне народження, смерть, воскресіння та вознесіння назад на небо.

Повні рукописи «Вознесіння Ісаї», що збереглися, включають коротку розповідь про народження Ісуса, його життя та розп'яття (11:2–22). За словами Джонатана Найта, ці розширені традиції зустрічаються в ефіопському перекладі, тоді як слов'янський і один з двох латинських перекладів замінюють їх коротким викладом традицій земного вигляду. Крім того, він стверджує, що серед науковців поширена думка про те, що вірші 11:2-22 були у творі в момент написання й не є пізнішою вставкою чи підробкою.

Елементи «Вознесіння Ісаї» є паралельними в інших єврейських і християнських творах. Метод смерті Ісаї (розрізаного навпіл Манасією) збігається як у Вавилонському, так і у Єрусалимському Талмуді, і, ймовірно, на нього посилається автор «Послання до Євреїв» (11:37). Демон Веліар з'являється в багатьох апокрифічних творах, включаючи «Книгу Ювілеїв», «Книгу Еноха», «Заповіти дванадцяти патріархів»« і »Сивілінські оракули". Нарешті, подорож Ісаї сімома небесами схожа на подорож Еноха в «Другій книзі Еноха».

Перший розділ тексту також містить ворожість до самаритян, єврейської секти, яка стверджує, що є євреями, залишеними під час вавилонського полону, від яких інші євреї відмовилися.

Прототринітаризм
Деякі вчені відзначають, що «Вознесіння» відображає прототринітарну перспективу, наприклад, коли жителі шостого неба співають хвалу «Першому Отцю і Його Улюбленому Христу, і Святому Духу». Ларрі Уртадо пише:Однак найбільш розширена розповідь про небесне поклоніння міститься в розділі 9:27–42, де представлено подібний тріатичний погляд. Досягнувши сьомого неба, яке омивається незрівнянним світлом, Ісая бачить незліченну кількість ангелів і «всіх праведних від часів Адама і далі» (9:6–9). Потім, після того, як його ангел-провідник пояснює, як зішестя Улюбленого дозволить праведним отримати свої ризи, корони та престоли (9:10–26), Ісая бачить, як поклоняються постаті, «слава якої перевершила всі інші» Адам, Авель та всі інші праведники та ангели (9:27–28). Важливо, що в цей момент ангел-провідник направляє Ісаю «поклоніться цьому», якого ангел визначає як «Господа всієї хвали, яку ви бачили» (9:31–32), Улюбленого; Ісая приєднується до поклоніння і оспівування цієї фігури. Потім наближається інша славетна постать, згодом ідентифікована як «ангел Святого Духа, який говорив у вас, а також в інших праведних» (9:36), і Ісаї також сказано приєднатися до ангелів у поклонінні цьому (9:35–36). Нарешті, у ретельно підготовленій кульмінації цієї сцени Ісая бачить «Велику Славу» (але своїм духом, бо здається, що його очі засліплені світлом цієї слави, 9:37), і він розповідає, як «мій Господь» і «ангел Духа» обидва поклонялися цій третій фігурі разом з «всіми праведними» та ангелами (9:40–42).

Теологічна полеміка
«Вознесіння Ісаї» свідчить про ранньохристиянську віру в субординаціонізм, подібну до віри Оригена та, пізніше, Новаціана. У тексті описується поклоніння «Великій Славі», «Улюбленому» і «Ангелу Святого Духа», що передбачає ієрархію в чинах Трійці. Крім того, передбачається, що ангели, які супроводжують Ісаю під час його вознесіння, є не хто інший, як Ісус («Улюблений») і Ангел Святого Духа. У тексті, що позначає Ісуса і Святого Духа як ангельських істот, встановлено христологію та пневматологію, які відрізняють «господь» (ймовірно, вживається у значенні «володар», «хазяїн», тобто, таким зверненням відображається повага до ангела) від «мого Господа» (тут йдеться про звернення саме до Ісуса) і Святого Духа. Це було б підставою позначити історію як єретичну в західній православній традиції разом із подібними богословськими віруваннями, такими як аріанство. Тим не менш, ранні юдеї-християни, найімовірніше в палестинському регіоні, вважали б цю історію впливовою на розуміння теології, пневматології та христології, значною мірою завдяки тому, що вона посилається на пророків єврейських писань.

Демони
Теологічні демони, згадані в тексті:

 Беліал є ангелом беззаконня (антиномізм), а також ідентифікується як Самаель і Сатана.
 Самаель ідентифікований у видінні, яке пережив Ісая, коли він піднявся на небосхил і зазначає: «Там я бачив Самаеля (sic) та його війська, і була велика війна в ній… як вгорі, так і на землі [внизу] також, бо подоба того, що на небосхилі, є тут, на землі». Самаїла також часто називають Малкірою (євр. מלך רע melek ra — бук. «цар зла», «цар лукавих»; або מלאך רע malach ra — «посланець зла», «ангел беззаконня»), які всі є епітетами лжепророка, посланого Веліалом, щоб звинуватити Ісаю в зраді.

Рукописна традиція
Текст існує в цілому в трьох рукописах мовою Ґеез, датованими приблизно XV—XVIII століттями, але фрагменти тексту збереглися також грецькою, коптською, латинською та старослов'янською мовами. Здається, що всі три складові тексту були написані грецькою мовою, і цілком можливо, що «Мученицька смерть Ісаї» походить від єврейського чи арамейського оригіналу. Порівняння різних перекладів свідчить про те, що мали існувати дві різні редакції грецького оригіналу; один, на якому були засновані ефіопська та одна з латинських версій, а інший, на якому були засновані слов'янська та інша латинська версії. Збереглися фрагменти обох грецьких версій. Поточна назва твору походить від назви, використаної в ефіопських рукописах («Ergata Īsāyèyās» — «Вознесіння Ісаї»). У давнину Епіфаній також використовував цю назву (грецькою: Τὸ Αναβατικὸν Ἡσαΐου), як і Єронім (латиною: Ascensio Isaiæ).

Література

 Джонатан Найт (1995), Вознесіння Ісаї
 Енріко Нореллі (1995), Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius (Corpus Christianorum. Серія Апокриф)
 Енріко Нореллі (1994), L'Ascensione di Isaia. Studi su un apocrifo al crocevia dei cristianesimi.

Примітки

Посилання

 Онлайн переклад Вознесіння Ісаї
 Відомості про мученицьку смерть і Вознесіння Ісаї
 Онлайн переклад Вознесіння Ісаї гл. 6-11
 Ефіопська версія Вознесіння Ісаї (з грецькими та латинськими фрагментами), відредагована Робертом Генрі Чарльзом у 1900 році.
 Мученицька смерть Ісаї: переклад та аудіоверсія 2012 року
  Це перш за все вивчення екзегези, як її розуміли в той час; Чарльз цитує себе кілька разів.

Християнські тексти III століття
Книги III століття
Книги II століття
Книги I століття
Християнські тексти II століття
Християнські тексти I століття
Псевдоепіграфія

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The art of healing is the art of well-being. Explore, this journey for a better you today.
I completed my 900-hour professional training as a massage therapist and health educator at the National Holistic Institute November 2016. I am currently a member of the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) and a member of the California Massage Therapy Council (CMTC).
I became a Massage Therapist to help heal people. I provide customized specific sessions based on individual client needs to increase health and wellness, customer satisfaction and retention. My area of specialties is in my ability to integrate multiple massage modalities in any given session to systematically address each of my client want and needs.
The Benefits of my combination of modalities is to relieve aches and pains, decrease tension and stress levels in the body, enhance mental clarity, and improve body circulation for a better healing process.