Is Human Cloning Really A New Biomedical Breakthrough?
Human cloning in the laboratory is inevitable and will bring with it disastrous consequences, according to Matthew Omaye Ajiake, author of Nephilim: The First Human Clones. Ajiake makes a case for the existence of human clones in Old Testament times i...

Distribution Source : PRWeb

Date : Thursday, July 07, 2005

(PRWEB) July 7, 2005 -- In 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first surviving mammal known to be conceived by laboratory cloning. Other animals since Dolly, including horses and cattle, have been created using this method. The biotechnology used to create a human clone is essentially the same as that used to clone animals.

Human cloning in the laboratory is inevitable and will bring with it disastrous consequences, according to Matthew Omaye Ajiake, author of Nephilim: The First Human Clones.

Ajiake makes a case for the existence of human clones in Old Testament times in the form of the Nephilim, descendants of Cain, one of the sons of Adam. The Nephilim were referred to as "giants" and "the fallen ones" � unnatural and grotesque creatures.

[...]

Mosaic inspired image of England's favourite saint
By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent (Times of London)

THE earliest known template for the image of St George slaying the dragon has been found in Syria, archaeologists believe.

A mosaic floor dating from approximately AD260 depicting the figure who became the patron saint of England has been found in the city of Palmyra in the Syrian desert. Experts say that the portrait is one of the finest classical mosaics yet uncovered and may even be the source of the St George legend.

George was reputedly a Roman soldier, martyred in Palestine some 1,700 years ago. The mosaic shows Bellerophon, a hero in Greek mythology, killing a chimera, and it was found in what appears to have been a dining room in Palmyra.

[...]

The messianic temptation
By MATI WAGNER

'Long live our master, our rebbe, the king messiah forever," shouted hundreds of Chabad hassidim at the end of the evening prayer in the courtyard outside Beit Menachem, the main synagogue in Kfar Chabad, the town across the road from Ben-Gurion Airport, which serves as the Lubavitch movement's Israeli headquarters.

Inside the synagogue, a bulky TV perched on a cabinet showed old videos of the movement's revered sage, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.

[...]

Messianists, known as mashichistim, also believe that the dissemination of the idea that Schneerson is the messiah helps prepare the world for the messianic era.

"The rebbe said that learning and teaching about the days of redemption help bring it closer," says [Rabbi Yigal] Pizam. "Understanding the concept that the rebbe is mashiach helps prepare a Jew for the messianic era, which is coming any minute now. Knowing that he is the mashiach makes the idea of redemption that much more real and, therefore, brings it closer."

Yet in addition to the evening's decidedly messianic message, there was another theme: "We express our protest against the government's dangerous policies in the Holy Land," read the flyer advertising the rally.

[...]

Unlike mashichistim, mainstream Chabadniks acknowledge the death of the rebbe, although many do not rule out the possibility that he could still be the rebbe once he is resurrected. But more importantly, unlike the mashichistim, mainstream Chabadniks tend to avoid talking about Schneerson's role in end-of-days redemption unless asked directly.

Aggressive Greater Israel activism seems to go hand in hand with rigorous messianism: mashichistim tend to be the same men in black suits and hats blocking roads, passing out anti-disengagement flyers and attending demonstrations. The way they see it, strong messianic beliefs go together with taking the disengagement struggle to the streets.

[...]

Scottish police lower alert
07/07/2005 21:25 - (News 24, South Africa)

Gleneagles - Police on Thursday lowered their alert around a shopping area of the Scottish capital of Edinburgh after determining that a suspect package was harmless, police said.

Police had evacuated an area of Princes Street, a shopping district in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, after a suspect package was found on a bus, a spokesperson said.

She said a bomb disposal squad had carried out a controlled explosion and found no sign the package contained any explosives.

[...]

Ben-Hur (1959)

The Legend: A stuntman was killed during the shooting of the famous chariot race sequence. The shot was left in the final cut over the protests of the stuntman's widow.

The Facts: No stuntmen died during the filming of the 1959 version of Ben-Hur. One stuntman was injured in a spectacular mishap during the chariot race, and that shot was left in the film, to the protestations of no one. This legend may have originated in rumors that surrounded the shooting of Fred Niblo's earlier 1926 version of Ben-Hur, during which at least one stuntman was indeed killed in an accident.

U.S. Holds Filmmaker in Iraq
* Family drafts suit to free L.A. man working on a Cyrus the Great project. Pentagon plans hearing to determine if director is a security threat.

By Henry Weinstein, [Los Angeles] Times Staff Writer

Cyrus Kar's family says he left his Los Feliz apartment for Iraq to make a documentary film about a Persian king who wrote the world's first charter of human rights. But now they fear he may never get home.

On May 17, Kar was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint in a taxi allegedly packed with a common component for improvised explosive devices, according to a Defense Department spokesman. Since then, he has been in U.S. military detention outside Baghdad.

[...]

About three years ago, Kar became interested in the history of ancient Persia, particularly the story of King Cyrus the Great, founder of Persia. He went to Iraq, over his family's objections, to film near Baghdad. He also filmed in Iran, Tajikistan, Turkey and Afghanistan and consulted with scholars.

David Stronach, professor of Near Eastern archeology at UC Berkeley, has signed a sworn declaration to be filed with the [family's federal] lawsuit, stating that he has known Kar for more than two years and has "assisted him in making his documentary" about Cyrus the Great, whom he described as "one of history's most extraordinary figures."

Stronach said Cyrus "is mentioned many times in the Bible, not least because he liberated the captive Jewish community in Babylon � an event that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and arguably, provide the conditions that permitted the birth of Christianity.

"It is impossible to tell the story of Cyrus without bringing in the subject of Babylon, his latest and greatest conquest, and one which had quite exceptional consequences. It is therefore unsurprising to me that Cyrus Kar thought it essential to go to Babylon � in present-day Iraq � to finish filming his documentary."

[...]

"Content Divine Infinity in Gregory of Nyssa and Philo of Alexandria"
pp. 152-177
Author: Geljon, Albert-Kees

Judith Hauptman, "The Tosefta as a Commentary on an Early Mishnah" (English)

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that much of the Tosefta precedes the Mishnah and serves as its basis. However, this raises a fundamental question: how could the Tosefta have been a source of the Mishnah, if the Tosefta is essentially a wide-ranging commentary on and supplement to the Mishnah, as evidenced by the fact that numerous passages in the Tosefta make no sense on their own, and can only be understood when read together with the text on which they comment?

The author suggests that while the Tosefta often comments on a Mishnah, this was not *our* Mishnah, but rather some other, organized, older collection of tannaitic teachings. Numerous examples are adduced to prove this point, thereby providing evidence for the existence of a version of the Mishnah which preceded our Mishnah, which was used and modified by the redactor of our Mishnah.

Amram Tropper,"Yohanan ben Zakkai, Amicus Caesaris: A Jewish Hero in Rabbinic Eyes" (English)

In the foundation myth of Yavneh, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai flees besieged Jerusalem, surrenders to the Romans, predicts Vespasian�s promotion to emperor and is subsequently granted Yavneh as a new center for the rabbinic movement. This rabbinic story risks portraying Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai as a deserter, perhaps even as a traitor and it is puzzling that the rabbis would have depicted one of the most important sages of the formative period in rabbinic Judaism in such a potentially damaging fashion. Indeed, the nationalistic atmosphere that reigned in Judea during the late first and early second centuries would probably have discouraged contemporary rabbis from portraying a rabbinic hero in this manner, and accordingly, there is not even a hint of the escape story in tannaitic literature. I suggest, however, that later rabbis were comfortable depicting Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai in this potentially unflattering manner because of the precedent set by Jeremiah. Jeremiah�s experiences during the destruction of the First Temple, as narrated in the Bible, resemble those of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai at the end of the Second Temple period, and it seems that the rabbis typologically depicted Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai as the Jeremiah of the Second Temple.

Ronit Shoshany, "Rabbi Elazar ben Shimeon and the Thieves�A Story of Sin and Atonement" (Hebrew)

The story of R. Elazar and the thieves consists of two parts. The first part describes R. Elazar�s service under Roman rule as a thief-catcher (Bavli, Bava Metzi�a 83b). The story is interrupted by a sequence of short stories, concluding with the story of R. Yohanan and Resh Lakish (84a). This interruption is apparently an intentional editorial one, aimed at encouraging the reader to compare the stories of R. Elazar and R. Yohanan. There are several similar motifs, but there is an important difference between the two stories: R. Yohanan mourns for the dead Resh Lakish, but does not repent for having caused his death by his cruel behavior, whereas R. Elazar deeply repents of his misconduct. This repentance and self-punishment is described in the second part of the story (84b). In this article, I present a close reading of the two parts of the story of R. Elazar, and a detailed comparison between this story and that of R. Yohanan. I argue that the main theme of R. Elazar�s story is his sincere repentance and atonement, which eventually enables acknowledgment of his righteousness by readers of the story.

One thing I noticed about your blog is that you do not have a meta tag indicating what character set you want your page to be displayed in (so I imagine it is assuming ASCII or something like that).

Try including the following meta tag in the <*head> section of your blog template:

<*meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">

This will set your page to be able to display Unicode fonts (that is what the utf-8 indicates)