http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/21/joe-biden-gets-rare-permission-to-drive-his-67-corvette-proceeds-to-burns-rubber.html

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Fuggerei is a social housing complex in Germany where you can rent a house for just under one Euro per year! Find out why the rent is so cheap and learn about the fascinating life of the man behind it all, Jakob Fugger.

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/22/donald-trump-domestic-terrorist-the-man-who-tried-to-kill-democracy-and-why-we-had-it-coming/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

This article is rather long. Some things I found interesting:

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To use a famous metaphor once employed by the great 1960s filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Trump is like a snakeskin full of ants — he appears to be alive and moving on his own, but it’s an illusion produced by the forces working through him.

Where have we read before of a  similar illustration??

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Recently a British journalist asked me whether I thought the United States had become so politically paralyzed and ideologically divided as to be ungovernable. When we have a major-party presidential candidate, trailing in the polls, who threatens not to accept the election results, and a well-respected senator who vows to oppose any possible Supreme Court nominee put forward by the other candidate, the question answers itself.

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  But to believe that Clinton in any way represents a departure from the path of political entropy and paralysis, or that her victory will cause the ants inside the Trump snakeskin to crawl back into their underground nests, is willfully naive.

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Well, once we get past Election Day and all the right-wing wailing and gnashing of teeth that is likely to follow, maybe we can get back to some semblance of normal government. They are inhabiting a state of near-Trumpian delusion.

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Donald Trump is arguably performing an important medical function — he’s like the tumor or the boil that makes the disease obvious to everyone.

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Trump is without doubt the most spectacularly ignorant and unqualified person ever to emerge as a major presidential candidate, and now is widely understood to be an abusive pig as well. Yet Hillary Clinton has been unable to shake him, largely because she represents that failed, decaying and paralytic political system I have just described and he doesn’t. Trump may represent something much worse — incoherent chunks of authoritarian, nationalistic fantasy super-glued together with hate — or may represent nothing at all beyond his own vacuous sense of greatness. But he does not represent the political establishment and cannot be described with terms like “conservative” or “liberal.” And like a stopped clock, he is right by accident a couple of times a day.

RE: Deborah Frances - White Rolls the Dice

What is an apostate?

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Richard Branson skewered Donald Trump on Friday, describing a “bizarre” meeting at some point in the past that left the British billionaire “disturbed and saddened.”

In a blog post on his website, the Virgin founder said the Republican nominee invited him over “some years ago” for a one-on-one lunch at his gilded Manhattan apartment. Soon after sitting down to the meal, Branson said, Trump launched into a vicious tirade, vowing vengeance on people who’d refused to lend him money during one of his six bankruptcies.

“Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help,” Branson, 66, wrote. “He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.”

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“What concerns me most, based upon my personal experiences with Donald Trump, is his vindictive streak, which could be so dangerous if he got into the White House,” wrote Branson, who, as a British citizen, cannot vote in the U.S. election. “For somebody who is running to be the leader of the free world to be so wrapped up in himself, rather than concerned with global issues, is very worrying.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-branson-trump_us_580a45b4e4b000d0b15658d8

Use above link for video and full article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/george-h-w-bush-bill-clinton-letter_us_5808470fe4b0180a36e929c1

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Donald Trump suggested during Wednesday’s presidential debate that he won’t accept the outcome of the Nov. 8 election should he lose, saying he’ll instead keep the country in “suspense” after the results come in. 

Trump’s defiance flouts the norms of American politics and threatens to undermine democracy. It also breaks with civility traditionally put forward by a losing candidate. It’s become customary for the loser of a presidential race to personally call the winner to concede and offer congratulations. Presidents leaving office pen letters to their successors extending well wishes. 

video;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/george-h-w-bush-bill-clinton-letter_us_5808470fe4b0180a36e929c1

Here’s How George H.W. Bush Handled Losing The 1992 Election

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Take, for example, former President George H.W. Bush’s 1993 letter to Bill Clinton, written as the Democrat was set to take office. Clinton had just defeated Bush in his 1992 re-election bid, yet Bush expressed his wish for the next president to succeed, and offered him advice about dealing with critics

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Jan. 20, 1993

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good luck –

George

Use link  to view the letter handwritten by President Bush;

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Despite what Trump himself has said, the Republican Party says it will respect the election’s outcome.  

“We expect to win this race, so it’s not going to be an issue, but regardless, we will accept the will of the people,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer after Wednesday’s debate. 

Bush, meanwhile, plans to vote for Hillary Clint

h

ttp://www.ksl.com/?sid=41919595&nid=148

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PLAIN CITY, Weber County — When some people hear the word Cadillac, they think of a large, comfortable and expensive road car. When Mike Mcquiston thinks of his 2009 Cadillac CTS-V he thinks of burnt rubber, luxury, and above all, extreme horsepower.

Mcquiston first purchased his Cadillac, which produces a whopping 986 horsepower, in February 2016 with many modifications already being done.

“I bought the car from a friend, and it already had probably $40,000 in mods done to it,” Mcquiston said.

Mcquiston previously owned a 2011 Cadillac CTS-V he had planned to build, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity of buying one that already had the money and time put into it.

This Cadillac sports a 377-cubic inch engine with Trick Flow heads that have been heavily modified with aftermarket valve train and porting, as well as a set of Wiseco forged pistons and Callies Compstar H beam connecting rods.

The car still utilizes the factory block and crankshaft as well as the factory supercharger, although the supercharger has been ported by G-force. The engine also has a barrage of Brian Tooley parts throughout. To help air flow into the engine, the car has also been fitted with a 102mm Nick Williams throttle body, and to help exhaust flow out, is a set of Stainless Works 2-inch headers connected to a full 3-inch exhaust all the way back.

The factory after cooler for the supercharger was also swapped out for a 4-inch- thick unit and an ice box in the trunk was also added to keep high inlet temperatures from the supercharger down at the race track. A set of Injector Dynamics 1300cc injectors, backed by an AEM 320-liter per hour fuel pump, and a twin set of 450-liter per hour fuel pumps, supply the massive amount of fuel needed for the engine.

The car also has a nitrous system, supplied by Nitrous Outlet, which gives an additional 75 horsepower on command with a full progressive controller to help aid delivery.

Mcquiston’s Cadillac still uses the factory transmission and differential, which is impressive considering the car from the factory was only rated at 556 horsepower, and it is now producing nearly 1,000 horsepower.

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http://bedroom.about.com/od/Mattresses/fl/Clean-Your-Mattress-the-Natural-Way.htm

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What do you think a 9 year old girl would want to do when she grows up? Stereotypes tell us she would want to be a ballerina or maybe a veterinarian. But things are changing for the best. Stereotypes are changing, and Jesse Jane McParland is most definitely NOT your stereotypical 9 year old girl. When Jesse was very young, her parents wanted her to take classes like many young girls do. They tried taking her to ballet classes but, right away she was having none of it, she hated it.

After looking around for a while she decided to try martial arts instead. And oh boy, this was definitely the right path for her. She picked it up in no time and she became incredible at it.

In very little time began to master these new skills and within some short years she decided to try and show off her skills at Britain’s Got Talent. Her audition is the video you are about to see. When she first started it almost seemed as though the judges almost dismissed her. She is so small and cute that it’s hard for most people to take her seriously as a martial artist. But as soon as she started her routine, the judge’s jaws dropped. You have to see this audition to believe it. To make this story even more incredible, shortly after her audition she got cast for a part in a new movie called “The Martial Arts Kid” featuring the famous actor, Zac Efron.

Watch the video below and don’t forget to share with your family and friends!

Read more at http://www.metaspoon.com/ninja-girl-9-year-old/?cat=celebrities#WHOckUgqLLk2fCOG.99

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They Thought She Was Cute And Harmless. But Never Judge A Book By Its Cover!
Read more at http://www.metaspoon.com/ninja-girl-9-year-old/?cat=celebrities#WHOckUgqLLk2fCOG.99

 

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It's not what they want you to believe ...

Joe Saunders October 11, 2016 at 11:51am

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From the time Donald Trump entered the Republican race for president, the conventional knock on his campaign wasn’t just that it had little chance of succeeding, but that it could drag down with it other Republicans running for office.

Trump supporter and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, however, believes that doesn’t paint an accurate picture of elitist GOP concerns.

What the Republican establishment really feared then, and fears now, said Huckabee, is something else entirely.

In an interview Monday night on Fox News’ “The Kelly File,” Huckabee said the anti-Trump argument was much more self-serving than the “good of the party” spiel being sold in the mainstream media.

“A lot of the bed-wetting, hand-wringing Republicans, they’re not afraid Donald Trump is going to lose,” said the man who early on challenged Trump for the GOP nomination. “They’re scared to death he’s going to win. And if he wins, he’s going to mess up the neat, little package of fun they have, because they all play to the donor class, and Donald Trump is going to make big changes in the way these institutions go.”

Check out the interview here:

use link to see video and to read rest of article: http://www.westernjournalism.com/thepoint/2016/10/11/mike-huckabee-tells-megyn-kelly-anti-trump-gop-bedwetters-really-afraid/

Trashing Trump, while embracing trash...

Joe Saunders October 19, 2016 at 10:27am

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Michelle Obama’s “core” must be sturdier than she thinks…or her standards not so high after all.

The president’s wife presided over her 13^th – and blessedly final – state dinner at the White House on Tuesday attended by the usual star roll of foreign dignitaries, media lapdogs and celebrities showing off their political pull and liberal cred at the same time.

But at least one invited guest was on hand who has made a living out of vile “locker room talk” worse than Donald Trump could ever dream of.

Along with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Obama consigliore Valerie Jarrett and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, the Obamas’ guest list included Chance Bennette, better known by his stage name of Chance the Rapper. This black entertainer may be best known for song lyrics described by New York Post sportswriter Phil Mushnick as “standard dehumanizing gangsta rap — young black men are N—-s, he’s especially fond of dope and regards young women as a sub-species in over-and-out service to his immediate libidinous whims, especially oral sex.”

(Why was a sportswriter critiquing raunchy rap music? Because in the spring, Chance the Rapper was named the Chicago White Sox’s “ambassador.” Presumably to some of the Windy City’s tougher neighborhoods.)

Mushnick wasn’t exaggerating. Next words I did not quote because of vulgarity,

Compared to that, Trump sounds downright romantic. And it gets worse, and more unprintable, from there.

As rap lyrics go, that’s more or less par for the course. Which is part of what makes the rank hypocrisy and gutter-style entertainment preferences of both Obamas all the more galling.

In Michelle Obama’s speech last week, where she talked about being “shaken to my core” by Trump’s obviously crude 2005 comments, she went even further. “Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough,” she said. “This has got to stop right now.”

Well, it’s got to stop if you’re a Republican running for president against Barack Obama’s chosen successor. If you’re a hip young black man on the make from Chicago, though — furthering the degradation of the black community by fathering children without benefit of wedlock — it can keep on going and get you invited to the White House. (Makes you wonder if knocking up random women, hating white cops, and using drugs exactly what liberals want and expect from black men in the 21st century? Sure looks that way.)

At Tuesday’s dinner, Italian PM Renzi saluted the first lady’s anti-Trump speech, according to CNN’s nauseating coverage.

“Thank you so much, as prime minister but also as father of a small daughter,” he said.

Maybe the prime minister’s daughter will grow up to hear degrading lyrics like Chance the Rapper’s and reflect that her father was an Obama dinner guest with that worthy poet, in the company of some of the most famous and powerful men and women in the United States.

Maybe she’ll reflect that every person in that room understood that in an election season that had passed previous boundaries for vile caricature, her father was part of a dinner party that passed judgment on a political rival as being too lewd for polite company, while breaking bread with a man who’s made millions spewing far worse ideas all over impressionable young people, and extolling drug use in the process.

Maybe she’ll understand that Michelle Obama’s “core” was sturdier than she was letting on – or was just part of another Democrat Big Lie in furtherance of a morally bankrupt progressive agenda.

What are the chances of that?

What do you think?

http://www.westernjournalism.com/thepoint/2016/10/19/michelle-obama-was-shaken-by-trumps-talk-but-look-who-she-invited-to-white-house-gala/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=WesternJournalism&utm_content=2016-10-19&utm_campaign=manualpost

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1547741205525098&set=p.1547741205525098&type=3&theater

http://www.washingtontimes.com/multimedia/collection/christian-celebrities/

Use link to view all 19.

https://medium.com/@WhiteHouse/behind-the-lens-official-state-visits-through-the-years-dcc637b64114#.b3qreklj9

Interesting to see the changes through the years.

The Bella of the Ball! Michelle Obama pulls out all the stops for Barack's last state dinner as she welcomes a VERY impressed Italian prime minister in a stunning custom-made Versace gown 

While competition can be positive and sportsmanship does exist, sometimes we forget the bigger meaning of athletics and the opportunity it can provide each of us to excel as individuals. Sometimes we need to put aside our bravado and competitive nature for a higher good.
Here’s a kid named Mitchell who has been a huge basketball fan since a kid. He helps out on the team and is the coach’s favorite right hand man. Mitchell is also special needs.
In a surprise move, Mitchell gets the word from his coach to suit on up and get in the game. It was the end of the season, the last game, and it was time to allow those who don’t always get the opportunity to excel, to be given some play time. He gets out there and fires away, shot after shot, but he just can’t seem to connect. He didn’t score any baskets, but the coach had hoped just being in the game was enough. But then something happened.

How Did Walmart Get Cleaner
Stores and Higher Sales?
It Paid Its People More

Can the answer to what ails the global economy be found
in the people in blue vests at your neighborhood Walmart?

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When a furor erupted over the rapidly rising price of EpiPens this summer, the drugmaker Mylan offered a solution: a coupon for the expensive drug.

People who need the EpiPens to protect themselves from life-threatening allergic reactions could use the coupon to get up to $300 off at the pharmacy counter if their insurance plan has a deductible or a co-payment.

It is a good deal for those people. But these seemingly generous coupons may be making drug costs higher for everyone. New research suggests that co-payment coupons can actually increase total health care spending by encouraging patients to choose more expensive drugs when there are lower-priced substitutes available. Those high costs can then boomerang back to patients in the form of higher insurance premiums.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/drug-coupons-helping-a-few-at-the-expense-of-everyone.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=The Upshot&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

An opinion as posted by Roger Cohen OCT. 14, 2016

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?”

Of course Bob Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. We’re all Mister Jones now. It’s the wildest political season in the history of the United States.

Just to make his pedigree clear, Donald Trump is now suggesting that Hillary Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors.”

What was it the Nazis called the Jews? Oh, yes, “rootless parasites,” that’s it. For Stalin they were rootless cosmopolitans.

Just saying.

Societies slide into dictatorship more often than they lurch, one barrier falling at a time. “Just a buffoon,” people say, “and vulgar.” And then it’s too late.

I’ve been reminded in recent weeks of the passage in Fred Uhlman’s remarkable novella, “Reunion,” in which a proud German Jewish physician, twice wounded in World War I, and convinced the Nazis are a “temporary illness,” lambasts a Zionist for trying to raise funds for a Jewish homeland:

“Do you really believe the compatriots of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Beethoven will fall for this rubbish? How dare you insult the memory of twelve thousand Jews who died for our country?”

Germans fell for the rubbish. The Republican Party fell for the garbage.

Today, millions of Americans who plan to vote for Trump are apparently countenancing violence against their neighbors, people who might be different from them, perhaps Muslim or Latino. It’s easy to inject the virus of hatred: just point a gun.

That Trump traffics in violence is irrefutable. His movement wants action — deportations, arrests, assassination and torture have been mooted. The most worrying thing is not that Trump likes Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Aleppo, but that he apes Vladimir Putin.

Speaking of Latinos, here’s what happened the other day to Veronica Zuleta, who was born in El Salvador and became an American citizen more than a decade ago. She was in the upscale Draeger’s Market in Menlo Park when the man next to her said:

“You should go to Safeway. This store is for white people.”

Zuleta was shocked. Never had she encountered a comment like that about her brown skin. But even the Democratic bastion of Silicon Valley is not immune to the Trump effect: Once unsayable things can now be said the world over. “Go back to where you came from” is the phrase du jour.

In the three months after the Brexit vote in Britain, homophobic attacks rose 147 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. It’s open season for bigots.

Financial and emotional pressures have been mounting on Zuleta. She lives in what the visionaries of Google, Facebook and the like consider the center of the universe. Where else, after all, are people thinking seriously about attaining immortality; or life on Mars; or new floating cities atop the oceans; or a universal basic income for everyone once the inevitable happens and artificial intelligence renders much of humanity redundant?

Y Combinator, a big start-up incubator, has announced it will conduct a basic income experiment with 100 families in Oakland, giving them between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for up to a year. Just to see what people do when they have nothing more to do. Oh, Brave New World.

Back in the present, prices for real estate have soared. Zuleta lives in a modest rented place on what used to be the wrong side of the tracks, in East Menlo Park, east of Route 101 that runs down the Valley. As it happens, her home is now a couple of blocks from Facebook’s sprawling headquarters designed by Frank Gehry that opened last year. She asked about a job in the kitchen, to no avail. She struggles to make ends meet.

Facebook, she told me, “is intimidating for people like me. It’s like, get out of here if you don’t know anything about technology.”

For its part, Facebook says it cares about and invests in the local community — $350,000 in grants donated to local nonprofits this year and last, new thermal imaging cameras for the local fire district, and so on. Its revenue in 2015 was $17.9 billion.

Zuleta works from 6:30 in the morning until midnight, cleaning homes, driving children to school and activities, running errands for wealthy families (like shopping for them at Draeger’s), and cleaning offices at night. In between she tries to care for her two young children. The other day, she was in the kitchen, collapsed and found herself in the hospital.

“The doctor said I need to sleep and relax,” she told me. “But I can’t!”

Life is like that these days for many Americans: implacable and disorienting. As a Latina, Zuleta said she would never vote for Trump, but she feels overwhelmed.

Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/opinion/how-dictatorships-are-born.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article

Audience members excitedly awaiting the start of the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Look at their faces. Look at the caption  under the picture.  I find this very funny. lol

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/opinion/whos-sorry-now-the-country.html?action=click&contentCollection=opinion&module=NextInCollection&region=Footer&pgtype=article&version=column&rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fgail-collins

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Music is a splendid thing. It can cheer you up when you're sad, make you dance like a fool, and allow you to drown out the world when you need to. But music has its scientific uses, too. The documentary Alive Inside details how dementia patients react positively when given iPods filled with their old favorite songs. The music seems to help them "come alive" again. While listening to familiar songs, many of the documentary's patients can sing along, answer questions about their past, and even carry on brief conversations with others.

"Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience," says neurologist Oliver Sacks, who appears in the film. "Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory."

The documentary follows recent studies showing that music can improve the memories of dementia patients, and even help them develop new memories.

Here, a look at some other things music has been known to "cure": see link:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/30649/11-problems-music-can-solve

The first thing you might not know about obelisks is what they are. If you have ever visited the Washington Monument, however, or walked across the Place de la Concorde in Paris, or seen any rendering of ancient Egypt in its glory, you are very familiar with obelisks: vertical stone columns that taper as they rise, topped by a pyramid. Washington’s Monument and the Fascinating History of the Obelisk, by John Steele Gordon, is an absorbing account of the obelisk’s place in human civilization. Here are seven things revealed by Gordon that you might not know about obelisks

1. THEY WERE BUILT BY THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, THOUGH ONLY A FEW REMAIN IN EGYPT.

The ancient Egyptians placed pairs of obelisks at the entrances of their temples. According to Gordon, the columns were associated with the Egyptian sun god, and perhaps represented rays of light. They were often topped with gold, or a natural gold-and-silver alloy called electrum, in order to catch the first rays of the morning light. Twenty-eight Egyptian obelisks remain standing, though only six of them are in Egypt. The rest are scattered across the globe, either gifts from the Egyptian government or plunder by foreign invaders.

2. AN OBELISK WAS USED IN THE FIRST CALCULATION OF THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE EARTH.

Around 250 B.C., a Greek philosopher named Eratosthenes used an obelisk to calculate the circumference of the Earth. He knew that at noon on the Summer Solstice, obelisks in the city of Swenet (modern day Aswan) would cast no shadow because the sun would be directly overhead (or zero degrees up). He also knew that at that very same time in Alexandria, obelisks did cast shadows. Measuring that shadow against the tip of the obelisk, he came to the conclusion that the difference in degrees between Alexandria and Swenet: seven degrees, 14 minutes—one-fiftieth the circumference of a circle. He applied the physical distance between the two cities and concluded that the circumference of the Earth was (in modern units) 40,000 kilometers. This isn’t the correct number, though his methods were perfect: at the time it was impossible to know the precise distance between Alexandria and Swenet.

If we apply Eratosthenes's formula today, we get a number astonishingly close to the actual circumference of the Earth. In fact, even his inexact figure was more precise than the one used by Christopher Columbus 1700 years later. Had he used Eratosthenes’s estimation, Columbus would have known immediately that he hadn’t reached India.

3. TRUE OBELISKS ARE MADE OF A SINGLE PIECE OF STONE.

True obelisks as conceived by the ancient Egyptians are “monolithic,” or made from a single piece of stone. (The literal translation of monolith—a Greek word—is “one stone.” On that note, the word “obelisk” is also Greek, derived from obeliskos, or skewer. An ancient Egyptian would have called an obelisk a tekhen.) The obelisk at the center of Place de la Concorde, for example, is monolithic. It is 3300 years old and once marked the entrance to the Temple of Thebes in Egypt. So difficult is the feat of building a monolithic obelisk that Pharaoh Hatshepsut had inscribed at the base of one of her obelisks the proud declaration: “without seam, without joining together.”

4. THEY WERE REALLY, REALLY HARD TO BUILD.

Nobody knows exactly why obelisks were built, or even how. Granite is really hard—a 6.5 on the Mohs scale (diamond being a 10)—and to shape it, you need something even harder. The metals available at the time were either too soft (gold, copper, bronze) or too difficult to use for tools (iron’s melting point is 1,538 °C; the Egyptians wouldn’t have iron smelting until 600 B.C.).

The Egyptians likely used balls of dolerite to shape the obelisks, which, Gordon notes, would have required “an infinity of human effort.” Hundreds of workers would have each had to pound granite into shape using dolerite balls that weighed up to 12 pounds. This doesn’t even address the issue of how one might move a 100-foot, 400-ton column from the quarry to its destination. While there are many hypotheses, nobody knows precisely how they did it.

5. AN OBELISK HELPED ARCHAEOLOGISTS TRANSLATE HIEROGLYPHICS.

Until the 19th century, hieroglyphics were thought to be untranslatable—mystical symbols with no coherent message beneath. Jean-François Champollion, a French Egyptologist and linguist, thought differently, and made it his life’s purpose to figure them out. His first success came from the Rosetta Stone, from which he divined the name “Ptolemy” from the symbols. In 1819, “Ptolemy” was also discovered written on an obelisk which had just been brought back to England—the Philae obelisk. The “p,” “o,” and “l” on the obelisk also featured elsewhere on it, in the perfect spots to spell the name “Cleopatra.” (Not that Cleopatra; the much earlier Queen Cleopatra IX of Ptolemy.) With those clues, and using this obelisk, Champollion managed to crack the mysterious code of hieroglyphics, translating their words and thus unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt. (Almost 200 years later, the European Space Agency’s mission to land a spacecraft on a comet commemorated these events; the spacecraft is named Rosetta. The lander is named Philae.)

6. THE OLDEST REMAINING OBELISKS ARE AS OLD AS RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY.

The oldest obelisks are almost impossibly old—ancient even by the standards of antiquity. Seaton Schroeder, an engineer who helped bring Cleopatra’s Needle to Central Park, called it a “might monument of hoary antiquity,” and commented eloquently, “From the carvings on its face we read of an age anterior to most events recorded in ancient history; Troy had not fallen, Homer was not born, Solomon’s temple was not built; and Rome arose, conquered the world, and passed into history during the time that this austere chronicle of silent ages has braved the elements.”

7. THE TALLEST OBELISK IN THE WORLD IS THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT.

First conceived in 1832, the Washington Monument took decades to build. It is, by law, the tallest structure in the District of Columbia, and is twice as tall as any other obelisk in the world. Gordon notes that it stands unique among memorials in Washington. Whereas people visit memorials to Lincoln and Jefferson (among others) to see giant statues of the men they commemorate, the highlight of the Washington Monument is the monument itself. The statue of Washington inside receives little notice. As Gordon writes in Washington’s Monument, “The obelisk, silent as only stone can be, nonetheless seems to say as nothing else can, ‘Here is something significant.’”

http://mentalfloss.com/article/73935/7-fascinating-facts-about-obelisks

From Egypt to Cities Around the World

BY AWAKE! WRITER IN ITALY

“THEY have ‘traveled’ out of the land of their origin,” says the Italian magazine Archeo, “becoming tangible symbols of the great civilization that had produced them.” Most left Egypt long ago and were brought to such places as Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome, and New York. Visitors to Rome may observe that many of the city’s most famous squares are adorned by their presence. What are they? Obelisks!

Each tapering four-faced stone column, known as an obelisk, is crowned by a pointed cusp in the form of a pyramid. The earliest dates back some 4,000 years. Even the most recent one is about 2,000 years old.

Obelisks, generally of red granite, were quarried by the ancient Egyptians as monolithic blocks of stone and were erected in front of tombs and temples. Some are huge. The largest still standing rises 105 feet [32 m] above a Roman piazza and weighs some 455 tons. Most are embellished with hieroglyphs.

The monuments’ purpose was to honor the sun-god Ra. They were erected to thank him for his protection and for victories granted to Egyptian sovereigns as well as to request favors. Their shape is thought to have been derived from that of the pyramid. They represent beams of sunlight descending to warm and illuminate the earth.

Additionally, obelisks were used to glorify the Pharaohs. Their inscriptions proclaim various Egyptian sovereigns as “beloved of Ra” or “beautiful . . . like Atum,” who was the god of the sun at sunset. One obelisk says of a Pharaoh’s military prowess: “His power is like that of Monthu [god of war], the bull that tramples foreign lands and kills rebels.”

The first obelisks were raised in the Egyptian city of Junu (the Biblical On), thought to mean “City of the Pillar,” perhaps referring to the obelisks themselves. The Greeks called Junu Heliopolis, meaning “City of the Sun,” since it was the chief center of Egyptian sun worship. The Greek name Heliopolis corresponds to the Hebrew name Beth-shemesh, meaning “House of the Sun.”

The Bible’s prophetic book of Jeremiah speaks of the breaking of “the pillars of Beth-shemesh, which is in the land of Egypt.” This may refer to the obelisks of Heliopolis. God condemned the idolatrous worship they represented.—Jeremiah 43:10-13.

Extraction and Transportation

How obelisks were made is shown by the largest of these monuments. It still lies abandoned near Aswân, Egypt, where it was being quarried. After choosing a promising bed of rock and leveling it, workers excavated trenches around what was to become the obelisk. They dug passages beneath it and filled them with beams, until the bottom face was freed. The monolith, which weighed about 1,170 tons—heavier than any other block of stone quarried by the ancient Egyptians—was then to have been hauled down to the Nile and conveyed to its destination by barge.

As things turned out, the Aswân obelisk was abandoned when workers realized that it was irreparably fractured. Had it been finished, it would have stood 137 feet [42 m] high, with a base 13 feet square [4 m by 4 m]. How obelisks were raised upright is still not known.

From Egypt to Rome

In 30 B.C.E., Egypt became a Roman province. Various Roman emperors desired to adorn their capital with monuments of great prestige, so as many as 50 obelisks were transferred to Rome. Moving them meant building huge ships designed especially for that purpose. Once in Rome, the obelisks continued to be closely associated with sun worship.

When the Roman Empire fell, Rome was ransacked. Most of the obelisks were toppled and lay forgotten. Various popes, however, took an interest in reerecting the obelisks taken from the ruins of the ancient city. The Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged that the obelisks were “dedicated to the Sun by an Egyptian king” and that they once “brought vain magnificence to sacrilegious pagan temples.”

The reerection of the first obelisks during the reign of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) was accompanied by exorcisms and blessings, as well as the sprinkling of holy water and the burning of incense. “I exorcise you,” sang a bishop before the Vatican obelisk, “to bear the holy Cross and remain devoid of all pagan impurity and all assaults of spiritual iniquity.”

So as a tourist examines the obelisks that stand in Rome today, he may well ponder the genius it took to extract, transport, and raise them. He may also marvel that monuments used in sun worship adorn the city of the popes—a strange combination indeed!

http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102007125#h=1:0-25:5

AWAKE! WRITER IN ITALY

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3839168/Monaco-buys-Grace-Kelly-s-Philadelphia-childhood-home.html

Quote

• The 4,000 sq ft house features six bedrooms and four bathrooms and was built by Kelly's father in 1920s
• It was originally listed for $1million in July and dropped to $750,000 but a bidding war brought it up 
• Kelly not only grew up in the home - it is where  Prince Rainier III of Monaco proposed to her 
• Marjorie Bamont, 82 at the time, was convicted with animal cruelty after 14 cats were found inside in 2014
• The home was found covered in cat feces and fleas and a dead cat was also discovered 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3839168/Monaco-buys-Grace-Kelly-s-Philadelphia-childhood-home.html#ixzz4N7IhvStC
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Horrible. Probably no charges, for fear of retaliation.That hit sounded very, very loud. Thug.