Author: Serkadis

iMalqata

Two days ago we decided that one more area we wanted to explore this season, in order to get a better feel for the extent of the village, was a short row of bricks visible west of the “Lower Village.” The Lower Village is what I call a group of what are probably houses at the base of the desert terrace, the area we first began to excavate three weeks ago. As soon as we started to clear the brick (a good thing we did because there is only a partial course of foundation bricks left), we found several pits. We cleaned out the smaller one, away from the wall, to see what kind of material was being dumped there.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Bloom Trail grad’s ship helps relief effort on iway to Mideast deployment

From aboard the USS Nassau docked near Haiti, 19-year-old Airman Ariel Nichoson did her part to get food and medical equipment to earthquake victims.

Nichoson, a 2009 Bloom Trail High School graduate, helped helicopters land on her amphibious assault ship’s deck and chained them down. And she guided drops of supplies from helicopters while they hovered above, too.

En route to the Middle East, the USS Nassau got rerouted to Haiti, where, between Jan. 25 and Feb. 7, the ship dropped off:

57,368 meals.

1.3 million pounds of rice.

30,776 bottles of water.

3,260 pounds of medical supplies.

2,781 hand-crank radios.

80,000 jars of baby food.

“We gave them a lot of water and food supplies, and overall medical care,” she said. “We brought people on the ship to receive care.”

One of about 20 Navy ships that aided Haiti, the USS Nassau took on 16 patients, she said. It reunited a baby girl found in a cardboard box onshore with her mother.

And it dropped off more than a million pounds of rice, almost 58,000 meals, 2,700 hand-crank radios and almost 80,000 jars of baby food during its 16-day stay.

Nichoson was excited on her first deployment to join in the worldwide effort to save Haiti, even if she didn’t get to step foot on the island.

“I didn’t have the chance to get off the boat,” she said. “My job requires me to stay on board and land helicopters.”

Instead, Nichoson shot footage of the shore with a new video camera she bought before deploying to capture her adventures.

“From the boat, I could see streets and houses,” she said.

Life at sea is different

Seeing the world is what led Nichoson, who had never before left home for more than two weeks at a time, to enlist in the Navy.

Halfway through high school, Nichoson changed her college plans to the military. She had joined junior ROTC and decided the military was her ticket out.

“I wanted to do more with my life than just go to college and get a job,” she said.

Of all the branches, the Navy seemed to have the most travel options.

“I wanted to see more. With most other branches, you get stationed in one place, you don’t see as much,” she said. “Boat life is definitely a different experience than any other service.”

When Nichoson called the SouthtownStar earlier this month, she was cruising across the Atlantic Ocean, en route to the Middle East where the Nassau will remain until August.

The USS Nassau left on Jan. 18 from Norfolk, Va., and picked up 2,300 Marines in North Carolina. On Jan. 23, the ship, home to a crew of 1,200, got diverted from its original mission to the Middle East to Haiti, where a 7.0 earthquake leveled the impoverished island nation on Jan. 12, killing more than 200,000 people and leaving another million homeless.

Nichoson enlisted at age 17, before graduating and after she persuaded both parents to agree to let her join.

Her ROTC director, retired Lt. Cmdr. Dan Walsh, made sure the teenager knew what she was getting into. She had been an active member all four years, pushing herself onto one of the drill teams that didn’t have a lot of girls.

“She was dedicated to the cause. And that is the key. We try to teach the kids about hard work and the fact that it pays off,” he said.

“Ariel was keyed into that.”

Now Nichoson is an aviation boatswain’s mate handler, a job she chose so she could be outdoors and learn about aviation.

“What I really do is we land helicopters, chain down helicopters, direct them,” she said.

She can guide in a drop shipment from a helicopter while the chopper’s still in the air.

She also trained to fight fires on deck.

And the mail and other supplies that come on the ship goes through her, too.

Ah, the mail

Nichoson lives for the mail lately, because the distance is the hardest part of her deployment, she said.

She left a boyfriend at home, her mom and 5-year-old brother in South Chicago Heights, and her dad and 10-year-old brother in South Holland. The family has been tight-knit after losing her 19-year-old brother a few years ago in a car crash.

Life on a ship means no regular Internet access or phone lines, either.

“It really makes you appreciate letters and simple things that people take for granted,” she said.

But friends at home are doing the same old stuff. It’s hard to find work.

Nichoson knows she’s in the right place.

“I’m out here. I have a job,” she said. “I don’t consider it a job because I have fun when I do it.”

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Down with Debbie, and up with Adam.

That was the message at Friday’s Tea Party gathering in New Lenox, where more than 300 people showed up to rally against U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-11th) and support her Republican opponent in November, Adam Kinzinger.

Held at Gatto’s Restaurant, the event was sponsored by the New Lenox and Joliet Tea Party organizations. Both are part of the Will County Tea Party Alliance, which hosted candidate forums for congressional and governor candidates in the Feb. 2 primary election.

Halvorson, of Crete, drew the anger of local Tea Party members last year when she held town-hall-style meetings about the health care reform bill via teleconference rather than in public forms.

Kinzinger, who showed up about 15 minutes into the rally, was the keynote speaker. The 32-year-old Bloomington resident got the crowd worked up with a couple of quick questions.

“How many of you believe America is worth fighting for?” he said. “If you believe the same things I do, then you are done with Debbie.”

Kinzinger told the crowd about his background as an Air Force pilot and his willingness to serve his country after Sept. 11, 2001 – three times in Iraq and twice in Afghanistan.

While he acknowledged a need for health care reform, he said a government takeover wouldn’t solve the problem. Kinzinger called Halvorson “arrogant” for voting for the health care bill without reading it first.

Near the end of his speech, Kinzinger asked everyone who came out Friday night to volunteer for his campaign.

“I need an army of people behind me,” he said. “I want you to be that army.”

Kinzinger pledged that, if elected, he would help oust House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a claim that elicited big cheers from the conservative crowd.

Before Kinzinger took the stage, Joliet Tea Party chairman Tim Kraulidis spoke about the importance of the 11th District race. He got the crowd warmed up by playing over the public address system a radio interview that Chicago radio host Don Wade did with Halvorson on health care.

“Does that sound like someone who deserves to be your congressman?” Kraulidis asked the crowd, who greeted his request with a resounding, “No!”

When asked to comment on Friday night’s rally, Halvorson spokesman Ryan Vanderbilt said, “Congresswoman Halvorson is focused on her constituents’ priorities right now – creating jobs and fixing health care for families – not playing politics.”

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

With two photos.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Nevine El-Aref reports on the return of a previously unknown coffin that was only found thanks to the diligence of US customs officers

Following almost 18 months of investigations and legal battles involving fraudulent possession and shipment, a 21st- Dynasty coffin of a private individual named Imesy is to come back to Egypt early in March.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni describes the coffin, which is plastered and painted with colourful religious scenes, as one of the most beautiful coffins of its type.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), says talks on the return of the coffin began in October 2008 when US customs officials at Miami International Airport detained a shipment from Spain containing the coffin, which was found to have no papers or provenance.

The lack of documentation raised the concern of the American authorities, who suspected that the coffin might have left Egypt illegally.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Berkshire Eagle (Jenn Smith)

Though he may be a mummy, the Egyptian priest Pahat can still speak volumes about his ancient civilization.

On Wednesday morning, the nearly 2,300-year-old Berkshire Museum resident and the lower half of his sarcophagus were wrapped to brave the winter weather to undergo a CT scan at Berkshire Medical Center.

The procedure uses advanced X-ray technology as a tool in the scientific study of mummies.

Stuart Chase, executive director of the museum, was among a crowd of nearly 20 other museum, medical and press personnel who squeezed into BMC’s CT scanning suite to watch the process firsthand.

“It’s a rare situation to have a mummy and to be a museum that’s so close to a hospital with the technology to be able to do this,” said Chase. “It’s an exciting new way to unlock the mysteries of the past.”

Pahat himself was first scanned in 1984. On June 4, 2007, the mummy was scanned again at BMC.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Article Tags: David Lappi, World Temperatures

David Lappi is a geologist from Alaska who has sent in a set of beautiful graphs–including an especially prosaic one of the last 10,000 years in Greenland–that he put together himself (and which I’ve copied here at the top).

If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000 from both ends of the world. What’s obvious is that in terms of homo sapiens history, things are warm now (because we’re not in an ice age). But, in terms of homo sapiens civilization, things are cooler than usual, and appear to be cooling.

Then again, since T-rex & Co. vanished, it’s been one long slide down the thermometer, and our current “record heatwave” is far cooler than normal. The dinosaurs would have scoffed at us: “What? You think this is warm?”

Click source to read FULL report by David Lappi

Source: joannenova.com.au

Read in full with comments »   

Al Ahram Weekly (Gamal Nkrumah)

Drawings of the Time: Impressions from Edfu Temple is an exhibition that displays colourful and engaging portraits of high priests of ancient Egyptian Temples. Gamal Nkrumah discovers they tend to be at odds with contemporary art in many respects. These striking images are definitely not the stuff of daily life in the closing years of the Pharaonic era. They have a broader and more aspiring canvas

The exquisite works of Andalusian artists Asuncion Jodar Minarro and Ricardo Marin Viadel ornament the Egyptian Museum and offer a timely lesson in Mediterranean camaraderie. The exhibition focuses on the miscellaneous aspects of the high priests of the Ptolemaic Period. The focus of this show is art rather than history. And yet the images have quite a tale to tell

What a difference a couple of millennia make. Two thousand years ago, these images were adored as the very likeness of the living gods. Or those destined to serve the gods. Today they are admired as imaginative and ingenious interpretations of an art of an age bygone. They were worshipped then, and they are viewed with wonder now.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Osama Kamal)

Osama Kamal explores Egypt’s past in the company of one of Port Said’s best-known antique dealers and collectors

Sometimes chance leads you to things you know very little about, only to delight you with startling details. This is what happens when meeting Ashraf El-Sayyad. Coming from a family that has specialised in buying and selling oriental products, Pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic, for generations, El-Sayyad today runs an antique shop in Port Said not far from the Canal. Many of his clients are foreigners who stop by as they pass through the Suez Canal.

What makes El-Sayyad unique in his family is that he sells other relics of the past besides oriental items. Ever since childhood he has been fond of collecting old things, including antiques, stamps, old envelopes, letters, postcards and coins from all over the world. El-Sayyad does not know why he is so infatuated with the material culture of the past, only that he is. His profession, he says, has become a way of communicating with the world.

As a result, El-Sayyad’s love for old things nears the kind of obsession one sees in top athletes or award-winning scientists.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Friends build the ultimate snow fort

There are snow forts.

And then there are snow forts.

Club Chill is one of the latter.

Most snow forts consist of kids digging into a pile of snow at the end of a driveway.

That’s what longtime friends Dylan Kwiatkowski, 18, Nick Frodyma, 18, and Randy Remblake, 17, all of Tinley Park, did for years.

“We’re sick of those,” Kwiatkowski said Friday.

So when they woke up Monday to find a blanket of heavy snow had fallen, the wheels were set in motion.

“It was perfect packing snow,” Kwiatkowski said.

Perfect for building the ultimate snow fort.

“Over the years, we wanted to do something awesome, and we came up with this,” Remblake said.

“This” is a snow fort that’s 15 feet wide, 15 feet long and seven feet tall.

The fortress with walls that are 2 1 / 2 -feet thick is going nowhere soon.

“This will be up until the middle of March, at least,” Remblake said.

The three, all seniors at Lincoln-Way North High School in Frankfort, worked on the fort three to four hours after school Monday through Thursday.

“It was worth it,” Kwiatkowski said.

They gathered snow from the Frodyma yard and neighbors’ yards.

Why build it behind the Frodyma home?

“I’ve got the biggest back yard,” Frodyma said.

And the most snow to work with.

Once word spread in the neighborhood, younger kids began showing up to help.

They gathered snow into small buckets that were dumped into recycle bins used to build the walls.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, the fort grew. Cold weather at night fortified the walls, Frodyma said.

The three all attend engineering classes, and put that knowledge to work.

“We used a tape measure. We made sure the walls were straight, and the ground was flat” Frodyma said.

The walls look sturdy.

“You can run into one and nothing would happen,” Kwiatkowski said.

A moment later, he added, “but we don’t want to try that.”

They considered using sheets of plywood topped with snow for the roof. Instead, a green tarp borrowed from a friend’s pool is the roof. The tarp attracts heat, making the interior quite tolerable.

There’s plenty of room to lounge inside Club Chill.

There’s a bench, several folding chairs, a small table, a garbage can, an iPod player and a George Foreman Grill.

“We made hot dogs on the grill (Thursday) night,” Kwiatkowski said.

Power is supplied by an extension cord from the Frodyma home that snakes through a small hole in the wall.

Several strings of green Christmas lights illuminate the interior.

“When it’s dark out, there’s a green aura coming from in here,” Remblake said.

These three Arctic architects planned to spend most of the weekend relaxing in their fort.

“We’ll beat this one next year. We’ll all come home from college to build it,” Kwiatkowski vowed.

His father, Matt Kwiatkowski, is impressed by the boys’ dedication.

“It’s nice that they channeled their energy doing something constructive, rather that sit around playing video games. They made good use of the snow,” he said.

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Addressing an auditorium of some 400 children at Mount Greenwood School on Friday, Jennifer Marcello dropped the “R” word – retarded.

Not surprisingly in a room packed with first- through fourth-graders, an outbreak of giggling erupted.

Two rows of students who compete in the Special Olympics Young Athletes program did not laugh, and neither did the older children from the special needs class.

“It’s not a funny word. It’s what people say when they want to make fun of other people,” said Marcello, who manages Illinois’ young athletes program for children ages 2 to 7.

Special Olympics representatives and athletes are touring schools on behalf of a national campaign to stomp out use of the “R” word. A group of seventh-graders also took the Mount Greenwood stage Friday, performing a series of one-minute skits highlighting why the word is hurtful.

Controversy surrounding use of the word made national headlines last month when it was reported that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel referred to a group of liberal activists as “(…….) retarded.” Emanuel quickly apologized and agreed to sign a pledge to not use the word.

So far, more than 72,000 people have signed the pledge at www.r-word.org. The goal is to reach 100,000.

Thomas Strack, 38, of Palos Heights, said he frequently was taunted by the word as a junior high student. Friday was the first time that Strack, who is on the Special Olympics Illinois Board of Directors, publicly spoke out against use of the word.

“It’s time for a change,” said Strack, who has Down syndrome. “Spread the word to end the word. It would mean so much to so many people.”

After discovering that their son Jack had Down syndrome, Special Olympics coach Brook Klawitter said she and her husband worried that he would be teased and wouldn’t have friends, she told the schoolchildren. Now an outgoing 4-year-old, Jack has lots of friends, loves to play ball and can spell his own name, she said.

“Why is it so important to spread the word to end the word? It’s because the ‘R’ word is hurtful to him. And it goes back to all (our) fears,” Klawitter said.

The national campaign began in earnest last winter at the Special Olympics World Winter Games in Idaho, when a group of athletes asked the organization to remove the word “mentally retarded” from its literature.

Since then, legislators across the country have sponsored measures to purge the word from the law books. A Maryland congresswoman has sponsored a measure in the U.S. House, and similar efforts are under way at statehouses in West Virginia, Washington state and Idaho, according to The Associated Press.

Illinois still uses the terminology, said Tom Green, spokesman for the state human services department.

The American Psychiatric Association has also proposed changing the diagnostic term “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability.”

Read the original article from SouthTown Star.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

Facebook is about to become a much quieter place and, despite it being a social service, designed to connect people, that’s actually a good thing. Because it’s not idle chit-chat that’s getting silenced, thankfully, it’s the amount of app spam clogging up your notifications inbox. Starting March 1st all that is gone and developers are encourag… (read more)

Google Street View is great tool, which despite all the criticism and privacy concerns has plenty to offer users. But it’s greatest asset is also its major drawback, the amount of photos Google has taken for the tool makes it very hard to expect any sort of ‘artistic merit’ to them. This is where user photos come in. That’s not to say that use… (read more)

Chile was struck by an enormous 8.8 magnitude quake Saturday, which was luckily 200 miles from Santiago.

Still, tsunami warnings have been issued on the coast:

Reuters:

A tsunami warning was issued for Chile and Peru by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, and a tsunami watch was issued for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica.

Soon after, the U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had generated a tsunami that may have been destructive along the Chilean coast near the epicenter. The USGS said the earthquake struck 56 miles northeast of the city of Concepcion at a depth of 34 miles at 3:34 a.m./1:34 EST.

Its magnitude was initially reported at 8.3 then 8.5. An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over is classified as a “great” earthquake that can cause “tremendous damage,” according to the USGS website.

The earthquake that devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on January 12 was rated at magnitude 7.0.

Read more here >

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See Also:

• If Bolivia Is The Saudi Arabia Of Lithium, Then What’s Chile?*
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(NIH, February 24, 2010) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health today unveiled an initiative designed to accelerate the process from scientific breakthrough to the availability of new, innovative medical therapies for patients.  The initiative involves two interrelated scientific disciplines: translational science, the shaping of basic scientific discoveries into treatments; and regulatory science, the development and use of new tools, standards and approaches to more efficiently develop products and to more effectively evaluate product safety, efficacy and quality. Both disciplines are needed to turn biomedical discoveries into products that benefit people. As part of the effort, the agencies will establish a Joint NIH-FDA Leadership Council to spearhead collaborative work on important public health issues. Click here to read more…

(USDA, February 16, 2010) Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced $144 million in loan guarantees to assist 54 rural businesses through funding made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The funding is authorized through USDA Rural Development’s Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan Program. The program received $1.57 billion through the Act to help rural businesses stimulate economic development.   ”A number of the Recovery Act projects announced today support the President’s comprehensive energy strategy announced earlier this month,” said Vilsack.  Click here to read more…