#Brighams Tomb

[thorsenmark]

Wide-Angle, Panoramic Feel to an Image Captured by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While at a roadside pullout at Forrest Gump Point with a new looking to the southwest down the road with a backdrop of the sandstone buttes and formations present in the Monument Valley. This is along U.S. Route 163 not far from Halchita, Utah. My thought on composing this image was to have a view looking down the road and center myself with the stripe leading off into the distance. I decided to angle my Nikon SLR, camera slightly downward and create more of a sweeping view, bringing the horizon higher into the image. I wanted the image to have a panoramic, wide angle view, so I knew that I would cut off some of the foreground to my front.

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

Ok I was fooling around this morning and came up with this blurssed idea and now I'm like, wait. Should I make this into a real thing??

I could include such banger recipes as:

Funeral potatoes

Better than ✨ intimacy ✨ cake

15 kinds of casseroles

15 kinds of baked goods

Brigham's tea (look it up if you haven't! It's interesting)

Empty tomb puffs

What else should I put in this imaginary-and-possibly-one-day-real cookbook? 😂

I have no idea if I want to make this or not, but if you want to contribute to the possible future of this... Zine...? Then read below the cut!

I have a few problems:

I need more recipes; despite how Mormon my family is, I don't have very many Mormon family recipes to use (or even ideas)

I've never made a zine. How is it done?? What would a beginner zine maker not consider? Do I have the skills/time/resources/etc to do it?

How to... Distribute it...?

I think besides recipes I would want to look at a couple of those old ward cookbooks to see how they look and try to imitate that feel...

IDK what I'm doing. I don't know if I'll do this or not, and if I do, IDK when. But I have a cookbook collecting problem and my desire to have this is consuming. Please help

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.16 (before 1940)

456 – Ricimer defeats Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire. 690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire. 912 – Abd ar-Rahman III becomes the eighth Emir of Córdoba. 955 – King Otto I defeats a Slavic revolt in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. 1311 – The Council of Vienne convenes for the first time. 1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. 1590 – Prince Gesualdo of Venosa murders his wife and her lover. 1736 – Mathematician William Whiston's predicted comet fails to strike the Earth. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: The British-led Royalton raid is the last Native American raid on New England. 1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 finishes after its sixth day, killing between 20,000 and 24,000 residents of the Lesser Antilles. 1793 – French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette is executed. 1793 – War of the First Coalition: French victory at the Battle of Wattignies forces Austria to raise the siege of Maubeuge. 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: Napoleon surrounds the Austrian army at Ulm. 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon in the three-day Battle of Leipzig. 1817 – Italian explorer and archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni, uncovered the Tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. 1817 – Simón Bolívar sentences Manuel Piar to death for challenging the racial-caste in Venezuela. 1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London burns to the ground. 1836 – Great Trek: Afrikaner voortrekkers repulse a Matabele attack, but lose their livestock. 1841 – Queen's University is founded in the Province of Canada. 1843 – William Rowan Hamilton invents quaternions, a three-dimensional system of complex numbers. 1846 – William T. G. Morton administers ether anesthesia during a surgical operation. 1847 – The novel Jane Eyre is published in London. 1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. 1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered". 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women. 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. 1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business. 1905 – The Partition of Bengal in India takes place. 1909 – William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold the first summit between a U.S. and a Mexican president. They narrowly escape assassination. 1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the first family planning clinic in the United States. 1919 – Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers' Party. 1923 – Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, today known as The Walt Disney Company. 1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March to escape Nationalist encirclement. 1939 – World War II: No. 603 Squadron RAF intercepts the first Luftwaffe raid on Britain.

[thoughtfulfoxllama]

Who wants to hear about my Hazbin Hotel Fanfic

Here's a Character Outline

Vaggie- Vagatha Young, known as Vaggie. She was an Exterminator. In this world, there is a class of Sinner that is not allowed to be killed, known as the Penitents. However, she saw that a group of Penitents was about to be killed by a group of Masked Exterminators (because, in this AU, they don't wear masks), so she stepped in. Charlie saw her fighting the other Exterminators, and so, she took her in. They got engaged weeks before the events of the Fanfiction start

Charlie- Charlie is relatively unchanged. She still has the same "Disney Princess" Energy she gave off in the show. The only difference is she was there during the Harrowing of Hell (which, in Christian Lore, happened on the Saturday when Jesus was in the Tomb), so she took the responsibility of protecting the Penitents

Brigham Young- Brigham is really the Main Character. I've already discussed him plenty, with his story focusing on his Atonement

Penny Young- Penny is a fanatic, plain and simple. She & Vaggie didn't get along when they were alive, and this grudge continued into the afterlife. Unlike the majority of Exterminators, she is not traumatized by the Exterminations, she enjoys them. She is Brigham's Lieutenant, and [redacted for spoilers]

Carmilla Carmine- Carmilla is Vaggie's mother. She was a Mexican woman who traveled up North, and got acquainted with Brigham. Clara & Odette both died as Infants (one was from a previous marriage, and the other was Brigham's), and Carmilla died when Vaggie was 5. They agreed pretty quickly that the Exterminations shouldn't go on, so Carmilla, Clara, and Odette volunteered to go to Hell, to provide some way of protecting the Sinners (which is why she became a weapons dealer). She is actually Ace in this version, so her relationship with Brigham & Zestial is platonic

Sir Pentious- Sir Pentious is my favorite. He was a railroad worker in the 1850s, who was killed in a robbery. His story follows the same path as in the show really, but it's revealed that the robber who killed him was Cherri Bomb (who was a prostitute, chased out of town when she killed an abusive client, turning to train robbery to stay alive. She was killed by Pentious, who shot one of her bombs, taking out their entire train car)

The Story will follow 3 Plotlines:

1.) Brigham's Atonement. This will include him advocating for Charlie's Hotel, and eventually getting a meeting before the Archangels (Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham (or Melchizedek), Moses, Peter (or John the Baptist), and Joseph Smith)

2.) The Penitents. This covers Charlie's attempts at Redeeming the Patrons in the Hotel. It'll essentially be like the Show

3.) The Rebels. This follows Carmilla's attempts to arm the citizens of Hell (undercover, because she still wants to protect her daughters, so she can't risk anyone finding her out, as that would put a target on her back)

[roelandbeers]

Highway UT-163 towards Brighams tomb & Stagecoach, Utah, 9th june 2017

(Nikon D700, 24-70 mm, 2.8 (set at 32 mm, 18,0, 13 sec, ISO 200)

[sciencenewsforstudents]

SAN DIEGO — Modern technology is illuminating tattoos on mummified, ancient Egyptians that until now had gone unnoticed.

Infrared photography has helped to identify tattoos on seven mummified individuals dating to at least 3,000 years ago at a site called Deir el-Medina, archaeologist Anne Austin of the University of Missouri–St. Louis reported November 22 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Although the identities of these tattooed folks are unknown, artisans and craft workers at Deir el-Medina built and decorated royal tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.

Until the Deir el-Medina discoveries, tattoos had been found on a total of only six mummified individuals over more than a century of research at ancient Egyptian sites. But infrared photos, which display wavelengths of light invisible to the naked eye, are transforming what’s known about tattooing in ancient Egypt, Austin said.

“It’s quite magical to be working in an ancient tomb and suddenly see tattoos on a mummified person using infrared photography,” said Austin, who, along with her colleagues, examined the mummies in 2016 and 2019. That research was conducted while Austin was working with the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo.

Designs and placement of tattoos vary greatly on the 13 Egyptian mummies, which consist of 12 women and one man. A female mummy found in 1891 bore the first known tattoo from ancient Egypt. More recently, archaeologist Renée Friedman of the University of Oxford in England used infrared imaging to reveal tattoos on one male and one female Egyptian mummy housed at the British Museum in London (SN: 3/9/18). Those people lived in Egypt shortly before the rise of the first pharaoh around 5,100 years ago.

Ötzi the Iceman’s 5,250-year-old body, found in the Italian Alps, displays the oldest known tattoos (SN: 1/13/16).

Only tattooed females have been identified at Deir el-Medina. Discoveries there challenge an old idea that tattoos on women connoted fertility or sexuality in ancient Egypt. Deir el-Medina tattoos appear to be more closely associated with women’s roles as healers or priestesses, Austin said.

In the most striking case, infrared photos revealed 30 tattoos on various parts of a female mummy. Cross-shaped patterns on her arms don’t occur on any of the other dozen tattooed mummies, Austin said. Several other of her tattoos look like hieroglyphs used in ancient Egyptian writing. The extent and range of body markings on this woman suggest she may have been a religious practitioner of some kind, Austin speculates.

Another Deir el-Medina woman had a tattoo on her neck depicting a human eye — an ancient Egyptian symbol associated with protection — as well as tattoos of a seated baboon on each side of her neck.

“I see no discernible pattern in the tattoos we’ve found so far,” Austin said.

Discoveries of tattoos on additional Egyptian mummies may help researchers figure out how these markings were used. “Everything about the new tattoo discoveries is surprising because so little is known about this ancient Egyptian practice,” said Egyptologist Kerry Muhlestein of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

[timeagainreviews]

5 Moments when Doctor Who SUCKED

Imagine, if you will for a moment, that you are a brand new Doctor Who fan. You don’t even know to call yourself a Whovian yet. You get on a few facebook groups, see a few YouTube videos and discover, much to your dismay, that Doctor Who is, in fact, ruined now. Woe is you who set path down a trail leading toward mediocrity, and eventually utter devastation. I ask you to picture yourself in this manner because I want you to realise that only a person new to Doctor Who would believe such drivel. Everyone else saying this seems to have rose tinted glasses. The rest of us all know that Doctor Who is a show that sometimes requires forgiveness.

Am I saying Doctor Who is a bad show? Not hardly. Much like pizza, Doctor Who is still pretty good, even when it sucks. I would venture to say that one of the things I love most about Doctor Who is how campy and silly it can be at times. Why is it then that so many people are turning their backs on a show that’s filled their lives with so much joy? I’m really trying to avoid the "because sexism," argument. But I can’t help but feel like if you were to switch the Doctor to a male, nobody would be calling the show "ruined." Furthermore, how do you even ruin something that has gone through so many changes throughout the years? Oh right, it’s the Doctor Who fandom. Where the only language allowed is hyperbolic.

Perhaps these fake geeks are mad because making the Doctor a woman takes away their ability to call her a Mary Sue. Especially when you consider the same character once burst out of a golden birdcage and floated to the ground in a wave of Jesus energy. That might mean they’d have to retroactively apply the title to every incarnation. Could the Doctor ever escape the distinction? Unnaturally talented, charismatic, good at everything he does, brilliantly smart. Or is it that these attributes only belong to men? We can believe Tom Baker’s Doctor is capable of walking into a burning furnace to save K9, but hell no, a woman can’t be the Doctor.

You have to face it, Doctor Who has had some terrible moments. Yet we continue to tune in because we forgive it. We forgive when Doctor Who is bad because of the moments when Doctor Who is wonderful. Which I know is how you would describe an abusive partner, but I’m gonna let it slide for a television series. Especially this series. Because unlike that dickhead who never texts you back, Doctor Who can change. If you don’t believe me, please peruse this list of five instances when Doctor Who was terrible.

1. The John Nathan-Turner era

My God, how could I not start with this? While there is no denying there are some wonderful moments in JNT's Doctor Who, it's easily my least favourite era of Doctor Who. And as much as I personally love Colin Baker, his Doctor got the lion's share of poor scripts and erroneous costume choices. Never has a man more game for a role, been dealt such a bad hand.

Introducing a Doctor that was cowardly, and even violent toward his companion, was seen as a bridge too far. While I understand the desire to try something new with the character, this wasn't the way to go about it. While the show begins to pick up around the end of McCoy's tenure, it's evident that this is more the influence of studio notes and the hard work of script editor Andrew Cartmel. I can't think of anyone less suited for the job of showrunner.

It seems that for a good nine years, Doctor Who had a madman at the helm, and not in that cute Matt Smith way. Dressing in flamboyant Hawaiian shirts, Nathan-Turner brought that same brash sensibility to the program. From Six's garish costume, to question mark lapels, to Mel's entire timeline, it's a big fat mess with him sitting in the middle. Add to all of this, the allegations of him being a predatory creep toward young male fans, and it's a surprise the show ever survived. Oh wait, it didn't.

2. Racism

Ok, maybe I should have started with this. While Doctor Who has taken efforts to address its racist past, it still happened. They drop a racist slur in "The Celestial Toymaker." Even the term "celestial," is used to mean "Chinese," in describing the titular character played by the very white Michael Gough, fully clad in Oriental silks. This tradition follows into "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," when Li H'sen Chang was played by John Bennett.

It's an uncomfortable miracle that they didn't allow Patrick Troughton to play the role of the Second Doctor in brownface. Not to say his era escaped the odd bit of racism. While Toberman in "Tomb of the Cybermen," gets a few heroic moments, he also gets none of the lines. Cast as mute manservant, we learn nothing about the inner workings of a black man who died so that white people may live.

Later, the show used characters like Ace to talk about racism. She shows disgust with a "No Coloureds," sign hanging in the boarding house she's staying in. When the evil Morgaine had her under mind control, it was calling her friend Ling Tai "yellow," and "slant-eyed," that she was able to snap out of it. Real Ace would never say such things. But even with that groundwork laid, the new series still struggles. From the Doctor being weirdly dismissive toward black people, to it taking nearly 50 years for the first black TV companion, Doctor Who is still grappling with its race issues. Yet you all kept watching.

3. Ace gets molested

This one is a bit of a lesser known infraction as it takes place in the books after the show had already been cancelled. Kicking off the Virgin Media "New Adventures," is 1991's "Timewyrm: Genesys," by John Peel. In it, the Doctor and Ace travel to ancient Mesopotamia, where they meet King Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh wastes no time going full blown creep, groping Ace and pawing at her like he was Joe Biden.

The Doctor's reaction to this is to tell Ace to just go with it, and that it's part of the culture. While I agree that, yes, Gilgamesh may not be the sophisticated modern man that hugs a bro and supports equal pay, the Doctor's reaction is some straight up bullshit. If you're going to go there, maybe try saying something with it other than "Women are men's property." This could have been a great opportunity for the Doctor to puff up and use Gilgamesh's own primitive mindset against him. "How dare you touch my woman!" the very tiny Doctor could say to the very tall man. It would have been a funny visual, mixed with the Doctor utilising male privilege in a way that helps his companion.

This is really an objection I have against most of John Peel's work. He writes women in that "she boobed boobily," manner. Much to my dismay, Peel is one of the sole writers of the Dalek books, so any time you want to enjoy a tale involving our enemies from Skaro, you have to also partake in his brand of women. I'm talking women being described as buxom babes with shoulder length blonde hair, voices like baby goddesses, and legs up to their neck. While on the other hand, we get men described as having a hat and probably some other features. I may be embellishing, but seriously, John Peel, your women suck. Yet it still spawned a rather large book series.

4. Minuet in Hell

Doctor Who has never been known to nail accents. Tegan is vaguely Australian. And Peri must have moved around a lot due to the fact that nothing about her American accent sounds like a regional dialect. That doesn't mean that Robert Jezek's Foghorn Leghorn meets the KFC Colonel performance as " Brigham Elisha Dashwood III," is any less painful. But bad accents aside, the biggest demon in this Big Finish audio is one of Doctor Who's oldest enemies- sexism!

While I understand that Charlotte Pollard may be a fan favourite among many Big Finish listeners, her character will forever be tainted for me, and it's all due to this story. In it, Charlotte, or Charley, gets literally human trafficked. They kidnap her, force her to wear lingerie in a very creepy and misguided attempt to add some sexiness to the story and force her to wait on rich businessmen at a casino.

Now, allow me to clarify, it's not the human trafficking that taints her in my eyes. People who get trafficked are victims, obviously. What bothers me is that neither Gary Russell or Alan W Lear thought to give her a single line of dialogue where she protests. She doesn't even complain a little. Sure, the Doctor often gains intel by getting captured, but this is ridiculous. Add this to the weird disjointed story, and "Minuet in Hell," easily serves as one of the lowest points in not just Big Finish history, but Doctor Who as a whole.

5. Sexism

(Image by Billy Darswed)

It makes the most sense that this is the last one on the list. Because let's be honest, it's a huge problem in the fandom. A lot of early Doctor Who audios and books smack of moments when it feels as though the writers never considered the existence of female fans. Women are often utilised as a means to make the Doctor look better, and for the baddies to look scarier. Mind you, it's not always been a pantheon of swooners and screamers. We got the occasional Sarah Jane, Leela, and Ace.

Even the strong women are long-suffering. Liz Shaw (and her real-life actress Caroline John) left the role of companion over sexism. Beginning her time on Doctor Who as UNIT's top scientific advisor, she was demoted to assistant, holding beakers for the male Doctor who stole her job. The Fourth Doctor acted similarly when telling Romana her qualifications had nothing on real life experience. The same excuse has been used for decades to keep educated women out of the workforce. "Come back when you've got some experience, sweetheart."

While Rose Tyler was a refreshingly real character with a family and life of her own, it doesn't mean that she wasn't horribly mismanaged. In "The Stolen Earth," we see a darker, more serious version of her character. The Rose we used to know is now fully devoted toward one mission and one mission only- getting her man back. It's as though her personality disappears and is fully dependent on having the Doctor in her life. She rises to greatness so that she might bask in his once more. Maybe it's romantic, but maybe it's bad writing.

If you were to ask me who my favourite Doctor Who writers are, I'd have to say Robert Holmes is up there, and he wrote "Talons of Weng-Chiang," a serial full of yellowface. I'd also say Russell T Davies, who wrote the aforementioned "Stolen Earth," and also saw it in his wisdom to turn Shirley Henderson's "Ursula," into a blowjob dispensing garden brick. Or even Steven Moffat who believes the Statue of Liberty could sneak around New York, undetected, and that nobody notices his predilection toward dominatrix women in stiletto heels.

In my review for "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos," I quipped that Chris Chibnall had not yet written a truly great episode of Doctor Who. However, since "Resolution," I can no longer say such a thing. I may even go as far as to say it's one of the best Dalek episodes ever. It would seem then that, given enough time, he could become a great showrunner. And it seems that given enough time, any writer, yourself included, could one day write the latest "worst episode ever."

Every new era has had its stumbles. Not every Doctor gets it correct 100% of the time. Capaldi decided he was the kind of Doctor to exit through the window, a trait we never saw again. The Fifth Doctor decided to sleep his way through his first adventure. The Eighth Doctor was "human on his mother's side." And Ten took so long to regenerate that I'm beginning to think it was old age, and not radiation that did him in. If you can look at all of these stupid, stupid moments and still say you love Doctor Who, then maybe, just maybe, you can get over a bit of spotty writing, like you always have. Or is it still the female Doctor thing? Oh...

[diygabl]

Ten Foods That Keep Practically Forever

Firstly – nothing will keep forever if it is not stored correctly in the right environment. Many of these foods need to remain dry and be kept in their original unopened packaging or airtight containers. SUGAR All kinds of sugar, whether white, brown or powdered etc, will last forever if kept dry in an airtight container. Sugar will never spoil as bacteria simply cannot grow on sugar. DRIED BEANS Dried beans were tested by Brigham Young University. They tested the long-term storage of pinto beans, and their conclusion was that pinto beans were safe to eat 32 years after they were stored in an airtight container at an ambient temperature. RICE White, wild, arborio and basmati rice all keep for 25+ when kept in their sealed packaging, or when stored in an airtight container. Brown rice does not store so well due to its high oil content. CORN STARCH Kept dry in its original box with the lid on, corn starch has an indefinite shelf life. Great for thickening soups and sauces post zombie apocalypse! POWDERED MILK When stored unopened in its original packaging, powdered milk has an indefinite shelf life. Quick tip to determine if powdered milk has spoilt – if it has started to turn yellow, it’s time to bin it. HONEY Due to its high sugar content and antibiotic properties, honey can remain edible for 1000s of years, even when opened! Edible honey has been found in Egyptian tombs. HARD LIQUOR All distilled spirits such as vodka, rum, whisky, gin and tequila, keep forever, even in opened bottles. Their color and taste may change over time, but they are still fine to drink. SEA SALT Salt will never go bad if stored in a dry container and environment. It has the added benefit of being able to be used to preserve other fresh foods too. VINEGAR Both apple cider vinegar and basic white vinegar will keep indefinitely when stored in a cool/dark cupboard. Vinegar also has countless cleaning, DIY and medicinal uses MAPLE SYRUP When unopened maple syrup will last forever.

[uacboo]

Jane Austen died on this day 200 years ago. Learn more about Poet’s Corner, where she is buried in Westminster Abbey, in this beautifully done video with amazing background music.

(Published on Apr 26, 2017)

Ever wondered about the origins of Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, where over 100 poets and writers are buried or commemorated? It all began in 1400 when Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ was buried there but not because he was a poet.

One of the best-known parts of Westminster Abbey, Poets’ Corner can be found in the South Transept. It was not originally designated as the burial place of writers, playwrights and poets; the first poet to be buried here, Geoffrey Chaucer, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey because he had been Clerk of Works to the palace of Westminster, not because he had written the Canterbury Tales.

Over 150 years later, during the flowering of English literature in the sixteenth century, a more magnificent tomb was erected to Chaucer by Nicholas Brigham and in 1599 Edmund Spenser was laid to rest nearby. These two tombs began a tradition which developed over succeeding centuries.

Burial or commemoration in the Abbey did not always occur at or soon after the time of death. Lord Byron, for example, whose lifestyle caused a scandal although his poetry was much admired, died in 1824 but was finally given a memorial only in 1969. Even Shakespeare, buried at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, had to wait until 1740 before a monument, designed by William Kent, appeared in Poets’ Corner.

Other poets and writers, well known in their day, have now vanished into obscurity, with only their monuments to show that they were once famous.

Conversely, many whose writings are still appreciated today have never been memorialised in Poets’ Corner, although the reason may not always be clear.

Music:

Serenade to Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams performed by Elizabeth Connell, Amanda Roocroft, John Mark Ainsley, Martyn Hill, Maldwyn Davies, Anne Dawson, Linda Kitchen, Alan Opie, Gwynne Howell, Sir Thomas Allen, Sarah Walker, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, John Connell and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Matthew Best. Courtesy of Hyperion Records Ltd, London.

Source: YouTube and @wabbey

[lincoln-cannon]

This is an edited transcript of my presentation at the 2019 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. At the conference last year, I told you that I didn’t know how to raise the dead. That might not have been entirely true. It’s true that I don’t know how to do all the work. But I do have some ideas about how to get started – and even about how we’ve probably already started. Before I can share those ideas effectively, though, I need to do some theology. The scriptures, clearly and repeatedly, teach that Christ will raise the dead. And some have supposed that to mean that they shouldn’t do anything except verbally affirm their trust in Christ. But our scriptures also teach that trust without action is dead. And in this case, that’s as literal as it gets. Without action, the dead stay dead. So whose action will it be? Presumably, Jesus could tell us to relax. After all, the Bible says he raises the dead three times before God raises him and many others from the dead. But he doesn’t tell us to relax. Instead, Jesus commands us to "raise the dead." As precedent, in the Old Testament, Elijah and Elisha raise the dead. In the New Testament, Peter and Paul raise the dead. And in the Book of Mormon, Nephi raises the dead. Of course that makes perfect sense because Jesus also commands us to take the name of Christ, do the works he’s done, and even greater things. So the scriptures do teach that Christ will raise the dead. But those who’ve supposed that verbal trust is sufficient are wrong, because the scriptures also teach that Christ will raise the dead through us. The Book of Mormon says that God has prepared a way for our escape from death. Consider the words. God prepared our escape. God didn’t finish our rescue. And in the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith echoes that idea, claiming that “God ordained, before the world was, that which would enable us to redeem [our dead].” In other words, the scriptures would have us trust that the grace of God has provided means for us to act. And that reminds me of the words of Captain Moroni. He asks:

"[Do you] suppose that [you] could sit [on] your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God [you] could do nothing and [God] would deliver you? ... Or do [you] suppose that [God] will still deliver us, while we sit [on] our thrones and do not make use of the means which [God] has provided for us? ... If [you] have supposed this [you] have supposed in vain."

The Bible says that we’ll reign with Christ and judge the world during the resurrection. It also says that we won’t all die, and the living will change. Joseph Smith said that we’ll perform the ordinance of transfiguration to make each other immortal in what he called the "last times." Brigham Young taught that, when immortal, we’ll perform the ordinance of resurrection for our dead friends and family. And Joseph characterized that time, when we “attain to the resurrection of the dead,” as the time when we become Gods, the same as all other Gods have done before. As I mentioned at the beginning, I think we’ve already started to raise the dead. And here’s how. I call this thought experiment "Resurrection by Family History."

A historian develops a model of a dead person.

Another historian improves the detail and accuracy of the model.

Other historians repeat #2 indefinitely, recursively improving the detail and accuracy of the model.

This has been happening for at least thousands of years. Ancient models were stories and pictures. Modern models added audio and video. Emerging models have extended to biometrics and simulation. And future models may incorporate data that we mine from the depths of time through what science fiction has called "quantum archeology." Given enough time, the natural consequence of our history project may be models that are practically indistinguishable from the persons who were dead. In other words, the natural consequence of our history project may be their resurrection. I don’t know of any organization that has done more to advance the work of family history, and thereby advance the possibility of natural resurrection, than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Howard W. Hunter wasn’t president of the Church for long. But that didn’t stop him from being prophetic. In 1995, at the dawn of the Internet, he observed:

"In recent years we have begun using information technology to hasten the sacred work of providing ordinances for the deceased. The role of technology in this work has been accelerated by the Lord himself, who has had a guiding hand in its development and will continue to do so. However, we stand only on the threshold of what we can do with these tools. I feel that our most enthusiastic projections can capture only a tiny glimpse of how these tools can help us — and of the eternal consequences of these efforts."

So here’s my enthusiastic projection – my tiny glimpse of how these tools can help us. Imagine a superintelligent historian. Using the tools of quantum archeology, she traces backward through time and space from effects to causes. Sampling a sufficiently large portion of her present, she attains a desired probabilistic precision for a portion of her past. The result of her computation is a highly detailed, highly accurate model of you. The future-you is distinguishable from the present-you, but no more so than the today-you is distinguishable from the yesterday-you. You are resurrected. As we imagine the eternal consequences of these efforts, some philosophical objections may haunt us. I know they’ve haunted me. But Jesus also commanded us to cast out devils. So in that spirit, let’s see if I can quickly exorcise six of them – seems like the number for devils. Objection 1: Jesus didn’t use technology to raise the dead. You don’t know that. Maybe you just don’t see anything that you recognize as technology in the depictions of Jesus raising the dead. My father died over 20 years ago. I tried praying for his resurrection. It was probably a good start, but it wasn’t sufficient. He’s still dead, so far as I know. And I’m pretty sure that holding a picture of Jesus over his tomb, or standing like Jesus with my hands raised in the air, won’t be sufficient to resurrect him either – although those actions, like the stories and pictures, may also function as motivating prayers. Something else is required. And just because technology isn’t obvious doesn’t mean it’s absent. After all, we already live in an age of invisible technology. Objection 2: Technological resurrection assumes that the body creates the mind. No. It doesn’t. Technological resurrection is compatible with that hypothesis. But it’s also compatible with other hypotheses. For example, it may be that the body individuates, concentrates, or channels mind from some pervasive or external source. Technological resurrection requires only correlation between body and mind. And it’s perfectly compatible with a belief that spirit is matter, like Joseph Smith taught, but independent from any particular body. Some Transhumanists call that a substrate-independent mind. Objection 3: The resurrected body wouldn’t really be mine. By that reasoning, the body you have now isn’t really yours. You don’t have exactly the same body that went to bed last night – let alone the same body that your mother birthed. Resurrection doesn’t require exactly the same body. It requires only whatever is psychosocially sufficient for individual and communal identity. In other words, if you’re comfortable identifying with your changing body throughout life, you should be comfortable with technological resurrection. Objection 4: The mind in the resurrected body wouldn’t really be me. By that reasoning, you might not be the person you think you are right now – which of course makes no sense. But seriously, you haven’t experienced and you don’t remember a perfect continuity of consciousness throughout your life – let alone whatever might have transpired before. Resurrection doesn’t require conscious continuity. Again, it requires only whatever is psychosocially sufficient. If you think you’re still you after full anesthesia, you should be comfortable with technological resurrection. And in any case, you wouldn’t know the difference. Objection 5: Technological resurrection would require a computer larger than our universe. No. It wouldn’t. Resurrection doesn’t require every detail of the universe, our world, or even our bodies. Once again, it requires only whatever is psychosocially sufficient. All humans combined, past and present, have only ever known a tiny fraction of the information of which we and our world consist, and we’ve cared about even less. If you’re not losing sleep over the precise number of prehistoric mosquitoes or the spacetime coordinates of your gut bacteria, we wouldn’t need to calculate those details. And if that doesn’t feel right, we can expand to whatever does, and it would still be only a tiny fraction of the universe. Objection 6: Technological resurrection could enable multiple copies of me. Yes. It could. And those copies could go on to have individuating experiences and separate identities. Maybe you’re already a copy of God that individuated. We could call that your "spirit birth." In any case, it’s not clear that the potential for copies is inherently bad. But it could be abused, so we would probably need to establish and enforce laws related to identity – perhaps the Gods already have. That reminds me of Brigham Young’s repeated claims that eternal life is the power to preserve your identity. Maybe he was on to something. Originally published at lincoln.metacannon.net on April 14, 2019 at 02:58PM.

[thorsenmark]

A Personal Photo Assignment in Monument Valley by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A setting looking to the southwest while taking in views across eroded formations and sandstone buttes in this southern Utah high desert landscape. This is at a roadside pullout along U.S. Highway 163 with a view looking to Brighams Tomb, Stagecoach, and King-on-his-Throne.

[misterivy]

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) Despite his lasting association with the world of horror, Price started out as a character actor. He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London. The following year he portrayed the title character in the film The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein). In 1946, Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films, Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in film noir thrillers like The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948) and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Charles Laughton. In the 1950s, Price moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958) and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). Price starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He later starred in House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961),[10] Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964),[10] and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). Price was also on television, playing the villain Egghead on the Batman series. Besides Batman, Price made guest star appearances in many shows of the decade, including Get Smart, F Troop, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). Vincent Price suffered from emphysema, a result of being a lifelong smoker, and Parkinson's disease. He died in 1993 from lung cancer, at age 82, and was cremated.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.16 (before 1900)

456 – Ricimer defeats Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire. 690 – Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire. 912 – Abd ar-Rahman III becomes the eighth Emir of Córdoba. 955 – King Otto I defeats a Slavic revolt in what is now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. 1311 – The Council of Vienne convenes for the first time. 1384 – Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. 1590 – Prince Gesualdo of Venosa murders his wife and her lover. 1736 – Mathematician William Whiston's predicted comet fails to strike the Earth. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: The British-led Royalton raid is the last Native American raid on New England. 1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 finishes after its sixth day, killing between 20,000 and 24,000 residents of the Lesser Antilles. 1793 – French Revolution: Queen Marie Antoinette is executed. 1793 – War of the First Coalition: French victory at the Battle of Wattignies forces Austria to raise the siege of Maubeuge. 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: Napoleon surrounds the Austrian army at Ulm. 1813 – The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon in the three-day Battle of Leipzig. 1817 – Italian explorer and archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni, uncovered the Tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. 1817 – Simón Bolívar sentences Manuel Piar to death for challenging the racial-caste in Venezuela. 1834 – Much of the ancient structure of the Palace of Westminster in London burns to the ground. 1836 – Great Trek: Afrikaner voortrekkers repulse a Matabele attack, but lose their livestock. 1841 – Queen's University is founded in the Province of Canada. 1843 – William Rowan Hamilton invents quaternions, a three-dimensional system of complex numbers. 1846 – William T. G. Morton administers ether anesthesia during a surgical operation. 1847 – The novel Jane Eyre is published in London. 1859 – John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. 1869 – The Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered". 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge is founded, becoming England's first residential college for women. 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. 1882 – The Nickel Plate Railroad opens for business.

[tlatollotl]

Olmec colossal heads, such as this one unearthed in the 19th century at the site of Tres Zapotes, are thought to be portraits of all-powerful kings.

On a sweltering day in 1862 at the foot of the Tuxtla Mountains in the Mexican state of Veracruz, a farmworker was clearing a cornfield when he hit something hard and smooth lodged in the earth. He thought it was the rounded base of an iron cauldron buried upside down, and, it being the 1860s, he reported the find to the owner of the hacienda where he worked. The farmworker’s boss told him to dig up the cauldron immediately and bring it to him. As the farmworker labored to uncover the object, he realized he had found not a large iron bowl, but a gargantuan stone sculpture with a pair of glaring eyes, a broad nose, and a downturned mouth. What had appeared to be the base of a cauldron was actually the top of a helmet worn by the glowering figure. What the farmworker had unearthed was a colossal Olmec head, one of the first clues to the existence of that ancient culture.

Over the next century and a half, archaeologists would uncover many more of these heads along the Mexican Gulf Coast and discover the ancient cities where they were carved. The site of that first fateful discovery became known as Tres Zapotes, after a type of fruit tree common in the area. Along with the sites of San Lorenzo and La Venta, Tres Zapotes was one of the great capitals of the Olmec culture, which emerged by 1200 B.C. as one of the first societies in Mesoamerica organized into a complex social and political hierarchy.

The key to the Olmecs’ rise appears to have been a strong, centralized monarchy. The colossal heads, each one depicting a particular individual, are likely portraits of the Olmec kings who ruled from ornate palaces at San Lorenzo and La Venta. Even though Tres Zapotes yielded the earliest evidence for Olmec kingship, 20 years of survey and excavations there suggest that, at its height, the city adopted a very different form of government, one in which power was shared among multiple factions. Further, while other Olmec capitals lasted between 300 and 500 years, Tres Zapotes managed to survive for nearly two millennia. The city, therefore, may have weathered intense cultural and political shifts not by doubling down on traditional Olmec monarchy, but by distributing power among several groups that learned to work together. According to University of Kentucky archaeologist Christopher Pool, who has spent his career excavating the city, that cooperative rule may have helped Tres Zapotes endure for centuries after the rest of Olmec society collapsed.

This mound is what remains of a temple pyramid, one of four erected at Tres Zapotes.

When Pool arrived at Tres Zapotes in 1996, he was the first archaeologist in over 40 years to take a serious interest in the site. Tres Zapotes had been recognized as an important Olmec center since shortly after the discovery of the colossal head, and in the decades to follow it had yielded a plethora of intricate figurines and stone monuments, including another colossal head. But important details of the site’s history remained unknown, including its size and how long it had been occupied. Pool set out to map the full extent of the ancient city, survey the ceramics he found scattered across the ground, and excavate the most compelling areas.

Battling dense fields of sugarcane, swarms of mosquitoes, and the occasional poisonous snake, Pool painstakingly reconstructed the layout of Tres Zapotes and how it had changed over time, and began to be able to compare it to the other great Olmec capitals. Between 1000 and 400 B.C., in a period called the Middle Formative, Tres Zapotes was a minor regional center covering around 200 acres. At the time, La Venta and its all-powerful king dominated the Olmec heartland. Like its predecessor San Lorenzo, which flourished between 1200 and 900 B.C., La Venta was organized around a single dominant plaza featuring administrative buildings, elaborate monuments, and elite residences. The kings whose likenesses are memorialized by the colossal heads lived in palaces that brimmed with precious exotic goods, such as greenstone imported from Guatemala and polished iron-ore mirrors from Oaxaca and Chiapas. Their subjects, meanwhile, lived in modest households arrayed around the central plaza. The concentration of wealth and power in the center of the city, as well as art that glorified individual rulers, suggests that “the Olmecs had a cult of the ruler,” says Barbara Stark, an archaeologist at Arizona State University who works on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.

Early in the city’s history, offerings such as ceramic vessels were buried with the rich and powerful. 

During La Venta’s height, Tres Zapotes operated under a similar model. As the nineteenth-century farmworker was the first to discover, it too had rulers represented by colossal stone heads. Despite being a relatively small city, it was also organized around a dominant central plaza. Elite burials discovered by Pool were filled with grave goods such as ceramic goblets and jade beads fashioned into jewelry. Another burial Pool uncovered contained no objects at all, hinting at possible social or class differences within the city’s population at that time. While Pool doubts that Tres Zapotes was under La Venta’s direct control during the Middle Formative period, it was clearly part of the same cultural and political tradition.

Around 400 B.C., La Venta abruptly collapsed. Archaeologists still aren’t sure why, but they have found evidence that traders stopped bringing luxury goods into the city. “A lot of [the Olmec rulers’] authority was supported by great displays of exotic wealth,” Pool says. When access to those goods was cut off, the resulting loss of status could have destabilized the monarchy’s control. Evidence shows that the city was quickly abandoned, and, absent any mass graves or other signs of violence, it seems that people likely poured out of the once-grand capital, looking for a new place to call home.

Elite Olmec sculptures, such as a greenstone monument were later used by Tres Zapotes’ collective government as symbols of power.

Researchers believe that it’s possible many of them moved to Tres Zapotes, 60 miles to the west. The city quickly expanded, covering 1,200 acres by the beginning of the Late Formative, shortly after 400 B.C. As he mapped the site’s growth, Pool discovered that the newly dominant Tres Zapotes didn’t look much like its predecessors, San Lorenzo and La Venta. They had both been organized around one outsized and opulent central plaza. In Tres Zapotes, however, Pool identified four separate plazas evenly spaced throughout the city, each about half a mile apart and ranging from about four to nine acres in size. “No one of these plaza groups is dramatically larger than the others,” Pool says. He also discovered that their layouts are nearly identical. Each has a temple pyramid on its west side, a long platform along its north edge, and a low platform set on an east-west line through its middle. According to John Clark, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University who studies the Formative period, “The site pattern is completely different from anything else I know for an Olmec site.” It’s so different, in fact, that archaeologists have dubbed the Late Formative culture at Tres Zapotes “epi-Olmec.”

Pool wondered if the seat of power in Tres Zapotes had moved from plaza to plaza over time, perhaps as the various groups jockeyed for control. But when he radiocarbon dated material from middens behind each plaza’s long mound, he discovered that they had all been occupied at the same time, from about 400 B.C. to A.D. 1. The ceramics Pool recovered from the different plazas were similar in style and technique, providing more evidence that they were occupied simultaneously—and that no one group dominated the others. Pool realized he wasn’t looking at signs of political conflict. He was looking at signs of political cooperation. “There was a change in political organization from one that was very centralized, very focused on the ruler,” he says, “to one that shared power among several factions.”

Pool is careful to point out that Tres Zapotes wasn’t a democracy as we think of it today. “I’m not saying that everybody in this society was getting together and agreeing on things,” he says. “It may have been more like an oligarchy.” But there are signs that Tres Zapotes may have been more equitable than traditional Olmec capitals. For instance, the elites in the plazas and the commoners who lived outside of them all used similar styles of pottery. “Everyone pretty much has the same range of stuff,” says Pool. He has discovered that, unlike at La Venta and San Lorenzo, the leaders of Tres Zapotes didn’t import exotic goods, and so weren’t reliant on trade networks. Craft workshops attached to the plazas show that the people at Tres Zapotes made ceramics and obsidian tools locally. “All that,” says Pool, “suggests a more flattened kind of sociopolitical hierarchy than you see elsewhere.”

This monument shows a person (lower left) kneeling before a standing figure, suggesting a return to monarchy. It was carved in the Tres Zapotes region around the time when the city’s shared power model began to break down.

“With the declining importance of the nobility and other kinds of elites, you get more economic equality,” says Richard Blanton, an anthropologist at Purdue University who was among the first to propose that such societies may have existed in Mesoamerica. Cooperative governments also tend to produce different kinds of art than monarchies, Blanton says. Rather than monuments and tombs that glorify individual rulers, polities with shared power tend to separate the idea of authority from any particular person. That’s what Pool sees at Tres Zapotes. The most elaborate monument he’s found from the Late Formative period shows a ruler emerging out of the cleft brow of a monster to connect the underworld, the earth, and the sky. “This reasonably represents the ruler as the axis mundi, or the central axis of the earth,” says Pool. This is a common theme in Olmec iconography. But unlike earlier Olmec art, including the colossal heads, the carving is not naturalistic and doesn’t seem to represent a particular ruler. “The focus seems to be less on the person than it does on the office,” Pool says. At Tres Zapotes, the idea of rulership, rather than an actual monarch, was what mattered.

Pool can’t say exactly why the people of Tres Zapotes first decided to experiment with a shared power model. Perhaps the collapse of trade routes doomed the monarchy at La Venta and undermined that form of authority. Or maybe the mass migration into the city that researchers have posited required that the factions cooperate to build a new, stable home. But whatever the cause, Pool says, this unprecedented level of cooperation in an Olmec city helped it outlast every other outpost of its culture. “What Tres Zapotes has shown is that even though there were Olmec centers that collapsed, Olmec culture also evolved,” Pool says. Archaeologists today may define this change as epi-Olmec, but for the people living through it, the transition was smooth and continuous. “The Olmec culture didn’t just vanish overnight,” Clark agrees. At Tres Zapotes, he says, “They’re hanging on and modifying it and trying to save it.”

Even as Tres Zapotes tried out a new form of government, it made room for symbols of the past: Two colossal heads, as well as other pieces of older, more authoritarian Olmec art, occupied prominent places in plazas throughout the city’s height. “There are aspects of their culture that [the epi-Olmecs] are trying to hold onto,” Pool says. The older heads “are essentially royal ancestors that provide a legitimate claim to authority”—even though that authority was now shared among several different groups.

This system of cooperative government worked for a long time—about 700 years. “But eventually,” Pool says, “it just falls apart.” Between A.D. 1 and 300, shared power slowly gave way to individual rule again. The once-standardized plazas were built over with new architectural styles and layouts, each taking on a discrete form and asserting its individuality rather than projecting harmony and cooperation. Carved stone monuments dating to around the first century A.D. found just outside Tres Zapotes show a standing figure with another person sitting in front of him, a resurgence of the artistic themes of individual ruler and subject. Over the next several centuries, Tres Zapotes slowly declined and the Gulf Coast’s cultural center of gravity shifted toward sites in central Veracruz. Meanwhile, the monarchy-obsessed Maya rose to dominate lands farther south. After 2,000 years of adaptation and survival, Tres Zapotes slowly faded into obscurity and was eventually abandoned.

Pool still doesn’t know why the city gave up on its experiment in shared governance. He does speculate that it’s possible that Tres Zapotes’ power model splintered as its regional dominance declined. Pool is sure, however, that the transition wasn’t sudden, as with San Lorenzo or La Venta. According to Pool, when the end came for Tres Zapotes, it was “a soft landing.”

The surprising thing is not that Tres Zapotes’ era of shared power came to an end, says Blanton. It’s that it survived for as long as it did. “It is very difficult to build and sustain these more cooperative kinds of polities,” he says. “Autocracy is always an alternative.” Tres Zapotes may have ended as it began: with a king. But for nearly 700 years in between, it tried something different. Monarchy gave way to cooperation, wealth became more evenly distributed, and an entire culture, for a time, redefined what government and leadership could mean.

[roelandbeers]

Highway UT-163, towards Brighams tomb & Stagecoach, Utah, 9th june 2017

(Nikon D700, 24-70 mm, 2.8 (set at 32 mm, 18.0, 6 sec, ISO 200)

[sciencenewsforstudents]

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Modern technology is exposing hidden tattoos on ancient Egyptian mummies.

Archaeologist Anne Austin discovered the ink on mummified women. She used infrared (IN-frah-red) light. It can reveal things that the naked eye can’t see. “It’s quite magical to be working in an ancient tomb and suddenly see tattoos on a mummified person,” Austin said. She works at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. This technique, she notes, is transforming what’s known about tattooing in ancient Egypt.

In 2016 and 2019, Austin’s team examined mummies from a site called Deir el-Medina. This ancient Egyptian city was home to people who built and decorated royal tombs. Seven of the mummies had tattoos. Each was at least 3,000 years old.

In the most striking case, infrared photos revealed 30 tattoos on various parts of a mummy. Cross-shaped patterns on her arms don’t occur on any of the other known tattooed mummies, Austin said. And several of her tattoos look like hieroglyphs. These are symbols used in ancient Egyptian writing. The tattoos suggest this woman may have been a religious figure, Austin said.

Another woman had a tattoo on her neck. It depicts a human eye. This is an ancient Egyptian symbol for protection. She also had a tattoo of a seated baboon on each side of her neck.

These discoveries challenge an old idea that tattoos on ancient Egyptian women related to fertility. The tattoos instead may be linked with women’s roles as healers or priestesses, Austin suggested. She reported her team’s findings November 22 at a scientific meeting.

“Everything about the new tattoo discoveries is surprising,” says Kerry Muhlestein. He’s an Egyptologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Researchers know little about this ancient Egyptian practice, he notes.

Until now, scientists knew of only six tattooed mummies from ancient Egyptian sites. The first of these was a female mummy found in 1891. More recently, infrared imaging revealed two mummies with tattoos at the British Museum in London. Those people lived in Egypt around 5,100 years ago.

Tattoos vary greatly on the 13 Egyptian mummies. More tattooed mummies may help researchers figure out how ancient Egyptians used these markings.