#but still support graham hancock
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daydreamerwonderkid · 3 months ago
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graham hancock is a licensed archeologist with decades of experience in the field. decades more than YOU have. while atlantis is in no way a real place graham hancock's contributions to the field of archaeology have opened up a world of new scientific breakthroughs and he heavily encourages his audience to employ critical thinking unlike the archaic institutes of archaic academia.
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*womp womp* Graham Hancock is a quack and lost all credibility decades ago ever since he published his book Chariot of the Gods. Which btw heavily relies on the concept of hyperdiffusion, i.e. all ancient civilizations originate from "one superior master race." He has actively committed to and made a career out of contributing to the growth of pseudo-science and anti-intellectualism and has actively promoted Nazi conspiracy theories. His most well known associates are climate change deniers, historical/archaeological disinformationists, and have links to various white supremacy and anti-semitic groups.
Just admit you're racist and move on.
FYI: he's not and never was an archaeologist. He has a fucking sociology degree and is a writer with an agenda.
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danses-with-dogmeat · 1 year ago
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2000 Followers Celebration!!!
& Fallout Alphabet Poll End Results!
Hey all, so the secret is out! (Kinda) But all these past polls have been the prelude to my 2K Followers Celebration BONANZA. (That's not the official title, I just wanted to use the word BONANZA).
Anyway, a HUGE, MASSIVE thank you to every single one of you folks who are a part of this little community and who've supported me and my fanfiction writing journey for the past few years (which is crazy that it's been that long, omg.) But I love and appreciate you all SO MUCH and am absolutely baffled that I've made it to this. I thought 100 was crazy, then I thought 1K was crazy and then it just kept on going! Ahh, I'm just so so so glad that there's a thriving Fallout community out here of amazing writers, artists, and fans that are still so involved 😊
I don't know what I would do without this space, so thank you all for being a part of it <3
ANYWAY (x2) Here are the final results to all 22 polls that I posted, with more event details just below!
So I've posted the 1st place winners, 2nd place, and then a 3rd "runner up" position that will only be filled by non-companion npcs, just to give them a chance to shine, and me a chance to write for some folks I'm not as used to. For the purposes of the 2k event, I will only be using the 1st place winners for the 'prompts' (which I'll explain in another post), and then a few of the 2nd placers and (almost) all of the runner ups will be used in ANOTHER upcoming event that I'm going to start prepping for (because I'm an insane person).
--
A:
1st: Arcade Israel Gannon
2nd: Arthur Maxson
3rd: Dr. Amari
B:
1st: Benny Gecko
2nd: Butch Deloria
3rd: Beatrix Russell
C:
1st: Charon
2nd: Craig Boone
3rd: Caesar
D:
1st: Deacon
2nd: Danse
3rd: Dazzle
E:
1st: ED-E
2nd: Easy Pete
3rd: Edward Deegan
F:
1st: Fawkes
2nd: Fahrenheit
3rd: Fantastic
G:
1st: Gob
2nd: Glory
3rd: Gary(s)
H:
1st: Robert Edwin House
2nd: Harold
3rd: Harkness
I/O:
1st: Old Longfellow
2nd: Captain Ironsides
3rd: Oliver Swanick
J:
1st: John Hancock
2nd: Joshua Graham
3rd: Julie Farkas
K:
1st: The King
2nd: KL-E-O
3rd: Kent Connolly
L:
1st: Lily Bowen
2nd: Legate Lanius
3rd: Red Lucy
M:
1st: Mysterious Stranger
2nd: Magnolia
3rd: Moira Brown
N:
1st: Nick Valentine
2nd: No Bark Noonan
3rd: Nate/Nora
P:
1st: Preston Garvey
2nd: Primm Slim
3rd: Pickman
Q/U/X:
1st: Ulysses
2nd: X6-88
3rd: Dr. Usanagi
R:
1st: Raul Alphonse Tejada
2nd: Robert Joseph MacCready
3rd: Rotface
S:
1st: Sunny Smiles
2nd: Sturges
3rd: Swank
T:
1st: Three Dog
2nd: Tinker Tom
3rd: Travis Miles
V:
1st: Veronica Santangelo
2nd: Victor
3rd: Vulpes Inculta
W:
1st: Whitechapel Charlie
2nd: Wiseman
3rd: Winthrop
Y/Z:
1st: Yes Man
2nd: Captain Zao
3rd: Yefim Bobrov
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father-of-the-void · 1 year ago
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There are ancient oral traditions, still repeated by the elders of some of the more remote islands, which provide an explanation for the Maldives' atmosphere of lost prehistoric grandeur and for its strange ruins. These traditions speak of a mysterious people called the Redin, said to have built the hawittas, who were described to me by Naseema Mohamed, a scholar at the Maldives National Institute for Linguistic and Historical Research, as:
"Very tall. They were fair-skinned, and they had brown hair, blue eyes sometimes. And they were very, very good at sailing. So this story has been around in Maldives for many, many years, and there are certain places where they say the Redin camped here, and certain places which they say here the Redin were buried. But we don't really know how old or how long ago it happened."
During his series of research visits to the Maldives, Thor Heyerdahl collected and compiled Redin legends from all parts of the archipelago. He concludes that in the memory of the islanders the Redin were 'a former people with more than ordinary human capacities':
"The Redin came long before any other Maldivians. Between them and the present population other people had also come, but none were as potent as the Redin, and there were many of them. They not only used sail but also oars, and therefore moved with great speed at sea ..."
Such notions of humans with supernatural or even god-like powers flying swiftly across the sea in their boats with sails and oars is strangely reminiscent of the imagery of the Rig Veda ... concerning the Asvins - who are several times praised for having conducted a daring rescue in the depths of the Indian Ocean:
"Yea Asvins, as a dead man leaves his riches, Tugra left Bhujyu in the cloud of waters ... Ye brought him back in animated vessels ... Bhujyu ye bore ... to the sea's farther shore, the strand of ocean ... Ye wrought that hero exploit in the ocean which giveth no support, or hold, or station, what time ye carried Bhujyu to his dwelling borne in a ship with hundred oars, O Asvins."
Thor Heyerdahl makes a case that there is real history behind the Redin myth, that it is older than the date now confirmed by radiocarbon for the construction of the hawittas - which tradition nevertheless attributes to the Redin - and that the people it refers to probably originated in north-west India, the primary setting of the Rig Veda ... [at] the great marine dockyard of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization at Lothal [north-west India] ... cowrie shells from the Maldives (Cyprea Moneta) have been excavated amongst the ruins and are to be seen in the site museum ...
— Graham Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, ch. 13, section The Secret of the Redin
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brunnismemorybank · 2 years ago
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The outrage over Graham Hancock’s documentary series amuses me. Sure, I think his conclusion that there was once an advanced, globe-trotting Ice Age civilization is a reach (OK, a long reach),* considering the evidence. But archaeology is full of discoveries that archaeologists had previously deemed impossible; any modern archaeologist worth their salt will tell you that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” And Hancock isn’t wrong about the fact that new research keeps pushing our timeline of (proven) advanced technology deeper and deeper into the past.
Besides, who cares if the excavations he asks for fail to support his conclusion? They’d still collect valuable data on cultures that actually existed. Archaeologists ask for more excavations all the time.
*I think it’s plausible both that foragers were capable of more complex technology than we’ve yet discovered, and that some groups might have experimented with small-scale plant and animal domestication during periods of relative climatic stability. I just don’t buy that one culture could’ve been responsible for all the agricultural packages, religions, and monuments that Hancock attributes to it. That still doesn’t make him a menace to society, though!
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smokeybrandcompositions · 2 years ago
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Historical Accuracy
The discourse around Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse is fascinating to me. I haven’t seen it and i know next to nothing about it’s creator, Graham Hancock, but the vitriol around this man and his theories is f*cking intense. The academic establishment hates this man and the media is definitely following suit. This man dares to postulate that there was a pre-Ice Age, sea fairing culture that suffered a fall, leading to it’s people integrating with the hunter-gatherers of the time and teaching them the seeds of society. He believes that there is ample evidence around the world pointing to this, Gobekli Tepe being a hug one. If you don’t know, Tepe is a civilization dating back almost twelve thousand years, who built a monolithic civilization something thought not possible until thousands of years later. There’s even evidence that the Sphinx in Egypt is much, much, older than what is common accepted. For all of these “insane” theories, Hancock is seen as a fraud and dangerous but, like, how?
Why is it so hard for people to accept that what we know as history is just a snippet of what we are? It feels like every other month, our genesis as a species is pushed back a couple dozen millennia. More than that, why is it so hard to believe that these people, who lived in a completely different version four world, was able to harness a completely different yet similar technology to ours? Roman streets still exist to this date, flawless in their construction, but our modern streets are riddled with potholes. We found legitimate Orichalcum at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea but that sh*t was considered mythological until then. No one even knows what Greek Fire is, but it, for sure, was used as a weapon of mass destruction back during the Bronze Age. Hell, no one even knows what caused the Bronze Age collapse and that sh*t was well within the wheelhouse of written historic record. Why is it so wild to believe that there was a civilization that had existed long enough to develop sea faring tech, long before other people? Why is it so hard to believe that there were isolated pockets of people who just observed the world closer than most, and decided to f*ck around and find out? That’s all it takes to develop anything really.
It’s incredibly disrespectful and wildly dismissive to just write off these theories, especially when they point to these advanced civilizations being from Africa or the Far East. I absolutely believe Atlantis existed and that it was situated in West Africa before that sh*t got washed away during a glacial melt. There is a ton of f*cking evidence which supports The Eye of Africa in  Mauritania, being the site of the mythological super power. Imagine that. Imagine this very narrow, Eurocentric view of “history” which paints ancient Egyptians as Greeks (even though the Ptolemys were the last of the Dynastic families and literally caused the downfall of the millennia old civilization), absolutely eviscerated by the revelation that one of the oldest, most advanced cultures in the history of man, were African. Like, so far away from that light-skinned Middle Eastern by way of white folks narrative perpetuated throughout schools, African. And that’s just one of these pre-Ice Age civilizations. I personally believe there were many, many, more.
Civilization ebbs and flows. In ten thousand years, we will be long gone and whoever comes after us will think us primitive. They’ll come across our combustion engines and think, “Really?” I’m sure their tech will be just as advanced, maybe moreso maybe not, but it will look the same. It will do the same things but they would have gotten to that answer in a different way than us. Ingenuity isn’t tied to a level of intelligence, it just takes patience and experimentation. What has that got to do with Hancock and his black listing from modern academia? Absolutely everything. IF we know that tech, society, and civilization rise and fall at pretty regular intervals, then why is it so hard for anyone to think that sh*t started earlier? Why is it so hard to believe that sh*t  existed in an advanced state, one alien to our perception of what advanced even is, but fell due to a complex system of issues? No one knows why agriculture started, they just have an idea of when. No one knows why we began to build, we just have an idea of when; One that keeps getting pushed farther and farther back. It’s not a stretch to think our story started much, much, earlier than we have accepted and it’s weird to me that there is so much resistance to this notion.
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smokeybrand · 2 years ago
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Historical Accuracy
The discourse around Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse is fascinating to me. I haven’t seen it and i know next to nothing about it’s creator, Graham Hancock, but the vitriol around this man and his theories is f*cking intense. The academic establishment hates this man and the media is definitely following suit. This man dares to postulate that there was a pre-Ice Age, sea fairing culture that suffered a fall, leading to it’s people integrating with the hunter-gatherers of the time and teaching them the seeds of society. He believes that there is ample evidence around the world pointing to this, Gobekli Tepe being a hug one. If you don’t know, Tepe is a civilization dating back almost twelve thousand years, who built a monolithic civilization something thought not possible until thousands of years later. There’s even evidence that the Sphinx in Egypt is much, much, older than what is common accepted. For all of these “insane” theories, Hancock is seen as a fraud and dangerous but, like, how?
Why is it so hard for people to accept that what we know as history is just a snippet of what we are? It feels like every other month, our genesis as a species is pushed back a couple dozen millennia. More than that, why is it so hard to believe that these people, who lived in a completely different version four world, was able to harness a completely different yet similar technology to ours? Roman streets still exist to this date, flawless in their construction, but our modern streets are riddled with potholes. We found legitimate Orichalcum at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea but that sh*t was considered mythological until then. No one even knows what Greek Fire is, but it, for sure, was used as a weapon of mass destruction back during the Bronze Age. Hell, no one even knows what caused the Bronze Age collapse and that sh*t was well within the wheelhouse of written historic record. Why is it so wild to believe that there was a civilization that had existed long enough to develop sea faring tech, long before other people? Why is it so hard to believe that there were isolated pockets of people who just observed the world closer than most, and decided to f*ck around and find out? That’s all it takes to develop anything really.
It’s incredibly disrespectful and wildly dismissive to just write off these theories, especially when they point to these advanced civilizations being from Africa or the Far East. I absolutely believe Atlantis existed and that it was situated in West Africa before that sh*t got washed away during a glacial melt. There is a ton of f*cking evidence which supports The Eye of Africa in  Mauritania, being the site of the mythological super power. Imagine that. Imagine this very narrow, Eurocentric view of “history” which paints ancient Egyptians as Greeks (even though the Ptolemys were the last of the Dynastic families and literally caused the downfall of the millennia old civilization), absolutely eviscerated by the revelation that one of the oldest, most advanced cultures in the history of man, were African. Like, so far away from that light-skinned Middle Eastern by way of white folks narrative perpetuated throughout schools, African. And that’s just one of these pre-Ice Age civilizations. I personally believe there were many, many, more.
Civilization ebbs and flows. In ten thousand years, we will be long gone and whoever comes after us will think us primitive. They’ll come across our combustion engines and think, “Really?” I’m sure their tech will be just as advanced, maybe moreso maybe not, but it will look the same. It will do the same things but they would have gotten to that answer in a different way than us. Ingenuity isn’t tied to a level of intelligence, it just takes patience and experimentation. What has that got to do with Hancock and his black listing from modern academia? Absolutely everything. IF we know that tech, society, and civilization rise and fall at pretty regular intervals, then why is it so hard for anyone to think that sh*t started earlier? Why is it so hard to believe that sh*t  existed in an advanced state, one alien to our perception of what advanced even is, but fell due to a complex system of issues? No one knows why agriculture started, they just have an idea of when. No one knows why we began to build, we just have an idea of when; One that keeps getting pushed farther and farther back. It’s not a stretch to think our story started much, much, earlier than we have accepted and it’s weird to me that there is so much resistance to this notion.
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vexxisaversailles · 5 years ago
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Why I Believe in Atlantis - Note: It is important to know our history and have the right story in our minds or we would be doomed to repeat it. //
People dedicated to truth-seeking and with great credibility; Graham Hancock, John Anthony West, and Robert Schoch proved the Sphinx was there at the end of the Last Ice Age because of the weathering they found. Robert Schoch and also Randall Carlson, real geologists -support that the Sphinx is at least 11,600 years old, probably older because it obviously had been kept up over centuries. Meaning the core body is probably even before then.
Historians & Mainstream Archaeologists are the ones that are trying to make sure no new discoveries are made but the new evidence got overwhelming. Another discovery they are ignoring that aligns with the Pyramids of Giza being 11,600 + years old is that at that time on Earth, the Great Sphinx would be looking at its celestial reflection at that time, the constellation of Leo. 
In Plato’s story of Atlantis - that he got from his great grandfather, Solon, visiting Egypt - Atlantis, the lost advanced civilization, was destroyed 9000 years before the supposed year Solon was in Egypt, 600 B.C., meaning Atlantis was destroyed in 9,600 B.C. - oh wait, that’s 11,600 years ago.
I do not believe a lot of the myth and fantasies of Atlantis, so many adaptations have been made to drown out the original story that came from Plato who said himself that it was not a fable. Amongst them are many misconceptions of Atlantis being an island, continent, here or there, but the word Island itself was a looser term in those days, so we assume he could have been talking about a civilization, group of peoples, etc and not a literal specific island. So this ancient advanced civilization got destroyed at the end of the Last Ice Age and in Plato’s story, it was specifically destroyed in 1 Day.
Research on how The Last Ice Age ended has come to a new hypothesis only within the last 5 years or so that a Comet, about 3 miles wide, ended the Last Ice Age. Which would cause cataclysmic floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes, all over the world. AKA, probably destroying this civilization in 1 day since from what we DO know it did wipe out ¾ths of Large Mammals - The Great Extinction - on the continent of North and South America.
Comets HAVE Caused Cataclysms Before - Ending the last Ice Age and also as originally proposed in 1980 by a team of scientists led by Luis Alvarez and his son Walter Alvarez, it is now generally thought that the K–Pg “Dinosaur” extinction was caused by the impact of a massive comet or asteroid 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) wide, 66 million years ago, which devastated the global environment.
Fun Fact: Although I am still skeptical of psychics, Edgar Cayce’s psychic vision of the Hall of Records under the paw of the Sphinx ended up being true, after he died, but the man also had some stories of Atlantis.
🙌 More will be in YouTube Video ❣
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goodvibesatpeace · 5 years ago
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Theories: Darwinism and Our Extraterrestrial DNA
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If you fancy a bit of light reading 😀
The mysteries of ancient history, such as how the great pyramid was built and by whom and why, have been well established over the past four decades. Similar archaeological enigmas litter the landscape around the planet and they raise many difficult questions about the origin of human civilisation.
Erik Von Daniken’s series of books, which began with Chariots of the Gods, presented archeological evidence while recounting many mythological traditions that have “gods” arriving on Earth from a distant world and bringing technology and the arts of civilised life to primitive human tribes.
Many writers followed Von Daniken’s lead and an entire school of alternative historical thought called the “ancient astronaut” theory emerged over the years. This school must be distinguished from another branch largely defined by such writers as Graham Hancock, which we can sum up as the “lost civilisation” school.
The latter does not figure into this discussion nor is it covered in the book The Genesis Race because it never really addresses the issue of the ultimate origins of Man or civilisation. Even if you accept the idea ancient Egypt and Sumer had their origins in Atlantis, who created that civilisation and from what precursors?
The essential questions the author has been studying over the past three decades are:
1) how did life originate and evolve on Earth?, and
2) how did civilisation suddenly emerge from mankind’s primitive roots?
To my mind it seemed the ancient astronaut theory could be defeated if Darwin’s theory proved to be correct, which “official science” claims it has been. That premise can be justified using several valid arguments.
The “ancient astronaut” theory generally includes the idea summed up in the first chapter of Genesis, which indicates the “gods” genetically engineered a proto-human race. The actual verse reads, “Let us make man in our image.” If Darwinism is accurate then this assertion would be untrue and the notion of cosmic intervention by an advanced race would fall apart.
The second reason is Darwin’s theory has not only been applied to biology, it is also used to explain the emergence and development of human civilisation by a process referred to as cultural evolution.
At its core Darwinism is based on a simple concept: life evolves slowly via a process of incremental adaptations to a wide variety of external stimulus. He applied it to biology and anthropologists, archaeologists and historians applied the same principles to culture and human history. If this is correct then we should not find any abrupt transformations in human “evolution” either biological or historical.
I reason that if Darwinism is accurate then there may not be any valid scientific basis for the “ancient astronaut” theory, which posited intervention and rapid-fire metamorphosis in both the biological and historical spheres. The results of this research proved surprising.
Darwinism is not only unproven – it has been shown by scientists to be fatally flawed.
This is where the book, The Genesis Race, begins…
Chapters two and three clearly show the flaws in the theory of evolution. It has failed exactly where Darwin feared it might – in the fossil record. Here we find – instead of widespread confirmation – a large number of missing links.
The general public is given to believe the only “missing link” in the fossil record exists between apes and man. This is not true. The fossil record contains hundreds of gaps between ancient and modern plant and animal species.
Darwin referred to the gap separating the primitive non-flowering plants (gymnosperms) and flowering plants (angiosperms) as the “abominable problem.” Why? Because the gymnosperms, like ferns, existed for billions of years and they still exist today.
The angiosperms, like roses, appeared on the scene about 150 million years ago and they exist today. Where is the evidence showing the fern evolved through a series of slow, incremental changes into a rose?
According to Darwinism the angiosperms evolved from the gymnosperms. If this is true then where are the intermediate forms linking the two very different types of plants? They have not been found in the fossil record and none exist today. This seems impossible and it is if you accept the principles of Darwinism.
There is no scientific explanation for the lack of intermediate plants linking the ancient and modern types. In fact, there should be millions of such fossils since they would have been evolving for hundreds of millions of years, far longer than flowering plants.
Scientists also have no explanation why gymnosperms and angiosperms exist side by side. Somehow all the intermediate plants they say connect the two kingdoms mysteriously vanished from the fossil record and became extinct. Logic would dictate that the older, ancient plants (non-flowering) should have been the ones to go the way of extinction.
This is actually enough evidence to kill Darwinism. Official science would have us believe the only dissenters against Darwinism are Creationists that come from the ranks of the Religious Right.
However, I present numerous references to bona fide scientists that slam the door on Darwin’s theory of natural evolution.
What is, or should be, of great interest to anyone interested in the pursuit of science – as it applies to getting to the truth of human origins and the emergence of civilisation – are the works of Francis Crick and Fred Hoyle.
While Von Daniken’s books were becoming popular in mainstream culture, these two eminent scientists wrote books about the origins of life on Earth. Both were highly critical of Darwinism and posited that life did not originate on Earth. They said the seeds of the biosphere originated in the cosmos.
In his book Life Itself, Crick – a Nobel prize-winner and the co-founder of the shape of the DNA molecule – claimed an advanced civilisation transported the seeds of life to Earth in a spacecraft.
Hoyle, an astronomer who gave the world the steady state theory of the Universe, proposed that life came from the stars borne on comets or riding on the currents of light waves.
The unfortunate thing is these rigorous scientific arguments were largely dismissed or completely ignored by “official science”, and also overlooked by the same folks embracing Von Daniken’s relatively unscientific, yet popular approach. (Erik did make people question and think.)
I want to clarify what I mean by that statement. Von Daniken claimed he was presenting a theory yet the title of his first book ended with a question mark.
A new theory is normally offered by presenting arguments against the currently accepted theory, as Crick and Hoyle did, and it is presented assertively with equal measures of humility and confidence that do not end in a question mark.
His somewhat insecure and uncritical approach has characterised much of the “ancient astronaut” literature, which official science finds easy to debunk.
That is why The Genesis Race begins with a serious critique of Darwinism. That is followed by several chapters re-examining the account of human genesis and the early history found in the Bible. A revolutionary analysis of the first three chapters clearly shows there were two creation events of life (and mankind) on Earth.
It also shows the history given in the Bible agrees with the findings of paleontology and anthropology. In the first chapter we find that an early proto-human race was created and lived in the wilderness, like other animals, as hunter-gatherers. They were given “every green thing to eat” by the gods and Genesis 1 ends with that covenant.
However, in the second chapter we are told Adam is created to be a gardener and Eve is taken from Adam’s rib and the “gods” give them clothing and self-awareness. The chronological account of Creation in the second chapter is entirely different than that of the first chapter of Genesis.
This is a critical point. Not only do the two accounts differ completely, we find Adam is not to live in the wilderness as an animal but is intended to be a caretaker and farmer. If the two accounts are compared side by side the difference is obvious:
Adam and Eve are not equivalent to the race created in Genesis 1; and Genesis 2 and 3 are not a detailed elucidation of the events described in the first chapter, which is normally implied or taught in church Bible classes.
What the first three chapters of Genesis actually describe are:
1) the creation of a proto-human race, the pre-Neanderthals and Neanderthals who live as hunter-gatherers in an innocent state as described in chapter 1, followed by,
2) the genesis of modern Homosapiens (Adam) fit for the agricultural revolution.
That is exactly the history given in Genesis and it agrees with everything modern science establishes about the chronology of human pre-history.
This is a radical revision giving much stronger support to the Biblical version of human genesis and how and why the agricultural revolution took place.
It also clarifies who the “us” refers to when God is abruptly referred to as ‘a plurality’ that intervenes and genetically alters life on Earth, the Genesis Race; and it sets the stage for a presentation of the enigmatic archaeological and additional evidence that further supports the theory of intervention by a technologically advanced extraterrestrial race.
Archaeology has never even addressed all the questions raised by the sudden emergence of agriculture and highly advanced civilisations in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the 3rd millennium BCE, let alone answered the most critical ones.
From the perspective of conventional archeological and anthropological thinking, the origins of humankind and the emergence of civilisation from the Stone Age remain enigmatic. We have incontrovertible proof our ancestors could not have built the Great Pyramid with the tools and methods they possessed.
Yet official science simply ignores or tries to explain away many serious questions and issues such as how the Great Pyramid – the world’s largest precision-engineered stone structure – was constructed using only hammer-stones, ropes, manpower and sledges.
However, there are other issues that need to be addressed and today’s genetic research is shedding new light on this field. The implications of several important recent findings seem to have escaped the attention of many independent investigators.
Established archaeologists and anthropologists have either ignored or railed against the findings of these controversial DNA studies. I am referring to genetic studies into the origin of the domesticated dog and into the diet of our Paleolithic and early Neolithic ancestors.
You may ask what do the dog and Stone Age dietary habits have to do with solving the enigmas of mankind’s ancient past? The answer is everything.
Until recently it was believed dogs (Canis familiaris) came from a variety of wild canines such as wolves, coyotes, dingos, jackals, etc. But the latest DNA research shows that the wolf alone is the ancestral race of all dogs.
This poses a set of very difficult problems. The first dog would have been a mutant wolf. However, wolves are extremely sensitive to the genetic fitness and strength of each member of the pack. They are constantly testing and establishing a stringent social pecking order and only the alphas reproduce.
So how would a mutant ever have survived and reproduced given the rigours of pack behaviour? No wolves in captivity have produced viable mutants and geneticists tell us mutants are normally unfit and do not survive.
We are faced with a real conundrum. If we pose that early human tribes intervened and bred wolves into dogs we are faced with an equally impossible scenario. How could primitive humans have known it was possible to selectively breed a wild animal into one possessing only those traits beneficial to them?
We take the characteristics of dogs for granted, however, they present us with a profound mystery. A dog is the embodiment of only those wolf traits that people find useful, attractive and safe. How did genetically illiterate Stone Age humans achieve this feat of genetic engineering?
This problem is compounded when we are confronted by evidence from our earliest civilisations showing that salukis, sighthounds and the pharaoh’s hound, had already been bred in ancient Sumeria and Egypt.
How is it possible our ancestors, recently emerged from the Stone Age, could have successfully engineered purebred lines at the onset of civilisation? In addition, dogs are not only temperamentally different than their wild progenitors, they differ physiologically as well.
A wild alpha male and female only breed once a year, whereas dogs can breed any time. Wolves shed their winter coats, dogs do not. These diverging physiological characteristics take time to develop, in fact, many generations. Again, how did our ancestors at the onset of civilisation accomplish this?
This mystery is underscored by the fact most of the modern dog breeds originated thousands of years ago. Science has not even addressed most of these issues let alone have the experts satisfactorily explained how wolves became dogs – 100,000 years ago – nor have they shown the step-by-step transitions.
Purebred dogs just suddenly appear in the archeological record as if by magic. This is also true of agriculture and our key cereal and legume crops. Wheat, corn, beans and rice pose a second set of genetic enigmas.
Research into the dietary habits of Stone Age tribes around the globe show our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors subsisted on leafy plants and lean muscle meats. This makes perfect sense because these foods were readily available, took little or no processing, and wild game could be cooked over an open fire.
The problem with our grain crops, and they are the basis of civilisation, is wild grass seeds are so miniscule the cost/benefit of harvesting them was not in favour of it. They also require harvesting, threshing and cooking technology since they have to be boiled extensively. This was technology Stone Age Man lacked.
The reason grains have to be cooked is that the human gut is not adapted to digest wild grains. This makes it very clear the use of wild grass seeds as a primary food source is of recent origin. Our Paleolithic ancestors did not subsist on them.
Once again, this poses a set of formidable problems that need to be studied rigorously. If our ancestors did not harvest and eat wild grains, how could they have domesticated and bred the wild species so quickly?
Without many generations of trial and error experimentation – culminating in a vast body of agronomic knowledge and agricultural practices that would have included genetics and breeding – it is all but impossible to understand how the agricultural revolution was brought about.
Official science tries to explain the evolution of nomadic hunter-gatherers into sedentary, crop-growing farmers by claiming they discovered crops quite by accident. We are told it happened when a primitive villager tossed a seed bearing plant into the trash pile and noticed that it sprouted.
But that trite tale can hardly explain how they selected the best wild species to use as the basis for the agricultural revolution. There are thousands and thousands of potential wild plants that could be turned into agricultural crops.
How is it people with very little experience with wild grasses were able to pick the best varieties to breed? This represents a quantum leap. What we are asked to believe is that our ancestors, without much experience at the seminal stage of civilisation, were able to select and breed the very best varieties of wild grass species.
How do we know this is true? Because we still grow the very crops they supposedly selected even after 5,000 years of continuous technological and agricultural development.
We are asked to suspend disbelief and accept they also constructed the largest precision-engineered stone building the world has ever seen – the Great Pyramid of Giza – using only primitive hand tools and backbreaking labor. Something is obviously wrong with this picture.
Is it logical to assume our Earthly ancestors could (or would) have thrown together the agricultural revolution and then the entire civilisations of Sumer and Egypt out of whole cloth? No it is not; and neither do these suppositions represent sound science.
For those of us in the alternative history camp, one of the most fundamental questions we must impress upon the public and upon ‘official science’ is to ask where are the antecedents and precedents?
Show us the slow Darwinian stages of development that official history presupposes. How can you explain the sudden appearance of genetically altered food crops and advanced engineering techniques at the onset of human civilisation?
We need step-by-step documentation and incontrovertible evidence and it ought to be copious and devoid of missing links since we are supposedly talking about events that occurred thousands and not tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, as is the case with biological evolution.
Where did our Paleolithic ancestors acquire the knowledge and skills to breed wild plants into food crops while also constructing planned cities? How did they achieve an exacting command of the principles of civil engineering as exhibited in Sumeria and the Harrappan civilisation of the Indus Valley?
How did humans go from mud huts and collecting leafy plants to building ziggurats, flush toilets, public bathhouses (Mohenjo Daro), making bread in ovens, and inventing process metallurgy seemingly overnight? In plain language, where is the proof – the missing links – demonstrating your (official science) theories are confirmed in the archaeological record and meet simple standards of logic and commonsense?
Turning to what our ancestors in Sumer, Mexico, Egypt and Peru have to say about the origins of agriculture and civilisation we find a very different story. According to the ancient records, written and oral traditions, none of the earliest civilisations claimed they invented it. What is of profound interest is they are in unanimous accord in claiming they were given the arts of civilisation by the ‘gods’.
It is very unlike human nature to give credit to anyone else for anything we have invented or achieved. The ancient Egyptians left copious records of every aspect of their culture in a huge collection of artwork, hieroglyphics and texts.
Yet, we find no reference in their 3,000 year history as to how or why ‘they’ built the pyramids. What a curious lapse of documentation for such a communicative race assuming they did indeed built the pyramids. Would they have omitted any reference to their most important monuments?
That seems a preposterous supposition and yet Egyptologists gloss over it as they do the lack of mummies in the alleged ‘pyramids-as-tombs’ scenario they embrace without blushing.
These are all clues, pieces of a vast planetary puzzle, telling the story of the Genesis Race. The references to these ‘gods’ that arrived on Earth to uplift man are described in the Bible and other ancient texts and traditions. Their megalithic calling cards are found in Egypt, Mexico, Peru and China.
The Darwinian-based theories of ‘official science’, concerning the origin of Man and human civilisation, lead to a series of intellectual dead ends.
If we closely examine the record we find civilisation was founded upon five primary inventions:
1) Agriculture,
2) Urbanisation,
3) Writing,
4) The Wheel, and
5) Process metallurgy.
Now, what happens when we try to uncover the origins of these key inventions in the archaeological and historical record? We find anthropologists and historians positing that agriculture was probably discovered by accident when our primitive ancestors tossed plants into the garbage heap and noticed the seeds produced new plants.
Of course that does not explain what motivated them to plant and harvest wild grass seeds (they almost never ate) and how they learned to selectively breed and domesticate (alter) these plants genetically.
Well, they brush aside these queries with the same logic. This, too, was probably a serendipitous process that moved forward by a series of benign and happy coincidences. We are given to imagine the first domesticated animal, an example of perfect selective breeding, also took place when Paleolithic tribesman – via unknown techniques – domesticated a line of mutant wolves.
Then we learn that process metallurgy, too, was the result of an accident, when someone dropped a piece of malachite into a campfire and observantly noticed that as it melted it produced copper.
In short, the fundamental paradigm ‘official science’ has formulated on how human life originated and how we created civilisation rests on a series of ‘miraculous’ accidents and impossible knowledge and skills!
Egyptologists would have us believe the primitive tribes living along the Nile in oval huts who used mud-bricks to build mastabas for millennia were suddenly capable of advanced quarry operations, stonemasonry, architecture and corporate engineering.
Of course, they cannot explain how these primitive peoples built a massive, precision-engineered pyramid using only round hammerstones, wooden sledges and human labor.
The Egyptian’s could not have built it, did not build it, and never claimed they were the pyramid’s creators
It is simply not possible to quarry, lift, drag and transport 70-ton blocks of granite 500 miles from the Aswan quarry to Giza and up 150 vertical feet and precisely position them in the King’s Chamber as Egyptologists claim was done.
I have repeatedly challenged Egyptologists, and their irrational, unscientific fellow travelers to demonstrate how the blocks of granite in the King’s Chamber can be quarried and lifted out of the quarry-bed and transported using the primitive tools and methods they claim were used. It cannot be done!
Furthermore, this author claims he can show that any academics – mathematicians, anthropologists and/or engineering professors – who believe and teach these absurdities to students are lunatics running the asylums – our scientific institutions and universities.
This is certainly a serious, bold indictment and yet it must be made because it is true and it is high time to expose the intellectual chicanery and fraud perpetrated upon generations.
I am not making these claims to create a controversy but to resolve a long-standing debate that has profound ramifications since it involves eliminating falsehoods and getting to the historical facts.
How can I make such strong accusations with complete confidence?
First, the author has studied the engineering problems intensively and extensively comparing the building of modern-day monuments using state-of-the-art technology to the construction of the Great Pyramid using primitive tools and methods.
Second, I have examined the recent record of tests conducted by Egyptologists and others trying to prove they could quarry, move and lift blocks of stone using nothing but ancient tools and techniques. Both studies yielded the same results: the Great Pyramid could not have been built with hammerstones, sledges and ramps.
One test filmed by Nova was organised by Egyptologist Mark Lehner and involved leading experts in a variety of fields. The team set out to quarry, move and lift a 35-ton obelisk into place. They failed miserably at every step.
The master stonemason could not quarry the block using the primitive tools he was given. A Cat was called in to quarry the block and lift it onto a flatbed truck; sensing defeat they never even tried to transport it using a wooden sledge. The block was half the weight of one those used in the King’s Chamber.
A Nissan funded Japanese team conducted another serious test in 1978. They set out to build a small-scale duplicate of the Great Pyramid also using the primitive tools and techniques Egyptologists claim the ancients employed.
This group was confident they could demonstrate how it was done. However, when they tried to quarry the blocks they found the hammerstones were not equal to the task. They called in pneumatic jackhammers. When they tried to ferry the blocks across the river on a primitive barge, they sank. They called in a modern tugboat for help.
Then they loaded a block onto a sledge only to find that it stubbornly sank into the sand when they tried to drag it to the site. They called for trucks and loaders. The final coup d’grace was delivered when they were forced to call in helicopters to lift and position the blocks into place.
Even using modern technology the Japanese team found, to their utter embarrassment, they could not bring the apex of their tiny 60 feet tall replica together. They suffered a bitter and quite humbling defeat in the unforgiving Egyptian desert. Their replica of the Great Pyramid turned out to be a joke.
We are supposed to believe men using tools marginally better than Stone Age equipment, quarried, lifted and hauled millions of blocks of stone to form a precision-engineered 4-million ton tomb. Stuff of nonsense!
The conventional scenario is not just an absurd proposition that can only be maintained using intellectual smoke and mirrors, it is downright silly. The real question is, how could anyone with any commonsense have ever believed it?
There are, of course, many other problems with the primitive tools and methods scenario and the Great Pyramid. To begin with Mark Lehner commissioned an engineering firm to study the site.
They found that the 13-acre base had been leveled with an accuracy equal to that achieved by modern day lasers. Are we to believe a 13-acre limestone bench was planed with that degree of precision using rounded hammerstones to grind down the rock until it was almost perfectly flat?
Furthermore, the Descending Passage was actually the next phase of this massive construction project. It too had to be dug out of solid bedrock. The problems with this phase of the project are manifold.
The passageway was only about 3 by 4 feet, just large enough to accommodate one worker at a time. It was dug 150 feet underground maintaining a precise angle of 26 degrees and a negligible deviation from side to side and bottom to top throughout its length. Then it was opened up into several rooms and another passageway. How?
Why would the ancients dig a straight tunnel under a 4-million ton tomb and how was the passageway kept straight and true? Egyptian ‘engineers’ had no more than ropes in their toolkits.
The author can also prove these two phases alone – leveling the base and digging the Descending Passageway – would have required half the time Egyptologists have allotted to the entire construction project. They, in fact, never even include these two phases in their calculations.
But we have other important fish to fry. During decades of research the author noted some curious similarities between Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley – the sites of our earliest civilisations – that do not add up. As we all know now, the ruins of Sumer are located in modern day Iraq.
Our history and anthropology books routinely tell us that agriculture and civilisation were given birth in benign and highly fertile river valleys. But when we stop and closely examine these locations we find they are some of the hottest, driest and most inhospitable places on the planet.
The temperatures in these locations for 6 months out of the year are typically between 35-48 degrees Celsius (95-118ºF). It is true the alluvial flood plains of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and ancient Indus rivers were fertile.
But it takes considerable agronomic and hydrological knowledge to know this and to convert the marshes and control the floods to turn these wetlands into productive farmland. The question is how did our ancient ancestors, so recently emerged from the hunter-gatherer way of life, so quickly acquire this knowledge and develop these skills?
When we peer out from the ziggurats of ancient Sumer, the sandblasted pyramids of Egypt or the ruined cities of the Indus Valley, we do not see fruited-plains but vast, blistering, desert expanses.
Is it not difficult to envision our primitive ancestors rolling out their blueprints for civilisation while squinting into the sun and deciding this is where the first cities and great monuments would be built and the first real cropland cultivated?
The scenario jars the mind and makes hash out of the comfortable fantasies painted by ‘official science’. Is something starting to smelly funny or is the author’s nose just too sensitive?
I do seem to detect the subtle aroma of too many skeletons and enigmas – having been shoved hurriedly into too many closets and musty catacombs – wafting up from ancient stones and bones…
We have to examine several other items that do not pass the smell test. Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley share some other critical features in common which make them unlikely places for primitive peoples to have developed our first civilisations.
We should expect to find civilisations evolving where people had immediate access to a wide variety of resources. The most logical scenario would be in river valleys near forested, mineral rich mountains.
This is a logical expectation since people needed water, fuel (wood) for fires, tool handles and building materials as well as copper, gold and silver to make jewellery and tools and so on.
We would expect to find this association not just to establish they had immediate access to these necessary resources, but also that they had been engaged in a prolonged period of extracting, processing and working with these resources.
Unfortunately, Sumer, the birthplace of civilisation, was completely lacking in forests, minerals and even stones. This is a curious, illogical fact. How did this strange tribe, speaking an odd tongue and calling themselves ‘the black-headed people’, invent civilisation in the middle of a barren desert wasteland?
Egypt was also bereft of forests, as was the Indus Valley. The point is not that civilisation was or is impossible in these areas, but that it is supposed to have originated in these harsh, desert environs lacking many basic resources.
Yet we find the Sumerians ingeniously mining copper and tin and creating the first alloy, bronze, in kilns around 3000 BCE. In rapid-fire succession they invented the wheel, the chariot, the sailboat, writing, cities, labor specialisation, civil engineering and on and on. Ostensibly, the tribes of the Indus Valley and the Nile would soon follow.
They did all this while most of the world’s tribes were still living as hunter-gatherers, another fact that demolishes the theories of cultural Darwinists. You cannot explain the radical departure from the human norm by several tribes without invoking some form of racism or inexplicable genetic deviations.
The other curious features we find in common among Earth’s ‘first’ civilisations are that none of them claimed they invented agriculture, laws, morality or the other prime tools of civilisation.
The Sumerians claimed they owed everything to the ‘gods’ (Anunnaki) that had descended from the heavens to Earth to create and teach mankind the arts of civilised life. The ancient Egyptians referred to the Nefertu who ruled over them during the Zep Tepi (First Time) for thousands of years until they handed over the reigns to the human pharaohs.
Our real human history as handed down by our ancestors is far more exciting and incredible than the pabulum ‘official’ science has been force feeding us for many generations.
Mankind is indeed on the threshold of a re-awakening to a new dawn; the time of profound revelations about the truth of our astonishing origins and history is at hand.
Be Open Minded and Question Everything... Love and Light to all 💓💓💓💓
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dontgobreakingmyart · 6 years ago
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Fanfiction: Why Is It So Popular?
As someone on tumblr, you probably know what fanfiction is and know why it is popular. My AP Literature teacher, however, wasn’t so informed. 
My senior year, we were required to write a research paper about a trend. Some people did the rate of divorce, others did the increase of body modification and someone even did the death of Pokemon Go. 
Our teacher recommended that we chose a topic that we were familiar with, and my first 2 thoughts were fanfiction and anime. I had already had a friend that had done anime the year the before, so I thought “why not?”
And thus, my senior paper was born:
March , 2018
Fanfiction: Why Is It So Popular?
INTRODUCTION:
Generally, the word “fanfiction” conjures an image of lonely hermits, obsessive fans, or even dangerous flirtation with copyrights, but lately, fanfiction has been given a new face―a face of validity, expression, and even publication. Since January 2012, the amount of fanfiction for just one fandom (a collection of fans supporting a certain medium) has increased an astonishing 1,154% (Pellegrini). Objectively, fanfiction is a fan-made story that contains strong elements of the original work, generally using the same characters, themes, and other various components. For example, there are numerous works based off Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, continuing on the story of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy; in fact, there has been a recent increase of published novels based on Pride and Prejudice of 32% since 2015 (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”). Why? Because fans were not satisfied with the original content; they wanted to see more of Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship or they wondered what the characters would do in a zombie apocalypse or any other variation of “what if?” Fanfiction allows “amateur writers” to express their love for a book, tv show, game, etc., and whether it’s because of the lack of LGBT themes in most published works or the increasing ease of sharing their fiction, fanfiction writers are not likely to stop any time soon (Knorr).
BACKGROUND / HISTORY:
Although it might seem very unbelievable, fanfiction did not just start recently, or a couple decades ago, or in the 70s with that one Star Trek fanfiction. In fact, a good amount of older literature is fanfiction. If fanfiction is being defined as “any work of fiction that borrows major elements of another work of fiction,” then works such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet could technically count as fanfiction; Hamlet was originally an “ancient Scandinavian folk tale . . .[known as] ‘Vita Amlethi’ (‘The Life of Amleth’)” that Shakespeare not only re-wrote as a play, but inserted his own, personal experiences (Clark). The Iliad, The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex were all orally-told, Greek myths that someone decided needed to be written down. The only reason theses works are not recognized as “fanfiction” was because copyright was not as strict in that time and practically did not exist; after all, no one knows for sure who the real Shakespeare was because he did not officially claim his work. 
Fanfiction didn’t really become a label until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s and with the birth of the internet, the famous Star Trek fanfiction. Officially, “the actual term ‘fanfiction’ was coined in 1939” and was used as an insult towards crudely written sci-fi fiction (Reich). In the late 90s and early 00s, rather than the “all-purpose” fanfiction cites today, “fans carved out their own little homes on the burgeoning internet. Star Trek fans here, X-Files fans there, Frasier fans somewhere else” (Hill). Most of those sites, however, have since died and have been replaced with the “all-purpose” ones like fanfiction.net. One of the most infamous modern fanfictions is E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Although it is technically a published novel, James has admitted that her novel was simply a Twilight fanfiction that she had written and aftered so that she wouldn’t break the copyright (Morrison). The largest development to the world of fanfiction, however, was the birth of Archiveofourown.org in 2007, a fanfiction website that “promised stronger resistance to legal challenges” to fanfiction writers unlike other, previous websites such as fanfiction.net (Burt). With the creation of this site, older ones have begun to die out just like the fandom-centric ones of the past.
#1 REASON:
Over the years, fanfiction has morphed from a shameful pass time to a socially acceptable medium of expression. Published authors have been, in fact, recommending fanfiction as a positive way to start writing. The author of the Princess Diaries Meg Cabot came out about her fanfiction writing, saying, “I myself used to write Star Wars fan fiction when I was tween. I think writing fanfiction is a good way for new writers to learn to tell a story” (Romano). And many other famous authors have made a contribution to the fanfiction community: Cassandra Clare, author of Mortal Instrument Series; Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game; S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders; Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman Series, and so many others (O’Brien, Kovach). 
While visiting a Writing Workshop, the published author hosting it, Pamela Thibodeaux, encouraged me to begin writing and posting fanfiction in order to start a healthy fanbase, so that when I go to get a book published, the transition is much smoother. Writing fanfiction is just as stimulating as writing an original novel. In a CNN article about fanfiction, they explicitly stated that “even if the subject matter is a little blue [writing fanfiction] is a positive form of self-expression,” compelling parents to “encourage writing” (Knorr). In fact, the main difference between the two is that writing fanfiction “takes the pressure of world-building off” which allows the writer to explore their writing style without getting tangled up in creating something from scratch (McQuien). In a way, fanfiction is the box of cake mix in the literature world―it helps amateurs to take the first step of baking without getting too overwhelmed, but in the end, it can taste just as good.
#2 REASON:
As the overall acceptance and validity of fanfiction has increased, fanfiction has found its way into the publishing world, being branded as actual literature. Time-honored novels such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have several published, fan-made additions and recreations of the original tale like Pride and Prejudice II: The Sequel by Victoria Park and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was turned into a filmed phenomena in 2016 (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”). Although there have been many literary adaptations of this novel spanning as far back as 1932, there has been a 32% increase of published fanfictions just for this fandom (“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice”).
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has also witnessed this movement with his iconic Sherlock Holmes series, especially with the popular television series Sherlock, a “modernization” (or modern au [alternate universe] in fanfiction jargon) of the classic cases between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (“8 unconventional Sherlock Holmes adaptations”). These published fanfictions have been able to keep the trademarked names of their beloved characters, but many novels had to undergo extensive editing to cross the line of “fanfiction” into “literature.” 
One of the most famous, or rather infamous, examples of this is how E. L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfiction (Morrison). Another, perhaps not as well known, is L. Stoddard Hancock’s Cruel and Beautiful World, which was heavily based off of J. K. Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter; in fact, her novel indulges the ship [romantic pairing] of Hermione and Draco, fondly known as “Dramione” in the Harry Potter fandom (Sarner). While some fanfictions have to undergo a facelift in order to be published, their true identity still remains intact: they are still devoted extensions to the esteemed works of another author.
#3 REASON:
Fanfiction has evolved greatly throughout history, and how to post fanfictions and share them with the world is just getting easier and easier. As mentioned prior, the creation of Archive of Our Own revolutionized the world of fanfiction with its promise of legal support, but how? In 2002, there was a great purging of fanfictions on the original fanfiction posting website, fanfiction.net, shaking the fanfiction community and dissuading writers from posting their fanfics (Silver). It was this sort of mass-banning on works that encouraged the creation of Archive of Our Own and its legal branch the “Organization of Transformative works” where they “clarify the legality of fanfiction, champion fan-created works whenever they were legally challenged, and provide fans with legal resources in case they were targeted by copyright claims” (Silver). In short, Archive of Our Own gave fanfic writers a safe place to share their fanfictions. 
Because of this difference with websites, despite the age difference and advantage Fanfiction.net may have with it, the increase of Harry Potter fanfictions on Archive of Our Own, for example, have increased 795% more than those on Fanfiction.net since 2010 (Pellegrini). Not only that, but Archive of Our Own has many other unique features that makes both writing fanfictions and reading fanfictions much more convenient such as tagging (Romano). Speaking from personal experience as a user of both Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, although the first is not a bad place to read fanfiction, it is not nearly as user-friendly. For example, if I wanted to read a Harry Potter fanfiction, I could easily do so on both sites, but if I wanted to read a Harry Potter fanfiction that had the ship “Dramione” or had “zombies” or where Fred didn’t die, I can only specify those tags on Archive of Our Own to find that perfect fanfiction. And fanfiction sites are still continuing to expand, to shape, to mold themselves in order to fit the preferences of the ever-evolving writers that post on them.
#4 REASON:
The world of literature is a diverse melting pot of ideas and people, but even with this diversity, there are many minorities that are pushed to the side such as the LGBT community―in the world of fanfiction, however, they are the majority. Seeing LGBT often connotes inaccurate concepts, especially in literature, where one thinks “gay” when they see LGBT and then “the label of ‘gay’ often overshadows the important elements of the story/author, often tarnish[ing] the book before it can be read” (Guy). The LGBT community is so much more than just “gay,” and those different branches are very rarely explored in published literature, but in fanfiction, they florrish. 
Although majority of fanfiction does involve romance and a good amount of it involves couples of the same sex, that is not the only layer as is with most “gay” literature. In fanfiction, everyone is represented―if you want to read a fanfiction where the main character is asexual, where the main character is genderfluid, where there’s a polyromantic relationship, where someone is aromantic, bisexual; no matter what it is you want, I can almost guarantee it’s out there somewhere. The fanfiction website Archive of Our Own found that only 38% of their users were heterosexual, meaning that at least 62% belong to the LGBT community and more people identified as genderqueer than as male (Hu). Everyone wants to be represented in media, to have someone to relate to. 
The little gay literature that is there, is only just now being reprinted, falling out of print since the 80’s, and a good amount of it is being banned (Healey). For example, Amazon refused to sell a gay Victorian novel, claiming it was “pornagraphic,” yet they have an entire section for “erotic” fiction such as 50 Shades of Grey (Healey). With fanfiction, writers don’t have to worry about labels, whether a couple is straight or homosexual or genderqueer or whatever. Writers care about the stories, the chemistry between the characters that make them a dynamic duo, and with fanfiction, writers can share that.
CONCLUSION:
Fanfiction has existed for centuries with Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek and it shows no sign of stopping now. In fact, the amount of fanfiction hasn’t just increased because of its acceptance or its publication or the ease of posting, but because of new and continuous material. 
Before the release of BBC’s show Sherlock, there were fanfictions based on the original book, and the addition of the show allowed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to become more familiar, and thus, more fanfictions to be added to the overall fandom. The same occured with the Harry Potter fandom. When Jack Thorne’s play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (a published fanfiction continuing J.K. Rowling’s original series Harry Potter), fanfiction writers exploded with new material, new ideas, and new fanfictions; a total of 1,682 fanfictions concerning Harry Potter and the Cursed Child have been posted on Archive of Our Own since the play’s release date in 2016 (Search Results for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). Due to the recent release of Voltron: Legendary Defender in 2016, there has been a staggering 5,054% increase of fanfiction for the show originally from the 80’s (Search Results for Voltron). 
With every reinstatement of a show, a new generation of potential fanfiction writers are exposed to it, adding on to the classic mediums other fanfiction writers wrote about before them such as Star Trek or Sex in the City, where there are still significant increases of 8,600% since 2005 and the show ended in 2004 (Kneale). Fanfiction increases because more and more people are being exposed to that world. Just as there will always be incoming literature and TV shows and movies, new fanfictions will be trailing in afterwards like a relentless shadow.
Works Cited
“Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own, www.archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=✓&work_search[query]=Harry potter and the cursed child.
“Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own, www.archiveofourown.org/works/search?utf8=✓&work_search[query]=Voltron.
Burt, Stephanie. “The Promise and Potential of Fan Fiction.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 23 Aug. 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-promise-and-potential-of-fan-fiction.
Clark, Cassandra. “‘Hamlet’ Origins: The Legend of Amleth.” Shake It Up, 28 June 2017, sfshakes.wordpress.com/2017/06/28/hamlet-origins-the-legend-of-amleth/.
“Eight Unconventional Sherlock Holmes Adaptations.” The Week - All You Need to Know about Everything That Matters, 29 Feb. 2012, theweek.com/articles/477729/8-unconventional-sherlock-holmes-adaptations.
Guy, Lauren. “What's the Point of LGBT Literature?” The University Times, 16 Oct. 2016, www.universitytimes.ie/2016/10/whats-the-point-of-lgbt-literature/.
Healey, Trebor. “Early Gay Literature Rediscovered.” Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/trebor-healey/early-gay-literature-redi_b_5373869.html .
Hill, Mark. “The Forgotten Early History of Fanfiction.” Motherboard, 3 July 2016, motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4xa4wq/the-forgotten-early-history-of-fanfiction.
Hu, Jane. “The Revolutionary Power Of Fanfiction For Queer Youth.” The Establishment, The Establishment, 16 May 2016, theestablishment.co/the-importance-of-fanfiction-for-queer-youth-4ec3e85d7519.
Kneale, Heidi. “Final Staff.” The Appeal of Fanfiction, July 2005, www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10165.
Knorr, Caroline. “Inside the Racy, Nerdy World of Fanfiction.” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 July 2017, www.cnn.com/2017/07/05/health/kids-teens-fanfiction-partner/index.html.
Kovach, Catherine. “7 Authors Who Wrote Fanfiction.” Bustle, Bustle, 20 Mar. 2018, www.bustle.com/articles/160939-7-authors-who-wrote-fanfiction-because-its-actually-the-best.
“List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice.” List of Literary Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/List_of_literary_adaptations_of_Pride_and_Prejudice.html.
McQuein, Josin L. “My Bloggish Blog Thing.” Novels vs. Fanfiction, 18 Apr. 2012, 12:53 PM, josinlmcquein.blogspot.com/2012/04/novels-vs-fanfiction.html.
Morrison, Ewan. “In the Beginning, There Was Fan Fiction: from the Four Gospels to Fifty Shades.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Aug. 2012, www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/13/fan-fiction-fifty-shades-grey.
OBrien, David. “Famous Authors Who Began in Fan Fiction.” AUTHORS.me, 27 Oct. 2016, www.authors.me/famous-authors-began-fan-fiction/.
Pellegrini, Nicole. “FanFiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own.” HobbyLark, HobbyLark, 15 Feb. 2017, letterpile.com/writing/fanfictionnet-vs-archive-of-our-own.
Pellegrini, Nicole. “FanFiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own.” HobbyLark, HobbyLark, 15 Feb. 2017, letterpile.com/writing/fanfictionnet-vs-archive-of-our-own.
Romano, Aja. “10 Famous Authors Who Write Fanfiction.” The Daily Dot, 9 Mar. 2017, www.dailydot.com/parsec/10-famous-authors-fanfiction/.
Romano, Aja. “Is It Possible to Quantify Fandom? Here's One Statistician Who's Crunching the Numbers |.” The Daily Dot, 24 Feb. 2017, www.dailydot.com/parsec/toastystats-ao3-fandom-statistics/.
Sarner, Lauren. “This 'Harry Potter' Fan Fiction Author Adapated Dramione Into A Novel.” Inverse, 18 July 2016, www.inverse.com/article/15572-dramione-fandom-harry-potter-fan-fiction-romance-l-stoddard-hancock-broken-wings.
Silver, Farasha. “How Archive of Our Own Revolutionized Fandom.” FAN/FIC Magazine, 26 Mar. 2017, fanslashfic.com/2015/11/01/how-archive-of-our-own-revolutionized-fandom/.
Times, J.E. Reich Tech. “Fanspeak: The Brief Origins Of Fanfiction.” Tech Times, MENU$(".Topsearchbutton").Click(Function(){ $(".Srcframe").Toggle(); }); $('Input[Type="Search"]').Keypress(Function() { $("#Srcform").Submit(); });TechScienceHealthCultureReviewsFeatures, 25 July 2015, www.techtimes.com/articles/70108/20150723/fan-fiction-star-trek-harry-potter-history-of-fan-fiction-shakespeare-roman-mythology-greek-mythology-sherlock-holmes.htm.
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flatpyramid-blog · 5 years ago
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building 029 3D Model
Building 029  3D model
high detail building model with multi layer phososhop PSD file For Mies, the structure was paramount, hence his emphasis on the rectilinear frame constructed of familiar building elements, including most importantly the wide-flange beam. Mies's buildings are typically dependent, for their exterior structural materials, on steel or less often reinforced concrete, along with broad expanses of glass. Like the Prairie Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies's skyscrapers blurred the boundary between interior and exterior space, as their glazed curtain walls became filters instead of barriers. Above all, Mies believed in creating friendly functional structures to serve people, rather than decorative structures to serve historical notions of artistic style. His focus on minimalism was expressed in his famous aphorism less is more. By the early 1950s, as a teacher, Mies van der Rohe had begun to produce a generation of students who shared his principles of design, while at the same time he had succeeded in impressing a number of independent architects and interior designers with his completed buildings. By the late 1950s, the first signs of a Miesian school were beginning to appear, most noticeably in Chicago. But within a decade, this Miesian school had expanded to become a Chicago school in order to reflect the growing body of Chicago architecture which was derivative but not directly imitative of him. The first major firm of architects to produce steel and glass high-rise buildings in keeping with the main characteristics of the Second Chicago School was Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), founded in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. The Inland Steel Building (1957), the first high-rise construction in the Loop of the postwar period, was famous for its stainless steel frame, its exterior columns positioned outside the curtain wall, and its column-free interior. After this came its two iconic tubular frame buildings: the 100-story John Hancock Center (1969), with its tapering wedge-shape and X-shaped support braces; and the 110-story, 1,451-foot tall Sears Tower (1974) now the Willis Tower, still the tallest building in the United States. The key designers at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill whose architecture helped to define the Second Chicago School included the legendary Bangladeshi Fazlur Khan (1929-82) inventor of the tubular frame, Myron Goldsmith (1918-1996), the Colombian architect Bruce Graham (1925-2010), and the brutalist designer Walter Netsch (1920-2008). Fazlur Khan's innovations, in particular, had and continue to have a huge impact on skyscraper design in Chicago and elsewhere. His revolutionary structural system of framed tubes first appeared in the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building (1963), Chicago, and afterward in his John Hancock Center and Sears Tower, as well as in today's Trump International Hotel and Tower, the Petronas Towers, the Jin Mao Building, and other supertall skyscrapers. Download Building 029 3D model on Flatpyramid now. - #3D_Model #Buildings
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dasenergi · 7 years ago
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"Who do you think we are? It's not crazy it's true. Your gut is right. Be still and listen."
This is what I hear when I sit still and listen:
The universe is a living being that we are a part of.  Every object and matter in the universe is one. Our lives are illusions. All I need to do is wake up, and it’ll all be over.  But who is the dreamer, and what is the dream?  The sleeper must awaken.
To think I am anyone special is ego. I am no one.  I’m just a guy–  A lonely, depressed, over-weight, middle-aged man.  I’m the nice guy who always finishes last.
I expect to have a heart attack in my sleep one day, and then I’ll know the great unknown.
Is magic real?  Yes, I’ve experienced the unexplainable.   I have senses evolved further than ordinary people.  But more are waking up.
I’ve always felt I was different.  I’ve always felt like the outsider.  Like I didn’t belong.  I’d fantasize about being the reincarnation of King Arthur or Merlin.  I’d dream about being the ancient sage living alone in a cave on a mountain top.
And my visions of being Jesus on the cross – Being given the temptation of this life, or dying for a world of peace. And I was too weak, too scared to sacrifice myself. I picked this life, believing that we can turn it into a world of peace. But I did it out of fear.  
My heroes are Peace Activists, Poets, Lovers, Artists. I aspire to be one. but I’m not.  I’m the observer.  Watching.  I fake it well enough.   Just like how we all fake our way through life.
And now you’re bringing up Sun Signs and Soul Groups. Aliens from other planets.  
Did you know I was very involved in the alien subculture for a little while? I met all the thought leaders of that subject. People like Giorgio Tsoukalos, Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock, David Wilcock, George Noory, James Gilliland, and more.  I was going to re-write the bible, changing any mention of angel to alien, Heaven to Space, fiery chariot to UFO, etc.
I’ve even gone to abduction survivor support groups.   I’ve heard their testimonials.   Something really did happen to those people.  I’ve had unexplainable incidents happen to me too.  Especially back at the Chino home while growing up.  Aliens and Ghosts. Or whatever they are.  
“Who do you think we are?”  I don’t know.  We are energy.  We are thought. We are the manifestation of some other larger living organism I’ll call the Universe.  
I’m not Jesus.  I’m not King Arthur or Merlin.  I’m just a Joe Schmo, trying to get by and make his way in the world without too much suffering. Living life to the best of my abilities, cherishing it, enjoying it, loving it, all the food and music and beauty and love, and touch, and smells, and laughter, and tears, and sex, and pain. It’s not easy being human.   But that’s why we’re here. To experience emotions, feelings.   Why do people go on roller coasters?  For the experience.   Why do cosmic entities become human?  For the experience.
Good or bad, right or wrong, we will experience it.
And that’s what I hear when I sit quietly and listen.
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dudja · 5 years ago
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NO LONGER SUPERMAN by Cripple Club and Hans Albers (Please See Description) by Mountain Songs NO LONGER SUPERMAN (Written by Terry Reeves) Terry Reeves: Vocals Hans Albers: All instruments, arrangement, production and final mix. Artwork by Blue Lemon Studios (https://ift.tt/2XjJegO) The 30th. May is World MS Day (#MyInvisibleMS) My wife Joanne has always told me that I’m her superman – possibly my own fault for wearing my underpants on the outside, but then I’m nothing if not a slave to fashion- so it was a real shock when, a number of years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At the time, only Jo and myself knew, and I managed to explain away any walking and balance problems as the effects of past football injuries, something which only worked until it became blindingly obvious to everyone that something more serious was amiss. Recent years have brought some fairly dramatic physical changes. Walking requires a walking frame, my arms and hands aren’t as nimble as they once were, but maybe the worst effect is something called Trigeminal Neuralgia (a facial nerve problem), which at it’s worst is, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody agony. There’s good and bad days though and, on the good ones, I can still play my guitar and write the odd song, so the situation could be appreciably worse. Having the best wife and the best kids in the world makes all the difference and, even with my glasses on, they still tell me I’m their Superman. All things considered, I’ll take that… (Terry Reeves) Hans is a Superman himself, eventually producing 4 brilliant versions of this song, which made choosing just one to include here a nigh-on impossible task. If you want to make your own judgment on that, we’ve posted an EP of all of them, plus Tel’s original demo, on Bandcamp. If you’d like a free copy, just follow this link, (https://ift.tt/2J4f5hG), enter £0.00 in the payment box and Bob’s your uncle - just a small way of saying thanks to all for all your support over the years. Thanks so much for listening. (Gary Reeves) Lyrics: I used to be your Superman I was the man who solved it all Someone found some kryptonite And hid it in the wall The strength has left the body The brain has lost its blade I can no longer take off my glasses To complete the masquerade I have no plan To send a telegram. Fight Jackie Chan Or Jean - Claude Van Damme There's no diagram To help Joanne I know who l am No longer Superman You said I had the strength of many And the look of Georgie Best I was as funny as Tony Hancock But now I have MS on my vest I try to keep on flying I respond with every cell But the telephone box is much too small To take my walking frame as well I have no plan To send a telegram Fight Jackie Chan Or Jean-Claude Van Damme There’s no diagram To help Joanne I know who I am No longer Superman I blame it on Lex Luther I even rang Alexander Graham Bell No one else seems to have a theory That explains this dilution spell Before I lose my full control I want the world to know The bulging muscles I used to have No longer come and go I have no plan To send a telegram. Fight Jackie Chan Or Jean - Claude Van Damme There's no diagram To help Joanne I know who l am No longer Superman...................................................
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didanawisgi · 7 years ago
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Tau = Tula as Great Mother and much much moreAuthor: Joyeuse ()Date: April 21, 2005 03:00AMjust found that in my notes in checking something else as usual, lol. "DEFINITIONS: TAU The Greek alphabet. Esoteric Meaning: Ta, where; bottom, valley, abyss, etc. A T-square is an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for “Tau” which means “sacred gate” or “sacred opening”. Multiple Taus form a temple: for example “Stonehenge”. The Triple Tau is the symbol for the Temple of Jerusalem. Around the neck of Sirius, the “King of the Seven Stars” is the double tau, the “pi” symbol. From the tau hieroglyph in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is clear that “Tau” means “holy or sacred gate or “holy or sacred opening”. The five- pointed star also denotes the word “sacred”. TAU CROSS The tau cross was shaped in the form of a “T” and is an ancient symbol of eternal life. The Druids venerated and made a tree sacred by etching into its bark a tau cross. Among Christians it is hailed as the “Cross of Saint Anthony”, since the saint was allegedly martyred on such a cross. The tau cross is also utilized in Freemasonry as one on its sacred symbols. TAU AS A PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN SYMBOL That which is now called the Christian cross was originally no Christian emblem at all, but was the Mystic Tau of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians—the true original form of the letter T, the initial of the name of Tammuz. It is the same as ancient Chaldee and is found on their coins. The Mystic Tau was marked in baptism on the foreheads of those initiated in the Mystery Schools. The Catholic priests make the sign of the cross on the foreheads of infants at baptism and it was used as a most sacred symbol. To identify Tammuz with the sun, it was joined with a circle of the sun; sometimes it was inserted in the circle. Whether the Maltese cross, which the Roman Bishops append to their names as a symbol of their Episcopal dignity, is the letter T, may be doubtful; but there seems no reason to doubt that the Maltese cross is an express symbol of the sun; for Lanyard found it as a sacred symbol in Nineveh in such a connection that it led him to identify it with the sun. The mystic Tau, as a symbol of great divinity, was called the sign of life. It was used as an amulet over the heart. It marked the official garments of the priests of Rome. It was borne by kings in their hands as a token of their dignity and divinely conferred authority. The Vestal virgins of Pagan Rome wore it suspended from their necklaces, as the nuns do now. The Egyptians did the same, as did many of the barbarous nations. It was worshipped in Mexico for ages before Roman Catholic missionaries set foot there. They were large stone crosses erected to the “gods of the rains”. The cross was the symbol of Bacchus, the Babylonian god, for he was represented with a headband of crosses. The cross of the Manicheans with leaves and flowers and fruit is called the divine tree, the tree of the gods, the tree of knowledge, and life. So the TAU was used by many ancient peoples and is still in use today as a sacred symbol. THE ANSATED CROSS, ANKH, OR TAU The ankh is an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph signifying “life” a cross surmounted by a loop and known in Latin as a crux ansata (ansate, or handle-shaped cross). It is found in ancient tomb inscriptions, including those of the king Tutankhamen, and gods and pharaohs are often depicted holding it. The ankh forms part of hieroglyphs for such concepts as health and happiness. The form of the symbol suggests perhaps a sandal strap as its original meaning though it has been seen as representing a magical knot. It has been extensively used as the symbol of the Coptic Christian Church. One of the most widely recognized symbols sacred to the ancient Egyptians and often used as an amulet, this symbol is basically the T or Tau cross supporting a circular shape. It combines two symbols, the tau cross-‘life’, and the circle-‘eternity’, thus together ‘immortality’, and it is also the male and female symbols of the two principal Egyptian deities ‘Osirus’ and ‘Isis’. Thus we have the union of heaven and earth. THE TAU The Tau ‘T’ is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet and in ancient times it was regarded as the symbol of life, and the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, theta, was considered the symbol of death. Many say that these two symbols created today’s + and minus – symbols. The Tau is a very old form of the cross and is also known as St. Anthony’s Cross. The Hebrew form of the word Tau is pronounced ‘tov’ which means marking, etching or scrawl. In Pagan times a warrior returning honorably from battle would attach a T to his name. An ancient Roman Arch Lecture reveals that those acquitted of a crime or returning from battle could also use a T as a sign. In other words, The Tau cross was put on men to distinguish those who lamented sin or were brave in battle. In imitation of this, in the 26th degree of the Scottish Rite, a tau is put on the candidate’s forehead after the candidate has been purified with water to distinguish himself before proceeding. THE TRIPLE TAU It has been said that three taus come together to form the Triple Tau. Others say the Triple Tau is originally the coming together of a T and an H, forming Templum Hierosolyma, or the Temple of Jersusalem. Christians interpreted the symbol as “Holiness supporting Trinity”. Royal Arch Freemasonry records dating from 1767 show this symbol. In addition to meaning Templum Hierosolyma (The Temple of Jerusalem), it also is said to mean Calvis as Thesaurum- “ A key to the Treasure” –and Theca ubi respretiosa- “A place where the precious thing is concealed.” THE TAU-A FRANCISCAN CROSS The first recorded biblical reference to the TAU is from Ezekiel 9:4, “Go through the city of Jerusalem and put a TAU on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.” The TAU is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and looks very much like the letter T. At the Fourth Lateran Council, on November 11, 1215, Pope Innocent III made reference to the TAU and quoted the above verse in reference to the profaning of the Holy Places by the Saracens. St. Francis was present and he heard these words of Pope Innocent III when he said, “The TAU has exactly the same form as the Cross on which our Lord was crucified on Calvary, and only those will be marked with this sign and will obtain mercy who have mortified their flesh and conformed their life to that to the Crucified savior. From Then on, the TAU became Francis’ own coat of arms. Francis used the TAU in his writings, painted in on the walls and doors of the places he stayed, and used it as his only signature on his writings. TULA: THE GREAT MOTHER William Henry wrote the following about TULA, The Center of the Milky Way Galaxy. TAU is an anagram within the word itself. “No matter where the word Tula appeared it represented the Great Mother. Her lore dominated the thinking of the ancients who believed our souls came from Tula and our mission on earth was to learn to return to Tula. Simultaneously, we were to turn the Earth, herself, into a Tula. Jesus called this the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. It is this awareness of the original concepts of Tula, including those of Jesus that we are now being asked to absorb. The Apocalyptic-minded believe we are being asked to learn the teachings that will place us in attunement or resonance with Tula in preparation for our return home. According to Greek myths, this heart of Tula beats and vibrations spread throughout the Galaxy. This Central Sun, TULA, is a fountain of healing energy, healing ‘waters’ or ‘living waters’. It is even considered to be the Holy Grail itself.” In the Egyptian Ceremony, “The Weighing of the Heart”, the scale used to weigh the heart is the SACRED TAU and the soul’s eternal destination was determined at this ceremony. The Tau represents balance in this ancient ritual. The TAU symbol also has a number of other meanings in physics, for example, the tau particle, the tau neutrino, and as a symbol for torque, etc. " complete article titled : The Sacred and Mysterious Tau (Missouri Mystery Mound) I skipped the parts specifically on the Missouri Mystery Mound you can read on the source link below if interested. [www.100megsfree4.com]
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mtwy · 8 years ago
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Philadelphia Daily News
USA February 28th 1985
Women in Rock Madonna: ‘BOY TOY’ IMAGE
by JONATHAN TAKIFF
Many people are as entranced by Madonna’s tawdry look and brazen ‘come hither’ body movements as they are by her pinched, girlish vocals and percolating disco pop music. Maybe even more intrgued by the physical distractions.
This should not really come as a surprise. Fashion now rules a large hunk of pop culture - in music, art, film, clothing - and artful substance has become a secondary consideration. And whenever cheap thrills are what really matters to the average teenage record buyer, then a girl with ratty hair, naughty clothes, loud jewelry and an enticing exposed belly button is certainly going to create more of a stir than a subtle songstress who dresses conservatively, like everyone else.
But will they love Madonna tomorrow? Can she outlive her “Boy Toy” image, her penchant for posing in lacey undergarments (preferably on a messed up bed), and her musical catalog stressing close encounters of the sexual kind?
Or will she eventually be rejected as a cheap hussy - the kind of girl that boys love to grapple with after the high school dance, but never take home to meet mom?
It’s certainly significant that the nominations committee for this year’s Grammy Awards ignored Madonna completely, even though her debut album, “Madonna,” and follow-up LP, “Like a Virgin,” have clung tenaciously to the top of the charts for an entire year (Making her second only to Prince in importance at Warner Brothers Records). Ordinarily, the Grammys are a celebration and endorsement of just such success.
Could it be something this damsel wore in her R-rated videos - all those crucifixes dangling from her ears and between her legs, perhaps - that put off the Grammy crowd? Blasphemous stuff!
Or maybe they’ve misread the message of, ah, pure romance inherent in her lyrics: “They can beg and they can plead/But they can’t see the light, that’s right/’Cause the boy with the cold hard cash/Is always Mister Right.” 
And let’s not overlook her recent No.1 celebration of, um, reborn innocence: “I was beat/Incomplete/I’d been had, I was sad and blue/But you made me feel/Yeah, you made me feel/Shiny and new/Like a virgin/Touched for the very first time/Like a Virgin/When your heart beats next to mine.”
What kind of temperament breeds such a talent?
“From the start I was a very bad girl,” brags 24-year-old Madonna Louise Ciccone, the eldest daughter in a family of six. “I was always in touch with my sexual side.”
Born on Detroit’s tough West Side, Madonna was all of 6 when her mother (also named Madonna) died of cancer, forcing the little girl to grow up fast. “I really felt like I was the main female of the house. There was no woman between my father and me, no mother,” she recalls.
Life turned even weirder when Madonna was 8 and her father, a Chrysler engineer, announced that he was going to marry the family’s housekeeper. “It was hard to accept her as an authority figure and also accept her as being the new No.1 female in my father’s life. My father wanted us to call her mom, not her first name. I remember it being really hard for me to get the word ‘mother’ out of my mouth. It was really painful. I hated the fact that my mother was taken away and I’m sure I took a lot of that out on my stepmother.”
Madonna says she gew loud and aggressive to get attention among all her brothers and sisters, and always had “this thing” about nuns and crucifixes. “I went to three Catholic schools as a child with uniforms and nuns hitting you over the back with staplers. I lived in a real intergrated neighborhood. We were one of the only white families there.” Later, Madonna’s large family moved to Pontiac, Mich., where she lived next to Bob Seger and attended Pontiac Catholic High School.
Her father didn’t believe in leisure time: he always wanted her to be doing homework or reading the Bible. Madonna rebelled by throwing herself into the world of the fantastic. In eighth grade, she appeared in her first movie, a Super 8 project directed by a classmate, in which an egg was fried on her stomach. (That belly was obviously hot stuff, even then!) She acted in plays, studied piano, loved movies, danced to Motown hits in backyards, and finally let dance become the central focus of her adolescent life. She’d take all her school classes early so she could take dance classes in the afternoon. Then at night her ballet teacher served as her “introduction” to glamour and sophistication. “He used to take me to all the gay discotheques in downtown Detroit. Men were doing poppers and going crazy. They were all dressed really well and were more free about themselves than all the blockhead football players I met in high school.”
Madonna won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan, then quit after a year to take on the real world. “I moved to New York in ‘78. I was only 17, I had $35 in my pocket and knew no one. I told the taxi driver to take me to the middle of everything. I was let off in Times Square.”
Madonna won a work-study scholarship with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s third troupe - the farm team. “Still, I thought I was in a production of ‘Fame’,” she recalls with a laugh. “Everyone was Hispanic or black, and everyone wanted to be a star.”
But they couldn’t keep this ambitious girl down on the farm for long. Through Ailey, Madonna met Pearl Lange, long the lead soloist for the famed Martha Graham troupe, who taught her the modern Graham technique. Madonna later worked as a Lange’s assistant. “It was interesting work. The style is very archiac, angular and dramatic. Painful, dark and guilt-ridden; very Catholic.....I was always an outcast in my ballet classes, the freak. I didn’t have long hair pulled back in a bun. Mine was short, and I used to dye it different colors.
“I would rip my leotards all the way up to my chest and then safety-pin them all the way down. I couldn’t stand all those horrible little ballerinas who hadn’t seen anything of the world except for their dance classes. They came from really rich families and bored me.”
Not willing to wait for her big break in serious dance, Madonna started going to musical theatre auditions. Catching the attention of French disco singer Patrick Hernandez’s management, she was asked to join his show, and was promised she could be a star, too, with a little guidance. “They took me to Paris and gave me everything: a vocal coach, a dance teacher, an apartment and a chauffuer. They were like the French mafia, very wealthy and had come into even more money through Patrick. They knew I was talented but had no idea what to do with me.”
Eventually tiring of this scene, too, Madonna returned to New York and decided to devote herself to music. Befriended by a rock group called The Breakfast Club, she shared a loft with them in an old Queens Synagogue and, when they went off to work, she taught herself to play instruments using their small home studio. When they needed a drummer, she was ready.
Later came her own band called Emmy (from her nickname). That one broke up over a dispute with her manager, who saw Madonna as a Pat Benatar-like rock belter. She had other ideas.
“I’m proud of the fact that I started out as a rhythm-and-blues-oriented disco singer. It gave me more of an identity. I feel that the pop charts are finally opening up to urban contemporary sounds like Herbie Hancock and all those other people who are making great street records. Detroit has always been hip to it but finally mid-America is hearing it for the first time.”
On her first album, songs like “Borderline,” “Lucky Star” and “Holiday” moved Madonna from disco play to R&B radio and then to Top 40 and MTV. Her second album, produced by Nile Rodgers of Chic, and featuring the same musicians who’ve lately been backing up David Bowie, also has broken her through to rock radio. “It’s more pop-oriented than my first record, more accessible and it shows my growth as an artist and a vocalist,” she assesses.
But can Madonna’s paper-thin vocal sound cut it live, a situation in which voice-thickening echo chamber devices stand out much more obviously, and even the sexiest body moves don’t look like much from 100 yards away? We’ll see this Spring, as Madonna embarks on her first concert tour, featuring equally trendy British gay/political rock group Bronski Beat as special support act.
An acting career is her next burning ambition to fulfill. In 1979, Madonna played the part of a punk in a cheap, psuedo-French art flick. “A Certain Sacrifice.” The film is belatedly going to be released, to cash in on her name recognition, and the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine describes Madonna’s part in the film as “a quasi-dominatrix who has three sex slaves.” But Video Insider editor Steve Apple, who recently screened it, says that “any suggestion this is a porno movie is a lie. There’s a violent scene in which she’s raped, and there’s a half second of frontal, upper torso nudity, but that’s it. The producer of the movie was hoping Madonna’s management would come up with some money to bury the movie, but they won’t even give him a kill fee.”
With her clothes on (sort of), Madonna is currently on view as a nightclub singer in “Visionquest” and soon will be seen in a featured part in the much hyped “Desperately Seeking Susan.”
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a-h-arts · 8 years ago
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5.0 out of 5 stars An AMAZING work...but there is much more to this story...
4.0 out of 5 stars Light at the end of the tunnel I am a huge Graham Hancock fan, having read most of his books. I appreciate who he is and what he stands for, his holistic approach to consciousness issues and fierce commitment to uncover what is hidden is unparalleled in my opinion. I couldn't wait for this book after reading fingerprints. After the first few chapters I was becoming disappointed. I felt like I was reading scientific paper after scientific paper about scientific disciplines I had very little interest in. I wondered who Graham was writing to, it certainly wasn't the general public, maybe to a geological convention. It was too repetitive, and too technical, too deep of a foundation and too much that never tied into the rest of the material until much later in the book., I understood the key point he was making after the first chapter, but he kept beating the dead horse chapter after chapter. I thought it would never end. IMO, the author could have made this a much more readable book by summarizing half of the technical dialogue of the beginning several chapters and tying it into the excellent and fascinating material in the second half of the book. He could have put the majority of the case studies and biographies etc. into the appendices for those that need to see the multiple supporting arguments. It was not my favorite Graham book, but could be the most important. He masterfully weaves all the tangents and new evidence together to make a compelling point. Go to Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Another great book from the author... as expected. Thankfully Mr. Hancock never disappoints. Well researched and as always, a very well written book. The author has a spectacular way of giving a very large amount of useful and intriguing information, while at the same time managing to keep the book very interesting throughout. The book is fairly long, so you definitely get your money's worth as far as the context and all the different subjects that are explored. Plus, the book keeps the reading from getting boring like some other books on similar subjects tend to. That's why I appreciate Mr. Hancocks books... he's one of the few authors that you can read from cover to cover without going through long, monotonous boring sections. With other authors there seems to be a lot of filler writing, or even worse, some of these so called experts start to seriously get into ego trips... all of which really annoys me, and makes finishing some books a chore at times. None of that garbage happening in Mr. Hancocks work. Get the book, its well worth the price of admission. Go to Amazon
3.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing I thought the topic was very interesting, which merits much more discussion and research, however at times I was a bit frustrated with the assumptions that the author made.There were many times when the author raised a serious question or hypothesis to a question he presented and then very shortly after he would use he would pose new questions using his personal answer as an assumptive truth. I found this annoying and somewhat disingenuous to the reader, especially when many of these questions are very important and we don't have to input our ideas as the information is still being researched.Case in point is the site in Turkey, magic pillar 42 or 43. There is too much assuming of the constellation correlation, especially to say they were sending a message specifically to "our" time. That seems unbelievably coincidental to me.Like the topic and wide range of information from these megaliths sites. I plan to visit a few and to see north west USA to see the area of this amazing water run off from the supposed impact. Go to Amazon
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spirit-science-blog · 4 years ago
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Welcome to the fifth part of The Sumerian Epic! Today, we explore the legends found in the Sumerian Tablets further, by getting into the myths and ideas surrounding the creation of humanity. The tablets tell us that it was the Sumerian God “Enki”, along with his wife Ninhursag (also Damkina/Ninmah) who created humanity, by mixing “divine blood” with the “clay of the earth”.
There are in fact a number of sources that reveal remarkable stories in the creation of humanity, including “Enki and Ninmah”, which speaks of several failed attempts to make humans at first, until we, at last, see the perfect human. This is also reflected in “The Atrahasis”, in which Enki and Ninhursag create 14 humans, 7 males, and 7 females at the exact same time, who run rampant across the earth until Enlil decides to wipe them out with a flood.
What’s especially curious, is the correlations to the bible. In the story called “Enki and Ninhursag”, we see Enki eating 8 “Forbidden Plants” in a sacred paradise land, and while he is being healed, several goddesses come out of his body. The one who comes from his Rib is called “Ninti”, whose name means Goddess of life. This is clearly reflected in the stories in Genesis, where Eve is created from Adam’s rib, and her name actually means “Life”.
Along with these mysteries, we discuss today, we must ask… Is there any evidence to support that these events actually took place in our ancient past? Throughout this exciting chapter, join us and discover the ancient African ruins that are thought today by some to be the remnants of gold mines!
Along with that, we also explore our own genetic history, which suggests the first humans truly did arise in Africa nearly 200,000 years ago, exactly when the Sumerian Tablet stories say that it all happened.
As we dive deeper and deeper into The Sumerian Epic, more and more is revealed about the true nature of our origins, or at the very least, the origins of the world's most prominent religions and belief systems today.
Thank you for watching, and we’ll see you again soon for the next installment in the series!
Sources:
vc_column_text Sitchin, Zechariah (1976). The 12th Planet, Harpercollins
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(2:34) Mark, Joshua. (2017). Ancient History Encyclopedia, “Enki”. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/Enki/
(3:07) & (4:55) Tellinger, Michael (2013), “Decoding the Hidden Ruins of Southern Africa – Discovering the True Cradle of Humankind”. Featured on GrahamHancock.com. Retrieved from https://grahamhancock.com/tellingerm1/
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(31:34) Wikipedia, “Elohim”. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elohim[/vc_column_text]
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