varnamHISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY & BOOKSThe James Ossuary- June 30, 2008 Early this year, film makers Simcha Jacobovici and James Cameron made the case in their documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, that a tomb found in Jerusalem belonged to Jesus. This claim was made based on the fact that the tomb contained ossuaries with inscriptions reading ""Jesus son of Joseph", "Miriam", and "Judah son of Jesus", among others. When the tomb was discovered in 1980, it had ten ossuaries; currently it has only nine.The tenth ossuary, the documentary claimed, was the James ossuary.http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_james_ossuary.php Presentation Zen- June 27, 2008 "Death by Powerpoint", "Do Powerpoint presentations violate Geneva Convention",and "Supreme Court rules against using Powerpoint in Guantanamo" - these are common headlines all the time. But if your job involves reading itemized lists from slides, then this lecture by Garr Reynolds is worth watching. It will change the way you think about presentations.http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/presentation_zen.php Those Primitive Vedic People- June 26, 2008 (image via archaeologyonline.net)In a recent review of Frits Staal's Discovering the Vedas, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri writes Even a non-history buff will find the role of the Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) and the Iranian Wedge in the evolution of Hinduism fascinating.What led such primitives to dwell so much on infinity or develop numbers so large they have nothing to do with the universe, he wonders.After the Aryan Invasion theory failed, some proponents moved to a convenient...http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/those_primitive_vedic_people.php Groping Around- June 24, 2008 Recently Santosh Madhavan aka Swami Amritachaithanya, a self proclaimed godman, was arrested in Kerala for among other things molesting girls and blackmailing them with videos of it. The Communists were all over the news marching against godmen and speaking sanctimoniously. Then the other day a television channel showed the image of a woman being groped by a Communist party district leader as the Chief Minister was inagurating a bridge. The abused woman, it turns out, was a Communist MLA and...http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/groping_around.php Stop All Terrorists- June 23, 2008 Recently Bal Thackeray suggested that 'Hindu Suicide Sqads' be created to fight 'Islamic Terrorism'. Thackeray was of proud some terrorists who planted a bomb in an auditorium in Thane which injured seven people. Justifying this, he said that Hindus were safe only because Shivaji took up arms against the Mughals.Now according to an Indian Express report, there are other Hindu terrorist groups who are preparing to take arms.While the SS and the HJS are both registered in Goa as charitable...http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/stop_all_terrorists.php The World's Oldest Church- June 23, 2008 Abdel-Qader al-Housan, director of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies in Jordan, announced that they had found the world's first church. It was not a building, but a cave located under Saint Georgeous Church near Amman. In the cave they found a circular worship area with stone seats and a tunnel leading to a source of water.The reason why they believe it to be a church was an inscription found on the floor, which read, "the 70 beloved by God and the divine." The theory was.http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_worlds_oldest_church.php Hampi's North Pole- June 23, 2008 The Hindu, recently had a feature on Hampi.From the DVD we know that the city was planned as a microcosm of the Universe, suggesting an equivalence between divinity and kingship. John Malville explores this idea in depth. The principles of Vastu appear to have been used to create a totality, with interlocking relationships between constructed and natural features. Several examples, with detailed measurements, support this argument. For instance, the Royal Centre is divided into public and...http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/hampis_north_pole.php World's Oldest Wheat- June 22, 2008 Wheat, which resulted from a sinful relationship between einkorn and emmer, was previously thought to be 6000 years old, but now..A series of DNA analyses conducted on ancient wheat samples have led scientists to conclude that the oldest known wheat was grown in atalhyk, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia. Professor Mahinur Akkaya from the Middle East Technical University's (ODT) department of chemistry says the world's oldest wheat found so far comes from atalhyk, this according to a..http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/worlds_oldest_wheat.php The Chinese Agents in India- June 18, 2008 Amulya Ganguli writes about the Indian Communists and who they owe allegiance to.In this tussle for supremacy, India is at a disadvantage because China can count on whatever support it can receive from its friends in India. The latter's strenuous efforts to scuttle the nuclear deal is evidently a part of their tactic of undermining India's ambition to secure the "Big 5 plus 1" position at the high table of diplomacy. The CPM has even been candid enough to admit that one of its reasons for...http://varnam.org/blog/archives/2008/06/the_chinese_agents_in_india.php |