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Pre- history of Bubonic Plague

7/3/2017

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".. in the journal Cell, researchers report that the bacterium was infecting people as long as 5,000 years ago.

"...Exactly what those early outbreaks were like is impossible to know. But the authors of the new study suggest that plague epidemics in the Bronze Age may have opened the doors to waves of migrants in regions decimated by disease.

“To my mind, this leaves little doubt that this has played a major role in those population replacements,” said Eske Willerslev, a co-author of the new study and the director of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen.

"David M. Wagner, a microbial geneticist at Northern Arizona University who was not involved in the study, said that the new research should prompt other scientists to look at mysterious outbreaks in early history, such as the epidemic that devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian War. “It opens up whole new areas of research,” he said...."
​
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/science/in-ancient-dna-evidence-of-plague-much-earlier-than-previously-known.html?_r=0
1 Comment

Ali-Baba's Cave & Pontius Pilate Discovered:  Antiquities In Jerusalem Today

5/20/2017

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On the Road to Jerusalem: Ali Baba's Cave & solved mysteries of the time of Jesus and Pilate. Gideon Avni, Israel Antiquities Authority. Malcolm Hoenlein @conf_of_pres.

Dr. Gideon Avni (PhD – 1997) is the Head of the Archaeological Division in the Israel Antiquities Authority and a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University. In 1989 – 2000 he was the IAA Jerusalem District Archaeologist.

His academic interests focus on various aspects of Classical, Late Antique and Early Islamic archaeology, the cultural and religious transformation of the Near East from Byzantine to Islamic rule, and the archaeology of desert societies in the Levant. During the last 30 years he has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Negev Desert (1979-1988; 2005-2011), Beth Govrin (1983-1992), Jerusalem (1984-2003) and Ramla (2002-2004). In 1996-2002 he headed a comprehensive survey and excavations project at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

In 2004-2007 he co-directed a research team supported by the Israel Science foundation on the urban centers of Palestine in the Early Islamic period. He was a fellow at Institute of Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2008-2009). He is currently a member of a research group of the Hebrew University and the Israel Academy of Sciences on the formation of Islamic society in Palestine, and a co-director of an interdisciplinary study on the ancient agriculture of the Negev during Byzantine and Early Islamic times.

http://www.antiquities.org.il/personal_cv_eng.asp?id=15
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Sex & The Citadel:  Intimate Life In a Changing Arab World

5/20/2017

3 Comments

 
Amazon Author Page
@shereenelfeki

TED Video
3 Comments

Ancient Nautical Tool:  How an Unknown Discovery Revealed Ancient Calendars & Nautical Training

4/12/2017

7 Comments

 

THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM

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THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM (pronounced Anti-Kie-Thera)
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explaining how the mechanism works

AMAZON BOOKS:  A PORTABLE COSMOS
NY University, Institute for Study of Ancient World:  Dr. Alexander Jones Homepage
An Ancient Greek Computer - WSJ.pdf
File Size: 313 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
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Ancient Royal Boat Found Beside Pyramids:  Race On for Preservation 

4/1/2017

1 Comment

 
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC VIDEO, ARTICLE, PICTURES
NY POST
Japanese Restoration Team
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Discovering GOD In Genocide

3/17/2017

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AMAZON BOOKS

Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Ilibagiza and Steve Erwin.

​In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family, when the death of Rwanda's Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis in the country. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor's tiny bathroom with seven other starving women for 91 cramped, terrifying days.

This searing firsthand account of Ilibagiza's experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is soul-numbingly devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. Her account of the miracles that protected her is simple and vivid. Her Catholic faith shines through, but the book will speak on a deep level to any person of faith. Ilibagiza's remarkable path to forgiving the perpetrators and releasing her anger is a beacon to others who have suffered injustice. She brings the battlefield between good and evil out of the genocide around her and into her own heart, mind and soul.

This book is a precious addition to the literature that tries to make sense of humankind's seemingly bottomless depravity and counterbalancing hope in an all-powerful, loving God. (Mar.)
About the Author
Immaculée Ilibagiza is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide that took the lives of nearly one million Tutsis. Men, women and children, including her entire family except for one of her brothers, were massacred at the hands of Hutu marauders. Immaculée found shelter at a pastor's home, where she and seven other women hid from the deadly rebel mob in a 3-by-4-foot bathroom for 91 days.

During those 91 days of unimaginable suffering, Immaculée found her faith, taught herself English, and most incredibly, committed herself to a life of peace, hope and forgiveness, even for those who had murdered her family.

After the Genocide finally ended, Immaculée found work at the United Nations, emigrating from Rwanda to the United States in 1998. She has gone on the receive five honorary doctoral degrees, write seven books about her faith and her life journey, and is the recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace.

Immaculée's first book, Left to Tell; Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (Hay House) was released in March of 2006.

Left to Tell quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. To date, it has been translated into seventeen languages and has sold nearly two million copies. Immaculée's story has also been made into a documentary entitled The Diary of Immaculée.

Left to Tell has received a Christopher Award "affirming the highest values of human spirit," and was chosen as Outreach Magazine's selection for "Best Outreach Testimony/Biography Resource of 2007." Left to Tell has been adopted into the curriculum of dozens of high schools and universities, including Villanova University, which selected it for their "One Book Program," making Left to Tell mandatory reading for its 6,000 students.

Immaculée has written six additional books in recent years - Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide, Our Lady of Kibeho, If Only We Had Listened, Visit from Heaven, and The Boy Who Met Jesus, and The Rosary: The Prayer that Saved my Life.

She has appeared on 60 Minutes, The CBS Early Show, CNN, EWTN, CBS Evening News, The Aljazeera Network and in The New York Times, USA Today, Newsday, and many other domestic and international media outlets. She was recently featured in Michael Collopy's Architects of Peace project, which has honored legendary people like Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

Today, Immaculée is regarded as one of world's leading speakers on faith, hope and forgiveness. She has shared this universal message with world leaders, school children, multinational corporations, churches, and at events and conferences around the world, including a recent presentation to over 200,000 people in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Left-Tell-Discovering-Rwandan-Holocaust/dp/1401944329/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1489349426&sr=1-1
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AUTHOR'S HOMEPAGE

Twitter:  @Ilibagiza

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2 Comments

Inside the turkish harem:  The Grand Seraglio of the Turkish sultans

2/24/2017

1 Comment

 
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Chicago Tribune Original Excerpt N.M. Penzer's Book "The Grand Seraglio"
Amazon

For nearly four centuries, the Ottoman sultans dwelt amid the secret splendors of Topkapi Palace. Access to the Grand Seraglio--which served as the empire's administrative, legislative, and judicial center and an academy of fine arts, as well as the ruler's home--was jealously guarded, even after the sultans ceased to reside there in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1936, a distinguished scholar of Orientalism, Norman Mosley Penzer (1892-1960), was afforded a rare opportunity to step inside the Grand Seraglio; in this eagerly embraced and much-consulted volume, he reveals what he found.

Constructed between 1459 and 1465 at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Topkapi Palace stands in present-day Istanbul, near the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Marmara Sea. Penzer surveyed the entire palace from end to end during numerous visits over the course of two years, and he presents photographs and floor plans that provide a comprehensive view of Topkapi's structure. Penzer's illustrations of the opulent gardens, chambers, and pavilions come to imaginative life with his explorations of day-to-day palace life--particularly among the women of the harem and their eunuch guards. His evocative accounts of the manners, dress, and politics of Turkish court life continue to influence the scholarly work of the twenty-first century, and this classic history remains indispensable to studies of harem life.

Inside Turkish Harem:  Various Residences

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The Baghdad Kiosk

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Hall of Ceremonies:  Housing Military expeditionary swords

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Inside Courtyard of Harem Quarters

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Inside The Black Eunuchs Quarters

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Last Man Off: Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas        Part I 

2/22/2017

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AMAZON

Outside South Africa, the fate of the Sudur Havid was never big news. It was just another foreign fishing boat in trouble. Really, I should be calling her the Sudurhavid, or even Suðurhavið, for I have come to learn that this was her proper name. But on board I only ever saw the word split on life-rings, and I’ve known her as the Sudur Havid for far too long to change. To continue with the confessional, I have used the more familiar term ‘Antarctic Seas’ for the subtitle of the book when we were technically only 54° South – but we were south of the Antarctic convergence, so the water masses and ecology are much the same.

I waited a long time before I started writing Last Man Off. Partly this was due to a lack of self-belief, but it was also because I was trying to get on with my life and forget. I was trying to persuade myself that nothing of any significance had happened, so to write a book about the events was the last thing on my mind.

I’m glad I waited to start writing. In the immediate aftermath of the accident I was so caught up in being a participant, and there was so much emotion, that it was impossible to be objective in description. When the police in the Falkland Islands asked me what had happened, I barely paused for breath for three hours, producing sixty-five pages of descriptions, times and details. I kept the transcript of the interview and, eight years later, this and other evidence helped me relive and reconstruct the events. By that time the need to blame had mellowed, I had listened to others as they discussed what had happened, and processed the events myself. Time passed has made the story clearer, and less painful to tell.

There was coverage of the Sudur Havid in Cape Town. Some accounts were based on fact, some were more like fiction, but none were complete. I slipped quietly back into the UK, no cameras or journalists waiting for me at the airport, and I was grateful. My friends and family let me be; they didn’t want to drag up traumatic memories, and assumed that I would talk about things in my own time. But I didn’t want to tell those I cared about for fear of scaring them, and didn’t tell others for fear of upsetting myself. It took years for me to realize that there was a story that deserved to be known. How could the struggle of a crew against the toughest seas in the world have slipped by? While I have been writing, a number of my fellow survivors have died, leaving the biggest story of their lives untold.

I knew that I would need to describe events that I had not directly witnessed. After years out of touch, I managed to make contact with Phil Marshall of the Isla Camila and Magnus Johnson from the Northern Pride, and met to interview them. For Phil, in particular, the memories were upsetting. It wasn’t pleasant to ask him to recall as much detail as I needed, but he helped me to describe the search and the moment of rescue.

As the book took shape, and I became more committed, I travelled to South Africa to interview some of the crew. In a series of one-on-one interviews, I checked my recollections with Morné Van Geems, Sven Lizamore and Stephan Truter from the Sudur Havid, and they described events I couldn’t have witnessed in the other raft. There were small conflicts between their memories and mine, but I expected this. They also helped me to build up a better picture of the techniques that we used in fishing, which was something I wanted to describe as vividly as I could. We sat and chatted in the shade, outside their comfortable Cape Town homes, and their stories took me back to the Southern Ocean. Their enthusiasm and drive to fish still humble and mystify me; they are fishermen to the core. By the end of the book I had also been helped by Big Danie from the Sudur Havid, and finally Captain Ernesto Sandoval from the Isla Camila.

Writing has not been the healing process I had hoped for; I have been reduced to tears on many occasions. It has been less of a catharsis and more of a self-imposed torture as I have forced myself to picture and relive painful events, again and again. I am fearful of misportraying men who were operating under great stress, and know that for some I am describing the deaths of loved ones.

I wish I had more photos, which would make the boat and the people more vivid for you and for me. But my camera is still on the Sudur Havid. Port side, aft cabin, on the main deck, in the right-hand drawer under my bunk. If anyone wants to get it for me, it’s at 53º56´S, 041º30´W.
​
The surprise for me, in writing, was realizing how much I miss the sea, the boat and the adventure. For a short time in the Southern Ocean, I was at my most alive, at my best.
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Last Man Off: Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas    Part II

2/22/2017

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An Amazon Best Book of May 2015: In 1998, a young Scotsman named Matt Lewis sought to boost to his budding career as a marine biologist by securing a position as the "scientific observer" on a fishing vessel. Though he would be considered an officer, his role would be limited and relatively tame compared to the rest of the crews’: documenting wildlife the boat encountered, while also keeping notes on the crew’s adherence to fishing regulations. A coin flip landed him aboard the Sudur Havid, a South African boat bound for the outer waters of Antarctica’s frigid and tempestuous Southern Ocean. Even though his novice eyes, Lewis was immediately struck by its apparent unreadiness, including a dearth of adequate boots and survival suits, and a crew seemingly unprepared for work in the harsh polar environment.

His misgivings were soon realized. As winds rose and whipped the seas into a ship-tossing frenzy, the fuel- and fish-heavy boat listed, taking on water. A disastrous and inexplicable chain of decisions--starting with the Sudur Havid’s chief officers and running down through the ship’s engineers and some of the crew--doomed the ship, putting Lewis in the unlikely position of organizing the frantic evacuation. These are not spoilers--Lewis’s narrative is rich with detail, putting readers in the thick of the action as the panic-struck men stuff themselves into three inadequate rafts and embark on a nightmarish struggle on the open ocean. Last Man Off is a tale of survival, not an adventure story; and while the particulars are often grim and the outcome unhappy, Lewis's book is a sort of catharsis, a compelling testimonial to his experience and the ones that didn’t return. --Jon Foro

Review
"A story that reminds us of the unforgiving nature of the sea and the courage that lies within the everyday heroes that have found themselves in hell."—Bear Grylls, bestselling author of Mud, Sweat, and Tears
“Reads like a sinister version of The Perfect Storm... Thrilling, compelling, unsettling, rewarding.”—Sunday Times
​
“A dramatic tale of survival in one of the most brutal situations on earth. Feels like reading the diary of a doomed man...so personal and chillingly real; totally takes you there in a way that is not always comfortable.”—Steve Backshall, Deadly 60

AMAZON
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Survival in the Alaskan Wilderness: Part I

2/21/2017

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"Shortly before Christmas in 1943, five Army aviators left Alaska's Ladd Field on a routine flight to test their hastily retrofitted B-24 Liberator in harsh winter conditions. The mission ended in a crash that claimed all but one—Leon Crane, a city kid from Philadelphia with no wilderness experience. With little more than a parachute for cover and an old Boy Scout knife in his pocket, Crane found himself alone in subzero temperatures. 81 Days Below Zero recounts, for the first time, the full story of Crane's remarkable twelve-week saga."

AMAZON
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PictureB-24 Liberator
​​
PictureLEON CRANE


U.S. National Park Service- Crane's Story
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Survival in the Alaskan Wilderness: Part II

2/21/2017

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"In 81 Days Below Zero, Brian Murphy rediscovers one of the most astounding survival stories in Alaskan history. The account is all the more remarkable because of Leon Crane's lifelong reluctance to talk about his ordeal. Murphy has saved from oblivion a tale that resonates with inspiration more than seventy years later."
—David Roberts, author of Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration

"This is a great story, wonderfully told. From the moment the doomed plane takes off until the lone survivor rejoins civilization, the reader is taken on a thrilling, emotional, and hugely satisfying ride. Seamlessly interweaving the pilot's intense struggle against the elements with the broader history of the war, Alaska, and the home front, Brian Murphy has created a fascinating page-turner that you will not want to put down."
—Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan and When America First Met China

"The hardships endured by Leon Crane are unimaginable, and author Brian Murphy expertly takes the reader into Crane's inspiring journey of survival. You will find yourself rooting for Crane to take the next step, make the next right decision, and fight on. 81 Days Below Zero pulls you into Crane's thought process, and you might find yourself wondering, 'What would I have done in a similar situation?' Few of us would have that combination of creativeness and mental fortitude to do what Crane did."
—Michael J. Tougias, author of Fatal Forecast, A Storm Too Soon, and Overboard

Kirkus Reviews, 4/1/15
“A gripping story”
Booklist, 5/15/15

“A solid entry in the perennially popular canon of real-life adventure stories.”
Roanoke Times review, 6/17/15

“[A] thrilling true story… Many have been the tales of man against nature, the struggle for survival among icy peaks in a howling wilderness—some fictitious (Jack London's “To Build a Fire”), others far too true (“Alive”). Few if any have chronicled such an epic battle as this, the journey of a lone airman from near death to life, in the course of which might be seen a series of miracles, fortified by his indomitable will to survive… It is a well-told tale.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 6/28/15

“81 Days Below Zero by Brian Murphy, is a thrilling page-turner of true-live adventure… Murphy's instincts for pacing and re-creating emotions, dialogue and details are so finely crafted that you might find yourself shivering right along with Crane as he struggles to hang on in subzero conditions with only his Boy Scout knife, 40 matches, a parachute and the clothes on his back.”
Alaska Dispatch News, 7/12/15

“Pilot's genuine Alaska survival story puts reality TV to shame… As survival tales go, this one is epic…81 Days Below Zero is a traditionally crafted narrative that balances historical details with themes of adventure and unlikely survival. But there is more here than just an unexpected World War II story, which is compelling enough…Murphy shows how close the 21st century is to the events of the past and the quietly heroic actions a historian can take. Reality television has very nearly convinced us that it takes manufactured drama to get our attention. Kudos to Brian Murphy for reminding readers how far from the truth that assertion can be.”

Portland Review of Books
“An exciting, caring, and interesting story.”
Jacksonville Journal-Courier, 8/16/15

“Murphy relays the incredible survival story in subzero conditions with masterful suspense.”
Washington Post, 10/11/15

“This would be a great read at the beach on a hot summer day…A riveting story…An interesting saga of survival against formidable odds.”
WWII History magazine, December 2015

“Leon Crane's amazing story is recounted in great detail. The author relates the young aviator's harrowing tale in smooth prose, which beckons the reader to continue reading. There are many survival stories of airmen and sailors adrift at sea and how they beat the odds. This story reveals how one flyer endured an experience just as extreme and lived to tell about it.”

Charleston Post and Courier, 1/17/16
“[A] sharply detailed, gripping account…The reader shivers with Crane as he ponders each next step through a desolate Alaskan forest when a warm day during the winter of 1943 is zero degrees Fahrenheit…A fresh, vivid, film-worthy tale of World War II survival.”

Military Officer, February 2016
“Murphy vividly describes Crane's World War II Alaskan ordeal.”
Collected Miscellany, 1/28/16

“Gripping…Murphy perfectly captures Crane's predicament of trying to survive in some of the most brutal terrain and weather on the planet…This book is an epic story of one man's will to survive in a harsh environment.”

About the Author
Brian Murphy is a journalist at the Washington Post. He joined the paper after more than twenty years as an award-winning foreign correspondent and bureau chief for The Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. He has two previous books and currently lives in Washington, DC, with his wife Toula Vlahou.
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Mysterious Radio Flashes from Outer Space

2/21/2017

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A direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host fast radio bursts are astronomical radio flashes of unknown physical nature with durations of milliseconds. Their dispersive arrival times suggest an extragalactic origin and imply radio luminosities that are orders of magnitude larger than those of all known short-duration radio transients. So far all fast radio bursts have been detected with large single-dish telescopes with arcminute (a unit of angular distance equal to 160 of one degree, 1/3600 of a degree) localizations, and attempts to identify their counterparts (source or host galaxy) have relied on the contemporaneous variability of field sources or the presence of peculiar field stars or galaxies. 

These attempts have not resulted in an unambiguous association with a host or multi-wavelength counterpart. Here we report the subarcsecond (less than an arcsecond which is a unit of angular distance equal to a 160th of a arcminute 1/3600 of a minute) localization of the fast radio burst FRB 121102, the only known repeating burst source, using high-time-resolution radio interferometric observations that directly image the bursts. Our precise localization reveals that FRB 121102 originates within 100 milliarcseconds of a faint 180-microJansky persistent radio source with a continuum spectrum that is consistent with nonthermal emission, and a faint (twenty-fifth magnitude) optical counterpart. The flux density of the persistent radio source varies by around ten per cent on day timescales, and very long baseline radio interferometry yields an angular size of less than 1.7 milliarcseconds.

Our observations are inconsistent with the fast radio burst having a Galactic origin or its source being located within a prominent star-forming galaxy. Instead, the source appears to be co-located with a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus or a previously unknown type of extragalactic source. Localization and identification of a host or counterpart has been essential to understanding the origins and physics of other kinds of transient events, including gamma-ray bursts and tidal disruption events. However, if other fast radio bursts have similarly faint radio and optical counterparts, our findings imply that direct subarcsecond localizations may be the only way to provide reliable associations.

Confounding Transient Event 2 Billion Light Years Away. Shami Chatterjee, Cornell University. @shamichatterjee

​http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v541/n7635/full/nature20797.html

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On an Irish Island

2/2/2017

1 Comment

 
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AMAZON

“Wonderfully vivid . . . A remote setting, a handful of young visitors, a collection of colorful locals, an ancient language and a story that spans half a century: These are but a few of the elements that make Robert Kanigel’s On an Irish Island an exuberant and delightful book. . . . It can be read as an erudite primer to the [literary] works of the islanders; as a beautifully assured ensemble biography; and as a large-scale portrait of a remarkable time in the history of the Great Blasket and the wider world. Yet it is, above all, a compelling tale of ordinary—and often enviable—lives in an extraordinary setting.”
—Karin Altenberg, The Wall Street Journal

“Deliciously hones in on the ‘singularly severe glory’ of the Blasket Islands off the west coast of county Kerry.”—Katharine Whittemore, The Boston Globe
“Tells a fascinating piece of history . . . [Nowadays], what’s gone is the whole concept of village life, without television, iPads or Beyonce. There’s no point in posing questions about where such a life went, or whether we can get it back. But now, at least, we’ve got this lovely book.”
—Carolyn See, The Washington Post

“It is the interaction of the natives and the visitors that fascinates Kanigel, and he tells the story of the community’s last decades through the succession of visitors, beginning with the playwright John Millington Synge. . . Affection for the place and its culture is something Kanigel first admires and then comes to share, and he makes his reader envy those tough, resourceful islanders.”
—Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast

“Kanigel avoids pushing any thesis about the advantages of premodern life, and instead points out the glories of the island and its inhabitants.”
—Rachel Nolan, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Robert Kanigel has written a tender paean to a lost world that called him out of his own time. On a bleak, treeless island, he unearths a buried linguistic treasure.”
—Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter

“A mesmerizing interplay of lives and socio-historical contexts . . . The portraits in this book are classic Kanigel: lively, sympathetic and thoroughly engaging. Yet what makes the narrative so affecting is the loss that permeates the text. As cultures like those on Great Blasket continue to be destroyed by the march of progress, so too are our connections to a simpler, more personally fulfilling way of living.”
–Kirkus Reviews, (starred)

“[An] impressively researched , greatly inviting history of the curious-minded men and women who, in the early twentieth century, came from mainland Ireland and elsewhere to reside on the Great Blasket for a while, to absorb the slower way of Irish customs before the advent of electricity and other aspects of fast-paced contemporary life.”
—Brad Hooper, Booklist

Review
“Kanigel avoids pushing any thesis about the advantages of premodern life, and instead points out the glories of the island and its inhabitants.”
—Rachel Nolan, The San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author
ROBERT KANIGEL is the author of six previous books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Grady-Stack Award for science writing. His book The Man Who Knew Infinity was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Harvard Magazine, and Psychology Today. He has just retired as Professor of Science Writing at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now lives in Baltimore.
From The Washington Post
​
“Tells a fascinating piece of history . . . [Nowadays], what’s gone is the whole concept of village life, without television, iPads or Beyonce. There’s no point in posing questions about where such a life went, or whether we can get it back. But now, at least, we’ve got this lovely book.”
​—Carolyn See, The Washington Post
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Atlantis in the Aegean?????

2/2/2017

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Click to set custom HTML
There is one historic event that fits Plato’s tale remarkably well.
It’s the story of the eruption of the volcano Thera (now called Santorini) in 1650BC.

Archaeologists in recent decades have uncovered the remains of an ancient settlement there belonging to the then remarkably advanced Minoan civilization.

Among the ruins they found a map. It shows a palace on an island in the middle of volcanic caldera (a large volcanic crater).

The fallout of the eruption, and its subsequent tsunamis, are believed to have triggered the collapse of the entire civilization as it engulfed much of northern Crete.

Into the ruins marched tribes of Greeks - the predecessors of the great nations of Sparta, Corinth and Athens.

So the idea that the disaster that destroyed the Minoans may have somehow wound its way through the centuries down to Plato certainly seems enticing. Though unsubstantiated.
​
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/archaeology/has-james-cameron-found-atlantis/news-story/ad7e5e9dcde35c0a8fc769dffef14670

www.volcanodiscovery.com/santorini/minoan_eruption/1613bc_olive-tree-date.html

www.livescience.com/4846-eruption-thera-changed-world.html


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Unearthing Atlantis

2/2/2017

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The film tracks a team of archeologists, scientists and historians as they travel throughout the Mediterranean Sea in an attempt to search for the true “Atlantean” civilization — and a possible location for the mother city, the lost city itself, using cutting-edge technology and Plato’s ancient writings as a virtual treasure map to lead the way.

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal a sneak peek at the documentary, in which Jacobovici travels to the Pillars of Hercules, the ancient name given to a point that flanks the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, to investigate what just might be a startling discovery.

“This legendary diver in these parts, that they nicknamed The Panther, shot this video footage,” Jacobovici tells Cameron via Skype. “When I got images of it at the beginning, I thought: ‘This is a joke.’ ”

“But when I looked at still frame grabs, it looks like an underwater Nuragic [site],” he continues. “It’s big — it’s got pillars, it’s got steps, it’s got circles. It’s the Hollywood version of Atlantis, and it’s supposed to be right here, where we are.”

As for how that scene pans out? Stay tuned to find out — but one thing’s for sure, and it’s that Cameron believes exploring myths — and what we can learn from them — is important.

“That’s how the ruins of Troy were found!” Cameron tells PEOPLE. “With Plato, we have only fragments from Critias and Timaeus, but yet this fragmentary story has intrigued people for the 2,400 years since he wrote it.”

“When I’m not doing my day job as a Hollywood movie guy, I’m doing my other job as an ocean explorer,” he continues. “The payoff is that in the course of searching for Atlantis and exploring the possible sites, we came up with some pretty good evidence that there was in fact a ship-based trading culture outside the so-called Pillars of Hercules, which is the Strait of Gibraltar, just off the coast of Spain. That’s pretty big.”
​
http://people.com/tv/james-cameron-atlantis-rising-documentary-legend-lost-city-atlantis-exclusive/
0 Comments

Grand Central, NYC: Iconic and Majestic

1/6/2017

3 Comments

 
A rich, illustrated - and entertaining -- history of the iconic Grand Central Terminal, from one of New York City's favorite writers, just in time to celebrate the train station's 100th fabulous anniversary.

In the winter of 1913, Grand Central Station was officially opened and immediately became one of the most beautiful and recognizable Manhattan landmarks. In this celebration of the one hundred year old terminal, Sam Roberts of The New York Times looks back at Grand Central's conception, amazing history, and the far-reaching cultural effects of the station that continues to amaze tourists and shuttle busy commuters.

Along the way, Roberts will explore how the Manhattan transit hub truly foreshadowed the evolution of suburban expansion in the country, and fostered the nation's westward expansion and growth via the railroad.

Featuring quirky anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information, this book will allow readers to peek into the secret and unseen areas of Grand Central -- from the tunnels, to the command center, to the hidden passageways.
​
With stories about everything from the famous movies that have used Grand Central as a location to the celestial ceiling in the main lobby (including its stunning mistake) to the homeless denizens who reside in the building's catacombs, this is a fascinating and, exciting look at a true American institution.
​
AMAZON
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3 Comments

Dinosaurs Without Bones

1/4/2017

0 Comments

 
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AMAZON

CSI meets Jurassic Park in a fascinating, revelatory look at dinosaurs and their world through the million-year-old clues they left behind.

What if we woke up one morning all of the dinosaur bones in the world were gone? How would we know these iconic animals had a165-million year history on earth, and had adapted to all land-based environments from pole to pole? What clues would be left to discern not only their presence, but also to learn about their sex lives, raising of young, social lives, combat, and who ate who? What would it take for us to know how fast dinosaurs moved, whether they lived underground, climbed trees, or went for a swim?

Welcome to the world of ichnology, the study of traces and trace fossils―such as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, toothmarks, and other vestiges of behavior―and how through these remarkable clues, we can explore and intuit the rich and complicated lives of dinosaurs. With a unique, detective-like approach, interpreting the forensic clues of these long-extinct animals that leave a much richer legacy than bones, Martin brings the wild world of the Mesozoic to life for the twenty-first century reader. 
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Reaching for the Stars, VERA RUBIN CONFIRMED DARK MATTER; NO NOBEL

12/31/2016

1 Comment

 
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Dr. Rubin died Dec. 25 at an assisted-living home in Princeton, N.J. She was 88 and suffered from dementia. Her reputation, as an astronomer, was eventually made by finding evidence—acknowledged only gradually by her mostly male peers—that much of the universe is dark matter, invisible to the human eye.

Her findings highlighted how much we don’t know. Astronomers thought they were studying the universe, she once said, “and now we learn that we are just studying the 5% or 10% that is luminous.”

Her breakthrough arose from research—started in the 1960s and conducted with Kent Ford—into how fast stars orbited around galaxies. It was assumed that mass in galaxies was concentrated in their luminous centers. If so, the stars farthest from that center were expected to orbit more slowly because they would be subject to less gravitational pull. Instead, Dr. Rubin found they orbited at about the same speed. The finding suggested there must be some other, unseen masses exerting gravitational force.
​
Dark matter had been posited by the Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky in 1933, but now there was powerful evidence for it. Her observations of orbital speeds forced other theorists to rethink their ideas. She considered herself an observer, not a theorist. “The role of observers,” she wrote in 1995, “is to confound the theorists,” spurring them toward better models.
WSJ, James R. Hagerty, 12/31/16

​HOW VERA RUBIN CONFIRMED DARK MATTER

NO NOBEL???
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Dr. Vera Rubin, Vassar College in the 1940's
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1 Comment

Climate 1314 AD and the great famine history forgot: the third horseman

12/30/2016

0 Comments

 

“A kink in Europe’s climate during the fourteenth century indirectly triggered a seven-year cataclysm that left six million dead, William Rosen reveals in this rich interweaving of agronomy, meteorology, economics and history.... Rosen deftly delineates the backstory and the perfect storm of heavy rains, hard winters, livestock epidemics, and war leading to the catastrophe.”
--Nature

“Rosen... delights in the minutiae of history, down to the most fascinating footnotes... Engrossing.... A work that glows from the author’s relish for his subject.”
--Kirkus

“Rosen (The Most Powerful Idea in the World) argues persuasively that natural disasters are most catastrophic when humankind’s actions give them a push. The depredations committed in battle by Englishmen and Scots were augmented by years of bad weather: the result was that people died in droves. The interactions Rosen describes have been studied but are seldom incorporated into popular history, and the author never overreaches in his conclusions, providing a well-grounded chronicle.... This book will appeal foremost to history lovers, but it should also interest anyone who enjoys a well-documented story.”
--Library Journal

“William Rosen is a good enough writer to hold interest and maintain the fraught relations between nature and politics as a running theme. He ends The Third Horseman with a stark observation: in some ways, global ecology is more precarious nowadays than it was in the 1300s.”
—Milwaukee Express
​
“Rosen is a terrific storyteller and engaging stylist; his vigorous recaps of famous battles and sketches of various colorful characters will entertain readers not unduly preoccupied by thematic rigor.... Rosen’s principal goal, however, is not to horrify us, but to make us think.... While vividly re-creating a bygone civilization, he invites us to look beyond our significant but ultimately superficial differences and recognize that we too live in fragile equilibrium with the natural world whose resources we recklessly exploit, and that like our medieval forebears we may well be vulnerable to ‘a sudden shift in the weather.’”
—The Daily Beast
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0 Comments

ThorNton Abbey U.K. Death PIT:  Plague Victims MOSTLY CHILDREN 

12/4/2016

1 Comment

 
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Smithsonian
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​...AND WE ALL FALL DOWN.
Ring Around The Rosey... GIF from Rosey... GIFs
HISTORY OF THORNTON ABBEY AND GATEHOUSE
SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY
BBC NEWS: DEATH PIT 
ARCHAEOLOGY.ORG
ARCHAEOFEED.COM
TAU CROSS: MEDIEVAL HEALTHCARE
EXCAVATION OF THORNTON ABBEY: DNA ANALYSIS, 3D MODELING, AND SURPRISES TOO!
1 Comment

Fredrick Law olmsted:  Landscape Architect of NYC Central Park, Frontier Explorer of Wild West & South pacific

11/19/2016

5 Comments

 
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Frederick Law Olmsted Homesite, Personal Library 
​Genius of Place:  Biography of Olmsted
Clearing in the Distance:  Intellectual Biography 
Grave
The tragic life of Frederick Law Olmsted is arguably the most important historical figure that the average American knows the least about. Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the environment, and abolitionist credited with helping dissuade England from joining the South in the Civil War. This momentous career of public service in now retold. 
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5 Comments

Hot Jupiter & Mysteries of Space

11/6/2016

0 Comments

 
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ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, AWARD- WINNING SPACE HISTORIAN
Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced to show here, provides an overall summary of what astronomers know about the atmospheres of many gas giant exoplanets that also orbit very close to their suns and are tidally locked. The view is of the planet hemisphere facing away from the star, which is also where most of the clouds are thought to be. These results come from Kepler data combined with computer modeling, and show what scientists thinks happens with different cloud compositions at different temperatures.
​
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/the-clouds-of-hot-jupiter-exoplanets/

“Hot Jupiters are exoplanets that orbit their stars so tightly that their temperatures are extremely high, reaching over 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (1600 Kelvin). They are also tidally locked, so one side of the planet always faces the sun and the other is in permanent darkness. Research suggests that the "dayside" is largely free of clouds, while the "nightside" is heavily clouded.
This illustration represents how hot Jupiters of different temperatures and different cloud compositions might appear to a person flying over the dayside of these planets on a spaceship, based on computer modeling.

Cooler planets are entirely cloudy, whereas hotter planets have morning clouds only. Clouds of different composition have different colors, whereas the clear sky is bluer than on Earth. For the hottest planets, the atmosphere is hot enough on the evening side to glow like a charcoal.

Figure 1 shows an approximation of what various hot Jupiters might look like based on a combination of computer modeling and data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. From left to right it shows: sodium sulfide clouds (1000 to 1200 Kelvin), manganese sulfide clouds (1200 to 1600 Kelvin), magnesium silicate clouds (1600 to 1800 Kelvin), magnesium silicate and aluminum oxide clouds (1800 Kelvin) and clouds composed of magnesium silicate, aluminum oxide, iron and calcium titanate (1900 to 2200 Kelvin).”
​
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21074
BEHINDTHEBLACK .COM
COAST TO COAST AM
THE SPACE SHOW.COM
EXPLORING GLOBAL WARMING AND SPACE
0 Comments

Space, Search for Alien Life:  SETI & Space X Explosion

11/6/2016

0 Comments

 
“Breakthrough Listen recently entered into a partnership with FAST and the National Astronomical Observatory of China,” which built and operates the telescope, said Andrew Siemion, director of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, who is also a co-director of Breakthrough Listen.
​
"The dips found by Kepler are real. Something seems to be transiting in front of this star and we still have no idea what it is." confirms German astronomer Michael Hippke. Even if aliens are not involved, Tabby's star remains "the most mysterious star in the universe" as Yale astronomer Tabetha Boyajian described it in a TED talk.
“…SpaceX today released an update on its investigation of the September 1 Falcon 9 launchpad explosion.

Previously, we announced the investigation was focusing on a breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank. The root cause of the breach has not yet been confirmed, but attention has continued to narrow to one of the three composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) inside the LOX tank. Through extensive testing in Texas, SpaceX has shown that it can re-create a COPV failure entirely through helium loading conditions. These conditions are mainly affected by the temperature and pressure of the helium being loaded.

SpaceX’s efforts are now focused on two areas – finding the exact root cause, and developing improved helium loading conditions that allow SpaceX to reliably load Falcon 9. With the advanced state of the investigation, we also plan to resume stage testing in Texas in the coming days, while continuing to focus on completion of the investigation.

The report suggests that they are starting to pin down the very specific temperature and pressure conditions during loading of the helium tank that cause the problem, which also suggests they will soon also be able to adjust their procedures to avoid those conditions. This also suggests that they repeated assurances that they will be able to fly before the end of the year are not unreasonable….”
​
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/spacex-update-on-sept-1falcon-9-launchpad-explosion/
“First reported in September 2015 by Boyajian, then a postdoc at Yale University, Tabby’s star – more properly called KIC 8462852 – had been flagged by citizen scientists because of its unusual pattern of dimming. These volunteers were looking at stars as part of the internet project Planet Hunters, which allows the public to search for planets around other stars in data taken by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which has been monitoring 150,000 stars for regular dimming that might indicate a planet had passed in front of it.

But while most such dimming by transiting planets is brief, regular and blocks just 1 or 2 percent of the light of the star, Tabby’s star dims for days at a time, by as much as 22 percent, and at irregular intervals.

While Boyajian speculated in her 2015 paper that the irregular dimming might be explained by a swarm of comets breaking up as it approached the star, subsequent observations show the star, which is located about 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, is far more irregular than a comet swarm would produce. In fact, it seems to have been dimming at a steady rate for the past century.

Speculation eventually arose that the dimming was caused by a Dyson structure: a massive orbiting array of solar collectors that physicist Freeman Dyson once proposed would be a natural thing for a civilization to build as it needed more and more energy to power itself. Theoretically, such a structure could completely surround the star – what he termed a Dyson sphere – and capture nearly all the star’s energy….”

http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/aggressive-seti-observations-of-tabbys-star-upcoming/
________
If intelligent aliens actually do live around Tabby's star, astronomers are determined to find them.

The Breakthrough Listen initiative, which will spend $100 million over the next 10 years to hunt for signals possibly produced by alien civilizations, is set to begin studying Tabby's star with the 330-foot-wide (100 meters) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, project team members announced Tuesday (Oct. 25).
​
http://www.space.com/34505-alien-megastructure-star-seti-search.html
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC- Space X Plans to Send People to the Moon in 2018
0 Comments

Earth & Martian Microbes Aboard Curiosity On Mars:  The Interview

10/12/2016

0 Comments

 
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Electron Microscope Picture of Martian Microbe 
NASA officials are trying to determine whether Earth microbes aboard Curiosity could contaminate the potential Martian seeps from a distance. If the risk is too high, NASA could shift the rover’s course — but that would present a daunting geographical challenge. There is only one obvious path to the ancient geological formations that Curiosity scientists have been yearning to sample for years (see ‘All wet?’).

“We’re very excited to get up to these layers and find the 3-billion-year-old water,” says Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “Not the ten-day-old water.”

The streaks — dubbed recurring slope lineae (RSLs) because they appear, fade away and re­appear seasonally on steep slopes — were first reported1 on Mars five years ago in a handful of places. The total count is now up to 452 possible RSLs. More than half of those are in the enormous equatorial canyon of Valles Marineris, but they also appear at other latitudes and longitudes. “We’re just finding them all over the place,” says David Stillman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who leads the cataloguing.

http://www.nature.com/news/mars-contamination-fear-could-divert-curiosity-rover-1.20544

http://www.nature.com/news/water-seems-to-flow-freely-on-mars-1.14343
​
http://www.asianage.com/science-health/nasas-curiosity-rover-begins-exploring-new-mars-destinations-733
0 Comments

The Third Horseman:  Weather, War & Famine 

9/27/2016

0 Comments

 
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AMAZON

The incredible true story of how a cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history—years before the Black Death, from the author of Justinian's Flea and the forthcoming Miracle Cure

In May 1315, it started to rain. For the seven disastrous years that followed, Europeans would be visited by a series of curses unseen since the third book of Exodus: floods, ice, failures of crops and cattle, and epidemics not just of disease, but of pike, sword, and spear. All told, six million lives—one-eighth of Europe’s total population—would be lost.

With a category-defying knowledge of science and history, William Rosen tells the stunning story of the oft-overlooked Great Famine with wit and drama and demonstrates what it all means for today’s discussions of climate change.
“Rosen (The Most Powerful Idea in the World) argues persuasively that natural disasters are most catastrophic when humankind’s actions give them a push. The depredations committed in battle by Englishmen and Scots were augmented by years of bad weather: the result was that people died in droves. The interactions Rosen describes have been studied but are seldom incorporated into popular history, and the author never overreaches in his conclusions, providing a well-grounded chronicle.... This book will appeal foremost to history lovers, but it should also interest anyone who enjoys a well-documented story.”
--Library Journal

“William Rosen is a good enough writer to hold interest and maintain the fraught relations between nature and politics as a running theme. He ends The Third Horseman with a stark observation: in some ways, global ecology is more precarious nowadays than it was in the 1300s.”
—Milwaukee Express

“Rosen is a terrific storyteller and engaging stylist; his vigorous recaps of famous battles and sketches of various colorful characters will entertain readers not unduly preoccupied by thematic rigor.... Rosen’s principal goal, however, is not to horrify us, but to make us think.... While vividly re-creating a bygone civilization, he invites us to look beyond our significant but ultimately superficial differences and recognize that we too live in fragile equilibrium with the natural world whose resources we recklessly exploit, and that like our medieval forebears we may well be vulnerable to ‘a sudden shift in the weather.’”
—The Daily Beast
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The Countries Affected by the Great Famine 
William Rosen Author Webpage
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THE GREAT FAMINE 1315- 1317
THE GREAT FAMINE; A PRELUDE TO THE BLACK DEATH
WEATHER PATTERNS RESULTING IN FAMINE
THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR
THE AVIGNON PAPACY
WESTERN SCHISM: A SPLIT IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SURVIVAL TACTIC: CANNIBALISM
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THE STORY OF THE HORSEMEN
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