Mesocosm

The Guardian UK presents its ten favorite depictions of skies in paintings.

Early Christianity Elaine Pagels has a new book out on the Book of Revelation, which she reads in the context of extra-canonical accounts of the end-times. I’m ambivalent about her writing, which usually present an apologetic and sanitized form of Gnosticism, stripping the movement of the grotesqueries which are often its most interesting features. Her book The Gnostic Gospels, for example, completely lacks discussion of the Demiurge, Archon, or Ialdabaoth.

The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from her new book:

Biblical archaeologists working in Jerusalem have uncovered what they believe to be an extremely early first century Christian tomb, on the basis of what I find to be tenuous evidence. Their work is linked to the interesting Jesus tomb controversy. Their field report (PDF) is worth scanning in part because of its fascinating descriptions of the problems of conducting field work in Jerusalem. Their work was disrupted by “ultra-orthodox” protesters several times, who on one occasion drove the archaeologists from the site and replaced artifacts back in the tombs.

Speaking of re-burying artifacts….

A host of artifacts were uncovered recently in the Greek city of Thessaloniki during subway construction, including an early Christian basilica. In a sign of the times, archaeologists are forced to discontinue excavation due to a lack of funds, and are reburying material to entrust them to future generations.

This LED puts out more power than it consumes. Balderdash! you say? Nay! This little fellow is Second-Law-of-Thermodynamics-compliant – it absorbs heat from its environment.

Finally, the Village Voice has written a damning article on the NYPD’s malignant attempts to destroy a whistleblower from their ranks, who presented evidence that officers in his precinct were routinely ordered to ignore serious crimes in an attempt to “massage the statistics.” When he came forward, the NYPD went after him, going so far as to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital for six days.