Free Republic

Modern society's focus on credentials has created a two-tiered system, where multi-talented individuals are criticized, and elites oversee a dependent underclass. The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88. Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with...

A new version of how the face of the legendary Greek king and army leader Alexander the Great might have been in real life is presented by Royalty Now Studios on YouTube. Researchers have often employed modern technology and historical records to try and answer the question what Alexander’s true face might have looked like, also based on numerous surviving busts of the great Greek leader who was born in 356 b.C. and died in 323 b.C.. In his short but fascinating life, Alexander created a vast empire that stretched from Greece to northwestern India and established him in the...

Archaeologists with the University of Tübingen, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, uncovered ancient Egyptian murals depicting the zodiac signs beneath 2,000 years of grime and soot in the Temple of Esna. The archaeologists have been working to restore the temple, which lies on the West Bank of the Nile, near the city of Luxor, which was once known as Thebes. “The zodiac was used to decorate private tombs and sarcophagi and was of great importance in astrological texts, such as horoscopes found inscribed on pottery sherds,” Dr. Daniel von Recklinghausen, a Tübingen researcher, said in...

Egypt's first complete Zodiac was uncovered on the ceiling of the Temple of Esna in Luxor governorate during restoration work carried out by an Egyptian-German expedition...After five years of cleaning and restoration work, the joint Egyptian-German mission uncovered a bright and colourful astronomical representation of the ancient Egyptian night sky.The relief contains all the twelve Zodiac signs, the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, as well as depictions of the so-called seven arrows and constellations used by the ancient Egyptians in time measurement....these findings were not recorded by the temple's previous publication by late French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron, who...

Christopher Columbus wrote that he sailed in February 1477 to an island a hundred miles beyond Tile (Iceland). This trip, which would have led him to Greenland according to the distance he mentioned, was questioned many times in the 20th century. Arguments against accepting his claim have been that ice and snow would not have allowed him to make an expedition to the North in winter, and that the details he had given about the size of the tides (26 braccia) were far too overstated to be taken seriously. Taking into consideration new research concerning the change of climate at...

The object was listed in the George Petrie Catalogue compiled by the antiquarian William Wakeman in 1867. With the work of the Inventory Project, the object was identified in the Museum crypt and matched with its Petrie catalogue record... The extent of the Roman influence in Ireland has long been debated. The Classical texts imply that due to Ireland's peripheral location, it was not a desirable destination. However the archaeological record has been helping to shed more light on the actual events of this time. Roman objects discovered in Irish contexts exist but they are relatively uncommon, and subsequently the...

On Sunday, Britain's Daily Star reported that Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie — two white actresses — are competing for the role of Cleopatra, sparking outrage across social media. Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) demanded that the African queen should be played by a woman of color, even though the historical Cleopatra was Greek, not black. "Stop whitewashing Cleopatra!!!" tweeted Kendra James, a writer and editor at Shondaland.com. "Film the story of literally any other queen on the vast African continent."

Uranus, which takes its name from the Greek God of the sky, is a gas giant and the seventh planet from our Sun. It is also the third largest planet in our Solar System, ranking behind Jupiter and Saturn. Like its fellow gas giants, it has many moons, a ring system, and is primarily composed of gases that are believed to surround a solid core. Though it can be seen with the naked eye, the realization that Uranus is a planet was a relatively recent one. Though there are indications that it was spotted several times over the course of...

Chennai: A coa­s­tal survey is being carried out in Tamil Nadu by a te­am of professors and students, seeking to throw mo­re light on the ancient po­rts in south India, mentio­ned in Greco Roman geographer Ptolemy’s accounts... Ancient Tamil literature, including ‘Akananuru’ of the Sangam era, referred to the period between 600 BCE and 300 CE, suggest that some 20 to 25 ports had existed in the region. “Greco Roman writer Ptolemy’s geographical ac­c­ounts mention some 15 po­rts. We want to find out whether these ports menti­o­ned in the Sangam era literature and by Ptolemy are the same,” Athiyaman said....

The Cimbrian flood (or Cymbrian flood) was a large-scale incursion of the North Sea in the region of the Jutland peninsula (Denmark) in the period 120 to 114 BC, resulting in a permanent change of coastline with much land lost. The flood was caused by one or several very strong storm(s). A high number of people living in the affected area of Jutland drowned, and the flooding apparently set off a migration of the Cimbri tribes previously settled there (Lamb 1991)... The Cimbri were a tribe from Northern Europe, who, together with the Proto-Germanic Teutones and the Ambrones threatened the...

Team found that Polaris is 2.5 times brighter today than in 137CE Experts say find is 'entirely unexpected' Astronomers have discovered that Polaris, the north star, is getting brighter. They say the star has suddenly reversed two decades of dimming. It is expanding at more than 100 times the rate they expected - and nobody is sure why. A team led by Scott Engle of Villanova University in Pennsylvania recalibrated historic measurements of Polaris by Ptolemy in 137 C.E., the Persian astronomer Al-Sufi in 964 C.E., and others. They investigated the fluctuations of the star over the course of several...

President Obama will break into his Martha’s Vineyard summer vacation Thursday morning to make a statement on the unrest in Egypt, the White House said.

(original title, had to be shortened to fit):Bloodbath in Cairo: More than 120 dead and 1,000 injured after police 'shoot to kill' in violent clashes which have rocked Egypt More than 120 people are believed to have been killed at a protest in support of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi, according to the Muslim Brotherhood. Security forces are reported to have started shooting demonstrators shortly before pre-dawn morning prayers at a round-the-clock vigil in Cairo being staged by backers of Morsi, who was removed from power by the army three weeks ago. Makeshift field hospitals around the area near the...

CAIRO (CNN) —The Egyptian military opened fire on supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, early Monday, killing more than 30 people. The health ministry put the number of fatalities at 34, and said 200 others were wounded. CNN counted at least eight bullet-riddled bodies and up to 40 wounded at the chaotic emergency facility in the Egyptian capital, down the street from the site of the shooting. The upper bodies of the victims appeared to be peppered with shotgun pellets and bullet wounds. Doctors tended to the victims, performing surgeries in many cases before shipping...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Mending the Morsi MistakePosted By Noah Beck On July 5, 2013 @ 12:32 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 7 Comments Critics who call the recent coup by the Egyptian army “undemocratic” are placing form over substance and forgetting that the election of Mohamed Morsi was itself arguably undemocratic. Because his Muslim Brotherhood party was the only organized political force running for office, there was little chance of meaningful political competition emerging in the mere six months between Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and Egypt’s first free elections. That fact might have mattered much less had Morsi used his...

In recent days, the protests and clashes over the Egyptian military's July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsy have transpired amid a parallel battle over semantics -- specifically whether the dramatic events of the past week constituted a "coup." Adopting the loaded word has very real implications for everything from the future of Egypt's fledgling democracy to the more than $1 billion in aid Washington sends to Cairo each year. And, as with past international crises, nowhere is the debate fiercer than in the dark netherworld of Wikipedia forums. The heated back-and-forth over the title for the English-language page "2013...

Mahmoud Badr "owns" the Egyptian street. The 28-year-old activist in sneakers, jeans and a worn-out polo shirt invented the magic formula that drew millions of Egyptians out to demand the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. Now he is determined to ensure all their demands are met. On the day the army stepped in to remove Mursi last week, Badr and his two twenty-something co-founders of the "Tamarud - Rebel!" movement got a phone call from a general staff colonel, inviting them to meet the armed forces commander-in-chief. Speaking to Reuters in a bare suburban high-rise apartment lent to his...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on Sunday said the U.S. could use its foreign aid package for Egypt as “leverage” to push the country back to democracy, days after the military ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi. Menendez did not call for suspending aid, but said it could help “ensure we end up with an Egypt for all” by pressing the military to transition quickly back to civilian rule and free elections.

The military's overthrow of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood's fall from power in Egypt have sent Islamist parties around the region scrambling to preserve gains made in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of the Arab Spring uprisings. The stunning reversal has instilled caution among some Islamists against pushing their agenda too hard, but it has also strengthened hard-liners long opposed to democracy....

Latest Egypt News: July 3, 2013 10:00 AM EDT Egyptian Military Occupies TV Stations 10:05 EDT CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt's military moved to tighten its control on key institutions Wednesday, even putting officers in the newsroom of state TV, in preparation for an almost certain push to remove the country's Islamist president when an afternoon ultimatum expires. Mohammed Morsi has vowed not to step down in the face of millions of protesters in the streets in the biggest anti-government rallies the country has seen. His Islamist supporters have vowed to resist what they call a coup against democracy, and have...