e pur si muove

For the last few decades, researchers have been working to restore an ancient, rotting document purporting to be of biblical significance. After extensive testing, bible scholars now agree on its authenticity, and it is nothing less than a testament of the Apostle Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus to the priests who ruled ancient Jerusalem.

I came across a bible scholar’s blog after hearing about the Gospel on TV, where I discovered National Geographic’s feature site, and from there the link to an English translation [pdf] of the original Coptic text [pdf].

It’s interesting even to non-Christians, for offering another authentic perspective to arguably one of the greatest betrayals in the whole of recorded history. If nothing else, I learnt a new, cool name: Harmathoth, the second ruler of the otherworld beyond Seth (Jesus).

On a completely different note, thanks to my friend at Evidence of Intent for the dumb Korean videos: [1] [2].

The publications office has been right on the ball in getting this self-congratulatory release right off the presses.

I want to complain: the chemistry (overall and subdivision) rankings still use the old 2002 values! Dammit, why didn’t they use the 2006 ones? I really wanted to see how the new listing on theoretical chemistry fared.

Here’s something that I found amusing:

New Mobility magazine ranks Illinois first among “disability-friendly colleges” in America.

I don’t mean to malign the physically-challenged, but the campus is flat. as. a. pancake. Someone once told me the maximum height difference in ground level in the entire county is a mere six feet (1.8m). It’s every SimCity urban planner’s dream terrain. It doesn’t get better than that. Oh, and the “press/kick here to open” powered doors are a godsend to those of us who can walk but are carrying all sorts of nasty things such as thick piles of exam scripts or quenched reaction flasks in a bath of acetone/dry ice, or even something as nicely packaged as double-sealed NMR vials of crystallized tobacco mosaic virus.

I have to get this off my chest now: for those clods out there who think the best American schools are all in the Greater Boston metropolitan region, the Greater Los Angeles basin, or in the San Francisco bay area, think again. Yes, Toto, there *are* schools that trump “those” schools.

Oh, and Dave Bacon has the rankings list for the enigmatic “Physics: Quantum” subdiscipline. *harrumphs* Putting the Orange and Blue on the bottom is kinda mean. But I guess you could still say we’re a Top Ten department.