Computer Technology for the Benefit of the Rule of Law: Communication and Research

This Essay suggests a number of ways in which rule of law partners in the United States and abroad with modest technical background might more easily communicate, plan, coordinate, and research joint projects. Without the new computer technologies it would be very difficult to conduct rule of law projects between partners in the United States and Russia. Recent advances in technologies now make communication with colleagues across the world by computer easier than ever

Mushrooms and the wine of Maron

Although the excavators of the sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace recognize that drinking to the point of intoxication was practiced at the Mystery, naively this has not been seen as an element in the initiation scenario. Numerous drinking cups have been found, inscribed as the property of the gods, and the ancient village of Keramidaria (‘Ceramics’) was devoted to the manufacture of amphorae, officially stamped as genuine provenance of Samothrace for the export of the wine distinctive of the Mystery, probably a version of Homer’s potent Maronian wine of the Cyclops. That wine still existed in the Roman Period, and on the testimony of the proconsul assigned to the province, it even required dilution with eight parts water to be drunk safely. At the time of Odysseus, the rate of dilution was twentyfold. Such potent wines achieved their high intoxicating potential from the substances added to the ferment, a fact that has now been confirmed by the discovery of an intact wine cellar from Canaan, dated to the beginning of the second millennium BCE. The myth of the establishment of the Mystery, dated to the generations before the Trojan War, narrates the tale of its founder sailing like a drunken loon upon a wineskin, and similar establishments of the Mystery of the Great Gods depict a Kabeiric dwarfish Odysseus sailing upon an amphora filled with the special potion of the great sorceress Circe. This wine was fortified with a sacred psychoactive mushroom, whose antiquity can be traced back to the wolf sacrament of the Achaemenid Persians, and documented as well in Celtic lore and among the Nordic berserkers, recorded as early as the Emperor Trajan as a rite of the Dacians of Thrace, who are named as the ‘People of the Wolf’ and who carried the banner of Draco into battle, a serpent with the head of a wolf. The serpent is an indication of the wolf’s toxicity, and the fondness of wolves for eating the mushrooms was the basis for the rituals of lycanthropy and the initiated fraternal packs of warriors. In Athens of the Classical Age, the fungal identity of this initiatory sacrament was common knowledge, obscenely parodied on the comic stage. The Etruscans carried this sacrament to the Italian peninsula and it was incorporated into the mythologized history of Rome’s founding by the Trojan Aeneas as the fulfillment of the prophecy of the edible tables that would signal the site for the future city. The cult of the Great Gods involved the widespread phenomenon of the little people that materialized from the sacramental fungus as fairy creatures, using the mushroom as their tables set with dainty morsels that inspired visionary experience and of which it was taboo for the uninitiated to partake

Agriculture in the Clermont Silt Loam Area

Exact date of bulletin unknown.PDF pages: 2

Geography and History of Periodical Cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) in DuPage County, Illinois

The spatial distribution of periodical cicada (Magicicada septendecim L. and M. cassini Fisher) emergence in 2007 did not match either historical locations of woodlands or the cicadas’ own geography in the 19th and early 20th centuries in DuPage County, Illinois. Cicadas were present in forest areas that had remained above 61 ha throughout historic times, and they were absent from areas which at some point had been reduced below 52 ha by tree removal, mainly for agriculture. Isolation of forest areas also may have contributed to local extinctions. The insects have spread into new, urban woodlands created by residential plantings. Their distribution is associated with the early growth of towns along commuter railways in the eastern part of the county (toward Chicago). A peculiar gap in the main emergence area (encompassing two adjacent cities) may be the result of the cicadas shifting their emergence four years early. An active dispersal on 9–11 June, coinciding with the peak in cicada singing in forested areas, apparently placed scattered small groups of cicadas outside the main emergence area

Lex Orandi, Lex Operandi: The Relationship of Worship and Work in the Early Church

(Excerpt) We are all familiar with the famous dictum of Prosper of Aquitaine, who in the fifth century coined the axiom, lex orandi, lex credendi. I propose a variation on this principle by suggesting lex orandi, lex operandi, the law of prayer gives birth to the law of works, and my test case will be the early church before Gregory the Great. To take each of these themes separately would be a simple task. We are all familiar with early Christian treatises on worship and the histories of worship. We also possess numerous commentaries on early Christian attitudes toward society and the evidence of faith resulting in actions in and towards the world