Tag Archives: Construction

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Archaeologist discovers artifacts from a 3,000 year old community

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Ari sent me an article on the discovery, but I chose this one to link from the Jerusalem Post.

Excerpt:

A Hebrew University archeologist has discovered artifacts from a 3,000-year-old community that have created a new understandings of how the First Temple was built, the university announced on Tuesday.

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin Professor of Archeology at the university, displayed models of items excavated in Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city in the Valley of Elah, about 30 km. southwest of Jerusalem.

The religious community, which Garfinkel believes was Jewish, based on the lack of pig bones and graven images, kept small shrines in rooms of three buildings. The small ritual objects are box-like in shape and made from basalt or clay. The shrines predate the First Temple by at least 30 years, but utilize important architectural designs written in the Torah that describe how the Temple should be built.

The discovery of these ritual objects has allowed archeologists a new understanding of the Temple’s construction, explained Garfinkel.

More than 20 architectural terms that describe the Temple no longer exist in modern language, so models of the Temple are based on educated guesses. For example, the Torah states that the Temple had “slaot,” which was previously understood as “columns,” and “sequfim,” which was widely translated as “windows.” But after studying the small shrines, Garfinkel concluded that the number of slaot corresponded to triglyphs, ornamental decorations above the columns, and the number of sequifim was consistent with a triple recessed doorway, rather than windows.

The Christian Post has more about what the discovery means.

Excerpt:

“For the first time in history we have actual objects from the time of David, which can be related to monuments described in the Bible,” the press release, provided by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, states.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, told The Christian Post on Tuesday that the find is “extremely interesting” but needs to be examined further.

“The unfortunate thing is we don’t have enough information … to be all confident of the conclusions that Yosef Garfinkel is drawing,” said Shanks.

One thing that should be considered is the miniature shrines that were uncovered by Garfinkel are not the first to be discovered, and some might interpret the finding as evidence of a Canaanite cult rather than an Israelite one.

The date of the artifacts is pretty accurate – they are from approximately 1,000 years Before Christ – although Shanks says it is impossible to say with certainty which biblical king was on the throne at the time.

“This may well have been Davidic, but it’s hard to come down hard on it. But within that range, yes … we have a lot of confidence in the date of it,” he said.

So things are still up in the air on the significance of this discovery.

This reminds me of the story I am following about Dan Wallace’s discovery of the early fragments of Mark. Scholars are still holding off judgment on that as well.

News

Greek men deprived of provider role commit suicide in record numbers

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From the Wall Street Journal, a reminder that recessions hit men the hardest. (H/T Tom)

Excerpt:

]Gross domestic product in the second quarter was down more than 7% from a year before, amid government spending cuts and tax increases that, combined, will add up to about 20% of GDP. Unemployment is over 16%. Crime, homelessness, emigration and personal bankruptcies are on the rise.The most dramatic sign of Greece’s pain, however, is a surge in suicides.

Recorded suicides have roughly doubled since before the crisis to about six per 100,000 residents annually, according to the Greek health ministry and a charitable organization called Klimaka.

[…]Suicide has also risen in much of the rest of Europe since the financial crisis began, according to a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which said Greece is among the hardest hit.Suicide has also risen in much of the rest of Europe since the financial crisis began, according to a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which said Greece is among the hardest hit.

[…]A suicide help line at Klimaka, the charitable group, used to get four to 10 calls a day, but “now there are days when we have up to 100,” says a psychologist there, Aris Violatzis.

The caller often fits a certain profile: male, age 35 to 60 and financially ruined. “He has also lost his core identity as a husband and provider, and he cannot be a man any more according to our cultural standards,” Mr. Violatzis says.

Heraklion, commercial center of the island of Crete, has had a spate of such deaths.

[…]Victims once were typically adolescent males or old people facing severe illness, and in normal times suicide cases often involve a mixture of factors including mental illness, says local psychiatrist Eva Maria Tsapaki.

But the economic crash has created a “new phenomenon of entrepreneurs with no prior history of mental illness who are found dead every other week,” she says. “It’s very unusual.”

Hans Bader had a recent post about Obama’s stimulus bill that is relevant.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A logical place to have financed road and bridge repairs would have been Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package. But the stimulus package was purged of most investments in roads and bridges, and filled instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that building and repairing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

Christina Hoff Sommers points out that “of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men,” because men “predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors, which have lost more than 3 million jobs since December 2007.” But when some administration officials floated the concept of “an ambitious . . . stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges, schools, electrical grids, public transportation, and dams” as a way of “reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy,” “Women’s groups were appalled,” asking “Where are the New Jobs for Women?” and denouncing what they called “The Macho Stimulus Plan.”

As Sommers notes, the Obama administration quickly knuckled under to this pressure, replacing its recovery package with an $800 billion stimulus package that instead “skews job creation somewhat towards women” by spending money instead on social services like welfare that are administered mostly by female employees.

As a 2009 Associated Press story reported, “Stimulus Funds Go to Social Programs Over ‘Shovel-ready’ Projects.” A team of six AP reporters who have been tracking the funds find that the $300 billion sent to the states is being used mainly for health care, education, unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other social services.” Or, as another AP report put it, “Stimulus Aid Favors Welfare, Not Work, Programs.”

The stimulus package also repealed welfare reform, as Slate’s Mickey Kaus and the Heritage Foundation have noted. (In 2008, Obama ran campaign ads claiming to support welfare reform, even though he had sought to undermine welfare reform as an Illinois legislator. The stimulus package largely repealed the 1996 welfare-reform law.)

Men: don’t vote for this man in 2012.

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What will the Copenhagen conference mean to ordinary Americans?

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Article from Forbes magazine. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

Whatever the results of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, one thing is for sure: Draconian reductions on carbon emissions will be tacitly accepted by the most developed economies and sloughed off by many developing ones. In essence, emerging economies get to cut their “carbon” intensity–a natural product of their economic evolution–while we get to cut our throats.

[…]Our leaders will dutifully accept cuts in our carbon emissions–up to 80% by 2050–while developing countries increasetheirs, albeit at a lower rate. Oh, we also pledge to send billions in aid to help them achieve this goal.The media shills, scientists, bureaucrats and corporate rent-seekers gathered at Copenhagen won’t give much thought to what this means to the industrialized world’s middle and working class. For many of them the new carbon regime means a gradual decline in living standards. Huge increases in energy costs, taxes and a spate of regulatory mandates will restrict their access to everything from single-family housing and personal mobility to employment in carbon-intensive industries like construction, manufacturing, warehousing and agriculture.

You can get a glimpse of this future in high-unemployment California. Here a burgeoning regulatory regime tied to global warming threatens to turn the state into a total “no go” economic development zone. Not only do companies have to deal with high taxes, cascading energy prices and regulations, they now face audits of their impact on global warming. Far easier to move your project to Texas–or if necessary, China.

Now consider this Wall Street Journal article regarding the EPA decision to call carbon dioxide a threat to public health.

Excerpt:

An endangerment finding would allow the EPA to use the federal Clean Air Act to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, which are produced whenever fossil fuel is burned. Under that law, the EPA could require emitters of as little as 250 tons of carbon dioxide per year to install new technology to curb their emissions starting as soon as 2012.

The EPA has said it will only require permits from big emitters — facilities that put out 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. But that effort to tailor the regulations to avoid slamming small businesses with new costs is expected to be challenged in court.

Legislators are aware that polls show the public appetite for action that would raise energy prices to protect the environment has fallen precipitously amid the recession.

Congressional legislation also faces plenty of U.S. industry opposition. Under the legislation, which has been passed by the House but is now stuck in the Senate, the federal government would set a cap on the amount of greenhouse gas the economy could emit every year. The government would distribute a set number of emission permits to various industries. Companies that wanted to be able to emit more than their quota could buy extra permits from those that had figured out how to emit less.

Proponents of the cap-and-trade approach say emission-permit trading will encourage industries to find the least-expensive ways to curb greenhouse-gas output. But opponents say it will saddle key industries with high costs not borne by rivals in China or India, and potentially cost the U.S. jobs.

There will be an economic impact on ordinary Americans from the Democrats trying to “do something” about global warming. The economic impact will not be felt primarily by liberal elites in government.