DARK SKIES BLOG

Here’s something truly incredible and timeless! (If it doesn’t appear immediately…hit reload a few times. This is the full 16 minute file).

Per Hank Drake:

This performance, taped in 1978, is the last time Vladimir Horowitz performed the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto in his lifetime. By this time he had known the work for nearly sixty years.

This performance was taped a few days before Horowitz’ 75th birthday, but I would defy anyone to guess his age hearing only the audio portion. Naturally, he can’t mount all the technical hurdles quite as superhumanly as could when he was 40. But, I have never witnessed a greater performance, either in concert or on video.

Horowitz’ intimate knowledge of this wonderful concerto is evident throughout every bar. There is something magical about the phrasing, the tone, Horowitz’ mastery of “the big line,” an art which transcends merely putting the right finger in the right place at the right time. Horowitz was a notoriously self-critical artist, and he was courageous enough to change his interpretation over the years: only his later performances of the Rachmaninoff Third are played without the disfiguring cuts the composer sanctioned (Horowitz does make a tiny cut in the first movement Cadenza).

Zubin Mehta, a sympathetic accompanist, is to be credited with supporting his soloist (who was known to never play the same piece twice in quite the same way) and securing fine playing from the New York Philharmonic.

The videography is more than adequate and the mono sound well balanced in this difficult to record concerto. I know of no greater Rachmaninoff Third on video.

Source

BTW, Hank Drake is speaking of the performance as recorded by Deutsche Grammophon…not necessarily as has been reproduced for Google Video.;-)

I have been scouring the news for any follow-up articles on the “Stone Scroll” or “Gabriel’s Revelation” as it has been called and haven’t found much that advances the arguments that have already been made.

I did, however, stumble across this piece this morning in IsraelToday.com and thought it worth posting.

Messianic leaders say Hebrew tablet validates Jesus’ claims

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This morning I found one article (in the Times UK) on this subject but it was so one-sided it could have been written by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (it offered elaboration of only Israel Knohl’s theory). Here’s its thrust…

The death and resurrection of Christ has been called into question by a radical new interpretation of a tablet found on the eastern bank of the Dead Sea.

After a little bit of digging, I came across an article that presents both Professor Knohl’s point of view and the opposing POV–that the information so far provided by the “tablet” is supportive of and consistent with the Christian view of the Resurrection. The Christian point of view is presented by Dr Timothy Gray, a professor of Biblical Studies at the Augustine Institute in Denver.

Here’s a link to that article (in the Catholic News Agency)…

Scholars divided on interpretation of ‘Gabriel’s Revelation’ tablet

(excerpt)

The interpretations of scholars reported in the International Herald Tribune, Gray said, was “very striking” for its insistence that any evidence must undermine Christianity.

“On the one hand, scholars argue no Jewish tradition about a messiah suffering shows that the Church added this idea. And once you show a document, an ancient document to point to, showing that they did interpret a prophet like Daniel to expect a suffering messiah, well then people say ‘Well this proves Christianity can’t be true.’”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Gray said.

Newt does it again with his effusive (but well deserved IMO) praise for Bobby Jindal in his article in Human Events entitled “Bobby Jindal, America’s Most Transformational Governor”.

Here, according to Newt, is a partial list a Bobby’s achievements in only six months…

(…)

* Six Major Tax Cuts worth more than $500 million, including eliminating taxes on business and capital investment and the largest personal tax cut in the history of the state – a $300 million reduction in personal income taxes, worth up to $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a family.

* Governor Jindal brought about a Transformation of Job Creation and Retraining. He completely eliminated the Department of Labor and passed a guarantee for employers that Louisiana educational institutions will train its workforce to meet their needs, and if they fail, they will retrain workers for free.

* He created $10 million in Opportunity Scholarships so 1,500 poor children in New Orleans can escape failing public schools.

* Jindal led the passage of The Health Care Consumers Right to Know Act, creating transparency of cost and quality for the first time in Louisiana’s health care system.

* Bobby Jindal expanded the number of charter schools in Louisiana from 42 to 100.

* He passed legislation cracking down on child molesters and also passed a resolution calling for the creation of involuntary civil commitment of sexually violent predators to keep them confined for treatment after they complete their prison terms.

And here’s a seventh achievement…

Louisiana’s Third Bond Rating Boost in a Week

All this, and Governor Bobby Jindal is just getting started. Just last week he vetoed $9 million dollars in pet projects and pork barrel spending in the legislature’s budget – another area in which this 37-year-old governor is showing the way to Washington.

Not coincidentally, Jindal also announced that for the third time last week, Louisiana’s bond rating had been raised by a major credit rating agency.

(…)

Read it all…

[UPDATE: See comments below for a reposting of a line by line English translation of the script on the stone--Source.]

Before the NY Times article on the Stone Scroll appeared on Sunday, Ada Yardeni herself (the specialist in Hebrew writing who recognized the importance of Jeselsohn ‘s stone tablet) published an article in the Jan/Feb 2008 Biblical Archaeology Review entitled “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone?”.

Here’s an excerpt. Read the whole thing, it’s quite interesting!

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And the letters that have survived are often very hard to read. The back of the stone is rough and unfinished, unlike the polished side with script. This suggests that the stone was once mounted in a wall. Whether it was inscribed with the stone already mounted in the wall or lying flat on the floor, it must have been very inconvenient to write on the polished side and this may well account for the rather careless look of the script, which was nevertheless the work of a professional scribe.

The text has not been identified, but it is clearly a literary composition, similar to Biblical prophecies. It is written in the first person, perhaps by someone named Gabriel (“I Gabriel,” line 77), so I have named the text “Gabriel’s Vision.” It is apparently a collection of short prophecies addressed to someone in the second person.

Like the prophets of old, whoever wrote this composition proclaims the “word of Yahweh,” the personal name of the Hebrew God. And, again like the Bible, many of the prophecies open with the words “Thus (or therefore) said the Lord [that is, Yahweh and sometimes the more generic Elohim] of Hosts.” Sometimes the text uses Elohei Yisrael, “God of Israel.” There are also numerous references to Yahweh’s kavod, or glory, familiar to all students of the Hebrew Bible.

(…)

Here’s a photo at Ada Yardeni’s article…

UPDATE 7/7/2008 at 2:28pm EST: Here is a link to an English translation of the “Gabriel’s Revelation” stone at the Biblical Archaeology Review—English translation (in Microsoft Word). I have also posted the English translation (from Biblical Archaeology Review) in comments below.

This stone tablet, which contains writings dated to the decades before the birth of Christ, is thought by serious scholars of the subject to be a significant discovery.

The tablet itself is not a new discovery–it was purchased 10 years ago from a Jordanian dealer in antiquities by an Israeli/Swiss collector who, while himself an expert on Hebrew antiquities, was unaware of its importance until recently when it was shown to Ada Yardeni, a specialist in Hebrew writing.

“She (Ms Yardeni) was overwhelmed. ‘You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,’ she told me.”

Read the article in today’s NY Times or in the Times Argus (Montpelier/Barre, Vermont).

David Jeselsohn and the tablet.

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The Army is adopting a new PT program that sounds like a modified “Crossfit.” As fans of Crossfit know, the Navy Seals have already discarded their old program in favor of a system that incorporates the Crossfit WOD system (here’s the link to Sealfit)…

Here’s the article at Strategy Page…

Realistic PT For Combat

The U.S. Army is changing its physical training (PT) to more closely reflect the needs of combat. Instead of long distance running, sit-ups and push-ups, the new training emphasizes sprinting, agility and the kind of strength needed to carry weapons and equipment in combat. The new training also uses a twelve month physical training cycle that peaks when troops are deploying to a combat zone, or, in peacetime, doing a year or more of “ready for deployment” status.

The more advanced stages of the new physical training has troops doing the drills in full combat equipment. That won’t be a problem, because the exercises they will be doing are the same kinds of moves they will make in combat.

Continue reading…

Keywords: Crossfit, Army, Military, fitness, Tabata, physical training