Lately...

Just an update of recent events, thoughts, articles that's been on my mind or wanted to remember for later...

So tragic. I've been having this online friend, Leslie, for quite some time now... at least 8 yrs now. We've only met once in person in the past, back before Calista was even a year old. At that time, Leslie had only 2 children, both girls. I had invited her to our house for supper. We had a nice time. We had intended on getting together again... but, in that time, Jeremy and I have moved many times and she moved a couple of times. And then, when I would be able to go meet up with her, I either wouldn't have a working car or didn't have one at all. Anyways, we've kept in touch via email, blogs, pictures, etc and I went on to have 2 more children and so did she. Flash forward to this past Sunday. Her 2nd child, Elizabeth - now 10 yrs old, was riding their 4-wheeler and they aren't sure what happened, but she died. How sad. Terrible. She was with a friend of hers, both on 4-wheelers. Leslie told me that she had told Liz not to go past 2nd gear - no racing. Well, they go ride. Her 12-yr-old friend comes running back telling Leslie and her dh, Chris, that Liz needs them. Chris knows CPR and all that stuff, he's trained in it. There was nothing he could do. Leslie told me that the coroner said Liz was bleeding from both ears. The 4-wheeler was upright and Liz was laying next to it. They have no idea what happened. Leslie said that the 4-wheeler was in 5th gear... but, how strange, huh? And how terribly sad. Leslie had posted her obituary on myspace, that's how I found out... otherwise, there's no way I would have known. I wrote her and asked if she'd like me to go to the funeral home... I wasn't sure how appropriate it would be, ya know? Well, she wrote back saying she'd love to see me and to please come. So, I had to wait for Jeremy to get back from work since the carseats are in his car. I ended up just taking Wyatt. I went only for like half an hour. I didn't know anyone else but her, so I only had her to talk to and I didn't want to take up too much of her time; plus, Wyatt was getting antsy... he wanted to get down and play with the stuff on the floor. At the funeral home, Liz has tons of flowers, quite a few soccer balls, her best friend even put his handheld game system in there with her! Leslie told me a couple of times that she was glad I went. I'm glad I did too... to show support and friendship.

My girls like going next door to ride our neighbor's 4-wheeler, 3-wheeler, go-carts, etc... I am thinking 'NO MORE'. Is that too crazy? I was always leary about them anyways. They only ride the go-cart by themselves (its kids' size) and there's a seatbelt that they do use. But, I'm thinking that they don't get to get on the 4-wheeler unless there's an adult with them as opposed to just another kid.

I know, I know, you can't save your children from everything. I know. Personally, and I know many others feel this way, I want to pass on BEFORE any of my children do.

I'll finish up on this entry later... Jeremy just called to tell me that I need to pay the electric bill today... thanks for the heads up! So, now I have to get myself and the kids dressed... I'll be back :D

Okay, I'm back...

Then, last night, I dream that I can't find Calista. I'm crying like crazy and looking everywhere. I wake up without ever finding her in my dream. So, this morning, before she gets on the bus, I review with her stuff about not talking to strangers, not taking candy, not helping them find their dog, etc... and scream and run, kick, bite, poke their eyes, whatever. I hate when I have dreams like that.

In recent news...

I'm just copying and pasting the whole articles in case they disappear in the future.

I wonder what the end result of this will be...
Tomb could be of Jesus, wife and son

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The burial site of Jesus has been found and suggests he had a wife and son, according to highly sensitive claims in a documentary by "Titanic" director James Cameron and Israel' -born Simcha Jacobovici.

The claims inject controversy into the issue of resurrection central to Christianity and, if accurate, could reignite questions about Jesus' earthy family life popularized in the book "The Da Vinci Code."

Cameron and Jacobovici, an award-winning documentary director, said their research suggested Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a son, Judah.

"DNA analysis conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggest a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," a statement from Discovery, which will broadcast the documentary, said.

The tomb was located in Talpiot, Jerusalem, March 28, 1980 by a construction crew developing an apartment complex.

Scholar L.Y. Rahmani later published "A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries" that described 10 ossuaries, or limestone bone boxes, found in the tomb, the Discovery statement said.

Five of the 10 discovered boxes in the Talpiot tomb were inscribed with names believed to be associated with key figures in the New Testament: Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph and Mary Magdalene. A sixth inscription, written in Aramaic, translates to "Judah Son of Jesus."

"Such tombs are very typical for that region," Aaron Brody, associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion and director of California's Bade Museum, told Discovery News.

In addition to the "Judah son of Jesus" inscription, which is written in Aramaic on one of the ossuaries, another limestone burial box is labeled in Aramaic with "Jesus Son of Joseph." Another bears the Hebrew inscription "Maria," a Latin version of "Miriam," or, in English, "Mary."

Yet another ossuary inscription, written in Hebrew, reads "Matia," the original Hebrew word for "Matthew." Only one of the inscriptions is written in Greek. It reads, "Mariamene e Mara," which can be translated as, "Mary known as the master," the television network said.

Jacobovici, director, producer and writer of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," and his team obtained two sets of samples from the ossuaries for DNA and chemical analysis. The first set consisted of bits of matter taken from the "Jesus Son of Joseph" and "Mariamene e Mara" ossuaries. The second set consisted of patina, a chemical film encrustation on one of the limestone boxes.

The human remains were analyzed by Carney Matheson, a scientist at the Paleo-DNA Laboratory at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. Mitochondrial DNA examination determined the individual in the Jesus ossuary and the person in the ossuary linked to Mary Magdalene were not related.

Since tombs normally contain either blood relations or spouses, Jacobovici and his team suggest Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been a couple. "Judah," whom they indicate may have been their son, could have been the "lad" described in the Gospel of John as sleeping in Jesus' lap at the Last Supper, they argue in their
documentary.

Israeli archaeologist and professor Amos Kloner, who documented the tomb as the Jewish burial cave of a well-off family more than 10 years ago, is adamant there is no evidence to support claims that it was the burial site of Jesus.

"I'm a scholar. I do scholarly work which has nothing to do with documentary film-making. There's no way to take a religious story and to turn it into something scientific," he told AFP in a telephone interview.

"I still insist that it is a regular burial chamber from the 1st century BC," Kloner said, adding that the names were a coincidence.

"Who says that 'Maria' is Magdalena and 'Judah' is the son of Jesus? It cannot be proved. These are very popular and common names from the 1st century BC," said the academic at Israel's Bar Ilan University.

And this is cool:
Strange New Creatures Found in Antarctica

Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Sun Feb 25, 12:20 PM ET

Several strange creatures including a psychedelic octopus have been found in frigid waters off Antarctica in one of the world’s most pristine marine environments.

Others resembled corals and shrimps. At least 30 appear to be new to science, said Julian Gutt, chief scientist of an expedition that was part of the International Polar Year research effort set to launch on March 1. The researchers catalogued about 1,000 species in an area of the Antarctic seabed where warming temperatures are believed to have caused the collapse of overlying ice shelves, affecting the marine life below.

“This is virgin geography,” said expedition member Gauthier Chapelle. “If we don’t find out what this area is like now following the collapse of the ice shelf, and what species are there, we won’t have any basis to know in 20 years’ time what has changed and how global warming has altered the marine ecosystem.”

The expedition also found sea lilies, sea cucumbers and sea urchins thriving on the sea floor—these species are usually found in much deeper waters where food is scarce, but the ice shelves probably made food scarcer than it would usually be at that shallow depth.

Images of the newfound creatures:

Octopus
Sea
Squirts
Crustacean
Cucumbers

An opened seal

In the Weddell Sea off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, 10,000 square kilometers of seabed was sealed off from the surface for thousands of years by the 100-m thick Larsen A and B ice shelves. When these ice shelves collapsed in recent years, the area was opened up to colonization by species that could not have survived there before [Original News Story].

The international team of scientists recently completed a 10-week expedition of the area. Using a remote operating vehicle, they were able to do the first comprehensive survey of life on the seabed. Before the ice shelves collapsed, the only access scientists had to the area was through holes drilled in the ice.

Ice shelves form when creeping glaciers reach the continent’s coast and begin to float on the ocean. They usually lose mass via icebergs that calve off and float out to sea gradually, but the Larsen A and B shelves both suddenly and surprisingly collapsed. Since 1974, a total of 13,500 square kilometers (about half the size of New Jersey) of ice shelves have disintegrated—a phenomenon linked to global warming, as temperatures have risen faster in Antarctica than anywhere else in world.

In general, the expedition found that animals were less abundant in the Larsen A and B areas compared to other areas of the Antarctic. Animals in the area were only one percent as abundant as other parts of the Weddell Sea, which Gutt suspects is somehow related to the availability of food.

New species?

One of the main aims of the expedition was to survey both indigenous life-forms and creatures that had moved in after the collapse to take advantage of the newly opened environment.

Gutt said that 95 percent of the animals the expedition found were probably indigenous and just 5 percent had moved in after the ice shelves collapsed, but even that small percentage indicated a shift in biodiversity and species composition in the area which will probably continue.

“Life at the sea floor obviously reacts very slowly to this very climactic change in the environmental conditions," Gutt said. “[It] needs hundreds to thousands of years until a new community has fully developed, if this will happen at all.”

One creature new to the neighborhood was the fast-growing, gelatinous sea squirt, which the scientists found in several dense patches.

Iceberg damage

The expedition also found scours created by icebergs that calved from the ice sheets and ran aground on the sea bed, destroying the life in the area, but the damage wasn’t as bad as expected.

“I expected more, because if there are thousands of icebergs disintegrated, or calved, in a very short period of only a few months, then I expected that everything would be destroyed. But it was not,” Gutt said.

The expedition actually found more evidence of disturbance outside the Larsen ice shelf area at points where many icebergs must pass.

But in the areas icebergs had destroyed, Gutt said, signs of life were returning.