MSU allows Christmas tree to go up again in building lobby

From the ky3.com article:
Missouri State University administrators decided Thursday morning to put a Christmas tree back in the lobby of Strong Hall, along with other religious holiday symbols. A department head removed the 20-foot tree on Monday after a faculty member who is Jewish complained that it was insensitive to other religions.

After learning about the complaint and the removal of the tree, administrators scheduled a meeting for Friday afternoon to discuss appropriate holiday decorations at the school. That meeting is now canceled.
“We decided this is the right thing to do, and I am glad there was widespread agreement about it,” President Mike. Nietzel said in a news release. “Missouri State is an institution at which many different religions are represented, and we try to be sensitive to the many views people hold.

“After having had a chance to air this out a bit more and consider the various perspectives of our campus community, I am happy that the Christmas tree will be back up along with the many others that were already on campus. I hope we can have it on display before the end of the day.”

Courts have ruled Christmas trees are secular symbols if they do not bear religious decorations. The department head who put the tree up said she didn’t use any religious symbols on it.

See the article here.

Lafayette’s ancestor to auction his famous medal from George Washington

Society of the Cincinnati medal (nytimes.com)

From the iht.com article:
He is a French aristocrat who created a stir in America as a precocious teenager, and then returned decades later to the United States to be celebrated in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.

The Marquis de Lafayette? Yes, of course. But that was then. This time, it is his great-great-great grandson.

Arnaud Meunier du Houssoy arrived in New York from Paris on Saturday to be celebrated at events in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the nation’s capital to mark a season of Lafayette commemorations.

It is the 250th anniversary year of the birth of the Revolutionary War general, and a major new exhibition — “French Founding Father: Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America” — recently opened at the New-York Historical Society. Next month there will be a multimillion-dollar auction of a historic gold medal of the Society of the Cincinnati: an enameled patriotic badge created for George Washington that was presented to Lafayette in 1824 after Washington’s death.

“The medal has been kept in our family for more than 180 years,” the 48-year-old M. du Houssoy said, “but it was originally George Washington’s, and it belongs to America.” Six days before the Dec. 11 auction, it will be on display at Sotheby’s; on view in America for the first time since the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago.

Read the article here.

Grotto of Rome’s Founders Revealed

From the nationalgeographic.com article:
Colorful mosaics spiral across the vaulted ceiling of a grotto that was unveiled today as the likely place where ancient Romans believed that a she-wolf suckled their city’s legendary founders.

In January archaeologists announced that the sacred cave, known as the Lupercale, had been found during excavations of Emperor Augustus’ palace on the Palatine, a 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) hill in the center of Rome.

According to Roman myth, a female wolf nursed the abandoned twins Romulus and Remus in the Lupercale. The grown brothers are said to have founded the Eternal City at the site on April 21, 753 B.C.

Read the article here.
Additional pictures of the Lupercale here.

Also check out this Photo Gallery of Ancient Rome Reborn in 3-D.

Combat Fitness

I like this site for Calisthenic isometric bodyweight training exercises. Good for beginners up to advanced levels.

Scientists ‘infer’ existence of 5-planet extrasolar system

From the cosmictribune.com article:
On Nov. 6 astronomers announced that the star 55 Cancri, right around the corner at 41 light-years away, has at least five planets in its retinue. Number Five is a Saturn-class world that outweighs Earth by about 45 times. It circles 55 Cancri in a 260-day-long orbit roughly the size of Venus’s. Because the star is slightly fainter than our Sun, this new find (officially designated 55 Cancri f) lies within the star’s “habitable zone” — at temperatures where water would exist in liquid form.

A team led by Debra Fischer (San Francisco State University) and Geoff Marcy (University of California, Berkeley) utilized measurements of the star’s very slight cyclical motion toward and away from Earth to infer the planets’ presence. It’s taken 320 of these measurements at Lick Observatory in California over 18 years to disentangle the contributions of all five planets.

. . . . “Finding five extrasolar planets orbiting a star is only one small step,” observes Marcy. “Earth-like planets are the next destination.”

Read more here.

Greece Begins Transfer of Ancient Acropolis Sculptures

From the voanews.com article:
Greek authorities have begun a transfer of ancient sculptures from the Acropolis to a new museum located below the Athens landmark.

The first artifact removed from the Acropolis Sunday was a section of the Parthenon frieze – a (160-meter long) strip of sculptures on the temple depicting an ancient religious procession.

Three cranes lifted the more than two ton fragment and carried it slowly to the new Acropolis Museum.

Hundreds of sculptures will be moved from the Acropolis to the museum over the next six weeks.

Greek authorities hope the opening of the Acropolis Museum next year will boost their campaign to reclaim Parthenon sculptures currently held by the British Museum in London.

British diplomats removed those sculptures, known as the Elgin Marbles, from the Acropolis in the early 19th century when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire.

The British Museum bought the artifacts and has long argued that they should remain in London.

See the article here.
See some pictures of the artifacts being moved here.

Tonight’s Sky – Highlights of the November Sky

See what’s available to stargazers this November in this short video. It’s a guide to constellations, Deep Sky objects, planets and events brough to you by HubbleSite.

See the video here.

Egypt Puts King Tut on Public Display

From the article:
King Tut’s buck-toothed face was unveiled Sunday for the first time in public – more than 3,000 years after the youngest and most famous pharaoh to rule ancient Egypt was shrouded in linen and buried in his golden underground tomb.

Archeologists carefully lifted thae fragile mummy out of a quartz sarcophagus decorated with stone-carved protective goddesses, momentarily pulling aside a beige covering to reveal a leathery black body.

The linen was then replaced over Tut’s narrow body so only his face and tiny feet were exposed, and the 19-year-old king, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was moved to a simple glass climate-controlled case to keep it from turning to dust.

Read the myway.com article here.