M.J. Rose

They believe. And their followers do too.

From National Geographic,

Meet Five Men Who All Think They’re the Messiah

These men say they’re the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Their disciples agree.

Story and Photographs by Jonas Bendiksen and As told to Jeremy Berlin

‘Surely I am coming soon.’

“The Bible’s penultimate verse, prophesying the return of Jesus Christ, has always fascinated me. When is “soon”? And who is “I”? For the past three years I’ve followed seven men who claim to be the Second Coming of Christ (five are shown here). By immersing myself in their revelations and spending time with their disciples, I’ve tried to produce images that illustrate the human longing for faith, meaning, and salvation.

Religion is somewhat mysterious to me, probably because I wasn’t raised with it in Norway. But I’ve always enjoyed reading Scripture, and over the past decade or so my interest in it has grown. I’ve found myself coming back, again and again, to that mysterious line—a promise that Christianity has been waiting nearly 2,000 years to be fulfilled…”

For the stories and photographs, click here.

All Hallow’s Eve is nearly upon us.

Frances Glessner Lee, “Burned Cabin” (detail) (1944-48) (Collection of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, courtesy Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Baltimore)

Frances Glessner Lee, “Dark Bathroom” (detail) (1944-48) (Collection of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, courtesy Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Baltimore)

From Hyperallergic,

The Smithsonian Conserves Blood Pools and Charred Skeletons from 1940s Crime Dioramas

by Allison Meier

For the first time all 19 surviving Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are going on public view, with an exhibition opening in October at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

When reached by phone, Ariel O’Connor, objects conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, was in Baltimore’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner studying 18 intricate crime scenes. Each was made in the 1940s and ’50s by Frances Glessner Lee for Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine to show a death in miniature, with details carefully crafted down to the working door locks and painted blood spatters. One has a body sprawled on the street outside an illuminated storefront stocked with magazines, comic books, wrapped lollipops, potato chips, bottles, and other wares, all handmade to scale. “I’m looking at the sidewalk and there are tiny cigarettes, three millimeters long, that she rolled by hand,” O’Connor told Hyperallergic. “Her level of detail just astounds me daily.”

or the first time, all 19 of Lee’s surviving dioramas will be on public view in Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. The 18 Nutshell Studies still in use for criminologist training at Baltimore’s Medical Examiner’s Office are joined by a 19th “lost” study found in the attic of her New Hampshire estate in the 1990s. O’Connor is working on stabilizing, cleaning, and conserving the delicate models before the exhibition, organized by curator Nora Atkinson, opens on October 20 at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Lee was not allowed by her wealthy Chicago family to go to university, and it was only later in life that she was free to pursue her interest in forensics. Now recognized as the “mother of forensic science,” Lee used her inheritance to endow the first program for studying forensics at Harvard University, and in 1943, she was named State Police Captain of New Hampshire for her service. A rare woman in a male-dominated field, she also used what were perceived as traditionally feminine crafts — stitching, knitting, and doll houses — to improve the field of homicide investigation…”

For the rest (more pictures!!!!), click here.

The Quantum Theory of Consciousness states that the soul is maintained in micro-tubules of the brain cells. The following article gives a good overview of what this means, and what it implies about death and the afterlife.

From Peace Quarters,
Scientists Found That The Soul Doesn’t Die – It Goes Back To The Universe

“According to two leading scientists, the human brain is in fact a ‘biological computer’ and the consciousness of humans is a program run by the quantum computer located inside the brain that even continues to exist after we die.

As experts explain it; “after people die, their soul comes back to the universe, and it does not die.”

The debate about the existence of the soul and whether it is immortal or dies with the person is an endless story that for centuries has occupied the time of the great thinkers of universal history. Its mysterious nature continues to fascinate different areas of science, but now a group of researchers has discovered a new truth about it: the “soul” does not die; it returns to the universe.

Since 1996, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, an American Physicist and Emeritus in the Department of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University, have worked in a Quantum Theory of Consciousness in which they state that the soul is maintained in micro-tubules of the brain cells.

Their provocative theory states that the human soul is be contained by the brain cells in structures inside them called micro-tubules…”

For the rest, click here.