616 — The Typo Of The Beast

May 4th, 2005 | researchmaterial

A newly discovered fragment of the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament indicates that, as far as the Antichrist goes, theologians, scholars, heavy metal groups, and television evangelists have got the wrong number. Instead of 666, it’s actually the far less ominous 616.

The new fragment from the Book of Revelation, written in ancient Greek and dating from the late third century, is part of a hoard of previously unintelligible manuscripts discovered in historic dumps outside Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Now a team of expert classicists, using new photographic techniques, are finally deciphering the original writing.

Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. He said: “This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people’s names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula.”

…satanists responded coolly to the new “Revelation”. Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, based in New York, said: “By using 666 we’re using something that the Christians fear. Mind you, if they do switch to 616 being the number of the beast then we’ll start using that.”

(Found via Cherie)

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Not Even A Secret One

Kieron Gillen - 09 Feb 10

Complete Plan B Archive

Kieron Gillen - 09 Feb 10

The whole run of Plan B magazine has been released as a single 670Mb PDF. That’s 46 issues of some of the finest music writing of the decade. And a lot of posturing pretentiousness too. It’s like two of my favourite things for the price of one. Or none, as it’s a free PDF.

If you’ve any interest in music in the 00s, or music full stop, this is a great thing to just have on file. You’ll discover a new band every time you browse it.

Hell, it’s even worth getting if you’re one of the games journalist sorts. For the first 10-20 issues or so, I was doing games stuff for it. And Quinns and Mathew Kumar too, who I bullied into contributing. Very much written for the non-gamer about games which get pretty much no coverage, we had fun trying to decode the concept of Outsider Games.

Whole thing here. Go gets!

Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.

Coilhouse - 08 Feb 10

Back around the time of Issue 03, we launched the Small Business Advertising Program to create affordable ad space for indie companies in the print version of Coilhouse. By the time Issue 04 rolled around, the number of advertisers had grown significantly – by this time, we had record labels, jewelry and clothing designers, sculptors, other magazines, web hosts, toy makers and graphic designers advertising in our pages. Click here to see them all. With editorial duties taking up more and more of our time as the weeks go by, the moment has come for us to seek help with the advertising side of running the magazine. We’re looking to hire an Ad Manager for our Small Business Advertising Program, starting with Coilhouse Magazine #05… and possibly subsequent issues.

Full details after the jump!


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State of South Carolina Secretary of State Subversive Agent Form

jwz - 08 Feb 10

Check the appropriate box. Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?
[ ] YES [ ] NO

If yes, please outline the fundamental beliefs. If applicable, attach a copy of the bylaws or minutes of meetings from the last year.

"Inflection Points" Presentation

Open The Future - 08 Feb 10

For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.

My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.

By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.

The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.