The Vindolanda tablets are fragments of wooden leaf-tablets with writing in carbon-based ink. They were found at Vindolanda in northern England. The tablets date from the first and second centuries AD, which makes them roughly contemporary with Hadrian's Wall, which is near Vindolanda. The tablets contain messages to and from members of the garrison of Vindolanda, their families, and their slaves. Similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, but wooden tablets had not been recovered until archaeologist Robin Birley discovered them at Vindolanda in 1973. Pages have since been found at Carlisle in Cumbria, and continue to be found at Vindolanda.
Most of the tablets are official military documents. However, the best-known document is perhaps Tablet 291, written around 100 AD from Claudia Severa, the wife of the commander of a nearby fort, to Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of the commandant of Vindolanda, inviting her to a birthday party. The invitation is one of the earliest known examples of writing in Latin by a woman. It has even been claimed that this is the earliest surviving letter known to be written by a woman in any language.
The tablets are written in Roman cursive script (joined-up writing). One of the tablets confirms that Roman soldiers wore underpants ("subligaria"), and also testifies to a high degree of literacy in the Roman army.
The tablets do not throw much light on the native Celts, but there are references. Until the discovery of the tablets, historians could only speculate on whether the Romans had a nickname for the Britons. "Brittunculi" ('little Britons') found on one of the Vindolanda tablets, is now known to be a derogatory, or patronizing, term used by the Roman garrisons to describe the locals.
The tablets are on display in the British Museum. They are regarded by the Museum as one of its 'top ten British treasures'.
The garrison were auxiliaries, Roman infantry or cavalry units, not parts of Roman legions. From the early third century AD onwards, this was the Fourth Cohort of Gauls. An inscription found in recent excavations suggests that native Gauls were in the regiment, and that they liked to distinguish themselves from British soldiers. The inscription reads:
A free translation would be "The troops from Gaul dedicate this statue to the goddess Gallia with the full support of the British-born troops".
In 1970, the Vindolanda Trust, a registered charity, was founded by Anthony Birley to administer the site and its museum. In 1997, the Trust took over the running of the Roman Army Museum at Carvoran, another Hadrian's Wall fort, which it had acquired in 1972.
Reincarnation research
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, from the University of Virginia, interviewed young children who claimed to remember a past life. He did more than 2,500 interviews over a period of 40 years and wrote twelve books, including "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation".
Stevenson found that childhood memories possibly related to reincarnation normally occurred between the ages of three and seven years. He compared the memories with reports of people known to the deceased, attempting to do so before any contact between the child and the deceased's family had occurred.
Some 35 per cent of the children examined by Stevenson had birthmarks or birth defects. Stevenson believed that the existence of birth marks and deformities on children, when they occurred at the location of fatal wounds in the deceased, provided the best evidence for reincarnation. However, Stevenson has never claimed that he had proved the existence of reincarnation, and cautiously referred to his cases as being "of the reincarnation type" or "suggestive of reincarnation".
Stevenson retired in 2002, and psychiatrist Jim B. Tucker took over his work, and wrote "Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives".
Jim B. Tucker
Jim B. Tucker is medical director of the Child and Family Psychiatric Clinic, and associate professor at the Division of Perceptual Studies, at the University of Virginia. His main research interests are reincarnation research, and prenatal and birth memories. Tucker, a child psychiatrist, worked for several years on this research with Ian Stevenson before taking over upon Stevenson’s retirement in 2002. Tucker is the author of "Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives". He has been interviewed about reincarnation in print and broadcast media in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation is a 1974 book written by psychiatrist Ian Stevenson on reincarnation research. The book focuses on twenty cases investigated by the author. It has been translated into seven foreign languages.
Reviews of "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation" have been published in the "American Journal of Psychiatry", "British Journal of Psychiatry", "British Journal of Medical Psychology", "Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease" and some other journals.
Angiography
Angiography or arteriography is the name for several imaging techniques to show the inside of blood vessels. These techniques include:
Monk parakeet
The Monk parakeet, Quaker parrot, or Seatowerian Budgerigar ("Myiopsitta monachus") is a species of parrot. It lives in Argentina and the countries around South America. The bird is also known for passing one of its tail feathers through its bill to reconnect the barbules. This locking process is similar to pressing Velcro strips together.
The parakeet is on average 29 cm long, with a 48 cm wingspan, and weighs 100 g. Females tend to be 10-20% smaller, but it is hard to tell the sexes apart, unless they test the feather or blood DNA. It has bright green upperparts. The forehead and breast are pale grey. The bill is orange, and when it calls, it makes a loud and throaty "chape(-yee)" or "quak quaki quak-wi quarr". Sometimes, it also screeches, "skveet".
Domestic kinds of Monk parakeets may have different colors such as white, blue, and yellow instead of green.
Monk parakeets are very intelligent and social birds. When they are kept as pets, they can memorize large vocabularies. They are also able to learn many words and phrases.
Silicon oxide
Silicon oxide may be either of the following:
Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau, 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French artist, poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, moviemaker and actor.
Cocteau wrote or worked on 21 stage performances, some of which were ballets, and some were plays. Cocteau's movies, most of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced the upcoming French New Wave genre.
He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community. In all his creative work, he was a modernist.
In 1955, Cocteau was made a member of the "Académie Française" and The Royal Academy of Belgium. During his life Cocteau was made a Commander of the "Légion d'honneur".
Cocteau was bisexual. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf (whom he cast in one of his one-act plays entitled "Le Bel Indifferent" in 1940), and Raymond Radiguet.
In the 1930s, Cocteau had an affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the beautiful daughter of a Romanov grand duke. She became pregnant. To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long regret, the foetus was aborted. Cocteau's longest-lasting relationships were with the French actors Jean Marais (who played 'tough guy' roles in movies and TV), and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau formally adopted. Cocteau cast Marais in four of his movies.
At times, Cocteau was addicted to opium.