The Gospel According to Judas

This is kind of cool. I haven't had the chance to look deep into it yet, but I remember the big buzz when the tomb of "James, the brother of Jesus" was found a few years ago. This has got to be another huge discovery in the field.

Sigh. Sometimes I wonder why I left Biblical Studies/Northwest Semitic Philology to study all this current event stuff. My heart and passion are really in the pre-history stuff.

New York Times: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

It's a Gnostic gospel. I wonder how it compares to the Gospel of Thomas?

Archaeology in relation to nation-building and colonization

Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society
Nadia Abu El-Haj, University of Chicago Press, 2001.

OMG before I start my notes let me just say how excited I am that we're finally reading a pre-history book, after what I wrote last night about how much I miss ancient history!!! This book is my undergraduate field (well, mine was more linguistic while this one is more archaelogical), this is my academic love. ♥

Anyway...

Premise: to examine nation-building and colonization through the lens of archaeology.

( 1: Excavating Archaeology )

( 2: Scientific Beginnings )

( 3: Instituting Archaeology )

( 4: Terrains of Settler Nationhood )

( 9: )

( 10: Conclusion )

Challenging copyright law with HP, SW, The Matrix, and LotR

From the Columbia Journalist: NYU Group Sponsors Film Competition Meant to Challenge Copyright Law

"The Film Remix Contest asks participants to make a five- to seven-minute parody from one of four blockbuster trilogies: Harry Potter (though there are now four HP films on DVD), Star Wars, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. Parody is explicitly protected from the charge of copyright violation under Fair Use guidelines, a provision of the standing Copyright Act of 1976."

...

"The Film Remix Contest tests this concept against current law by encouraging participants to make works that are themselves legally protected, but whose process of creation is not."

I'm interested in the outcome of this contest: how many people will participate, whether anyone will get flagged for challenging the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), what this will do as a precedent for the US's fuzzy and confusing copyright laws, etc.

Read the full article here.