Secrets of China's Ancient Pyramids (video)

CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; National Geographic; Nick Redfern (CLE)

Modern Chinese Buddhist pyramid structure and stupa (reliquary), Buddha Memorial Center, Fo Guang Shan Temple complex, Taiwan, Republic of China (Bernard Gagnon)

(National Geographic) Documentary on the pyramids of China and its view of the afterlife

For decades, government agencies have taken a clandestine and profound interest in pyramids and other archaeological, historical, and religious puzzles.

 

Why and how have they been doing this?  What profound and powerful secrets are sequestered in secret vaults and archives, and what would happen if the truth were revealed? Focusing primarily upon the classified work of the U.S. Government, The Pyramids and the Pentagon invites us to take a wild ride into the fog-shrouded past. It is a ride that incorporates highlights such as:

•  The CIA’s top secret files on Noah’s Ark
•  U.S. Army documents positing that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed via levitation
• Claims of nuclear warfare in ancient India
• Links between the "Face on Mars" and the pharaohs...

Modern Buddhist pyramid (Zosoiv71/flickr.com)

Nick Redfern is the author of more than 30 books, including The Real Men in Black; On the Trail of the Saucer Spies; Contactees; and The Pyramids and the Pentagon. He writes for UFO Magazine, Mysterious Universe, and Mania.com. Originally from the UK, Redfern now lives in Dallas, Texas.

• Dr. Patrick Flanagan on the Power of Pyramids, LA 2014
• White man convicted of killing black teen over loud music (and racist "stand your ground" excuse)

Social Media: The First 2,000 Years (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Tom Standage, Mitch Jeserich (KPFA), Frank Rose (NY Times, 11-1-13)

Through the ages: A Roman wax tablet and its 21st-century electronic descendant, the iPad.

The Romans had social media and tablets. The Victorians had an Internet. We are taught to believe it's novel, but it's the way things were before media got centralized. Technology has just returned us to where we were with everything potentially faster and cheaper.

For nearly 20 years, we’ve thought of “new media” as the brash young upstart and “old media” as the stalwart if increasingly embattled establishment. 

But what if new media aren’t as new as we assume -- and old media not really old at all?

 

Social media history (popscreen.com)

So argues Tom Standage in Writing on the Wall, a provocative book that asks us to look at media less in terms of technology -- digital or analog -- than in terms of the role they invite us to play. Are we passive receptors for whatever facts, opinions, and ad messages come our way? 

Or are we participants, sharing what we like with others, amending or commenting in the process? The second is characteristic of the Internet in general and social media in particular. But there’s nothing revolutionary about this, Standage says. 

Instead, it’s the role of consumer, so typical of 20th-­century mass media, that’s unnatural -- and to Standage, a historical blip. This observation has been made before, but never with such a wealth of information to back it up. Standage -- the digital editor at The Economist and the author of such unorthodox chronicles as... More

Writing on the Wall: Social Media — The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage. Illustrated. 278 pp. Bloomsbury.

• Letters and Politics, Dec. 26, 2013, 10:00 am
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