Home Architecture Talk

I want to learn architecture via correspondence? In India, I would like to learn interior design / architecture and earn a valid degree B. Arch or similar so as to practice the profession.

what is the difference between interior design majors and architecture majors? i want to have an interior design major because i like remodeling and designing furniture but i realized recently that architecture is technically the same but more of the actually building. i want to also design buildings exterior, interior, and landscape but i dont know what you actually learn when you have an interior design or architecture major. sooo my question is, what is the difference and what do you learn when you have an interior design major and an architecture major?

Is there any MA Architecture/interior Design Program In English in Germany? I have been Looking for MA Program for architecture or Interior Designing In Germany But I Don't want to learn German! so I search for an English one! I Only Had find one university but they didn't answers my e.mails! now Is there any MA Architecture/interior Design Program In English in Germany?

is there any way i can find free notes or resources on interior design on the internet maybe? hi, i'm studying architecture in Uganda. i really want to learn interior design or interior architecture but we don't have such programs in my country. i'm in love with interior design and was hoping for some helpful websites to teach me more about it or books. actually anything that can help me be a better designer. thanks

Which websites will give me free tutorials on learning basic architecture and interior designing?

how to learn architecture drawing? hey .i am first year interior design student. and we have this " tech class" that we have to do all the architecture drawing for house design, how the problem is that. the school is actually not teaching us how to draw... we have to somehow figure out how to do it and then get corrected by the tutors... i found it extremely hard, frustrated and time consuming to go through all the time just to find out how to draw a window etc... so , is this how architecture / interior design normally go?? if so, is there any good books that i cat get that will help me with this???? pls help..

I want to get postgraduate degree,can i continue from bachelor of interior design to master of architecture? i know this seems a bit ridiculous, as most of ppl tend to have bachelor of architecture first.. but i've already taken my path to bachelor of interior design/interior architecture bcoz i love the way of design and planning.. but then i realized too before this i loved drawing buildings too, suffice it to say like an architecture. the reason i didn't take bachelor of architecture was bcoz i dont really like the calculation of architects, math, physics, construction structure of a bulding, etc. i mean.. not so much interested in that part. so then i just consider to take the master of architecture.. with a little regret, but it's ok, i'll learn the basic concepts of architecture first so that it wont be difficult for me to learn the postgraduate degree.. but can i continue through it? as i'm from interior part, not architect itself.. thanks..

Any university can provide the Bachelor degree of interior design Thur distance learning? I'm a diploma holder of interior design right now and want to get the bachelor degree of interior architecture design by distance learning.

I want to learn AUTOCAD for my interior designing works, which software should i learn ? There are lots like 3d max, Autocad Revit, Autocad Architecture. Please suggest which will be the best for me. My use is for creating 3d images of my clients houses/offices, and drawing of WINDOWS/DOORS/PARTITIONS and FLOORING like Wood floor. Plz suggest !

What we learn in interior design? information about interior design, compare with architecture

architecture? Ive been told that interior design involves a bit of architecture and thats what im going to do for a career so id like to know what is involved with architecture? (to do with houses) things like simple maths? or more advanced? what kind of things do you need to learn? is it hard or complicated? anything else?

Would a bachelor's in interior architecture be a good way to prepare me for a master's in architecture? I know they're 2 different subjects, but I've toured the interior architecture department at my college and it's pretty in-depth in terms of the designs. Like, it's not just some fluff major where I'd be learning what pillows look best with what couch. The courses deal more with actually designing the structure of a room and whatnot. Would this be a good stepping stone to eventually get my master's in architecture? Being an architect is my main goal, however none of the public colleges in my state offer bachelor's degrees in architecture, only master's. I figure interior architecture would be the next best thing since it deals with architecture and structure and focuses a lot on being able to design plans for a building, which is one of the central parts of an architecture program. Obviously I'd be better prepared with a degree in architecture. but will interior architecture give me sort of an introduction to what I'd be learning in grad school?

What are some key terms for interior architecture/design? Hi guys! I hope this is the right section for posting this question (if not, just let me know where would be better). I have a foreign client whose job is as a consultant in commercial real estate development. His specific role is meeting with prospective tenants of a commercial space and going over the configuration of the space to meet the clients' particular needs - he tells the clients whether what they need/desire is technically achievable and whether it is practical in cost. He is not responsible for the actual aesthetic interior design, but rather the nuts & bolts of what can/cannot be done in a space and its cost relation. This client of mine wants to learn the technical terms related to his job. While I've worked as a building inspector before, my specialization was in accessibility, so my knowledge of the terms is quite narrow. My guess is he needs more terminology related to space division (walls, etc.), flooring, ceiling, HVAC, fiber optics, as well as the actual instruments/components of interior building. What would you guys consider the key terms? You can just rattle off a few that strike you as important. IF you know of any illustrations of interior spaces with labelling of architectural terms, that would be an added bonus. I have a few dictionaries of architectural terminology, so you needn't provide detailed descriptions, just the words alone will suffice. Thanks sooooooo much. Thanks, Charles, for your answer. I think he's wanting to learn terms like "suspended cieling", "partitioning", "HVAC", etc. That's the type of stuff I'm looking for. The three I just mentioned are more on the obvious side, but I suppose there must be specific terms (of which I'm ignorant) for other features of interior architecture.

How can I re-learn AutoCAD? I want to change jobs and to make myself more marketable I need to re-learn AutoCAD. I was taught AutoCAD in college for Interior Architecture, but at my current company we use Archicad. Any suggestions?

adobe illustrator tutorials for rendering architecture? Just wondered where there was a site which I could learn to realistically render architecture and architectural spaces ( interiors and such) I am an architecture major and am working on my portfolio but Have not yet taken the computer classes. Any good tutorials?

Where to go to school for Interior Decoration? Im interested in pursuing a career in Interior Decorating. I can probably have that done before interior deign, Im not particularly intrested in learning architecture that comes with interior design. Or is it worth it to do that instead of interior decorating? I live on Vancouver Island and VIU offers a 4 yr program for about 10K. Where in Canada is the best place for the best price to take the program? Also, I have never really been very artsy, but I am very creative, cant get enough of those home reno and property shoes, I work in real estate as an assistant and im always finding free stuff and making it beautiful. Am i cut out for this? I cant draw to save my life lol

Where can I get valid information about historical architecture? I want to learn about the influences in history that created the French early 1900's, Victorian, and Georgian architecture. Also, I need to know what the interiors of those houses tended to look like. Also, if you know the name of any type of historical Japanese architecture (like the paper wall one) please let me know because I would like to learn about that also.

How can I learn to become a designer, and which kind of designer fits me better? I have a PhD in Physics, but I love designing job, interior design, industrial design and even fashion design and architecture, but I do not know which of them to start and how?

what is the name of the course considering 3ds max in 3d modeling and animation? Does this course exist on its own? what is its name(any college all over the world)? OR this course exist when learning interior design,architecture, animation..etc..so i have to be learning one of such courses and learn 3d max then...??? I mean is there a 3dmax course,or i learn 3d max when learning special type of courses. i know that lots of courses include 3ds max to go on with...but is their a JUST 3ds max course,on its own..

learn how to sketch buildings and interiors? im an architecture student and i have been practicing sketching just by going to places and just sketching. i want to learn how to sketch better and learn some techniques. does anyone know any online tutorials or maybe a useful book that i could use. thank you very much.

I am finding it hard to choose what job i want in later life? i am currently studying graphic design at college, i don't find it that hard, but i no i am more creative that what i am showing, i just don't seem the have the enthusiasm to even try that much, i think this is because my heart is not in it, i think i chose graphic design because it was the only thing i got excepted in, because i dropped out of my other college of which i was learning architecture and interior design, i loved it, but the college was too far away., so i ended up joining late. i just think if i don't seem to like it now then i will definitely struggle with it in later life. i have decided to carry on with my second year, but have worries about what to study at uni, where can graphic design at college take you? do i have to stick with graphic things or can i go for some thing completely different? i really want to be successful but cannot seem to make up my mind, and just wondered if anybody else is going through the same thing? or if they are graphic designers who where exactly the same.

I want to learn about everything? I want to learn in depth about car engines, car design, sewing and architecture, i want to learn about agriculture and i want to design clothings. I want to learn about how to be a writer and how to be a interior designer. I want to learn about neurology and military history. I want to learn about cooking and the medical field. I want to learn about zoos and wildlife and how to swim. I want to learn about the air force and gas companies. I want to learn about the navy and off shore drilling. I want to learn how to tailor a suit. I want to learn about finances and law. I want to learn about currency and politics. I want to learn about EVERYTHING IN DEPTH BUT i cant because i cant be in college and collect student loans for years and years. I want to be everything and learn about everything but i cant because most people need alot of money to do that. I know i need to be realistic and get a job and raise a family. But it feels a bit restricting. Getting a job, doing 9 to 5 every day, coming home and cooking for the kids, helping them with their homework and dropping into bed exhausted. Being responsible for a mortgage and bills. Its a lot and it stifles my imagination. I have been there, with a job, going to work and trying to make ends meet and then it felt like i was no longer myself. My job and other responsibilities seemed to sap my imagination and creativity. I dont want to go back there. I have another chance. So tell me what do you guys suggest??? By the way i am 28 years old and a female and NO i am not high.

I am interested in interior design, but...? I don't have heaps of natural drawing talent and don't know color theory? I would like to start learning though. I am an architecture student for the reason that it's not as artistic as interior design...do you have to be talented at drawing and painting to be a successful interior designer? I know with architecture that is not necessarily the case...iti's more about your concept, and graphically communicating that well whether it's through hand drawing or computer..... Thanks, I'd appreciate any feedback or advice, as I am considering looking into interior after my architecture studies.

Book Autocad 2008 for Interior design and space planning? I bought the book by the Kirkpatricks and tried to learn on Autocad Architecture 2008 but interface was different and could not find features that was discussed in the book. Which Autocad should I use with this book? Thank you for the answer. I bought the book from Amazon.com. It is quite expensive :(

i'm confused about my career choice, i need advice plz? i'm going to study architecture this fall but i'm planning doing a summer course in fashion design in Paris next summer and the summer after that i'm planning to do a summer course in interior design in Milan/Paris/London am i contradictory? (i LUV fashion, but my parent doesn't want me to do that, architecture is the second thing i luv but i though that it will be good to learn interior design so that not only the exterior gave you a feeling of beauty but when you enter the house, you will also feel it)

A Turkish university with English as mode of instruction for studying Built environment related subject? I am an international student looking a for a Turkish university with English as mode of instruction for learning subjects in the field of Built environment like Interior Architecture design and Architecture and design related subjects. PLEASE help with good optionsof universities

College Grad running a new business? Oh Brother? I intern part time at a architecture and interior design firm in their marketing/public realtions department. I am in school for advertising and I have 2 semesters to go (May 06). I have a small gourmet baking business that I started a few months back and business is starting to pick up. Im starting to look at some building in an area I would like to focus on in the city. I feel the city I live in is lacking a full service gourmet bakery that provides a variety of different desserts that are rich, natural contents and somewhat expensive to produce and sell. I considered getting a job in my field after school, (with my experience i could go to any construction,architecture,plan... firm)but there is no way i would be able to do that full time and bake on the side. I considered volunteering at a real estate office for my next internship to learn about this business and investments so i could do that and support myself during the new business processs after i graduate. What to do? Help?

High School Junior (11th Grader) interested in Architecture ?!? Well im currently going into my junior year and im taking geometry during the summer because i didnt pass algebra 1 my freshmen year and so i had to retake it my sophmore year and now i chose to take geometry during the summer to be in Algebra 2 this upcoming school year. Well im actually wanting to major in Architecture or Interior Design and ive checked out some Colleges/ Universities but i wasnt really sure which one i could really count on learning ( actually learning) and not just being in debt for the rest of my life for a really low educated College/ Universities. I just wanted some feedback on what school are great but non-expensive. I am also wondering about any activities or any club that might look good in my college transcript, and how to sign up for those. Someone also mentioned about Schools asking for Portfolios, what do i need to have in those portoflios ? And what can i do extra to make me look good and make me look like i am really interested in Architecture or Int.Designing? Please Help. I want o make the right choices and make my colleges look at me and say "Wow this person is actually interested in our University/ College". Please can you answer all questions i asked because i really want to know these answers. Thank You Very Much. Also i currently have the most a 2.8 GPA and ive never actually had a 3.0 Gpa or higher :/. I hated algebra 1 that's was a reason why i didn't pass in my freshmen year but Geometry i love and understand more thoroughly.

Is this true behind interior design? I just learned that the rumor in my country that interior designs are only for girls and gays. I don't see it why it is feminine. Is this true and why is it that so? My male cousin is greatly interested in it but he's scared to take it in college (he's graduating this year with excellence in art) because he will be laughed at coz' "It's for girls and gays" thing. He's straight, mind you, and he has an awesome girlfriend. I'm taking architecture (ok for men) and I tried to move him to architecture but his best interest is in interior design. He said that he hated architecture because it has to do with physics stuff. Please help him!

unique present for a friend who will learn ma? unique present for an architect? My best friend is going to study this year for ma in architecture and he will write his first book. His recent presents were: His mom bought him a lot of different books, architecture and interior design. His father bought him a flight ticket to see one of his old friends in Germany. His friend gave him a unique pencil. His grandpa gave him his old pen(extremely rare). Last year I gave him a special toy that he loved to play with as a child. The problem is that I cant think of something he might want but not need. oh and one thing, he does not like any video games or sports. He does not drink alcohol

I need help finding a college? I was hoping to be able to get a double major and double minor. I want to major in Pre-medicine and Foreign Language. I want to minor in Architecture and Interior Design. And by Foreign Language major, i don't mean i want to major in a specific language. I want to learn several languages, but I haven't found any degrees where i can just learn a bunch of different languages for 1 degree. Any ideas for school that might offer some of these majors/minors things? thanks!

What types of jobs are available for foreigners who DO speak Japanese? I'm adding this to Vickey's question below. If you're a foreigner who IS fluent at Japanese and willing to learn technical terms in Japanese, then are some of the following professions open to you? 1. Doctor (after a few more years studying Japanese terminology and other stuff for the Japanese medical licence, of course) 2. Laboratory-based researcher 3. University lecturer (there are lots of foreign lecturers here in England, many of whom speak English worse than I speak Japanese) 4. Architect 5. Sales manager 6. Interior designer 7. Public accountant etc. etc. In other words, all those jobs that: - Are classified as "professional", - Require at least a Master's degree (e.g. MBA) or professonal degree (e.g. for Medicine or Architecture) - Pay well and require lots of thinking. These sorts of professions. Are they open to foreigners skilled in Japanese, like they are open in the UK to highly-educated foreigners who speak English? Or, how about engineer or technician in one of the giants like Hitachi, Panasonic, and Mitsubishi Denki? Haha... I could get first grade ++ on the Kanji proficiency test if I try hard. Hey, I'm Chinese, I use more kanji than you *wink wink* (But yeah, we use some different ones, so that's why I'll have to study ^_~)

architecture design major for college good idea and a bit confused bout the different designs in architecture? i'm going to syracuse university in sept this year. and was wondering if i should go for architecture, because i always like to design houses, both inside and out. including the garden even. so i was wondering if architectural design is something i should get into, i learned a bit about how to make blue prints and model homes in high school. but not much. but from what i know of architectural design, i like it. and my parents also agree. but there are many different categories of architecture design like interior design and exterior design and what not, i'm a bit confused. so if anyone can help me, i'll really appreciated it. thanks alot

interior design course? Hi! I'm an italian girl and I'm just finishing to study architecture (here in Italy). I would like to take a course of interior design in England, Ireland, USA (however, a country in which I can learn english too). The problems are: 1. I would like to take a "short course" (like 6 months or something like that), not a real diploma. 2. I know that English's and USA's university cost a lot. Maybe can u help me??? Please I really need a help, Manu

How long would it take me to learn V-ray with sketchup pro? I am an architecture student just starting out in the realm of software. I am working with sketchup pro now, and was wondering how compatible v-ray is with it? And how long does it take to learn, and ultimately render good work? If I purchased v-ray how does it work together with sketchup pro?- i.e. importing/exporting or it works within the frames? any more advice or knowledge you could tell me about these programs would be much appreciated! my goal is through some combination of software( wheather or not it is vray or sketchup or not), I can come up with realistic architectural interior/exterior models.

Any advice for a 3d software? I would like to use the software(s) for interior architecture.In the first place I would bring my plans "alive" in 3d and then would need to render the 3d. I need something straightforward and easy to use and learn. Thanks guys...

(Re-posted) Is this personal statement okay..? please read.? My first memory of enjoying art and design was from a young age, as I had won an art box set for Best Sketchbook, in year 2003. Also achieving first place in a Rangoli competition, I feel my drawing and designing skills have grown from this. I have always been interested in making and creating new things by using scrap materials, different mediums, textures and colours. Over the years, I have become more independent with my work and thoughts, which I gained throughout my A-levels. I have wanted to pursue a career in interior architecture for a while now and am eager to express and explore it through university. The possible chance to shape, life style and surroundings, is incredible. Interior architect being a unique subject; it fascinated me that the environment we live in is enjoyed by people on an everyday-basis. I recently took on some voluntary work experience, which amongst other features involved an element of interior work. This encouraged me to be creative and do first-hand decision making for layouts, themes and furnishings, and being responsive to their needs. Currently doing a foundation diploma, I have gained more independence with my work and ideas, as well as broadening my mind about the use of materials by being more experimental. Slowly beginning to push the creativity side of me, it has expanded the way my mind works and thinks, in terms of analysing and reflecting on my own creations. Interior architecture is not only having a skill but also a combination of creativity and imagination, which I think many designers have such as Rachel Ashwell that I aspire to be like. Whilst being in America this summer, I had come across Mint Museum of Art situated in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was filled with a range of art from ancient, contemporary to decorative textile and sculptures. The artwork was from broad variety of cultures, and I personally had enjoyed the insights of ethnicity, which was portrayed through the work. Recently visiting an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, I found the sketches and insight of architectural work done by Sir Nickolas Grimshaw, very interesting. I admire the thought process and amount of detail included in his developments, which for me shows the connection between problem solving and originality. Also visiting Anish Kapoor’s gallery in London, I was amazed at the artwork, because it was so neat and expressive. I find when observing the sculptures, it makes the mind work in a different way due to it being surreal and attractive. I want to study interior architecture because, I am intrigued by the opportunity to explore and learn, which can allow me to be expressive and development my strengths. I feel enthusiastic about designing and making, so being a hardworking person, I am open to challenges. I believe overcoming challenges can only further improve minds, and increase the ability to expand our thinking. Therefore I am eager about the prospect of working with others, to see how their interpretations and aspirations vary from my own; as well as gain an insight and inspiration from contrasting works.

Is this personal statement ok? please read...? My first memory of enjoying art and design from a young age, was winning an art box set for Best Sketchbook, in year 2003. Also achieving first place in a Rangoli competition, I feel my drawing and designing skills have grown from this. I have always been interested in making and creating new things by using scrap materials, different mediums, textures and colours. I have wanted to pursue a career in interior architecture for a while now and am eager to express and explore it through university. The possible chance to shape, life style and surroundings, is incredible. Interior architect being a unique subject; it fascinated me that the environment we live in is enjoyed by people on an everyday-basis. I recently took on some voluntary work experience, which amongst other features involved an element of interior work. This encouraged me to be creative and do first-hand decision making for layouts, themes and furnishings, and being responsive to their needs. (who I would work for). Currently doing a foundation diploma, I have gained more independence with my work and ideas, as well as broadening my mind about the use of materials by being more experimental. Slowly beginning to push the creativity side of me, it has expanded the way my mind works and thinks, in terms of analysing and reflecting on my own creations. Interior architecture is not only having a skill but also a combination of creativity and imagination, which I think many designers have such as Rachel Ashwell, and I aspire to be like them. Recently visiting an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, I found the sketches and insight of architectural work done by Sir Nickolas Grimshaw, very interesting. I admire the thought process and amount of detail included in his developments, which for me shows the connection between problem solving and originality. Also visiting Anish Kapoor’s gallery in London, I was amazed at the artwork, because it was so neat and expressive. I find when observing the sculptures, it makes the mind work in a different way due to it being surreal and attractive. I want to study interior architecture because, I am intrigued by the opportunity to explore and learn, which can allow me to be expressive and development my strengths. I feel enthusiastic about designing and making, so being a hardworking person, I am open to challenges. Therefore I am eager about the prospect of working with others, to see how their interpretations and aspirations vary from my own; as well as gain an insight and inspiration from contrasting works. Btw this is just my 1st draft...it still needs a bit of adjusting

Best 3D software? I want Architecture, Interior Design and Landscaping in 3D rendering and animation, want sharp clean image, which is best and easier to learn? Maya or Solidwork or???

risd or pratt institute? what school would you choose? i'm taking interior designing/interior architecture andi don't know where i should take it, if i should take it at pratt or at rhode island school of design? i like pratt institute because of the location and because they teach what i'm expecting to learn while at risd, i heard that it's one of the most prestigious art school in america and the quality of education is very good, only thing i worry about is that what i see from their portfolios aren't really the structures that i want to see because they seem a bit weird from pratt institute's

Do you own a Rubik's cube? Rubik and the Cube - Rubik's Cube The history of Rubik's Cube and inventor Erno Rubik. By Mary Bellis, About.com Guide .See More About:rubik's cubepuzzletoy Rubik Cube Cube 4X4 Cube Cubic cm Solve Cube There is only 1 correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones for Rubik's Cube. God's algorithm is the answer that solves the puzzle in the least number of moves. One eighth of the world's population has laid hands on 'The Cube', the most popular puzzle in history and the colorful brainchild of Erno Rubik. Enter Erno Rubik Erno Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. His mother was a poet, his father an aircraft engineer who started a company to build gliders. Rubik studied sculpture in college, but after graduating, he went back to learn architecture at a small college called the Academy of Applied Arts and Design. He remained there after his studies to teach interior design. The Cube Rubik's initial attraction to inventing the Cube was not in producing the best selling toy puzzle in history. The structural design problem interested Rubik; he asked, "How could the blocks move independently without falling apart?" In Rubik's Cube, twenty-six individual little cubes or cubies make up the big Cube. Each layer of nine cubies can twist and the layers can overlap. Any three squares in a row, except diagonally, can join a new layer. Rubik's initial attempt to use elastic bands failed, his solution was to have the blocks hold themselves together by their shape. Rubik hand carved and assembled the little cubies together. He marked each side of the big Cube with adhesive paper of a different color, and started twisting. An Inventor Dreams "It was wonderful, to see how, after only a few turns, the colors became mixed, apparently in random fashion. It was tremendously satisfying to watch this color parade. Like after a nice walk when you have seen many lovely sights you decide to go home, after a while I decided it was time to go home, let us put the cubes back in order. And it was at that moment that I came face to face with the Big Challenge: What is the way home?" - Erno Rubik That was how the Cube as a puzzle, was invented in the spring of 1974, when the twenty-nine year old Rubik discovered it was not so easy to realign the colors to match on all six sides. He was not sure he would ever be able to return his invention to its original position. He theorized that by randomly twisting the Cube he would never be able to fix it in a lifetime, which later turns out to be more than correct. He began working out a solution, starting with aligning the eight corner cubies. He discovered certain sequences of moves for rearranging just a few cubies at a time. Within a month, he had the puzzle solved and an amazing journey lay ahead.. First Patent Rubik applied for his Hungarian patent in January 1975 and left his invention with a small toy making cooperative in Budapest. The patent approval finally came in early 1977 and the first Cubes appeared at the end of 1977. By this time, Erno Rubik was married. Two other people applied for similar patents at about the same time as Rubik. Terutoshi Ishige applied a year after Rubik, for a Japanese patent on a very similar cube. An American, Larry Nichols, patented a cube before Rubik, held together with magnets. Nichols' toy was rejected by all toy companies, including the Ideal Toy Corporation, which later bought the rights to Rubik's Cube Rubik and the Cube - Rubik's Cube The history of Rubik's Cube and inventor Erno Rubik. By Mary Bellis, About.com Guide . Rubik Cube Cube 4X4 Cube Cubic cm Solve Cube There is only 1 correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones for Rubik's Cube. God's algorithm is the answer that solves the puzzle in the least number of moves. One eighth of the world's population has laid hands on 'The Cube', the most popular puzzle in history and the colorful brainchild of Erno Rubik. Enter Erno Rubik Erno Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary during World War II. His mother was a poet, his father an aircraft engineer who started a company to build gliders. Rubik studied sculpture in college, but after graduating, he went back to learn architecture at a small college called the Academy of Applied Arts and Design. He remained there after his studies to teach interior design. The Cube Rubik's initial attraction to inventing the Cube was not in producing the best selling toy puzzle in history. The structural design problem interested Rubik; he asked, "How could the blocks move independently without falling apart?" In Rubik's Cube, twenty-six individual little cubes or cubies make up the big Cube. Each layer of nine cubies can twist and the layers can overlap. Any three squares in a row, except diagonally, can join a new layer. Rubik's initial attempt to use elastic

new career in photography????? Hey I have just finished a 3 year degree course in interior architecture which I love but I think I would prefer to get involved in photography. I have no experience in it at all just taking pictures of friends and family. What I would like to know is: 1. Is there a good market out there for photography as a career? Especially the way the country is now..... 2. Do I have to go back to college to get a career in photography.(as I would prefer not to as I have been in college for 4 years now) 3. Will photographers take me on as an assistant with no experience or qualifications? 4. I am very interested in Photoshop, could i just go on a short course to learn it? 5. I live in the West of Ireland and I would prefer not to travel to Dublin or abroad on courses or work experience..... Even though I do know this is where I would gain the best experience. So does anyone know if the West have any opportunities for me? 6. And finally I have been looking for jobs in this area and I found jobs with pixifoto, they train you up and then you go around the country as a mobile photographer. Or I could go on a cruise and work as a photographer there. Is this a good idea or should I go to a professional photographers studio and get experience there? I am sure I have lots more questions to ask I just can’t think of them now!! Any more information that you have on this topic will be great to know..... THANKS.

Should i major in architecture? I am a bit weak in math, and I believe that it is not lack in skills but it is lack of practice. I understand that math is not memorizing, but math is based on practice. I consider myself weak in math because i tend to be careless about the subject. When an upcoming test is coming, I leave studying until the night before the test, knowing that i don't know where we are in the subject. It is not that i hate the subject, but i treat it like the rest of the subjects in school. I am a junior, and next year a senior. I've been looking for a major that suits me. Law is in my consideration, where it is based on understanding law and memorization. Business and management, im taking a diploma course in school just in case. I like the subject, i understand it and my grade is 80%(85% equivelant) considering it's an IB course. Architecture. I love designing. I love graphic and 3D designing. I know that it is somehow related to interior designing. I discovered that i liked the subject through Microsoft Visio, where we learned how to use the program in Computer class. As a final assesment, we were assigned a project where a customer would seek for us as architectures and want us to build them a house based on their requirment. I loved the project and my design was picked by the teacher so that i would make a model of it, and to be exhibited in the school lobby. As a requirment of this course or major, i need mathematical skills and some science courses. I am willing to focus more on math and science courses. If i am willing to take this major, i am willing to focus more on it so that i would be qualified. So anyone tell me what you think i should do, or major in. I need after i graduate from school to take some courses, as next year would not be enough for me to take 3 science courses and 2 math courses, it would be alot of pressure in one year. So again any help would be appreciated. Thanks=)

I m an interior designer & will like to work in Spain...? Hi I am from Singapore. Will I be able to get an interior designer job & work in Spain; any chance to work in an architecture or int design firm? My Spanish is more like a beginner cos just started learning. I want to live in Spain to enjoy being a real designer which I dont get to in Singapore as no one appreciates design here & also to perfect spanish language too. Where would the best place (city/area) to look for such interior job or any advise how I can go about looking for it? Is it more difficult for Singaporean to find work in Spain or get a visa? I will appreciate for any help or advises you can offer.Thanx a million...

A few ( many ) questions about RISD ( Rhode Island School of Design )? I am thirteen years old and since I was ten (eleven?) I had become suddenly interested in Interior Designing and Architecture. I had learned about RISD and I was like OhMyGoshIHaveToGoThere! It was like the perfect college for me! It has Architecture and Interior Designing classes and It's in Rhode Island Where I go every summer since I was born ( I am actually here right now ) and It's even in Providence right near Newport and everything. So I would like these questions answered: 1. What is the tuition? 2. What subjects do you need to be best at ( besides Art ha ha) 3. What kind of special scholarships would they like? 4. Is there anything you'd suggest for me to do that might help me be suggested or just accepted into the college? I am just going into eighth grade so I don't know if anything i do know would have any effect on my college application. ive always had good grades- always A's and B's. Thanks =)

What websites would you recommend me to find online people I can practice my German with ? I am an Interior Architecture student at the German Jordanian Uni. OBVIOUSLY learning German in my university is A MUST. I have been learning it for 2 years now, and this semester I am going to finish my last German course. However, I don't think I am capable yet of speaking proper German, due to the lack of practice. So I thought of practicing my German online with people who are welling to help and exchange cultures, ideas, knowledge and interests. Unfortunately I don't know where to find such connections, so any idea? thanx

Need advice deciding on my major? I am a freshmen in college and I need help deciding on a major. The majors that I am interested in are somewhat different from each other, being: Engineering Technology, Graphic Design, Architecture, Interior Design, Advertisement/Marketing. My vision is to be creative in whatever I choose to do, while also having the feeling of making a difference. I have past experience in graphic design just doing it in my free time, but I stopped a few years ago. I am also talented at drawing and have always like creating or designing something. I also like being active. I am trying to learn about the majors that interest me but my fear is deciding on something that I will not be happy with and being stuck with it. All advice is apreciated, especially if anyone has experience with the majors or situation I am in. Thanks

College, IB and NHS questions? Please help? So I am soon to be junior =] On thursday I was accepted to NHS(national honors society) and I'm also in IB. I'm really scared for the next year because it's supposed to get a lot harder plus I have to get my 150hours, which I wanted to do this summer, but apparently they won't let me. I'm really scared that I won't get the IB diploma and that I will be a failure. You see I moved to american almost 5 years ago, and my EPAS scores are really low (mostly because I have taken them when I still had problems with english). Here are my scores (from 8th grade up to 10th grade) English: 8th grade Explore:15 9th grade Explore:15 9th gr. practice plan:14 10th gr. sept. plan:14 10th gr. feb practice act: 17 Math: 8th grade Explore:17 9th grade Explore:18 9th gr. practice plan:18 10th gr. sept. plan:22 10th gr. feb practice act: 18 Reading: 8th grade Explore:18 9th grade Explore:15 9th gr. practice plan:18 10th gr. sept. plan:16 10th gr. feb practice act: 18 Science: 8th grade Explore:17 9th grade Explore:17 9th gr. practice plan:18 10th gr. sept. plan:20 10th gr. feb practice act: 18 Composite: 8th grade Explore:17 9th grade Explore:16 9th gr. practice plan:17 10th gr. sept. plan:19 10th gr. feb practice act: 18 I'm really bad at those test because it takes me forever to understand a question, and I always run out of time and just bubble in random answers(that's what I did for my Ap History test :''''[ )I'm really jealous for my friend who has all 20 and up scores. I want to be as good as others but I just don't see to take in knowledge as easily as others. It's really frustrating, because I'm the only one in my family that managed to learn english almost perfectly ( I even ended up without a harsh accent). Question 1: How should I improve my testing scores without making studying so boring? Also on monday I'm going to have my first NHS meeting, they are going to be choosing the new president, vice president etc., I remember during the ceremony the leading people of the NHS, got medals. So I was thinking, if I would be qualified, and is it worth it? Question 2: Please explain the jobs of , president , vice president, treasury/secretary and the historian? Question 3: If I were to take one of the leading positions in the previous question, and received the medal, would it pay off?is it worth to become one of the leading people of NHS ? Question 4: What really gets you the IB diploma? The 150 hours? or passing grades? My college plan: Getting a schloar ship for 2 years in a really good university/college (thinking about Chicago university) and then go to study over seas for two years. I want to study architecture, interior design and archeology. The problem is that I'm really weak in math and history =/.So how do I improve ? SORRY for so many questions but I'm desperate, I really want to succeed, I hate failure (although I fail almost everything I attempt at) I just really want to make my parents proud :).

Relationship money problems.....am I being unreasonable? My boyfriend of nearly 3 years and I are from very different financial backgrounds. My family were not hugely wealthy or anything but they were quite a bit wealthier than his, and because my parents worked in the Middle East I had to be sent to boarding school in my teens. My bf's family have always only just afforded to live, with no room for any luxuries. (Please note that I only have positive opinions of them because of this; it has made them very humble and down-to-earth people). However, in recent years my father has become extremely successful, and (perhaps trying to make up for his poor parenting and the years of depression he caused my mother, my sister and I) likes to give me generous amounts of money from time to time (nb. I never ask for this, it's just given). My bf is not very comfortable with this as I didn't earn it. Now for the problems............my bf and I are about to buy our first apartment together under the mentality that every expense is to be split 50/50 between us (his idea, which I respect). Neither of us have much furniture to our names, so we will need a lot of stuff for the new place. I really want to just go to IKEA and buy new, clean (but cheap) stuff, within a budget of course - and if he can't afford it I am so happy to buy it for us with the money my dad gave me (and further, if he wanted to keep it all 50/50 he could pay an extra bill of ours sometime in the future when he can afford it). My bf, however, is happy to take old, decrepit stuff that his family doesn't want. I can't stand the thought of having his grandma/aunt's old, worn-out furniture, towels (gross!), cutlery, a blender that must be from 1979....etc. Why? I guess there are a few reasons....1) I'm an artistic, creative person; I love fashion, art, interior design, architecture etc, and the old furniture in question is kind of hideous to say the least. This is not a choice, it's completely innate. I can't change who I am. 2) My mother has an extreme case of OCD when it come to cleanliness, and it has definitely rubbed off on me somewhat.....the thought of having to use someone else's stuff, let alone 20/30-year-old stuff, really freaks me out. We've had a few arguments over these differing opinions and he keeps saying I need to learn to compromise. I think I am compromising by having gone from place to place trying to find the absolute cheapest stuff I can (and kind of also by the fact that I'm having to deal with and get over him having cheated on me last year with someone at his work and then leaving me for her......AND now he still works at the same place, on th same floor as her. He got away with that one pretty damn easily I would say, I tried to be reasonable to him and forgive him. That's not easy.). I completely respect how sensible he is with money, but this is our home and I want to make it ours. I only want to get cheap stuff for it instead of having all random old, mismatching, grotty furniture that I think would kind of depress me a bit. Do you think I'm being unreasonable? (I know some of you will think I sound like a spoilt brat, it's not exactly a 'famine in africa' kind of problem, I realise that). Thank you to everyone who has answered so far, I appreciate and take on board all the comments (even the guy who thinks I'm not compromising, I need all these different points of view! ;-) ). Also, I guess I didn't make it clear how we feel about each other - it's love, not like. Completely and utterly in love. We tell each other all the time, and more importantly, I can see it in the things he does for me (apart from that blip in our past, obviously). As for that blip, I maybe should also explain that he has had a lot of issues regarding women, largely I imagine because is mother died when he was young, and his father subsequently dated a new woman just about every month! I realise mentioning the cheating may have seemed somewhat unrelated to this question, but as someone picked up, it is such a deep-rooted issue for me that it really relates to every part of my life with him. I am honestly working on trusting again. And I can see how repentful and sick with himself he feels for wha * for what he did. Isis - I also did a law degree and the LPC, so I am entirely aware of the legal ownership/cohabiting issues, but thank you very much for your contribution. :-) Sappe - I do work, although I don't earn as much as him.

what's the major about constructing building or bridge? and design building.? I don't mean Interior Design or Landscape Design. I love design, drawing and I wonder how to constructing a building? So I want to learn it in UC. But I don't know which major it should be. Architecture? Architecture Engineering? Structual Engineering, or Civil Engineering? or Anything else?

Suggestions for people who want to study/learn about everything? I'm fascinated with practically every field of study, particularly humanities-based subjects: I spent my secondary school years taking advanced courses in English Literature, Foreign Languages (Mandarin Chinese and Japanese), Biology as well as Classical Music (history and performance). My school's gifted education programme also allowed me to discover the joy of philosophy through four years of Philosophy and Theory Of Knowledge classes. During that time, I also joined and won a number of creative writing competitions. I've since graduated and entered college, where I am currently studying Visual Communication and Graphic Design for the second (of three) year. I've since discovered a keen interest in marketing, advertising and copywriting. Additionally, the curriculum includes a Design Theory module and another on Art History and Philosophy, both of which I am very much in love with. However, the classes for both subjects are limited to only two hours a week each, leaving me feeling only almost satisfied. The dean of design has also very graciously given me permission to attend his Interior Architecture lectures between my own classes, where I am allowed to listen in and do the assignments. Having given my educational background, I would like to ask if anyone has any advice for someone who is interested in, well, everything? Ideally, I'd love to study not only the subjects mentioned above, but also Geography, Psychology, English and Linguistics in depth. While I am satisfied with focusing on learning about one subject at a time, before long I always feel like I want to pick up on an additional one and/or having my lessons progress at a faster and more intense rate. I'm honestly lost as to what to do next in life as I feel like I want to do so much but I don't know where to start. What should I do? Where should I go? What University or career should I aim for? A sincere answer will be much appreciated! ?: It's not quite the same though, is it? I mean, I do love reading things up online but it's miles more satisfying to be in an environment filled with learning and amazing lecturers who can teach you so much. Besides, many of the aforementioned topics are humanities, which are by nature highly subjective so if I am to simply read up on them, I run the risk of developing a very insular and uni-dimensional perspective. Lorraine Cafarella: Thanks for the suggestions! I've thought about this before too; I suppose my goal isn't just learning in order to gain skills that I can put to use, but the learning process itself is already very enjoyable for me. Career-wise though, I'm hoping to not just be any academic (writing theses, getting Ph.D's for the sake of it) but maybe to reform the educational system (introduce philosophy to everyone, not just some skewed gifted education system)? Maybe teach? Or be a copywriter/creative director! Ultimately, I guess I'm str

What scriptural text can I associate with the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City? Some information regarding the Sistine Chapel: The Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It’s famous for its architecture. The interior is frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, and Raphael with the different events from the Bibles. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling, which, today, is widely believed to be Michelangelo's crowning achievement. A team of painters also created a series of frescoed panels depicting the life of Moses and the life of Christ, including the Temptation. The Sistine Chapel took its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored the old Cappella Magna between 1477 and 1480. On August 15, 1483, Sixtus IV consecrated the first mass in honor of Our Lady of the Assumption. Since the time of Sixtus IV, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the ceremony by which a new Pope is selected. Any scriptural text that I can relate with the importance of anamnesis, recalling the past. From what I understand, the paintings help us recall of Jesus' life and the other important characters in the Bible. Because of this, we are able to learn from what happened to them. clarification: I meant what we can learn from their experiences. thanks!

interior design course? Hi! I'm an italian girl and I'm just finishing to study architecture (here in Italy). I would like to take a course of interior design in England, Ireland, USA (however, a country in which I can learn english too). The problems are: 1. I would like to take a "short course" (like 6 months or something like that), not a real diploma. 2. I know that English's and USA's university cost a lot. Maybe can u help me??? Please I really need a help, Manu

Placements after civil engineering? I am a student of Civil Engineering (2nd year) from India( Osmania University). Things would have been really easy only if they went right. But it dint. I have a gap of 3yrs and I would finish in the year 2011. Now that I am only in 2nd year, which means 2more years to go,i.e. 4 semesters altogether, I would now go with some better planning so that even before i finish my graduation I want to be placed in the best company possible earning quite good amount. It need not necessarily be in my own field, i would dare to jump into IT sector as well if I am being paid good. But my passions are architecture and interior designing. I dream about setting up my own studio! But practically to get the finances or whatever, i would want to work and not depend on any. So considering all these I want to know what and how should I proceed further, for example, with percentages i require to score in my graduation so that i can compensate the gap I have or additional software programmes I need to learn to make myself a better choice for the recruiters. Let me also mention that I am a person with impressive personality and confidence and attitude. So plz suggest me friends!!!!

Dance as a career? Please help? I really enjoy ballroom and latin dancing. I've been dancing for a year now and I'm currently 14. I really wanted to become a fashion designer before, but realised I didn't want to get caught up in the competitiveness of the business. I also wanted to become a photographer but they don't make that much money. I'm quite a creative person and I'm not interested in any other jobs in the same category like interior designing or architecture. Just not my thing. Then I thought about becoming a professional dancer. I live in London, does anyone know any good collegesthat rank highly in the league tables that specialise in dance? Also, do people that study dance also learn about something academic of their choice? Because I'd like to know that if I don't progress in dance, I have a back up career as well. I know I'm still young but I'd just like to open up my options for the future! Sorry this is so long, thank you so so so much. Have a nice day.

Dance as a career? Please help? I really enjoy ballroom and latin dancing. I've been dancing for a year now and I'm currently 14. I really wanted to become a fashion designer before, but realised I didn't want to get caught up in the competitiveness of the business. I also wanted to become a photographer but they don't make that much money. I'm quite a creative person and I'm not interested in any other jobs in the same category like interior designing or architecture. Just not my thing. Then I thought about becoming a professional dancer. I live in London, does anyone know any good collegesthat rank highly in the league tables that specialise in dance? Also, do people that study dance also learn about something academic of their choice? Because I'd like to know that if I don't progress in dance, I have a back up career as well. I know I'm still young but I'd just like to open up my options for the future! Sorry this is so long, thank you so so so much. Have a nice day.

Washington University in St. Louis or Johns Hopkins? I am a senior in high school and have come down to the stage of deciding which school to attend for the next four years. While I have been waitlisted to a few schools, on a practical level, my choice is between Washington University in St. Louis and Johns Hopkins. I haven't visited either school yet, but I have heard great things about each. I want to go into archaeology and go on to get a PhD in that field. However, I would like to focus more on medieval european archaeology, and from the research I have done, it seems that Wash U has more for that than Hopkins, a lot more. However I am not sure. I also prefer a nice setting, nice architecture, interiors, good faculty relationships, numerous resources, opportunities, and many other things I can't think of. I am not crazy for parties, but I am not antisocial. I do not intend to join a frat, but I would like to join some clubs (I am big on the environment, all different types of music, travel, vegan). Overall, I love to learn, and want a school that will allow me to endure what I love to do, while not exploiting it to the point of misery. I really would like a school that has a good amount of humanities programs like I described, so that I can basically have a major in archaeology but focused in medieval europe. I want to be able to take a lot of interesting classes. I want to be able to learn as much as I can (get my money's worth!) Thanks for all of the help, I desperately need it since both are such great contenders.

Someone please check my essay? English is my second language. I need someone who enlgish is first language. please check my essay and correct it. I know this essay is look pretty bad but i don have enough time..... After I graduated high school, I decided to go University of Washington to achieve my goal. I applied architecture school. I always dream about being an architect since I was kid. I loved to draw and design something. I did not know why but it makes me clear that I really happy and it makes me smile. I was very into it and enjoy about it when I work on something that I really like. Whether you like it or not, I think most important fact is “Are you enjoy what you are doing now?” I love this quote “A genius can’t win one who does his best, a person who tried his best can’t win t he one who enjoys what he does.” My college life wasn’t good straight line. I lost somewhere and I did not focus on what I should do in school. I realized I lost my interest at architecture. Also, it was hard for me as well. I figured architecture wasn’t what I dreamed about. It wasn’t right picture for me. Subjects and materials of architecture that I learned from classes was not what I expected that I dreamed about. After I lost my appetite, I was totally out of control. I should study but I started to do something else other than what I supposed to do. I spent lots of time on playing computer games and hanging out with friends and drinks. Yeah, I was enjoying of college life but in wrong way. I wasted time and I lost my chances. This is really I regret about what I done in college. I did not use time wisely. Of course, my grade became low and low to hit the bottom. I couldn’t graduate from that school. I work at the architecture firm as CAD operator now. I have been working here almost 2 years now on. Before this job, I worked but I had something in my mind that this is not what I wanted for. Since I kept thinking about dissatisfaction of my job, I felt that I work for nothing. I had a chance to work at architecture firm that I really wanted to work. Its small company but I could learn much stuff that I desire long time ago. My new career changes my life. I changed more energetic person than before. I started to enjoy it and it makes me smile. When I work on this filed, I figure out that this is what I really want to do in future. That is including interior design as well. I always said that in my mind “Wow, this is really fun.” But I felt that I am lack of special knowledge for this job field. I felt that I need to be more educated before it’s too late. I think education is very important. I want to be an interior designer. I hope AI will help me out to achieve my goal. I was very slacker in previous college. It means I could be lost in school once again. However, I really regret what I done in previous college life. I was young and I did not know what to do at that time. But I learned something from my mistake. I set my ultimate goal now. I would more concentrate and focus on interior design classes for sure. This is what I desire for long long time ago and definitely I will really enjoy it. This is my last minute chance. I did one step back last time but this is chance to two steps forward.

Calling all experienced Confused Graduates! Help me decide my major! Please!? I am a junior at FIU and I have been changing my major alot because I am not sure what profession i want to enter. I am 21 years old, I have a talent for drawing, enjoy art, children(although I have not learned classroom management, I like to teach), I think id like teaching high school, I think Id enjoy solving peoples problems, & Id definitely like a job where I'm in charge, creativity is useful, and a business type setting. I want to be happy but I want to make at least 50K in the profession I choose. Here are my major changes in order. I changed each of them because I wasnt so sure I liked what the careers everyday routine entailed. 1.Sociology 2.Elem. Teacher 3.Juvenile Criminal Justice (for at-risk youth) 4.Forensics (This is where I was looking for something I could make $) 5.Elem. Teaching & now Im thinking of switching to either: 6. Interior Design (Architecture) (for the business and art)( i also wanted to get into real estate and flipping houses, once the economy is back) 7. Art History (to become an Art Curator, designing museum exhibitions and or working in or starting my own art gallery. Or fall back on teaching high school kids if the curator job doesnt work out) No one in school is helpful, especially not the advisors. I need help, I am very stressed out and feel very down that I do not know what I should major in, and I dont want to go through years of schooling to earn the same salary as my current CVS job. Please help me! I am also looking to pursue a masters degree, i dont know what yet. but it is defintely a must. things I dont like, much math and much medicine. the two things that make the most money. :/ i know. Thanks Susan, that makes alot of sense. I dont really have anyone to guide me as to how college, majors, and careers work together.

US IB Student interested in attending university in Japan? My graduating class is 2012--by then I will have acquired four years of Japanese. Initially, I was supposed to be placed in IB Japanese SL (because I was qualified for it this year; perhaps even HL) however the class size was too small at my high school and due to budget cuts I was forced to take regular Japanese and pick up French I & II in order to take an SL ab initio exam. As of now I'm a International Baccalaureate diploma candidate, and my GPA (only taking into account junior year) is somewhere between a 4.40 ~ 4.50. Cumulative for sophomore and freshman year is probably around 4.16~4.20, somewhere around there I believe. At the rate I'm going, I believe I will probably receive my diplomacy, and I'm in many active extracurriculars. In terms of my SAT I hope to score around a 2100. All this rigorous work has drained me of any enjoyment in learning--from the stupid TOK papers I'm forced to write to the HOA Internal assignment I'd love to burn. I want to study in Japan and enjoy it learning again; I'm aware of things like social stigma, difficulties getting a student visa, scholarships, etc. I am interested in interior architecture and industrial design but due to my weakness in math-inclined subjects, I find myself drawn to graphic design or something of the sort. To put it simply, I've been glancing at universities in Japan... mostly Sophia University, Ritsumeikan University and etc. I've also glanced briefly at Temple University, ICU, Keio University and Waseda University. I glossed over Tokyo University, because of my Japanese proficiency. In terms of testing, if I buckle down, I can probably learn 100~250 kanji that I've neglected in my studies (I should know more, around 350~450). Any advice for a student interested in going abroad, such as which Universities (with english based courses) are best for graphic design or architecture? Is a portfolio needed? Tuition doesn't seem so bad...but the cost of living I am wary of. I also plan on having a conference with my sensei (from Sapporo) and Career Center supervisor. I'd really like a urban life so I'd prefer schooling around the Tokyo area. PS. I'm still considering joining a home university than going to Japan by the CIEE program instead of attending 4 years in Japan. Not sure. Any advice would help, or descriptions of past experiences! I'm also trying to take account how the 2011 earthquake will affect my chances of entry and tuition (condolences to victims of the tragedy, my school is currently fundraising for relief). Thanks in advance.

Job Promotion / Transfer? I work for an architecture and interior design firm. I currently support these two departments, but would like to work with the interior designers. MY QUESTION IS: What is the best way to ask to change departments? I am taking a class in interior design. I would like to take what I've learned and apply it to a new position, perhaps as an Office Manager that orders all the supplies and creates the design boards for various projects. I am hoping to save our deisgners a considerable amount of time because I understand the amount of time it takes to order prep and assemble a design board.

Any advice? I'm writing my college application essay? Ok i'm 17 i'm applying at the Art Institute of California (Los Angeles Campus) and going into th Interior Design Program and this is the prompt they gave me: "What are your career goals, how do you expect your education at The Art Institute of California to help you in order to attain them, and in what ways will you participate and commit to your education in order to be successful?" I took some notes on what i'll write about if you care to read them: CAREER GOALS: to merge decorating with architecture to create beautiful and functional spaces to fashion attractive places that meet the clients desires and requirements OVERALL: to please the customer by producing exceptional work HOW TO REACH GOALS: the Art Institute can help me gain the skills necessary to succeed in this creative and technical field of art attending this facility of higher education will teach me the aspects of interior design including architectural drafting, textiles, colors, lighting, and computer applications OVERALL: to learn the trade of interior design HOW WILL YOU PARTICIPATE: by trying to the best of my abilities to learn the expertise that is crucial to reaching my career aspirations by being active in the school and joining clubs and tutoring in order to do my best possible OVERALL: doing my absolute best Any advice is greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

University tuition fees in UK. Please answer me. =[? So I'm doing BTEC Extended Diploma Art and Design and I'm on my first year, i was thinking of going to University after finishing this course which will be in 2012 and now that I've read that the risen tuition fees will take effect in 2012, I'm not so sure if I should go or not. I was thinking of going to study architecture or interior design, something in that. I don't have my parents support, my mum doesn't work has she has a baby and my stepfather is a waitor and I don't want his help as he has his own kids to support. So I'm totally on my own, I really want to do a degree and do not know if that will be possible. Do you think I can make that? I do not understand how do the loans work yet but will I have to pay them back after earning a certain salary per year? About accommodation and food etc? I want to get part time job while at Uni but do not know if that will be enough. I don't want to take any gap years, I'm already 19 and going to be 20 this month. I'm from Portugal and moved to the UK because of my parents that is why I had to start all over again, learning English etc, it took me 3 years to be where I'm now. Now That I'm about to go to University, I get punched in the face with the risen tuition fees. I know it is not in your interest guys but I've always worked so hard and started all over again and again and it is getting so heavy all this money matters. I know there are people like me or similar problems and can't believe of the fees going up. I speak Portuguese fluently, English fluently and learned French before but forgot most of it, and I do not want to go back to my home country because I would have to lose more years to study and go to university. But I need to know will I have any chance to go to University? thank you for taking your time to read this.

HEEEEEEELPPPPP NEED IT IN ACOUPLE OF HOURS? Help me filling my uni application!!!!!? heey everyone weired question in my application(applying for the american university of sharjah) what is written is: In your own handwriting write astatment in the space given below about your personal and educational background and your expectation from your university education. I WROTE: As previous high school student who has passion in creating new things.I can sum up every single thing i have learned in the past 12 years as an experince which have improved my mental abilities and helped me building asocial life I can be proud of. What Im expecting from my future university education that it will open new doors of experince for me which will help me achieving my personal and educational goals. so what do u guys thing is it okay? and while im writing it on the application there is'nt enough space because of my handwriting do you guys think it's okay form me to get abit out of the lines?? and do i have to leave asmall space about afive letters space at the begining the way we do when we write anessay??? 9 minutes ago - 4 days left to answer. Additional Details NOTE**** MY FIRST CHOICE IT INTERIOR DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE AND THE SECOND MIGHT BE FINANCE OR BIOLOGY SO IS THE INFORMATION AND ADVANTAGES GIVEN ARE APPROPRIATE FORM MY CHOSEN MAJOR?????((( WILL THEY THINK OF ME ACCORDING TO MY STATMENT AS APERONS WHO IS PERFECT FOR THE CHOOSEN MAJOR))))

What careers should I look into? Okay, so I like: oil painting drawing/ sketching photography water color painting working with little kids making things (sewing w/ a sewing machine, somewhat) recycling reading nature photography history (to a degree) designing things (not so much fashion, or architecture) computers (but im not a comp. geek) graphic designing interior design flowers animals origami (somewhat) being social (but im kinda shy sometimes) NOT: acting professional babysitter/ nanny fashion designing chef Professor (like at a school, aka teacher of older students) hospital nurse doctor surgeon anything blood and guts wrting math (I HATE math, even if it is an important skill to learn!!) training animals I know its a little long, but I was just curious. Please, no stupid/ rude comments, or swearing. I just hate that (oh, there's another thing I can add to my list! lol). Thanks!

Should I take a college calculus course in high school for the profession I want to go into? See more...? I'm enrolled in a tough college calculus class at my high school. I'm a bit concerned with it taking up too much time (the homework), the difficulty of it, and if I even need to learn this stuff at all for what I want to go into in college. I'm looking into majors including graphic design, school art teaching, interior design, film (behind the scenes work like editing, wiritng etc.) and architecture. I also have the option of taking a college statistics course, what would be the smartest thing to do?? Thanks in advance for an advice!

Can someone help me come up with a cool tattoo Idea? Well, I just turned 18, and I really wanted to get a tattoo. But not sure what to get it off, I liked the idea of a blue Phoenix as i have been reborn. I am very cute and I love to laugh, but i was/am overweight and I am losing it, and gaining muscle. So I wanted it to symbolize my rebirth, and I wanted it to be a bird, bc my parents are over baring and control every aspect of my life, but I have still managed to overcome them and have my own personality. I was also thinking something aztec/mayan like, since i have a mexican heritage. like a winged serpent. Here is some more info about me: I am 18 y/o male teen, 6’0”, 221 lbs, Blue-green eyes, and somewhat curly brown hair with natural highlights, growing it out a bit. Next year I will b going to college to major in Architecture I love to draw, make sculptures from clay and other materials, i enjoy fashion/interior/architectural design, dancing, cooking and gardening. I have to say my favorite is gardening, and I love orchids, and dancing, like reggaeton and hip-hop. I also want to learn Italian, and I love to travel. I can also speak fluent Spanish. I dress in a mixture of preppy clothes like A&F, and scene, but I am more on the preppy side. I am funny and I love to have fun, I have a nice smile, and when I am happy my face and eyes get a nice glow. I like the name Ángel, bc in Spanish it is a guy’s name and in English/Spanish it means an angel. My fav color is blue, then green, then brown. Thanx for the help. Ps: if you have pics of examples I would greatly appreciate it. and i was thinking of placing it on my front/hip, like flying towards my belly botton, but please location is also important. oh yeah and i want it in a place that cannot be seen when ur wearing a sleeveless hirt and shorts. so not on the legs/arms/neck. Thanx again

Need advice deciding on my major? I am a freshmen in college and I need help deciding on a major. The majors that I am interested in are somewhat different from each other, being: Engineering Technology, Graphic Design, Architecture, Interior Design, Advertisement/Marketing. My vision is to be creative in whatever I choose to do, while also having the feeling of making a difference. I have past experience in graphic design just doing it in my free time, but I stopped a few years ago. I am also talented at drawing and have always like creating or designing something. I also like being active. I am trying to learn about the majors that interest me but my fear is deciding on something that I will not be happy with and being stuck with it. All advice is apreciated, especially if anyone has experience with the majors or situation I am in. Thanks

Can someone help me come up with a cool user name? Well, I just turned 18, and I really want to create a biggercity account... And I want a cool/cute username for Biggercity/Yahoo. My previous emails were LunaXtar and SolXtar, i like them bc they were in English and Spanish. The X was supposed to b an S but the x looks more like a star. I am very cute and I love to laugh. Here is some basic info: I am 18, 6’0”, 221 lbs, Blue-green eyes, and somewhat curly brown hair with natural highlights. (100% gay) Next year I will b going to college to major in Architecture I love to draw, make sculptures from clay and other materials, i enjoy fashion/interior/architectural design, dancing, cooking and gardening. I have to say my favorite is gardening, and I love orchids, and dancing, like reggaeton and hip-hop. I also want to learn Italian, and I love to travel. I can also speak fluent Spanish. I am not masculine or feminine, I am in the middle. I dress in a mixture of preppy clothes like A&F, and scene, but I am more on the preppy side. I am funny and I love to have fun, I have a nice smile, and when I am happy my face and eyes get a nice glow. I like boi, thought of boitoy, but don’t like it bc it sounds sexual, and I like Ángel, bc in Spanish it is a guy’s name and in English it is an angel. My fav color is blue, then green, then brown. Thanx for the help.

What college major is better in the long run? Urban Studies (Social Ecology) OR International Studies (Social Sciences) My first goal was to be a designer, either interior or fashion but i also wanted to do business, specifically, internationally. Urban Studies is like architecture, but not really. You help plan cities and basically work for the government help organize a city's outlook. Whereas Intl Studies is based internationally and can lead to further study in business, economics or teaching. SO .. i like designing..not sure if 'city planning' would fit me..but i also want to explore business outside of the U.S. and learn about new cultures etc.~ What do you think would benefit me in the long run like salary wise and enjoyment wise? I'll be in the graduating class of 2013...I know economy is bad now, how about by then??

Majoring/Career Match-Making? Hi! I was wondering if anyone could give me some input as to what i should pursue as a career =S I know what type of work i like to do, and what type of worker i am.... but i cant seem to pinpoint something that will match me. Likes: Hands-on projects, busy-work, learning constantly, results that can be seen [i despise number crunching work; i dont *SEE* results, i just see numbers on end.], architecture, car interiors, organized work, plans Type of worker: Organized, concentrates on one thing until finished, accurate and thorough. Thanks, if i get any replies to this... lol.

Business & Employment help. Hi I am a highly creative individual and have massive ideas and suprise people with them. My imagination is very advanced and can easily think of ideas and ways to improve things. I like the gym and can push myself and have a great physic for my age. I love painting and drawing. I am learning photoshop and my passion in life is photography and picutes and thoughts created in pictures. I also have very polical views and like to do documentary Photography and am a bit shy just pointing and shooting. I like clothes and making them. I love the layout of a room and can figure out ways to do interior design naturally. I love buildings and architecture. I love travel and seeing how others live. I like listening to peoples problems and helping but cannot sort out my own. My biggest problem in life is choosing my career and am left doing nothing because of this but have numerous talents that have gone to waste. Does anyone see a pattern here which leads to a certain job or have any ideas where most of these subjects are used. Or maybe good advice on a job and what to keep as a hobby. Please halp as I am in a crisis.

Would you offer critique on my paper on design? This is the beginning of a paper for school, I am to describe what influenced me to pursue the career I am pursuing and since starting school if I am still confident that I chose the right career. This is a rough rough draft, just looking for some opinions so far (I feel like it has no rhythm as of now...) The beats of hammers on a piece of wood and the crack of a bat to a ball are two sounds that will always take me back to my childhood. My father was a sales representative for a lumber company by day, and the founder of a baseball organization by night. It was almost inevitable that I grow up with a passion for one of the two. The baseball fields never did much for me. Unless there was a wooded area nearby, there was not much to explore and no place to wander. Empty half built houses, on the other hand, were full of imaginary wonders. When I was very young, I would create worlds inside these houses and with each new house that my father was overseeing, there was a new adventure as well. As I got older, I became more curious about the structure itself. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know how it was being built, what was holding the roof up, how the staircase was installed. Fortunately, I had formed a relationship with some of the workers over the years, and a lot of them took the time to answer my questions and explain things to me. My inquisitiveness about the structure itself soon turned into wanting to know more about the interior. How would the family use this space? Why the architect designed specific rooms to be adjacent to certain other rooms and why some rooms were spaced further apart. When not at the construction sites, studying the blueprints my father would bring home with him became another favorite thing to do. I started becoming familiar with floor plans and eventually began trying to draw my own (though, with only graph paper and little knowledge of drafting, they were never to scale and only understood by me.) Now that I am school and learning the ins and outs of the design field, I am even more confident that I have chosen the right path. I struggled for a long time to choose one of my many passions to pursue as a career. I went back and forth for a very long time between Creative Writing, Photography, and Interior Design. I was very confused and put off returning to school for a long time because of my indecision. One day I realized, my poetry is always inspired by one of three things: architecture, humanity, and nature. My photography is also the same way, I do not find joy in posing people for portraits but leave me alone in a city for a day and I will return with a camera full of photos of people on the streets surrounded by beautiful architecture and natural wonders. Architecture, Humanity, and Nature. How could I possibly combine the three things that inspire me the most into one daily profession? Design is important to every aspect of our lives. A home’s functionality defines how the people in it live. By choosing sustainable products to use within the design, I can help protect our planet. Architecture, humanity, and nature are all closely interconnected and effect each other in intimate ways. As a designer, I can influence how they effect one another.

I am weak in math, what about this major? I am a bit weak in math, and I believe that it is not lack in skills but it is lack of practice. I understand that math is not memorizing, but math is based on practice. I consider myself weak in math because i tend to be careless about the subject. When an upcoming test is coming, I leave studying until the night before the test, knowing that i don't know where we are in the subject. It is not that i hate the subject, but i treat it like the rest of the subjects in school. I am a junior, and next year a senior. I've been looking for a major that suits me. Law is in my consideration, where it is based on understanding law and memorization. Business and management, im taking a diploma course in school just in case. I like the subject, i understand it and my grade is 80%(85% equivelant) considering it's an IB course. Architecture. I love designing. I love graphic and 3D designing. I know that it is somehow related to interior designing. I discovered that i liked the subject through Microsoft Visio, where we learned how to use the program in Computer class. As a final assesment, we were assigned a project where a customer would seek for us as architectures and want us to build them a house based on their requirment. I loved the project and my design was picked by the teacher so that i would make a model of it, and to be exhibited in the school lobby. As a requirment of this course or major, i need mathematical skills and some science courses. I am willing to focus more on math and science courses. If i am willing to take this major, i am willing to focus more on it so that i would be qualified. So anyone tell me what you think i should do, or major in. I need after i graduate from school to take some courses, as next year would not be enough for me to take 3 science courses and 2 math courses, it would be alot of pressure in one year. So again any help would be appreciated. Thanks=)

What jobs should an aspiring architect look for if he/she would like to further their knowledge in this field? I am an aspiring architect who is looking for ways to expand my knowledge in this field through work experience. I understand that obtaining internships involving drafting and design is a wonderful way to start, but what I would like to know is, are there any other types of jobs that are seemingly unrelated to this field, yet will provide a learning experience that can be used within this field? For example, a mentor of mine held a job in a well known department store dealing with the arrangements of how the floors should look in order to attract customers. This involved a keen sense of design and organization. In the long run, this has helped her to better understand the functionality of a floor plan as well as have a niche for interior decorating. With that said, I would like to know if there are other jobs that may be suggested that are seemingly unrelated to architecture, yet provide me with invaluable knowledge that will help me to see things from a different angle and still apply it to architecture. Hope this makes sense and I thank you in advance for your suggestions.

How many of you can't read this? The Unthinkable Thought "Jesus said, 'It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries.'" The Gospel of Thomas On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practised. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps. This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction. Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on 25 December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like lesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their saviour who, just like Tesus, had declared: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and to imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible. Some readers will find our conclusions shocking and others heretical, but for us they are merely the simplest and most obvious way of accounting for the evidence we have amassed. We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called 'the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.' It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the 'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism. But although this book makes extraordinary claims, it is not just entertaining fantasy or sensational speculation. It is firmly based upon the available historical sources and the latest scholarly research. Whilst we hope to have made it accessible to the general reader, we have also included copious notes giving sources, references and greater detail for those who wish to analyse our arguments more thoroughly. Although still radical and challenging today, many of the ideas we explore are actually far from new. As long ago as the Renaissance, mystics and scholars saw the origins of christianity in the ancient Egyptian religion. Visionary scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century also made com-paxable conjectures to our own. In recent decades, modern academics have repeatedly pointed towards the possibilities we consider. Yet few have dared to boldly state the obvious conclusions which we have drawn. Why? Because to do so is taboo. For 2,000 years the West has been dominated by the idea that Christianity is sacred and unique, whilst Paganism is primitive and the work of the Devil. To even consider that they could be parts of the same tradition has been simply unthinkable. Therefore, although the true origins of Christianity have been obvious all along, few have been able to see them, because to do so requires a radical break with the conditioning of our culture. Our contribution has been to dare to think the unthinkable and to present our conclusions in a popular book rather than some dry academic tome. This is certainly not the last word on this complex subject, but we hope it may be a significant call for a complete reappraisal of the origins of Christianity. THE PAGAN MYSTERIES In Greek tragedies the chorus reveals the fate of the protagonists before the play begins. Sometimes it is easier to understand the journey if one is already aware of the destination and the terrain to be covered. Before diving deeper into detail, therefore, we would like to retrace our process of discovery and so provide a brief overview of the book. We had shared an obsession with world mysticism all our lives which recently had led us to explore spirituality in the ancient world. Popular understanding inevtitably lags a long way behind the cutting edge of scholarly research and, like most people, we initially had an inaccurate and out-dated view of Paganism. We had been taught to imagine a primitive superstition which indulged in idol worship and bloody sacrifice, and dry philosophers wearing togas stumbling blindly towards what we today call 'science.' We were familiar with various Greek myths which showed the partisan and capricious nature of the Olympian gods and goddesses. All in all, Paganism seemed primitive and fundamentally alien. After many years of study, however, our understanding has been transformed. Pagan spirituality was actually the sophisticated product of a highly developed culture. The state religions, such as the Greek worship of the Olympian gods, were little more than outer pomp and ceremony. The real spirituality of the people expressed itself through the vibrant and mystical 'Mystery religions.' At first underground and heretical movements, these Mysteries spread and flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean, inspiring the greatest minds of the Pagan world, who regarded them as the very source of civilization. Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, a process which brought about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. The philosophers of the ancient world were the spiritual masters of the Inner Mysteries. They were mystics and miracle-workers, more comparable to Hindu gurus than dusty academics. The great Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example, is remembered today for his mathematical theorem, but few people picture him as he actually was a flamboyant sage who was believed to be able to miraculously still the winds and raise the dead. At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egyp he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name "Osiris-Dionysus" to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific Mystery tradition. From the fifth century BCE philosophers such as Xenophanes and Empedocles had ridiculed taking the stories of the gods and goddesses literally. They viewed them as allegories of human spiritual experience. The myths of Osiris-Dionysus should not be understood as just intriguing tales, therefore, but as a symbolic language which encodes the mystical teachings of the Inner Mysteries. Because of this, although the details were developed and adapted over time by different cultures, the myth of Osiris-Dionysus has remained essentially the same. The various myths of the different godmen of the Mysteries share what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell called 'the same anatomy', just as every human is physically unique yet it is possible to talk of the general anatomy of the human body, so with these different myths it is possible to see both their uniqueness and fundamental sameness. A helpful comparison may be the relationship between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein's West Side Story. One is a sixteenth-century English tragedy about wealthy Italian families, whilst the other is a twentieth-century American musical about street gangs. On the face of it they look very different, yet they are essentially the same story. Similarly, the tales told about the godmen of the Pagan Mysteries are essentially the same, although they take different forms. The more we studied the various versions of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, the more it became obvious that the story of Jesus had all the characteristics of this perennial tale. Event by event, we found we were able to construct Jesus' supposed biography from mythic motifs previousl3 relating to Osiris-Dionysus: - Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the saviour and 'Son of God'. - His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. - He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds. - He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites ot baptism. - He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. - He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. - He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. - After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory. - His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. - His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood. These are just some of the motifs shared between the tales of Osiris-Dionysus and the 'biography' of Jesus. Why are these remarkable similarities not common knowledge? Because, as we were to discover later, the early Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent us perceiving them. It systematically destroyed Pagan sacred literature in a brutal programme of eradicating the Mysteries -- a task it performed so completely that today Paganism is regarded as a 'dead' religion. Although surprising to us now, to writers of the first few centuries CE these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'Church fathers,' such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of 'diabolical mimicry.' Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of 'plagiarism by anticipation,' of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible! These Church fathers struck us as no less devious than the Devil they hoped to incriminate. Other Christian commentators have claimed that the myths of the Mysteries were like pre-echoes of the literal coming of Jesus, somewhat like premonitions or prophecies. This is a more generous version of the'diabolical mimicry' theory, but seemed no less ridiculous to us. There was nothing other than cultural prejudice to make us see the Jesus story as the literal culmination of its many mythical precursors. Viewed impartially, it appeared to be just another version of the same basic story. The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition that should not be understood literally. Such motifs were 'borrowed' from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints' days. This theory is common amongst those who go looking for the 'real' Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris. Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanarion seemed inadequate.We had collated such a comprehensive body of similarities that there remained hardly any significant elements in the biography of Jesus that we did not find prefigured by the Mysteries. On top of this, we discovered that even Jesus' teachings were not original, but had been anticipated by the Pagan sages! If there was a 'real' Jesus somewhere underneath all this, we would have to acknowledge that we could know absolutely nothing about him, for all that remained for us was later Pagan accretions! Such a position seemed absurd. Surely there was a more elegant solution to this conundrum. THE GNOSTICS Whilst we were puzzling over these discoveries, we began to question the received picture of the early Church and have a look at the evidence for ourselves. We discovered that far from being the united congregation of saints and martyrs that traditiona! history would have us believe, the early Christian community was actually made up of a whole spectrum of different groups. These can be broadly categorized into two different schools. On the one hand there were those we will call 'Literalists', because what defines them is that they take the Jesus story as a literal account of historical events. It was this school of Christianity that was adopted by the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, becoming Roman Catholicism and all its subsequent offshoots. On the other hand, however, there were also radically diffejent Christians known as 'Gnostics.' These forgotten Christians were later persecuted out of existence by the Literalist Roman Church with such thoroughness that until recently we knew little about them except through the writings of their detractors. Only a handful of original Gnostic texts survived, none of which were published before the nineteenth century. This situation changed dramatically, however, with a remarkable discovery in 1945 when an Arab peasant stumbled upon a whole library of Gnostic gospels hidden in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This gave scholars access to many texts which were in wide circulation amongst early Christians, but which were deliberately excluded from the canon of the New Testament -- gospels attributed to Thomas and Philip, texts recording the acts of Peter and the 12 disciples, apocalypses attributed to Paul and James, and so on. It seemed to us extraordinary that a whole library of early Christian documents could be discovered, containing what purport to be the teachings of Christ and his disciples, and yet so few modem followers of Jesus should even know of their existence. Why hasn't every Christian rushed out to read these newly discovered words of the Master? What keeps them confined to the small number of gospels selected for inclusion in the New Testament? It seems that even though 2,000 years have passed since the Gnostics were purged, during which time the Roman Church has split into Protestantism and thousands of other alternative groups, the Gnostics are still not regarded as a legitimate voice of Christianity. Those who do explore the Gnostic gospels discover a form of Christianity quite alien to the religion with which they are familiar. We found ourselves studying strange esoteric tracts with titles such as Hypostasis of the Archons and The Thought of Norea. It felt as if we were in an episode of Star Trek -- and in a way we were. The Gnostics truly were 'psychonauts' who boldly explored the final frontiers of inner space, searching for the origins and meaning of life. These people were mystics and creative free-thinkers. It was obvious to us why they were so hated by the bishops of the Literalist Church hierarchy. To Literalists, the Gnostics were dangerous heretics. In volumes of anti-Gnostic works -- an unintentional testimony to the power and influence of Gnosticism within early Christianity -- they painted them as Christians who had 'gone native.' They claimed they had become contaminated by the Paganism that surrounded them and had abandoned the purity of the true faith. The Gnostics, on the other hand, saw themselves as the authentic Christian tradition and the orthodox bishops as an 'imitation church.' They claimed to know the secret Inner Mysteries of Christianity which the Literslists did not possess. As we explored the beliefs and practices of the Gnostics we became convinced that the Literalists had at least been right about one thing: the Gnostics were little different from Pagans. Like the philosophers of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed in reincarnation, honoured the goddess Sophia, and were immersed in the mystical Greek philosophy of Plato. 'Gnostics' means 'Knowers', a name they acquired because, like the initiates of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed that their secret teachings had the power to impart 'Gnosis' -- direct experiential 'Knowledge of God.' Just as the goal of a Pagan initiate was to become a god, so for the Gnostics the goal of the Christian initiate was to become a Christ. What particularly struck us was that the Gnostics were not concerned with the historical Jesus. They viewed the Jesus story in the same way that the Pagan philosophers viewed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus -- as an allegory which encoded secret mystical teachings. This insight crystallized for us a remarkable possibility. Perhaps the explanation for the similarities between Pagan myths and the biography of Jesus had been staring us in the face the whole time, but we had been so caught up with traditional ways of thinking that we had been unable to see it. THE JESUS MYSTERIES THESIS The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered if the picture were reversed and Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. Boldly stated, the picture that emerged for us was as follows. We knew that most ancient Mediterranean cultures had adopted the ancient Mysteries, adapting them to their own national tastes and creating their own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting godman. Perhaps some of the Jews had likewise adopted the Pagan Mysteries and created their own version of the Mysteries which we now know as Gnosticism. Perhaps initiates of the Jewish Mysteries had adapted the potent symbolism of the Osiris-Dionysus myths into a myth of their own, the hero of which was the Jewish dying and ~surreeting godman Jesus. If this was so, then the Jesus story was not a biography at all but a consciously crafted vehicle for encoded spiritual teachings created by Jewish Gnostics. As in the Pagan Mysteries, initiation into the Inner Mysteries would reveal the myth's allegorical meaning. Perhaps those uninitiated into the Inner Mysteries had mistakenly come to regard the Jesus myth as historical fact and in this way Literalist Christianity had been created. Perhaps the Inner Mysteries of Christianity, which the Gnostics taught but which the Literalists denied existed, revealed that the Jesus story was not a factual account of God's one and only visit to planet Earth, but a mystical teaching story designed to help each one of us become a Christ. The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice which prevent us from seeing tlae New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and the other Pagan Mystery saviours as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem? We had both been raised as Christians and were surprised to find that, despite years of open-minded spiritual exploration, it still felt somehow dangerous to even dare think such thoughts. Early indoctrination reaches very deep. We were in effect saying that Jesus was a Pagan god and that Christianity was a heretical product of Paganism! It seemed outrageous. Yet this theory explained the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ in a simple and elegant way. They are parts of one developing mythos. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis answered many puzzling questions, yet it also opened up new dilemmas. Isn't there indisputable historical evidence for the existence of Jesus the man? And how could Gnosticism be the original Christianity when St Paul, the earliest Christian we know about, is so vociferously anti-Gnostic? And is it really credible that such an insular and anti-Pagan people as the Jews could have adopted the Pagan Mysteries? And how could it have happened that a consciously created myth came to be believed as history? And if Gnosticism represents genuine Christianity, why was it Literalist Christianity that came to dominate the world as the most influential religion of all time? All of these difficult questions would have to be satisfactorily answered before we could wholeheartedly accept such a radical theory as the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. THE GREAT COVER UP Our new account of the origins of Christianity only seemed improbable because it contradicted the received view. As we pushed further with our research, the traditional picture began to completely unravel all around us. We found ourselves embroiled in a world of schism and power straggles, of forged documents and false identities, of letters that had been edited and added to, and of the wholesale destruction of historical evidence. We focused forensically on the few facts we could be confident of, as if we were detectives on the verge of cracking a sensational 'whodunnit', or perhaps more accurately as if we were uncovering an ancient and unacknowledged miscarriage of justice. For, time and again, when we critically examined what genuine evidence remained, we found that the history of Christianity bqueathed to us by the Roman Church was a gross distortion of the truth. Actually the evidence completely endorsed the Jesus Mysteries Thesis! It was becoming increasingly obvious that we had been deliberately deceived, that the Gnostics were indeed the original Christians, and that their anarchic mysticism had been hijacked by an authoritarian institution which had created from it a dogmatic religion - and then brutally enforced the greatest cover-up in history. One of the major players in this cover-up operation was a character called Eusebius, who, at the beginning of the fourth century, compiled from legends, fabrications and his own imagination the only early history of Christianity that still exists today. All subsequent histories have been forced to base themselves on Eusebins' dubious claims, because there has been little other information to draw on. All those with a different perspective on Christianity were branded as heretics and eradicated. In this way falsehoods compiled in the fourth century have come down to us as established facts. Eusebius was employed by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion of the Empire and gave Literalist Christianity the power it needed to begin the final eradication of Paganism and Gnosticism. Constantine wanted 'one God, one religion' to consolidate his claim of 'one Empire, one Emperor.' He oversaw the creation of the Nicene creed -- the article of faith repeated in churches to this day -- and christians who refused to assent to this creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced. This 'Christian' Emperor then returned home from Nicaea and had his wife suffocated and his son murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his deathbed so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive forgiveness of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being baptized at the last moment. Although he had his 'spin doctor' Eusebius compose a suitably obsequious biography for him, he was actually a monster -- just like many Roman Emperors before him. Is it really at all surprising that a 'history' of the origins of Christianity created by an employee in the service of a Roman tyrant should turn out to be a pack of lies? Elaine PageIs, one of the foremost academic authorities on early Christianity, writes: "It is the winners who write history -- their way. No wonder, then, that the traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms (naming themselves "orthodox" and their opponents "heretics"); then they proceeded to demonstrate -- at least to their own satisfaction -- that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, "guided by the Holy Spirit." But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions." History is indeed written by the victors. The creation of an appropriate history has always been part of the arsenal of political manipulation. The Roman Church created a history of the triumph of Literalist Christianity in much the same partisan way that, two millennia later, Hollywood created tales of 'cowboys and Indians' to relate 'how the West was won' not 'how the West was lost.' History is not simply related, it is created. Ideally, the motivation is to explain historical evidence and come to an accurate understanding of how the present has been created by the past. All too often, however, it is simply to glorify and justify the status quo. Such histories conceal as much as they reveal. To dare to question a received history is not easy. It is difficult to believe that something which you have been told is true from childhood could actually be a product of falsification and fantasy. It must have been hard for those Russians brought up on tales of kindly 'Uncle Joe' Stalin to accept that he was actually responsible for the deaths of millions. It must have strained credibility when those opposing his regime claimed that he had in fact murdered many of the heroes of the Russian revolution. It must have seemed ridiculous when they asserted that he had even had the images of his rivals removed from photographs and completely fabricated historical events. Yet all these things are true. It is easy to believe that something must be true because everyone else believes it. But the truth often only comes to light by daring to question the unquestionable, by doubting notions which are so commonly believed that they are taken for granted. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is the product of such an openness of mind. When it first occurred to us, it seemed absurd and impossible. Now it seems obvious and ordinary. The Vatican was constructed upon the site of an ancient Pagan sanctuary because the new is always built upon the old. In the same way Christianity itself has as its foundations the Pagan spirituality that preceded it. What is more plausible than to posit the gradual evolution of spiritual ideas, with Christianity emerging from the ancient Pagan Mysteries in a seamless historical continuum? It is only because the conventional history has been so widely believed for so long that this idea could be seen as heretical and shocking. RECOVERING MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY As the final pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, we came across a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book. It was a drawing of a third-century CE amulet. We have used it as the cover of this book. It shows a crucified figure which most people would immediately recognize as Jesus. Yet the Greek words name the figure 'Orpheus Bacchus,' one of the pseudonyms of Osiris-Dionysus. To the author of the book in which we found the picture, this amulet was an anomaly. Who could it have possibly belonged to? Was it a crucified Pagan deity or some sort of Gnostic synthesis of Paganism and Christianity? Either way it was deeply puzzling. For us, however, this amulet was perfectly understandable. It was an unexpected confirmation of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. The image could be that of either Jesus or Osiris-Dionysus. To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure. The 'chance' discovery of this amulet made us feel as though the universe itself was encouraging us to make our findings public. In different ways the Jesus Mysteries Thesis has been proposed by mystics and scholars for centuries, but has always ended up being ignored. It now felt like an idea whose moment had come. We did, however, have misgivings about writing this book. We knew that it would inevitably upset certain Christians, something which we had no desire to do. Certainly it has been hard to be constantly surrounded by lies and injustices without experiencing a certain amount of outrage at the negative misrepresentation of the Gnostics, and to have become aware of the great riches of Pagan culture without feeling grief that they were so wantonly destroyed. Yet we do not have some sort of anti-Christian agenda. Far from it. Those who have read our other works will know that our interest is not in further division, but in acknowledging the unity that lies at the heart of all spiritual traditions -- and this present book is no exception. Early Literalist Christians mistakenly believed that the Jesus story was different from other stories of Osiris-Dionysus because Jesus alone had been an historical rather than a mythical figure. This has left Christians feeling that their faith is in opposition to all others -- which it is not. We hope that by understanding its true origins in the ongoing evolution of a universal human spirituality, Christianity may be able to free itself from this self-imposed isolation. Whilst the Jesus Mysteries Thesis clearly rewrites history, we do not see it as undermining the Christian faith, but as suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. The Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the saving Gnosis which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else 2,000 years ago. Belief in the Jesus story was originally the first step in Christian spirituality -- the Outer Mysteries. Its significance was to be explained by an enlightened teacher when the seeker was spiritually ripe. These Inner Mysteries imparted a mystical Knowledge of God beyond mere belief in dogmas. Although many inspired Christian mystics throughout history have intuitively seen through to this deeper symbolic level of understanding, as a culture we have inherited only the Outer Mysteries of Christianity. We have kept the form, but lost the inner meaning. Our hope is that this book can play some small part in reclaiming the true mystical Christian inheritance. The Pagan Mysteries "Blest is the happy man Who knows the Mysteries the gods ordain, And sanctifies his life, Joins soul with soul in mystic unity, And, by due ritual made pure Enters the ecstasy of mountain solitudes; Who observes the mystic rites Made lawful by the Great Mother; Who crowns his head with ivy, And shakes his wand in worship ot Dionysus." Euripides Paganism is a 'dead' religion -- or more accurately an 'exterminated' religion· It did not simply fade away into oblivion. It was actively suppressed and annihilated, its temples and shrines desecrated and demolished, and its great sacred books thrown onto bonfires. No living lineage has been left to explain its ancient beliefs. So, the Pagan worldview has to be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and texts that have survived, like some giant metaphysical jigsaw puzzle. 'Pagan' was originally a derogatory term meaning 'country-dweller,' used by Christians to infer that the spirituality of the ancients was some primitive rural superstition. But this is not true. Paganism was the spirituality which inspired the unequalled magnificence of the Giza pyramids, the exquisite architecture of the Parthenon, the legendary sculptures of Phideas, the powerful plays of Euripides and Sophocles, and the sublime philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Pagan civilization built vast libraries to house hundreds of thousands of works of literary and scientific genius. Its natural philosophers speculated that human beings had evolved from animals. Its astronomers knew the Earth was a sphere which, along with the planets, revolves around the sun. They had even estimated its circumference to within one degree of accuracy? The ancient Pagan world sustained a population not matched again in Europe until the eighteenth century. In Greece, Pagan culture gave birth to the concepts of democracy, rational philosophy, public libraries, theatre and the Olympic Games, creating a blueprint for our modern world. What was the spirituality that inspired these momentous cultural achievements? Most people associate Paganism with either rustic witchcraft or the myths of the gods of Olympus as recorded by Hesiod and Homer. Pagan spirituality did indeed embrace both. The country people practised their traditional shamanic nature worship to maintain the fertility of the land and the city authorities propped up formal state religions, such as the worship of the Olympian gods, to maintain the power of the status quo. It was, however, a third, more mystical, expression of the Pagan spirit which inspired the great minds of the ancient world. The thinkers, artists and innovators of antiquity were initiates of various religions known as 'Mysteries.' These remarkable men and women held the Mysteries to be the heart and soul of their culture. The Greek historian Zosimos writes that without the Mysteries "life for the Greeks would be unlivable" for "the sacred Mysteries hold the whole human race together." The eminent Roman statesman Cicero enthuses: "These Mysteries have brought us from rustic savagery to a cultivated and refined civilisation. The rites of the Mysteries are called "initiations" and in truth we have learned trom them the first principles of life. We have gained the understanding not only to live happily but also to die with better hope." Unlike the traditional rituals of the official state religions, which were designed to aid social cohesion, the mysteries were an individualistic form of.spirituality which offered mystical visions and personal enlightenment. Initiates underwent a secret process of initiation which profoundly trans-r formed their state of consciousness. The poet Pindar reveals that an initiate into the Mysteries "knows the end of life and its God-given beginning." Lucius Apuleius, a poet-philosopher, writes of his experience of initiation as a spiritual rebirth which he celebrated as his birthday, an experience for which he felt a "debt of gratitude" that he "could never hope to repay." Plato, the most influential philosopher of all time, relates: "We beheld the beatific visions and were initiated into the Mystery which may be truly called blessed, celebrated by us in a state of innocence. We beheld calm, happy, simple, eternal visions, resplendent in pure light." The great Pagan philosophers were the enlightened masters of the Mysteries. Although they are often portrayed today as dry 'academic' intellectuals, they were actually enigmatic 'gurus.' Empedocles, like his master Pythagoras, was a charismatic miracle-worker. Socrates was an eccentric mystic prone to being suddenly overcome by states of rapture during which his friends would discover him staring off into space for hours. Heraclitus was asked by the citizens of Ephesus to become a lawmaker, but turned the offer down so that he could continue playing with the children in the temple. Anaxagoras shocked ordinary citizens by completely abandoning his farm to fully devote his life to "the higher philosophy." Diogenes owned nothing and lived in a jar at the entrance of a temple. The inspired playwright Euripides wrote his greatest tragedies during solitary retreats in an isolated cave. All of these idiosyncratic sages were steeped in the mysticism of the Mysteries, which they expressed in their philosophy. Olympiodorus, a follower of Plato, tells us that his master paraphrased the Mysteries everywhere. The works of Heraclitus were renowned even in ancient times for being obscure and impenetrable, yet Diogenes explains that they are crystal clear to an initiate of the Mysteries. Of studying Heraclitus he writes: "It is a hard road to follow, filled with darkness and gloom; but if an initiate leads you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun." At the heart of Pagan philosophy is an understanding that all things are One. The Mysteries aimed at awakening within the initiate a sublime experience of this Oneness. Sallustius declares: "Every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and with the Deity." Plotinus describes the initiate transcending his limited sense of himself as a separate ego and experiencing mystical union with God: "As if borne away, or possessed by a god, he attains to solitude in untroubled stillness, nowhere deflected in his being and unbusied with self, utterly at rest and become very rest. He does not converse with a statue or image but with Godhead itself. And this is no object of vision, but another mode of seeing, a detachment from self, a simplification and surrender of self, a yearning for contact, and a stillness and meditation directed towards transformation. Whoever sees himself in this way has attained likeness to God; let him abandon himself and find the end of his journeying ." No wonder the initiate Sopatros poertcally mused, "I came out of the Mystery Hall feeling like a stranger to myself." THE SACRED SPECTACLE AT ELEUSIS What were these ancient Mysteries that could inspire such reverent awe and heartfelt appreciation? The Mystery religion was practised for thousands of years, during which time it spread throughout the ancient worid, taking on many different forms. Some were frenzied and others meditative. Some involved bloody animal sacrifice, while others were presided over by strict vegetarians, At certain moments in history the Mysteries were openly practised by whole populations and were endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the state. At other times they were a small-scale and secretive affair, for fear of persecution by unsympathetic authorities. Central toall of these forms qf the Mysteries, however, was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman. The Greek Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honour of the Great Mother goddess and the godman Dionysus were the most famous of all the Mystery cults. The sanctuary of Eleusis was finally destroyed by bands of fanatical Christian monks in 396 CE, but up until this tragic act of vandalism the Mysteries had been celebrated there for over 11 centuries. At the height of their popularity people were coming from all over the then known world to be initiated: men and women, rich and poor, slaves and emperors -- even a Brahmin priest from India. Each year some 30,000 Athenian citizens embarked on a 30-kilometre barefoot pilgrimage to the sacred site of Eleusis on the coast to celebrate the autumn Mysteries of Dionysus. For days they would have been preparing for this important religious event by fasting, offering sacrifices and undergoing ritual purification. As those about to be initiated danced along the 'Sacred Way' to Eleusis, accompanied by the frenzied beat of cymbals and tambourines, they were accosted by masked men who abused and insulted them, while others beat them with sticks. At the head of the procession was carried the statue of Dionysus himself, leading them ever onward. After ritual naked bathing in the sea and other purification ceremonies the crowd reached the great doors of the Telesterion, a huge purpose-built initiation hall. Only the chosen few who were already initiated or about to be initiated into the secret Mysteries could enter here. What awesome ceremony was held behind these closed doors that touched the great philosophers, artists, statesmen and scientists of the ancient world so deeply? All initiates were sworn to secrecy and held the Mysteries so sacred that they kept this oath. From large numbers of hints and clues, however, we know that they witnessed a sublime theatrical spectacle. They were awed by sounds and dazzled by lights. They were bathed in the blaze of a huge fire and trembled to the nerve-shattering reverberations of a mighty gong. The Hierophant, the high priest of the Mysteries, was quite literally a 'showman' who orchestrated a terrifyingly transformative dramatic reenactment of sacred myth. He himself was dressed as the central character - the godman Dionysus. A modern scholar writes: "A Mystery Religion was thus a divine drama which portrayed before the wondering eyes of the privileged observers the story of the struggles, sufferings, and victory of a patron deity, the travail of nature in which life ultimately triumphs over death, and joy is born of pain. The whole ritual of the Mysteries aimed especially at quickening the emotional life. No means of exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, either by way of inducing careful predispositions or of supplying external stimulus. Tense mental anticipations heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, imposing processions and elaborate pageantry, music loud and violent or soft and enthralling, delirious dances, the drinking of spirituous liquors, physical macerations, alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight of gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy emblems, auto-suggestion and the promptings of the Hierophant -- these and many secrets of emotional exaltation were in vogue." This dramatization of the myth of Dionysus is the origin of tragedy and theatre. But the initiates were not a passive audience. They were participants who shared in the passion of the godman whose death and rebirth symbolically represented the death and spiritual rebirth of each one of them. As a modern authority explains: "Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate." By witnessing the awesome tragedy of Dionysus, the initiates at Eleusis shared in his suffering, death and resurrection, and so experienced a spiritual purification known as 'catharsis.' The Mysteries did not offer religious dogmas to simply be believed, but a myth to be entered into. Initiation was not about learning something, but about experiencing an altered state of awareness. Plutarch, a Pagan high priest, confesses that those who had been initiated could produce no proof of the beliefs that they acquired. Aristotle maintains, "It is not necessary for the initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a certain frame of mind." The philosopher Produs talks of the Mysteries as evoking a "sympathy of the soul with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine, so that some of the initiates axe stricken with panic, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods, affd experience divine possession." Why did the myth enacted by the Mysteries have such a profound effect? ENCODED SECRET TEACHINGS In antiquity the word mythos did not mean something 'untrue't as it does ( for us today. Superficially a myth was an entertaining story, but to the initiated it was a sacred code that contained profound spiritual teachings. Plato comments, "It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teachings." He explains that it is "those who have given their lives to true philosophy" who will grasp the "hidden meaning" encoded in the Mystery myths, and so become completely identified with the godman in an experience of mystical enlightenment. The ancient philosophers were not so foolish as to believe that the Mystery myths were literally true, but wise enough to recognize that they were an easy introduction to the profound mystical philosophy at the heart of the Mysteries. Sallustius writes: "To wish to teach all men the truth of the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it." It was the role of the priests and philosophers of the Mysteries to decode the hidden depths of spiritual meaning contained within the Mystery myths. Heliodorus, a priest of the Mysteries, explains: "Philosophers and theologians do not disclose the meanings embedded in these stories to laymen but simply give them preliminary instruction in the form of a myth. But those who have reached the higher grades of the Mysteries they initiate into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine, in the light cast by the blazing torch of truth." The Mysteries were divided into various levels of initiation, which led an initiate step by step through ever deepening levels of understanding. The number of levels of initiation varied in different Mystery traditions, but essentially the initiate was led from the Outer Mysteries, in which the myths were understood superficially as religious stories, to the Inner Mysteries, in which the myths were revealed as spiritual allegories. First the initiate was ritually purified. Then they were taught the secret teachings on a one-to-one basis. The highest stage was when the initiate understood the true meaning of the teachings and finally experienced what Theon of Smyrna calls "friendship and interior communion with God." THE INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES The Mysteries dominated the Pagan world. No other deity is represented on the monuments of ancient Greece and Italy as much as Dionysus, godman of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is a deity with many names: Iacchos, Bassareus, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Zagreus, Yhyoneus, Lenaios, Eleuthereus, and so the list goes on. But these are just some of his Greek names! The godman is an omnipresent mythic figure throughout the ancient Mediterranean, known in different ways by many cultures. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus, known as 'the father of history', discovered this when he travelled to Egypt. On the shores of a sacred lake in the Nile delta he witnessed an enormous festival, held every year, in which the Egyptians performed a dramatic spectacle before "tens of thousands of men and women," representing the death and resurrection of Osiris. Herodotus was an initiate into the Greek Mysteries and recognized that what he calls "the Passion of Osiris" was the very same drama that initiates saw enacted before them at Eleusis as the Passion of Dionysus. The Egyptian myth of Osiris is the primal myth of the Mystery godman and reaches back to prehistory. His story is so ancient that it can be found in pyramid texts written over 4,500 years ago! In travelling to Egypt Herodotus was following in the footsteps of another great Greek. Before 670 BCE Egypt had been a closed country, in the manner of Tibet, or Japan more recently, but in this year she opened her borders and one of the first Greeks who travelled there in search of ancient wisdom was Pythagoras. History remembers Pythagoras as the first 'scientist' of the Western world, but although it is true that he brought back many mathmatical theories to Greece from Egypt, to his contemporaries he would have seemed anything but 'scientific' in the modern sense. A wandering charismatic sage dressed in white robes and crowned with a gold coronet, Pythagoras was part scientist, part priest and part magician. He spent 22 years in the temples of Egypt, becoming an initiate of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries. On returning to Greece he began to preach the wisdom he had learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles. Inspired by Pythagoras, his disciples created a Greek Mystery religion modelled on the Egyptian Mysteries. They took the indigenous wine god Dionysus, who was a minor deity all but ignored by Hesiod and Homer, and transformed him into a Greek version of the mighty Egyptian Osiris, godman of the Mysteries. This initiated a religious and cultural revolution that was to transform Athens into the centre of the civilized world. The followers of Pythagoras were models of virtue and learning, regarded as puritans by their neighbours. Strict vegetarians, they preached non-violence towards all living things and shunned the temple cults that practised the sacrifice of animals. This made it impossible for them to participate in the traditional Olympian religion of Athens. Forced to live on the fringes of acceptability, they often organized themselves into communities that shared all possessions in common, leaving them free to devote themselves to their mystical studies of mathematics, music, astronomy and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Mystery religion spread quickly amongst the ordinary people and within a few generations the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, now the Mysteries of Dionysus, inspired the glory of Classical Athens. In the same way that Osiris was synthesized by the Greeks with their indigenous god Dionysus to create the Greek Mysteries, other Mediterranean cultures which adopted the Mystery religion also transformed one of their indigenous deities into the dying and resurrecting Mystery godman. So, the deity who was known as Osiris in Egypt and became Dionysus in Greece was called Attis in Asia Minor, Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, Mithras in Persia, and so on. His forms were many, but essentially he was the same perennial figure, whose collective identity was referred to as Osiris-Dionysus. Because the ancients recognized that all the various Mystery godmen were essentially the same mythic being, elements from different myths and rites were continually combined and recombined to create new forms of the Mysteries. In Alexandria, for example, a charismatic sage called Timotheus consciously fused Osiris and Dionysus to produce a new deity for the city callled Serapis. He also gave an elaborate account of the myth of the Mystery godman Attis. Lucius Apuleius received his initiation into theMysteries from a high priest named after the Persian godman Mithras. Coins were minted with Dionysus represented on one side and Mithras on the other? One modern authority tells us that "possessed by the knowledge of his own secret rites," the initiate of the Mysteries "found no difficulty in conforming to any religion in vogue." Like the Christian religion which superseded it, the Mysteries reached across national boundaries, offering a spirituality which was relevant to all human beings, regardless of their racial origins or social status. Even as early as the fifth century CE philosophers such as Diogenes and Socrates called themselves "cosmopolitans' -- "citizens of the cosmos" -- rather than of any particular country or culture, which is testimony to the international nature of the Mysteries. One modern scholar, commenting on the merging and combining of different mystery traditions, writes: "This went a long way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea of separate gods from the different nations, and towards teaching them that all national and local deities were but different forms of one great Power. But for the rise of Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities would continually have merged into Dionysus." OSIRIS-DIONYSUS AND JESUS CHRIST Osiris-Dionysus had such universal appeal because he was seen as an 'Everyman' figure who symbolically represented each initiate. Through understanding the allegorical myth of the Mystery godman, initiates could become aware that, like Osiris-Dionysus, they were also 'God made flesh.' They too were immortal Spirit trapped within a physical body. Through sharing in the death of Osiris-Dionysus initiates symbolically 'died' to their lower earthly nature. Through sharing in his resurrection they were spiritually reborn and experienced their eternal and divine essence. This was the profound mystical teaching that the myth of Osiris-Dionysus encoded for those initiated into the Inner Mysteries, the truth of which initiates directly experienced for themselves. Writing of the Egyptian Mystery godman Osiris, Sir Wallis Budge, who was keeper of antiquities in the British Museum, explains: "The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the power of evil, that after great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous might also conquer death. "He represented to men the idea of a man who was both God and man, and he typified to the Egyptians in all ages the being who by reason of his sufferings and death as a man could sympathise with them in their own sickness and death. The idea of his human personality also satisfied their cravings and yearnings for communion with a being who, though he was partly divine, yet had much in common with themselves. Originally they looked upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by help of certain gods triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what Osiris did they could also do." These are the key motifs that characterize the myths of all the Mystery godmen. What Budge writes of Osiris could equally be said of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Mithras and the rest. It also describes the Jewish dying and resurrecting godman Jesus Christ. Like Osiris-Dionysus, he is also God Incarnate and God of the Resurrection. He also promises his followers spiritual rebirth through sharing in his divine Passion. CONCLUSION The Mysteries were clearly an extremely powerful force in the ancient world. Let's review what we've discovered about them: - The Pagan Mysteries inspired the greatest minds of the ancient world. - They were practised in different forms by nearly every culture in the Mediterranean. - They comprised Outer Mysteries which were open to all and secret Inner Mysteries known only to those who had undergone a powerful process of mystical initiation. - At the heart of the Mysteries was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman - Osiris-Dionysus. - The Inner Mysteries revealed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to be spiritual allegories encoding spiritual teachings. The question which intrigued us was whether the Mysteries could have somehow influenced and shaped what we have inherited as the "biography" of Jesus? Unlike the various Pagan Mystery godmen, Jesus is traditionally viewed as an historical rather than a mythical figure, literally a man who was an incarnation of God, who suffered, died and resurrected to bring salvation to all humankind. But could these elements of the Jesus story actually be mythical stories inherited from the Pagan Mysteries? We began investigating the myths of Osiris-Dionysus more closely, searching for resemblances with the Jesus story. We were not prepared for the overwhelming number of similarities that we uncovered. Diabolical Mimicry "Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales, like the things that were said by the poets." Justin Martyr Although the remarkable similarities between the myths of Osiris-Dionysus agd the supposed "biography" of Jesus Christ are generally unknown today, in the first few centuries CE they were obvious to Pagans and Christians alike. The Pagan philosopher and satirist Celsus criticized Christians for tryingto pass off the Jesus story as a new revelation when it was actually an inferior imitation of Pagan myths. He asks: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians -- and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God." The early Christians were painfully aware of such criticisms. How could Pagan myths which predated Christianity by hundreds of years have so much in common with the biography of the one and only saviour Jesus? Desperate to come up with an explanation, the Church fathers resorted to one of the most absurd theories ever advanced. From the time of Justin Martyr in the second century onwards, they declared that the Devil had plagiarized Christianity by anticipation in order to lead people astray? Knowing that the true Son of God was to literally come and walk the Earth, the Devil had copied the story of his life in advance of it happening and created the myths of Osiris-Dionysus. The Church father Tertullian writes of the Devil's "diabolical mimicry" in creating the Mysteries of Mithras: "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine." Studying the myths of the Mysteries it becomes obvious why these early Christians resorted to such a desperate explanation. Although no single Pagan myth completely parallels the story of Jesus, the mythic motifs which make up the story of the Jewish godman had already existed for centuries in the various stories told of Osiris-Dionysus and his greatest prophets. Let's make a journey through the 'biography' of Jesus and explore some of these extraordinary similarities. SON OF GOD Despite Christianity's claim that Jesus is the "only begotten Son of God." Osiris-Dionysus, in all his many forms, is also hailed as the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God, yet equal with the Father. Dionysus is the "Son of Zeus, in his full nature God, most terrible, although most gentle to mankind." Jesus is "Very God of Very God." Dionysus is "Lord God of God born." Jesus is God in human form. St John writes of Jesus as "the Word made flesh." St. Paul explains that "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh? Dionysus was also known as Bacchus, hence the title of Euripides' play The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is the central character. In this play, Dionysus explains that he has veiled his "Godhead in a mortal shape" in order to make it "manifest to mortal men.. He tells his disciples, "That is why I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man." Like Jesus, in many of his myths the Pagan godman is born of a mortal virgin mother. In Asia Minor, Attis' mother is the virgin Cybele. In Syria, Adonis' virgin mother is called Myrrh. In Alexandria, Aion is born of the virgin Kore. In Greece, Dionysus is born of a mortal virgin Semele who wishes to see Zeus in all his glory and is mysteriously impregnated by one of his bolts of lightning. It was a popular tradition, recorded in the most quoted non-canonical text of early Christianity, that Jesus spent only seven months in Mary's womb. The Pagan historian Diodorus relates that Dionysus' mother Semele likewise was said to have also had only a seven-month pregnancy. Justin Martyr acknowledges the similarities between Jesus' virgin birth and Pagan mythology, writing: "In saying that the Word was born for us without sexual union as Jesus Christ our teacher, we introduce nothing beyond what is said of those called the Sons of Zeus." Nowhere was the myth of the 'Son of God' more developed than in Egypt, the ancient home of the Mysteries. Even the Christian Lactantius acknowledged that the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus had "arrived in some way at the truth, for on God the Father he had said everything, and on the Son." In Egypt, the Pharaoh had for thousands of years been regarded as an embodiment of the godman Osiris and praised in hymns as the Son of God. As an eminent Egyptologist writes, "Every Pharaoh had to be the Son of God and a human mother in order that he should be the Incarnate God, the Giver of Fertility to his country and people." In many legends the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysus are also portrayed as saviours and sons of God. Pythagoras was said to be the son of Apollo and a mortal woman called Parthenis, whose name derives from the word parthenos, meaning "virgin." Plato was also posthumously believed to be the son of Apollo. Philostratus relates in his biography of Apollonius that the great Pagan sage was regarded as the "Son of Zeus." Empedocles was thought to be a godman and saviour who had come down to this world to help confused souls, becoming "like a madman, calling out to people at the top of his voice and urging them to reject this realm and what is in it and go back to their own original, sublime, and noble word." Mythic motifs from the Mysteries even became associated with Roman Emperors who, for political reasons, cultivated legends about their divine nature which would link them to Osiris-Dionysus. Julius Caesar, who did not himself even believe in personal immortality, was hailed as "God made manifest, the common saviour of human life." His successor, Augustus, was likewise the "saviour of the universal human race." and even the tyrannical Nero is addressed on an altar piece as "God the deliverer for ever." In 40 BCE, drawing on Mystery myths, the Roman poet and initiate Virgil wrote a mystical 'prophesy' that a virgin would give birth to a divine child. In the fourth century CE Literalist Christians would claim that it foretold the coming of ]esus, but at the time this myth was interpreted as referring to Augustus, said to be the "Son of Apollo," preordained to rule the Earth and bring peace and prosperity. In his biography of Augustus, Suetonius offers a cluster of 'signs' that indicated the Emperor's divine nature. One modern authority writes: &am

Interior Design/Architecture program in Montreal? I'm a 27-yr-old Shanghainese who's immigrating to Montreal around end of this year. After getting a BA in French with a top Chinese university and a degree of Political sciences from Science Po, French's Yale in terms of presidents' cradle, I'm holding a decent and well-paid job with a decent multinational company. However, I'm not fulfilled of being an Admin & HR Manager and I know clearly that my future will not be a bright one if i don't shift asap to a career to which I can devote all my passion and inspiration. I'm not interested in dealing relationship with people, money; while quite absorbed in maths especially geometry, drawing especially sketching, geography especially human and travel geography, and almost all kinds of Fine arts & Studio arts. Since i was a little girl, I've always dreamed to be a designer (be it in the fields of fashion, decoration, packaging, etc.). I posses a considerable portfolio of my art & design works. Even my graduation thesis is on Haute couture/Luxurious Ready-to-wear (there was no topic limit as long as it's written in French). Thus I regard my immigration as an opportunity and encouragement for me to challenge myself to start a brand new tough but fulfilling life. Now my targeted programs are Interior Design with University of Montreal and Architecture with Mcgill. Both have pros and cons. The first one is 3-yr program which seems more practical for me. But I'm worrying that finding a job out of Quebec(for example US, or my homeland China) might be difficult with a degree from a French-language university; while the alternative, the Architecture program with Mcgill will take 4.5 yrs and be much more demanding on my talent, diligence, memory and energy, anyway greater challenge for a 27 yr-old one. I chose French to be my university major as I want to be closer to Arts; I learnt Italian by myself (and i master the language) also because of my affection towards arts; but all that I did and I'm doing is indirect and proved to be unwise. Who can help me and lead me a wiser way to pursue my art dream? Thank you a thousand times.

Risd or Pratt institute? what school would you choose? i'm taking interior designing/interior architecture andi don't know where i should take it, if i should take it at pratt or at rhode island school of design? i like pratt institute because of the location and because they teach what i'm expecting to learn while at risd, i heard that it's one of the most prestigious art school in america and the quality of education is very good, only thing i worry about is that what i see from their portfolios aren't really the structures that i want to see because they seem a bit weird compared to pratt institute's. and who would you think architecture firms would hire, a risd grad or a pratt grad?

Why are people like rickenbanger so ignorant about black historty? ". By the way, the "great Africa" idea is what's known as revisionist history. It's written to fit a current political ideal and not factual history." ahahhahaha Time for some real history but some people who lived during those days. \\\ Since then we have learned much, and we know today that the beautiful turbans and clothes of the Sudanese folk were already used in Africa before Muhammad was even born or before Ethiopian culture reached inner Africa. Since then we have learned that the peculiar organization of the Sudanese states existed long before Islam and that all of the art of building and education, of city organization and handwork in ***** Africa, were thousands of years older than those of Middle Europe. Leo Frobenius "When they [the first European navigators of the end of the Middle Ages] arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find the streets well cared for, bordered for several leagues in length by two rows of trees; for many days they passed through a country of magnificent fields, a country inhabited by men clad in brilliant costumes, the stuff of which they had woven themselves! More to the South in the Kingdom of Congo, a swarming crowd dressed in silk and velvet; great states well ordered, and even to the smallest details, powerful sovereigns, rich industries, -- civilized to the marrow of their bones. And the condition of the countries on the eastern coasts -- Mozambique, for example -- was quite the same. I have seen in no part of Africa the Negroes worshipping a fetish. The idea of the'barbarous *****' is a European invention which has consequently prevailed in Europe until the beginning of this century. Leo Frobenius "Among the kingdoms of the rulers of the world, only Syria is more beautiful. Its inhabitants are rich and live comfortably."1 ~Mahmud Ka'ti, medieval Syrian scholar on Mali "…the Negroes (of Mali) are of all peoples those who most abhor injustice…Complete and general safety one enjoys throughout the land." ~Ibn Battuta, 14th century Arab who traveled to China, India, the Swahili Coast of Africa, North Africa, the Mid East, and finally West Africa2 "European travelers in the sixteenth century were impressed with the African kingdoms of Timbuktu and Mali, already stable and organized at a time when European states were just beginning to develop into the modern nation."3 ~Howard Zinn, famous modern day historian best known for his People's History of the United States Ghana (AD 5th-13th) A rich and powerful gold kingdom. "He is the richest sovereign on Earth." -Ibn Hawkel, 10th century North African geographer on Ghana's king Mali (AD 13th-15th) An empire larger than Western Europe. Its prosperity and morality gave the empire great international prestige. "It's inhabitants are rich and live comfortably." -Mahmud Kati, famous medieval Syrian scholar Songhay (AD 11th-17th) An Empire larger than Mali that was renowned for its scholarly culture and complex government. "(Surpassed) all other Negroes in wit, civility, and industry." -Leo Africanuas, 16th Century Spanish Moor Kongo (AD 14th-17th) A provincial government with an advanced system of checks and balances. Zimbabwe (AD 10th-15th) A feudal kingdom that has obtained fame for its large stone structures. Swahili Coast A very advanced merchant civilization that traded with India, China, the Mid East, the interior of Africa, and North Africa. Bornu (AD 13th-17th) One of the longest lasting kingdoms of all time. Renowned and feared for its armored knights and cavalry. Benin (AD 13th-19th) A highly organized forest kingdom that had much direct interaction with the first Portuguese merchants. They are renowned for their naturalistic art. Ethiopia, in the Middle ages A highly advanced Christian civilization known for its military might, close relationship with the Portuguese and magnificent architecture. Ancient Nubia One of the world's most powerful ancient kingdoms; it halted the Roman, Greek, Assyrian, and Persian conquerors- it even ruled over Egypt for a time. It built pyramids, palaces, and other great architectural feats. It also developed its own written language. Ancient Aksum (Ethiopia) One of the richest and most powerful kingdoms in ancient times; it even ruled over Southern Arabia for several centuries. It is known for inventing the first castle and developing its own written language. The Largest structure in the 4th century was found in Ethiopia http://www.endingstereotypesforamerica.org/image011.jpg The first castle in the world can be found in Ethiopia http://www.endingstereotypesforamerica.org/image005.jpg The Greek historian Lucian (125?-90) wrote that the Ethiopians (name for all black people), "Being in all else wiser than other men," invented astrology and taught it to the Egyptians. Aristotle (398-332BC) believed that, "The races that live in…. Europe are full of courage and passion but somewhat lacking in skill and brain power Many Arabs in the Middle Ages believed they were superior mentally to all people--they showed contempt for lighter and darker skinned people--although they seemingly held blacks in higher esteem than whites. The Muslim scholar Sa'id al-Andalusi wrote: "Whites lack keenness of understanding and clarity of intelligence, and are overcome by ignorance and dullness, lack of discernment, and stupidity. These Negroes...are people who have good laws."16 Donald Levine and Almeida described the Ethiopians as "very amenable to reason and justice…intelligent and good natured…mild, gentle, kind…"17 The memory power of Africans struck one European merchant as "beyond what is easy to image. John Hunwick, a history Professor at Northwestern wrote: "In India Black African slaves or freedmen played a considerable role, not merely as soldiers but also as administrators and rulers, in a number of states from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century "For the Ethiopians (Greek and Roman name for all Negroid people) are said to be the justest men and for that reason the gods leave their abode frequently to visit them."1 -Lactantius Placidus, a 6th century AD grammarian "The Negroes are of all peoples those who most abhor injustice…Complete and general safety one enjoys throughout the land (Mali Empire in West Africa)."2 Ibn Battua, 14th century Arab scholar who had traveled to China, India, East Africa, North Africa, and finally Mali. tobaeus recorded that the Ethiopians do not need doors on their homes and do not steal the possessions that their neighbors leave in the street. The Asian Mongols also believed that whites were innately inferior. Between 1237 and 1242 the Mongols ruled over Russia and much of central Europe. They grew wealthy selling white slaves. In the Middle Ages Russians and other Slavic people were the primary source of slaves in the Mediterranean world--The word slave even derives from the word Slav.13 To the surprise of many, there can be little doubt that black people in the Mid-East and Egypt owned white slaves. osa recorded that a people near Zimbabwe, "…are great traders."26 The "sophistication," of the West African forest people's agricultural, recorded Iliffe, "impressed fifteenth-century European

Since when you blacks NEED whites? We built great civilizations without your help. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmfI_AJhhIe_iBhRDcfG2O7sy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090125054237AArEe73 Look at the ignorant first poster. Ghana (AD 5th-13th) A rich and powerful gold kingdom. "He is the richest sovereign on Earth." -Ibn Hawkel, 10th century North African geographer on Ghana's king Mali (AD 13th-15th) An empire larger than Western Europe. Its prosperity and morality gave the empire great international prestige. "It's inhabitants are rich and live comfortably." -Mahmud Kati, famous medieval Syrian scholar Songhay (AD 11th-17th) An Empire larger than Mali that was renowned for its scholarly culture and complex government. "(Surpassed) all other Negroes in wit, civility, and industry." -Leo Africanuas, 16th Century Spanish Moor Kongo (AD 14th-17th) A provincial government with an advanced system of checks and balances. Zimbabwe (AD 10th-15th) A feudal kingdom that has obtained fame for its large stone structures. Swahili Coast A very advanced merchant civilization that traded with India, China, the Mid East, the interior of Africa, and North Africa. Bornu (AD 13th-17th) One of the longest lasting kingdoms of all time. Renowned and feared for its armored knights and cavalry. Benin (AD 13th-19th) A highly organized forest kingdom that had much direct interaction with the first Portuguese merchants. They are renowned for their naturalistic art. Ethiopia, in the Middle ages A highly advanced Christian civilization known for its military might, close relationship with the Portuguese and magnificent architecture. Ancient Nubia One of the world's most powerful ancient kingdoms; it halted the Roman, Greek, Assyrian, and Persian conquerors- it even ruled over Egypt for a time. It built pyramids, palaces, and other great architectural feats. It also developed its own written language. Ancient Aksum (Ethiopia) One of the richest and most powerful kingdoms in ancient times; it even ruled over Southern Arabia for several centuries. It is known for inventing the first castle and developing its own written language. The roots of "Western" civilization, culture, science, technology and religion are to be found not in Greece, but in Black Egypt and Nubia-Kush. From as early as 10,000 B.C. to 1500 A.D., Blacks were in the forefront in the development of science, culture and technology. Black empires and civilizations from the prehistoric Zingh Empire of 15,000 B.C. of Mauritania to ancient Khemet (Egypt) and Nubia-Kush, which existed about 17,000 years ago, experimented in various aspects of science and technology. ompared to Africa and East Asia where the Europeans learned more technology from the Chinese such as the making of gunpowder and guns, Western and Eastern Europe, (excluding Rome, Greece, etc.) have very little history of great civilization and achievements before the Middle Ages. Africans and the Blacks of India, have had thousands of years of great contributions to world culture and civilizations. The British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavians, Germanics, Celts, Russians, Poles and many of these groups who claim "superiority" to Blacks and others, were from prehistoric times until the 1500's A.D., much less advanced economically, culturally, intellectually and scientifically as well as socially than most Black nations, kingdoms and empires during that period. From the time of the Roman conquest of Europe about 400 B.C. to the about 1200 A.D., much of Northern and Western Europe was in a stage or barbarism and backwardness. The Roman settlements and cities built by the Romans were the only areas of advanced culture The claim by some people of racial superiority over Blacks is based on recent developments The introduction of gunpowder to Europe from China via the Arabs played a major part in elevating the Europeans to a level of military superiority. This advantage over some Africans made colonialism and the theft of African lands as well as the defeat of some African armies easier than in past eras. When the Europeans fought with sword and lance against sword and lance, their victories against Africans were few. For example, Hannibal, the African from Carthage defeated Rome's legions with as little as 15,000 men and ruled Italy for many years. However, even with modern weapons during the modern era, Europeans were sometimes soundly defeated. Nations such as the Zulus, Mossi States, Ashanti, Dahomians, Ethiopians, Herrerros and others defeated the Europeans in a number of wars and battles. Therefore, even if people of European origins have made improvements in ancient technologies and ancient inventions, such as rocketry, computer technology, aerodynamics and others, the basic mathematical formulas and ancient prototypes were invented by Africans and Chinese. For example, the Africans invented the binary system which is still used in the Yoruba oracle and was copied by German scientists and applied to computer programming. Many ancient formulas in trigonometry, calculus and physics as well as chemistry (Khem mysteries) came from the scientific discoveries of Blacks in Egypt and Nubia-Kush. Edit since when do blacks need whites. Steel was invented by Africans in ancient Tanzania, where ancient cone-like blast furnaces with bellows still exist to this very day and are still used. The hydraulic pump for lifting water and irrigation was invented by Africans in Egypt How europeans underdevoloped Africa http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/rodney_review.php I don't hate white people I have white friends. Tao you snitch I asked a question since when do blacks need whites ummm the first college was in The Mali Empire a black civilization and the compass was invented by the chinease Wrong a black man made the computer you are typing on and the base of all invetions . http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html Europeans made Africa a lame sitting duck http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/rodney_review.php

Grammar, redaction help........Please read and help me build a nice ad/posting!? Hi There, My name is Franco, I am looking for work as an apprentice and assistant for an Interior Designer. I have an interesting mix of experience that icludes 4 years of university studies in Architecture, studies in Fine arts, 6 years experience in residential construction and remodeling and a rich background in traditional woodworking. I am currently an student of the CAD program at College of San Mateo. I am deeply passionate about interiors, furnishings, Architecture, Art, Objects and specially people rich living. I have excellent free hand & sketching skills as well as traditional technical drafting. I have a very positive attitude, very handy for installations, errands and deliveries, extremely eager to learn and work hard. If my profile sounds interesting to you, let me buy a cup of coffe for you and have a talk!