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✽  "A group of leading historians held a press conference Monday at the National Geographic Society to announce they had "entirely fabricated" ancient Greece, a culture long thought to be the intellectual basis of Western civilization..." ~ The Onion

✽  Common English Bible NT Kindle Edition is available for free for a limited time on Amazon! ~ link

✽  Flagstaff people are reporting snow on top of San Franciso Peak. I guess we did just jump right from summer to winter.

✽  Highly quotable -- but is it hyperbole or reality?:

Much of America is in a nasty mood and the language of compassion has more or less been abandoned… 

America today presents the paradox of a rich country falling apart because of the collapse of its core values. American productivity is among the highest in the world. Average national income per person is about $46,000 – enough not only to live on, but to prosper. Yet the country is in the throes of an ugly moral crisis...

Americans seem to believe that they have a natural right to government services without paying taxes. In the American political lexicon, taxes are defined as a denial of liberty. 

The result of all this is likely to be a long-term decline of US power and prosperity, because Americans no longer invest collectively in their common future. America will remain a rich society for a long time to come, but one that is increasingly divided and unstable. Fear and propaganda may lead to more US-led international wars, as in the past decade. ~ Jeffrey Sachs (via)