Madame Butterfly

Yes I have seen an episode.

 

I thought it was laughably bad.

I said HELLO BRIT

Hello Brit.

One sad note: this all happend just as the affair was in full bloom. Now the man is revealed as a seedy character, with a reputation that is soiled.

That must be a huge relief to the woman he was beginning to be "in full bloom" with.

Man Sues Florist for Revealing Affair

By SCOTT MICHELS,ABC News

Posted: 2007-08-10 22:41:48

Filed Under: Weird News

HOUSTON (Aug. 10) -- A married man is suing 1-800-Flowers for $1 million for revealing that he was cheating on his wife.

 

Leroy Greer, a married man going through a divorce, claims in a federal lawsuit filed in Texas that he bought flowers through 1-800-Flowers for his girlfriend and asked the company to keep his purchase private.

 

Leroy Greer said in a lawsuit filed this week in a federal court in Texas that he bought flowers for his girlfriend through 1-800-Flowers. He asked to keep his purchase private.

 

Greer said he was referred to the company's privacy policy, which states that customers can ask 1-800-Flowers not to share personal information with "third parties."

 

But, the lawsuit says, 1-800-Flowers sent a thank-you note to his house and his wife saw it. When she called the company, 1-800-Flowers faxed her a copy of the receipt from Greer's secret purchase.

 

The receipt revealed that Greer had sent another woman a dozen long-stemmed red roses, along with a note that read, "Just wanted to say that I love you and you mean the world to me!" according to court documents.

 

The couple was already going through what Greer's attorney described as an amicable divorce.

 

After learning of the affair, Greer's wife asked for a $300,000 divorce settlement in addition to child support, said Kennitra Foote, Greer's attorney.

 

"That thank-you note is going to cost him money," Foote said.

 

Greer is asking for $1 million for breach of contract and deceptive trade practices.

 

"This is not a moral issue," Foote said. "The issue is, is 1-800-Flowers in the business of causing divorce or are they in the business of sending flowers and sticking to their privacy policy?"

 

A 1-800-Flowers spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation. In a statement, spokesman Steven Jarmon said, "We take all matters relating to our customers seriously; however, we are not responsible for an individual's personal conduct."

 

 

 

I think the man here has a case. It is not the florist's business whether or not this man was having an affair. They clearly violated their privacy policy and should pay through the nose for it. Besides, the man was already in the process of getting a divorce so I'm not sure it could even be called "having an affair".

 

 

I'd have to strongly disagree.

 

This dude is an idiot. They ask for a billing address when you order flowers, he didn't have to use his home address. He's wanting someone else to take the blame for his infidelities, and I hope he loses this case big time.

We may disagree......but it SO NICE to see Madame Butterfly dipping her perfectly manicured toes into our little forum again.......

:) Ironically I just had my first pedicure Kor. :)

Nice to be back. :)

Man Sues Florist for Revealing Affair

By SCOTT MICHELS,ABC News

Posted: 2007-08-10 22:41:48

Filed Under: Weird News

HOUSTON (Aug. 10) -- A married man is suing 1-800-Flowers for $1 million for revealing that he was cheating on his wife.

 

Leroy Greer, a married man going through a divorce, claims in a federal lawsuit filed in Texas that he bought flowers through 1-800-Flowers for his girlfriend and asked the company to keep his purchase private.

 

Leroy Greer said in a lawsuit filed this week in a federal court in Texas that he bought flowers for his girlfriend through 1-800-Flowers. He asked to keep his purchase private.

 

Greer said he was referred to the company's privacy policy, which states that customers can ask 1-800-Flowers not to share personal information with "third parties."

 

But, the lawsuit says, 1-800-Flowers sent a thank-you note to his house and his wife saw it. When she called the company, 1-800-Flowers faxed her a copy of the receipt from Greer's secret purchase.

 

The receipt revealed that Greer had sent another woman a dozen long-stemmed red roses, along with a note that read, "Just wanted to say that I love you and you mean the world to me!" according to court documents.

 

The couple was already going through what Greer's attorney described as an amicable divorce.

 

After learning of the affair, Greer's wife asked for a $300,000 divorce settlement in addition to child support, said Kennitra Foote, Greer's attorney.

 

"That thank-you note is going to cost him money," Foote said.

 

Greer is asking for $1 million for breach of contract and deceptive trade practices.

 

"This is not a moral issue," Foote said. "The issue is, is 1-800-Flowers in the business of causing divorce or are they in the business of sending flowers and sticking to their privacy policy?"

 

A 1-800-Flowers spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation. In a statement, spokesman Steven Jarmon said, "We take all matters relating to our customers seriously; however, we are not responsible for an individual's personal conduct."

 

 

 

I think the man here has a case. It is not the florist's business whether or not this man was having an affair. They clearly violated their privacy policy and should pay through the nose for it. Besides, the man was already in the process of getting a divorce so I'm not sure it could even be called "having an affair".

I'd have to strongly disagree.

This dude is an idiot. They ask for a billing address when you order flowers, he didn't have to use his home address. He's wanting someone else to take the blame for his infidelities, and I hope he loses this case big time.

Hey Odo, I got to see them play this summer when I returned home for a visit.

I dont like them not being at the stadium where there was a roar in '84, but I do like them beating up on the White Sox.

Go Tigers!!!

The Roar of '84, still have the grass from the infield from the night we had tickets, though it's been so long, I can't remember which game # it was.

 

This is worded much nicer than at ST.com Wishfire. B)

 

Not my fault, I had two bottle of rum in me then! Now I only have a little less than one. B)

B)

I don't many disagreed with you there.

This is worded much nicer than at ST.com Wishfire. B)

Human Ears Evolved from Ancient Fish Gills

By Bjorn Carey

LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 19 January 2006

12:21 am ET

Your ability to hear relies on a structure that got its start as a gill opening in fish, a new study reveals.

Humans and other land animals have special bones in their ears that are crucial to hearing. Ancient fish used similar structures to breathe underwater.

Scientists had thought the evolutionary change occurred after animals had established themselves on land, but a new look at an old fossil suggests ear development was set into motion before any creatures crawled out of the water.

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Researchers examined the ear bones of a close cousin of the first land animals, a 370-million-year-old fossil fish called Panderichthys. They compared these structures to those of another lobe-finned fish and to an early land animal and determined that Panderichthys displays a transitional form.

In the other fish, Eusthenopteron, a small bone called the hyomandibula developed a kink and obstructed the gill opening, called a spiracle.

However, in early land animals such as the tetrapod Acanthostega, this bone has receded, creating a larger cavity in what is now part of the middle ear in humans and other animals.

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The new examination of the Panderichthys fossil provides scientists with a critical "missing link" between fish gill openings and ears.

"In Panderichthys, it is much more like in tetrapods where there is no longer such a 'kink' and the spiracle has widened and opened up," study co-author Martin Brazeau of Uppsala University in Sweden told LiveScience. "[The hyomandibula] is quite a bit shorter, but still fairly rod-like like in Eusthenopteron. It's like a combination of fish and tetrapods."

However, it's unclear if early tetrapods used these structures to hear. Panderichthys most likely used their spiracles for ventilation of either water or air. Early tetrapods probably passed air through the opening. Scientists would need preserved soft tissue to say for sure.

"That's the question that we're starting to investigate, whether early tetrapods used it for some ventilation function as well," Brazeau said. Whether it was for the exhalation of water or air, it's not really clear. We can infer that it's quite expanded and improved from fish."

This research is detailed in the Jan. 19 issue of the journal Nature.

Hubble finds new moons, rings around Uranus

Friday, December 23, 2005; Posted: 5:00 a.m. EST (10:00 GMT)

(CNN) -- New images from the Hubble Space Telescope show the planet Uranus has two additional moons and two faint rings never observed before.

The new moons, which were named Mab and Cupid, bring the total number of satellites orbiting Uranus to 27.

Astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute and his colleagues were not looking for new moons or rings when they submitted a proposal to take deep exposures of the planet with Hubble's most advanced optical camera. Rather, they planned to study the 11 previously known rings and several moons embedded within them.

Once they saw the new moons, they re-examined images that the Voyager 2 spacecraft took when it flew by Uranus in 1986. The two moons are clearly there, but no one recognized them at the time.

"The discoveries all came from Hubble," Showalter said. "The Voyager results came because it's much easier to find something you are looking for."

The Hubble images also confirmed the existence of another moon, Perdita, which was first identified in the Voyager 2 pictures but had eluded telescopes ever since.

Many moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare, and these new moons follow suit. Mab is named for Queen Mab, who is the subject of a famous speech by the character Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet." Cupid is best known as the Roman god of love, but he also turns up as a character in the lesser-known play "Timon of Athens." The name Perdita comes from the play "A Winter's Tale."

All three moons are very small. Perdita is the largest, measuring about 16 miles across.

The moons are orbiting in the same vicinity as the newly discovered rings -- outside the previously known ring system but closer to the planet than the five largest moons.

"Sometimes you find things you aren't looking for," Showalter said. "No one thought this region of Uranus was very interesting."

As it turns out, that region is turning out to be very interesting, because the orbits of the moons within it are chaotic. The system is so unstable that Showalter thinks the moons will collide and smash each other to bits one day, though probably not for a million years or so.

The private, not-for-profit SETI Institute, whose major mission involves the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the study of life in the universe, also has some involvement in other astronomical research projects.

Yesterday evening I went into work to work on floor set and to supervise the "cashwrap" sections.

I was appaled by the service a "holiday" employee was giving to a "guest".

"Oh yeah, well we could look that up, but if they only have one or two on the search, it most likely means no, and so we've wasted everyones time".

:P

If the guest is looking for something and is willing to drive to another of our stores THAN DO IT!!! They are a "guest" because you are to treat them as you would a stranger in your home. :)

This woman had actually been wanting to get into our management program and when the store GM happened to ask me on my thoughts of her, about 30 minutes after this situation, I laid it out straight. I'm absolutely certain she won't be working with our company after holiday season is officially over at the end of January.

This is no reflection of you MP. Just an observation after reading what UH had written.

Some people just don't understand that to keep a business running, it's about how to please the customer. I'm embarrassed for those who keep apologizing to me for me doing something to meet their needs. That's why I have my job!!! To make the "guests" want to shop there again.

Read my log about me dealing with customers... I think the reason was that they had me watching sporting goods, and when they came back, I was smiling and polishing a shotgun I got out of the case.

:) :P :)

Oddball object circles sun beyond Neptune

Friday, December 16, 2005 Posted: 1631 GMT (0031 HKT)

Manage Alerts | What Is This? WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A distant object named Buffy has been spotted circling the sun far beyond Neptune in a strange tilted orbit that is making some astronomers question how the outer reaches of the solar system formed.

Officially called 2004 XR 190 by the International Astronomical Union but code-named Buffy, the object is now about 58 times as far from the sun as Earth, and twice as far from the sun as Neptune.

At this distance from the heart of the planetary system, Buffy is a considered a Kuiper Belt object, but an odd one, astronomers working in Canada, France and the United States said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Kuiper Belt is a ring of space objects that may be remnants from the early solar system. Most of these objects orbit the sun between 30 and 50 times the distance that Earth orbits. The distance from Earth to the sun -- 93 million miles -- is known as one astronomical unit.

Most Kuiper Belt objects are contained in this thick swath of space, and most have elliptical orbits, which means they get much closer to Neptune during parts of their orbits. They generally orbit in the same plane as most of the planets and other solar system objects.

But Buffy's circular track means it stays beyond the 50 astronomical unit range for its entire orbit, never getting much closer than 52 astronomical units, or AU, and sometimes swinging out to 62 AU.

The only other known object that never gets within the 50 AU boundary is Sedna, which flings out to 900 AU and swoops in to 76 AU. But Sedna's orbit is typically elliptical, while Buffy goes around in a near-perfect circle.

And Buffy's orbit is tilted at a 47 degree angle from the rest of the solar system.

The highly eccentric orbits of the other Kuiper Belt objects are thought to be the result of being flung outward in a slingshot effect by Neptune's gravity. But Buffy's orbit does not follow that pattern.

Here's a link to the story, and it does have an image for you to enlarge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4542174.stm

Saturn Moon Spews Fountains

By Irene Mona Klotz, Discovery News

Dec. 1, 2005— A mysterious energy source is heating up the southern pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus, triggering blasts of highly pressurized water ice that is spewing hundreds of miles into space, say scientists who this week released pictures of the fountains taken by the Cassini satellite.

"This is one of the most extraordinary discoveries for us," said Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., who heads the Cassini imaging team.

Cassini captured images of the geysers with a back-lit view of Enceladus as the spacecraft made a pass by the moon last weekend.

Scientists earlier had discovered the moon's southern hot spot, relatively speaking. Temperatures around Enceladus' south pole are about -163° Celsius (-261° Fahrenheit), compared to -198° Celsius (-325° Fahrenheit) for the rest of the moon.

The team suspected there could be some geologic activity and set up the camera angle to take advantage of the sun-moon geometry. They were richly rewarded with a series of shots showing fountains blasting from the moon's surface to a height of about 500 kilometers (311 miles), Porco said.

"We suspect it could be caused by cold vents that lead from somewhere in the subsurface, perhaps as far as 1 kilometer (.62 mile) down. Water ice is sublimating (changing directly from a solid to a gas state) and the vapors are coming off and building up to high pressure," Porco said.

The vapors rise to the surface as a jet and blast. The images taken by Cassini show particles of powder-sized ice scattering, much as a stream of dust is illuminated by sunlight flowing through a window.

The jets are formed like comet tails, except that Enceladus has some sort of internal heating mechanism to transform its ice into vapor, rather than the solar energy that heats up a comet.

Another possibility is that Enceladus' energy source is even hotter than suspected and the water ice is actually melted into an underground liquid that is creating hot springs, similar to the geysers found at Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere on Earth.

"What's puzzling us is how it's getting hot enough," Porco said. "We're still in a quandary over how you'd get this much energy."

The findings buttress theories that Enceladus is providing the material for Saturn's E-ring, which was first observed in images taken by Cassini in January.

The scientists are continuing their analysis of the fountains and looking for additional opportunities to gather more information during future Cassini flybys.

MB, Whats that aboot?!

 

I'm Frum Pittsburgh, Pittsburghese Yinz should come on up n' sit doun and have a Primanti's Samitch n' At

I have no clue. I don't quite say aboot. I think it's because my Dad and his family are from England, and the neighborhood my Grandparents lived in was heavily Cornish. I think it's just a small something that reminds people of Canada.

I've always like purple and green the best, though red has become a huge fav in the past two years.

Beagle 2 probe 'spotted' on Mars

By Pallab Ghosh

BBC science correspondent

The scientist behind the British Beagle 2 mission to the Red Planet says the craft may have been found in pictures of the Martian surface.

Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth.

He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard - as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars.

This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the call home.

The Beagle 2 lead scientist has been painstakingly studying images of the landing site in search of his spacecraft ever since it was lost on Christmas Day two years ago.

Now, he says, specially processed pictures from the camera on the US space agency's (Nasa) Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show that it came down in a crater close to the planned landing site.

Life search

The robotic laboratory was designed to search Mars for signs of past or present life. The last contact was an image of Beagle taken by its mothership, the Mars Express orbiter, on 19 December 2003.

Beagle 2 was designed to seek out signs of life on Mars

The £45m lander was scheduled to put down in a near-equatorial region of the planet known as Isidis Planitia. But despite many attempts to locate it - using overflying spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes - no sign of it, not even any wreckage, has been detected.

Professor Pillinger accepts the sceptics will say Beagle 2 is too small to be seen from space.

And when taken in isolation, each of the "objects" in the crater bowl could be explained by other phenomena. But, he argues, it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that so many unusual features are to be found "within 20m of each other".

"We've had the pessimists round saying 'we've already seen something like that'. But they haven't seen them all together," he told the BBC.

Crater bounce

Based on the features found in the crater, members of the Beagle 2 team have reconstructed what might have happened to Beagle as it touched down on the Red Planet.

"There is a lot of disturbance in this crater, particularly a big patch on the north crater wall which we think is the primary impact site," Professor Pillinger explains.

"There are then other features around the crater consistent with the airbags bouncing around and finally falling down into the middle. Then, when you cut the lace, the airbags fall apart giving three very symmetrical triangles."

Four roughly circular features to the right of the 'airbags' could conceivably be Beagle's unfolded solar panels.

Professor Pillinger claims the images show Beagle 2 came very close to being the first spacecraft to mount a concerted search for life on the Martian surface.

And so, he says, it would have been common sense for British and European governments to have backed another attempt.

Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which will photograph Mars in unprecedented detail once it reaches the planet next year, could confirm the tentative identification.

Extinct mammoth DNA decoded

By Helen Briggs

BBC News science reporter

Mammoths became extinct in the last few thousand years

Scientists have pieced together part of the genetic recipe of the extinct woolly mammoth.

The 5,000 DNA letters spell out a large chunk of the genetic code of its mitochondria, the structures in the cell that generate energy.

The research, published in the online edition of Nature, gives an insight into the elephant family tree.

It shows that the mammoth was most closely related to the Asian rather than the African elephant.

The three groups split from a common ancestor about six million years ago, with Asian elephants and mammoths diverging about half a million years later.

"We have finally resolved the phylogeny of the mammoth which has been controversial for the last 10 years," lead author Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told the BBC News website.

Ice age wanderer

Mammoths lived in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America between about 1.6 million years ago and 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch.

It is the longest stretch of DNA [decoded to date] from any Pleistocene species,

Michael Hofreiter

The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, with its covering of shaggy hair, was adapted to the extremes of the ice ages.

The DNA of several extinct ice age mammals, preserved in permafrost, has been analysed before, but not in such detail.

"It is the longest stretch of DNA [decoded to date] from any Pleistocene species," said Professor Hofreiter.

Maternal line

The team of researchers - from Germany, the UK, and the US - extracted and analysed mammoth DNA using a new technique that works on even the tiny quantities of fossilised bone - in this case 200 milligrams.

Some 46 chunks of DNA sequence were matched up and arranged in order, giving a complete record of the mammoth's mitochondrial DNA - the circular scrap of genetic material found outside the cell's nucleus.

It is passed down the maternal line with small but regular changes, giving scientists a window into the past.

Although the bulk of an animal's genetic information is found in the nucleus, mitochondrial DNA is particularly useful for studying the evolutionary relationships between different species.

The complete mitochondrial DNA of an extinct animal has been sequenced before but only for the flightless bird, the moa, which died out about 500 years ago.

Dan Bradley, an expert in ancient DNA at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, said the research was "a bit of a landmark".

"Most ancient mitochondrial DNA projects use just small parts of the mitochondria," he said.

Alternative view

In a separate piece of research, published in the journal Science, a team reports sequencing some of the nuclear DNA from 27,000-year-old Siberian mammoth remains.

Again, novel techniques were used to get at this genetic material which is normally less prevalent than mitochondrial DNA.

Hendrik Poinar, from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues took their sample from an animal's jawbone.

In contrast to the Nature paper, the Science team says its work shows the ice age beast to have been more closely related to the African elephant; its genetic material was 98.5% identical to nuclear DNA from an African elephant, the group said.

One of the Science article's authors, Stephan Schuster of Penn State's Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics, noted the Nature study's reliance on mitochondrial DNA.

"Mitochondrial DNA is a tiny piece of hereditary information," he told the Associated Press.

"What determines the physiology and the appearance of an organism is all stored in the chromosome [found in the nucleus], and so this tiny bit of information [carried by mitochondrial DNA] is only one-100,000th of the information that is stored on the chromosome."

I'm originally from Michigan and ironically I've been told I talk like a Canadian.

Chocolate may cut heart disease

The health claims of chocolate are not accepted by all

Researchers have produced more evidence that dark chocolate may help to reduce the risk of serious heart disease.

They found eating a few squares a day may stave off artery narrowing and hardening in smokers by countering the disruption caused by their habit.

Smoking compromises the activity of both endothelial cells, which line the artery walls, and platelets, which are involved in blood clot formation.

The research, by University Hospital, Zurich, is published in Heart.

The researchers compared the effects of dark (74% cocoa solids) and white chocolate on the smoothness of blood flow in the arteries of 20 male smokers.

Before eating 40g of chocolate, smokers were asked to abstain from other foods rich in beneficial antioxidants, such as onions, apples, cabbage, and cocoa products for 24 hours.

After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow - an effect which lasted for eight hours.

Blood sample analysis also showed that dark chocolate almost halved platelet activity.

Antioxidant levels rose sharply after two hours.

White chocolate had no effect on endothelial cells, platelets, or antioxidant levels.

The researchers are convinced that the key is the high antioxidant content of dark chocolate, which contains more per gram than other food and drink laden with the substances, such red wine, green tea, and berry fruits.

Research published last year by the University of California found antioxidant-rich flavonoids in chocolate helped the blood vessels expand.

Warning

Dr Charmaine Griffiths, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "There is some evidence that when eaten in small quantities, dark chocolate might have some beneficial effects on blood vessels, but as yet no study has investigated the long-terms clinical effects - and this new, small study from Switzerland, does not change that.

"The key thing to remember about such studies is that chocolate is a bigger part of the problem than the solution.

"Whilst dark chocolate is higher in anti-oxidants, all forms of chocolate are very high in calories (typically about 500 calories per 100g) and contain an average 30% total fat.

"We are certainly not suggesting people never eat chocolate - everyone can enjoy a treat from time to time.

"But there are much better ways of improving your heart health, such as eating a varied diet, including at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

"And whatever they eat, the biggest step the smokers in this study could make to reduce their risk of heart disease would be to give up."

Thank you both.

You are very kind.

As I came across this article today, I could not help but to think that many people at this site would enjoy this discovery, and possibilities in these finds.

I hope that some of you do.

Have a joyous holiday season, and a blessed new year.

MB

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The importance of the written word

St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai is famed for its unique collection of manuscripts. Jill Kamil looks into the wealth of the scriptorium and the plan to update its literary wealth

Deep in South Sinai, snuggled amidst dry gorges and naked valleys, 17 centuries of uninterrupted asceticism in an orthodox monastic centre trace back to the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Never in its long history has St Catherine's Monastery been conquered, damaged, or destroyed. It is famous for its icons and manuscripts, and it is the latter that is about to receive attention.

The Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the custodians of the monastery, have announced a three-phase project, the first of which includes comprehensive documentation of all the manuscripts -- one of the richest monastic collections in the world and second in importance only to the Vatican.

The holy fathers of St Catherine's exercise much secrecy and reserve regarding their heritage, especially their sacred manuscripts. This is largely owing to their unfortunate experience with Konstantin von Tischendorf, a German scholar from the vicinity of Leipzig. He took a precious codex, the oldest translation of the Bible into any language, to old St Petersburg and gave the monks a handwritten note saying that he was taking the work on loan in order to copy it and promising to return it undamaged. The monks counted on the return of the precious codex, but they never saw it again.

The great significance of the Codex Syriacus or the Syrian codex, which is now of international fame, is that it is the only known copy of the Greek New Testament in its original uncial script. It was discovered in 1892 and the text is a palimpsest -- which is to say, a text partly erased so that the parchment on which it was written could be used again, as indeed, it was. In this case, the underlying fifth-century text is now so faded as to be virtually invisible.

Its discovery revolutionalised biblical analysis. Before then, von Tischendorf and other scholars believed the Gospel according to Matthew was earlier than Mark's, and that John and Matthew had been direct eye-witnesses to the events in the life of Jesus. Study of the codex led Tischendorf to think otherwise. Through literary detective work, he studied the order of events in the ancient texts, compared biblical stories, and provided evidence -- subsequently hotly disputed but today generally accepted -- that the Gospel of St Mark was written before those of Matthew and Luke. If this is indeed so, then it is somewhat startling to learn that some of the most treasured biblical stories do not appear in it. Were they, perhaps, later additions? Although it is not known exactly where the codex was written, it was certainly not in the monastery where it was found; it had not then been built.

Von Tischendorf presented the Syrian codex to then Czar of Russia Alexander II. After Tischendorf's death in 1917, however, the Russian revolution in the same year resulted in financial problems for Russia which caused the precious bible, consisting of 346 folia and a small fragment, to be sold to the British Museum for the then enormous sum of GBP100,000. Little wonder that the monks were subsequently reluctant to let anyone gain access to their library. They have been suspicious of scholars who wish to carry out research in their archives ever since -- even if they hold the highest credentials.

Evaluation of the nature and quality of the manuscripts remained a closed secret until between 1948 and 1950, when a special committee was formed by the Farouk I University in Alexandria and the American Foundation for the Study of Man, acting on behalf of the Library of Congress in Washington DC, with the aim of examining every volume separately and microfilming, co-jointly, the whole set for the Library of Congress and the university. This was achieved thanks to the collaboration of a team of scholars and technicians.

Their work revealed that manuscripts in the library exceeded all previous estimates put forward in existing catalogues and hand-lists, which registered a total of about 2,000 codices. The new study revealed that the Greek manuscripts alone numbered 2,250, Arabic manuscripts in the neighbourhood of 600, and Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Polish, Slavic and Syriac numbering several hundred volumes.

Some of the texts proved to be older than the monastery itself, which indicated that the monks either collected these or were given them even before its foundation. The material covers a wide range of subjects -- theological, liturgical, scientific and historical as well as rare texts in the form of rolls of varying lengths, sometimes reaching several metres. Among them are accounts of pilgrims' journeys to Sinai, charters or liberties issued by the caliphs and sultans of Islam in favour of the monks of St Catherine, and a large collection of books, more than 5,000 in number, many of which were produced in the first decades after the invention of printing.

The existence of the Arabic documents in the library provides clear demonstration of the spirit of tolerance which marked the relations between the sultans and their Christian subjects. Among the greatest treasures is Mt Sinai Arabic Codex 151, which is probably the oldest Arabic translation of the Bible from its original Aramaic -- the language in common use for 1,000 years. It is dated 867 AD, the name of its translator is Bishr Ibn Al-Sirri, and the original manuscript was completed in Damascus, Syria. Its importance was recognised by Aziz Suriyal Attiya of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who was closely associated with the microfilming of the manuscripts in 1950. He handed a copy to Harvy Staal at the University of Michigan for translation, and it proved to be so fascinating and challenging a task that he devoted his life to working on it. It was published in English and Arabic in 1985.

Bishr Ibn Al-Sirri's translation of the Arabic codex was made about 200 years after the Arab conquest of the Middle East, and in his introduction to the English text Harvy Staal observed that it was remarkable to read the comments made by a Christian Arab community of 1000 years ago, reflecting the theology of people from a similar cultural background to that of Jesus Christ. How the manuscript came to be in St Catherine's Monastery is not certain. Perhaps a monk smuggled it to what was recognised as a place of safety during the uncertain years of the Crusades, and there it reposed ever since.

On 26 May 1975 a totally unexpected discovery was made. A walled-up room in the great north-western wall of the monastery which was being cleared after a fire that broke out in St George's tower was found to contain more than 70 boxes with an additional 3,000-odd manuscripts. Apparently a part of the library had been kept there until the 18th century, and when most of the codices and manuscripts -- especially those in Greek -- were later moved to the new library, this collection of largely Syrian, Slavic and Coptic texts was left behind. It was buried when the roof caved in and subsequently forgotten.

The horde included ancient biblical texts and other documents, as well as Greek texts in uncial script which shed new light on the history of Greek writing. To their delight the monks recognised some dozen leaves of their sacred Syrian Codex; today the 53 leaves originally purloined by von Tischendorf are preserved in Leipzig, 346 leaves and a fragment are in the British Museum, and the dozen newly-discovered leaves remain at St Catherine's.

Following their chance discovery the monks contacted the Greek Ministry of Culture and Science, and in 1976 and 1977 experts from the National Library of Athens and other conservationists travelled to Sinai. The find was made public for the first time at the International Byzantine Congress in Vienna in October 1981, and Archbishop Damianos announced that it would be made available to scholars after the monastery had published its own catalogue. This is the first stage of the Ministry of Culture project that is about to be launched. The second stage will focus on compiling an encyclopaedia on the monastery from an Egyptian-Greek perspective, and the third will including filming a documentary.

The holdings of the library clearly reflect the growth of the monastery which, despite its isolation in central South Sinai nevertheless lay at the crossroads of many cultures. Innumerable inscriptions left on the monastery walls and buildings in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Russian attest to the large number of pilgrims, and together with the mass of crusaders' arms and blazons engraved on the stone masonry leave no doubt of the importance of the monastery as one of the chief centres of Christian pilgrimage.

Taken as a unit, the manuscripts extend chronologically from the 4th century to the 19th, and this vast and diverse literary heritage brings a vanished world to life. The Greek Orthodox monastery in Sinai is reminder of the time, before the dominance of Rome, when Greek was the lingua franca of the community of people throughout the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, including Palestine and Syria. It reveals the linguistic progression of the Greek language, the continuous life of the monastic community, and casts light on the growth and development of Christianity in the grand cities of the eastern Mediterranean -- Antioch, Constantinople, Endessa and Jerusalem -- where evidence has all but vanished, the victims of neglect, natural disasters, and changes in both religion and taste. In St Catherine's monastery, however, are acquisitions from various parts of the Roman Empire, varied in character and content.

After the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640, it is said that the Prophet Mohamed granted the monks of Mt Sinai a covenant whereby their lives and property would be secure under Muslim rule. The existing tradition is that the original charter was taken from the monastery by Sultan Selim I after the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in the 16th century; but the sultan gave the monks a copy of it and sanctioned its terms. From the enormous collection of ancient and modern rolls preserved in the monastery's library, it is clear that the Covenant of the Prophet, whether or not authentic, was in some way or other renewed, and the privileges of protection and safe-conduct for the monks were upheld.