The Top 10 Most Popular Hallelujah Renditions on Youtube

The most beautiful word: Hallelujah.

The most beautiful song, originally written and sung by none other than Buddhist, and Ladies’ Man, Leonard Cohen.

“And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand right here before the Lord of song, with nothing on my tongue but ‘Hallelujah’.”

It’s, as I say, a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion…It’s a rather joyous song. I wanted to write something in the tradition of the hallelujah choruses but from a different point of view…It’s the notion that there is no perfection—that this is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still that is no alibi for anything.

On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.

~ Leonard Cohen

Then, most memorably, sung by a young man who would, tragically, stay young forever, who would breathe out at the beginning of the song, and finally, never breathe in again. This was the version I first go to know, when, 12 years ago, my designer Pam Uhlenkamp and I played it again and again in her second floor flat just off downtown Boulder, as we worked endless days and nights putting together an issue of Elephant (then Magazine).

And, then, most famously, by Rufus Wainwright, a version that made it into Shrek, the blockbuster children’s fave movie.

“Leonard Cohen originally wrote 80 draft verses for his song “Hallelujah.” He chose several of the most relevant and interchanged some of them depending on where he was playing.”

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who out drew ya
It’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not someone whos seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Here are the top ten most popular versions, as picked by We the People across the World, on youtube. The only editorial privilege I’ve exercised is selecting the top 10 that have kept some of the original heartache and space within each word…there are many pop, casual, speedy, shmaltzy versions that exhibit breathtaking vocal range and a decided lack of heart. Fuck ’em.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hallelujah

Earl Grey Milk Tart

Ingredients

• For the pastry:
• 200g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 100g cold butter, cut into cubes
• 1 medium free-range egg, beaten
• 2 tsp very cold water
• For the custard filling:
• 250ml whole milk
• 350ml double cream
• 2 Earl Grey tea bags
• 8 medium egg yolks
• 80g caster sugar
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• Extra icing sugar for dusting

Method

For the pastry:

1. Mix the flour and icing sugar together in a bowl. Add the diced butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

2. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add the egg. Mix with a spoon and draw the egg into the flour to bring the pastry together. If it’s a little too dry add the water.

3. When the dough begins to stick together, gently knead into a ball. Wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and roll it out into a circle that's about 3mm thick.

5. Line a 20cm loose-based tin with the pastry, leaving the excess pastry hanging over the edge. Prick the base all over with a fork, then chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

6. Preheat your oven to 200°C.

7. Line the chilled pastry case with baking parchment and baking beans, then bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the edge ofthe pastry is light golden-brown.

8. Remove the baking beans and paper, and bake for a further 5-8 minutes, or until the pastry case is crisp and golden-brown all over.

9. Once cooled, carefully trim the edge to remove any overhanging pastry and to neaten the edge. Turn the oven down to 150°C.

For the filling:

1. Pour the milk and cream in a pan, add the tea bags and bring to the boil.

2. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar. Remove the tea bags from the hot cream mixture then pour onto the egg mixture and mix well.

3. Place the trimmed pastry case on a baking tray. Pour the custard into the tart case then sprinkle the nutmeg over the surface.

4. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until the custard is just set.

5. Leave to cool at room temperature. Remove from the tin, dust with plenty of icing sugar and slice into wedges.

http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/earl-grey-milktart.html

10 Unique Animal Places to Visit in 2019

Ethical experiences from Nairobi to Chiang Mai.

BY NIKKI VARGAS, PLACES EDITOR

10 PLACES

In British Columbia, a veritable Club Med exists for cats. In Thailand, a female-founded sanctuary pampers rescued elephants. In the Bahamas, wild pigs have an island all to themselves. This year, Atlas Obscura scoured the planet for incredible animal experiences that are both memorable and ethical, the way all animal tourism should be.  

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1

ISHINOMAKI, JAPAN

Cat Island

On Japan's Tashirojima Island, cats outnumber the people.

 

 

2

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Elephant Nature Park

Thailand's distressed elephants find peace at this Chiang Mai sanctuary.

 

 

3

BHIMASHANKAR, INDIA

India's Giant Technicolor Squirrels

These particularly resplendent rodents are the state animal of Maharashtra.

 

 

4

NEW ZEALAND

Kapiti Island Nature Reserve

Only 68 people per day are allowed to visit this New Zealand bird-watcher’s paradise.

 

 

5

HIGHLAND, SCOTLAND

Cairngorm Reindeer Centre

In the Cairngorm Mountains, you'll find the United Kingdom's only herd of free-range reindeer

 

 

6

BIG MAJOR CAY, BAHAMAS

Pig Beach

In paradise, feral pigs have claimed an island all to themselves.

 

 

7

MESA, ARIZONA

Salt River Wild Horses

These free-roaming horses were once destined to disappear from the land.

 

 

8

SMYRNA, NEW YORK

Wolf Mountain Nature Center

See wolves, coyotes, and arctic foxes in a natural environment just outside New York City.

 

 

9

NAIROBI, KENYA

Nairobi Animal Orphanage

Located in Nairobi National Park, this animal orphanage is the oldest of its kind in Kenya.

 

 

10

RICHMOND, BRITISH COLUMBIA

RAPS Cat Sanctuary

One of the largest cat sanctuaries in North America is considered a "Club Med" for felines.

These Prehistoric Cave Paintings Show Advanced Knowledge of Astronomy

Astronomy is one of humanity's oldest obsessions, reaching back all the way to prehistoric times. Long before the Scientific Revolution taught us that the sun is at the center of the Solar System, or modern astronomy revealed the true extent of our galaxy and the universe, ancient peoples were looking up at the night sky and finding patterns in the stars.

For some time, scholars believed that an understanding of complex astronomical phenomena (like the precession of the equinoxes) did not predate the ancient Greeks. However, researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Kent recently revealed findings that show how ancient cave paintings that date back to 40,000 years ago may, in fact, be astronomical calendars that monitored the equinoxes and kept track of major events.

The team's study, "Decoding European Palaeolithic Art: Extremely Ancient knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes," recently appeared in the Athens Journal of History. The study team included Martin B. Sweatman (an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering) and Alistair Coombs — a researcher and Ph.D. candidate with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent.

Precession of the Equinoxes.

NASA

Together, Sweatman and Coombs studied the details of Paleolithic and Neolithic art featuring animal symbols at sites located in Turkey, Spain, France, and Germany. What they found was that all of these sites used the same method of date-keeping, even though the artwork was created by people living tens of thousands of kilometers and years apart.

According to the team's analysis, the cave paintings were not simply depictions of wild animals (as previously thought) but instead represented star constellations in the night sky. These paintings were apparently used to represent dates and mark major astronomical events like comet strikes. In this sense, they demonstrate that ancient humans kept track of time by monitoring the precession of the equinoxes.

This refers to the phenomenon where the constellations appear to slowly shift in the sky in a cycle that spans a period of roughly 25,920 years. This is the result of axial precession: a slow, continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's rotational axis. To an Earth-bound observer, the equinoxes appeared to move westward along the ecliptic relative to the background stars and in the opposite direction of the sun.

As Dr. Martin Sweatman, a professor with the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, explained in a recent U of E press release:

"Early cave art shows that people had advanced knowledge of the night sky within the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly any different to us today. These findings support a theory of multiple comet impacts over the course of human development, and will probably revolutionize how prehistoric populations are seen."

Göbekli Tepe, structures A-D of the site, located in southern Turkey.

Reinterpreting Old Finds

Their analysis including a clarification of earlier findings from stone carvings at Gobekli Tepe. Located in modern day Turkey, this site is dated to ca. 10,950 B.C.E., making it the oldest known temple site in the world. In a previous study conducted by Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis (a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh), they interpreted this site as a memorial to a devastating comet strike around 11,000 B.C.E.

This strike is thought to have initiated a mini ice-age known as the Younger Dryas period, which began abruptly about 12,500 years ago and ended just as abruptly 1,200 years later. By examining the pictograms and animal reliefs on the site's many standing pillars (using the planetarium program Stellarium 0.15), they concluded that the images bore a resemblance to constellations that would have been visible in 10,950 B.C.E.

For this study, the team compared artwork in various locations with the positions of stars in ancient times, which they simulated using Stellarium 0.18. From this, they were able to decode what is perhaps the best-known example of ancient artwork — the Lascaux Shaft Scene, which is part of a series of cave paintings located in the Lascaux caves in southwestern France.

These paintings, which feature a dying man and several animals, may be an astronomical record of another comet strike that took place around 15,200 B.C.E. In addition, they found that the world's oldest sculpture, the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave (which is located in southern Germany) appeared to conform to this ancient time-keeping system. This sculpture is dated to 38,000 B.C.E, making it the earliest piece of evidence of prehistoric astronomy.

Aurochs’ heads found within one of the shrine rooms at Catalhöyük.

Verity Cridland / Wikipedia Commons

Another site they considered was Catalhöyük, an ancient settlement in modern-day Turkey that existed from approximately 7500 B.C.E to 5700 B.C.E. Within the excavated shrine rooms, there are carvings of animals (auroch heads, ram heads, a bear symbol, and the pouncing lion/leopard) that are similar to reliefs found at Gobekli Tepe and are believed to represent the constellations of Capricornus, Aries, Ursa, and Cancer.

What this reveals is that as early as 40,000 years ago, humans may have been keeping track of time based on how the position of the stars slowly changed over the course of thousands of years. The commonalities found between sites would also seem to indicate that these traditions survived the passage of time and were carried from place to place by prehistoric humans as they migrated.

In essence, ancient people may have had a far greater understanding of astronomy than previously thought. This could have drastic implications when it comes to our understanding of prehistoric human migration, since this knowledge could have aided navigation of the open seas. It could also help anthropologists further refine their theories of when migrations occurred.

This article is republished from Universe Today under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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