Tales of Disbelief

2006-01-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-marry-for-money,0,6258658.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

Study Finds That Marriage Builds Wealth

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By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press Writer

January 18, 2006, 4:43 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Marrying for money, it turns out, works. A study by an Ohio State University researcher shows that a person who marries -- and stays married -- accumulates nearly twice as much personal wealth as a person who is single or divorced.

And for those who divorce, it's a bit more expensive than giving up half of everything they own. They lose, on average, three-fourths of their personal net worth.

"Getting married for a few years and then getting divorced is clearly not the path to financial independence," said Jay Zagorsky, whose study divided married couples' assets so they could be compared with singles.

Zagorsky, a research scientist at OSU's Center for Human Resource Research, tracked the wealth and marital status of 9,055 people from 1985 to 2000. Those people have been participating in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which has repeatedly interviewed them about various aspects of their lives since 1979.

The participants are now 41 to 49 years old, making them the youngest of the baby boomers.

Zagorsky cautioned that results could be different for older and younger Americans, who have faced different attitudes about marriage, divorce and living together without marriage.

Zagorsky's study, which is published in the current issue of the Journal of Sociology, defines wealth as the total value of a person's assets, such as real estate, stocks and bank accounts, minus liabilities, such as mortgages.

A big reason married people accumulate more wealth than others is simple economies of scale -- one household is cheaper to maintain than two, Zagorsky said. Divorce reverses those benefits, he said.

"Divorce looks like one of the fastest ways to destroy your wealth," Zagorsky said.

David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, said people become more economically productive after they marry.

"They work harder, they advance further in their job, they save more money, and maybe invest more wisely," Popenoe said. "That's because, one can speculate, they are now working for something larger than themselves. They are working for a family."

Zagorsky showed that single people slowly accumulated wealth during the study, going from a median of $1,500 at the start to $10,900 in the 15th year.

Married people accumulated wealth much faster, accumulating 93 percent more than single or divorced people over the life of the study, Zagorsky said.

People who divorced started losing net worth four years before their divorces were final, Zagorsky said. That could be because they had separated before divorcing, forcing them to support two households, he said.

The study found that men fared better than women after divorce, holding about 2 1/2 times the wealth. However, in dollars, it added up to a difference of only $5,124.

"While men come out slightly ahead, divorce destroys wealth dramatically for both sexes," Zagorsky wrote in his study.

2006-01-18T13:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17752119%255E601,00.html

Ice cores show warming 'natural'
Brendan O'Keefe
January 07, 2006

HUNDREDS of thousands of years worth of climate records in ice cores show there is nothing unusual in a global warming trend over the past 25 years.

Marine geophysicist Bob Carter, a professor at Queensland's James Cook University and leading climate change sceptic, said the effects of human activity would barely register in the long-term history of climate change.

He told The Weekend Australian that ice cores from Antarctica "tell us clearly that in the context of the meteorological records of 100 years, it is not unusual to have a period of warming like the one we are in at the moment".

Dr Carter disputed the theory that human activity was making a current - natural - warm period hotter: "Atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change." He argues that "any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation".

Fellow sceptic William Kininmonth, a former director of the Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre, agreed. He wrote in a 2004 book, Climate Change: A Natural Hazard that there was "every reason to believe that the variabilities in global temperature and other climate characteristics experienced over the past century are part of the natural variability of the climate system and are not a consequence of recent anthropogenic activities".

But other leading scientists, who blame human activity for climate change, say the "denialists" are a one-to-99 minority.

Will Steffen, director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, said: "There is no debate. The debate is over." The evidence that human activity had increased emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to natural warming, was "overwhelming", he said.

For scientist and University of Adelaide academic Tim Flannery there was also no argument: humans had turned up the heating and only humans could keep a lid on it. The argument that human activity did not contribute to global warming was "not a credible hypothesis to build policy on", he said.

2006-01-18T12:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.christian-mommies.com/ages/tweens-and-teenagers/elephants-and-teenagers/

Elephants and Teenagers

Something eerily familiar happened in KwaZulu-Natal's Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in Africa recently.

The adult elephants were taken away and the orphaned youngsters were left to fend for themselves.

The youngsters started the path to sexual maturity. The young boys were going into lengthy 'musths', as a dog would go into heat, much longer than a normal elephant in a normal setting.

The boys ganged together. They started raping and killing white rhinos, an endangered species. They were displaying extreme aggression. The park authorities were very concerned.

Someone had the idea to bring in ten adult bulls to "straighten out" the gang of elephant thugs.

Sure enough, the mature males put the band of so called 'delinquent juveniles' in their place. The adults were reintroduced, and life turned back to normal. No more killings. The elephants and rhinos were at peace again.

Obviously, strong male and female presence's are needed in these elephants lives. The young elephants needed the adults from when they were defenseless babies through the time they were in their elephant 'teenage' years.

In the meantime, over in the United States of America there was another gang related murder in your city. Another fatherless, semi or fully orphaned teenager shot a man and then reported back to his or her gang of 'delinquent juveniles'.

Perhaps we should take a lesson from the elephants.

© Rachel Lower, 1999-present

Rachel is the founder of www.Christian-Mommies.com. Her main web site is rachellauer.com and her blog address is freelancing blog.com.

2006-01-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

I feel incomplete.

I want to be a dad. I could have been one many times before, but... I always figured it would be with a good woman. Not one of those that hang out in bars getting drunk, and screwing anything they could get between there legs. I wanted someone that had respect for themselves. Someone that could truly smile.

Im empty and hollow.

I babysat a neighbours kid last night. I enjoyed helping him with his homework.

Ive felt this way for a long time.

I feel incomplete.

da Lizard

2006-01-17T15:57:00.000-08:00

Im depressed!

Seriously I didn't want to come into work today. The thought of listening to IDOITS try to tell me what there problem is made me want to climb under the covers and stay there.

I didn't want to shower, change into my work clothes. NOTHING!

All I wanted was to think of that which was.

When I was in school, there was this woman. She was amazing. Up until I met her, I never wanted to be a dad, but I did when I met her. Shes dead now, killed by a drunk driver. I guess every woman Ive met since her I've subconsciously compared to her.

Ive met a lot of nice ladies since, but its never worked.

No wonder Im depressed. My head is stuck on a possibility that never will be.

da Lizard

2006-01-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

Everyone in the world has probably posted this but any ways, here it is...

http://www.benstein.com/121805xmas.html

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

2005-12-29T09:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.theregister.com/2005/12/23/phone_throat/

Enraged woman vents by swallowing cell phone
A mobile mouthful
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View
Published Friday 23rd December 2005 20:13 GMT

We've all been there. Your spouse or loved one drives you to the breaking point, and you have no other choice than to swallow their cell phone.

A Blue Springs, Missouri woman was the latest victim of cell phone rage. She swallowed her boyfriend's mobile in mid-argument because "she didn't want the boyfriend to have it," according to a report in The Kansas City Star. The phone became lodged in the lady's throat, and she was rushed to the emergency room.

"Police responded to a call about a non-breathing person about 4:50 a.m. in the 3000 block of Southwest U.S. 40," the paper reported. "Police arrived and found that the 24-year-old woman was having trouble breathing. Her identity was not released."

The poor lass still had the phone wedged in her throat when she got to the hospital. ®

2005-12-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

http://kathymcmahon.blogspot.com/2005/12/infant-discovered-in-barn-child.html

INFANT DISCOVERED IN BARN, CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES LAUNCH PROBE

Those of you involved in mental health will appreciate this humor:

INFANT DISCOVERED IN BARN, CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES LAUNCH PROBE
Nazareth Carpenter Being Held On Charges Involving Underage Mother

Bethlehem, Judea - Authorities were today alerted by a concerned citizen who noticed a family living in a barn. Upon arrival, Family Protective Service personnel, accompanied by police, took into protective care an infant child named Jesus, who had been wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough by his 14-year old mother, Mary of Nazareth.

During the confrontation, a man identified as Joseph, also of Nazareth, attempted to stop the social workers. Joseph, aided by several local shepherds and some unidentified foreigners, tried to forestall efforts to take the child, but were restrained by the police.

Also being held for questioning are three foreigners who allege to be wise men from an eastern country. The INS and Homeland Security officials are seeking information about these who may be in the country illegally. A source with the INS states that they had no passports, but were in possession of gold and other possibly illegal substances. They resisted arrest saying that they had been warned by God to avoid officials in Jerusalem and to return quickly to their own country. The chemical substances in their possession will be tested.

The owner of the barn is also being held for questioning. The manager of Bethlehem Inn faces possible revocation of his license for violating health and safety regulations by allowing people to stay in the stable. Civil authorities are also investigating the zoning violations involved in maintaining livestock in a commercially-zoned district.

The location of the minor child will not be released, and the prospect for a quick resolution to this case is doubtful. Asked about when Jesus would be returned to his mother, a Child Protective Service spokesperson said, "The father is middle-aged and the mother definitely underage. We are checking with officials in Nazareth to determine what their legal relationship is.

Joseph has admitted taking Mary from her home in Nazareth because of a census requirement. However, because she was obviously pregnant when they left, investigators are looking into other reasons for their departure. Joseph is being held without bond on charges of molestation, kidnapping, child endangerment, and statutory rape.

Mary was taken to the Bethlehem General Hospital where she is being examined by doctors. Charges may also be filed against her for endangerment. She will also undergo psychiatric evaluation because of her claim that she is a virgin and that the child is from God.

The director of the psychiatric wing said, "I don't profess to have the right to tell people what to believe, but when their beliefs adversely affect the safety and well-being of others - in this case her child - we must consider her a danger to others. The unidentified drugs at the scene didn't help her case, but I'm confidant that with the proper therapy regiment we can get her back on her feet."

A spokesperson for the governor's office said, "Who knows what was going through their heads? But regardless, their treatment of the child was inexcusable, and the involvement of these others frightening. There is much we don't know about this case, but for the sake of the child and the public, you can be assured that we will pursue this matter to the end."

2005-12-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20677

Christianity and Islam in History
By Walter Brandmüller
Chiesa | December 27, 2005

I will address the topic of Christianity and Islam by limiting myself to a brief presentation of historical facts, without entering into the specifics of religious and theological dialogue. This seems useful to me, because the celebration of the fifth centenary of the birth of Pius V was a bit muted, especially in academic circles. The victor at Lepanto in 1571, this pope who had the courage and the energy to construct an alliance of almost all the Christian kingdoms against the Ottoman empire – which was advancing to threaten Europe and had already established dominion over the Balkans – today, precisely on account of the unhappy restoration of hostility between the two worlds – one formerly Christian, and to a certain extent still Christian, and the Muslim world – seems to many to be an obstructing presence best left in the shadows.

The so-called “secularism” that would silence all the monotheistic religions through accusations of fundamentalism, or that exalts dialogue by negating their differences, intends to blot out the age-old conflict that has pitted the two religious communities against one another. Above all, it intends to neutralize the Roman pontiff, who has shown himself capable of blocking the Islamic advance and saving Christian civilization.

Although the two monotheistic religions in question share, among other things and to different degrees, the Jewish tradition – a specialist like Samir Khalil Samir emphasizes how before Mohammed the Arab Jews and Christians called their God by the name of Allah – there are many differences between Christianity and Islam, and the differences are fundamental.

Since their very beginnings, there have been differences in how Christians and Muslims think of conversion and the use of violence.

For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how Christianity did in fact spread during its first centuries. Obviously, we must immediately note that this conception of early Christianity underwent changes in later eras, connected with the diffusion of a spirit of religious intolerance in Western culture. John Paul II himself acknowledged that in this regard the Church’s children “must return with a spirit of repentance [for] the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 35).

But on the part of the Muslims, from the earliest times, even while Mohammed was still alive, conversion was imposed through the use of force. The expansion and extension of Islam’s sphere of influence came through war with the tribes that did not accept conversion peacefully, and this went hand in hand with submission to Islamic political authority. Islamism, unlike Christianity, expressed a comprehensive religious, cultural, social, and political strategy. While Christianity spread during its first three centuries in spite of persecution and martyrdom, and in many ways in opposition to Roman domination, introducing a clear separation between the spiritual and political spheres, Islam was imposed through the power of political domination.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the use of force occupies a central place in Islamic tradition, as witnessed by the frequent use of the word “jihad” in many texts. Although some scholars, especially Western ones, maintain that jihad does not necessarily mean war, but instead a spiritual struggle and interior effort, Samir Khalil Samir again clarifies that the use of this term in Islamic tradition – including its usage today – is essentially uniform, indicating warfare in the name of God to defend Islam, which is an obligation for all adult Muslim males. Those who maintain that understanding jihad as a holy war constitutes a sort of deviation from the true Islamic tradition are therefore not telling the truth, and history sadly demonstrates that that violence has characterized Islam since its origin, and that Mohammed himself systematically organized and led the raids against the tribes that did not want to convert and accept his dominion, thus subjecting the Arab tribes one by one. Naturally, it must also be said that at the time of Mohammed warfare was part of the Bedouin culture, and no one saw anything objectionable about it.

The interpretation that Muslims today try to make of the crusades – an interpretation that finds many followers among Western historians – also fails to correspond to historical reality.

According to this representation, Western Christians were invaders in a peaceful region that was respectful of the different religions – the Holy Land, which back then was part of Syria – using religious motives to disguise imperialist ambitions and economic interests.

But the idea of the crusades emerged, above all, as a reaction to the measures that the Fatimid caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah took against the Christians of Egypt and Syria. In 1008, al-Hakim outlawed the celebrations of Palm Sunday, and the following year he ordered that Christians be punished and all their property confiscated. In that same year of 1009, he sacked and demolished the church dedicated to Mary in Cairo, and did not prevent the desecration of the Christian sepulchers surrounding it, or the sacking of the city’s other churches. That same year saw what was certainly the most severe episode: the destruction of the Constantinian basilica of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, known as the Holy Sepulcher. The historical records of the time say that he had ordered “to obliterate any symbol of Christian faith, and provide for the removal of every reliquary and object of veneration.” The basilica was then razed, and Ibn Abi Zahir did all he could to demolish the sepulcher of Christ and any trace of it.

Today in many intellectual circles there is a lot of talk about the religious tolerance shown over many centuries by the Islamic authorities, because – while in terms of the pagan populations the saying “embrace Islam and your life will be spared” held true, and the pagans who did not convert were killed – the “people of the book,” the Jews and Christians, were able to continue practicing their religion.

In reality, the situation was much less idyllic: the Christians and Jews could survive only if they accepted Muslim political dominion and a situation of humiliation, which was aggravated by the obligation to pay increasingly burdensome taxes. So it’s no wonder that most of the Christians, even though they were not constrained by force, converted to Islam on account of the constant economic and social pressure. This led to the total disappearance of a form of Christianity that had flourished for more than half a millennium, as in the part of Africa ruled by the Roman empire, the land of Tertullian, saint Cyprian, Tyconius, and above all saint Augustine.

But the biggest difference between Christianity and Islam concerns the crucial issue of understanding the human person.

This is shown by the fact that many Islamic countries have not accepted the declaration of human rights promulgated by the United Nations in 1948, or have done so with the reservation of excluding the norms that conflict with Qur’anic law – which means practically all of them. From an historical point of view, therefore, it must be recognized that the declaration of the rights of man is a cultural fruit of the Christian world, even though these are “universal” norms, in that they are valid for all. In Islamic tradition, in fact, the concept of the equality of all human beings does not exist, nor does, in consequence, the concept of the dignity of every human life. Sharia is founded upon a threefold inequality: between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, and between freeman and slave. In essence, the male human being is considered a full titleholder of rights and duties only through his belonging to the Islamic community: those who convert to another religion or become atheists are considered traitors, subject to the death penalty, or at least to the loss of all their rights.

The most irrevocable of these inequalities is that between man and woman, because the others can be overcome – the slave can be freed, the non-Muslim can convert to Islam – while woman’s inferiority is irremediable, in that it was established by God himself. In Islamic tradition, the husband enjoys an almost absolute authority over his wife: while polygamy is permitted for men, a woman may not have more than one husband, may not marry a man of another faith, can be repudiated by her husband, has no rights to the children in case of divorce, is penalized in the division of the inheritance, and from a legal standpoint her testimony is worth half as much as a man’s.

So if Islam implied, and still implies, not merely religious membership, but an entire way of life, sanctioned even at the political level – a way of life that naturally involves and prescribes how to act with other peoples, how to behave in questions of war and peace, how to conduct relations with foreigners – it is very easy to understand how the victory of Lepanto guaranteed for the West the possibility of developing its culture of respect for the human person, for whom equal dignity regardless of his condition came to be guaranteed.

If this characterization of Islam is destined to remain unchanged in the future, as it has been until now, the only possible outcome is a difficult coexistence with those who do not belong to the Muslim community: in an Islamic country, in fact, the non-Muslim must submit to the Islamic system, if he does not wish to live in a situation of substantial intolerance.

Likewise, on account of this all-embracing conception of religion and political authority, the Muslim will have great difficulty in adapting to the civil laws in non-Islamic countries, seeing them as something foreign to his upbringing and to the dictates of his religion. Perhaps one should ask oneself if the well-attested difficulties persons coming from the Islamic world have with integrating into the social and cultural life of the West are not explained in part by this problematic situation.

We must also recognize the natural right of every society to defend its own cultural, religious, and political identity. It seems to me that this is precisely what Pius V did.

2005-12-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11365

Sober virus scares up child-porn confession
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2005-12-20

A 20-year-old German man turned himself and his child-porn collection into authorities after believing a message propagated by the recent Sober virus that law enforcement officers were investigating his activities, Germany's Federal Criminal Investigation Office said on Monday.

The Sober.X, also known as Sober.Y, virus attempts to fool computer users into running the malicious program by attaching itself to an e-mail that seems to come from the FBI or its German counterpart, known as the Federal Criminal Investigation Office or Bundeskriminalamt (BKA). The message implies that the law enforcement agency is investigating the recipient and asks the user to open up an attachment and answer questions.

In reality, the attachment is the Sober virus, which quickly takes control of the victim's PC to send more copies of itself, said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer for antivirus firm F-Secure.

"I'm glad the guy was stupid enough to get caught," Hyppönen said. "If you have to write viruses, something like the type of message is not bad."

While a prior version of the Sober virus had a similar message, this is likely the first time that a message intended to convince the recipient to run the virus scared a wrongdoer enough to turn themselves in. The Sober virus has made headlines because its creator has used the program to spread right-wing German propaganda and messages of hate. The latest variant is expected to download a payload on January 5, the anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party, according to antivirus firms.

While consumers have gotten better about distrusting the e-mail messages produced by such viruses, the number of PCs that are currently infected and compromised by the control software, known as bot software, installed by such viruses is in the millions, according to recent investigations.

The Sober virus does not install sophisticated bot software, but does compromise a PC so that it will spread future versions of the virus, F-Secure's Hyppönen said.

"Every new version of Sober infects every single computer already infected by Sober. So the bigger a Sober infection gets, the bigger the next launch of the next Sober is," he said.

The English version of the latest variant of the Sober virus has a common collection of possible messages, including notes from administrators and e-mail bounce notifications. In addition, there is a message that appears to come from the FBI or the CIA.

The English version of the message states:

we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites. Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached.

The Paderborn, Germany resident read the bulk e-mailed message sent by the latest Sober virus, panicked and contacted the police to admit he possessed child pornography, the BKA said in a statement. A search of the suspect's hard drive allegedly turned up pornographic images of minors--pictures that the suspect also sent out through e-mail, the BKA stated.

The FBI did not immediately know if any similar cases had occurred in the United States.

2005-12-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

Once again, further proof of just how corrupt this world is, if the color of skins had been reversed they would have made a movie staring Louis Gossett Jr. show just how bad whites are...

da lizard

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/13420224.htm

2 going to prison on charge of carjacking
The Associated Press

FLORENCE - Two Hartsville men who pleaded guilty to federal carjacking charges in an incident in which a man was chained to a pickup truck and dragged through a field have been sentenced to prison.

Kenneth Smith, 41, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday by U.S. District Judge R. Bryan Harwell. Lamont McKay, 27, was sentenced to seven years.

Prosecutors sought the reduced sentence for McKay because they said he cooperated in the case.

Each man had faced a maximum of 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The two men began arguing with the victim over a drug deal at a Darlington County store in January, then struck him in the head and robbed him, prosecutors said.

The men forced the victim into his own pickup truck, ordered him to drive to a nearby field and made him take his clothes off, authorities said.

The victim was then beaten with a tire iron and burned with a cigarette lighter, chained to the truck and dragged up the road, prosecutors said.

The victim said he was able to escape when the men turned a corner.

The victim recovered from his injuries, which included cuts and bruises.

The Darlington County Sheriff's Office had charged the men with assault and battery with intent to kill, kidnapping and armed robbery.

The victim, who is white, said Smith and McKay, who are black, made racial slurs while chaining him to the truck.

Authorities said they do not doubt the comments were made but said the crime did not appear to be racially motivated, because the robbery occurred first.

2005-12-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/21/wice21.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/21/ixworld.html

Creation of 'hot ice' could explain cloud formation puzzle
By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 21/12/2005)

Scientists have created ice at room temperature, potentially explaining a mysterious variation in the temperature at which clouds form.

By exposing water to a weak electric field, they have produced what is being called "hot ice". The discovery could answer a question that has perplexed atmospheric scientists for years: why the temperature at which water droplets stick to dust and turn to ice to form clouds varies according to whether the dust particles have been through the process before.

South Korean researchers were surprised that the field needed to create ice at room temperature was only 106 volts per metre, a strength low enough to be found in nature.

If these "mini icebergs" are hiding in cracks in rocks and clay particles and in crevices in proteins in our bodies, their presence could help explain a number of natural processes.

Denys Wheatley, a cell biologist at Aberdeen University, said: "Ice at room temperature just should not happen.

"Water is the crucible of life. Everything else is buzzing around in it. It seems that this most common of liquids in our bodies is one of the least understood."

In 2003 a computer simulation carried out by Dutch biophysicists suggested that, by introducing an electric field, it should be possible to impose an orderly structure on the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules, freezing it at room temperature.

Eun-Mi Choi and colleagues at Seoul National University created ice at room temperature by trapping a thin layer of water between a metal plate and a thin metal tip. When the tip was moved downwards while a weak electric field was applied, it hit ice at 0.7 nanometres below the plate.

The research was published in the American journal Physical Review Letters and reported in this week's New Scientist.

2005-12-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/lookup.html?node=1860

Helacyton gartleri
The immortal remains of Henrietta Lacks.

When human body cells are removed and put into a cell culture, they weaken and die quickly, usually within about 50 divisions. Without the rest of the support structure—a heart, blood circulating, a digestive system and so-on—body cells can't survive. Body cells also age, so even if you were to simulate the body's environment in a test tube or petri dish, the cells would eventually perish anyway. The basic mortality of the cells reflect the basic mortality of the organism they comprise, which is why there's no fountain of youth or medicinal procedure that'll give you biological immortality.

There is, however, one human being who is biologically immortal on a technicality, and her name is Henrietta Lacks. In 1951 she showed up at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, complaining of blood spotting in her underwear. Samples were taken of her cervical tissue and sent to a lab for analysis, which came back with a diagnosis of cervical cancer.

The cancer was caused by the Human papillomavirus, which is a sexually transmitted disease. Most variants of this virus are harmless, but some are known to cause cervical cancer, as in Henrietta's case. After her diagnosis and before attempts to treat the disease with radium, another sample from the tumor was sent to George Gey, who was the head of tissue culture research at Hopkins. Gey discovered that the cells from Henrietta's tumor would not only survive and multiply outside of her body, but they didn't age either. These cells were basically immortal.

And they're still alive, even though Henrietta herself died of the cancer on October 4th, 1951. Now, HeLa cells are about as common in biological research as the lab rat and the petri dish, and are still being grown in an unbroken lineage from the cells originally harvested from Mrs. Lacks in 1951. They're used in cancer research because a scientist can perform experiments on them that otherwise couldn't be done on a living human being. They were also used in the development of the Polio vaccine, making Henrietta somewhat of a posthumous hero to millions.

But say you're a scientist looking at HeLa cells under a microscope. They live independently of the body they came from. They reproduce (faster even than other cancerous cells). They consume, excrete, and do everything an independent living organism usually does. A thousand years from now there will still be HeLa cells multiplying and living, even some of the original cells sampled from Mrs. Lacks, even though Henrietta Lacks herself has long since passed away. Is this a new species?

In 1991 the scientific community decided it was, and blessed HeLa cells with its own genus and species: Helacyton gartleri, named by Van Valen & Maiorana.

That would make Helacyton gartleri an example of speciation, which is when a new species is observed developing from another. In this case, the development is from a chordate (homo sapien) to something that's more like an ameoba (a cross-phylum mutation), giving us an animal with a mostly human genotype, but which does not develop into a human-like phenotype. Since this event occurred in nature when the papillomavirus transformed Henrietta's cells, and not in the laboratory, it's a strong piece of evidence supporting Evolution (although not one that suggests you could go from an ameoba to a chordate, which would probably take more than one mutation).

2005-12-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/13445527.htm

Workers' bias suit ends in win, slur
Jurors said a lawyer called them "crackers." The school district was told to pay four white men nearly $3 million.
By John Shiffman
Inquirer Staff Writer

Four white men fired by the Philadelphia School District have won a racial-discrimination lawsuit, and a federal jury awarded them nearly $3 million in damages.

After Friday's verdict, Carl E. Singley, a prominent African American lawyer who represented the school district, exchanged words with some members of the all-white jury as they rode a courthouse elevator. He called them "crackers," four jurors said in interviews.

Within 30 minutes, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d brought Singley and five of the seven jurors in the case back into his courtroom. Singley, a former Temple Law School dean, promptly apologized.

"What I did and said was inappropriate," Singley said, according to a transcript. "I should not have disrespected you, and I do apologize."

Reached yesterday, Singley declined to comment.

In a statement last night, the school district's chief executive officer, Paul Vallas, said he had not yet spoken with Singley about the elevator incident but planned to pursue the matter.

"If the statement is true it is outrageous and hurtful to us all," Vallas said.

The unusual post-verdict hearing came at the end of a two-week trial during which the four white men alleged that they were wrongfully fired from the district's purchasing department in 2003. They alleged reverse racial discrimination and said that the district's chief purchasing officer, Kimberly Sangster, retaliated when the men initially complained of discrimination.

"What we stressed to the jury is that the law in America is that equal opportunity in employment applies to everyone," said lawyer Michael D. Homans, who represented the four plaintiffs with Lizanne V. Hoerst. "You can't discriminate against anyone based on race - white people, black people, Hispanics. Discrimination infected the decision-making of Kim Sangster."

In his statement, Vallas said the district was considering an appeal. "We vehemently disagree with the verdict," he said. "Kim Sangster is one of the finest public servants that I have had the pleasure to work with. Under her leadership, the procurement department has made it possible for the district to focus more dollars into the classroom. This case does not reflect in any way her professionalism and leadership."

At trial, Homans argued that Sangster set out to replace white managers with blacks and that she did not hire a white worker until the plaintiffs threatened to sue. The lead plaintiff, Robert Johnston, was rehired, but was assigned to a putrid basement office "where sewer water is standing," Homans said.

"They're out to get these guys no matter what," Homans told the jury. "They're ticked off because they had the nerve to sue for race discrimination."

In his closing argument, Singley told the jury that the plaintiffs had manipulated the evidence to falsely portray Sangster as a racist. He called her "the real victim."

"These men were playing the race card," Singley said. "And I told you what the steps in the race card are: You make the claim, manipulate the facts... and then you rely on people's racial fears and prejudices to reach the conclusion that you want to reach... . If we had the same facts, same gender, same race, there would be no case. Think about that. That's how the race-card strategy works."

The jury began deliberating late Thursday and returned the verdict about 3:15 p.m. Friday.

"We really worked hard at it," recalled Joanna Harrison, who lives in Berks County.

The jury foreman, Bruce Furman, who works in Feasterville, said the evidence showed that Sangster ignored federal discrimination laws and school district policies. Juror Joann Dickel of Lancaster said that Sangster's own notes showed illegal bias and that her testimony was not credible.

Shortly after the verdict, five jurors entered the elevator with Singley and other trial participants for the ride down from the 16th floor.

In interviews yesterday, four of the jurors in the elevator - Harrison, Furman, Dickel, and Patricia Lewis of Malvern - gave the following account.

Singley said: "I hope you can sleep tonight."

A juror replied: "I'll have no trouble sleeping at night, thank you."

Singley: "God bless America."

Another juror: "God bless America. That's why I'm glad I live here."

Singley: "You're just a bunch of crackers."

The fifth juror in the elevator could not be reached for comment. A member of the school district's defense team gave a slightly different account. That person said a juror addressed Singley first.

Juror to Singley: "How're you doing?"

Singley: "I hope you can sleep at night with the decision you rendered."

Juror: "I'll have no trouble sleeping at night, thank you. This is America. God bless America."

Singley: "That's only if you're crackers."

What happened next is not disputed. After Singley stepped off the elevator on the ground floor, the jurors decided to go back to see the judge.

"We thought it was rather rude," Harrison said. "He was obviously upset."

Dickel said she "was quite shaken up by it because he said it so unprofessionally and confrontationally... . I thought, 'Is this what happens all the time?' "

Bartle received the five jurors in his chambers, and, according to Furman, told them Singley's comments were inappropriate. Bartle declined to be interviewed yesterday.

Bartle then called Singley and the other lawyers back to his courtroom. The judge began to call the jurors to the microphone to explain what happened, but Singley said it was not necessary.

"I admit to making inappropriate comments," Singley said, according to a transcript.

The four plaintiffs in the case were each awarded $500,000 for "past, present and future mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and humiliation." They also got their old jobs back, plus back pay.

Johnston, 54, of Philadelphia, a former director of material maintenance, was awarded $71,000 in back pay.

Jack Zubris, 57, of Holland, Bucks County, who joined the district in 1973 and specialized in technology, was awarded $203,000 in back pay.

Ed Pilosi, 65, of Bala Cynwyd, a purchasing manager and a 33-year employee, was awarded $302,000 in back pay.

Peter Bracchi, 55, of Philadelphia, a food-service manager, received $141,000 in back pay and $243,000 for future economic damages.

Their lawyer, Homans, said he expected to ask the judge to order at least an additional $400,000 for legal fees.

2005-12-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/stix/archive/2005_10_01_archive.html

Tuesday, October 04, 2005
The Color of Crime
By Nicholas Stix

Imagine if one demographic group in America were 33 times more prone to commit crimes than another group. How would you feel about the relatively crime-prone group? The relatively crime-free group? Wouldn’t you want to know about such differences?

But we don’t have to imagine anything. The above contrast was not a hypothetical case, but rather the statistical relationship of black to Asian crime in America, as detailed in the ground-breaking new report, The Color of Crime, released by the New Century Foundation, the organization that sponsors American Renaissance magazine.

* “… between 2001 and 2003, blacks were 39 times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the reverse, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.”

* Between 2001 and 2003, blacks committed, on average, 15,400 black-on-white rapes per year, while whites averaged only 900 white-on-black rapes per year.

* “Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.”

But there are five-and-one-half as many whites as blacks. If anything, the numbers should be reversed. After all, as leftists always tell us, all groups are supposed to be equally represented in all categories, for good or ill. (Well, not really. Leftists never call on the NBA and NFL to institute racial parity for white players.)

* Nationally, youth gangs are 90 percent non-white. “Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs. Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.”

* The only crime category in which Asians are more heavily represented than whites is illegal gambling.

* “Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.”

But how can that be, when for years commentators of all political persuasions have insisted that the majority of the victims of black crime were themselves black? But it has been true for some time, because blacks increasingly target whites based on the color of the latter’s skin. The commentators have been guilty variously of lying and laziness.

* Far from being guilty of “racially profiling” innocent blacks, police have been exercising racial bias on behalf of blacks, arresting fewer blacks than their proportion of criminals: “… blacks who committed crimes that were reported to the police were 26 percent less likely to be arrested than people of other races who committed the same crimes.”

* “… police are determined to arrest non-black rather than black criminals.” (I have seen this practice in operation on the streets and subways of New York.)

* “[Blacks] are eight times more likely than people of other races to rob someone, for example, and 5.5 times more likely to steal a car.”

Well, as everyone knows, innocent blacks get rounded up by the police all the time, so we can safely ignore such statistics. After all, isn’t that what the NAACP, Village Voice, New York Times, and countless black “activists” and prominent academics have been saying for years? After all, although the folks insisting on racial profiling have no facts to back up their claims, they enjoy political prestige and moral authority. The Color of Crime, meanwhile, is based merely on lowly facts. As we shall see, prominent people are already saying that we should ignore The Color of Crime, because it wasn’t produced by the right sort of people. (And of course, “the right sort of people” doesn’t tell the truth about race and crime.)

* Charges of racial profiling, which maintain that police target innocent black motorists for traffic stops notwithstanding, a 2002 study by Maryland’s Public Service Research Institute found that police were stopping too few black speeders (23%), compared to their proportion of actual speeders (25%). In fact, “blacks were twice as likely to speed as whites” in general, and there was an even higher frequency of black speeders in the 90-mph and higher range.

* “… the only evidence for police bias is disproportionate arrest rates for those groups police critics say are the targets of bias. High black arrest rates appear to reflect high crime rates, not police misconduct.”

* Blacks not only commit violent crimes at far higher rates than non-blacks, but their crimes are more violent than those of whites. Blacks are three times as likely as non-blacks to commit assault with guns, and twice as likely as non-blacks to commit assault with knives.

* Blacks not only commit violent crimes at far higher rates than whites, but blacks commit “white collar” offenses -- fraud, bribery, racketeering and embezzlement, respectively -- at two to five times the white rate.

* The single greatest indicator of an area’s crime rate is not poverty or education, but race and ethnicity. Even when one controls for income and education, the black crime rate is much higher than the white rate.

Things are actually much worse than the above notes suggest. As The Color of Crime notes, the feds inflate white crime statistics by counting Hispanic offenders as white; at the same time, “Hispanics are a [hate crime] victim category but not a perpetrator category. If someone attacks a Mexican for racial reasons, he becomes a Hispanic victim of a hate crime. However, if the same Mexican commits a hate crime against a black, he is classified as a ‘white’ perpetrator. Even more absurdly, if a Mexican commits a hate crime against a white, both victim and perpetrator are reported as white.” Thus, the number of white perpetrators is bloated, while the number of white victims is constricted by the federal double-standard.

But things are even worse than the study shows. It fails to note, with black-on-white male prison rape an institutionalized sport among black inmates, that hundreds of thousands of white men have thus been victimized but never counted by the government. Meanwhile, white-on-black male prison rape is virtually non-existent.

Some of the study’s many sources were the FBI’s uniform crime reports (UCRs); the feds’ National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS), in which 149,000 people across the country, in statistical proportion to all demographic groups, were called; the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS); Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHRs); State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS); National Youth Gang Survey; Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP); and National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The succinct report slays dragons in the course of mere footnotes, such as its nailing of tenured California State University criminology professor Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld, who in her book Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls and Controversies, the reality of interracial violence be damned, depicted whites only as perpetrators, and not as the victims of hate crimes.

The Color of Crime – not to be confused with a 1998 piece of propaganda of the same name by tenured University of Maryland professor of criminology, Katheryn K. Russell -- is the most scientifically rigorous research on crime and race available. It’s the state of the art.

The mainstream media will surely be anxious to publicize and discuss The Color of Crime. After all, hasn’t the public been inundated since the late 1990s (and ultimately, since the 1960s) with dubious charges of racism (“racial profiling”) against law enforcement and the justice system? And don’t the MSM always tell us that they will report on anything newsworthy? After all, the New York Times claims to be “the newspaper of record.”

In a future column, we shall see just how the MSM has responded to The Color of Crime.

In any event, the report gave in precise numbers what any sentient being over the age of twenty and living in the United States has long known. A 75-year-old Irish neighbor of mine is a retired nurse who was run out of a once-lovely Brooklyn neighborhood forty years ago by “integration” (read: brazen black crime in broad daylight). During a friendly conversation during a quiet morning on our peaceful street last spring she said, “The problem is … you know what the problem is.”

2005-12-19T13:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.afromerica.com/knowledge/justice/hatecrimes/tricks.php

Racist Tricks

Steven Stroud and Randy Blazak have worked with members of hate groups for over ten years and have learned many of the rhetorical tricks they use to convince young people of the rightness of their simplistic world-view. Blazak is a professor of sociology and criminology and Stroud actually spent time as a Nazi skinhead. Here they easily debunk some hate group myths.

Myth #1: There is going to be a race war, so you better only have white friends, because your non-white friends will become your enemies.

Reality: Racist terrorists have been trying to start a race war for decades and have failed miserably. This was The Order's and Timothy McVeigh's goal and the dream of every two-bit Klansman, but it will never happen. America is a melting pot nation. Most "white" people have heritage that includes Africans, Irish, Mexicans, Native Americans, Italians, Greeks, Jews, and many other non-Aryans.

The die-hard Nazis believe that anyone who isn't blonde-haired and blue-eyed will be the enemy in a race war. The REALITY is that if there were a race war, the majority of white Americans would fight AGAINST the racists, as would the rest of the people of Earth.
> Nazis are twits... There is a war going on, whites are being systematically being portayed as evil racist devils and they have no way of countering this claim in the PC world <
Myth #2: After the "race war" or the expulsion of minorities, America will be a better place.

Reality: Who would want to live in a land where everyone looked and thought just like them? No Mexican restaurants, no Jewish comedians, no rock or jazz music. Just a bunch of Nazis marching around, listening to Wagner and eating waffles. Besides, "White America" would be isolated by the rest of the world and probably provoke a third world war. The international response to Hitler's Germany, South Africa during apartheid and Serbia in the 1990s should give you a clue. America run by and for racists would be a very boring and lonely place. America is a cultural melting pot by its very nature. For a great example, read Ralph Linton's short essay, 100% American.

> I would, the chances of being robbed or having my wife raped would drop dramatically <

Myth #3: America was built by white men.

Reality: Who could possibly believe this? There were millions of white women, African slaves, Indians, Arabs, Chinese and others who helped to build this country. Huge chunks of America used to belong to Mexico. The nuclear power that drives much of America, the penicillin that heals America, and the movie industry that entertains America and exports its culture to the world are the result of the work of Jewish innovators. Since most white Americans' ancestors immigrated to this country between 1880 and 1940 and most black Americans can trace their family roots back to slavery (1609-1865), who is more American?

> Bull Shit, from whos mind did the modern world come from? From whos mind that all people should be free come from? Hate to say it but the white man created the modern world and is unfortunately giving it away... <

Myth #4: Blacks are more criminal than whites.

Reality: True, African-Americans are over-represented in the arrest statistics. But this shows us the natural bias in policing toward arresting poor, urban criminals. For example, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the typical arrest for rape is of a young black man. But if you look at anonymous victimization data (which includes all the UNREPORTED and UNARRESTED rape cases), rapists are overwhelmingly white and known to the victims (only 22% are rapes by strangers).

A white woman is much more likely to be raped by her white boyfriend or white relative than by a black man. Here's another example. Self-report data shows us that whites are as likely to use drugs as blacks, but blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for drugs than whites. Many people believe the "War on Drugs" is really a war on blacks, warehousing them in America's prison system.

> Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Wrong. This totally ignores the fact that BLACKS are committing more crimes than whites. How about murder, robbery etc. Im not up on rates of rape, but I would love to see how the nubmers work on a per capita basis. "War on Drugs" is a war on blacks? Really, if thats the only way blacks can make money I guess it is.. <

Myth #5: Gay men want to molest children and rape straight men.

Reality: All statistics on child abuse show that molesters are disproportionately heterosexual and known to the victim. Outside of prison, the rape of males is extremely rare and is typically done by homophobes who are assaulting gay men in hate crimes. Gay men respect their friends just like straight men do and probably don't want to have sex with you.

> If a person has desire to have some form of sexual relation with a person of the same sex then that person is either a fag/dyke or bisexual. Either way this is just a dumb attempt of trying to victimize us straight guys. <

Myth #6: There is a secret Jewish conspiracy controlling the U.S. government.

Reality: This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It was used to explain the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the German Weimar Republic. The so-called "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" that discusses the Jewish plot to rule the world is a work of fictitious anti-Semitic propaganda (for the evolution of the conspiracy theory, see the book Blood In The Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture by James Ridgeway).

The high percentage of Jews in President Clinton's cabinet reflects the Jewish culture's emphasis on literacy and education, not an evil plot. Jews generally find this conspiracy theory hilarious (but frightening, since Hitler used it so effectively).

> I actually agree with this one <

Myth #7: Whites are genetically superior.

Reality: Tell that to Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein! Adolf Hitler tried to promote the idea that Aryans were physically superior and failed miserably. At the 1936 Olympics, he removed all Jews from the German Olympic team to promote his Aryan Ubermen. They were stomped into the race track, by Jesse Owens, black American.

The few American Jews that defied the boycott and traveled to Berlin also did well against the Germans. In the wake of the dominance of black athletes, racists shifted their case to claim that whites are intellectually superior. Standard IQ tests, which are culturally biased in favor of whites, still produce higher scores for Asian-Americans.

> Whites are better atheletes, just look at who wins most of the medals at the olympics. <

Myth #8: Minorities, women and homosexuals want special privileges.

Reality: Civil rights are not special rights, they are for all Americans, including straight white Christian males. Allowing groups who have been traditionally discriminated against to organize (black student organizations, women's groups, gay rights parades) is an attempt to right history's wrongs.

We don't need a "White History Month" because, traditionally, every month has been a white history month. We don't need a "masculinist" movement, because men have always held the controls of power in America. We don't need a "National Association for the Advancement of White People" or a "Straight Rights Parade" because straight whites have always had their interests supported by the status quo.

> So I have to watch what ever I say but they can say whatever they feel like? Must be nice. We dont need a white history month? Really, I guess blacks really did invent things like air conditioning, peanut better etc. <

Myth #9: Calling black people "African-American" proves that they aren't true Americans.

Reality: Most non-black Americans are aware of their ethnic identity through their last names. Our names are Scottish or German or French or Italian. Johnson, Jefferson and Jordan are not African names. They are slave names. But blacks' history doesn't begin with slavery. There were hundreds of cultures and ethnicities in Africa before the slave trade. While Europeans were still living in caves, Africans were making leather shoes, building structures and calculating mathematics on paper. The term "African-American" is an attempt to connect black Americans with their pre-slavery history. We don't mind when Irish-Americans use the hyphen.

> I agree with this myth... this does nothing but divide people... <

Myth #10: All non-whites do is complain about America.

Reality: Ever been to a Klan rally? It's just a bunch of whining white guys. Americans have the right to peacefully protest. Where would we be if our forefathers never complained about taxation without representation?

> That is all they ever do... gimme gimme gimme <

Myth #11: America would be better off if the races were separate.

Reality: According to polls, the vast majority of Americans enjoy the diversity that is America. We enjoy our Asian silk and our Arabian coffee. We don't want to give up soul music, bagels or burritos. And, most importantly, we love our friends of various ethnicities. "White Separatism" isn't even possible.

What if you were biracial? Where would you go? Would Italian-Americans have to be separated from Franco-Americans? What about whites with brown hair? Are they REALLY white? Could you have a Chinese restaurant, as long as the food was cooked and served by whites? Would white kids be allowed to listen to rock 'n' roll, which is black music? Who would pay to move the races to separate areas? Our attempt to do this with American Indians was a huge failure. America would be better off if the races learned to respect and appreciate each other.

> Whites would have to put up with a lot less crime <

Myth #12: Love for the white race is not "hate".

Reality: It's possible to love the uniqueness of being a white American. Most whites love the privilege that comes along with their racial status (i.e., racism is someone else's problem). The reality is that most "pro-white" groups spend most of their time discussing their hatred for other groups who they think want to take away their racial privilege. People who are "pro-black" are not usually anti-white, just anti-racist. Unfortunately, the converse is rarely true. Being proud of being white is not the same as being proud of your Irish, German, Mexican or Swedish heritage. "White pride" is associated with bigotry.

> White equals privilage and that is wrong... Black = slave... deal with it <

Myth #13: The Bible says gay men should be killed.

Reality: The Bible also says people who work on the Sabbath should be killed. The Christian Bible has thousands of interpretations. The Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists all have different takes on it. Martin Luther King, Jr. used The Bible as a civil rights manual. Some people believe that God is white, others show evidence that Jesus was black. In America, everyone has the constitutional right to interpret The Bible any way they want. You can believe that Adam & Eve were from Mars! But when you use your interpretation to violate the rights of other Americans, including gay Americans, then you are a dangerous religious fanatic.

> Jesus was black??? Guess I should not have started looking up hebrew definitions of words. Jesus was WHITE... deal with it. <

Myth #14: All crimes are hate crimes.

Reality: Actually, most crimes are committed over domestic disputes. Many crimes are motivated by financial need, not hate. While most crimes are intraracial (white-on-white, black-on-black, etc.) the overwhelming majority of black-on-white crimes are motivated by a need for money. Hate crimes target and victimize whole categories of people. Targets are picked simply for their symbolic value. Hate crimes undermine the fabric of our society.

> This is a myth, but blacks commit hates crimes as well. Some day the FBI will start keeping track of when white are victims of hate crimes and by whom <

Myth #15: The white race is in danger of extinction.

Reality: The white race isn't going anywhere! According to the 1990 U.S. census, there were 209,180,000 white people in America, 83.9% of the population. Using birth rates and immigration trends, the Census Bureau has projected what America will look like in the future. In 2050, it is predicted that there will be 213,782,000 white Americans, 75.7% of the projected population, still an overwhelming majority! High birth rates are associated with poverty. If racists really cared about preserving their 83.9%, they would work to reduce urban poverty in America.

> This is a myth <

Commentary from Dr. Blazak: Bigots are masters of manipulating the facts. They can convince kids that there is a Jew or a black rapist under every bed, just like they used to with communists. The reality is that a white woman is much more likely to be raped and killed by her white husband, but the racists won't tell you that.

They'll ignore all the white serial killers and schoolyard shooters and all the horrible acts done by whites and focus on the horrible acts done by minorities, ignoring the vast majority of law-abiding minorities. It's called "selective perception" and it's a flimsy basis for a world-view that is easily taken apart.

> IGNORE WHITES WHO ARE SERIAL KILLERS? Actually the reverse is true, it is so common for blacks to kill multiple people that it rarely makes a headline, but so rare for whties that is is big news <

It is not enough for people to say that they aren't racist, sexist or homophobic. They must be anti-racist and anti-sexist and anti-homophobic. When someone makes a bigoted comment, we must refuse to accept it.

> Does this apply when a black makes a racist comment? <

2005-12-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

Blame WHITEY! It seems like a national pasttime nowadays...

da Lizard

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20571

Race Was No Factor In Who Died from Hurricane Katrina
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com | December 16, 2005

Statistics released by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals suggest that fewer than half of the victims of Hurricane Katrina were black, and that whites died at the highest rate of all races in New Orleans.

Liberals in the aftermath of the storm were quick to allege that the Bush administration delayed its response to the catastrophe because most of the victims were black.

Damu Smith, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, in September said that the federal government "ignored us, they forgot about us ... because we look like we look."

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in October said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasn't fit to help the storm's victims because "there are not enough blacks high up in FEMA" and added that, "certainly the Red Cross is the same."

Rapper Kanye West used his time on NBC's telethon for the hurricane victims to charge that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

But the state's demographic information suggests that whites in New Orleans died at a higher rate than minorities. According to the 2000 census, whites make up 28 percent of the city's population, but the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates that whites constitute 36.6 percent of the storm's fatalities in the city.

African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent of the storm's fatalities.

Overall for the state, 658 bodies have been identified. Forty-seven percent were African-American and 42 percent were Caucasian. The remaining bodies were either non-black minorities or undetermined.

An additional 247 victims have not been identified, so their demographic information has not been released.

The data showed that the majority of Katrina's victims lived in the Orleans parish. The nearby St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes had 91 and 25 victims, respectively.

The storm also did not discriminate based on gender. Fifty percent of the victims were male and 49 percent were female, with 1 percent being undetermined.

Calls requesting comment from Damu Smith and the Nation of Islam were not returned Wednesday.

2005-12-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

An extremely fascinating article, not sure how true it is...

da Lizard

http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/2005/03/17/6900069_Acetone/

Acetone In Fuel Said to Increase Mileage

Readily-available chemical added to gas tank in small proportion improves the fuel's ability to vaporize completely by reducing the surface tension that inhibits vaporization of some fuel droplets.

by Louis LaPointe
Adapted by Sterling D. Allan and Mary-Sue Haliburton
with LaPointe's permission for Pure Energy Systems News

Acetone (CH3COCH3) is a product that can be purchased inexpensively in most locations around the world, such as in the common hardware, auto parts, or drug store. Added to the fuel tank in tiny amounts, acetone aids in the vaporization of the gasoline or diesel, increasing fuel efficiency, engine longevity, and performance -- as well as reducing hydrocarbon emissions.

How it Works

Complete vaporization of fuel is far from perfect in today's cars and trucks. A certain amount of residual fuel in most engines remains liquid in the hot chamber. In order to be fully combusted, the fuel must be fully vaporized.

Surface tension presents an obstacle to vaporization. For instance the energy barrier from surface tension can sometimes force water to reach 300 degrees Fahrenheit before it vaporizes. Similarly with gasoline.

Acetone drastically reduces the surface tension. Most fuel molecules are sluggish with respect to their natural frequency. Acetone has an inherent molecular vibration that "stirs up" the fuel molecules, to break the surface tension. This results in a more complete vaporization with other factors remaining the same. More complete vaporization means less wasted fuel, hence the increased gas mileage from the increased thermal efficiency.

That excess fuel was formerly wasted past the rings or sent out the tailpipe but when mixed with acetone it gets burned, though the engine still thinks it is running straight gas.

Acetone allows gasoline to behave more like the ideal automotive fuel which is PROPANE. The degree of improved mileage depends on how much unburned fuel you are presently wasting. You might gain 15 to 35-percent better economy from the use of acetone. Sometimes even more.

How Much to Use

Add in tiny amounts from about one part per 5000 to one part per 3000, depending on the vehicle -- just a few ounces per ten gallons of gas. This comes to between 0.0003 % to 0.0025 % acetone maximum or approximately 1/15th of one-percent. Note that is around .78 cc per liter or one ounce per 10 gallons. Not more than three oz. per 10 gallons.

After you first find the best gasoline in your area, then try the acetone amount for your car per ten gallons, and if you are happy with your newfound mileage, you might want to try stopping the use of acetone for a couple of tanks. Watch the drop in mileage. It will amaze you. That reverse technique is one of the biggest eye openers concerning the use of acetone in fuel.

In a 10-gallon tank of gasoline, use one to three ounces of pure acetone to obtain excellent mileage improvements. In a ten-gallon tank of diesel fuel, use from 1 to 2 ounces of acetone. Performance goes up too. Use about a half-teaspoon of acetone in the fuel tank of a 4-cycle lawnmower or snowblower. Or you can apply it with an eyedropper.

Where to Get Acetone

The pure acetone label is the only additive suggested and is easily available from most drug stores in 16-ounce plastic bottles and in one-gallon containers from some large fleet farm supply stores. But any acetone source is better than none. Containers labeled acetone from a hardware store are usually okay and pure enough to put in your fuel. We prefer cans or bottles that say 100-percent pure. The acetone in gallons or pints we get from Fleet Farm are labeled 100 % pure. The bottles from Walgreen say 100 % pure. Never use solvents such as paint thinners or unknown stuff in your gas. Toluene, benzene and xylene have been okay if they are pure but may not raise mileage except when mixed with acetone. However the aromatics also raise octane.

Adding Acetone to Your Tank

When you fill up with fuel, note the number of gallons added, then calculate the right amount of acetone to add. Less is more. Remember all gasoline is different. Some will work better than others in the presence of acetone which is strictly a vaporization tool, rather than a fuel additive that alters combustion. The car computer still thinks it is running straight gasoline. None of your settings are altered. None of your engine parts are affected. Check out ScanGauge for an inexpensive MPG device.

Some stores sell acetone in metal cans of various sizes, which are safe to keep indoors. However, it is difficult to pour from these cans, which have a flat top and short neck from which spillage is inevitable. In any case, while handling acetone, you should be wearing rubber gloves.

One option is to get a small graduated cylinder (available from science supplies store or some pharmacies). The small ones have larger intervals between markings so that it is easier to fill them to the level desired. The narrow cylinder can be held to the neck of the can to catch all drips. Then from the cylinder you can pour neatly into the tank. The small pouring spout suitable for laboratories prevents drips onto the paint.

Being etched with neat lines at each milliliter, these graduated cylinders are also good for measuring precise amounts -- in ounces or milliliters.

Additional Benefits

In addition to increased mileage acetone added to fuel boasts other benefits such as increased power, engine life, and performance. Less unburned fuel going past the rings keeps the rings and engine oil in far better condition.

A tiny bit of acetone in diesel fuel can stop the black smoke when the rack is all the way at full throttle. You will notice that the exhaust soot will be greatly reduced and your truck or car runs smoother.

Acetone can reduce hydrocarbon emissions up to 60 percent. In some older cars, the HC readings with acetone in a 1986 GMC went from 440 PPM to 195, as just one example. Though mileage gains taper off with too much acetone, hydrocarbon emissions are nevertheless greatly reduced. Pure acetone is an extremely clean burning fuel that burns in air with a pretty blue, smokeless flame.

Acetone reduces the formation of water-ice crystals in below-zero weather which can damage the fuel filter. Change that fuel filter every year to protect injectors.

There are no known bad effects and every good reason to use acetone in your fuel. I have never seen a problem with acetone, and I have used ACETONE in gasoline and diesel fuel and in jet fuel (JP-4) for 50 years. I have rigorously tested fuels independently (with burns all over me) and am considered an authority on this important subject.

Cautions

eep acetone away from painted surfaces, such as the paint on your car under the gas tank opening. Acetone is the key ingredient in paint remover. In addition to paint, fuels, including acetone, gasoline alone can also dissolve asphalt and most plastics.

Never allow skin contact with it. It may damage clothing as well. Don't breathe it. Keep children away from all dangerous chemicals. Read the directions on the container.

Acetone is a highly flammable liquid, as is gasoline. Do not expose it near a flame or spark. Acetone should be stored outside, with proper ventilation, not inside your house. Gasoline and/or acetone will dissolve cheap plastics, so be sure the container you store it in will not deteriorate. Read all the precautions on the labels.

No Issues with the Engine Parts

I have soaked carburetor parts in acetone for months and even years to see if there is any deterioration. Any parts made to run with gasoline will work with acetone just fine. I presently have parts soaking in 1, 2, 5, and 10 % acetone/gasoline mixes as well as just gasoline. That is 20 to 200 times too much just to be sure. The 30R7 rated parts are in perfect condition. All my tests have been run with Texaco gasoline. I tested the gas stations in my area to FIRST find the best gasoline BEFORE putting acetone in the tank. But I have no idea from a pragmatic view what other gasolines do except that when I attempt to use them, my MPG drops like a rock. So for purely monetary reasons, I run the best available gasoline. When my dyno is built this summer, I will test all the gasolines in my area and publish the results on the web. I hear from engineers out West that Chevron gas is very good. I used it and it was fine during trips to California. I attach more credence to engineers who report things of interest to me because of their training and knowledge of testing methods. You may want to look up Science and Testing Methods in my site.

Contrast with Alcohol

In contrast, alcohol has been shown to be corrosive in an engine, yet they put THAT into gasoline. Alcohol in general is anti-mileage. Alcohol is no good in fuels. In Brazil, millions of engines and fuel systems were ruined by alcohol. Yet they are talking of doubling the amount of alcohol in gasoline.

Furthermore, alcohol increases surface tension, producing the opposite effect from acetone. Alcohol in fuel attracts water. This hurts mileage because water acts like a fire extinguisher. Some cars may run badly and even quit due to the incombustible nature of the water-laden fuel. We know of a dozen cars that recently stopped running due to water in the alcohol and gas mixture. In my Neon, it frequently has cut the MPG in half on trips when I take pot luck at the pump.

In below-zero weather, the water and alcohol can form abrasive, icy particles that may damage fuel pumps and clog injectors.

Has Not Been Warmly Received

Questions asked of someone in the petroleum industry regarding ACETONE will often automatically trigger a string of negative reactions and perhaps false assertions. We may have heard them all. The mere mention of this additive represents such a threat to oil profits that you may get fabricated denials against the successful use of acetone in fuels.

The author has never found any valid reason for not using acetone in gasoline or diesel fuel. Plus it takes such a tiny amount to work. No wonder they fear this additive.

Political Action

You might Email this article to your government representative. After sufficient data has been collected, and that data supports the conclusions presented here, ACETONE should be ordered by Federal Law to be present in all fuels. While you're at it, request that vehicles be equipped with a MPG read-out to make it easier for consumers to know what is and is not working to improve their mileage.

If You Want to Do Independent Testing

For those of you who like to see the data yourself, there is a great little device available to check your exact gas mileage and more. See ScanGauge for an instrument that fits any car 1996 or newer. And some 1995 models. It measures your real-time MPG, inlet and coolant temperatures and many more details as you drive. This inexpensive tool should end a lot of debate over what works for mileage and what does not. We use the TRIP function to average the MPG at a steady 50 MPH both ways.

Since the fuel from every gas station is different from the next, the MPG performance will also vary. Then there exist a wide variety of additive choices at the terminals that affect quality. Also other variables in the cars performance such as warm external temperature versus cold external temperature, using the AC or not, headlights or not, incline of drive, etc. Try to eliminate as many of these variable as possible in your comparative testing.

Be consistent where you buy your gasoline because different gasolines vary tremendously. The best gas and the worst gas in your neighborhood will likely have a 30-percent spread in mileage. Same for diesel fuel. In my experience with repeated test results, I found that Texaco, Chevron and Canadian Shell deliver excellent gasoline mileage. Try to keep down the number of variables wherever you gas up by using the same station, same pump, same grade or same octane before testing. This is important.

Incidentally, in almost all cases, the lowest octane is best for mileage. Most modern vehicles do not have high enough compression to justify using high octane fuels. The testing indicates best mileage is usually obtained with 85 or 87 octane gasoline. Too much octane causes a loss of power and economy. BUT too little octane causes the same things plus knocking. Listen carefully to your engine for tell-tale knocks or clicks when you start out from a light. The best mileage points to the correct octane when the engine is properly tuned. See your owners manual.

The ScanGauge enables you to notice differences and then check variations with and without acetone added in various proportions. Roughly 1/20 to 1/10 of one percent. On the dyno I never exceeded 1/4 of a percent. There was no point.

Report Your Findings

PES Network Inc. has created an index page at PESWiki where you can report your findings. PESWiki is a publicly editable website where you can post a summary of your results, or create a full page, with all the details you wish to report, with images and links to video or spreadsheet data.

Other Additives Exist

There are of course other additives that improve mileage (which also have had less than a favorable reception by the petroleum industry). Certain octane improvers for example also aid mileage. We recently proved that Carb Medic from Gunk can raise mileage when 3 oz. are used with 2 oz. of acetone per 10 gallons of gasoline, even in cold weather. Acetone seems to help cars start easier in winter.

Many products claiming to improve mileage are expensive and do not really help much. Others are fakes. For instance, a SMOOTH flow of air into a carburetor or injector is far better for mileage than turbulent air. Turbulence is bad. Yet many people deliberately introduce turbulent air into their engines. There are many silly myths floating around the car industry to fool the average person. Another is that cold intake air improves mileage. NO. Warm air improves mileage.

Test for yourself. Take a mileage check for each and every tank of gas or diesel fuel like we do. Your actual mileage is NOT that of a single tank full but the average of perhaps five tanks. To be accurate, you should not miss any checks. This takes discipline to get reliable results. Someday your car will do it for you with a factory MPG gauge on the dash. But for now, YOU ought to keep tabs on your mileage for all our sakes.

# # #

SOURCES

The above story was adapted with permission from a story reported at:
http://www.lubedev.com/smartgas/additive.htm

2005-12-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8429

Big brain means small testes, finds bat study

* 12:16 07 December 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Gaia Vince

The brainier male bats are, the smaller their testicles, according to a new study. Researchers suggest the correlation exists because both organs require a lot of energy to grow and maintain, leading individual species to find the optimum balance.

The analysis of 334 species of bat found that in species where the females were promiscuous, the males had evolved larger testes but had relatively small brains. In species, where the females were monogamous, the situation was reversed. Male fidelity appeared to have no influence over testes or brain size.

Both brain tissue and sperm cells require a lot of metabolic energy to produce and maintain. The different species appear to have evolved a preference for developing one organ more than the other, presumably determined by which will help them produce more offspring.

“An extraordinary range of testes mass was documented across bat species - from 0.12% to 8.4% of body mass. That exceeds the range of any other mammalian order,” says Scott Pitnick, from Syracuse University in New York, US, one of the research team. Primate testes vary between species from 0.02% and 0.75% of body mass.
Energy knife-edge

Efficient use of energy is crucial for bats, says Pitnick: “Bats really exist on an energy knife-edge: they are small with a large surface area, and they need to fly around, particularly during the mating season.”

Pitnick and his colleagues had predicted that, in species with promiscuous females, males would require bigger brains in order avoid being cuckolded. So they were surprised to find the opposite: “Perhaps monogamy is more neurologically demanding.”

Harry Moore, a sperm researcher at the University of Sheffield, UK, says that testis size is normally related the amount of sperm produced.

“In species with promiscuous females, the males are competing to fertilise her eggs and so need to produce a lot of sperm," he told New Scientist. “And this may be especially true in some species of bats where the females store sperm for several months.”

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3367)

2005-12-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/1207nudists1207-CR.html#

Christian nudists to build village in Florida

Phil Barnoti Wahba
Columbia News Service
Dec. 6, 2005 06:29 PM

Jonathan Palmiter was enjoying a recent Sunday morning stroll through a lush yard full of trees and Spanish moss--naked as was Adam in the Garden of Eden.

A 59-year-old born-again Christian, Palmiter was visiting Natura, a development 40 miles north of Tampa, Fla., that, when it opens up next summer, will become the first nudist community for devout Christians in North America.

Natura is being developed over five years and will house as many as 200 people in 50 family houses on 100 acres of land, with room for up to 100 recreational vehicles, according to Daniel Bellows, chief executive of the development. He even envisions a self-contained village with home-schooling and a strip mall.
advertisement

Christian nudism might sound like an oxymoron, but for thousands of devout followers, living and worshipping naked is at the core of their faith.

No one knows how many Christian nudists there are in North America, but the advent of Natura will increase their visibility.

Bill Martin, the driving force behind Natura, runs the Naturist-Christians Web site, which has 19,000 registered users and averages 35,000 hits a day. His Yahoo group--where members discuss biblical passages rather than the etiquette to follow in nude social settings--has 6,000 users.

While Bellows believes "naturism and faith are one," other Christians disagree. Bellows, 44, said he gets e-mail messages warning him of eternal damnation, while Allen Parker, from Virginia, said, "Many Christians attack us on many fronts, but the love Jesus shows us sustains us."

For many, nudism is the lifestyle that dare not speak its name. In Ohio, Rob L., who asked that his last name not be used, is a self-proclaimed fundamentalist who practices nudism in seclusion, fearing criticism and misunderstanding within his religious community.

Martin said he doesn't want Natura to be only a haven for these Christian nudists--or naturists, a term many prefer. Instead, he wants Natura to make the bold statement that nudism is not only healthy, but sanctioned by God.

"Naturism was quite normal for the first few 100 years of Christianity," said Martin, a 67-year-old Quaker. He blames puritanical Victorianism and what he calls America's sexually obsessed culture for society's qualms about nudity. "The culture has to be shown that naturism doesn't lead to promiscuity. Natura will show them that."

But the idea of raising kids in a nude environment can raise eyebrows--even Rob L.'s wife doesn't want him nude at home when their daughter is around.

Martin and Bellows contend nudism is healthy for all. They believe it helps to correct a poor body image in children, which they believe is at the root of low self-esteem, depression and drug addiction. And they believe nudism diminishes sexual curiosity by "demystifying" the body. They point to the lower incidences of sexually transmitted diseases and lower pregnancy rates in Europe, where more relaxed attitudes prevail.

The compatibility of Christianity and nudism is detailed in "Nakedness and the Bible," a self-published book by Canadian author Paul Bowman. The book cites key biblical events, including God's order to the prophet Isaiah to go naked for three years, and states that, contrary to popular belief, Jesus was naked when he washed the feet of his disciples, when he was baptized and when he was crucified and resurrected.

"Nakedness and the Bible" states that nothing forbids nonsexual nudity and that misinterpretations of the Bible stem from faulty translations of ancient Hebrew words for nudity.

For example, Jim T., Natura's spiritual adviser, and his wife, Shirley, believe the apostle Paul's call for modesty targeted ostentation, not nudity. Besides, said Shirley, 55, women in church wearing "designer clothes and $90 haircuts" are the immodest ones.

Christian nudists have long organized their own services and prayer groups. Carolyn Hawkins of the American Association for Nude Recreation, which was founded in 1931, said most of its 270-member clubs offer Sunday services, including one in North Carolina where they are led by a member who is a Baptist minister.

Nathan Powers, a 50-year-old Texan, begins his day praying naked in his backyard. Nakedness intensifies his dialogue with God, he said. "I feel closer to God. It's an act of humility. It is absolutely spiritual." To reconcile being a good Christian with their need to be nude, many of the faithful turn to prayer and follow their own spiritual path. Some are led away from their particular denominations.

Parker, who organizes the annual "Christian Nudist Convocation" in Virginia, a coming-out event for closeted nudists, was raised a Southern Baptist. He is now independent, turned off by Sunday sermons he said were "too hypocritical for one afternoon."

Jim T. let God do the talking. "As a conservative Christian, I had to let the Bible be my guide. I'm the one who'll have to answer to God," he said.

Secular culture has helped the cause of Christian nudists by "spawning the contemporary social nudist movement," said John Kundert, editor of the Fig Leaf Forum, a leading Christian nudist newsletter with a circulation of 1,300 that he runs from Winnipeg, Manitoba. In turn, Kundert said he offers the Gospel to secular nudists "willing to receive" it.

Christian naturists are particularly mortified by the caricature of the nudist as a randy middle-aged swinger. Parker and his wife attend many naked parties that he insists are wholesome. Some of the most spiritual conversations they've had have been in hot tubs with other couples, he said.

"You can admire beauty, but lust is wrong," said Rob L., the Ohio fundamentalist. On his Web site, he describes his first co-ed nudist experience. At a nude swim years ago, he bumped into an attractive woman in the changing room. When he didn't get an erection, he knew he could separate nudity from sex.

Indeed, nudist Christians said faith helps them resist temptation. "God created us as sexual beings, and gave us coping mechanisms," said Jim T. In any case, said Shirley, people are "sexier" in Victoria's Secret lingerie.

The lifestyle of these Christians doesn't necessarily make them lefties of the 1960s free-love, live-and-let-live mold. They tend to be deeply conservative on issues like homosexuality and premarital sex, and Republican, differing only from other Christians in their need and desire to be naked whenever possible.

For Bellows, the ideal society would be clothing-optional, but he isn't holding his breath waiting for that to happen. As much as Christian nudists advocate for naturism, they put faith above all else.

"I am a Christian first, a naturist second," Palmiter said.

2005-12-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825293.700

Nobel laureate admits string theory is in trouble

* 10 December 2005

"WE DON'T know what we are talking about." That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory - the attempt to unify the otherwise incompatible theories of relativity and quantum mechanics to provide a theory of everything.

Gross - who received a Nobel for his work on the strong nuclear force, bringing physics closer to a theory of everything - has been a strong advocate of string theory, which also aims to explain dark energy. "Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory," he said. "But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break."

He compared the state of physics today to that during the first Solvay conference in 1911. Then, physicists were mystified by the discovery of radioactivity. The puzzling phenomenon threatened even the laws of conservation of mass and energy, and physicists had to wait for the theory of quantum mechanics to explain it. "They were missing something absolutely fundamental," he said. "We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then."
From issue 2529 of New Scientist magazine, 10 December 2005, page 6

2005-12-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/12/08/state/n125444S24.DTL&hw=magnetic+pole&sn=002&sc=844

Earth's north magnetic pole could shift to Siberia in 50 years

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer

Thursday, December 8, 2005

Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting from North America at such a clip that it could end up in Siberia in the next 50 years, scientists said Thursday.

Despite accelerated movement over the past century, the possibility that Earth's fading magnetic field will collapse or that the magnetic poles will flip is remote. But the shift could mean that Alaska may no longer be able to see the high-altitude shimmering displays of colorful lights known as auroras.

Scientists have long known that magnetic poles migrate and in rare cases, swap places. But exactly why this happens is a mystery.

"This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," said Joseph Stoner, a paleomagnetist at Oregon State University.

Results were presented Thursday at an American Geophysical Union meeting.

Previous studies have shown that the strength of the Earth's protective magnetic shield has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 685 miles out into the Arctic, according to a new analysis by Stoner.

The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared to fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said.

At the present rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia. If that happens, Alaska could lose its Northern Lights, which occur when charged particles streaming away from the sun interact with different gases in Earth's atmosphere.

Earth's magnetic poles are different from its geographic poles, which indicate the rotation axis around which it spins. The invisible magnetic field is formed by liquid, molten iron spinning in the Earth's core.

The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found that the pole had moved 31 miles since it was first found.

Pole reversals are uncommon, happening at intervals of several hundred thousands years. The last time the poles flip-flopped was about 780,000 years ago.

In the study, Stoner examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes.

Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.

They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but it sometimes moved in other directions, too.

2005-12-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/13368286.htm

Posted on Fri, Dec. 09, 2005
M O R E N E W S F R O M topix.net
• Good Morning America

Foreign Accent syndrome baffles medical experts

BY STEVE PAUL

The Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Cindy Langdon spent the weekend in bed. She felt nauseous, and the words tumbling out of her mouth had nothing to do with what she was trying to say. It was frightening. And before this Memorial Day weekend was over, her son took her to the hospital.

Langdon, a healthy, active woman of 51, had had a stroke. And like many people who suffer strokes, her life since that weekend in May 2002 hasn't been quite the same.

She doesn't run for exercise anymore; her weakened right arm keeps her off the tennis court.

And - most puzzling to her and others - when she speaks, her voice sounds like she comes from France.

The accent is rather odd for a woman who grew up in Missouri. And it's still much a mystery even to scientists who have studied cases similar to Langdon's.

Langdon is among only a couple of dozen known cases of people who developed what's been labeled Foreign Accent syndrome. In most cases, since the condition was first identified more than 80 years ago, their natural voices have been altered by some kind of brain trauma or head injury.

One researcher estimates fewer than 30 cases have been documented in scientific literature.

People who know Cindy Langdon, including colleagues and marketing clients, have by now taken her change of voice in stride.

When she meets new people, they often ask where she's from.

"It's annoying," she says, and sometimes she'll try to get away with replying that she's from somewhere in Italy or Brazil or France. Beats having to explain.

Before her stroke, most people knew Langdon as an effusive, creative woman. A divorced mother of three, she still operates a marketing, consulting and creative production firm out of her home.

In May 2002, Langdon says, she had two episodes that signaled something was wrong - flashes in one eye, ringing in her left ear, poor coordination and difficulty speaking were among the symptoms. After the stroke, Langdon emerged unable to speak and bound for months of physical and speech therapies.

"All she could do was smile," says daughter Morgan Langdon, now 24. "For someone who was active and very outspoken ... to go from that to nothing but facial expressions, that was traumatic. We couldn't fathom the idea that our mother could not speak."

Morgan returned from South Carolina, where she'd been a nursing student, to stay with her mother during her post-stroke recovery and rehab. Sons Dylan and Beau rallied round, as did Langdon's ex-husband, Tom, and numerous friends, all of whom visited her frequently and fretted over her future.

It took about six weeks or so before Langdon's voice began to come back. A friend, Janis Rovick, remembers being in the room when Langdon looked up and said "Hi."

But then Langdon had to learn how to speak all over again.

"I knew the words," she says now, "but I had to learn to form the words. There were some words I couldn't say and sounds I couldn't even make."

The speech therapist gave her facial exercises. She started with one-syllable words, then two and three syllables, then phrases and paragraphs.

As she watched her mother, Morgan Langdon realized it was like encountering a child who was learning to speak.

With two important differences.

For one, children are also learning word meanings as they learn to pronounce and Morgan's mother hadn't lost what she already knew.

The second difference was, her voice took on a different tone and shape, and no matter how much she tried to shake it, she was stuck with the new sound.

Nowadays her voice is slightly breathy, and sometimes there's a gap in rhythm or grammar that may evoke the sound of a non-native speaker of many languages.

Scientists who have studied patients with Foreign Accent syndrome have begun to understand the condition better in recent years as brain imaging technology has improved and as the Internet has made it easier to bring scattered research and researchers together, says Jack Ryalls of the University of Central Florida.

Ryalls has studied post-stroke speech problems for 25 years and saw his first case of Foreign Accent syndrome 20 years ago.

While brain researchers used to think language involved discrete regions of the brain - part of the frontal lobe, for instance, on the left hemisphere - now they theorize it involves a network of neurons crossing and connecting multiple regions.

Foreign accent syndrome may involve a lesion somewhere along that network, says Julius Fridriksson, assistant professor of communications sciences and disorders at the University of South Carolina.

Fridriksson, Ryalls and other colleagues published a scientific paper just last month involving a South Carolina man who began speaking with an accent after a stroke. The man, in his 40s, had no other disabilities and a year after his stroke completely regained his Southern accent.

Fridriksson's study concluded that the brain can often compensate for damage.

Doctors often note that a stroke patient's recovery will plateau within two years. Three and half years after her stroke, Langdon understands the implication of that. Perhaps her accent will never go away.

But, as neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote recently in a New Yorker article about aphasia, a more common and devastating communication disorder linked to strokes, the two-year timeline is not always firm. "I have seen this generalization," he noted, "proved false in many individual patients."

The act of speaking involves the movement and coordination of 50 muscles, Fridriksson says, and damage along the nerve network could affect any movement controlling the larynx or face or other speech-related body parts.

It's too soon to identify which of those brain fibers, neurons or muscle movements add up to a voice that sounds like an accented, non-native speaker of English or any other language. But the science, Ryalls says, is progressing "and cases like Cindy Langdon's are helping."

One morning two years ago, Langdon had the television on and was startled to discover someone shared her problem, a woman who, after a stroke, spoke with a British accent. Langdon got in touch with producers of "Good Morning America," and soon Diane Sawyer had Langdon on the air in a brief follow-up interview.

The show aired Langdon's old answering-machine message, which callers to her business still hear. Her voice on it is sharp-edged and all-American, without the halting, lilting rhythms she speaks with now.

"It's almost like her new accent seems to fit her look and her personality," says Fred Paddock, an old friend and colleague. "When I work with her now, it does not sound strange any more. It just sounds like Cindy, or the new Cindy, I guess."

Her daughter and sons are grateful just to have her back in action and mostly recovered from the stroke.

They know it all could have been far more devastating.

And Morgan Langdon's not sure, but she thinks the accent has begun to recede a bit.

Today, Langdon still pauses at times, in search of words and phrases. She has filed a lawsuit over aspects of her diagnosis and treatment. And if people wonder whether her accent is real, well, she can't help that kind of uninformed opinion.

"I would talk in my own voice if I had it," she says. "I'd give anything to not talk in this voice."

2005-12-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051207_moon_storms.html

New Research into Mysterious Moon Storms
By Trudy E. Bell & Dr. Tony Phillips
science.nasa.gov
posted: 07 December 2005
05:07 pm ET

Every lunar morning, when the sun first peeks over the dusty soil of the moon after two weeks of frigid lunar night, a strange storm stirs the surface.

The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.

Never heard of it? Few have. But scientists are increasingly confident that the storm is real.

The evidence comes from an old Apollo experiment called LEAM, short for Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites. "Apollo 17 astronauts installed LEAM on the moon in 1972," explains Timothy Stubbs of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It was designed to look for dust kicked up by small meteoroids hitting the moon's surface."

Billions of years ago, meteoroids hit the moon almost constantly, pulverizing rocks and coating the moon's surface with their dusty debris. Indeed, this is the reason why the moon is so dusty. Today these impacts happen less often, but they still happen.

Apollo-era scientists wanted to know, how much dust is ejected by daily impacts? And what are the properties of that dust? LEAM was to answer these questions using three sensors that could record the speed, energy, and direction of tiny particles: one each pointing up, east, and west.

LEAM's three-decade-old data are so intriguing, they're now being reexamined by several independent groups of NASA and university scientists. Gary Olhoeft, professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, is one of them:

"To everyone's surprise," says Olhoeft, "LEAM saw a large number of particles every morning, mostly coming from the east or west--rather than above or below--and mostly slower than speeds expected for lunar ejecta."

What could cause this? Stubbs has an idea: "The dayside of the moon is positively charged; the nightside is negatively charged." At the interface between night and day, he explains, "electrostatically charged dust would be pushed across the terminator sideways," by horizontal electric fields.

Even more surprising, Olhoeft continues, a few hours after every lunar sunrise, the experiment's temperature rocketed so high--near that of boiling water--that "LEAM had to be turned off because it was overheating."

Those strange observations could mean that "electrically-charged moondust was sticking to LEAM, darkening its surface so the experiment package absorbed rather than reflected sunlight," speculates Olhoeft.

But nobody knows for sure. LEAM operated for a very short time: only 620 hours of data were gathered during the icy lunar night and a mere 150 hours of data from the blazing lunar day before its sensors were turned off and the Apollo program ended.

Astronauts may have seen the storms, too. While orbiting the Moon, the crews of Apollo 8, 10, 12, and 17 sketched "bands" or "twilight rays" where sunlight was apparently filtering through dust above the moon's surface. This happened before each lunar sunrise and just after each lunar sunset. NASA's Surveyor spacecraft also photographed twilight "horizon glows," much like what the astronauts saw.

It's even possible that these storms have been spotted from Earth: For centuries, there have been reports of strange glowing lights on the moon, known as "lunar transient phenomena" or LTPs. Some LTPs have been observed as momentary flashes--now generally accepted to be visible evidence of meteoroids impacting the lunar surface. But others have appeared as amorphous reddish or whitish glows or even as dusky hazy regions that change shape or disappear over seconds or minutes. Early explanations, never satisfactory, ranged from volcanic gases to observers' overactive imaginations (including visiting extraterrestrials).

Now a new scientific explanation is gaining traction. "It may be that LTPs are caused by sunlight reflecting off rising plumes of electrostatically lofted lunar dust," Olhoeft suggests.

All this matters to NASA because, by 2018 or so, astronauts are returning to the Moon. Unlike Apollo astronauts, who never experienced lunar sunrise, the next explorers are going to establish a permanent outpost. They'll be there in the morning when the storm sweeps by.

The wall of dust, if it exists, might be diaphanous, invisible, harmless. Or it could be a real problem, clogging spacesuits, coating surfaces and causing hardware to overheat.

Which will it be? Says Stubbs, "we've still got a lot to learn about the Moon."

2005-12-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6606668

USATODAY.com
Search for the most prolific inventors is a patent struggle
Tuesday December 6, 8:44 pm ET

What living person holds the most U.S. patents? In this era of information and lightning searches - when patents are both more valuable than ever and a source of raging controversy - you'd think such a simple question would be easy to answer.

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You'd think somebody could push a button and get a list. But, uh, no.

America cannot identify its most prolific living inventors. We can't single out these people who should be considered national treasures. (Related item: Kevin Maney's blog)

I found this out because I wanted to interview the top 10 living patent holders for a story. I got in touch with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and asked for a list, thinking it was about the same as calling Billboard and asking for the top 10 songs.

As it turns out, the USPTO has but one guy who does statistical studies of the agency's 7 million-patent database. He last sorted for individual inventors in 1997, and has since been too busy with other projects to update that list.

I asked for help from a few commercial companies that do patent database searches. Thomson gave it a college try and for a while had a team working on my question. Others just said it couldn't be done. The question, with variables including inventors with same last names and multiple names on patents, is apparently a database operator's nightmare.

"The last five years include some 1 million granted U.S. patents," Thomson's Ryan Sheppard e-mailed me, explaining why Thomson couldn't pull it off, either. "Ten years of data would be roughly double that. So we are talking astonishingly large numbers of documents."

Anyone can go to the USPTO's website, type in an individual's name, and get a list of all the patents granted that person. But you have to start with a name. You can't set up an open-ended search that finds the names that appear most often. There's no easy way to let the database generate a list of top inventors.

Since the question can't be officially answered, I thought I'd hack at it in other ways. It's possible to use a variety of resources to tease out a few names who would likely make the top 10 list of living inventors. And that leads to some pretty wild surprises.

For more than 50 years, Thomas Edison has been considered the nation's all-time most prolific inventor. He has 1,093 patents to his name, including the electric light bulb and phonograph. He is to American innovation what Thomas Jefferson is to American politics.

However, Edison is apparently NOT the top American inventor. He has been bested by Donald Weder of Highland, Ill. - a man who, in contrast to the stupendous impact of Edison, has mostly used his inventive powers to give the world better floral arrangements.

This is as deflating as finding out that Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak has been surpassed by a stadium peanut vendor.

Weder, who is still alive and whose family runs floral packaging company Highland Supply, has his name on 1,321 patents. Almost all have to do with items you'd find at a florist. Weder's most recent patent - No. 6,962,021, granted Nov. 8 - is for a sleeve for holding a group of flowers. Before that, on Oct. 11, Weder was issued a patent titled, "Method of covering a flower pot." On Sept. 20, he was issued a patent titled, "Method of covering a flower pot or floral grouping."

Much of Weder's list goes on in a similar fashion. (Weder didn't return phone messages.)

Aside from Weder, who else would make the list of most prolific living inventors?

While the patent office doesn't keep a list of top individual inventors, it does track which companies get the most patents. For the past decade, IBM has been first on that list every year. I figured the top patent holder at the top patent-holding company would be a good bet.

Ravi Arimilli is IBM's top patent holder, with more than 300 patents. He's a researcher, based in Austin, who specializes in computer chip innards. Arimilli's most recent patent, issued Nov. 29, is for "Layered local cache with lower level cache optimizing allocation mechanism." He must be great at cocktail parties.

In 2002 alone, Arimilli won 78 patents. That's three patents every two weeks. Either he's a wonder-dude who makes the rest of us look like slugs, or his name winds up on a lot of work done by teams of people.

Either way, at only 42, he'll probably continue to climb up the patent-holding ranks.

In the search for prolific inventors, here's the biggest shock: The all-time champion of U.S. patents might be a foreigner.

When the USPTO made that 1997 list of living prolific inventors, the No. 1 patent holder was Shunpei Yamazaki. Most of his work involves computer and video screens for his Tokyo company, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory. As of 1997, Yamazaki held 372 patents.

Today, a search of the USPTO database turns up 1,432 patents bearing his name, whupping both Edison and Weder. Yamazaki's most recent patent, granted Nov. 22, was titled, "Reflective liquid crystal display panel and device using same." His first patent, for a computer chip design, was granted in 1980. Yamazaki has averaged about a patent a week for 25 years.

It doesn't seem unusual to have a foreigner holding so many patents. Of the top 10 living patent holders on the 1997 list, eight were from other countries. Six were Germans, and two were Japanese. The only two Americans were flower guy Weder and oil industry researcher Hartley Owen.

So much for the legend of Edison. America's greatest inventor is apparently an obscure guy in Japan who makes stuff most people can't comprehend. And the nation's greatest native inventor seems to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot.

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com.

2005-12-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10366968/

Scientists discover how cancer spreads
Disease sends bone marrow cells to prepare new tumor sites, study finds

Updated: 1:51 p.m. ET Dec. 7, 2005

LONDON - Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads from a primary site to other places in the body in a finding that could open doors for new ways of treating and preventing advanced disease.

Instead of a cell just breaking off from a tumor and traveling through the bloodstream to another organ where it forms a secondary tumour, or metastasis, researchers in the United States have shown that the cancer sends out envoys to prepare the new site.

Intercepting those envoys, or blocking their action with drugs, might help to prevent the spread of cancer or to treat it in patients in which it has already occurred.

"We are basically looking at all the earlier steps that are involved in metastasis that we weren't previously aware of. It is complex but we are opening the door to all these things that occur before the tumor cell implants itself," said Professor David Lyden, of Cornell University in New York.

"It is a map to where the metastasis will occur," he added in an interview.

Landing site for cancer cells
Cancer's ability to colonize other organs is what makes the disease so deadly. Once the cancer has spread beyond its original site it is much more difficult to treat.

In research reported in the journal Nature, Lyden and his colleagues describe what happens before the arrival of the cancerous cells at the new site.

"The authors show that tumor cells can mobilize normal bone marrow cells, causing them to migrate to particular regions and change the local environment so as to attract and support a developing metastasis," Patricia Steeg, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a commentary.

Cells at the site of the metastasis multiply and produce a protein called fibronectin, which acts like a glue to attract and trap the bone marrow cells to create a landing pad or nest for the cancer cells.

"These nests provide attachment factors for the tumor cells to implant and nurture them. It causes them not only to bind but to proliferate. Once that all takes place we have a fully formed metastatic site or secondary tumor," said Lyden.

"This is the first time anyone has discovered what we call the pre-metastatic niche."

Without the landing pad, the cancerous cell could not colonize the organ.

In animal and laboratory studies, the scientists looked at how breast, lung and oesophageal cancer spread. The envoys from the tumor determine the site of the secondary site.

Lyden said measuring the number of special bone marrow cells circulating in the body could help to determine whether a cancer is likely to spread.

"This opens up the door to new concepts of how metastasis is taking place. If we can understand all these multiple processes we can develop new drugs that block each step. That way we have a much better future than just trying to treat the tumor cell, which is almost like a last step in this process," he added.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

2005-12-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since I've snitched on some customers, heres a new story.

A customer brings in there machine a month ago and its filled with spyware and adware.
I clean it up and install SpyBot Search and Destroy. Its a good program, I show him how to use it and send him on his way. Yesterday he brings his machine back and its filled to the brim with spyware again. I look thru his system and see that hes removed Spy Bot and that he installed another program. I ask him why he did it and he says "The popup said it was the best and that it would also stop all those popups I kept getting. I read on the net that Spybot and Adaware were garbage and that this program was the best thing out there." I then ask him where he read this? and he says "On the site that I bought that program from." Ok, what ever. I sit down and start reinstalling Spy Bot and he says that I shoulnt because its a crappy program. At this point Ive had enough and say "Go home and take your machine with you, Ive got more important things to do." Bad move, the guy is friends with the owners of the company. Oh well. Life sucks.

da Lizard

2005-12-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,17456074-5001028,00.html

PC rules blamed for Santa shortage

By Joe Spagnolo

December 04, 2005

DISILLUSIONED by a growing list of rules imposed by recruiting agencies and shopping centres to guard against litigation, men who have brought smiles to the faces of thousands of young West Australians for decades are reluctantly deciding to call it quits.

They can't hand out lollies, they can't pat children on the head because of religious beliefs, they can't put children on their laps unless they get permission from parents and they can't have photographs taken with youngsters unless their hands are in full view.

So frightened have some Santas become of being sued that they are demanding extra helpers to act as witnesses just in case a complaint is made.

Santas are even being told not to go around saying 'Ho, ho, ho' because they may frighten children.

One Santa told The Sunday Times he walked through a shopping centre in silence because he was worried he'd be sacked if he appeared too jolly.

Political leaders Matt Birney and Brendon Grylls (Nationals) said the plight of Santas highlighted a worrying trend around the world of political correctness gone mad.

Labor Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said it was important society struck the right balance between political correctness and what some people saw as acceptable behaviour.

For Athol Marsh, who has donned the red-and-white suit for 41 years, and John Gomez, who has played Santa for a decade, the pressure ofbeing politically correct has become too much and they say this will be their last year playing the jolly man.

Many other Santas will follow them into retirement, while some of their former colleagues have been hanging up their boots since the rules began evolving a few years ago.

"Kids want to have a real Santa, not a grouchy fake who can't wait to knock off and get out of costume," Mr Marsh said.

"The ones who did the job because they loved doing it and wanted to keep a child's dream alive are no longer working because of the stupid rules and a lot are thinking, as I am, that this will be the last year.

"There are still Santas in stores, but the heart has gone out of them.

"The rules are getting ridiculous.

"How can you stop a child running up to you and leaping into your arms? Do you just drop them and say: 'Sorry, against the rules'?

"Kids run and cuddle Santa because they love the guy in the red suit."

Mr Gomez said the day was coming when Santas would no longer be a part of the Christmas spirit.

He feared Santas in shopping centres and public areas would be shielded behind glass screens, away from children.

"It used to be a fun job. I used to look forward to it every year, but not any more," he said.

"The fear of litigation hangs over you because you might have grabbed a kid the wrong way or helped a kid in the wrong way.

"Santa can't even be portrayed as a fat, jolly old fellow any more because it's not politically correct.

"Once upon a time you'd walk through the mall saying 'Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas', but now you say nothing."

The Sunday Times has been told that shopping centres and other venues are battling to find enough Santas.

Perth-based Westaff, which employs Santas every year, is still 10 short with only three weeks until Christmas.

A Westaff spokeswoman said Santa recruits were given a list of rules to follow at an annual training session in Perth.

Some rules had been introduced to protect the Santas and shopping centres from possible litigation, she said. Santas also required a police clearance.

2005-12-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a bullies picture on his dart board on home. Does that make him a criminal? Come to think of it, didnt Murphy Brown have a dart board with peoples picture on it in her office?

da Lizard

http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln6_1130.html

Student faces discipline over 'list'

By CRAIG T. NEISES
cneises@thehawkeye.com

STRONGHURST, Ill. — An eighth–grader at West Central Junior High has been removed from school and may face a charge of disorderly conduct after school officials learned last week about a list that named students and school staff the boy considered irritating.

The identity of the student was not available from the school or the Henderson County Sheriff's office.

A letter describing the incident and the steps taken by the school in the aftermath of the discovery was sent home to parents Monday. In it, Superintendent Ralph Grimm offered assurances about the safety of West Central schools.

"I believe the campus to be as safe today as any other day," Grimm wrote, referring to the junior high, where sixth–, seventh– and eighth–grade students from the former Union and Southern school districts now attend class in the newly unified school district.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Grimm said the teen was taken out of school after being confronted Nov. 24 by Principal Jeff Nichols, who learned about the list late the previous day. A disciplinary hearing before the School Board has been set for Thursday.

The list was not a product of the Internet, Grimm said, but was in physical possession of the student.

Grimm would not go into detail about the nature of the list, or explain why its existence was deemed serious enough to precipitate the student's removal from school and the involvement of law enforcement.

In the post–Columbine massacre environment, Grimm said it is appropriate to err on the side of caution in these circumstances.

"You just can't take a chance," he said.

The superintendent went on to say there were other issues involving the student that needed to be addressed. Citing student privacy laws, he did not elaborate.

There was no indication any other students at the school were involved in creation of the list, which Grimm said contained the names of people the boy found "annoying."

Henderson County Sheriff Mark Lumbeck was to meet with school officials Tuesday as part of his office's investigation of the incident.

He said findings from the investigation would go to the state juvenile probation office and to the Henderson County state's attorney's office. An investigative report should be in the hands of State's Attorney Ray Cavanaugh by week's end, Lumbeck said.

Because no action was taken beyond compiling a list of names, Lumbeck said the only crime the boy could be charged with is disorderly conduct for disrupting the school environment.

2005-12-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.azstarnet.com/news/105238

Gene variant may depress IQ of males
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.03.2005

DALLAS — Scientists in North Carolina say they have identified a gene that affects IQ, a finding that, if confirmed, would be a significant step toward understanding the genetic basis for intelligence.
The new research could also have ethical implications because the effect of the gene appears to be quite dramatic: The scientists say that males who inherit a particular version of the gene have, on average, an IQ that is 20 points lower than males who don't.
"I have to admit, the ramifications of it are great," said Randy Jirtle, the Duke University biologist who led the new research, noting that current genetic-testing techniques can easily determine which males have that version.
However, he stressed that the IQ results in his research were based on a group average; individual males carrying the gene version had a wide range of IQ scores. While females also can carry the variation, it does not appear to affect their IQ, he said.
Jirtle reported the new findings last month at a scientific conference in Durham, N.C.
As early as the 1920s, research suggested that genetics play a key role in determining a person's mental capabilities.
But so far, connections between IQ and specific genes have been just correlations, with little supporting evidence. The new research, Jirtle and other experts said, will need to be replicated before it is considered definitive.
Jirtle's research centers on a gene identified as IGF2R, for type 2 insulinlike growth factor receptor. The gene governs the production of a protein that, among other jobs, affects cell growth. All people carry the gene, but some have a version with a slightly different code, Jirtle said. This variation, he and his colleagues found, correlates with a lower IQ.
The researchers studied about 300 children with an average age of 10. The children, all Caucasian, came from six counties in the Cleveland area. As a group, males — but not females — who had the variant gene had IQ scores about 20 points lower than males who didn't.

2005-12-05T12:25:00.000-08:00

I was over at front page and read an article about some Aetheists exchanging Bibles for porn.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20428
This got me thinking about how foolish the Aethiest Ive met over the years have been. How limited there view of the world, and how self limiting there understanding is.

Any way I went to atheists.org and found there section on christianity, first page I looked at was rather disappointing. Here it is with some quick comments added.

enjoy

da lizard

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/contradictions.html

INTRODUCTION

It is a central dogma of all fundamental Christians that the Bible is without error. They teach this conclusion by "reasoning" that god cannot be the author of false meaning and he cannot lie. Is this true? If written by a perfect being, then it must not contradict itself, as a collection of books written by different men at different times over many centuries would be expected to contradict each other.

>An excellent start. Lets see what they can come up with...

With this in mind, let us have a look at the Bible on several subjects. [top]

ON THE SABBATH DAY
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." -- Exodus 20:8

>One of the ten commandments,not much to be said about this, its rather self explanetory.

"One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." -- Romans 14:5 [top]

>I can see how this is a contradiction to an athiest. Its taken out of context with absolutely no reference to what the rest of the chapter is discussing. If you read from Rom 14:1 on you see that Paul is discussing how christians should treat other people and not criticise people who are approaching God in a different fashoin (in regareds to personal weaknesses eg. if your friend has a problem with alcholal then it would not be prudent to have drink in front of him or force him to have a sip of wine during communion).
Also if someone wishes to have a special day to give thanks to the Lord and it is not the sabbeth then "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind" meaning a person should be able to justify himself and what he does before the Lord. NO CONTRADICTION HERE JUST A PRIME EXAMPLE OF SLOPPY SCHOLARSHIP!

ON THE PERMANENCY OF THE EARTH
"... the earth abideth for ever." -- Ecclesiastes 1:4

>A very poetical chapter show how the life of man in short in comparison "to the earth which abideth for ever h5956"
From H5956; properly concealed, that is, the vanishing point; generally time out of mind (past or future), that is, (practically) eternity; frequentative adverbially (especially with prepositional prefix) always: - always (-s), ancient (time), any more, continuance, eternal, (for, [n-]) ever (-lasting, -more, of old), lasting, long (time), (of) old (time), perpetual, at any time, (beginning of the) world (+ without end). Compare H5331, H5703.

"... the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." -- 2Peter 3:10 [top]

>Perhaps the person who wrote this article should have read 2Pe 3:13 where it talks about a new earth g1093. Something that should be noted is the meaning of earth. Once again this either sloppy and poor scholarship or a prime example of Athiestic reasoning abilities.
g1093 Contracted from a primary word; soil; by extension a region, or the solid part or the whole of the terrene globe (including the occupants in each application): - country, earth (-ly), ground, land, world.

ON SEEING GOD
"... I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." -- Genesis 32:30

>The word used is h430, can also mean ANGEL. If two nations are at war and one sends a peace emmisary, how does the recieving nation describe the message? Is it "I recieved word from the Peace emmisary" or "I revieved word from the Leader of the enemies"?

"No man hath seen God at any time..."-- John 1:18 [top]

>In John 1:18 the word of God is g2316 meaning Diety. So if no one has seen God himself then the alternative meaning of Angel is meant for h430 as God uses Angels as messengers. NO CONTRADICTION, just another example of POOR SCHOLARSHIP.

ON HUMAN SACRIFICE
"... Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God..." -- Leviticus 18:21

>Dont let your children follow the religion of the Ammonites.

[In Judges, though, the tale of Jephthah, who led the Israelites against the Ammonoites, is being told. Being fearful of defeat, this good religious man sought to guarantee victory by getting god firmly on his side. So he prayed to god] "... If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering" (Judges 11:30-31).

[The terms were acceptable to god -- remember, he is supposed to be omniscient and know the future -- so he gave victory to Jephthah, and the first whatsoever that greeted him upon his glorious return was his daughter, as god surely knew would happen, if god is god. True to his vow, the general made a human sacrifice of his only child to god!] -- Judges 11:29-34 [top]

>Where did God demand that he make this vow? God did not demand he make this vow. People make mistakes and the Bible records them so we can learn from them.

ON THE POWER OF GOD
"... with God all things are possible." -- Matthew 19:26

"...The LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." -- Judges 1:19 [top]

>It says in the Bible that God is with his followers, but that trials and tribulations will occur to not just test but to strengthen his followers. The question here is not what is wrong with God but what was wrong with Judah? Were they afraid, tired or what?

ON DEALING WITH PERSONAL INJURY
"...thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. " -- Exodus 21:23-25

"...ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." -- Matthew 5:39 [top]

>The versus in Exodus are clearly referencing the treatment of slaves and people from a legal standpoint but Matthew is refering to personal attacks on ones person. No contradictions just another example of POOR SCHOLARSHIP!

ON CIRCUMCISION
"This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised." -- Genesis 17:10

"...if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." -- Galatians 5:2 [top]

>Genesis is refering to God's covenant with the Jews whereas Galatians is a rebuke to people who believed that salvation in Christ is dependant up circumcision rather than Christ himself. No contradiction just another example of POOR SCHOLARSHIP!

ON INCEST
"Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of this mother..." -- Deuteronomy 27:22

"And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter...it is a wicked thing...." -- Leviticus 20:17

[But what was god's reaction to Abraham, who married his sister -- his father's daughter?] See Genesis 20:11-12

"And God said unto Abraham, As for Sara thy wife...I bless her, and give thee a son also of her..." -- Genesis 17:15-16 [top]

>Its fascinating that people like to jump on stuff like this but ignore everything else. The rules on incest were given after Abrahams time. No contradiction, no sin just more POOR SCHOLARSHIP.

ON TRUSTING GOD
"A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD..." -- Proverbs 12:2

Now consider the case of Job. After commissioning Satan to ruin Job financially and to slaughter his shepherds and children to win a petty bet with Satan. God asked Satan: "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." -- Job 2:3 [top]

>How God dispenses his favour and when is up to him, after Job held fast to God how was he rewarded? Once again this is an example of POOR SCHOLARSHIP!

ON THE HOLY LIFE-STYLE
"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart..." -- Ecclesiastes 9:7

"...they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not..." -- 1 Corinthians 7:30 [top]

>Again these verses are taken out of context. If I said they used POOR SCHOLARSHIP on this contradiction would be a compliment.

ON PUNISHING CRIME
"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father..." -- Ezekiel 18:20

"I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation..." -- Exodus 20:5 [top]

>Ezekiel is talking about eternal life, the judgement of our soul, what your father does has no bearing upon this judgement. Whereas Exo 20:5 is given to the people of Israel right after they were delivered and witnessed Gods greatness and to those that chose to ignore them and hate God, well its very clear as to what will happen. Once again no contradiction or error just another example of POOR SCHOLARSHIP.

ON TEMPTATION
"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." -- James 1:13

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham..." -- Genesis 22:1 [top]

>In Gen22:1 a more accurate translation of tempt would be to test. Here is a language problem. The BIBLE was originally written in Hebrew and Greek and then translated into English. As such specific words are used in the English translation but do not necessarily provide the whole meaning of the word or the sense of what is being conveyed. No contradiction at all, just a lack of knowledge or lazyness.

ON FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
"Honor thy father and thy mother..."-- Exodus 20:12

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. " -- Luke 14:26 [top]

>No contradiction here, God comes first. Exodus makes it clear how we are to treat our parents where Luke makes sure we know who comes first. Eg. If your father says you must do something that is against Gods word should you do it? No, but if it is not against his word then you should. No contradiction just POOR SCHOLARSHIP!

ON RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD
"...he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. " -- Job 7:9

"...the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth...." -- John 5:28-29 [top]

>Job is very clear about how we are to consider the dead, they are gone to us. As such psychics and such are unable to contact them (they contact evil spirits). Whereas the dead are not gone to God. I wish I could say that this was poor scholarship but unfortunately a lot of christians dont fully understand what the Bible has to say on Death and resurrection.

ON THE END OF THE WORLD
"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. " -- Matthew 16:28

>Who was he tlaking to here? Is refering to a future time or people in the group he was addressing?

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. " -- Luke 21:32-33

>Here a specific sign shall come and that will signify the end times. This is a future event.

"And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." -- Romans 13:11-12

>This is a reference as to how we should live our lives.

"Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." -- James 5:8

>The Bible is clear that we should live as if he would be coming today.

"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." -- 1 John 2:18

"But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." -- 1 Peter 4:7

>Once again a reference as to how we should live.

These words were written between 1800 and 1900 years ago and were meant to warn and prepare the first Christians for the immediate end of the world. Some words are those supposedly straight out of the mouth of the "Son of God." The world did not end 1800 or 1900 years ago. All that generation passed away without any of the things foretold coming to pass. No amount of prayer brought it about; nor ever so much patience and belief and sober living. The world went on, as usual, indifferent to the spoutings of yet another batch of doomsday prophets with visions of messiahs dancing in their deluded brains. The world, by surviving, makes the above passages contradictions. [top]

>If it doesnt occur immediately it is wrong? Context matters.

CONCLUSION
What is incredible about the Bible is not its divine authorship; it's that such a concoction of contradictory nonsense could be believed by anyone to have been written by an omniscient god. To do so, one would first have to not read the book, which is the practice of most Christians; or, if one does read it, dump in the trash can one's rational intelligence -- to become a fool for god, in other words.

>"Dump in the trash can one's rational intelligence -- to become a fool for god" I dont think so, no where in this article has the author shown any problems with the Bible. The only people showing there foolishness is the Author of this piece.

To be an Atheist, one need only be able to laugh when such obvious nonsense is offered as being "divine" truth. If you are laughing, then you belong in the only organization dedicated to determined Atheist activism -- dedicated to doing something about the intrusion of religion into all areas of our government and our private lives.

>Can i laugh at you? Or would that be rude? Im sorry but religion is not intruding into all areas of government or private lives. Its atheists that are trying to strip away history, destroy religion and deny its proper historical role and the affect it had on the founding fathers of the United States of America.

All Bible quotes from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible (New York: Abradale Press, 1965)

2005-12-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

Im finding this a little hard to believe, but it is Russia were tlaking about...

da Lizard

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'
Black squirrel (archive)
Local people suggest hunger is driving squirrels to extremes
Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A "big" stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack.

While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds' nests, he said, the idea of them chewing a dog to death was "absurd".

"If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests," he added.

Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory.

A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been "no pine cones at all" in the local forests this year.

"The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat," he added.

2005-12-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Its friday and Ive come to an epiphany... My job is too easy. I seriously thought about sabotaging myself just to make it more challenging. Not a good sign. Looks like I need to start looking for a new job :(

Anyway enough about my problems...

A couple of things to note here... This article assumes that global warming is true, Ive yet to see it proven (dont believe me, just start criticizing the data proving it, the reaction from the diehards make fundamentalists look tame). They admit the current has halted before, how exactly did that happen and what got it moving again and what was the climate like when this happened?

da Lizard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0%2C3605%2C1654803%2C00.html?gusrc=rss

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

· Slowing of current by a third in 12 years could bring more extreme weather
· Temperatures in Britain likely to drop by one degree in next decade

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday December 1, 2005
The Guardian

The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.

Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a £4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.

The network should also answer the pressing question of whether the significant weakening of the current is a short-term variation, or part of a more devastating long-term slowing of the flow.

If the current remains as weak as it is, temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by an average of 1C in the next decade, according to Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton who led the study. "Models show that if it shuts down completely, 20 years later, the temperature is 4C to 6C degrees cooler over the UK and north-western Europe," Dr Bryden said.

Although climate records suggest that the current has ground to a halt in the distant past, the prospect of it shutting down entirely within the century are extremely low, according to climate modellers.

The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current.

The researchers measured the strength of the current at a latitude of 25 degrees N and found that the volume of cold, deep water returning south had dropped by 30%. At the same time, they measured a 30% increase in the amount of surface water peeling off early from the main northward current, suggesting far less was continuing up to Britain and the rest of Europe. The report appears in the journal Nature today.

Disruption of the conveyor-belt current was the basis of the film The Day After Tomorrow, which depicted a world thrown into chaos by a sudden and dramatic drop in temperatures. That scenario was dismissed by researchers as fantasy, because climate models suggest that the current is unlikely to slow so suddenly.

Marec Srokosz of the National Oceanographic Centre said: "The most realistic part of the film is where the climatologists are talking to the politicians and the politicians are saying 'we can't do anything about it'."

Chris West, director of the UK climate impacts programme at Oxford University's centre for the environment, said: "The only way computer models have managed to simulate an entire shutdown of the current is to magic into existence millions of tonnes of fresh water and dump it in the Atlantic. It's not clear where that water could ever come from, even taking into account increased Greenland melting."

Uncertainties in climate change models mean that the overall impact on Britain of a slowing down in the current are hard to pin down. "We know that if the current slows down, it will lead to a drop in temperatures in Britain and northern Europe of a few degrees, but the effect isn't even over the seasons. Most of the cooling would be in the winter, so the biggest impact would be much colder winters," said Tim Osborn, of the University of East Anglia climatic research unit.

The final impact of any cooling effect will depend on whether it outweighs the global warming that, paradoxically, is driving it. According to climate modellers, the drop in temperature caused by a slowing of the Atlantic current will, in the long term, be swamped by a more general warming of the atmosphere.

"If this was happening in the absence of generally increasing temperatures, I would be concerned," said Dr Smith. Any cooling driven by a weakening of the Atlantic current would probably only slow warming rather than cancel it out all together. Even if a slowdown in the current put the brakes on warming over Britain and parts of Europe, the impact would be felt more extremely elsewhere, he said.

2005-12-01T14:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112801.html

Ireland's Largest University Prevents Abortion Survivor Speaking

DUBLIN, Ireland, November 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Gianna Jessen, a 28-year-old woman who survived a saline abortion when she was 7 months in utero, has been prevented from speaking at Ireland's largest university - University College Dublin (UCD).

Despite her cerebral palsy, which she has described as a gift and is a legacy of the abortion, Jessen has traveled the world with her powerful testimony. She is living evidence of the humanity of the unborn child and the fact that abortion takes a human life.

'Ultrasound', the pro-life student network formed by the pro-life group Youth Defence, was delighted when Jessen agreed to undertake a tour of Irish colleges. Bookings and arrangements were made and materials printed and distributed in Ireland's largest universities.

However, while students across the country gave Gianna a rapturous welcome, Youth Defence suggests that forces within Ireland's largest university were determined to prevent students at University College Dublin (UCD) from hearing her testimony. Ultrasound leaders were told by UCD's administrators that they had to provide insurance for the event, which they arranged. On the morning of Ms Jessen's talk, however, the pro-life group was told the insurance did not meet requirements and that the talk could not go ahead.

Despite every effort of Ultrasound, UCD's would not let Ms Jessen speak. It then transpired that no insurance broker could provide the sort of insurance demanded by UCD for this event, since they were requiring insurance cover which would be necessary to facilitate a extreme risk event.

"This sort of insurance has never before been demanded by UCD to allow a speaker and it would seem that this obstacle was raised to prevent Ms Jessen's story being heard," commented Youth Defence. "Universities are meant to be places of discussion and learning; it is to UCD's shame that they effectively banned this young woman and her amazing story."

2005-12-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112803.html

British Doctors “Increasingly Uneasy” with Abortion Survival Rate Reports Times

By Hilary White

LONDON, November 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The weekend edition of the London Times carries a report that provides insight into what pro-lifers identify as the moral vacuity of media representation of abortion. In a story on “botched” abortions the Times reports on the latest British medical scandal: that some of the intended victims survive.

A government agency has published a report titled, “Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH),” that shows, to the horror of the British medical establishment, that up to 50 babies survive abortion every year in Britain.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, says the Times, requires that babies whom the mother chooses to kill after 21 weeks and six days of gestation must receive an injection of potassium chloride into the heart “before being delivered.” The article states blandly that “in practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.”

In an unusually frank admission, the Times neglects the standard journalistic euphemisms that soothe public conscience in abortion coverage. Instead of speaking of “terminations” and “foetuses,” the Times refers to “babies.” Instructions to abortionists doing early term abortions in Britain require that the drugs used should “prevent such babies being alive at birth.”

Britain has one of the highest rates of abortion per live births in the world with abortion on demand available through 24 weeks gestation. British women seeking abortions later than 24 weeks can be sent without criminal penalty to Spain where facilities are available for “preventing such babies being alive at birth.”

As with human fecundity, the problem of children surviving abortion refuses to go away quietly and, according to the Times, doctors are “increasingly uneasy” with it. While disclaiming that he is not “anti-abortion,” Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London said that abortion botching is “substandard medicine.”

“If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell.

Catholic World News’ resident pseudonymous blogger and commentator, Diogenes, drew the obvious comparisons. “Skill at saving babies' lives is improving, skill at ending them is in short supply. The result: half a hundred stubborn little bastards -- breathing and crying -- who won't do the sporting thing and die. No wonder the health service is upset.”

Read the Times article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-18926...

2005-12-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Its getting scary out there... all parents are becoming is a wallet.

da Lizard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1640257,00.html

Mother no longer knows best, high court told

· Family planning group defends guidelines
· Woman challenging law has pregnant daughter

Helen Carter
Friday November 11, 2005
The Guardian

The long-held belief among parents that they know what is best for a child is out of date and represents a traditional paternalistic approach that contradicts social changes in western Europe, it was claimed at the high court yesterday.

Nathalie Lieven, representing the Family Planning Association, made the submission in a case involving Sue Axon, 51, a divorced single mother of five who is challenging government guidance allowing doctors to provide abortion or contraception advice to children under 16 without their parents' knowledge.

Article continues
Ms Lieven argued that parents are no longer necessarily the best people to advise a child on contraception, sexually transmitted infections and abortions - and they have no right to know if their children under 16 are seeking treatment.

"There is no doubt whatsoever that a child has a right to confidentiality," she said on the final day of the three-day hearing. "A parent's rights cannot override a child's rights."

She added: "They may be highly loving parents, or have extremely strict views on underage sex, or extremely strict views on abortion, or teenagers having babies," she said. Even in a perfectly loving family such factors might lead a child to feel she did not want to tell her parents in case family relationships were damaged.

But Philip Havers QC, for Mrs Axon, claimed the public would find the FPA view "astonishing". "I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people in this country would support the proposition that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the best judges of a child's welfare are his or her parents," he said, adding that most people would be astonished to be told that view was out of date.

"One can ask the question, if parents are not the best people to advise their child - who is? Is it the FPA? Is it social workers?"

In a further twist, Mrs Axon's solicitor, Paul Contrathe, confirmed that her 16-year-old daughter is pregnant and the baby is due in March. "This goes to show that this case is more than a hypothetical interest to my client," he said. Mrs Axon, of Baguley, Manchester, had told the hearing she was prompted to make the legal challenge after a termination she had 20 years ago caused her "guilt, shame and depression for many years".

But she told the Daily Mail she was proud her daughter had confided in her about the pregnancy and that the experience had reinforced her campaign. "It backs up my case, that this is what is happening with young girls who are having sex and getting pregnant because it is there for them on a plate," she said. "The confidentiality policy gives them the confidence to have sex underage, knowing that they won't have to tell their parents.

"I think that may have been a factor in my daughter having a sexual relationship at such a young age."

Mrs Axon launched the proceedings more than a year ago. At the time, she stressed that neither of her teenage daughters had sought abortions.

Her barrister had previously argued that family life depended upon relationships of "trust and openness and respect and transparency between family members - not on secrecy, or what might have to be lies on the part of children in relation to what they are doing".

Mrs Axon's case centres on the notion that Department of Health guidelines issued last year contradict a Lords ruling in the Victoria Gillick case of 1985. While the law lords said it would be "most unusual" for a doctor to advise a child on contraception without parents' knowledge or consent, the guidance says involving parents should be the exception not the rule.

But lawyers for the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, are insisting the right of confidentiality enjoyed by under-16s is crucial in the battle to reduce teen pregnancies and improve their sexual health.

Mr Justice Silber reserved judgment.

Backstory

Victoria Gillick, a mother of 10 from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, began a campaign against a DHSS guidance circular in 1980 permitting confidential contraceptive treatment of under-16s without parental consent in exceptional circumstances. Her case was dismissed in the high court in 1983 but this was overturned by the appeal court the following year. The circular was declared illegal and the court ruled that none of Mrs Gillick's five daughters, then under 16, should be given advice or treatment on abortion or contraception without parental consent, except in an emergency or by leave of the courts. The issue was settled in October 1985 when the law lords upheld the right of doctors to prescribe contraceptives to girls under 16 without the consent of their parents. In 2002 Mrs Gillick was working as a voluntary pregnancy advisory councillor in the UK - the country with the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe.

2005-12-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4484728.stm

Woman has first face transplant
Surgeons operating
The operation lasted several hours
Surgeons in France have carried out the first face transplant, it has been reported.

The woman had lost her nose, lips and chin after being savaged by a dog.

In the controversial operation, tissues, muscles, arteries and veins were taken from a brain-dead donor and attached to the patient's lower face.

Doctors stress the woman will not look like her donor, but nor will she look like she did before the attack - instead she will have a "hybrid" face.

It has been technically possible to carry out such a transplant for some years, with teams in the US, the UK and France researching the procedure.

Skin from another person's face is better for transplants as it will be a better match than skin from another part of the patient's body, which could have a different texture or colour.

But the ethical concerns of a face transplant, and the psychological impact to the patient of looking different has held teams back.

Concerns relating to immunosuppression, psychological impact and the consequence of technical failure have so far prevented ethical approval of the procedure in the UK, though doctors here are fully able to perform transplants.

'Gravely disfigured'

The 38-year-old French patient from the northern French town of Valenciennes underwent extensive counselling before her operation, which is believed to have lasted at least five hours, and which took place at the weekend at a hospital in Amiens.

The French magazine Le Point reports that the tissues, muscles, arteries and veins needed for the transplant were taken from a multi-organ donor in the northern city of Lille, who was brain-dead.

The operations were carried out by a team led by Professor Bernard Devauchelle and Professor Jean Michel Dubernard.

In a statement, the hospital said the woman had been gravely disfigured in the attack in May this year.

She has been unable to speak or eat properly since.

It added that the woman - who wishes to remain anonymous - was in "excellent general health" and said the graft looked normal

Live donors

Like any other transplant patient, the woman will have to take immunosuppressant drugs to help her body cope with the donated tissue.

Doctors working in the field say many could benefit from the procedure, including 10,000 burns victims in the UK.

Iain Hutchison, an oral-facial surgeon at Barts and the London Hospital, said: "This is the first face transplant using skin from another person."

But there are medical, and ethical, concerns of facial transplants.

Mr Hutchison, who is chief executive of Saving Faces - the Facial Surgery Research Foundation, warned blood vessels in the donated tissue could clot, the immunosuppressants could fail - and would increase the patient's risk of cancer."

Mr Hutchison added there were ethical and moral issues around donating facial tissue.

"Where donors would come from is one issue that would have to be considered.

"The transplant would have to come from a beating heart donor. So, say your sister was in intensive care, you would have to agree to allow their face to be removed before the ventilator was switched off.

"And there is the possibility that the donor would then carry on breathing."

Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society's ethics committee, said: "The extent of facial expression which will occur in the long term is unknown.

"The skin tends to promote rejection by the immune system very strongly and immunosuppression is likely to need to be kept at high levels for prolonged periods of time.

"It is not clear whether an individual could be left worse off in the event that a face transplant failed."

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon's facial transplantation working party, said: "If successful, this is a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction.

"It appears that this has been a partial face transplant incorporating the nose and lips; therefore issues relating to similarity in appearance between donor and recipient are unlikely to be a major problem.

"We wish the patient and the team a successful outcome and look forward to learning more about the details of the procedure which could be a major step forward for the facially disfigured."

2005-11-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

Ive said it before and I will say it again. Aids is a SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE!!!

Keep it in your pants and it will go away. Act irresponsibly(premarital sex/shared needles etc.)and you get what you deserve.

da Lizard

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Aids_Focus/0%2C%2C2-7-659_1842561%2C00.html

Cape Town - HIV/AIDS Is The Leading Cause Of
Death Of South African Children Under Age Five

Diseases of poverty account for a further 30% of deaths in this age group, the Children's Institute (CI) has said.

The HIV/Aids pandemic is first among a number of factors that are standing in the way of realising child rights in South Africa, and the country needs a comprehensive response to children infected and affected by the disease.

This is the message from the Children's Institute, as it launched a publication on the situation of South Africa's children to coincide with World Aids day on December 1.

This year's edition focuses on the theme of children and HIV/Aids. It is called the South African Child Gauge 2005.

"Forty percent of deaths of children under the age of five years are directly attributable to Aids and a further 30% to diseases of poverty," said Professor Marian Jacobs, director of the CI.

"The second major obstacle to the realisation of child rights is the ongoing income inequality and widespread poverty that continue in the country.

"The unemployment rate is rising alongside the HIV infection rate and this is of great concern, because poverty deepens the effects of HIV/Aids on households, while the disease in turn aggravates already existing poverty," she added.

2005-11-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

How can you fix a problem when you ignore it... Shame on the MEDIA FOR LYING ABOUT ALL THE MUSLIM RIOTING THAT IS HAPPENING IN FRANCE!!!!!!

da Lizard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1639537,00.html

French TV boss admits censoring riot coverage

Claire Cozens in Amsterdam
Thursday November 10, 2005

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.

Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the rolling news service LCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been "excessive" and could even be fanning the flames of the violence.

Mr Dassier said his own channel, which is owned by the private broadcaster TF1, recently decided not to show footage of burning cars.

Article continues
"Politics in France is heading to the right and I don't want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television," Mr Dassier told an audience of broadcasters at the News Xchange conference in Amsterdam today.

"Having satellites trained on towns across France 24 hours a day showing the violence would have been wrong and totally disproportionate ... Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you're broadcasting," he said.

Mr Dassier denied he was guilty of "complicity" with the French authorities, which this week invoked an extraordinary state-of-emergency law passed during the country's war with Algeria 50 years ago.

But he admitted his decision was partly motivated by a desire to avoid encouraging the resurgence of extreme rightwing views in France.

French broadcasters have faced criticism for their lack of coverage of the country's worst civil unrest in decades. Public television station France 3 has stopped broadcasting the numbers of torched cars while other TV stations are considering following suit.

"Do we send teams of journalists because cars are burning, or are the cars burning because we sent teams of journalists?" asked Patrick Lecocq, editor-in-chief of France 2.

Rival news organisations today questioned the French broadcasters' decision to temper coverage of the riots.

John Ryley, the executive editor of Sky News, said his channel would have handled a similar story in Britain very differently.

"We would have been all over it like a cheap suit. We would have monstered the story, and I didn't get the impression that happened in France," he said.

2005-11-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/13228435.htm

Pair of brothers shot returning home from "Tookie" rally

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Calif. - A pair of brothers was shot, one of them fatally, as they returned home from a weekend rally for condemned inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams, police said Monday.

Sheriff's deputies found Elliot Noble, 20, of Oakland, fatally shot in a vehicle at the side of a road before noon Saturday, Contra Costa Sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee said.

The second victim, his 22-year-old brother, was taken by helicopter to a hospital, where he remained in serious condition Monday. Police have no suspects.

"They had just left the rally at San Quentin in support of Tookie Williams," Lee said. "We need to find out what they were doing there and how this evolved."

Williams, 51, a co-founder of the Los Angeles Crips gang, was convicted in 1979 of killing four people during two Los Angeles robberies. While on death row, he's received international acclaim for an array of peace efforts, including his children's books warning kids to stay away from gangs.

The execution is set for Dec. 13.

Saturday's rally featured rapper celebrity Snoop Dog, whose real name is Calvin Broadus.

2005-11-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/ThierryGattuso51125.htm

Why do Moslems Underachieve?

Thierry Gattuso

2005/11/24

Muslims make up 22% of the World’s population, according to the United Nations' Arab Human Development Report: "Half of Arab women cannot read; One in five Arabs live on less than $2 per day; Only 1 percent of the Arab population has a personal computer, and only half of 1 percent use the Internet; Fifteen percent of the Arab workforce is unemployed; 60% of Muslims are illiterate”. Only two Muslims have won the Nobel prize in a scientific field - Dr. Abdus Salam, in 1979 for Physics and Dr. Ahmed Zewail, in 1992 for Chemistry. Dr Salam a native of Pakistan , is not considered to be a Muslim in his home country as he follows the Ahmadiyyas sect of Islam.

Only 600 universities service a Muslim population of 1.2 billion in 57 countries. Half the universities concentrate on teaching Islamic education and science. India has 8,407 universities for 1 billion people and the United States has 5,758 for 280 million people. The combined annual GDP (purchasing power parity basis) of the 57 Muslim countries is under $2 trillion. The US produces goods and services worth $10.4 trillion; China $5.7 trillion, Japan $3.5 trillion, India $3 trillion and Germany $2.1 trillion. The oil rich states Saudi Arabia , United Arab Emirates , Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services worth $430 billion; Thailand alone produces goods and services worth $429 billion.

Underachievement by Muslims was not always the case claim Muslims and point to a glorious and illustrious time when the Arab Muslim empire was the most advanced and enlightened in the world. Many discoveries were made in the period 750 – 1250 AD according to Muslims. Critical analysis of this period shows that many of the advancements and discoveries we falsely attribute to Muslims were actually made by the ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean area, or by the ancient Chinese and Indian civilisations.

Muslims believe, that glass mirrors, were first developed by Muslim Spain in the 11th century. Around 1290 Venetians learned how to produce glass from the Spanish Muslims. The Romans invented the glass mirror around the 1st century. Research by Reinuad and Fave, indicates that Muslims chemists were the first to develop the formula for gunpowder and later produced firearms. The Chinese knew the formula for gunpowder and used it for military purposes during the Sung dynasty of the 12th century. Muslims boast that they laid the foundations for modern mathematics and two of its main branches, geometry and trigonometry. The Muslim contribution was merely to collect and combine the work done by the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Persians and Romans. The Indian civilisation gave us the concept of zero and modern numbers. Brahmagupta, an Indian mathematician, (598 – 665 AD) can be accredited with the initial work on algebra and negative numbers. The trigonometry terms sine and cosine have there origin in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India .

The underachievement and underperformance by Muslims is acute in the 57 Islamic countries. Muslims claim that they are recovering from a long period of colonisation and de colonisation and the effects of the removal of the Palestinian people from Arab lands. How about the achievements of Muslims who live and work in the West? Well the truth is not that much better than their cousins in Muslim countries.

The United Kingdom census of 2001 for the first time looked at the nation’s religious background. The findings showed that Muslims make up 2.8% of the UK population. Hindus 1%, Sikhs 0.6, Buddhists and Jews both make up 0.5% of the UK population. 31% of Muslims of working age have no qualifications, the highest of any religious group. As in many countries owing your own home is a major achievement and financial responsibility. 82% of Sikhs followed by 78% of Jews own their own home in the UK . Only 52% of Muslims own their own home, the lowest of any religious group. 14% of Muslims are unemployed, compared to 8% of Sikhs and 6% of Hindus. The underachievement of Muslims is even more bleak when you examine where most Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhist in the UK come from. 75% of Muslims, 97% of Hindus, 98 % of Sikhs and 69% of Buddhists in the UK are from or have ancestral links to South Asia . Therefore any cultural factors can be largely ruled out when comparing the achievement of Muslims with people from other religious groups. Muslims complain that they have to overcome language difficulties and face discrimination in the UK and state this as a factor in there poor performance. Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs face the same language and discrimination issues as Muslims, yet their achievements and performance is much better than Muslims.

The underachievement of Muslims should come as no surprise to those of us who understand the true nature of Islam. Everything a Muslim needs to know is in the Koran, Hadith or Sunnah. Muslims are not encouraged to seek knowledge and better themselves. Muslims are against progress, modernity and science. Those that control Islam do not want to see Muslims educated as an educated Muslim will apply commonsense and logic to the Koran and see it for what its is, a collection of distorted Bible and Torah stories and in print the mind of a 7th century Bedouin bandit leader.

References

United Nations' Arab Human Development Report 2002

United Nations' Arab Human Development Report 2003

World Book Encyclopaedia

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Chronology of Science and Discovery Isaac Asimov's

2005-11-24T12:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/11/22/texas_supreme_court_rules_property_tax_unconstitutional/

Texas Supreme Court rules property tax unconstitutional

By April Castro, Associated Press Writer | November 22, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas --Texas school districts illegally tax property owners to pay for public education and the state must find a new way to fund schools by June 1 or classrooms will remain closed in the fall, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

Texas' highest civil court ruled that the property taxes for schools have become an unconstitutional statewide property tax and charged lawmakers with repairing the $30 billion funding system. State funding would be stopped if the deadline isn't met.

The nine-member Republican panel agreed 7-1 with one of three arguments in a lawsuit brought against the state by hundreds of school districts, but found the system meets constitutional requirements for "adequate education" and equitable facilities funding. Justice Scott Brister dissented and Justice Don Willett did not participate.

June 1 is an extension of an earlier court deadline set in the long-running case, and one lawmaker said it this one is much more serious.

"This time the Supreme Court has ruled. There is no back door," said Texas Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, a member of the House Public Education Committee. "This deadline is a real, hard, firm deadline. At that point, you can't finance schools the same way, you have to make the system constitutional, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to open schools in August."

The court declined to offer its own solution, pushing the issue back to lawmakers.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry praised the ruling and said he plans to call lawmakers back to Austin to take up the issue in a special legislative session "at an appropriate time before that deadline."

The Legislature has failed to remedy the system during the last two regular sessions and three 30-day special sessions called by Perry.

"I'm also pleased to see that the court agreed with a position that I have long advocated: simply pouring more money into the same system will not alleviate the property tax problem," Perry said. "Our entire tax system needs substantial reform to make it fair, more modern and that will ensure schools have a reliable stream of revenue."

The court has been considering the case for months on appeal from a district court in Austin. Property-rich and poor districts sued, claiming the method for funding education did not meet requirements set in the state constitution.

State District Judge John Dietz in September 2004 agreed. He ordered that the three problems get repaired or the state would have to halt funding for schools Oct. 1. That deadline was suspended pending the high court ruling.

The state appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that changes to the system should be made by the Legislature, not the courts.

"The court recognized -- as all Texans recognize -- that we can and should do a better job of educating students in Texas," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office represented the state in the case. "But, just because we can do a better job does not mean that the job being done now is unconstitutional."

The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that the system is unconstitutional because so many school districts are forced to tax property owners at the maximum limit of $1.50 per $100 in property value. That amounts to a statewide property tax because districts don't have room to set their own rates, the high court ruled.

Districts argued that to fund all state and federal education mandates -- such as the 22-student per class limit and minimum teacher salaries -- they must tax at the legal limit. The property tax cap, they said, had become both a minimum and a maximum rate.

Money for the Texas school system comes primarily from property taxes and a loophole-ridden franchise tax. The business tax probably will be overhauled to make more entities pay.

While the court said that state spending on education satisfies the constitutional requirements of an "adequate" education, the ruling cast doubt on the future of the system if there is not "increased funding, improved efficiencies, or better methods of education."

"The court is obviously worried about the future of the system," said Scott McCown, a retired state judge whose decisions helped shape Texas' school funding system.

Still four months away from the March primary, the ruling already offered political fodder for the upcoming gubernatorial race. Comptroller and Perry challenger Carole Keeton Strayhorn attacked the governor for his "inaction" and urged him to call an immediate special session. Perry aides pressed Strayhorn to offer her own school funding plan rather than more political attacks.

Perry has appointed former comptroller John Sharp, a Democrat and former political rival, to head a commission that will recommend how to restructure the tax system that pays for schools. It met for the first time Monday.

2005-11-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

What can I say... I have as much right here as a First Nations(really??) person...

da Lizard

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbustrans.shtml

Stone Age Columbus - transcript

NARRATOR (JACK FORTUNE): This is the story of one of the greatest voyages in human history. It was a journey which took people across thousands of miles of snow and ice through some of the most extreme weather ever seen on Earth, but these were not famous polar explorers like Scott or Shackleton and they weren't adventurers in search of conquest. These were men, women and children travelling across oceans and ice floes in search of a better life and this is more than just an epic journey. It is threatening to rewrite one of the greatest stories of them all. For these people were travelling across the Atlantic from Europe to America and they would get there 17,000 years before Columbus, in the Stone Age. Last year archaeologist Bruce Bradley went on a mission to France to challenge one of the most widely accepted theories of early human history and here, in the back room of this small museum, he found exactly the evidence he was looking for because amid the arrowheads and needles he found something which by rights should not have been here at all, some distinctive two-sided spearheads that are at least 17,000 years old.

DR BRUCE BRADLEY (Smithsonian Institution): When I first saw this material when it was first brought out I was astounded, I was shocked, I was absolutely flabbergasted. Here is what we needed.

NARRATOR: Because of what he saw a mystery that everyone thought was solved will have to be reopened, for these spearheads say that one of the great sagas of pre-history, the tale of who were the first people to populate America, will have to be rewritten. Once upon a time we thought we knew it all. The story of who had been the first settlers in America was one of the most studied in archaeology.

DR PAUL MARTIN (University of Arizona): I think to know when people first came into the New World is important. Archaeologists have been looking for the earliest for a long time. It's been a Holy Grail for them - who was first.

NARRATOR: The answer it seemed lay with one remarkable find. In 1933 in a dried-up lake in Clovis, New Mexico archaeologists uncovered an ancient spearhead. It became known as the Clovis Point.

DR DENNIS STANFORD (Smithsonian Institution): It's a very distinctive type of artefact. As you can see here it has a flake that's been taken out of the base and there's also a, a flake on the other side removed from the base and these are called flutes and beyond that the projectile point is flaked on both sides. You see it's worked here and it's worked on this side which is what we call bifacial.

NARRATOR: And alongside the Clovis Point was one huge clue to its age. The skeleton of a mammoth which it had clearly been used to kill. When they dated the bones they found they were 11,500 years old. It made the Clovis Point the oldest human artefact ever found in America. That was just the beginning. Soon all over the country archaeologists were finding thousands of similar, beautifully crafted flints, from tiny arrowheads to much larger possible ceremonial pieces, all made in the same distinctive way. The Clovis Point soon became the icon of the first Americans.

DR MICHAEL COLLINS (University of Texas): There's Clovis in every one of the 48 states in the United States, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, in all kinds of environments. The Clovis Point itself, it may be the first really great American technological invention.

NARRATOR: And all these Clovis Points didn't just look the same. They all seemed to date from the same time, 11,500 years ago and then the archaeologists noticed something that transformed the Clovis story into one of the great sagas of human history. 11,500 years ago it was not just one mammoth that met a bloody end - they all did and a host of other great Stone Age beasts in America - the giant armadillo, the giant sloth, the great black bear - all were wiped out in just a few brutal years.

PAUL MARTIN: It was large animals for the most part that disappeared. It looks as though it didn't take long at all. It looks as thought it was over almost as soon as it began.

NARRATOR: And so an epic story was born. Somehow from somewhere 11,500 years ago people arrived in America for the first time. Whoever they were they were warriors and they brought with them a fearsome weapon, the Clovis Point. In just a few years they charged down the length of the continent killing all the great beasts as they went. It was a fantastic story. There was only one outstanding question: where did this intrepid band of hunters come from, who were they? When the archaeologists looked for an answer they found it in the weather of the Ancient World. 11,500 years ago was the end of the last great Ice Age. Huge swathes of the northern hemisphere still lay frozen under ice. These giant ice-sheets locked up vast quantities of water. It meant that sea-levels were far lower than they are now. Huge tracks of land were exposed meaning the continents of Asia and America were joined with a bridge of land linking Siberia and Alaska across what is now the Baring Strait. It seemed clear that this was the route the Clovis people must have taken as they undertook an intrepid journey across into a new continent 11,500 years ago, so their story entered the history books. The first Americans were the Clovis, a people from Asia, and they had stayed isolated ruling America for 11,000 years until their first fatal contact with Columbus and the people of Europe in 1492. It became an accepted fact. It was such a powerful story that for years no archaeologist bothered to look back beyond 11,500 years ago. Everyone knew there could be nothing there, so no-one dug any deeper, but one day somebody did. Jim Adovasio has spent the past 30 years excavating an ancient settlement near Pittsburgh. Layer upon layer telling the story of who lived here and when going back at least 11,000 years.

DR JIM ADOVASIO (Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute): On these surfaces that you see before us we have signs of repeated visits by Native Americans to this site. These discolorations literally represent a moment frozen in time. Just below the surface I'm standing on roughly 11,000-11,200 years ago is where the conventional Clovis first model says that the earliest material should stop basically, that there ought not to be anything beneath it, no matter how much deeper we dug.

NARRATOR: But then Adovasio did the unthinkable - he dug below the Clovis layer - and that's when the trouble started.

JIM ADOVASIO: The artefacts simply continued and we recovered blades and blade cores like this all the way down to 16,000BC.

NARRATOR: If Adovasio was right then someone had been in America thousands of years before Clovis. It was an astonishing revelation. In fact it was too astonishing. When Adovasio published his findings he was simply dismissed out of hand.

JIM ADOVASIO: The majority of the archaeological community was acutely sceptical and they invented all kinds of reasons why these dates couldn't possibly be right. People have invested in the Clovis first position for more than 70 years. For a lot of people they think that this is not only a repudiation of a well accepted dogma, it's a repudiation of themselves.

NARRATOR: And so it was for other scientists. Anyone who dug back beyond 11,500 years ago had to be either mad or worse.

MICHAEL COLLINS: The best way in the world to get beaten up professionally is to claim you have a pre-Clovis site.

DENNIS STANFORD: When you dig deeper than Clovis a lot of people do not report it because they're worried about the reaction of their colleagues.

MICHAEL COLLINS: And then accused of planting artefacts. People will reject radiocarbon dates if they're older than 11,500 years ago just simply because there's not supposed to be any people here at those times and it just goes on and on and on.

NARRATOR: And so it could have stayed. The Clovis theory remained dominant with just a few awkward dissenters, but then something happened which opened up the whole mystery once more. Douglas Wallace is not an archaeologist, but nonetheless he is trying to write a complete history of the world. It's just that his history is based on the science of genetics. Stored at temperatures below minus 250°C he has samples of DNA from every part of the world, a complete record of who we all are and where we came from.

DR DOUGLAS WALLACE (Emory University): We can get insight into our history by looking at modern DNA samples. If and when we need a sample from a population in Africa or a population in Asia we can then go to that tube, pull that tube out, resurrect those cells, amplify them, isolate their DNA and ask yet a new question.

NARRATOR: Wallace was particularly interested in a type of DNA called mitochondrial DNA. As humans reproduce mitochondrial DNA is passed along the female line from mother to daughter. The only change that takes place is when there are mistakes in copying as the cells reproduce. The mistakes are called mutations and they take place with a clock-like regularity. By comparing the number of mutations in his samples from around the globe Wallace could trace not only the route our ancestors followed as they migrated across the planet, but also when they did it.

DOUGLAS WALLACE: So what we've been able to do using genetic variation and comparing the genetic variation of aboriginal populations from all the major continents of the world we've literally been able to reconstruct the history of migration.

NARRATOR: Sp the DNA should tell Wallace not just where the first American came from, but even when they made the journey. When he looked at his samples he found that genetically speaking every Native American's DNA was made up of a combination of four groups which he called A, B, C and D. They all came from Siberia and north-eastern Asia. So far this discovery was consistent with the Clovis theory, but then came the revelation. When he worked out the dates he realised there were several waves of migration and the earliest group had come over nearly 10,000 years before the Clovis, some 20,000 years ago. Immediately Wallace thought he had to be wrong. He repeated his work. So did other labs. The results were absolutely clear.

DOUGLAS WALLACE: All of the papers that had been published have come to a very similar conclusion: that the first migration was in the order of 20,000-30,000 years ago.

NARRATOR: There was now no doubt. The epic Clovis theory had to be wrong. The great quest to uncover the story of the early settlement of America had to start all over again. Archaeologists decided to go back to basics and none more so than Dennis Stanford from the Smithsonian Institute. He started with what was still the only real clue: the Clovis Point itself. He decided to look for spear points along the route from Asia to America trying to see if he could trace the people who had brought the Clovis Point to the Americas, but as he worked back through Alaska and then Siberia the trail went dead. The only tools he found were quite different.

DENNIS STANFORD: After looking at the collections we were disappointed that we didn't find what we thought we would find and I was surprised to find that the technologies were so much different.

NARRATOR: In Siberia he found Asian tools that bore no relation to Clovis Points at all. Most were made from lots of small flints called micro- blades embedded in a bone handle.

DENNIS STANFORD: Microblade technology is striking a long thin flake from the core and then making a projectile point or a knife blade out of bone and then cutting a slot in it and then putting the microblade in the slot and that's a totally different philosophy entirely than using the bifacial projectile point, as you can see here, it's just a total different mindset.

NARRATOR: There was now a real puzzle. The DNA said the earliest Americans could only have come from Asia, yet the Clovis Points seemed to have come from somewhere else. The man who set out to solve this paradox was archaeologist Bruce Bradley. Bradley has a skill that allows him to see things in stone tools that others cannot. He's a flint knapper, an expert at crafting flint objects.

BRUCE BRADLEY: So what I'm doing here is I'm choosing to be Clovis, in other words I'm choosing a Clovis approach to this piece of stone now. I'm going to grind it a little bit, strengthen it.

NARRATOR: If he could work out how the Points had been made it might be a clue to who the people were who had brought them to America.

BRUCE BRADLEY: Every piece that we find, if you know how to read it, can tell you the story of the technology from which it comes.

NARRATOR: What Bradley found was that the Clovis Points didn't just look distinctive, they had also been made in a very distinctive way.

BRUCE BRADLEY: You can see how this, starting from this side went and took off this whole other side. This is what we call an overshot outré passé flake, a very intentional process. Now I've set up to do, go this way.

NARRATOR: The result of this process is that the flint flakes off in large, useable chunks. Such flakes have been found wherever you find Clovis Points.

BRUCE BRADLEY: Not only do I have a spear point, but with this technology I have a large number of big, useable flakes that are going to be very good for making other kinds of tools and so every single flake has that little story to tell.

NARRATOR: Bradley was certain that the big flakes had to be a clue. Whoever had made the Clovis Point had used a technique quite different to that used in Asia, so where had they come from and then he remembered a textbook he had seen when he was a student. It showed pictures of ancient spearheads made 20,000 years ago, long before Clovis, by a people called the Solutreans, but their points looked very like Clovis Points. The trouble was that the Solutreans came from France.

BRUCE BRADLEY: Even then I was thinking this can't be right, something's going on.

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, the idea began to form in his mind. No matter what the textbooks of the DNA might say, perhaps some of the earliest Americans were not Asian, but European.

BRUCE BRADLEY: It was sacrilege to even mention the possibility, you know, it, it certainly wasn't part of the scientific process at that point in time. There was no possibility, forget it, don't even think about it.

NARRATOR: The heresy was that it was a challenge to the identity of Native Americans. They believed they were an Asian people with no European blood at all. It had long been a crucial part of their culture.

DR LAWRENCE GUY STRAUS (University of New Mexico): Before we run around suggesting that the Native Americans of Asian origin are not the original peoplers of the Americas, we should think long and hard about what the consequences of saying those things might be. There are historical reasons for that.

DR JOALLYN ARCHAMBAULT (American Indian Programme, Smithsonian Institution): Some Indian people will undoubtedly find it upsetting. The thought that some of our ancestors might come from Europe, the very peoples who conquered us and took away our land and colonised us, will not be a comfortable thought with many Indian people and I really can't blame them.

NARRATOR: Despite the controversy Bradley was stirring up, he decided to pursue his idea. He went to south-western France where the Solutreans had lived 17,000 years earlier. In his mind was one simple question: could they possibly have been amongst the first Americans? In France one thing became abundantly clear. The Solutreans were a remarkable people.

BRUCE BRADLEY: Of all the Stone Age cultures that we've studied, the Solutrean people continually come out as being the most innovative, the most adaptive and probably the most inventive. We have evidence that they invented the heat treatment of flint to make it better to flake. I mean they invented all kinds of things like the eyed needle and the, the list goes on and on and on.

NARRATOR: Bradley's research took him to the local museum in the town of Les Eyzies. What he saw were displays of hundreds of what looked very like Clovis Points.

BRUCE BRADLEY: I see this stuff and I just, it's, I don't know, it's so exciting. The similarity is just, it's mind-boggling.

NARRATOR: But the close similarity of the spearheads was not enough.

BRUCE BRADLEY: What we're seeing here is only the finished objects, only the things that museum people thought were really good for display. It doesn't always show you how things were made.

NARRATOR: To establish a link between the Solutreans and the earliest Americans he needed to find out if they shared the same technology. Had the Solutreans used the same big flake method to make those spearheads?

BRUCE BRADLEY: So what we do is we go back to the collections of the broken materials which is probably 99% of what there is here and in that we're seeing the various ways that the Solutrean were making the things, not just the finished objects and so it's the pieces that are hidden away that are going to tell us the most.

NARRATOR: And there in the drawers he found what he needed, clear signs that the Solutreans really had made their spearheads just like the early Americans.

BRUCE BRADLEY: The thing that I first noticed when I looked in this drawer specifically was a few pieces right on the very top - this is a good example here - that shows a kind of flaking that, where the flake is struck from one side and went across the surface removed some of the other side and these pieces show it over and over and over again. I mean just about any piece you pick up shows this very special technique. This is the technique we see uniquely in Clovis and when I saw so much of it just sitting there I just knew there had to be some kind of a connection. There's nothing in here specifically that makes them Solutrean except that we're in France and they came from here.

NARRATOR: To Bradley it was the first proof of a direct link between the people of America and Europe, but critics pointed to one problem in particular. The Solutreans had lived 17,000 years ago and the Clovis Point had apparently not arrived in America until 11,500 years ago. Where had the Solutreans been in the intervening five thousand years? It was a question that even troubled Bradley's colleagues.

DENNIS STANFORD: I was going through the old arguments, yeah, well Solutreans, five thousand years older than Clovis and you've got the Atlantic Ocean out there, so I wasn't convinced that we really ought to push forward on it.

BRUCE BRADLEY: I remember it a little bit differently. You said are you out of your mind?

NARRATOR: Bradley needed to find something to bridge the 5,000 year gap between the Solutreans and the Clovis and then from a site called Cactus Hill in Virginia a wonder: a Solutrean-style point and it dated from far earlier than the Clovis.

DENNIS STANFORD: And here we have a projectile point from a feature that dates right at 15,900 years or 16,000 years ago which is clearly right in the middle between Clovis and Solutrean and what's really exciting about it is that the technology here is very similar to Solutrean. In fact it's closer to Solutrean than Clovis where you can see that it's in a progression between Solutrean and Clovis so you have Solutrean, Cactus Hill and Clovis.

NARRATOR: The evidence of the points was that there was no 5,000 year gap. The Solutreans hadn't disappeared. They seemed somehow to have gone from France to America some 16,000 years ago, but it was still far from proof. Critics pointed out a massive problem, one that was 5,000 kilometres wide: the Atlantic Ocean. How, they asked, could a Stone Age people have made a journey that was thought to be beyond mankind until thousands of years later? The fact was the Solutreans lived in south-west France. Between their settlements here on the coast and America lay one of the biggest expanses of water in the world and there was something that made the journey far more formidable then: the Ice Age.

BRUCE BRADLEY: The environment would have been pretty much a frozen environment similar to what we see in the Arctic today and the ice was the furthest south that it, that it ever got. The environment would have been almost diametrically opposed to what we see here today. We wouldn't see people lounging on the beach.

NARRATOR: At the time of the Solutreans ice-sheets stretched down from the Arctic obliterating life as far south as southern France. The weather, even in south-western France, would have dropped to 20 degrees below freezing. The Atlantic would have been thick with icebergs and over-run with blizzards. It is difficult to conceive of a journey to America through this.

LAWRENCE GUY STRAUS: There are 5,000 kilometres of open North Atlantic Ice Age conditions to be crossed. There are icebergs floating around in the Bay of Biscay and it's a polar desert.

NARRATOR: The problem confronting Bradley and Stanford was to show how the Solutreans could have survived these extraordinarily harsh conditions. Could this Stone Age people have used their technology to take them across an ocean? How would they have travelled, kept warm and found food? There was one place on Earth where Stanford hoped he could find out, from the one people on Earth who still live in conditions like those endured by the Solutreans: the Eskimos. Stanford flew to Alaska, to the small town of Barrow. Barrow stands on the edge of the continent at the northern most tip of the United States. Here people have to endure temperatures that reach below -35°C in the winter. Nowadays they live a thoroughly modern existence, with supermarkets, four-wheeled drives and snowmobiles, but Stanford hoped that ancient Eskimo techniques might demonstrate how much the Solutreans could have achieved with their inventions thousands of years ago.

DENNIS STANFORD: I'd like to show you some old needles. This needle is 20…

ESKIMO WOMAN: Needle. (Yeah) Oh.

DENNIS: 20…

WOMAN: Eskimo needle.

DENNIS: No, 20,000 years old.

WOMAN: Ah that 20,000…

NARRATOR: The Solutrean needle was almost identical to Eskimo ones, made of bone and used until recently. The Eskimos used these needles to fashion warm, waterproof clothing out of fur.

ESKIMO WOMAN: Eskimo mukluks. This way and this way and this way and this, that way.

DENNIS STANFORD: To make a waterproof seam.

WOMAN: They use… Yeah, waterproof.

DENNIS: Right.

NARRATOR: The Eskimos used caribou skin and sinew to make their clothing. The Solutreans could have hunted the same animals and they would have had exactly the same function. That needle would have been their passport to survival in the Ice Age landscape. It would have allowed them to keep warm and dry. Even so, their survival was far from certain in this polar desert. What would they have eaten on a voyage which would have taken months? Again the Eskimo has provided the answer. There is all the food anyone could want - in the sea.

RONALD BROWER (Inupiat Heritage Centre, Barrow): The sea has been our garden. We don't have any growth, growing things. There's nothing growing up here, so we depend on the sea for our livelihood and most of our hunting is based on sea mammal hunting. We have the great whales, polar bears, walrus, seals and fish and this is a good time for us to be going out to do some crabbing, for example.

NARRATOR: What Stanford realised was that the Solutreans could have done exactly the same. They had all the tools they needed to hunt at sea, from spears to bows and arrows. Above all they had the crucial Clovis Point.

DENNIS STANFORD: The projectile points that we found that are Solutrean in age are almost identical to the in blades that Eskimos use on their seal hunting harpoons and the Clovis Point makes a wonderful harpoon point. The technology's there, the technology is definitely there.

NARRATOR: But then came the critical question: how would they actually have travelled, could they have made boats capable of surviving journeys across thousands of miles of icy water? It would be easy to assume that Eskimos today would rely on the most modern craft when going out to sea, but in fact this isn't the case.

RONALD BROWER: You need something resilient here and these advanced technological materials do not work well in the Arctic. They freeze, they break. Unbreakable plastic breaks apart.

NARRATOR: Instead Eskimos still build their whaling boats with sealskin, wood and caribou sinew. The frames are sealed with oil applied directly from seal blubber. These are exactly the type of materials that would have been available to the Solutreans.

DENNIS STANFORD: People have been using this type of craft for at least 10,000 years that we know of and probably 20,000. The flexibility of this type of, of boat is, is really amazing and it's specially built for Arctic waters.

NARRATOR: 17,000 years ago the Solutreans had all the materials and the skills they needed to build Eskimo-style boats and what Stanford discovered is that the flimsiness of these open boats is deceptive. Once launched into the water these craft are capable of making extremely long journeys through the ice.

DENNIS STANFORD: Boats like these can, could have made the journey that we're hypothesising for Solutrean people quite well. In fact I was noticing on the distance signs here in the middle of town they say it's about 1500 miles to Greenland and we know that prehistorically Eskimo peoples moved that distance from here to there several times.

NARRATOR: The way Eskimos travel is to work along the edge of the ice hopping from ice floe to ice floe. 17,000 years ago the northern Atlantic, as far south as south-west France, would have been filled with pack ice and the Solutreans would have been able to travel in the same way.

DENNIS STANFORD: Well it certainly is exactly the way I think the Solutrean guys were dealing with the ice edge 'cos you can get in and off of the ice real rapidly and, and if the weather gets a little, little nasty then you just pull up off the, out of the water and onto the ice. Operating along the edge of the ice like this you could keep hitting the water all summer.

NARRATOR: Stanford and Bradley felt the Eskimos had greatly strengthened their case. The Solutreans had everything they needed to make a journey like this and to the Eskimos the proposed feat of these Stone Age people would not be at all out of the ordinary.

RONALD BROWER: There's nothing that would have prevented other people from crossing the Atlantic into the Americas 17,000 years ago. It, it would be a perfectly normal situation from my perspective.

BRUCE BRADLEY: Why not a journey like this? I mean I'd turn the question around. It's not could they have done it, is how could they not have done it?

NARRATOR: But however convinced Stanford and Bradley were that the Solutreans were capable of this epic voyage their critics would need something stronger and then, completely by chance, a remarkable piece of new evidence emerged. Back in America, Douglas Wallace was continuing his mammoth task of writing the history books according to the evidence of DNA. So far his work showed that the Native Americans had four distinctive types of mitochondrial DNA - A, B, C and D - all of them from Asia. Then one day a set of samples from a north-eastern Native American tribe called the Ojibwa arrived on his desk.

DOUGLAS WALLACE: When we studied the mitochondrial DNA of the Ojibwa we found, as we had anticipated, the four primary lineages - A, B, C and D - but there was about a quarter of the mitochondrial DNAs that was not A, B, C and D.

NARRATOR: There was a mysterious fifth source of DNA. He called it X, and X was very strange. It was of European origin. At first he thought it must have got there some time in the last few hundred years, after Columbus.

DOUGLAS WALLACE: When we got that result we naturally assumed that perhaps there had been European recent mixture with the Ojibwa tribe and that some European women had married into the Ojibwa tribe and contributed their mitochondrial DNAs.

NARRATOR: But he was wrong. When the dates of X came back it was dated thousands of years earlier, some 15,000 years in fact, the time of the Solutreans.

DOUGLAS WALLACE Well what it says is that a mitochondrial lineage that is predominantly found in Europe somehow got to the Great Lakes region of the Americas 14,000-15,000 years ago.

NARRATOR: It seemed there could now be no doubt. Some of the earliest Americans were really from Europe. The DNA proved it and so it is now possible to tell a quite different story about the first settlement of America and one which makes sense of all the evidence. The Ice Age led not to one, but a whole host of migrations to America as people fled the frozen wastes in search of something better and one of these groups, perhaps the most important of all, was an extraordinary people from Europe.

BRUCE BRADLEY: For me the, the most important aspect of our theory about people leaving south-western Europe and eventually ending up in North America is that I, I think it takes into consideration the abilities of people to adapt to new environments, to embrace new places and to ignore the, this possibility ignores the humanity of, of people 20,000 years ago.

NARRATOR: It was a journey that would have seen them hopping from ice floe to ice floe, spearing food out at sea, huddling together to keep out the fierce cold. Eventually they would have arrived at the rich fishing grounds at the edge of a new continent. There some of the Solutreans settled and helped build an enduing culture that spread across the continent and transformed the landscape of America. Though controversial, this discovery may not be so upsetting to Native Americans after all.

JOALLYN ARCHAMBAULT: I think the value of this research is that it shows that we are truly all one species and that our ancestors tends of thousands of years ago were very much like us and they had new ideas and that they did crazy things in small boats crossing big bodies of water to go somewhere else. I mean I think that's marvellously creative and courageous.

NARRATOR: As humanity moved inexorably across the planet this great voyage of the Solutreans to settle a new world has emerged as one of the last great colonising efforts of our species.

2005-11-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml

Stone Age Columbus - programme summary

Who were the first people in North America? From where did they come? How did they arrive? The prehistory of the Americas has been widely studied. Over 70 years a consensus became so established that dissenters felt uneasy challenging it. Yet in 2001, genetics, anthropology and a few shards of flint combined to overturn the accepted facts and to push back one of the greatest technological changes that the Americas have ever seen by over five millennia.

The accepted version of the first Americans starts with a flint spearhead unearthed at Clovis, New Mexico, in 1933. Dated by the mammoth skeleton it lay beside to 11,500 years ago (11.5kya), it was distinctive because it had two faces, where flakes had been knapped away from a core flint. The find sparked a wave of similar reports, all dating from around the same period. There seemed to be nothing human before Clovis. Whoever those incomers were around 9,500BC, they appeared to have had a clean start. And the Clovis point was their icon - across 48 states.
"The best way to get beaten up, professionally, is to claim you have a pre-Clovis site"
Michael Collins, University of Texas

An icon that was supremely effective: the introduction of the innovative spearpoint coincided with a mass extinction of the continent's megafauna. Not only the mammoth, but the giant armadillo, giant sloth and great black bear all disappeared soon after the Clovis point - and the hunters who used it - arrived on the scene.

But from where? With temperatures much colder than today and substantial polar ice sheets, sea levels were much lower. Asia and America were connected by a land bridge where now there's the open water of the Bering Strait. The traditional view of American prehistory was that Clovis people travelled by land from Asia.

This version was so accepted that few archaeologists even bothered to look for artefacts from periods before 10,000BC. But when Jim Adavasio continued to dig below the Clovis layer at his dig near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he found blades and blade cores dating back to 16,000BC. His findings were dismissed as erroneous; too astonishing to be credible. The Clovis consensus had too many reputations behind it to evaporate easily. Some archaeologists who backed Adavasio's conclusions with other similar data were accused of making radiocarbon dating errors or even of planting finds.
"The first migration was 20,000 to 30,000 years ago"
Douglas Wallace, Emory University

Decisive evidence would have to come from an independent arena. Douglas Wallace studies mitochondrial DNA, part of the human chromosomes that is passed unchanged from mother to daughter. It only varies when mistakes occur in the replication of the genetic code. Conveniently for Wallace's work (piecing together a global history of migration of native peoples) these mistakes crop up at a quite regular rate. The technique has allowed Wallace to map the geographical ancestry of all the Native American peoples back to Siberia and northeast Asia.

The route of the Clovis hypothesis was right. The date, however, was wrong - out by up to 20,000 years. Wallace's migration history showed waves of incomers. The Clovis people were clearly not the first humans to set foot across North America.

Dennis Stanford went back to first principles to investigate Clovis afresh, looking at tools from the period along the route Clovis was assumed to have taken from Siberia via the Bering Strait to Alaska. The large bifaced Clovis point was not in the archaeological record. Instead the tools used microblades, numerous small flint flakes lined up along the spear shaft to make its head.

Wallace's DNA work suggested migration from Asia to America but the Clovis trail contradicted it. Bruce Bradley stepped in to help solve this dichotomy, bringing with him one particular skill: flintknapping and the ability to read flint tools for their most intimate secrets.

He spotted the similarity in production method between the Clovis point and tools made by the Solutrean neolithic (Stone Age) culture in southwest France. At this stage his idea was pure hypothesis, but could the first Americans have been European?

The Solutreans were a remarkably society, the most innovative and adaptive of the time. They were among the first to discover the value of heat treating flints to increase strength. Bradley was keen to discover if Solutrean flintknapping styles matched Clovis techniques. A trawl through the unattractive flint offcuts in the storerooms of a French museum convinced him of the similarities, even though five thousand kilometres lay between their territories.

The divide was more than just distance; it crossed five thousand years as well. No matter the similarities between the two cultures, the possibility of a parallel technology developing by chance would have to be considered. More evidence emerged from an archaeological dig in Cactus Hill, Virginia. A bifaced flint point found there was dated to 16kya, far older than Clovis. Even more startling was its style. To flintknapper Bruce Bradley's eye, the Cactus Hill flint was a technological midpoint between the French Solutrean style and the Clovis points dating five millennia later. It seemed there is no great divide in time. The Solutrean flint methods evolved into Clovis.
"[Stone Age] people crossing the Atlantic would be perfectly normal from my [Eskimo] perspective"
Ronald Brower, Inupiat Heritage Center, Barrow, Alaska

If time could be discounted, Bradley's critics pointed to an obstacle that was hardly going to go away: crossing the Atlantic Ocean in small open boats. How could Stone Age people have made such an epic journey, especially when the Ice Age maximum would have filled the Atlantic with icebergs.

Dennis Stanford returned to his earlier hunch, looking for clues among the Arctic Eskimo peoples. Despite the influx of modern technologies, he was heartened to discover that traditional techniques endured. Clothing makers in Barrow, Alaska, recognised some Solutrean bone needles he showed them as typical of their own. The caribou skin clothing the Inuit still choose to wear could equally have been made by people in 16,000BC. And for Eskimo peoples the Arctic is not a desert - but a source of plentiful sea food. If the Solutreans had the Clovis point it would have made a formidable harpoon weapon to ensure a food supply. Would modern Eskimo ever consider a five thousand kilometre journey across the Atlantic?

The answer it seems is yes - they have undertaken similar journeys many times.. Most encouraging was the realisation that Inuit people today rely on traditional boat building techniques. 'Unbreakable' plastic breaks in the unceasing cold temperatures whereas boats of wood, sealskin and whale oil are resilient and easily maintained. The same materials would have been available to Solutrean boat builders. Even if the Stone Age Europeans could make those boats, would it survive an Atlantic crossing?
"DNA lineage predominantly found in Europe got to the Great Lakes, 14,000 to 15,000 years ago"
Douglas Wallace, Emory University

Stanford believes the boats' flimsiness is deceptive. With the Atlantic full of ice floes it would be quite possible for paddlers in open boats to travel along the edges, always having a safe place to haul out upon if the weather turned in.

All this evidence was still essentially circumstantial, making the Solutrean adventure possible not proven. Douglas Wallace's DNA history bore fruit once more. In the DNA profile of the Ichigua Native American tribe he identified a lineage that was clearly European in origin, too old to be due to genetic mixing since Columbus' discovery of the New World. Instead it dated to Solutrean times. Wallace's genetic timelines show the Ice Age prompted a number of migrations from Europe to America. It looks highly likely that the Solutreans were one.

The impact of this new prehistory on Native Americans could be grave. They usually consider themselves to be Asian in origin; and to have been subjugated by Europeans after 1492. If they too were partly Europeans, the dividing lines would be instantly blurred. Dr Joallyn Archambault of the American Indian Programme of the Smithsonian Institute offers a positive interpretation, however. Venturing across huge bodies of water, she says, is a clear demonstration of the courage and creativity of the Native Americans' ancestors. Bruce Bradley agrees. He feels his Solutrean Ice Age theory takes into consideration the abilities of people to embrace new places, adding, "To ignore this possibility ignores the humanity of people 20,000 years ago."

2005-11-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051122/ap_on_fe_st/naked_taser;_ylt=AqNNvV20jIqb6AnOl3yer2kDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Police Hit Man in Genitals With Taser

FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. - Police accidentally hit a naked man in the genitals with a Taser after he was caught breaking windows and asking women to touch him, authorities said.
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Jeremy J. Miljour, 26, tried to run away when sheriff's deputies approached so one of them shot their Taser, said Cpl. Matt Chitwood. But one of the gun's prongs accidentally hit Miljour's genitals and got stuck, Chitwood said.

"The Taser is relatively accurate, but when someone is moving like that, it doesn't matter if you have a Taser, or a pistol. (Officers) can't aim," Chitwood said.

Miljour was treated at a hospital before being taken to the Lee County jail. He was charged with indecent exposure, resisting an officer and criminal damage

2005-11-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

I normally dont publish stuff from another blog but I am going to present a rather disturbing article from this one...

da Lizard

http://thespiritofman.blogspot.com/2005/11/5000-islamic-clerics-to-be-sent-to-us.html

5000 Islamic Clerics to be sent to the US: Iran's Ayatollah
According to BBC Persian and Persian service of IRNA, the hardline ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi has announced that the Iranians living in the US need 5000 Islamic clerics for their religious services.

Mesbah Yazdi asks the new Iranian government to finance their trainings!

This hardline ayatollah is known as the founder of the shiite version of Taliban in Iran.

Given the numerous statements made by several regime's officials regarding the destruction of the US and Israel, it makes me think about the type of the religious missionaries, this Mullah is talking about.

Statements like "Execution of suicide and missile attacks aimed at [their] 29 sensitive sites" or "to wipe off Israel off the world map" given in the past 2 years should wake all the western officials up to the dangerous nature of this terrorist regime!

Can they not send their so-called religious teachers (read suicide bombers) to the west under the cover of International students?

Is it not possible for them to send any one under any valid cover to the US and other western countries to execute their dangerous orders which might be to eradicate the whole western civilization from the face of the planet earth?

Think about it!

2005-11-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7224296p-7136322c.html

Unexpected life appears in Alaska's glaciers

Study of ice-hardy wigglers may help guide space exploration efforts

By CHRIS NEWMARKER
The Associated Press

Published: November 21, 2005
Last Modified: November 21, 2005 at 02:29 AM

TRENTON, N.J. -- Normally fodder for anglers and early birds, worms are getting a tad more respect from a Rutgers-Camden biologist who's focusing on a species of hardy wigglers able to live in Alaska's freezing temperatures, surviving without food for up to two years.

NASA recently gave Daniel Shain, an associate professor of biology, a three-year, $214,206 grant to figure out what makes the ice worms such survivors.

The answer might show how life could survive on distant ice worlds such as Jupiter's moon Europa, as well as provide answers to more earthbound problems such as preserving transplant organs kept on ice.

The threadlike, black Mesenchytraeus solifugus -- which feed on microorganisms as they crawl through tiny ice cracks in coastal mountain glaciers in Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state -- thrive at around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Shain.

Drop the temperature a few degrees and they freeze. Raise it a few degrees and their flesh starts to melt.

"If you put an earthworm or any other organism on ice, they wouldn't live very well. But with an ice worm, they come to life," Shain said.

The 40-year-old Shain, who has studied the worms for the past decade, says many people who live around the mountains in Alaska have never heard of the inch-long worms, or believe they are mythological creatures.

But get out on a glacier right after the sun goes down, and the surface of the ice turns gray as the worms come up to the surface.

"You can't miss them," Shain said. "There're millions of them."

During his research trips. Shain uses "a regular, old spoon" to scoop up thousands of worms into a cooler, then duct-tapes it shut and ships it back to Camden.

The biologist, who travels to Alaska about every other year, also has contacts in the region who make sure he gets a steady supply of worms for his experiments.

He said his most remarkable work has involved adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, a molecule that stores energy in the cells of living organisms. Most organisms produce less ATP when temperatures become colder.

But when Shain ground up ice worms and mixed them with an enzyme that lights up in response to ATP, he found the colder the worm, the more light.

Shain -- along with Brittany Morrison, a Rutgers-Camden graduate biology student -- have a hypothesis that a mechanism regulating ATP doesn't work in ice worms.

The next step is to breed bacteria where the same mechanism is turned off, to see if they are able to thrive at colder temperatures.

Shain said NASA is interested because conditions on the glaciers are very much like the conditions on some cold planets that scientists theorize have a chance of harboring life. Figuring out how ice worms live will give scientists a point of comparison if life is ever discovered on another icy world.

When told about the research, Colleen Cavanaugh, a Harvard University biology professor who studies life thriving near scalding hot thermal vents on the ocean floor, said it was another great example of the ability of organisms to prosper in even the most unusual environments.

"It's fascinating because you're looking at the adaptations to these extreme environments that allowed these things to survive and diversify," she said.

Eric DeChaine, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow who works with Cavanaugh at Harvard, first saw ice worms during his doctoral studies on species in mountain environments.

DeChaine estimates only about a handful of researchers across the country study the worms, but he said interest in ice worms has grown in recent years, with some experts envisioning potential applications for space travel and others seeking evidence of global warming.

"Worms have been these creatures that people think to put on their fishhook, but now they're receiving attention because they can live near thermal ocean vents or inside mountain glaciers," DeChaine said.

2005-11-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

I know I havent posted much lately but a close friend of the family died two weeks ago and well I just havent felt like posting much...

da Lizard

http://www.davesdaily.com/interesting/posednaked_08-05.htm

52 Percent Of Americans Have Posed Naked

HOUSTON (Wireless Flash) -- A lot more Americans have posed nude than you might think -- and that's the naked truth!

According to a survey by the Adam & Eve sex toy company, 52 percent have stripped down to their birthday suit for a still camera and 38 percent has posed in the buff for digital photos.

In addition, 37 percent have been naked in front of a video camera while 19 percent have been a nude model for a drawing or a painting.

Finally, 21 percent say they have posed nude but won't specify the situation or occasion in which they dropped their drawers.

2005-11-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1690

Where is Dracula When You Need Him?
By David Yeagley
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 15, 2001

MANY PEOPLE don’t know that Dracula was a real man.

He defended Eastern Europe against invading Turkish Muslims in the 15th century.

If it weren’t for warriors like Dracula, Europe would have been conquered by Turkish and Moorish Muslims. To save their lives, most Europeans would have converted to Islam, as did many Bosnians, Albanians and others. Many would now be speaking Turkish and Arabic. The average European today would likely have little need of sun-tan lotion.

From the beginning, Islam spread through military conquest. Its goal was world domination.

However, Europe successfully resisted, thanks in large part to men like Dracula.

His real name was Vlad. Born in 1431, he died in battle, near Bucharest, in 1476.

His father’s name was also Vlad. Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund invested the father with the "Order of the Dragon" in 1431. The Order was a semi-monastic military machine dedicated to driving the Turks from European soil.

Their official standard was the Red Dragon.

Because the word "Dracul" means both devil and dragon in Romanian, Emperor Sigismund’s invocation of the Dragon gave rise to rumors that he had called on the Devil himself to help him against the Turks.

The conduct of Vlad’s son Vlad Dracula (the diminutive "a," means son of the dragon) added fuel to this legend.

Dracula was notoriously cruel a characteristic he may have acquired while a prisoner of the Turks in Egrigoz (Asia Minor). He was later called tsepesh "The Impaler," because of his favorite method of executing his enemies.

In 1462 Dracula drove the Turks down to the Black Sea.

His armies came within sight of Constantinople, the former Christian capital of the Roman Emperor Constantine, which had fallen to the Muslims in 1453.

Dracula’s 1462 campaign gave hope to Christians that Constantinople might be liberated. But it remains in Turkish hands to this day.

In the end, it was the Mongols not the Europeans who broke the power of Islam. Mongol hordes overran the Muslims, as well as vast tracts of Europe.

The Mongol armies of Batu had advanced to Vienna, as early as 1240. Mongols ruled Kiev until 1480. The Magyars of Hungary are of direct Mongolian descent.

Europe’s brush with annihilation changed it in many ways.

People often accuse Christian Europe of being the preeminent imperialist culture in the world. However, Christian Europe did not actually begin its expansion until Europe itself had been nearly extinguished, first by the Muslims and then by Mongol invaders.

I have a theory that once a people or nation survives a great threat of extinction, that people become themselves aggressive expansionists, in their determination never again to be so vulnerable.

That is certainly what happened in Europe.

For centuries, Muslims controlled much of Spain, southern France and Eastern Europe. The Turks besieged Vienna in 1529, and again, as late as 1683.

The last of the Muslim Moors were not evicted from Spain until 1492. Only then did King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella send Columbus to explore the Atlantic.

Today, Muslim aggressors are once again on the move. Once again, Muslims fight Christians in Eastern Europe. Once again, Muslims besiege the great cities of Christendom, this time through terrorism.

Of course, I understand that not all Muslims aspire to world conquest. Most, I am sure, just want to live their lives peacefully.

No doubt, the same was true centuries ago. It was not the poor fellahin scratching out a living in the Nile mud who lusted after Christian gold, but rather the pashas and sultans in their palaces.

Similarly today, it is wealthy men such as Osama bin Laden who organize and finance the jihads.

For Westerners, however, the problem remains the same. It is a question of survival.

The last time the Christian West faced this problem, it was men like Dracula who saved us. As a Christian, I recoil from Dracula’s bloody cruelties against the innocent. Yet there is something in his ruthless conviction that we need today.

Pacifists of the Christian Left, be warned. Had your ancestors thought like you, you would have no freedom to practice Christianity today.

Muslim Americans too should realize that the freedoms they enjoy were won by the likes of Dracula.

Where is our Dracula today? We are still waiting for him to arise.

Our leaders say they will bring the terrorists to "justice." But Dracula did not think in such terms. He annihilated his foes without mercy. He filled their hearts with fear.

Where is Dracula when you need him?

2005-10-31T21:21:00.000-08:00

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=2176562005

Scientists prove blind people can 'see' with sixth sense

RHIANNON EDWARD

THE uncanny ability of blind people to "sense" unseen objects has been demonstrated for the first time in sighted volunteers whose vision was blanked out by scientists.

The findings suggest "blindsight", which has been observed in blind people whose eyes function normally but who have suffered damage to the brain's visual centre, is a real and not imagined phenomenon.

In tests, the blind have been able to distinguish basic shapes of objects they cannot see, as well as their orientation and direction of motion. On other occasions a blind person has reported experiencing a "feeling" that an object is present, while not being able to see it.

A number of theories have been proposed to explain "blindsight". Generally, it is suggested that other parts of the brain besides the primary visual cortex respond to nerve messages from the eyes at an unconscious level.

Scientists from the University of Houston in Texas, temporarily blinded a group of 12 volunteers by using an

electromagnetic field to shut down the primary visual cortex. Images were then flashed in front of them on a screen.

In one experiment, volunteers were shown either a horizontal or vertical bar. In another, a red or green dot appeared.

Most of the time, the volunteers were unaware of the images with which they were presented. But they guessed either the orientation of the bar or the colour of the dot correctly more often than would have been expected by the law of averages.

The researchers wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "Despite unawareness of these 'targets', performance on forced-choice discrimination tasks for orientation and colour were both significantly above chance."

They said the findings suggested that a visual pathway bypassing the primary visual cortex must be responsible for "blindsight".

2005-10-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

A year or so old, but its true.

da Lizard

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/06/found_europeas.php

Found: Europe’s Oldest Civilisation

Archaeologists have discovered Europe’s oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile. They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to 50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming.

Their civilisation seems to have died out after about 200 years and the recent archaeological discoveries are so new that the temple building culture does not even have a name yet.

Excavations have been taking place over the past few years—and have triggered a re-evaluation of similar, though hitherto mostly undated, complexes identified from aerial photographs throughout central Europe.

Archaeologists are now beginning to suspect that hundreds of these very early monumental religious centres, each up to 150 metres across, were constructed across a 400-mile swath of land in what is now Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and eastern Germany.

The most complex excavated so far—located inside the city of Dresden—consisted of an apparently sacred internal space surrounded by two palisades, three earthen banks and four ditches.

The monuments seem to be a phenomenon associated exclusively with a period of consolidation and growth that followed the initial establishment of farming cultures in the centre of the continent.

It is possible that the newly revealed early Neolithic monument phenomenon was the consequence of an increase in the size of—and competition between—emerging Neolithic tribal or pan-tribal groups, arguably Europe’s earliest mini-states.

After a relatively brief period—perhaps just one or two hundred years—either the need or the socio-political ability to build them disappeared, and monuments of this scale were not built again until the Middle Bronze Age, 3,000 years later. Why this monumental culture collapsed is a mystery.

The archaeological investigation into these vast Stone Age temples over the past three years has also revealed several other mysteries. First, each complex was only used for a few generations—perhaps 100 years maximum. Second, the central sacred area was nearly always the same size, about a third of a hectare. Third, each circular enclosure ditch—irrespective of diameter—involved the removal of the same volume of earth. In other words, the builders reduced the depth and/or width of each ditch in inverse proportion to its diameter, so as to always keep volume (and thus time spent) constant .

Archaeologists are speculating that this may have been in order to allow each earthwork to be dug by a set number of special status workers in a set number of days—perhaps to satisfy the ritual requirements of some sort of religious calendar.

The multiple bank, ditch and palisade systems “protecting” the inner space seem not to have been built for defensive purposes—and were instead probably designed to prevent ordinary tribespeople from seeing the sacred and presumably secret rituals which were performed in the “inner sanctum” .

The investigation so far suggests that each religious complex was ritually decommissioned at the end of its life, with the ditches, each of which had been dug successively, being deliberately filled in.

“Our excavations have revealed the degree of monumental vision and sophistication used by these early farming communities to create Europe’s first truly large scale earthwork complexes,” said the senior archaeologist, Harald Staeuble of the Saxony state government’s heritage department, who has been directing the archaeological investigations. Scientific investigations into the recently excavated material are taking place in Dresden.

The people who built the huge circular temples were the descendants of migrants who arrived many centuries earlier from the Danube plain in what is now northern Serbia and Hungary. The temple-builders were pastoralists, controlling large herds of cattle, sheep and goats as well as pigs. They made tools of stone, bone and wood, and small ceramic statues of humans and animals. They manufactured substantial amounts of geometrically decorated pottery, and they lived in large longhouses in substantial villages.

One village complex and temple at Aythra, near Leipzig, covers an area of 25 hectares. Two hundred longhouses have been found there. The population would have been up to 300 people living in a highly organised settlement of 15 to 20 very large communal buildings.

2005-10-31T15:03:00.000-08:00

I wonder what they were thinking

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=109810

Bloomington custodians indicted for running marijuana operation

Bloomington school officials knew something was up when they looked at a list of recent purchases and spotted an order for 100 lamps.

But the order was not for your ordinary kind of lamps, these lamps do more than just light up a room.

Bloomington custodial worker Guy Carlson used a district account to request the large number of grow lamps.

"I don't know what their motivation was for using it, I suspect that it might have been to save some money," said Bloomington Cmdr. Kevin Hinrichs.

Police say the use Carlson, and two other Bloomington school custodians, had for the lamps was to grow marijuana... lots of it.

"This has probably been going on for some time, so it's a pretty significant amount of marijuana," said Hinrichs.

According to this federal indictment, authorities seized more than 1,000 marijuana plants, at least 100 of them inside a Bloomington home.

The remainder of the plants were found in Hinckley and in Backus.

"We've done a pretty extensive investigation and we don't believe that this stuff has been sold to students in schools. Given the sheer amount of it, we think that's it's being sold elsewhere," said Hinrichs.

Hinrichs says the police force has, for years, heard rumors that a major marijuana ring was operating in Bloomington, but he said, until school officials called to say one of their maintenance workers apparently had a new hobby, they were completely in the dark.

"If we hadn't gotten a call from the school district, ah we still might just be hearing the rumors," said Hinrichs.

In addition to the three custodians two other men, who are not district employees, have also been indicted in this case.

All five are charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. The three custodians were all fired from their jobs.

2005-10-31T10:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-religious-assembly,0,2147197.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

Apology Follows Christian-Themed Assembly

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By Associated Press

October 27, 2005, 12:33 PM EDT

NEWARK, Del. -- The principal of a public high school apologized to parents for allowing a Christian-themed assembly that featured two pro football players, saying he was misled about what the presentation would cover.

Newark High School Principal Emmanuel Caulk wrote in a letter that he expected the talk by Philadelphia Eagles players Tra Thomas and Thomas Tapeh to focus on "values, choices and challenges that adolescents face in today's society."

He said promotional material used the name "Tra Thomas Promotional Tour," and that he did not know Thomas was founder and spokesman for Athletes United for Christ.

A projection of that organization's logo was shown throughout Tuesday's assembly, and the athletes urged students to attend an upcoming rally and concert at a Philadelphia-area Christian center.

Some students and parents complained.

"As a parent of a child in a public school, I am uncomfortable with the fact that an evangelical organization can come into a public assembly that is a promotional event for an evangelical Christian concert," Becky Ashley told The (Wilmington) News Journal.

Thomas said he assumed everyone knew his promotional tour was connected to his organization but that he has heard similar complaints after speaking at other public schools.

"What we're trying to do is to help the kids make better decisions in life. I guess I understand," why some people objected, he said, "because you have other religions there. But we're not preaching to the kids."

Promoter Angela Brown said she had made it clear what Thomas would be talking about and the organization with which he was affiliated.

Caulk disputed that.

Drewry Fennell, executive director of the Delaware chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said such miscommunications reflects a nationwide trend.

"Organizations like this one across the country are gaining access to schools through the famous people and entertainment value and then using those opportunities to proselytize," she said. "These organizations sometimes take advantage of the schools' desire to provide compelling experiences for their students."

Thomas said he's just trying to help.

"I'm just trying to get them to identify with me, the person, rather than just Tra Thomas, the football player, so we can relate to each other better," he said. "And my Christianity is a big part of what I am."

2005-10-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-28-lottery-charges_x.htm?csp=34

Cops: Woman bought $1M ticket with stolen credit card
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — A woman bought a winning lottery ticket worth $1 million with a stolen credit card and could wind up with nothing if convicted, police said.

Christina Goodenow, 38, of White City in southern Oregon faced numerous theft-related charges, forgery and possession of methamphetamine, said authorities, who searched her home Thursday. The card belonged to a deceased relative, they said.

If convicted of any of the charges, Goodenow will not be able to collect prize money from the winning ticket, said police Lt. Tim George.

Oregon Lottery officials refused to discuss specifics of the case because an investigation is still underway.

"I'll be fascinated to see how this shakes out," Lottery spokesman Chuck Baumann said. "In my 12 years with the Oregon Lottery, this is the first time I've encountered something like this."

Goodenow purchased the winning ticket Oct. 9 using a credit card that had belonged to her mother-in-law, who died more than a year ago, police said.

Goodenow traveled to Oregon Lottery headquarters in Salem on Oct 12 to accept an installment payment of $33,500. The $1 million grand prize is paid out over 20 years.

Detectives began tracking Goodenow on Wednesday after learning that she had used the credit card to purchase several items, including the ticket.

A search warrant served at her home Thursday turned up some methamphetamine, but little money, George said.

"Our investigation is still trying to determine what happened to the $33,500," George said.

2005-10-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

Come on, is anyone suprised by this?

Years ago I read a book called "Psychic Mafia" and it exposed a lot of the tricks that mediums have used to fool the gullible. Its a little dated but an excellent read.

da Lizard

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16303507&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=spooky-truth--tv-s-most-haunted-con-exposed-tv--name_page.html

SPOOKY TRUTH: TV'S MOST HAUNTED CON EXPOSED TV
By Matt Roper

THE TV show that has spooked millions with its footage of hauntings and poltergeists is today exposed as a fake - by one its own stars.

Resident parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe has sensationally lifted the lid on the ghosthunting series, Most Haunted ... and claims that the public are being deceived by "showmanship and dramatics."

He accuses the show's medium Derek Acorah of hoodwinking viewers by pretending to communicate with spirits and obtaining information about locations prior to filming.

The Mirror has also obtained unedited footage which appears to show presenter Yvette Fielding and her husband faking 'paranormal' occurrences such as ghostly bumps and knocks.

Most Haunted has quickly achieved cult status since it was launched in 2002 and is LivingTV's most successful programme.

Millions of viewers tune in regularly to watch Ex-Blue Peter girl Yvette and her team of ghost hunters spend the night in some of Britain's most haunted locations.

Advertisement
Click to learn more...

It has made Acorah - who claims to be guided by an Ethiopian spirit guide called Sam - into one of the country's best-known psychics.

Tonight the show will start its biggest ever live vigil, a four-night Halloween special from East London following the murderous trail of Jack the Ripper.

Yvette Fielding has said of the show - which is made by her husband Karl Beattie's production company Antix Productions: "There is no acting in this programme, none whatsoever. Everything you see and you hear is real. It's not made up, it's not acted."

But our investigation reveals how the programme uses careful editing to mislead viewers and, on at least one occasion, has even lied about the location of filming.

Ciaran, a lecturer in the paranormal at Liverpool's Hope University, knows speaking out will probably put an end to his media career... but he believes viewers should know the truth.

He says: "I think it's time to open the dialogue about what I've experienced on Most Haunted. There have been many incidents with the medium that have been brushed under the carpet.

"I was put in the show to give a professional slant to it, to give it an element of credibility, but the sceptical argument is just swept away.

"In my opinion, we're not dealing with genuine mediumship."

He says he isn't the only member of the crew who feels viewers are being cheated.

"Other crew members have been irked by Derek and what's going on, because it turns what should be a serious investigation into a laughing matter."

And our exclusive footage shows other members of the team occasionally forget they are on camera.

One of our clips, later edited out, shows Karl push an unwitting sound man in the dark and pretend it was a poltergeist attack.

In the remaining footage he says (after surreptitiously hitting the soundman): "S**t, did you feel that?"

Yvette: Are you all right? What's happened?

Karl: I felt something touch me on my shoulder.

Soundman: I felt something hit me.

And in another edited clip with medium Ian Lawman, Yvette is seen on camera making a deep sigh. In the scene that eventually went to air, Ian (after Yvette sighs) says: "What's that noise?

Yvette: What noise? Like a moan?

Ian: Breathing or something.

Yvette: I heard like an 'arrggh'.

Ciaran, who joined Most Haunted in April 2004 became suspicious of Acorah's antics on a shoot at Castle Leslie, Co Monaghan in Ireland where a 17th Century four-poster bed has been claimed to levitate.

Ciaran recalls: "As we walked into the bedroom, Derek touched the bed and came out with extremely accurate information.

"He insisted he got all the information just from touching the bed. But it was the wrong bed."

Antix Productions claims the mediums have no idea where they will be filming or know any details about the history of the locations.

But Ciaran says: "Derek must have had prior knowledge of the locations."

He devised a plan to see if Derek was deliberately deceiving the public.

While on a shoot at Bodmin gaol he invented a long-dead South African jailer called Kreed Kafer - an anagram of Derek Faker.

"I wrote the name down and asked another member of the crew to mention it to Derek before filming.

"I honestly didn't think Derek would take the bait. But during the filming he actually got possessed by my fictional character!"

On the next shoot at Prideaux Place, Cornwall, Ciaran made up another fictional character, highwayman Rik Eedles - an anagram of Derek Lies. Sure enough, Derek made contact with the dead outlaw.

Ciaran says: "In my professional opinion we're not dealing with a genuine medium.

"When Derek is possessed he is doing it consciously - all we are seeing is showmanship and dramatics."

Ciaran went a step further at Craigievar Castle, near Aberdeen.

"I made up stories about Richard the Lionheart, a witch, and Richard's apparition appearing to walk through a wardrobe - the lion, the witch and the wardrobe!" True to form, Derek mentioned all Ciaran's stories - even though Richard I reigned 500 years BEFORE Craigievar Castle was built.

The final straw came last month when Most Haunted presented a three-night special from Manchester.

On the second evening, the show claimed to be broadcasting live from the site of Cheadle's Victorian asylum, a place where - according to presenter David Bull - thousands died in torment. In fact they were in the derelict remains of Barnes Convalescence Home - where nobody died in torment.

Ciaran remembers: "Derek was communicating with spirits that sounded as if they'd been in an asylum, but it was never an asylum."

Yesterday the Mirror confronted Derek Acorah with Ciaran's allegations. He told us: "I've worked with Ciaran for many shows and he's got every right to say what he says.

"However, it does shock and surprise me. Not only do I believe that I am a genuine medium - I live my work 24 hours a day. If I thought that I wasn't a true medium, I wouldn't work as one."

A spokesman for LivingTV said: "Ciaran O'Keeffe has worked as the programme's official sceptic for 18 months and during this time has not brought any of his concerns to our attention.

"LivingTV has not seen any of your filmed evidence, but will fully investigate your claims."

2005-10-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.star.niu.edu/articles/?id=12274

'Monsters' have biological explanations
Professor says legendary creatures have genetic basis

COURTESY
Stephan Bibrowsky was born in Poland in 1890 and suffered from hypertrichosia, in which six-inch-long hair covered his body. He became famous throughout Europe, where he gained the nickname of Lionel the Lion-Faced Man.

Article by:
Jake Miller - Staff Reporter
• jmiller@northernstar.info

Halloween was alive Tuesday in the Holmes Student Center as Dracula, dwarves, Frankenstein’s monster and werewolves were among the many "monsters" discussed in Rick Johns’, associate professor of biological sciences, lecture: "I have Created a Monster: Genetic Explanations for Halloween’s Legendary Creatures."

The lecture, which was sponsored by the Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming in conjunction with NIU’s Lifelong Learning Institute, explained how the mythical creatures earned such infamous spots in the minds of millions.

Johns, an NIU professor since 1985, presented biological evidence of genetic abnormalities and diseases that can create physical appearances and behavior that could have been at the root of the monster tales.

"I have been teaching human genetics for quite sometime so I became interested in [the monsters]," Johns said.

The presentation was thorough and provided an enormous amount of information regarding the diseases and abnormalities that can occur in humans that have monster-like effects.

Dwarves, Johns said, are short people with disproportional arms and legs, large heads and high foreheads. Dwarves are real, but they are hardly like the ones that can be seen in such movies as "Lord of the Rings" or "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." The malformation is caused by a defect known as achondroplasia, Johns said. Unlike movie monsters, a mass race could never exist because members could not successfully breed with each other and the defect is very rare.

Cyclops also can exist, but they are not terrible monsters like the one in Homer’s "Odyssey." The idea of having one-eyed socket with one eye is a disease, holoprosencephaly, which although rare, does occur. The development of the brain does not divide and one effect is to only have one eye-socket with zero, one or two eyes in it, Johns said.

Among other monsters that Johns explained were werewolves and Dracula.
The idea of a man becoming a wolf is usually induced from narcotics or madness in the individual, Johns said. However, a disease known as hypertrichosis universalis does exists, causing hair as long as 10 to 15 inches to grow all over the human body.

One example was Stephan Bibrowsky, also known as "Lionel the Lion Faced Man," who toured with the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Dracula may not be real, but one disease, porphyria, causes many symptoms that are similar to characteristics of the fictional character. Porphyria, in some forms, causes the skin to burn and blister when it is exposed to sunlight. This is due to lack of heme in the blood, Johns said. In the past, people would drink blood to help cure the disease. Modern treatment of porphyria includes injection of heme directly into the blood, Johns said.

Johns discussed the biological reasons that the diseases occur, providing great detail. Among the many other monsters discussed were two-headed monsters, Frankenstein’s monster, the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot. Johns put the ideas of real monsters to rest and instead provided a history from which the folk stories could have sprung.

The lecture concluded with Johns fielding questions regarding genetics and other various topics from the attendees who included students from a COMS 100 class and members of the Lifelong Learning Institute.

This lecture was part of a continuing series that is open to everyone. The next lecture will 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday.

"We do these lectures every Wednesday and we will finish in early November," said Kathy Wright, director of Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming.

2005-10-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

At the start of the article the author raises some very interesting points, dont know if they are true, but this is an interesting article...

da Lizard

http://www.rense.com/general68/nasaisnt.htm

rense.com

What NASA Isn't
Telling You About Mars
Ted Twietmeyer
tedtw@frontiernet.net
10-26-5

This book is a brand new look at what Mars really must be like, and reveals numerous important ancient Mars artifacts that NASA knows about and has been hiding all along.

We,ve all listened for years since we were children, to the endless stories about what the environment on Mars is and how no life could have ever lived on the planet.

So let's get right to the point. This author felt it was past time to look at the overall picture of what we have been told, using the tools of logic and common sense. And use NASA data to start connecting the dots.

Let's look at some of the common statements made about the planet:

* The atmosphere on the planet is 1% that of earth

* Gravity on the planet is 1/3 that of earth

* The ground is red, and the sky is red

* Its always been a lifeless planet

Let's look at these common beliefs about the "red planet" using the illuminating and sanitizing light of common sense:

THE PROOF: COLOR SHIFTING TO MAKE THE SKY RED

There are the NASA statements from about two years ago - "It's very hard to get the color right on Mars, images." Utter non-sense! ALL the spacecraft sent to Mars over the past 30 years have color calibration charts in one form or another, and have even included the American Flag. The vertical line scan camera of Viking and the CCD cameras used today could always be used to view the color charts.

However, scientists often have not calibrated the cameras using a color chart as they should have. As a result, we are usually shown a red sky and a surface with rocks which are reddish. The color chart's blue squares clearly become red, indicating a shift across the entire visible color spectrum. Green is in the middle of visible spectrum. Anyone with common sense knows that if the colors on the color chart are correct in a picture, then the remainder of the image MUST also be correct. We are talking about the SAME sun on Mars that illuminates our earth!

Even so, about two years ago a scientist was asked about the colors on Mars. He stated on television "it's very hard to get the colors right on Mars." Hard for who? Perhaps it is hard, if you must change it to red all the time. That would be a full-time job, and probably done behind closed doors.

WHY would they do tamper with color? Because it's psychological: since the early days of astronomy the planet has appeared red as viewed from earth in a telescope.
But wait a minute! Viewed from the moon, our earth appears like a "big, blue marble" as one astronaut described it. Are rocks and dirt on earth BLUE? Of course not. NASA conveniently forgets this "minor detail" and INSISTS that their images remain reddish, no matter how much their science data will be compromised. What nerve it takes to do this!

Every now and then, an image comes from the "red planet" with a blue sky.

The scientists go along with this insane theory in spite of wrong color chart colors. Why?

THE FOUNTAIN OF TRUTH?

How many space agencies on earth have successfully landed a rover on Mars?

Only one: NASA. That agency has been THE source for all so-called "facts" about the planet's surface - facts which are tailored for human psychology. Isn't it nice to be treated like a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed well, you know.

In short, we are told (and shown) what we are supposed to believe and absolutely nothing more. I proved this with more than 160 selected images taken straight from NASA computers.

THE GRAVITY IS TOO WEAK TO RETAIN AN ATMOSPHERE

First, we know ICE and weather exist on the planet. If the atmosphere is 1% that of earth, any ice would have boiled away or just evaporated. One doesn't need a physics degree to understand this. Water BOILS AWAY at room temperature in a laboratory vacuum chamber on earth, well before reaching .01 atmosphere (1 %.) For all practical purposes, .01 atmospheres is a VACUUM to water's boiling point and to air-breathing life-forms.

Here is a direct quote from a paper [3] written about the atmospheric pressure as measured by the Viking Landers:

The day to day atmospheric pressure variability, low in summer and higher in fall and winter, (especially at the northern site), is due to weather "fronts" quite similar to those on Earth Along with the annual cycle, meteorological fronts are indicated by the increasing variability of the pressure between fall and spring at these northern hemisphere sites as previously mentioned. The Lander 2, VL2, site is similar in latitude to Seattle, Paris or Vienna, while the southern, VL1 site, like Pathfinder, is similar in latitude to Hong Kong, Havana or Calcutta. Like on Earth, the frontal activity is less in the tropics and sub-tropics, e.g., the VL1 site. Typically, the fronts pass every few sols (mars days) on Mars, often resembling those of Earth except for the lack of rain, while at other times, they are far more regular.

Note the author's statement above, that planet has weather fronts like that of earth, except it doesn't rain. But a 1% atmosphere which is essentially a vacuum - having weather? How can the planet have weather without an atmosphere?

Evidence of frozen water on the planet is abundant. It's now claimed by NASA that any water at the poles is trapped under "a layer of frozen carbon dioxide" - what most of us commonly know as DRY ICE. Of course, it was never rationally explained just HOW that could happen.

If you have you ever worked with dry ice you know of its strange behavior. Frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) is what NASA claims are laying on the ground at the poles. If you wrap up dry ice, no matter how well it is insulated what happens? In the span of a day or so it just DISAPPEARS without a trace. It returns to the gaseous state, unless you could lower the ambient temperature to less than -109.3F, or -79C. This is the known constant temperature of the surface of dry ice. The ONLY WAY to keep dry ice solid is to keep it in an environment colder than -109.3F, or -79C. And if the air pressure is lower it will evaporate even faster.

Mars is CONSIDERABLY WARMER than the temperature of dry ice by about 60 degrees. Could there be some sort of special physics on Mars that prevents any kind of ice from evaporating over millennia or even eons of time? So how can we know for certain the planet's overall surface is far warmer than -109.3F, or -79C?

The solar panels on the rover tell us the answer! All solar panel technology is based on semiconductor technology, which places definite limits on the lowest temperature it can operate at, and also the lowest temperature a solar panel can be exposed to without permanent damage.

Solar cell operating temperatures are -40ºF to 176ºF, or -40ºC to 80ºC [1]. Below -40ºC, solar cell output begins to drop dramatically. This is a long way from -109.3F. Most semiconductors can be permanently damaged when exposed to extreme cold below -60ºC.

Temperatures measured by the two Viking Landers varied from + 1° F, ( -17.2° C) to -178° F (107° C). This is far from being cold enough to keep carbon dioxide frozen, but just warm enough for solar cells to work.

The surface temperature in WINTER at the polar caps is BELIEVED (though not actually measured) to drop to -225° F, (-143° C) while the warmest soil occasionally reaches +81° F (27° C.) This is an estimated value from Viking Orbiter Infrared Thermal Mapper. [4] Solar cells will stop working, and could be permanently damaged at -143°C.

Thirty years ago the Viking Landers were powered with nuclear thermoelectric generators, not solar cells. These generators created 950 watts of heat to heat the inside of the Lander to keep electronics within safe operating limits. Only 50 watts of heat was converted to electricity for powering instrumentation and electronics.

Today we have rovers which are solar powered and without nuclear generators. If the average Mars temperature was cold enough to keep dry ice solid, solar cells on the rovers simply could not function. But we know this is not the case.

What does all this mean?

ANY carbon dioxide ice on the surface would have evaporated long ago, since the planet is not cold enough all the time to keep ice in solid form. It might be possible for ice to still be present at the bottom of a deep crater according to orbital images, but this hasn't been proven conclusively by ground exploration. We simply can't know for certain whether some or all of the ice at the bottom of those craters which have been found is water and/or CO2 ice.

All of this ties into whether or not the atmosphere is actually denser than we have been led to believe. And we shall see there is evidence it most likely is far denser than we have been told.

SOLAR PANELS DUSTED OFF BY A WIND - IN A NEAR VACUUM?

Then we have the interesting situation with the rovers themselves. Why have the rovers outlasted their design life? Do you recall the 1% atmosphere? On-board cameras have observed occasional dust storms which are apparently cleaning off the solar panels. NASA has released several videos on JPL's website comprising a number of still images sequenced together, which show dust-devils in action moving across the surface. A number of these movies can be viewed at
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050506a.html

Note: As you read the following quote from a paper about dust accumulation, keep in mind that a SOL is one Martian solar day, equivalent to 24 hours and 39 minutes on earth.

"The rover solar array is accumulating dust at a rate of about a quarter of a percent of coverage per day according JPL. This is very close to the coverage of 0.22% predicted [G. Landis, "Dust Obscuration of Solar Arrays," Acta Astronautica, Vol. 38, No. 11, pp. 895-891 (1996)]. The deposition rate seems to be the same on the sols when the rover is in motion as it is on sols when the rover remains in place, indicating that the deposition is probably due to dust settling out of the atmosphere, not dust kicked up by Sojourners' motion."

But wait a minute - how could a planet with a near vacuum atmosphere have enough "air" to clean off these panels? Dust and dirt isn't weightless even on Mars and it still has mass, even in a lower gravity environment. Apparently NASA figured this out too, and the undeniable presence of dust devils soon became a problem for their 1% atmosphere theory. But they had a cure for the conflict that would allow them to keep the 1% value.

The solution? They simply changed their dust-devil theory to eliminate the atmospheric vortex part of the equation. The agency now claims these Martian dust devils are "Electrical vortices." The agency reminds one of an old Rockford Files episode. Jim Rockford in a state of frustration and disbelief after a series of problems from another character, just smiles and says "It just keeps on comin,, doesn't it?!"

What the space agency scientists must do to backup their new theory about dust-devil formation, is to provide a credible theory showing the cause of these "electrical vortices." This has not been done because their scientists answer to no one. And even more important, they regularly hide ground-breaking images which you shall see for yourself later.

There are no known thunderstorms on the planet, or any known sources of electrical disturbances. So why base a theory on this? Does that follow common sense?

The European Space Agency's orbiting spacecraft has recently detected METHANE from orbit. This gas will float in the air. We know that on earth ORGANIC MATERIAL generates the majority of methane on the surface. Every living person generates methane, too. It is one of the byproducts of life, and keeps products like Beano on the market.

So what's methane doing in Mars, orbit, a planet with no active volcanoes and supposedly no life at all? No answers or theories are forthcoming on that one, either. Yet there are images taken from orbit which have shown large areas are well populated by what appear to be huge circular shrubs or trees. Remember - these plants are living in a near vacuumjust 1% that of earth!

And what happened to "Beagle" - the European Space Agency's little robotic surface exploration vehicle that was scheduled to land on Mars? It went silent when it was about to land and no one knows why. Scientists believed it never made it to the surface in one piece. Was Beagle about to prove NASA's statements about the planet wrong?

We know the planet has a blue sky and has a far denser atmosphere than we have been told. It makes one wonder if ANYONE has ever MEASURED the atmosphere scientifically.

Here's another statement: "ITS COLD AND DARK ON MARS BECAUSE IT's SO FAR AWAY FROM THE SUN"

The rovers on Mars operate in the DAYTIME. Most of their systems are shut down at night to extend daytime operating time, according to JPL. Solar cells are not very efficient. Therefore, they require light levels close to that of earth outdoors to recharge the batteries, power the transmitters and instrumentation, the computers AND power the rover's SIX drive and SIX steering motors at the same time. Could a dim environment accomplish that? Not with today's solar cells, which have a peak efficiency of just 21%, as of this writing on Oct. 2005.

Here is another quote from an expert on solar cells: Regardless of size, a typical silicon PV cell produces about 0.5 - 0.6 volt DC under open-circuit, no-load conditions. The current (and power) output of a PV cell depends on its efficiency and size (surface area), and is proportional the intensity of sunlight striking the surface of the cell. For example, under peak sunlight conditions a typical commercial PV cell with a surface area of 160 cm^2 (~25 in^2) will produce about 2 watts peak power. If the sunlight intensity were 40 percent of peak, this cell would produce about 0.8 watts. [2]

Outside of the environmental issues discussed above, are there MORE LIES to deal with?

Yes, and I,ve saved the best one for last!

WOULD NASA FIND SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE AND NOT TELL US?

This definitely has been answered with a deafening YES, and I have the proof. Reviewing more than 10,000 images from the Spirit rover for 655 days of exploration has resulted in the discovery of DOZENS of artificially made objects. Most are only a few yards from the rover's camera. One must not be naïve, and think that since NASA has been silent about these objects, that they cannot exist. This is far from being the first time this trick has been pulled. Again the mushroom treatment is used on the public. On this subject, the BS is suffocating.

BACKGROUND ON SOME STARTLING ARTIFACTS

These objects include bricks and what appear to be building blocks and cubes, standing on one corner or just lying on the surface. These objects are apparently made from solid rock or a material like it.

And there are the ultimate in smoking guns: three different objects with CHARACTERS clearly visible on them, which are easy for anyone to see. Two of these images are included in this essay.

These are not images taken from orbit which are open to wild speculation about what is or is not artificial. These artifacts are just as real as the computer you are reading this on.

Below are only a few artifacts from the book which have been minimally sharpened or enlarged for clarity. NO manual "pixel twiddling" was ever performed on any image in this essay or in the book. Those artifacts with a yellow background are from the book's cover. The others are from pages in the book itself. NO changes were made to the artifacts themselves. What you see here is what they really are, for better or worse.

And then there are 160 more artifacts in the book that defy any explanation that cannot be easily debunked, if at all. Keep in mind that the distance of these artifacts from the camera is between 2ft. and 100ft. Panoramic camera source images for these artifacts were only available in JPEG form on NASA archive servers searched. Therefore, they cannot be sharpened much more than what you see below. Most objects are only 1 to 3 feet in size. Descriptions are not in any way meant to be absolute answers, just possibilities.

All the objects below are covered in far more detail in the book, including the exact SOL day they were photographed:

Block object bearing lettering in an unknown script. Who could have written it? NASA knows about this because they took this close-up. Note the shadow from the rover's strobe lamp and the closeness of the ground around it.

This object is similar to the strangely formed steel suspension arm found under some motor vehicles. This object was found lying up against a rock, in the position shown here. Rock was carefully removed from the image for clarity. Note the artifact's inside right angle bend (darkened area.)

A strange triangular artifact lying on the ground was about 50ft. from the camera. It has two protruding cylindrical objects on the right end, similar to vehicle headlights. A dark vertical disk-like object on the rear has what appears to be a shaft in the center. It was the triangle on the front laying on the ground up against it, which first caught my eye. The housing of the artifact is very similar in shade to the surrounding soil, probably because it is covered with dust. One could jokingly describe it as "an upright vacuum cleaner without a bag or handle." One can only guess at what this really is.

ARCHEOLOGISTS - WHO WERE THEY, WHAT YEAR AND FROM WHERE?

In the image below, it appears that a catalog number may have been written on this artifact. Archeologists do this when excavating a site. This object appears to have been lying there far longer than we can imagine. The artifact isn't buried deep under dust, dirt or debris or from winds that blow (dust devils) that cross the planet - which of course has no atmosphere. HOW is all this possible?

This artifact was about 50ft. from the camera, and is shaped like the letter "Y" with a bar across the top. It is reminiscent of the "Y" in the YMCA logo. It appears to have four handwritten numbers along the top edge, which upon close examination are closest to the numbers "5563." There is a white coating or cladding peeling back on the left end, and the bottom edge of the image reveals its thickness. Perhaps it was a vertical ornament which fell from the top of a building (More about that later.)

Above you have seen only 4 of the objects from more than 160 images. Not all may be as striking as this, and yet some are far more amazing. Another one (shown in the book) has a knife or metal edge clearly protruding out of a rock or handle. The image was a close-up, taken about 1 foot from the camera. The edge is so sharp and well defined, that sharpening the image with professional image processing didn't change the blade's appearance. Since this was also a close-up, NASA KNOWS it's there.

There are MANY other artifacts too numerous to mention. All of these artifacts - most LESS than a stone's throw from the camera, are undeniable. This ancient extraterrestrial artifact collection is like nothing else ever published before. About two years ago I stated on a radio show that if NASA ever found any signs of life they would not tell us.

These discoveries prove my statement was correct.

The hand-writing on the artifact above raises some very tough questions no one is answering:

1. Are these an archeologist's CATALOG NUMBERS?

2. WHO was the archeologist?

3. WHERE did the person come from?

4. Was the person who wrote these numbers from our future and they traveled to Mars?

5. Is this confirmation that that we already have a base on Mars? Many in black projects have been saying this for years. This could mean the catalog numbers were written by someone in that program. Some have called it "Alternative 3."

6. A movie titled "Capricorn 1" 25 years ago was about a staged moon landing. Could it be the entire Spirit and Opportunity rover explorations are STAGED - and what we are looking at is a mistake, an exposed number like those used for stage productions to keep track of props? Let's hope not!

Everyone who has examined these images has been astounded, just as I was when first finding these artifacts.

WHAT HAS NASA DONE ABOUT THESE TREASURES?

Silence is what we hear. When discovery of new objects averaged 2 to 3 per day, they moved the Spirit rover AWAY FROM THE AREA to again "look for signs of water" elsewhere, despite all these groundbreaking discoveries.

Here is an analogy of what they,ve done: A beachcomber with a metal detector finds two items together - one is a rusted modern iron nail and the other a solid gold ring. The unappreciative beachcomber keeps the rusted nail and throws the gold ring into the ocean!

With NASA staying on their pointless, pathetic and absurd search for signs of water they have tossed away many such gold rings.

At that location up to three artifacts a day were being found. Then they sent the rover on a one-way trip AWAY from this area to featureless, sandy terrain. That is where it is roaming today. All they explored was a 2 mile strip of a 90 mile wide crater!

This is L.I.E.S. - Lies and Intentionally Engineered Stupidity.

The discovery of signs of LIFE and a denser atmosphere present on the "red, barren lifeless planet" may force them to swallow their pride. This is the same brand of pride and arrogance of always being "right" that caused the first and second shuttle failures. And several other deep space missions to fail - failures that happened some 25 years AFTER the Voyager and Viking spacecraft missions which all worked perfectly. All four of those vehicles outlived their design lifetimes by many years. That's because 25 years ago, engineering employed common sense - a very rare commodity today.

I challenge ANYONE to explain away the mechanical objects as "products of erosion."

Where are those debunkers when we need them? In hiding.

The agency NEEDS a discovery of life on Mars to obtain the massive funding required for a manned mission to reach Mars. If the artifact with "5563" written on it is a fake, (which requires someone on the INSIDE to confirm this) then the ENTIRE rover mission has been faked.

A POSSIBLE THEORY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AT GUSEV CRATER IN THE ANCIENT PAST

Gusev doesn't have the usual deep concave shape - instead, it's like a giant, shallow 90 mile wide plain with a wall around the outside according to orbital imaging.

Here's what we can see: there are blocks from Giza pyramid size down to brick size, scattered everywhere at Gusev. Most of these are BLACKENED on just one or two faces, indicating a tremendous explosion took place. These artifacts are most likely the remains of a city or town that was present, perhaps many millennia ago.

And then there are numerous MECHANICAL ARTIFACTS.

A likely scenario is that a space vehicle exploded high above the surface, blackening the rocks and blocks, destroying the city or town and forming the crater. Then shortly afterward, mechanical fragments from the space vehicle rained down on the area which are still lying there today, although they are now probably fossilized. The implications of this are enormous and cannot be overstated.

What we don't know - is just how deep down the debris field goes.

IMPLICATIONS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

Someone credible in the space agency needs to come forward and say, "Yes, they already know about the artificial objects but don't want the public to know." They can open the door by setting the example for others. Then they too, can step through the doorway out into the sanitizing light of day - opening it wide for all to see the proverbial wizard inside, pulling levers which manipulate public information behind the curtain.

Let's push the barn door open all the way, and send the antiquated Brookings Report from 50 years ago into the repository of all obsolete documents - the shredder. That cursed document laid the foundation for the on-going cover-up to this day. The report instituted a cover-up program that has created employment for many thousands of people whose sole function is to enforce "security."

"Security personnel" have ruined the lives of untold thousands of people by intimidation and discrediting them, who have had close encounters they didn't even ask for. They have also ruined the lives of those who have stumbled upon "forbidden artifacts" or have had contact with certain ET races living on earth. This author is waiting for the trouble to start for him, too - for bringing these images out into the sanitizing light of day.

I don't expect the images to remain on their servers for very long. This is why I provide in the book ALL the information on where to find the original source images. Nothing is hidden from the light of day, as some who have sold other Mars images have done. The barn door MUST remain open.

THIS BOOK CAUSES FEELINGS IN THE READER NEVER FELT BEFORE

The artifacts on Mars are startling, revealing and in fact some have called them "amazing, almost scary." Frank Whalen stated repeatedly on his radio show Frankly Speaking Radio (RBN) with this author on Oct. 21 2005, that "this is explosive, ground breaking and will shake the world." He said it did hit him "like a hammer." He also stated "he has never read anything like this before."

Be warned that the book's contents are outside the paradigm you are comfortable with. If you want to escape the mushroom treatment once and for all, this book is for you. But if you are someone whose religion believes that God only created life on this earth and no where else - then you will be in for the shock of your life. After you read the book, all the images instill in one a feeling that you,ve been to Mars yourself and have seen it firsthand.

The book covers more than 10 times the material of what you have just read.

You can see 10 sample pages for free taken from the book at www.data4science.net/book

These pages also show other artifacts not included in this essay.

Ted Twietmeyer

Author of "What NASA Isn't Telling You About Mars"

References:

[1] Temperature specifications from two different solar cell companies:

http://www.solar-cells.net

http://www.solarenergyalliance.com/flexible_solar_modules.htm

[2] Details about solar cell output vs. light level:
http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/pvt/pvbasics/

[3] http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_
data-information/pressure_overview.html

[4] http://mars.sgi.com/science/atmospheric.html

2005-10-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

I think Im gonna be sick...

da Lizard

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/printpage/0,5481,17026063,00.html

Police told to respect traditions
Liam Houlihan, religious affairs reporter
25oct05

POLICE are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits.

Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together.

Women's groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence.

The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers that also recommends special treatment for suspects of Aboriginal, Hindu and Buddhist background.

Some police officers have claimed the directives hinder enforcing the law equally.

Police are told: "In incidents such as domestic violence, police need to have an understanding of the traditions, ways of life and habits of Muslims."

They are told it would be appreciated in cases of domestic violence if police consult the local Muslim religious leader who will work against "fragmenting the family unit".

Islamic Women's Welfare Council head Joumanah El Matrah called the guidelines appalling and dangerous.

"The implication is one needs to be more tolerant of violence against Muslim women but they should be entitled to the same protection," Ms El Matrah said.

"Police should not be advising other officers to follow those sorts of protocols.

"It can only lead to harm."

Ms El Matrah said Muslim leaders should be brought into domestic violence investigations only if requested by the abused woman.

The guide also advises officers not to hold interviews with Aboriginal suspects or set court hearings during Aboriginal ceremonies involving "initiation, birth, death, burials, mourning periods, women's meetings and cultural ceremonies in general".

They are told to interview Baha'i suspects only after sunset in the fasting month.

And they are cautioned that when a Sikh is reading the Sikh Holy Script -- a process that normally takes 50 hours -- "he should not be disturbed".

The 50,000 handbooks instruct police to take shoes off before entering Buddhist and Hindu houses and mosques, and remove hats before entering or searching churches.

They are warned that taking photos or samples from Aboriginal suspects could raise fears they could be used for sorcery and spiritual mischief.

Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau head Gerard Daniells, who created the 82-page full-colour handbook, said common sense would prevail over the guide in an emergency.

Mr Daniells said the next edition would include Maori spiritual beliefs and practices.

The glossy guides would have cost at least $300,000 to produce, a printing industry expert said.

Police Association secretary Paul Mullet said members had an appreciation of different cultures but their overriding concern was for safety of the community.

2005-10-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19946

Islamophobia?
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 25, 2005

An Islamist group named Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to bring the world under Islamic law and advocates suicide attacks against Israelis. Facing proscription in Great Britain, it opened a clandestine front operation at British universities called “Stop Islamophobia,” the Sunday Times has revealed.

Stop what, you ask?

Coined in Great Britain a decade ago, the neologism Islamophobia was launched in 1996 by a self-proclaimed “Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia.” The word literally means “undue fear of Islam” but it is used to mean “prejudice against Muslims” and joins over 500 other phobias spanning virtually every aspect of life.

The term has achieved a degree of linguistic and political acceptance, to the point that the secretary-general of the United Nations presided over a December 2004 conference titled “Confronting Islamophobia,” and in May a Council of Europe summit condemned “Islamophobia.”

The term presents several problems, however. First, what exactly constitutes an “undue fear of Islam” when Muslims acting in the name of Islam today make up the premier source of worldwide aggression, both verbal and physical, versus non-Muslims and Muslims alike? What, one wonders, is the proper amount of fear?

Second, while prejudice against Muslims certainly exists, “Islamophobia” deceptively conflates two distinct phenomena: fear of Islam and fear of radical Islam. I personally experience this problem: despite writing again and again against radical Islam the ideology, not Islam the religion, I have been made the runner-up for a mock “Islamophobia Award” in Great Britain, deemed America’s “leading Islamophobe,” and even called an “Islamophobe Incarnate.” (What I really am is an “Islamism-ophobe.”)

Third, promoters of the “Islamophobia” concept habitually exaggerate the problem:

· Law enforcement: British Muslims are said to suffer from persistent police discrimination but an actual review of the statistics by Kenan Malik makes mincemeat of this “Islamophobia myth.”

· Cultural: Muslims “are faced with an extreme flow of anti-Islamic literature that preaches hatred against Islam,” claims the president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia, Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani: “novels, movies, books and researches. Just among the best selling novels alone there are almost 1000 novels of this type.” One thousand bestsellers vilify Islam? Hardly. In fact, barely a handful do so (for example, The Haj, by Leon Uris).

· Linguistic: A professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, falsely reported (in his keynote speech at a U.N. event, “Confronting Islamophobia,” reports Alexander Joffe) attempts to hide the Arabic origins of English words such as adobe – which derives in fact from ancient Egyptian, not from Arabic.

· Historical: The term anti-Semitism was originally used against Arabs living in Spain, Nasr also stated in his speech, and was not directed at Jews until after World War II. Nonsense: anti-Semitism dates back only to 1879, when it was coined by Wilhelm Marr, and has always referred specifically to hatred of Jews.

Fourth, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s manipulation of “Stop Islamophobia” betrays the fraudulence of this word. As the Sunday Times article explains, “Ostensibly the campaign’s goal is to fight anti-Muslim prejudice in the wake of the London bombings,” but it quotes Anthony Glees of London’s Brunel University to the effect that the real agenda is to spread anti-Semitic, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, anti-homosexual, and anti-female attitudes, as well as foment resentment of Western influence.

Finally, calling moderate Muslims (such as Irshad Manji) Islamophobes betrays this term’s aggressiveness. As Charles Moore writes in the Daily Telegraph, moderate Muslims, “frightened of what the Islamists are turning their faith into,” are the ones who most fear Islam. (Think of Algeria, Darfur, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.) “They cannot find the courage and the words to get to grips with the huge problem that confronts Islam in the modern world.” Accusations of Islamophobia, Malik adds, are intended “to silence critics of Islam, or even Muslims fighting for reform of their communities.” Another British Muslim, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, discerns an even more ambitious goal: “all too often Islamophobia is used to blackmail society.”

Muslims should dispense with this discredited term and instead engage in some earnest introspection. Rather than blame the potential victim for fearing his would-be executioner, they would do better to ponder how Islamists have transformed their faith into an ideology celebrating murder (Al-Qaeda: “You love life, we love death”) and develop strategies to redeem their religion by combating this morbid totalitarianism.

2005-10-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-06-22-abuse-usat_x.htm

Studies shatter myth about abuse
By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — It is not just men who hit women. Women hit men, too. And the latest research shows that ignoring the role women play in domestic violence does both women and men a disservice.

There is little doubt that women get hurt more than men. She may slap him. But then he may hit her harder or more often.
A BRUTAL PICTURE
Most researchers agree more women than men are seriously hurt in partner violence. Some
estimates of violence to women:

On average, three women a day are murdered in the USA by husbands or boyfriends.
31% of U.S. women report
being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend.
30% of Americans know a woman who was physically abused by her husband or
boyfriend in the past year.

Source: Family Violence Prevention Fund

By not understanding the mutual role they often play, women are at great risk for injury, new studies show.

Still, the newest findings challenge the feminist belief that "it is men only who cause violence," says psychologist Deborah Capaldi of the Oregon Social Learning Center. "That is a myth."

The number of women who hit first or hit back is "much greater than has been generally assumed," Capaldi says. She says she is surprised by the frequency of aggressive acts by women and by the number of men who are afraid of partners who assault them.

Capaldi and two other female researchers call for a re-evaluation of treatment programs nationwide. Such programs focus on men and ignore women. Men are court-ordered into some type of rehabilitation, and their women are told in support groups or shelters that they had nothing to do with the violence, Capaldi says.

"Prevention and treatment should focus on managing conflict and aggression for both young men and women," Capaldi says. Each needs to understand the role both play while still putting a "special responsibility" on the man, who can inflict greater injury.

The three women did different studies but presented them as a team recently to a conference sponsored by the Society for Prevention Research. The National Institutes of Health sponsored much of the work.

The researchers emphasize they are not blaming women. "We are not saying anybody is at fault," says psychologist Miriam Ehrensaft of Columbia University. "But new data is emerging that says women are also involved in aggression. If we do not tell women that, we put them at risk."

Rita Smith of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is not convinced that men are afraid of abusive women. "That fear is a critical factor in any domestic violence situation. And the abuse is part of an ongoing pattern to control someone else's behavior."

Murray Straus, co-director of the Family Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire, has found both men and women are involved in physical aggression, but he emphasizes injury rates are not the same. "The likelihood of an injury to a woman requiring medical attention is much greater. Men cause more damage."

The little-talked-about involvement of women in mutual aggression with men is "the third rail of the domestic violence field," says Richard Gelles, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work. "Touch it and you get electrocuted." Both he and Straus have done studies that caused fiery controversies.

Gelles says the lifetime risk of a woman being struck by a male intimate partner is about 28%. And "depending upon who is doing the survey and how you measure it, you could get numbers of up to 50%." But he says a man's lifetime risk of being struck by a woman is also about 28%.

Many researchers' findings in earlier, government-financed studies emphasize the man's role.

Patricia Tjaden's study for the non-profit Center for Policy Research, sponsored by two government agencies, questioned 8,000 men and 8,000 women. She found women three times as likely to be assaulted in some way over a lifetime by a male partner than the reverse, and seven to 14 times as likely to be attacked, including beaten, choked or threatened with a gun.

Different research tools and methods pick up on different kinds of intimate partner violence, Tjaden says. But still, she says, she has "always had trouble with the mutual-abuse argument. Where are all the male victims?" It is women, she says, who are subjected to "systematic terrorism."

The young are particularly prone to aggression. Erika Lawrence of the University of Iowa told the prevention conference that one-third of newlywed women and one-quarter of newlywed men engage in physical aggression.

The subject of partner violence is a minefield. Even defining it is controversial. Some call verbal abuse a form of battering. And all sorts of studies are done in all sorts of ways. Those based on crime statistics and reports from women's shelters tend to show dramatic aggression by men against women. (Gelles cautions that some men may not realize or admit they have been assaulted by a woman and may not report it as a crime or seek treatment.)

"Family conflict" studies may reflect a broader population, Straus says, and take into account lesser types of aggression that don't lead to arrests or broken limbs. These studies show about the same rates of aggression by men and women.

It is clear that women suffer physically more at the hands of men than the reverse, says Faye Wattleton of the Center for the Advancement of Women. But still she says it is good to bring new research to public attention. "I applaud the women who had the courage to present these findings. We don't make progress by suppressing the evidence."

2005-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

This lady who works for the city calls up and says "Im getting a timeout error when I check my email."
No biggie, I ask her what her email address is and she ignores me and continues on explaining what is happening.
I end up asking her 3 times before she tells me her email address, its our competitors.
I remember this lady, she left us about 3 months ago making a big stink about how they were cheaper...

Good luck lady, we dont need you around here...

da Lizard

2005-10-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

Talk about double standards south of the border, if a white person had said this they would have been lynched.

The scary part is that Canada is starting to head in the same direction...

da Lizard

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/10/cspan_speaker_says_exterminate.php

C-SPAN Speaker Says “Exterminate White People”

AR Articles on Real Hate Speech

Anti-White Hate Speech

More news stories on Real Hate Speech

Kamau Kambon, C-SPAN, Oct. 14

The following is an extract from a speech by black activist Kamau Kambon on the C-SPAN’s “Black Media Forum on Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media,” which was broadcast on Oct. 14.

Listen to the extact here.

“And we have to start thinking about a solution to the problem. So that these young sisters and brothers who are here now, who are 15, 16, 17, are not here 25 years later talking about these same problems.

“Now how do I know that the white people know that we are going to come up with a solution to the problem. I know it because they have retina scans, racial profiling, DNA banks, and they’re monitoring our people to try to prevent the ONE person from coming up with the ONE idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve the problem. [tepid applause] Now I don’t care whether you clap or not but I’m saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us. And I will leave on that. So we just have to set up our own system and stop playing and get very serious and not get diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem and the problem on the planet is white people.”

Listen to the whole speech on C-SPAN. (It begins at 3:33:00)

Original article

(Posted on October 17, 2005)

2005-10-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

We live in a world where few people tell the truth. We have to be PC all the time.

Unlike most people I have read the Koran and a fair bit of their other literature. I honestly believe that they are not a religion of peace. I figure I could study Islam for a 100 years and still not be an expert on it. But if I did do that I would still have the same belief.

da Lizard

http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/Wood/islam_spread.htm

Don’t Lose Your Head!

Four Reasons for the Early Spread of Islam

By David Wood

Muslims often cite the early spread of Islam as evidence of its divine origin. While history shows that Islam spread rapidly, many Muslims (and many non-Muslims) have a distorted picture of why it spread rapidly. For instance, in a popular Islamic apologetic, Mawdudi claims that Islam spread because of Muhammad’s eloquence and conviction:

When [Muhammad] began preaching his Message, all of Arabia stood in awe and wonder and was bewitched by his wonderful eloquence and oratory. It was so impressive and captivating that his worst enemies were afraid of hearing it, lest it should penetrate deep into the recesses of their hearts and carry them off their feet making them forsake their old religion and culture. . . . He came before them as an illustrious politician, a great leader, a judge of the highest eminence, and an incomparable general. . . . A nation which for centuries had produced not one single great man worthy of that name now gave birth, under his influence and guidance, to thousands of noble souls who were to travel to far-off corners of the earth to preach and teach the principles of religion, morality and civilization. He accomplished this feat not through any lure, oppression or cruelty, but by his captivating manner, his winsome personality, and the conviction of his teachings. With his noble and gentle behavior, he befriended even his enemies. He captured the hearts of the people with his boundless sympathy and human kindness. . . . By his forceful personality, he made a permanent impression on the hearts of thousands of his disciples and molded them according to his liking. . . . Can anyone cite another example of a maker of history of such distinction, another revolutionary of such brilliance and splendor?[1]

Mawdudi apparently finds it impressive that early Muslims converted to Islam because of Muhammad’s "eloquence and oratory," "his captivating manner," and "the conviction of his teachings." Yet these are feeble motives for conversion: many Germans committed themselves to Adolf Hitler’s political movement for the exact same reasons. Nevertheless, even if these grounds were entirely justified, Mawdudi still presents us with an incomplete picture. There are many other reasons for the rapid spread of Islam, but Muslims are understandably ashamed of acknowledging them. Let us briefly discuss four such reasons.

Reason One: Muhammad’s Ability to Breed Rage in His Followers

Historically, we know of at least one individual who was so impressed by Islam’s ability to inspire men to kill without question that he concluded that Islam must be true:

The apostle said, "Kill any Jew that falls into your power." Thereupon Muhayyisa bin Mas’ud leapt upon Ibn Sunayna, a Jewish merchant with whom they had social and business relations, and killed him. Huwayyisa was not a Muslim at the time though he was the elder brother. When Muhayyisa killed him Huwayyisa began to beat him, saying, "You enemy of God, did you kill him when much of the fat on your belly comes from his wealth?" Muhayyisa answered, "Had the one who ordered me to kill him ordered me to kill you I would have cut your head off." He said that this was the beginning of Huwayyisa’s acceptance of Islam. The other replied, "By God, if Muhammad had ordered you to kill me would you have killed me?" He said, "Yes, by God, had he ordered me to cut off your head I would have done so." He exclaimed, "By God, a religion which can bring you to this is marvelous!" And he became a Muslim.[2]

In this passage, Muhammad tells his followers to "Kill any Jew that falls into your power." Muhayyisa, acting on Muhammad’s orders, kills a Jewish merchant named Ibn Sunayna. Huwayyisa doesn’t understand how Muhayyisa could turn against a friend of the family so quickly, so Muhayyisa explains it to him. Essentially, Muhayyisa’s justification for the murder is that Muhammad told him to do it, and that, if commanded by Muhammad, he would murder anyone, even his own family. Huwayyisa is much impressed by his brother’s willingness to mindlessly follow the orders of Muhammad, so he converts to Islam, shouting, "By God, a religion which can bring you to this [i.e. a readiness to kill your own family] is marvelous!"

Huwayyisa’s admiration for his brother’s dedication was probably shared by many in the early hours of the Islamic Empire. Young men without direction were suddenly transformed into ardent followers of a new system of belief, and they would do anything for their prophet. "Surely there must be something to this new religion," people would think. Even so, the devotion of believers is not an infallible test for truth. If it were, we would have to conclude that Christianity, Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism, communism, and Nazism are all true, for all of these systems have produced dedicated adherents.

Reason Two: Patently False Prophecies

Many people were impressed when Muhammad spoke. He seemed to know everything, and he confidently answered difficult questions that no one else could answer. The problem is that many of his answers later turned out to be completely false. Consider the following answers given by Muhammad:

When Abdullah bin Salama heard of the arrival of the Prophet (the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) at Madina, he came to him and said: "I am asking you about three things which nobody knows but a prophet: What is the first portent of the Hour? What will be the first meal taken by the people of Paradise? Why does a child resemble its father, and why does it resemble its maternal uncle?" Allah’s Apostle (the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) said: "Gabriel has just now told me of their answers." . . . "The first portent of the Hour will be a fire that will bring together the people from the east to the west; the first meal of the people of Paradise will be extra-lobe of fish-liver. As for the resemblance of the child to its parents: If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife and gets discharge first, the child will resemble the father, and if the woman gets discharge first, the child will resemble her." On that Abdullah bin Salam said: "I testify that you are the Apostle of Allah."[3]

Here Muhammad is presented with three questions: (1) What is the sign that the end is coming? (2) What will the first meal in Heaven be? (3) How come a child sometimes looks like its father, but other times resembles its mother’s family? Notice that Muhammad’s answers to the first two questions—a great fire in the end-times and fish-liver in heaven—are utterly unfalsifiable; that is, it is impossible to test them or prove them wrong. Muhammad could have just as easily claimed that the "portent of the hour" will be that three frogs will recite the Qur’an, and that the first meal in heaven will be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In other words, we have no reason to think that Muhammad’s answers are correct, for we have no way to test their accuracy. Even so, Muhammad’s third answer is falsifiable; it can easily be tested in the light of modern science. So how does Muhammad’s answer stand up to criticism? Not very well. Women don’t have a "discharge" that contributes to the appearance of the offspring. They have an egg, but this isn’t a discharge. Further, a child’s appearance has nothing to do with which parent has the first discharge. Muhammad’s answer, as it turns out, is wrong.

But notice that his answer won him an important Jewish convert, who was amazed at Muhammad’s brilliance. One of Muhammad’s greatest strengths was that he had complete confidence in his own answers, yet this confidence was misplaced. His assurance led others to believe that he must be correct, but he wasn’t. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Muhammad’s proclamations is that Muslims have never recovered from their awe at his claims, even though many of these claims have been shown to be false. To this day, Muslims retain their misplaced confidence in the sayings of their prophet, and Muhammad’s answers are still winning converts.

(For more on Muhammad’s scientific blunders, see "Talking Ants and Shrinking Humans.")

Reason Three: Boundless Greed

Muhammad made an enticing guarantee to those who joined him in his struggle:

[Muhammad said]: "The example of a Struggle in Allah’s Cause—and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause—is like a person who fasts and prays continuously. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Struggler in His cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty."[4]

[Muhammad] said: "Khosrau will be ruined, and there will be no Khosrau after him, and Caesar will surely be ruined and there will be no Caesar after him, and you will spend their treasures in Allah’s Cause."[5]

If a seventh century pagan Arab rejected Islam, he was guaranteed nothing. He may be poor all his life, and he wouldn’t know what would happen to him when he died. But Muhammad guaranteed that if a person dies fighting Islam’s enemies, he will enter Paradise, and that even if he survives, he will return home "safely with rewards and war booty." Either way, pagans were much better off (financially) if they became Muslims.

This promise of rewards and war booty was an important factor in the early spread of Islam. Indeed, using war booty to win converts was part of Muhammad’s strategy. For example, when Muhammad was accused of distributing the spoils of war unevenly, he replied, "Are you disturbed in mind because of the good things of this life by which I win over a people that they may become Muslims while I entrust you to your Islam?"[6] Imam Muslim adds: "[W]hen the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) conquered Hunain he distributed the booty, and he bestowed upon those whose hearts it was intended to win."[7]

Muhammad’s promises of wealth were so great that, when difficulties arose, his followers sometimes complained that he wasn’t delivering on all that he had promised:

The situation became serious and fear was everywhere. The enemy came at them from above and below until the believers imagined vain things, and disaffection was rife among the disaffected to the point that Ma’attib bin Qusyahr brother of B. Amr bin Auf said, "Muhammad used to promise us that we should eat the treasures of Chosroes and Caesar and today not one of us can feel safe in going to the privy!"[8]

These passages stress the importance of wealth and booty as a motive for conversion. Muhammad promised his followers that they would one day spend the treasures of Caesar. He distributed war booty after every military campaign, and he used his wealth to win converts. Thus, many early Muslims embraced the religion with impure motives, yet Muhammad saw nothing wrong with such conversions.

Reason Four: Fear of Death

Muhammad’s personality, conviction, and eloquence certainly played a role in winning people to Islam. However, he won few supporters when he relied on his "winsome personality" and sincerity to spread Islam. It is only when Muhammad turned to violence and oppression that we find large conversions to Islam. For instance, Muslim writings report a large number of conversions that took place after the assassination of a woman who had criticized Islam:

When the apostle heard what she had said he said, "Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?" Umayr bin Adiy al-Khatmi who was with him heard him, and that very night he went to her house and killed her. In the morning he came to the apostle and told him what he had done and he said, "You have helped God and His apostle, O Umayr!" When he asked if he would have to bear any evil consequences the apostle said, "Two goats won’t butt their heads about her," so Umayr went back to his people. . . . The day after Bint Marwan was killed the men of B. Khatma became Muslims because they saw the power of Islam.[9]

Whereas the men of Khatma became Muslims when they saw Islam’s power over others, many individuals converted because their own lives were in danger. Ka’b bin Zuhayr heard from his brother that Muhammad "had killed some of the men in Mecca who had satirized and insulted him and that the Quraysh poets who were left . . . had fled in all directions."[10] The brother then suggested that Ka’b go to Muhammad and convert before it was too late. Ka’b heeded his brother’s advice:

When Ka’b received the missive he was deeply distressed and anxious for his life. His enemies in the neighbourhood spread alarming reports about him saying that he was as good as slain. Finding no way out, he wrote his ode in which he praised the apostle and mentioned his fear and the slanderous reports of his enemies. Then he set out for Medina and stayed with a man of Juhayna whom he knew, according to my information. He took him to the apostle when he was praying morning prayers, and he prayed with him. The man pointed out the apostle to him and told him to go and ask for his life. He got up and went and sat by the apostle and placed his hand in his, the apostle not knowing who he was. He said, "O apostle, Ka’b bin Zhayr has come to ask security from you as a repentant Muslim. Would you accept him as such if he came to you?" When the apostle said that he would, he confessed that he was Ka’b bin Zuhayr.[11]

History also shows that some were directly threatened with death (in the presence of Muhammad) if they didn’t convert:

[Muhammad] said: "Woe to you, Abu Sufyan, isn’t it time that you recognize that I am God’s apostle?" He answered, "As to that I still have some doubt." I said to him, "Submit and testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the apostle of God before you lose your head," so he did so.[12]

Abu Sufyan doubted the prophethood of Muhammad, yet he was told to convert before he lost his head. Fully aware of the countless people that had been murdered by Muhammad, Abu Sufyan submitted to the Prophet.

Thus, fear of death played a crucial role in converting people to Islam. Since Islam didn’t really take root until Muhammad began spreading it through violence, fear of death may have been the single most important factor in the early spread of Islam.

2005-10-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

I can see why this article was never published by the LA Times. Ive learnt in my job that its not always wise telling a twit the truth.

Da Lizard

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19856

Not So Forgiving: The Reparations Argument Revisited
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 17, 2005

Political argument in
America is increasingly a dialogue of the deaf. The controversy over reparations for black slavery, in which opponents argue across a Grand Canyon of disagreement where no common ground seems possible is a case in point. A recent book by San Diego Law professor Roy L. Brooks -- Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations -- attempts to extricate the two sides from the impasse. His failure illustrates exactly how difficult the task is.

Brooks’ argument begins by defining the reparations issue: “When a government commits an atrocity against an innocent people, it has, at the very least, a moral obligation to apologize and to make that apology believable by doing something tangible called a ‘reparation.’ The government of the United States committed atrocities against black Americans for two and one quarter centuries in the form of chattel slavery and for an additional one hundred years in the form of Jim Crow--…and it has not even tendered an apology for either.”

The problem begins with this opening, which contains two false claims, starting with the statement that the Government of the United States maintained a system of chattel slavery for 225 years. In fact, the Government of the United States had existed for only 87 years before it enacted an Emancipation Proclamation, which ended the slave system it had inherited from the British Empire. It paid a terrible price in blood and treasure, moreover, to do so. The Government which Brooks indicts as criminal was created in a Declaration that proclaimed the then revolutionary idea that all men are created equal. This declaration resulted almost immediately in the ending of slavery in nearly half the newly united states. Within a generation it led to the freedom of all slaves in North America and the Western hemisphere. These are not small facts when weighing the matter of restitution, yet they are entirely absent from Professor Brooks’ considerations.

Before 1776, slavery existed at one time or another in all human societies, and for 3,000 years was unchallenged by any moral authorities. American Founders and the English Christians who inspired them were the first individuals to condemn slavery as an institution (albeit not all the American Founders did so). This puts the crime of America in a somewhat different light than that suggested by reparations clamants. Slavery was an institution that America inherited, but destroyed within a generation, something no nation had thought to do since the beginning of recorded history prior to 1776.

It is also false to say, as Professor Brooks does, that no apology has been made for slavery or for Jim Crow. In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, generally regarded as the most eloquent speech in the English language, the American President called slavery an offense to God, said the Civil War was God’s retribution on America for slavery, and warned that the war would continue until “every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” If that isn’t contrition and if the 300,000 Union lives sacrificed to end slavery isn’t some kind of payment, it would be hard to say what is.

Like others who argue his case, Brooks ignores these reparations because he dismisses the Civil War as a conflict solely about “preserving the Union” rather than ending slavery. This is historically untenable and Professor Brooks does not himself believe it. Thus, without pausing to notice the contradiction, he also decries the flying of the Confederate flag as a symbol of slavery. Well, which is it? If the confederacy was created to preserve slavery – as it was – and if the civil war was about restoring a union based on the proposition that all men are created equal, then those who died to achieve this result, died in the cause of freedom for all Americans and African Americans in particular.

The indisputable truth in the reparations claim is that slavery was a crime and that no restitution was made to the slaves themselves. But the reparations case that is argued today is not made in behalf of the slaves who suffered, and who are all dead. It is made in behalf of living black Americans who are alleged to be victims of slavery in some politically relevant sense, enough to require payment from their contemporaries. But how can an injury from slavery be demonstrated three or four generations after the fact, and by people who may be quite wealthy themselves like such millionaire reparations supporters as Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and Cornel West?

Half the black population in America is now middle class. It is true that approximately 25% of black Americans have been left behind and live below the poverty line. But how can this be established as a consequence of slavery (or segregation) if 75% of blacks are not poor? Moreover, if discrimination is in itself an explanation for economic failure, how account for the success of minorities like Jews and Asians, or those blacks whose ancestors came from the West Indies and whose income is close to that of whites?

Professor Brooks does not even address these issues but proposes instead a “new model for reparations,” involving contrition rather than judgment. In criticizing what he refers to as the “tort model,” Brooks makes a welcome point: “The tort model like all litigation, is too contentious, too confrontational to provide the kind of racial reconciliation and accord that is needed for future race relations.” Moreover, the legal case for reparations is thin. “A final blow to slave-redress claims based on international law,” observes Brooks, “is the fact that most legal scholars have determined that slavery was not illegal during its practice in the United States.” For obvious reasons like this, reparations suits have been unsuccessful in the courts.

In fact all the slavery reparations suits are frivolous. In the case of governmental suits, the wrong government is in the dock. If the claims were directed at the Confederacy, they would make sense, but directed against the government that destroyed the slave system they make no sense at all. In the case of private corporations, the torts are absurdly old and the appropriate plaintiffs, witnesses and defendants, are long dead. There is no real connection between a corporation that existed in 1850 and a corporation that might bear the same name 150 years later. If the courts weren’t so guilt-ridden over the treatment of Africans and their descendants in America, the lawyers involved in these suits would be disciplined under Rule 11, which bars officers of the court from wasting its time and resources on such fooleries.

To extricate the reparations movement from its legal cul-de-sac, Brooks proposes an “atonement model.” Half of his argument in this section of the book is admirable. He proposes a government financed “Museum of Slavery,” for example, to remind Americans of this tragic past. Who would oppose this?

But he then proceeds to agendas that are more questionable, such as a formal apology for slavery from a government that ended slavery and has provided more freedoms to black citizens in America than black people enjoy anywhere else in the world, including all of black Africa. Brooks recognizes that living Americans did not perpetrate slavery, but argues that segregation and discrimination also had damaging effects for which reparations are necessary. Unfortunately this argument has problems identical to those of the original tort model. Most Americans alive today had no complicity in segregation, which was confined to southern states. Most were born after the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. Many participated in the movements that led to those Acts. Huge numbers are immigrants or minorities themselves. Moreover, there have already been significant apologies for America’s racial injustices made by American leaders, including presidents Clinton and Bush.

Perhaps Professor Brooks is unaware that Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty at Howard University on the 100th anniversary of the liberation of the slaves and devoted his speech to the difference between white poverty and black poverty, ascribing the latter to social injustice and the crimes that America had committed against African slaves. Or that the programs his speech spawned have transferred more than $1.5 trillion from non-black Americans to poor black Americans net. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed that national holidays honoring the births of America’s founding fathers, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln were removed from the calendar so that we might honor the only American now with a national holiday in his name. That man is Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the civil rights movement that ended segregation and legal discrimination. If that recognition is not enough to satisfy Professor Brooks, and those who think like him, what would be?

Unfortunately, Brooks goes a lot further than apologies and museums to propose an “Atonement Trust Fund,” which would tax Americans to provide money to every black child, accumulating for the first 25 years of the child’s life. This proposal sums up the distance we are from the reconciliation that Brooks seeks. It demonstrates how atonement for some is prosecution (and discrimination) to others. Why should tens of millions of black Americans who are already comfortably middle class receive monies based on their skin color that is taxed from Mexican, Korean and Arab Americans, let alone white Americans who had no part in slavery or discrimination, and who may be no better off or even worse – and to do so in the name of injustices committed 50 or a 150 years ago? What kind of reconciliation is this?

*This review was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles Times, which held it for more than a year without publishing it, before informing the author that it had no intention of doing so.

2005-10-15T17:40:00.000-07:00

I got to admit Ive missed my HOCKEY...

da lizard

http://www.castefootball.us/viewarticle.asp?sportID=14&teamID=0&ID=22843

J. B. Cash's Column

The NHL is Back!

(10/15/05) The 2005-2006 season opened to record crowds after a year long absence, silencing the doubters who had predicted doom and gloom for North America’s best team sport. ESPN, which dropped hockey from its regular programming, has been an especially harsh critic of the game. The Caste System-worshiping network may yet regret its decision.

There is a lot to be excited about. Lots of talented players have changed teams due to the new salary cap restrictions. The talent level has evened out across the league so nearly every team has some players worth watching. Prospects look good for teams in those Northeastern cities with large hockey fan populations: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Boston, as well as traditional contenders in Detroit and New Jersey. Hey maybe even the Rangers can get it right for once.

Rules changes aimed at opening up the offense promise excitement for those that appreciate goal scoring. The clutching and grabbing, along with other interference-causing defensive maneuvers, has been banned which should loosen up the offensive zone for the best stick-handlers. The center red line is gone, no more two-line offside penalties, which means teams can break out of their own zone and down the ice in lightning like fashion.

The only down side so far to the rules changes is that there is a lot of penalties as players learn what will be tolerated and what will not. But the bonus is: more power plays! Power plays, the most exciting two minutes in sports, are now so frequent that there are virtually no slow spots in the game. What sport can say that?

The use of the "shoot-out" to decide tie games is sure to be a crowd pleaser as it will feature hockey’s most exciting play: the breakaway, performed by the teams' best players until the tie is broken. Imagine if baseball could arrange to have a series of players trying to score from first or football arranged to have a player running for a touchdown with one player from the defense (the best tackler) to beat.

Hockey is a sport rooted in tradition; it's played and loved by people that hail from the northern latitudes. The use of ice skates is particular to the peoples of northern Europe and their extended family in North America. Nowhere else on the globe did people develop the necessary skills to thrive so well that they had enough free time to invent games to play in harsh winter weather.

The idea that a fan base can be generated from people that have never skated, has proven daunting thus far. In the warm weather locations where the NHL has planted franchises the local fan base is primarily made up of "snowbirds" — retirees or transplants from the north.

And it is not enough just to live, or have lived, in a cold weather location. One must embrace the climate. Many northern American cities have large non-white populations but those people have not become hockey players or fans. Thus hockey is a virtually all-white sport and promises to remain one for some time. This makes hockey a non-winner to those Madison Avenue types that want to remake the world into a rainbow-hued multi-racial paradise.

Here is a list of some things about hockey players which makes them unattractive to modern media sensibilities:

* There are no hockey players that aspire to be actors and make it big in LA-LA land
* No players that cut rap albums
* No hip-hop music in the locker room
* You will never, ever, hear a player ‘braggin’ on hisself’; if they did it would be lights out the next time they stepped on the ice.
* Few players have multiple kids to multiple women and if they did the kids would have the same last name as them
* No one wears cornrows, dreadlocks, or dog rags
* Hockey players actually believe drug use effects their playing ability negatively
* When hockey players are interviewed you can understand what they are saying even if they are from a foreign country and have just learned to speak English a few weeks before
* Players never yell or assault their coaches
* Lots of white ethnic names, with plenty of vowels and consonant combinations that are difficult to pronounce, especially among Americans that are used to their sports stars being named Johnson, Jones, or Smith.
* No ridiculous dancing after scores
* Hockey players hang their heads when they do something wrong
* No one drives an Escalade or a Hummer
* When a hockey player is escorted by a beautiful blonde woman she is not "on the clock"
* Hockey players don’t need four failed drug tests before they are suspended
* Few players are arrested, virtually none for murder, violent crime, or sexual assault/rape. (the one "murder" case to make the news from the NHL involved a player that tried to hire someone to kill someone else—-NFL players prefer to do the job themselves!)

Almost all hockey players are the types of kids you would want your kids to hang out with. Hockey players often hail from small towns and lead what was once considered "normal" lives, back when we were allowed to consider decent behavior normal. No ghetto gangsters or streetwise thugs. Once a kid has shown some skill he joins a team and frequently his parents or other parents take him around to all his games. With so much parental investment you end up with kids that have been raised right. No going out with the homies and shooting hoops all night long at the local playground/drug market.

And a lot of hockey players are foreign. That means the sport is full of players from quiet towns in Sweden and Russia. That also means the behavioral level of the average hockey player is better than the average Boy Scout.

Hockey is not just a different sport from the other team sports like football and basketball, it is a different world from those sports.

For anyone that is sick and tired of the type of player that makes up the rosters of our professional football, baseball and basketball teams, then they should look to hockey. It's a fast-paced, exciting game filled with the best of our young men. Caste Football welcomes back the best team sport in North America.

2005-10-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/12820794.htm

Pot grower accidentally shoots self, police say

HE WAS ALLEGEDLY TRYING TO BOOBY-TRAP MARIJUANA PLANTS

HERALD-LEADER STAFF REPORT

A Spencer County man was trying to "booby trap" his home to protect his marijuana plants when he accidentally shot himself, Kentucky State Police said yesterday.

Police were called to the Flaget Memorial Hospital in Bardstown to investigate a patient suffering from a gunshot wound. Preliminary investigation revealed that Danny Walden, of Taylorsville, was attempting to protect his marijuana plants when he accidentally shot himself, state police said.

Because of the seriousness of his leg injury, Walden was later taken by ambulance to the University of Louisville Hospital.

Police searched Walden's home at 950 Bowman Lane in Taylorsville, finding 115 marijuana plants -- 37 growing in a closet and 78 in a crawl space.

Police also seized four surveillance cameras and monitors, as well as several guns.

The state police Hazardous Devices Unit was called in to remove the single "booby-trapped rifle" that had injured Walden. No other traps were located in the home.

When he recovers from his injury, Walden will be taken to the Shelby County Detention Center, state police said yesterday. He is charged with cultivating in marijuana, his second offense, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

2005-10-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

Odds are you didnt hear about this one...

da Lizard

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/VernonRichards51005.htm

Oklahoma Jihad

By: Vernon Richards, author of: ‘Islam Undressed’

Football fans in Oklahoma dodged a bullet Oct 1 2005, and the sad fact is that most of the lucky are blissfully ignorant of how close they came to being the latest victims of Islam’s world-wide Jihad. In a minor report buried amongst the Supreme Court nominations, main-stream media reported an apparent suicide by a ‘small’ explosive device by a disturbed Oklahoma Student outside a Sooner’s football game. Poor disturbed Joel Henry Hinrichs III, a distraught engineering student from Colorado, had decided that taking the time to build a powerful explosive vest and blowing himself up near a huge public event was preferable to shooting himself in the head all alone in his apartment he shared with two roommates from Pakistan. 87,000 fans only learned about the ‘suicide’ when they were delayed from leaving the stadium for a bit while the site was cleaned up. No one was told that part of the clean-up consisted of rendering harmless an additional large bomb nearby, or that the blast was strong enough to be heard 4 miles away and blow out windows of a building 200 yards away. CNN somehow failed to catch the fact that the boy was a recent Muslim convert sporting the typical beard of the devout. We don’t want to be accused of being insensitive to our peaceful Muslim fellow Americans, so the spin by mainstream media in keeping this huge story off the front page is ongoing.

A lot of additional information has been coming out of this event which somehow has missed by all but the most conservative news blogs. Apparently the local CBS affiliate in OKC also held a report that Hinrichs has been known to visit the local Islamic center around the corner from his apartment. But that is not national news, so they stuff it in a small byline. Still, information is slowly leaking out. A blogger named PhiKapMom posted:

I was at the game so I might as well post what a girl at my son's fraternity said. She is Iranian (Persian) and she said two dark Middle Eastern types came running into the stadium and separated several minutes after the bomb went off. She said since she was Middle Eastern she felt safe in saying they fit the profile. She made a point of saying they were much darker skinned then the Iranian people and when she heard the bomb blast, she was convinced at the time it was a suicide bomb and these two were part of what was happening.

The police raided the young mans apartment and found some other interesting facts and items apparently not worthy of reporting, like lots of extremist Jihad material and enough explosives to keep the bomb squad busy for hours removing it. It was also discovered that the boy had two Pakistani roommates, and we all know how moderate Pakistani Muslims are. No word as to whether they were the two reported making their escape after the blast. It also emerged that Dustin Ellison, the general manager of Ellison Feed & Seed on Porter Avenue reported that Joel Henry Hinrichs had previously inquired about purchasing a significant amount of ammonium nitrate, but couldn't offer a reason why he needed it.

Apparently Hinrichs was an at-risk depressed young man who fell into the clutches of Fanatical Islam. As has been shown in Israel and Iraq , Islamists often manipulate the humiliated, the depressed, and sometimes the intellectually handicapped to carry out their most vile acts of murder by explosion. The boy is dead, but his handlers, either the local Imam/Cleric and/or Muslim roommates, still run free. One wonders why their faces are not broadcast nation-wide to bring them to justice. The largest attempted attack on a public venue since 9-11 and our media suppresses the facts to insure public support for the War on Terror continues to deteriorate, and to prevent Bushes approval rating from spiking. Spin and misinformation, or no-information, remain effective tools of an extreme Socialist agenda playing a fatal political game with American lives.

Either Hinrichs had reservations and was killed to cover his co-conspirators escape, or the explosives were mishandled arming them. Either way, hundreds of lives were spared the horror of yet another sanctimonious act demonstrating pure Islam. The secondary bomb was obviously intended to be set-off after homicide weapon had been detonated, and the potential for panic and deaths by stampede are all too real.

And what would have been the reaction if the young man and his handlers had succeeded in killing hundreds of Americans? Mmmmm? Well CAIR would had condemned the act as having nothing to do with Islam and requested authorities to protect Muslims from any unjustified backlash. Mean while the same individuals would have praised Allah in secret, while Muslims world wide danced in the street. Soundly condemned in English, the act would enter Muslim lore as another example of Islam’s superiority to all other peoples and nations. We can also be sure that every leftist from Washington to Seattle would blame Bush and his neo-cons for provoking otherwise peaceful Muslims to such extreme measures, as if Muslims have ever had any difficulty coming up with the necessary pretext to kill infidels.

Few truly familiar with Islamic culture are surprised at the crazed mobs stirred up in Mosques worldwide, but it is troubling indeed when born and bread Americans fall under the spell of this culture of death. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised since the indoctrination in sacred script, official publications, and media creates the belief that Americans, Jews, Hindus, and other non-Muslims are not human beings in the same sense as Muslims, and can and should be slaughtered with impunity.

Unfortunately, equality is an unacceptable idea to Islam. A basic principle of Islamism holds that humanity is divided according to a strict hierarchy of worth. At the top of this hierarchy are free Muslim males, the cream of humanity. Below them, in descending order of humanity, are: Muslim male slaves, free Muslim women, Muslim female slaves, the males of the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), and, then, the female of the ‘People of the Book’. Finally, the rest of humanity comes in dead last (excuse the pun); because they lack a soul they are regarded as worthless having no rights whatsoever. This unfortunate final grouping includes Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, and others. But before Jews and Christians celebrate escaping last-place in this uniquely Islamic popularity contest, the fine print should first be carefully studied. Quotes referencing Christians and Jews from the Qur’an include: – "Worst of Creatures, Perverse, and Friends of Satan". The clear direction from Muhammad appears to be that Muslims are not allowed to even be friends or take favors from Jews and Christians, unless that devotion/tax is extracted by force or threat of force. Christians and Jews were regarded with contempt by Muhammad, the final words reported from the mouth of the dying Prophet were a curse on them "Allah's damnation be on the Jews and the Christians …." Some other interesting Koranic tidbits:

Sura 98:6: Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures.

Sura 5:51 O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya' (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya' to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya', then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrongdoers and unjust).

This shows that even blood ties are to be broken in the cause of Islam. Country and family ties, devotions, and sensibilities are dissolved by Islam. When one takes into consideration that Muhammad demands all faithful support and/or engage in Jihad, the direction to have no Muslim friends makes perfect sense. It’s all part of the psychology of violence. Built-in natural human feelings of empathy and all impulses of conscience must be overcome before an individual can perform an act of violence or treachery. Islam thus grooms otherwise nominal humans into becoming an effective, non-thinking, non-feeling Jihadist killing machines.

It’s imperative that our schools begin to teach the real nature of Islamic doctrine and how it relates to 1400 years of ongoing violence with all who come in contact with Islam’s faithful. The first order of the day is to protect our impressionable and passionate young from becoming the unwitting tools of the most inhumane theology in the world today. By protecting them with the shield of truth, we also protect ourselves. Middle Eastern men are much easier to spot and stop than American Jihadist recruits. Or, we can happily comply with the manipulation of our national media and just roll over and go back to sleep. …”Move along, …nothing to see here …just move along”.

2005-09-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Another rant for Welfare Wednesday...

Half of them have been DRUNK!!!!!!

How can it be considered healthy to be drunk by 10am???

The other half are complaining that they are only getting channels 3 or some other dumb problem...

I have to keep telling myself that "I LOVE MY JOB!!!!"

da Lizard

2005-09-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

Oh my GOD its welfare wednesday!!!!

I hate welfare and the people that live on it. Welfare has been so badly abused that it should be scraped. Ya Ya I know, some people seem to think that it is a right! Its not, its meant to be there to help people thru a tough time. Shit, my parents have been on it, but as soon as my dad had a job and earned enough money, he went down with a cheque to the local welfare office and paid them back every cent that they gave him. The lady at the desk didnt know what to do with it, they had to call someone to figure out what to do with the money.

Aparently PRIDE, INTEGRITY and HONESTY are not very common traits for people on WELFARE! We see it here every welfare wednesday. The dregs of society come in and pay thier bills. These are people that buy the worst kind of food at the supermarket! CRAP DINNER!!! CHIPS!!! They dont buy healthy food. Yet they claim Im fat, IM DISABLED I CANT WORK!!! When they dont pay there bills they scream that they have rights and we are violating them. I cant tell you how many time Ive spoken to people at the local welfare office because it was easier for them to tell the bastards they will talk to us so they can get them out of their offices. Im sorry CABLE AND INTERNET ARE NOT A RIGHT!!!

Ive got a friend of mine, he works full time on minimum wage and any extra work that comes his way he takes. Hes got 2 kids and a mortgage payment. From time to time he ends up going to welfare and asking for help. THis I got no problem with. He likes to earn his way and it eats at him every time he has to ask. The scary thing is the welfare dudes have told him to go unto welfare hed make more money from them than working at minimum wage.

No wonder this country is going to shit. Corporations are sending the jobs to 3rd world nations. The food is being deliberately spiked to make it addictive and unhealthy. A work ethic is now considered a bad thing.

I could go on, Ive got a lot more I could say, but I think you guys get the picture.

da Lizard

2005-09-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

"Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." — William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice

2005-09-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Pretty slow weekend except for one nut that Im fighting with...

da lizard

http://www.newswithviews.com/Duke/selwyn17.htm

FIGHTING THE MAN & BLACK DOGMA

by Selwyn Duke
September 14, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina there were certain inevitabilities. No, scores of thousands of hapless souls trapped in a city on a precipice was not one of them. Personal and governmental responsibility would have relegated that scenario to the realm of imagination. Nor were looting and all the other manner and form of hooliganism and the resultant pain and death inescapable realities. Possessing the intestinal fortitude to issue a shoot on sight order would have kept the rats in their holes and preserved lives and many lasses' honor.

But there were inevitabilities.

You had to know it was coming. I could feel it; I could smell it. I knew it was only a matter of time - and not much time at that - before the levees of decency and common-sense were breeched by the storm surge of racial hatred and paranoia.

Then it happened. The inevitable allegations that President Bush, FEMA and rest of that infernal white establishment - whose mere shadow ostensibly rendered the New Orleans black establishment impotent - were at best indifferent to and at worst reveling in the plight of the city's beleaguered black community.

And that's how it started. Now, the usual pathology has appeared. From platitudinous racial tripe, we've transitioned to true paranoia and overt racial demagoguery, as the rabble-rousers who see a roarin' twenties bigot clad in a white sheet around every corner engage in their brand of looting.

Enter stage left, Kanye West, a purveyor of the cultural effluent known as rap. He had a hissy fit on stage during an NBC Katrina fundraiser and started stammering and babbling quasi-incoherently in what amounted to an assertion that the only thing black about George Bush was his heart. West said that America was set up,

" . . . to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

And,

"They've given them permission to go down and shoot us . . ."

Lastly he proclaimed,

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

Finding one of his many soullessmates in the hollowed hells of government, his remarks were defended by congressman Cynthia McKinney who said,

"As I saw families ripped apart, I could only think about slavery. [They] look like concentration camps."

Gee, with countrymen like this in our corner in our darker hours, who needs Al-Qaida?

Lost - no doubt forever so - on these folks are a few little, insignificant facts. For one thing, four of the five parishes hardest hit in New Orleans were predominantly white. For another, most of the rescuers were white and, lastly, the lion's share of the millions of dollars that are pouring in from all points has been doled out by white hands.

As for lending this perspective, that's as far as I'll go, since I'm not too fond of exercises in futility. And as I throw up my hands I can only echo the sentiments of Louis Armstrong, offered when asked how one plays jazz: "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

No, the McKinneys and Wests and Sharptons of the world may never know how to interpret the actions of white folks because those wretches view the latter through tinted glasses. But while they may never understand whites, if whites want to understand them they have to understand what I call "fighting the 'man' and black dogma."

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this phenomenon is with a real-life example. Everyone remembers the O.J. Simpson trial, and I think most of us also recollect how it divided the country along racial lines. Simpson was as guilty as sin, yet, polls showed that approximately two-thirds of black people thought him innocent and, astoundingly, the same percentage thought he shouldn't even stand trial.

Now, to explain this, pseudo-intellectual pontificators postulated theories having to do with blacks' disproportionately negative experiences with law enforcement and the legal system, providing the wrong half media with sound bites that pleased the politically-correct palate. But a better explanation came from a far more anonymous and far less guileful source.

Some years back an individual close to my heart got to talking about the Simpson case with a rather frank black woman, a person who, I imagine, was a "one-thirder." This woman explained that most of the black folks proclaiming Simpson's innocence didn't really believe it in their hearts, it was simply designed for white people's consumption. In other words, they were abiding by a tenet of black dogma: thou shalt always defend thine own and fight the "man."

This dogma dictates that racial-patriotism is the greatest virtue. As such, you don't give up one of your own to the opposition. It doesn't matter what he has done, what he is or who he has hurt, you don't give white people a victory.

What about right and wrong? Isn't it wrong to kill, steal and rape? Must not justice be done? Sure . . . but . . . there's a hierarchy here. And occupying the top spot is the greatest good of all: that racial-patriotism. It justifies all, spares none and gives no quarter. Everything must be subordinated to that imperative.

Of course, black people who reject and even abhor the dogma are easy to find. But since deviation from the dogma is apostasy, many are either given no voice or are cowed into silence. I suppose you could call them the silent minority of the minority.

Then, too, those possessing both a large podium and a stout heart are also present, and their voices are strong and defiant. They would be individuals such as Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes, Jesse Lee Peterson, Bill Cosby and the members of Project 21. But having left the liberal plantation, they've become the lynched minority of the minority of the minority, as they are held in contempt as race-traitors and labeled Oreos and Uncle Toms.

Such hostility is not surprising, however, because black dogma is not an invention of the intellect, and it certainly isn't divinely inspired. Rather, it's born of the emotional realm, having wrath as its impetus.

And there's a funny thing about anger and hatred: it blinds one. If you've ever wondered why rumors circulated in the black community that AIDS was the fruits of an effort to commit genocide against black people, or that the drug trade was being facilitated by the CIA for the purposes of undermining black progress, wonder no more. If you've ever wondered how it is that so many black people are willing to attribute anything and everything - such as Michael Jackson's skin bleaching, blacks' poor academic performance and their high rate of incarceration - to bigotry, wonder no more. An angry man is blind to truth, because anger is like darkness: the more there is, the less you can see.

It's much like that tormented soul you once knew who harbored a burning antipathy, one on which the sun never set. Perhaps it was directed against you or someone you know. If you were the object, you could do nothing right as he viewed you with the most jaundiced of eyes. Your failings were never mere accidents, but always purposeful attempts to thwart him or be a thorn in his side. If you did him a good turn, it was perceived as quite the opposite or, at best, as having been driven by ulterior motives. You see, he knew what you were, or, at least he thought he did. And he knew what to expect from the likes of you.

So it is with the adherents of the cult of black dogma: they know what white people are and what to expect from them. They know that white people are consumed with concerns about race and are inherently bigoted. They know that whites conspire to keep blacks down and that their nefarious machinations are as many as the stars in the sky. They know all these things, or, at least they think they do.

This is why we hear some black folks become truly exercised over the use of the word "refugees" to describe flood victims. They know that the use of this word, assuming it is in fact inappropriate to the situation, cannot be an innocent slip of the pen or the product of a zealous effort to capture the drama of a disaster of biblical proportions. No, no, it's just another attempt by the white establishment to stigmatize black people. That's what whites do, you see.

At this juncture one may ask about the other side of the coin: is there not white dogma? Well, needless to say, every group contains elements that subscribe to a version of racial dogma. But, while this may disappoint you, you won't see this pen issue any desperate disclaimers, pretend as if differences between groups are non-existent or pay homage to populist ideas of being "fair and balanced." This is because I know that true balance involves being centered around the truth, not jumping through hoops to remain situated at the center of a political spectrum whose heart is occupied by the characteristic prejudice of the day.

So, what is the truth? It's something you will hardly ever read or hear in the media, for it's one of the many third rails of social commentary. Some dare think it, but to give it voice is forbidden. This truth is that, generally speaking, bigotry and racial hatred imbue the black community to a far greater degree than the white one. Racial dogma lies at the heart of black America, and while it is found in white America as well, it's present only at its fringes. It doesn't characterize the white collective psyche.

The reason for this is simple. There are two Americas, as a rather dim-witted presidential aspirant once opined, but not in the way he meant. You see, white and black children are raised with very different sets of values and ideas, yielding disparate world views. The average white child nowadays is raised with either little mention of race or with the idea that prejudice in any form is to be considered anathema. He isn't inculcated with ideas about taking pride in his "whiteness" or white identity any more than in his hair or eye color. Oh, don't get me wrong, white people have their obsessions, too. But these obsessions are as likely to involve any one of a plenitude of other things as they are to involve race.

In contrast, most black children are weaned on entirely different stuff altogether. From infancy they are barraged with the idea, transmitted both implicitly and explicitly, that race is a central factor in their lives. They are told to "take pride" in being black and may hear affirmations like, "You're going to be a strong, young black man!" In schools and often at home there is a gratuitous focus on the transgressions committed against those who they are told are "their people" and, furthermore, they're instilled with the notion that an invisible hand of oppression bedevils them to this day. The white man has kept you down; the white man has oppressed you. Theirs is to imbibe this daily, starting with a baby formula laced with black dogma.

This is an old story; it's the story of how hate has been perpetuated throughout the ages. It's no different from the plight of the millions of Arab children who are radicalized in madrassahs steeped in anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda. And as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

This is also why the Cynthia McKinneys, Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world are the most loathsome of creatures. These false prophets maintain their power and control by perpetuating this cycle of hatred, thereby ensuring that each generation of black youth will feel alienated from their white brethren. In turn, that ensures that Americans will remain divided.

But there's another consequence.

By crippling generations of black children with black dogma - a philosophy of hate, defeatism, nihilism and failure - they corrupt their minds and consciences and damn them to a netherworld of moral, spiritual and material poverty.

And this is the genocide perpetrated upon the black community. It's not one that figures prominently in history books and is attended by grisly images of piles of corpses, and the agent of destruction isn't a virus or drug. It's a spiritual genocide, and its agent is found in the realm of ideas.

Of course, I don't expect the black dogmatists to lose much sleep over their ruinous stewardship of the black community. You see, long ago we learned that by their reckoning battles against oppression are only worth waging insofar as they enable you to fight the man. They proved this when they were willing to go to the ends of the Earth to overturn Apartheid in South Africa, while turning a blind eye to the greater transgressions being perpetrated upon Africans by black African governments. They prove it when they insist on resurrecting the ghosts of our antebellum past in every history discussion, while uttering nary a word about the present-day slavery rampant in African lands. They prove that what bothers them most isn't the weight of the iron fist that crushes the souls of their brothers, but the color of it. And lastly, and damnably, they prove that they believe that when the slave-master looks back at them in the mirror, those in bondage to him aren't called a slave class. They're called a constituency.

© 2005 Selwyn Duke - All Rights Reserved

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Selwyn Duke lives in Westchester County, New York. He's a tennis professional, internet entrepreneur and writer whose works have appeared on various sites on the Internet, including Intellectual Conservative, nenewamerica.us (Alan Keyes) and Mensnet. Selwyn has traveled extensively in his life, visiting exotic locales such as India, Morocco and Algeria and quite a number of other countries while playing the international tennis circuit.

E-Mail: SelwynDuke@aol.com

2005-09-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

"How can we unite in an era of diversity?" - Uri

2005-09-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

"Politicians are like tea bags, you cant tell if they are any good until they get into hot water." - unknown

"He who laughs last didnt get the joke." - Uri

da Lizard

2005-09-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Thankgod the week is almost over. Nothing but IDIOT calls.

You wouldnt believe how many people just dont listen. Its hard to help people when they ignore what you say and just repeat over and over what they think there problem is. When I ask a question it is because I am looking for some specific information, its not because I like the sound of peoples voices.... Or worse yet, I only get half way through my question and the customer goes off on their own tangent wasting both my time and theirs...

On a much sadder note, summer is almost over and the dresses are starting to disappear.

da Lizard

2005-08-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

ALL HAIL DARWIN THE GOD OF THE MODERN WORLD!!! MAY HIS HIGH PRIESTS RAIN DOWN HELLFIRE AND JUDGEMENT TO ALL THOSE THAT BLASHPEME AGAINST THE ONE TRUE RELIGION!!!

da Lizard
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680.html?sub=AR

By Michael PowellWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, August 19, 2005; Page A19
Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg made a fateful decision a year ago.
As editor of the hitherto obscure Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg decided to publish a paper making the case for "intelligent design," a controversial theory that holds that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- subtle or not -- of an intelligent creator.

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper.
"They were saying I accepted money under the table, that I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists," said Steinberg, 42 , who is a Smithsonian research associate. "I was basically run out of there."
An independent agency has come to the same conclusion, accusing top scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History of retaliating against Sternberg by investigating his religion and smearing him as a "creationist."
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which was established to protect federal employees from reprisals, examined e-mail traffic from these scientists and noted that "retaliation came in many forms . . . misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian Institution and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false."
"The rumor mill became so infected," James McVay, the principal legal adviser in the Office of Special Counsel, wrote to Sternberg, "that one of your colleagues had to circulate [your résumé] simply to dispel the rumor that you were not a scientist."
The Washington Post and two other media outlets obtained a copy of the still-private report.
McVay, who is a political appointee of the Bush administration, acknowledged in the report that a fuller response from the Smithsonian might have tempered his conclusions. As Sternberg is not a Smithsonian employee -- the National Institutes of Health pays his salary -- the special counsel lacks the power to impose a legal remedy.
A spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution declined comment, noting that it has not received McVay's report.
"We do stand by evolution -- we are a scientific organization," said Linda St. Thomas, the spokeswoman. An official privately suggested that McVay might want to embarrass the institution.
It is hard to overstate the passions fired by the debate over intelligent design. President Bush recently said that schoolchildren should learn about the theory alongside Darwin's theory of evolution -- a view that goes beyond even the stance of intelligent design advocates. Dozens of state school boards have attempted to mandate the teaching of anti-Darwinian theories.

A small band of scientists argue for intelligent design, saying evolutionary theory's path is littered with too many gaps and mysteries, and cannot account for the origin of life.
Most evolutionary biologists, not to mention much of the broader scientific community, dismiss intelligent design as a sophisticated version of creationism. To teach it in science classes, they say, would be to overturn hundreds of years of scientific progress. The National Museum of Natural History was drawn into this controversy in June, when protest forced it to withdraw from co-sponsorship of a documentary on intelligent design.

Sternberg's case has sent ripples far beyond the Beltway. The special counsel accused the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that defends the teaching of evolution, of orchestrating attacks on Sternberg.
"The NCSE worked closely with" the Smithsonian "in outlining a strategy to have you investigated and discredited," McVay wrote to Sternberg.
NCSE officials accused McVay of playing out a political agenda. "I must say that Mr. McVay flatters us beyond our desserts -- the Smithsonian is a distinguished organization of highly competent scientists, and they're not marionettes," said Eugenie Scott, the group's executive director. "If this was a corporation, and an employee did something that really embarrassed the administration, really blew it, how long do you think that person would be employed?"
Risky Decision
Sternberg is an unlikely revolutionary. He holds two PhDs in evolutionary biology, his graduate work draws praise from his former professors, and in 2000 he gained a coveted research associate appointment at the Smithsonian Institution.
Not long after that, Smithsonian scientists asked Sternberg to become the unpaid editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a sleepy scientific journal affiliated with the Smithsonian. Three years later, Sternberg agreed to consider a paper by Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge University-educated philosopher of science who argues that evolutionary theory cannot account for the vast profusion of multicellular species and forms in what is known as the Cambrian "explosion," which occurred about 530 million years ago.
Scientists still puzzle at this great proliferation of life. But Meyer's paper went several long steps further, arguing that an intelligent agent -- God, according to many who espouse intelligent design -- was the best explanation for the rapid appearance of higher life-forms.
Sternberg harbored his own doubts about Darwinian theory. He also acknowledged that this journal had not published such papers in the past and that he wanted to stir the scientific pot.
"I am not convinced by intelligent design but they have brought a lot of difficult questions to the fore," Sternberg said. "Science only moves forward on controversy."
He mailed Meyer's article to three scientists for a peer review. It has been suggested that Sternberg fabricated the peer review or sought unqualified scientists, a claim McVay dismissed.
"They were critical of the paper and gave 50 things to consider," Sternberg said. "But they said that people are talking about this and we should air the views."

When the article appeared, the reaction was near instantaneous and furious. Within days, detailed scientific critiques of Meyer's article appeared on pro-evolution Web sites. "The origin of genetic information is thoroughly understood," said Nick Matzke of the NCSE. "If the arguments were coherent this paper would have been revolutionary-- but they were bogus."
A senior Smithsonian scientist wrote in an e-mail: "We are evolutionary biologists and I am sorry to see us made into the laughing stock of the world, even if this kind of rubbish sells well in backwoods USA."

An e-mail stated, falsely, that Sternberg had "training as an orthodox priest." Another labeled him a "Young Earth Creationist," meaning a person who believes God created the world in the past 10,000 years.
This latter accusation is a reference to Sternberg's service on the board of the Baraminology Study Group, a "young Earth" group. Sternberg insists he does not believe in creationism. "I was rather strong in my criticism of them," he said. "But I agreed to work as a friendly but critical outsider."
Scott, of the NCSE, insisted that Smithsonian scientists had no choice but to explore Sternberg's religious beliefs. "They don't care if you are religious, but they do care a lot if you are a creationist," Scott said. "Sternberg denies it, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it argues for zealotry."
Endgame
Sternberg has seen stress piled upon stress in the past year. His marriage has dissolved, and he no longer comes into the Smithsonian. When the biological society issued a statement disavowing Meyer's article, Sternberg was advised not to attend. "I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order," Sternberg said.
A former professor of Sternberg's says the researcher has an intellectual penchant for going against the system. Sternberg does not deny it.
"I loathe careerism and the herd mentality," he said. "I really think that objective truth can be discovered and that popular opinion and consensus thinking does more to obscure than to reveal."

2005-08-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

Got this in the mail

da Lizard

Subject: Mathematical Proof

From a strictly mathematical viewpoint it goes like this:What Makes 100%?
What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?
Ever wonderabout those people who say they are giving more than 100%?
We have allbeen to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.
Howabout achieving 103%?
What makes up 100% in life?
Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:
If:A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented
as:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
andK-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,B-U-L-L- S-H-I-T2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work andKnowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's thebullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top.

2005-08-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

One more for good measure

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/singingman7/Drug.htm

da Lizard

2005-08-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

Whats scarier? George Bush as President of the USofA or Christopher Walkin?

You decide...

http://www.walken2008.com/index.html

da Lizard

2005-08-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

A 4% chance your kid is not yours... A lot I could say but I wont...

da Lizard

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050810_whose_child.html

Surprise! 1-in-25 Dads Not the Real FatherBy LiveScience Staffposted: 10 August 200507:01 pm ET

About 4 percent of men may unknowingly be raising a child that really belongs to the mailman or some other guy, researchers speculate in a new study.
Here's the real news: With modern methods, the truth will become known more frequently.
Researchers pawed through a host of scientific articles published around the world from 1950 through last year. The perceived "paternal discrepancy rate," as it is called, ranges from less than 1 percent to as high as 30 percent in the various studies. Most researchers believe the rate is less than 10 percent.
The author's settled on four percent -- one in 25 families -- in a new article in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The actual figure will likely become clearer as more people undergo DNA profiling and genetic testing, the researchers say. In the United States, rates of paternity testing alone more than doubled to 310,490 between 1991 and 2001, they note.
But there are other tests on the rise that could have the unintended effect of revealing a child to belong to another man.
DNA testing is becoming more common in courts, health care systems and in cases of organ transplants. Perhaps the most widespread use on the horizon is to diagnose susceptibility to hereditary diseases. Are you likely to get Alzheimer's or die from a heart attack or cancer? Medicine promises to one day let you know, should you want to.
Eventually, the researchers argue, there will be a greater need for support services and guidance on how to disclose paternal discrepancy.
"In a society where services and life decisions are increasingly influenced by genetics, our approach to [paternal discrepancy] cannot be simply to ignore this difficult issue," the authors write.