Complaints like "hurts my brain" and "blows my mind" as a result of exposure to incredible stories have recently been definitively tied to the neuronal cell death (apoptosis). Furthermore, the notion of the usefullness of the Baloney Detection Kit (BDK) in protection of brain cells against the negative effects of incredulity has recently garnered significant support. In this review, the authors gather the most notable examples in recent scientific and medical literature on the subject, evaluate the currently available data on the effectivness of BDK and propose new avenues for further research.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI is “investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall ‘Duke’ Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites.” The Journal also said the investigators are exploring “whether any other members of Congress” are involved.

Last night on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, Dean Calbreath of the San Diego Union Tribune – which recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Cunningham case – said that “as many as a half a dozen” members of Congress could ultimately be implicated in the prostitution scandal.

Sources close to the White House said Monday that Fox anchor Tony Snow is likely to accept the job as White House press secretary, succeeding Scott McClellan.

The sources said they expect him to announce his decision within the next few days.

World oil production is about to peak, so prices are headed even higher... On April 27-29 join over 50 experts in NYC to explore how to break America's oil addiction. Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma.

World oil production is about to peak, changing every aspect of our lifestyle... On April 27-29 hop in your car or get on a plane and come halfway across the country to join over 50 experts in NYC talking about how to use less oil.

State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state's new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher's door.

Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.

The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes.

Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas' recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.

Friday, April 7th, 7:00 PM
Seattle Labor Temple (Hall 1)
2800 1st Ave

We do not need more people from foreign countries coming in taking the jobs of Americans and bidding down our wages. We can do those jobs, even in the fields. The millions of young men who are prisoners around our country can pick the fruits and vegetables. I say let the prisoners pick the fruits.

British anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said Wednesday.

Detectives halted the London-bound flight at Durham Tees Valley Airport in northern England and Harraj Mann, 24, was taken off.

The taxi driver had become worried on the way to the airport because Mann had been singing along to The Clash's 1979 anthem "London Calling," which features the lyrics "Now war is declared -- and battle come down" while other lines warn of a "meltdown expected."

Mann told British newspapers the taxi had been fitted with a music system which allowed him to plug in his MP3 player and he had been playing The Clash, Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles to the driver.

"He didn't like Led Zeppelin or The Clash but I don't think there was any need to tell the police," Mann told the Daily Mirror.

When M. Smith learned she had AIDS in the early 1990's, she figured it was a death sentence....

She was 35, healthy, and never suspected that an ex-boyfriend, who died years earlier of AIDS related complications, had infected her.

Smith, who also had cancer at the time, says her prognosis gave her less than two years to live. So, she started to get her affairs in order.

One day, flipping through a magazine for HIV positive people, Smith, who asked we shield her identity, saw an ad offering to buy her $150,000 life insurance policy. Smith had no children and no husband.

According to the contract she signed, the company, Life Partners, would pay her $90,000 up front, and cover her combined life and health insurance premiums if she lived longer than two years. When she died, the company would collect the full value of the policy, potentially a windfall profit of more than 60 percent, depending on when Smith died.

That was 12 years ago. Smith is still alive, and the company has paid out $100,000 in premiums, according to Smith's attorneys. But Smith and her lawyers also claim that over the years, Life Partners has been trying to get out of its contract, claiming Smith should pay her own health premiums and at one point sending a letter saying, "The investors ... are no longer willing to support the cost of your health insurance."

In a letter to Smith this past August, the day her premium was due, Life Partners demanded she pay the money herself. Because Smith just turned 50, her health premiums jumped to $29,000 a year, money the self-employed woman does not have. Without that insurance, she says she will not be able to afford the pricey AIDS medicines keeping her alive.

Is the "Jesus" of this so-called "Jesusland" the Jesus of the Jefferson Bible (also called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels")?

When children go to a dinosaur museum, are the displays they see displays of science or displays of art and science fiction? Are we being deceived and brainwashed at an early age into believing a dinosaur myth? Deep probing questions need to be asked of the entire "dinosaur industry".

This article will discuss the possibility that there may have been an ongoing effort since the earliest dinosaur "discoveries" to plant, mix and match bones of various animals, such as crocodiles, alligators, iguanas, giraffes, elephants, cattle, kangaroos, ostriches, emus, dolphins, whales, rhinoceroses, etc. to construct and create a new man-made concept prehistoric animal called "dinosaurs".

Where bones from existing animals are not satisfactory for deception purposes, plaster substitutes may be manufactured and used. Some material similar or superior to plasticine clay or plaster of Paris would be suitable. Molds may also be employed.

The dinosaur industry needs to be investigated and questions need to be asked. I personally do not have any reasons to believe dinosaurs ever existed and I believe they may be a fabrication of nineteenth and twentieth century people...

1. Nature of dinosaur discoveries - only within the last 150 years and in huge unusual concentrated quantities going against the laws of nature and probability.

"The class Dinosauria was originally defined by Sir Richard Owen in 1842, in a two hour speech that reportedly held the audience captivated....

"It is generally accepted that the first discovery of dinosaur remains in North America was made in 1854 by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden during his exploration of the upper Missouri River."

[...]

So, dinosaurs were described in 1842 before the discoveries in 1854 which were required to give a clear picture of what dinosaurs looked like! Were discoveries made or constructed to fit the descriptions?

Why were there no discoveries by native Americans in all the years previous when they roamed the North American continent? There is no belief of dinosaurs in the native American religion or tradition.

For that matter, why were there no discoveries prior to the nineteenth century in any part of the world? According to the World Book Encyclopedia, "before the 1800's, no one ever knew that dinosaurs ever existed..".

[...]

Why has man suddenly made all these discoveries? Belgium, Mongolia, Tanzania, West Germany (and North America as well) were inhabited and very well explored for thousands of years and there were no discoveries until the nineteenth century. Why?

Finds of huge quantities of fossils in one area, or by one or few people, goes against the laws of natural probability and suggests a possible concentrated planting effort.

2. Nature of dinosaur discoverers and excavators - not by (initially) disinterested parties. When discovered by parties without a vested interest, they need to be told by dinosaur experts that they are dinosaur bones.

"Dinosaur skeletons were found for the first time in abundance in the Garden Park area of Colorado and at Como Bluff, Wyoming, in the late 1870s. These specimens initiated the First Great Dinosaur Rush in North America, driven largely by the efforts of a Philadelphia paleontologist, Edward Drinker Cope, and Othniel Marsh, a paleontologist from Yale University.

"These two men started as friends but became bitter rivals in a feud of legendary proportions. The stories surrounding these two include tales of armed field parties, spies, and intercepting shipments of fossils intended for the other."[Wozney's emphasis.]

Why were fossils being shipped to the discoverers and from whom?

Discoveries and excavations seem not to be made by disinterested people, such as farmers, ranchers, hikers, outdoor recreationists, but rather by people with vested interests, such as paleontologists, scientists, university professors, museum organization personnel, who were intentionally looking for dinosaur bones or who have studied dinosaurs previously. The finds are often made during special dinosaur-bone hunting trips and expeditions by these people to far-away regions already inhabited and explored.

This seems highly implausible.

How do we know the bones were not planted? How do we know the discoverers are honest and "on-the-level", so to speak? Again, we are taking other peoples' word that these are authentic finds.

[...]

It would take only a small number of people (less than ten, for example) to plant fake dinosaur bones on a worldwide scale. However, it is quite possible that much more than this number of people are involved.

3. Nature of public display preparation - integrity and source of fossils - possible tampering and bone substitution and possible fraudulent activities on a massive scale.

"Eight years after this reference book was published the first comprehensive skeletal form of a real dinosaur--Hadrosaurus foulkii --was unearthed in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Taller than a house, it had the pelvic structure of a bird, the tail of a lizard and, incredibly, it walked upright on two legs, foraging with arm-like forelimbs." [Wozney's emphasis.]

Were the bones of a bird and lizard and other animals used in the discovery?

"Even fossils that are difficult, nigh near impossible to collect in the field, are harder still to prepare in the lab. Specimens that take from a day to a week to remove from their beds of stone can require months or even years to clean, consolidate, repair and reconstruct for study or display.... "

What exactly is taking months or years? Is the public being given altered versions of bones? What exactly is going on? Is this science or art and science fiction? Is the public being deceived?

At The Changing Shape of Hadrosaurus foulkii we learn of an iguana skull being substituted for the skull of a dinosaur on display. Was the public told at the time? What are we not being told today?

"The original reconstruction of Hadrosaurus foulkii featured a creature in a kangaroo stance--an animal that used its tail as a third leg. At the same time, while the excavated fossil was nearly complete, it lacked a skull. Because parts of its skeleton resembled those of an iguana, the skull of a modern iguana was used as a model for the skull created for the original display in 1868. That sculpted skull is currently on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia as a historical curiosity."

"To add to this comedy of errors, today in our museums and hallowed halls of science, we have hundreds of dinosaur skeletons constructed, not of REAL bones, but of 'MOLDED COPIES.' If you don't believe this, just ask your friendly museum curator exactly where that 'whole' brontosaurus skeleton, or that 'whole' Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was discovered. Watch him start to cough and sputter as he tries to come up with a half-believable way to explain to you that they were really 'pieced' together based on a few discovered bones, or that most of the skeleton is based on some 'original' discovered somewhere which he himself has never seen! Or maybe he will be honest and tell you that what you are looking at is not even real bones."

If molded copies are being passed off as real bones, is this not deception and fraud? Would you trust an organization that is known to engage in deception and fraud?

SHUMATE: Every museum curator I know is quite forthright with the fact that most museums have replicas, and that perfectly complete skeletons are as rare as hen's teeth; in fact, perfectly complete skeletons would be less plausible than fragmentary ones. In fact, skeletons at the museum near my house are labelled as replicas up front. While other museums may not advertise the fact, how does this equate to "depiction and fraud"?

WOZNEY: What percentage of people are aware that molded bones are being used? Please indicate your source for such information. When you see a dinosaur skeleton on display, how do you know which bones, if any, are authentic? Are they all marked or labelled?

SHUMATE: As I said, this is no secret. Fiberglass models are much lighter than fossilized stone bones, and thus are easier to hang. Also, there are often not enough specimens of popular species for each museum to have one (there have only been six T-rex skulls found, for example).

WOZNEY: How many museum curators do you know? Please provide names, addresses, and/or fax numbers, and the dates you had conversations discussing these replicas.

Also please indicate which museums clearly label bones as "molded" or "authentic." Also indicate what percentage of museums worldwide this represents.

SHUMATE: Since your quoted source gave no such percentages, addresses, etc., I see no reason that I should do so.

WOZNEY: Most people do not have the benefit of having museums near their houses.

SHUMATE: How does this relate to our discussion?

WOZNEY: Personally, I do not believe museums should be using replicas, as they tend to mislead people. How many images are there and how much video footage is there of these replicas that do not have an explanatory note that "the bones have been manufactured"? Does your museum state where the original bones are located?

SHUMATE: More appropriately, most are labelled with the location at which the original bones are found. They are willing to tell me where the originals are located; I visited my local museum over the weekend, and the staff was quite friendly and forthcoming. No sputtering to be heard.

WOZNEY: If people are believing that molded bones are authentic dinosaur bones, then they are being deceived. If molded or manufactured bones are being passed off as authentic dinosaur bones, then this is fraud.

SHUMATE: No. If they believe that, they're wrong. If someone is intentionally deceiving, then they are deceived. You have yet to prove intent.

4. Existing artistic drawings and public exhibits showing off-balance and awkward postures that basic physics would rule out as being possible.

5. Very low odds of all these dinosaur bones being fossilized but not the bones of other animals.

7. A lack of organizations and people questioning or being skeptical of each and every discovery and public display. Dinosaurs are popular.

The dinosaur industry needs to be investigated and questions need to be asked. I personally do not have any reasons to believe dinosaurs ever existed and I believe they may be a fabrication of nineteenth and twentieth century people possibly under Satanic control pursuing an evolutionary and anti-Bible and anti-Christian agenda.

What would be the motivation for such a deceptive endeavor? Obvious motivations include trying to prove evolution, trying to disprove or cast doubt on the Christian Bible and the existence of the Christian God, trying to disprove the young-earth theory, and trying to disprove creationism. Yes, there are major political and religious ramifications.

The dinosaur concept implies that if God exists, He tinkered with His idea of dinosaurs for awhile, then probably discarded or became tired of this creation and then went on to create man. The presented dinosaur historical timeline suggests an imperfect God who came up with the idea of man as an afterthought, thus demoting the biblical idea that God created man in His own image.

[...]

The impression that I receive is that people were possibly being deceived and that the discoveries were possibly "being made" as a reaction and rebellion against God and the Bible.

[...]

As mentioned earlier, motivations for the possible invention of the dinosaur include trying to prove evolution, trying to disprove or cast doubt on the Bible and the existence of God, trying to disprove the young-earth theory, and trying to disprove creationism. Of course, the devil's ultimate goal is to cast doubt on the deity of Jesus Christ and prevent people's eternal salvation.

The name of Devils Canyon Science and Learning Center may possibly provide good insight to the real source of the dinosaur concept.

6. Implications of dinosaur discoveries to the theory of evolution and the belief that man was created in God's image, suggesting possible hidden and subtle political or religious agendas served on a naive and unsuspecting public.

I think at a fundamental level, in terms of what drives me in this is that I think God's glory is being robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution, creation, the origin of the world, the origin of biological complexity and diversity. When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these mindless material mechanisms, God's glory is getting robbed...