Free Republic

When Minneapolis artist Janey Westin first came across the runes near the town of Kensington, she assumed they were left behind by the same Norse explorers who created the so-called Kensington Runestone, found nearby in 1898. The infamous 200-pound rock is covered with runes that describe the travails of a party of Scandinavians beset by Indians in 1362. Though most scholars doubt the stone's authenticity, it continues to fuel debate about a Norse presence in the Midwest. Excited by the new find, the Kensington Runestone Museum paid for archaeological testing at the site, which yielded only a few Native American...

The current treatment of young-age creationists in the scientific community and society at large is unfair and unwise. Scientists and philosophers of science, including old-age creationists and naturalists, should respect youngage creationists as legitimate contributors to science. Young-age creationists offer to the current origins science establishment a competing rational viewpoint that will augment fruitful scientific investigation through increased accountability for scientists, introduction of original hypotheses and general epistemic improvement...

Single-minded and with a high opinion of his scholarly abilities, Beringer was wide open for a simple, but devastating hoax... Beringer "wholly, publicly committed himself to the belief that fossils were merely the capricious fabrications of God, hidden in the earth by Him for some inscrutable purpose; possibly, thought Beringer, merely for His own pleasure; possibly as a test for human faith" and proceeded to write a book on them... historians Melvin E. Jahn and Daniel J. Woolf, who in 1963 produced the first English translation of Beringer's book, showed the truth behind the tale lies not in farcical student...

Many archaeological finds are accidentally unearthed by construction crews, as was the discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull of a giant ground sloth in Southern California. Buried in the ground since the Ice Age, the skull was found by a construction crew and could be on its way to be displayed at the San Bernardino County Museum. Work on a new site for a Southern California Edison sub-station was immediately halted when the ancient bones were discovered while earthmovers were flattening out a hilly area west of Beaumont, which is a few miles from the low desert community of Palm...

A crofter... Graeme Mackenzie, 47, made the find after hiring an excavator to open the drain on rough pastureland 50yds (48m) from his home near Sleat. Rain had partly washed away the bottom of the drain and exposed a corroded 4in (10cm) iron spike. Mr Mackenzie levered it out and was "stunned" as the ancient anchor gradually emerged. The Treasure Trove Unit at the National Museums of Scotland said the anchor will probably be claimed by the Crown. Measuring 4ft high and a similar distance from tip to tip, the artefact is undergoing dating and metallurgical testing. Preliminary results...

At no point, Low says, did he sign an agreement to sell or give the tablet to the historical society. He always considered it a loan. "I never intended for them to keep it," he said. "I told them it's not for sale." Low said the artifact has great sentimental value for him, not only because he found it as a child, but also because he has American Indian ancestors who could be related to the ancient Adena people who made the carving. Two years ago, Low decided he wanted to get the tablet back so he could donate it...

Introductory Remarks: On December 7, 1941, U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii were attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Could this tragic event that resulted in over 3,000 Americans killed and injured in a single two-hour attack have been averted? After 16 years of uncovering documents through the Freedom of Information Act, journalist and historian Robert Stinnett charges in his book, Day of Deceit, that U.S. government leaders at the highest level not only knew that a Japanese attack was imminent, but that they had deliberately engaged in policies intended to provoke the attack, in order to draw...

Here are a series of places I found on Google Earth where significant events happened in World War Two.

Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that all lives have eternal value because they are the work of a Creator and not the product of chance. WORLD's 12th annual Daniel of the Year does not save lives abroad, as Britain's Caroline Cox and Sudan's Michael Yerko do. Nor does he regularly save lives of the unborn, as Florida's Wanda Cohn does through her pregnancy center work. No, Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, fights to show that those lives have eternal value because...

Dr. Henry M. Morris founded the Institute for Creation Research in 1970 with a vision to uncover and present evidence for the accuracy and authority of the Bible. For almost 40 years, ICR has distinguished itself as the leader in creation science research and education, ably assisted by the many fine scientists whom God has led to work here. These men and women have dedicated their training and skills to raising the banner for the truth of our Creator God. We would like you to meet our current on-site scientists and hear their thoughts on the purpose, significance, and importance...

Museums and textbooks often use artistic renderings to estimate what a fossilized animal or plant may have looked like when it was alive. These images by “paleoartists” put flesh and faces on skeletal structures, and they can influence public perception of early human history more than the actual science—particularly in regards to human evolution.

Dec 4, 2009 — The facility with which some evolutionary biologists appeal to almost magical powers of evolution to explain anything and everything is revealed in some recent science articles. Whatever needs explaining is due to evolution – evidence or not. These four examples can be considered representative of the genre...

New research out this week has resolved a long-standing, and important, quandary about the causes of global warming. While several models point to anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gases as the leading cause of global warming, the warming trends do not quite match the history of anthropogenic CO2. In fact, shrinking glaciers and other undeniable evidences of warming trace back to about the mid seventeenth century. But this predates the significant rise in anthropogenic CO2 that came later in later centuries. Now environmental researchers have solved the puzzle...

While in the midst of researching another piece, I ran into some photos of a rather beautiful church near Nepi, Italy; the Basilica of Sant'Elia in Castel Sant'Elia. It is beautiful for reasons of its architecture, its cosmatesque floors, its vibrant wall paintings, its ambone, and its altar with ciborium. The basilica was constructed in either the 10th or 11th century, and the ciborium likewise dates from this period. By tradition, it is suggested that this basilica was erected over the spot of a former pagan Roman temple constructed by Nero for Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. In...

Description of simple experiment that shows CO2 can't cause warming by trapping Infra Red (Credit to mystery blogger) The claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase air temperatures by "trapping" infrared radiation (IR) ignores the fact that in 1909 physicist R.W. Wood disproved the popular 19th Century thesis that greenhouses stayed warm by trapping IR. Unfortunately, many people who claim to be scientists are unaware of Wood's experiment which was originally published in the Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Wood was an expert on IR. His accomplishments included inventing both IR and UV (ultraviolet) photography. Wood constructed two...

An impassioned letter penned by George Washington in 1787 about the strengths of the newly written U.S. Constitution was sold at auction in New York on Friday for a record price of $3.2 million. Christie's had estimated that the letter, written from Mount Vernon, could fetch up to $2.5 million at auction, but some experts doubted it would bring that much in the poor economy. The previous auction record for a Washington document was set in 2002, when one of his military reports fetched $834,500, the auction house said. The letter's "hammer" price Friday was $2.8 million, but the buyer's...

The Earth's temperature may be 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this weekIn the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week. The results show that components of the Earth's climate system that vary over long timescales – such as land-ice and vegetation – have an important effect on this temperature sensitivity, but these factors are often neglected in current climate models. Dan Lunt,...

<p>Somewhere along the line — at a wedding, at a child’s birthday party, in third-grade music class — everybody has done the hokey pokey. Admit it: you sang the silly song, you did the silly dance.</p> <p>And you shake it all about.</p>

It's a new rule of thumb, apparently, that history doesn't matter. Fall of Rome? Who cares? WWII? What's it matter? The Great Depression? Just a blip. It's NOW that we care about, man. All that history stuff? Pffft. If it isn't happening now, it doesn't matter. This notion that history is for the stuffed shirts of academe and that it doesn't mean anything to modern, common folks always screams out when these woeful "Top Ten" lists start showing up in the media. Today we have another example of this historically illiterate sort of list at Time Magazine's website. There you'll...

Perhaps the most anticipated popular fiction offering of the year for readers of this column is Heart of the Assassin, (Scribner, $25.95) Robert Ferrigno's final volume in his trilogy about a future America split by civil war and dominated by Islamic rule. http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36278#disqus_thread

Arguing with Idiots… Part Deaux (A full-frontal assault on the Temple of Darwin) (Link to PDF). (I know I’ve done rants like this before, but you guys are worth it!) Dear worshippers of Darwin and lovers of self, My personal (condensed) declaration of faith: I believe in the God of the Bible. I believe in the Bible. I believe what it says. I believe, unashamedly that God is the Creator of the Universe and that He created it just as described in the Genesis account. I believe the only way to receive salvation is to believe and receive Jesus Christ...

Read the following mini-stories and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. The Times: “Evidence of Life on Mars Lurks Beneath Surface of Meteorite, Nasa Experts Claim 2. PhysOrg: “‘Super-River’ Formed the English Channel” 3. Wired: “There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Simple’ Organism” 4. ScienceDaily: “Study Pits Man Versus Machine in Piecing Together 425-Million-Year-Old Jigsaw” 5. PhysOrg: “Bacterial Gut Symbionts Are Tightly Linked with the Evolution of Herbivory in Ants” 6. And Don’t Miss . . .

Brooklyn College Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology Alfred L. Rosenberger is part of a team of Argentinean and United States scholars who have identified a new species of monkey that once roamed the forests of South America. The discovery of the monkey species, Killikaike blakei, is the result of painstaking analysis of a small, perfectly preserved monkey skull that was found embedded in volcanic rock by members of an Argentinean ranching family. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. This fossil, which is dated to 16.4 million years ago, is a spectacular addition...

ABOUT 200 skeletons dating as far back as 1200 years have been unearthed. The foundations of a medieval church and graveyard have also been found by Historic Scotland near Tantallon Castle, by North Berwick. Archaeologists were called in earlier this year when human remains were found during ploughing at Auldhame farm. Some of the graves are believed to be medieval, but others could date from the time of St Baldred, who lived in the eighth century. The saint founded a monastery at nearby Tyninghame and lived as a hermit on Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth before his death...

An Early Bronze Age grave In the spring of 2002 what started as a routine excavation was undertaken in advance of the building of a new school at Amesbury in Wiltshire. By the end of the excavation the richest Bronze Age burial yet found in Britain had been discovered. The Bronze Age man discovered there had been buried not far from the great temple of Stonehenge. He was a man who owned and could work the new and magical metals of gold and copper. And he had come from what is now central Europe, perhaps around the Alps. Was he...

A bid by an Australian archaeologist and other sailors to recreate an ancient voyage in a traditional reed boat has struck trouble in the Arabian Sea. Nautical archaeologist Dr Tom Vosmer and seven other sailors had set off from Oman for a two-week voyage in the Magan, a 12-metre-long sailing boat made of reeds, rope and wood, but capsized within hours. "Water leaked into the Magan causing it to capsize, but a support ship from the Omani royal navy accompanying the boat intervened and rescued the sailors," a source from Oman's culture and national heritage ministry which organised the trip...

Machine operator John Rutherford is used to digging objects out of the ground, but he was shocked when he came face-to-face with an 8,000-year-old beast. For the Thompsons of Prudhoe employee has unearthed a complete auroch's skull -- a species of large wild cow that became extinct in Britain during the Bronze Age... The quarry is located on land, owned by Nunwick Estates, on a bend in the North Tyne river. The skull has been identified by a Durham University expert as a large elderly male auroch, which was possibly cast out of its herd before dying in secluded wetland....

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city. Italy's culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site, state news agency Ansa reports. Among the ruins visible on the search engine's free mapping service are the town's statues, temples and theatres. The city was buried in ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and was not discovered until the 18th Century. The volcanic debris preserved many of the city's buildings, frescos, silverware, mosaics and other artefacts. "Giving people a chance to...

Newborn babies start learning language in the womb -- and are born with what you might call accents, a new study of crying babies says. That fetuses hear and become accustomed to language is nothing new. Several studies have shown that, when exposed to different languages shortly after birth, a baby will typically indicate a preference for the language closest to the one he or she would've heard during gestation... For the new study, a team led by Kathleen Wermke at the Center for Prespeech Development and Developmental Disorders at Würzburg University in Germany studied the cry "melodies" of 60...

Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient Roman city submerged off the coast of Libya. The remains of the city date back to the 2nd century A.D. and were found by archaeologists and experts from Sicily and the University Suor Orsola Benincasa of Naples, involved in the ArCoLibia archaeology project. The discovery took place on the Cape of Ras Eteen on the western side of Libya's Gulf of Bumbah, as archaeologists were searching the area for shipwrecks and the remains of ancient ports. Archaeologists instead found walls, streets, and the remains of buildings and ancient tombs. After a...

Dec 3, 2009 — In the previous entry, Darwin inspired some geologists, even though he was wrong. Here are some news stories showing nature inspiring engineers with wonders right under their noses...

New research has heated up the debate over whether dinosaurs were ectothermic (cold-blooded) or endothermic (warm-blooded like us). The topic is addressed in this week's Johns Hopkins News-Letter and a recent PLoS One paper. The prevailing view for decades was that dinosaurs were cold-blooded, as reptiles, fish and amphibians are today. Now support is leaning toward the warm-blooded dinosaur theory, which opens up a slew of intriguing questions: Did dinosaurs sweat? Were they able to live in very cold regions? Did they have to eat a lot to fuel their lifestyle? and more. Herman Pontzer at Washington University in St....

The first stage of a five-year (2009-2013) excavation project in Ancient Tegea, near Tripolis, has been completed by an international team of archaeologists led by the Norwegian Institute in Athens in Collaboration with the Greek culture ministry's 38th Ephoria for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and 25th Ephoria of Byzantine Antiquities. The area of excavation is a field located to the west of the theatre and the Basilica of Thyrsos, where magnetometer survey 2003-2004 documented the probable location of a major north-south street and a stoa bordering the agora... Tegea was a settlement in ancient Greece, and it is also a...

The well-preserved remains of a Roman tower used by guards patrolling Chester’s City Walls has been discovered by archaeologists repairing a section which collapsed near the Eastgate Clock. Interval towers were placed regularly every 65m or so along the rear of the main fortress wall and acted as lookout points and as bases for roman artillery. The tower has been found beneath the foundation of the city wall... Restoration specialist Maysand is undertaking the work to repair the Walls section, joined by a team of specialists from Giffords, English Heritage, Chester Renaissance and Cheshire West and Chester Council... The webcam...

At a settlement in what is now southern Germany, the menu turned gruesome 7,000 years ago. Over a period of perhaps a few decades, hundreds of people were butchered and eaten before parts of their bodies were thrown into oval pits, a new study suggests. Cannibalism at the village, now called Herxheim, may have occurred during ceremonies in which people from near and far brought slaves, war prisoners or other dependents for ritual sacrifice, propose anthropologist Bruno Boulestin of the University of Bordeaux... A social and political crisis in central Europe at that time triggered various forms of violence, the...

In May 2009, a remarkably well-preserved extinct primate, nicknamed “Ida,” was hailed as one of the most important fossil finds ever. It had features that some interpreted as a link between two primate body forms. At the time, ICR News suggested that its evolutionary significance was far overblown, predicting that the scientific consensus would offer retractions. Those retractions came three months later, confirming that the fossil―called Darwinius―was really just an extinct lemur variety...

[no excerpt, the miserable curs at AP, who digitized Sarah's entire book and published large chunks of it, claiming "fair use", don't like to be hoist on their own petard, whatever. The gist of the original AP story is, the Jews start all wars.]

Worn teeth, periodontal diseases, abscesses and cavities tormented the ancient Egyptians, according to the first systematic review of all studies performed on Egyptian mummies in the past 30 years. After examining research of more than 3,000 mummies, anatomists and paleopathologists at the University of Zurich concluded that 18 percent of all mummies in case reports showed a nightmare array of dental diseases... Published in the Journal of Comparative Human Biology (HOMO), the review takes into consideration all studies published since 1977, when computed tomography was first applied to ancient Egyptian mummies. CT imaging revealed an impressive collection of diseases, including...

THEIR reputation for raping and pillaging may not have set them out as the ideal role-models for an environmentally-friendly way of life. But it seems that lessons could perhaps be learnt from the Vikings after the intriguing discovery in Yorkshire of what is believed to be a metal recycling centre dating back to the 11th century. Historians and metal detector enthusiasts have made the find which is being heralded as evidence of how the Norse invaders recycled their fearsome array of weapons. Hundreds of pieces of metal including arrowheads, shards of swords and axe heads have been unearthed as part...

MUMBAI: A group of naturalists from Amravati districts has discovered a set of 17 unique cave paintings in the nature-rich Satpura range of Madhya Pradesh – which opens up new avenues of research as this art form are believed to be of Paleolithic period. The group call themselves, ‘Hope’, and has been working since the last six years on this project. The group include scientist Dr V T Ingole, wildlife writer PS Hirurkar, Padmakar Lad, Shirishkumar Patil, Dnyaneswar Damahe and Manohar Khode. They are a group of nature and bird lovers, and luckily chanced upon these unique paintings. Ingole said...

Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no --snip-- Summary 1.This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for the various professors who assert that it does. 2.Darwin’s theory promoted the idea that man is “a beast with animal lusts and no morality”, and this has been gleefully accepted by much of modern society. 3.We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence, which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man...

Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races...

Cairo, December 2nd, 2009 – Egypt’s leading Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, has revealed that an excavation team under his charge are investigating an ancient tomb at the centre of claims regarding the alleged discovery of a cave underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza. In August British writer and explorer Andrew Collins announced that he had rediscovered the entrance to a previously unexplored cave system, entered via a mysterious tomb several hundred meters west of the Great Pyramid. The cave entrance was found following clues left in the 200-year-old memoirs of British diplomat and explorer Henry Salt, who recorded how in...

By feeding birds, you could alter their evolutionary future, with changes visible in the very near term, scientists now conclude. Due to winter bird-feeding, what was once a single population of birds has, in fewer than 30 generations, been split into two groups that do not interbreed, despite the fact that they continue to breed side by side in the very same forests. > Over the course of three-and-a-half years, the scientists followed birds known as blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) in Central Europe after humans began offering food to them. A recent divide has sprung up, with two groups following distinct...

Evolutionists retreating from the arena of science --snip-- Today, the Darwinian scientific consensus persists within almost every large university and governmental institution. But around the middle of the 20th century an interesting new trend emerged and has since become increasingly established. Evolutionary theorists have been forced, step by step, to steadily retreat from the evidence in the field. Some of the evidences mentioned earlier in this article were demonstrated to be frauds and hoaxes. Other discoveries have been a blow to the straightforward expectations and predictions of evolutionists. Increasingly, they have been forced to tack ad hoc mechanisms onto Darwin’s...

Samples of a colony of Martians have been put on display in the Natural History Museum, in London. A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a series of partly filled pits on the surface of a mineral grain from the Nakhla meteorite Photo: NASA/David McKay The microscopic aliens are on a slice of a meteorite in the museum. Nasa scientists, who used a scanning electron microscope to take snaps, say the bumpy surface resembles a fossilised colony of microbacteria – a simple form of life.

Dishes of chicken blancmange and porpoise porridge are unlikely to whet the appetite of most modern food lovers. But such recipes were apparently fit for a king 600 years ago. Written by chefs employed by Richard II, they are included in what is thought to be the world's oldest cookbook. The unusual dishes rival modern creations by British TV chef Heston Blumenthal, who is famous for his snail porridge. Experts from Manchester University's John Rylands Library, who discovered the manuscript, have translated a handful of its 150 recipes, which are written in Middle English and date back to 1390. They...

Dec 2, 2009 — Field geologists have revisited a site Darwin visited on the voyage of the Beagle, and found that he incorrectly interpreted what he found.  A large field of erratic boulders in Tierra del Fuego that have become known as “Darwin’s Boulders” were deposited by a completely different process than he thought.  The modern team, publishing in the Geological Society of America’s December issue of the GSA Today,1 noted that “Darwin’s thinking was profoundly influenced by Lyell’s obsession with large-scale, slow, vertical movements of the crust, especially as manifested in his theory of submergence and ice rafting to...

Geologist Scott Wolter wants you to forget 1492. While you're at it, forget the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Forget all of it. Forget Christopher Columbus because he wasn't the first European to visit North America and Wolter is out to prove it in his new book, "The Hooked X: The Key to the Secret History of North America." Minnesota and the Great Lakes states play a key part in that history, Wolter said, as Vikings and Cistercian monks traveled here leaving behind inscriptions and evidence that they were here long before Queen Isabella hocked her jewels to...

A team of Hungarian marine archaeologists has found the wreckage of a Dutch cargo ship which sank near the Brazilian coast over three centuries ago. Voetboog was a three-mast flyboat, which left the port of Batavia (now Jakarta) for The Netherlands with a 109-member crew on board, the expedition leader Attila K. Szaloky told MTI. Owned by the Dutch East India Company, the Fluyt ship carried silk, spices, tea, Japanese and Chinese porcelain as well as nearly 180,000 pieces of Dutch golden ducats. The estimated value of the wreckage is about 1 billion dollars, he said. Sailing on the Atlantic,...