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Date Set for James Ossuary Verdict Biblical Archaeology Society Staff • 03/05/2012 The James Ossuary verdict will be announced on Wednesday, March 14th. As events unfold, check in with Bible History Daily for exclusive reporting and commentary.

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The Navy has teamed up with Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania to develop a humanoid robot to fight fires on-board its vessels. The Navy Technology Center for Safety & Survivability at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., carries out research to solve Navy problems regarding combustion, fire extinguishing, fire modeling and scaling, damage control, and atmosphere hazards. The robot, called the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFiR for short, is designed to move throughout the ship, interact with people and fight fires. It will be charged with handling the dangerous firefighting tasks normally performed by humans. The...

On one issue, President Barack Obama is depressingly consistent. Just this week, he once again sounded the alarm about the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to pursue alternative sources of energy. He is also determined to purse “green” energy projects, despite some well publicized disasters such as Solyndra. In spite of $535 million in federal government loans, the solar panel manufacturer went bankrupt. The administration was able to stage some nice photo opportunities, but the public’s money was wasted.

An article in the Daily Mail, and other places, cites a study by BYU biologist and bear expert Tom S. Smith that claims carrying a gun in bear country does not make you safer. Many people have wandered into bear country reassured that their trusted gun would keep them safe if they ever come face-to-face with an aggressive grizzly. But experts have shattered that myth after carrying out a study of hundreds of animal attacks.A Brigham Young University study found using a gun is no more effective at keeping people safe than not using a firearm. The study is published...

New Study Shows Polygamy Leads to Higher Levels of Crime, Violence, Poverty, and Gender Inequality Interesting. Islam institutionalized polygamous marriage. Researchers have determined that polygamous marriage in a culture leads to higher levels of crime, violence, poverty, and gender inequality. Hence, Islam institutionalized a practice that led to the problems we now see in Muslim societies: rampant violence, poverty, and gender inequality. Shouldn't Allah have known better? For those unfamiliar with Islamic teachings, here's a quick review. According to the Qur'an, Muslim men are allowed to marry up to four women: Qur'an 4:3—And if you fear that you shall not...

Got some spare time today? How about putting aside that game of Bejeweled Blitz and instead lend a hand in what could be the most important discovery of all time? It’s no joke — the people behind the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project have partnered with TED (Technology Entertainment Design) to create a website where anyone can log on and start searching for aliens. Called SETI Live, the new project reduces the hunt for intelligent life on other planets to a kind of game — sort of a mix between Foursquare and Where’s Waldo. Once you log on and...

Over at Bishop Hill there is a post titled A Study in Groupthink that looks at an exchange of Twitter comments between Maurizio Morabito ( @Omnologos ) and Bora Zivkovic ( @BoraZ ), the blogs editor at Scientific American. The author of the Bishop Hill blog, Andrew Montford, explains in his post that Zivkovic is clearly very much out of the same mould as Peter Gleick, which I take to mean an unswerving true believer, a rigid in his views who sees anyone dissenting from what he chooses to believe in and argue for as ultimately evil or corrupted by...

From the earliest days of the Wild West, water rights have always been a bone of contention and, no doubt, the cause of more than one gunfight. It’s still an issue to this day. But instead of being a dispute between farmer and rancher or cattleman and sheepherder, it’s now a battle between people and fish. Two years ago, the Delta smelt, a tiny, minnow-like fish, caused a brouhaha. In an effort to save this fish (which has no commercial value whatsoever), water supplies to California’s Central Valley were severely limited. As a direct result, this fertile agricultural center was...

The massive solar storms currently bombarding the earth with charged particales (@ 4 million mph!) are the largest in over five years, driven by a double solar flare. This phenomenon could bring the beauty of the Aurora Borealis to places it's rarely seen early this morning and heading-on-in to Thursday night... What we have is the Sun belching-out a cloud of gas (twice) who's strong electrical charges will temporarily warp the Earth's own magnetic field as it gets here... which is now. They also play havoc with elements like Nitrogen in our upper-atmosphere, and thus the auroras are produced. But as we wait for...

Heather Mallick, columnist for The Star, is angry. What has her so upset? The fact that a young man who attends a Catholic school should have the audacity to exhort young women to be modest in their attire. Matt Gurney, writing for the National Post, said that the 17 year old Catholic student, "clearly believes that many of his female peers do not treat each other, or themselves, with due respect, and he wishes that everyone would focus more on how wonderful they are on the inside and not how attractive they can make themselves on the outside." This is...

Via: On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events Key Points Probability of a Carrington event occurring over next decade is ~12% Space physics datasets often display a power-law distribution Power-law distribution can be exploited to predict extreme events By virtue of their rarity, extreme space weather events, such as the Carrington event of 1859, are difficult to study, their rates of occurrence are difficult to estimate, and prediction of a specific future event is virtually impossible. Additionally, events may be extreme relative to one parameter but normal relative to others. In this study, we analyze several measures...

Costs of Algae Biofuel* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *Detective Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them! ~ Memorable quotes from Soylent Green * The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), reported that gasoline prices have risen from an average price of $1.61, in the week ending December 29, 2008, to $3.72, as of the week ending February 27, 2012 (see chart above). So with gasoline prices on a tear having risen by 131%...

They are movers and shakers and whether crowned or uncrowned these Black women have made an impact in the community. These unique individuals have given so unselfishly of themselves to better the common good in hopes that the world will listen, act, and join them in their mission. During this women’s history month, we at NewsOne are honoring the remarkable accomplishments of 10 sheroes whom we love and who have demonstrated the noblest qualities of humanity: 1) Michelle Obama: She is the 44th First Lady, an attorney, Mother, and wife. Mrs. Obama has focused her attentions on the issues that...

A new ad from a super PAC supporting former House speaker Newt Gingrich makes its case with New Jersey accents. The Winning Our Future ad is another animated spot, featuring a burly talk radio host who wants listeners to tell him who can beat President Obama. “It ain’t nobody named Mitt, that’s for sure,” a caller named “Joey” responds. “Something about him, he’s not one of us. He’s not tough enough. And Rick? He ain’t my guy either. What’s he ever done?”.....If you really want to stick it to the bums in D.C., it’s Newt. The guy’s a fighter. And...

Here we often discuss history, but what of our future? I wonder this as the shuttle program ends and after reading the The Case for Mars. The exploration of space is adrift, blown about by the shallow whims of politicians only interested in making it to the next election. Will the lessons of history that tell us of the perils of short-sightedness ever impact the feeble minds of Washington?

Attempts to look at the taxpayer-funded ruminations of a taxpayer-funded climate researcher suffered a setback today in Virginia where a split decision by the state’s high court said essentially, it’s none of your business what Michael Mann was writing about his taxpayer-funded work. State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli lost a verdict that permits continued suppression of evidence in the Michael Mann “hockey stick” graph controversy. But it’s probably not the last note in this song, not by a long shot....

'a game-changer' British multinational BAE Systems has developed a functioning prototype of a new artillery piece for the US Navy's testing purposes, and what it does is propel a specially-designed shell to high supersonic velocities (cca 5600 mph) via powerful magnetic rails. At Mach 7, the projectile arrives almost three times as fast as the Navy's current big guns can deliver one, and at an astonishing range of 50-100 nautical miles (!) The new technology is now undergoing testing in Virginia. Considering that today's naval artillery can reach only about 15 mi -and that long-range cruise missiles poke-along at...

This is a new one on us: there’s something called “autonomous vehicles” inching off the drawing board and onto the freeways. These self-driving cars apparently are spawned by techies at Google, Caltech and other places. According to the L.A. Times, the cars “use radar, video cameras and lasers to navigate roads and stay safe in traffic without human assistance.” Seems interesting. It couldn’t but help that mad rush on the 57 we navigate every morning and evening. But wait...

We noticed years ago that global warming not only was caused by everything we do, according to the alarmists, but that global warming caused nearly everything – including oddly enough, global cooling. We came across this news clipping today at Creative Minority Report, which dubbed it the “Greatest Global Warming Headline … Evah!” We have to agree: . . .

With the ongoing media coverage of a well-known scientist lying to get confidential documents from the Heartland Institute regarding global warming, there’s been consistent reporting in the media about the “scientific consensus” that climate change is manmade. Numerous articles on blogs and news sites cite that scientific “consensus” of man-made global warming without citing any reference. The phrase may be a reference to the body of work done over the years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which involves work done by thousands of scientists from more than 120 governments. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center...

I've been holding this post in the hope of finding video of Lara Friedman's appearance on James Zogby's Viewpoint on Sunday night in which this issue was discussed. I haven't found it yet. In an earlier post, I reported that 'Peace Now's Lara Friedman attended the 'International Conference to Save Jerusalem' in Qatar. At the time, I was appalled by Friedman's attendance and apparent support for the disgusting pretense that there is something wrong with Israel exercising sovereignty in its own capital. But maybe some good will come out of Friedman's attendance. On Sunday night, Friedman wrote a piece for...

...The statement I made that the ethnic groups of all the types at the Upper Cave does not mean they are adjacent on the chart: instead I was drawing attemtion to the fact that skull "B" of the robust series is one such out of the ethnic groups represented at the Upper cave Choukoudian, the (male) Capelinha skull separted out of the bottom row at right represents another group, represented by a (female) Upper Cave skull (The "Melanesian" one) and one of the CroMagnon-mixes is closest to the Upper Cave male skull (The skull C here is just a bit...

I have spent a good amount of time researching modern environmentalism, its rabid enthusiasts and its choke-hold on the economy. I didn't ever plan to until a coal plant was proposed in my town, and I watched as government and environmental groups worked shoulder to shoulder to stop it from happening, no matter what accommodations the energy company proposed. So, this video of Mitt Romney means so much to me, and when accidentally finding it a few weeks ago, I dug a little deeper until I realized what a pickle Romney would be in if he becomes President. Romney says...

Newt Gingrich has a double-digit lead over the rest of the GOP field in his home state of Georgia, according to a Landmark-Rosetta Stone poll released late Friday. Gingrich took 38 percent, followed by Rick Santorum at 25 percent, Mitt Romney at 19 percent, and Ron Paul at four percent, the poll found. Gingrich held a nine-point lead in the same poll taken earlier this month. The poll could be an outlier – Gingrich leads by only two points in Georgia according to the latest Insider Advantage survey and leads by five points according to Rasmussen. Both of those polls...

James Delingpole of The Telegraph reports that the British Parliament heard devastating testimony overturning the global warming hoax from MIT's Richard Lindzen who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Prof. Lindzen sounded the alarm early over the systematic subversion of Climate Sciences in North America and Europe by a cabal centered around Al Gore and the UN's Maurice Strong. The Telegraph has published Prof. Lindzen's presentation here as the House of Commons undertakes to "Reconsider the Climate Change Act" --the provisions of which have decimated the British economy.

Good grief! A Maryland state legislator has filed a bill that would allow surrogate decision makers to “donate� kidneys and liver lobes. From HB 449: THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO A PATIENT WHO HAS BEEN CERTIFIED UNDER § 5–606(B) OF THIS SUBTITLE TO BE IN A PERSISTENT 8 VEGETATIVE STATE. (3) A PERSON AUTHORIZED TO MAKE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FOR ANOTHER UNDER THIS SECTION MAY AUTHORIZE THE DONATION OF A NONVITAL ORGAN IF THE DONATION IS BASED ON: (I) THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT AS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED BY THE PATIENT; OR (II) A DETERMINATION BY THE SURROGATE THAT THE DONATION...

This is the second of several installments on Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. The first is here. Subject: Parchin Military Complex Coordinates: 35° 31.915'N 51° 45.116'E The Parchin Military Complex has been in the news lately because for the second time since the beginning the year, Iran has refused to allow IAEA inspectors to go there. Parchin is important because the IAEA and intelligence agencies of several nations have evidence that it was used to conduct tests of a dummy implosion device. These tests are important because they measure the accuracy and the degree of compression of the nuclear “pit”,...

We’ve noted many times how those costly electric cars (even after factoring in taxpayer subsidies for manufacturers, sellers and buyers) are hugely reliant on cheap fossil fuel. How else do you think they get the electricity they run on? Windmills? And this cartoon pretty much sums up the absurdity of that predicament: . . .

That’s right – all those Greenpeace activists performing agitprop street theatre all over the world are partly financed mainly by western governments. The “activists” are, of course, front line cannon fodder, a mixture of idealistic young students and seasoned agitators who happily block pavements, trespass onto private property and perform acts of vandalism for the “cause”. They do it for the kicks and cost little money. Above them, however, are the Greenpeace executives who jet around the world, hang out in luxury hotels and drive around in expensive limos, hobnobbing with politicians and bureaucrats. There function is twofold – to...

My endless rants here about the hot field of multiverse studies are mainly motivated by concern about the effect this is having on particle theory. Multiverse scenarios all too often function as an excuse for not admitting that string theory/extra-dimensional ideas about unification have failed. Such an admission would encourage people to move on to more promising ideas, but instead hep-th is stuck in an endless doldrums with the high profile public face of the subject dominated by excited claims about what a wonderful discovery this region is.Independently of the string theory problem, I’m personally a skeptic that multiverse...

As members of Georgia’s House of Representatives debate whether to prohibit abortions for women more than 20 weeks pregnant, House Democrats introduced their own reproductive rights plan: No more vasectomies that leave "thousands of children ... deprived of birth." Rep. Yasmin Neal, a Democrat from the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro, planned on Wednesday to introduce HB 1116, which would prevent men from vasectomies unless needed to avert serious injury or death. The bill reads: "It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment...

Is gasoline getting too costly for you? Are you already cutting back on your trips to the store, to the theater, to grandma’s? What did you expect? Remember President Barack Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu saying he wanted much higher gas prices – because it’s good for you? “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Chu said in 2008. . .

Our friends up the freeway at that Los Angeles newspaper courageously have come out against asking “teachers to lie to” students about global warming. We agree. Teachers should stop repeating the Al Gore mantra that the world has a fever and that it’s our fault. Except, sadly, that’s not what the L.A. Times meant...

We wrote over the weekend about the “Global-warming skeptics gaining upper hand” and heard from readers who agree with and applaud the news, which always is good to hear. Then we were delighted to see the latest in the back-and-forth dueling columns in the Wall Street Journal advance the cause with clarity and truth. In short, the esteemed scientists who sparked the back-and-forth commentary in the Journal’s pages, summed up their case against global warming alarmism thus: . . .

A blast from the past animated the blogosphere earlier this month when a buddy of famed "Fire in the Sky" UFO abductee Travis Walton accused a dead debunker of attempted bribery. Steve Pierce said he -- Pierce -- had been offered $10k to say Walton had hoaxed the whole thing back in 1975... Klass was a prolific writer who dismissed the Walton controversy as confabulation in his 1983 book UFOs: The Public Deceived... Klass' take on what became known as the Cash-Landrum incident stopped me cold. Because I'd actually done my homework on that one. And that's when I got...

The Chevy Volt's batteries hold the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline—one single gallon. Would you buy a car that held only one gallon of gasoline? Neither would I. Yet, we've invested billions of dollars developing and promoting a car with a “gas tank” (the batteries) that only holds one gallon's worth of energy. I've heard that new super batteries are just around the corner. All we have to do is invest enough money and they'll appear. Just like computers (in the 1950's they were the size of rooms, today they can be held in the...

ATLANTA — In every state where he campaigns, Newt Gingrich weaves local issues into his stump speech, and in Georgia he aimed at a sweet spot: “Let’s be clear what this election is all about,” he told supporters. “We believe in the right to bear arms, and we like to bear the arms in our trucks.” His audience burst into laughter and applause. Mr. Gingrich repeated the line during two days of Georgia rallies on Friday and Saturday, where he met large, enthusiastic crowds,.... ....He raised an aggressive argument with President Obama over energy, framing it as a policy disagreement...

Hi , Our cars and trucks account for 20 percent of our country's greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration knows this -- that's why they fought for better fuel economy standards. But the rules that would go into effect don't go far enough. In fact, loopholes for SUVs mean that, even with higher standards, our greenhouse gas emissions will still continue to rise. The European Union, Japan and even China are far ahead of the United States when it comes to fuel efficiency. By carving out loopholes for big, gas-guzzling vehicles, we're giving automakers an out to keep the status...

The United States has massive deposits of petroleum locked in shale. Government estimates are there are two trillion barrels of oil, and perhaps 800 billion barrels could be recovered. That's about three times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. The problem is finding an efficient way to get that petroleum out of the rock. It's a challenge that's frustrated scientists for decades. Two North Dakota State University researchers are taking a different approach to the problem, and they believe the key to extracting oil from shale is in understanding the material at the nano scale. Nano is breaking materials down...

Won’t those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems? Not exactly. There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain: . . .

This is a cool video of the ISS flying from Mexico to New Brunswick Canada. You can see the Aurora Borealis in the distance. As you get further north, it is easier to tell what is what, and you can clearly make out Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit (which surprisingly has a lot of lights, but the lights could be Windsor), Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal, and even Fredrikton. You can see most of the great lakes, the St Lawrence River, and at the very end you can see the Gaspee peninsula of Quebec, and my favorite place I have worked,...

...Were this a story in any field other than "Climate Science" it would be given massive play by both the BBC and in the print media – for what has happened here is a national scandal. An institution which was manifestly good has now been made bad, for no other reason than the arrogance and egotism of three blinkered men who took it upon themselves to behave like political activists rather than scientists. You don't even need to be a climate sceptic to understand that what May, Rees and Nurse have done is wrong. All you need is a rudimentary...

Andrea Rossi, an Italian man who claims to have invented a practical low-energy nuclear reaction device, will not have his device tested and evaluated by NASA. In the past year, Rossi has had mixed success in gaining support at two NASA laboratories: Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Scepitical? Look at the clip and you tell me Red furry coat, giant tusks... elephants of any sort not native to the region, either! The Siberian Woolly Mammoth -which we are taught disappeared abruptly at the end of the last Ice Age (~8000 B.C.)- has long been a source of fascination, as on occasion examples are found in a highly-preserved, mummified state under the Arctic territory's thick layer of permafrost.  Similar in appearance to a modern elephant, the Mammoth was actually only slightly larger (~3m at the shoulder) yet with a shorter trunk, longer tusks, ears only 10% the size of their contemporary brethren,...

The arms race between humanity and disease-causing bacteria is drawing to a close—and the bacteria are winning. The latest evidence: gonorrhea is becoming resistant to all standard antibiotic treatment. Gonorrhea is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world—with about 600,000 cases diagnosed in the U.S. each year. A few years ago, investigators started seeing cases of infection that did not easily respond to treatment with a group of drugs called cephalosporins, which are currently the last line of defense against this particular infection. Now, the number of drug-resistant cases has grown so much in the U.S....

Today we have yet another example of what was unintended, but probably could have been seen coming had our government know-it-alls not been blinded by their ideological mission. We call these Global Warming Oops Moments. There’s no shortage of them. “While President Barack Obama is touting clean energy such as wind farms, a group of American scientists are raising alarm bells that wind turbines increase the effects of global warming, as well as killing birds that fall prey to the deadly spinning blades,” says an item from Dallasblog.com.

Call it global warming schizophrenia. It's the disconnect between what really is happening and what global warming alarmists demand must happen. For example, many government officials and government-paid scientists insist the world risks being incinerated because humans generate a little more carbon dioxide than they used to. But they completely ignore the reality that CO2 hasn't proved to be a threat, let alone the horrific danger they make it out to be. Why must they pretend this fiction to be true? Because so much rides on it.

They found the Ark of the Covenant where Moses placed the 10 Commandments, in a cave under Golgotha. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. Who would have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 1 Tim 2:3-6 Rom 3:28-30 Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes of the...

The primary focus of NASA's-- manned space program-- should be the pioneering and colonization of the rest of the solar system. That means building the space transportation and habitat infrastructure that can get humans into space and settled into the rest of the solar system. That would also mean minimizing the use of terrestrial resources while maximizing the use of extraterrestrial resources in order for humans to survive in the New Frontier. But any significant deviation of our manned space program away from the primary goal of-- human colonization-- would be a waste of tax payer dollars, IMO. And it...