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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: . . .