Free Republic

Vin Scully in 1960: It's insulting the listeners to make them think they're silly and superstitious enough to believe my telling them that a no-hitter is going will affect the game. I'm not breaking a precedent. Other announcers do the same. You see, no one expects a listener to hang on to every word for three hours. They leave the radio from time to time and this service must be rendered.

Who hasn't picked up a piece of dropped food from the floor, given it a quick blow and assumed it was still safe to eat? To many of us, it is second nature to apply the age-old pseudo-scientific 'three second rule' on such occasions, telling ourselves we're safe if the food hit the floor only momentarily. The idea that food is not contaminated if it is retrieved quickly has been believed for many years - but there has not been extensive proof that this is the case.

LONDON (AP) — A British jury on Thursday found a couple guilty of torturing and murdering a 15-year-old boy whom they accused of witchcraft. Magalie Bamu and her partner Eric Bikubi, originally from Congo, were convicted of killing Magalie’s brother Kristy Bamu, who drowned in a bathtub on Christmas Day 2010. Prosecutors at London’s Central Criminal Court said the teenager had 130 injuries inflicted by sticks, a metal bar, a hammer and a chisel. They said he eventually drowned after being forced into a bathtub and doused with cold water. The boy “had been the victim of a prolonged attack...

But the relic's documentation was never found. And this, Tilley says, creates a problem. "In the absence of certification and in the absence of a chain of possession, it is very difficult to weigh whether they are real or not," she says. But that doesn't mean there are no clues to where it came from.

An Arizona sheriff said he tried today to comfort the mother of a family that perished when a small plane crashed into Superstition Mountain, a crash the sheriff said that no one could have survived. The twin-engine aircraft, which carried three adults and three children, was en route to Safford, Ariz., when it crashed Wednesday night in the jagged terrain of the Superstition Mountains.

A plane crashed in Arizona's Superstition Mountains, according to ABC News Phoenix affiliate KNXV, citing witnesses and local authorities -- but officials told ABC News that passenger flights at major local airports all were accounted for. It was not immediately clear how big a plane may have crashed or how many people were involved. Dark video transmitted from the scene appeared to show glowing areas in the mountains, possibly fires. Witnesses said they saw the plane crash and flames erupt around 6:40 p.m. local time, KNXV reported. "What we saw was a small plane," said Mark Klein, who lives at...

Posted: 7:04 PM By: Katie Fisher APACHE JUNCTION, AZ - Crews are working to access the wreckage of a plane that crashed into the Superstition Mountains east of the Valley. Pinal County Sheriff's Office spokesman Elias Johnson confirmed a plane went down in the mountain range and caused a fire visible from miles away. ABC15 viewers reported seeing the crash and flames around 6:40 p.m. Air15 video over the mountain range showed many separate areas of flames spread around the crash site. Johnson said the size of the plane and number of people involved is unknown at this time.

Weeks after a story shot across the Web claiming that the imminent explosion of a nearby star would result in the appearance of a second sun in the sky — a story that was later debunked — two suns were caught on camera yesterday in China. The suns — one fuzzy and orange, the other a crisp yellow orb — appeared side-by-side, one slightly higher than the other. What's going on? Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to Space.com, asked Jim Kaler, the University of Illinois astronomer who squelched the excitement over the aforementioned exploding Betelgeuse and who has written...

The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves. Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” But, believe it or not, from a culturist perspective, the death of some patients is not the main...

Liberal Belief in Fairy Tales is not Limited to Global WarmingLiberals live in a fantasy bubble where all us conservatives are lowbrow wife beaters or slack-jawed hicks with tobacco juice dribbling down our chins.  We're uneducated and superstitious; just look at how many of us go to church!  Meanwhile, enlightened liberals constitute America's cognoscenti and intelligentsia. Well, Michael Graham has written a brilliant article that bursts that irrational bubble. If you thought the “fire never melted steel” crowd was nuts, check out the new study from the bipartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. They find that liberals...

From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says. The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say. [ snip ] The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus' burial cloth. The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in...

BATULAO, Batangas, Philippines — It was a heartbreaking 60th birthday for visionary Emma De Guzman when in the early morning of Tuesday, December 8, she chose not to deliver the message from the Virgin Mary unlike so many other times in the past. Close to 5,000 pilgrims joined the trek up the Mountain of Salvation in Batulao, to some observers possibly the biggest delegation to join in the prayers and support of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Emma. Emma’s journey from plain overseas Filipino nanny in Canada to visionary exhibiting mystical phenomena like stigmata, bilocation, levitation, the gift...

A salamander allegedly “18 million years old” is the latest fossil to produce astonishingly well preserved soft tissue. This time, it’s muscle tissue, and it is supposedly the most pristine example yet. Background—the “dinosaur connection”...

The field of biology has provided much support for a recent creation, and physical evidence of very young-looking biological materials from supposedly ancient fossils continues to accrue from around the world, and from various depths under the earth. In August of this year, paleontologists in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, made a discovery that astounded the evolutionary community...

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake. The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ. "We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy,...

Many atheopaths1 and their compromising churchian allies claim that biblical belief and science are mortal enemies. Yet historians of science, even non-Christians, have pointed out that modern science first flourished under a Christian world view while it was stillborn in other cultures such as ancient Greece, China and Arabia. The historical basis of modern science depended on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33). For example, evolutionary anthropologist and science writer Loren Eiseley stated:...

The hunt for Albinos is still on © Alida Vanni. A school in Tanzania. The case of 18-year-old Moszy, who landed on a Spanish beach along with several other refugees from Africa, has raised awareness of the plight of albinos in many African countries, where witchdoctors claim albino body parts can bring wealth and good luck. Albinism is an inherited genetic condition characterised by the absence of melanin in skin, eyes and hair and can affect all races. African albinos, easily spotted by their white skin and fair hair, have long been ostracised and discriminated against. The target of superstitions...

In his article, "How to Argue with (Guilty) Liberals," Carey Roberts wrote, "Like a demanding and ill-mannered child, liberals are used to getting their way. Whenever they lapse into the losing side of an argument, they reflexively resort to name-calling and mud-slinging. Epithets like "neo-Nazi," "crypto-fascist," and "imperialist stooge" buzz like mosquitoes hovering over a Potomac swamp. But how many conservatives who are targets of such slurs know these liberals are indulging in one of the greatest intellectual ruses in history? How many realize it's a matter of the red-faced pot calling the kettle black?" (http://www.chronwatch-america.com/5457/1/How-to-Argue-With-a-Guilty-Liberal/Page1.html) In response to Carey's...

It’s rare that a movie produced by Discovery and BBC Films about the natural world doesn’t contain any mention of molecules-to-man evolution or millions of years of history. In fact, it’s almost as if the production companies are joined at the hip with the false view of history, taking every opportunity to promote the idea that the earth is not a product of God’s handiwork. And yet, with the movie Earth (a trimmed-down version of the documentary series Planet Earth), they demonstrate it can be done. As far as I could tell, there was no mention of “evolution” or “millions...

Jerry Coyne Recycles: Why Darwinism Is False, Part IOn Earth Day 2009, we are reminded of the ecological importance of recycling. As a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago, Jerry A. Coyne must be keen on recycling: He even recycles worn-out arguments for Darwinism. If "evolution" meant simply that existing species can undergo minor changes over time, or that many species alive today did not exist in the past, then evolution would undeniably be true. But "evolution" for Coyne means Darwinism — the theory that all living things are descendants of a common...