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CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE – The county plans to sell the home of a Dennis Township man, the subject of one of the largest stolen property scams in local history, according to Prosecutor Robert Taylor. Thomas Moran, 48, of Furlong Drive in South Seaville, was sentenced last month to six years in prison, part of a plea agreement for crimes in Cape May and Atlantic counties. “When you add up all the amounts, it’s a tremendous amount of money this man took,” said Taylor. “This is one the largest cases, if not the largest case, of this nature for this...

"As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities." —Voltaire "Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." —Demosthenes A long, long, long time ago, many people believed the Earth was flat, but for more than the last 2,000 years few educated people have subscribed to this delusion. The story (included in some textbooks used in American schools) that Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage was the first proof that the Earth is round and not flat is deceitful historical revisionism, nothing more. For (literally) thousands of years, people...

Global warming is a religion, not a science. The prospect of governing every action of every individual on the planet in the name of staving off “catastrophic climate change,” and charging especially the U.S. a fee for impoverishing it, makes belief in global warming as tenacious and anti-reason as the literal interpretation of the Bible is to a fundamentalist or evangelical holly-roller. The fraudsters have come too close to their goal of “world governance” to concede not only error, but the lies that sustained that error, as well. They want to rule, or at least see men ruled by others....

Today, at an international ESO/CAUP exoplanet conference in Porto, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-metre telescope, reports on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS's position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. This result also increases the number of known low-mass planets by an impressive 30%. Over the past five years HARPS has spotted more than 75 of the roughly 400 or so exoplanets now known.

ALBANY -- An artifact of life in the country, the backyard burn barrel, came to an end Wednesday under new state environmental rules. Outdoor waste burning is now banned in all towns, regardless of population. Such burning has been illegal in towns of 20,000 people or more since 1972. DEC said the tougher rules are needed because burning of waste can release harmful chemicals like dioxins into the air, in large part because barrels burn at much lower temperatures than commercial incinerators, allowing dangerous compounds to escape destruction. "The greatest source of dioxin exposure in New York today is the...

During the last several years, New York State has been a leader in supporting the growth of wind energy. As a result of this effort, there have been several "wind farm" projects developed across the region. In western New York, some of the bigger projects include the towns of Sheldon, Wethersfield, Eagle/Bliss in Wyoming county. These farms are located between 20 miles and 35 miles directly southeast of the Weather Surveillance Doppler Radar located at the National Weather Service office in Cheektowaga (KBUF) in northern Erie county. The towers are on top of ridges at elevations that exceed 1600 feet...

When the poet Matthew Arnold wrote of faith's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar," the thought was that scientific inquiry had forever undermined claims to certitude. In hindsight we see Arnold was only half right. In place of Genesis we now have scientism—the idea that science alone can speak truth about man and his world. In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today's advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists...

William Dembski, the “intelligent design” creationist who is a professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has some rather interesting requirements for students of his creationism courses — 20% of their final grade comes from having written 10 posts promoting ID on “hostile” websites: Academic Year 2009-2010. Spring 2009 Intelligent Design (SOUTHERN EVANGELICAL SEMINARY #AP 410, 510, and 810; May 11 – 16, 2009) NEW! THE DUE DATE FOR ALL WORK IN THIS COURSE IS AUGUST 14, 2009. Here’s what you will need to do to wrap things up: AP410 — This is the undegrad...

Last Thursday GOP Sen. Stephen M. Saland announced he would introduce a resolution in the state Senate to try to freeze any member items earmarked for ACORN and its affiliate, the New York Agency for Community Affairs. Other Senate Republicans are calling for a state investigation of the group, and the Assembly has temporarily frozen ACORN member items until an investigation of the organization’s Brooklyn chapter by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office is complete. Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, cited 43 member items in the 2009-2010 budget that amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for...

ALBANY, NY (WAMC) - Come tomorrow, you'll need to dig a little deeper into your pocket to pay for a new vehicle registration or driver's license in New York State... Capital District Bureau Chief Dave Lucas reports. As of September first, state Department of Motor Vehicles registration fees will go up for passenger and commercial vehicles, trailers, taxis, buses, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and motorboats. The changes were called for in the state budget passed this year. Registration for passenger vehicles, will increase from $44 to $55. The cost of a driver's license or a renewal will rise by 25 percent...

HURRICANE JIMENA DISCUSSION NUMBER 15 NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL EP132009 200 AM PDT TUE SEP 01 2009 THE SMALL EYE OF JIMENA BECAME LESS DISTINCT IN SATELLITE IMAGERY AROUND 0500 UTC...HOWEVER SINCE THAT TIME IT HAS WARMED AND IS EMBEDDED WITHIN VERY COLD CLOUD TOPS AND A RATHER SYMMETRIC CDO. THE LATEST DVORAK CI-NUMBERS REMAIN 6.5 FROM TAFB AND 6.0 FROM SAB...AND OBJECTIVE ADT ESTIMATES ALSO CONTINUE TO HOVER AROUND T6.5. BASED ON THE SATELLITE APPEARANCE AND UNCHANGED SATELLITE ESTIMATES...THE INITIAL INTENSITY WILL REMAIN 135 KT FOR THIS ADVISORY. AN AIR FORCE HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT IS SCHEDULED TO...

In the battle for U.S. health care, patients and doctors are losing. Who Killed Health Care? shows how to win the war. One of the nation's most respected health care analysts, Regina Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of those who have crippled America's health care system—figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors. She proves how our current system, which is organized around payers and providers rather than the needs of its users, is dangerously eroding patient welfare and is pushing costs out of the reach of millions. Who Killed Health Care? then outlines Herzlinger's bold new...

Ok..time for some fun with "Government Healthcare" as seen through the lyrics of Alice's Restaurant Massacree, by Arlo Guthrie. The link is above, pick a section, and rework the words. Starting: This song is called Government Healtcare Plan, and it's about Government, and the healthcare plan thing, but Government Healtcare is not the name of the plan, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Government Healtcare Plan. You can't get anything you want from a Government Healthcare plan. You can't get anything you want from a Government Healthcare plan. The whole damn train...

Universal health care advocates held a press conference today to highlight certain aspects of a report released by the New York state Departments of Health and Insurance on July 17, which studied four possible reforms to the state’s health insurance system. The groups, Hunger Action Network of New York state and Single Payer New York, honed in on the single payer option of the report. Mark Dunlea, executive director of Hunger Action Network, touted the cost effectiveness of the single payer option. “Our bottom line [regarding health care] is cover everybody, cut costs, finance it fairly and treat health care...

Last week, House Democrats unveiled their much-anticipated health care plan– the same day that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary scoring of the bill putting a $1.3 trillion price tag on the effort. Weighing in at 1,018 pages, that comes to $1.264 billion per page. But even this analysis understates the true costs of the bill. The CBO only scores bills on a ten-year time frame. So, that $1.3 trillion price tag will only get bigger after 10 years, not smaller, and will do nothing to fix the catastrophic long-term fiscal path on which it places our country....

U6' Unemployment -- The People Who Will Be Hurt Most If Pelosi & Reid Kill E-Verify Parts Of DHS Spending Bill "U6." No, it isn't a new version of an Irish rock group. It is the more complete look at the victims of unemployment. These are the people who would most benefit from the expanded use of E-Verify to open up jobs held by illegal aliens. Let's make sure that Pelosi, Reid and Obama look at the 25 million American victims before they choose to once again favor illegal aliens for U.S. jobs. The unemployment figures you usually hear are...

I encourage you to read the latest words from Sam Webb, National Chair of the Communist Party USA. As is the wont of communists, Mr. Webb is rather long-winded; I provide only a few interesting excerpts. All emphases added by me. "Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years. "In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead. "We can visualize passing tough regulatory reforms on the financial industry, which...

NASA's next generation of spacecraft will have the safest-ever astronaut escape system, a modern-day version of the reliable Apollo system. Like Apollo, the Orion launch abort system will swiftly propel the crew capsule away from the nose of the Ares I rocket and out of harm's way in case of an emergency on the launch pad or during ascent to orbit. Also -- as was the practice at times during development of key Apollo elements -- while NASA engineers are working on the Orion launch abort system, another NASA team is investigating an alternate launch abort concept. The alternate system,...

South Korea has issued security warnings after the disruption of major Internet sites by an apparent cyber attack. Several U.S. Web sites have also been affected. Reports are emerging in South Korean media that intelligence officials suspect North Korea may have had a hand in the disruption. South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted parliamentary intelligence committee lawmakers as saying North Korea may be behind the apparent cyber attack. Wednesday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of the North's revered first leader, Kim Il Sung. In past years, North Korea has used the occasion to show defiance or superiority toward...

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica. These introduced Argentine...