Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag on Mare Tranquillitatis during Apollo 11 in 1969. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What would have happened if the Apollo 11 crew had been unable to take off again from the lunar surface ?
The historic Apollo 11 moon landing was a risky business, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the surface there was no guarantee that they would be able to lift off again. While engineers did everything in their power to make the craft as reliable as possible there was still a chance that the two men would have ended up stranded there.
Because of this risk, both NASA and President Nixon had a contingency plan in place if the worst were to happen. Fellow orbiting astronaut Michael Collins would have been ordered to return to Earth alone, while Nixon would have made a special announcement in tribute to Armstrong and Aldrin. NASA would have kept in contact with them until the very end and a clergyman would have spoken to them over the radio, commending their souls to the deep.
Fortunately however this plan was never needed, to date every astronaut NASA ever sent to the moon returned alive and well at the end of the mission.
Ascending from the lunar surface was one of the most important maneuvers on the mission; any problems could leave Aldrin and Armstrong stranded on the moon with no way home. It was a gruesome scenario, but not impossible. In the unlikely event this lunar disaster did happen, NASA had a plan in place.
Is it the end of the super steely era? Ford is reportedly mulling over a decision to use aluminum panels in its F-150pickup trucks, which have utilized steel panels since the vehicle's birth decades ago. The company has already moved toward technology that helps its vehicles save on gas, and this aluminum move is yet another, as it will cut 700 pounds out of the pickup. That's a lot less truck to move.
The Associated Press says the change will happen with the F-150s appearing on the market in July 2014. It's a big move, as the pickups are Ford's cash cow and the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 30 years. Not to mention Ford's a widespread and devoted customer base which could be resistant to any more big changes in the beloved vehicles.
For the next millennium, Greeks gathered every four years in Olympia to honor Zeus through sports, sacrifices and hymns. The five-day festival brought the Greek world together in devotion to one deity.
What began in ancient Greece as a festival to honor a single god, Zeus, has now become an almost Olympian task, as organizers of the games navigate dozens of sacred fasts, religious rituals and holy days.
The London Olympics will try to accommodate religious athletes with 193 chaplains, a prayer room in every venue and a multifaith center in the Olympic Village.
Athletes at the ancient Olympics believed their training honored the gods, and victory was a sign of favor from a deity. As contests like wrestling, boxing, and horse racing were added to the Olympic roster, they supplemented devotional sacrifices, hymns, and ceremonies.
“The idea was that you were training to please Zeus. But part of the festival would be to visit the temple, visit the cult statues, making offerings, celebrating and seeing your family,” said David Gilman Romano, a professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Arizona.
In one of the most shocking articles that the New York Times has ever put out, a New York Times reporter has openly admitted that virtually every major mainstream news organization allows government bureaucrats and campaign officials to censor their stories.
For example, almost every major news organization in the country has agreed to submit virtually all quotes from anyone involved in the Obama campaign or the Romney campaign to gatekeepers for "quote approval" before they will be published.
If the gatekeeper in the Obama campaign does not want a certain quote to get out, the American people will not see it, and the same thing applies to the Romney campaign. The goal is to keep the campaigns as "on message" as possible and to avoid gaffes at all cost.
But this kind of thing is not just happening with political campaigns.
It happened again! Obama while in Aurora Colorado, addressing the nation on the theatre shootings was pestered yet again by a fly! The darn thing just would not leave him alone! I have named him "The Lord of the Flies," a biblical term for one who comes in the form and nature of Satan.
Beelzebub is derived from the ancient Semitic Ba‘al Z bûb, in Hebrew Ba‘al Z bûb means "Lord of the Flies" (ba‘al being Hebrew for "lord, master, owner" and z bûb being a Hebrew collective noun for "fly"). In Arabic the name is retained as Ba‘al HaZvuv or Ba‘al Azabab again literally "Lord of the Flies". The Septuagint renders the name as “Baalzebub” and as “Baal muian” or Baal of flies. In Greek it is “Beelzeboub” in Latin it is “Beelzebu-b”, Jerome read and translated the name into Latin, as "Dominus muscarum", all these names translate into English as "Lord of the Flies".
The name Baal-zebub is mentioned four times in the Old Testament book 2 Kings 1: 2-3,6,16
2 Kings 1:2-16 (New American Standard Bible)
“2And Ahaziah fell through the lattice in his upper chamber which was in Samaria, and became ill. So he sent messengers and said to them, "Go, inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I will recover from this sickness."
“3But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?'
“6They said to him, "A man came up to meet us and said to us, 'Go, return to the king who sent you and say to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed where you have gone up, but shall surely die.”
“16Then he said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron--is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire of His word?--therefore you shall not come down from the bed where you have gone up, but shall surely die.”
The ancient Philistines lived about 25 miles from Jerusalem, and at the time of 2 Kings, they were the great enemy of all Israelites. Philistine origins are traced back to the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah. Ham is the father of the black race. They conquered the local Canaanite western-Semitic speaking population of the coast, and together the conquered people and the invaders created a blended, west-Semitic speaking culture that we now refer to as Philistine, we have no idea what name the Philistines called themselves.
Nothing is known for certain about the original language of the invading tribes that later became the Philistines. There is some evidence in favor of the assumption that they originally spoke an Indo-European language. A number of Philistine-related words found in the Bible are not Semitic, and can in some cases, with reservations, be traced back to Proto-Indo-European roots.
Enough of the history, here is, in my opinion, some videos of God Almighty showing us a "sign" concerning Barack Obama and his role on earth!
Navy Special Warfare Trident Insignia worn by qualified U.S. Navy SEALs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The country has had a weekend for the tragic Aurora, Colo., shooting to sink in. During that time, many have probably gone from shock, to anger, to grief, and several other stages. Some are also contemplating the lessons that can be learned. The editor-in-chief of SOFREP (the Special Operations Forces Report) is one who has considered the latter, and he has felt compelled to share “some lessons” from his time as a Navy SEAL that he “can pass on to the average citizen.” In other words, he has some advice for people going forward that could help protect you should you ever find yourself in such a situation.
Brandon Webb, who was apart of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Class 215, told TheBlaze that he, like many, was “angry that this sick individual could just stroll into this theater and open fire on innocent, unsuspecting people.”
However sickened Webb was by the news, while flying to New York and contemplating the events, advice “just poured out” of him about how to react — as much as possible — in dangerous situations.
“I wanted to do something to help that could possibly better prepare people in the future,” Webb said. “Having any plan in place will better prepare people …”
In a blog post, Webb first offers advice on how to lower your profile as a target should you find yourself in such a horrific event. He writes that one can achieve this at public venues by choosing seats that would allow for a “hasty exit.” For example, Webb states that he “still combat [parks] (backs into a space) and [sits] with my back to the wall when I’m eating.”
If a major emergency happened in the United States, do you have faith that the government would take care of you? Amazingly, even after all of the examples to the contrary that we have seen in recent years, a solid majority of all Americans actually believe that the government will be there for them when things hit the fan.
According to a new survey conducted by the Adelphi University Center for Health Innovation, 55 percent of Americans believe that the authorities will come to their rescue when disaster strikes.
Sadly, most Americans still view the government as a "nanny state" that has both the capability and the willingness to take care of them from the cradle to the grave. Most Americans still have faith that the government will come through for them when they need it the most. But all we have to do is look back at what happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to realize what a crock of baloney that is. Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that was limited to a relatively small geographic area, and yet we all saw how the response of the federal government was a complete and utter failure.
So what is going to happen someday if there is a nationwide disaster that stretches on for months or even years? Do you really believe that the federal government will be there for you?
NOTE: BE PATIENT!!! It takes a while (in darkness) for the bomb to go off and after you finally see it - It takes another 30 seconds or more for the sound to hit the people filming! Civilians were allowed to watch this blast from 11 miles away, partly an attempt by the government to allay public fears about the dangers of nuclear fallout.
They are surely the most horrifying offshoot of modern technology - nuclear warheads which can smite hundreds of thousands of people dead within seconds, and leave lasting scars on a landscape for generations.
And while most of us will have seen archive footage of nuclear explosions before, one thing we are unlikely to have heard is their sound.
For, according to one expert, most films we see of a nuclear blast use stock 'explosion' sound effects for the bang - and audio footage is few and far between.
But Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, has shared a unigue video of a blast during America's testing of nukes in the Yucca Mountain area of Nevada during the 1950s.
Read the story below - notice what can happen when one has dual citizenship (as Obama had).... then read the article below it, on the standing LEGAL ruling from an American court on the subject. These facts ARE NEVER mentioned by the media....
Little Jack Redmond, of Orland Park, Illinois, was put on a plane headed to Ireland to live with his father possibly for the rest of his childhood after international courts ruled against his mother in a drawn-out custody battle against her ex-boyfriend, who is Irish. Although the five-year-old boy was born in the U.S. and has spent nearly all of his young life in a Chicago suburb, he has dual citizenship, which means that he is subject to Irish laws.
What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with all detective work, eliminating the usual suspects from the beginning goes a long way in quickly solving a case.
What Natural-Born Citizen Could Not Mean
Could a natural-born citizen simply mean citizenship due to place of birth?
Fourteenth Amendment
Whatever might had been the correct understanding of “natural-born citizen” prior to 1866, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment certainly changes the view because for the first time we have a written national rule declaring who are citizens through birth or naturalization. Who may be born citizens is conditional upon being born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States - a condition not required under the common law. The legislative definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was defined as “Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”
This national rule prevents us from interpreting natural-born citizen under common law rules because it eliminates the possibility of a child being born with more than one allegiance.
Natural-Born Citizen Defined
One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature - laws the founders recognized and embraced.
Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”
From reading all the material on the subject of natural born citizens I can’t help but conclude the following:
1) Citizens of united states was never properly defined by the framers mainly because only state law could define whom were born a citizen of the state which in return automatically made them a citizen of the united states under article 4.
2) Congress in 1866 recognized not all states recognized people of color as citizens and set out to define who were citizens of the united states through statute and amendment to the constitution.
3) Congress decided to recognize all persons born or naturalized as citizens of the united states as long as they could not be claimed as subjects of another country.
4) The 14th amendment was clearly designed to recognized only those politically attached to the nation (citizens) and no other.
5) Just as a naturalized citizen cannot be claimed by any other foreign power as their citizens, neither can anyone born.
Obama cannot be a citizen of the united states under the true meaning behind born or naturalized subject to the jurisdiction of the united states. Justice Gray himself confirmed this in Elk v Wilkins writing for the majority in defining subject to the jurisdiction as political attachment and not mere place of birth. This was in perfect agreement with acts of congress of 1866, 1868 and 1874.
This crazy notion that place of birth controls citizenship is so contrary to written law makes you wonder how so many got carried away with such an easily debunked belief.
This case concerned Mrs. Happersett, an original suffragette, who in virtue of the 14th Amendment attempted to register to vote in the State of Missouri, and was refused because she was not a man. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in that year, wrote the majority opinion, in which he stated:
The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
In this case, Wong Kim Ark, the son of 2 resident Chinese aliens, claimed U.S. Citizenship and was vindicated by the court on the basis of the 14th Amendment. In this case the Justice Gray gave the opinion of the court. On p. 168-9 of the record, He cites approvingly the decision in Minor vs. Happersett:
At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
On the basis of the 14th Amendment, however, the majority opinion coined a new definition for “native citizen”, as anyone who was born in the U.S.A., under the jurisdiction of the United States. The Court gave a novel interpretation to jurisdiction, and thus extended citizenship to all born in the country (excepting those born of ambassadors and foreign armies etc.); but it did not extend the meaning of the term “natural born citizen.”
CONCLUSION
Finally it should be noted, that to define a term is to indicate the category or class of things which it signifies. In this sense, the Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.
Hence every U.S. Citizen must accept this definition or categorical designation, and fulfil his constitutional duties accordingly. No member of Congress, no judge of the Federal Judiciary, no elected or appointed official in Federal or State government has the right to use any other definition; and if he does, he is acting unlawfully, because unconstitutionally.
The mystery of the ages is just what exactly happened to the Ark of the Covenant? There are many theories, but no real answers. In today's program, we follow not what happened to the actual ark the housed the Ten Commandments, we rather look to what happened to the Ten Commandments in our churches! A great video!
How did the Romans grow grapes in northern England? Perhaps because it was warmer than we thought.
A study suggests the Britain of 2,000 years ago experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today.
German researchers used data from tree rings – a key indicator of past climate – to claim the world has been on a ‘long-term cooling trend’ for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century.
This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells.
These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now.
They say the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD has been underestimated by climate scientists.
Lead author Professor Dr Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: ‘We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low.
‘This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 deg C.’
In general the scientists found a slow cooling of 0.6C over 2,000 years, which they attributed to changes in the Earth’s orbit which took it further away from the Sun.
The Bible mentions the primary physical causes for the great Flood of Noah’s day in Genesis 7:11. First to break loose were “all the fountains of the great deep.” These no doubt brought to the surface enormous volumes of water and magma that had been sequestered beneath earth’s surface. Next, we are told that the “windows of heaven were opened,” pummeling the earth with excessive rainfall. Both “fountains” and “windows” remained open for 150 days (Genesis 8:2-3), and then God closed them. We observe the results of these geologic processes in the vast amounts of sedimentary and volcanic rock draped over the continents.
Another geologic process may have been involved, although it is not mentioned in Scripture. Large surface features on earth seem to speak of horrific past events that no longer occur. Meteorite impact craters suggest earlier episodes of bombardment not witnessed by man, but recorded in rock.
The best known crater is the Barringer Meteorite Crater in Arizona. Its sharp edges have not been significantly eroded, indicating that the meteor probably struck ground during post-Flood times. Other craters are too big to see at ground level and can only be detected from a high altitude or on a map. The biggest ones are discerned through sub-surface mapping and the discovery of meteorite fragments in drilling. The underground craters are encased in Flood sediments, leading to the conclusion that meteorites impacted earth during the Flood….
The books of the Old Testament, showing their positions in both the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, shown with their names in Hebrew) and Christian Bibles. The Deuterocanon or Apocrypha are colored differently from the Protocanon (the Hebrew Bible books which are considered canonical by all). click on image to enlarge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Bob Barney
It's finally done! Actually, I finished on Penetecost week (May 29), after three long years of work. What did I finish? I finish a complete fresh translation of the Holy Bible, in modern language and as close to the original meaning as possible. The thing that sets this Bible different than any other one you will ever read is that every word of Jesus Christ is in red - IN BOTH the New and Old Testament. Many do not understand the Plain Truth that Jesus Christ is the LORD (Yahweh) of the Old Testament. He is the God of Noah, Abraham and Jacob. He is the God who said, "Let there be light." He is the same one who wrote the TenCommandments with His own finger! It is easily proven, and I will not go deeply into this now, except to point out that Jesus said that no human had ever seen the Father (Ixquick <a better Google search engine> these phrases for proof). Jesus also said that He was before Abraham and that, in fact, he was the "I AM" of Exodus 3! "I AM" is the personal name of Yahweh who spoke to Moses. So in this truly revolutionary Bible, I have every word of GOD in RED, in both the Old and New Testaments. This will make the Bible come alive as you have never experienced it, when you realize it is the God that would become Jesus Christ who said, "I change not, therefore, you are not destroyed." Most scholars say that Christ came to change the Law. Christ says in the Old Testament that He never changes! My brother in Christ, Joe Kovacs' new book, the "Divine Secret" uses this technique, and it makes the scriptures come alive!
The other really important difference that you will notice in this Bible, is that the Old Testament will be put in its exact order as God commanded it to be done, and as Jesus read it, as a human being! Today's Bibles are NOT in the accurate order or number of Books that God intended. There are not 39 books of the Old Testament, but 22 (or possibly 24). That is because in today's Bible, we have books cut in half! There isn't I Kings and II Kings, or 1st Samuel and 2nd Samuel, they were never intended to be two books at all. All "39" books are in this new translation, but will be in the original order and comprise only 22 books.
6) Joshua and Judges [reckoned as two separate books by the Jews after the 2nd century] 7) The Book of Kingdoms (Samuel and Kings) [reckoned as two separate books by the Jews after the 2nd century] 8) Isaiah 9) Jeremiah 10) Ezekiel 11) The Twelve (Hosea to Malachi) [always reckoned as one book by the Jews]
III. THE HOLY WRITINGS (or THE PSALMS because it was the first book in the collection in this "Royal Division")
12) The Psalms 13) The Proverbs 14) Job 15) Song of Songs 16) Ruth 17) Lamentations 18) Ecclesiastes 19) Esther 20) Daniel 21) Ezra-Nehemiah [reckoned as one book by the Jews] 22) The Book of Chronicles [reckoned as one book by the Jews]
These 22 books of the Old Testament (and their arrangement as indicated above) should be the standard canon followed by every version of the Bible today. They represent the exact number presently in our King James Version but as one can observe, they are arranged and enumerated differently. Again, it was Jerome who gave us our present enumeration of 39 books for the Old Testament rather than the original 22 enumeration (which agreed on the number of letters to the Hebrew alphabet). It was Ezra, the second "Moses" who edited the Old Testament and canonized it. It was the LORD JESUS who affirmed that canonization! If you are a Christian, then you must accept the order above!
Ezra (עֶזְרָא, Standard Hebrew ʿEzra, Tiberian Hebrew ʿEzrâ: short for עַזְרִיאֵל "My help/court is God", Standard Hebrew ʿAzriʾel, Tiberian Hebrew ʿAzrîʾēl) was the "scribe" who led the second body of exiled Israelites that returned from Babylon to Jerusalem in 459 BCE, and is probably the author of the Book of Ezra and the Book of 1 Chronicles in the Bible... He was the son, or perhaps grandson, of Seraiah (2 Kings 25:18-21), and a lineal descendant of Phinehas, the son of Aaron (Ezra 7:1-5). All we know of his personal history is contained in the last four chapters of his book, and in Nehemiah 8 and 12:26.
In the seventh year during the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (see also Darius I of Persia), he obtained leave to go up to Jerusalem and to take with him a company of Israelites (Ezra 8). Artaxerxes manifested great interest in Ezra's undertaking, granting him "all his requests," and loading him with gifts to the house of God. Ezra assembled the band of exiles, probably about 5,000 in all, who were prepared to go up with him to Jerusalem, on the banks of the Ahava, where they rested for three days, and were put into order for their march across the desert, which was completed in four months. His activities in Jerusalem following his arrival are recorded in his book.
For about fourteen years, (i.e., until 445 BCE), we have no record of what went on in Jerusalem after Ezra had set in order the ecclesiastical and civil affairs throughout the nation. In that year, another distinguished personage, Nehemiah, appears upon the scene. After the ruined wall around the city had been built by Nehemiah, there was a great gathering of the people at Jerusalem preparatory to the dedication of the wall. On the appointed day, the whole population assembled, and the Torah was read aloud to them by Ezra and his assistants (Neh. 8:3). The remarkable scene is described in detail. There was a great religious awakening. For successive days, beginning on Rosh Hashanah (the first day of the seventh month) they rejoiced in the holy days during the month of Tishri. Ezra read to them the entire scroll of the Torah and he, and various scholars and Levites explained and interpreted the deeper meanings and applications of the Torah to the assembled crowd. These festivities culminated in a very enthusiastic and joyous seven-day celebration of the Festival of Sukkot, concluding on the eighth day with the holiday of Shemini Atzeret. On the twenty-fourth day, immediately following the holidays, they held a solemn assembly, fasting and confessing their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. Then, they renewed their national covenant to follow God's Torah, given through the hand of Moses, and to observe and fulfill all the Lord's commandments, laws and decrees. (Neh. 10:30). Abuses were rectified, and arrangements in the temple service completed, and now nothing remained but the dedication of the walls around the city (Neh. 12).
Ezra - Relation to the Book of Ruth
According to some scholars, the Book of Ruth was originally a part of the Book of Judges, but it was later separated from that book and made into an independent book. Its opening verse explicitly places it during the time period of the Judges, and its language and description seem to make the authorship contemporary with that period. On the other hand, the message from the book, which shows acceptance of marrying converts to Judaism, has been used to suggest that the book was written during the early days of the Persian period. At that time, Ezra condemned intermarriages and, according to his eponymous book, forced the Israelites to abandon their non-Jewish wives who did not convert. According to this theory, the Book of Ruth was written in response to Ezra's reform and in defense of these marriages. More likely, the book was a response to critics of King David, who contested his qualifications as a Jew due to his Moabite ancestry. In that context, the book uses the precedent set by a Jewish court, led by Boaz, to demonstrate that a Moabitess could convert and be a member of the Children of Israel.
Ezra - Place in editing the Torah and Bible....According to Rabbinic Jewish tradition, Ezra collected and arranged the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
It was probably Ezra, who footnoted the entire scripture, added needed endings to stories, or additional information for the reader. Thus, we see "and it is named to this day..." Terms like this found in the Torah would not be written by Moses, but by someone some 500-1,000 years later! Also, who wrote the account of the death of Moses? Maybe Joshua, but most believe Ezra did it.
The new Plain Truth RED LETTER Bible will be online for review by October (The Feast of Tabernacles), but I will have some chapters on The Plain Truth thoughout the summer! Someday, as income allows, I plain to publish this Bible as well in print! That will cost about $25,000.00
For decades, science books in America’s schools have taught that the earth is billions of years old, with the Big Bang bursting through the universe some 14.3 billion years ago. They teach children that bacteria has been around a billion years or so and that the “Precambrian Explosion” some 500 million years ago launched some of the earliest forms of life.
But what if the evidence doesn’t support that? What if scientific observation suggests that the Bible’s literal account of thousands of years is right.
English: Graph showing public support for Roe v. Wade over the years (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Michael Thompson
With news of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare and striking down three of the four provisions of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 dominating the news, the 50th anniversary of a Supreme Court case passed by without recognition.
Engel v. Vitale, decided on June 25, 1962, determined it wasn’t constitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer or encourage its recitation in public schools.
A violent new sunspot is bombarding the Earth with particles from solar flares - including a blast that affected some radio transmissions across Europe.
Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an M5.6-class solar flare erupting from the sun's surface starting on July 2, from a huge sunspot called AR1515 in the sun's southern hemisphere.
The blast of particles - a 'coronal mass ejection' - was not directed towards Earth, but the charged particles caused brief radio interference across Europe.
Scroll down for video
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory saw an active region on the sun, labeled AR1515, sent out an M5.3 class solar flare that peaked on Independence Day July 4th, 2012
This image, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the M5.3 class solar flare that peaked on July 4, 2012
SUMI'ss instruments are designed to study magnetic fields of the sun's chromosphere -- a thin layer of solar atmosphere sandwiched between the visible surface, photosphere and its atmosphere, the corona
From a different spot, but on that same day, the sun unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME) that began at 4:36 AM on Tuesday.
Models from the NASA's Space Weather Center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, described the CME at traveling at nearly 700 miles per second, but do not show it heading toward Earth.
Sunspots are darker than the surrounding area because they are slightly cooler, which makes them less luminous.
'Britain's Atlantis' - a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea - has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews.
Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC.
Divers from oil companies have found remains of a 'drowned world' with a population of tens of thousands - which might once have been the 'real heartland' of Europe.
A team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies - and revealed the full extent of a 'lost land' once roamed by mammoths.
Divers from St Andrews University, find remains of Doggerland, the underwater country dubbed 'Britain's Atlantis'
Dr Richard Bates of the earth sciences department at St Andrews University, searching for Doggerland, the underwater country dubbed 'Britain's Atlantis'
A Greater Britain: How the North Sea grew and the land-mass shrunk
Drowned world: Scans show a mound discovered under the water near Orkney, which has been explored by divers
St Andrews University's artists' impression of life in Doggerland
The research suggests that the populations of these drowned lands could have been tens of thousands, living in an area that stretched from Northern Scotland across to Denmark and down the English Channel as far as the Channel Islands.
The area was once the ‘real heartland’ of Europe and was hit by ‘a devastating tsunami', the researchers claim.
The wave was part of a larger process that submerged the low-lying area over the course of thousands of years.
'The name was coined for Dogger Bank, but it applies to any of several periods when the North Sea was land,' says Richard Bates of the University of St Andrews. 'Around 20,000 years ago, there was a 'maximum' - although part of this area would have been covered with ice. When the ice melted, more land was revealed - but the sea level also rose.
'Through a lot of new data from oil and gas companies, we’re able to give form to the landscape - and make sense of the mammoths found out there, and the reindeer. We’re able to understand the types of people who were there.
'People seem to think rising sea levels are a new thing - but it’s a cycle of Earht history that has happened many many times.'
Organised by Dr Richard Bates of the Department of Earth Sciences at St Andrews, the Drowned Landscapes exhibit reveals the human story behind Doggerland, a now submerged area of the North Sea that was once larger than many modern European countries.
(Gatestone Institute) Egypt’s “first sex-slave marriage” took place mere days after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi was made president.
Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi showed a video-clip of a man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, “marrying” his slave. Before making the woman, who has a non-Egyptian accent, repeat after him the Koran’s Surat al-Ikhlas, instead of saying the usual “I marry myself to you,” the woman said “I enslave myself to you,” kissing him in front of an applauding audience.
Then, even though she was wearing a hijab, her owner-husband declared that she is forbidden from such trappings and commanded her to be stripped of them, so as “not to break Allah’s laws.” She took her veil and abaya off, revealing, by Muslim standards, a seductive red dress (all the other women present were veiled). The man claps for her and the video-clip (which can be seen here) ends.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is becoming the church of contention, with a bid by the Palestinians to use their position as the newest members of the U.N.’s cultural arm to obtain World Heritage status for the iconic Christian site – and perhaps boost their own campaign for legitimacy.
The effort by the Palestinian Authority, like its overall efforts for global recognition for an independent Palestinian state, is drawing resistance. And it may fail at the World Heritage Committee meeting that starts Sunday.
An experts committee has turned down the emergency bid to quickly confer on the Church of the Nativity, and its pilgrimage route, the status as an endangered World Heritage site, saying the application needs more work. Even custodians of the holy site, the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian churches are opposed, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
The church – which drew some 2 million visitors last year and parts of which are 1,500 years old – stands above the grotto that Christians believe was the birthplace of Jesus. The Palestinians’ application asks for recognition as a site of “outstanding universal value” urgently in need of attention.
The world's first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.
The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.
So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three 'parents'.
Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.
The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.
Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults --two women and one man.
There’s a tricky and potentially-troubling situation going on when it comes to individuals who are studying counseling in college, but who happen to oppose homosexuality. Jennifer Keeton, a Christian, learned this the hard way after she was expelled from the graduate program at Georgia’s Augusta State University in 2010 for expressing her disagreement with the same-sex lifestyle. Now, two years later, she has lost a subsequent court case defending herself against the school’s decision.
Here’s how the situation unfolded. The university‘s program apparently stressed that students couldn’t discriminate against others based on any indicators, including sexual orientation. But Keeton, citing her religious views, refused to alter her engagement with gay students and clients (clearly, these views impacted her relations with these individuals). It’s not clear exactly what Keeting said inside or outside of the classroom that created such a stir, but this is certainly an interest First Amendment case to continue watching.
Buzz Aldrin salutes the U.S. flag on Mare Tranquillitatis during Apollo 11 in 1969. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
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