The 'killer' icon (Photo: London Telegr

"It's an inexplicable phenomenon and it started long ago," Boris Sapunov told the paper. "Three or four people died of diseases, and the coincidence began to make me wonder. When the [supervisors'] seats were moved away, all the trouble stopped. It won't be exhibited any more.

"The icon was created by several artists, but it is the middle section, painted by an apprentice, that has a negative bio-field." ...

The professor first drew attention to the problem by contacting a Russian tabloid, the Komsomolskaya Pravda. After the publication of a story headlined "Killer icon in the Hermitage," the museum began to receive complaints from worried members of the public.

Vyacheslav Gubanov, a local doctor, reportedly conducted an analysis of the icon.

"This is a wonderful icon, a very powerful one," Gubanov told Russia's Pravda. "It is not guilty of making people feel bad. It produces the power, which makes the human brain vibrate at a high frequency. Not every human being can stand that. Most likely, the icon was meant for the elite, not for common people."

Since America is typically represented by an eagle. Saddam should have read up on his Muslim passages... The following verse is from the Quran, (the Islamic Bible)

Quran (9:11) -- For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.

Note the verse number!!!!!

[9.11] But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and We make the communications clear for a people who know.

AP Photo

Many who practice voodoo praised the move, but said much remains to be done to make up for centuries of ridicule and persecution in the Caribbean country and abroad.

Voodoo priest Philippe Castera said he hopes the government's decree is more than an effort to win popularity amid economic and political troubles.

"In spite of our contribution to Haitian culture, we are still misunderstood and despised," said Castera, 48.

In an executive decree issued last week, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide invited voodoo adherents and organizations to register with the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

After swearing an oath before a civil judge, practitioners will be able to legally conduct ceremonies such as marriages and baptisms, the decree said.

Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, has said he recognizes voodoo as a religion like any other, and a voodoo priestess bestowed a presidential sash on him at his first inauguration in 1991.

"An ancestral religion, voodoo is an essential part of national identity," and its institutions "represent a considerable portion" of Haiti's 8.3 million people, Aristide said in the decree.

Voodoo practitioners believe in a supreme God and spirits who link the human with the divine. The spirits are summoned by offerings that include everything from rum to roosters.

The Blount County Board of Education denied the adoption of three new biology textbooks because they teach evolution but do not cover creationism.

The vote to deny the texts passed by a 2-1 margin Thursday night. Four board members did not vote.

COWARDS!

... Treadway said he had reservations about the approach to the theory of evolution in the three texts. He said he does not want people to believe he is against evolution, but wants it to be taught as a theory along with creationism.

"With the overwhelming references to evolution, I don't feel comfortable with (adopting these texts),'' Treadway said.

Maybe the "overwhelming references to evolution" have something to do with the fact that you are looking at a SCIENCE text and not a SUNDAY SCHOOL WORKBOOK, Treadway.

Simerly said she is concerned with how evolution is approached in the selected biology texts, because creationism is not addressed.

"I do not believe that we evolved from anything other than human beings,'' she said.

So just because YOU choose to believe something (sweet little chump that you are), that BELIEF should be taken seriously in a SCIENCE text? What if I were to say that I believe the world is flat and is balanced on the back of a turtle? Should my fervent and illogical beliefs be incorporated into the science curriculum? No? Then why are you trying to incorporate YOURS?

McNelly said he shared those concerns, though he is not against evolution as a theory.

Big of him, innit?

Like Treadway, he said he believes students should be taught both creation and evolution theories. "With creationism not presented as a theory, there's a large gaping hole in the books,'' McNelly said.

Listen up, dingy: creationism is not a theory in the sense that evolution is a theory. Creationism is a statement of belief that people are trying (without success) to make fit the (mostly very inconvenient) facts on the ground, and the only way they can do that even marginally is by throwing out whole classes of data and artifacts. Evolution, on the other hand, is a theory that pretty thoroughly incorporates and explains the data and artifacts as they EXIST in the real world.

McNelly said he voted against the motion to reject the textbooks because he believes the teachers could address creationism when covering the material in class.

NO. Since science is an attempt to explain what IS rather than what "could be," creationism doesn't come anywhere near passing the "science" test. So keep it the hell out of the science classroom. Exclamation point.

The next course of action would be for the matter to be taken back to science instructors at the high schools and have them write a curriculum that includes creation being taught beside evolution. With that curriculum in place, the board would be content to adopt the three texts, according to Bell.

Cheese Louise on Pumpernickel.

shaking head in disbelief

The four nonvoting board members apparently were reluctant to get involved in the discussion with memories of the Scopes' Monkey Trial in the not so distant past.

In other words, they have no gonads whatsoever. Fire them, too.

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Reader Mail: Tennessee Monkeybrains Redux "Laurie" writes: Your rant about Blount County, Tennessee, Schools choice of textbooks is predicated on an error in reporting. The choice to reject the textbook which mentioned Evolution as a fact and the only possibility was made by a 6 to 1 vote. Here is what one of the Board said later about the matter: "The board wanted the textbook to say that the theory of evolution is a theory. Many other books say that. We know the law. We don't intend to violate the law. The law has to do with: "the public schools shall neither advance or inhibit religion (TCA 49-6-2902)." You will certainly disagree with their decision, but you may decide they are at least not lacking in courage nonetheless. The Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times have been apprised of their mistake, but have elected not to issue a correction. I thank Laurie for her correction to the vote count as reported. However, it only makes me more angry. It means that only one member of that board deserves to be making educational decisions for the Blount County schools. A scientific "theory" is not a "theory" in the sense Laurie and the board members seem to think it is (or wish it was): something that is "just a guess" and/or is not proved. We all know what is going on here. The board members are insisting on the word "theory" to provide an opportunity for teachers in the classroom to deliberately skew the word's real meaning in the scientific context and tell students that they don't have to accept evolutionary science because "it's just a theory." The board member Laurie quotes makes this intention clear by essentially saying, "We won't approve a science book that doesn't give teachers an opportunity to dismiss science and push religion." (I think it's fascinating that Tennesee has a law that guarantees that the public schools can't ever tell kids anything that might "inhibit" their religion. Does that go for the religion of Hindus and Buddhists, too? What if a kid were to claim that his religion was Atheistic Evolutionism...would he get to object to the teacher who promotes Creationism as an alternative "theory"? What? Oh, yeah, silly me, I guess I am assuming that serious lawmakers would THINK THINGS THROUGH.) Evolution is about as proved as a scientific theory ever gets: it and its corollaries are the best fit to the processes we observe and artifacts as we have them. Creationism, on the other hand, is cobbled together out of IGNORING the preponderance of the evidence (forced, for example, to say that God put dinosaur bones in the ground to "test our faith"), and consists of little more than desperate efforts to fit minor disputes or datapoints into an ancient STORY that was never intended to be taken literally in the first place. That is the very antithesis of science, and as such it does not belong in a textbook or in a science classroom. Period. No: Exclamation point. I repeat: Blount County voters should fire that school board at the earliest opportunity. People who are effectively plotting to sneak Creationism into the science curriculum -- or are too scared to stand up to those who have that intention -- shouldn't be making decisions about what color to paint the gymnasium walls, much less deciding which textbooks to buy.

I wrote up the description of a book club for my church at the beginning of last semester. I entitled it, "The Sacrament of Story." Basically, the idea behind it was to read fiction that dealt with faith, and ... I wanted to do something that brought the personally reflective focus of a "bible study" together with something that was imaginative, as I think that that might be a more dynamic experience.

The book list, in the end, consisted pretty much entirely of Catholic writers. The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter by Greene, Silence by Endo, Love in the Ruins by Percy, Brideshead Revisited by Waugh, Diary of a Country Priest by Bernanos, and Wise Blood by O'Connor was the entire list. It wasn't purposeful to make it only Catholic, but when I started thinking about the kinds of books I wanted to read, these were the books I wanted. What is the connection between 20th century Catholicism that it managed to produce so much great literature?

God converts to Microsoft Windows, experiences salvation failure; distraught Christians lament not having Saved themselves more often

In a shocking turn of events, sources in Heaven report that God has made a crucial error in the management of His IT infrastructure. ...

All over Heaven, The Servers crashed. Total Salvation Failure.

The recriminations flew faster than cherubs on cappuccino. Gabriel said, "It must be a bug."

"But this is Heaven!" said God. "There are no bugs, only Features!"

On Earth, Christians shuddered in horror as word spread that their eternal souls would revert to their Last Save. Jerry Fallwell reverted to the age of fourteen, and ditched his ministry to spy on college girls in the shower. ...

Guess who's The Angel of Microsoft?

Hyman, whose lifelong research interests include examination of alleged psychic readings and the psychology of deception and self-deception, points out that Schwartz's one experiment with a double-blind protocol (the scientific gold standard for validating data with the potential for unconscious signaling or subjective flaws) in fact repudiated his thesis.

"Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one," says Hyman.