Maybe I'm just a Sucker for Book Blurbs...

...but I couldn't resist this one by George Gilder, whom Rabbi Klinghoffer describes as "a techno-utopian economist and New York Times bestselling author," who says about Darwin's Doubt:

I spend my life reading science books. I've read many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment Darwin's Doubt is the best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that will be read for hundreds of years.

I'll try to read my pre-ordered copy early and let you know if I agree with Mr. Gilder.

UPDATE:  Doh!  It turns out Mr. Gilder is co-founder of the Discovery Institute.  Dang.  Oh well, it's only $16.95, and I'm supposed to be an ID advocate, anyway.

Who Own's Iraq's Oil?

From an article by Antonia Juhasz, Why the War In Iraq was Fought for Big Oil:

It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom's bombs first landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started.

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

Antonia Juhasz

From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

The war is the one and only reason for this long sought and newly acquired access.

Full coverage: The Iraq War, 10 years on

Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in the years following the invasion.

"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense SecretaryChuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."

For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world's largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through Iraq's economy or society.

These outcomes were by design, the result of a decade of U.S. government and oil company pressure. In 1998,Kenneth Derr, then CEO of Chevron, said, "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas-reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to." Today it does.  Read more.

Did the ATF Destroy the Evidence at Fertilizer Plant Explosion?

If you've seen the video of the fertilizer plant explosion, you know that a strange bright light from the left approaches the plant a split second prior to the explosion. If it was a missile of some kind, chemical or physical residues of it might be left in the debris, and chemical analysis of the site might reveal it. But now the Chemical Safety Board (the agency probably most qualified to chemically analyze the site), has claimed that they have been prevented from doing their job. Further, they claim that evidence has been removed from the site, after their request to examine it:

“Access was denied at first, then it was limited thereafter, then it was denied again. Generally to get access, our investigators and experts had to be assigned to ATF work teams, where they often given shovels and rakes and assigned to labor tasks sifting debris, for whatever objects ATF was interested in. They had very little access to to the site for the purposes of the CSB investigation. From May 13 onward ATF denied us any access ‘until further notice’ and that has remained the status to the present day.

There was one block of AN that disappeared after we indicated we wanted to sample it. Additionally ATF removed the fertilizer materials that survived in the bins before we could sample any. We were not permitted to draw our own samples of the surviving material in the bins. We understand ATF conducted some form of testing, but we have not received any results.

We did obtain some samples but other chemical materials of interest were removed after we indicated we wanted to sample them.

Concerning the tour of Dr. Moure-Eraso, this occurred on the afternoon of Thursday, May 2.  It involved Dr. Moure-Eraso, Daniel Horowitz, Don Holmstrom, and some senior ATF and SFM officials.  It was essentially a ceremonial, perimeter tour of about one hour, similar to those previously provided to various elected officials and members of the news media. Dr. Moure and the various ATF/SFM personnel walked along the periphery of the site, on the railway grade (where many trains pass each day and can observe the site) and from there they briefly overlooked the crater and some other parts of the site from a distance.

This was not comparable to in-depth site access and evidence collection for our investigators and experts, which would be a multi-week or month process. From May 13 onward, all site access was denied ‘until further notice’ per the email of the ATF supervisor, and that has remained the situation since then. We are not aware of anything that precipitated this change on site access; we certainly didn’t do anything to prompt it, and the May 4 agreement specifically had specifically stated the CSB would have site access.”

UPDATE: My hypothesis that the Boston Bombing and Ricin Letters were diversions so that most people wouldn't pay much attention to the West Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion seems to be holding up rather well. If one looks at stories in conspiracy theorists' websites, the Boston Bombing takes up the most space. It's difficult to find mention of the other two stories.

Proposal for Independent Study of the WTC Dust

From Debunking the Debunkers:

Proposal for Independent Study of the WTC Dust - Using an Independent Lab that has No Idea that the Dust is From the WTC or From 9/11 (Donate)

Posted by SpookyOne

Chemical Engineer Mark Basile proposes a blind study into the WTC dust:

A "blind" study is when the technicians performing the test have no idea what the purpose of the test is or where the testing samples came from, so that they will not unconsciously influence results.

In previous analyses of the dust by independent 911 investigators, iron microspheres were found - something that could not be created by jet fuel or office fire - plus there were also unreacted red/grey chips that ignited in a thermitic (incendiary) fashion to produce iron spheres.

This physical evidence shows that Thermitic materials, which are sometimes used by the military to demolish equipment - and have been used to dismantle steel structures in the past - were present in the buildings on 911.

Along with the collapse features of the Towers and WTC7, plus the evidence of eyewitnesses to explosions and melted steel, we can see that explosive and incendiary devices must have been used.

Please donate a few dollars to Mark Basile's blind study by following his green highlighted link on his webpage. Do not be concerned about Government interference since the tests will be monitored.




Related info:

The Great Thermite Debate

Is Physiology Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology?

This looks interesting: Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology:

 "New Findings 
•  What is the Topic of this review? Have recent experimental findings in evolutionary biology concerning the transmission of inheritance opened the way to a reintegration of physiology with evolutionary biology?
 •  What advances does it highlight? The answer is yes, and that this requires a new synthesis between evolutionary theory and experimental physiology. 

The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has now been shown to be robust for many generations. The 21st century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology."


HT: Uncommon Descent, Nullasullus

Does Anthropogenic Global Warming Mean That We Are Really "Screwed"?

I haven't had much to say about the whole global warming debate, partly out of not wanting to reveal my vast ignorance, but also because I've suspected that I'm not alone in being this ignorant. A recent article in The Atlantic proves my point. It's entitled, We're Screwed: 11,000 Years' Worth of Climate Data Prove It.

In the article they provide two graphs: One showing average temperatures going back 2,000 years, and one showing average temperatures going back 11,000 years. The second graph is the more interesting. It shows a gradual rise in temperatures until about 7,000 years ago, and then a gradual decline in temperatures until about a hundred years ago, when temperatures started to rise rapidly.

Now I'm willing to believe that the reason for the rapid rise in temperatures is anthropogenic greenhouse gases. What I wonder about is the assertion that this means that we are "screwed." What I just learned myself is that we are currently living in an ice age that started about 2.6 million years ago. The last glacial period ended about 12,500 years ago. It lasted about 100,000 years. And apparently we've been in a cycle of glacial periods lasting for about 100,000 years, followed by warm periods lasting about 10,000 to 15,000 years during much of our current ice age. So when I look at that second chart, I wonder, "Were we headed into another glacial period?  Did our anthropogenic greenhouse gases save us from catastrophy?"  For one thing I do  know is that we do not want another glacial period. The human race would certainly be "screwed" then.

What isn't clear to me is that continued output of greenhouse gases will screw us, or screw us as badly as a glacial period. For example, some scientists think that we are about to experience a reduced amount of sunspot activity and that we will have another little ice age. I don't know if they're right, or if they're just payed employees of oil companies, spewing more propaganda. I do know that reduced growing seasons is something we don't want, especially with seven billion mouths to feed. Compared to the risk of global cooling, tell me again why global warming is so much worse.

Jesus's Clever Way to Say, "I am the Messiah"?

I've been wondering about the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  Could this have been Jesus's first public messianic proclamation (relying on his Jewish audience's connecting it to the Zecharaiah prophecy*)?  Is it probable that the Jewish audience would have recognized the messianic proclamation, but that the Roman authorities wouldn't have understood it?  Would the Roman authorities have understood the crowd's palm branches and chanting of "son of David" and "Hosannah" as messianic?  Or would they have thought that it was just some sort of strange greeting for a weird religious dude riding on a donkey?   If they wouldn't have recognized the messianic implications, then did Jesus find a clever way to say to his Jewish audience, "I am the Messiah," without tipping off the Romans?  

Further, would this leave the Temple authorities in a dilemma?  Do they inform the Roman authorities, who would try to arrest Jesus and perhaps cause a riot?  Do they themselves try to arrest Jesus and perhaps also cause a riot?  Do they do nothing and hope Jesus does nothing?  Do they hope for an opportunity to arrest him in secret, so there's no danger of a riot? 

Even further, would Jesus be clever enough to know that he had put the Temple authorities in such a dilemma?   Would Jesus now be in charge of events for the last week of his life?  Remaining in the safety of the crowd, until it left in the evening, and he along with it?  Choosing to remain in Jerusalem Passover night at a secret location, and then retire to the seclusion of the garden and wait for the Temple authorities to take advantage of their golden opportunity? 

*"Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
    righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,   
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
(Zechariah 9:9)