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From Friends of Science. Be sure to visit their page and bookmark it. COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate. FACT: The HadCRUT3 surface temperature index shows warming to 1878, cooling to 1911, warming to 1941, cooling to 1964, warming to 1998 and cooling through 2011. The warming rate from 1964 to 1998 was the same as the previous warming from 1911 to 1941. Satellites, weather balloons and ground stations all show cooling since 2001. The mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8 C over the 20th century is well within the...

Israel decided to refrain from a ground invasion of Gaza after it was warned that such a move could spell the end of the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, Channel 2 reported Thursday. According to the report, Mossad Head Tamir Pardo, who went to Cairo as Israel's representative in the contacts that preceded the ceasefire, was told in messages from Cairo and from Washington that the peaceful relations between Israel, Jordan and Egypt were at risk.

Bun Rany, Cambodia's first lady, gives President Obama a "sampeah" greeting at a tilt usually reserved for servants.

FULL TITLE: Not just 'following orders': Nazi prison camp bosses 'took pride in what they were doing' new study claims Nazi concentration camp bosses who claimed they were just 'following orders' truly believed and took pride in what they were doing, researchers have claimed. Landmark studies on human behaviour in the 1960s and 1970s had founded the theory that people carried out evil act because they naturally follow orders from figures of authority. And Nazi war criminals famously tried the defence at the Nuremberg trials. But Scottish psychologists have challenged the fifty-year-old findings after going back and re-examining the original...

Most recent vote count - Obama 64,037,946 (50.8%) - Romney 59,944,056 (47.5%) - Summary and sources in "Comments."

Forget all that turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, today should be a day of fasting and atonement for American “sin.” That’s according to Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen, known for his hard-left politics, also calls Thanksgiving a “white-supremacist holiday.” Jensen’s opinion piece “No Thanks for Thanksgiving,” appeared on the far-left, Soros-connected website Alternet on Thanksgiving eve. In it, he wrote how Native Americans suffered because of the “European invasion of the Americas.” He went on to compare the Founding Fathers to Nazi Germany. “How does a country deal with the fact that...

CAIRO (AP) -- The Gaza cease-fire deal reached Wednesday marks a startling trajectory for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi: an Islamist leader who refuses to talk to Israelis or even say the country's name mediated for it and finally turned himself into Israel's de facto protector.The accord inserts Egypt to an unprecedented degree into the conflict between Israel and Hamas, establishing it as the arbiter ensuring that militant rocket fire into Israel stops and that Israel allows the opening of the long-blockaded Gaza Strip and stops its own attacks against Hamas.In return, Morsi emerged as a major regional player. He...

Comparison A 220-story Sky City tower in the Chinese city of Changsha could take the crown as the world's tallest skyscraper next March with an astounding height of 2,749 feet, edging out the mega Burj Khalifa that currently stands 2,722 feet over Duba

The video takes only fifteen minutes to watch but has many hours worth of excellent ideas. Here is a link to a recent presentation by Bill Whittle. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to embed it so if you want to see it, please go to the link. This screen shot is the best I could do. I won't try to rephrase Mr. Whittle's comments here; he says it far better than I could.

As part of a joint effort by the Shin Bet, the Police and IDF forces last night members of the group which planned and put into action the bus bombing in central Tel Aviv Wednesday were arrested. Those arrested are affiliated with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and admitted to their involvement during the investigation. (Yoav Zitun)

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (CBS Connecticut) – For some, the idea of Christmas coming early is anything but welcome. Local shop owner Sarah Hamilton-Parker, tired after years tolling bells sounded by Salvation Army workers for hours on end during the holiday season, took matters into her own hands by reaching out to local authorities to complain about the noise. “I listen to this for 200 hours a year,” Hamilton-Parker told the Portsmouth Herald. “This is my fourth year and I can’t take it anymore. I’m so sick of it.”

AFP - Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements. Since last week, Saudi women's male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. Manal al-Sherif, who became the symbol of a campaign launched last year urging Saudi women to defy a driving ban, began spreading the information on Twitter, after she was alerted by a couple.

SOUTH SACRAMENTO - A shopper threatened to stab people while in line for K-Mart doorbuster deals in South Sacramento. A line of hundreds had started wrapping the building on Stockton Boulevard since 2 a.m.

The newly elected, 113th Congress includes the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, the first Hindu to serve in either chamber and the first member of Congress to describe her religion as “none,” continuing a gradual increase in religious diversity that mirrors trends in the country as a whole. While Congress remains majority Protestant, the institution is far less so today than it was 50 years ago, when nearly three-quarters of the members belonged to Protestant denominations. Catholics have seen the biggest gains among the 530 seats in the new Congress that have been decided as of Nov. 16....

What makes us human? Some say that it is the development of language, though others argue that animals have language as well. Some say that it is our ability to use tools, though many animals are able to use rocks and other objects as primitive tools. Some say that it is our ability to see death coming. Now, researchers believe that they have found the definitive difference between humans and other primates, and they think that the difference all comes down to a single gene. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland attribute the split of humanity from apes...

Egypt President Morsi grants himself far-reaching powers CAIRO – Egypt's president on Thursday issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight and ordered the retrial of Hosni Mubarak for the killing of protesters in last year's uprising. Mohammed Morsi also decreed immunity for the Islamist-dominated panel drafting a new constitution from any possible court decisions to dissolve it, a threat that had been hanging over the controversial assembly. Liberal and Christian members withdrew from the assembly during the past week to protest what they say is the hijacking of the process by Morsi's allies, who they saw are trying...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ah, Thanksgiving. A little turkey, some cranberry mold, maybe apple pie with ice cream, some football on TV. Getting together with the cousins. Catching up beside the fire. Togetherness. On second thought: Scratch that. What were we thinking? This was an election year. “The Thanksgiving table will be a battleground,” says Andrew Marshall, 34, of Quincy, Mass. Like many extended families across the country, Marshall’s includes Democrats and Republicans, conservatives, liberals and independents. And so, like many families that count both red and blue voters in their ranks, they’re expecting fireworks. Things had already gotten so bad...

Diplomacy: So amid all the colorful and flirty photos from President Obama's first tour of Southeast Asia, what did he actually accomplish? As usual, he served himself politically in what was largely a Potemkin mission abroad. It was obvious enough from the rubelike gaffes that the president hasn't been particularly interested or attentive to the affairs of Thailand, Burma or Cambodia as he made his first trip since his re-election. It was pretty much all style over substance. In his tour of Burma, billed as an historic first visit since Burma's 2007 move to democracy, it was clear he was...

San Francisco Workers May Be Reimbursed On Same-Sex Couple Benefits November 22, 2012 San Francisco public employees who add their same-sex spouses or domestic partners to their health insurance have always faced a raw deal compared to their straight married counterparts: the premiums are considered taxable income and the employer takes additional federal tax out of the worker’s paycheck. But a San Francisco supervisor has now proposed to end the “discriminatory” practice and “reimburse those same sex domestic partners to make them whole.” Supervisor Mark Farrell, who introduced the proposed legislation this week, said it was crafted over the past...

Many people read the Bible literally and feel very strongly that there's nothing more to it than that, and yet Jesus Himself says the whole Old Testament is about Him. How could that be?!? We ponder this through a bizarre story in which Caleb pleads with Joshua to be given a mountain inhabited by enemy giants in fortified cities (Joshua 14). Also see: Spirit And Life Bible Study on Facebook