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Footsteps from the past: the ancient village of Skara Brae CAROLINE WICKHAM-JONES SCOTLAND'S towns and settlements are proud of their roots, but few can boast the antiquity of Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands. Originally built around 3100BC to house a small group of Neolithic farming families, the abandoned houses with their stone dressers, beds and hearths provide a remarkable glimpse of a lifestyle that has long disappeared. Of course the village developed slowly, as any village today, but Skara Brae is notable for the quality of its remains. The historic site still provides a powerful message, even for the...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2005 – With the four-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States three weeks away, President Bush used his weekly radio address to offer appreciation to current and former military veterans for their sacrifices in the war on terror. "In this war, our nation depends on the courage of those who wear the uniform," the president told radio listeners. Bush said the mission is clear to the nation's men and women serving in the armed forces. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from...

This is a compilation of articles related to the Iran ICBM missile program. Most space magazines and organizations are praising Iran for their efforts to space launch and explorations. This is my attempt to pull the pieces back into context. Shahab-3 / Zelzal-3 Technical Details   Range (km) 1,350-1,500 CEP (m) 190 (Previously thought to beseveral thousand meters) Diam. (m) 1.32-1.35 Height (m) 15.852-16 Launch Weight Mass (kg) 15,852-16,250 Stage Mass (kg) 15,092 Dry Weight Mass (kg) 1,780-2,180 Thrust (Kg f) Effective: 26,051 (-709) Actual: 26,760-26,600 Burn time (sec.) 110 Isp. (sec.) Effective: 226 - SL due to vainssteering drag...

Here is the speech General Patton would give today to the public. He would immediately be busted to Private Patton, but it is a great speech.Here is the speech: http://patriotfilesannex.org/General_Patton_Message.htmGood Hunting... from Varmint Al

Bloody past is catching up with Liberian despot By David Blair in Calabar (Filed: 02/07/2005) After impoverishing his country, killing thousands and stealing a fortune, Africa's most notorious fallen tyrant is facing a rising clamour for him to face justice. Charles Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia, benefits from asylum in Nigeria despite being the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant and an indictment on 17 counts of war crimes. Charles Taylor: Africa's most prominent fugitive A life steeped in bloodshed has not prevented Taylor from enjoying Nigeria's official hospitality and a grace-and-favour residence in a government lodge in the...

Democratic Senator Richard Durbin's now-historic comment likening U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo to the Nazis, Soviet gulags, Pol Pot--"or others"--was not the worst thing said in recent days about the administration's Iraq policies. All this proved was that Sen. Durbin was looking out the window in the fifth grade when the nuns taught analogies. A similarly tossed-off comment by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, generally regarded as a serious person, was more troubling. After saying "there is rising concern that everything [my emphasis] seems to be going the wrong way" on Iraq, Sen. Feinstein demanded "regular progress reports" from the President...

Light Speed a Barrier? To go, the children of tomorrow may have had to discover what is believed impossible today -- how to travel faster than light. Mel Zisfein, deputy director of the national Air and Space Museum, and an aerosynamicist amoung other things, has noted a similarity between the way most people today regard "C," the speed of light, and the way many people a generation or so ago regarded "a", the speed of sound. For this publication, he sketched the illustrations which appear on the following page, and drafted the following... "Some people used to look at...

LOS ANGELES -- Back east, well-placed Democrats have agreed that the party's 2008 nomination is all wrapped up better than three years in advance. They say that the prize is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's for the asking, and that she is sure to ask. But here on the left coast, I found surprising and substantial Democratic opposition to going with the former first lady. Both the Hollywood glitterati and the more mundane politicians of Los Angeles are looking elsewhere. They have seen plenty of Sen. Clinton over the past dozen years, and they don't particularly like what they've seen. Two...

Scientists Interrupt Search for the “Mayan Atlantis" in the Caribbean. Cuban Newpaper: GRANMA Mexico City, November 6, 2004 Forwarded by David Drewelow This story updates this prior story . - A group of scientists searching for a hypothetical “Mayan Atlantis" found a pyramid of 35 meters under the waters of the Caribbean, but it had to interrupt the mission due to technical problems, as reported by the Mexican newspaper Millenium, today. After 25 days of work in the sea, near the southwestern end of Cuba, the investigations deeper than 500 meters had to be abandoned due to problems with the...

   Contact Your Representative Contact Your Senators Home PageTwo Bill Page Nation World Finance House Senate GovWebs State & Local Orgs Petitions Feedback 109th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 997 To declare English as the official language of the United States, to establish a uniform English language rule for naturalization, and to avoid misconstructions of the English language texts of the laws of the United States, pursuant to Congress's powers to provide for the general welfare of the United States and to establish a uniform rule of naturalization under article I, section 8, of the Constitution. IN THE HOUSE...

Anti-Semitism may seem to be a static, unchanging phenomenon but in fact the obsessive hatred of Jews has a history that goes back millennia and continues to evolve.Developments since World War II and the Holocaust have been especially fast-paced and portentous. Here are four of the most significant shifts: From right to left: For centuries, anti-Semitism was the hallmark of the right and merely episodic on the left. To take the ultimate examples of these trends, Stalin's Judeophobia was peripheral to his monstrous project, but Hitler's was central to his. Even a decade ago, this pattern still basically held true....

The other project cut was the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. JIMO - recently renamed Prometheus 1 - had been intended as the first mission under Project Prometheus, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's pet project to encourage the use of nuclear-power propulsion to explore the outer solar system. Washington (UPI) Feb 08, 2005 Despite fears by many in the scientific community that President George W. Bush's initiative to re-invigorate the American manned space program would cause deep cuts in NASA's science budget, the administration's proposed 2006 budget - announced with great fanfare on Monday - left almost all of the agency's present...

NASA 2006 Budget Presented: Hubble, Nuclear Initiative Suffer While NASA fared better than many federal agencies in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2006 budget request, the White House is not seeking as much money for the U.S. space agency as previously planned. The White House is seeking $16.45 billion for NASA in the 2006 budget. That's an increase of 2.4 percent over what the U.S. space agency has in its 2005 budget, but still about $500 million less than what the agency had been expecting. When Bush gave NASA a new space exploration vision last year, he also pledged to...

Mona Charen: Hillary cannot reinvent her past BY MONE CHAREN Published Saturday, January 29, 2005 A little immigration reform here, a little religion in the public square there, a little gentle talk about common ground on abortion - and what have you got? A new, moderate Hillary Clinton, announces the press. "Democratic Party appears to be getting softer on reproductive rights," headlined a National Public Radio story. "Gasps as Hillary woos the anti-abortion vote," reported the London Daily Telegraph. "Hillary Clinton Seen as Staking Out Centrist Positions," announced the Bulletin's Frontrunner. It's a testament to the rigidity and extremism of...

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW O'Reilly's law of the kitchen: Cleanliness is next to impossible. Lieberman's law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens. Denniston's law: Virtue is its own punishment. Gold's law: If the shoe fits, its ugly. Conway's law: In any organization, there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person should be fired. Finster's law: A closed mouth gathers no feet. Lynch's law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves. Muir's law: When we try to separate anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the...

Archaeologists excited over old toilets Posted Thu, 20 Jan 2005 Excited archaeologists are sifting through the contents of 150-year-old New Zealand toilets to get a better understanding of the everyday lives of early settlers. Although there is plenty of oral and written history, there are gaps which can only be answered by lifting the lid on the sanitary habits of pioneering families, they say. About 30 of New Zealand's leading archaeologists arrived in Wellington on Thursday to start a five-week project to collect and document information from historic sites along an inner-city bypass route. The old toilets, locally referred to...

The American Association for Retired Persons now calls itself simply "AARP" because some members are offended by the term "retired" and it wants to appeal to younger Americans. But the organization is now trying to explain a far more serious and deceptive practice. It hired an admitted former drug user and dealer as an editor of its 22-million circulation magazine. He has emerged as a spokesman on the so-called "medical marijuana" issue, telling America that seniors might benefit from smoking dope. With the assistance of Jeanette McDougal of Drug Watch International, anti-drug activists Joyce Nalepka and Dee Rathbone uncovered the...

Tunnels under Cusco Early chroniclers reported that by far the greatest amount of treasure in Cusco was in the Sun Temple (Koricancha). However, it disappeared before the conquistadors could get hold of it and melt it down. Despite the use of various forms of persuasion, the Spanish never found this horde. A team of investigators from Spain, using modern technology of radar and software producing 3D images, have suggested that there are tunnels connecting the former Incan temples (over which colonial churches were built) to Sacsahuaman. They have discovered the existence of huge tunnels over 5 metres deep under the...

I honestly don’t know what is so threatening about Christmas to some. No matter how you spend your Christmas Season, if you belong to the vast majority of believing Americans, you spent it, well, somehow. When I was a kid, the rule was we could not open the presents under the tree until my dad had his first cup of coffee. One year, when my mother’s younger brother was visiting, I convinced him to make coffee at about two o’clock in the morning. It didn’t change the rule in later years, but, I think, it made my uncle a little...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Tom Daschle says he might consider writing, lecturing or teaching now that his Nov. 2 election loss has cost him his Senate seat and the job of Senate minority leader. "I do want to affiliate in some way professionally with public policy," Daschle said Saturday in a telephone interview from his Washington home, where he was helping baby-sit his two grandchildren. "I'm also looking at the investment world." The three-term senator, who led the Democratic caucus for 10 years, lost the nation's highest-profile Senate race last month by 4,500 votes to former Rep. John Thune...