Free Republic

Wednesday, August 11, 2004. 6:01am (AEST) Shanghai two millenniums older than previously thought China's thriving and modern metropolis of Shanghai was first established nearly 6,000 years ago, about two millenniums earlier than previously estimated, experts and state press have said. Newly discovered artefacts in Shanghai's outskirts prove the first inhabitants migrated from neigbouring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces more than 6,000 years ago, Song Jian, director of the Shanghai Cultural Relics Management Commission, told AFP. Mr Song said new archaeological evidence, including pieces of a human skull, show that today's teeming city of 17 million was first populated some 2,000 years...

Human sacrifice was rarer than thought Anna Salleh in Brisbane ABC Science Online Thursday, 22 July 2004 Did this skull from the Lichtenstein cave come from someone who was sacrificed or who died naturally? (Image: Stefan Flindt) Bronze Age ritual human sacrifice may have been rarer than believed, according to a unique study of ancient DNA from bones in central Europe. German anthropologist Dr Susanne Hummel from the University of Göttingen presented her team's research at a recent ancient DNA conference in Brisbane, Australia. Hummel said the research was also the first to use ancient DNA to complete a family...

From Sunday, July 18 to Friday, July 23, 2004, the 89th International New Thought Alliance (INTA) Congress will be held at Sheraton Premiere Tysons Corner, Vienna, VA. This year's theme is "The Power of One: Coming Together as Love." INTA Congress programs on prosperity, healing and interfaith will include individuals from all New Thought movements coming together for dialogue, support and growth. Highlights include spiritual leaders Mary Tumpkin, Walter Starcke, and best-selling author Iyanla VanZant among many others, along with outstanding local and national musicians and an interfaith service. Highlights include an Interfaith Service on Sunday July 18th and a...

Twitching with rage and disbelief, a pro-homosexual student approached one TFP Student Action member and said, “Why are you here? This is a liberal university.” Visibly shaken, he continued: “You’re in the wrong place. People on this campus disagree with you.” To this the TFP member nodded: “Yes, that’s exactly why we came – to let the other side be heard.” The TFP had gone to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. to defend traditional marriage as part of a continuing effort on college campuses. News of their presence spread like wild fire. Within minutes of their arrival, homosexual activists...

Shell Beads From South African Cave Show Modern Human Behavior 75,000 Years Ago ARLINGTON, Va.- Perforated shells found at South Africa's Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago-making them 30,000 years older than any previously identified personal ornaments. Archaeologists excavating the site on the on the coast of the Indian Ocean discovered 41 shells, all with holes and wear marks in similar positions, in a layer of sediment deposited during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). "The Blombos Cave beads present absolute evidence for perhaps the earliest storage of information outside the human brain,"...

Ostrich beads indicate early symbolic thought 18:25 31 March 04 NewScientist.com news service Stone Age beads revealed by archaeologists on Wednesday could be the strongest evidence yet that humans developed sophisticated symbolic thought much earlier than once thought. The ostrich egg beads and numerous other artefacts, including ochre pencils, carved bone and stone tools, were recovered from the Loiyangalani River Valley, in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The archaeologists who discovered the relics have yet to date them precisely, but believe they originate from the African Middle Stone Age - between 280,000 and 45,000 years ago. This is because they...

SA rock art older than thought Friday February 06, 2004 11:23 - (SA) New radio-carbon dating technology shows some South African rock art to be three times older than previously believed, Newcastle University in the United Kingdom said. A study by archaeologists at the institution estimated that rock art at the World Heritage Site of uKhahlamba-Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal could be 3,000 years old. Their age was originally put at 1,000 years, university spokeswoman Claire Jordan said in a statement to Sapa. Archaeologists from the Australian National University in Canberra participated in the study. "The findings, published in the current edition...

TIME What is time and when did time start? Many think that time started when the God created the world. It is true that the way that man keeps track of time is based on the physical universe. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years are all related to the earth's rotation around the sun. This does not mean that time did not exist before the creation of the world. For a proper understanding of time, a person must understand that God is both an uncreated eternal being and a creator. He has many natural uncreated attributes or characteristics....

Your Thought Life "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he?" Proverbs 23:7In one sense, you are the sum of your thought life. What you think reveals what you are. Although how you look forms externals that disappear upon death, what you think you take into eternity with you. All permanent change in your life takes place by altering your perception of reality.You respond to the opportunities and imperatives of life on the basis of two things: First, what you think you can do. If you do not believe you are capable, you will not try. A man...

Preaching abundant living The Rev. Della Reese Lett teaches lessons of material success and personal empowerment in her own church. Della Reese, who played a down-to-earth heavenly being on "Touched by an Angel" isn't acting as she stands in front of a congregation on Sundays in West Hollywood. She's preaching — in her own church. And her message has no mention of sin, no mention of good and evil and no endorsement of sacrifice if it means doing without. She talks about abundant living, not in the hereafter but in the here and now.

Suspect Admits 48 Seattle-Area Killings (AP) Gary Ridgway in court on Wednesday November 5, 2003 in the King County Courthouse in Seattle... Full Image SEATTLE (AP) - Gary Ridgway, the former truck painter long suspected of being the Green River Killer, admitted in court Wednesday to 48 murders. "I killed so many women I have a hard time keeping them straight," he said in a confession read aloud by prosecutors. "I wanted to kill as many women as I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could," Ridgway said in the statement. Some relatives of victims wept quietly in the courtroom....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dr. Miguel Nicolelis knew he had nailed it when the monkey stopped using her arm to play the computer game. An implanted device had allowed the monkey to control the game using only her thoughts, Nicolelis and colleagues report in the Public Library of Science Biology journal on Monday. And changes in the way the monkey's brain cells worked suggested the brain was physically adjusting to the device, they reported in the new online science journal. Nicolelis hopes the device will eventually allow paralyzed patients to regain some ability to use their upper bodies -- virtually, if...

<p>SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Dennis Udink says there's nothing dirty about his name. He's trying to get a vanity license plate in Utah that says "UDINK." But his request has been rejected by the Division of Motor Vehicles because it's supposedly vulgar.</p>

Professor Robert P. George is pacing around a Princeton auditorium before 200-plus undergraduates, preparing to wage an intellectual shock-and-awe campaign against illogical thinking. “Some politicians say that they’re ‘personally opposed’ to abortion, yet ‘pro-choice,’” says the 48-year-old professor of constitutional law and moral philosophy. “But we must ask: Is this a position that can survive the test of logical coherence? After all, if abortion is wrong, surely it is wrong because it is the unjust taking of the life of a developing human being.” He pauses to let that sink in and then launches another question: “And if one believes...

'We thought the ceasefire had put an end to all this' By Eric Silver in Jerusalem 20 August 2003 The sleek, green, double-length No 2 bus left the Wailing Wall, Judaism's holiest site, shortly before 9pm (7pm BST) on a sultry Jerusalem night. Packed with religious families returning from evening prayers, it was threading its way through a series of ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods north of the city centre when a 29-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up, taking 20 with him to the grave and sending a hundred more to the casualty wards. Ambulances were still removing the wounded half an...

ON A RESONANCE THEORY OF THOUGHT AND SPIRITUALITY by Varadaraja V. Raman The following theory is proposed to explain the observed phenomena of thought and spiritual/mystical experience/creativity: PROBLEM: (a) Thought is the subtlest emergent entity from the human brain. As of now, though it is taken to arise from complex biochemical (neuronal) processes in the brain, we have no means of detecting any physical aspect of thought. (b) All sensory experiences (light, sound, smell, taste, sound) result from an interaction between an external agent (photon, phonon, etc.) and some aspect of the brain. HYPOTHESIS: (a) It is proposed that, like...

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language' This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal. Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of...

In your April 27 editorial you say "wearing a yellow ribbon is not a political statement in support of warfare" but rather "a reminder that we may know someone in the service who is sacrificing his or her life for our freedom" - a major contradiction! If you favor "supporting the troops" when they are engaged in warfare, you support warfare. It's that simple. Those poor souls who die in combat are sacrificing their lives because they bought the story that killing the "enemy" (whomever the "leader" chooses to call "enemy") keeps you free. What is "freedom"? If freedom implies...

April 13, 2003 Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes People with synesthesia--whose senses blend together--are providing valuable clues to understanding the organization and functions of the human brain By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues--so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded, making it easier for her to remember and play musical scales. And when Jeff Coleman...

'Join the other superpower," said the bumper sticker on the back of the clapped out Chevy van on the ferry, "world opinion." How I wish I could. Just walk right into that ocean of warmly felt righteousness until the waves were over my head, then breathe. But that would mean I had an IQ of twelve. That would mean I conflated Bush and Saddam. That I was somehow convinced that Saddam, causing the death of an estimated 300,000 children, not to mention the brutal torture or murder of unnumbered Iraqi adults over the past 10 years, is somehow equal to...