September 20, 2005
Enthusiast uses Google to reveal Roman ruins
Google Earth programme leads to remains of ancient villa.
Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. Luca Mori was studying maps of the region around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma, when he noticed a prominent, oval, shaded form more than 500 metres long. It was the meander of an ancient river, visible because former watercourses absorb different amounts of moisture from the air than their surroundings do.
Mori, who describes the finding on his blog, Quellí Della Bassa, contacted archaeologists, including experts at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. They confirmed the find. At first it was thought to be a Bronze Age village, but an inspection of the site turned up ceramic pieces that indicated it was a Roman villa.
"Mori's research is interesting in its approach," says Manuela Catarsi Dall'Aglio, an archaeologist at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. He says the find may be similar to a villa the museum is currently excavating at Cannetolo di Fontanellato, which was found during the construction of a high-speed rail network. "Only a scientific, archeological dig will tell," he adds.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050912/full/050912-6.html
People with brain damage said to make better financial decisions than rest of us
September 19, 2005 …In a study of investors’ behaviour, the team from three US universities suggest that people with brain damage can make better financial decisions than the rest of us.
…The experts found that emotions can make investors play it too safe. They claim the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes.
The US team found that people with certain brain injuries which suppress their emotions could make the best stock market traders. They took a selection of 41 people of normal IQ, 15 of whom had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions, and made them play a simple investment game.
Those with brain damage significantly outperformed those without, the researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Iowa found.
…Emotions lead people to avoid risks even when the potential benefits far outweigh the losses, a phenomenon known as myopic loss aversion that scholars have concluded can explain, for example, why people invest in bonds over historically higher-performing stocks.
The study does not mean that it is a good thing to have lesions in emotional regions of the brain. Such patients generally make worse decisions than those with intact brains. In this experiment, risk-taking was the most advantageous behaviour, so the participants who were less fearful made the better choices.
…However, in other studies, the experiment has been set up so that risky choices had lower expected values, and in these studies, normal subjects tended to perform more optimally.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1786949_1,00.html
Teacher fired for writing Congressman
September 20, 2005 Saying her First Amendment free-speech rights have been violated, a Florida teacher says she plans to sue the Orange County School Board after being suspended without pay when a Spanish-language newspaper printed a letter she wrote to a U.S. congressman complaining about the impact of foreigners on the nation.
…The private letter, which apparently was leaked to the Spanish paper by a member of Congress, was roundly criticized, resulting in Hall's suspension without pay by the school district.
"She has been removed from Sadler Elementary and will not be returning to Sadler Elementary regardless of the outcome of the investigation," Orange County Schools spokesman Frank Kruppenbacher said. "The letter was written by an employee of our district that contained information that does not reflect the views of this school district or its leadership.”
...Hall had gotten high marks from principals over the years – she's been a teacher for nearly three decades… The district offered several options, including teaching homebound students, if she apologized and met with a psychiatrist.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46413
New book from "experts" promotes sex with children
Ph.D. 'expert' claims pederasty good for 'nurturing,' 'mentoring' young boys
September 19, 2005 A new book published by Haworth Press features multiple Ph.D. "experts" claiming that sex with children "can benefit" boys and even serve a "mentoring function."
...Rind brought unfavorable publicity to the American Psychological Association in 1999 when the organization published in its official peer-reviewed journal, APA Bulletin, a report disputing the harmfulness of child molestation…
..."Many people seem to think having sex with children is a good thing," says Kupelian, noting "a reported 100,000 websites now offer illegal child pornography, and worldwide child porn generates a reported three billion dollars in revenues every year..."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46394
Pope bans homosexuals from ordination as priests
[Obviously the Pope hasn't read the book in the previous article]
September 19, 2005 Pope Benedict XVI has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document that bans men with homosexual tendencies from being ordained as priests, reports Catholic World News. ...The text, approved by Benedict at the end of August, says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate, because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder that detracts from their ability to serve as ministers, says the CWN report.
..The "Instruction" does not represent a change in church teaching or policy, according to the Vatican...Catholic leaders have consistently taught that homosexual men should not be ordained to the priesthood. Pope John XXIII approved a formal policy to that effect, which still remains in effect. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, that policy was widely ignored, particularly in North America...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46409
Holocaust Survivor Simon Wiesenthal Dies
September 20, 2005 VIENNA, Austria -- Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96.
Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles...
..A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life's mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.
...Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice.
...He was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town near the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932 received a degree in civil engineering...
....Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target _ Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades...
(long but good article)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092000161.html
Katie Couric Ignores Historical Data
September 20, 2005 It was just a comment made in passing, but it was very revealing in its own way. On this morning's Today show, in discussing incipient Hurricane Rita, Katie Couric observed "if Rita turns into a hurricane, it will be the seventh." She then added pointedly added "there have been a lot this year!"
We can all read Katie's 'subliminable' message: "Gotta be the global warming/Bush's failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty/hole in the ozone layer/Halliburton/VRWC/Republican SUVs and who knows, probably the lack of 'free' national health care."
There's only one small problem with Katie the Climatologist's theory. Far from being "a lot," seven hurricanes in a year is very typical, and far from the recent high of 12, which occurred 36 years ago.
http://newsbusters.org/blog/40
Number of Hurricanes Each Year since 1851 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
So who is divisive and obstructing the government?
A lot of senators have said they will not vote to confirm Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court because he’s conservative even though they admit he is highly qualified.
It is interesting that in 1993 Clinton’s nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, got 96 vote sout of 100 even though she was a very liberal judge and ACLU activist. Despite the ideological differences the Republicans voted for her, not because they liked or agreed with her, but because she was technically qualified. Too bad it doesn’t work both ways. -DB
Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Vote Counts: YEAs 96, NAYs 3, Not Voting 1
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=103&session=1&vote=00232
An ‘absolute’ wall between all things religious and all things governmental?
...During the first day of questioning at his Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts was asked about his religious views by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif...Now, the funny part was that Sen. Feinstein had been sitting there just a little while earlier when Judge Roberts had been administered the oath to tell the truth "so help me G-d." She'd also sat there when he'd been asked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., about the oath he took when he was sworn in as an appellate judge and the oath he'd take again when/if he's confirmed. It goes in part like this "I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title of position) under the Constitution and the laws of the United States, so help me G-d."
Why didn't Sen. Feinstein cry "foul"? Why didn't she say "Whoa, whoa, whoa! There will be no G-d-talk here"?
... This is, after all, a heartfelt conviction on Sen. Feinstein's part. For example, in 2003, she was very upset to learn that Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. — Bush's nominee to the 11th circuit court of appeals — had once told a Catholic high school that while the "American experiment is not a theocracy and does not establish an official religion" the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are "rooted in a Christian perspective."
...Look: The view that the Constitution was ever intended to create an atheistic political culture is so universally recognized as ahistorical claptrap, it's become almost a cliché to debunk it...
http://jewishworldreview.com/0905/goldberg091605.php3
Katrina Prompts Comparisons Between Religious and Federal Relief Efforts
September 20, 2005 (AgapePress) - ...Gary Glenn, president of the AFA of Michigan, says while national media is focused on New Orleans, the damage from Hurricane Katrina is even worse in Mississippi. The place that got hit the hardest by the storm itself, he asserts, was in the Magnolia State, a town called Waveland that he says was "wiped clean" by the storm. "The only thing standing in Waveland," Glenn notes, "is a stone wall with a mural of the city painted on it, and a bronze plaque on a bronze pole that says, 'From the citizens of Waveland, with appreciation to all those who helped us rebuild from Hurricane Camille in 1969.' It really is kind of tough to imagine what it would be like to be one of those people, to come back to where they used to live, and nothing at all be there."
...The Michigan group pitched in to help those displaced or otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, Glenn observed that the national media has continued to emphasize race as a factor in the pace of delivering disaster relief. Yet he says he saw no racial division or animosity in southern Mississippi. Nevertheless, the pro-family leader says he has emphasized telling the victims of the hurricane, African Americans in particular, "that we've come all the way from Michigan to tell them that we care about them, and love them and want to help them."
Among the many groups that have responded to the needs in the Katrina disaster zone are many religious groups. Rev. Bob Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, recently told Associated Press that his and other faith-based charities responded more quickly than government agencies to help victims of the hurricane...."We've proven we're much faster," Reccord noted. "When Katrina was coming in, we were mobilizing on Saturday and Sunday, we were getting in place on Monday, and we were feeding on Tuesday." He believes religious groups are able to help in ways the government cannot...As Rev. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, points out, "long after the Red Cross pulls out and FEMA pulls out, the churches are still going to be there."
...While Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney concedes that the experience of Hurricane Katrina was a terrible way for the government to learn lessons, he says that is exactly what has happened in this case. Romney told a Heritage Foundation audience this past week in Washington, DC, "One of the key lessons that will come from Katrina is the need to understand who is in charge."
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/202005b.asp
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
Google Earth programme leads to remains of ancient villa.
Using satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth, an Italian computer programmer has stumbled upon the remains of an ancient villa. Luca Mori was studying maps of the region around his town of Sorbolo, near Parma, when he noticed a prominent, oval, shaded form more than 500 metres long. It was the meander of an ancient river, visible because former watercourses absorb different amounts of moisture from the air than their surroundings do.
Mori, who describes the finding on his blog, Quellí Della Bassa, contacted archaeologists, including experts at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. They confirmed the find. At first it was thought to be a Bronze Age village, but an inspection of the site turned up ceramic pieces that indicated it was a Roman villa.
"Mori's research is interesting in its approach," says Manuela Catarsi Dall'Aglio, an archaeologist at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. He says the find may be similar to a villa the museum is currently excavating at Cannetolo di Fontanellato, which was found during the construction of a high-speed rail network. "Only a scientific, archeological dig will tell," he adds.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050912/full/050912-6.html
People with brain damage said to make better financial decisions than rest of us
September 19, 2005 …In a study of investors’ behaviour, the team from three US universities suggest that people with brain damage can make better financial decisions than the rest of us.
…The experts found that emotions can make investors play it too safe. They claim the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes.
The US team found that people with certain brain injuries which suppress their emotions could make the best stock market traders. They took a selection of 41 people of normal IQ, 15 of whom had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions, and made them play a simple investment game.
Those with brain damage significantly outperformed those without, the researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Iowa found.
…Emotions lead people to avoid risks even when the potential benefits far outweigh the losses, a phenomenon known as myopic loss aversion that scholars have concluded can explain, for example, why people invest in bonds over historically higher-performing stocks.
The study does not mean that it is a good thing to have lesions in emotional regions of the brain. Such patients generally make worse decisions than those with intact brains. In this experiment, risk-taking was the most advantageous behaviour, so the participants who were less fearful made the better choices.
…However, in other studies, the experiment has been set up so that risky choices had lower expected values, and in these studies, normal subjects tended to perform more optimally.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1786949_1,00.html
Teacher fired for writing Congressman
September 20, 2005 Saying her First Amendment free-speech rights have been violated, a Florida teacher says she plans to sue the Orange County School Board after being suspended without pay when a Spanish-language newspaper printed a letter she wrote to a U.S. congressman complaining about the impact of foreigners on the nation.
…The private letter, which apparently was leaked to the Spanish paper by a member of Congress, was roundly criticized, resulting in Hall's suspension without pay by the school district.
"She has been removed from Sadler Elementary and will not be returning to Sadler Elementary regardless of the outcome of the investigation," Orange County Schools spokesman Frank Kruppenbacher said. "The letter was written by an employee of our district that contained information that does not reflect the views of this school district or its leadership.”
...Hall had gotten high marks from principals over the years – she's been a teacher for nearly three decades… The district offered several options, including teaching homebound students, if she apologized and met with a psychiatrist.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46413
New book from "experts" promotes sex with children
Ph.D. 'expert' claims pederasty good for 'nurturing,' 'mentoring' young boys
September 19, 2005 A new book published by Haworth Press features multiple Ph.D. "experts" claiming that sex with children "can benefit" boys and even serve a "mentoring function."
...Rind brought unfavorable publicity to the American Psychological Association in 1999 when the organization published in its official peer-reviewed journal, APA Bulletin, a report disputing the harmfulness of child molestation…
..."Many people seem to think having sex with children is a good thing," says Kupelian, noting "a reported 100,000 websites now offer illegal child pornography, and worldwide child porn generates a reported three billion dollars in revenues every year..."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46394
Pope bans homosexuals from ordination as priests
[Obviously the Pope hasn't read the book in the previous article]
September 19, 2005 Pope Benedict XVI has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document that bans men with homosexual tendencies from being ordained as priests, reports Catholic World News. ...The text, approved by Benedict at the end of August, says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate, because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder that detracts from their ability to serve as ministers, says the CWN report.
..The "Instruction" does not represent a change in church teaching or policy, according to the Vatican...Catholic leaders have consistently taught that homosexual men should not be ordained to the priesthood. Pope John XXIII approved a formal policy to that effect, which still remains in effect. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, that policy was widely ignored, particularly in North America...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46409
Holocaust Survivor Simon Wiesenthal Dies
September 20, 2005 VIENNA, Austria -- Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down Nazi war criminals following World War II, then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96.
Wiesenthal, who helped find one-time SS leader Adolf Eichmann and the policeman who arrested Anne Frank, died in his sleep at his home in Vienna, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles...
..A survivor of five Nazi death camps, Wiesenthal changed his life's mission after the war, dedicating himself to tracking down Nazi war criminals and to being a voice for the 6 million Jews who died during the onslaught. He himself lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust.
...Through his work, he said, some 1,100 Nazi war criminals were brought to justice.
...He was born on Dec. 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants at Buczacs, a small town near the present-day Ukrainian city of Lviv in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire. He studied in Prague and Warsaw and in 1932 received a degree in civil engineering...
....Wiesenthal did not bring to justice one prime target _ Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele died in South America after eluding capture for decades...
(long but good article)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092000161.html
Katie Couric Ignores Historical Data
September 20, 2005 It was just a comment made in passing, but it was very revealing in its own way. On this morning's Today show, in discussing incipient Hurricane Rita, Katie Couric observed "if Rita turns into a hurricane, it will be the seventh." She then added pointedly added "there have been a lot this year!"
We can all read Katie's 'subliminable' message: "Gotta be the global warming/Bush's failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty/hole in the ozone layer/Halliburton/VRWC/Republican SUVs and who knows, probably the lack of 'free' national health care."
There's only one small problem with Katie the Climatologist's theory. Far from being "a lot," seven hurricanes in a year is very typical, and far from the recent high of 12, which occurred 36 years ago.
http://newsbusters.org/blog/40
Number of Hurricanes Each Year since 1851 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
So who is divisive and obstructing the government?
A lot of senators have said they will not vote to confirm Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court because he’s conservative even though they admit he is highly qualified.
It is interesting that in 1993 Clinton’s nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, got 96 vote sout of 100 even though she was a very liberal judge and ACLU activist. Despite the ideological differences the Republicans voted for her, not because they liked or agreed with her, but because she was technically qualified. Too bad it doesn’t work both ways. -DB
Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Vote Counts: YEAs 96, NAYs 3, Not Voting 1
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=103&session=1&vote=00232
An ‘absolute’ wall between all things religious and all things governmental?
...During the first day of questioning at his Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts was asked about his religious views by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif...Now, the funny part was that Sen. Feinstein had been sitting there just a little while earlier when Judge Roberts had been administered the oath to tell the truth "so help me G-d." She'd also sat there when he'd been asked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., about the oath he took when he was sworn in as an appellate judge and the oath he'd take again when/if he's confirmed. It goes in part like this "I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title of position) under the Constitution and the laws of the United States, so help me G-d."
Why didn't Sen. Feinstein cry "foul"? Why didn't she say "Whoa, whoa, whoa! There will be no G-d-talk here"?
... This is, after all, a heartfelt conviction on Sen. Feinstein's part. For example, in 2003, she was very upset to learn that Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. — Bush's nominee to the 11th circuit court of appeals — had once told a Catholic high school that while the "American experiment is not a theocracy and does not establish an official religion" the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are "rooted in a Christian perspective."
...Look: The view that the Constitution was ever intended to create an atheistic political culture is so universally recognized as ahistorical claptrap, it's become almost a cliché to debunk it...
http://jewishworldreview.com/0905/goldberg091605.php3
Katrina Prompts Comparisons Between Religious and Federal Relief Efforts
September 20, 2005 (AgapePress) - ...Gary Glenn, president of the AFA of Michigan, says while national media is focused on New Orleans, the damage from Hurricane Katrina is even worse in Mississippi. The place that got hit the hardest by the storm itself, he asserts, was in the Magnolia State, a town called Waveland that he says was "wiped clean" by the storm. "The only thing standing in Waveland," Glenn notes, "is a stone wall with a mural of the city painted on it, and a bronze plaque on a bronze pole that says, 'From the citizens of Waveland, with appreciation to all those who helped us rebuild from Hurricane Camille in 1969.' It really is kind of tough to imagine what it would be like to be one of those people, to come back to where they used to live, and nothing at all be there."
...The Michigan group pitched in to help those displaced or otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, Glenn observed that the national media has continued to emphasize race as a factor in the pace of delivering disaster relief. Yet he says he saw no racial division or animosity in southern Mississippi. Nevertheless, the pro-family leader says he has emphasized telling the victims of the hurricane, African Americans in particular, "that we've come all the way from Michigan to tell them that we care about them, and love them and want to help them."
Among the many groups that have responded to the needs in the Katrina disaster zone are many religious groups. Rev. Bob Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, recently told Associated Press that his and other faith-based charities responded more quickly than government agencies to help victims of the hurricane...."We've proven we're much faster," Reccord noted. "When Katrina was coming in, we were mobilizing on Saturday and Sunday, we were getting in place on Monday, and we were feeding on Tuesday." He believes religious groups are able to help in ways the government cannot...As Rev. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, points out, "long after the Red Cross pulls out and FEMA pulls out, the churches are still going to be there."
...While Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney concedes that the experience of Hurricane Katrina was a terrible way for the government to learn lessons, he says that is exactly what has happened in this case. Romney told a Heritage Foundation audience this past week in Washington, DC, "One of the key lessons that will come from Katrina is the need to understand who is in charge."
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/202005b.asp
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
posted by David Bennett | 7:30 PM
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