Wow:

The Nexus Journey Stone is one of the most innovative tools for self-improvement available anywhere. It looks really cool (your very own rollie poly little alien friend).

Because the first step in self-improvement is to wear a cheap, useless stone amulet that some guy selling it says “looks really cool.” And, no, honey, those pants don’t make you look fat.

The process is unique and simple. All you do is wear the amulet and let the energy of the stone connect you with the Oracle. You will connect in your own time, in your own way. Until you decide to make the connection, you can have a lot of fun just wearing the darn thing and enjoying how good and alive you feel. You will become a more positive person and a stronger and happier one too.

Wow, that’s amazing! How does this wondrous magic happen? I wonder, what with it being so wondrous!

The Journey Stone vibrates at a high, very healing, frequency. You raise your own personal energy vibration to match it by holding or wearing the amulet and focusing on the energy. Then you just be still and listen.

Can you imagine if the Journey Stone vibrated at the all-too-common, low, tissue-damaging frequency? Why, no one would buy the thing! Haven’t we all had enough of rocks that vibrate in such a way that they kill us?

The Nexus Journey Stone is a truly inspiring meditation tool that can take you to places you’ve never been before and show you the larger reality in which you exist. You can wear it as often as you want.

As opposed to those lifeless rocks you can only wear on Tuesdays, I guess.

You are the guiding intelligence for matters that pertain to yourself. By working with the Journey Stone you begin to tune in to yourself at the “being” level. And when you’re there, the answers just come to you – naturally.

I believe most of us call this exciting process “thinking.” And I’ve been doing it for 36 years without the benefit of the Journey Stone. I must be a truly gifted soul!

Which is a good thing, because…

One of the most unique and wonderful things about the Nexus Journey Stone is that I cannot tell you how to use it.

“Unique.”

“Wonderful.”

“Instructions not included.”

What is this, “The Greatest American Hero?”

I simply must know: are people stupid enough to buy this crap?

Oh no!

A meteorite which ploughed into the Peruvian countryside last year should have shattered and dispersed long before reaching the ground.

That is the conclusion of scientists who have been examining samples of the space rock and the 15m-wide crater it dug out in Carancas last September.

The discovery of a water-filled hole, following reports of a fireball in the sky, made headlines around the world.

Now experts say the event challenges conventional theories about meteorites.

Clearly, given that current scientific theories regarding meteorites may now have to be amended, we should accept that evolution is false and creationism is true and that quantum mechanics should be supplanted by the powerful truth of The Secret.

Your universe needs you!

MIGHTY oaks from little acorns grow. In the 1840s an astronomer called Urbain Le Verrier noticed there was something wrong with the orbit of Mercury. The main axis of the planet’s orbital ellipse shifts each time it goes round the sun. That was well known, and is caused by the gravitational pull of Venus. Le Verrier, however, realised that the orbit was shifting too fast. The excess was a tiny fraction of a degree. But it was a disturbing departure from the purity of Newton’s majestic clockwork—a departure that was explained only 70 years later, when Einstein’s general theory of relativity swept Newton away by showing that gravity operates by distorting space itself.

Even Einstein, however, may not have got it right. Modern instruments have shown a departure from his predictions, too. In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates America’s unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre (designed to speed it on its way to the outer solar system), Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected.

Once might be happenstance. But this strange extra acceleration was seen subsequently with two other craft. That, as Goldfinger would have put it, looks like enemy action.

Oh man, if the scientific method finds a flaw in current thinking, it means we have to return to the default position that gravitation is actually a bunch of industrious elves moving things around.

Forget everything we have learned to date! Be gone, evil anti-elf secularism!

Elves, baby!

Very smart, very fast - and surprisingly magical - elves.

Amen.

Your liver, maybe not so much:

Middle-aged non-drinkers can quickly reduce their risk of heart disease by introducing a daily tipple to their diet, South Carolina researchers say.

New moderate drinkers were 38% less likely to develop heart disease than those who stayed tee-total, a four-year study involving 7,500 people found.

Those who drank only wine showed the most benefit, the researchers reported in the American Medical Journal.

Does this mean, as Benjamin Franklin once said, that the making of wine is “a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy?” If so, does that mean he really doesn’t like Southern Baptists, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists?

I guess we know who won’t be getting invited to the Heavenly kegger. Won’t they be surprised?

Boy, how I am going to laugh and laugh and laugh at them from my place in Hell reserved for atheists.

When Moses Met Shroomy:

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

It’s probably those same drugs which allowed him to defy the laws of space, time, and human biology so that he could write autobiographically about his own death in Deuteronomy.

If the Bush Administration, with its rabid anti-drug attitude, had existed back then, just think, there would be no Bible!

Hmmm, how does one build a time machine?

(kudos to Vodkapundit for sending this to me)

Nope, same as always: absolutely no evidence that God exists.

We’ll try it again next time and see what we get.

Because, you know, we’re all about the science here.

Just stuff.

Ralph Nader says, “Give the Republicans the White House again!”

The Clinton campaign says “we didn’t intend that Obama photo as a smear“, quickly following up with “not that it was ours, or anything. Whatever. Hey, look over there!” (scurry, scurry, scurry) … looks to me like more politics as usual, which is why I think we might actually see a President Obama.

In matchups looking ahead to November’s general election, Clinton leads Arizona Sen. John McCain by 48 percent to 43 percent. Obama’s lead over the virtually certain GOP nominee is twice that size, 51 percent to 41 percent.

Ouch.

And Heh.

A McDonald’s in California is giving the ancient made-up art of Feng Shui a try, channeling the made-up energy of chi in all sorts of fantastic ways, which is easy to do when you’re just making things up. Perhaps, if the executives in the McDonald’s board room really want to grow profits, they should all watch “The Secret” and compel the universe to make everyone Super Size themselves.

Colorado moves one step closer to retail alcohol sales on Sunday. Hey, look at us, we’re almost all grown up and getting our boobies here.

In a time of war, with economic crises looming, the U.S. Congress still has its priorities straight. Well, for a bunch of pinheads. Which, um, they seem continually bent on demonstrating that they are.

Atheists are fomenting rebellion, rising in numbers! The end is nigh! Hide the women and the whisky!

Also, marvel at how Mary Jordan of the Washington Post draws some moral equivalence between the fanaticism of 9/11 and the “extremism” of someone crossing out “In God We Trust” from U.S currency.

On the flip side, it looks like Texas may be heading back towards breeding stupid children.

Via the magic of Last.fm (see right sidebar), I came across the band Speechwriters LLC yesterday. I dug it. So I went to iTunes, looked it up, saw it was $9.99 for an album and almost bought it.

Instead, I went to Amazon’s MP3 store, and found the same album for $3 less. What did the extra $3 get me at iTunes? Digital Rights Management (DRM). Well, that’s quite the selling point there, Apple. No, thanks, I like my music to have its freedom.

And, uh, that’s all.

…as Florida’s State Board of Education concurs that evolution is a scientific theory (because its status was in doubt, I guess).

Florida’s public school science standards for the first time will use the word “evolution,” although the biological concept already was being taught under code words such as “change over time….”

The standards state that evolution is “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence….”

Opponents of evolution denied they had a religious motive, arguing that there are flaws in the scientific theory of evolution and that students should be allowed to explore them.

As a compromise, the standards refer to evolution as a scientific theory, explaining that a theory is a well-supported and accepted explanation of nature, not simply a claim.

Quite the compromise the creationists got! A forthright statement of facts regarding evolution. Somehow, I’m guessing that’s not what they were hoping for.

Also of note is the denial by the creationists of having a religious motive. Riiiiiight. Roger that. Sacred cows make the best hamburger, and it seems the religious right makes the best liars.

John Sullivan, executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention, objected to calling evolution the only fundamental concept underlying biology. He wrote in an e-mail to Education Commissioner Eric Smith that Baptists firmly believe there’s evidence of a “Creator-initiated origin of life” but did not object to teaching evolution.

Hmmm, when it comes to deciding whether evolution is the only fundamental concept underlying biology, should I trust a collective of the brightest minds in the world or a man who thinks that a self-contradicting book of myths, written by ignorant men over a thousands years ago and then haphazardly compiled by men in pointy hats with their own patriarchal agendas, is the height of wisdom and learning?

Tough one, that. Might have to ask me for an answer in the morning.

Answer…

Then there is Oscar Howard, the superintendent of schools in Taylor County, who drove nine hours to a hearing last month at Everglades High in Miramar to state his opposition to evolution.

“I think they could be teaching a lie,” he said. “There’s not a place on me where they took the tail off.”

Question…

“What is Oscar Howard’s coccyx?”

Because it’s not like he’s using it these days…

Ben Stein’s work in his new controversial movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” has earned him praises and now an award from the intelligent design community.

The multi-talented star of his Comedy Central show “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” who is also known for his lead role in the film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” was named the recipient of the 2008 Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, an award created to honor one of the founding fathers of the intelligent design movement.

The Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth?

Wow, put that right up on the mantle next to the Lynne, Britney, and Jamie Lynn Spears Award for Responsible Motherhood, would you?

Not that dishonesty and, oh, just making stuff up has ever been a problem for the intelligent design crowd.

It seems their God-given nature.

(Thank you, thank you).