Careful Thought

FOXNews.com - British Judge Dismisses Bid for Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage :
Monday, July 31, 2006

LONDON:  A British judge on Monday dismissed a bid by two female professors to have their same-sex wedding in Canada recognized as a marriage in Britain. Judge Mark Potter, head of Britain’s High Court Family Division, dismissed the claim by Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger that in defining their relationship as a civil partnership, rather than a marriage, Britain had violated their human rights.

Granting their request would risk undermining the time-honored institution of marriage, he said. ‘To accord a same-sex relationship the title and status of marriage would be to fly in the face of the (European) Convention (on Human Rights) as well as to fail to recognize physical reality,’ Potter wrote in his ruling.

From the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System :

• Some people consider themselves experts in the sounds animals make. The only animal sound I care about is ’sizzle’.
• Two plus two does not always equal four. Sometimes it equals five … for sufficiently large quantities of two.

From Y-Net News :

Book of Psalms found when construction worker drove a shovel of his backhoe into a bog

(AP)  Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

“This is really a miracle find,” said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations’ attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

That Psalm reads (in part):

See how your enemies are astir,
how your foes rear their heads.

With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.

“Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
that the name of Israel be remembered no more.” ( Psalm 83:2-4, NIV )

The more things change, the more they stay the same….

Courtesy of Drudge Report .

From the Seattle P-I : State’s high court upholds ban on gay marriage

By TRACY JOHNSON and PHUONG CAT LEThe state Supreme Court today upheld Washington’s law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, rejecting the argument of 19 same-sex couples that they’ve been unfairly denied the right to wed.

In a splintered decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that the state’s marriage law was enacted to ‘promote procreation and to encourage stable families.’

‘The legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the State’s legitimate interests in procreation and the well-being of children.’

She wrote that the same-sex couples failed to prove that they had a fundamental right to marry, or that the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional.”

The lead on P-I main page read, “Ban on gay marriage upheld: The Washington State Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision today, upheld the Legislature’s right to ban same-sex marriages. There can be no appeal .”

According to Money Magazine’s Best Places to Live 2006 survey, Colorado Springs is the top rated location in the Big City category. That is, of course, unless you’re concerned about lightning. In an article in the Gazette about recent “bolt from the blue” casualties reports,

“Colorado has the third-highest number of lightning strikes in the nation behind Florida and Texas, and El Paso County [that's us!], in 2005, was the most dangerous county in Colorado.”

So come enjoy the great atmosphere of the Front Range, but don’t go waving metal objects in the air when the thunder rolls….

Pat Buchanan has lost it. In the past he has been fairly reasonable, occasionally nudging the president and others remind them of their conservative roots, but now he has launched an all-out attack on Israel and Bush. His screed in World Net Daily is completely over the top, blasting Israel?s policy of attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.”

It may have slipped his mind, but Israel is not America and is a Jewish nation, not Christian. I?m sorry it offends Buchanan?s delicate sensibilities for a sovereign nation to defend itself. Pat Buchanan has not suffered under an almost daily assault from neighbors who deny his right to exist. He has not given up his own land in a vain attempt to placate murderous thugs and he has certainly not seen his schools, restaurants, bus stops and homes under relentless rocket attack.

Get off your self-righteous high horse, Pat.

In a follow-on to the earlier story about a dog that needs to realize that he is actually a dog, the good folks at Focus on the Family have found a dog that knows he is a dog.

Focus Counters Mooing Pup

PERRY SWANSON ( Colorado Springs Gazette ), July 19.
Two pooches are the unlikely mascots for competing ideas in Colorado Springs over what makes a person gay. First there was Norman, the puppy who says “moo” because he was born different, according to an ad campaign that started early last month. Organizers of the Born Different campaign say Norman is a metaphor for gay people, who they argue were born different and deserve acceptance.

Tuesday, a dog named Sherman launched a counter-campaign with a sharp “woof,” a sound he makes because, his creators say, “that’s what dogs do.” A campaign featuring Sherman called “ No Moo Lies ” begins today with an advertisement in The Gazette.

Colorado will likely join New York, Georgia, and other states in further protecting marriage by imposing bans on homosexual unions.

Colorado voters will decide in the November election whether to change state law to grant the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples in domestic partnerships. Organizers are gathering petition signatures for three other ballot measures to change the Colorado Constitution, including one to ban any new legal status similar to marriage, one to define marriage as only the union of one man and one woman, and a third establishing domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. The last measure is similar to the one already on the ballot, except that it would change the constitution rather than merely state law.

States are fed up and if Congress won’t act, they will.

Tags: defense of marriage, homosexuality, societal decay

Now, this is way cool. Actually it looks like a metallic Pushmi-Pullyu with legwarmers, but it’s still pretty darn cool.

The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth

BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

Click here for the video (12mB).

From Molten Thought :

The Heart of Global Warming ‘Science’ Just Got Ripped Out Statisticians confirm that the ‘hockey stick’ model of climate produced by Mann et al is bogus:

Mann, et al, misused certain statistical methods in their studies, which inappropriately produce hockey stick shapes in the temperature history. Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium.

Read that again, because it’s vitally important.

All of Algore’s agitprop is ultimately tied to the claim that mean global temperature is at a millennial high. This is taken as a fact by everyone urging you to become Amish to reduce your carbon emission. Yet the data simply do not support this claim.

Now we understand why Mann didn’t want to share his data: he cooked his books.

This is cold fusion all over again.