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That's completely make-believe. There was no "eye of the needle" backdoor to any walled cities. That was an excuse invented to cover for rich people pretending to be Christians.

http://www.debunker.com/texts/needleye.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_a_needle#Christianity

I have to wonder how they reconcile the whole "it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" bit.

That's a very good question, and unfortunately one that I know the answer to.

Many modern Christians believe in a fairly modern and contrived myth that the "eye of a needle" is referencing a gate in Jerusalem called "The Eye of the Needle", which for enigmatic reason was made to have a fairly short entrance. This entrance was too tall for a burdened camel to pass through. Travelers with a camel would have to first "remove their burdens" to enter this gate. Some will even make reference to the camel has to "get down on it's knees" first as well.

Of course, the problem is that it's a myth that only began appearing in the last 2 centuries. That doesn't matter though, because it's quite popular among fundamentalist Christians. They choose an interpretation that makes them feel better. Now they can ignore the poor and feel comfortable being rich because all they have to do is pray and make themselves believe that they have rid themselves of their burdens. In their defense, looking after the poor is quite a burden.

It's kind of like how when Jesus is quoted as saying, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me" is interpreted to only refer to children. It's used to attack those who are pro-choice. However, it is never used for the poor, immigrants, criminals, Muslims, or democrats. ;-)

http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm
http://www.debunker.com/texts/needleye.html

Now Slashdot has been invaded! Is there nowhere I can go to escape these conspiracist nutbags? I will make a feeble attempt to counteract this inane review of an inane book, with a list of various debunking links:

September 11th
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/911myths/
http://www.debunking911.com/index.html
http://www.911myths.com/
http://wtc.nist.gov/

Income Tax and the Federal Reserve
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/jsiegel/Personal/taxes/IncomeTax.htm
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/flaherty/Federal_Reserve.html

Other
http://www.debunker.com/conspiracy.html
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000140.html

General
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory
http://www.urban75.org/info/conspiraloons.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html

Anonymous Coward wrote: Jensen did not publish his rebuttal until Gould died. Can we say smear campaign? I think so.

Jensen's review of Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" was published in Contemporary Education Review in Summer 1982.
http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html

Gould died in 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould

Gould had 20 years to respond to Jensen and never did.

Jensen responded and Gould never responded in turn:

http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html

What bullshit. [...] Where's Stephen Gould when you need him?

Gould's argument was that all intelligence researchers were idiots or in a conspiracy. (Like the arguments from creationism believers against evolutionary biology.)

Here is one of the answers to Gould on intelligence.

Jensen's main complaint about Gould -- that he put up very stupid straw man arguments (not his real position) and attacked them -- seems very similar to the answers to Gould from the evolutionary psychology researchers.

Actually, Gould's book wasn't that good. He frequently misrepresented the people he was criticizing. He heaped particular scorn on Arthur Jensen, who responded to the criticisms.

I especially remember a passage where Gould tries to make Jensen look like an idiot. In one of his books, Jensen makes a rather straightforward claim: that some critters are smarter than others. But when Gould gets through with it, it sounds very much as though Jensen believes that humans evolved from dogs.

I'm all in favor of looking for preconceptions and biases in the current understanding of science. But as I remember Gould's book, it amounted to little more than trying to smear modern researchers by linking them to the blatant racists who did the earliest work in the study of human intelligence.

Gould did little to disprove the correlation between brain size and intelligence. Sure, he went over the early (1800's era) studies with a fine-toothed comb to show their pitiful accuracy. But he didn't deal with more recent attempts to measure the correlation.

For the sake of making my own biases clear, I do believe that IQ tests do a passable job of measuring something. Also, my hat size is 7 5/8. Bow before me!

I am not sure how you get off calling people hacks and expect people to take you seriously. Also, if you're going to try to criticize my spelling, the least you can do is try to get your own grammar correct.

Racist? Provide proof. Just because they are studying the nature of intelligence and genetics does not make them racist. Many of the people who are doing these studies are gentile white males. The studies that they do often show that Jews and Asians have better traits for intelligence. That is hardly racist!

While I do not think that the issue is closed, I think the community should be able to discuss and investigate the issues without being ridiculed and called various unsubstantiated names.

This is Arthur Jensen's reply to Gould

Wikipedia also has a good section as to many of the problems people have found with his work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould#Con troversies.

Please, lets get away from the labels and petty criticisms and get on to a serious discussion.

Every time you share on a P2P network, God kills a kitten.

That's only if you're sharing pr0n. He doesn't mind in the slightest if you happen to be sharing warez. mp3's, movies, etc. In fact, he completely supports that.

Furthermore, I think it's a bit dismissive in this case to call it "just some object in the air", like it could be a weather balloon or swamp gas or something. This is an object that moves and behaves like no known terrestrial phenomenon.

Except a light house.

Someone had the common sense to go to the event site and look in the direction indicated by the report. Must have been a really cool-looking incongruity if you didn't recognize the illusion.

You should give this page a read. It explains the whole story, from the initial reports down through the extremely reasonable explanations for all the allegedly weird events.

It was just an optical illusion.

http://www.rendlesham.com
http://www.io.com/~nelson/rendlesham.htm
http://www.debunker.com/texts/RidpathRendlesham1.h tml
Tape Transcript: http://www.skiesare.demon.co.uk/bentwatr.htm

• www.debunker.com
• Skeptical Inquirer
• If it's on TV, it must be true, right?
• Ah, the innocence of childhood