Slashdot Mirror

?What since 9/11/2001 has the United States of America done under President Bush's leadership to convince the Arab peoples that their culture is broken and that they need to do something about it in order to end this endless cycle of war and destruction so that they may prosper and live in peace?

That should be "next to nothing", not "nothing". There is a State Department "hearts and minds" campaign.

I'd post this on my account but the droves of mis-informed people who actually believe the media is reporting the facts (including Slashdot) would mod me into oblivion.

Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of White House-approved National Security Agency monitoring operations.
"None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, a member of a special Intelligence Committee panel appointed to oversee the NSA's work.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-Calif.) has been on the FISA court that has known about and been monitoring the NSA's activities since 2001. She never voiced any problems with these activities until the Democratic party decided to use it as ammo against Bush.

Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) has also known about these activities since 2001 and he also had not said word one about any problems until the Democratic party decided to assault Bush with it.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Vir.) is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and he also knew about these activities since 2001.

How can the Democrats pretend that there was any wrongdoing if they have known about and approved these activities for 5 years? There is no scandal, there was no wrongdoing, there was nothing.

Not only that, but the Washington Post (which is known for being extremely anti-Bush) published an article about how Americans in general feel about the NSA's activities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/05/12/AR2006051200375_pf.html
The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

When people have to invent stories and make up accusations about you, it means they don't have anything real to attack you with. Please people, turn your BS detectors back on for the love of God.

Good news for you, they already are: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/10/11/AR2005101101788.html.

I'm glad you didn't asphyxiate yourself today!

Sigh. And the democrats.com didn't give you pause about the potential bias of such a piece?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&node=&contentId=A12623-2001Nov11

At best, you might reach a conclusion like the WP:

"But there are too many variables in any effort to reexamine the ballots -- from varying standards in judging ballots in the counties to problems of getting an exact replication of the overvote and undervote ballots -- to be able to say with absolute certainty what might have happened in Florida."

Far cry from the absolute certainty your article expouses.

Can we please MOVE ON from the 2000 election already?

President Bush effectively blocked a Justice Department investigation of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, refusing to give security clearances to attorneys who were attempting to conduct the probe, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.
...
Last week, Specter and the administration agreed on a proposal that would allow Bush to submit the program to the government's secret terrorism and intelligence court for review of its legality.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the eavesdropping has been subject to legal review every 45 days by senior officials, including Gonzales. "The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting" a legal review, Snow said.

This Washington Post article contains more information about this story.

The interesting part is that the bush whitehouse has stalled the OPR investigation by refusing to give the investigators clearance -- these are Justice Dept. officials. That same whitehouse quickly gave clearance to the FBI when they were investigating who leaked the NSA wiretapping program in the first place.

This is the blatantly political part - say that secrecy is so important you dare not allow one dept. to look into goings on, but quickly let another investigate when it serves your political agenda.

Here is a good article on the subject. It claims the ER system is on the verge of collapse.

Hardly thinking it's okay to make mistakes, these poor people are in a constant state of sleep deprived chaotic panic.

Never being able to be a juror? where is the downside... I have never ever known anyone to say "hey, I would like to be on a jury"

Maybe, but if you are on the other side of things, you might care. If you are from some segment of society that is disproportionately likely to be arrested unfairly -- say because of your race or political activity -- that means that a jury is less likely to include people like you.

Please take a look at this page form february 2006. It shows some very nice toys that are actually based on technology, like the bug sound amplifier (bugs to be collected by the kid himself) a toy creator set, where you can mould your own toys. And some moldeable moon sand. All these modern technological toys really stimulate kids discorvering the world, and technology is in there, but not in the way. And dammit, I wish I had some of these things as a kid! By the way, lego also contains a lot of technology, one way (how come the bricks stick so nicely but are also easy to remove from eachother) or another (the new robotics sets).

You neo-cn supporters are impervious to facts aren't you? Did you actually read the Washington Post article I linked to? No of course not that would require you to be a member of the reality based community that Bush has adamantly rejected. And no I don't support the Dems either BOTH Bush and Kerry suck, chew on that one for a while of single cell brained life form.

What part of "has not been observed" don't you understand?

"His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-200 4Feb2?language=printer

Next time give me a challenge arguing with neo-con supporters is like shooting fish in a barrel.

You mean the news service that got it right about Bush going AWOL?

Here's what a Feb 2004 Washington Post article has to say:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7372-200 4Feb2?language=printer

"In 2000, the Boston Globe examined a period from May 1972 to May 1973 and found no record that Bush performed any Guard duties, either in Alabama or Houston, although he was still enlisted.

According to military records obtained by The Washington Post, Bush first requested and received permission in May 1972 to be transferred to the Alabama National Guard so he could work on a U.S. Senate campaign. After he was in Alabama, he received notice from the Guard personnel center that he was "ineligible" for the Air Reserve Squadron he requested.

In August 1972, Bush was suspended from flying because he failed to complete an annual medical exam. A month later, Bush requested to be assigned to a different unit in Alabama and was approved. Although he was required to attend periodic drills in Alabama, there is no official record in his file that he did.

According to the records, Bush had been instructed to report to William Turnipseed, an officer in the Montgomery unit. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall and I do not," Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Globe in 2000. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."

White House communications director Dan Bartlett said yesterday that although no official record has been found, "obviously, you don't get an honorable discharge unless you receive the required points for annual service." He said Bush "specifically remembers" performing some of his duties in Alabama. Bartlett also provided a news clipping from 2000 quoting friends of Bush's from the Alabama Senate campaign saying they recalled Bush leaving for Guard duty on occasion.

Bush said in 2000 that he did "show up for drills. I made most monthly meetings, and when I missed them I made them up."

Reached in Montgomery yesterday, Turnipseed stood by his contention that Bush never reported to him. But Turnipseed added that he could not recall if he, himself, was on the base much at that time.

Bush returned to Houston after the election, and again his service is vague in the records. His officers at Ellington Air Force Base wrote in May 1973 that Bush could not be given his annual evaluation, because he "has not been observed" in Houston between April 1972 and the following May. Ultimately, another officer states in a subsequent document that a report for that one-year period was unavailable for "administrative reasons."

The records indicate that Bush surfaced at the end of May 1973 and fulfilled point requirements 10 times between May 31 and July 30. In September 1973, Bush requested an early discharge to attend Harvard business school; in October he received an honorable discharge."

Just because Rather got Roved on one piece of "evidence" it does not follow that Bush did serve. Yeah I know there is a vast left wing cospiracy to tell the truth. Why don't you whine and cry about it?

Owners of property have a right under our Constitution to sell thier property to another consenting party for whatever price they choose

Wrong. Apparently you've never heard of eminent domain. Or of the history and rationale behind anti-trust laws. Both limit property rights in the United States.

and that right is an inalienable freedom.

Wrong again. The universe has no concept of this fiction you call inalienable or natural rights. If you don't believe me, then go provoke a grizzly bear and then attempt to argue with him/her about your rights to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness.

As a consolation, I'm sure Kenneth Lay (posthumously) and British Petroleum would be interested in promoting your point of view.

>Terrorist homo-fucks

An intriguing description of the detainees who are innocent according to the military but still caged at Guantanamo.

Not so fast, it goes the other way too. Separate research is taking place in the meantime that involves turning donor cells into egg cells-- which would be the counterpart in fertility procedures to the artificial sperm procedure this article is about, and would also hypothetically make possible the conception of a baby with only males donating the biological material.

When a news article about such research cropped up last year, I saw people on the internet worrying about a science-fiction type scenario where the development could lead to a world devoid of women.

People get really paranoid about science...

A year after the invasion, none other than Colin Powell said the link was tenuous at best.

A few months later, the 9/11 commission, along with the FBI and the CIA found that there were no substantive links.

This, of course, is not surprising given that the administration's own point man on WMD found that Iraq had no WMD, which 33% of Fox News viewers incorrectly believe.

It is mostly for creative/artistic reasons and preserving the integrity of the film as the creators intended it.

to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.

This has something to do with that purchase of AOL stock by Google some time ago?

Just a quick Google search came up with this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29&notFound=true

Some excerpts:

"The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors"

"The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague."

Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia

Superman, is that you? You must have used your x-ray vision to look through the masks of the men in the video footage. Even if Zarqawi claimed responsibility, that's what? Two dead Americans? Versus how many thousands with ruined retirement accounts, millions of dollars lost? We have no way of knowing how many deaths, let alone injuries, Lay's activities caused.

I'd say it's a safe bet that he injured more than two Americans however. See, I live in California, and I personally have been injured by the actions of Enron, the company Lay oversaw.

Presumably, you have links from the AP regarding these AQ funded labs? I have this link

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/06/09/AR2006060902040_2.html

which depicts Zarqawi as wanting to ally himself with AQ, but not being embraced by the terrorist organization's leadership. Furthermore, I have yet to find a mainstream media outlet which claims AQ was operating from Iraq before the war.

There is nothing absurd about calling Republicans traitors, it is indisputable: they seek to undermine the Constitution of the United States, and do not support the Constitution, the document upon which almost all of our laws depend. In so doing, they hope to destroy the United States, and are hence traitors, QED. There is nothing in the Constitution which allows violation of amendments one, five, or six, but there are the Republicans, supporting their violation each and every day.

Traitors all. To paraphrase the Traitor-in-Chief, "you're either with us, or you're with the Republicans."

You don't _have_ to be a traitor, you know. You can always read the Constitution, and educate yourself about this country's founding, and the ideals behind it.

Where did shooting at the police come in? Somebody proposed a tangling net launcher, somebody else asked why a taser wouldn't work, and I responded. For that matter the TNL proposer was talking about shooting it at idiots before PHBs(Pointy Haired Boss, from dilbert) were impressed by the idiotic idea the idiot was proposing.

Police are allowed to use lethal force quite quickly, and in some districts, I feel too easily. I think that police, being professionals, should be held to a higher standard when it comes to 'accidental discharges'. Do you really need the SWAT team to charge in with fingers on triggers for a optometrist moonlighting as a bookie?

My suggestion to add glue to the package is for that little extra bit of effectivness. The person isn't getting out without a lot of work and assistance, though it shouldn't be too hard back at the station with an agent to dissolve the glue and maybe even the strands.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/10/20/AR2005102001931.html This guy wanted to build 3 bridges in Alaska to tiny islands where nobody lives with more funds than it would've taken to give those people speedboats and gas for the boats for life! He's an idiotic moron!

Write to Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Vir., voted in favor of Network Neutrality in the Judiciary committee) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore., introduced the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, S 2360, in March) to tell them about Sen. Stevens comments so that when they debate on the floor, they can speak to the utter incompetence of Sen. Stevens on this subject.

Make this your July 4th pledge. I'm sure most of you have the day off tomorrow. Spend an hour and write some letters. Talking amongst ourselves will accomplish nothing.

-S

they must be using Powerpoint again.

As you may recall, said Alaska nitwit has been pushing a bridge to nowhere for quite awhile. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/10/20/AR2005102001931.html

You've been lied to by Karl Rove once again. (Karl Rove is "Bush's Brain".)

A lot of things Senator Gore says sound very wooden and otherwise poorly expressed. However, Gore delivers. In a private email message, Vint Cerf told me that it was true that Al Gore was instrumental in the development of the Internet. Before Mr. Gore's involvement, it was a semi-private utility known as ArpaNet and NSFNet. Mr. Gore championed the development of the private network as a public utility. This was years before Bill Gates, for example, recognized its importance.

No, Vint Cerf is not a friend of mine; that's not the point. The point is that Senator Al Gore has a brain of his own, and a very good one.

Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is known as someone who supports destructive causes. So, those who want corruption in the U.S. government go to him. Many people on Slashdot suppose that he views his ignorance as bad; on the contrary, he is openly advertising his ignorance so the corrupters will know to find him when they want someone who will help them corrupt.

Science is an extremely necessary step to the evolution of mankind. As a species, we are curious in nature, and we are always striving to understand more and more about our environment; And believe it or not, the universe is our environment.

Instead of scrapping these projects, why not cut the US defense budget? At an excess of $419.3 billion for 2006, I'm sure even if only $20 billion (~10 B-2's or a few ICBM's) was shaved off that, a lot of the problems you describe could be taken care of. NASA's current budget is only $16.5 billion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/inte ractives/budget06/budget06Agencies.html

Brian Krebs over at WaPo.com's Security Fix blog is reporting that lawyers are now asking a judge to certify a class-action suit against Microsoft, charging that "the company violated anti-spyware laws in California and Washington state when it collected information about consumers without clearly disclosing that activity in its end-user license agreement."

More here: Microsoft Re-Issues Anti-Piracy Tool, Lawyers Sue

I think this whole concept of a "state church" is what the founding fathers were against, and the motivation for separation of church and state, not petty crap like what is going on in San Diego.

I mean seriously, I think all the folks who rant against the US being a theocracy and hot-bed of fundementalism, etc, etc. need to travel around a little bit more, I think they'd be in for some surprises... even in Europe!

Don't forget they don't have to knock now ..

Countries constantly arrest people on terrorism charges.

Even if they "terrorists" are clueless wannabes with no knowledge or skills or anything, with no resources (one of their big requests was boots that would fit them) and the government even has to supply them with a camera to take pictures of their "targets."

Terrorists? Ha! Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

--MarkusQ

Yes, some of this software can be difficult to use. So is most of the junk on the average office machine, and everybody has survived that. (The selection of cryptography software might also be better if the federal government hadn't spent years trying to criminalize a free, open standard for encryption called Pretty Good Privacy. But I digress.)

> Worse, congress debated over a flag admendment

Maybe for a suitably fraudulent definition of "debated".

Why has this not been done before?

Well, y'know, it isn't like the information was anything important... like, you know, information about exactly what the bush administration is doing with your tax dollars or anything. It was just like personal information on veterans and stuff. We can afford a few gigantic slip-ups there.

They're sent to China for "recycling".

Sing: That old woman with the onion!
                  You look real tough. Want to try me?
                  I'll let you hit me first.

(woman punches him in the stomach and he spits out blood)

Sing: What do you do?
Woman: I'm a farmer.
Sing: Farmers don't fight. Piss off!

>my point is not directly about hardship but about responsibility
37% of adults in Botswana are HIV positive
Leave aside the irresponsible governments, which are a minority of their people. Leave aside wars like Congo. The Congolese war is fueled from outside and doesn't tell you about the Congolese. Leave aside the desertification of the Sahel, which is probably part climate change, and even the overgrazing may be the result of desperation rather than irreponsibility.

A 37% infection rate of a disease as cheaply preventable as AIDS does not square with the idea that Africans are more responsible than Westerners. They're human beings and therefore just as screwed up as we are.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/05 01_020501_roborats.html

Couple this with:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17434-20 03Oct12?language=printer

and you get monkeys that can control rats with their mind!

I for one welcome our new monkey overlords and their army of mind controlled rats...

If your home was invaded and you were incapacitated, you'd be pretty damn glad when the cops showed up

Unless it was the cops doing the invading...

250 cops raid house and shoot innocent man in the chest

Man Shot Dead by British Police Was Innocent Brazilian Citizen

Get a dog, they're much better protection than police.

Indeed, Hans Blix has shown they won't find it even if it is
there.

It's not his fault though. He was an egoist, and an egoist can't be expected to do the job asked of him. Not when there's a much more important-sounding job right there for the taking. So he fancied himself a diplomat and apparantly thought his job was to prevent war.

He shan't be blamed, even if his course of action was ironically, the one choice that all but guaranteed an armed conflict: half-assed inspections and cover-your-ass ambiguous (and sometimes contradictory) reports peppered with political statements that should've disqualified him as the leader of a cold, impartial team of observers.

Anyone who doesn't ask that (in our litigious society, especially) deserves what they get, because they're stupid.

Whoever screwed up in that VA thing will likely get a promotion.

The current administration has a pattern of rewarding incompetence. Recall NORAD and FBI higher-ups getting promotions after 9/11 and CIA's Tenet getting the top civilian medal for screwup on Iraq's WMD intel.

Oh, and Iraq's Bremer getting Freedom Medal for 'losing' US$ 8,000,000,000 in Iraq, and Gen. Franks for sending enough troops. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A636 23-2004Dec14.html

"Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job!"

The biggest impediment to Africa being the next India are the African warlords who keep the continent stuck in the 13th century.

Got a source for that one?

Posting AC because this is OT now.

President Bush's remarks to the U.N. General Assembly
Sept. 12, 2002

"The United Nations was born in the hope that survived a world war -- the hope of a world moving toward justice, escaping old patterns of conflict and fear. The founding members resolved that the peace of the world must never again be destroyed by the will and wickedness of any man. We created the United Nations Security Council, so that, unlike the League of Nations, our deliberations would be more than talk, our resolutions would be more than wishes. After generations of deceitful dictators and broken treaties and squandered lives, we dedicated ourselves to standards of human dignity shared by all, and to a system of security defended by all."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41966-20 03Oct3?language=printer ...and the world turns their collective backs... Shame on you all. Cowards and appeasers, the lot of you!

There was an article a couple days ago on TGDaily that stated the Samsung's first blu-ray player to be a grand.

I don't know why an article on Slashdot is reporting Sony's to be $1500 when Best Buy is already taking pre-orders for both the Sony BDP-S1 & Samsung BD-P1000 models each equally priced at a thousand dollars. Even the Froogle search for it seems to come out on the one grand consensus.

It seems a lot of articles have been against Sony while this fear of Sony's set top player being overpriced is relatively unfounded. As we all know, this shall prove interesting if the PS3s offer the same functionality for much less.

If both players debut at $1,000, perhaps this will be a war one in quality instead of price? Ah, who am I kidding--whoever licenses pr0n easiest/fastest will come out on top (no pun intended).

I don't intend to run out and buy one because the only movie I've seen advertised for blu-ray is the second Underworld movie. And I don't even know which kind of blu-ray player it's for (customer confusion indeed)!

Just a side note, the same Reuters article is in The Washington Post and I've linked the print format to avoid having to click through pages and view less ads.

Comparing faith and religious belief to a neurosis or schizophrenic condition is a Freudian way to look at God (and therefore seems to be unquestionably sanctioned by the "scientific" community). But, it is only one way to look at it. The true objective of science is to study all things, whether we believe they are real or not and from multiple perspectives, to determine answers about them. So, if you actually want to understand where people of faith are coming from, you have to study what they believe and whether there is a true basis for believing it. Maybe not in the way a physics or genetic specialist would approach it, but maybe in the way a social scientist does.

Albert Einstein believed in God AND developed the theory of relativity with the belief firmly in his mind that God was the cause of it all. He was unapologetic about that and is on the record as stating so. Yet we do not discredit his work because of his beliefs. Newton, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, and others were of the same mind, yet it did not hinder their ability to do solid science. Their only beef about religion was the Vatican's ridiculous interpretation of the nature, composition, and physical workings of the universe. In the case of Copernicus, it's interesting to note that:

"If Copernicus had any genuine fear of publication, it was the reaction of _scientists_, not clerics, that worried him. Other churchmen before him -- Nicole Oresme (a French bishop) in the fourteenth century and Nicolaus Cusanus (a German cardinal) in the fifteenth -- had freely discussed the possible motion of the earth, and there was no reason to suppose that the reappearance of this idea in the sixteenth century would cause a religious stir." (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindber g.html, emphasis added)

The scientists, even then, thought they had all the answers. Boy, were they wrong.

Neither of us own a private library of primary research conducted by ourselves or our own teams of scientists, so we'll both have to rely on Google-driven quote mining. Here is a small cross section sample of articles found around the keywords "research prayer healing". I've deliberately left the titles off of the link list below so that anyone reading this will have less chance of being biased by the headline. Can't do much about the domain names, though, so I'll just have to trust that anyone really interested in knowing a faith-based perspective will actually click those links. I've also deliberately chosen articles from as many viewpoints as possible, including skepdic.com so that a) I won't be accused of cherry-picking and b) so that, as scientists, we can begin to appreciate that there are many ways of looking at things and at least two ways of "knowing" (faith and experimentation).

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/366162p-311 612c.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/23/AR2006032302177.html
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/research confirmsdh.html
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2001-12/reality-check.htm l
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/14/AR2005071401695.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.ht ml
http://www.stnews.org/News-1590.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/healing_pr

Comparing faith and religious belief to a neurosis or schizophrenic condition is a Freudian way to look at God (and therefore seems to be unquestionably sanctioned by the "scientific" community). But, it is only one way to look at it. The true objective of science is to study all things, whether we believe they are real or not and from multiple perspectives, to determine answers about them. So, if you actually want to understand where people of faith are coming from, you have to study what they believe and whether there is a true basis for believing it. Maybe not in the way a physics or genetic specialist would approach it, but maybe in the way a social scientist does.

Albert Einstein believed in God AND developed the theory of relativity with the belief firmly in his mind that God was the cause of it all. He was unapologetic about that and is on the record as stating so. Yet we do not discredit his work because of his beliefs. Newton, Galileo, Brahe, Copernicus, and others were of the same mind, yet it did not hinder their ability to do solid science. Their only beef about religion was the Vatican's ridiculous interpretation of the nature, composition, and physical workings of the universe. In the case of Copernicus, it's interesting to note that:

"If Copernicus had any genuine fear of publication, it was the reaction of _scientists_, not clerics, that worried him. Other churchmen before him -- Nicole Oresme (a French bishop) in the fourteenth century and Nicolaus Cusanus (a German cardinal) in the fifteenth -- had freely discussed the possible motion of the earth, and there was no reason to suppose that the reappearance of this idea in the sixteenth century would cause a religious stir." (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindber g.html, emphasis added)

The scientists, even then, thought they had all the answers. Boy, were they wrong.

Neither of us own a private library of primary research conducted by ourselves or our own teams of scientists, so we'll both have to rely on Google-driven quote mining. Here is a small cross section sample of articles found around the keywords "research prayer healing". I've deliberately left the titles off of the link list below so that anyone reading this will have less chance of being biased by the headline. Can't do much about the domain names, though, so I'll just have to trust that anyone really interested in knowing a faith-based perspective will actually click those links. I've also deliberately chosen articles from as many viewpoints as possible, including skepdic.com so that a) I won't be accused of cherry-picking and b) so that, as scientists, we can begin to appreciate that there are many ways of looking at things and at least two ways of "knowing" (faith and experimentation).

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/366162p-311 612c.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/23/AR2006032302177.html
http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/research confirmsdh.html
http://www.csicop.org/sb/2001-12/reality-check.htm l
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/14/AR2005071401695.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.ht ml
http://www.stnews.org/News-1590.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/healing_pr

Thanks for your message. You inspired me to send my own letter to letters@washpost.com, and the Ombudsman http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/deb orah+howell/ and the author himself http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/fra nk+ahrens/

Dear Sir or Madam,

In Frank Ahrens recent article, "U.S. Joins Industry in Piracy War", Thursday, June 15, 2006, Ahrens says the following:

"Last month, Swedish authorities briefly shut down an illegal file-sharing Web site after receiving a briefing on the site's activities from U.S. officials in April in Washington. The raid incited political and popular backlash in the Scandinavian nation."

His reference to the Pirate Bay as "illegal" is factually incorrect. In Sweden, the fact is that the Pirate Bay's legal status is unclear and has been debated extensively. The law change in the previous line that Ahrens references, "Sweden change its laws to make it a crime to swap copyrighted movies and music for free over the Internet." does not directly incriminate the Pirate Bay. This is because the Pirate Bay does not host any copyrighted material whatsoever on its servers. It merely provides pointers to other sites on the internet. In the United States, laws against "contributory infringement" would be applicable, however Sweden does not have these laws.

This inaccuracy has a very real effect on shaping the perceptions of the issue. The fact is that there is a very real debate on the world stage right now about the extent to which U.S. intellectual property laws should be respected globally. By jumping the gun and calling the Pirate Bay illegal when it is not stigmatizes one side of the debate unfairly and introduces bias where there should be none.

I urge others to do the same. It only takes a few minutes.

Thanks for your message. You inspired me to send my own letter to letters@washpost.com, and the Ombudsman http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/deb orah+howell/ and the author himself http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/fra nk+ahrens/

Dear Sir or Madam,

In Frank Ahrens recent article, "U.S. Joins Industry in Piracy War", Thursday, June 15, 2006, Ahrens says the following:

"Last month, Swedish authorities briefly shut down an illegal file-sharing Web site after receiving a briefing on the site's activities from U.S. officials in April in Washington. The raid incited political and popular backlash in the Scandinavian nation."

His reference to the Pirate Bay as "illegal" is factually incorrect. In Sweden, the fact is that the Pirate Bay's legal status is unclear and has been debated extensively. The law change in the previous line that Ahrens references, "Sweden change its laws to make it a crime to swap copyrighted movies and music for free over the Internet." does not directly incriminate the Pirate Bay. This is because the Pirate Bay does not host any copyrighted material whatsoever on its servers. It merely provides pointers to other sites on the internet. In the United States, laws against "contributory infringement" would be applicable, however Sweden does not have these laws.

This inaccuracy has a very real effect on shaping the perceptions of the issue. The fact is that there is a very real debate on the world stage right now about the extent to which U.S. intellectual property laws should be respected globally. By jumping the gun and calling the Pirate Bay illegal when it is not stigmatizes one side of the debate unfairly and introduces bias where there should be none.

I urge others to do the same. It only takes a few minutes.