I saw this remarkable video about a month ago and have been trying to get a good quality copy uploaded here to Merchantprince. An inventor from Erie, PA has stumbled onto something which lead to extraordinary scientific breakthroughs.

John Kanzius has found a way to burn salt water with the same radio wave machine he is using to kill cancer cells.

Kanzius was testing his external radio-wave generator to see if it could desalinate salt water, and the water ignited. A university chemist determined that the process is generating hydrogen, which can be burned as fuel.

Here is a local news story on the saltwater fuel demonstration. Unfortunately, this was the best copy I could come up with. There is some off-synching with the voices, but it’s worth watching:

Now, recent updates have made this story even more incredible. It seems that preliminary testing on Kanzius’ process has begin curing cancer in laboratory rats. From Wikipedia:

Kanzius treatment kills cancer cells in rabbits – John Kanzius, sorely weakened by leukemia treatments, drew on his lifetime of working with radio waves to devise a machine that targets cancer cells. The miracle: It works. (LA Times; Nov. 2, 2007)

Sending his cancer a signal – Hard evidence that researchers using John Kanzius’ radio-wave generator are successfully killing cancer cells has been published by the American Cancer Society. (Go Erie; October 31. 2007)

How amazing would it be if this could be a reality?

Read this on FOX News about a week ago and really thought it hit all the nails on their respective heads, regarding the recent attempts by the Federal government to ban online gambling. Regardless of your opinion on the subject (or even if you don’t know the details of the story at all), this is a good read.

There are likely many people whose reaction to all of this is “so what?” It’s tough to get too worked up over a ban on something as seemingly niche and targeted as a ban on Internet gambling. Who other than Internet gamblers should care?

Part of the problem is the mentality that comes with this kind of legislation. The gambling ban seems to have been supported by two similar approaches to governance that, although they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, are generally quite similar.

From the right, many feel that if they’re personally morally opposed to a particular consensual activity, it ought to be banned for everyone. From the left, it’s the mentality that because some people can’t engage in a particular activity responsibly and without harming themselves, that activity ought to be banned for everyone. One is moral paternalism. The other is Nanny State paternalism. But the result is the same. The government makes your decisions for you.

For the full article, Click Here.

An atheist blog recently listed the best atheist-positive anecdotes that have been seen either on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt. Of course, they are accurate as well as hilarious. Which ones are your favorites?

Top 40 Atheist T-Shirt and Bumper Sticker Aphorisms

1. Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers
2. Honk If Your Religious Beliefs Make You An Asshole
3. Intelligent Design Makes My Monkey Cry
4. Too Stupid to Understand Science? Try Religion.
5. There’s A REASON Why Atheists Don’t Fly Planes Into Buildings
6. “Worship Me or I Will Torture You Forever. Have a Nice Day.”­ ~ God
7. God Doesn’t Kill People. People Who Believe in God Kill People.
8. If There is No God, Then What Makes the Next Kleenex Pop Up?
9. He’s Dead.
   It’s Been 2,000 years.
   He’s Not Coming Back.
   Get OVER It Already!
10. All religion is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. ~ Edgar Allen Poe
11. Viva La Evolución!
12. Actually, If You Look It Up, The Winter Solstice Is The Reason For The Season
13. I Wouldn’t Trust Your God Even If He Did Exist
14. Cheeses Is Lard. Argue With THAT If You Can.
15. People Who Don’t Want Their Beliefs Laughed at Shouldn’t Have Such Funny Beliefs
16. Threatening Children With Hell Is FUN!
17. What Schools Need Is a Moment of Science.
18. God Doesn’t Exist. So, I Guess That Means No One Loves You.
19. When the Rapture Comes, We’ll Get Our Country Back!
20. You Say “Heretic” Like It Was a BAD Thing
21. Science: It Works, Bitches.
22. “Intelligent Design” Helping Stupid People Feel Smart Since 1987
23. I Gave Up Superstitious Mumbo Jumbo For Lent
24. My Flying Monkey Can Beat Up Your Guardian Angel
25. If God Wanted People to Believe in Him, Then Why Did He Invent Logic?
26. Praying Is Politically Correct Schizophrenia
27. I Forget – Which Day Did God Make All The Fossils?
28. Don’t pray in my school, and I won’t think in your church.
29. I Was An Atheist Until The Hindus Convinced Me That I Was God
30. The Spanish Inquisition: The Original Faith-based Initiative
31. If we were made in his image, when why aren’t humans invisible too?
32. JESUS SAVES….You From Thinking For Yourself
33. How Can You Disbelieve in Evolution If You Can’t Even Define It?
34. Q. How Can You Tell That Your God is Man-made?
    A. If He Hates All the Same People You Do.
35. Every Time You See a Rainbow, God is Having Gay Sex
36. I Went to Public School in Kansas and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt and a Poor Understanding of the Scientific Method.
37. The Family That Prays Together is Brainwashing the Children
38. Another Godless Atheist for Peace and World Harmony
39. God is Unavailable Right Now. Can I Help You?
40. When Lip Service to Some Mysterious Deity Permits Bestiality on
    Wednesday and Absolution on Sundays, Cash Me Out. ~ Frank Sinatra

The X-Files was one of my favorite TV shows in the 90s, so I was tentatively happy to hear that they were making a second movie. But that was years ago and it started to look like it was never going to happen.

Well, the movie officially started filming in this past December and today we have some hard evidence for you: pictures of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the set on The X-Files 2! And here’s even more good news straight from creator Chris Carter regarding what kind of movie we can expect:

“We spent a lot of time on (the mythology) and wrapped up a lot of threads”. “We want a stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one.” (Source)

It’s great to see the two of them together again and the fact that the movie won’t deal with the alien conspiracy that dragged the show down is good to hear. And is it just me or is Scully even hotter now than she was back in the day? The X-Files 2 is set to hit theatres on July 25th, 2008.

original article courtesy Popoholic 

I just watched this and at first thought it was some kind of comedy show, but it’s real footage. This Australian kid threw a party while his parents were out of town, 500 people showed up and terrorized the neighborhood. Some local news station gets him for an interview – and I wish I’d been half as cool as this kid when I was 16:

George Romero, the original master of the zombie move genre, has a new film out about – well, guess what?

In any case, this installment will differ from all previous Romero films in that it will feature a first-person handycam style of footage. I am dubious on this point, as I have had enough (bad) shakycam experiences in both film and TV to give me pause about Romero’s brainstorm.

But it is zombies. And it is Romero. See for yourself:

Air Force Times describes female airmen as deadly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take AC-130H Spectre gunship evaluator-navigator Capt. Allison Black, for example. It was mid-November 2001…

Black began to chart the course. When her voice crackled over the soldiers’ field radios, Dostum was delightedly incredulous. A woman? Sent to kill the Taliban? “He couldn’t believe it,” Black said. “He thought it was the funniest thing.”

The Spectre neared and its cannons erupted. Unaccustomed to the Gatling gun’s mechanized snarl, the fighters confused the airstrike with a ground assault. Militants scattered into the fields, seeking cover in ditches and vehicles, although Black could see their heat-signature silhouettes from her console by the cockpit.

Dostum, hidden with the Army detachment several miles away, said the Taliban also believed a high-powered laser pointer used by Spectre operators to identify ground targets — a “sparkle,” in Air Force spec ops speak — was a death ray that turned everything it touched to flames.

As the hailstorm of munitions continued, Dostum grabbed his walkie-talkie, switched to the Taliban’s unsecured frequency and relayed to them the sound of Black’s chatter coming through Army radio.

He used the female pilot’s voice to taunt them as they bled.

“He said, ‘America is so determined, they bring their women to kill the Taliban. You’re so pathetic,’” Black said. “‘It’s the angel of death raining fire upon you.’”

Now that’s empowerment. Click Here for the rest of the story.