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Happymom
Member
01-20-2003
| Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 7:49 pm
My nephew went to Australia with P to P when he was about 11. (About 2 - 3 yr ago). He had a GREAT time! He was safe and well taken care of.
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Twinkie
Member
09-24-2002
| Sunday, August 23, 2009 - 7:36 pm
Urgent Help Needed!! The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting FREE FOOD donated every day to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute (about 15 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box 'fund food for animals for free'. This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising. Here's the web site! Please pass it along to people you know. http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/
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Donnagg
Member
08-11-2007
| Monday, August 24, 2009 - 4:56 pm
Twinkie I went. Can you click more than once?
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Monday, August 24, 2009 - 5:45 pm
I have had that as my home page for the past few years. I have to click every donation tab there before I can start reading on the internet in the morning. Donnagg, you can click each donation button once per day. Hit the Mammograms and the others while you are there.
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Twinkie
Member
09-24-2002
| Monday, August 24, 2009 - 6:48 pm
Yep, Juju is right. Its been around for years and you can click it once a day. I just got notice in email yesterday that they are in dire need of clicks to get the free food right now.
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Donnagg
Member
08-11-2007
| Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 1:50 pm
I added it to my favorites list so I'll be clicking each day. Thanks for pointing out the others I'll be clicking them also.
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Twinkie
Member
09-24-2002
| Saturday, September 05, 2009 - 6:27 pm
I hope Schoolmarm sees this here since she and I and hubby went to see this at the museum in Toronto. The Burial Box of Jesus' Brother: A Case Against Fraud By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009 The bone box, or ossuary, allegedly bearing the Aramaic inscription "Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua" ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus") AFP / Getty Print Reprints Email 1 Twitter LinkedIn Buzz up! (7)Facebook MORE...Add to my: del.icio.us Technorati reddit Google Bookmarks Mixx StumbleUpon Blog this on: TypePad LiveJournal Blogger MySpace The world of biblical archaeology was stirred in 2002 by the unveiling of a limestone burial box with the Aramaic inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). Allegedly dating to an era contemporaneous with Christ, the names were a tantalizing collation of potentially great significance: James was indeed the name of a New Testament personage known as the brother of Jesus, both ostensibly the sons of Joseph the carpenter, husband of Mary. If its dates were genuine, the burial box — or ossuary — could well be circumstantial evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, a tenet supported only by gospels and scripture written, at the earliest, a generation after his crucifixion and, of course, by the faith of hundreds of millions through 2,000 years. Related The Ossuary of James, Brother of Jesus Stories Fraudulent Relics and the Brother of Jesus More Related Exposing the Jesus’ Brother Fraud Jesus ’Tomb’ Controversy Reopened Rewriting The Gospels Experts, however, declared the ossuary a modern-day forgery. It was seized by Israeli police and its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan, was arrested and charged with counterfeiting the ossuary and dozens of other items. Golan and co-defendant Robert Deutsch were put on trial in the Jerusalem District Court in 2005. Deutsch is accused of forging other valuables, though not the ossuary. Both men deny all charges. (Read a review of a book on fraudulent biblical relics and the ossuary of James.) Their trial is still continuing. Many of the world's top archaeological experts have testified as both prosecution and defense witnesses in proceedings that already run to more than 9,000 pages. And while the original charges against the ossuary appear to have been popularly accepted as conventional wisdom, they seem to be headed for trouble in the courtroom. Judge Aharon Farkash, who has a degree in archaeology, has wondered aloud in court how he can determine the authenticity of the items if the professors cannot agree among themselves. (Read a story from TIME's archive on the ossuary of James.) The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority will soon take the witness stand for the first time since he declared, in December 2004, that the ossuary and other items seized in a two-year investigation were the "tip of the iceberg" of an international conspiracy that placed countless fakes in collections and museums around the world. He promised more arrests. But no other fake items have been seized, no-one else has been arrested, and Judge Farkash has hinted strongly that the prosecution case is foundering. Next week, defense attorneys will present evidence suggesting that scientists testifying for the prosecution have disproved their own findings against the ossuary. The scientific evidence against Golan is largely based on measurements of the oxygen isotopic composition (in technical terms, d18O — Delta 18 Oxygen) of the thin crust — or patina — covering the ossuary inscription. Scientists are unsure exactly how the patina is formed but most agree it is composed of deposits of solid calcium carbonate that come by way of rain or groundwater. It can contain particles added by wind and perhaps biological. Additionally, depending on the levels of acidity, it may also involve a chemical reaction with the surface of the object. Some scientists say the process is similar to the way stalagmites grow in caves; others disagree. Testifying for the prosecution, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon from the Geological Survey of Israel recorded isotopic values as low as -10.2 permil (parts per thousand) in patina found within the inscription on the ossuary. (It is believed that the lower the number permil, the wetter the season was when it was created.) "The patina could not have been created in the Judean Hills or the surrounding area in a natural way," Bar-Matthews told the court in October 2007. With the exception of one letter in the word Yeshua ("Jesus"), she said, "the patina in the other letters is not natural." Bar-Matthews and Ayalon based on their research on stalagmites in a cave near Jerusalem, where isotopic data showed rainfall and surface temperatures over many centuries, they concluded that the climate in the past 2,000 years could not have produced the patina on the ossuary. As they wrote with Professor Yuval Goren — another prosecution witness and professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University — in the Journal of Archeological Science in 2004, "the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters." The article states: "There is no evidence for the existence of water with such low d18O values in the area during this time span. The range of rain and groundwater d18O values in the Judean Mountains region during the last 3,000 years could not have been lower than approx -6 permil." Pressed by defense counsel, Bar-Matthews declared that an isotopic value lower than -6.5 permil for the ossuary was "impossible." However, a subsequent paper by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon with their American colleagues Ian Orland and John Valley studied samples from a stalagmite that apparently grew from about 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. And that showed isotopes as low as -8.5 permil, with annual rainfall in the Roman era reaching double the amounts the scientists had previously calculated. The article, published in the 2009 issue of Quaternary Research, was submitted for publication on October 11, 2007, before Bar-Matthews and Ayalon gave evidence at the ossuary trial. The defense expects to use these esoteric contradictions against the prosecution when the trial resumes on Sunday. Defense expert Prof Joel Kronfeld of the Department of Geophysics at Tel Aviv University says the new data shatters the prosecution case. "I think this is amazing — it blows my mind," Kronfeld told TIME. "The findings in this study stand in complete contradiction to the assumptions presented by Ayalon and Bar-Matthews, and shed new light on the theory they presented to the court. They not only undercut their own arguments for determining that the patina on several items was not natural but rather quite the opposite. These data can support the authenticity of the items." Bar-Matthews, however, argues the data from her later study are "irrelevant" to the ossuary trial. She and her colleagues say that the very low values representing wet seasons were "noise" that should not be taken in isolation since patina takes many years to form. Patina's isotopic value would represent an average figure, not just the low winter results. "It's like comparing tomatoes and gloves," Bar-Matthews told TIME. "There is no scenario where we can get light isotopic values below -6 permil also in Jerusalem under natural conditions." The defense is likely to point out that the tests on the ossuary carried out by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon also found traces of patina in at least two other letters of the inscription with isotopes of -4.65 and -5.82 permil — well within the original range they suggested. Bar-Matthews and Ayalon discounted these results, saying the results had been corrupted either from the limestone of the box or from a nearby crack that had been recently repaired. The trouble with this kind evidence is, of course, that the formation of patina isn't yet explainable in science everyone can agree on. The patina on one letter could be the result of one particularly wet winter that happened to leave its evidence on the ossuary — but perhaps not in a stalagmite in a cave. Or vice versa. "The analogy between the formation of cave deposits and the formation of patina on archeological objects is imprecise and more work is needed," says Professor Aldo Shemesh, an isotope expert at the Weizmann Institute who was also called as a defense expert. In the end, it is a numbers game — figuring on averages of statistics over which all the experts disagree. Says Shemesh: "Scientific debates should be discussed and resolved in peer-reviewed literature and scientific conferences, not in court." But a judge in Jerusalem has to decide on the "facts" as he sees them, for Jesus' sake.

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Ktbb
Member
08-10-2003
| Sunday, September 06, 2009 - 2:46 pm
I have a question for all you smart people out there. I saw an ad for a tv show called Dunham County on Ion. I wanted to watch the first season but I can't find a site to do that on. I tried Hulu but I couldn't find it. I googled it, but they all look fishy to me. Any other sites I'm missing?
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Monday, September 07, 2009 - 9:38 pm
For those of you who remember Bastable (he's a travel writer who lives in New York City), he is now hosting a web post-show for ABC's "Shark Tank". http://www.walletpop.com/after-shark-tank I follow him on Twitter. He is Bastable on Twitter.
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Tishala
Member
08-01-2000
| Monday, September 07, 2009 - 9:47 pm
awwww. i miss Bastable. He was so smart and funny.
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Twinkie
Member
09-24-2002
| Monday, September 07, 2009 - 10:03 pm
Very cool!! Thanks, Juju! I met Bastable a few years ago and what a super nice guy!
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Grooch
Member
06-16-2006
| Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 11:34 am
Thanks, Juju. I miss his posts and had been wondering what happened to him.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 2:50 pm
I miss him too, and it's why I have kept in touch with him. Of course, most of the time, he is off traveling the world, but with Twitter I now know where is. How cool is that!?
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Goddessatlaw
Member
07-19-2002
| Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 4:52 pm
Love me some Bastable. Good for him!!!!
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Tuesday, September 08, 2009 - 5:09 pm
OH, that's awesome! I thought Bastable was awesome, and now I'll be able to watch him talk about one of my fav shows!
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Dovez
Member
08-27-2005
| Wednesday, September 09, 2009 - 2:48 pm
ok. could someone, please, explain "shark tank"? i guess i stayed up in the mtns too long this summer.
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Naja
Member
06-28-2003
| Wednesday, September 09, 2009 - 2:56 pm
Dovez, I didn't know either but I looked it up and it's a reality TV show. Entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to five multi-millionaire business tycoons called the "Sharks". The Sharks decide if they will fund the company and then negotiate on what percentage of the company they will get in exchange for their money. Before the show, contestants decide what amount of money they need to get from the Sharks. They must get at least that amount from a single Shark or combination of multiple Sharks or they walk away with nothing.
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Texannie
Member
07-16-2001
| Wednesday, September 09, 2009 - 3:32 pm
it's on ABC
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Sunday, September 13, 2009 - 9:33 pm
NEW QUESTION Any ideas of how to make a necklace look less christmassy if using emerald and garnet? (Those are the birthstones of my SIL's kids and my brother is asking my advice.) Such as maybe using a blue and a pink stone instead -- to represent girl/boy instead. Only I can think of is use a lighter green and lighter red stone??? Any other ideas out there???
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Couchtomato
Member
09-09-2008
| Monday, September 14, 2009 - 10:08 am
Julieboo, space the emeralds & garnets between lots and lots of diamonds. Then....Christmassy won't matter, lol.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Monday, September 14, 2009 - 2:17 pm
Small pearls in between maybe?
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 8:18 am
Thanks CT & Juju!
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Abby7
Member
07-17-2002
| Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:00 am
this cat is so funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW_-oyAldfo
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Dipo
Member
04-23-2002
| Friday, September 18, 2009 - 1:36 pm
LMAO, I wonder what caused her to think that was the way to drink water!
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Twinkie
Member
09-24-2002
| Friday, September 18, 2009 - 1:57 pm
That is hilarious! Our boy cat will only drink water out of the bathroom tub faucet. Its been dripping for years and we don't bother to get it fixed because that's the only place he'll drink from. Our girl cat drinks from their water bowl.
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