Or crackpottery, depending on your perspective.

Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned "we would be been gone by now".

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," Dr Mitchell said.

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it . . .

Check out Ed Stetzer's Twitter feed as he documents some of the wares on display at this year's International Christian Retail Show (formerly known as Christian Booksellers Association convention).

My wife is there but coming home today. Maybe she'll bring me some of those cool "Christian" sunglasses.

I'm a fiend for iTunesU. That little jewel allows you to essentially audit college courses from all sorts of disciplines. Currently I'm hooked on a doctrine course and a hermeneutics course at Concordia Seminary.

I was saddened, though, by a recent question in the doctrine class. The professor asked a room full of students (this is a graduate level course, by the way) to raise their hands if they had ever read any of the C. S. Lewis Space Trilogy. In the entire room only one guy had read any part of it. Pathetic! They may as well have admitted to not ever having read anything by Paul, or to confusing Martin Luther with Martin Luther King (Concordia is Lutheran).

Sure, I'm being hyperbolic here, but ... c'mon! ... we're talking about the great one here -- our boy, Clive!

Despite all that, you guys should check out the free educational stuff on iTunesU. It's addictive. I'm addicted. I admit it.

And you thought reality TV was bad...


This is from a series of 70's primetime TV specials called "Legends of the Superheroes" which was designed to be a Dean Martin variety style show. This clip was from an episode where Batman and Robin get summoned to a "supehero roast". The specials were hosted by Ed McMahon.

In this "hilarious" clip Robin talks to Captain Marvel about crashing the Batmobile and is then forced to tell Batman. (OK, it's not really hilarious. But apparently the audience thought it was. Oh wait, that's a laugh track...") Maybe somebody thought this would be hilarious.



Can't get enough? Here's more.

The Washington Post says, "According to a new Pew survey, 21% of American atheists believe in God or a universal spirit, 12% believe in heaven and 10% pray at least once a week. What do you make of this?"

Brian McLaren had an interesting response. I'll give you part of it here:

I love this question and the reality to which it points, namely, that people are complex and perpetually surprising. What the finding about atheists suggests to me is something that I came across many times in my work as a pastor: when people call themselves atheists, they often mean not that they don't believe in any god at all as the term would indicate, but they don't believe in a particular version or description of God.

If that's the case, then I'd say they're not really atheists at all, so there's no point in saying that 21 percent of atheists believe in God. Never mind the fact that by its very definition atheism denies the existence of God.

Strange. Very, very strange.

What's up with that? Seriously. We're genuinely curious.

There's been more than a few comments from quasi-anonymous commenters that are "religious" in tone but typically are only semi-coherent and bear no relation to the post they're left under.

Are you one person commenting under different names?
A group "targeting" Thinklings for some reason?

Can you explain yourself?

(I await the nonsensical "flee into the LIGHT" type bon mots . . .)

Croc eats shark.

(HT: But I'm No Expert)

I just read a blogger apologize (sincerely, not sarcastically) for calling another blogger's remarks "dumb" when what he really meant is that they were "stupid."

The reason for the apology is that he meant to echo a Proverb that uses "stupid" and he misremembered it as "dumb." Or something like that.

Not that he needs a reason, but that our society can produce and accommodate this is essentially begging God to wipe us off the earth.

I'm not one for moral hand-wringing, and it's not like I don't know millions of babies have been murdered basically for convenience, but OH MY GOD.
When pro-choicers are appalled, you know you're sick.

That this person gets to keep doing this is proof God is merciful.

(HT: BHT)

Why am I endlessly fascinated by stuff like this?

Send me any Texe Marrs books you have laying around too.

(HT: BHT)

Woman Bites Dog...Who Attacked Her Dog

Woman Bites Dog Who Attacked Her Dog
2 hours ago

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Amy Rice feared for her dog's life when a pit bull jumped over a fence into her yard and attacked her pooch. So she took matters into her own mouth.

Rice says she bit the pit bull on the nose Friday after trying to pull the dog's jaws off her Labrador retriever, Ella. The dog had jumped a fence to get into Rice's northeast Minneapolis yard, and Rice says she feared the pit bull would kill Ella.

"I didn't plan it, that's what happened. I broke the skin and had pit bull blood in my mouth," said Rice, 38. "I knew what happened, and I knew that it wasn't good."

The pit bull was quarantined Wednesday by Minneapolis Animal Control officers while rabies tests are being completed. Rice's doctor will determine whether she needs shots for rabies.

"I was sure that my dog was dying in my arms; it was horrible," Rice said.

Ella is recovering with staples and stitches to her head and a crushed ear canal, but she is afraid to go for walks, Rice said.

They might have found D.B. Cooper's parachute.

The parachute -- similar to the one Cooper jumped with -- was unearthed earlier this month after a Clark County man plowed part of the rural property he's owned for nearly a decade, said Larry Carr, the lead agent on the Cooper case. The man's children found the parachute when they were playing and Carr, who is based in Seattle, retrieved it from southwest Washington.

"If D.B. Cooper had pulled his chute not long after that jump, he would have landed in that area," Carr said. "Is this D.B. Cooper's parachute? We don't know yet" . . .

Carr said Cooper's backup parachute was sewn shut, and the working one he jumped with was a Navy-issue NB6. But Carr can't find identifying markings on the worn parachute or the container in which it was packed. He is hoping someone with expert knowledge of NB6 parachutes can assist in the effort.

"If this canopy can be traced to an NB6 backpack, it will start looking pretty good," Carr said.

Most investigators surmise Cooper died in the frigid wild, perhaps even in his jump. But!

None of the $200,000 ever made it into circulation, though $5,800 worth of the frayed bills were found along the Columbia River in 1980. And that creates another complication for FBI investigators.

Carr said that if Cooper landed where the parachute was found, it would be impossible for the ransom money to end up where it did by natural means.

"No matter what you do with this case," Carr said, "the mystery deepens."

Two reversals of stories you've probably heard from the pulpit at some point in time but are actually not true.

1. Myth: Sincere Means "Without Wax"

[T]he most wide-spread story is that Roman potters would fill cracks in defective pots with wax the same color as the pot and sell the pots as perfect. To convince a customer that a pot was perfect, the potter had to convince him that it was sin cera “without wax”. That has long been established as either an urban myth (or an old wives’ tale, depending on your age and slang generation). Of course, sincere does not mean “without wax” or even “perfect” so the semantic side of this proposed derivation never worked.

Sincere comes to English from Latin sincerus “sound, whole, pure, genuine” via French. Its origin is simply unknown. A possible source would be a Proto-Indo-European compound sem-kero-s “of one growth” based on sem- “same, one” + kero- “to grow”. Although semantics troubles this purely speculative derivation, too, I sincerely believe it is the most likely historical scenario for the development of sincere.

2. Myth: Jesus Talked About Hell ____ Times More Than He Talked About Heaven

Nope. Jesus talked about heaven more. Or, at least, the word "heaven" appears in more of his teaching on the kingdom and eternal life than "hell" (or Hades or whatever) does.
That one is easily verifiable just looking in a concordance or checking Bible Gateway, but the Jollyblogger did a piece on it 2 years ago.

The catch on that one is that Jesus did reference hell (or some form of conscious torment/punishment for unrepentance) quite a bit, and that alone is quite shocking to those who think of Jesus as the anti-judge.

E-mail forwards are the bane of my existence. Urban legends, fearmongering about missing children and Democratic politicians who want to eat them, political rabble rousing, mushy stories about little kids in Sunday School or grandfathers and ice cream cones, jingoistic screeds masquerading as patriotism, etc etc etc.
I hatessss them, my preciousss. And I always feel all Gollumy when I ask a relative or friend to:
a) not include me in their send to file for such things
b) at the very least place me in the BCC section of their e-mail's "To" field so all the hundreds of people they know but I don't won't have my e-mail address, or
c) do some quick research and learn that the story they're forwarding is not true.

I can kinda-sorta understand the sentiment that provokes one to pass these things along.
But for the life of me I cannot put myself in the brainpattern of the person who falsifies details or begins the lie. What's the compulsion?

Check this out.
This ginormous mountain lion was struck by a car in Arizona. The good folks at Snopes document several variations of the email forward in which people change the details to say the mountain lion was found in Arkansas, Virginia, etc.

Why? What's the point?
What rational person takes an e-mail and purposefully changes the place names so as to mislead others for something so stupid?
I get white lies, I get fudging details on "big fish" stories, I get lying for profit . . . I don't get the person who changes "in Tempe between 1st and 3rd Avenue" to "in Jacksonville between 4th and 5th Street."

According to The Mechanical Contrivium: Jared Wilson

1. The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed Jared Wilson would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used him to decorate their battle shields.
2. In his entire life, Jared Wilson will produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
3. Reindeer like to eat Jared Wilson!
4. Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by Jared Wilson.
5. The Jared Wilson-fighting market in the Philippines is huge - several thousand Jared Wilson-fights take place there every day.
6. The horns of Jared Wilson are made entirely from hair.
7. The moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than Jared Wilson, and 400 times smaller!
8. The international dialling code for Jared Wilson is 672.
9. Ninety-six percent of all candles sold are purchased by Jared Wilson!
10. Bananas don't grow on trees - they grow on Jared Wilson!

#'s 1 and 5 -- Total awesomeness.

#9 -- Awww, yeah. Ninety-six percent of all Barry White CD's too.

You try it.

Cryptozoology has always fascinated me. Sasquatch, Yeti, Bigfoot. Nessie. Dinosaurs in the Amazon. Blo.

Here's something cool:
Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said Tuesday they have collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths.

I'll take nominations for a better title. But you'll have to watch the video first...

If you missed it, since last week, the small Texas town of Stephenville has been "abuzz" with reports of UFO sightings.

I love this line from the AP video:

“Sorrells thought about shooting at the object but he didn’t want to start an interstellar war.”

Check it out.

As tonight showed, she's not out of it by any stretch. But her shape-shifting as a politician just seems to grow weirder by the minute. From the hippie feminist who made herself over to get back in the governor's mansion, the White House matron with the cookie recipe, the Chicago girl who supposedly grew up a Yankee fan, the Sopranos spoof video, to this latest transparent attempt at manipulation, I just don't see how anyone could take her seriously. While I don't favor any of the Democratic candidates, I can see how someone might want to believe Obama or Edwards. But Hillary?

This is appalling.

A Texas woman who was declared dead in a car crash and found to be alive after the emergency medical crew left the scene has since died of her injuries, but San Antonio emergency officials deny they did anything wrong.

Erica Smith, 23, was left unattended in freezing temperatures with a yellow tarp draped over her body for up to two hours early Sunday morning after she was declared dead by the ambulance crew. The two crew members worked instead on two other people who were injured in the car crash before 4 a.m. Those victims were both rushed to a hospital.

Smith, a student at Southwest Texas State University, was discovered to be alive about 6 a.m.by an official from the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office and the ambulance crew was summoned back to the crash site, according to Henry Valadez, a San Antonio newsman who shot footage at the crash.

Smith died Monday afternoon from her wounds, which were described in the police report as "severe head trauma."

Check out the Fire Chief's comment:

During a Monday press conference, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said he did not expect the paramedics to be disciplined in connection to the incident.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he said during the press conference. “We weren’t driving the vehicle that hit the car.”

Nice.