Though this is number 1, we all advertising is mostly lies. This is the first post I'm doing to expose these lies for what they are. Mostly they're abuses of the word "free", as in "free with your paid subscription". If you have to pay to get something, it isn't free. It's that simple.

So, the first one here, not really monumental, but just to get things started:

Lenscrafter TV ad: "Free Lenses!"

And in slightly smaller print beneath, "With purchase of frames."

Complete lie. The lenses aren't free. Isn't that false advertising, and therefore illegal?

Revenant

Blunt answers about risks of global warming

Rajendra Pachauri isn't nearly as famous as Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with an international panel on climate change that Pachauri, an Indian scientist and economist, has led since 2002.

But as chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri has an urgent message for world leaders about the perils of global warming. He talked to the Tribune recently while he was in town to meet with Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago civic leaders. An edited transcript follows.

Pachauri and Gore, two idiots intent on destroying modern society, while retaining power for themselves.

I can't help but think how ridiculous this all is, and how it ties into religion.

Anthropogenic Gobal Warming (AGW) is a religion. Those who practice this religion refuse to acknowledge the facts which dispute it. Of course it's a unique hypothesis in that it doesn't seem falsifiable. Any weather/climate event is attributable to AGW; hot, cold, floods, droughts, more intense storms, less intense storms, you name it. Normally, all it takes to falsify a theory is one contradictory fact. AGW has many, yet they don't give up the hypothesis.

How does this relate to Pachauri? Well, in the above-linked story he states:

Q: What have you done personally to shrink your carbon footprint?

A: I've become a vegetarian. I try to minimize the use of cars. Where I've failed is my impact with regard to air travel. I tell people I was born a Hindu who believes in reincarnation. It will take me the next six lives to neutralize my carbon footprint. There's no way I can do it in one lifetime!

So, he believes in two fairy tales, AGW and Reincarnation. How can you really take someone seriously who believes in previous and future lives, with zero evidence? Well, just look at the AGW hype, lots of belief there with only computer models as "evidence". Actual observational science doesn't support the hypothesis. It needs to be thrown out.

Revenant

A recent program on the History Channel speculating about Chinese discovery of North America 71 years before Columbus, was nothing but a pile of speculation without substance.

I have no problem with the concept, but you actually need evidence to backup the claims. One claim was that since 1421, when the Chinese supposedly first landed, North America, and presumably South America, was completely populated by the Chinese. The archaeologist making the claim had as his "supporting evidence" that DNA doesn't support the Bering Straight land bridge theory of emigration from Asia. Hmm, really? Ok, maybe it doesn't. But DNA also doesn't support a Chinese population of North America either. And to populate and spread across an entire continent in just 70 years? And into the Caribbean islands? And is this enough time for the now indigenous peoples to change dramatically from the Chinese?

And what does this mean for South American civilizations which we know existed a good thousand years before 1421?

To try and bolster the theory, one entrepreneur decided to go searching for an ancient Chines boat hull buried in the sands of the American west coast. His search tools? Divining rods.

Wow.

This is the state of science these days?

So, he takes his team to some point along the California coast, I think it was, and got out his dowsing rods, and proclaimed he had found a spot. They start "drilling" a hole using forced water through a series of PVC pipes and then when they reached the desired depth of approximately 40 feet, they used a power drill and very long corer to obtain a sample.

They came up with small bits of wood. Instantly the dowser proclaimed "That's it, that's part of the keel. That's Chinese wood there." Instant analysis. Don't need no stinkin' labs and such.

But of course, try as they might, they couldn't find any more wood. Guess it was a teeny weeny boat. They couldn't even get enough for carbon dating (50 grams).

Now, judging from the amount of wood that collects on the shorelines here in Washington state, chances are he bored into a piece of old driftwood, which is probably extremely plentiful.

And, as the one skeptic voice in the program pointed out, "Discovery means finding something, and communicating it back to other peoples." There is zero evidence of this happening in any Chinese historical record. The Vikings were more successful than the Chinese in this respect, having at least written about the discovery of Vinland and reporting back to their homeland. They just weren't in a position to exploit it.

Nice to see History Channel is keeping up their high quality programming, based on speculation and little fact.

Deuteronomy 4:23-28

4:23 Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.

4:24 For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.

4:25 When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger.

4:26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed.

4:27 And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you.

4:28 And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

Apparently god is so jealous he can't stand ANY graven images. Not just images of other gods or things of worship but "any thing". So a bird, a cloud, a rock, a corpse, no graven images, period.

And the penalty? Complete destruction of the Jewish nation. Guess that didn't happen, eh?

This sounds more like Moses being a dick, since he's about to die anyway.

If you believe this crap, you're a moron.

Revenant

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate

"Considerable presence" of skeptics

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

I suppose there will be those Kool-Aid drinkers who will say that Physicists aren't Climate Scientists. Well, Climate Scientists are apparently a bunch of hacks who have to falsify data, or refuse to disclose data and methods, in order to keep their gravy train going.

The global climate is a physical system, physicists are the best qualified to refute the basics of the "global warming" hypothesis (It's not a theory since it has no supporting experimental or observed validation). In fact several of the tenets of "global warming" have been disproven (upper troposphere warming, for one), which invalidates the hypothesis. They need to go back to the drawing board, but physics won't let them.

Good for the APS for being brave enough to buck the consensus that never was.

Revenant