According to these men they stumbled across a Bigfoot corpse in the woods of northern Georgia. First they released a picture of their bigfoot corpse in a freezer. One picture. Not too clear (surprise, more on this below).

Today they had a news conference along with some professional bigfoot hunters. Supposedly they were going to show the world the proof of their find. So, along comes the news conference, drum roll please….. ah, er, um. Well, I’ll let the Associated Press describe the “news conference”:

Biscardi, Whitton and Dyer presented what they called evidence supporting the Bigfoot theory. It was an e-mail from a University of Minnesota scientist, but all it said was that of the three DNA samples sent to the scientist, one was human, one was likely a possum and the third could not be tested because of technical problems.

At least one other Bigfoot researcher, Idaho State University anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum, called the trio’s claims “not compelling in the least.” He told the Scientific American that photographs posted on the Web site “just looks like a costume with some fake guts thrown on top for effect.”

Whitton and Dyer have offered three different accounts of how they found the beast’s remains.

In early videos, the animal was shot by a former felon, and the men followed it into the woods. In a second version, they found a “family of Bigfoot” in the north Georgia mountains. In the third, the two were hiking and stumbled upon the corpse with open wounds.

In one of their YouTube videos, they are shown speaking with a man they identify as a scientist. Earlier this week, they admitted that the man was Dyer’s brother. Dyer said they were simply having fun.

Asked why anyone should believe his claims when he already had shown a flair for tomfoolery, he suggested that skeptics simply are jealous.

“They don’t have a choice to believe us. We have a body,” Dyer said.

What is it with people like this? Every picture they take is grainy and out of focus. My cell phone takes better pictures than the home-made pinhole cameras they all seem to be using. Out in the wilds where bigfeet roam along with the buffalo and some aliens I can see that the pictures would be somewhat less than studio quality. So these guys have a “real”, formerly live, bigfoot. And so, call me silly, but if I had a croaked bigfoot in a freezer I would use a fairly modern digital camera and I would take a million pictures. Hell, I have an inexpensive Olympus FE120, and I take a million pictures of flowers, bugs, our local river, and my sweetheart. And the quality is amazing. I could loan it to the bigfoot hunters if they can’t come up with the money to get one from eBay.

Another thing that slightly amuses me is that there is actually an anthropologist fromIdaho State University who is a “Bigfoot researcher”. I can just see the grant application for that one. The real funny thing is that he probably got a grant for the research. Me, I’m working on a grant to do some serious research on Leprechauns. I think some time spent in Ireland, maybe a couple times a year for the next five years to start with. And some serious interviews at some of the finer drinking establishments I know of in Boston and New York. After that preliminary work I should be ready for some serious research.

And I promise, when I take pictures I will use a good camera.

Apparently someone thought that it would be a good idea to have the Spanish Olympic team pose for photo’s while holding their eyes in a slanted position. Amazingly there was nobody who thought twice about taking or publishing the photo.

The dumbest part of the whole thing is that they posed for this photo before going to the Olympics being held in China. I wonder how well they will sleep surrounded by a billion pissed-off Chinese?

Imagine if there had been no DNA evidence. Waller would have spent the remainder of his life in prison. I have asked before and ask again: How many people are in Texas prisons who are innocent? There must be more. We, as citizens, always trust that justice is done. And most probably agree that errors can be made even when the intentions of prosecutors and law enforcement are pure. Add a little malice and the scales start to tip in the direction every honest citizen should dread.

And I have no easy solution for the people who may be in prison based on bad evidence. My guess is that 99% of inmates will plead their innocence. And some really are.

The fact that we, as fallible humans, can make these mistakes serves to strengthen my belief that we are not capable of applying the death penalty and it should therefore be abolished.

(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

I spent years in fundamentalist churches and attended a 4-year fundamentalist Bible Institute. Any fundamentalist who did not view the RCC as apostate was himself viewed as such. The penalty for a church member with an aberrant view of the RCC would undoubtedly be excommunication. A minister with these views would be ostracized and banned from fundamentalist circles.

So, that brings us to John Hagee and his new views on the RCC. After being raked over the coals of popular opinion following his endorsement of Sen. John McCain, Hagee has had a change of heart.

In a letter to William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, Hagee wrote: “Out of a desire to advance a greater unity among Catholics and evangelicals in promoting the common good, I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.” The letter can be found here.

Hagee has referred to the Inquisition and the Crusades as evidence of anti-Semitism within the RCC. He believed that that RCC anti-Semitism caused Adolf Hitler’s insane quest to eradicate Jews.

His letter goes on to state: “In my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms, I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews. In the process, I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church. It most certainly does not.”

Hagee continues backpedaling on his decades of belief and commentary on the RCC by stating in another part of the letter: “In addition, I better understand that the reference to the Roman Catholic Church as the “apostate church” and the “great whore” described in the book of Revelation is a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary.”

Where to begin? For him to say that he better understands that these are rhetorical devices used by anti-Catholic writers is absurd. Hagee is not a stupid man. He had an earned Masters degree and has undoubtedly read a book or two which referred to the RCC using these terms and then some. He knows that this view of the RCC is prevalent in the circles he has traveled in since his youth. I am curious as to whether this is a considered opinion or a political dodge.

Billy Graham went from the “great whore” view in his early life to the very inclusive view he currently holds. Graham essentially holds to a murky universalism that made me wonder what his “Crusades” were designed to accomplish. I addressed this issue some years ago in an article I wrote. I may scan it and some others and repost them another time.

The reaction of Hagee’s followers and his fellow fundamentalists will be interesting.

The world’s biggest polluter and violator of human rights has solved so many of its problems that it has decided to add more smoking inspectors to the original 60,000 that they already have(Story Here). By my capitalist, running-dog, math that will come out to one inspector for every 170 people in Beijing. And I am sure that if they cannot find anyone smoking then they will find other infractions of the laws of the Glorious People’s Republic to enforce. There are always spaces opening up at the “Mao Zedong Memorial Re-education Academy and Gulag”.

I ask again, would we hold the Olympics, that epitome of fair-play and honesty, in Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany? Oh, wait, we did. Well, like they say, “Let the games begin!”

According to the story (found here) he has done this before but arrived at his destination safely. I hope they find him safe and sound and he is able to finish his work on the rest stop.

In excoriating the immorality of those who divorce without enriching the coffers of Rome B16 called divorce, which he lumped with abortion, ”serious offences… which violate human dignity, inflict deep injustice on human and social relations and offend God himself, guarantor of conjugal peace and origin of life.” But, for a fee, he is willing to declare that a marriage has never occured and therefore annulled.

I am a former Roman Catholic. I view many of the teachings and practices of the RCC, in my kinder moments, as being odd and antithetical to Christianity as I understand it. All of the Canon Lawyers and RCC theologians can insert their pooh, poohs and complaints here (De Catholicis, nil nisi malum). Beyond that I view many of the actions of the RCC as highly commendable. And the issue of annulment is one of the areas that I find detestable.

Some years ago this issue was in the news because of the granting of a decree of nullity to Joseph P. Kennedy II. Joe decided that since he was a good Catholic and had the coin and prestige needed to swing the deal, he would get an annulment. Along with philandering and alcohol abuse that seems to be a family tradition. Unfortunately for little Joe his wife (the first one) decided that the prospect of her children being seen as bastards in the eyes of the RCC was not a fate she wanted for them. So, given no other choices, she wrote a book.

Some time after the book was written the decision was reviewed in Rome. No doubt the bad publicity stemming from other scandals was good timing for Sheila Rauch Kennedy. But this does little for the many women and children who are branded as something as less-than-equal in the church community by the annulment of a marriage that the church blessed at its start.

If the RCC is actually that concerned with divorce I suggest it stop granting them! Whatever the name a divorce is a divorce. Families are damaged by divorce and it should be the mission of all churches to lessen the damage. The reality is that divorce is never going to go away and churches are in a unique position to help all parties to heal and move on in a healthy manner.

So then I said to my people, “We only want to make a small profit”.

And the next thing I knew, they musta flipped the wrong switch or something, ’cause there was this pile of cash covering the company parking lot. Then I did the right thing and gave donations to all my politician friends.

When I leave the house I decide that I would follow the “fake it until you make it” system. I am friendly, cheerful, and not whiny about the pain. I realize that being around a person who is in pain and who constantly reminds you they are in pain is uncomfortable for most people. Even the normal grunts, winces, sighs and other outward signs of pain cause people to be uncomfortable.

But this approach has not been too helpful for me.

Over the years I have discovered that dealing with constant pain is not a matter of just one treatment, one pill, one anything; dealing with pain is a matter of using any number of tools. I have run into many people who believe that there is one “thing” that will fix them. They spend their time fixated on finding that one thing. Maybe the mere hope of there being one thing is what gets them through their days. But I suspect that they are far worse off than someone who realizes that the magic bullet does not exist.

One acquaintance commented to me, as others have, that he envied me because I have so much “free time” and can do whatever I want. What a delusion. My day is spent trying to find positions that minimize the pain. I sit, stand, lie down, move, stay still, sit, stand, on and on. I take the pills that are supposed to alleviate the pain. I hope that today they work better than the last dose. Some times it works better than others. Some days the pain keeps me curled up in a ball and the pills just make me foggy. Some days I am able to leave the house hopeful that the pain will not come roaring back. Some days it does come roaring back.

I cannot plan anything without the caveat that I may be incapacitated and unable to fulfil an obligation. I have disappointed my wife numerous times. And even if the pain (which has its own capacity to fog the brain) is somewhat subdued the medication generally makes my brain function at a far reduced level than prior to my injury. My wife and sister have noticed that I am not as sharp as I once was. I wrote this post down to the last sentence and needed to get up, walk around and then lie down for a while.

When I go out I also have the constant fear that I will loose the strength in my legs and fall down. This happens about 4 to 6 times a week. The good thing is that I am usually seated or lying down when it happens. The bad thing is that sometimes I am not.

Add to this the near poverty I live in and I am not so sure that there is much to envy.