Truth and Hammer

Author: Truth & Hammer

  • Oahu’s Kailua beach is named best in the US by ‘Dr. Beach’

    Oahu’s Kailua beach is named best in the US by ‘Dr. Beach’

    In Kailua, the sand is soft and white, the water is clear and calm, and the view is exactly what you would expect from a beach in the Hawaiian Islands.

    Those are among the reasons Oahu’s Kailua Beach Park has been selected as the best stretch of sand for an annual list of top U.S. beaches.

    Stephen Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, has been drafting the list under the alias “Dr. Beach” since 1991.

    Leatherman uses 50 criteria to evaluate beaches, with the most important categories being water cleanliness, safety and management of the beach environment and its facilities. Leatherman uses data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grade the beaches on water quality and has been to all the beaches on his list.

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  • Smarter people listen to instrumental music

    Smarter people listen to instrumental music

    If there seems to be an air of pretension among aficionados of jazz and classical music, psychological research is giving them good reason.

    A new study published in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences suggests that those who prefer instrumental music tend to be more intelligent.

    Study author Elena Racevska, a PhD student at Oxford Brookes University, became interested in how musical preference is tied to personality traits as she learned about the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, which presumes that more intelligent individuals seek more novel experiences compared to less intelligent people.

    “After reading Kanazawa’s papers, one of which was on the relationship between intelligence and musical preferences, we decided to further test his hypothesis using a different set of predictors — namely, a different type of intelligence test (i.e. a nonverbal measure), and the uses of music questionnaire,” says Racevska. “We also measured a number of variables likely to have an effect in this relationship, such as taking part in extra-curricular music education, its type and duration.”

    Racevska and her colleagues surveyed 467 Croatian high school students, and found that those with higher scores on the intelligence test were associated with a preference for genres such as jazz, classical, big band and ambient/electronica.

    Researchers point out that gender, age, level of education, income and other factors also play into the results.

    “Future studies could focus on untangling the relationship between complexity and novelty in shaping preferences — complexity of vocalisation is preferred by many species, which could mean that it is evolutionarily familiar,” says Recevska.

    She suggests studies of how musical tastes “chance throughout developmental stages of human life,” and how “societal pressures and peer relationships” play a role. Revevksa adds, “A cross-cultural study could examine and control for influences of culturally specific ways of experiencing music, and other music-related behaviours.”

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  • Hold on to your Bible– Christian Students are Forced to Cite Islamic Conversion Prayer in School!

    Hold on to your Bible– Christian Students are Forced to Cite Islamic Conversion Prayer in School!

    Wow!  Get ready to cite your Islamic hola, or whatever.  I am all for a good education, well rounded is nice too.  However, prayer?  Yes I know you need them but when the school, (government) says this is how you pray.  We are in trouble!!!!

    Four years ago, a Christian high school junior was compelled by her teacher at La Plata High School in La Plata, Md., to recall the Islamic conversion creed – the Shahada – as part of a written assignment. She was required to write the Islamic creed, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”  The World History course also taught that “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian’s.”  Caleigh Wood refused to complete the assignment, believing that is it is a sin to profess by word or in writing, that there is any other god except the Christian God.   School officials refused to let her opt out of the course, and as a result she received a lower percentage grade for the course, but that did not affect her letter grade.

    The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) on behalf of the Wood family filed a lawsuit, claiming the school had violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause and the girl’s right not to be forced to profess faith in another religion. Both the Federal District Court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the high school’s Islamic curriculum.   Now, the TMLC has appealed the case to the Supreme Court asking the high court to decide whether any legal basis exists to allow public schools to discriminate against Christianity while at the same time promoting Islam.

    “Under the guise of teaching history or social studies, public schools across America are promoting the religion of Islam in ways that would never be tolerated for Christianity or any other religion,” TMLC President and Chief Counsel Richard Thompson said in a statement. “I’m not aware of any school which has forced a Muslim student to write the Lord’s Prayer or John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”

    Using a Powerpoint presentation in the class, the students at the school were also taught:

    • Islam is a peaceful religion
    • Jihad is a “personal struggle in devotion to Islam, especially involving spiritual discipline.”
    • “To Muslims, Allah is the same God that is worshiped in Christianity and Judaism.”
    • “Men are the managers of the affairs of women” and “Righteous women are therefore obedient.”

    “Many public schools have become a hotbed of Islamic propaganda,” Thompson continued. “Teaching Islam in schools has gone far beyond a basic history lesson. Prompted by zealous Islamic activism and emboldened by confusing court decisions, schools are now bending over backward to promote Islam while at the same time denigrate Christianity.”

    “We are asking the Supreme Court to provide the necessary legal guidance to resolve the insidious discrimination against Christians in our public schools,” he concluded.

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  • A New Pep Drag Rally? School Hosts Drag Queen Show During School Hours

    A New Pep Drag Rally? School Hosts Drag Queen Show During School Hours

    What’s new at school you ask?  Drag Queen Rally happen today.  Really?  No Drag King?  Do they do football rallys anymore?  I am so behind the times.  How does this get my kids into college? Or any where for that matter?  After the rally there is Muslim prayers in the gym for all the Muslims.  Why am I paying taxes for this?

    A high school located in southeastern Pennsylvania was scheduled to host a drag show during school hours on Wednesday.  It’s a part of an all-day event highlighting LGBTQ issues at the school.  The College Fix reports the event at Landsdowne’s Penn Wood High School, titled “Coming Home,” is sponsored by the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance club. The drag show was being held during the afternoon with “Singing and Runway Performances,” followed up with a “History of Drag” after a video presentation about the 1969 Stonewall Riots.  An anonymous source within the William Penn School District notified The Fix about the program.

    “There are many religious people in this community,” including an estimated 15-20 percent Muslim population at Penn Wood, according to the source. “Most of them have pulled their kids out of PWHS and sent them to parochial or Christian schools, but they still pay taxes to the school district. There are also many African Christians, who would be alarmed at this program.”  The source told The Fix the school has been dealing with an “LGBT explosion” since the retirement of the last superintendent of schools. There’s now no one to push back against the LGBT agenda that has grown at the high school, including giving special scholarships for LGBT students and daily gay pride parades in the hallways.

    The Fix contacted the event sponsor at the school for comment and was told the district public relations coordinator would contact them with a response. They never received a reply.  Meanwhile, Ramadan accommodations are made for Muslim students like using the school’s gym for Islamic prayers. “Students are excused from classes on a daily basis for their religious obligations” during this time, the source claims.

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  • CHEERS! Israeli Scientists Use Yeast from Ancient Beer to Recreate 5,000-Year-Old Drink

    CHEERS! Israeli Scientists Use Yeast from Ancient Beer to Recreate 5,000-Year-Old Drink

    A team of Israeli scientists extracted yeast used to make beer in biblical times and turned it into a modern drink with a 5,000-year-old taste. Scientists from Hebrew University, Israel’s Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University examined the colonies of yeast specimen that settled in the pores of 5000-year-old pottery debris and successfully created beer with it. Archaeologists gave the scientists shards of pottery that had been used as beer and mead (honey wine) jugs back in ancient times. To their surprise, the yeast found inside survived thousands of years and could safely be removed from the jars. “We dug at Ramat Rachel, the largest Persian site in the Judaean kingdom, and found a large concentration of jugs with the letters J, H, D – Yahud – written on them. In a royal site like Ramat Rachel it makes sense that alcohol would be consumed at the home of the Persian governor,” explained Prof. Yuval Gadot from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.

    These jars date back to the reign of Egyptian Pharaoh Narmer (roughly 3000 BCE), to Aramean King Hazael (800 BCE) and to Prophet Nehemiah (400 BCE) who, according to the Bible, governed Judea under Persian rule. Researchers then cleaned and sequenced the entire genetic code of each yeast specimen and turned them over Dr. Amir Szitenberg at the Dead Sea-Arava Science Center for analysis.  Szitenberg discovered that these 5,000-year yeast cultures are similar to modern beer yeast and to those used in traditional African brews, such as Ethiopian honey wine. Local Israeli beer expert Itai Gutman helped the scientists make the beer, which was given a “thumbs up” by international taste testers. Dr. Yitzchak Paz of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the project is the first of its kind.

    “We are talking about a real breakthrough here,” he said. “This is the first time we succeeded in producing ancient alcohol from ancient yeast. In other words, from the original substances from which alcohol was produced. This has never been done before.” “The greatest wonder here is that the yeast colonies survived within the vessel for thousands of years—just waiting to be excavated and grown. This ancient yeast allowed us to create beer that lets us know what ancient Philistine and Egyptian beer tasted like. By the way, the beer isn’t bad.  Aside from the gimmick of drinking beer from the time of King Pharaoh, this research is extremely important to the field of experimental archaeology—a field that seeks to reconstruct the past.  Our research offers new tools to examine ancient methods, and enables us to taste the flavors of the past.”

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  • ‘I’m Pretty Sure Every Single Employee at Twitter Hates Trump’: Social Media’s War on Conservatives

    ‘I’m Pretty Sure Every Single Employee at Twitter Hates Trump’: Social Media’s War on Conservatives

    What is the point of news, any news?  Is it to give you the best, latest, and more accurate report of real events?  Today, not so much.  You kinda subscribe to what suits your mood.  I think that is just great.  You will not learn anything new, but you will be happier.

    Many conservatives rightfully feel like second class citizens on social media, where now simply posting conservative ideas can get you in trouble.   Facebook suspended conservative Candace Owens last week after she posted that liberal policies were harmful to the black family. Facing an outcry, Facebook claimed the suspension was a mistake.   Twitter suspended Heritage Foundation Media Director Greg Scott for so-called ‘hateful conduct’ after simply tweeting about the physical differences between men and women.  Conservative actor James Woods – with two million Twitter followers – left the platform altogether after Twitter suspended him for a tweet quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson. (“‘If you try to kill the King, you better not miss.’ #HangThemAll.”)

    “We just have to say ‘This is wrong,’” says author and radio host Eric Metaxas, “This is fundamentally un-American and it must be addressed. It will undermine our voting process, it will undermine self-government, it’s already doing that. ”  He added, “When you control information you control everything.”  A new study published by the left-wing Columbia Journalism Review confirmed that search giant Google skews heavily liberal in its search results. Only one conservative news source popped up in Google’s top 20 – Fox News. Dan Gainor of the media research center says no one should be surprised. After all, Google is liberal. “They set up rules that are liberal,” Gainor says, “They hire staff who are liberal. The staff give politically to liberal candidates and then when you appeal it you have to talk to the liberal staff. We’re boxed in on all sides.”

    A Project Veritas undercover investigation found the same anti-conservative attitudes at Twitter, where one employee was recorded saying, “I’m pretty sure every single employee at Twitter hates Trump.” And when companies like Facebook start deciding who is allowed to have free speech, first amendment lawyer Alex Abdo at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University says we should all be concerned. “Over the last few years we’ve certainly seen indications that Facebook gets content moderation wrong all the time,” Abdo says. “They take down speech that most reasonable people think shouldn’t be taken down and they leave up other speech that a lot of people think should be taken down. ” President Trump has taken notice, setting up an online tool for reporting censorship on social media. The White House has also refused to sign on to a new global compact to monitor online speech, in what some call a worldwide attempt to censor conservatives.

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  • Jim Carrey’s Abortion Art

    Jim Carrey’s Abortion Art

    Who are we killing and why?  Is that what we have become?  Maybe abortion should apply to all of us.  If you do not like someone or have no need of them, just abort them.  Things that make you go, hummm.

    In a recent tweet, actor Jim Carrey shared an image to his followers showing the head of Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey being sucked up into a tube as a gloved hand holds the tube to her head.

    “I think if you’re going to terminate a pregnancy, it should be done sometime before the fetus becomes Governor of Alabama,” Carrey wrote.

    The actor’s tweet targeted the strict abortion ban that was passed by The Yellowhammer State and signed into law by Ivey.

    Shortly after Carrey posted the image, it backfired.  Members of the pro-life community congratulated the actor for accidentally arguing that abortion involves killing a human being.

    In a Facebook post, Franklin Graham wondered why Twitter didn’t have a problem with Carrey’s obviously threatening message.

    “That’s sick,” the evangelist wrote. “Did you see Jim Carrey’s tweet with his drawing showing AL Gov. Kay Ivey being “aborted”—sucked apart by an abortionist? Well it just shows that Jim Carrey and others do know beyond any doubt that abortion is the taking of another person’s life—murder. Wonder why Twitter doesn’t have a problem with Jim Carrey’s threatening message of hate?”

    Graham’s post has drawn more than 33,000 views

    Ben Shapiro, founder, and editor of the Daily Wire pointed out that the image was graphic, but that it pointed out what a real abortion looks like.

    “This is a pretty great depiction of an abortion: clinically accurate, and wiping out an individual human life,” Shapiro wrote in a tweet.

    Lila Rose, the founder of Live Action a pro-life organization, also chimed in, pointing out the hypocrisy of Twitter.

    “The extreme double standard of Jack & Twitter on full, gross display here,” she said pointing at Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey.

    “Jim Carrey publicly wishes death on someone and posts a gory photo of them being killed. He explicitly promotes a very violence that kills almost 1M people a year in the United States. & zero response,” Rose wrote.

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  • ‘They Drug Their Babies and Put Them Under the Bed’: A Woman’s Desperate Mission to Save Kids of Prostitutes

    ‘They Drug Their Babies and Put Them Under the Bed’: A Woman’s Desperate Mission to Save Kids of Prostitutes

    We were visiting a rural malnutrition clinic. This doctor came up to us, “Did you bring money?” “No.” “Did you bring medicine?” “No.” “Well, then why are you here? Do you have blood?” I’m like “Yeah.”  And so she said, “I want that blood because I have a 2-year-old, Angelina, who’s basically at death’s door.” You could see it in her eyes, I mean, she’s just like terrorized, and I’ll never – I’ll never forget her eyes looking at me.

    I just wanted to do whatever I could to help her, and I felt helpless. And these are easy answers, you know, we’re not trying to cure cancer, just babies hanging by a thread. That was a defining moment for me.

    My name is Sarah Bowling and I’m the founder for Saving Moses. We’re a global humanitarian organization aimed for zero-to-five-year-olds where the need is most urgent and the care is least available. This is like the most fragile vulnerable time of a human’s life.

    We do something very distinct called “nightcare.” So we take care of babies and toddlers of prostitute/sex workers in third world countries while they work.

    So they come in, they give them a bath, they feed them dinner and then there’s playtime, and then they circle up after a little bit of time, circle up and do a little bit of discipline, self-control, so they sing songs, they have a little snack, they have a little prayer time and at the end they get to sing about Jesus, which is cool. And then we take them and put them up to bed.

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  • Children in Social Services System Most at Risk of Being Sex Trafficked

    Children in Social Services System Most at Risk of Being Sex Trafficked

    Among children reported as likely victims of child sex trafficking upon running away from home, most have one thing in common—they were supposed to be looked after by the government.

    In 2014, some 10,000 endangered runaway children were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a nonprofit that serves as a clearinghouse for reports on missing children. Nearly 1,700 of them were likely victims of sex trafficking and of those, 68 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing, be it a group home, a government facility, or foster care.

    While these sobering statistics have been reported for years by the NCMEC, more recent data suggests that the problem is even more acute.

    In 2017, nearly 25,000 runaways reported to NCMEC and nearly 3,600 were likely victims of sex trafficking. Of those, 88 percent came from the social services system.

    In fact, children in the social services system are the group with the highest prevalence of child sex trafficking, said Robert Lowery, NCMEC’s vice president who heads its missing children division.

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  • Following US Export Ban, Mobile Carriers Worldwide Drop Huawei Phones From Lineup

    Following US Export Ban, Mobile Carriers Worldwide Drop Huawei Phones From Lineup

    In light of the U.S. administration’s export ban on Chinese telecom giant Huawei, mobile carriers around the world have announced that they would discontinue selling Huawei models of smartphones, owing to concerns that the U.S. restrictions would affect the phones’ maintenance.

    Meanwhile, UK-based chip designer ARM suspended its business with Huawei, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.

    Huawei smartphones use Google’s Android operating system. After the U.S. Commerce Department added Huawei and its 70 affiliates to its trade blacklist on May 15, Google announced that it would suspend its business with Huawei.

    Losing access to Google’s products means Huawei phones would no longer be able to access many of the U.S. tech giant’s most popular apps, such as Gmail and Google Maps.

    To give current Huawei clients time to adjust to the restrictions, the Commerce Department granted Huawei a temporary exemption for 90 days, allowing them to maintain existing networks and provide software updates to existing Huawei phones.

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