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The Skeptic's Dictionary

The Skeptic's Dictionary
From Abracadabra to Zombies - 754 entries | View All What's New? See the most recent entries, updates, and reader comments Sample the Skeptic's Dictionary In spiritualism, a medium is one with whom spirits communicate directly. In an earlier, simpler but more dramatic age, a good medium would produce voices or apports, ring bells, float or move things across a darkened room, produce automatic writing or ectoplasm, and, in short, provide good entertainment value for the money.

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Explore - Free Library Blue Sargent's entire family is psychic. Blue's only power is to amplify the abilities of others. Growing up in Henrietta, VA, Blue has a great life with her mother and other female relatives who share the big house at 300 Fox Way. But one night while helping her mother record the names of the people from Henrietta that will die in the next year she sees a boy and hears him speak his name. He is one of the "Raven Boys" who attend a local prep school for the ultra elite. Typically arrogant and privileged, the Raven Boys are despised by the residents of Henrietta.

How To Sell Magic Beans One of the eternal questions for skeptics is – how can some people be so gullible? We have a standard answer which captures many of the factors: poor understanding of science, lack of an innate sense of probability, all the various mechanisms of self-deception, and the strong desire to believe in certain things. Further, some cons are just slick, and anyone can be fooled by a clever-enough deception. But still, there are some claims that are so astoundingly gullible it’s difficult not to face-palm when confronted by them. One category of such claims is what I think of as the equivalent of magic amulets, or the magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk.

List of Latin phrases This page lists direct English translations of common Latin phrases, such as veni, vidi, vici and et cetera. Some of the phrases are themselves translations of Greek phrases, as Greek rhetoric and literature were highly regarded in ancient Rome when Latin rhetoric and literature were still maturing. The Latin letter i can be used as either a vowel or a consonant. When used as a consonant, it is often replaced by the letter j, which was originally simply an orthographic "long i" that was used in initial positions and when it occurred between two other vowels. This convention from Medieval Latin is most commonly preserved in Latin legal terminology—hence phrases like de iure are often spelled de jure. To view all phrases on a single, lengthy document, see:

E-Books for Free E-Books, Papers, and Articles by Wes Penre: Penre, Wes [2009]: "The Myth Around Supriem David Rockefeller" Penre, Wes [2013]: "Beyond 2012--A Handbook for the New Era" Penre, Wes [1998-2011]: "The Wes Penre Papers - A Journey into the Multiverse: (Introductory Level of Learning): Introductory Paper #1: Basic Information on the Global Elite a.k.a.

Bad Astronomy Well now, this is an interesting discovery: astronomers have found what looks like a "super-Earth" – a planet more massive than Earth but still smaller than a gas giant – orbiting a nearby star at the right distance to have liquid water on it! Given that, it might – might – be Earthlike. This is pretty cool news. We’ve found planets like this before, but not very many! And it gets niftier: the planet has at least five siblings, all of which orbit its star closer than it does. Online Collections and Presentations The Library provides access to a portion of its audio collections through the Recorded Sound Reference Center's web page, the American Memory site, The Performing Arts Encyclopedia and the American Folklife Center pages. These collections are described below. To listen to recordings that are unavailable online, contact the Recorded Sound Reference Center. Recorded Sound Section Online Collections

Pharyngula Probably not. But the New York Times reports: A review of studies has found that the health benefits of infant male circumcision vastly outweigh the risks involved in the procedure. Audio-Visual Conservation (Library of Congress Packard Campus, Culpeper, Virginia) || The Packard Campus || Located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Culpeper, Virginia, the Library's newly completed Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center provides underground storage for this entire collection on 90 miles of shelving, together with extensive modern facilities for the acquisition, cataloging and preservation of all audio-visual formats. The Packard Campus was created through a unique partnership between the Packard Humanities Institute, the United States Congress, the Library of Congress, and the Architect of the Capitol. Learn more about The Packard Campus || Film, Television and Video Collections ||

Browse - TAMI Browse for Videos by Topic Not sure what you're looking for? Start out by exploring the categories below for footage from your hometown, to see what Texas looked like in the past, or check out some of your favorite Texas icons. Smithsonian Libraries : Free Books : Free Texts : Download & Streaming Smithsonian Libraries America : being the latest, and most accurate description of the New World : containing the original of the inhabitants, and the remarkable voyages thither : the conquest of the vast empires of Mexico and Peru, and other large provinces and territories, with the several European plantations in those parts : also their cities, fortresses, towns, temples, mountains, and rivers : their habits, customs, manners, and religions : their plants, beasts, birds, and serpents : with an appendix containing, besides several other considerable additions, a brief survey of what hath been discover'd of the unknown south-land and the Arctick region by Ogilby, John, 1600-1676; Montanus, Arnoldus, 1625?

Download 422 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art You could pay $118 on Amazon for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s catalog The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Or you could pay $0 to download it at MetPublications, the site offering “five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free.” If that strikes you as an obvious choice, prepare to spend some serious time browsing MetPublications’ collection of free art books and catalogs. You may remember that we featured the site a few years ago, back when it offered 397 whole books free for the reading, including American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915; Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library; and Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Related Content: Download Over 250 Free Art Books From the Getty Museum

Smithsonian Digitizes & Lets You Download 40,000 Works of Asian and American Art Art lovers who visit my hometown of Washington, DC have an almost embarrassing wealth of opportunities to view art collections classical, Baroque, Renaissance, modern, postmodern, and otherwise through the Smithsonian’s network of museums. From the East and West Wings of the National Gallery, to the Hirshhorn, with its wondrous sculpture garden, to the American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery---I’ll admit, it can be a little overwhelming, and far too much to take in during a weekend jaunt, especially if you’ve got restless family in tow. (One can’t, after all, miss the Natural History or Air and Space Museums… or, you know… those monuments.) In all the bustle of a DC vacation, however, one collection tends to get overlooked, and it is one of my personal favorites—the Freer and Sackler Galleries, which house the Smithsonian’s unique collection of Asian art, including the James McNeill Whistler-decorated Peacock Room.

55 Survival Downloads and Handbooks - Pioneering, SHTF, Engineering, Urban Gardening, Defense, and More Posted on Aug 16, 2013 in Emergency Preparedness & Survival, Featured Articles, Urban Gardening, Farming & Homesteading Kevin Hayden – TruthisTreason.net If you find this material helpful, please consider donating $1 or $2 to the website!

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