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Archeologists have discovered a cave in Israel with 28 stepsleading down to an underground pool of water where theythink John the Baptist baptized many of the disciples.Shimon Gibson says, “John the Baptist, who was just a figurefrom the Gospels, now comes to life.”

Karin Laub writes that archaeologists found wall carvingsthat tell the story of John, including one showing a manwith a staff and wearing animal skin, the way John has beendescribed in the Gospels. They also found a stone with animprint of a foot on it, which they believe was used forceremonial foot washing.
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Sequoia Voting Systems say their touch-screen machinesprovide “nothing less than 100% accuracy.” But when theydemonstrated their new paper-trail electronic votingmachines for the California state senate, they found themachines failed to record votes from testers usingSpanish-language ballots. These omissions wouldn?t have beendiscovered without the paper trail. In wired.com, Kim Zetter quotes election consultant DarrenChesin as saying, “We did it again and the same thinghappened?The paper trail worked flawlessly, but it caught amistake in the programming of the touch-screen machineitself.read more

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Oil is trading for between $47 and $44 a barrel, and someexperts think it will reach $50 in the near future. Thecauses are Iraq, Russia and hurricane Charley.

An attack on an Iraqi oil well, and the fact that oil fromIraq is still flowing at only half its former rate,contributed to this, but Iraq isn’t the main reason for theprice rise. And news from Venezuela that Hugo Chavez willremain as president actually caused prices to drop slightly,since he guaranteed oil market stability if he won (weimport about 15% of our oil from Venezuela). One majorfactor in the price rise is the dispute between the Russiangovernment and the giant oil company Yukos. Even tropicalstorm Charley had a hand in the price rise, since ittemporarily halted oil output in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Would changing your name change the way people think aboutyou? Linguist Amy Perfors put photos with fake names on a”Hot or Not” website and found that some names wereconsidered “hot”?while others definitely were not.

In case you’ve ever thought changing your name might improveyour social life, Perfors found that men with names that had”front vowels,” such as the “aaa” sound in Matt, were ratedas more attractive by website visitors than photos labeledwith “back vowel” names, such as the “aw” sound in Paul.Emily Singer writes in New Scientist that the opposite wastrue for women’s names, so we must perceive the “aaa” soundas masculine and the “aw” sound as feminine.
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