Don't censor and rewrite what people say, Jim. (man, Jer cuts you a lot of slack here..)

What I said was: SCIENTIFIC consensus based on data and experimental observation over time has always been the basis of science.

But as your blog makes clear, you just don't trust scientists in general. Probably because you heard on talk radio that science is un-Biblical and interferes with the Free Market..

And as we all know, if nothing else, you're endlessly loyal to whatever non-thought travels down to you from the Breitbart-Geller-Heritage-Beck pipeline.

Just don't forget to flush. And to wash your hands.

ROFLMAO

Axis Mundi" is nothing short of miraculous. There are certainly more creative words to describe The Leftovers given that its second season takes place in Jarden, Texas, which came to be known as "Miracle" after the town took a post-Rapture inventory and found none of its nearly 10,000 residents had gone missing. But few adjectives would be more fitting. The Leftovers is, after all, one of the most polarizing television shows of the past few years, and it was co-created by Damon Lindelof, the man behind one of the most polarizing television shows ever. Added to this, Lindelof and co-creator Tom Perrotta burned through all of Perrotta's dour, knotty source material in the first season, leaving them without a net. It's hard to think of a recent example of a show that seemed more doomed to failure going into its second season.

yes, "Axis Mundi" is miraculous. It's leaner and more focused than anything season one had to offer. The existential dread remains, though it's naturally less pronounced in "Miracle" than it was in Mapleton, but the tone isn't nearly as elegiac. What's most surprising is that "Axis Mundi" is more mysterious than anything from the first season, and far more confident. The perplexing nine-minute opening sequence is enough to put The Leftovers among the boldest, most audacious storytelling of the year. It's more than a notion to take a show that's been pilloried for being humorless and for refusing to slow-walk its audience and start its season premiere with a brutal vignette set in a prehistoric age with nothing more to connect it to the present-day narrative than its physical location. A pregnant woman watches helplessly as a rock slide crushes her people, then delivers her own baby before dying of a snake bite. It's not as difficult to watch as, say, poor Gladys being pummeled to death with rocks, but as human despair goes, it's right up there.

Reza Aslan

religion writer and future TV personality Reza Aslan, a Harvard Divinity School grad, has come on board to help craft the story for season two, and consult on all matters of faith. He says we'd better get comfortable with the show's ambiguity because that's what religion is about, though we can expect lots of clues to help frame the central mystery. Still, those looking for specific answers take heart: Aslan says we'll get "all the material necessary to draw our own firm conclusions about what happened." Ahead, more of his divine insights into episode one.

What's the significance of the prologue, which takes place in the same spot that becomes Miracle?
The episode is called "Axis Mundi," an ancient thought that goes back thousands of years. The idea is there are parts of the planet that served as a cosmic pole around which the entire universe circles. So for instance, the pyramids at Giza, the temple in Jerusalem, the Kaaba in Mecca are axis mundis. What's really remarkable about an axis mundi is that putting something sacred there is not what makes it sacred. It's that the land itself was already sacred for some mysterious reason, and that's why people put something there. Jarden is an axis mundi. To indicate that, Damon [Lindelof] came up with this clever prologue, which will of course pay off in subsequent episodes. The inherent sanctity and magic of this place -- whatever it is -- is an eternal thing. It's not just something that happened at the sudden departure.

Donald Trump has boasted that he's "leading every poll and in most cases big." Not anymore. The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows him in second place, seven points behind Ben Carson.
The nationwide survey found that 24% of Republicans back Carson, compared with 17% who say they support Trump.

Marco Rubio came in third with 11% and Carly Fiorina fourth at 9%. Jeb Bush, once considered a prohibitive favorite, ranked fifth with just 8% support, which was a point lower than those who say they are still undecided.

The IBD/TIPP Poll has a proven track record for accuracy, based on its performance in the past three presidential elections. In a comparison of the final results of various pollsters for the 2004 and 2008 elections, IBD/TIPP was the most accurate. And the New York Times concluded that IBD/TIPP was the most accurate among 23 polls over the three weeks leading up to the 2012 election.