THE X CHRONICLES NEWSPAPER

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The Day That Batman Cried in Aurora, Colorado Friday. July 20, 2012

by Rob McConnell
Publisher The X Chronicles Newspaper
Hamilton, Ontario: In a day and age when technology is held ever closer to godliness, we need to step back and take a good look around us, planting our feet flat on the ground for a hard core reality check. Are events of Friday, July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were shot and killed , and 59 others were wounded, when

24-year-old James Holmes, a neuroscience Ph.D candidate, armed with an assault rifle, shot gun and two automatic hand guns, tossed a canister of tear gas into the theatre and then opened fire on the unsuspecting occupants at a suburban Denver movie theatre number 9, as they sat during a midnight premiere of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises of things to come? Are they to be ignored? Will they be forgotten? Will the lesson be lost? The suspect James Holmes was arrested by police, without incident, outside at the rear parking lot of the theatre where he had just killed 12 people. James Holmes had died his hair red and told the police that he was The Joker. Among those in the theatre were a threemonth old baby and a six-year old. Who in their right mind would being a three-month old and a six-year old to a movie theatre at midnight anyway? What is more important: being a responsible parent or fulfilling a selfish need to immerse yourself momentarily into a world of digital fiction? Why would anyone go to a midnight premiere to see a fictional character that is being placed on a sociological pedestal anyway? What is wrong with society? Is life so bad that we must herald fictional characters in a Hollywood manufactured fictional movie, where, if you want to get to the bottom line has only one goal and that is to make money for Hollywood, the

theatres and the cross merchandising that will make billions of dollars for them from people who work hard for the money? Is life so bad that people are willingly handover to anyone, their hard earned money for a trip from reality to their chosen digital fantasy? Psychologists tell us that those who flock to these fictional movies and convention fan events are unhappy with their lives and think that they would be happier as another person, even if a fictional comic book character. These are typically people who are not so successful in this world but believe they might be a hero or even a king in an imaginary, fictional, digital world. You see them at movie premieres and at fantasy conventions everywhere, dressed up like their alter-ego comic book or sci-fi hero, trying to mimic them in every way possible. Comic conventions, sci-fi conventions and now, even Halloween conventions - people flock to them by the thousands, shelling out millions of dollars for the opportunity to justify their need to escape life as they know it and become someone or something theyre not. We know for a fact that when a new UFO/extraterrestrial movie is released, UFO sightings in the area where the movie has played increase dramatically. The same is true of movies that have a paranormal theme.

Continued on Page 2

The Day Batman Cried

In This Edition of The X Chronicles Newspaper
JULY / AUGUST 2012 - 50 Pages
These are just SOME of the stories and articles in this edition of THE X CHRONICLES NEWSPAPER Page 01: The Day Batman Cried in Aurora, Colorado, Friday, July 20, 2012

The Day Batman Cried

Continued from Page 1
The same is true of television shows, and the very best example of this is when The X Files was first aired in the early 90s. The X Files was then followed by a number of television series all relating to UFOs, extraterrestrial visitations, alien abductions, government conspiracy and so on., creating an ever increasing number of people who claim to have been witnesses or participants in such events. Then, with the booming growth of home computers and the internet, the paranormal and other pseudo-sciences went viral. Anyone with an audio card and a cheap microphone could now call themselves a radio host, and dispel whatever was on their mind, even if they do not know what they are talking about. In my opinion, the internet is the largest septic tank that mankind has ever created. Although there is truth to be found on the internet, the majority of it is crap! From webinars, to finding dates and mates, to social networking, to attending meetings and attending class, all is now being done digitally on the internet. There are still those who sincerely believe, that if it is no the internet, it must be true! Bullying has now hit the digital age with people blogging random, hurtful, and even delivering digital threat without having the common sense to think before they type and before they hit the enter key. People are leading secret lives using digital avatars in virtual reality worlds where they virtually live a second life with digital life partners, get digitally married, buy and sell digital real-estate (with real money) and conducted their virtual reality lives on a real day-to-day basis. We are now seeing cases before the courts where real people are presenting digital marriages and affairs as ground for real divorce cases! The tragic events in Aurora, Colorado must be seen as a wake-up call to one and all. Life is precious and as human beings, we must all take responsibility for our actions, get our feet back on the ground and heads out of the clouds and away from the digital devices that so many are addicted to. It is time to grab the bull by the horns and together, working as one, make this real world of ours, planet Earth, a better and safer place for our children, and for the generations to come. It is up to us to make this happen, leading by example, showing the importance of family unity and not to be lured under the spell of the digital age and the devices that makes it oh so easy to escape the real world and become part of its virtual world timeless spell. If you were an extraterrestrial, who has the ability and technology to cross the timespace continuum to this planet, with it wars, civil unrest, global warming, economic failures, famines, diseases, would you really want to stop and make contact with us? Continued on Page 3

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Balloon Boy Hoax Sold As Trading Cards

The Day Batman Cried
Continued from Page 1
My heart and prayers are with all those who are grieving the loss of a loved one or friend, as well as for those who have been wounded in this senseless tragedy, now known as the number one mass shooting in the history of the United States, the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, on the day Batman cried. For The X Zone Radio/TV Show and The X Chronicles Newspaper, I am, Rob McConnell ABOUT ROB McCONNELL: Rob McConnell has been hosting the internationally syndicated radio show, The 'X' Zone Radio/TV Show since 1992 and publishing The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper, North America's only Paranormal / Parapsychology / New Age newspaper since 1991. Rob McConnell was featured by the BBC in C*O*N*T*A*C*T in 1997, and was the consultant to the producers of the Canadian hit TV Show, Creepy Canada for three years. In 1997 Rob invented the very popular 'X' Game. Rob's broadcast experience includes 1220 CHSC in St. Catharines, 1290 CJBK in London and Rob was also the Executive Producer of Talk Programming for NewsTalk 610 CKTB. Rob produced TV commercials, infomercials, concerts and features in Ontario and Quebec and has worked with/ produced shows with Peter Noone (Herman's Hermits) and B.J. Thomas. Rob is also an internationally syndicated columnist.

Pieces of flying saucer used in Colorado balloon boy hoax being sold as trading cards
www.startribune.com
LOVELAND, Colo. - Pieces of the infamous flying saucer that starred in Colorado's balloon boy hoax are now available as trading cards. Michael Fruitman, the balloon's current owner, struck a deal with New York-based sports and entertainment card company Topps to use a segment of the Mylar saucer for individual trading cards. The cards are included in the recently released 2012 Topps Baseball Allen & Ginter Relics Set, the Loveland Reporter-Herald reported (http://bit.ly/MGRmkt). The silver, UFO-like helium balloon gripped the country's attention in 2009 when Richard and Mayumi Heene said their 6-yearold son had floated away in it. The parents were charged when it was discovered the boy was never onboard the saucer, and they were ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution. The Heenes lived in Fort Collins at the time but have since moved to Florida. Fruitman acquired the balloon from the couple's California attorney, who says the Colorado man paid $2,502 for it in an auction. The Mylar-adorned trading cards are available from eBay sellers seeking anywhere from 99 cents to $49.99 each. They also can be bought for $3 a pack from mass retailers. []

TV critics suspicious about Animal Planets Finding Bigfoot

The Washington Post
TV critics seemed a bit put out to be reminded that Animal Planet has a series on its lineup called Finding Bigfoot. The show got a Q&A session at Summer Press Tour because its not only returning with 11 episodes and two specials but is also

expanding its search for Bigfoot to Australia and Indonesia. And for the first time, Animal Planet will produce two Bigfoot aftershows. Kind of like what Andy Cohen used to do with his housewives on Bravo. Only in this case, Animal Planets bigfootologists will be taking burning questions from fans and diving deeper into the evidence and theories. When they actually do find Bigfoot, one TV critic wondered, what contractual arrangement does Animal Planet have with the producers to slap that episode on the air out of order. Animal Planet General Manager Marjorie Kaplan admitted that she had no such contractual arrangement but I will tell you when they find Bigfoot, you will know quickly. Another critic wondered whether Animal Planet had run out of real animals to profile. Kaplan said the network has been reinvented and now is all about exploring the rich planet on which we live. Yet another TV critic wondered whether this was a sequel to Animal Planets documentary Mermaid the Body Found. The fact that the mermaid docudrama did so well ratings-wise is evidence our audience loved it, Kaplan said, adding that there are new species being discovered all the time. Do you want to stick with docudrama on that? the critic asked. Someone asked Kaplan whether she thought Discovery Communications the parent company of Animal Planet was damaging the brand by putting on fake documentaries about mermaids and Bigfoot. I dont think so, or I wouldnt put it on, she said. The audience voted with their remotes, she said, returning to that Sucker Born Every Minute theme. You cant equate Bigfoot with mermaids, scoffed Bigfoot researcher James Bobo Fay. Youre ignorant of the subject matter. []

ALF's UFO headed for landing on silver screen

Sony Pictures Animation has landed the rights to ALF, based on the hit comedy series of the '80s, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jordan Kerner, who worked on The Smurfs in 2011, is in charge of supervising the production of the movie version of ALF. Paul Fusco and Tom Patchett, the creators of the show, will also be involved, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The feature length film will be based on the original sitcom's storyline. In the TV series, the Tanners, a typical middle-class American family, welcome a hairy cat-eating extraterrestrial named Gordon Shumway, nicknamed ALF for "Alien Life Form." []

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Mystery Solved on Mars Roverss UFO

Mystery solved on Mars rover's UFO
The Sydney Morning Herald
Space enthusiasts have been abuzz for days over whether the Mars rover Curiosity captured an extraterrestrial crash. On Friday, NASA declared the mystery solved. Seconds after the car-size rover parked its six wheels in an ancient crater, a tiny camera under the chassis snapped a picture revealing a smudge on the horizon. The feature disappeared in a later photo. Was it dirt on the camera lens or a spinning dust devil? It turned out Curiosity spotted the aftermath of its rocket-powered backpack crash-landing in the distance. It "was an amazing coincidence that we were able to catch this impact," said engineer Steve Sell of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $US2.5 billion mission. The nuclear-powered rover landed in Gale Crater near the equator on Sunday night to study whether environmental conditions could have favoured microbes. Its ultimate target is a mountain looming from the crater floor where mineral signatures of water have been spied. Curiosity performed a novel, complex landing routine. In the final seconds, the rocket stage hovered as cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground. After landing, it cut the cords and the rocket stage flew out of the way, crashing 610 metres from the landing site. Speeding at 161km/h, the high-speed impact kicked up a plume of dust - which showed up in Curiosity's field of view. Curiosity was in the right place at the right time and facing the right direction, Sell said. Since the feat, Curiosity has returned a flood of pictures including an all-round, colour view and a low-resolution video featuring the last minutes of its descent. Over the weekend, it will get a software update, a process that will take four days. During the hiatus, stored data will continue to be downloaded. It will be weeks before Curiosity can take its first drive, zap at boulders or dig up soil in search of the chemical building blocks of life. The prime mission lasts two years. A preliminary reconstruction of the "seven minutes of terror" plunge through the Martian atmosphere revealed everything went as planned. Curiosity ended up 2.4km downrange from the bull's-eye target, probably because of tail winds and a late steering turn. "We're still happy where we landed," said Gavin Mendeck of the NASA Johnson Space Center. []
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These before-and-after images show a plume of dust, left, that disappeared. NASA thinks a camera aboard Curiosity caught the rocket stage crash-landing in the distance. Photo: NASA

A high-resolution image of Curiositys heat shield falling away during the rovers descent. Credit: NASA

Mars flying saucer is Curiositys heat shield

SKYMania
The picture was taken about three seconds after the 4.5-metre diameter shield had been ejected and two and a half minutes before landing when the shield was about 16 metres away. It was taken with the Mars Descent Imager instrument known as MARDI. The picture shows the inside surface of the heat shield, with its protective multi-layered insulation. It is such a detailed image that the stitching can be seen in the shields thermal insulation. Space scientists at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are delighted with the quality of the site where their $2.5 billion runabout touched down on Monday. They have picked out a number of

interesting rocks and other features to travel to and explore when Curiosity is ready to move on its two-year mission inside Gale Crater. They also released a panorama formed from the first two full-resolution images of the Martian surface taken by the Navigation cameras on NASAs Curiosity rover, which are located on the rovers head or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly ground. The foreground shows two distinct zones of excavation which were probably carved out by blasts from the rovers Sky Crane descent stage thrusters. [] Words of Wisdom: The only difference between a dream and reality is just doing it! The dream is the plan, and the reality is bringing the plan to completion. - Rob McConnell 1993

Why Do People Believe In UFOs?

Why Do People Believe in UFOs?
Ray Villard, Discovery News
I'm bemused that we are smart enough to land an automobile size payload on another planet, but still live in a culture where a significant percentage of people want to believe in implausible if not impossible things. The reality is that intelligence has nothing to do with believing in "weird things." A recent National Geographic Society poll reported that 36 percent of Americans -about 80 million people -- believe UFOs exist, only 17 percent do not, and the rest of the people are undecided. The survey did not specifically equate UFOs with flying saucers or little green men, however. (If there are any Martians, the pyrotechnics show of the Mars Science Lab's descent and landing earlier this week has made them all UFO believers overnight.) The percentage of UFO followers agrees with other surveys taken over the years. A 2001 Gallup Poll showed that belief in haunted houses, ghosts, and demonic possession slightly exceeded belief in UFOs. It's pretty unlikely a ghost will make a grand appearance on CNN, or we'll see an exorcism release the devil. But the discovery of aliens via a SETI signal might conceivably happen someday. Fortunately, we'll be prepared because the NGS survey shows that 77 percent of Americans believe there are signs that aliens have already visited Earth. No doubt this is anchored in mystical themes that benevolent aliens came by and helped out early civilization on huge public works projects, such as the building of the Egyptian pyramids. Only 13 percent of 1,114 respondents said they would be afraid of aliens harming them. Apparently sci-fi films such as "Independence Day" and "Signs" haven't made much of an impact. Nor has astrophysicist Stephen Hawking's warnings of ray-gun wielding aliens. A public relations challenge for NASA and the U.S. military is that 80 percent in the NGS survey feel that the government is hiding information about UFOs. This percentage of government distrust is consistent with a 2009 CBS News poll that found that 77 percent of the population believes that the government covered-up the truth behind the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination. On the flip side, belief that the Apollo moon landings were a government hoax dropped from 11 percent to 6 percent over the past decade. It's Fun to Believe in Weird Things Contrary to conventional wisdom, people of all levels of education like to believe in "weird things," says Michael Shermer of the Skeptical Inquirer. Shermer wrote that people tend to seek or interpret evidence favorable to existing beliefs and ignore or misinterpret evidence unfavorable to those beliefs. This is no more obvious than in the writings of "creationist scientists" who either reject or grossly misinterpret geological,

biological and astronomical data to support their biblical-based belief in an 8,000 year-old universe. This "confirmation bias" is in real science as well. The classic example is the 1903 discovery of "N-rays" a completely new form of radiation announced by Prosper-Ren Blondlot. At the time, dozens of other scientists confirmed the existence of N-rays in their own laboratories. But further tests showed that Nrays don't exist at all. How could so many scientists be wrong? They deceived themselves into thinking they were seeing something with their instruments that in fact was not there. This came on the heels of Wilhelm Rontgen's discovery of X-rays and Paul Ulrich Villards discovery of gamma rays in the early 1900s. Apparently there was a predisposition to expecting that other invisible forms of radiation must permeate the universe. Likewise, any two people can see a blob of light in the sky, one thinking it is the planet Venus and the other person predisposed to interpreting it as a space vehicle under alien control. Yes, airline pilots, and law enforcement office seen strange things in the heavens too. But this is outside of their sphere of expertise -especially when it comes to astronomical phenomena seen under unusual conditions. Collectively, UFO stories are a sci-fi inspired projection of how we think space visitors would look and behave. Despite over 60 years of "sightings," the purported scientific evidence is largely anecdotal and uncorroborated. The Mars Science Lab landing left more physical evidence strewn on the Red Planet than thousands of alleged flying saucers reported over the decades. I'd say that UFO beliefs are fueled by a "secular theology" where people look for greater meaning to the universe and our relationship with it. The theme is that the aliens flying the UFOs pay attention to us, worry about our misdeeds (as evident in alleged sighting of UFOs hanging around nuclear power plants) and want to help raise us to a higher level of existence. This is simply a postindustrial age version of ages old stores of visitation by angels, demons, and other imaginary spirits. A few of my colleagues dismiss the

SETI searches as an unscientific experiment that border on theology. We imagine aliens that are intellectually made in our image: they are as curious as we are, they build lasers or radio telescopes like we do, and they are similarly motivated to devote time and resources simply to letting us know that they exist among the stars. This is hypothesis on top of hypothesis. Also, people simply love to believe in weird things just because it's fun. (As an example, simply listen to the audio track of the UFO sighting posted on the YouTube video shown above.) The staid, rational world described in physics, astronomy or biology 101 classes is a bore to most undergraduates. This is exacerbated by the fact that students traditionally are taught what to think but not how to think, concludes Richard Walker and colleagues in a 2001 survey of 211 college students. One of the true/false questions was, "The government is hiding evidence of alien visitors at Area 51." Walker's conclusion: science knowledge is not an inoculation against accepting pseudoscientific gobbledygook. What's more, fun ideas sell. Simply go to you neighborhood bookstore. Pseudoscience topics from astrology to parapsychology fill a lot more shelves than hard-core science books. Thankfully, today's science renaissance of traveling to other planets and tearing apart subatomic matter is demonstrating achievements once dismissed as impossible. []

Could Terrorist Aliens Cyberattack Us?

Could Terrorist Aliens Cyberattack Us?
Analysis by Ray Villard
to blow through the latest Microsoft security update. More fundamentally, why would an advanced civilization waste the time and resources to go to the effort of undermining our comparatively primitive technology? All I can imagine -- and it would make a fun science fiction story -- is if an alien computer virus took over an automated military weapons factory (as was done by hackers in the 1983 film "Brainstorm") and reprogrammed the assembly robots to crank out an army of killer androids that looked like the The Terminator.

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Ever since H.G. Wells' 1898 classic novel "The War of the Worlds," science fiction books, movies, and even video games have had fun portraying alien invasion fleets pillaging Earth. Even the esteemed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has speculated about space invaders conquering Earth. But maybe any bellicose extraterrestrials prefer to attack us at the speed of light, literally. In an article posted on io9.com, contributor George Dvorsky asked a couple SETI scientists if an alien radio transmission could contain a virus designed to infect our computers and carry out untold mischief. They said that the odds were pretty low, but not impossible. The phrase "not impossible" is fundamental to any speculation about the future. Any imagined events that obey our present laws of physics are possible, no matter how unlikely. This is best described in one of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws of prediction: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." That caution aside, speculation about alien cyberwars takes gigantic leaps in logic that push at the boundary of plausibility. The aliens would somehow have to glean an intimate knowledge of our computer technology. That's no small trick, unless they can teleport one of our personal computers to their home planet. What's more, only civilizations orbiting stars within 90 light-years of Earth would even suspect we had a SETI program. That's because it has been less than a century since artificially produced electromagnetic radiation has been leaking off into space from our society. If we assume that one of these hypothetical nearby civilizations is bent on pulling off an interstellar cyber-terror attack, it could take dozens of years for their signal to reach our radio telescopes at the speed of light. By the time the transmission arrived our computer technology would have substantially evolved from what it is today. The barriers of time and space ensure a cosmic firewall from cyberattacks. That is unless the extraterrestrials developed some sort of quantum faster-thatlight eavesdropping capability that would allow for their malware to be instantaneously adjusted

Equally implausible, as dramatized in Carl Sagan's 1985 novel "Contact," is the worry that aliens send us blueprints for constructing a high-tech Trojan Horse. "The transport theory is only one hypothesis, ... and in my view a rather naive one," warns the U.S. President's nation security adviser, "We build it [the alien machine] and out pours the entire Vegan [from the star Vega] army." Just imagine if we had some sort of time machine where we could communicate with the ancient Romans and teleport to them blueprints for making a Predator drone or even a machine gun. Time travel paradoxes aside, it would be utterly impossible for the Romans to fabricate such devices. And, they are only separated from us by 2,000 years -- not 10,000, 100,000, or 1 million years. This is more likely the evolutionary gap between us and science savvy extraterrestrials, given the age of our galaxy. So if youre using SETI@Home or Astropulse to hunt for E.T. don't remove it from your computer. The odds of alien viruses getting into your hard drive are as close to impossible as I can imagine. []

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Why Would Aliens Invade?

Why Would Aliens Invade?

Analysis by Ian O'Neill
Late on Feb. 24, 1942, reports of flares and blinking lights in the skies over southern California caused a succession of nervous alerts. Only three months earlier, the U.S. had entered the Second World War after the shocking attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, so it is understandable that the West Coast was on the look-out for enemy aircraft. By the early hours of the following morning, on Feb 25, military radar detected an unidentified flying object 120 miles offshore approaching the coastline. This was followed by reports of a squadron of aircraft over LA and a balloon-borne flare over Santa Monica. A barrage of gunfire from anti-aircraft artillery was ordered, causing the skies to erupt "like a volcano," according to eyewitness reports. This may sound like the storyline from a work of fiction, but "The Battle of Los Angeles" definitely happened in the early morning of Feb. 25 and will forever fuel UFO conspiracy theories. Indeed, this event inspired the most recent alien invasion movie, "Battle: Los Angeles," where an aggressive alien race attacks Earth. The storyline focuses on present-day LA, and rather than the 1942 false alarm being caused by jittery war nerves, the anti-aircraft guns were actually shooting at an extraterrestrial "scout" spacecraft spying on southern California nearly 70 years before the aliens landed. Movies featuring angry aliens are always fun (unless you had to sit through Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," that is), but ignoring our obvious uneasiness with the phantom alien menace that might lurk in our galaxy, there is one question that keeps popping up in my mind: Why would extraterrestrials attack us?

Brand Life to work with. And no, I don't believe for a second that they have visited Earth already. So, looking back at our own history, the root causes of most conflicts are resources and ideology. If one country has a resource another nation wants, they might take it, with force. If one nation has a different ideology to another, they might attack that perceived threat. This is a massive oversimplification of warfare history, but it is a fact that our planet possesses massive resources; would a resourcehungry, sufficiently advanced alien civilization want to take our resources for themselves? Would they take it with force? Having said that, aliens might just turn up, unannounced, wanting to exterminate us for no reason (as most alien attack movies would have us believe). It might not be about resources, perhaps they just want to be the only intelligent life form in this region of the galaxy? Perhaps killing things is their ideology. But now I'm speculating about the beliefs and motivation of an alien race, which is well beyond the scope of even my imagination.

apple.

Grim Living
In a recent article by Ken Croswell for National Geographic, my blog "Life is Grim on the Galactic Rim" was quoted when discussing the likelihood of life in the outermost reaches of our galaxy. The upshot is that studies show the galactic rim as being a very bad place for planets, and therefore life, to form. One study, by Chikako Yasui of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, showed that young stars in our galaxy's outermost reaches lacked protoplanetary dust disks due to their low metal content (i.e. any element heavier than helium). This means that the young stars are anemic and planet formation is rare. If any planets did form, it seems logical to assume they would have a very limited supply of the materials required to support a growing, advanced civilization. This study serves as a reminder that other star systems are not like ours; depending on where you are in the galaxy, there's a variation in the supply of resources. If a spacefaring alien civilization came from one of these "less fortunate" systems -- or they've simply exhausted their supply of once-bountiful resources -- that would be a potent motivator to explore other star systems, claim resources and expand their civilization. How long could it be until one of those hungry alien races come knocking on our door? Would they send out a diplomatic attach to negotiate for the resources under our feet? Or would they dispense with the pleasantries and nuke the natives without a second thought? I'd argue that if it's just about resources, an alien race probably wouldn't bother pillaging Earth. As we know by now, the galaxy is teeming in worlds to exploit, and many in our cosmic neighborhood will contain similar materials to Earth. There are far easier pickings out there rather than landing on a planet filled with a civilization that takes great pride in building big weapons that could hinder attempts at mining the planet. So, what is the motivation behind the invading hoards of gun-toting extraterrestrials in "Battle: Los Angeles"? They want us dead. Our aliveness offends them. Either that, or it's their idea of a vacation, Malibu is lovely this time of year. []

Why Assume They're Friendly?

Last year, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking caused a storm when discussing the possibility of alien invasions in his Discovery Channel documentary "Into the Universe." For some reason, the international press went nuts when they found out that Hawking believes our encounter would be less like "ET: The Extraterrestrial" and more like "Independence Day." Hawking's argument was that perhaps mankind should stay quiet and refrain from trying to send signals into outer space. After all, we have no clue about the nature of these hypothetical aliens, why assume they're friendly? In principal, I agreed with Hawking's concern, but not trying to communicate with other beings in our galaxy could resign us to a dull and ultimately self-destructive future. (There's also the point that perhaps any aliens in our backyard should be worried about us. We have an awful track record of living in harmony with the other species' on our own planet. Remember "District 9"'s "Prawns," poor guys.) Hawking's main concern was that a fleet of alien spacecraft could turn up wanting to strip mine the Earth for its bountiful resources. Any life would be just brushed off, like ants off an

Resources? A Strong Dislike for Humans?

You could counter that question with: Why wouldn't they attack us? but either way, the answer is as speculative as the search for extraterrestrial life itself. There's no precedent for life beyond Earth, we only have Earth

The Worlds Greatest Hoaxes

The Worlds Greatest Hoaxes
Benjamin Radford

The 2009 story of the "Balloon Boy" the 6year-old whose family claimed he had climbed aboard a homemade balloon, triggering a nationwide police search has been officially declared a hoax. It seems that this stunt was done for publicity, though the motives for creating a hoax are as varied as the hoaxers themselves. Some do it for fun or profit; others to make a social statement; still others pull hoaxes for no clear reason. History is filled with great hoaxes "great" meaning important or influential, not necessarily smart or beneficial. Here are some of the most remarkable and curious hoaxes of all time:

nearby field. Her story was dismissed as a bizarre delusion until six months later a doctor was called to her bedside. According to his published report, the woman gave birth to five bunnies! While news of the strange birth spread throughout England and Europe, Toft gave birth to a few more rabbits, astounding many learned men of the day. Eventually skeptical investigators exposed her, and she confessed to having her husband secretly hide bunnies in her bedsheets, whereupon she would further secrete them in what was euphemistically called the "dumb oracle."

Laughing at the ivory tower Raelians

In 2004, a religious sect called the Raelians claimed that a group of their scientists had created the world's first human clone, a sevenpound baby girl named Eve. The ultimate goal, according to leader Rael (who claims to have descended from extraterrestrials), was to achieve immortality. The announcement was met with widespread public condemnation and skepticism among scientists, while President George W. Bush called for a ban on human cloning. The claim was eventually exposed as a publicity stunt when the group failed to produce evidence of the experiments or the cloned child. When well-respected physicist Alan Sokal submitted an article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to "Social Text," a leading journal of cultural studies, the piece was accepted without question. The article, in 1996, was in fact filled with academic jargon and nonsensical, pseudointellectual gibberish, a parody of post-modernism and philosophical relativism. "I intentionally wrote the article so that any competent physicist or mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major) would realize it was a spoof," Sokal said. The journal's editors didn't, and Sokal's hoax exposed an Ivory Tower emperor without clothes. Continued on Page 9

Crazy for crop circles

Though many people believe that crop circles have been reported for centuries, in fact they only date back about thirty years. The mysterious circles first appeared in the British countryside, and their origin remained a mystery until September 1991, when two men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, confessed that they had created crop circles for decades as a prank to make people think UFOs had landed. They never claimed to have made all the circles- in fact many were copycat hoaxes done by others-- but their hoax was responsible for launching the crop circle phenomena.

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The Worlds Greatest Hoaxes

The Worlds Greatest Hoaxes
Continued from Page 8

Tawana Brawley incident

In 1987 America was riveted to the story of a young black girl named Tawana Brawley, who said she had been gang-raped by six white men, including several police officers. Rev. Al Sharpton and others fanned racial tensions and accused police of a cover-up. The following year, following an extensive investigation (and revelations about contradictions in Brawley's story), a grand jury concluded that the girl had hoaxed the incident. A New York prosecutor successfully sued both Brawley and Sharpton for defamation.

Ironic Science Reality: Flying Saucers on Mars from Earth

Universe Today Irony: The first real flying saucer is from Earth. And it landed on Mars. Thats a quote we saw via UT writer Ray Sanders, from a great graphic making its way around the internet. But amazingly, its true. Above is a high resolution image from the Mars Science Laboratorys MARDI instrument showing the heat shield falling away from the spacecraft and heading towards Mars, looking like a classic flying saucer UFO. This image shows the 4.5-meter (15-foot) diameter heat shield when it was about 16 meters (50 feet) from the spacecraft. The image shows so much detail that You can actually see the stitching in the thermal blanket and some wiring said Mike Malin during a press conference at JPL today. Heres a new, higher resolution video of the heat shields descent from what was previously available:

Emily Lakdawalla has another image that she tweaked that shows another look at the heat shield when it is farther away from MSL:

It is still mind-blowing to think that this snapshot was taken by a spacecraft flying in the air above a different planet, Emily wrote on the Planetary Blog. In other MSL news, Curiositys mast is deployed, evidenced by this shadow selfportrait:

Amityville horror
In 1974, six members of an Amityville, New York, family were killed by their youngest son, Butch DeFeo. The following year George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the home, and soon, they claimed, they were supernaturally attacked by a demonic ghost or spirit. They collaborated with novelist Jay Anson, who embellished their tale, and the story was soon adapted into a screenplay for the hit film "The Amityville Horror." Investigators, skeptical of their claims, were proven correct years later when DeFeo's lawyer admitted that he and the Lutzes made up the whole thing, and all profited handsomely from the hoax. []

This image shows the inside surface of the heat shield, with its protective multi-layered insulation. The bright patches are calibration targets for MARDI. Also visible is the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) hardware attached to the inside surface. Malin said that at this range, the image has a spatial scale of 0.4 inches (1 cm) per pixel. It is the 36th MARDI image, obtained about three seconds after heat shield separation and about two and one-half minutes before touchdown.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

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Conspiracy Theorists: UFO Over Antarctica?

By Benjamin Radford
A video taken of the Antarctic research station Neumayer-Station III appears to show what some are calling a UFO over the South Pole. The video posted to YouTube seems to show a round, blurry object floating above the station on Aug. 10. Speculation has run rampant, with conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs swapping explanations ranging from government collaboration with aliens to a topsecret test of some new cutting-edge secret weapon. While a definitive explanation has not been found, several elements suggest a prosaic answer. The supposed UFO appears more or less directly over the research station; it also appears to be nearly perfectly round and about the right size for a balloon. Neumayer-Station III, a scientific research station, carries out tests and experiments in a wide variety of areas, including geophysics, meteorology and atmospheric chemistry. Weather balloons are used extensively to study and sample the atmosphere at different times and altitudes above Antarctica. One UFO buff admitted that most of the evidence suggested it was indeed a balloon, except for one mysterious fact: "none could explain why the object appeared in just a few frames." It's true that the object appears in only a few frames of the footage. However this becomes much less mysterious when you realize that the original video has been sped up. That's what happens in time-lapse photography: objects that are not stationary for long periods of time (people, vehicles, animals, clouds, etc.) only appear in a few frames depending of course on the frame rate of the video and how fast they move. There's nothing mysterious about it If it were a balloon that had been put aloft for hours, it would have been visible for a longer duration than seen in the video. On the other hand, not all experiments using balloons necessarily last for hours; some may only take a few minutes. It's also possible that someone at the station was merely conducting a routine equipment test in preparation for an upcoming experiment or sampling: The balloon went up, everything worked perfectly, so it came back down. Though the "Neumayer UFO" is being discussed on various UFO and conspiracy theory websites, there's a glaring contradiction in suggesting it's evidence of extraterrestrials. If it is indeed a spacecraft instead of a balloon or some other mundane object, why would the government which is routinely accused of going to extraordinary lengths to cover up all evidence of aliens intentionally release the video to the public? Unlike an Air Force base where people live and work nearby and can usually photograph or videotape what's in the skies above at will, Neumayer-Station III in Antarctica is essentially inaccessible to the public except in limited ways such as a Web cam that the government has exclusive access and control over. Did this somehow get past the

global UFO censors? Conspiracy-minded people will always search for, and often find, anomalies, things that they don't understand or believe to be odd or unusual for some reason. For some people any ambiguous light or object in the sky they don't recognize can be turned into a possible UFO sighting. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Baltic UFO may be secret Nazi sub-trap

an important shipping route. German vessels carried many goods important for the war effort during the war, and Soviet submarines sneaking from the Gulf of Finland into the Baltic Sea targeted them. If the theory is true, the trap may be an important historical find, but there is evidence against it too. The 60-meter object studied by Ocean X is way larger than what Germans and some other warring nations deployed during the World War II. Peter Lindberg, another member of the team, says he still believes the object is a natural formation. The Baltic UFO was discovered in May last year through sonar imaging technology. Its unusual shape provoked a good deal of speculation, with some people comparing it to the Millennium Falcon ship from the movie Star Wars. Skeptics say the peculiar images may have resulted from improper adjustment of the sonar and the limitations of the technology. Ocean X, professional wreck-hunters, have returned to the site with better and more sophisticated equipment after receiving funding from an undisclosed sponsor. They hope the object may become a popular tourist attraction once unearthed. []

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The mysterious disc-shaped object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea could be a relic from a giant World War II device placed there by the Nazis to disrupt Soviet submarine navigation. The object may be the concrete anchor of the device, which also had to be fitted with stainless steel mesh, Swedish naval officer and warfare history expert Anders Autellus told Swedish newspaper Expressen. It would interfere with submarine radar signals and make them crash. The mesh itself may well have eroded away over the decades, but the images of the object made by the Ocean X team exploring it show what appear to be holes, where it was attached to the foundation, he added. Stefan Hogeborn, a member of the team, concurs, saying their find is located just under

Author attempting to debunk Lothians UFO mystery

Edinburugh Evening News
THE mystery of what happened to Robert Taylor on the morning of November 9, 1979, is one of the longest standing in the history of ufology. Now a Livingston resident has claimed he has the definitive explanation of what really happened during the incident known by UFO hunters as the Dechmont Woods Encounter. The case has seen theories ranging from a fit-inducing mirage of Venus to magic mushrooms put forward to explain the story of strange craft and robotic beings which attacked and knocked unconscious the 61year-old Livingston Development Corporation worker on Dechmont Law in West Lothian. Local detectives even joined the investigation after Mr Taylors legs were found to be grazed and his trousers torn. In a new book, however, John Alison, 54, a selfemployed businessman, argues that Mr Taylors alien assault encounter was actually the result of a mini-stroke or Transient Ischaemic Attack. The father of two said Mr Taylors loss of consciousness and vision of a large, domeshaped machine with spheres on stalks rolling towards him could be explained by the temporary interruption of blood to his brain. He said: About two hundred yards away from where the encounter was claimed to have occurred, theres a dome-shaped fresh water reservoir tower built in the late 1950s that still serves as a fresh water reservoir to this day. This construction matches the description of the UFO given by Robert Taylor. It features a large grey dome with a flange sitting on top of a cylindrical base coloured green to match the surroundings. I believe this is what Taylor saw but that it was misinterpreted because of the stroke. Mr Alison, who said he had been intrigued for years by the incident, also believes detectives incorrectly identified the site of the encounter. He said: The police would not have been aware of the water tower that was on the other side of the M8. I believe that when Taylor spoke to his boss, Malcolm Drummond, after he came to and made it home, he neglected to mention he crossed the motorway using a footbridge close to where he parked his vehicle. Not knowing that this footbridge had been crossed, Mr Drummond retraced Mr Taylors steps on the wrong side of the motorway and found himself in a different section of the woods to where the water tower was located. This latest theory is unlikely to see the case closed however, and Andrew Hennessey, 55, a ufologist for 22 years dismissed Mr Alisons theory. He said: Over the years I have heard all sorts of attempts to debunk this story. Ive heard Taylor was on magic mushrooms and Ive never heard the stroke theory, but I do not believe a word of this. There were quite clear marks left in the clearing which the local CID found had been made by a vehicle entering the clearing from above the forest. []

Remember that UFO spotted in June? Well, here it is in daylight

Not so much little green men as no men at all: the craft that triggered 911 calls and Twitter furore after being mistaken for a UFO back in June has been put on show by the US Navy, a human-made drone rather than ETs escape pod. The X-47B is a new, experimental unmanned aircraft the Navy has admitted, with a spokesperson telling Fox 5 that while the stealth aircraft wasnt meant to be a secret, the team all got a laugh after it was confused for something extraterrestrial while being transported on a truck two months ago. There was nothing real secretive about it, US Navy Test Engineer Matt Funk said of the drone, but we didnt go out of our way to publicize it. The drone itself, an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) made by Northrop Grumman, is entirely remote instructed and the first of a new breed of air surveillance and attack systems expected to be increasingly commonplace in the coming years. Commanded remotely from a computer system that will eventually be on an aircraft carrier, the Navy says the UCAS can also return to base

autonomously should it lose connection with its controller. Unlike existing drones, the X-47B doesnt require continuous controlling from a human operator, but is instead given a flight target and relied on to get itself there and back. There are space, weight and power provisions for weapons and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors, Northrop says, but the current prototypes are not equipped with weaponry. Its otherworldly looks make it a good candidate for something from outer-space. At 62.1ft wide and 38.2ft long, with distinctive kinked and truncated wings (that fold up to reduce width), the X-47B is more sciencefiction at first glance than warfare-fact. Northrop Grumman says it will have a range of over 2,100nm and a maximum altitude of over 40,000ft, with high subsonic speed potential. It will also support in-flight refueling for continuous missions. A 36 minute test flight at the end of July saw the X-47B fly at a maximum altitude of 7,500 feet and a maximum air speed of 180 knots. Its worth roughly $800m, and will begin aircraft carrier testing in 2013. [] The X Zone Radio Show is heard nightly on the TalkStar Radio Network www.talkstarradio.com

Alberta Town Still Waiting For UFO

Ready and waiting: Alberta town built worlds first UFO landing pad 45 years ago
Financial Post
ST. PAUL, Alta. Everyone wants to see something unique. They travel to Glendon for perogy, says Glenn Andersen, mayor of St. Paul, Alta. Glendon has a 27-foot statue of the Ukrainian dumpling pierced by a fork. Ellen Cartier chimes in: Mundare has the kielbasa. Its home to the worlds largest garlic sausage. Then they have the duck in Andrew and the Goose in Hanna. You go in there and its an identity for the community, Mr. Andersen says. And Vilna has mushrooms, Ms. Cartier adds. Vilna has mushrooms, yes, the mayor agrees. Everyone in Alberta loves giant statues of food, its true. But St. Paul a town of about 5,000 resting between Edmonton and the Saskatchewan border well, it has something really special. The pale green paint is a little cracked and neer-do-wells seem to have chipped away some of the stones that once depicted a map of Canada. The Star Trek-like curves that would have marked the apogee of futuristic style look anything but, now. However, the 130-tonne landmark of concrete and steel can still draw a crowd like nothing else for 200 km in any direction and maybe much, much further. Thats because St. Paul is home to the first-ever UFO landing pad, a monument that turned 45 years old this year. When it opened in 1967, it was a Big Deal. Ellen Cartier was there: Her husband helped to build the pad, which is perched atop an upside-down column, like a cement pancake sitting on an ice-cream cone. The tourist shop, notable for its roof decorated as an angular spaceship with a green glass dome and blinking lights, was a later addition. Ms. Cartier still has the program from the day the monument was dedicated, printed in a faded blue. It was the [Canadian] centennial year, and they wanted to do something extra special for the centennial year, she says. The landing pad was built two years before man walked on the Moon and decades before a rover named Curiosity would beam home photos of Mars. It was at a point in time when North Americans everywhere were optimistic about the possibility of space travel, exploration and, maybe, meeting alien species. The monument became emblematic of a town striving for a multicultural ideal: Everyone is welcome, even extraterrestrials. And according to Ufology Research, a Manitoba group that monitors sightings, it may be helping to do just that. The researchers said Canada had reported 986 UFOs so far this year, an increase from the year before. Calgary reported the develop around that all you want. We draw the line at fire hydrants that look like Martians and stuff because we want them to be taken seriously as fire hydrants, right? Then the marketing committee came up with the cut-outs wooden stand ups that tourists can stick their heads in to take pictures with little green men. The tourist shop also sells headbands with alien heads on them, inflatable aliens and novelty T-shirts. All smaller communities have an identity crisis and they need something to draw people, the mayor says. A lot of people from cities dont understand rural Alberta. They need something to bring them here. [We have] people in ministerial positions and in the Alberta government who dont think roads are paved to your community. Thats how bad it is. So the town took its landmark and ran with it. In the 80s, Ron Belzil, a former present of the St. Paul and District Chamber of Commerce, purchased a UFO display to be erected near the pad. Still set up under the spaceship tourist centre, it shows fuzzy photographs of real and fake saucers, strange lights and early literature about alien abduction. While they were at it, the chamber also set up a 1-888 number to report unusual activity and saucer sightings. Mr. Belzil himself was too busy to follow up on tips. And thats how Mr. Belzils father became the resident expert in cattle mutilations. Id say hes been involved in over 100 cases, the younger Mr. Belzil says. His father, a former cattleman now in ill health, doesnt speak of his work much anymore. Sometimes the organs have been removed, the eyes, the ears have usually been nicely cut off, but theres no blood on the scene. The elder Mr. Belzil posted photos of some of his findings on a website. He was even featured in a CBC fifth estate documentary. Nobody has ever been caught doing a cattle mutilation, Ron Belzil says. The evidence is almost non-existent. His father, however, was never able to rule out the possibility of an alien presence, cutting up cattle across northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. He couldnt eliminate that as a possibility because there was no other logical explanation, he says. The elder Mr. Belzil stopped investigating the mutilations when his health failed. There was no money in it although the town did pay for some of his mileage. The mystery may always remain. In the meantime, St. Pauls mayor says hed consider sprucing up the space pad. Maybe its time for a retro-fit, or a new coat of paint. Its rare for such a small town on the prairie to have such reputation, after all. You have to be able to identify it and promote yourself because hiring an economic development officer is not feasible, he says. This is economic development. That landing pad does bring people here and they camp here and they stay and they buy things from the business community here. Does it embarrass me? Not at all. I think its great. I think the decision they made brought some notoriety to St. Paul. []

second-highest number of flying saucers and strange lights of any major city it was beaten only by Toronto. In St. Paul, the landing pad is about more than just attracting a light show. The town donated the land and local business owners provided the labour and cement. It cost $11,000 to build, none of it from the public purse. It was dedicated on June 3, 1967. Then minister of national defence, Paul Hellyer, cut the ribbon no small coincidence considering Mr. Hellyer would later admit to believing the U.S. government was covering up the existence of alien beings. A fake saucer landed in a puff of smoke, followed by a parade of officials dressed in Martian costumes. Then came the Indian smoke signals and dances. The affair wrapped up with a display of teenage Martian go-go dancers. The current mayor says thousands of people have since come to St. Paul just to see the landing pad. In 1978, Queen Elizabeth II visited. Mother Teresa followed in 1982. Lately, the pads attracted a kitschier crowd: St. Paul hosted UFO conferences in 1998 and 2000. Just the other day he said he overheard a crew discussing how it was a six-hour trip from Calgary to see if anyone happened to be landing on this pad because theres extraterrestrial stuff happening in Alberta. A plaque at the gates to the landing pad reads: The area under the worlds first UFO landing pad was designated international by the town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. It all sounds idealistic, but Mr. Andersen says the intentions behind the icon were a bit more practical. The tiny town wanted tourists. Its plan worked. St. Paul is now known across much of Alberta as the place with the landing pad. Like it or not, these people in the 60s made that decision and thats what were known as: the UFO landing pad, he said. We have to play that and thats why weve given our marketing people, You go ahead and you

The Most Extraordinary Discovery

by Professor Solomon Huriash

The Most Extraordinary Discovery:
The most extraordinary discovery in the field of religion in thousands of years, one that will affect Western civilizations both secular and religious people, is the research findings of the sync between the Biblical story of creation with the teachings of modern science. The ramifications range from the social, to the political, and to the educational as school board battles between evolution theorists and those of intelligent design will be brought to an end. Science teaches that the world was formed over 4 billion years ago, life started in the oceans, dinosaurs were not a mistake as birds evolved from them, the Sun was created at the same time as the Earth, etc. Now we learn that there is no conflict with the scrolls of Moses if we translate them using the etymologic derivate meanings of the key Hebrew words with their intended usage in the time period of the Exodus. That proper translation then gives us a story making the Bible (Torah, Old Testament) literally in sync with the teachings of modern science and ending all conflicts between them. The research findings in question have been detailed in our book WHY HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT NEED BLIND FAITH TO BELIEVE IN CREATIONISM. This work should cause a new perspective on life for both religious and non-religious people. Religious people no longer need blind faith and non-religious people have to face a world that has proven there is a Supreme Being (otherwise how could the Bible have known all the scientific facts of the creation story?).

WHY HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT NEED BLIND FAITH TO BELIEVE IN CREATIONISM proves the Biblical story of creation is literally in sync with the concepts of modern science! Learning that will make a difference and it will unite rather than divide us.

No Smoking Gun In Australias X-Files

Secret UFO files released

Tim Barlass
It is probably the closest Australia has come to scrambling fighter jets to intercept a UFO. Documents that have just become available under the 30-year rule at the National Archives of Australia reveal how two RAAF Mirage jets were placed on the second highest level of alert to determine the cause of unidentified radar contacts seen on screens at Mascot. The ''X Files'' viewed in Canberra also give details of other unexplained sightings, some of which are supported by witness statements to police. In the Sydney alert, the papers stamped ''restricted'' tell how operation ''Close Encounter'' was launched by No.3 Control and Reporting Unit at RAAF Base Williamtown near Newcastle on June 30, 1983, after the phenomenon was first noticed earlier in the month. Senior air controllers at Mascot said the contacts were mostly located between 70 and 150 nautical miles north of Sydney at ''alleged speeds of 1100-6500 km/h that suggested high altitude''. The papers state that no scramble was to occur in the round-the-clock operation unless confirmation of any reported tracks was made on the radar screens at RAAF Williamtown or any radar other than Sydney. At the same time, three senior air defence controllers were dispatched to Sydney to investigate and plot every contact and ''control interceptors against these contacts if a reasonable chance of interception presented itself''. But then one of the defence controllers, a squadron leader, asked whether a comparison had been made of the contacts on the screens of Mascot's Area Approach Radar Centre and those in a ''workshop across the corridor''. Soon after, tests showed that the ''unidentified objects reported by Sydney were generated entirely by

radar interference known colloquially as 'running rabbits' ''. Squadron leader K. Keenan, in his sixpage report, said operation Close Encounter cost 66 days of overtime, 1000 kilometres was travelled by a staff car and a C130 Hercules transport aircraft ''may have been diverted to Sydney airport'' to deliver one of the defence controllers. He wrote: ''The lines of communication, extending as they did across the width of an entire corridor, seem to have been insufficient for the purpose.'' He added rather dryly: ''Fortunately there was no temptation to launch aircraft and add to the fuel bill occasioned by use of the RAAF Datsun.'' A cautiously worded statement was released as a result ''in a manner that would not embarrass departmental personnel'' which blamed ''random atmospheric conditions''. Other reports in the X Files give details of an ''unidentified physical feature'' of circles on Milo Station at Adavale, Queensland, in 1982. The file refers to photographs that apparently were taken, but they were not among the papers. Constable Geoffrey Russell, from the local police station, visited the site and wrote a report for RAAF Base Amberley near Ipswich. The officer saw depressions in the ground and thought they were caused by a motorcyclist doing donuts but then dismissed the idea. He wrote: ''I strongly feel this [is] no hoax even though I do not know the cause of this 'feature'.'' He described a large circle of 2330mm in diameter with one inner circle of 2010mm which were 160mm in width and about 15-20 mm deep. The soil around the outer circle appeared to have been ''blown away'', he said. Elsewhere in Queensland, dairy farmer Robin Priebe phoned Imbil police at 5.30am in July 1983 to report seeing a strange object in the sky to the north of the town. The papers state that a Sergeant Waterson then went to his back verandah and saw ''a large white light with several flashing lights around it'' which did not appear to be a normal aircraft.

A similar sighting was made by Constable R. Keys from a separate position. He was also of the opinion that it wasn't a normal aircraft. Mr Priebe said both he and his wife saw a bright red glow gradually change to a white light which then started to move slowly east. Through binoculars, ''the light was disc shaped with a very bright light around the perimeter of the disc with two flashing lights in the front and one to the side'', he said. The only photographs in the X Files were of unusual lights over Bendigo, witnessed by hundreds in May 1983. An interim report by the RAAF stated that Mike Evans, a 17-year-old disc jockey with the Bendigo radio station 3BO, received calls from listeners, then saw the lights himself and took photos. One anonymous caller to the RAAF said the lights were caused by a rock group experimenting with laser lighting. The report said they were probably caused by train headlights or lasers or from planets or stars. There had been unusual weather atmospherics on the night. Zoe D'Arcy, director of digital and online access at the National Archives, said: ''Where you and I might think UFO - a spaceship - the RAAF and other agencies were probably wondering if there was a security threat. ''Most of the files you read and you think that most probably was a meteorite, but there are ones that you read and you think - well, what could that have been? ''I can't explain that from my knowledge. ''So what was it that these people have experienced? It has that open-ended question to it that I find really intriguing.'' []

1947 Woodworth UFO hoax caused national concern

The Jamestown Sun
The summer of 1947 may be considered the summer of the flying saucer. That summer 65 years ago is noted for some famous and some not-so-famous encounters with flying saucers. The Roswell UFO incident made news in late June and early July in 1947. The Jamestown Sun carried only brief stories on the incident. Some publications reported the capture of a flying saucer and the recovery of alien bodies. The official explanation was a crashed weather balloon. The truth of what happened in the New Mexico desert is still debated today. Few issues of The Jamestown Sun that summer did not carry some reference to a flying saucer being seen somewhere in the United States. Still, no reports of UFOs in Jamestown or Stutsman County occurred. The July 7, 1947, edition lamented the lack of Unidentified Flying Objects in the area with the headline, None reported here Saucers spurn city. That appears to be when some young men in Woodworth decided to cook up their own flying saucer. This kind of joke was all in character for them, said Chris Wingire, nephew of John Wingire, one of the saucer conspirators. From what I heard they seemed to be up for most anything. Not all of the pranks were completely harmless. Dad and John did things that were a little odd or funny, Chris Wingire said. They got a hold of some dynamite one time. They didnt want to make too much noise so they set it off in a garage and blew it up. Older residents of the community agree. When they got together you didnt know what to expect, said Virginia Struxness, community historian. The headline of The Jamestown Sun for July 11, 1947, said Woodworth Saucer Revealed as Hoax. The subheading was Five Confess Prank; Nation Gets Excited. The article detailed how Oscar Cellmer, William Clark, Wingire, Palmer Hanson and Leslie Thompson had made the flying saucer out of a part of a washtub, a lamp shade, some radio parts and a car fan. A coat of silver paint was added to make the unit look like something from out of this world. John (Wingire) was a welder, said Chris Wingire. They worked all the night before to build it and then put it in somebodys yard. When she found it they came over and said, hey, it must be a flying saucer. The conspirators sweetened the story by adding they had heard there was a $1,000 reward for the capture of a flying saucer. The saucer had been placed in the yard of Mrs. Bert Miller. It would appear, from the newspaper article, that Miller alerted a lot of people. By noon July 11 more than 100 people had flocked to the Miller home. This included

Capt. G.W. McCoy of the Civil Air Patrol in Fargo. He was given orders to make sure the object was watched and closely guarded. He was also told to make sure the item got as little publicity as possible. The part about little publicity just wasnt going to happen. According to an article in the Minot Daily News, people were flying in to Woodworth to see the flying saucer. The story was picked up by United Press and distributed to papers and radio stations around the country. The Associated Press also distributed the story, which ran with the headline Hoax saucer excites N.D. in the Bismarck Tribune. Somewhere in the middle of the military visit and the hundreds and hundreds of visitors, the five conspirators couldnt keep a straight face. Cellmer, Clark, Wingire, Hanson and Thompson, all residents of Woodworth, broke down amid gales of laughter and admitted the prank after whispers of a hoax began circulating in this community, wrote The Jamestown Sun correspondent. Struxness said until the conspirators admitted the hoax, many in the community were frightened. People were scared, she said. From what Ive been told it shook everybody up. The Jamestown Sun article described the level of concern the hoax raised this way; Long distance telephone wires began to hum with activity as newspapers, radio stations and just plain curious folks contacted Woodworth. All five of the men who built the Woodworth flying saucer have since died. The last to pass away was William Clark, who died in spring 2012. []

the decision. The Raelians then appealed the Strasbourg-based court's decision, ultimately winning an appeal for the Grand Chamber to hear the case. The 17-member chamber ruled Friday, nine to eight, that the Raelians' freedom of expression was not violated. "Authorities had not overstepped the broad margin of appreciation given to them in view of the non-political dimension of the poster campaign," the court said. At a November hearing, a lawyer for the Raelians argued that cloning is not illegal. He said the religious movement had repeatedly condemned all acts of paedophilia and said it was contradictory to ban a poster when neither the sect nor the website were barred. The court also noted the ban only applied to putting posters on public property, "allowing the association to use other means of expression." The Geneva-based sect, which claims tens of thousands of members worldwide, was founded in 1976 by Claude Vorilhon, known as "Rael". According to its constitution, the group aims to make the first contacts and establish good relations with extraterrestrials. The poster in question was about onemetre (three feet) tall and across the top in big letters were the words: "The Message from Extraterrestrials", according to the court. Underneath was the Raelians' web address, a French phone number and the phrase: "Science at last replaces religion." The middle of the poster showed alien faces and a pyramid, together with a flying saucer and the Earth.[]

Top rights court upholds Swiss ban on UFO group's posters

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STRASBOURG More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated. Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters. The local ban came after other authorities in Switzerland had allowed the posters. Neuchatel officials said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and "geniocracy," a system where leaders are picked according to their intelligence. Additionally, a Swiss court found the Raelians had "theoretically" advocated paedophilia and incest, the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement Friday. The group had also been the subject of criminal complaints about sexual practices involving children, the court said. Swiss high courts affirmed the ban and Europe's top rights court in January 2011 upheld

Linda Star Wolf

Visionary Shamanism and Shamanic Breathwork
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UFO Sightings: Why I Do Not Believe Aliens Exist

Abdul Siddiqui
The most conclusive answer that I ever received, regarding the debate of science and religion, was actually the least divisive. As part of a course on cognitive psychology, my professor took the time one day to address the issue of faith in the scientific world and simply stated that, while it may indeed be true that there is a higher power that rules over us or that our existence is nothing more than a dream, it is not possible to use that in science -- because it can neither be proven nor disproven. And while my totem is currently indicating that we are indeed awake, it is crucial to remember that until something can be decisively verified or refuted, we should always work on the assumption that it may indeed be true or false. Simply put, Schrdingers cat can be alive or dead and we should be open to both options. However, that does not mean we can work with assumptions in a logical setting because there is nothing for us to analyze either way until we open the box and look inside. Therefore, when I looked at the pictures and interviews of self-professed alien abductees from the International UFO Conference, I did my best to keep an open mind about their stories possibly being true. However, seeing as how there is no logical way for me to prove or disprove their assertions, I do not feel guilty for maintaining my cynicism regarding the credibility of these accounts. The amount of unidentified flying object sightings reported each year is nothing short of staggering and the number is still on the rise. However, regardless of whether they are just specks of light or "Sovereign the Reaper," it is certain that the human race has always been fascinated with the aliens tendency to visit us in order to conduct horridly invasive medical procedures, despite Kangs assurance that they have learned all they can from rectal probing. While I do not intend to mock anyone, the folks interviewed in the aforementioned article are possibly a product of that fascination, although I find it hard to believe that someone would risk public ridicule unless they genuinely believed their own stories to be true. Still, having faith in their accounts or even keeping an open mind is rather difficult. My cynicism, while seemingly bordering on stubbornness, is not easily moved when someone claims they have been on and off alien ships their whole life. Photographer Steven Hirsch, the man behind these interviews, insists that he does not want audiences to go in with a preconception about his subjects but when people start talking about memories getting erased and or having had six different encounters with extraterrestrials, I become less forgiving. Sure, the people may be right and the aliens are slowly expanding into our society but if ET is really phoning home to invite a secret invasion, he should take a cue from the Skrulls and not let people blab about it. The obsession with alien life forms and the inevitable conspiracies they inspire,

depicted most enjoyably in Disneys Lilo and Stitch, are rather prominent in some circles. Whether it is just a fascination with the unknown or some kind of Orwellian fear of government hiding things from us, it is certain that the alien phenomenon is one that has started long before the public has been conclusively exposed to species from another planet. While it is not my purpose or place to ridicule anyone, I do not feel that a person telling a story with no logic or credibility should be treated as a logical or credible person. Yes, there is some inherent hypocrisy here because I am a fan of Philip K. Dick but I only accept his stories for the social messages behind them; taken literally, they seem rather unfeasible. In short, I am a disbeliever but I try not to be. The most compelling flying object story in the past few years is Balloon Boys and even that turned out to be false, so you cant really blame me. Also, while I only cite that example facetiously, it does work to demonstrate what people are willing to do for publicity nowadays. I believe the photographer does not entirely believe the interviews to be true, instead choosing to settle for creepy pictures in hopes that people will watch grown adults share tall tales and make faces resembling the Morlocks (Wells, not X-Men). My reasoning for mentioning all these fantastic science-fiction writers is to demonstrate what capable people did with the concept of extraterrestrial life but this photo gallery just pulls a William Shatner and makes them seem ridiculous. I am still willing to accept the idea that these stories might be true; whether I am willing to respect it is another story. []

equipment. "It could an aircraft; it could be Chinese lanterns. Apparently people confuse them with UFOs and I got one picture once where there was a smudge - a greenish smudge - but that was from the camera. It was a reflection in the lens." Astronomers have expanded their field to include observations from the public and it has helped identify previously unknown objects. In 2007, Dutch school teacher Hanny van Arkel discovered a massive gas cloud about 650 million light years away from Earth and around 16 000 light years across. The object, known as Hanny's voorwerp has become the subject of much research by professional astronomers. "That [Hanny's voorwerp] was something they weren't aware of and they found this and they got a whole lot of people to carry on in Galaxy Zoo to look for more of them. And they've written papers on it now," Loaring said.

Baffled
She added that with the wealth of current data available, there wasn't enough researchers to do a proper examination and the public could get involved in early stage analysis. "That was something they just weren't expecting. There're quite a few citizen science projects out there and people can contribute because there's so much data; there're not enough [professional] people to look at it." Still, despite the best efforts of researchers, some observations, particularly by credible witnesses such as pilots leave astronomers baffled. This is especially true when an observation of a UFO cannot be explained by clouds, tricks of light or known aeroplanes. "Other times you really can't tell what it is. And you're just... 'I don't know'," said Loaring. []

UFOs often misidentified astronomer

News 24
Cape Town - Astronomers say that people often misidentify known astronomical objects for UFOs. "I get lots of phone calls. Quite often people have spotted a planet - often Jupiter and Venus - and they don't realise it. I ask them which direction they were looking at; what time it was and I can go check and see what was up at that time," Dr Nicola Loaring outreach astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory told News24. She said that members of the public often call or send pictures of objects they have photographed and identified as Unidentified Flying Objects. "There're also the UFOs which people see and sometimes I get photos sent to me and it's quite difficult from the photos to work out what it is," said Loaring. Orthodox scientists do not recognise that aliens from other worlds or dimensions are regularly visiting Earth, but there are aerial anomalies that have been observed both at night as well as during the day.

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Anomalies
Loaring said that some of the photographed anomalies may be errors on recording

From a possible UFO sighting to a certain 100-meter dash, London betting focuses on Olympics
Associated Press
What are the odds of a UFO sighting during the London Olympics opening ceremony? Or of the final torch bearer tripping as they ascend to light the flame? Or would you prefer a more traditional wager on the battle for gold between Russia and Spain in synchronized swimming duos? London betting houses will offer odds on almost anything, including all 26 sports at the games, from the 100-meter dash to fencing, from diving to soccer. The industry expects to handle a record 100 million pounds ($155 million) in wagers during the July 27-Aug.12 competition _ even some pretty outlandish parlays. "We try to cater to most people's tastes," said Joe Crilly, a spokesman for William Hill, a gambling house that encourages punters _ the U.K. term for gamblers _ to contact them with any bet they can dream up. They also offer online gambling in 182 countries, though not in the United States or in other countries where it is prohibited. Ladbrokes, another British bookmaker, will offer 11,000 different wagers during the games, according to spokeswoman Jessica Bridge. Those bets include that the Olympics will be over budget, that a British athlete will be photographed eating a McDonald's Big Mac, or that the athletes village in Olympic Park will run out of condoms. William Hill offers perhaps the longest odds of the games: 1,000-to-1 that a flying saucer will appear over Olympic Stadium during Friday's opening ceremony. Tough luck, presumably, if aliens don't make first contact until the next day. Other longshots get slightly better odds, like 250-to-1 that every team in the 4x400meter relay final drops the baton, or 33-to-1 that flamboyant London Mayor Boris Johnson accidentally lights his hair on fire with the Olympic torch. And this being famously soggy London, of course they are taking bets on the weather, paying even-money that rain will mar the opening night. If that's not enough to make an Olympic fan cry, Ladbrokes will pay $50 on a $1 bet that it will rain every day, and 10-to-1 that a strike by transit workers will halt train service on the London Underground. But the gambling story is not all fun and games. The British betting industry is worth $9 billion a year, one of the biggest in the world, according to a 2010 study by accounting and consultancy firm Deloitte. Most houses offer online gambling as well. There have been fears that the massive gambling volume could lead to corruption, which would forever mar London's legacy. The

IOC has barred athletes from betting on the games _ and sports, police and gambling industry officials plan to meet daily to ensure that no illegal bets are placed. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, has said previously that illegal betting can fuel the scourge of match-fixing. Crilly said the betting industry is heavily regulated and immediately reports suspicious activity to Britain's Gambling Commission. "We have a lot of strict regulations in place to guard against any funny business," Crilly said. "If we were to see an unusually large bet for a sport we were not particularly expecting large amounts of money for, it would flash up ... If there was any suggestion that it was suspicious we would get authorities involved." The most heavily wagered event during the London games is expected to be the 100meter dash, where Jamaican Usain Bolt, the reigning Olympic champion, is still the odds-on favorite despite a rough run-up to the games that saw him bested in trials by countryman Yohan Blake. Soccer will also be an extremely popular wager, as will the women's heptathlon, where star British athlete Jessica Ennis is expected to compete for gold. A major challenge for the gambling houses is setting the odds for the more obscure sports. Who is to say Dutch rider Adelinde Cornelissen should be a 15-to-8 shot in dressage, an equestrian discipline? Or if Sweden's Anders Gustafsson should be set as a 9-to-1 shot in the 1,000-meter men's single kayak race? Crilly says ahead of the Olympics, betting firms assign teams to research each sport, spending weeks immersing themselves in facts and figures. Punters can also bet on which country will win the overall medals table (the U.S. is favored, with China a close second), or how many golds the host nation will take home. Bridge says Ladbrokes has already taken a 10,000 pound ($15,500) bet on Bolt to win the 100-meter dash and expects much larger wagers ahead of the big race. "We anticipate our high roller customers will fancy him to do the business,' she said. "If they were to want 50,000 pounds ($77,500) or more on Bolt, then we will happily lay it." [] a Soviet invasion. Humans make sense of the world by building narratives. A random but humdrum collection of events temperature inversions and, yes, weather balloons is somehow not as satisfying as a flying saucer. It seems to Answer Man that asking whether there were any alien spacecraft over Washington in 1952 is like asking whether there were any witches in Salem, Mass., in 1692.[] For ALL Your Publishing Needs Printing. Digital eBook Formats, Hand Held

No UFO; Mysterious lights identified

PETOSKEY The mystery has been solved. The strange lights area residents reported seeing in the night sky this week were actually coming from aircraft used in training at the Grayling Air Gunnery Range, said Patricia Luna, executive assistant at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center. Nineteen Air National Guard units from seven different states are participating in Northern Strike 2012, "a large-scale training exercise that emphasizes air-to-ground operations," according to a Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs news release. Luna said the training, including night and day flights, began Monday, July 9, and is to continue through Friday, July 20. The lights were spotted by several people throughout Northern Michigan late Tuesday, prompting several calls to CCE Central Dispatch which covers Charlevoix, Cheboygan and Emmet counties. John Cassidy of Petoskey described the lights as a "long bright orange glow, resembling fireworks or an orange flare." Cassidy said the glow didn't last long, but when it went away, two objects with whitish flashing lights appeared, before quickly disappearing. Mary Albertson, office manager at central dispatch, said the calls began around 10:15 p.m. and continued to about 11:30 p.m., and came in from Mackinaw City to Indian River, Harbor Springs to Petoskey. []

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The Month That E.T. Came To D.C.

The month that E.T. came to D.C.
John Kelly The Washington Post
This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Great Alien Invasion of 1952 or, as it might more appropriately be called, the Great Alien Reconnaissance of 1952. The UFOs allegedly just flew around; no one saw them land. But were they aliens? This much is undisputed: Late on the evening of July 19, 1952, air traffic controllers at Washington National Airport spotted a curious cluster of seven blips on their radar screens. Similar blips were sighted by radar operators at Andrews and Bolling Air Force bases. Nationals control tower contacted commercial aircraft in the vicinity and asked their pilots if they had seen anything unusual. Why yes, Capt. S.C. Casey Pierman of Capital Air Flight 807 radioed back. He saw six bright lights streaking across the sky, like falling stars without tails. F-94 jets were scrambled from Delawares New Castle Air Force Base (the runway at Andrews was under repair), but the pilots saw nothing. The Pentagon was already studying the escalating number of UFO sightings under the aegis of Project Blue Book and the officer in charge added the Washington outbreak to his growing list. Then, the next weekend, it happened all over again. National Airports air traffic controllers tracked a dozen unexplained blips. Fighter jets were again scrambled, and on their second circuit, pilots saw bright lights speeding away from them. I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet, pilot William Patterson later told investigators. I was at my maximum speed chance of overtaking them. The media had a field day. A headline on the front page of The Washington Post read: Saucer Outran Jet, Pilot Says; Air Force Puts Lid on Inquiry. After the earlier outbreak, a reporter for the Washington Daily News had written: Recent attempts to explain saucers as optical illusions have been shaken by recent radar sightings. Illusions dont show up on a radar screen. Illusions dont, but temperature inversions do. A temperature inversion occurs when a layer of cold air is trapped under a layer of warm air. Its most common in extremely hot weather of the sort that Washington was enduring 60 summers ago. The warm air can create a ceiling that causes radar beams to bounce down. Objects on the ground moving cars, a row of telephone poles can appear to be thousands of feet in the air. An Air Force officer ascribed the sightings to this phenomenon. But what of the lights? A layer of moisture in the atmosphere could have caused reflections. Its very much like when youre riding down the highway and its very hot out and you

see a mirage on the highway, said Bruce Press of National Capital Area Skeptics, a group that debunks UFOs, ghosts and the like. As you drive towards it doesnt get any closer, so you assume that because it doesnt get any closer its moving away from you at the same speed youre driving. UFOlogists discount these explanations. Experienced pilots saw the lights, said Robert Swiatek of the Mutual UFO Network, and Nationals radar operators felt that the anomalous signals were good, solid targets, as though they were being reflected from the surface of metallic aircraft. While there certainly are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Answer Mans philosophy, he must side with the skeptics in what became known as the Washington Flap. Even before that hot July, the papers were full of stories about UFOs. They were a staple of science-fiction movies in an America fearful of a Soviet invasion. Humans make sense of the world by building narratives. A random but humdrum collection of events temperature inversions and, yes, weather balloons is somehow not as satisfying as a flying saucer. It seems to Answer Man that asking whether there were any alien spacecraft over Washington in 1952 is like asking whether there were any witches in Salem, Mass., in 1692. []

the first three episodes. (Dear God, there are five more waiting in the wings!)" Most reviews trashed the show, including its format, character antics, handling of evidence, lack of actual investigation tactics and overall lack of anything related to actual UFO investigations. Pursuing through a private Facebook page with leaders of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) - the largest UFO investigation group on the planet - one could see outright disdain for the show and how the investigation techniques seem comical. There were few compliments from MUFON members and most said they would not watch the show. Hastings followed up with a second story after interacting by email with James Fox and then after both Fox and co-host Dr. Ben McGee posted show explanations on another web site. A piece of the dialogue includes: I know how disappointed all of you are. I am too. Its not the show that was sold to both myself and scientist Ben[It] does get a bit better further down the road but not a lot. James Fox James and I both had expectations and (for our own reasons) hopes of an ultimately serious product. We both saw the project heading in a different direction as time went on and were powerless to influence it. Dr. Ben McGee. []

Professional UFO hunters say they won't watch 'Chasing UFOs'

UFO-NUKES expert Robert Hastings compared National Geographic Network's new show, "Chasing UFOs", to "Blair Witch Project meets Inspector Clouseau" in a story released this week at the UFO Chronicles web site. The show premiered in June in a Friday night time slot with many ufologists watching to see how the subject would be portrayed. Commenting on the story itself, Hastings wrote, "This article would have to be several pages longer if I were to summarize all of the breathless hoo-ha passed off as investigation and analysis by the showin just

'UFO Triangle' Is Alien Hotspot, Believers Claim

Discovery News
On July 8, 1947, a crash in Roswell, N.M. described by local papers as a "flying saucer" lit a fire in America: UFO fever. And today, just over 65 years later, some Central Californians believe their region remains a UFO hotspot, the bottom leg of a "UFO triangle" as mysterious as Bermuda's. Jeffrey Gonzalez is one of such, the founder of Sanger Paranormal Society and a UFO-chaser for the past four years. He even runs a 24-hour UFO hotline: people call and he investigates claims of UFO sightings. No, Im not crazy. Its an obsession, its a hobby, Gonzalez told FoxNews.com He works as a phone company technician during the day and solves mysteries of the unknown during his time off. He says his background in electronics helps him use the tools to investigate the paranormal. I go out to the location to where these events happen, Ill talk to the witnesses I will take reference points and I will make sure its real, he said. Gonzalez drives a research vehicle or Paranormal Ambulance equipped with the requisite gear necessary to investigate UFOs: a Geiger counter, an EMF scanner, infrared cameras, and of course, a Sony HandyCam camcorder with night vision. If a witness reports a sighting more than one time or says something crashed then well go out and stake out the area in case the craft comes back. Because if it does come back then well be ready, he told FoxNews.com. The Geiger counter tests for radiation and the electromagnetic frequency (EMF) reader monitors different types of energy. Infrared cameras are very helpful during stakeouts, he said; they can see up to 300 feet in pure darkness. Well usually park outside from about 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in the morning, he said. Gonzalez is part of a new National Geographic series called Chasing UFOs. A recent survey conducted by National Geographic finds that 80 million Americans believe in UFOs. I have witnesses calling me -- law enforcement, doctors, lawyers, and military personnel that have pictures that they have captured over Fresno, Gonzalez said. Fresno lies at the bottom of the "Nevada Triangle" a region that includes Area-51 and China Lake. Gonzalez says this area is similar to the Bermuda Triangle where many planes have disappeared without a trace over the last 50 years. Theres a lot of military presence and there could possible be a lot of top secret military craft flying over our skies, Gonzalez said. According to the non-profit National UFO Reporting Center there are roughly 5,000 UFO sightings reported each year. Gonzalez has people throughout the city of Fresno who serve as sky watchers. These people sit outside for

hours watching the sky for anything out of the ordinary. Sky watcher Robert Dorson saw his first UFO 25 years ago, and today he loves watching for UFOs from his roof where he captures video on his camera. Ive got the best footage. I got the close and the best footage. All hours of the night and day Im out here watching, Dorson told FoxNews.com. Are you a believer, or still just a skeptic? Start being more observant and perhaps you might see something unusual, they explained. Its turned out to be more than a hobby now its a passion of mine to find out what are these things flying over Fresno. Are they military or are they something else? And I think Im getting pretty darn close, Gonzalez said. []

But Gerstein explains that the strangest discovery during the investigation of this case was mysterious balls which were so light that they could float on water surface. They had very complicated chemical structure. After their analysis an assumption was made that they were formed during a high temperature process, a kind of welding. Researchers have also noted unusually extensive plant growth on the lakes floor where the object crashed. Despite the conducted investigations and the collected evidence, the identity of what crashed into Korb Lake in 1961 remains an enigma. The mystery surrounding this case is what officials are hoping will appeal to tourists, drawing visitors to the region. []

Russian Radio Using UFOs to boost tourism

Jason McClellan
Russian radio station The Voice of Russia reports that plans are underway to utilize UFO tourism to draw visitors to the Leningrad region of the country. A new tourist route will take visitors through the Vespian forests, and will visit the site of a 1961 UFO incident where a massive, cylindrical object fell into Korb Lake. This UFO incident reportedly occurred the night of April 27, 1961. Divers explored the lake and, although they did not find the cylindrical object that fell from the sky, they did discover evidence indicating that an object impacted with the lakes floor, and then advanced approximately sixty-five feet after impact. Researchers indicated that the UFO broke through ice when it entered the lake, suggesting the lake was frozen over at the time of the incident. Mikhail Gerstein, chairman of the ufologists commission of the Russian Geographic Society, told The Voice of Russia, The ice pieces which were knocked out by that body were floating in an ice-hole and had an intensively green color. The researchers took ice samples but failed to find the causes of such a strange coloring. Gerstein says samples from the lakes floor were also collected and tested, but nothing unusual was detected.

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Rented Silence by Lucia Mann

A woman was recently sentenced to 140 months in prison after using two Nigerian immigrants as personal unpaid servants in her luxury home in Atlanta, Georgia. A few days later, two Ukrainian brothers were convicted of smuggling desperate villagers into the United States to work long hours, cleaning retail stores and office buildings at little or no pay. The prosecuting U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, Daniel Velez, said it was modern-day slavery. Its hiding in plain sight. However, according to a woman who lived through the racial prejudice, segregation and slavery in post-World War II Europe, the slavery crisis in the modern world is far greater than that. Anyone who thinks slavery died when America abolished it in the 1800s has a shock coming to them, said Lucia Mann, whose mother was a sex slave and a WWII concentration camp survivor. Mann, a former journalist and author of Rented Silence (www.rentedsilence.com), a novel about slavery and racial prejudice based on her life experiences and those of other persecuted souls she witnessed says, According to the United Nations, there are more than 27 million slaves worldwide, which are more than twice the number of those who were enslaved over the 400 years that transatlantic slavers trafficked humans to work in the Americas. Many are forced into prostitution while others are used as unpaid laborers used to manufacture goods many of us buy in the U.S. In fact, its almost impossible to buy clothes or goods anymore without inadvertently supporting the slave trade. "Rented Silence is a story of human suffering during a brutal period in the British Colonial history. But at the same time it is an inspiration tale of hope and love, but mostly the testimony of the human spirit to survive against the odds. Rented Silence will move you to tears, anger and a wide range of other emotions and will make you ask: Where was God in the midst of this evil? Rented Silence will stay with you long after you've closed the book."

About Lucia Mann : Lucia Man is part Sicilian and part British South African, born in British Colonial South Africa in the wake of WWII. She is a citizen of Britain and Canada who recently applied for a U.S. Green Card because she believes she is an American at heart. She was educated in London, England and retired from freelance journalism in 1998. After suffering from racial prejudice most of her early life because she was part Italian and part South African, she saw and felt firsthand the pain and suffering of those who were thought to be inferior because of the color of their skin. Her mission is to end prejudice and slavery now and in the future.

CIA Smacks Down Former Employee

CIA smacks down former employee
Herald-Tribune
Whether or not Chase Brandons Roswell UFO story has legs obviously depends on the MSMs inclination to run with the ball. Theyve been warming up to it since June 23, when the retired CIA operative told Coast-To-Coast AM that the Agency had UFO material from the 1947 mystery stashed in its Historical Intelligence Collection files. But if the trend holds, theyll lose all followup ardor soon enough and itll be a dead duck, as usual. And thats too bad, because someone here is clearly lying. Last week, De Void asked the CIA if a) its HIC was in possession of Roswell data, and b) would Brandon have had access to that material?Agency PIO Jennifer Youngblood responded Tuesday afternoon: Our historians have found nothing in the Agencys holdings to corroborate Mr. Brandons specific claims. The CIA has fielded numerous inquiries related to UFOs over the years, and the definitive account of the Agencys role in UFO studies was published in 1997 and can be found without redaction on our website. The document can be found here and stands on its own: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-thestudy-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csistudies/studies/97unclass/ufo.html Thats a link to National Reconnaissance Organization historian Gerald Haines dubious 1997 assertion that most Cold War UFO sightings can be attributed to U.S. spyplane activity. It has no bearing on the Roswell controversy. And thats pretty much all the CIA has to offer on Brandons claims which, if true, are pure dynamite. Reached at home, HIC curator Hayden Peake declined to provide additional information. My comments are all in that statement released today, he said. Although Brandon claimed last month he had no first-hand knowledge of the event, he told national audiences he took a peek inside a boxed file labeled Roswell during the mid1990s. As a result: I absolutely know that there was a craft from beyond this world that crashed at Roswell, that the military picked up remains of not just the wreckage but cadavers and all of that was made public for a short while One hundred percent guarantee, in my heart and soul I say Roswell happened. Brandon added his security oath prevented him from sharing more details. But what makes him worth listening to are his credentials. A 35-year CIA veteran, he was on the media radar screen from Popular Mechanics to Mother Jones for his foreign intrigues long before his decision to go Roswell. At about the same time Brandon claims to have seen the Roswell material, he became the CIAs first-ever technical consultant to Hollywood, where he reviewed scripts for image and credibility issues before lending the Agencys imprimatur to productions. Several things are immediately suspicious about Brandons revelations.

Foremost is the timing, which coincides with the release of his new novel, The Cryptos Conundrum, billed as a sci-fi conspiracy thriller. Then theres the fact that nothing he discussed about Roswell goes above and beyond anything long since in the public domain. Chases claim that he saw a box of files marked Roswell is ridiculous, states Sarasota researcher Tony Bragalia, who has spent years investigating Roswell. No doubt they use identifying code and project numbers [at the Archives] not boxes marked Roswell, JFK, Bigfoot, etc. And hes got the perfect fallback because he says he cant offer any other details due to national security. I dont think its official disinformation. I think hes kind of setting himself up for the book. And its too bad because theres so much stuff about this case thats real and interesting. []

UFO sightings were a nationwide rage in 1947

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS COUNTY Nova Hart and his father-in-law, J.H. Jackson, saw the mysterious thing soaring noiselessly over their July 4th picnic near Creve Coeur Lake, in what is now Maryland Heights. Hart said it was silver-gray and round. "Our wives saw it too, and so did some people in an automobile who stopped when they saw us looking up," said Hart, then of 3969A St. Ferdinand Avenue in St. Louis. "I can say it certainly was strange, and none of us drinks a drop." Hart and Jackson were the first St. Louisans to report one of the flying saucers that suddenly were all over the American sky in the summer of 1947. Some newspapers called them "flying discs." Eventually, the accepted term became unidentified flying object, or UFOs. The first sighting was made June 25, 1947, by a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, who said he saw nine saucers zipping at 1,200 mph east of Seattle. Another aviator spotted them over Bakersfield, Calif. Sightings poured in from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Idaho and

Kentucky. Among the witnesses were the Idaho lieutenant governor and a Weather Bureau meteorologist. Thus began an enduring national craze. Military brass scoffed, then dispatched fighter planes to search for saucers. "If some foreign power is sending flying discs over the United States, it is our responsibility to know about it," an Army Air Forces spokesman said. The wave hit St. Louis on July 5, when Hart told his story. One evening later, Dr. Walter Hoefer, 23 Black Creek Lane in Ladue, saw six saucers flying southeast in formation. People in Shrewsbury, Webster Groves and south St. Louis also saw them. George Malcolm of 5632 Tholozan Avenue described the six as 'silver streaks floating in the air. ... They were round and made no noise." Reports came from 38 states and Canada. Newspapers dutifully contacted scientists, who suggested weather balloons, reflections from searchlights, vivid imaginations and generalized fear of a world in peril. One California physicist cited the "transmutation of atomic energy." There already was enough serious news in 1947 to keep Americans on edge. The Iron Curtain ran across eastern Europe. The Soviets coveted the atomic bomb. Communists were gaining in China. Could a visit from outer space be so unlikely, or unwelcome? Many people got their notions of space travel from "Flash Gordon" movies and radio shows. American rocketry, still barely off the ground, practiced with surplus German V-2s. Inevitably, reports trailed off, undone by mockery and pranksters. On July 9, nearly 100 people called the Post-Dispatch to report discs plunging from the sky. It turned out that three pilots had dropped them in a publicity stunt for their flying school near Fenton. But UFOs, or at least sightings, never went away. [] The X Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell Mon - Sun 10 pm - 2 am Eastern is available on The TalkStar Radio Network www.talkstarradio.com

Roswell UFO Incident Timeline, Details and Quick Facts

Christian Post
In July 1947 there were reports of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, with some alleging that an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants had crashed there and were recovered by military personnel. The U.S. military maintains that what was recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance balloon belonging to a classified program named "Mogul." However, to this day many conspiracy theorists and others claim that it was all part of an extravagant cover up by the United States government, and that a UFO actually crashed on that day.

July 2, 1947
A rancher named Mac Brazel and others reportedly hear a loud crash during the night near Corona, New Mexico.

July 3, 1947
Mac Brazel finds peculiar crash debris on the Foster Ranch.

July 5, 1947
In the town of Corona Mac Brazel hears about a $3,000 reward for the debris of a crashed flying saucer.

July 6, 1947
Mac Brazel showed pieces of the wreckage to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field (AAF) and talked to Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer. Major Marcel drove to the sheriff's office and inspected the wreckage, at which point William Blanchard, Marcel's commanding officer, ordered there recovery of the wreckage. Military police arrived at the sheriff's office and collected the wreckage to bring to Blanchard's office. The wreckage was then reportedly flown to Eighth Air Force HQ in Fort Worth, and from there to Washington.

papers and only carried the alleged "cover-up story" the next morning. In the following investigations it seemed that only one couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot, saw what they believed was a UFO "flying disc" the night of the alleged crash. According to various reports they described sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. at about ten o'clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high speed. It was only visible for about 45 seconds, the couple estimated, and was going at about 400 to 500 miles per hour. Generally thought of as a reliable person, Wilmot reported the details of what he and his wife had seen just minutes before announcements that the RAAF was in possession of a crashed object. Conspiracy theorists claim that it was on the afternoon of July 8 that military personnel substituted the wreckage of a balloon for the real crashed debris. Officials soon emerge saying that original officers at the scene from Roswell were fooled and the material was simply that of a weather balloon.

the real events around the Roswell incident as told to him by his father. []

'Paranormal State' star Ryan Buell diagnosed with pancreatic cancer

www.realtyworld.com
The 30-year-old paranormal investigator was treated Wednesday for the disease and has been continuously updating fans on his condition via Facebook. "Things are looking positive after complications with his kidneys started a month ago and temporarily knocked him down," Buell's Paranormal State staff wrote Thursday. "Ryan enjoyed some Wendy's (but keep that a secret) and reported back to work today." But despite his own battle, Buell has apparently been reaching out to those who have endured the same hardships and reminding his fans that he's not alone in the struggle. "I know there are many of you suffering from illnesses, and not just cancer. I say to all of you: SOLDIER ON!" Buell recently wrote on Facebook. "I know the pain that you will feel. And the pain for treatment. I still say SOLDIER ON! Let's think of one another during those moments, even though we don't know each other." "[Ryan] wants to make sure that others are taken care of first. Ryan has been honored and humbled by the support... There are those who have struggled with this disease for years, those who are diagnosed every day and those within the support network surrounding them. Ryan knows he is loved and supported, and would want for that love and support to stretch beyond this community," said a staff member. News that Buell, who founded the Paranormal Research Society, had been diagnosed with cancer first began circulating last month. []

July 9, 1947
It is alleged that officers located Brazel and questioned him. He was then taken by the military to the office of the Roswell Daily Record, where he issued a much revised version of his story. It was reported that officers from the base then visited newspaper and radio offices in town and recover all copies of the original press release. Brazel was also then taken to radio station KGFL, where he again gave his revised version of the incident. The Roswell Daily Record runs a second story with the new official information.

July 7, 1947
Marcel filled his vehicle with more wreckage. and at around 1-2 a.m. he showed his wife and son the strange material he had found. His son, Jesse Jr., later recalled that there were pink,purple, lavender symbols along the centre sections of some of the small metallic "I" beams in the debris.

July 8, 1947
Information about a UFO crashing is put on the AP wire.The only newspapers that carried the initial flying saucer version of the story were evening papers from the Midwest to the West, including the Chicago Daily News, the Los Angeles Herald Express, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Roswell Daily Record. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune were morning

1970
Jesse Marcel comes out to claim that the weather balloon announcement had been a cover-up, and that the original UFO story was the real facts of the case.

2004 - 2007
Jesse Marcel Jr. writes a book detailing

The X Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell REAL REALITY RADIO www.xzoneradiotv.com

65 Years After Alleged Roswell Incident

On 65th anniversary of Roswell UFO crash, questions remain
Fox News
Like Fox Mulder, some people still want to believe. On July 8, 1947, a crash in Roswell, N.M., was the spark that started UFO fever burning in the U.S. And for some, that passion is just as intense today as when they first learned that a crash in the desert had been labeled a UFO -- and quickly re-labeled a weather balloon by government officials. "It was not a damn weather balloon -- it was what it was billed when people first reported it," Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran, told the Huffington Post. His comments came on July 8, 2012 -- 65 years after the Roswell Daily Record newspaper ran a front page article claiming RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region. "It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don't doubt for a second that the use of the word 'remains' and 'cadavers' was exactly what people were talking about." Brandon claims to have seen photographs and written material in a special section of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., called the Historical Intelligence Collection that conclusively proved to his mind that the crash was alien. Brandon refused to explain what he had seen, however, and with the government classification, his persistent belief was understandable. Hard facts have been hard to come by; many of the documents are still officially redacted, such as the July 8 teletype from the FBI Dallas field office advising that the flying saucer was officially just a weather balloon. Others see the event differently, notably Annie Jacobsen, whose 2011 book Area 51: An Uncensored History of Americas Top Secret Military Base offers a very different view of events. Jacobsen, a contributing editor and investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times Magazine, interviewed dozens of former Area 51 employees in 2008 and 2009 -- a total of 74 scientist, pilots and engineers -- shortly after the CIA declassified much of the work they had done, including countless pages of redacted memos and declassified reports. They revealed what really went on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear reactions to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the war on terror. And that book explained that test flights of the U-2 spy plane, built at the mysterious Area 51 test site, were often confused for UFOs -- fueling the stories surrounding the facility. As soon as the U-2s started flying out of Area 51, reports of UFO sightings by commercial airline pilots and air traffic controllers began to inundate CIA headquarters, Jacobsens book explained. Her book also offers a bizarre explanation for the 1947 event: unspeakable German experiments during World War II led to a handful of children being used as pilots, whose distorted bodies resembled aliens. Believe it or not, but despite decades of analysis and theories, many simply refuse to believe the official Air Force explanation, issued in 1994, that the event at Roswell was simply a weather balloon. "Aliens observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high-altitude balloons for scientific research, explained a report from the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. Claims of alien bodies at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital were most likely a combination of two separate incidents: a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured. Case closed, the report concluded. Area 51 is still officially a military secret, unmentioned by name, Jacobsen notes. [] elephants kicking balls into nets or forced to do handstands; chimpanzees dressed up and paraded on TV. In many cases the dignity of the animals is being completely ignored, and theyre being forced to do things that are totally unnatural to them and in some cases are causing them to suffer. Can it really harm the animals? Sure, its a bit undignified, but animal prognostication is just a bit of fun, right? Not so, said Benazir Suraiya, of PETA India. These intelligent, sensitive animals are not props or toys to be used for entertainment, she told the Wall Street Journal, adding that zoos and others who make animals perform tricks in desperate bids to bring business through the door are causing the animal more confusion and stress than necessary. For example, Big Huat, an arowana fish from Singapore, suffered a bad case of nerves during his meet the press moment when he was frightened by the camera flashes. Its to promote conservation, not make money Paul the psychic celephods fame brought thousands of visitors to a small aquarium in Oberhausen, increasing awareness of the octopus and other sea creatures. Prasertsak Boontrakulpuntawee, chief of the Chiang Mai Zoos panda research project, told the Wall Street Journal, that these kinds of publicity events are meant to promote conservation and draw attention to the plight of these animals. And Paul seemed to survive his brush with fame despite earning himself the opprobrium of none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran though he later died of natural causes (we believe). Whos making predictions? Emma the pig from Freiburg, who accurately predicted Germanys semifinal loss to Italy, has so far had the best record Ferret and Mormel, otters from a zoo in Aue, Germany, who have been spotty in their accuracy Traudl, a goat who has landed a job at a Bavarian radio station Tik the seal from Bangkok Citta the elephant in Poland Funtik the pig, in Ukraine []

Pet prognosticators out of control, have animal rights groups worried

The Periscope Post After Paul the Octopus shot to fame in 2010 with his accurate World Cup predictions, animal owners the world over are trying to recreate his psychic magic and animal rights groups are angry. The background Two years ago, Paul the psychic octopus accurately predicted the results of Germanys eight World Cup matches and now, animal owners across the globe are trying to recreate the phenomenon with their own pets around Euro 2012, much to the consternation of animal welfare groups. Thankfully for the German would-be pet psychics, Germany lost to Italy 1-2 Thursday night, likely putting an end to the mania there, and the Euro 2012 is due to wrap up on July 1. But in the meantime, is it cruel to use your hamster to predict the outcome of a sporting event? Pet prophesy is out of control Elephants to alpacas, pythons to pigs are being forced to predict the results of the Euro 2012 football championships currently underway in Kiev. Lin Ping the panda, at the Chiang Mai Zoo in Thailand, mauls the flags of countries she predicts will win the match; Ado the python was asked to choose between two rats, one representing Germany and the other Denmark, by an internet radio station in its bid to harness his innate animal psychic powers. Reported The Guardian, animal rights groups worry that the animals are being forced to do things unnatural to them just so their owners, or the TV or radio stations promoting them, can earn a bit of publicity. Marius Tnte of Germanys Deutscher Tierschutzbund told the paper, Theres hardly an animal thats not being used as a prophet. From pigs and parrots to hamsters to dogs, everyones at it. Weve got

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THE X ZONE RADIO SHOW WITH ROB McCONNELL Real Radio....with a Real Broadcaster....Dealing with Real Issues in a Very Real, Logical, No-Bull Way Visit www.xzoneradiotv.com Listen Monday - Friday from 10 pm - 2 am Eastern on The TalkStar Radio Network - www.talkstarradio.com

Ridiculous New UFO Poll Reveals Nothing Important

UnderWire
The National Geographic Channel has released the results of a poll it took to, presumably, gauge the medias willingness to report on ridiculous polls. For instance, the poll says 80 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. government is harboring secret information about UFOs. This seems shocking until you realize two things: UFO stands for unidentified flying object. A response like we are not going to comment on that flying object you cant identify, not even to tell you we have no damn idea what youre blithering about counts as harboring secret information. So, yes, the U.S. government is not going to tell you whether that airborne thing you saw near a military base was an alien, a spy plane, a plain old regular plane, a bird, a meteor or a bird getting hit by a meteor. Whee. The other questions in National Geographics UFO poll are also very odd, giving the overall impression that the survey was designed by junior-high-schoolers passing notes during detention. Im fairly certain the first draft of the poll included the question, Would you french Janey Magrand? BE HONEST! Nonetheless, as a journalist of some poorly defined variety, I feel like the public deserves to know my opinion on the type of vastly important questions raised by a channel for people who think the Discovery Channel is for eggheads.

prepared and psychologically manipulative Hulk-handler. Which is to say, Batman. Assuming Superman is excluded because he actually is a space alien, my second choice is Katniss Everdeen, and my third choice is Finn and Jake.

What would you do if a UFO landed in your backyard?

The most popular answer is befriend them, which is going to be tough to do if they find out youre willing to unleash a deeply angry, incomprehensibly strong gammairradiated monster on them at the first opportunity. A full 13 percent chose lock the door, which demonstrates a troubling lack of critical thinking skills. Do they think other planets dont have locksmith schools? Or bricks? Im imagining a group of heavily armed Klingons standing around someones front porch saying, Well, we knocked, and then Kftargh rang the bell like 20 times. Im stumped. My answer: Tweet like Ive never tweeted before.

science, and the REAL out-of-this-world quirky news! Dave has years of experience speaking on radio about one of his great passions astronomy! He has a talent for making astronomy a "not to be missed" topic, and now it's a weekly part of the ABC Riverina breakfast. He tries to visit the region as often as he can through his Astronomy Outreach program. Anne and Dave are great mates, and this comes through in the warm and witty conversations they have each Monday. []

Fraud Psychic Paula Lee Arrested On Theft Charges and Tax Evasion. Over $300,000 Stolen From Former Clients
The Daily Record
A psychic who was sued by a former client who said she was bilked out of jewelry and $150,000 has been charged in Morris County with stealing $324,650 from five people and failing to pay income taxes for five years. Defendant Paula Lee, also known as Pauline Lee, was held Tuesday in lieu of $75,000 bail in the Morris County Jail on charges of stealing $324,650 from five people between 2004 and 2010. Lee, now 36 and living in Hewlett, N.Y., got the victims to give her money to invest in a church but claimed the funds would be returned to them, according to complaints signed by Morris County Prosecutors Office Detective Barry Bittenmaster. Lee for years operated a psychic, or fortune-telling shop, in Randolph but moved in 2010, about the time that one of the victims in the criminal case sued her for fraud. The criminal complaints allege that Lee, between 2004 and 2010, stole amounts that ranged between $3,600 and $149,550 from victims in Randolph and Denville, with the promise the money would be placed in a church. The complaints also charge Lee with failing to pay income taxes between from 2007 to 2011. Karen Brown, the person claiming the greatest theft from Lee, sued in state Superior Court, Morristown, in 2010, alleging that Lee exploited her depression and made her believe she would die without her assistance. Brown had seen her sign for psychic services in Randolph and went to her for help coping with her marriage and depression, the suit said. Lee used her psychic powers to convince Brown she was under a curse and dark forces were obstructing her efforts to find happiness, the lawsuit alleged. Lee also convinced Brown to give her money that she promised to return and borrowed her credit card to buy an $11,000 ring and a miniature scale model of a church that cost $12,000. [] Listen to The X Zone Radio Show Archives at www.xzonepodcast.com

Do you believe in UFOs?

No. A UFO is an unidentified flying object. If you dont know what a given flying object is, then you have identified that object as a UFO, and thus it is no longer unidentified. But, OK, wait, hold on. If its not a UFO, then you dont know what it is, so its an unidentified flying object, so its a UFO. But then youve identified it, so it cant be, so it isnt, so it has to be, so it is, so its not. Dammit, wheres Batman when you need him? []

Who would be better to deal with space aliens, Obama or Romney?

At first glance, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney would be the best choice for this, given that he is a member of a religion that actually has hymns about extraterrestrial planets and how awesome they are. But in the end, Romneys enthusiasm would either annoy the hell out of the aliens, or make him give away the farm and the planet upon which the farm is located. President Barack Obama, on the other hand, could deliver one hell of a dont destroy us, there is good in humanity if you can look past the wars and hatred and read a Dickinson poem or something speech.

Spaced Out! Meteorite hoax

www.abc.net.au

Who would you enlist to battle an alien invasion: the Hulk, Batman or SpiderMan?
First off, the answer is Batman. The answer is always Batman. If the Hulk is really the best choice, as 21 percent of Americans seem to think, then Batman will realize that and fetch the Hulk. The problem with the Hulk is that he is motivated mostly by resentment, anger and whim, so youd need a very intelligent, well-

A whopping big meteorite landed on a London cab...or did it! Plus a look at World UFO Day and what lies beneath on Saturn's moon Titan. Astronomer Dave Reneke's a selfconfessed space-aholic and has more than 40 years' experience as an amateur astronomer and lecturer. And he rubs shoulders with some of the world's most prestigious space scientists and astronomy institutions. Each Monday at 6.20am on ABC Riverina Breakfast, Dave talks with Anne Delaney (a fellow space fanatic) about the latest astronomy news, explorations of planets and moons happening at the moment, great space

If You Ever Need Me

Im totally amazed at the beauty and quality of the writing...

Its like Ulysses, only easier to read... Every sentence counts and the author has an excellent recall of details. The flow of the thought, the depth, the humor, the vignettes are entertaining; the book is a page-turner.
MERLA ZELLERBACH, AUTHOR OF LOVE TO DIE FOR

Each memory from Rosens life comes alive in these pages.

We smell the smells, walk the ground, experience the emotions. We follow the logic that lies behind each decision made, and feel the pain of the hard decisions.
BONNIE CEHOVET EDITOR OF Soul Chronicle

Origin of the Flying Saucer Myth

The Surprising Origin of the Flying Saucer Myth
by Natalie Wolchover
On June 24, 1947, an amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying a small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he saw something extraordinarily strange. Directly to his left, about 20 to 25 miles north of him and at the same altitude, a chain of nine objects shot across the sky, glinting in the sun as they traveled. By comparing their size to that of a distant airplane, Arnold gauged the objects to be about 45 to 50 feet wide. They flew between two mountains spaced 50 miles apart in just 1 minute, 42 seconds, he observed, implying an astonishing speed of 1,700 miles per hour, or three times faster than any manned aircraft of the era. However, as if controlled, the flying objects seemed to dip and swerve around obstacles in the terrain. When the objects faded into the distance, Arnold flew to Yakima, Wash., landed and immediately told the airport staff of the unidentified flying objects he had spotted. The next day, he was interviewed by reporters, and the story spread like wildfire across the nation. "At that time there was still some thought that Mars or perhaps Venus might have a habitable surface ," Robert Sheaffer, an author of UFO books (and a skeptic), told Life's Little Mysteries. "People thought these UFOs were Martians who had come to keep an eye on us now that we had nuclear weapons." As time would prove, this was but the first of many outlandish theories behind visits of an extraterrestrial nature. The era of UFO sightings had begun. Reporting error Arnold's sighting was "such a sensation that it made front page news across the nation," UFOlogist and author Martin Kottmeyer wrote in an article ("The Saucer Error," REALL News, 1993). "Soon everyone was looking for these new aircraft which according to the papers were saucer-like in shape," Kottmeyer continued. "Within weeks hundreds of reports of these flying saucers were made across the nation. While people presumably thought they were seeing the same things that Kenneth Arnold saw, there was a major irony that nobody at the time realized. Kenneth Arnold hadn't reported seeing flying saucers." In fact, Arnold had told the press that the objects had flown erratically, "like a saucer if you skip it across the water." They were thin and flat when viewed on edge, he said, but crescentshaped when viewed from the top down as they turned. Nonetheless, a reporter named Bill Bequette of the United Press interpreted Arnold's statement to mean that the objects he saw were round discs. According to Benjamin Radford, UFO expert and deputy editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, "It was one of the most significant reporter misquotes in history." "The phrase 'flying saucers' provided the mold which shaped the UFO myth at its created the internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The legend has been used to explain why the US should control the internet domain system and not some international world body. The legend was recently spouted by Barack Obama who used it as proof that the government really was important to the development of technology. He said that the internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the internet so that all companies could make money off it. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, some in the US have conceded that it was a lot more complex than that. By the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network. While the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network did work in this direction, it was not about maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to technologists in 2004 saying that what Arpanet had was not an internet. An internet is a connection between two or more computer networks and that was nothing like Arpanet. Taylor said that the full credit should go to Xerox PARC labs, where he worked in the 1970s. It was there that Ethernet was developed to connected different computer networks for the first time. Xerox PARC researchers realized that waiting for the government to connect networks was like waiting for Godot because ARPA was too slow and bureaucratic. Xerox, having invented the internet, missed a major trick. It was only interested in selling photocopiers so its interest in Ethernet was only important because it meant a printer could be shared. It was Ethernet technology which connected networks together. The real internet came along when Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee created hyperlinks. []

beginning," Kottmeyer wrote. UFOs took the form of flying saucers, he noted, in artist's renderings, hoax photos, sci-fi films, TV shows and even the vast majority of alien abduction and sighting reports for the rest of modern history, up until the present day. "Bequette's error may not prove to be the ultimate refutation of the extraterrestrial theory for everyone. But it does leave their advocates in one helluva paradox: Why would extraterrestrials redesign their craft to conform to Bequette's mistake?" Kottmeyer wrote. [Read: Could Extraterrestrials Really Invade Earth, and How? ] For the birds Though he didn't see flying saucers, most of Arnold's contemporaries believed that he really had seen something that day. The Army report on the sighting states: "[If] Mr. Arnold could write a report of such a character and did not see the objects he was in the wrong business and should be engaged in writing Buck Rogers fiction." His account was very convincing. So if he did see something, what was it exactly? One theory holds that it was a fireball a meteor breaking up upon entry into the atmosphere. If a meteor hit the atmosphere at a shallow angle to the Earth, its pieces would approach the surface traveling almost horizontally. Furthermore, the pieces of meteor would travel in a chain like the one Arnold saw, would shine very brightly, and would travel at thousands of miles per hour. But most historians think the objects weren't from outer space at all: "It was probably pelicans flying in formation," Sheaffer said. "Probably Arnold misjudged the distance and thought they were huge objects at a great distance but they were actually much closer." After all, the boomerang shape that Arnold drew in a picture of the objects he had seen looks very much like a bird with its wings outstretched. []

HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SLAVERY IS A CRIME. If You Know Of Human Trafficking and Slavery, MODERN DAY SLAVERY REPORTING CENTER at

US realizes the Pentagon did not invent the net

TechEye.net
It seems that over the pond, the US press is finally admitting that its glorious government did not really invent the internet. For years the US has trotted out what amounts to an urban legend that the Pentagon

www.mdsrc.org
Thank You.

Top 5 Urban Legends of Central NY

Top 5 urban legends of Central New York
Syracuse.com
1. Mall of danger: An email is circulating warning women about serial rapists in Carousel Center. In the email, a woman informs a group of her female friends that the mall isnt safe because 90 percent of crimes that occur there arent reported, an example being men who know where to hide from the security cameras, then grab and rape women. The information is secondhand and allegedly its original source was a Syracuse police officer. The officer recommends not going to the mall alone after 5 p.m. including a disclaimer that the rapes happen during the day too and not parking in the garage or any lower level lots. Syracuse police Sgt. Tom Connellan, reached at a training session to familiarize police with the new expansion of the mall, denied that such things are going on. 2. Wheres Billy? Rumors have run rampant for a while about Billy Fuccillo, including that he was arrested by the FBI, and in rehab. He denies any of them are true, and told The Post-Standard this week its just people starting nonsense. When he disappeared from his usual appearances in his signature commercials the speculations began. The truth is hes been in Cape Coral, Fla., setting up a new car dealership. 3. The ghosts of CNY: Most people love a good ghost story. Central New York has several that have been passed along over the years; including the ghosts of Syracuses Landmark Theatre, Split Rock Quarry, and the 13 Curves. The ghost of the Landmark Theatre has reportedly haunted its balcony areas since her death in the 1920s. There are two versions of how Clarissa, or Clare, died. The first is that she fell to her death from the mezzanine after witnessing her husband get electrocuted and die while working on stage. The other is that she was an actress who flung herself from the balcony after she finding out she didnt get the role shed auditioned for. People who claim to have seen her say she wears a white gossamer dress and smells of lilacs. A munitions plant exploded at Split Rock Quarry on July 12, 1918, killing 50 men. Fifteen of the 50 men were never identified and were buried in a common grave. The legend is that the unidentified mens ghosts still haunt the area, glowing shades of green and yellow because of the picric acid they were exposed to while doing mining work. The legend of the ghostly bride who wanders the 13 Curves of Cedarvale Road on Onondaga Hill, has several variations. The parts that all those variations agree on are that a newly married couple crashed after veering off the seventh curve, or Dead Mans Curve, on their wedding night over 70 years ago. From there the versions differ. Some say only the bride died and the groom left the area after the accident so she wanders the area looking for him. Others say they both died. There have also been claims of her leaping towards the car to make the drivers crash when shes feeling particularly vindictive. 4. Bird Library is sinking. 5. Carousel Center is sinking. Its often said as a joke, but some people believe it to be true that Syracuse Universitys E.S. Bird Library and Carousel Center are sinking. The legend rests on the idea that the respective architects did not factor in the weight of the books, or whatever objects, inside these buildings when they designed their structures. Other universities Brown University, Northwestern University and the University of Toronto have similar versions of this legend. Nicholas is facing charges of larceny over $250 and conspiracy. is facing charges of larceny over $250 (two counts), larceny over $250 by false pretenses, larceny from a person over 65, and conspiracy. []

WE ARE STRONGER THAN WE THINK

Hingham Fraud Psychics Property Now Up For Rent

Hingham Patch

The property which once belonged to the two psychics who were arrested for allegedly scamming customers, is now up for rent on Whiting Street. The building, which was formerly known as Crystals Spiritual Reader no longer has a psychic reading sign on its property, appears completely empty, and is now available for lease. In April, police arrested Teresa Nicholas and her accomplice Tiffany Crystal Smith, for allegedly scamming a 69-year-old Pembroke woman out of more than $7,000 during a psychic reading at the Whiting Street property. Since then more victims have come forward to police. Police say Smith, who goes by the psychic name, Sofie told the woman there was a curse on her daughter and if she didnt pay her $16,000, Smith claimed the daughter would commit suicide. According to a police report, while giving the psychic reading, Smith dropped a bag and red liquid spilled out and said it represented her daughters blood. While pleading the Pembroke woman to pay her, Smith said, Isnt your daughter worth more than $16,000?, the police report said. The Pembroke woman was scammed into giving Smith an antique opal ring worth $500 and two checks totaling $7,385. Police say Smith told the woman to sell personal items, borrow the money from relatives, or bring a credit card to come up with the additional $9,000.

Once again Ted Unarce creates a compendium of global insight about the current conflicts and conditions of life on Earth. Weaving issues on an international and local scale, involving rich and poor, the powerful and powerless - the entire glut of humanity Unarce poses the challenge of a united understanding that we are all endangered in the 21st century and that only a corrective action by all of us can turn it around.

WE ARE STRONGER THAN WE THINK is NOW available at

AMAZON.COM

Top 5 Urban Legends in Sci-Fi

Top Five Urban Legends In Sci-fi
Jordan Farley

3. The Hook Man

The Legend: A young couple drive up to lovers lane in their car for a bit of hanky panky. They turn on the radio, but the tunes are interrupted for a breaking news report a man has escaped the insane asylum and been spotted with a hook in his hand. The girl panics and asks to be taken home. When the pair arrive at their destination they discover the hook hanging off the door handle On Screen: Although it doesnt cover the story exactly (variations on lovers lane have been used endlessly) Candyman is the best example of a hook hand appearing on film. And he puts it to good use, filleting dozens of victims typically starting with the guts. Candyman himself is an amalgamation of several urban legends (one of which well touch on later). The hook also appears in I Know What You Did Last Summer and of course Captain Hook also has a notorious pointy appendage.

1. Bloody Mary
The Legend: Say Bloody Marys name three times in the mirror and she will appear to murder you on the spot, or curse you for the rest of your life. Peer pressure has a lot to answer for. The name refers to Queen Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary who suffered a number of miscarriages and false pregnancies during her life. The fiction: The Supernatural episode Bloody Mary is a straight retelling of this urban legend, but with a Ringu twist. Bloody Mary can not only climb out of any reflective surface but has nasty greasy hair, just like Sadako! She also makes people bleed from their eyes. Nasty. Theres also a (rubbish) 2006 horror film called Bloody Mary; Candyman plays on a variation of the Bloody Mary legend, with Tony Todds hooked horror appearing behind his foolish victims; and in South Park its possible to summon Biggie Smalls by saying his name three times in the mirror, but watch out or youll get a cap in yo ass. []

5. Killer In The Back Seat

The Legend: It begins with a woman driving on her own at night. Suddenly another vehicle appears behind her and starts flashing its beams and ramming her. When the woman finally makes it away from the apparent maniac and comes to a stop, she realizes the person in the other vehicle was trying to warn her about the actual maniac on the back seat of her car, but by then its too late On Screen: The character hiding on the back seat has been used countless times for everything from cheap scares to quick laughs. Non-SF horror Urban Legend is the best example, with the pre-credit sequence a retelling of this legend, but it also features in 1998 Millennium episode The Pest House where Frank chases a doctor from a mental hospital after one of the patients escapes.

UFO Central? Uri Geller Says 'Yes!'

celebs.gather.com Uri Geller, the famous Israeli psychic who bought a remote island in Scotland because of a "connection" to the Egyptian pyramids, now says it's really a hotbed of UFO activity on Earth. Geller, who bought the uninhabited Lamb Island in Scotland's Firth of Forth chain three years ago, is most famous for his astonishing mental abilities, including bending metal objects, like spoons, with just the power of his mind. The 65-year-old celebrity psychic is on a different mission now. Geller announced he's hoping that cameras set up to record exotic wildlife by the Scottish Seabird Centre on Lamb Island can also be used to catch images of the UFO activity other nearby residents say happens regularly over its skies. "Locals have told me they have seen strange objects moving above it. I can't believe it would be an aircraft or a balloon, and they have assured me it is not either of those," says Geller. Considering his track record of displaying either true psychic ability or a genius for self-promotion, chasing unidentified flying objects may be a brilliant career move. "I know some people don't believe in UFOs, but there's many people who don't believe in my mental powers either." []

2. The Vengeful Spirit

The Legend: Vengeful spirits are a huge part of Japanese urban legend. Theres the Red Cape a spirit that haunts bathrooms; the slitmouthed woman who asks her victims Am I beautiful? and Teke Teke a young woman who fell on a railway line only to be cut in half As a rule of thumb, if you die in Japan youre probably coming back all evil and murderous. On Screen: Ringu, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse and many more J-Horrors are full of examples. Ringu is the high point (or The Ring for subtitle-phobes). Sadako is a vengeful spirit who spreads her curse via a videotape. Watch it and seven days later shell come crawling out the TV to scare you to death, quite literally. Many believe Sadako is based on an actual urban legend, but its become something of a chicken and egg scenario the book Ringu is adapted from is allegedly based on a real urban legend, but who really knows? And of course Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir has its own vengeful spirit to scare you silly.

4. Kidney Bathtub
The Legend: A man, typically a tourist or businessman, goes for a drink in a hotel bar and meets a mysterious, beautiful woman. Its too good to be true, of course, and the man is drugged, waking up in the morning minus a kidney and in a bathtub of ice. The organ gets sold to the highest bidder on the black market. Grim. On Screen: In Crank 2 Chev Chelios has his heart removed and replaced with a battery that requires constant juice, against his will. Its not SF, but Park Chan Wooks brilliant Sympathy For Mr Vengeance also features a group of organ thieves, while Minority Report captures the sense of waking up in a bathtub of ice in a grotty hotel after amateur surgery perfectly. At least thats what we imagine its like. Hang on, where did that scar come from?

The X Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell www.xzoneradiotv.com/www.xzonepodcast.com

The Feasts Of Israel

THE FEASTS OF ISRAEL

How They Are Fulfilled Within the Church This book is a synopsis of the Hebrew Sabbath and the seven major Feasts of Israel - Passover, the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, the Feast of First Fruits, Shavuot (Pentecost), Rosh Hashanah (Feast of Trumpets), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles). Do they have relevancy to the Christian Church? This book will help Christians, and others, expand and grow in both their faith and in the knowledge of the faith of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, Gods Only begotten Son.

About the Author . . .

Andrea C. Paterson, Th. D., is a seventy-five-year-old widow. Having established outreaches in several long-term care facilities she see continued growth in those to whom she ministers. She spends her life in service to others , having a heart for both home and foreign missions. She is the author of Three Monotheistic Faiths - An Analysis and Brief History.

Jim Chapman - Come Back To Life

Come Back To Life SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BE THE NEXT BOOK YOU READ
For Everyone Who Has A Fear Of Dying... Suffers From Depression As A Result... Wonders If There Can Be Life After Death... Has Had A Personal Near Death Experience... Has Lost A Loved One And Wonders Where They've Gone... "COME BACK TO LIFE" Is A Must-Read Its the inspiring story of a seasoned media veteran who unexpectedly found himself struck down by a major heart attack in the prime of life and died in the hospital ER. It is told in an honest, straightforward manner by a formerly cynical journalist who had no expectation of anything after death but endless darkness, and who was amazed to discover how wrong he had been. It brings the phenomenon of Near Death Experience to vivid life for every reader. Dont Be Afraid Dont Waste Your Life Worrying Dont Let Fear of Death Steal The Joy Of Being Alive Read COME BACK TO LIFE and you will Learn What It's Like To Die, Then Be Brought Back To Life Learn How Dying Can Teach You How To Live Better Learn Why Dying Is Nothing To Fear "The Great Tragedy of Life Is Not Dying: It's Letting A Needless Fear Of Death Rob You Of The Joy Of Living."

Order Your Own Copy of Come Back To Life TODAY! eBook available at: www.barnesandnoble.com and www.chapters.indigo.ca Printed books available at:www.jimchapman.ca

Psychic Fraud Comes Clean

Psychic Fraud Comes Clean
Ed Brayton
Mark Edward, a former psychic and now a member of the editorial board of Skeptic and a big supporter of the work of James Randi, has a new book out called Psychic Blues, in which he argues that the vast majority of psychics are con artists (the rest may actually believe they have an ability that they do not, in fact, have). And he relates his own experiences and how he got in on the scam. Alternet has a chapter from that book. I had honed my magic chops and built my profile early on while working at a members-only magic club on Lido Isle called Magic Island. This was the OC version of Hollywoods Magic Castle. In its early years, this elegant Egyptian-style club was a recognized jumping-off point for OC millionaires and their mistresses. Hundreddollar tips were easily had for a mediocre card trick. It was here, in the splendor of Magic Islands main bar and lounge, that I first became aware of the appeal of tarot cards and palm readings. I was completely dazzled watching my friend Jules Lenier receive five to six times what I was earning as a magician (in cash, no less) by cannily chatting up the very richest of the rich. Luckily for me, Jules was happy to share his secrets. Jules has said I have him to blame for much of my slightly depraved and duplicitous psychic background. But it took years before I even began to catch up to the level of charm Jules could exude and the profits he could make. Both grew slowly for me, and part of this growth came from the Light Path Foundation, a place that was just about as far away from a dark, seductive bar scene as one could get. One particularly slow Sunday afternoon in 1991 I was working a small psychic fair in a hastily converted industrial mall in Fullerton, California, with my friend from the KYAK days, Peter. Psychic fairs were like small farmersmarket arrangements that rented halls or rooms at hotels and attracted a decent amount of interest from the local neighborhoods. It was hit or miss waiting for the bookings to come through. Peter and I were not doing well, psychically or financially. So Peter suggested that I contact his friend Betsy, who was the general manager at Light Path. Many psychic veterans, the walking wounded from either the Psychic Friends Network or the KYAK years, were gathering at various psychic fairs and venues in and around Los Angeles during the 1990s, and the biggest and busiest of their psychic supermarkets was the Light Path. Peter told me that people like Sylvia Browne and Kenny Kingstontwo luminaries in the bigtime psychic businesswere regulars at Light Path and that the foundations reputation was top of the line, as far as working the masses went. Sadly, Jules has since passed on to that magic lounge in the sky and is no doubt flipping over tarot cards and gently pulling on his elegant cigarette holder there now. I called Betsy, dropped Petes name, and was greeted by a giddy-sounding woman with the happiest of voices. I liked her immediately. Hey, any friend of Pete is a friend of mine! Great to hear from you! We have psychics working every day, but our big psychic fairs are on Saturdays. We have a big one coming up next weekend. Why dont you come on down and we can talk? Sounds like a plan. If its okay for me to ask, how many psychics do you have working when you do a big fair? Usually between twenty and thirty readers work the floor at one time. That includes astrologers, tarot readers, runestone readers, reflexologists, healersyou name it, we have it. We also have a huge marketplace where vendors sell books, incense, crystalsall that kind of stuff. Wow, it sounds like a busy day. I hope youll have room for one more psychic. That shouldnt be a problem. The main church chapel has all the pews removed and holds a lot of people. What do you do? Mostly tarot and palm readings right now, but I have also worked with ghost-hunting and mediumship over the years. I was hedging my bets here. The more skills a psychic can offer and more versatile he or she can be, the betterespecially when dealing with someone who might like to turn a profit on those skills. If youre a medium, that opens up a whole lot of other possibilities. Are you clairaudient or clairsentient? Eh, well . . . I hear em and see em both, I guess. Its hard to describe. It comes to me in a lot of ways. It doesnt always happen in the same way twice in a row. It depends on the situation. Usually, its pictures that come to me. They make more sense later. I totally understand. I think we all do. [] destroys it on its way to Earth to wreck havoc. While it would be good to have Optimus Prime protecting Earth and teaching us the benign aspects of the Transformers' culture, the amount of lives lost due to the Decepticon attacks wouldn't be worth it. 2. H. G. Wells' Martian invaders -- In The War of the Worlds Martians come to Earth looking to wipe humanity off the planet. This was one of the first stories to posit Martians as a violent and evil people, and sadly that stereotype has stuck. 3. Tharks and Therns -- The Mars that John Carter visits in Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, and in the recent Disney movie based on them, is full of alien races battling one another for control of the planet a battle that we should not get involved in. 4. Marvin the Martian -- Yes he's cute, but he has violent tendencies, so it would be best to leave him, and his lasers, alone. 5. The Mars Attacks Martians -- Less cute than Marvin, more diabolical than H. G. Wells' invaders, equally bad for the human race. 6. Dr. Manhattan's Mars hideout -Should Curiosity stumble upon the home of this demigod then New York may be on a collisioncourse for destruction as scripted in Alan Moore' Watchmen. Needless to say, this would be bad. 7. Jimmy Hoffa's body -- After years of wondering whatever happened to Hoffa, it would be rather unsatisfying to find out that he ended up on Mars. This also applies to Elvis, D. B. Cooper, and everyone's left sock. 8. Kristen Bell -- If the woman who plated Veronica Mars is there, it means that someone has beaten NASA to getting humans on the Red Planet, which would be a shame after the success of the Curiosity landing. 9. Any signs of the new Total Recall movie -- Not many people were asking for a remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name so let's hope the new version doesn't leave this planet. 10. Santa Claus - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has the dubious distinction of being the only film listed by Wikipedia as both an example of Mars in Fiction and one of the Worst Films Ever Made. If Mars were to have one example of Earthly culture, it shouldn't be this. 11. The Mars Volta -- While these freakout rockers might make for a good concert to attend, if the planet Mars is anything like their video for L'Via L'Viaquez we would be better off staying away. 12. David Bowie -- He may have written about "Life on Mars," but an entire planet of Thin White Dukes? We'd be better off taking our chances with the Tharks. []

12 things NASA's Curiosity rover hopefully won't find on Mars

Fox 6 WBRC / Don Meade
NASA has landed its Curiosity rover on Mars to document and study the Red Planet. Photos and tweets are already coming to Earth as the rover studies Mars looking for signs of any life that may have once lived there. If we're lucky dry river beds and rocks holding traces of water will be all Curiosity finds. Over the past hundred years many writers, artists and directors have thought about what life on Mars might be like, and what any native life forms might be like. More often than not, these fictional Martians have been less than friendly to us Earthlings. With this tradition of malignant Martians in mind, here is a list of 12 things that Curiosity will hopefully not find on Mars: 1. Decepticons -- In Michael Bay's Transformers movies, NASA sends a rover to Mars that "disappears" due to a "malfunction." That "malfunction" turns out to be a giant robot from outer space that finds the rover and

RENTED SILENCE by LUCIA MANN

Change Your Life!

www.rentedsilence.com www.luciamann.com

Elizabeth Joyce - New Visions

Ascension Accessing the Fifth Dimension (The Secret Truth About 2012 and Beyond) by Elizabeth Joyce
We know scientifically that there are Eleven Dimensions, (and perhaps Twelve) universe quirks and black holes within our Universe. To break this down, there are seven levels to each dimension, and the soul must pass through each and every level before crossing over to the next dimension. Sometimes the levels overlap. Think of a Solar and Lunar eclipse. The Solar eclipse begins a new stage and the Lunar eclipse completes and finalizes the last stage. The Solar eclipse always occurs before the Lunar eclipse closes up and up and finally seals the last stage. This is Natural Law. The sense and awe of our great universe never ceases to amaze and humble us, especially those involved with energetic healing. Why do the words the end of the world as we know it have to be negative? They dont! We are all on the brink of a great discovery as well as seeing the impossible become possible. Humanity has been living in the Third Dimension until the 1960s, when we began to enter the Fourth Dimension, and this is not considered a long time. We are infants with all of this energy. The planet is continuing its process of turning inside out as it strives to align with a higher vibration or with new ways of living and being within a very new vision of reality. We have a bit more than four years to prepare ourselves for the coming energy changes, which have already begun. Many of us are downloading Fourth and Fifth Dimension energies on a daily basis. Whatever existed in realities of the past, (Third Dimension energies) or within a lower vibrating dimension are becoming merely an illusion now and many of us are in fear believing that there is very little left to hold onto. In the past millennium we imagined a higher vibrating world or reality for ourselves, and this was called an illusion at that time. (An illusion about love, cooperation, spontaneous healing and helping each other within the spirit of oneness.) Now, the illusion is what is remaining in the old world, or the old three dimensional ways of living and being, the old structures, and the old systems of survival (war, money games, starvation, illness, and a fight for rulership). There is nothing left for these actions to adhere to and from now on, they will only exist within our imaginations or memories. As we progress further and further into the higher realms, we have less and less of the old world to hold onto; the world as we know it. This can create a feeling of falling down a deep hole with nothing to grasp onto and no apparent anchor. We may feel as though there is nothing surrounding us now which feels remotely right or good, or even perhaps that we are existing in a vacuum all by ourselves, like some kind of vortex of emptiness and detachment with no apparent connections to much of anything else. The vibrations are changing quickly, and with that experience we have chaos; destruction before reconstruction. God and The Divine are about to lift us up into a new world of splendor! Everyone has the ability to become transformed and carry the new frequencies within themselves. They can become natural healers, manifest their desires, and bring unconditional love to everyone they come in contact with, but eyes are blind. It is only those who choose to open their eyes and perhaps are blinded by what they see that will move along with the tides of change, and survive. I can assure you, everything is right on track with our spiritual evolutionary process. All is right where in needs to be for this phase of the amazing ascension process we have chosen to be born into, undertake, and move mankind forward. So where will you be on December 24, 2012? Right where you need to be! And not with fear, hiding or a sense of helplessness, but rather with tools for your growth as well as to reach out and help others. This focus on the December date is an illusion at best, and New Age mumbo-jumbo and spiritual hype at best. This is what is occurring now in 2009. As the Ascension process involves dying within while we are alive, we are now fully residing in a higher dimension, as many of us have completed our journey through that tunnel of death and onto the other side of this current energy phase. Many are finding themselves re-connecting with friends and loved ones and re-establishing connections. We are able to find some kind of shore or anchor to hold onto while we seemingly exist in the emptiness. The new leaders and teachers are embracing the entire planet in Oneness. From now until the latter part of 2012, many prophecies are going to be fulfilled, as the planet enters into the final three and one-half years of mans self-rule on the Earth. As these events unfold many people will increasingly become aware of the Divine Energies and desire to begin their ascension into the higher vibration levels. The key to survival as we enter into the new dimension is to rise above it, access the higher energies, and walk the planet, impervious to the events occurring, while healing others and welcoming in the Unity of All The Golden Age.

Police Warning Seniors On Fraud Schemes

Police warning seniors about fraud schemes
Halton Regional Police, Ontario
they are doing because the teller may be involved in an illegal activity. The senior is instructed to place the withdrawn cash in an envelope and meet the investigator in a nearby parking lot where the cash is turned over. If successful the investigator attempts a further request for funds to ensure the investigation is a success. On one occasion, says the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, the investigator also asked if the senior had any cash at home because the employee had been handing out counterfeit money. The senior turned over $6,000 in cash from her residence, which the investigator kept after looking at the bills serial numbers and claiming the money was counterfeit. The fraudsters often claim they are representing financial institutions. Moraghan said that in April two Burlington seniors, one male and one female, were approached for money over the phone by people claiming to represent the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank respectively. Bank-themed scams often involve a caller claiming they need help in proving a bank employee is committing fraud or that the citizen received money in their account by mistake and the bank needs to be reimbursed. Moraghan said the Burlington man was asked to give $4,800. He refused and called the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. The Burlington woman gave nothing and also called the centre. A female senior in Oakville was called by someone claiming to be from the Royal Bank. The caller said a teller made a fraudulent transaction on their account and she needed to pay back $6,200. She didnt. Police have no leads in the cases, says Moraghan. Its difficult to track these guys down, she said noting scammers often use untraceable cellphones. In some case I think the banks need to do due diligence with some peoples accounts when they see many transactions for large or unusual amounts. Our government needs to get on board and take some ownership of the problem, said Moraghan adding shes been told by Canada Post that its hands are tied because they have a duty to deliver properly-assigned mail. The Halton officer said she cant estimate the number of potential scam victims in the region because A lot of seniors dont report them to us, often out of embarrassment or because they dont realize the call or mailout was a scam attempt. They shouldnt be embarrassed (but) if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, said Moraghan. If you believe you have been a victim or contacted by a fraud artist, call Const. Moraghan at 905-634-1831, ext. 5064, or contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1888-495-8501 or visit www.antifraudcentrecentreantifraude.ca/english/home-eng.html. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is jointly managed by the RCMP, OPP and the Competition Bureau. []

Psychic donkey no match for legendary octopus

Horsetalk

Halton Regional Police is warning residents about the proliferation of mail-based and banking-themed scams that primarily target seniors. In one type of scam, a mass mailout that involves things like fictitious lotteries, psychic predictions, vitamins and costume jewelry, seniors are inundated with literature that tries to entice them to part with their money on the promise of future riches or good luck. Const. Wendy Moraghan, Halton polices Elder Services Co-ordinator, said in one recent case a Burlington senior lost $100,000 through a mass mailout scheme. The constable would not offer any identifying information about the victim only saying the person was scammed out of the large sum of money over the period of about a year. Some senior citizens are getting 60-100 pieces of (delivered) mail a day. Theyre all different but scams, said Moraghan, noting the senior who is out a lot of money was sending regular cheques of varying amounts in anticipation of the promise of future good fortune of some sort. The fraud being perpetrated against the local senior was brought to the attention of police on a tip from someone who knows the victim. Moraghan says Halton police know of three other seniors, two in Burlington and one in Oakville, who have been targeted by fraudsters recently in a banking-themed scam. While none of the trio parted with any money, believing the requests for cash from telephone solicitors to be phony, other seniors across the country have not been so fortunate. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (formerly Phone Busters) recently received more than 100 complaints with victims reportedly losing a combined $500,000. The current popular scam-du-jour, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, predominantly targets female seniors. Fraudsters sometimes use obituaries to obtain personal information about their potential victims. The fraudster contacts a senior by phone advising them they require their assistance to catch a bank employee that has been stealing money. The person is instructed to go to their bank and make a cash withdrawal, usually in $100 bills, for amounts in the $5,000 range. The person is told not to tell the bank teller what

www.xzoneradiotv.com

Remember the psychic octopus named Paul who correctly predicted the results of all seven of Germanys games at the 2010 soccer world cup? Well, Telegraphtv has stumped up with Larry the psychic donkey to provide similar startling insights into Great Britains performance at the London Olympics. Sadly, it seems Larrys career as a psychic appears to be pretty much over. Larry was asked whether Britain would win finally win gold on August 1, after four days without seeing its athletes on the top tier of the podium. Larry was presented with two containers holding feed, one marked with a yes and the other marked no. Larry opted for the no container, but proved to be well wide of the mark. Great Britain won its first gold medal of the Games that day, when rowers Helen Glover and Heather Stanning triumphed in the womens pair. Britain has since kicked on to win five golds, consigning poor Larry to the psychic scrapheap. The question was put to Larry as Britain stood on the medal table with two silvers and two bronzes. While publicity on Telegraphtv and Horsetalk may just about wrap up Larrys media exposure, the same could not be said for Paul, who gleaned headlines around the globe for his soothsaying ability. Paul, originally from Weymouth, England, lived in a tank at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany. He not only correctly predicted the results of Germanys seven games, but also nailed the outcome of the final, in which Spain beat the Netherlands. For each prediction, Paul was presented with two boxes containing food in the form of a mussel. Each box was marked on the outside with the flag of a national football team in a forthcoming match. His choice of which mussel to eat first indicated his prediction Paul the Octopus was retired after the 2010 World Cup, and died the following October. []

Psychic Brainwashed Women into Stripping

'Psychic' who brainwashed young women into stripping naked to 'help them contact the dead' is jailed for two years
www.dailymail.co.uk
A psychic was jailed today for convincing vulnerable young women to strip naked to improve their chances of contacting the dead. Karl Lang, 49, 'brainwashed' two women in their twenties who asked him to help contact their dead relatives. A court heard Lang had an 'almost hypnotic ability' to make women overcome their inhibitions and told one of his women clients to 'perform like a porn star' to help increase her 'psychic powers'. Lang was today jailed at Cardiff Crown Court for two years and banned from practising as a medium, clairvoyant, spiritualist or healer for 10 years. Judge Patrick Curran told him: 'This was repeated, systematic conduct, prolonged and plainly planned. 'It was designed to be more and more gross and it could only have been for your own sexual gratification. 'You seem to have had an almost hypnotic ability to make these women overcome their inhibitions. 'They put their trust in you and you betrayed that trust. You violated your role as a spiritual adviser and convinced them to engage in sexual activity. 'You have displayed an utter lack of remorse in that you continue to deny these offences.' Both women told Newport Crown Court in south Wales how they were left feeling embarrassed and ashamed after being tricked by Lang. Prosecutor Matthew Roberts had told the court: 'Lang told the women that by acting more and more outrageously they could get in touch with their loved ones. 'He encouraged them to send him naked photographs of themselves saying it would increase their psychic powers. 'He told them they had to be naked as the spirits are also naked.' Lang devised a 'spirit scale' with exercises designed to enhance his clients psychic powers. Mr Roberts told the court: 'He totally brainwashed them. He was a charming, charismatic spiritualist who was able to dominate his victims.' The first victim, 27, lost her father 10 years ago and was impressed after seeing Lang give a psychic reading at a friends house. Her 'explicit and intense' training involved her touching herself in front of Lang and sending him naked photographs of herself. The court heard Lang had warned the brunette not to tell anyone about his training methods because he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. would break loose. Bad things would happen. 'Thinking about it now it makes me feel sick. Im embarrassed and ashamed about what I had to do, but I was completely controlled. He mentally abused me.' The court heard after his arrest Lang rang her and said: 'Im big time in the s***, please dont hang me'. Lang told police he was 'totally shocked' when one of his women clients took her clothes off in one of his sessions. But he added that the key to spiritualism is 'letting yourself go'. He said: 'If they decide to take their clothes off, its their problem.' Lang claims he had the gift of communicating with the dead since the age of four and became a spiritualist more than 10 years ago. The court heard he has contacted the dead at hundreds of spiritual churches around Britain performing to crowds of up to 1,000 people. Lang, of Newport, South Wales, was found guilty of 12 charges of causing women to engage in sexual activity without consent between 2005 and 2009. Langs lawyer Nigel Fryer said: 'He will never again practise as a spiritualist in any way shape or form. 'These are very unusual charges. He was fully clothed throughout. He did not penetrate them at any stage.' []

Topless feminist disturbs 'psychic' pig

Fox News Latino
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) A barebreasted feminist Thursday staged a one-woman protest at a Euro 2012 fanzone in Kiev, breaching security at the pen of a "psychic" pig to complain about how soccer fans had ruined the Ukrainian capital. The woman, wearing only a pair of jeans and with an uncompromising message to the competition organizers written on her chest, got into the enclosure housing Funtik the hog in the special area set up for fans without tickets to watch matches. The protester belonged to the Femen group, who have staged previous demonstrations against prostitution, sex tourism and sexual harassment -- usually half-naked or scantily clad. Femen said later on its website that it was "outraged by this ghetto of alcohol and football in the center of Kiev" and accused the city authorities of "handing over the city to the vandalism organized by the football mafia at UEFA." An AFP photographer witnessed security guards removing the woman from the enclosure. Funtik the prognosticating porker is one of a number of apparently "psychic" animals vying to assume the mantle of Paul the Octopus, who correctly predicted the results of the German team in the last World Cup. [] The X Zone Radio Show with Rob McConnell www.xzoneradiotv.com

She said: 'The first time I stripped off my clothes he said: "Well done! Youve gone up a level in the spiritual world". 'He told me the more outrageous I behaved, the higher level I would get. It was like a reward system. 'On one occasion after obeying his sexually explicit instructions Karl congratulated me by saying: I didnt think you had it in you you really pleased the spirit world. 'He asked me to talk about my sexual fantasies during meditations. I would be naked with my eyes closed. 'He told me to imagine having sex. He said: Be as outrageous as you want, dont just have one man, have five. The other woman, 26, told the court she felt 'embarrassed and ashamed' at being tricked into taking part in nude seances in a bid to contact her dead grandfather. She said: 'To get stronger, he told me I had to do things that mankind was afraid of. 'This meant I had to get naked and perform a bit like a porn star. He said the more outrageous I performed, the stronger I would become. 'If you didnt dance to his tune, all hell

Snippets from the Trenches

ABOUT THIS BOOK : The really extraordinary thing about this book is that it tells the story of how one mother embarked on her feverish course of involvement in the AIDS community, in large part to help herself come to terms with the possibility of her son's death. But all that work really doesn't prepare her. She becomes incredibly intimate with a series of strangers, yet she and her son have more and more trouble talking about HIS illness, which is the reason she is doing all this in the first place. She becomes indispensable at the bedsides of countless other people, but when Gary is dying, she still feels helpless, disconnected and as if she'd never set foot in an AIDS hospital room. What is moving about this book is the fact that all this preparation doesn't prepare, because NOTHING can prepare her. Susan Choi, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, American Woman
Freda Wagman is one of the most sincere and caring persons that I have had the pleasure of interviewing. Freda brings with her honesty, integrity, compassion and love to all those who lives she has touched, especially her late son Gary. - Rob McConnell Host of The X Zone Radio & TV Show This book will make you shake your head, laugh, cry and ponder over what has happened during the last 20 years of the AIDS crisis. It is a story of a mother who has to come to terms not only with her son's illness but her fierce protection of his feelings. Beautifully written, you learn how fragile and random life can be. The strength that grows when you open your heart and mind helps us heal from losses life deals all of us. Revealed is a generous soul who has her prized possession taken from her and can only deal with it by giving back to others around her. - Peter Waterloo, San Francisco I was so very overwhelmed by this compelling narrative of the scourge, AIDS epidemic. I was reminded of the Bubonic Plague and what people suffered in those horrific years. What a wonderful and empathetic soul the author is and so giving to others in desperate need of love and care. The account of the saddening travails of her own son, Gary, brought me to tears. Perhaps only a mother can feel and understand what those people were (and are) going through and what looms in their futures. This is truly an important true story. We have much to learn from Ms. Wagman's wide experiences with a variety of young people who had one tragic thing in common -- a war with AIDS. - Bea and Woody, Michigan

Psychic Fleeced People, Prosecutors Say

Steven Meyerowitz Financial Fraud Law

Arrested Psychic Ms. Lee In January 2008, the Morris County, New Jersey, Prosecutors Office Fraud Unit began an investigation when a person reported seeking out the services of a psychic for advice regarding personal issues. The person allegedly obtained these services from Paul Lee at Ms. Lees home and place of business, which at that time was located in Randolph Township, New Jersey. The person allegedly provided Ms. Lee (pictured) with increasing amounts of money totaling $76,000 between June 2007 and January 2009 for services. Ms. Lee allegedly indicated that the money would be placed in an unknown location or at a church location and once the money was cleansed (through prayer), the money would be returned to the victim. In September 2010, the Morris County Prosecutors Office Fraud Unit interviewed a second person who reported going to Ms. Lee sometime in December 2004 for advice on personal issues and concerns. Between December 2004 and April 2008, this person allegedly provided Ms. Lee with increasing sums of money that totaled approximately $160,000 for cleansing purposes allegedly at Ms. Lees direction. In October 2010, the Morris County Prosecutors Office Fraud Unit interviewed a third person who allegedly provided Ms. Lee with $78,400 over a period of time in 2008. Also in October 2010, prosecutors say, a fourth person was identified who allegedly provided Ms. Lee with $3,600. In August 2011, a fifth person came forward, according to prosecutors, who allegedly provided Ms. Lee with funds totaling $13,300 between December 2010 and July 2011. Readers of the Financial Fraud Law Blog can imagine what happened next. Ms. Lee, however, apparently could not. On Wednesday, June 13, 2012, detectives from the Morris County Prosecutors Office, with the assistance of detectives from the Nassau County, New York, Police Department, arrested Ms. Lee at her place of business known as; Psychic Readings by Anna, located in Hewlett, New York, (also the residence of Ms. Lee) and transported her back

to the Nassau County Police Department. On Tuesday, June 19, 2012, Ms. Lee was transported from the Nassau County Correctional Facility to the Morris County Correctional Facility and jailed in lieu of $75,000 cash only bond (no 10 percent option) set by Superior Court Judge Minkowitz. Ms. Lee is charged with numerous counts of the following: * Theft by Deception *Theft by Failure to Make Required Disposition of Property Received *Financial Facilitation of Criminal Activity Money Laundering *Failure to Pay Taxes *Failure to File a Tax Return Morris County Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi stated: This intensive and thorough investigation has led to the arrest of Ms. Lee who is alleged to have fraudulently offered services to unsuspecting and vulnerable persons and failed to deliver the services offered and, had no intention of doing so. The actions alleged demonstrate a clear and repetitive pattern of fleecing money from numerous victims in violation of state law. The economic impact and emotional turmoil she is alleged to have caused by her illegal actions cannot be understated. []

Rolls research and published writings about psychic events focused on scientific explanations, but some of his theories went beyond mainstream science, according to online information about him. Roll died on Jan. 9, 2012. The Rhine Center is still located in Durham, but no longer is associated with Duke University. The Rhine Center is where the heart of parapsychology is today, Kruth said. This weekends events begin Friday, at Stedman Auditorium at the Duke Center for Living, 3475 Erwin Road in Durham. A wine reception begins at 6:30 p.m., followed at 7:30 p.m. with a presentation of Rolls work, which began with poltergeists and extended over 40 years, ending in brain research. Paranormal investigator Loyd Auerbach will follow with an in-depth look at Rolls research into ghosts. Also speaking will be Allison DuBois, an author and medium. Tickets are $15 for members, $20 for non-members and $10 for students. On Saturday, presentations will be made by Rolls family, friends and colleagues starting at 2 p.m. at the Alex Tanous Library at the Rhine Center, 2741 Campus Walk Ave. A 40-minute film interview with Roll follows. []

Noted parapsychologist to be remembered with events

By KEITH UPCHURCH DURHAM The late parapsychologist William G. Roll will be remembered Friday and Saturday for his life and work and the creation of his Psychical Research Foundation, which began in Durham. This is a chance for people who knew Dr. Roll and worked with him to gather to remember him, said John Kruth, executive director of the Durham-based Rhine Research Center, which studies parapsychology. The two days of events also mark the 50th year of the Psychical Research Foundation. In the 1950s, Duke University researcher J.B. Rhine invited Roll to join the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke, where Roll worked from 1957 to 1964. In 1958, Roll coined the term recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis that dealt with his investigation of objects that reportedly were moving in a home in Seaford, Long Island, in New York City. Kruth said Roll was sent to investigate reports of haunted houses throughout the United States. What Dr. Roll found is that very often, when they found these poltergeists [ghosts], they also found a young person in the house, Kruth said. And it seemed that when the young person was there, things in the house were moving around. But when the young person was gone, it stopped happening. In 1961, Roll became project director of the Psychical Research Foundation, an offshoot of Rhines lab. The connection between Duke and the foundation ended in the 1970s.

Is the End of the World Here Not likely, Says Expert Justin Deering
The end of the world is not going to happen within our lifetimes. Thats the word from Justin Deering, author of The End of the World Delusion: How Doomsayers Endanger Society. Were bombarded with end-of-theworld scares practically everywhere you look, Deering explains. You hear about it in church, on the news, in the movies. These doomsday scenarios have actually bankrupted people and destroyed their lives. A few people have gotten rich at the expense of the more gullible. Last year was a big year for end of the world talks, as Family Radios well-publicized prediction of May 21, 2011 as the day of the Rapture and subsequent day of wrath on October 21 came and went without incident. This year will be even bigger as the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, which many think will lead to something big happening. Many are spending their life savings getting ready for the end. Doomsday Preppers and Doomsday Bunkers are two shows that have come out this year, showing people spending their hard-earned cash on survival kits and underground bunkers. Theyre ready to weather out the Apocalypse. As for Deering? Hes not worried at all. The worlds not going anywhere, he says. There are always people who fall for this stuff. This survivalist mentality were seeing is Y2K all over again. "The Maya themselves didnt think 2012 was going to be a disaster, either, Deering added. []

Bolivia Bans Coke Due to Mayan Calendar

Coca-Cola ban in Bolivia due to end of Mayan calendar
Alaska Dispatch
Want an ice-cold Coca-Cola in Bolivia? Too bad. Oh, and you can blame the soon-to-beending "fourth world," as told by the Mayan calendar. Seriously. The Bolivian government has decided to ban Coca-Cola products from its borders, claiming the small South American nation will put an end to American-style capitalism when the ancient calendar sees its last day, reported RT News. Forbes reported that Bolivian Minister of External Affairs David Choquehuanca wants to boot Coke to start a new "culture of life in community based socieites." Choquehuanca promoted the consumption of local beverage Mocochinchi, a soft drink that is made from the juice of dried peaches. As Forbes pointed out, the ban is extra ironic as Bolivia is the world's number three producer of coca leaves, according to Reuters, which is reportedly used to make the worlddominating soft drink. Due to the coca leaf's rather obvious druggie implications, the Coca-Cola company prefers to neither confirm nor deny such rumors of its role in their recipe. According to NaturalNews, Coca-Cola is one of the only companies in the USA that's allowed to import the leaves, which were used as a painkiller and traditional medicine for millennia in the Andes mountains. Don't get excited, however: although there was indeed cocaine in the original CocaCola recipe, in the current incarnation, coca is used only as a flavor extract, says Good Business. The impending end of the current Mayan calendar is slated for December 21, and has prompted much international sturm und drang, though it's worth pointing out a recent archeological discovery extended the calendar considerably, as GlobalPost reported. (But everyone loves a good imminent apocalypse!) Although Bolivia's leaders are attempting to dump Coca-Cola, they appear to have no such qualms about coca leaves: in March, President Evo Morales defended Bolivians' right to chew coca leaves to Reuters, claiming growers are not merely drug traffickers. The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs declared the humble coca leaf an illegal narcotic, in the same category as such notables as heroin, opium, morphine, and cocaine. [] The X Zone Radio Show with ROB McCONNELL xzoneradiotv.com ARCHIVES xzonepodcast.com

Archaeologists Discover Oldest Maya Calendars

Skeletal remains found at site add to mystery

Night had fallen over the dense jungle surrounding the ancient city of Xultn, Guatemala, and Franco Rossi and Aviva Cormier were kneeling in a deep tunnel, brushing dirt from an ancient ceramic vessel within what could be a tomb that had been found beneath the floor of a Maya ruin. Rossi (GRS15) used a fine brush to gently remove dirt from the tombstones surface so they could eventually lift it, while Cormier (GRS16) carried the dirt out of the narrow trench. That was when Rossi noticed ita small fragment of a human skull beneath his brush. It was truly amazing, he says. Not only to uncover the ancient remains within this tomb, but to actually find what you had hoped would be there all along. In all, the excavation by a team of archaeologists led by William Saturno, a College of Arts and Sciences assistant professor of archaeology, revealed the skeletal remains of six people who researchers believe lived during the Classic period of ancient Maya civilization, between 250 and 950 A.D. More important, members of the team suspect that the remains are linked to figures depicted in a mural just a few feet away. Saturno found that mural two years ago, along with a strange and unique series of calendric calculations, in what he believes was the workplace of a Maya scribe. Those findings were published last spring in Science and National Geographic. We have this bizarre little room with notations in it, and we believe its part of a residential complex, says Saturno, director of the BU Study Abroad Guatemala Archaeology Program. Were looking at Maya scholars and scribes as they figured out their place in the universe. We can look at the history of science in the New World in a way that we couldnt before. I feel like I can get into the head of these incredible scholars and ancient society. Saturno is famous among Central American archaeologists as the lucky finder of 2 of the 10 to 15 Maya murals known to exist. In March 2010, he led a team of BU archaeologists to Xultn, one of the largest and least explored of Maya centers. The six-squaremile area is believed to have been home at one time to tens of thousands of people. Maxwell Chamberlain (CAS11, GRS12), one of

Saturnos Study Abroad students, wandered on a lunch break into a tunnel dug by looters, where he found a red line on a stucco wall, so faint he could barely make it out. It was the edge of large mural that may depict the people whose remains were found by Rossi. If you look at the figures in the mural, says Rossi, almost every one is wearing two pendantsone in their headdress, one in their necklace. The person whose remains were recently unearthed is also wearing these two ceramic pendants, and one has a hole in it like it would have been on a necklace. Thats why the find is a really big deal. We may actually have found one of the murals creators. The focus of the dig is a room roughly the size of a walk-in closet. The north wall is decorated with a mural with a seated king holding a scepter and wearing blue feathers. The west wall is dominated by three black human figures and millimeter-thick black and red glyphs. The east wall has a seated figure painted in black, but also several mysterious hieroglyphic texts. These glyphs, which are unlike any at other Maya sites, appear to represent the various calendric cycles charted by the Mayathe 260-day ceremonial calendar, the 365-day solar calendar, the 177 (or 178) lunar semester, the 584-day cycle of Venus, and the 780-day cycle of Mars. Saturno has since pioneered a way to jigger a flatbed scanner to take 8-by-11-inch pictures of the wall. On the fourth floor of the College of Arts & Sciences, his students can see things that werent visible back in Xultn. We were only able to identify some of the astronomical tables through the scan, Saturno says. Much of the paint wasnt in a condition that we could identify it. Only through examining and processing the scans, and changing the red writing to black, did we see more numbers. Saturno and Rossi are persuaded that the calculations put an end to the doomsday myththe belief that the Maya predicted the world would end in 2012. People love world ending scenarios, says Rossi, who with Cormier continues work on the human remains. After this one, theres going to be another one. Its just what people do. []

News of the Weird

Bright Ideas
Rhesus monkeys have always posed delicate problems in India, where they are both revered (by Hindu law) and despised (for damaging property and roaming the streets begging for food). In Delhi, the rhesus population has grown dramatically, aided by the Hindus who feed them, and streets and private property are increasingly fouled. However, Amar Singh's business is good. He owns 65 langurs (apes much more vicious than rhesus monkeys) and, for the equivalent of about $200 per month, periodically brings one or two by a client's house to urinate in the yard so that the rhesus monkeys will steer clear. [New York Times, 523-2012] []

Top 5 Conspiracy Theories About 2012!

BoldSky
Conspiracy theories range from being totally crazy to slightly over the top. But no one can deny that these Top rated conspiracy theories make interesting topics of discussion. The latest obsession of all conspiracy theorists is the impending doomsday or the end of the world. Love them or hate them, but you cannot ignore them 1. The Mayan Calendar: The much talked about Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. So, it is being believed that the world will come to an end on this day. Now just because ancient Mayan priests did not extend their calendar beyond 2012, we will all die? This conspiracy theory forgets to take into account an important fact; the Mayans became extinct centuries ago, so they are not too good at predicting their own doomsday! 2. Planetary Collision: According to many conspiracy theorists, the planetary alignment of the sun and all the 9 planets is going to change in 2012. This will result in indiscriminate planetary collisions that will destroy life on the Earth an all other planets. Fortunately, the astronomers from NASA see this conspiracy theory as totally baseless. First of all, there is going to be no realignment in planetary orbits for years to come. And even there was a realignment of planetary orbits why would it make the planets collide when they are so far off! 3. Giant Asteroid Theory: The only top conspiracy theory that makes any sense whatsoever is the one about a giant asteroid hitting the Earth. That is a possibility that we cannot deny scientifically but it has nothing to do with 2012. Small asteroids hit the Earth all

the time and are closely monitored by astronomers. So the chances of a giant asteroid going unnoticed and killing us in our sleep is about 100 to one outnumbered. 4. Travelling To The Centre Of The Galaxy: There is a bizarre conspiracy theory that says that the Earth will move to the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy which is a melting pot of heat. Now we are just about 30,000 light-year away from the galactic centre. So, can someone please explain how will we get there before this year ends? 5. Anti-Christ & Illuminati: Religious doomsday mongers have coined this top-notch conspiracy theory that the Anti-Christ (a devil who is an anti-thesis of Christ, the saviour) will rise and take over the world. This conspiracy theory is linked to the secret society Illuminati that holds the key to over throwing the Church's power over the world. Now, lets get real; how much power does the Church exercise on the world anyway? Moreover, the possibility of one-world-order itself is impossible. We live in a world were people speaking two dialects of the same language can't stand each other, so lets just forget about unification! []

Doomsday All Over Again? Second End Date Reference Discovered in Mayan Text
Indian Country Today
Recently a second Mayan text has been found that reveals an end date, for the Mayan calendar, but dont schedule your doomsday party just yet. This end date doesnt refer to the end of the world. This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy, Marcello Canuto, the director of Tulane University Middle

America Research Institute, said in a statement. This new evidence suggests that the 13 baktun date was an important calendrical event that would have been celebrated by the ancient Maya; however, they make no apocalyptic prophecies whatsoever regarding the date. December 21, 2012 just happens to fall at the end of the 13th baktun, which is the 144,000-day cycle the Mayan calendar was divided into. December 21 marks what the Maya would have seen as a full cycle of creation. That date has had doomsday believers in a tizzy, but up until now only one reference had been found, an inscription on a monument dating back to around 669 A.D. in Tortuguero, Mexico. The second reference to December 21, 2012 was found in the Mayan ruins of La Corona in Guatemala on a stairway block carved with hieroglyphs. LiveScience reports that the carvings commemorated a visit from Yuknoom Yichaak Kahk of Calakmul, a powerful Mayan ruler also known as Jaguar Paw, in 696 A.D. The date came up when the king tied his reign with another 13th cyclethe 13th baktun of December 21, 2012. What this text shows us is that in times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse, Canuto told LiveScience. The 22 carved stone steps this end date was found on were uncovered in 2010 near a building that had been damaged by looters. The stones have 264 hieroglyphs that chronicle the political history of La Corona, making the steps the longest known Maya text in Guatemala, reported LiveScience. Recent Mayan discoveries have been plentiful. In May, we talked about doomsday prophecies being busted when a team of archaeologists found a Mayan calendar in the Guatemalan jungle that looked 7,000 years into the future. And earlier this month scientists reported finding an impressive dam in the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, also in Guatemala.

Beyond the Super Computer

BEYOND THE SUPERCOMPUTER: SOCIAL GROUPS AS SELF-INVENTION MACHINES
by Howard Bloom
In the new evolutionary disciplines there is a debate with major implications for the way in which we view politics, citizenship, emotions, health, ideology, and even the perceptual processes that produce a consensual reality. In one sense, the scientific argument resembles that between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians who, in Gulliver's Travels, warred over whether a breakfast egg should be opened at the large or at the pointed end. Dominating the field are individual selectionists, those who believe that the emergence of all behavior must be explained by forms of self-interest which embody what author Robert Wright, in his summation of "the credo of the new paradigm," calls "head to head competition" between individual genes and often between individual animals or humans (Wright, 1985: 188). Group selectionists, on the other hand, are convinced that new evolutionary forms can emerge both from the battle for personal advantage and from the competition between social coalitions. The formulae upon which individual selectionism rests were enunciated by biologist William Hamilton in the early 1960s. Hamilton's conclusions were based on an analysis of bees and other Hymenoptera. The view that all behavior is ultimately based on self-interest had strongly taken hold. How, then, could one account for altruism? Hamilton focused on the selfless manner with which female worker bees sacrifice their reproductive rights and chastely serve their queen. His triumph was a mathematical demonstration that the workers were carrying essentially the same genes as the queen. Hence when an individual lived out her life on behalf of her monarch, she only appeared to be ignoring her own needs. The genes she carried were closely related to those in the eggs laid by her mistress. By pampering the colony's egg-layer, each worker was coddling replicas of her own internal blueprint. Altruism, asserted Hamilton, was self-interest in disguise. Hamilton's ideas and those built upon them have contributed mightily to our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms in fields from psychology, medicine, and ecology to the study of animals in the wild. But roughly twenty-five years after the Hamiltonian epiphany, examination of real world bee colonies demonstrated that Hamilton's mathematics did not correspond with fact. There was far more genetic variety in clusters of unselfish insects than the equations would allow (Queller et al., 1988; Seeley, 1995: 7). Individuals were not abjuring their interests simply to protect near-clones of their own genomic material. Apparently something else was going on. Nonetheless, concepts based on what became known as the selfish gene (Dawkins, 1976) are now dogma. Many scientists have been tempted to propose non-Hamiltonian approaches to the activities within and the competition between groups. For decades, these thinkers have been stopped by the quiet threat of exclusion from professional respectability, expulsion from career advancement, and banishment from the possibility of academic tenure. However it is becoming increasingly obvious to a small group of heretics that a new breed of evolutionary insights can emerge if one accepts the coexistence of both group and individual selection. In other words, indications are that the social and biological sciences may benefit enormously from a truce between the Blefuscudians and the Lilliputians. In my book The Lucifer Principle: a scientific expedition into the forces of history (Bloom, 1995), I've attempted to show the many ways in which we are both selfish competitors and pawns of the social group. For example, The Lucifer Principle presents evidence that individuals are biologically wired as expendable cells in a social "superorganism." The book goes on to contend that human groups follow the rules of dominance hierarchies uncovered by naturalists but normally applied primarily to individuals. The Lucifer Principle combines naturalists' observations with those of psychoendocrinologists and others to shed new light on phenomena from the bickering of local cliques to the machinations of nation-states and from the maneuvering of economic competitors to the butchery of armies. But perhaps the best way to demonstrate how far one can move if one accepts both individual and group selection is to reveal one of the many potential approaches to a postindividual selectionist sociobiology. I propose to outline five elements which turn virtually every form of social group--from a teenage gang to a multi-national culture--into a collective intelligence, a complex adaptive system whose powers of perception and invention both utilize and transcend those of the individuals within it. Next I'll show how social groups at every level on the evolutionary ladder operate as group brains. Finally, I'll present examples to suggest how the five principles can throw individual passions, mass mood swings, geopolitics, fashion, fads, and health into surprising new perspective. A great deal of work has been done since 1980 on complex adaptive systems--biological and electronic learning machines. Most of this scholarship has taken mathematical form. However, it is possible to sum up a complex adaptive system's quintet of key elements entirely without equations. These elements are (1) conformity enforcers, (2) diversity generators, (3) utility sorters, (4) resource shifters, and (5) intergroup tournaments. Conformity enforcers impose sufficient similarity on group members to give the social structure coherence, relative permanence, and the ability to carry out large-scale, integrated, multi-participant projects. In humans, conformity enforcers lead, among other things, to a collective perception, a socially constructed view of reality which influences both childhood brain development and adult sensory processing, and which produces a Weltanschauung displaying many of the characteristics of a shared hallucination. Diversity generators spawn variety. Each individual represents a hypothesis in the group mind. It is vital for the group's flexibility that it have numerous fallback positions in the form of individuals sufficiently different to provide approaches which, while they may not be necessary today, could prove vital tomorrow. This can easily be seen in the operation of one of nature's most superb learning machines, the immune system. The immune system contains different antibody types, each a separate conjecture about the nature of a potential invader (Farmer et al., 1985: 188). However diversity generators take on their most intriguing dimensions among human beings. Next come the utility sorters. Utility sorters are systems which sift through individuals, favoring those whose contributions are most likely to be of value. These pitiless evaluators toss those whose presence represents excess baggage and faulty guesswork into biological, psychological, and perceptual limbo. Some utility sorters are external to the individual. But a surprising number are internal. That is, they are involuntary components of a being's physiology. Fourth are the resource shifters. Successful learning machines shunt vast amounts of assets to the individuals who show a sense of control over the current social and external environment. These same learning machines cast individuals whose endowments seem extraneous into a state of relative deprivation. Christ captured the essence of the algorithm when he observed "For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath" (Mark 4:25). And bringing up the rear are intergroup tournaments, battles which force each collective entity, each group brain, to continue churning out fresh innovations for the sake of survival. Psychoneuroimmunologists have found that we come complete at birth with a myriad of seemingly self-defeating and maladaptive physiological reactions. It is currently fashionable to suppose that selfdestructive built-ins are misplaced leftovers from our hunter-gatherer days. But there is an enormous amount of evidence that each of these biological handicaps gives the group intellect a competitive edge. In fact, there is good reason to believe that autonomic shut-down devices help produce an even more positive byproduct: the constant enrichment of the environment, the complexification of the planetary biomass. To understand how these five principles affect you and me, it may be helpful to examine the workings of a group brain in an organism normally thought to have no intelligence at all: the bacterium. Continued on Page 44

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Beyond the Super Computer

BEYOND THE SUPERCOMPUTER: SOCIAL GROUPS AS SELF-INVENTION MACHINES
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In the late 1980s, University of Tel Aviv physicist Eshel Ben-Jacob and the University of Chicago's James Shapiro were perplexed. Bacteria, which we are popularly regarded as loners, are extraordinarily social, clustering in highly structured colonies. Traditional neoDarwinism says that bacteria stumble from one innovation to another by random mutation. But a growing body of evidence has accumulated to indicate that bacterial mutations are not completely random (Kiely, 1990; Weiss, 1990; Lipkin, 1995a; Lipkin, 1995b). Seemingly every month fresh studies suggest that these mutations may, in fact, be genetic alterations "custom-tailored" to overcome the emergencies of the moment. Ben-Jacob detoured from normal physics and spent five years studying bacillus subtilis. Meanwhile Shapiro focused on such organisms as E. coli and salmonella. Unlike the traditional biologists who had preceded them, both Shapiro and Ben-Jacob applied an unconventional tool to their data: the insights they had absorbed from the mathematics of materials science. Gradually their work indicated that, rather than being a mere carrier of construction plans, the package of genes carried by each individual subtilis functions as a computer. What's more, the genetic bundle seemed to accomplish something even computers cannot achieve. Says Ben-Jacob, "the genome makes calculations and changes itself according to the outcome." Unlike a silicon chip, the genome adapts to unaccustomed problems by remodeling itself (Eshel Ben-Jacob, personal communication, 1996; Ben-Jacob, 1993; Ben-Jacob, 1997; Ben Jacob, 1998; Ben-Jacob and Dworkin, 1997; Shapiro, 1991).1 Reaching this conclusion left a puzzle. Gdel's theorem implies that one computer cannot design another computer with more sophisticated computational powers than its own. So how does the individual bacterium's central processing unit confront large-scale catastrophe, natural disaster so overwhelming that it dwarfs the bacteria's solo computational abilities? The answer, Ben-Jacob hypothesized, lay in networking--in knitting the colony's multitude of genomic personal computers into something beyond even the massively parallel distributed processor known as a supercomputer. A supercomputer is only faster than its less sophisticated cousins, but does not transcend many of the smaller machines' most basic limitations. However the "creative net" of the bacillus, unlike a machine, can recast its form to face an unfamiliar challenge. Ben-Jacob has now analyzed thousands of colonies of bacillus subtilis to find out if his creative network hypothesis is true, and if so what makes the collective informationprocessor work. His conclusion: bacilli are in constant contact, communicating through a wide variety of means, measuring their environment's limitations and opportunities, and feeding their data to each other, then finally summing the product through collaborative decision. In short, bacilli engage in many of the basic activities we associate with human beings. Here's how Ben-Jacob's work appears when filtered through the lens of a social learning machine's five principles: 1) Bacillus subtilis colonies utilize the most basic conformity enforcer--the genome, which restricts the range of forms and of operating methods among the colony's individuals. The resulting semi-uniformity makes it possible for each and every member of the community to "understand" a common collection of "languages." 2) Bacillus subtilis colonies employ a variety of diversity generators. Says BenJacob, bacterial clones (genetically identical offspring of the same mother) can assume intriguingly different variations. Which each dons depends on the chemical signals it picks up from the herd around it. These cues activate or deactivate individual genes, redrawing a bacterium's design and replacing its old operations manual (Ben-Jacob, personal communication, 1996). In the best of times, when food is plentiful, the colony clumps together for the feast. Divergent appetites and digestive abilities are vital to a gorging group's survival. The bacteria which concentrate on mining the new food source produce a poisonous by-product--bacterial excreta, the equivalent of feces and urine. Other bacteria adopt an entirely different metabolic mode. To them the excrement is caviar. By snacking heartily on toxic waste, they prevent the colony from killing itself (Ben-Jacob, personal communication, 1996). More diversity generators kick in when the colony's banquet runs out. As famine approaches, individuals send out a chemotactic signal of repulsion, a signal that says "spread out, flee, explore." This prods roughly 10,000 groups of cells to act as scouting parties, setting forth in a trek which looks to the human eye like a spreading circle of fractal lace. Meanwhile other cellular cohorts apparently set up posts in the wake of the outward advance and channel the findings of the explorers toward the center. 3) At this stage the teams of pioneers (technically called "random walkers") utilize the third principle of a complex adaptive system: the colony's utility sorters. Those exploration parties which find slim pickings have an internal device, the bacterial equivalent of what British theorist Michael Waller, writing about human beings, has called a "comparator mechanism" (Waller, 1995). This gauge determines that the outriders have chanced across parched and dangerous territory. Their mission, in short, has failed. The unfortunates send out an altruistic repellent which makes others in the group avoid them, leaving them to starve in isolation. Conversely, discoverers which encounter a cornucopia of edibles have their comparator mechanisms tweaked in the opposite direction. They disperse an attractant which makes them the star of the party. 4) Now the fourth principle of the complex adaptive system enters the petri dish: the resource shifters. Those stranded in the desert are deprived of nutrients, which their location cannot provide, of companionship, and, most important from the point of view of the group brain, of what might best be termed popularity. Meanwhile, those who find an overflowing buffet eat their fill and command the attention and protection of a gathering crowd. They are transformed into leaders, guiding the group mind. "For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath" (Mark 4:25). Should things prove truly grim, however, and even the most strenuous searchers confirm that food is nowhere within reach, another diversity generator, the most startling of them all, may rouse to meet the challenge. It is a mechanism which James Shapiro calls the "genetic engineer." Explains Ben-Jacob, "the cell carries a complete set of tools for genetic self-reconstruction: plasmids, phages, transposons, and too many others to mention,... the same tools, in fact, used in the lab today for genetic engineering." A microscopic research and development squadron goes to work recrafting its own genetic string. Which raises a question: does the genomic skunk works merely trot out prefabricated parts which have worked in the past? Or is it capable of true innovation? Explains Ben-Jacob, "We've tried exposing bacterial colonies to conditions so novel that the creatures could never have encountered them before. Tough conditions, conditions of life and death. We wanted to know how inventive the colonies could be in reworking their genetic code. For example, we took bacteria that can't move on agar but are able to roam freely in liquid. We put them on the wilderness of their worst nightmares, agar, and deprived them of food. The need to branch out in search of grazing land was a true creative challenge." By forming a modular network beyond the supercomputer, by assembling a group mind, the massed genetic engineering teams were able to solve the problem. Thanks to the synergy of the conformity enforcer, the diversity generator, the utility sorter, and the resource shifter, the colony was capable of something numerous humans never achieve--creativity. 5) In a natural environment, the fifth of a complex adaptive system's principles would presumably come into play: the intergroup tournament. Alas, Ben-Jacob has studied each colony isolated in its own petri dish, sealed off by glass walls from competing groups. But as the resources which feed the bacillus subtilis run out, imagine what might happen if a spore of another bacterial species were to drop in, a species which found the inedible plateau on which the subtilis was stranded to be more nourishing than roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The race would be on. While the bacillus subtilis reworked its genome in an effort to gain sustenance from the now (to it) barren waste, the newcomer would rush to reproduce, taking advantage of the fact that subtilis' inedible slabs are its entre du jour. Continued on Page 47 Visit Howard Bloom Online At www.howardbloom.net

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Eugene Crowley

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Ever feel like that there is more to life than what you currently know to be true or real? Upside Down World: The Loss of the Sacred Cosmos is an incisive look on the concept of self awareness, instructing readers on how to find their true identities and potential by showing through detailed research how one needs to view reality and thereby move into a state of fulfillment with life. Eugene Crowley Jr. uses the elements of philosophy, history, mythology, spiritual and scientific issues, and social elements of ancient cultures to show how Western civilization has neglected the knowledge and acts of self-realization, instead trying to act as society deems appropriate. Integrating many cultures and societies throughout time, including Native Americans, Ancient Egypt, the Greeks, and early Americans, the author references their beliefs, customs, and religions to help illustrate how other cultures and people live their lives in a more awakened state.

Crowley supports his premise by relying heavily on mythological archetypes found in Kemetan/Egyptian, Greek, and Germanic/Nordic cultures and then applying them to the context of historical events. In one intriguing example, American patriarchs are cast as Set, the ancient Kemetan (Egyptian) neter of disorder and prototype of the JudeoChristian Satan Denise Martin, PhD Assistant Professor of Pan African Studies and Humanities About The Author - Eugene Crowley, Jr Eugene Crowley Jr., was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1944. He spent thirtytwo years teaching high school English Grammar, World Literature, and Mythology in Chicago. He earned a Masters degree in General Psychology from Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is a former member of the Jungian Institute in Evanston, Illinois. He has traveled throughout the United States, Europe and South America. In his first professional attempt in writing, he extends the focus of his Masters thesis, Meaning in Life for Urban Adolescents, to adults by encouraging them to reach a level of maturity by living more harmoniously with themselves, their fellow man, and the universe. The author sees a need for an overhauling or a reinventing of Western culture with the application of the moral and wise traditions that had given the Native American Indians and ancient civilizations wholeness, order, and harmony. These cultures maintained a balance with themselves and nature. While many universities are eliminating their Classical Studies, the author sees a need in understanding the past civilizations spiritual, psychological, and holistic approach to life. These approaches gave them serenity and security in their connection with the universe. They knew their place in the Big Picture. Mr. Crowley wants to share his compassion and enthusiasm in predicting what other writers are forecasting, the dawning of a new Age of Wisdom, a Renaissance, or Enlightenment where Western man will discover his true inner nature and put it to use to serve humanity. In his compassion to help humanity by informing them of the meaning of life, Crowley encourages everyone to discover the sacredness of the Self, nature, and the universe. With these tasks completed diligently, there should be optimism for a New Enlightenment and the restoration of the sacred cosmos.

Beyond the Super Computer

BEYOND THE SUPERCOMPUTER: SOCIAL GROUPS AS SELF-INVENTION MACHINES
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As the two groups struggled to take over the petri dish, would a new innovation emerge from the contest, an innovation of the sort which enriches the fate of a species for eons? One which transforms ever more of this once entirely barren planet into food for life? Ample evidence indicates that complex adaptive systems, with their enormous competitive advantages, have progressed from kin groups through to mega-societies with little or no regard for the interests of solitary selfish genes. This is particularly apparent in largescale human societies, societies seemingly ruled by the same five principles which structure colonies of bacillus subtilis: CONFORMITY ENFORCERS. Humans are biologically programmed to "fit in". For example, an infant's brain is shaped by the culture into which it is born. Six-month olds can either distinguish or produce every sound in virtually every human language. But within a mere four months, this capacity has decreased by roughly two thirds (Werker, 1989; Werker and Desjardins, 1995; Werker and Pegg, in press). This slashing of ability, like other cultural blinkers of perceptions (Eisenberg, 1995; Segall, et al. 1996; Shi-xu, 1995, Lucy, 1992; Berridge and Robinson, 1995; Lancaster, 1968; Emde, 1984; Belsky et al. 1996; Bower, 1995; Caporael, 1995; Nisbett and Ross, 1980; Shweder and D'Andrade, 1980), is accompanied by extensive alterations in the cerebral tissue. During human development, brain cells are measured against the requirements of the physical and socio cultural environment. The 50% of neurons found useful thrive. The 50% which remain unexercised literally cease to be (Gould, 1994; Young et al. 1994; Nadis, 1993; Levine, 1988; Elbert et al. 1995; Barinaga, 1994; Pascual-Leone and Torres, 1993; Holden, 1995; Korein, 1988.). The cerebral floor plan underlying the mind is redrawn to conform to a larger social pattern. Experiments by memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus (Loftus, 1980), psychologist Solomon Asch (Asch, 1956), and numerous others have demonstrated that even among adults there is a propensity to form a shared perception of the world, a view so distinctive that it can give outsiders the impression of a mass delusion. Pressures to conform arise from the urge to belong, the fear of social ostracism, and the appeal of role models. Nearly forty years ago sociologist Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1959) demonstrated that even much of what we think of as our most willful behavior is guided by scripts drafted for us by the social organism of which we are a part. DIVERSITY GENERATORS. All cultures impose conformity. Yet all benefit from the contribution of their marginal personalities--those who do not fit the mold. Numerous tribal groups turn their cross-dressers and their insane into shamans or seers and use the quirks of their vision as a guide in times of uncertainty. Large-scale societies benefit even further from singular individuals and unorthodox subcultures. Between 361 and 206 BC, the Chinese empire gained its unity, its bureaucratic structure and its standardized writing system from the most eccentric section of the future country, Ch'in, a territory constantly nourished by the input of traders shuttling between one culture and another. The religious non-conformists of 17th and 18th century England were excluded from the country's official schools. Formulating their own educational substitute, they abandoned the traditional Latin trivium and quadrivium in favor of the newly emerging sciences. Forbidden to participate in traditional highstatus occupations, they turned their attention to such dclass new enterprises as canal building and the mining of coal. The result: the nonconformists saved Britain from possible stagnation and helped usher in the Industrial Revolution. Productive deviants frequently benefit from "field independence" and a strong "internal locus of control" (Lefcourt, 1982). All too often, one era's despised tinkerer--an isolate like Gregor Mendel--will lay the groundwork for a later generation's innovative whiz kids. Additional diversity generators include impulses toward self-assertion, individuation, and youthful rebellion, not to mention Sigmund Freud's "narcissism of minor differences"(Freud, 1989; Scherer and Ekman, 1984; Boorstin, 1953; Birenbaum and Lesieur, 1982; Stevens and Price, 1996), Eric Erikson's "pseudospeciation," and the closely related ecological phenomenon of "character displacement" (Grant, 1994; Schluter, 1994). In all of these, fundamentally similar individuals seize on petty discrepancies and magnify them until they become insurmountable barriers (Stevens and Price, 1996). Even in tribal societies, the resulting differences of opinion easily overleap genetic barriers, turning brother against brother (Johnson and Johnson, 1995; de Waal, 1989: 247f.). In the last two and a half millennia, these forces have often gone one step further and created camaraderie among those of wildly varying chromosomal background. Human diversity generators are shifted into high gear by precisely the type of signals which trigger diversity generation among bacteria signs that the environment is overcrowded, under resourced, or lacking in other critical requirements for survival. A large body of studies demonstrates how stressors ranging from a rapid rise in taxes to a dramatic increase or drop in temperature and even an intolerable noise level can break down group cohesion, increase conflict, and encourage restlessness. The result is often a group split which provokes dissenters to search for a new environment, a new world view, and/or a new modus operandi (Griffitt, 1970; Griffitt and Veitch 1971; Weber et al. 1988: 129, 341; Horney et al. 1995; Roberts, 1983: 558-562; Ferguson and Rogers 1981: 141; Dollard et al. 1957: 44; Braudel, 1981: 144f; Weber, 1968: xxiii; Russ et al. 1979). These mechanisms and their effects eerily parallel the chemotactic repulsers which drive stressed bacteria apart, turning human migrants, malcontents, and rebels into feelers who scour the technical, social, and geographic landscape in search of a new way forward for the wider group. UTILITY SORTERS. The evidence, at this point, is not looking good for the selfish gene and its promoter, the individual selectionist. Among bacteria, a built-in comparator mechanism requires each forager to let the world know whether it has succeeded or failed. If its quest has been productive, physiology drives the bacillus to broadcast the message "follow me." If its expedition has failed, it has no choice but to signal "leave me to my fate." Voluminous evidence indicates that comparator mechanisms are virtually standard equipment in all social animals, from the microbial level (Ameisen, 1996) to that of crustaceans (Lange, 1996; Barinaga, 1996; Kravitz, 1988; Adler, 1996), birds,2 and mammals. At each evolutionary level these internal and external sensors of adaptation become more varied and complex. Are humans slaves to similarly implacable biological impulses? Through a variety of means, among them a sense of control (Lefcourt, 1982: 3-18; Miller et al. 1977; Shors et al. 1989; Shavit, 1983; Davis et al. 1980; Buchsbaum et al. 1982; Sagan, 1988; Davis et al. 1979) over circumstance and the intake of social feedback (Bloom 1995: 60-70, 140-145; Kemper, 1990: 7, 54, 197; Freedman, 1979: 100f; Kroeber, 1952: 43-47; Holmes, 1979), comparator mechanisms indicate to you and me our utility to the social group. A sense of being unneeded leads to a collapse of our self esteem (Brown et al. 1986; Price, 1988; Barkow, 1989; Festinger, 1944; Aronson and Linder, 1965; Goleman, 1988; Bloom, 1995: 47-72, 140-145; Maslow, 1973; I.H. Jones et al. 1995) and a range of physiological changes which, in the natural world, would sharply increase the odds of death. Our immune system is impaired (Bower, 1986; Ader, 1983; Sapolsky, 1990; Sapolsky, 1988; Davidson, 1992; Bower, 1988); our perceptions are dulled (Miller et al. 1977; Gazzaniga, 1992: 191-193); our sexual drive diminishes (Sapolsky, 1987; Miller et al. 1977); in males, sperm count and motility both fall; our appetite shrinks or is lost (Gallagher, 1992: 12-15; Lefcourt, 1982: 10; Thomas and DeWald, 1977: 229; Seligman, 1990: 69); our social magnetism evaporates (Gilbert et al. 1994: 149-165; Bloom, 1995: 140-145); and we tend to experience a profound sense of lethargy, negativity, and hopelessness (Dabbs and Leventhal, 1966; Gilbert and Allan, 1994). A multitude of psychophysiological and psychoneuroimmunological deactivators contribute to these effects, among them "learned helplessness" and the chronic secretion of glucocorticoids and endogenous opiates. A persistent bath of glucocorticoids, for example, literally kills tissue in the hippocampus--a part of the brain vital to memory. 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Beyond the Super Computer

BEYOND THE SUPERCOMPUTER: SOCIAL GROUPS AS SELF-INVENTION MACHINES
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Comparator mechanisms in those who feel un-needed go a step further. They produce a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle signals which drive others away, thus marginalizing the victim as thoroughly as the bacteria whose quest has failed (De Vries et al. 1994: 108; Bloom, 1995: 47-49, 55-56, 60-66, 110-115, 325). By contrast, those of us who've continuously had a handle on our fate: * are blessed with chemical tonics like androgens and serotonin, which boost health, sexual appetite, and energy (Sapolsky, 1988); * experience heightened acuity and independence of perception (Triandis 1993, Hollander 1958, Kandel and Hawkins 1992, Herskovits 1965: 39, Ezzell 1992); * become socially captivating (Thibaut and Riecken, 1995; Freedman, 1979: 68; Hurwitz et al. 1953; Torrance 1954); and * send out variants of the successful bacterium's chemotactic "gather round and follow my ways," using such devices as postural cues, verbal subtleties (Erikson et al. 1978), body languages (Henley, 1977; Thayer, 1989: 22; Hurwitz et al. 1953; Strodtbeck, 1957; Freedman, 1979: 96; K.R.L. Hall, 1967: 270; McGinley et al. 1975; Mehrabian 1981), and status symbols (Sahlins, 1986; Veblen, 1934; Johnson and Earle, 1987: 219; Galbraith, 1976; Fraser, 1989: 50; Braudel, 1981: 333). In other words, the folks with the firmest grasp on the challenges facing their group become its opinion-makers. They are given the privilege of steering the collective mind. The bumblers and wrong-guessers either submit to the leadership of others, or, if the community undergoes a severe lack of resources, succumb to disease or suicide. This concept and the empirical data from which it is derived run directly counter to the tenets of individual selectionism and current neo-Darwinism. In many instances, the victims of self perceived failure damage or eliminate, not only their own evolutionary interests, but also those of their kin. For example, a business failure can result either in suicide or other patterns of behavior equally damaging to both spouse and offspring. The case of the hospitalized is even more illustrative. Studies show that depressed patients become withdrawn (Zuckerman, 1995), cranky, inarticulate, lacking in wit, and deprived of verbal flexibility (E.E. Jones and Berglas, 1978; Paloutzian and Ellison, 1982; W.H. Jones et al. 1981). Even their facial gestures and body language drive others away (Altman and Vinsel, 1977; Raven, 1983: 253, 685; Argyle, 1989: 60; Kalin, 1993; Clore and Byrne, 1974; Gotlib, 1992; Myers and Diener, 1995; Emmons, 1986; Myers, 1993; Veenhoven, 1988; Seligman, 1990: 187-198; Bull, 1986: 121; Mehrabian and Williams, 1969; Kiritz 1971). The depressed also suffer from a severe reduction of immune function. They become sitting ducks for illness. In a hospital setting, studies show that depressed patients' avoidance cues are nearly suicidal. Those in the throes of depression receive far less care than others with a more cheerful demeanor (H. Hall, 1989; Lerner, 1980; Tavris, 1982: 233f). What causes depression in humans and other vertebrates? Two factors...an isolation which signals that one is socially dispensable (Raven and Rubin, 1983: 56f; Stolzenberg et al. 1995: 85; Lynch, 1979; Lynch and McCarthy, 1967; Lynch and McCarthy, 1969; House et al. 1988; Pelletier, 1983; Sarason and Pierce, 1988; Cohen et al. 1992: 301; Durkheim, 1951: 217, 241; Martin, 1968; Phillips, 1979; Phillips and Lu, 1980); and the loss of control which indicates that one is not capable of coping--that the hypothesis represented by one's "personality" is inappropriate to current circumstance. The result: depressive humans suffer the utility sorter's most extreme negative effects and are those most likely to die. (Depressive monkeys, rats, grouse, and numerous other creatures are subject to a similar fate.) RESOURCE SHIFTERS take over where the utility sorters leave off. Those who demonstrate the ability to generate or accumulate resources are given even more. It may be yams and pigs among Polynesians, copper and blankets among the Kwakiutl (Benedict, 1934: 178; Johnson and Earle: 1987: 168f; Harris, 1978: 94-98; Harris 1977: 104-108; Sahlins 1986: 308), cattle amongst the Masai and the Xhosa (Mostert, 1992), and cash, Lamborghinis, and yachts in the West. But most humans are inordinately drawn to the material indications of success. Resources are shifted in great quantities to those like Microsoft's Bill Gates and WalMart's Sam Walton, who become the apotheosis of business success. People shower them with luxurious gifts. Hotels attempt to lure them with free rooms and restaurants with free meals. Men and women of exceptional talent take pride in becoming members of their team. And, most important, like the pay dirt striking bacteria who find themselves the center of a crowd, successful humans become hubs of influence (Johnson and Earle, 1987: 52; White, 1993; Freedman, 1979: 36; Bernays, 1928), commanders of what primatologists call the social "attention structure" (Chance, 1967; Tiger and Fox, 1971: 39f; Washburn and Hamburg 1968: 471; Fossey, 1983: 64; Altmann, 1967: 349). In short, their attitudes, thoughts, and styles set the trend for the group. Success produces the equivalent of the bacterium's chemotactic attractant; failure generates the counterpart of a chemotactic repellant (Lipkin, 1995; Zullow and Seligman, 1990; Seligman, 1990: 187-198). As the old song says, "Nobody loves you when you're down and out." THE INTERGROUP TOURNAMENT. Everything from the subtle warfare between colonies of sea anemones to the territorial machinations of wolf packs and the outright pillage inflicted by armies of ants indicates the universality of intergroup strife. The forms of competition and bloodshed between troops of monkeys or apes are nearly innumerable. And then we have those primates who have left us eloquent histories, elaborate tapestries, equestrian statues, oil-on-canvas masterpieces, and heroic friezes testifying to their battles. "It is well that war is so terrible...", said one member of this species, "or we should grow too fond of it." The name of that Homo sapien was Robert E. Lee. Beating the opposition is central even in peaceful commercial enterprise. Two decades ago the supercomputer company led by Seymour Cray seemed invincible. But Cray's last enterprise was shattered well before his death, the victim of a new technology, the microprocessor. This superchip made possible a silicon version of what bacilli long ago evolved-the massively parallel computer (Verity, 1995). As Cray Computer Corporation fell, Bill Gates' Microsoft rose. Cray had been admirably adapted to the environment of the mainframe. But Gates was a creature of a new ecology--that of the microprocessor-powered personal computer. These are small scale battles compared to those which constantly unleash their brutalities across the face of this planet. Zoology, ecology, history, and current affairs abound with examples of competing group brains using their individual members as modules, sensors, parallel distributed information processors, pawns, and experimental test components in relentless battles for supremacy. The largest of them, we call nation states. These collective intelligences have frequently reengineered their organizational blueprints as thoroughly as the bacterial colony retooling its genome. Individual selectionists have two major fallback positions to account for the otherwise difficult to explain--kin selection (the surrender of self to benefit those who carry genes like your own) and reciprocal altruism (the swapping of generous deeds). But a plethora of studies indicates that among humans, the victims of elimination are the group members with the fewest family ties or close friends (House et al. 1988; Severino, 1983; Pelletier, 1983; Jarvinen, 1955; Arnetz et al. 1983; Cohen and Syme, 1985; Broadhead et al. 1983; Berkman, 1984; Bloom, 1995: 60-65; Konner, 1990: 27f; Catanzaro 1995: 393.). The selfsacrificers' pre-programmed renunciation does not add a scrap of benefit to genes identical to their own, nor does it store up favors for the future. This makes accounting for the survival of utility sorters ,and resource shifters in terms of individual selectionism exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Continued on Page 49 NEW FROM THE MIND OF HOWARD BLOOM

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Beyond the Super Computer

BEYOND THE SUPERCOMPUTER: SOCIAL GROUPS AS SELF-INVENTION MACHINES
Continued from Page 48
Group selectionism can provide a richly productive alternative explanation. Individuals within a social unit are ranked on the basis of perceived relevance to a larger community. They either move to the sidelines or to the center depending on the verdict rendered by their psychophysiology and by their social or environmental milieu. Thus they become components of a communal intelligence. Put yet another way, conformity enforcers, diversity generators, utility sorters and resource shifters aid in the construction of competitive machines far more powerful than mere individual organisms. When matched against genes whose disguised selfishness restricts them to family support and reciprocal exchanges, genes free to participate in the computational and inventive power of a group brain will roll over their rivals like a tank flattening a Volkswagen. Eshel Ben-Jacob has been forced to infer from his data on bacillus subtilis that we may be viewing "a new picture of cooperative evolution" (Corning, 1983; Corning, 1996; Smillie, 1993; Smillie, 1995), one entirely "orthogonal" to standard neo Darwinism (BenJacob, 1998; Ben-Jacob, Cohen, and Czirk. In press.). What does "orthogonal" mean? In Edwin A. Abbott's classic book, Flatland, creatures operating on only the twodimensional axes of depth and width felt their world was infinite (Abbott, 1953). Yet there was an even larger infinity above them--if only they had been able to look up. When using the light of both group and individual selection, the new evolutionary sciences are able to lift their eyes and see our kinship with three-and-a-half billion years of precursors, thus vastly expanding their range of explorable evidence and explanatory mechanisms. The world of the petri dish sheds light on the conference halls of the Hague. The mathematics of materials science and of such non-linear newcomers as fractals and chaos theory, the insights of cell biology and endocrinology, and the mysteries of psychology find a new place in the puzzle. If the evolutionary dogmatists of Lilliput and Blefuscu will simply recognize the equal importance of each end of the egg, they may finally make it possible for science to reveal something far more fascinating--the workings of an egg's interior. The inner workings of you and me. ABOUT HOWARD BLOOM: Howard Bloom has been called next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein,[and] Freud, by Britain's Channel4 TV, "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine, and "The Buckminster Fuller and Arthur C. Clarke of the new millennium" by Buckminster Fuller's archivist. Bloom is the author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing"The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering"The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical ReVision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), and The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich). Bloom has been published in arxiv.org, the leading pre-print site in advanced theoretical physics and math. He was invited to tell an international conference of quantum physicists in Moscow in 2005 why everything they know about quantum physics is wrong. And his book Global Brain was the subject of an Office of the Secretary of Defense symposium in 2010, with participants from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom has founded three international scientific groups: the Group Selection Squad (1995), which fought to gain acceptance for the concept of group selection in evolutionary biology; The International Paleopsychology Project (1997), which worked to create a new multi-disciplinary synthesis between cosmology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, and history; and The Space Development Steering Committee (2007), an organization that includes astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and members from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense. Bloom explains that his focus is mass behavior, from the mass behavior of quarks to the mass behavior of human beings. In 1968 Bloom turned down four fellowships in psychology and neurobiology and set off on a science project in a field he knew nothing about: popular culture. He was determined to tunnel into the forces of history by entering the belly of the beast where new myths, new mass passions, and new mass movements are made. Bloom used simple correlational techniques plus what he calls tuned empathy and saturated intuition to help build or sustain the careers of figures like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Billy Idol, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, John Mellencamp, Queen, Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run DMC, and roughly 100 others. In the process, he generated $28 billion in revenues (more than the gross domestic product of Oman or Luxembourg) for companies like Sony, Disney, Pepsi Cola, Coca Cola, and Warner Brothers. Bloom also helped launch Farm Aid and Amnesty Internationals American presence. He worked with the United Negro College Fund,the National Black United Fund, and the NAACP, and he put together the first public service radio campaign for solar power (1981). Today, his focus on group behavior extends to geopolitics. He has debated one-oneone with senior officials from Egypts Moslem Brotherhood and Gazas Hamas on Irans Arablanguage international Alalam TV News Network. He has dissected headline issues on Saudi Arabias KSA1-TV and on Irans global English language Press-TV. And he has appeared fifty two times for up to five hours on 500 radio stations in North America. Bloom is a former visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Psychology at NYU and a former core faculty member at the Graduate Institute in Meriden, Connecticut. He has written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Knight-Ridder Financial News Service, the Village Voice, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. In addition to arXiv.org, his scientific articles have appeared in PhysicaPlus, New Ideas in Psychology, and Across Species Comparisons and Psychopathology. Blooms 90-minute per episode YouTube series, Howard the Humongous, pulls in a minimum of 45,000 hits and a maximum of 161,000 per installment. Topping it all off, Blooms computer houses a not-so-secret and not-at-all humble project, his 7,100-chapter-long Grand Unified Theory of Everything in the Universe Including the Human Soul. Pavel Kurakin of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences says that Bloom has created a new Scientific Paradigm. He explains in vast and compelling terms why we should forget all we know in complicated modern math and should start from the very beginning. Blooms Grand Unified Theory opens a window into entire systems we don't yet know and/or see, newcollectivities that live, love, battle, win and lose each day of our gray lives. I never imagined that a new system of thought could produce so much light. Concludes Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution's End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, "I have finished Howard Bloom's books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom's on the planet." Author of: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History ("mesmerizing" The Washington Post), Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century ("reassuring and sobering" The New Yorker), The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism ("Impressive, stimulating, and tremendously enjoyable." James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic), and The God Problem: How A Godless Cosmos Creates ("Bloom's argument will rock your world." Barbara Ehrenreich). Former Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute; Recent Visiting ScholarGraduate Psychology Department, New York UniversityFounder: International Paleopsychology Project. Founder, Space Development Steering Committee. Member Of Board Of Governors, National Space Society. Founding Board Member: Epic of Evolution Society. Founding Board Member, The Darwin Project. Founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab. Member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology. Scientific Advisory Board Member, Lifeboat Foundation. Advisory Board Member, The Buffalo Film Festival. Board Member, Humanity Plus; Board of Editors, The Journal of Space Philosophy. []

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