Err…was it something I said, Your Holiness? :-(

• Comet, planet or fad? Planet X’s hype is gaining momentum.
• 'MACSJ0025.4-1222' won’t mean much to us, but it sure means a lot to the scientists trying to figure out the mysteries of Dark Matter.
• Getting the Shuttle ready for her final date with the Hubble telescope.
• Space is the Final Frontier… for computer viruses.
• Stop worrying about your credit card debt, thanks to the good people of CERN.
• RIP: Fundamental Physics research at Bell Labs.
• Will Obama & Co. become an administration that believes in science? Well, first they will have to rely on the “science” of Advertising to win the job.
• Algebra: You didn’t believe your high-school teachers, but it really is everywhere.
• Using tracking chips to fight kidnappers in Mexico. Big Brother or the Wild Wild West: which is the lesser evil?
• Harry Knowles’ wet dream: The 10 greatest sci-fi films never made.
• New sphere to explore the abyss. Michael Chrichton is feeling real smug right now (Amazon US & UK).
• Divers discover amazing remains of HMS London at bottom of Thames, with great pics.
• Looking for ghosts? Head to Derby, in the English Midlands.
• Beyond Qumram & towards the Digital Frontier: Israel to display the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet.
• Virgin Mary spotted in suburban tree trunk. Our Blessed Mother likes to blend with Nature, no matter how awkward.
• …Speaking of “blending with Nature”, our old friend the ‘Tree man’ has just left the hospital with his warts/branches removed.
• 'Greased Lightning!' From London to Athens using cooking fat as fuel (Video here).
• And if that is not ‘green’ enough for you, how about a super car built out of… WOOD??
• Good news for diabetics: Researchers turn living cells into insulin-makers.
• I smell danger! That’s because I’m a mammal… and a paranoid.
• A cousin of the saber-tooth tiger was found in a Venezuelan tar pit, guarding it against the imperialist oil companies… or so it was reported on the official Venezuelan news channel ;-)
• The Not-So-Colossal squid is sluggish and highly vulnerable to predators.
• Hobbits! Dwarves! Hobbits!!! Dwarves!!!! The Flores controversy is alive and well.
• ’5th Element’ style accommodations. 250 sq feet and “only” for US$279,000. Maybe Rick & I could afford to share a closet.

Thanks, Rick & Kat.

Quote of the Day:

"What is life? A madness.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a story.
And the greatest good is little enough;
for all life is a dream,
and dreams themselves are only dreams."

Pedro Calderón de la Barca, from the play ‘Life is a Dream’ (great-grandaddy of The Matrix)

Feast or nibble, the news is a banquet for all.

• Japanese scientists teach a whale to speak three words. "Stop eating us"?
• An African Grey parrot can speak like a Dalek from Dr Who. The parrot could teach whales...
• Never offend a crow, raven, jay or magpie, they never forget a face.
• Aussie lost in Laos jungle for 11 days chased by horrible lizards.
• Good news everybody: Australia is one of the world's top five wilderness havens, but the bad news is Australia has the worst rate of species extinction.
• Neanderthals weren't stupid, they used the same tools our ancestors did. Except for electric guitars.
• Fortune favours the brave: but are the heroic motivated by sex? Sure, Ajax got the babes, but Odysseus won Penelope's heart through intelligence and perseverance.
• Canada's Thule, ancestors of modern Inuit, have been ruled out as the ones who scared off the big tough Vikings. They ran away from the Moorwen.
• A pre-Incan female Wari mummy discovered in Peru, with pic.
• Exquisite statue of Marcus Aurelius dug up in ancient Turkish city of Sagalassos. Great photos.
• A small sacrifice for the Long Man of Wilmington, celebrating Lughnasadh.
• Podcast: Crop Circle Connector explaining how Bristol is the hub of crop circles.
• Video of a UFO fleet over Moscow: flares, Chinese lanterns, a CGI hoax?
• Photos of a UFO witnessed over Lake Sacandaga.
• Is there a link between water and UFOs?
• Six bright orange UFOs were seen in Melbourne's east, a few suburbs from my house but I was fast asleep and have an alibi.
• Michael Shermer snuck into Australia without Greg or myself knowing or we would have alerted customs, to give his same old "light of venus" UFO schtick.
• Leading astrobiologist and proponent of panspermia claims NASA has embargoed news of life on Mars for political reasons.
• Chilly relations between US and Russia threatens NASA space program. And our lives, I might add.
• It's the final countdown to the startup of the Large Hadron Collider. Great, now I'll have Europe's song stuck in my head for the Apocalypse.
• Some solar flares may be caused by dark matter spewed forth by the Sun. We're bathing in cosmic vomit.
• The challenge of renewable energy isn't its efficiency, but how can corporations make money from it?
• Man paralysed for 20 years is able to walk again thanks to Robocop-style exoskeleton. If only he could fight corporate and government corruption.
• Counter-terrorism unit launches global propaganda campaign to 'taint the Al Qaeda brand'. The irony is, unlike Nike and Gap, the Al Qaeda brand is made in the USA.

Big thanks to Greg and Kat.

Quote of the Day:

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius (121 AD - 180 AD), from Meditations (Amazon US & UK)

Credibility, confidence, sincerity, and it could still all be nonsense.

• Why Dawkins is right and his critics are wrong.
• Can neuroscience explain spiritual experience to a non-believer?
• The confidence game.
• Strange clouds at the edge of space.
• Where have all the real men gone? Here is another approach.
• Where is planet X?
• Evolution and creationism.
• Gods in the flesh: part 1 and part 2.
• Sky survey yields new cosmic haul.
• An inventory of Nazi secret weapons and their historical problematic.
• Cows automatically point to north.
• Human exoskeleton helps paralysed people walk.
• More evidence surfaces in megafauna murder mystery.

Quote of the Day:

A reputation is the smart attire an enigma wears to show everyone how good it looks.

Jameske

Better run faster -- Dystopia is gaining on us!

• Alpine melt reveals clues to Neolithic life. Artefacts predate Oetzi.
• Treasure hunter finds 11th century gold ring with rare black diamond.
• Hundreds of Bigfoot sightings are reported every year in Southern California. Researcher believes bullet wounds are giving Bigfoot a bad attitude towards stupid humans.
• 'Yowie Man' is on the hunt again in desolate area of Australia.
• Boffins say largest near-Earth asteroids come mostly from the asteroid belt's innermost edge.
• Aussie has answer to save Earth from asteroid attack.
• Petabyte database to track near-Earth objects.
• Generations of stars pose for family portrait.
• Oz could tap geothermal energy from its naturally radioactive hot rocks.
• Potential treatment for drug addiction also leads to rapid weight loss and reduced food intake.
• Using viruses to build self-assembled nanoscale batteries.
• Intel demos shape-shifting robots, sending sane journalists screaming for the exits.
• 'Clever as kids': Chemical nanobrains play noughts and crosses.
• Nearly half a million people are employed in 'virtual sweatshops' earning points and goods in online games to sell over the internet.
• Emerging double standard: While we risk arrest for pointing our cameras at them, they can photograph us when, where and how they like.
• Google in hot water again over invasive Street View photos that ignore private roads and 'No Trespassing' signs.
• Are 9-11 no-planers a cointelpro operation? Either that, or they're just willfully ignoring all the eyewitness accounts.
• Activists cry foul as federal agency declares 'new phenomenon' downed WTC 7. Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9-11 Truth and a member of the American Institute of Architects, doesn't believe a word of the theory.
• Hackers crack FEMA's telephone system, and rack up $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.
• Anatomy of an insidious malware scam: The evil genius of XP Antivirus.
• Death of patriotism: How nations are threatened by the global super-elite.
• Totalitarianism: It can happen here. Sheldon S Wolin's Democracy, Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism is available at Amazon US & UK.
• Aboriginal kids count without numbers.
• Elephants can count -- in fact, they can discriminate among similar quantities with greater accuracy than humans.
• The 10,000 years that the descendants of grey wolves have spent evolving alongside humans have had a remarkable effect on dog cognition.
• Pheromones detected that warn creatures of impending danger.
• If Bruce Wayne fancied a cat, he'd go bonkers over Yoda.
• You're one-third daffodil, and a host of other useless but fascinating facts.

Quote of the Day:

Democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs.
...
No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper helped to write the Constitution.
...
The American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed for three-quarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete: women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues to be ordered.

Sheldon S. Wolin, in Democracy, Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Amazon US & UK). For more, see Chalmers Johnson's review.

For a better tomorrow…

• Ironic robots?
• Think earthquakes in the states are exclusive to the West Coast? Think again…
• 2008 predicted to be the coolest year of the century.
• A funny thing happened on the way to the Karnak temple -- when they found four headless sphinx. Never one to miss a photo opp, Zahi made sure the cameras found him.
• Scientists use stem cells to ‘create blood from scratch’… No, it’s pronounced Franken*stein*.
• Wastewater Agriculture… (or how farmers worldwide started using untreated sewage to fertilize their crops and fields).
• The strange case of galactic filaments may be answered by the one and only Hubble.
• The mystery of how young stars form around a black hole has been solved. More here.
• Bid farewell to electrical power cords and say hello to wireless power...
• Ancient Mediterranean snail found in modern UK.
• New results in the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse.
• The silver lining of a devastating fire in Yorkshire: Bronze Age artifacts.
• The sight of polar bears swimming the open ocean is sadly becoming all too commonplace.
• Water… the new oil.

Quote of the Day:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge…”

Albert Einstein

BREAKING NEWS: My back is killing me! Because of that the news are early today.

• Georgia Hoaxers issued an apology video on their attempt to bamboozle the world with their monkey suit—and trying to implicate Biscardi in the deception as well—More on this sad and smelly story here. Oh, and here too.
• And as it was to be expected, the happiest persons with this whole debacle are none other than the usual skeptics.
• Americans? Russians? Chinese? Pffft! The Chileans are trying to woo the really powerful allies, and have opened the country's first UFO trail. Traitors!!!
• In South Africa, a lecturer and his students detected a very strong alien signal with their custom-built radio telescope. I only hope the South African Intelligence agencies will be gentler with them than the AFOSI was with Paul Bennewitz [‘Project Beta’ by Greg Bishop, available on Amazon US & UK].
• Was the Secret Service overruled in the release of FAA radar data on the Stephenville UFO? Or is it all part of the same disinfo game they’ve been playing with us?
• Blurry UFO pic of the day: This one’s from Bridgnorth.
• A 'minor planet' named 2006 SQ372 is now closer to the Earth than Neptune, on its 22'500-year journey around the Sun. Our overlords from Nibiru… are close O.o
• Mars' ice clouds eat up ozone. Soooo… are we talking of vaporous extraterrestrials here? Come on NASA, give me something!!
• Placebos work better in children. Lucky little bastards…Ouuu, the pain! :-(
• Freeze your dead baby and revive it later, the kosher way.
• Fetus mummies were likely king Tut's. Talk about missing alimonies...
• Remember that quarrel between Spain and the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. over a gold treasure? Well, Peru has joined the party!
• That mysterious underwater sound that’s been keeping scientists scratching their heads are not USOs, but sea urchins chewing their food. Yeah right! Like we’re gonna fall for that.
• So you think the Grail is missing from Leonardo’s famous Last Supper? Think again! (H/T to our own Carol Noble).
• Symmetrical bodies are more beautiful to humans. So that would mean Stephen Colbert got married to a goblin ;-)
• How to watch Faux news? Veeeeery slowly. 1, 2, & 3 examples of why a little NLP comes very handy these days.
• Another reason why you shouldn't trust TV: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games. Then again, the folks at Cartoonbrew are not impressed.
• The fat that could make you lose weight. And I’m not talking about your money-grabbing brother-in-law.
• Physicists transmit light through opaque materials. No, they didn’t use James Randi’s head.
• Alan Boyle gives us another twist on the Doomsday Debate, now that the LHC is about to be started.
• 'Watchmen' movie may be delayed as studios battle over rights. You hear that? That’s the sound of a million fanboys crying :-(
• Y’all ready for a Nuclear War? Come on, sell your SUV & build a homely shelter instead! :0)

Thanks to Greg, Rick, Kat, Perceval & Mr. Rodríguez (that’s the kind gentleman that injected me to easy my suffering).

Quote of the day:

”No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”

Christian Nestell Bovee

Three months and counting...

• Keilor Valley locals unite with environmentalists and archaeologists to oppose garbage dumps. Never upset a 7-foot-tall mega wombat.
• New research suggests humans caused the extinction of megafauna, not the end of the last Ice Age. We never stopped.
• Pollution, overfishing responsible for massive increase in ocean 'dead zones'.
• Canadian journalist Will Thomas on food as a weapon and fighting back with independent organic farming. Food for thought.
• Psychotherapist Andrew Feldmar writes about the benefits of psychedelic drugs.
• Incredible video of San Pedro ceremony, a Peruvian shamanic psychedelic.
• North Dakota man faces five years in prison for $32 of Salvia divinorum leaf.
• You'll find this hard to believe, but the U.S. military is paying scientists to study mind-reading... via synthetic telepathy.
• The incredible memories of elephants may hold key to survival in the worst of times.
• Quantum 'uncollapse' muddies definition of reality. When was it ever clear?
• If we have free will, then so do subatomic particles, say two mathematicians.
• Clues to life on Mars found in prehistoric Mexican crater. Too many burritos, RPJ.
• A new pic of the Yucatan cave system known as Xibalba, the Mayan underworld.
• Pre-Hispanic tombs and well-preserved textiles found in Machu Picchu, Peru.
• Ruins of a pagan temple from the second century AD excavated in Israel.
• 5000 years ago, women were in control of Iran's Burnt City. Today, they get 20-years prison when they're raped.
• If you want to get off this planet, here are the Top 10 exoplanets.
• Larry W. Bryant's FOIA request regarding a CIA UFO cover-up in 1987 involving the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
• Small, metallic UFOs are attacking people in Brazil with stabbing beams of light causing blood loss. Mosquitoes have gone high-tech.
• Chinese Roswell: 1947 document recently uncovered in Chengdu archives details an investigation of a crashed flying saucer in Sichuan. The official explanation -- American weather balloon!

Thanks Greg and Kat.

Quote of the Day:

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again.. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.

Chuang-Tzu, 3rd century BC

The Spoof's spot-on spoof of the spoof.

• Belief in Yeti dying out as Bhutan modernizes, but Bhutan's conservation department still has plaster casts of Yeti footprints mounted on the wall.
• Are aliens targeting Wales? (With video.)
• Monday night's premiere of Into the Unknown With Josh Bernstein on Discovery Channel set to dispel myths about ancient gladiators.
• The possible discovery of the Theatre, built in 1576 and where Shakespeare's troupe performed in the 1590s, could complete the set of open-air theaters where the Bard's plays were staged.
• Music inspired art in Stone Age caves.
• Amazing gold ring and earrings unearthed from 2500-year-old Thracian tomb.
• Roman sarcophagi discovered in Newcastle, 1,800 years after they were sealed.
• Scientists on 'Indiana Jones' mission hope global warming will help solve 160-year mystery of missing British explorers.
• The £10,000 drawing that turned out to be a £100 Million Da Vinci.
• Evolutionary benefits of the heebie jeebies: Horror film gene makes some scream while others laugh.
• Primordial Earth echoed in arsenic-eating bacteria.
• The origin of theories: A review of Robert J. Richards’ The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (Amazon US & UK).
• Not every scientist worships at Darwin's feet: Scattered among the world's top scientists are those who believe a conscious intention is behind nature's processes.
• Do subatomic particles have free will?
• While magicians work, the mind does the tricks.
• Bird flu hopes from 1918 victims.
• Flu not the only killer in 1918 pandemic.
• 300 dwarfs may hold key to beating cancer -- and to extreme life-extension.
• Ancient species of tree is helping Britain's birds survive the effects of climate change.
• Ugly Bettys will always do worse, say scientists, because bias towards beauty is human nature.
• Mayor assures 'beauty-disadvantaged women' they'll find no shortage of interested blokes in Queensland mining town, Mount Isa. Storm of protest ensues.
• Cockroaches of the sea: From Alaska to Africa, Australia to Alabama, scientists have noted with increasing frequency that jellyfish populations are on the rise, and threaten the health of oceans.
• Jellyfish invasion: Britain to fight them on the beaches.
• Designers of Spore want you to play God by creating your own alien species, starting from single-celled organisms. Will your 'intelligent beings' be bent on interstellar domination?
• A founding father of the internet says it's come a long way, but its potential for worldwide change can and will be greater still.
• Military bent on creating an online, self-teaching artificial intelligence.
• A flying saucer that can sneak into buildings to spot enemy gunmen or plant explosive devices or bugs could be used by British troops on the frontline.
• Once upon a time an ethicist had a brilliant idea for a prison. Today we all live in it.
• Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture abundant solar energy.
• Cataloguing Invisible Life: Microbe genome emerges from lake sediment.
• Lab animals number close to 115 million.
• Like the little Satans we are.
• A review of Kathryn Shevelow's scholarly For the Love of Animals (Amazon US & UK Oct 6).
• How apes are like us.
• Octopuses have six arms and two legs.
• Inhalation of persistent free radicals, a newly discovered air pollutant, exposes the average person to up to 300 times more free radicals than smoking a cigarette.
• Aussie drug may prevent kidney disease. A tablet a day may cast dialysis away.
• Researchers say we size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds via surprisingly small factors - where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin.
• A blueprint to regenerate limbs.
• The man with the answer to life, the universe and (nearly) everything.
• Millionaires are trying to save the planet by buying entire ecosystems and turning them into conservation areas.
• Mad Max Delusion: Some scientists believe we’ve already entered into the beginning of the sixth extinction, set in motion by Homo sapiens.
• Peak oil is coming, and we're unready.
• The Most Trusted Man in America?

Quote of the Day:

I'm not here to convince you that Sasquatch exists. I was hoping to convey to you that there is a body of data that is extremely compelling. I am convinced there is something out there. Something is leaving footprints. There's something out there that begs for our consideration.

The amassed evidence of the footprints is strong evidence that there is a real animal that exhibits a consistent anatomy that is distinct from human anatomy and yet shows adaptations that are very elegantly suited to the habitat where they are reported to exist.

Jeff Meldrum, PhD, author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (New paperback at Amazon US Sept 4, & UK Oct 10), speaking in Edmonton Sunday at the Royal Alberta Museum on his research into Bigfoot.

“Whatever happened to, the life that we once knew…”

• How green was my Saharan valley (albeit 10,000 years ago)?
• How dead are our oceans…
• Enceladus, the tiger-striped moon.
• More on Quantum Correlations and communicating 100,000 times faster than the speed of light.
• And since we’re already on the subject, could speed of light travel be far behind? Engage the FTL!
• Martian dust under the microscope…
• Nanotube technology as a new cancer cure?
• Entrance to Xibalba (the mythical Mayan underworld) discovered?
• Is your water polluted? Just ask the plants.
• Terrapin… Stationary? (Or “12 non-native species threatening British waterways”)
• Robots with biological brains -- And you thought skynet was all you had to worry about…
• Life on Titan?
• And in the 'blast from the comedic past' dept (emphasis on *blast*), say hello / reacquaint yourself with the good and gaseous “Reverend” Robert Tilton, the original.

Many happy returns and danke schöens to Capt. Greg and Dr. RP "Bones" J…

Quote of the Day:

" It is better to know less than to know too much that isn't so..."

Josh Billings

If 1968 was the Summer of Love, then 2008 is the Summer of Fort :-P

• 150 UFO sightings in UK in 2008. So that would mean 5 or 10 of those sightings could be the real deal.
• While we wait for tomorrow’s press conference, here’s a very interesting comparison between the Georgia “RickMatt Bigfoot” —or “Georgia Gorilla”, if you prefer—and a known Bigfoot costume. What do you think? (H/T Cabinets of Wonders)
• Chupas. Chupucabra. Chupacabra. Despite decades of reports, the American journalists still can’t write Chupacabras correctly! Who’s the sucker here? Video of the infamous beast— or a mangy coyote—here.
• Forget the 100th monkey. Is this the 100th crow?
• No, the Nazca lines weren’t made by aliens. They were made by this guy’s ancestors.
• Monolith schmonolith! It’s Cooking what stimulated a big leap in human cognition.
• Yes, we all love ‘2010’; but is there REALLY life on Jupiter's moon Europa?
• Roboticists create Rover to move & drill on the tough Lunar terrain. I wish they designed a bigger version to sell here in Mexico. The potholes on our streets would be the envy of the Mare Tranquilitatis.
• ... Speaking of which: Mexican crater could give clues to ancient Mars.
• Manipulating Dark Energy to travel faster than the speed of light. So, we haven’t really proven the so-called “Dark Energy” exists yet, and now we are planning to use it to pimp our ships? *sigh* Fine, whatever, just MAKE IT SO, Dammit!!!
• The stuff of Albert’s nightmares: Signals seem to travel faster than light.
• How do you stop a proton beam that can melt a half ton of copper? Find out here.
• A huge increase in the speed of the Internet could be produced by slowing parts of it down, say researchers. Maybe they started with Rick’s account :-P
• European Court of Human Rights allows McKinnon to stay in the U.K., for now. Good thing all the judges are too busy watching the beach volleyball games on the Telly ;-)
• At the beginning of the conflict, Georgia suffered a major cyber-attack to its networks; but kids were responsible & not the Russians, according to some researchers.
• Anthony North explains why he doesn’t believe in Conspiracy Theories… with a theory of his own. Oi!
• Teams set for mock Moon landing. They even have a competition to see who can do the best fake Moon landing? What’s next, a President’s assassination contest??!
• 2,500-year-old Greek ship, the biggest and best maintained vessel of its kind ever found, has been raised off the Sicilian coast. And No! Its name was not Poseidon.
• The 5 Most Ridiculously Unjust Religious Afterlives. What, no scientologists?
• The Pill: it’s what’s keeping you from finding Mr. Right-One. That and your annoying friends and your dreams of living in Park Avenue… and don’t get me started with your parents!
• The human brain could become the battlefield of the future. More of the same here.
• Can erasing a drug memory erase the need for a fix? Hmm let’s see: Messing my head with chemicals, or messing my head with hypnosis? I think I’ll stick to my red pills thank-you-very-much ;-)
• Drug prohibition is an untenable hypocrisy.
• Rat's 'brain' used to power robot. Robot ended up beating the s**t out of the lab’s cat.
• Your grannie will turn into a cyborg! And I think that’s awesome ^_^
• At what point should we consider the long-term ramifications of technological developments? Oops! Too late!

Thanks Greg, Kat & Loren Coleman (Loren for keeping this summer so interesting).

Quote of the Day:

"My view of, let’s say, the last thousand years, is that it’s been pretty progressive. And, yes, we probably killed more people in the 20th century than in the 10th, but there was more regret about it, more soul-searching afterwards, more questioning ‘Why? Why did we do that?’"

Terence McKenna