Histories, Mysteries, and Strangeness

Bringing the past and present together through photography

2012-01-22T18:19:00.000-05:00

I came across a couple of collections of modern pictures where vintage photographs have been held up and photographed where they were originally taken (or superimposed over modern ones) resulting in a picture of past and present together.

Here are a few of the pictures from the collections I found.

You can view more pictures like these at these links to retronaut.co:

'Looking into the past'

'Looking into the past II'

You can also find them on Flickr here and here.

The retronaut.co website also has a variety of other types of picture collections besides just vintage photos, such as movie posters from relatively recent movies made in vintage style with 50's and 60's actors, vintage photos with something from Star Wars inserted into them, and ads for internet companies done in a vintage style. A pretty cool site to check out if you have a moment!

Questions about Consciousness

2012-01-12T11:30:00.001-05:00

I like to watch the YouTube channel Vsauce, which is a channel of videos about random topics including science, funny pictures, and things you can do online. I came across a video today that questions and is titled, "What is Consciousness?" Although there is no clear answer to that question, it brings up some interesting information, and, not surprisingly, more questions. But I suppose that is the sort of question that leads to more questions! Personally, I think consciousness -- the mind and our awareness -- exists independently of the physical brain. I think the physical brain is more or less a control grid for the mind to control the physical body in the physical world. But that doesn't mean the study of the physical brain isn't interesting and sometimes confounding!

At the end of the video, there is also a link to a "Leanback," which is just a playlist of interesting videos about a topic with short videos of narration by the host in between each informative video. It's a cool thing to just sit and watch if you have a little time to spare.

Color switch

2012-01-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

Now that the holiday season is coming to a close, I figured I would switch back to my blogs normal colors.

How early religious beliefs about the afterlife may have been formed

2012-01-03T17:38:00.000-05:00

I was listening to a Skeptiko podcast where Alex Tsakiris talks to Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a near-death experience (NDE), and I began to wonder what the first person to have a NDE may have experienced. Could that be how people first learned of an afterlife? Could this be how the earliest religions began?

Each person who has a NDE has a unique experience. But many commonalities have been noted. People often report being aware of being outside of their body and may be able to remember hearing doctors or nurses saying specific things or just floating around and being able to see things that they wouldn't be able to see from the position of their physical body. They also often report seeing loved ones that have already passed on and possibly religious figures such as Jesus or some other divine beings like angels. Traveling through a tunnel towards light is common factor as well as having a life review. But despite commonalities, each experience is unique. Sometimes cultural differences may even be a factor.

But differences shouldn't be surprising. In life, we all have unique experiences everyday. Our consciousness may be confined to our physical self, but we still have free will and make our own decisions. We also have our own opinions and interpretations. Our day to day lives may have their similarities, such as brushing teeth, going to work, having lunch, watching TV, etc. But despite similarities, there are still differences. We don't all use the same toothpaste. We don't all have the same job or drive the same kind of car to work. We don't necessarily like exactly the same foods or TV shows. If you lived in a third world tribal society, you probably wouldn't being using toothpaste or watching any TV at all...but you'd still get up in the morning and you'd still want something to eat. So if our day to day lives are unique with some similarities, why should it be surprising that the afterlife would be unique with some similarities?

But anyways, the question here is, could a NDE have been the origin of any number of ancient and possibly prehistoric religions? Although many of the reports of NDEs come from people who have been revived on an operating table, there are instances where people have been mistakenly thought to be dead when they really weren't, and, in times past, there are even reports of people being mistakenly buried alive (you can see a Snopes article on that subject here). So if people have been mistakenly thought to be dead in time's past, then it may also be possible that they may have experienced a NDE. If so, then the story they may have told about their experience may have formed an ancient religion...especially if the stories were being told by someone everyone else had thought to be dead.

Of course, it's also entirely possible that some religious beliefs were formed by drug induced hallucinations or outright fabrications, but what if there is something more to it? What if some beliefs began from a real experience? What if religious beliefs that mirror common events that occur during a NDE are not the result of a person's preconceived notion of the afterlife, but because that is just the way it really is?

Christmas Posts

2011-12-14T20:38:00.000-05:00

It's my favorite time of year, so I thought this year I would temporarily change my blogs color scheme to Christmas colors! I haven't been able to think of anything new to write about that is Christmas related, though, so I thought I would just reblog my older Christmas posts.

The Christmas Story - In this post I point out some common misconceptions with the Christmas story as told in the Bible.

Music of the Christmas Season - Some good Christmas music!

The Christmas Truce - The story of the World War I Christmas truce and some of my own thoughts.

The Star of Bethlehem - Some thoughts on what the Star of Bethlehem may have been.

The Verizon Text Alert: A testing failure or success?

2011-12-13T20:46:00.000-05:00

A while back, it was announced that the emergency alert system was going to be upgraded to include cell phone text messages (see this article here). So in addition to the alerts you see on TV or hear on the radio, text alerts would also be issued.

Yesterday (12/12/11) in New Jersey, Verizon sent out a text alert telling people there was a "civil emergency" and "to take shelter now." But there was no civil emergency. The message was meant to be a test, but it wasn't labeled as such (see more details here).

So why wasn't it labeled as a test? Was it an accident? Or was the real test just to see how people would react to it?

:)

Chupacabra vaccinations

2011-12-01T16:50:00.000-05:00

Ever wanted to see a chupacabra? Maybe you should stake out this veterinary clinic and see if any chupacabra owners bring one in for a vaccination!

H/T

What if things had happened differently?

2011-11-25T17:11:00.003-05:00

I'm very skeptical about the concept of time travel...at least in the traditional sense. If someone in the future had actually developed a working time travel system, then where are they? Should we not expect them to randomly show up at different points in time? Some people think some UFO sightings may actually be time travelers from the future instead of aliens or classified modern technology. But if so, why have they never revealed themselves? Are we to assume that they are a part of some closely guarded organization of time travelers with some sort of prime directive that states they can never reveal their identities to people from the past? And are we to further assume that none of them ever go rogue and take an unauthorized ride to the past and reveal themselves?

You know, maybe we could just set aside an international time travelers day in the not too distant future and publicly announce it and make sure the media covers it well so that it will be well recorded so that if at any future point in time someone figures out how to physically travel through time, they would have a record of a time and place to visit to announce their discovery. Just pick a location and date. If someone shows up and can confirm they are a time traveler, then we know it's possible to do so. If no one shows, then maybe no one ever figures it out or it just isn't possible.

But anyways, what if it were possible and someone did figure it out? And what if someone who had access to time travel then looked at the history of the world and thought that maybe they could make things better if they just went back and changed a few things? Say, for instance (just to pick a random mythological event), Prometheus had not taught man how to build a fire. What if Prometheus was not a 'god', but a man from the future who thought if he just went back in time and taught men how to build a fire earlier than we would have figured it out on our own, that maybe the progression of technology could get a jump start? Or what if the assassination of Emperor Caligula had actually been instigated by a time traveler who knew what would happen if Caligula had lived longer? What if things had once happened differently than history now records simply because future time travelers thought they could make things better by making a few changes?

And if so, could they still be actively changing events? Could something be one way today, but another way tomorrow, and we would never know that it had ever happened the other way? Or what if the future time travelers saw their manipulations weren't really helping or had made things worse and then banned time travel, simply leaving things the way they were at the time? What if some ancient prophecies of the future were actually from time travelers who knew the future and left the stories of the future in the past so people would know what to expect?

Personally, I doubt that any of those scenarios is the case. As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I'm skeptical that physical time travel is even possible. I think if we set aside a day for a future time traveler to officially come visit us, no one would show up (although some crackpots posing as time travelers might make an appearance). And I think the history of the world is what it is and has always been what it is. But sometimes you just can't help but wonder...what if?

Hotel made of ice

2011-11-23T22:12:00.000-05:00

Imagine you decided to open a hotel and then built it...only to have to build it again the next year...and the year after that, and the year after that, and so on.

Well that's what the builders of the ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden do. Jukkasjärvi is 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) north of the arctic circle, so the winters are quite cold. Around the beginning of winter, a team of snow builders, architects, designers, artists from all over the world gather in Jukkasjärvi to begin construction on a new ICEHOTEL. Think of an igloo, only much larger with multiple rooms capable of accomodating many guests. According to the hotel's website, ICEHOTEL #22 will have 1 Deluxe suite, 16 Art suites, 20 ice rooms, 8 snow rooms and 2 group rooms. There will be 47 rooms in total during the winter season of 2011/2012. The various rooms are sculpted by artists from different countries. Guests will sleep in rooms made of ice and snow and some may even exchange wedding vows in the Ice church. People who want to visit Northern Sweden and stay in the ICEHOTEL will have the opportunity to do so until the Spring time when the sun starts to melt the walls away and the hotel returns to the Torne River. After that, they will have to wait until the next hotel is built.

Check out some pictures of the ICEHOTEL.

Entrance (2011)

Bar (2011)

Main Hall (2011)

Retro Drive suite (2011)

Royal Deluxe Suite (2011)

Legacy of the River suite -- Inspired by the legacy of the Torne River and Tron (2011)

Ice Church (2011)

You don't get ice in your drink at ICEHOTEL. You get drink in your ice.

It's not just a building. It's a work of art.

Visit the ICEHOTEL website here.

Check out an article about the ICEHOTEL and some other hotels made of ice here.

Watch a video here.

Do the 'laws' of physics need to be rewritten?

2011-11-19T16:56:00.000-05:00

Laws can be rewritten. And the government seems to like writing new ones. But the laws of physics are generally thought to be immutable, are they not? But what if they are not? Or what if we've just been wrong about what some of those laws are?

The speed of light is thought the universe's ultimate speed limit at 186,000 miles per second. Supposedly nothing can go faster than that.

But it was recently reported that a group of researchers measured neutrinos pumped from CERN had arrived 60 nanoseconds faster than light would have.

That's a pretty bold claim, considering that Einstein's theory of special relativity states that the speed of light is the cosmic constant.

Could it be an error though?

Well, the Washington Post has reported a second experiment has reached the same result. The article suggests more tests are needed and on other experiment setups, but if the two completed experiments are correct, then the result could shake up the world of physics. What would that mean for Einstein's theory of special relativity and study of physics in general? Would physicists have to rewrite many years of research and the 'laws' of physics? Would new models have to be formed?

And if neutrinos can travel faster than light, is there anything else that could go faster also? And what would the cosmic speed limit be -- or would there even be a cosmic speed limit?

The HoloDesk

2011-10-31T16:47:00.000-04:00

I came across this on Youtube today. I thought it was a good example of a sci-fi concept becoming a reality. And it's pretty cool too. :)

H/T

New sky and a new planet?

2011-10-18T17:36:00.001-04:00

As many times as I have read the book of Revelation in the Bible, I don't know if I have ever really stopped to think much about the first verse of chapter 21. I think I've always just assumed the passage was meant in a spiritual or figurative sense. But yesterday the possibility that it might be suggestive of something physical popped into my mind. Here is what the passage says:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. -Revelation 21:1

The word 'heaven' means 'sky'. We typically think of Heaven as being the spiritual dwelling place of God -- and I am not suggesting that it isn't -- I'm merely pointing out that when the term 'heaven' is used in that context, the notion is the spiritual dwelling place of God is 'out there' somewhere in the sky. So what exactly is this "new heaven" and "new earth" mentioned in Revelation? It's actually not the only time that is mentioned in the Bible. It is also mentioned in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.

See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind. -Isaiah 65:17

So are these passages suggesting that a new sky and a new earth (new planet) are in humanity's future? In this sense, the sky may more literally refer to the visible constellations and the movement of the stars. But if you were on another planet, the constellations would appear differently. So could that be what is meant by a new sky, or "new heaven?" If so, is this a prediction that humanity will one day move to a different planet, or a "new earth?" The passage in Revelation also says there was no longer any sea, so could that mean that the new planet is quite literally a newly formed planet that a sea hasn't even formed on yet?

I'm not really sure. It's difficult to tell if the passage is meant to be taken figuratively or literally. Is it suggesting that humanity will one day travel to another world on a spaceship? Or is it just saying that humanity will one day travel to a new world in spirit? Going there in spirit would probably be more in line with traditional interpretations. In verse 2 of Revelation 21, John says he saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. To the ancient alien enthusiast, this probably sounds like a spaceship landing. But I'm not so sure about that. The passage could very well be meant in a spiritual or figurative sense. To me, most of the rest of the chapter seems to be more indicative of something figurative or spiritual. In fact, in verse 10, John even says than an angel carried him away in "Spirit" to see the Holy City coming down out of heaven from God.

John goes on the describe what the city looks like. An ancient alien enthusiast might say he was describing some sort of spacecraft in terms he was familiar with. But it really doesn't sound like that to me. The description really just sounds like the description of a beautiful ancient walled city with enormous wealth.

So what is this passage really saying? Is it humanity's destiny to one day travel through space and settle a new world? Or is just saying that humanity's destiny is to travel to a new world in spirit one day? Judging by the chapter as a whole, I think it probably means in spirit. But hopefully one day it's meaning will become clear to us definitively. We may just have to wait and see what happens. :)

You can read the whole chapter here: Revelation 21

You can read the whole book here: Book of Revelation

Siri...too bad we don't have a starship to put it on

2011-10-04T21:00:00.000-04:00

So this isn't really a tech blog, but I saw the video today for Siri, Apple's new personal assistant app that is going to debut on the iPhone 4S. This isn't the first personal assistant app for a phone nor is it the first one with voice recognition. But if it works as good as it does the video, it may be the best one yet. You can check it on Apple's website here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html.

It looks so good, it actually reminds me of the onboard 'computer' from a Star Trek starship. The voice sounds overly robotic, but the things you can say to it remind me of people talking to the computer on Star Trek. We've come a long ways in the past couple of decades with technology. Our computers already look better than the computer terminals on a Star Trek starship. We have wireless communications. Will we ever have starships to put them on? Of course, we still don't have a holodeck, replicators, or matter stream transporters, so maybe we still have a ways to go. Who know's what's next?

But speaking of the holodeck....that reminds me...check out this video (at least skip to the 30 second mark if you want to see what about it reminded me of the holodeck).

New old 'Nazca Lines'

2011-09-17T13:33:00.000-04:00

Peru's famous Nazca Lines are a mystery. They are huge geolyphs that can only be viewed properly from high above, yet they are ancient designs from before any aircraft was known to exist.

Pre-Columbian native societies in Central America were known for building pyramids, much like the ancient Egyptians were known for building pyramids on the other side of the world. The design and purported use may not be exactly the same, but the resemblance is still there.

But one South American native culture may have something in common with ancient Middle Easterners too. Satellite and aerial photography have now revealed mysterious stone structures in the Middle East that are more numerous and older than the Nazca Lines.

See pictures and read about them on the UK Daily Mail.

Putting science to a beat

2011-09-15T19:14:00.001-04:00

Have you ever thought that science could be more entertaining if you could just get Morgan Freeman and some celebrity scientists together with a beat and Autotune?

Well, someone has now done that.

Are extra-terrestrials really any different from the 'gods'?

2011-08-22T17:53:00.000-04:00

So I feel compelled to write a little more about Ancient Aliens and their ancient alien hypothesis. It seems that those who profess this hypothesis seem to think that the 'gods' and the stories told by ancient man about the 'gods' were stories based in fact, but told from the perspective of men in terms that they were familiar with. Although, it seems to me, that those who profess this hypothesis are doing the same thing -- they are just reinterpreting past events in terms they are familiar with. In other words, instead of interpreting events as magical or supernatural, they interpret them as science and technology (more like sci-fi than actual science though).

But is calling the beings spoken about in these mythologies 'extra-terrestrials' instead of 'gods' really make them any different? Or, perhaps the better question to be asked is if events would have happened differently if the ancients used the term 'extra-terrestrials' instead of 'gods'? If we are to believe that some kind of intelligent beings with advanced technologies visited ancient man from another planet, then what difference would it have made in what you called them? What difference would it have made if you thought their flying machines flew by magic or science? If you didn't understand it, then, well, you didn't understand it. And that would have been an advantage or privilege these 'gods' had over men...regardless of whether it was science or magic.

The next question is, if these alleged extra-terrestrials were to return, what would be different now? If we called them extra-terrestrials and their mode transportation "spaceships" instead of 'gods' and flying chariots (or whatever), would anything really be different? If they were malevolent, then they may demand worship. If they were benevolent, they might not demand worship, but people might worship them anyways. They may not bow before them and offer sacrifices, and the term 'worship' might not even be used, but people would still probably look upon them as being higher beings. People would want to know about them, they'd want to ask them questions about the mysteries of the universe, and perhaps ask for solutions to their own problems. They'd sort of be like the new celebrities...but celebrities with advanced knowledge. So I'm not sure that things would really be all that much different if the 'gods' of the past turned out to just be extra-terrestrials.

And I'm not sure why those who profess the ancient alien hypothesis seemed to be so convinced that those aliens have to be flesh and blood aliens. My guess is that they are just interpreting it in a way they are familiar with...sci-fi. But why would they have to be flesh and blood aliens? Why couldn't they just be supernatural beings? Do they think that only flesh and blood beings are capable of sentience? That seems kind of narrow minded to me. I think they ignore the possibility of spiritual beings existing, and may also be ignoring the possibility of lifeforms we don't even recognize existing.

So what are some other possibilities about who these 'gods' of the past were?

The stories of the 'gods' were entirely fictional stories made up by charismatic men who were able to convince people that they were the intermediaries between the 'gods' and men. In doing so, they were able to elevate their own status among men, and live lives of luxury and wealth due to people coming and making offerings to the 'gods'...who were really just statues in a temple. These priests maintained power by keeping people in fear of these 'gods'.
The stories of the 'gods' were based on real people. Real, human, people that is. Throughout recorded history, many men have been worshipped as gods, such as Roman Emperors and Egyptian Pharaohs. So who's to say the mythological gods weren't once real people who's stories got passed down over time? Obviously the stories had some fabrications, but maybe there was some truth to them. Perhaps the 'gods' were just an early ancient or even prehistoric nobility. Various royal families throughout recorded history have been known to intermarry and have a lot of drama, which bears some similarities to the stories of the mythological gods. So maybe that's really all the 'gods' were -- strong, charismatic families who were able to get other people to follow them. Maybe they weren't really all that advanced...maybe they were just charismatic and told good stories (or had good stories told about them).

Or maybe they were advanced. Here we can invoke another myth...the myth of Atlantis. Perhaps the 'gods' were just a more advanced and sophisticated people from Atlantis or somewhere else. I've written before about the possibilities of lost civilizations being submerged after the flood/ice-age. It's possible there were some advanced civilizations in those predeluvian days. Even today, there are still people who live in tribal societies much the way their ancestors did. In some cases, after World War II, some tribal cultures who saw airplanes dropping off cargo came to think they could obtain the material wealth of the advanced culture through religious rituals and practices. These came to be known as "cargo cults" (read more about those here and here).

So who is to say this couldn't have happened before? Could an advanced prehistoric human civilization visited less advanced people who though they were some kind of 'gods'? Considering how long anthropologists say humans have been around, it seems like we have advanced rather quickly. But maybe people have advanced to high levels of sophistication before, and we have just forgotten about it?

I'm not sure which possibility is more likely. My mind isn't completely closed to the possibility that the 'gods' of the past were flesh and blood extra-terrestrials, but of the possibilities listed, I consider it the least likely. I think it is more likely the mythological stories are fictional, or based on real humans or some type of supernatural beings.

Maybe one day we will know for sure. But would they show themselves to us, or would we just have to take the word of some intermediaries?

Just us humans

2011-08-07T15:54:00.000-04:00

I often save articles I read on the internet that interest me and occasionally I like to go through my database of articles and just see what all is there. I've been saving articles for a while and have a quite a lot of them, so it's hard to remember what all is there sometimes.

Today I came across an article I had forgotten about and decided to reread it. It was from December 2004 and it was titled "Believe it or not, they're all the same species." The article suggests there are not multiple human species that have existed over time on earth, but just one single species that has had some variations along the way.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

The number of human species claimed by fossil-hunters now stands at around 10, while the total number of human-like species exceeds 50. Such claims have long been based on supposedly significant differences in sizes and shapes of fossil bones. Now they have all been thrown into doubt by research showing that the differences lie within the range expected for just a single species.

Professor Maciej Henneberg, of the University of Adelaide, a world authority on fossil human anatomy, made the discovery after analysing the skull sizes and estimated body weights for all of the 200 identified specimens of human-like fossils known as hominims. These span the entire history of humans, from the emergence of so-called Australopithecines with an upright stance more than four million years ago to neolithic modern humans from around 10,000 years ago.

Prof Henneberg found that the fossils show clear evidence of evolution, with substantial increases in both skull sizes and body-weight. However, he also found that the fossils show no evidence of being anything other than a single species which had grown bigger and smarter over time. According to Prof Henneberg, the much-vaunted differences in fossil size used to identify "new" species all lie within the normal range expected for one species.

I don't believe in evolution -- at least not Darwin's theory of evolution. Sure, there may be some 'evolution' in the sense that there are variations or mutations within the same species, but the idea that one species turns into another species over time is garbage, in my opinion. Any variations that occur are probably just variations to code that already exist within the genome anyways. Considering there are species that have existed since the time of dinosaurs unchanged, I see no reason to believe that species eventually evolve into brand new species over time. So the idea that there is only one human species throughout history makes sense to me.

But this also had me wondering how they come up with all these supposedly different species of humans in the first place and reminded me of a find from last year that was lauded as yet another species of human. The 'evidence' came from a single pinky finger bone. I could hardly see what the excitement was. Could they really declare a new species just from a pinky finger bone? The declaration was based on DNA evidence alone. But is that really enough? DNA has been called the "gold standard or proof in criminal cases,"but is that really true either? A New York Times article from 2009 says that DNA evidence can be fabricated. Here is an excerpt from that:

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

I doubt that our prehistoric ancestors conspired to fabricate the DNA of a single pinky bone in the hope that many thousands of years later someone would find it and confuse it for another species of human. But contamination may still be a possibility or it may just be possible that the difference really isn't significant enough to declare a new species. I mean, how important is DNA in determining the similarities and differences between species anyways? Apes are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom and have DNA that is 95-98% similar to ours, and they are the most similar to us as far their body structure goes. But the DNA of zebrafish is 92% similar to ours, which still sounds like a pretty close match. But you don't see much physical resemblance between us and zebrafish.

Granted, I don't know much about DNA and have no formal education on the subject. I don't doubt the authenticity of the science or it's benefits, but maybe it shouldn't be considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases or in determining whether or not a fossil is a separate species of human either.

Even today, you can see differences in modern humans. We're not all the same size or color. We don't all have the same kind of hair. We don't all live the same kind of lifestyle either. But we are all still human. And it would seem that it may have always been that way since the birth of humanity.

Ancient Aliens and The Mysterious Origins of Man

2011-07-31T20:49:00.000-04:00

I've had mixed feelings about the History channel show Ancient Aliens over the course of its run. When the original special aired a couple of years ago, I thought it was interesting and presented the information well. I'm not a believer of the ancient astronaut hypothesis it presented, but I'm open to the possibility (at least certain aspects of it). So when they decided to turn it into a series, I figured I would give it a shot. After watching a couple of episodes though, I lost interest. I thought they were just getting silly about it, seemingly assuming aliens had something to do with almost any ancient mystery. Although inspired by writers like Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Daniken, ultimately, all they are doing is inserting science fiction concepts that have been developed primarily over the last 60-70 years into history.

But I did catch some second season episodes that sounded like they might be interesting when I didn't see anything better on. My impression of the show didn't change much, but I did realize that the information they were presenting was interesting, even if their analysis of it could be a bit silly at times. So I've decided to watch the third season just to see what they bring up. I figure whatever they bring up will be interesting, even if I don't agree with their theories.

On the other hand, I was surfing around on Youtube today and came across a video called The Mysterious Origins of Man. It was obviously pretty old since Charlton Heston was the presenter (from 1996, according to Wikpedia), so there isn't any new information in it, but I thought the information was presented well. It covers topics such as out of place artifacts, Tiahuanaco, and ancient Egypt. If you're interested check it out below.

Here is a shortened version of that video: http://youtu.be/nne_-j08yMo

Zahi Hawass, back already!

2011-07-21T20:22:00.002-04:00

The other day it was reported that Zahi Hawass lost his job in Egypt as Minister of Antiquities. Now it is being reported that he is already back to work.

That didn't take long!

H/T

Here is another article I found about it.

This is an excerpt from that article:

Hawass is known for his cheerful spirit, and a closet full of cowboy hats he passes to foreign dignitaries as they come through Egypt. He even gave American President Barack Obama one of those hats.

Despite his jolly spirit, archaeologists, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of permits to dig in the country, which all go through Hawass, tell Bikya Masr a different, behind-the-scenes reality.

“He has a huge temper,” began one archaeologist. “If you don’t agree with him, he simply screams at you and threatens to remove your funding.”

That sounds like a good description of him!

Out of Body Experience; Hallucination or Reality?

2011-07-21T17:22:00.001-04:00

This article refers to out-of-body experiences as 'hallucinations' caused by a 'glitch' in the temporal lobe, but is it really a hallucination? I suppose the mind could create a hallucination like that, but what if someone experienced their surroundings the way they really are, and not just as a figment of the mind's imagination (such as seeing something they wouldn't have been able to see with their eyes at the physical location they are at)? If our consciousness, or spirit, whichever term you prefer, exists independently of the material brain, isn't it possible that the only 'glitch' could be in the brain's ability to confine a person's consciousness to their body (or at least the sense of being in our body, looking out from our eyes)?

Something to think about.

Zahi Hawass fired

2011-07-18T20:06:00.000-04:00

So I read today that celebrity archaeologist Zahi Hawass has lost his job as Minister of Antiquities in Egypt. I have mixed feelings about the guy, so in a way I am glad to see him go, but at the same time, it's almost sad to see such an iconic figure of Egyptian archaeology losing his job. On the one hand, I think he was very passionate about Egypt and history. But I also think he was very strict in his interpretation of Egyptology and pretty closed minded.

The article linked above notes that archaeologist Nora Shalaby said that Hawass didn't tolerate criticism and that most of his finds were about self promotion. That sounds about right to me. Especially after seeing his show Chasing Mummies on the History channel. I was wondering recently if the show would be returning for another season. In light of the revolution and Hawass losing his job, I'm guessing it probably won't.

Oh well, I'm curious what direction Egyptology will go in without him leading it. Will it follow the same direction, or will new ideas be tolerated and considered? I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Do 'Green' movements prevent progress?

2011-07-03T13:25:00.000-04:00

I came across an article with a title that amused me yesterday about France outlawing hydraulic fracturing as a means for extracting natural gas and oil. The title of the article is France Vote Outlaws 'Fracking' Shale for Natural Gas, Oil Extraction. If you are a fan of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, then you should know why that title sounds amusing.

But it turns out this 'fracking' is just a shortened term for hydraulic fracturing and has nothing to do with the similar term in Battlestar Galactica (which is typically spelled without a c). I wasn't really all that familiar with the fracking process prior to reading the article, but apparently Green groups aren't to fond of it. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Fracking, widely used in North America, uses a mixture of water, sand and chemicals injected under high pressure to break dense rock to release trapped oil and gas. Green groups and politicians led protests across France, saying the method could cause environmental damage. Government ministers and industry representatives say it is the only method currently available to extract hydrocarbons from the rock.

I got to wondering after reading that if Green groups prevent progress. Granted, I do think anthropogenic global warming is a scam devised to collect taxes and redistribute wealth, but overall I am in favor of conservation and protecting natural environments. We have dominion over this planet so we can do as we see fit, but if we are to be good masters of this planet, then we should protect it's natural environments. But where do we draw the line between conservation and progress?

I don't know much about the effects of fracking, and maybe it isn't even the best example to use here, but it's not the first time Green groups have been opposed to something due to environmental concerns. But the Green movement is a fairly new movement. What if it had been around earlier? Would we be where we are today? Whenever the first fire was started, what if there had been someone there to put it out due to the environmental concerns? What if they claimed the smoke was unhealthy and should be banned? And that the ash left was unsightly in a natural environment? Or what about when the first settlements with homes built out of wood were being built? What if someone had been there to say that chopping down trees was destroying the natural environment and should be banned? What about when roads were being built? What about the industrial revolution?

Where would we be today if all of those things had been stopped by some kind of Green movement? Where can we draw the line between conservation and progress? I'm in favor of preserving earth's natural environments, but what kind of future progress might we be limiting if we allow Green movements to stop everything that may (or may not) be an environmental concern?

But on the other hand, maybe these Green movement's can actually help us make progress. With the rising cost of gasoline, I'd like to see some cheaper alternative fuels replace oil and gasoline. Maybe if oil and natural gas extraction becomes more difficult to get approval for, there will be an incentive to make alternative fuels more available and common. Maybe that is the progress we really need?

Instant Induction Hypnosis and Missing Time?

2011-06-12T15:11:00.000-04:00

I was watching a DVRed episode of a Discovery Channel show called Deception with Keith Barry that focused on the possibility of spy agencies using hypnosis as a tool for spying. Barry, a 'mentalist' skilled in the art of hypnosis, explored some possible ways a spy agency may use hypnosis. In one experiment, he put two hypnosis skeptics into a trance and told them the combination of a safe that had $5000 in it but told them they wouldn't remember the combination until he woke them up and gave them a trigger phrase. When they first woke up, they were skeptical that they had even been in a trance at all, but he gave them a minute to remember the combination and open the safe and get the $5000. The minute passed, and neither of them remembered the combination. Barry said the trigger phrase, and they immediately remembered the combination. Afterwards they were convinced they had been hypnotized afterall. The purpose of the experiment was to see if someone could be hypnotized and told secret information that they wouldn't remember until given a trigger phrase. If they had been captured and interrogated for information by someone who didn't know the trigger though, the person wouldn't be able to divulge the secrets because they wouldn't consciously know that the secret was...and they might not even be aware that they had a secret hidden in their subconscious in the first place.

Barry also experimented with the possibility creating a Manchurian Candidate type of scenario (though not to kill someone). In his experiment, he programmed someone to go and 'drug' an assassin (actually an actor) in a coffee shop and steal some pictures from him and bring them back.

He also did a mass hypnosis experience by putting most of the people in an audience in a trance and convincing them they had seen a hilarious movie. But the experiment that most caught my interest was one where he used a hypnosis technique he called instant induction hypnosis. He was able to walk up to three different strangers on the street and put them in a trance in a matter of seconds without them even realizing what he was doing. With one guy, he just had him stand still looking at his watch for 10 minutes. Another guy he convinced to sit on the ground with a beggars sign and beg for money. Another guy he convinced to go to a ATM and withdraw $60 and throw it in the trash (Barry went and retrieved the money though, and gave it back to the guy). What was interesting though, is these people didn't recall doing what Barry told them to do. They had to be shown they had done it.

As interesting as all of that was on its own, what really got me thinking was how easily Barry was able to put those strangers on the street into a trance and then have them do something without having any recollection of it. Could this explain some of the stories people have told about experiencing missing time (where people cannot account for what happened to them during a certain period of time...here are a few examples here, here, and here)? The strangers on the street Barry put into a trance didn't even realize he had put them in a trance. Could something like this be one possible explanation for what has happened to people who claim to have experienced missing time? In some cases, a missing time experience may also be part of an alien abduction experience. If a guy on the street could put a person in a trance, then I suppose it's possible an alien could too. But what if there was no alien? What if the whole alien abduction experience was a false memory implanted into their mind while they were under a trance?

Why someone would want to implant an alien abduction experience into someone's mind, I don't know. I don't know why someone would have put them into a trance in the first place either. But perhaps being temporarily put into a trance could explain at least some of the cases of missing time some people have reported experiencing.

What's going on in the world?

2011-05-30T14:27:00.002-04:00

So what are some of the most significant news stories of this year? Earthquakes? Particularly in Japan? What about the mideast protests? Most significantly Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Now what is up with all the recent tornadoes? And what about the the wars being fought? And what about all the economic troubles?

What is bringing about these changes? Are any of them related? Could these things be some sort of precursor to possible changes some have alleged will occur in 2012? Or are they really changes at all? None of these things is new. Earthquakes have been occurring throughout history. Some of them tragic...just ask the people who lived at Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. People have been protesting things throughout recorded history. Government's have been overthrown before. Wars have been fought...some of them lasting many years. Economic troubles have come and gone before. And although tornado activity has increased this year, it could just be a temporary increase. It may be too soon to tell about that at this point.

So with that in mind, could all of these things a precursor of things to come? Could the world already be in the process of changing? Or are these events mostly unrelated and not necessarily an indication of any major long term changes (economic troubles and the mideast protests may be related though)?

The world has actually been changing in some ways for a long time anyways. Just think of some of the changes in the world throughout history. The world has come a long ways from simple stone tools, to cars, airplanes, and the Internet.

So what will next year bring? I guess time will tell.

Earthquakes and Weird Atmospheric Phenomena

2011-05-22T17:11:00.000-04:00

A while back I wrote a post about earthquake lights and today I came across a blog posting about atmospheric phenomena that may be related to earthquakes. Here is an excerpt from that posting:

Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.

In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.

Last year, we looked at some fascinating data from the DEMETER spacecraft showing a significant increase in ultra-low frequency radio signals before the magnitude 7 Haiti earthquake in January 2010

Today, Dimitar Ouzounov at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and a few buddies present the data from the Great Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan on 11 March. Their results, although preliminary, are eye-opening.

They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.

At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.

The post also mentions alleged high tech warfare that could be causing the atmospheric conditions and earthquakes. But it also points out that earthquake lights were seen long before any advanced technologies were invented to allegedly manipulate atmospheric conditions. But then again, just because the conditions existed naturally in the past isn't alone necessarily proof that atmospheric conditions cannot be manipulated by man. People have been conceiving babies naturally for a long time too...but that doesn't mean a baby can't also be conceived in a test tube today.

Nevertheless, conspiracy theories about weather manipulation aside, I thought the post was a good read about science behind atmospheric conditions noted around the time of earthquake occurrences. Maybe one day we will even be able to predict earthquakes.

Read the whole post here.

Nada

2011-05-09T16:58:00.002-04:00

I just realized I haven't posted anything new on here in over a month now. Life is busier for me these days that it was when I first started this blog, so I don't have as much free time to write. But at the same time, I haven't really had anything I felt like writing about either. I still read about paranormal topics some on a few different blogs and on the paranormal.about.com website, but I haven't really seen anything I felt like writing about myself. Nevertheless, life is good, so I'm not complaining. :)

Bigfoot sighted in NC...or not?

2011-03-25T10:15:00.000-04:00

MSNBC has an article on a alleged Bigfoot sighting in NC. I'm a little surprised they bothered to report it. The video quality is poor, especially considering how close up the video was shot, and the Bigfoot really doesn't look all that big.

UFO hovers over Jerusalem?

2011-02-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

I don't know if this is real or not, but I thought the woman who said, "We've seen them in Mississippi like this," was hilarious.

Bigfoot or Big Ape?

2011-01-28T23:40:00.001-05:00

It may be walking upright, but this gorilla still looks like a gorilla to me.

So I guess gorillas can learn to walk upright. But even though he's walking upright, he still doesn't look anymore like a bigfoot than a three legged bear does. He doesn't even look very tall. I doubt anyone would mistake him for a bigfoot, at least not up close.

Is there anything we could teach aliens?

2011-01-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder what an advanced alien race might be like. Would they be like we see them in movies and on TV? Would they be technologically advanced with spaceships capable of crossing great distances? Or would they be spiritually advanced? Would an advanced alien race have mastered things like telepathy and remote viewing? Would they even be made of flesh and blood? Would they be completely spiritual in nature, capable of crossing vast distances due to not being made of flesh and blood and not necessarily needing things like atmosphere to breathe? Or maybe they would be like Superman, made of flesh and blood but still capable of flying at high speeds.

Personally, I tend to think an advanced alien race would be more spiritual in nature, but it may be possible that both technologically advanced and spiritually advanced aliens could exist. Some might even be advanced in both categories.

Some people wonder what an advanced alien race could teach us, but if we were visited by an alien race, is there anything that we could teach them?

That question crossed my mind the other day when I was watching an episode of ABC's V. In V, the aliens, known as "Vistors" (or just Vs), have come to earth portraying themselves as a benevolent alien race bringing gifts and sharing knowledge. In reality though, they have sinister intentions and seek to exploit humanity (possibly for breeding purposes...which I think is the direction the series is going in). The Vs tend to be emotionless, and don't really understand human emotion. They begin to think that human emotion may come from the soul, a concept they seem to be unfamiliar with. In the episode I was watching, the Vs attempted an experiment to extract a soul from a person, despite the man's pleas for the experiment not to be carried out. So I thought, instead of begging for mercy, the guy should have attempted to exploit the Vs apparent lack of knowledge of what a soul is. He should have tried convincing them that he was an expert in the subject of what the soul is and offered to teach them about it. Maybe then they would have let him go.

Now if we were visited by aliens that were not sinister, no one would need to attempt to exploit their lack of knowledge of what a soul is. But is there anything we could teach a truly benevolent alien race? Sure, we could give them a history lesson, but is there anything else? If the aliens were technologically advanced and non-spiritual in nature, then perhaps we could teach them something about spirituality. Of course, humans have widely differing views on spirituality, but if the aliens were oblivious to concepts such as the soul and psychic phenomena, then maybe we could teach them a little something about that.

If the aliens were already spiritually advanced, then there probably isn't much we could teach them. What would aliens who have mastered telepathy need with cell phones? Many of our technologies may seem kind of backwards to them.

Ultimately though, unless we actually are visited by a race of aliens, it's difficult to know whether or not there is anything we could teach them. Until we see what they already know, we won't know if there is anything we can teach them.

Dreams of Anticipation?

2011-01-04T22:06:00.000-05:00

A guy I work with dropped his car off at a shop yesterday afternoon after he got off and then came back to our office because he didn't want to wait at the shop while it was being worked on (the shop is within walking distance of our office). He was already off for the day, so he decided to just take nap. I noticed when he had just dozed off, so I decided to shoot a rubber band at him just to mess with him. He woke up and told me he was dreaming that someone was pulling a tree branch back, and when he felt the rubber band hit him is when the person let the branch go in the dream. So his subconscious mind interpreted getting hit by the rubber band as getting hit by a tree branch. But the question in my mind is why was he even dreaming about someone holding a tree branch back? It's almost as if his subconscious mind knew he was going to get hit by a rubber band and it began preparing a scenario to fit what was about to happen.

Others have probably experienced similar dreams. A dream where something happening in the dream corresponds to something that's really happening, but it's not necessarily just the single instance that your mind interprets a certain way; it may be that your mind prepares a scenario to correspond with what is about to happen before it even happens.

So in the example I used above, why was he dreaming about someone holding a tree branch back as I was preparing to shoot him with a rubber band? Was he just randomly dreaming about a guy holding back a tree branch and getting hit by that branch just so happened to be the most convenient way to interpret the impact of the rubber band at that precise moment? Or was his subconscious somehow aware of what was about to happen? If so, how did it become aware? Was it some sort of unconscious telepathy? Or was his mind just able to somehow sense the movements I was making to prepare the shot? Could he sense my intention?

I don't know that it necessarily classifies as precognition, but it seems that the subconscious mind may be able to anticipate something that is about to happen and prepare a dreamlike scenario for it.

What happened to Flight 77?

2010-12-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

I was watching an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura the other day where they were investigating the conspiracy theory that a missile hit the Pentagon instead of Flight 77. It's not the first time I've ever heard of this conspiracy theory, but I've never really taken it too seriously. Flight 77 was hijacked, so the story that it crashed into the Pentagon makes sense. Besides, even if there was a conspiracy and the hijacking was an inside job, why would they need to use a missile anyways?

I must admit though, it is kind of odd there was no visible debris that looked like it came from an airplane. But if it wasn't Flight 77, then what happened to it? The episode didn't really say anything about that. I asked someone I work with who's interested in conspiracy theories what he thought about it, and he suggested it may have been shot down over the ocean. If so, and no one saw it, it would be very difficult to find any evidence for it if you don't even know where to look.

Without a plausible theory about what happened to Flight 77 that is backed up by some kind of evidence, it's going to be hard to convince people that a missile hit the Pentagon instead of Flight 77. If Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, then finding evidence of what happened to it would be the missing piece of the puzzle. It would be difficult to deny that a missile (or possibly a bomb) hit the Pentagon if Flight 77 was found somewhere else. If people who support the missile hitting the Pentagon theory really want to convince people they are right, then they need to figure out what happened to Flight 77.

But there may be no evidence to find. It must have crashed or landed somewhere. Maybe it really did crash into the Pentagon. I'm not really convinced that it did or it didn't. We may never know for sure.

Syfy pretty much sucks now

2010-12-16T22:52:00.003-05:00

Up until this afternoon, Syfy was one of my favorite networks...not so much anymore though. After finding out that the network has canceled Stargate Universe, my interest in the network has dropped considerably. So much so, that I may not even bother watching anymore shows on the network...at least for a while. I was already upset with the network for canceling Caprica, now they've canceled my favorite show on top of that.

Other shows that I've watched and enjoyed on Syfy are Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, Destination Truth, Hollywood Treasure, and Warehouse 13. But I may not be watching these shows anymore. Fact or Faked has been mediocre and Warehouse 13 is just so-so. Hollywood Treasure has been good, but I'm just not sure I even want to watch these shows anymore. One of the main reasons I watched the Syfy network is because of the Stargate franchise. Stargate Universe (SGU) was the third of three Stargate TV shows. To me, the Stargate series is sort of like a flagship series of the Syfy network. Sure, there's been 17 seasons of episodes between the three shows, which is more than most shows ever go for, but SGU had so much more potential for storytelling. They tried to keep it fresh, by making the show a drama instead of an action-adventure like the previous two series...but I suppose that may have contributed to it's demise in a way. Some people wanted the show to be more like its two predecessors.

Nevertheless, cancelling SGU as well as Caprica has made me lose interest in the Syfy network. The new stuff they have coming out, such as Being Human, doesn't even sound that interesting. It may have been interesting enough to watch when SGU was between seasons, but I don't think it's interesting enough to keep me interested in watching the Syfy network without SGU. I don't know that I'm interested in keeping up with any of these shows anymore. I watched Syfy because of Stargate. These other shows were just shows I watched because I saw them advertised and thought they looked good. They don't look so good anymore.

The only other show on Syfy now that I really like is Destination Truth. But I'm not sure that I even want to watch that anymore. Maybe I'll just watch it on Hulu instead.

Come to think of it, television in general has been starting to suck lately. NBC had a series called Persons Unknown over the summer that I liked, but it didn't do well and won't be returning. ABC had a decent show called FlashForward that won't be coming back either. And, of course, my favorite show ever, Lost, is over too.

I guess at least the History channel still has a few good shows. Whether or not I'll be tuning into the Syfy network again after this season of SGU ends remains to be seen.

Skepticism versus Science Video

2010-11-19T10:47:00.000-05:00

A somewhat humorous video I found. I think it sums up the difference between science and skepticism fairly accurately though.

H/T

One commenter on the blog I found this video on said, "In my scorecard, the male was practicing what I call 'lazy skepticism'.The flip side of lazy skepticism is believing something to be scientific simply because an authority figure claims that it's scientific."

I tend to agree with that statement!

A Telepathy Experiment

2010-09-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

Dean Radin wrote a post on his blog about a telepathy experiment he conducted that had someone looking at a randomly chosen picture and attempting to 'send' that information telepathically to someone else in another room. Dean transcribed what the 'receiver' described and posted the four pictures from which the randomly chosen picture was picked from. If you're interested, read the post and see the pictures here. See if you can guess which picture was the randomly chosen picture based on what the 'receiver' described. The answer is revealed in the comments.

Ye Olde Debunker

2010-09-11T14:03:00.000-04:00

Debunkers didn't just appear during the advent of modern science. They've been around for a long time. And although some debunkers can be quite annoying when they are cynical skeptics with a zealous belief in materialism, debunking isn't always bad. Sometimes its good to have a debunking attitude, as long as you don't take it to a zealous extreme.

One well known Renaissance debunking is that of geocentrism. The heliocentric model is taken for granted today, but for a long time, many people adhered to a geocentric model of the universe. The idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun was actually proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BC, but Nicholas Copernicus further developed the heliocentric model in the 16th century. Johannes Kepler supported the heliocentric model and Galileo contributed to it with astronomical observations he made using his telescope. Isaac Newton also supported the heliocentric model. Eventually, it was accepted that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and not long after that, astronomers began to realize that the Sun wasn't the center of the universe either. I suppose if the universe is infinite though, then maybe it doesn't really have a center. With that in mind, I guess it's really a matter of opinion where the center of the universe is.

It took a long time to debunk geocentrism and debunking it cannot be attributed to any one person. But there is a debunking from the 16th century that didn't take quite as long. The Rood of Grace, also known as the 'Holy Cross of Grace', was a wooden image of Jesus on the cross that was supposed to be miraculously gifted with movement and speech and was housed in Boxley Abbey in England (a rood is a large crucifix on a beam or screen at the entrance to the chancel of a church). It was during the 16th century that the Protestant Reformation began and King Henry VIII of England broke ties with the Catholic Church in Rome. It was during this atmosphere of anti-Catholic sentiments that the supposed miracle of the Rood of Grace was debunked. Thomas Cromwell sent Geoffrey Chambers to close down the abbey and investigate the rood for him. Chambers reported back that he found “certain engines and old wire, with old rotten sticks in the back of the same that did cause the eyes to move and stare; and also the nether lip to move as though to speak.” The abbot and monks claimed to be ignorant of it, but Chambers exposed the hoax and the Rood of Grace was burned in London. I suppose it might be possible that the monks at Boxley were not intentionally deceiving pilgrims visiting their abbey, but I doubt it. I think it's most likely that the monks (or at least one or some of them) knew what they were doing and were intentionally deceiving pilgrims so they could influence them and get money from them.

Another example of a historical debunking comes from ancient times. The story of Bel and the Dragon, an apocryphal addition to the book of Daniel, describes a debunking. Daniel is employed as a chief advisor to the King of Persia. Daniel, who was an exiled Jew, refused to worship Bel. The King questioned him as to why he refused to worship Bel and pointed out to him that the idol of Bel would eat all the food and drink all the wine that was left out for him at night. Daniel claimed that the idol was not really eating the food and drinking the wine at night, but the priests of Bel continued to say that Bel was eating the food and drinking the wine. The King declared that Daniel would be put to death unless he could prove that the priests were lying. So to prove he was right, Daniel spread ashes out on the temple floor that night before the King sealed the doors to the temple. The next morning when the King opened the door and saw all the food had been eaten, Daniel pointed out footprints on the floor. The King saw the footprints of men, women, and children on the floor, and he demanded the priests show him where the footprints came from. The priests showed him a trapdoor hidden under a table. The priests had been coming in at night with their families to eat the food and drink the wine. It was not the idol of Bel eating the food afterall. Daniel's life was spared.

Even if this addition to the book of Daniel isn't true, I think it's at least clear that some ancient author understood the concept of debunking.

Archaeological evidence suggests that some clever pagan priests from ancient times were able to deceive worshipers by hiding behind an idol and speaking through a hole, giving the worshipers the impression that the idol was talking. Hero of Alexandria, an ancient Greek inventor, built a primitive steam engine that could pull the doors of an ancient temple open using pulleys. To worshipers, it may have appeared as though the god of temple was miraculously opening the doors.

So although debunkers and skeptics can sometimes be annoying, I think these examples show that debunking can be a good thing. The key to a good debunking is to keep an open mind and not take the debunking to a zealous, materialistic extreme.

A Florida Pastor, the News Media, and the journey of two Muslims

2010-09-11T11:35:00.000-04:00

You've probably seen the headlines recently about Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who threatened to burn Korans on Saturday September 11th, 2010. Protests have been reported in Afganistan. I think the news media probably deserves more blame for the protests than the pastor though. The pastor only has a congregation of around 50 people. Whether you're offended by the pastor's threat, support it, or are just angered by the potential threat to American soldiers in Afganistan that could result from it, if the news media had ignored his threats, most people wouldn't even know about what he intended to do. People wouldn't be protesting it if they didn't know about it. The news media, as well as Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Robert Gates are responsible for turning the proposed event into an international news sensation.

However, in contrast to those headlines, CNN reported on the story of two Muslims who went on a journey across America. Here is the headline:

2 Muslims travel 13,000 miles across America, find an embracing nation

The story reports that the two Muslims were "embraced nearly everywhere they went, from a Confederate souvenir shop in Georgia to the streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, to the hills of North Dakota where the nation's first mosque was built in 1929."

I think that article is a more accurate representation of most of the population of America. That's the article that should be the international media sensation, not the articles about a Florida pastor for a 50 member congregation.

Caprica Returns in October!

2010-09-09T21:16:00.000-04:00

Blastr.com reports that SyFy has announced that one of my favorite shows, Caprica, will be returning on October 5th at 10 PM. It will be airing after one of my other favorite shows, Stargate Universe. I think both shows are excellent dramas and am excited they are both returning in October! Now that Lost isn't going to be coming on anymore, these are the two shows I look most forward to.

Read the press release here.

A couple of odd Google search phrases

2010-08-17T21:55:00.000-04:00

I like to look at the visitor statistics for my blog sometimes and see what keywords people used when they find my blog via Google. Most of the keywords used to find my blog make sense. One of the most visited posts I have had recently was my post about Zahi Hawass' TV show. That post comes up high on the listings for search phrases like 'zahi hawass reality show' (as of the time of this posting anyways).

Given the topic and title of that post, I can understand why that post would show up in the Google results for that keyword search, and I don't think it's odd that someone would be doing a search using that phrase.

But a couple of other search phrases that people have been using recently are a little odd and somewhat amusing to me.

For example, sometimes my post about the TV show Pawn Stars gets hits from people using search phrases like 'is richard harrison of pawn stars jewish' (or other similar variations of that). I've seen that search or a variant of it come up numerous times. The word 'Jewish' doesn't even show up my post about Pawn Stars, but that post comes up in Google search results for that phrase because I have 'Jewish history' listed as an interest of mine in the About me section on my page. So because Google sees 'pawn stars' and 'Jewish' on the same page, my post shows up high on the listings for those search terms.

What I don't get is why so many people have been searching for that. I don't know why they even care. But for what it's worth, I don't know if the pawn stars are Jewish or not. I don't know what religion they are or if they even have any religion. Now, if anyone does another search using that phrase, I wonder if this post will come up higher in the listings than my Pawn Stars post.

Another search phrase people have found my blog with recently is 'rough talk him and run him off' (or similar variants). It leads them to my post titled Rough Talk and Big Stick. The post includes a video of a man who claimed to see a Bigfoot in North Carolina and said he "rough talked him and runned him off." I understand why someone would find my post using those search terms, but it's just funny to me that so many people have been searching for that phrase.

And, just for laughs, if you want to read some funny Google Suggest results, click here.

Who Really Discovered America?

2010-08-12T22:30:00.006-04:00

Who Really Discovered America? That's the title of a documentary that aired on the History channel. I've written before about people who may have discovered America long before Columbus or even Leif Ericsson in a post titled Discovering America...again and again. The History channel documentary features some more people who may have discovered America.

For example, the show highlighted a map that is supposed to be a copy of a Chinese map from the early 15th century that shows the Americas. It's difficult to prove whether or not the map is a genuine copy of a 15th century Chinese map and many historians are skeptical, but if it really is a copy of an early 15th century Chinese map, the Chinese must have been at least somewhat familiar with the Americas.

The show also featured the story of a Welsch prince named Madoc who allegedly sailed to America and landed in what is now Mobile Bay in Alabama. While the story is generally considered to be a legend, some people feel there is evidence to support it. They point to the remains of stone buildings that may have been Welsh in design, as well as the Mandan indian tribe. Some of the Mandans were said to have blue eyes and light skin. There are no full blooded Mandans today though, so this is difficult to confirm now.

Another claim featured suggests that Japanese people may have discovered America thousands of years ago. The patterns on pottery shards excavated at Valdivia, Ecuador and on Japan's Kyushu island by Smithsonian archaeologist Betty Meggers matched so well, she posited that Japanese people reached Ecuador 6300 years ago. She has also uncovered DNA evidence. Read more about that here.

Another claim suggests that Polynesians discovered the coast of South America at least as far back as 1321 AD and possibly earlier than that. The evidence? Chicken bones dated to be from 1321 - 1407 AD. It's thought that chickens were not native to South America, but the evidence suggests that chickens arrived in South America before the Spanish conquistadors did.

In addition to that, South American sweet potatoes have been found in Polynesia, and the Polynesian word for sweet potato, kumala, is similar to the indigenous Peruvian word for sweet potato, cumal. The Polynesians were a great seafaring people and it is very possible and quite likely that they reached South America before the Spanish. Read more about the evidence of Polynesians in South America here and here.

What may have been the most interesting theory suggested on the program is the Solutrean theory. The Solutreans were a prehistoric people who lived in what is now southwestern Europe. It has been suggested that the Solutreans may have come to North America approximately somewhere between 22,000 to 17,000 years ago. The Clovis people, a name for the earliest known inhabitants of North America, had spearheads that are similar in style to the earlier Solutrean spearheads. It's thought by some that the Solutreans may have discovered North America and that the Clovis people were their descendants. The Solutreans may have been able to reach North America from Europe by boating along the pack ice that extended from the Atlantic coast of France to North America during the last glacial maximum.

It has long been thought by many that the first Americans were prehistoric Asians who probably crossed a land-ice bridge into North America around 13,500 years ago. But if the Solutrean theory is true, it would mean that prehistoric Europeans discovered North America much earlier.

Of course, it's also possible that the Solutrean theory has no merit because the Clovis people may have independently developed a style of toolmaking that just so happened to be similar to that of the Solutreans (I guess there's really only so many ways you can make a spearhead). Read more about the Solutrean theory here and here.

Overall, Who Really Discovered America? was an interesting documentary. If you ever come across a rerun of it, it might be worth a watch.

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Here are a couple of other interesting links I came across while looking up information for this post. An archaeologist in South Carolina found artifacts there that were dated to being over 50,000 years old. Read about those finds here and here.

The compassion of a Bedouin tribe

2010-08-05T22:25:00.001-04:00

I wasn't sure at first if the History channel's new show Chasing Mummies was going to be good or not. After watching a few episodes of it though, I'm hooked. I still think it would be better if they focused more on the history and less on Dr. Hawass' short temper, but overall it's been a decent show.

In last night's episode, Hawass and a few others were own their way to a site and got stopped by the military. They were told they couldn't pass that day. So instead of driving back, Hawass decided they should just drive out in the desert and camp. Allan Morton, one of the archaeologists, wasn't feeling well and Hawass instructed one of the archaeological fellows to return to the jeep and get some food. The food had spoiled though -- apparently meat can spoil in as little as 2 hours in the desert.

To solve the problem of having no food in the middle of the desert, Hawass approached a Bedouin tribe and asked if they could give them some food. The Bedouins agreed to help and proceeded to slay one of their camels for a feast (much to the dismay of Lindsay, one of the archaeological fellows, who had just been petting the camel five minutes earlier). That evening, they all ate, and since Hawass didn't really have anything to offer them in return, he gave them his hat.

From the time they were approached until the time they parted ways, the Bedouins seemed to be honored to help. They could have ignored the plea for help or grudgingly agreed to help and acted like it was a big inconvenience, but they didn't. They appeared to be glad to help and accepted a hat in return for their assistance. I was thinking, what if everyone had that type of attitude? What if everyone had that same level of compassion? I think the world would be a much better place.

Zahi Hawass: Reality Show Star

2010-07-16T23:01:00.003-04:00

When I first saw an advertisement for the History channel's new show Chasing Mummies, a reality show following the life of the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, my first thought was, "Are you serious?"

Hawass is no stranger to television though, he's appeared in many documentaries about ancient Egyptian history. I'm not sure if he just likes being on TV, or if he just wants to make sure his version of Egyptian history gets presented (as opposed to alternative versions proposed by people like John Anthony West and Graham Hancock). So I'm never surprised to see him in documentaries about ancient Egypt. But I wasn't expecting to see him a reality show setting that includes a couple of cute college girl interns.

I was intrigued enough to set my DVR to record the premier. The first episode starts out intensely. One of the cute interns and a cameraman accidently get locked in Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara, and the show's producer frantically contacts Hawass. Hawass was at a book signing in Cairo, and angrily storms out of the signing so he can head back to Saqqara to open the pyramid. Apparently the intern and cameraman had been locked in there for hours and no one had heard from them.

We find out early on that Hawass is cantankerous, impatient, and has a short fuse (but, according to one guy, has a heart of gold). He is grumpy throughout the whole episode. Later in the episode, the crew visits a new site Hawass is excavating and discover an intact tomb that has not been robbed. Hawass is excited and proceeds to excavate the site. He may be a little cantakerous, but he does seem to have genuine passion and desire for Egyptology. He's devoted his life to studying ancient Egypt and he still gets excited when he finds something new.

I thought a lot of the 'reality' seemed like it might be staged. It seemed overly dramatic, particularly the beginning. I'm not sure why Hawass himself had to hurry back to Saqqara to open the step pyramid; it seems to me that he could have easily just called someone and given permission to let the crew in the look for the intern and cameraman. Maybe he just didn't want the crew going in if he wasn't present? Maybe he just didn't want to bother one of his colleagues so late at night? Or maybe that just wouldn't have made for good reality TV? I don't know, but they really hyped it up. They eventually found the intern and cameraman, and fortunately, they were ok.

I wasn't overly impressed with the first episode. It seemed like the show was more focused on drama and Hawass' attitude than it was on Egyptology. The excavation of the intact tomb was interesting, but that was only part of the episode. Since some of it seemed like it might be staged, I thought the show in general seemed a little cheesy. For now, I've set my DVR to record the next episode, but I'm not sure if I'll watch the whole series. I'll have to see if the next episode can keep me interested first. The highlights for the upcoming episodes showed a lot of Hawass being cantankerous though. I'd rather see more Egyptology and less drama on the show. But if you like Egyptology mixed with drama and 'reality', Chasing Mummies might be the show for you.

Prehistoric Sophistication

2010-07-11T17:30:00.006-04:00

I think a lot of people think of prehistoric humans as being very dimwitted peoples who just lived in caves and hunted for food. Popular culture has depicted cavemen as wearing leopard skins, carrying clubs, grunting, and dragging their women back to their cave by her hair. That image is basically a caricature of what mainstream academia has been teaching for decades now.

But, of course, mainstream academia is dominated by Darwinian thinking, so the idea that prehistoric humanity is dimwitted and unsophisticated fits in well with the Darwinian concept that humanity has been consistently 'evolving' and progressing over the years.

But there is plenty of evidence to suggest even some prehistoric humans were sophisticated and intelligent.

Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, for instance, appears to be an 11,000 year old temple complex. Supposedly, 11,000 years ago, people were still supposed to be hunter-gatherers that had no system of writing. So how is it that prehistoric humans were able to build a megalithic temple in what is now modern Turkey? Here's an excerpt from a Smithsonian article about the site:

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

Moving ten ton stones and elaborate carvings? Not bad for hunter gatherers, huh? Sometimes signs of prehistoric sophistication just seem to pop up out of nowhere. Even the sophisticated civilization of ancient Egypt, though it may not be considered prehistoric, seems to have just sprouted up out of nowhere on the archaeological time scale. What were its origins? How did the ancient Egyptians go from being hunter-gatherers to megalithic builders so quickly? And how did the people of ancient Turkey manage to do that thousands of years earlier?

There are other signs of sophistication in the prehistoric world though; some much older than the temple at Gobekli Tepe. It's often been said that writing first developed in ancient Sumeria around the 4th century BC, but art, and possibly even written communication, existed earlier than that.

For instance, rock art dated to be around 7500 years old has been found in Baja California. Read more about that in a National Geographic article here.

An article in the Globe and Mail reports that a graphic code uncovered by researchers at the University of Victoria suggests that written communication may have existed in France 30,000 years ago. Read that article here.

But there is more evidence of sophistication in prehistoric times than just art and written communication. Tools dated to be 40,000 years old have been found as far south as Tasmania (read more about that here), but prehistoric humans weren't just making stone tools. Ivory carved figurines dated to be at least 33,000 years old have been found in Germany in a cave called Hohle Fels (read more about that here). One figurine, called the Venus of Hohle Fels, may be a representation of some sort of fertility goddess, suggesting the figurines may have been idols.

Figurines were not all that was found at Hohle Fels though, a flute was also found. The flute, according to a report in a New York Times article, is at least 35,000 years old. So not only were prehistoric humans carving figurines in Germany, it seems they also had an appreciation for music.

Prehistoric humans in Germany may have been playing music, but according to a report in the Guardian, Neanderthals in Spain may have been concerned about their appearance 50,000 years ago. Here's an excerpt of that report:

For decades, our low-browed Neanderthal cousins have been portrayed as dim savages whose idea of seduction was a whispered "ug" and a blow to the cranium.

But analysis of pierced, hand-coloured shells and lumps of pigment from two caves in south-east Spain suggests the cavepeople who stomped around Europe 50,000 years ago were far more intelligent – and cosmetically minded – than previously thought.

In 1985, archaeologists excavating the Cueva de los Aviones in Murcia found cockle shells perforated as if to be hung on a necklace and an oyster shell containing mineral pigments, hinting that the cave's Neanderthal residents had developed a taste for self-adornment and makeup.

Ok, so some prehistoric humans enjoyed art, music, were concerned about their appearance, and some apparently knew how to build megaliths. But what about travel? I've written before about people who may have visited the Americas long before Columbus did, but there is evidence of seafaring people even in prehistoric times. Prehistoric tools found on Crete indicate that seafaring people reached the island at least 130,000 years ago, according to a report in the New York Times. Here's an excerpt from that article:

Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.

Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia, beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water to new habitats.

Even more intriguing, the archaeologists who found the tools on Crete noted that the style of the hand axes suggested that they could be up to 700,000 years old. That may be a stretch, they conceded, but the tools resemble artifacts from the stone technology known as Acheulean, which originated with prehuman populations in Africa.

So even in prehistoric times, there is evidence of sophisticated and intelligent humans. I think archaeologists would do well to look for potential underwater excavation sites in areas that were once above water during the last ice age (I've written about that before here). I think the prehistoric world may have been a much more interesting and sophisticated time, compared to what we've been taught it was like by mainstream academia and popular culture.

Rough Talk and a Big Stick

2010-06-19T12:26:00.000-04:00

Stephen Wagner at about.com's Paranormal Phenomena posted a link to an NBC news clip about a bigfoot sighting in the mountains of North Carolina. What I found most interesting about this alleged sighting is how the witness, Tim Peeler, dealt with the situation. Instead of running scared or hiding, Peeler "rough talked him and runned him off." The bigfoot returned, and Peeler apparently ran him off again using a big stick.

So who knew you could run off a bigfoot with rough talk and a big stick?

This might also be the first time I've heard a bigfoot described as having "beautiful hair."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Qi and Prana on Nat Geo

2010-06-04T10:36:00.000-04:00

I typically don't watch that much on the National Geographic channel because a lot of their programs are very predictable. Nat Geo is very biased in favor of establishment materialism and atheistic thinking, so I know if the program is about something paranormal in nature or religious, the program is going to have a debunking stance.

I did watch an episode of Is it Real? the other night though, and I thought it was interesting. They were investigating spiritual energies, including what the Chinese call qi (pronounced "chee") and what the Hindu's call it prana.

One of the people they featured was martial artist George Dillman, who can not only knock people out using pressure points but also without even touching them by using his qi. Dillman is no fraud or stage magician though, he is a legitimate black belt in Ryukyu Kempo Tomari-te and has even trained with Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali. He was not only shown knocking people out without touching them, but he was also shown to be able to make a line of people move without even being able to see them (and them not being able to see him).

Two scientists who were skeptical of his ability to knock people out with his qi were bought on the show, and they felt his ability had more to do with hypnotic suggestion than qi. They thought the people being knocked out were expecting it to happen, so therefore, it happened. One of the skeptical scientists even let one of Dillman's top students attempt to knock him out with his qi (I'm not sure why Dillman himself didn't try; they may have been filming the scientists in different location where Dillman wasn't present). Dillman's student failed to knock the scientist out with his qi. Afterwards, Dillman said if a person was holding their tongue a certain way, it wouldn't work, or if they press one big toe against the floor while raising the other big toe up, it wouldn't work. Dillman did appear to have an impressive ability, but in the end, he sounded like he was just making excuses.

Another person featured in the episode was a clinical psychologist named Howard Hall who is also a hypnotist. He went to Baghdad in 1998 to investigate whether or not a sect of Sufi Muslims who perform self mutilations without any apparent ill effects and then heal almost instantly were under some sort of hypnotic suggestion. The Sufis shown had blades in their chest, head, and mouth. According to their belief, a sheikh channels the energy and 'protects' them. Dr. Hall did not think the faithful who were mutilating themselves were under any sort of hypnotic suggestion and was so impressed by what they were doing that he asked the sheikh if he could have 'protection' too. The sheikh said he could, and Hall stabbed a pointed object through his cheek with no ill effect.

After that experience, Hall began studying the Sufi religion and agreed to repeat the mutilation for National Geographic. He and another doctor used some sort of machine that supposedly shows a person's aura (something similar to Kirlian photography, but more updated). After Hall stabbed an ice pick through his cheek from inside his mouth, a gap was shown in what was alleged to be his aura where the ice pick had been in his cheek. He bled very little and the wound closed up quickly.

The skeptics brought in to counter Hall's claims didn't think the machine that supposedly shows an aura could be trusted, and they had their own machine that they claimed was similar and showed why the machine Dr. Hall used couldn't necessarily be trusted (although their machine that they claimed was similar seemed to be quite different to me...I'm not sure if it was really an accurate comparison). Another doctor said that the wound Hall inflicted on himself was small and he wasn't surprised that it didn't bleed much. He also said putting pressure on it afterwards probably helped to close the wound up quickly. So he wasn't impressed with how quickly the wound healed; he thought the healing seemed normal.

The show also featured a Hindu version of a shady televangelist who was setup by a debunker with a group of people with problems that they made up. The shady Hindu holy man, who I don't doubt was a fraud -- he was deceiving the poor and making himself wealthy (and he had a shady looking smirk on his face too) -- didn't catch on to the deception being played on him and he was considered debunked...and this case, I think the debunker was right on.

The show also featured a guy who could inflict self mutilation without ill effects who claimed it was just mind over matter. I think the program basically just featured that guy because he didn't claim to use any spiritual energies -- in other words, they were just showing more evidence of their bias against the concept of spiritual energies.

They also featured some yogic flyers who don't really fly, but just sit in the lotus position and then start hopping quickly across the floor. Apparently they get really happy and just start hopping. It looks hard to do, but I'm assuming Nat Geo took the stance that there wasn't really any spiritual energy involved and just included it as part of their bias against the belief in spiritual energies.

But anyways, lets look and Dillman and Hall again, who were the two most intriguing people featured in the episode. In the end, it looked like Dillman's ability may have had more to do with hypnotic suggestion than qi, and Dillman was left making excuses. I've often wondered if hypnotic suggestion may be how televangelist Benny Hinn is able to knock people down with a light touch. However, hypnotic suggestion still doesn't explain how Dillman was able to make a line of people move without them being able to see him. In the end, it may have appeared that the skeptics won in Dillman's case, but I'm not thoroughly convinced. I think it may still be possible that Dillman really does know how to use his qi to make people move (or knock them out).

In Hall's case, I don't even think the debunkers did a very good job of debunking it. The doctor may have been correct in saying he thought the wound closed up and healed in a normal way, but it still doesn't explain how Hall was able to jab an ice pick through his cheek without feeling pain. And even if you think the machine that supposedly can show a person's aura is hokey, it still doesn't explain how Hall could jab an ice pick through his cheek without feeling pain.

In the end, Nat Geo took the position that the abilities had less to do with spiritual energies and more to do with the power of the mind and the belief in an ability. And although I agree that the mind and belief can be very powerful, I'm not convinced that spiritual energies don't exist. I think there is ample evidence to suggest that spiritual energies do exist, even if little of that evidence was present in that particular Nat Geo program.

Oil Rig Explosion In Gulf Foreshadowed In 2009 Movie 'Knowing'?

2010-05-31T21:00:00.001-04:00

Did the Nicholas Cage movie Knowing predict the oil spill in the gulf? Or is it just a coincidence? There seems to be some buzz on the internet about this. It is an eerie similarity, but then again, you could probably find other similarities to events that occur in a movies and events that occur in the real world.

Selling a haunted house...disclosure required?

2010-05-26T22:22:00.000-04:00

I was reading a post written by Jason Offutt on his blog From the Shadows, and he mentioned that when selling haunted property in Indiana, there are laws that require real estate agents to disclose the haunting. I was a little shocked by that...but I'm not too surprised. I'm not surprised that a haunting is considered a stigma when selling a house, but I am surprised that the state would require that a haunting be disclosed. Who gets to decide whether or not a property is haunted?

I did a little more looking around, and an article I found in the Wall Street Journal says that in 44 states and Washington, DC, a haunting falls under a category of 'psychological stigmas' (although that doesn't necessarily mean that realtors are automatically required to disclose a haunting since it is considered a non-material factor, but they shouldn't lie about it if someone asks) . Another article I found mentioned a court case from New York named Stambovsky v. Ackley, where a home buyer (Stambovsky) sued to rescind the sales contract for the house he bought after he found out it was haunted. The haunting had not been disclosed to Stambovsky, and he won the case!

I wasn't able to find a list of states that require that a haunting be disclosed, but I got the impression that the laws vary state to state (and may not always be totally clear), and that it's not necessarily required that real estate agents disclose whether or not a house is haunted up front, but they should respond truthfully if a potential buyer asks.

Interesting nonetheless. In the Stambovsky v. Ackley case, there were publications (including Readers Digest) that reported the house as being haunted. But what if there were no published accounts of the house being haunted? What else could a court go by in making a decision? Who would get to decide whether or not a house was haunted? Stambovsky had the benefit of buying a house that had been previously reported as being haunted, but what if there was a case where there were no prior reports for a haunting? My guess is, if there were not prior reports of a property being haunted, it would be difficult to win a court case to rescind a sales contract.

Moon Buggy Repair: One of the many uses for duct tape

2010-05-16T19:09:00.000-04:00

I've heard jokes before about different things duct tape could be used for, but I didn't know one of those uses was moon buggy repair, and yes, I do mean the kind of moon buggy that astronauts would use on the moon.

Back in 1972, astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt landed on the moon in a mountain-ringed valley named Taurus-Littrow. At one point during their mission, part of a fender was accidentally torn off when Cernan brushed up against it and a hammer in his shin pocket caught it. And apparently, a moon buggy with a missing fender can create a big problem when you're driving it on the moon.

According to NASA, here is why:

The reason is moondust. When a rover rolls across the lunar surface, it kicks up a plume of moondust in its wake. (Astronauts called them "rooster tails.") Without a fender, the rover would be showered by a spray of dark, abrasive grit. White spacesuits blackened by dust could turn into dangerous absorbers of the fierce lunar sun with astronauts overheating inside. Sharp-edged dust wiped off visors would scratch the glass, making helmets difficult to see out of. Moondust also had an uncanny way of working itself into hinges, latches and joints, rendering them useless.

The solution? Duct tape!

Read more about it at NASA's website here.

UFO Car

2010-05-07T09:46:00.002-04:00

You didn't think there was a such thing, did you?!

Link: U.F.O.

See more unusual cars youdrivewhat.com.

The man with no appetite

2010-05-01T14:55:00.001-04:00

An Indian yogi named Prahlad Jani has been in the news recently due to his claim of not having any food or water for seven decades. Here's an excerpt from an article on Fox News:

Indian doctors are studying an 83-year-old holy man who claims to have spent the last seven decades without food and water.

Military doctors hope the experiments on Prahlad Jani can help soldiers develop their survival strategies.

The long-haired and bearded yogi is under 24-hour observation by a team of 30 specialists during three weeks of tests at a hospital in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

I thought I remembered hearing about this yogi before, so I looked up some more information on him and found a BBC article about him from 2003. Jani is also mentioned in a Wikipedia entry about inedia, which is apparently what the alleged ability to live without food is called (although the entry states that the word "inedia" simply means "fasting" in Latin).

Some people think Jani is a fraud, but according to the news articles I've found, the physicians have not seen him eat, drink, or use a toilet. If he is a fraud, he's a good one. If he is legit, then he is a pretty unique guy.

I'm not sure if should be amazed or if I should feel sorry for him....he's missing out on some good stuff!

Chariots of Light?

2010-04-25T11:46:00.006-04:00

Back in August of 2009, I wrote a post about a UFO sighting of my own titled Chariots of Fire. I described the UFOs as looking like two fireballs zipping around the sky and used the Biblical story of Elijah and Elisha being separated by a chariot of fire as the inspiration for the title of that post (though, for the record, I didn't actually see horses or an actual chariot, they really just looked like two glowing fireballs from my vantage point).

I've been reading about UFOs for years and have seen many videos of UFO sightings. Despite that, I've never really come across video footage of a sighting that I thought was similar to what I saw....up until now. Video footage of a UFO sighting over Geelong, Australia posted on the Geelong, Advertiser is similar to what I saw.

What's similar is the patterns of movement. These objects are able to move in a way that publicly known conventional aircraft cannot. The video footage is around seven minutes long, and in this case, the zoomed out shots are actually the best shots because the footage is to shaky when the cameraman zooms in. The best footage comes from around the two minute mark on, where the footage is mostly zoomed out and you can really get a good view of how these objects move around. There are two UFOs visible in this video, and two is how many I saw also, although I don't know if that is even a significant. A notable difference though, between my sighting and the sighting filmed in this footage, is the color of the UFOs. The objects I saw were a glowing reddish-orange color, but the UFOs in this video look like balls of white light.

I think the UFOs I saw moved around a little more than these did, but the speed and type of movements these objects were capable of doing is similar to what I saw. I haven't figured out what those fireballs were I saw, and I'm not sure what these are either. But as you can see, they don't move like any publicly known conventional aircraft.

This is one time that I don't feel the need to question whether the sighting and footage is authentic or not -- I know that something exists which is capable of moving around like these objects seen in the above video. I'm just not sure what they are.

H/T

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P.S. I've heard the objects in the video may be remote controlled airplanes. However, I'm fairly sure what I saw myself were larger than remote controlled airplanes, as I remember seeing one go behind a cloud on the horizon. Regardless of what the lights are in this footage, the movements still remind me of the UFOs I saw.

Destination Truth didn't ask enough questions in Petra

2010-04-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

In last night's (4/14/10) episode of Destination Truth, the team went to the ruins of Petra in Jordan to search for djinns (a type of spirit, which is the word that our word "genie" is derived from). At one point, Josh was doing an EVP session and asked out loud if anyone was there with them, and almost immediately afterward, the team heard what sounded like a voice saying "yes." This wasn't something they heard on the recording after the fact, they actually heard the "yes" out loud.

For some reason, they seemed to be content with just getting that "yes." You'd think that if someone asked if anyone was around and someone -- whether it's a person, djinn, or something else -- responds, they'd ask for more details. Instead of settling for a single answer to a question, they should have also asked other questions such as who it was, why it was hanging around Petra, can it grant wishes, etc. For all they knew at the time, it might have just been a lost tourist wandering near them!

I love Destination Truth, Josh's sarcasm as well as the adventures the team goes on seeking the truth about the unknown give it a real-life Indiana Jones feel that makes for a very entertaining show. But I think they might have dropped the ball at Petra. They should have asked more questions!

Unidentified Flying Pyramids?

2010-04-08T20:40:00.002-04:00

I was looking at Colin Andrews website today and came across a post about two tetrahedron/diamond shaped UFOs that were filmed over XI'an, China in January. The footage is actually pretty clear. At first glance, I thought they looked like kites, but after watching the video clip, they appear to be too big to be kites.

I did a quick search on Google to see if I could find out more about it, but I didn't come across anything I thought was significant.

There was a similar sighting over the Kremlin in Russia recently too. That sighting even got mentioned in some British media sources (see a Telegraph article here and a Daily Mail article here). The Daily Mail article says hundreds of people saw it, but if it's real, I'm surprised thousands of people didn't see it considering how big it was.

Some have questioned where the international media was and why the Russians wouldn't have scrambled jets. Well, those are good questions -- where were the media and jets? If it's fake, the media wouldn't have seen anything to report and the military wouldn't have needed to scramble jets to intercept it on that day. But whether it's real or not, why has most of the mainstream media ignored it? If it is a hoax, the mainstream media ought to investigate the hoax and report who was involved or how it was staged. At the very least, the mainstream media could just go on the record saying they didn't see anything unusual in the sky that day. This isn't just your average run-of-the-mill UFO video, it's actually pretty clear. You'd think it would deserve at least a brief mention. So why will the mainstream media report stuff like what Paris Hilton or Tiger Woods did and repeat it 50 times a day but they won't mention something like this?

I also found a video of a pyramid-like UFO over Colombia (this one actually looks kind of fake to me).

All of this reminded me of an episode of UFO Hunters entitled "Alien Fallout" though, where the team investigated a sighting of a diamond shaped UFO in Texas on December 29, 1980.

So what are these pyramid-like UFOs? Balloons? Kites? CGI? Holographic projections in the sky? Or are they real UFOs? I'm not sure what they are, but I can't help but notice the resemblance to Ra's mothership from Stargate. J

If plants were self-aware, would they believe in us?

2010-03-31T14:06:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about the limitations plants have compared to us. Plants are alive and interact with the world in their own way; flowers open their petals towards sunlight and (some) trees lose their leaves in the fall.

Plants do not have eyes though, so they cannot 'see' like we do. As such, they do not even have a concept of what 'sight' is. And, unlike a person who was born blind, plants cannot understand spoken language either, so we can't just tell them what 'sight' is.

We walk amongst the plants, yet they cannot 'see' us walking amongst them. A plant may have some sense of our existence amongst them when we touch them and talk to them (hey, some people say talking to plants makes them grow healthier), but, presumably, they have no idea what we look like or what our intentions are.

So, after thinking about that, I wondered whether or not there could be another sense that we are not even aware of? A plant would have no concept of sight and no idea there is even a such thing as sight, so what if there is some other type of sense that we have no concept of either? What all may be going on around us that we are not even aware of? What if ghosts, earth spirits, extra-terrestrials, demons, angels or any combination of the aforementioned were able to walk among us without us 'seeing' them simply because we do not have the sense needed to 'see' them? Some people who have a 'sixth sense' are sometimes able to sense the presence of such entities and sometimes even communicate with them on some level. But what if the sixth sense could be stronger? And what if there is a seventh sense we do not even have a concept of?

There are some people, who if you tell them there are spirits walking amongst us, they won't believe you. Makes you wonder that if plants could talk to each other and one plant tried to tell some other plants that some sort of intelligent beings walk amongst them, would the other plants believe it?

A couple of former Area 51 workers speak out

2010-03-31T09:33:00.000-04:00

Apparently, some Area 51 secrets from the 60s and 70s have been declassified, and a Seattle Times journalist interviewed a couple of former Area 51 workers who did contract work for the CIA at Area 51 during that time.

James Noce, one of the former workers interviewed, didn't have any stories about aliens or alien spacecraft though. However, if you've heard stories about UFO crashes, Noce did tell a story that sounds familiar:

Noce remembers when "Article 123," as one of the A-12s was called, crashed on May 24, 1963, after the plane stalled near Wendover, Utah. The pilot ejected and survived.

Noce says he was among those who flew to the crash site in a giant cargo plane loaded with several trucks. They loaded everything from the crash into the trucks.

He remembers that a local deputy had either witnessed the crash or had quickly arrived at the scene. There also was a family on a vacation car trip who had taken photos.

"We confiscated the camera, took the film out," says Noce. "We just said we worked for the government."

He says the deputy and the family were told not to talk to anybody about the crash, especially the press.

"We told them there would be dire consequences," Noce says. "You scared them."

As an added incentive, he says, the CIA arrived with a briefcase full of cash.

"I think it was like 25 grand apiece, for the sheriff and the family," says Noce.

Robarge says of cash payments to cover things up, "It was common practice."

Another former Area 51 worker named T.D. Barnes said that he believes the Air Force and the "Agency" didn't mind the stories about alien spacecraft -- it helped cover up the secret planes they were testing. He did tell a somewhat humorous story though:

On one occasion, he remembers, when the first jets were being tested at what Muroc Army Air Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, a test pilot put on a gorilla mask and flew upside down beside a private pilot.

"Well, when this guy went back, telling reporters, 'I saw a plane that didn't have a propeller and being flown by a monkey,' well, they laughed at this guy — and it got where the guys would see [test pilots] and they didn't dare report it because everybody'd laugh at them," says Barnes.

Read the whole article here.

H/T

Looters

2010-03-25T21:05:00.000-04:00

I was watching a documentary about ancient Egypt the other night (I love those!) and started thinking about the monuments that have been looted over the years. King Tut's tomb is considered one of archaeology's greatest finds because it was found intact with all its treasures. Most tombs had already been looted sometime in the past.

One question is, are modern archaeologists really any different than looters from the past? One could argue that archaeologists are trying to preserve the finds and they typically don't keep what they find for themselves but put it in museums or universities. But is that a valid justification or just an excuse to loot?

I think the answer to question lies within a gray area. On one hand, considering many genuine Egyptian obelisks and artifacts are kept in cities outside of Egypt, the removal of Egyptian artifacts by archaeologists does seem like looting. Additionally, the Egyptians who built the monuments probably were not expecting their art and precious objects to be sitting in museums outside of Egypt some day.

On the other hand though, the archaeological justifications for removing the objects are typically done with good intentions. By removing artifacts and putting them in museums, archaeologists not only get a chance to learn about the people who live there but they can better preserve the artifacts in a museum setting. I visited England several years ago, and one of the highlights of my trip was visiting the British Museum, where I saw ancient Egyptian artifacts as well as artifacts from many other locations and periods of history. I was glad to be able to see such things while I was there. So, from a certain point of view, it may be a type of looting, but I'm not going to complain about it too much.

Another question I wonder about is where did all the other loot go? Many of the tombs modern archaeologists have found were already looted...so who looted them and what did they do with the loot? Has it been passed down all these years and kept hidden from the public? Or was the loot just melted down and made into something else? Or is a combination of the two?

Just another one of Egypt's mysteries, I suppose.

'Science' doesn't always stand up to scientific scrutiny

2010-03-24T20:10:00.002-04:00

There are times when something that has been declared 'scientifically proven' turns out to not be scientifically proven. I've written criticisms of the scientific establishment before, and hopefully the examples cited in this post will help illustrate why I have developed such a cynical attitude towards the scientific establishment.

Simply put, from the 19th century until the present day, the scientific establishment has had its share of errors, hoaxes, and frauds. Establishment science isn't always about the truth. Sometimes it's about what the establishment wants to be true. I'll be citing some examples of scientific fraud in this post.

Archaeology and Paleontology Frauds

I'd like to start out with well known classic example of scientific fraud. The Piltdown Man hoax began in the early 20th century when Charles Dawson obtained a human skull and an ape jawbone in the Piltdown gravel pit in England. The two fossils did not fit together right, but it was claimed that they must belong together because they were found close together. In 1915, more fossils were found, including a human skull and an ape jawbone that seemed to fit together. The find at the Piltdown gravel pit was lauded as being the "missing link" that Darwinists so desperately wanted to find in order to lend more credence to their belief in natural selection and evolution. For 40 years, it was believed the fossils found at the Piltdown gravel pit were genuine. But eventually (and somewhat ironically), scientific scrutiny showed that the Piltdown man was not the missing link and was actually a hoax. The skull turned out to be ancient, but the jawbone was modern. More testing found that the teeth had been stained and filed to match the skull. Read more about the Piltdown Man hoax here and here. Here is an example from this year about a "missing link" fossil that turned out to not be human.

So is trying to prove a belief in Darwinism more important than just telling the truth? Historically, the belief in Darwinism developed before there was enough 'science' to 'prove' it. Ironically, the Darwinist crowd accuse creationist scientists of trying to fit 'science' with religious beliefs, yet the Darwinists have done precisely the same thing -- they just started adapting 'science' to fit their beliefs much sooner, giving it the appearance of being firmly 'established' to later generations.

And don't think the Piltdown man hoax is the lone example of scientific misconduct. A more recent example regarding science relating to prehistoric fraud involves a German anthropology professor named Reiner Protsch Van Zeiten. Protsch's work was cited as evidence of Neanderthal man living in Europe. A Frankfurt University panel ruled that he lied about the age of skulls he dated to be tens of thousands of years old -- turns out they were much younger. One skull that Protsch dated to being 27,400 years old turned out out to be less than 300 years old. Protsch had forged and manipulated facts for 30 years. Read more about that here.

Another recent example of archaeological fraud involves Shinichi Fujimura. Fujimura made of career of researching the prehistory of Japan, but it turned out he was faking many of his finds. Pictures were published of him digging holes and burying objects he would later 'discover' and announce as major finds. He eventually admitted to planting much of the evidence. Read more about it here.

Big Pharma

Big Pharma annoys me largely due to them constantly pushing pills of some sort on everyone for one reason or another, which is evident by their unceasing barrage of television commercials that are typically twice as long as the average commercial and twice as annoying too. Big Pharma has also had its share of fraud. An editorial on NaturalNews.com cites an example of a prominent medical researcher named Scott Reuben who faked an entire study and got the 'results' published in a medical journal. The 'studies' claimed to show benefits from painkillers like Vioxx and Celebrex. You can also read about this case on the Wall Street Journal here.

The author of that Natural News editorial has also claimed before that vitamin D is better than the swine flu vaccine (which begs the question of why the government would spend so much on swine flu vaccine when they could have saved money by just giving everyone a bottle of vitamin D). I mention that now because just the other day I came across an article on the Times Online that makes a similar claim regarding Vitamin D and the flu.

Another example concerning medical research fraud comes from a South Korean researcher who faked stem cell research results. Read more about that here.

Even when genuine research is conducted, sometimes the results can be ambiguous. An Newsweek article from this year questions whether common anti-depressant medications are really any more effective that placebos (Note: I do not recommend clicking that particular link if you are currently being treated for chronic depression with anti-depressant medications!).

Climategate and IPCC

One of the biggest scientific frauds exposed in recent history is the Climategate scandal. The Climategate scandal exposed the dubious research conducted by the the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia regarding anthropogenic global warming. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also been implicated in pushing the dubious anthropogenic global warming agenda. But in addition to citing questionable data concerning global warming, the IPCC has also cited questionable data regarding hurricanes. Read more about that here. It also appears that the IPCC's predictions about the devestating effect 'climate change' could have on the Amazon rainforest may be erroneous too. Read more about that here.

More Frauds

In 2004, the federal Office of Research Integrity received nearly 300 complaints, and, out of nearly two dozen cases they were able to close that year, eight individuals were found guilty of scientific misconduct. Here is an article that cites numerous examples of fabricated research. Here is another version of that article.

My Thoughts and Conclusions

One thing I want to emphasize here is that most of the examples I have cited were not innocent errors but intentional fabrications. Another thing I want to emphasize is these examples involve researchers from prestigious universities. And another thing I want to emphasize is scientific misconduct is not just something that only occurred many years ago or just recently started but has occurred throughout the history of modern science.

So why would these credentialed scientists risk their reputations by publishing fabricated data? I think it boils down to two main reasons: money and belief. Yes, belief. The scientific community generally doesn't like to be accused of believing something unless the data supports it, but sometimes the belief exists before there is data to support it. If someone believes something strong enough and they set out to find evidence for that belief, there's a good chance they'll find evidence they feel supports that belief if they try hard enough (keep in mind that data doesn't speak for itself; it is interpreted). Sometimes, in order to sell an certain idea, you have to find just enough evidence to make the idea sound convincing. Even Isaac Newton, one of history's most famous scientists, adjusted his calculations on the precession of equinoxes, the orbit of the moon, and the velocity of sound in order to make them more closely correlate with his own theories. Sometimes science works in reverse -- instead of forming a theory based on observations, a theory is formed and then data to support it is sought.

The other factor here is money. Some scientists are more concerned with making a lot of money than doing legitimate research. So they go where the funding is, and in some cases they just so happen to find the kind 'results' the financiers want them to find.

I do feel that scientific fraudsters only account for a small percentage of scientists. But you still have to wonder how many other cases of scientific fraud there may be out there that have not been exposed. In some cases I cited above, the fraud was believed for decades before it was exposed. And even though the fraudsters may only account for a small percentage of scientists, bear in mind that genuine, well-intentioned scientists will cite data published by fraudsters because they assume that their colleagues are publishing legitimate research. As a result, many people unknowingly end up repeating a lie.

So as you can see, just because something has been said to be 'scientifically proven', doesn't necessarily mean it has been scientifically proven. I grow weary of seeing the 'scientificfically proven' label being stamped on so many things so frequently, as if it were some sort of infallible seal of approval that cannot be questioned. I get tired of hearing people state emphatically and with authority that 'science says this' and 'science says that', as if science was some all-knowing deity that has never been wrong about anything. Sure, science has been known to answer many questions and has made many genuine advancements and improvements, but 'science' has also been known to say a whole lot of bunk.

Nevertheless, I still hold the study of science in high regard, particularly engineering sciences (which I feel is in a category of its own). If an aeronautical engineer says he can build a faster plane and then does so, then there isn't really anything to interpret. If the plane he designs is faster, then that alone is proof that his design is faster. If an electronics engineer says he can build a faster microprocessor and then does so, then the speed of the microprocessor proves his claims were accurate. And despite the fact that some of the examples I cited above involve medical science, I think it's clear that genuine advancements in medical science overshadow the medical frauds.

My criticisms of the scientific establishment are more or less directed at some of the historical and natural sciences (such as establishment paleontology and anthropology). A lot of these sciences are rooted in Darwinism and materialism, which has resulted in cherry picked data that is interpreted from a certain point of view and then repeated over and over. Today, there may very well be many genuine scientists who conduct well-intentioned research regarding prehistory, but they are still interpreting the evidence the way they have been taught to interpret it. Just as the professors who taught them were taught by their professors. When something gets repeated often enough and long enough, it starts to become 'established' in the minds of many people.

Although I may not be a fan of Charles Darwin's work, don't let it be said that he never said anything of value, for it was Darwin who said, "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long." I like that quote not only because I feel it is true but also for its irony.

I am not trying to discredit scientific method or science in general, nor am I telling people not to trust science at all. My point here is science isn't always right and has had its fair share of charlatans. Just as some spiritualists and religious leaders are wolves in sheep's clothing, some credentialed scientists are also wolves in sheep's clothing. I think it's good for people to research topics of interest themselves and carefully consider different interpretations and consider what point of view an interpretation stems from, that way they can draw their own conclusions instead of just being told what to think.

A Medieval European Fortress...in Arkansas

2010-03-18T22:37:00.001-04:00

No, it's not a long lost hidden fortress built by a mysterious group of forgotten European settlers in Arkansas during the 13th century...but it's still pretty cool. A group of French and American citizens have begun building what they are calling the Ozark Medieval Fortress. They are using 13th century tools and methods and the workers will also be available to answer questions from visitors. Here's an excerpt from the group's website:

We are building a human structure that is more than a pile of beautifully arranged rocks. The workers will transmit their know-how to visitors. The fortress is a place where knowledge will be transmitted orally every day. For part of each day the workers and craftsmen will respond to questions from the time-travelers who are watching the Middle Ages trying in action.
The Ozark Medieval Fortress is a living and permanently developing tableau of history where tourists, students of all ages, researchers and the staff of the fortress will come together.
This unique experience that the fortress offers will bring alive the intersection where book knowledge meets the fascinating and colorful reality of the Middle Ages. The experience of visiting the fortress will hopefully inspire students of all ages to support educational and scientific studies.

Visit the website here. Sounds like a pretty cool idea to me. Not only will visitors have the opportunity to see a 13th century style medieval European fortress in the United States, but visitors also have an opportunity to see it being built!

Alien Teachers Too?

2010-03-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

In a post I wrote titled 'Elusive Aliens: Are They Watchers?', I compared a modern theory suggesting that ET aliens remain elusive because they are merely here to observe us with the story of the Watchers from the Book of Enoch. The Watchers were angelic beings who were apparently supposed to just 'watch' us. Eventually, some of the Watchers betrayed their duty and began intermingling with humans. As I mentioned before, the Book of Enoch says the fallen Watchers taught men things such as cosmetics, building weapons, astrology, and writing. When I wrote about that in my previous post though, it didn't occur to me at the time to mention that the fallen Watchers teaching men new things bears a resemblance to another modern theory about aliens -- a theory that suggests the rapid advancements in technology over the last century are the result of aliens from an advanced technological society secretly working with governments and people in power to teach them how to develop new technologies (or, alternatively, the government is secretly reverse engineering crashed alien spacecraft). This also bears resemblance to the ancient Greek story of Prometheus, who defied Zeus and taught men to make fire.

So it seems that the modern theory suggesting aliens are assisting men in developing new technologies is not really all that modern afterall. Modernized perhaps, but not really a modern concept.

View my original post on this subject here.

Earthquake Lights

2010-03-06T11:53:00.000-05:00

In the past, people would try to discern what the weather would be by using various folk methods of weather forecasting. Old time weather forecasts may be based on whether or not the sky is red in the morning or evening, how high starlings fly in the evening, or how tight a pine cone is closed. There may be another method that has been overlooked though -- possibly a method for predicting earthquakes.

I only recently became familiar with a phenomena called "earthquake lights," a type of luminous phenomena that appears in the sky prior to some earthquakes. The lights are usually blue or white flashes of light, but may also include a wider color spectrum.

Here is a picture of what is alleged to be earthquake lights that occurred prior to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

When I first read about earthquake lights the other day, it was in an article blaming them on a HAARP conspiracy. According to the article I read, earthquake lights had been seen prior to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. I decided to see what else I could find out about earthquake lights, and I came across a question regarding earthquake lights on the FAQ page for the U.S. Geological Survey. According to the answer for that question, earthquake lights have been reported since ancient times but were not acknowledged in the seismological community until the 1960s. There are several theories as to what may cause the earthquake lights, but there is no single theory that has been agreed upon.

Considering earthquake lights have been reported since ancient times, all the occurrences can't be blamed on HAARP since HAARP wasn't established until 1993. Whether or not any of the recent occurrences can be blamed on HAARP, I don't know. Whatever the lights are, they appear to be some sort of natural occurrence.

It's not that I'm surprised that mysterious lights have been known to appear in the sky before an earthquake, but I am a little surprised that I haven't heard about it before. It's possible I may have heard about it in the past, but if I did, I had forgotten about it. So the question in my mind is why aren't these lights more widely publicized? When I was a kid in school, we were taught that tornadoes sound like trains. So I knew to associate a tornado with the sound of a train. But I don't recall anyone ever mentioning that rainbow colored lights sometimes appear in the sky prior to earthquakes. It may still be difficult to accurately predict an earthquake even if earthquake lights appear because they can appear as much as a few weeks in advance or even after the actual earthquake, and the lights may appear far away from the epicenter too. But you'd think it would be a good idea to tell people that if they see mysterious rainbow colored lights appearing in the sky on an otherwise clear day, they may want to start securing anything fragile -- you know, just in case.

A little bit of irony

2010-03-04T23:08:00.000-05:00

I read a two part article written by a skeptic who investigated the mysterious Phoenix Lights from 1997, and although I thought the article was well written and researched, I thought the author's analysis led to a rather ironic conclusion. He explains why he doesn't think the lights were a single UFO and then speculates that the event was part of a psychological warfare experiment. Here's an excerpt of his theory:

We know that military breakthroughs in technology usually occur a decade or more before civilian applications begin to appear. That’s one of the advantages the military has with generous taxpayer funding of its secret ‘black ops’ projects.

During the first decade of the 21st century, we began to see some of these advances in holographic research receive attention in science journals. An edition of Science Daily (June 15, 2005) carried an article summarizing science papers that had appeared in Optics Express and other specialized journals showing how a laser-based holographic system works in practice. One example given in the article of how this technology can be applied was the holographic image of circling fighter jets projected to a point in space.

Over the years I had heard rumors from civilian and military types that the technology necessary to project three-dimensional images to a point in space had been tested at Fort Huachuca and elsewhere during the 1990s. But until the Arizona Lights event in 1997, there had been no clear evidence that these electrical optical and laser devices had been used to target a civilian population to test their reactions to unusual phenomena.

Read part one of the whole article here. Read part two here.

I didn't think much about it until I noticed that the author, Randall Fitzgerald, was labeled as a 'Scepticism Examiner'. What I thought was ironic was that he was attempting to debunk the claim that the Phoenix Lights were a single UFO but presented a theory that it was a government psychological experiment instead. Isn't a secret government psychological experiment with classified technology usually the kind of thing a skeptic would try to debunk? Yet here we have a skeptic presenting it as an alternative theory to a UFO sighting. That's just a little bit ironic to me.

In his defense though, Fitzgerald's bio describes him as a "skeptic, not a cynic." Maybe that's his way of distancing himself from the Michael Shermer's of the world.

I'm not suggesting his theory is wrong, but I'm not suggesting it is right either. I'm not suggesting the the lights were planes or a single object either. I don't know what they were, but the video footage I've seen appear to show lights that weren't moving across the sky.

Those lights in the video look stationary to me.

H/T's here and here.

Elusive Aliens: Are They Watchers?

2010-02-25T21:03:00.002-05:00

The Book of Enoch is an apocryphal text that has been left out of nearly every edition of the Bible today. However, the book was popular in the 1st century AD, and Jude, author of the canonical text of Jude, even quoted a passage from the Book of Enoch in his epistle. The book was supposedly written by Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah in Genesis. Scholars have only been able to date the book to around the 3rd century BC, but this doesn't necessarily mean the book isn't older. It may also be important to note that Genesis says that God took Enoch, indicating that Enoch may have avoided mortal death altogether. If so, it's possible he could have written the book later. And, of course, I also realize the whole book could have just been someone's imagination. But for the rest of this post at least, we're going to take the stance that the book is at least partially based on truth.

One of the most notable stories in the Book of Enoch is the story of the Watchers. Here's an excerpt from chapter 6 of the Book of Enoch:

And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. These are their chiefs of tens.

As I've pointed out in previous posts (here and here), the word 'angel' means 'messenger'. The 'angels' and the 'Watchers' may very well be the same type of entities (or species, whatever term you prefer), but they apparently have different roles in their society. Some relay messages, some are apparently just supposed to watch. The fallen Watchers taught men things such as cosmetics, building weapons, writing, and astrology. The passage above says of the fallen Watchers that "they were in all two hundred." But does that mean there are only 200 Watchers? Or does it mean that only 200 Watchers are fallen? Could there be more Watchers out there?

I've pointed out before some similarities between the elusive 'aliens' of today and the angels and demons spoken of in ancient texts (here, here, here, and here). In the past, the beings known as 'angels' typically only appeared to certain individuals. Today, most people never see any aliens. And last I checked, there is no ancient story of a group of angels descending on the Roman Forum and declaring, "Hey, were those angels people have been talking about all these years," and then shaking hands with the emperor. Nor have any aliens landed on the White House lawn and shook hands with the President either. Is it a coincidence that angels and 'aliens' tend to be elusive?

And what about these Watchers? The Book of Enoch is not the only place that watchers are mentioned; the book of Daniel also mentions watchers (lowercased though, and Daniel does not elaborate about them). There are those among UFOlogists today who have postulated that the reason aliens are so elusive is because they are merely here to observe. I wonder how many among those who have considered that theory have considered that the idea that the earth is being observed is a very ancient idea? Indeed, it seems the ancients thought they were being 'watched' too. So could the aliens that are allegedly observing us be Watchers? Could they be Watchers that didn't break the Watcher status quo and have continued to watch throughout the millenia?

The Book of Enoch may be folklore akin to Greek mythology. But maybe some of these old stories are at least based on truth. Maybe some of the best evidence for that comes from comparing ancient folklore with some of our modern 'folklore'.

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P.S. View an update to this post here.

Just a couple of quick thoughts

2010-02-24T22:30:00.001-05:00

Have you ever noticed the media and politicians rarely ever say "global warming" anymore? Instead, they usually say "climate change" now.

Hmm...guess that 'warming' thing didn't work out too well for them huh? But I suppose for those that seek to profit from carbon trading, "climate change" sounds better anyways because that way, they can blame any type of weather phenomena -- whether it's a hurricane, earthquake, or snowstorm -- on carbon emissions.

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Remember back when food was just real food? You know, before processed, artificial, and imitation foods? Look at this advertisement below.

Are artificial foods so prevalent now that Taco Bell really felt it was necessary to clarify that their fruit drink actually contains real strawberries?

Paranormal Inspections?

2010-02-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

I read an article today about a team of paranormal investigators in Oregon who now make themselves available to perform paranormal inspections of properties before a potential buyer purchases a property.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Before buying a home, inspections usually mean checking the foundation, roof and pipes. But, sometimes there is another area of concern, things that are a bit more intangible. When there are questions regarding...the unknown... future homebuyers will be especially glad to know that there is someone to turn to.

Investigators with OPHIR (Occult & Paranormal House of Investigational Research) in Salem, Oregon, want to make it easier for homebuyers to make sure all the creaks and bumps are, shall we say, Of This World.

The team's founder says that they do not charge for the paranormal investigation itself, but they do charge a fee to investigate the history of the property.

The article also says this:

This specialized inspection service isn't just for buyers, though. Sellers, beware! You too may have some explaining to do, should you not follow your inclination to see that your property is void of unwanted guests. "You don't want buyers coming back and saying you never warned them about the house's past," Powell said.

"Protect yourself and make a wise future investment," Powell says. "There is a good chance that homes with a reputation or negative history may be harder to sell down the road, so you could get stuck with one."

Read the whole article here. H/T

I don't see any problem with investigating the history of a property if a buyer is genuinely interested in learning about the property's history. If it's a very old house, the history may be very interesting, especially to someone interested in history. But should such an investigation be a necessity? That last sentence quoted in the excerpt above sounds an awful lot like an advertisement for a service where the advertiser overemphasizes the importance of the service with the intention of making a profit. In other words, the team claims they can help 'protect' your 'investment' if you buy their service.

I've heard of people moving into a home and then wanting to move out after realizing that it is haunted, but is it really that big of a problem? How many houses are rented or sold everyday where this isn't a problem? I wonder what the ratio is for houses sold where a haunting doesn't turn into an issue and houses sold where a haunting is an issue. I don't know what the ratio is, but something tells me that the number of houses sold where a haunting isn't an issue far exceeds the number of houses sold where a haunting is an issue.

The team's founder also advertised their services to sellers, saying, "You don't want buyers coming back and saying you never warned them about the house's past."

Could this really become an issue? It might be a little uncomfortable for a seller to admit to a buyer that a house is haunted, but could something like this turn into a lawsuit? Has anyone ever tried to sue someone for selling them a haunted house and not disclosing that the house was haunted? I don't know if such a lawsuit has ever occurred, but if it has, I'd be curious to know the result of such a lawsuit.

I don't know much about this team of investigators, and they may be a well-intentioned team of paranormal investigators who sincerely have a passion for their field. If they perform an investigation of a property's history, then I suppose they have a right to charge a fee for doing so. But something about the idea of doing 'paranormal inspections' and a couple of the founder's statements regarding the service they perform sounded almost like a scam from the 19th and early 20th century spiritualist movement to me.

Green Screens

2010-02-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

Remember back when Hollywood producers wanted a certain type of background for a scene and they couldn't film on location somewhere so they just built a set or put a big picture of the background they wanted behind the actors?

Well, thanks to green screens, producers can just insert a background onto raw footage now. I used to think that green screens were mostly relegated to inserting computer generated imagery into sci-fi and fantasy films, but after watching the video embedded below, I realized green screens are fairly common in other stuff too.

TV Show Idea: Investigating Psychics

2010-02-18T22:32:00.002-05:00

There are a lot of paranormal themed television shows out there these days. We have shows that investigate myths and legends, shows that look for monsters, shows researching UFOs (or at least we did...bring back UFO Hunters!!), and a whole bunch of shows looking for ghosts.

So what about psychics? I think a show where investigators attempt to determine if a psychic has a legit ability or is merely a cold reader would be an interesting show.

So here's how I think an episode would go. First off, their would be a lead investigator who would be accompanied by a couple of assistant investigators. At the beginning of the episode, the investigators would do an on screen interview with the psychic. They would ask general questions about the psychic's background and ask the psychic to describe their method of psychic reading. After this, the two assistant investigators would each receive an individual reading from the psychic (the lead investigator would never get a reading, I'll explain why shortly). The two readings for the assistant investigators would be preliminary data.

After the two assistant investigators have their readings, a control subject would be brought in. The control subject would be different for every episode. The reason for this is because if the show was a success, there would be the potential for psychics featured in future episodes to base their reading on something from an earlier episode. To help avoid this, the reading for the control subject would be the primary piece of evidence used in determining the legitimacy of the psychic. The preliminary readings for the investigators would mainly be used to analyze the psychic's method.

After the readings are complete, the investigators would analyze the data. The analysis would focus on things such as accuracy, whether or not the psychic's claims could be confirmed, how generic the claims are, and the investigators would also try to determine whether or not the psychic was responding to facial expressions and body language. To help eliminate the possibility of a cold reader taking queues from body language or a person's appearance, the control subjects may be asked to wear a generic 'uniform' and possibly even a mask. Alternatively, the investigators may allow the control to wear they whatever want and behave however they want and then try to focus on whether or not the psychic is basing their reading on the control subject's behavior. Additionally, the psychic would never meet the control subject until it was time for the reading to occur. They would know nothing about the subject's heritage, background, age, or gender.

Now someone may say something like, "But eventually the psychics would be able to gather enough data about the investigators ahead of time to do a good cold reading and then just try to wing it with the control subject." Well, this is why the lead investigator would never receive a reading. If the show was successful, the assistant investigators would have to change each season. Since the lead investigator never receives a reading, he would stay on as the 'face' of the show. That way the show would be able to maintain a certain personality and tone and still be able to keep the data fresh and new.

Most episodes would focus less on predictions of the future and more on background readings. Since predictions for the future would probably need some time to play out, it would be difficult to really verify whether or not the predictions were accurate. Future predictions would probably be relegated to a season finale but filmed far in advance, so as to give the predictions time to play out. Some episodes may feature psychometrists who read objects instead of people.

Ideally, it would be nice if the investigators would state whether they feel the psychic is legitimate or a cold reader, similar to how Mythbusters confirm or 'bust' a myth. If the results of the data are somewhat ambiguous, they could just consider the psychic's ability to be plausible. However, this method probably wouldn't work for a show like this. If the investigators declared a psychic to be a cold reader and the cold reader has made a 'career' out of doing cold readings, the show could face lawsuits. Realistically, the investigators probably wouldn't be able to declare their actual opinion of the psychic's credibility on air, they would probably just have to make a few notable observations and let the viewer decide for themselves.

Also, from an investigative standpoint, it would be better if the control subject went in first without TV cameras and without the psychic knowing the subject was the control subject. But if it wasn't filmed, that wouldn't make for very interesting TV would it? It's possible that the control subject could go in wearing a hidden camera, but after revealing the true purpose of the visit, the psychic may decline to appear on TV and the investigators would have just wasted their time. And if they waste too much time, it would drain their budget and they wouldn't have anything to show.

As for a lead investigator, it would be really awesome if Josh Gates could fill that role. J

Some strange claims about a Mars colony

2010-02-16T23:13:00.001-05:00

So, earlier today, I came across a link to an article about an alleged secret Mars colony project. It's not the first time I've heard such claims, but this wasn't just any article about a secret Mars colony; this article was reporting about claims from a 'whistleblower' named Laura Magdalene Eisenhower. According to the article, she is a great-granddaughter of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The first question that popped into my mind was, "Is this really Ike's great-granddaughter?" Before I even started reading the article, I did some searching on the internet to see if I could find anyone disputing that claim. There were 602,000 results for her name on the Google search that I did. Admittedly, I didn't go through all of the results, but I went through quite a few pages and didn't see anything disputing that claim. However, I didn't come across anything confirming that claim either. Actually, most of the results just seemed to take for granted she is who she says she is.

So I finally get around to reading the article. Now I've heard some far-fetched sounding claims about Mars colonies before. Alternatively, I've heard some other claims about Mars that may be plausible. But what I read in this article today was waaaaaaay out there. This stuff isn't just your regular run-of-the-mill secret government Mars colony conspiracy theory/coverup stuff. The article mentions stuff about the 'Divine Feminine', Gaia, Sophia the Goddess, and supposedly, Laura is the reincarnation of Magdalene/Sophia/Isis. This lady sounds like she mixed new age concepts with the Kabbalah, some esoterica, a little bit of mythology, and some government coverup conspiracy theories and just writes her story as she goes.

So the question on my mind is still, "Is this Ike's great-granddaughter?" But another question on my mind is, "Does it really even matter if she is Ike's great-granddaughter?" I mean, does being a former President's great-granddaughter really add to her credibility? I don't even know if she is old enough to have met him. I wonder if she is just using his name in an attempt to upgrade her status from psychic/new ager to 'whistleblower'.

Anyways, if you want to read the article, go here. I'd take it with a grain of salt though.

Some Myths and Misconceptions about History

2010-02-15T23:19:00.000-05:00

Here are some common misconceptions and errors about various tidbits of history.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is not about the Revolutionary War. It's about the War of 1812, and more specifically, it is about the 1814 siege of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It did not become the National Anthem of the United States until 1931.
The Wright brothers did not invent the first airplane. The first airplane was built by Samuel Pierpont Langley in 1896. Langley's airplane was unmanned though. What the Wright brothers are actually famous for is the first manned flight.
Witches were not burned at the stake in Salem. They were hanged. One man was pressed to death under heavy stones.
Cinderella did not wear glass slippers. At least not in older versions of the story. In older French versions of the story, she wore pantoufles en vair (slippers made of white squirrel fur). But when French writer Charles Perault retold the story, he said Cinderella wore pantoufles en verre (slippers made of glass). Apparently Perault confused the two similar sounding words. On a similar note, in L. Frank Baum's book the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wore silver slippers. Hollywood Screenwriter Noel Langley changed Dorothy's shoes to ruby slippers for the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.
Cain, Abel, and Seth were not Adam's only children. Genesis 5:4 states that Adam had other sons and daughters (presumably with Eve, though it doesn't explicitly state they were all with Eve). It doesn't say how many children he had in all, but given that he lived 930 years, he had plenty of time to have a lot of children.
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, the monster is not called Frankenstein. Frankenstein is Victor Frankenstein, a student of natural psychology who created the monster. In the novel, the monster was named Adam.
The Battle of Bunker Hill did not take place at Bunker Hill. Bunker Hill was the objective. The battle actually took place at Breed's Hill.
The Battle of Waterloo did not actually take place at Waterloo. The battle took place in a valley south of Waterloo, between the villages of Plancenoit and Mont St. Jean. After winning the battle, Lord Wellington went to Waterloo to write home about the news.
Christopher Columbus was not the first person to claim the world was round. He wasn't even trying to prove the earth was round; people already knew that. What Columbus was trying to do was convince people that the world wasn't all that wide and that it would be quicker to get to the Indies by sailing west instead of down around Africa and then east. Pythagoras proposed that the earth was round in the 6th century BC. Aristotle proved it was round by pointing out the spherical shadow the earth casts on the moon. Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, ancient Greek astronomers and mathematicians, both attempted to calculate the circumference of the earth and produced nearly accurate results. During the middle ages, Roger Bacon, an English philosopher and Franciscan Friar, wrote that the curvature of the earth explained why we can see farther from higher elevations. Additionally, people had been sailing the seas throughout recorded history, so obviously they were not afraid of 'falling off the edge'. Depictions of a spherical globe appear in ancient and medieval artworks, so it's not really known when it became common knowledge that the earth was round, but by Columbus' day, it was already pretty much taken for granted.
Charles Lindbergh was not the first person to fly an airplane nonstop across the Atlantic. He was the first person to fly an airplane solo across the Atlantic.
Henry Ford did not invent the assembly line. Ransom E. Olds developed the assembly line concept in 1902 for his Olds Motor Vehicle Company. In Olds' assembly line, parts were wheeled from one workman to another. Henry Ford improved on Olds' idea by installing a conveyor belt system. Ford didn't come up with the assembly line concept on his own either; it was the joint effort of several of his top engineers.
The American declaration of independence did not occur on July 4th. The Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain on July 2nd. The document known as the Declaration of Independence was not signed until July 4th though. And not all of the signers signed the Declaration of Independence on the same day. Only John Hancock and Charles Thomson signed it on July 4th. So it seems the document announcing independence has overshadowed the act of declaring it.

You may or may not have heard a claim that George Washington was not the first President of the United States, but the ninth President. This claim has been presented as a common misconception about history, but this claim is actually a bit of a misconception itself. People who present this claim say that Washington was the 9th President of the United States because there had been eight Presidents before him under the Articles of Confederation. George Washington was the first President of the United States after adopting the Constitution. But prior to adopting the Constitution, the nation known as the United States of America didn't exist. The Articles of Confederation merely created a confederation of independent states (similar to the European Union today). John Hanson, the first President under the Articles of Confederation, held the title "president of the United States in Congress Assembled." So the claim that George Washington is the 9th President of the United States is based in truth but isn't entirely true.

Unusual Places

2010-02-09T22:31:00.001-05:00

There are some unusual places on earth. Thanks to satellite imagery and Google Earth, you can look for them on you computer. Here is a video that displays some of those unusual places.

Here is a sequel to that video.

Here's a different one with some humorous captions.

A 2012 Blame Game?

2010-02-09T22:09:00.001-05:00

A blogger going by the name George Washington wrote a post titled "Scientists Confirm the Effectiveness of The Big Lie - People Will Go To Extraordinary Lengths to Create False Justifications for Government Misdeeds" on his blog last year, citing research regarding why many Americans continued to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 even though there was little evidence to support that belief. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress
Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.
"For the most part people completely ignore contrary information."
"The study demonstrates voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information"
People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.
"We refer to this as 'inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.
"People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war"
"They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

Maybe Yogi Berra was on to something when he said, "There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."

I could apply those observations listed above to the global warming issue too. If you've read my post titled "The Dihydrogen Monoxide Scare," then you probably already know that I am skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. The global warming issue has gone from being a scientific issue to being a political issue. Despite evidence to the contrary, many people are still willing to believe that carbon dioxide, the gas that we exhale and one of the building blocks of life, is a pollutant. Anthropogenic global warming as a political agenda is aggressively pushed by the mainstream media and certain politicians, and I feel that a great deal of the 'grassroots' support for the global warming agenda comes from people who already admire politicians that push the agenda (which is the problem with mixing science and politics) . People don't like the thought that a politician they admire is wrong or lying to them.

Ironically, Al Gore, an advocate of anthropogenic global warming, has admitted that carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of global warming (he now claims it only accounts for 40% of the warming), but he hasn't backed away from his political agenda pushing for a global carbon tax. Al Gore has also been caught fudging numbers in an attempt to prove his claims of anthropogenic global warming. Al Gore has also claimed that there is a scientific consensus stating that anthropogenic global warming is true, yet thousands of American scientists have signed a petition declaring their skepticism. And then, of course, there's that whole Climategate scandal thing. Regardless of how you spin it, what you want to believe, or how loud Al Gore can yell it; there isn't a scientific consensus stating that anthropogenic global warming is true. I could sit here and post links on the subject all day, but at the end of the day, I would probably just be preaching to the choir for some people, while others would continue to believe that carbon emissions cause global warming.

But I digress. What's really on my mind today is if climate disasters were to occur in the year 2012, would the anthropogenic global warming crowd blame the disasters on carbon emissions? I think they probably would. Here is an article listing 10 things that global warming allegedly caused. Danny Glover even blamed the earthquake in Haiti on global warming. Throughout the history of the world there have been earthquakes, now all of a sudden an earthquake only happens because of global warming?

If you've read my blogs for a while, you probably know that I have a 'wait and see' attitude about the 2012 predictions. I hope there are no disasters in 2012, but if there are, I think there's a real good chance that some people are going to blame it on global warming. It could be just the disaster they need to try to push their agenda through.

I hope that doesn't happen though. Hopefully 2012 will come and go without disasters or a global carbon tax.

Pawn Stars

2010-02-06T16:39:00.000-05:00

In a post I did a while back about UFO Hunters being canceled, I ranted about the History Channel canceling UFO Hunters but letting reality shows about loggers and truckers who drive on icy roads stay on. A single documentary about logging or truckers who drive on icy roads might be interesting. But a whole entire series with multiple seasons? I don't think it's that interesting.

But I also mentioned Pawn Stars in that post, another History Channel show. At the time, I said I thought the show was "mildly interesting," but not something worth making a point to watch.

Well, I've changed my mind. I think the show is great. And I do try to make a point to watch it now.

You see, when I first heard about the show, I made the mistake of assuming that it was just going to be another reality show and I wasn't really interested in watching a reality show about working in a pawn shop. When I wrote that previous post, I think I had probably only seen one or two episodes at the time, and I was still basing my opinion of the show on a preconceived notion. After watching more episodes, I realized the show wasn't just a reality show about working in a pawn shop. The show does have a reality style format, but it isn't just about working in a pawn shop; it is actually about some of the interesting items that get brought into the pawn shop. And many of the items that get featured on the show are historical items (which I guess is how it fits in to being a show on the History Channel).

The pawn shop is owned and managed by Rick Harrison along with his father Richard, known as the "Old Man," and his son, Corey, known as "Big Hoss." They each help to make the show more entertaining in their own way. Richard is a crotchety but adorable old man, Rick is outgoing and funny, and Corey is, well, actually Corey can be rather annoying, but many of the segments that feature Cory also feature his friend Chumlee, who's an employee of the shop. Chumlee fits into the roll of 'big doofus', and often adds some additional comedy relief to the show.

The Harrisons are knowledgeable about many of the items that get brought into the shop, but if someone brings in an item they don't know much about, they'll bring in an expert. Whether the item is an old gun, a medieval jousting helmet, or a treasure chest, you'll get to learn something about the item and possibly find out if it is authentic or a reproduction. You also get to learn what an estimated monetary value for the items is and watch as the shop owners haggle with the item owners for a sale price.

So I'm glad I decided to give the show a chance. At the moment, it's probably the best show on the History Channel.

I still wish they'd bring back UFO Hunters though. J

Y2K Disqualified

2010-02-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

People who are skeptical of the year 2012 being the end of the world (as we know it) or a great awakening often cite Y2K as an example of a failed end of the world prediction. But I think it's time they picked another failed end of the world prediction to use an example. Why? Because I don't think Y2K should count as an end of the world prediction.

Sure, it was hyped like an end of the world prediction and a lot of people thought (and still think) of it as one, but I don't think it qualifies as one. Simply put, the problem of computer programs rolling over from 1999 to 1900 would have hardly caused the end of the world (and it didn't).

For one, there was plenty of time to fix the problem before it even became a problem. People became aware of the Y2K problem many years before the year 2000. There was plenty of time for programmers to solve the problem, and plenty of time for organizations at risk of being affected by the problem to either upgrade the software or buy whole new systems. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if a cabal of software and technology CEOs didn't spread the Y2K rumors and hype them up just to sell more computers.

Even the way the Y2K problem was predicted is different from your traditional end of the world prediction. Most end of the world predictions come from a psychic/seer/prophet, an astrological prediction, or someone trying to calculate a date based on some religious interpretation they have. The Y2K 'predictions' resulted from someone pointing out a potential software glitch.

Another reason I think the Y2K problem doesn't qualify as an end of the world scenario is that I would imagine that even if the problem had been as bad as some people feared it would be, there would still be many people living in tribal and rural communities around the world who would have woken up on January 1st, 2000 and gone about business as usual. While most of the world's population may live in cities, suburbs, and Western rural communities with modern conveniences, there are still a lot of people who live in rural communities without modern conveniences. In other words, if the Y2K problem had been as bad as some people feared it would be, most of the world may have been affected, but not necessarily all of it. Hardly an end of the world scenario if it doesn't actually affect the whole world.

And, considering that people lived without computers for thousands of years, it would seem to me that the worst the Y2K problem could have created is a bad situation. We've become accustomed to using computers for many reasons, but they are not a requirement for life. And, of course, we now know that the Y2K problem didn't even create a bad situation. The Y2K problem turned out to be nothing significant.

Maybe I'm just nitpicking here, but parading the Y2K problem around as a failed end of the world prediction is just so passé to me now. If you're skeptical of the year 2012 bringing any major disasters and want to cite a failed end of the world prediction, try to find something other than Y2K. There are plenty of other ones to choose from (here is a list). Y2K is overused as an example, and it isn't even a good comparison to 2012, in my opinion. The 2012 predictions come from various sources throughout the world and even scientists have warned that strong solar storms will be peaking around 2012. The Y2K issue may have received a lot of media hype, but that's about the only thing it has in common with 2012 predictions.

Of course, if nothing significant happens to the world in 2012, then they might have something else common. Guess we'll have to wait and see about that though.

Green Fog

2010-01-28T23:49:00.011-05:00

The "Paranormal Pastor" Robin Swope tells a story here about a lady named Mary who saw a ghost-like figure in the form of a green mist. Mary described the green mist as writhing and twisting around in the air as if it were trying to take on a more solid form.

The green mist in the story reminded me of green fogs I've heard about from other stories. Green fogs have allegedly appeared in the Bermuda Triangle before. The green fogs may have something to do with some of the mysterious disappearances reported in the Bermuda Triangle.

The story of the Philadelphia Experiment also describes a green fog. The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged military experiment that supposedly attempted to make a warship invisible. Here is a description from Wikipedia:

In most accounts of the experiment, the destroyer escort USS Eldridge, was fitted with the required equipment at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Testing began in the summer of 1943, and it was supposedly successful to a limited degree. One test, on July 22, 1943, resulted in the Eldridge being rendered almost completely invisible, with some witnesses reporting a "greenish fog" appearing in its place.

Some versions of the story also claim that the USS Eldridge teleported to Norfolk, Virginia or traveled back in time for about 10 seconds.

Wikipedia also points out in its article on the subject that the Philadephia Experiment is widely regarded as a hoax. Some parts of the story do sound a bit-far fetched, but it's possible that the story may at least be partially true. The military probably did want to make an invisibility cloak of some sort and may have attempted to do so, but whether or not they were successful, I don't know. Attempting to make an invisibility cloak would not be the strangest experiment carried out by a government around that period of time (the Nazis and Soviets were known for strange experiments too). The more far-fetched parts of the story may have been exaggerations or disinformation.

But what of the green fog mentioned in the story? Oddly enough, the green fog may be what lends some degree of credibility to the story. Bruce Gernon described seeing an "electronic fog" during an experience he had in the Bermuda Triangle. He did not report the fog he saw as being green, but he has reported seeing "green flashes" around the Florida Keys (the fog and flashes may not be directly related though).

In an interview with Bruce Gernon and Rob MacGregor that I found here (it appears the article is no longer at that link, so here is a cached version from Google), MacGregor mentions a researcher named John Hutchinson who created the Hutchinson Effect, in which objects of various materials levitate under the influence of intense electromagnetic activity. While Hutchinson was conducting experiments, a green fog appeared. So electronic fog and green fog may be similar types of phenomena. If so, could there be some kind of connection between the electronic fog Gernon described and the green fog that appeared during the Philadelphia Experiment?

So what are these green fogs? In the Hutchinson Effect and the Philadelphia Experiment, the fog seems to have been the result of electromagnetic activity induced by man-made technologies. But what about the reports of green fogs in the Bermuda Triangle or the green mist mentioned in Pastor Swope's article? Green mists/fogs aren't really all that common in ghost stories, but Pastor Swope's story is certainly not the only one to mention a green mist/fog (see a couple more here and here). So is green fog also a naturally (or supernaturally) occurring phenomena?

I'm not sure what these green fogs are. I'm not sure what causes them to be green (or appear to be green) either. Taking the man-made examples into consideration, the green fog seems to be more of an effect than a cause. My guess is the phenomena can occur naturally (or supernaturally), but the phenomena can also be duplicated by man with the right electronic technologies.

But regardless of what causes it, if you ever see a green fog, don't be surprised if something weird happens.

--------------------------------
P.S. I left a comment on a blog posting written by Rob MacGregor mentioning that I had cited something he said in this post. In his response to my comment, he mentioned another story about green fog that he included in the book he wrote with Bruce Gernon named The Fog. According to that story, a fisherman and his partner were pursued by a bank of green fog while fishing off the coast of Florida at 2 AM. As the green fog neared them, they ran for it and called it a night.

So there is another example of green fog around the Bermuda Triangle.

---------------------------------
P.S.S. I also want to clarify that the reason I think the green fog may lend some credibility to the story about the Philadelphia Experiment is because it happened before these other stories were written. So these other examples of green fog/mist and the Hutchinson Effect that Rob mentioned may lend some credibility to the story about the Philadelphia Experiment because green fog was also said to have been witnessed during the experiment. If the Philadelphia Experiment was completely fictional, what are the odds that the story tellers of the time would have mentioned green fog? I can't dismiss the possibility that the Philadelphia Experiment is a hoax, but it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that the story tellers of the time would have been familiar with green fog in this context.

Visiting Pandora on Earth

2010-01-26T23:04:00.002-05:00

You probably already know that the movie Avatar has been a major commercial success. It has now passed Titanic as the highest grossing film worldwide. You can read more about it here.

You may have also heard about the people who were depressed after watching the movie because it wasn't real. Some people apparently wanted to be able to live like the N'avi. Read more about that here.

Those depressed people may not be able to visit Pandora, but they might be able to go China, where a mountain has been renamed in honor of the movie. The Southern Sky Column in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, has now been renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain and local officials even claimed that the mountain was the inspiration for Pandora. Tourists are even being offered tours of locations that allegedly inspired the film. Read more about it here.

Introverted Ghosts?

2010-01-26T21:04:00.001-05:00

Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) is commonly used as evidence of ghosts trying to communicate audibly. You can find EVP clips on the internet or listen to them on TV shows like Ghost Hunters. I've listened to various clips of alleged EVPs, and some of them are rather intriguing. Sometimes they seem to say a person's name or respond to a question out loud.

But they aren't very clear. They usually just sound like blips of static to me. Once the ghost hunters suggest what they think the static says, I do think to myself, "Oh yeah, it does kind of sound like that I guess." But is it really saying that? Or is it just the power of suggestion? Are we just trying to hear what were told to hear? I don't know, maybe I'm just not good at interpreting EVPs.

But lets go ahead and assume for a moment that EVPs are communications from the spirit world. Why are they so brief? Why don't the ghosts ever seem to give many details? Why don't they say more? Is it difficult for them to communicate via sound waves? Do they have to muster up a lot of energy just to make a sound that an electronic device will pick up that will sound like a spoken language understandable to the listener?

Someone might argue that the ghost hunters can't hear the ghost say anything at the time, so they aren't able to carry on a conversation with them. But if that were the case, why not just explain to the ghost that they can't hear them now but that they are going to leave a recording device running and ask the ghost to give them a full dissertation on who they are, what the 'other side' is like, and what they do all day and that they will check back on the recording device later for any messages.

What if the ghosts have another reason for not saying that much though? What if they are intentionally vague because they don't think we can fully comprehend their answers? Sometimes ghost hunters sound like they are talking to a scared toddler when they talk to a ghost. Maybe they should consider the possibility that the ghosts know more about being ghosts than they do. Maybe they should consider that the ghosts are not confused and are fully aware of what is going on. Maybe the ghosts think we wouldn't be able to understand what its like on the 'other side' yet. Maybe it's like how a parent waits until a child reaches a certain age before they tell them about the birds and the bees. Maybe the ghosts think we're just to 'young' to understand.

But actually, I think it's probably more likely that the ghosts find it difficult to communicate via electronic recording devices. People have communicated (or at least appeared to communicate) with spirits via Ouija boards for years (Ouija boards are not recommended though!). Psychic mediums have claimed to communicate with spirits in another way. Ghost hunters have apparently carried on conversations with spirits via K2 meters (either that or they've gotten really really lucky with getting the device to light up right after asking questions out loud). So it's not necessarily that ghosts are always short on words, they just don't seem to be to fond of saying a lot on electronic recording devices.

Of course, I can't dismiss the possibility that the static is just static from a random radio wave passing by. But there's still plenty of other types of evidence to suggest that ghosts do exist. I'd still believe in ghosts even if EVPs were just static.

Excusing 2012

2010-01-25T10:56:00.001-05:00

My latest thoughts on 2012 were inspired by a post by Lon on the blog Phantoms and Monsters. Lon's post is about what appears to be planet sized spheres in the sun's corona that may be UFOs, expelled plasma, light distortion, or something else. Lon's post isn't about 2012, but thinking about the anomalies around the sun's corona made me consider possible excuses people may use if the year 2012 comes and goes without the world ending or a great awakening.

Would anyone suggest that aliens came and numbed the effects of the sun during 2012? Would they point to something like planet-sized UFOs around the sun claiming that the UFOs were there to prevent the earth's poles from shifting? Would others accuse aliens of preventing a great awakening? What other excuses might believers use?

Maybe instead of accepting that nothing significant happened, they would instead point to some event such as a major election or fancy new invention and herald it as the beginning of a new age. The event itself might not be that significant in the grand scheme of things, but maybe they would consider it to be only the very beginning and that the world would change more over time because of it. In other words, they may say an event occurring in 2012 is beginning of a new era in much the same way someone might use the phrase, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life."

As for me, I still just have a wait and see attitude. I'm not really a believer or a non-believer. But if 2012 comes and goes without anything significant happening in the world (or to the world), I'm curious to see how the believers will deal with it. Even if nothing significant occurs, I doubt the hype will go away over night.

Sky Circles

2010-01-17T13:04:00.000-05:00

Colin Andrews is famous as a crop circle researcher, but apparently he doesn't just limit himself to investigating crop circles. He's also finding circles in the sky apparently. He posted on his blog yesterday (January 16th, 2010) a link to pictures of a strange circle that appeared on weather satellite images over Australian. As of today (January 17th, 2010), he is still investigating what caused the circle. He's considered the possibility that it might be caused by HAARP, but he is still waiting (as of today) for a response from the Australian government's weather bureau to see if they have an explanation. Of course, if it was HAARP, I doubt they would actually tell you that it was HAARP.

If you want to see if Andrews posts any updates on the circle, you can visit his blog here. You can also see pictures of the circle in question on his website here.

2012: What about us?

2010-01-17T12:35:00.000-05:00

In the latest episode of Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory, Jesse and his team investigated claims that wealthy individuals and the government were building underground bunkers to prepare for a disaster that may occur in the year 2012.

It's no secret at all that there are people building underground bunkers in preparation for 2012. However, the government isn't quite so forthcoming about what they are building their underground bunkers for. It was reported that the government has been building an increasing number of underground bunkers over the last 10 years.

Hmm...the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago. So why would the government have embarked on a bunker building frenzy during the last 10 years? What is it they are afraid of?

This episode wasn't your typical run-of-the-mill 2012 documentary though. They didn't mention anything about the predictions of ancient oracles or the I Ching, and they barely even mentioned the Mayan calendar. Jesse and his team focused on scientific data regarding expected solar storms in 2012. It's alleged that the solar storms could be powerful enough to knock out the power grid, cutting off electricity throughout the nation.

So the conspiracy theory aspect of all this is that the government is allegedly building these bunkers in preparation for problems occurring as a result of solar storms in 2012. I'm not surprised that politicians and elitists - the epitome of greed and selfishness - would only be concerned with saving themselves, but what about us? What would the rest of us do if we woke up one morning and there was no electricity anywhere in the nation?

Here's some things to consider:

Not only would your appliances not work, but you wouldn't be able to turn the TV on for news reports. The TV station may have back up generators to power their equipment, but if you didn't have a generator of your own, that wouldn't do you any good. Even if you did have a generator of your own, the solar storms may knock the television satellites offline too. So even if you had a way to turn on your TV, there may be nothing transmitting.
Landline telephones probably wouldn't be working. Your cell phone may be battery operated, but the cell phone towers may be offline. So you might not be able to call anyone.
Even if your laptop still had battery power, the internet may be offline, but even if the internet itself wasn't offline, if you didn't have electricity to power your modem, you still wouldn't be able to connect to the internet. And even if you used an aircard sold by cell phone companies to connect to the internet, if the cell phone towers were offline, it wouldn't do you much good.
Radio stations may have backup generators, but it's possible the solar storms could interfere with radio transmissions too.
If you couldn't get your phone or the internet to work, the only people you would be able to contact immediately are your neighbors and anyone you know within driving distance. Keep in mind that you would probably only be able to drive as far as the gas in your tank would get you because without electricity, gas pumps would be offline.
The nation would probably be in a state of martial law.

So what would happen after people started realizing that the power outage wasn't just limited to their street? I imagine different people would react differently. Many people probably wouldn't bother going to work. For some people, there probably wouldn't be much point in going to work if they worked in a field where electricity was necessary to do their work. Many people would probably be focused on contacting their family and friends. A lot of people would probably sort to looting. It would probably be a good idea to avoid looting though. For one, looting a 65 inch TV and a $4000 computer isn't going to do you much good without electricity, and two, a looter that is bigger and faster than you might take offense if you took the 65 inch TV he was coming for.

Of course, there is also the possibility that it wouldn't be safe to go outside at all. The radiation from the storms may be unhealthy. But you might not have any way of knowing that, and you might not have much of a choice either.

So what should we do if such an event were to occur? It's difficult to plan ahead of time since you don't know what kind of situations you may be presented with. Ideally, I'd hope that people would focus on meeting up with their friends and family and then deciding what to do from there. There would probably be a lot of people looting, but let the looters fight amongst themselves. It could take months or years for power to be restored. You might have to adapt to living without electricity for a while.

Hopefully people would see it as an opportunity to come together and get along with each other. Looting might happen in the beginning, but hopefully people would eventually see it as an opportunity to share and help others in need. If faced with such a situation (and assuming the radiation itself wasn't deadly), people would have the opportunity to turn what appeared to be a bad situation into something good by spreading good will.

But it would it only be an opportunity. People would have to decide for themselves if they wanted to take that opportunity.

Cryptid Misidentifications

2010-01-16T18:32:00.002-05:00

As I was out walking earlier, I saw a crane (the bird species, not the machine of the same name) fly by near a pond. It's not the first time I've seen a crane in this area, and it might be the same one I've seen before.

But, even though I've seen a crane around here before, I don't see one very often. Today when I saw it, I considered that its body type resembles drawings I have seen of certain types of pterosaurs (except the crane had feathers, of course). I wondered if maybe people who had claimed to see a pterosaur or something like a pterosaur could have misidentified a large crane.

But I didn't wonder about it for too long. I can't dismiss the possibility that someone might have misidentified a crane as a pterosaur, but I think it's rather unlikely. When I saw the crane today, it was instantly obvious to me that it was a crane. Even if it had been twice or even three times the distance away from me that it was, I'm sure I would have still known it was a crane. Even if it had been so far away that I had to squint to see it and still couldn't quite make it out, my first assumption would have still been a crane or some other type of large bird, not a pterosaur.

I googled 'pterodactyl misidentifications', and it seems that fruit bats are a common suggestion for what alleged pterosaur sightings might be. One article I found said that large fruit bats can have a pterosaur-like profile when seen in silhouette, especially to 'nonscientific observers', as if to suggest that identifying a bat required at least a masters degree in zoology or something. I mean, come on, most people know what a bat looks like. A lot of the pterosaur and thunderbird sightings I have read about - credible or not - described something larger than a fruit bat. And I think if I were to see a larged winged animal flying around at night, my first guess would be a bat or an owl of some sort - not a pterosaur. It would have to be exceptionally large before I would even start considering the possibility that it was some sort of pterosaur or thunderbird. But hey, that's just me.

And what about these skeptics who suggest that bigfoot sightings are bear misidentifications? I guess I can see the possibility of some sightings being bear misidentifications - assuming that the bear was seen from the back and only at a distance and the witness got scared and ran away in the other direction without investigating any further. But when people describe seeing humanlike faces, how can that be confused with a bear? And what of the size and body type? Skeptics like using bears as examples because bears can stand on their hind legs, but bears have long torsos and short legs - they still don't look humanlike even when standing on their hind legs.

And it's not like people don't know what bears look like. Even someone who has lived in a city or the suburbs all their life with no interest in hunting or camping knows what bears look like. Some of the people who have claimed to have seen a bigfoot are outdoorsmen who are familiar with the area they sighted it at and the wildlife that is normally seen in the area. So what are the odds that they would misidentify a bear as a bigfoot?

I realize there are some people out there who may be overly-anxious to believe in bigfoot and let their imagination get the best of them, but is that really what most people would do? Wouldn't most people be able to recognize a bear when they saw one - even at a far away distance? And I could be wrong, but even if they saw a bear at a far away distance and couldn't tell for sure what it was, wouldn't most people be likely to assume it was bear anyways? Wouldn't most people be more likely to assume what they are seeing is something normal and common?

But like I said, I could be wrong; maybe most people wouldn't assume it was a bear. Maybe most people do have the vivid imaginations the skeptics accuse them of having.

And here's another thought - wouldn't it be ironic if someone misidentified a bigfoot as a bear?

Caprica

2010-01-15T22:33:00.001-05:00

It's not to often that I get excited about a fictional television show, but I am excited about the premiere of the new series Caprica.

The series is a prequel spin-off to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series, taking place decades before the events of Battlestar Galactica.

I didn't become interested in the Battlestar Galactica series until late in its run. Once I saw the series finale, I was disappointed that I hadn't gotten interested in it earlier. In contrast to a lot of other sci-fi programs that take place in space sometime in the future, Battlestar Galactica takes place in the distant past. The people in the series are very similar to us. Their technologies are only slightly beyond what we have today. In many ways, those people are a reflection of society today. They dress like us, they talk like us, and they act a lot like us.

The characters of Caprica will be a reflection of society today too. But the premise of Caprica will be different than that of Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica takes place during a post-apocalyptic era where the survivors are struggling to live and trying to find an opportunity to start over fresh. Caprica takes place decades before the cylons attack the planet Caprica and the other colonized human planets. According to Wikipedia:

Whereas the dark, post-apocalyptic reimagined series revolved around a final bid for survival, Caprica is preoccupied with a world intoxicated by success. "It's about a society that's running out of control with a wild-eyed glint in its eye," states Ronald D. Moore. The Twelve Colonies are at their peak, self-involved, oblivious and mesmerized by the seemingly unlimited promise of technology. Framed by the conflict between the Adamas and the Graystones over the resurrection of loved ones lost in an act of terror, the series will explore ethical implications of advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.

The show will be a prime time drama that the producers are hoping will appeal to an ever wider audience than Battlestar Galactica did. According to Wikipedia:

Though a critical success, Galactica had a predominantly male audience, and both Moore and the network felt the "war in space" backdrop was a major deterrent to female viewers. With these considerations and Caprica's storyline already focused on events taking place before the two Cylon Wars, the series has a different identity, with its own tone, content and style. While Caprica contains some Easter eggs for Battlestar fans, the series is intended to be accessible to new fans and as such, no prior knowledge is required.

The original pilot for the show was released as a direct to DVD release. I think it has a lot of potential as a series. Hopefully I won't be disappointed.

Here's a trailer:

Sometimes the only proof is belief

2010-01-13T23:09:00.001-05:00

I was thinking about an article I read I while back, and I don't remember who wrote it or where I read it, but the point the writer wanted to get across was that he thought UFOlogists should stop putting so much emphasis on the Roswell incident. He thought that by putting so much emphasis on the Roswell incident - by way of books, lectures, and the internet - UFOlogists were running the risk of losing any credibility they may have if the Roswell incident was ever proven to not have been an ET UFO crash. But after I thought about it, the question that came to my mind is how would anyone ever prove that the Roswell incident wasn't an ET UFO crash? The official story says that it wasn't a crash, but many people believe the official story is a lie, therefore, it doesn't constitute proof that an ET UFO didn't crash in Roswell, New Mexico back in 1947. Back in the 1990's, the government declassified documents relating to Project Mogul, a top secret project that existed from 1947-1949 that was tasked with operating high altitude spy balloons to spy on Soviet atomic bomb tests. With the declassifying of Project Mogul documents, the government essentially issued a new official story about Roswell, saying the original official story wasn't quite the whole truth. It was a balloon that crashed, according to official sources, but it wasn't a weather balloon - it was a spy balloon that they were testing. They claimed they had to keep the 'truth' about the spy balloon a secret because they didn't want the Soviets to know they were using balloons to spy on them. The Project Mogul story sounds plausible considering the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was going on. But a lot of people still don't believe that story. Some people think that story is still just a cover up. So if some people are not going to believe whatever the official story is, how is it ever going to be proven to not be true? What could they ever do or say that would convince everyone that it wasn't an ET UFO that crashed in Roswell? Personally, I'm not convinced that the Roswell incident was an ET UFO crash, but I'm not conviced the official story is true either. But I really don't know how anyone is going to prove that it wasn't an ET UFO that crashed in Roswell as long as people still believe they are hiding the truth.

So what about the flipside of this, what if the government admitted that it was an ET UFO that crashed in Roswell and that they retrieved the wreckage and bodies and reverse engineered the technology? If that were to occur, I imagine there would be many UFOlogists that would laud that disclosure as proof the Roswell incident was an ET UFO crash and proof of ET life. But would it be proof? If the current official story doesn't constitute proof now, why should it constitute proof then? It seems to me the proof is in the belief. Currently, many UFOlogists believe the official story is bogus. If the government were to tell them something that sounds more like what they already believe to be true, then I think they would most likely accept that official story as proof.

But would it be enough proof? If an official story only constitutes proof sometimes, can it ever be considered solid proof by itself?

So now we've come to a new question. How could they prove that it actually was an ET spaceship that crashed in Roswell? If the official story doesn't count as proof that it wasn't an ET UFO now, why should the official story suddenly count as proof that it was an ET UFO if the story was changed to admitting it was an ET UFO?

At this point, someone might say something like, "Well, hopefully they'd have pictures of the wreckage being recovered, or better yet, video footage."

That's the famous picture of Jesse Marcel holding what is allegedly the 'balloon' that crashed at Roswell. Many people think the picture was staged though. But if that picture isn't proof that it was a balloon, why would a picture (or video) of a spaceship being recovered be considered proof? Who's to say that a picture of a spaceship wasn't staged (or photoshopped)?

Now, at this point, someone might say something like, "Well, hopefully they could put some of the wreckage or one of the bodies on display."

But what if the wreckage was faked? What if the body was created in some geneticists lab to look like an alien? How would you really know for sure that it was real?

Now, at this point, someone might ask something like, "Well, why would they go to all that trouble to fake that?"

Well, what if they admitted to finding a crashed spaceship, but they didn't tell the whole story. What if the official story stated that a spaceship crashed, they recovered the wreckage, reversed engineered what they found, claimed they used that technology to build the SR-71, and they are not sure why the spaceship crashed and had no further contact with the aliens. Some people might accept that. Maybe it sounds like what they already thought might have happened. But what if that isn't exactly how it went down. What if what really happened was that they shot down the spacehship, arrested the aliens, brutally tortured them for information, and succeeded in pissing off the rest of the alien species who then proceeded to start abducting people for DNA samples to conduct experiments on creating human-alien hybrid super soldiers with appetites as big as a cow's for a future invasion of the planet earth (and this is just a 'what if' scenario, I'm not actually throwing that out there as a legitimate suggestion of what might have happened). What if the aliens succeeded in invading earth because no one was prepared for the invasion because no one bothered to keep pressuring the government for a full disclosure because they already believed they had been given a full disclosure? So that might be a reason they would fake having an alien spaceship - telling people something they will believe so they will shut up and quit asking about it. I mean, if they lied about it for decades, how would you ever really know for sure when they were telling the truth?

But I'm only using the Roswell incident as an example. This post isn't about whether or not the Roswell incident was a balloon, a spacehship, or something else. The point of this post is that proof oftentimes consists of something that confirms what someone already believes to be true. Have you ever dismissed something you heard simply because it contradicted something you already believed to be true? Have you ever known or known of someone who dismissed something they were told because it didn't fit with what they already believed to be true?

And if you have never actually experienced something or investigated it for yourself, then how can you personally say that you know for sure it is true? Is it because 'most' people think its true? Is it because someone with a PhD said so? Is it because CNN or FOX reported it?

As Marcus Aurelius said, "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if they know nothing about the subject." We should be careful to assume that something is true because 'most' people think it is true. We also shouldn't forget that someone who is well educated and has credentials can still be wrong about something. What if they are merely repeating something their college professor taught them? What if their professor was merely repeating something that they were taught? What if what they were taught was never true in the first place? What if it was just assumed to be true because it had been 'known for a long time'? And what if the news reports were reporting information that was inaccurate? What if the were just reporting something outlandish in attempt to boost ratings so they could charge more money for ads?

Not all proof is necessarily based on belief though. If you went to a pool and someone told you the water was cold, if you didn't believe them, you could just get in and see for yourself if it's cold. Once you've stepped in, you have solid proof as to whether or not the water is cold because you've experienced it. Prior to that, all you had was word of mouth. You could have just chosen to believe what you were told and not bothered to get in the water at all.

Maybe this is why parents sometimes get frustrated when their children get in trouble because they did something they were told not to do. Perhaps the children didn't believe their parents when they were told that they could get in trouble. Sometimes children may just have to experience something for themselves to get the proof they need to avoid getting into the same kind of trouble again.

But proof doesn't always come from your own personal experiences (and sometimes even certain experiences can be misleading). Sometimes the only proof available to you is something that confirms (or fits with) what you already believe to be true.

I guess 'proof' can be a personal preference.

Hopefully I've proven my point here. I'd like to believe that I have. J

Staging Evidence for Ratings

2010-01-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

I used to enjoy the show Mysteryquest, but I won't be watching anymore. I found out yesterday that a MUFON State Director named Mark Easter admitted to "misleading the public" in an episode of Mysteryquest. Apparently, in an effort to boost ratings, the producer of the Mysteryquest episode obtained some debris from an old test rocket and had it planted in the desert. Easter was aware of this and knew what the debris was but proceeded to comply with the producer's request to pretend to discover it. Here is an excerpt from an article on the subject:

The producer, the crew, area 51 advisors and Mark all met at the Rachael, Nevada Little Alien Inn. As they were talking about the day's shoot. up pulls a man named Peter Marlin with a jeep full of wreckage. "It's the remains of a nose cone to a test rocket from Area 51 launched in 1967". Not only did Peter have the debris but he also had"1000 pages of tech information on the rocket". This debris was not mysterious at all. They all knew what it was, when it was launch and by whom. The producer had hired Peter as part of the show. But, here is where it got really tricky. They all go out to the crash site where the wreckage was found and:.....

"When we arrived at the destination the producer proceeded to explain how the sequence would be shot. We had to pull the huge pile of debris out of Peter's Jeep…and plant it in the desert so on camera we could drive up and discover it. In the shot Peter and Mark are kneeling next to the debris and pulling pieces out talking about them as they pretend they are looking at it for the first time."

The producer instructed Mark to interject certain words about the debris into the dialogue like "alien", "extraterrestrial" and the word "UFO". They all then proceeded to go searching the site for other debris. When they didn't find any, the producer again came up with a brilliant, if less than ethical, solution. They would plant a piece of the debris and act as if they just found it. This farce even went to the extent where the show sent the material out to a Rutgers' scientist for analysis.

Read the rest here. The subject has also been written about on UFO Media Matters and Phantoms and Monsters.

To say that staging the evidence is "misleading the public" is putting it mildly. That not only looks bad for MUFON but for Mysteryquest too. I'm not surprised though. I don't condone it and I'm nonetheless disappointed by it, but I'm not surprised. TV shows are about ratings, because ratings sell ads. But when a show portrays itself as a documentary series performing real investigations, then staging the evidence tarnishes its credibility.

This revelation has left me wondering if other shows similar to Mysteryquest have also staged evidence just to make an episode more interesting. I guess part of the problem with having a whole series that focuses on any sort of mystery or paranormal topic is that the producers run the risk of spending a lot of money investigating something only to find nothing of interest. In the Mysteryquest episode, if they had gone out into the desert and didn't find anything, they would have wasted time and money in doing so and still had a deadline to meet to get the show ready to be aired. A couple of guys wandering around in the desert not finding anything wouldn't be that interesting, and it wouldn't fill up much of the time slot.

So if Mysteryquest has staged evidence, how many other shows may have done the same thing at some point? As much as I enjoy watching paranormal themed documentary style shows, I'm beginning to wonder which ones (if any) are really worth watching. Probably the best one out there now in my opinion is SyFy's Destination Truth. I think some of the other networks may do well to try and adopt Destination Truth's lighthearted format for their documentary series'. Josh Gate's keeps Destination Truth entertaining by narrating the team's journey to the various locales they visit and making it funny. The Destination Truth team could probably go on an investigation and find nothing and still make finding nothing entertaining. The team always seems to have a good time wherever they go.

I don't think the problem is just an effort to get better ratings though. There are so many documentary style series' now, I think some of the producers may be finding it difficult to efficiently produce a whole season of episodes and make them all interesting and entertaining. We'd probably get better documentaries if the networks focused more on individual documentaries or mini-series. But maybe that wouldn't fill up enough time slots - I don't know.

I know this revelation was only about a single episode of Mysteryquest, but it's caused me to lose interest in watching the show or similar shows again because it's left me wondering how often these shows may have staged evidence just to make an episode more entertaining. When I watch a documentary series that portrays its episodes as serious investigations, then I want to see a serious investigation - not just be 'entertained'. If I want to be entertained, then I will watch a fictional program or Destination Truth.

Dragons and Dinosaurs

2010-01-10T22:35:00.002-05:00

Dragons are a creature that feature in the stories and mythologies of various cultures around the world. They're mentioned in the Bible and ancient middle eastern stories, they feature prominently in east Asian traditions, and have also featured in ancient and medieval European folk tales. The east Asians typically depict dragons as large snake-like creatures, while the Europeans typically depict them as sauropod-like creatures, oftentimes with wings. While dragons may be depicted somewhat differently in different cultures, it seems that giant reptilian creatures of some sort feature in stories from all around the world.

So where did all these people get these ideas about giant reptiles? The study of Paleontology has only been around since the 19th century, but people have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Could the stories of dragons have been developed by people who found dinosaur fossils? If so, the next question in my mind would be how did they know the fossils were reptilian? If they had never seen large reptiles before, what would make them think the fossils belonged to reptiles? Even if someone in ancient times had found an intact skeleton of a sauropod, what about it would indicate to them it was a reptile instead of some bizarre cross between a giraffe and an elephant?

Some people point to the Ica stones as evidence that some dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time as humans. The Ica stones also depict scenes that appear to show men looking through telescopes, performing open heart surgery, and performing cesarean section births. These stones are generally believed to be a hoax not only because of what they depict, but because one man who sold the stones claimed he had been carving them himself (Although it's been claimed that he confessed to carving them to avoid jail time, because if they were legitimate artifacts, they would be the property of the government, and therefore, illegal to sell.).

But the Ica stones are not the only depictions of dinosaur-like creatures from the past.

An ancient Greek mosaic known as the Nile mosaic of Palestrina depicts what looks like some sort of dinosaur like creature.

The temple of Ankor Wat in Cambodia has a depiction of what has been alleged to be a hippo with a lotus flower behind it.

It also looks a little bit like a stegosaurus. I don't know if it is a stegosaurus, but I don't think it looks like a lotus flower and hippo either (tail looks to long to be a hippo to me).

A figurine found in Anatolia also bears a modest resemblance to a stegosaurus:

It might not be a stegosaurus, but it's hard to tell exactly what it is supposed to be after a few thousand years of weathering.

People argue over what these ancient artworks depict, but what about the depictions of dragons themselves? Regardless of how you spin it, dragons resemble dinosaurs. Any single depiction of a dragon might not match up exactly with any single known type of dinosaur, but there is no denying the obvious similarities. I think it's also important to note that dinosaur skeletons are rarely ever found completely intact. Modern depictions of dinosaurs are artists interpretations based partially on fossil evidence, and partially on guesswork. With that in mind, there may be even more similarities than previously thought.

So where did the ancients come up with their ideas of dragons? Are they the result of some ancient psychic having visions of the earth's distant past? Or could people have seen 'ghosts' of dinosaurs, like a type of residual haunting? Or could it be that ancient people found dinosaur skeletons and tried to visualize what they may have looked like (much like how modern artists try to visualize what they looked like based on scientific descriptions)? Or is it just a mere coincidence that depictions of dragons just so happen to resemble depictions of dinosaurs? Or could it be that humans and some dinosaurs did coexist at the same time?

Some people think that dinosaurs and humans not only coexisted at the same time, but that certain types of dinosaurs still exist today. Some people have speculated that the Loch Ness monster and Champ may be plesiosaurs. Chessie of the Chesapeake Bay is said to be a long serpent like creature, which some some have speculated might be a zeuglodon.

Of course, it's not known whether those sea serpents actually exist, much less if they are dinosaurs that survived extinction. However, stories of dinosaurs surviving extinction are not limited to aquatic dinosaurs. The Mokele-mbembe is allegedly a type of sauropod that lives in remote areas of the Congo today. The term Mokele-mbembe translates to "one who stops the flow of water," because apparently the Mokele-mbembe is so large it can get into a river and stop the flow of water. A handful of westerners have claimed to see the animal, and when locals of the region are shown pictures of animals known to exist in the region, they are able to identify them; when they are shown animals not native to the region, they draw a blank; when shown pictures of sauropods, they identify them as Mokele-mbembe (Although, according to the Wikipedia entry on the subject, a BBC documentary interviewed some tribe members who identified the Mokele-mbembe as a rhinoceros. So I guess it may depend on which local you ask). And it is not a situation where they are confusing the picture of a sauropod with a smaller sized reptile, because they are clear that the Mokele-mbembe is very large, and the name itself suggests that it is very large.

So what are the odds that some large sauropods could have survived extinction and still roam the earth in remote areas? I don't know what the odds are, but it may be important to emphasize that the regions these animals supposedly inhabit are very remote. We may have satellites and have charted the whole planet, but there are still plenty of places in the world that are rarely visited by people. There are monuments in the Amazon that modern archaeologists have not excavated (not yet, anyway). It's known that these monuments are there because they can be seen from an airplane. But those monuments stay still. They don't go anywhere. A 'Mokele-mbembe' - whatever it is - can move around. So while there may be satellite images of the Congo and western investigators may have traipsed through the jungles at various times, the entire Congo is not under constant surveillance.

Some people have also claimed to see pterosaurs flying through the sky. There are also stories of flying serpents, which may or may not fit the description of what a dragon is. A sighting of a flying serpent isn't necessarily paranormal though, as is it known that some snakes have the ability to glide through the air. However, I doubt a small snake gliding through the air would be mistaken for a large dragon.

So is it possible that some dinosaurs survived extinction and still exist today? Well, it's not only possible, it's true. For anyone who doesn't believe that, I would recommend you go to the local zoo and look for an animal known as the 'crocodile'. Crocodiles walked the earth with the Tyranosaurus Rex, and they still walk the earth today. The Tuatara lizard also walked with dinosaurs. Turtles lived with dinosaurs. The coelacanth was once thought to be a prehistoric fish that had gone extinct, that is, until they found some living ones. Certain types of insects, such as a grasshoppers and cockroaches, walked with dinosaurs too. All of these animals look the same now as they did in the past. All of these animals survived the dinosaur extinction. Bugs, turtles, fish, and small lizards might not be dinosaurs, but crocodiles are. Crocodiles are not the largest type of dinosaur, nor are they the smallest. They are dinosaurs in every sense of the word. They not only lived at the same time T-Rex's lived, but they are clearly large reptiles. If you factor in their aggressive nature, the term 'terrible lizard' (which, of course, is what the word 'dinosaur' means) could be a fitting description.

So if crocodiles still exist, why not another type of dinosaur? Could dinosaurs be the inspiration for dragons? Could the dragons that the Chinese people revere have been some type of dinosaur that their ancestors had seen? Could a dinosaur sighting have turned into a local tradition, which in turn spread to other communities, which eventually lead to a widespread tradition? Could a similar sighting somewhere else have produced similar results in other cultures around the world?

Something to ponder, I suppose.

UFO Misidentifications

2010-01-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

The other evening I was out driving and I glanced up and saw an airplane flying by. This is not unusual. People see airplanes fly by all the time. And aircraft is very common in the skies around here, considering there is a regional airport and two military bases here.

But for some reason, I glanced up at that airplane again, and it occurred to me that all I could really see was two white lights next to each other moving slowly across the sky. I couldn't actually make out a fuselage, wings, or a tail.

Most serious UFOlogists will tell you that the majority of UFO sightings are misidentifications of conventional aircraft, the International Space Station, bizarre weather phenomena, or Venus. You may hear someone suggest misidentifications account for anywhere from 80% to 99% of UFO sightings, and I'm inclined to agree that the majority are misidentifications.

However, as I was looking at the two white lights the second time, I also thought about how ironic it would be if those two white lights were a real UFO and I had just assumed it was an airplane and looked away. I'm sure what I saw was an airplane, but if some odd reason someone was skeptical that there was airplane flying through the sky that night and questioned me as to whether or not I could clearly see the fuselage, wings, or tail of the airplane, I would have to answer that I could not.

So, in spite of the fact that most UFO reports are probably misidentifications of something conventional, I wondered if there had ever been any instances where a legitimate UFO sighting was not reported because the observer just assumed they were looking at an airplane or helicopter and looked away from it without giving it a second thought. How ironic would it be if a UFO was misidentified as an airplane?

I don't know if there has ever been any instances where someone saw a UFO and misidentified it as something conventional. I don't suppose you can really get any good statistics on how many UFO sightings go unreported, since, you know, they're unreported. You can come up with statistics on reports you do have, but you can't really come up with statistics on reports you don't have. Any statistical percentage you come up with on reports you don't have would just be a guess.

Nevertheless, I'm still pretty sure those two white lights I saw the other evening were lights from an airplane. J

An Interview with Dr. Charles Tart

2010-01-04T00:06:00.000-05:00

I found an interview with Dr. Charles Tart, a Psychology Professor with an impressive academic resume, where he answers questions regarding his views on science and spirituality. I was very impressed by the interview, so I'm posting a link to it for anyone interested in reading it.

Read the interview here: An Interview with Dr. Charles Tart

H/T

Posted using ShareThis

Bill Clinton discusses the Roswell Incident

2010-01-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting video clip with former President Bill Clinton discussing the Roswell UFO incident.

Early in the questioning, Clinton mentions that there were people in his administration that thought there was a UFO and an alien buried in Nevada by the government (the location was off-limits to the public). Clinton said he sent someone there to "figure it out." According to him, there was just a secret defense installation there with people doing "boring" work that they didn't want anyone else to see. Maybe that's true, but what I found to be interesting about it was that Clinton had to send someone to figure it out. Not only were there people in his administration that thought there was a UFO there, but apparently this installation was so secret that he didn't even know what it was and couldn't just ask one of his generals what it was or pull it up in some sort of encrypted database of secret installations on his computer.

As far as Roswell goes, Clinton said he did attempt to find out if there were any secret documents about the UFO incident, but said that if there were any secret documents about it, they were concealed from him too. He also said, "I wouldn't be the first President that underlings have lied to or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere hiding these dark secrets even from elected presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me, and I'm almost embarrased to tell you I did try to find out."

So apparently, like a lot of us, even Clinton wanted to find out if something other than the official story happened at Roswell. Many people suspect the government of lying and covering up Roswell and many other incidents and programs. According to Clinton, underlings (i.e. government officials) have lied to Presidents before. So if they'll lie to the President, who's to say they won't lie to us too?

I think we can also glean from Clinton's statement just what a tangled web the government is. Not only did he not know about everything that was going on in the government, he also alludes to not being able to just pick up the phone and find out anything he wants to know about particular government operations - he had to send someone to find out about the secret operation in Nevada. He said that operation was in the public domain now, but you have to wonder how many other operations there are that are going on now that aren't in the public domain. You also have to wonder, considering that he admitted that 'underlings' have lied to Presidents, how many times a President sought information about secret information and was lied to about what was really going on. You also have to wonder why the 'underlings' would lie about it to the President in the first place. You also have to wonder why an 'underling' would be privy to something the President wasn't. Makes you wonder who the 'underling' really is.

And I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought Clinton seemed slightly fidgety in the video and had a tendency to look down a lot (but, granted, it was hard to tell if he was looking down and I'm not sure where the audience was sitting either). If my observation is accurate, I can't help but wonder if he wasn't hiding something himself.

Sometimes I think the President has become to much of a figurehead to the people. People often applaud the President when things are going good, and blame the President when things are going bad. But I don't think we should lump to much of the praise or blame on the Presidents. I think that video clip really shows that President does not rule alone - there is a lot more going on in the government than just what the President does. I think the 'career bureaucrats' that Clinton mentions wield a lot more power in Washington than the Presidents do, but the career bureaucrats seem to remain mostly behind the scenes.

H/T for the video.

A Quick Synchronicity

2010-01-02T01:20:00.000-05:00

Earlier this evening I was at a friend's (who's also a co-worker) house, and I mentioned that I saw the receptionist where we work earlier in the day. Right after I said that, he asked, "At Wal-Mart?" And I said yes, and asked him how he knew I saw him (the receptionist) at Wal-Mart (and this isn't a small town, there's plenty of other places I might have seen him). He answered by just saying that he had seen him at Wal-Mart before, which really doesn't make much sense, considering that just because he had seen him at Wal-Mart before doesn't mean that Wal-Mart is where I saw him, but I guess it was just the first thing that came to his mind.

But get this...while we were having this conversation, a Wal-Mart commercial came on TV. I don't really see any significant meaning to it, but what are the odds of that occurring?

Separating Scientists: The Toolmakers and The History Rewriters

2010-01-01T14:04:00.001-05:00

To anyone who has read this blog for a while, it's probably apparent that I have a tendency to be critical of the scientific establishment. And I'd like to emphasize that my criticisms of the scientific establishment are just that, criticisms of the scientific establishment. They are not criticisms of the scientific method, the philosophy of science, scientific investigation, or learning in general.

One reason that I am so critical of the scientific establishment is because I don't see science as an establishment. I also don't lump everyone wearing the scientist label into one crowd. You could get a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Kabbalist together and label them as "religious" people. While that might be a true statement, that broad label overlooks the key differences between the religions the people represent.

On the same note, if you take an Archaeologist, Paleontologist, Medical Doctor, a Rocket Engineer, and a Computer Engineer, you could label them all as "scientists," but the label doesn't clarify the differences between the types of science.

However, people don't readily point out the differences between the scientists and the types of science they research. I think this is kind of tragic, because it allows some scientists to ride on the accomplishments of other scientists.

The point I want to get across here is that we don't have computers, airplanes, and GPS systems because of Charles Darwin or a Big Bang Theory. We have computers, airplanes, and GPS systems because someone took the time to conceptualize them and then figure out how to build their concept.

On the other hand, we have a group of people trying to rewrite history that they didn't live through or experience. Their version of history is based on a materialistic viewpoint, and they model their concept of history through that viewpoint.

However, these two groups of people label themselves as scientists. One group seeks to design new tools, the other seeks to rewrite history from their perspective. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the tool making scientists have made many notable accomplishments, allowing the history rewriters to ride along with that success and teach their materialism.

I'd like to point out that tool makers have been around since the earliest records of men (and presumably before that too). Regardless of whether you think we were created here, planted here by aliens, or 'evolved', its apparent that men have been making tools for a long time. One generation develops a tool, and another generation builds upon the original design. The wheel becomes a cart, the cart becomes a carriage, the carriage becomes a car. These toolmakers have been making tools since before the word "science" was invented. If our modern engineers want to call themselves scientists that is fine, but what they are doing is something people did before "science" was defined.

The medical doctors of today take what is called the Hippocratic Oath (or rather, a modernized version of it). The Hippocratic Oath is basically an oath a doctor makes to practice medicine ethically. Hippocrates is widely considered to be the father of Western medicine, yet he lived circa 460 BC - 370 BC - long before science was defined. So the study and practice of medicine has been around for a long time. Over the years, knowledge of medicine has increased tremendously. We might call it "Medical science" today, but the study of medicine existed before modern term was defined.

During the Renaissance, the Catholic establishment began to lose its hold on Europe once the Protestant reformers began questioning their authority. It wasn't long after that though that the so-called 'age of enlightenment' began, which led to some people considering non-traditional outlooks on life and history, which led to materialism, which led to the modern scientific establishment. Essentially we've traded one establishment for another. Woopty-doo.

So really my criticisms here are against the history rewriters. Sure, they may abide by the philosophy of science and use the scientific method as tool for investigations and research, but ultimately, their brand of science is highly interpretative. Their brand of science isn't like the science of an aerospace engineer. The aerospace engineer designs airplanes. The history rewriters just intepret data they find from a certain point of view.

Which brings me to another point. Scientists are always about the data. They want to see the data. Data, data, data. They want to know what the data says.

But the data doesn't "say" anything. Data is interpreted. And not everyone may interpret the data the same way.

I have a book called Thousands...Not Billions, which makes a case for the earth being much younger than 4.5 billion years old. The book is written by a group of scientists called Radioisotopes and the Age of Earth (RATE), and they used the same data and radiometric dating techniques that the mainstream scientific establisment uses. The establishment says the earth is 4.5 billion years old because the data 'says' so. But as I pointed out, data doesn't say anything. The establishment has interpreted the data to mean that earth is 4.5 billion years old.

So how did the RATE scientists, who, by the way, are credentialed scientists, determine that the earth is so much younger? The Great Flood. What the establishment views as age, the RATE scientists view as flood deposited rock. RATE lumped what the mainstream scientists refer to as Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic eras together as a single layer of flood deposits.

So what we really have here is a debate between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. Catastrophism suggests that the earth has been affected by sudden, catastrophic events (such as the Great Flood). Uniformitarianism, on the other hand, suggests the opposite, that natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated that way without interruption. Uniformitarianism is the lens the scientific establishment views history through. It's actually pretty clear that the Uniformitarianism theory in its original form (which was developed by James Hutton and Charles Lyell) is not accurate, so during the 20th century the scientific establishment created a set of "correction tables" (or "calibration tables"). When asked how they 'know' the earth is 4.5 billion years old, the scientific establishment will say because the radiometric data 'says' so. Wrong. The data hasn't 'said' anything. They intepreted the data to mean that by examining it with a certain pre-conceived notion.

There are those out there that would suggest trying to dispute what the scientific establishment says about pre-history is just an attempt to cling to old religious beliefs. Well, I could say the same thing about those people. They are clinging to 19th century materialism and its interpretation of history and reality. How convenient that the Darwinist crowd created a new theory (Uniformitarianism) to support their theory of evolution. It was necessary to do so, otherwise the theory of evolution would have fallen apart long ago. The Darwinists needed a way to claim the earth was millions and billions of years old in order to make their theory of evolution plausible (by dismissing the hundreds of ancient stories of a catastrophic flood, the Darwinists can interpret radiometric data to suggest that the earth is billions of years old). Creating a theory about history to support another theory about history isn't the same as building airplanes.

I also criticize the scientific establishment because they often have a tendency to 'speak with authority'. They speak about theoretical concepts as though they were already known to be true. A recent example of what I mean can be seen in an article about dark matter. I think the main body of the article presents an authoritative tone regarding the existence of dark matter, yet if you go to the bottom, there's a little snippet that points out that not all scientists believe in dark matter. Well, if that's the case, I think the mainstream scientists need to make it a little more clear that dark matter itself is just a theoretical concept, instead of 'speaking with authority' about something that is not yet known to be true. Their concept of dark matter may very well be accurate, but until they actually find something and can clearly define it, they need to drop the authoritative tone.

This also goes for the so-called Higgs-Boson particle. Few scientists are interested in studying ghosts or psychic phenomenon, yet they'll spend billions of dollars and devote years of time to trying to find some unknown particle that no one has ever seen and may not even exist. Go figure.

And what of these 'peer-reviewed' journals? Are we to assume that because a bunch of people who already think alike agree with what an article says, that the article must be true? Frankly, when it comes to interpreting scientific data, I'm not interested in a 'peer' review. I would rather have an analysis by people with different viewpoints. Preferably, the data collection would be done by people with different viewpoints too. I think by doing so, we could get a more thorough examination of the data, instead of just looking at it through a single lens. As a result, people could review the different intepretations of the data, and draw their own conclusions from those intepretations, instead of just being told what the data supposedly means. When doing research, it's good to investigate a subject or the data thoroughly. If you're only looking to find specific answer, there's a good chance you'll find it. You can probably find someone out there to tell you what you want to hear. But it's not always good to stop researching something because you found someone who will tell you what think (or hope) is true. Maybe it is true, but, you know, maybe it isn't. Get some different perspectives, and draw your own conclusions. Ultimately, you can still choose your own perspective, but at least you can say you listened to other perspective and tried to understand where those perspectives were formed.

So when it comes to science, I try to have an open mind. I don't lump all scientists together. When reading about science, I try to determine what lens the writer is looking through. The tool making scientists look through a lens toward the future. The history rewriting scientists look through a lens to the past. History is one of my favorite subjects, yet the lens of 19th century materialism is of little interest to me. But hey, I'll still consider their viewpoint...but I'd want to consider other viewpoints too.

I criticize the establishment because they have a tendency to speak with authority and try to tell people what to believe. Some may argue that religious leaders from the past and present do the same thing, but there are already plenty of criticisms of religious establishments out there. I don't think there is enough criticism of the scientific establishment, which is one reason why I have chosen to take a critical position regarding the scientific establishment. Another reason I criticize them instead of religious establishments is that devout religious people admit their beliefs are based in faith, but scientists claim to base their beliefs on rationalism and data. So when they start talking about evolution, big bangs, dark matter, and Higgs-Bosons, they darn well better have some clear evidence that it's true first. And the evidence better be as clear as the sky is blue before they start 'speaking with authority'. Claiming the evidence is clear doesn't mean it's clear. It's obvious that the sky is blue. It isn't obvious that the universe exploded itself into existence.

Our tool makers, as they have throughout history, continue to make great accomplishments. Our history rewriters on the other hand, eh, not so much. I think lumping our history rewriters into the same bunch as our tool makers is an insult to the tool makers...but that is just my opinion.

Good Article: Woo Woo is a Step Ahead of (Bad) Science

2009-12-31T14:14:00.000-05:00

Deepak Chopra wrote an article pointing out some flaws with 'professional skepticism' on the Huffington Post website recently. As Chopra points out at the beginning of the article, he has been accused of expounding "woo woo" before. Sometimes I think he might be expounding woo woo, but there are other times that I think he makes some excellent points. This article is one of those times that I think he makes excellent points. The article is in response to a recent appearance Chopra made on Larry King Live with famous skeptic Michael Shermer. Here is a brief excerpt from the article:

Skeptics feel that they have won the high ground in matters concerning consciousness, mind, the origins of life, evolutionary theory, and brain science. This is far from the case. What they cling to is 19th Century materialism, packaged with a screeching hysteria about God and religion that is so passé it has become quaint. To suggest that Darwinian theory is incomplete and full of unproven hypotheses causes Shermer, who takes Darwin as purely as a fundamentalist takes scripture, to see God everywhere in the enemy camp.

Read the whole article here.

H/T

Crossing Back

2009-12-30T23:02:00.001-05:00

Michael Prescott posted another interesting near-death experience (NDE) story on his blog. The story is about Noelle McNeil, who suffered brain injuries in horse riding accident. Here is an excerpt he quoted from the newspaper story he found the article in:

McNeil was diagnosed with diffuse axonal injury in which many of the connections of the brain were severed. She said less than 3 percent of such patients make meaningful recoveries ...

[But] while her family and community and community prayed for a bedside miracle, the comatose McNeil was on an otherworldly journey. McNeil said she remembers leaving her body, gliding over brightly lit clouds into a brightly lit place where she encountered her Uncle Joe, her father's brother, who had died several years before.

"I asked Joe if this was heaven," McNeil explains in her book Heaven Exists. "He said yes. I asked if I could go back because I did not want to leave my life yet. I had so much more left I want to do."

Communicating telepathically, she said, Uncle Joe ultimately told her she could return to her body. He promised she would recover but told her it would take a long time.

"I had been to heaven and now I would have a glimpse of what hell is -- waking up to find myself totally debilitated in a hospital, unable to eat, walk or function in any real sense," she wrote.

McNeil returned to her body, but she had a long period of recovery ahead of her.

One aspect of her story that I found interesting was that she asked if she could return to her body. In many of the NDE accounts I have read, the NDErs were content to stay in the spiritual realm. Some didn't want to return but were told it was not their time yet (or something to that effect). McNeil wanted to return to her physical body though. When I thought about her story some more, I wondered if others may have asked to return to their physical bodies but were denied their request. Could a situation like that possibly result in an 'intelligent haunting' (the type of haunting where the ghost seems to be aware of what's going on around it)? Intelligent hauntings are commonly thought to be the ghost of a dead person. If true, could these ghosts be haunting a location because they were denied a request to return to their physical body? Could they have chosen to defiantly remain in a location familiar to them instead of crossing over?

I'm not claiming to know the answers to those questions, but I figured if someone could ask to return to her physical body and have her request granted, then theoretically, I figure that it may also be possible that similar requests could be denied in some instances.

The Queen of Heaven

2009-12-30T22:32:00.000-05:00

Today, the designation 'Queen of Heaven' is often associated with the Virgin Mary. Historically, the designation has been associated with Isis and Astarte.

In regards to the so-called 'Marian apparitions', it seems to me that the Catholics who claim to have seen the Lady assume she is Mary. In the accounts that I have read about her, she either refers to herself as something like 'Lady of the Rosary', or she may not introduce herself at all. So if she does not specifically introduce herself as the mother of Jesus, why should we assume that she is?

I am not denying that Mary existed; nor am I denying that she gave birth to Jesus. I'm not denying that she was a virgin either. The question in my mind is whether or not these so-called Marian apparitions are actually visitations by the spirit of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

What if these apparitions have been appearing for much longer than previously thought? Could it be that this entity or spirit - whatever you prefer to call her - is the same as Isis? It's long been thought by mainstream historians that Isis, along with all the other pagan gods and goddesses, is a myth. Some of the more open minded ones may consider that these ancient pantheons of gods and goddesses were once based on real people that had stories about themselves fabricated or were perhaps fabricated over time. Fringe historians have suggested that some of the gods and goddesses were aliens or some other type of non-human intelligences. I tend to think that the gods and goddesses may have once been based on real people, but I can't discount the possibility that the stories are entirely fictional. But I'm also not closed to the possibility that the pagan gods and goddesses were some sort of aliens, or non-human intelligences - perhaps something akin to angels or fallen angels. It could be that the pagan pantheons consisted of a combination of any or all three of these viewpoints.

So with that in mind, I can't help but wonder if these apparitions are some sort of non-human intelligent being who has been visiting people for thousands of years. Maybe she just adapts to the audience. To the Egyptians, she let them think she was Isis. To modern Catholics, she lets them think she is Mary. Mac Tonnies suggested a possibility that the 'aliens' people claim to see today have merely adapted to our cultural expectations. In the past (and still today, actually), people may have observed such phenomena as gods, angels, fairies, or something else. Perhaps the aliens are not the scientists with advanced technologies that they are assumed to be; maybe it's just a facade to fit our modern expectations. The aliens may be something else entirely. So could it be that this 'Queen of Heaven' (translatable as Queen of the Sky) is doing the same thing? Does this 'lady' just try to fit the appearance that the viewer(s) would expect?

Catholic traditions that grant Mary her Queen title and divine status come later in history. The Bible never says that she ascended to heaven and it doesn't say she remained a virgin throughout her lifetime. In fact, the Bible even makes reference to Mary having other children. The Catholic version of Mary more closely resembles a pagan goddess than the Mary depicted in the New Testament. Pagan goddesses of the past were often known by many names and titles, and the alleged apparitions of Mary have many titles too (Lady of the Rosary, Lady of the Pillar, Lady of the Snow, etc). So the question in my mind remains; are the so-called Marian apparitions actually appearances by Mary? Or is the apparition actually someone else - perhaps a pagan 'goddess' from the past? I'm not aware of her ever specifically introducing herself as Mary, but she doesn't deny being Mary either; so does she want people to think she is Mary? Or does she just not care who they think she is? Is she content just being called 'Our Lady'?

Of course, skeptics say these apparitions are just hallucinations or hoaxes. Maybe they are. But if they are real, I wonder if she is who she is assumed to be. If she isn't who she is assumed to be, then who - and what - is she?

The Star of Bethlehem

2009-12-21T22:53:00.001-05:00

One question that often comes up around this time of year is what the star of Bethlehem was. The star of Bethlehem is the star that heralded the birth of Jesus Christ. Many theories have been suggested as to what it could have been. It's difficult to determine exactly what it was because not much was actually said about it. Here is an excerpt from chapter 2 of the book of Matthew:

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Wise-men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying,

Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

And when Herod the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ should be born.

And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written through the prophet,

And thou Bethlehem, land of Judah, Art in no wise least among the princes of Judah: For out of thee shall come forth a governor, Who shall be shepherd of my people Israel.

Then Herod privily called the Wise-men, and learned of them exactly what time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search out exactly concerning the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word, that I also may come and worship him.

And they, having heard the king, went their way; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

Matthew keeps it simple, he just says they saw a star. Apparently a star that can move, and not just along the normal progression of the stars in the night sky. There have been several suggestions as to what the star might have been.

Comet - A comet would explain the sudden appearance of a star and could even appear to stay in the same place for a while. Although we base our calendar today on the birth of Jesus, most people seem to think Jesus was actually born around 4 BC, as opposed to the year 0. Halley's comet is said to have flown by around 12 BC, but that would be too early. I suppose it's possible another comet could have gone by, possibly a comet that rarely ever passes by earth and has not been recorded before. There is a whole universe out there, so I guess we shouldn't necessarily assume we have recorded every comet that ever has or ever will pass by the earth. However, there is a flaw in the comet theory. A comet may appear suddenly and appear to stay in one spot, but therein lies the problem. The star of Bethlehem didn't stay in one spot. It moved over to the location of Jesus' house.
Supernova - A supernova is an exploding star that would give off an enormous amount of light. This could account for the sudden appearance of another star. It's possible it may have been too faint to see, but after going supernova, the added brightness may have made it visible. Still, we have the problem with the movement of the star. A supernova wouldn't move outside of the normal progression of stars.
Astrological conjunction - Considering that the magi from the east were probably astrologers, this sounds like it might be a good explanation. Here is one suggestion of what the astrological sign might have been:

John Mosley, program supervisor for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles believes the Christmas star was a rare series of planetary conjunctions that took place in during the years 3 B.C. and 2 B.C. "The show started on the morning of June 12 in 3 B.C., when Venus could be sighted very close to Saturn in the eastern sky," says an MSNBC article about Mosley's findings. "Then there was a spectacular pairing of Venus and Jupiter on Aug. 12 in the constellation Leo, which ancient astrologers associated with the destiny of the Jews. Between September of 3 B.C. and June of 2 B.C., Jupiter passed by the star Regulus in Leo, reversed itself and passed it again, then turned back and passed the star a third time. This was another remarkable event, since astrologers considered Jupiter the kingly planet and regarded Regulus as the 'king star.' The crowning touch came on June 17, when Jupiter seemed to approach so close to Venus that, without binoculars, they would have looked like a single star."

UFO - In the strictest definition of the acronym, I suppose you could say the star was an unidentified flying object. That's not to say it was necessarily a metal spaceship built by aliens, it's just saying that it was an unidentified flying object. But, some kind spaceship would explain how it was able to change positions in the sky.

These are the most common explanations. We now know that stars are actually big balls of burning plasma, and they maintain a normal progression in the sky. So we know that a star itself didn't just move out of its normal progression because stars can't do that.....

......or can they? It wouldn't be the last time a star moved - or at least appeared to move - out of its normal progression. In Fatima, Portugal in 1917, thousands of people saw the sun spin around and 'dance' in sky. The dancing sun was accompanied by an apparition who called herself the Lady of the Rosary (presumed to be Mary, the mother of Jesus, by Catholics). Of course, billions of other people didn't notice the sun doing this, so apparently the so called 'miracle of the sun' was only visible to those people assembled in the Cova da Iria fields in Fatima (and apparently not everyone in attendance there saw the sun do anything out of the ordinary). But the fact that only a limited number of people observed the sun dance may be significant. If you read chapter 2 of the book of Matthew, it seems that Herod and the Judeans hadn't noticed the star had appeared. Not only that, considering the passage says the wise men followed the star to Jesus' house, it may be that the wise men were the only ones that saw the star move. I don't know what the Lady of the Rosary did to make the sun appear to move in the sky in front of thousands of people, but if she could do it, I suppose a similar event could have occurred a couple thousand years ago with another star.

Even if what the Lady of the Rosary did and what happened in Bethlehem in 2000 years ago are totally unrelated phenomena, I don't think we should assume that it wasn't some other kind of supernatural event. I mean, it's not like it's the only supernatural event recorded in the Bible. Unless you are someone who is 100% skeptical of anything supernatural, there's no reason to assume that the appearance and movement of the star of Bethlehem couldn't have been a supernatural event.

However, there is another question about the star of Bethlehem that I think often gets overlooked. People are so busy trying to figure out what it could have been, they don't bother to ask why the wise men associated the appearance of the star with the birth of Christ. I've asked that question before, and no one seems to have a good answer. Sometimes people don't seem to even understand the question when I ask. They'll answer by trying to explain what the star was. But that's not what I was asking. What I'm asking is how did the wise men know exactly what the significance of the star was? How did they know to travel west to Bethlehem to visit Jesus? How did they know the star appeared because of the birth of Christ? .

The only answer I've ever really gotten is the suggestion that maybe the Jews, who were held captive in Babylon and Persia for 70 years, passed along a story of a star appearing that would herald the birth of the Christ. It sounds plausible that eastern astrologers might have learned about Jewish traditions while the Jews were held captive, however, there is no record of a Jewish tradition concerning a star appearing at the birth of the Christ. Some people have suggested that Numbers 24:17 is a prophecy of the star of Bethlehem, but I disagree. I think the passage has been taken out of context, and furthermore, the passage doesn't specify anything about what the star would look like or where it would appear in the sky. So if Jews living during the Babylonian captivity passed along a tradition about a star appearing to herald the birth of the Christ, then that tradition has been lost to history.

So I'm still left wondering how the wise men knew what to associate the appearance of the star with. If we knew the answer to that, we might be able to figure what the star was (or which one appeared to move). I guess it's just one of history's mysteries though.

Some 'What if' questions of what we are a part of

2009-12-19T14:05:00.001-05:00

I've been putting this post off for a few days because I haven't been sure how to word it or organize it. Sometimes it can be hard to put some of my thoughts into words. It makes sense in my mind, but sometimes it's difficult to find the right words to convey my thoughts. It's not necessarily that the words don't exist, it's just that it might be necessary for others to understand a certain point of view or have knowledge of certain things related to the subject first. A point of view and a person's specific knowledge can be gained over time and from different experiences, so sometimes it can be difficult to just sum everything up and still properly convey the message to someone else. Sure, you could try to write about every aspect of your thoughts and what you base it on, but that could get very time consuming and wordy.

So the contents of this post mainly consist of some of my mind's ramblings over the past few days. I don't really have a singular point I'm trying to make. A lot of these thoughts are just questions, and shouldn't necessarily be considered 'beliefs' or even theories. This post is of a rambling nature, but hopefully the questions will at least make sense.

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Why is it that we are so concerned with seeking "life as we know it" somewhere "out there?" Because we want to know that we, the billions of us living now plus all of our ancestors before us, are not 'alone' in the vast universe? So far, not much has been found. Sure, it's been claimed microbes have been found and even water on the moon and mars, but so far, we haven't found plants or animals or people like us anywhere else.

But why should we be so focused on finding "life as we know it?" How should we define life anyways? Plants are not sentient, yet they are life. Most people don't think of the sun as a lifeform, but if you consider that a plant is a lifeform, why not the sun? Stars are born. They live for a while (a very long while). They 'grow' into red giants and red dwarfs and white dwarfs and towards the end of the life, they go supernova and 'die'. A guess a black hole could be considered the death of a star too, but technically, it still exists, albeit in a form so dense it is not even measurable. In a way, maybe they don't really 'die' at all. But they do appear to have some sort of life cycle. So is the sun not alive? Consider this; would you be alive if the sun wasn't there supplying light and life giving energy to the earth?

As Heisenberg said, "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning." But so often do we try to view everything through a particular lens. If you viewed the Mona Lisa through a microscope without ever stepping back to see the bigger picture, would you ever really know what it is? Sure, you could analyze the paint particles you see. You could do an in-depth analysis of what colors they are and maybe even conclude what chemicals were combined to make that color. But is that what the Mona Lisa really is? Is it just paint particles and a chemical analysis? Or is it a picture of a woman? If all you did was look at the painting through the lens of a microscope, you'd never see that is actually a picture of a woman.

So is this how we view our reality? Through the lens of a microscope or a telescope? What if we are a part of a much larger whole? We can see what matter is made up of through a microscope. The atoms we see consist of an atomic nucleus with electrons clouds orbiting it. Is it that much different from the moon orbiting the earth or the planets orbiting the sun or the stars spiraling in a galaxy (granted, an electron's orbit may not be elliptical like we are used to seeing with planets, but it is nonetheless orbiting around something). So what is this common theme of orbiting objects? Why is it when you look through a microscope you can see orbiting objects, and yet when you look through a telescope you also see orbiting objects? If the atoms we see through a microscope make up matter, then what do the stars and planets we see through a telescope make up?

And what of consciousness? Biologist Rupert Sheldrake considered the possibility that the sun may be conscious. Now of course if you go along with scientific establishment's current thinking that consciousness is entirely a manifestation of the brain, then that would sound absurd. The sun has no brain, so how could it be conscious? But if you consider that consciousness is not just a manifestation of the brain, then I suppose you could ask the question of "why not?" If the brain is merely an instrument for consciousness to control the physical body, then that means consciousness can still exist without a physical brain. So if consciousness can exist without a brain, then why couldn't the sun be conscious? If it were conscious, would we even be able to grasp a consciousness so vast?

What of our cellular structure? Our bodies are made up of many individual cells. Each cell has a purpose it serves. Some cells are part of the makeup of our skin, some cells are part of the makeup of our organs. Some cells are dead, making up our hair and nails. But do these cells understand what they are? Do they understand what they are a part of? Do they understand they are a part of a conscious being? Do they know what consciousness is? Sure, a cell serves it's purpose, it forms part of the makeup of life as we know it, but does it really understand what it is?

What if we too are just part of the makeup of something bigger? What if the cells of our body are to us what we are to the earth? What if the earth itself is a lifeform? If something much larger than us observed the earth through a microscope, could it not consider that the earth is alive? The earth is teeming with life of different types. The lifeforms on earth completely rely on the life giving resources of the earth and its star. If the earth itself was 'dead', then how would life exist on it? If the sun was 'dead', then how would one of its planets have life on it? And shoot, if were going to toss out the question as to whether or not the sun might be conscious, why not the earth too? Maybe it would help explain some of the mysteries of the world that we still don't understand. When a person is dreaming or under hypnosis, the dream world or memories seem real, as if they were really happening. Perhaps an earth mind could have a similar effect on the reality that we live in.

But then again, perhaps it is a ridiculous thought to consider that the earth or sun could be conscious. I can point out that life on earth may just form part of a bigger whole in much the same way that our cellular structure forms part of a much bigger whole that make us what we are, but I suppose a key difference between the two is that I am able to actually question what it is that we are a part of. I can question what I am a part of, but does a cell really question what it is a part of? So is it even a good analogy at all?

Nevertheless, I still wonder what all it is we are a part of. And I'm glad that I can wonder that. I'm glad to be able to say that I AM.