Invisible College

2005-02-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

New Updates At The Blind Spot/Invisible College II

BACON'S "SECRET SOCIETY":THE EPHRATA CONNECTION

The D.O.M.A. Plates

How much information is too much information?

Information assurance powwow

Inside the future

Black holes bend light the 'wrong' way

Fractal Software

Cupid

ARTHUR M. YOUNG: The Four Levels of Process

The Laughing Gnostic: David Bowie and the Occult

2005-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

The Blind Spot

INTRODUCTION

THE LURE AND LORE OF "THE BLIND SPOT"

by FORREST J ACKERMAN

The Blind Spot opens with the words: "Perhaps it were just as well to start at the beginning. A mere matter of news." Suppose I use them in the same sense:

A mere matter of news: The first instalment of this fabulous novel was featured in Argosy-All-Story-Weekly for May 14, 1921. Described as a "different" serial, it was introduced by a cover by Modest Stein. In the foreground was the profile of a girl of another dimension--ethereal, sensuous, the eternal feminine--the Nervina of the story. Filmy crystalline earrings swept back over her bare shoulders. Dominating the background was a huge flaming yellow ball, like our Sun as seen from the hypothetical Vulcan-- splotched with murky, mysterious globii vitonae. There was an ancient quay, and emerging from the ultramarine waters about it a silhouetted metropolis of spires, domes, and minarets. It was 1921, and that generation thus received its first glimpse of the alien landscape of The Blind Spot and the baroque beauty of an immortal woman of fantasy fiction.

The authors? Homer Eon Flint was already a reigning favourite with post-World-War-I enthusiasts of imaginative literature, who had eagerly devoured his QUEEN OF LIFE and LORD OF DEATH, his KING OF CONSERVE ISLAND and THE PLANETEER. Austin Hall was well known and popular for his ALMOST IMMORTAL, REBEL SOUL, and INTO THE INFINITE.

Then came this epoch-making collaboration. When Mary Gnaedinger launched Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine she early presented THE BLIND SPOT, and printed it again in that magazine's companion Fantastic Novels. These reprints are now collectors' items, almost unobtainable, and otherwise the story has long been out of print. Rumour says an unauthorised German version of THE BLIND SPOT, has been published in book form. There is another book called THE BLIND SPOT, and also a magazine story, and a major movie studio was to produce a film of the same title. However, here is presented the only hard-cover version of the only BLIND SPOT of consequence to lovers of fantasy. (cont.)

*

2005-01-11T21:37:00.000-08:00

CREATIVITY, HEALING, AND SHAMANISM: Part 1

A blue gray horizon loomed outside the window of the plane as it slowly banked and turned toward the airport still miles ahead of us. The plane turned as another glow punctuated the breach between the zodiacal light and the darkness that enveloped the earth below. The glow had the yellow-white tinge of city lights reflected up from a huge urban aggregate of life, power, and activity. As we descended into the dark landscape a long tentacle of lights reached out below, stretching from that still distant aurora. More tentacles appeared below stretching in all directions. Motionless, they laid full the valleys, extended up ridge lines and spilled over crests as if to defy containment. At last the conglomerate of lights radiated below us. We sailed through the sky above it for thirty minutes or more. It was as if we were gazing down at some giant primordial sea creature that had flung itself from the ocean depths and wedged among the rolling hills to await the warming sun of morning.

The sprawl below us was not what I had expected. This was not the emerald forest I had imagined, rather it was a jungle of humanity into which we descended. It was not my preconceived notion of idyllic tribal life with the local witchdoctor to show us his healing gifts. It was a world of urban shamans. Not the chic metropolitan healers suggested by the cover of Gabrielle Roth's book titled The Urban Shaman, but the world of healers as they live and serve in the poor favillas of populous Brazilian cities. The plane dropped onto the tarmac and taxied to its assigned port and thus began a journey into magical time, a reverie, a journey in Brazil. (cont.)

2005-01-11T21:10:00.000-08:00

spirasolaris

OVERVIEWTHE EXPONENTIAL PLANETARY FRAMEWORK: METHODOLOGY AND DATA
Bode's Flaw Bode's "Law" - more correctly the Titius-Bode relationship - was an ad hoc scheme for approximating mean planetary distances that was originated by Johann Titius in 1866 and popularized by Johann Bode in 1871. The " law " later failed in the cases of the outermost planets Neptune and Pluto, but it was flawed from the outset with respect to distances of both MERCURY and EARTH, as Titius was perhaps aware.II The Alternative Describes an alternative approach to the structure of the Solar System that employs logarithmic data, orbital velocity, synodic motion, and mean planetary periods in contrast to ad hoc methodology and the use of mean heliocentric distances alone.III The Exponential Order The constant of linearity for the resulting planetary framework is the ubiquitous constant Phi known since antiquity. Major departures from the theoretical norm are the ASTEROID BELT, NEPTUNE, and EARTH in a resonant synodic position between VENUS and MARS.
THE SPIRAL FORM AND UBIQUITOUS GOLDEN SECTION
IV Spira Solaris Archytas-Mirabilis Most suitably represented in terms of exponential growth and a complex equiangular spiral, the Phi-series based planetary model appears to be new in one sense and yet quite ancient in another. Title graphic (91 kb, best viewed at 1280 x 1024 resolution).IVd2 Spira Solaris and The Middle Ages Ostensively the translation of Aristotle's De Caelo from medieval latin to French, Nicole Oresme's Le Livre du ciel et du monde [ ca.1375 CE] was more than a translation and a commentary. The numerous references in this work to the insights of the Arab scholar Ibn Rushd [Averroes,1128-1198 CE] lead back to Plato's Republic, Archimedes, Pythagoras, and the Golden Section in early Alchemical contexts. (cont.)

2005-01-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

Hubble's Infrared Eyes Home in on Suspected Extrasolar Planet

ASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is providing important supporting evidence for the existence of a candidate planetary companion to a relatively bright young brown dwarf star located 225 light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile detected the planet candidate in April 2004. They used infrared observations and adaptive optics to sharpen their view. The VLT astronomers spotted a faint companion object to the brown dwarf star 2MASSWJ 1207334-393254 (also known as 2M1207). The object is a candidate planet, because it is only one-hundredth the brightness of the brown dwarf (at the longer-than-Hubble wavelengths observed with the VLT). It glimmers at barely 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is cooler than a light bulb filament.

Is This Speck of Light an Exoplanet ?

Caption: ESO PR Photo 26a/04 is a composite image of the brown dwarf object 2M1207 (centre) and the fainter object seen near it, at an angular distance of 778 milliarcsec. Designated "Giant Planet Candidate Companion" by the discoverers, it may represent the first image of an exoplanet. Further observations, in particular of its motion in the sky relative to 2M1207 are needed to ascertain its true nature. The photo is based on three near-infrared exposures (in the H, K and L' wavebands) with the NACO adaptive-optics facility at the 8.2-m VLT Yepun telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory.

Since an extrasolar planet has never been directly imaged, this remarkable observation required Hubble's unique abilities to do follow-up observations to test and validate if it is indeed a planet. Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) camera conducted complementary observations taken at shorter infrared wavelength observations unobtainable from the ground. This wavelength coverage is important, because it is needed to characterize the object's physical nature.

Very high precision measurements of the relative position between the dwarf and companion were obtained with NICMOS in August 2004. The unique HST follow up observations were compared to the earlier VLT observations to determine if the two objects are really gravitationally bound and hence move across the sky together. Astronomers said they can almost rule out the probability the suspected planet is really a background object, since there was no noticeable change in its position relative to the dwarf. (cont.)

2005-01-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

Light shed on black-hole masses

Orbiting matter suggests monster is 300,000 times heavier than the Sun.

Black hole is a space-bender

and mind-bender

How do you weigh a supermassive black hole? Simply follow any surrounding clumps of matter as they circle towards their doom.

Astronomers using this technique have come up with the most accurate mass measurement so far for one such monster, which turns out to be more than 300,000 times as massive as our Sun.

"This is the first time we've been able to measure a complete orbital period for something close to a black hole," says Lance Miller, a team member from the University of Oxford, UK, who presented the results on 10 January at the American Astronomical Society conference in San Diego, California.

"We couldn't even be sure that there were hotspots around black holes before," he says of the hot matter they studied. (cont.)

2005-01-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

amazing cat collection

via J-Walk Blog

2005-01-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

Applying engineering principles to curing aging (reversing aging), not just slowing aging:
SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence)

The Fountain of Youth
1546
Lime panel, 122,5 x 186,5 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
A practical approach to developing real anti-aging medicine

SENS is a detailed plan for curing human aging. SENS is an engineering project, in the same way that medicine is a branch of engineering. The key to SENS is the appreciation that aging is best viewed as a set of progressive changes in body composition at the molecular and cellular level, caused as side-effects of essential metabolic processes. These changes are therefore best thought of as an accumulation of "damage", which becomes pathogenic above a certain threshold of abundance. The traditional gerontological approach to life extension, namely to try to slow down this accumulation of damage, is a misguided strategy, firstly because it requires us to improve biological processes that we do not adequately understand, and secondly because it can even in principle only retard aging rather than reverse it. An even more short-termist alternative is the geriatric approach, namely to try to stave off pathology in the face of accumulating damage; this is a losing battle because the continuing accumulation of damage makes pathology more and more inescapable. Instead, the engineering (SENS) strategy is not to interfere with metabolism per se, but to repair or obviate the accumulating damage and thereby indefinitely postpone the age at which it reaches pathogenic levels.

Think curing aging would be bad? Think againWhat the heck is "engineered negligible senescence"? AnswerWhat's this nonsense about me maybe living 1000 years? AnswersWhy didn't they say this on the TV last night? Answers

via TADspot

2005-01-11T14:12:00.000-08:00

Seeing is Believing

Since its perhaps surprising acceptance as a surveillance device within the intelligence community, Remote Viewing has gone through a transformation to become part of the New Age toolkit. Mark Blacklock visits one of RV’s elder statesmen in the USA.

At the Monroe Institute in Virginia, non-local consciousness is a reality. Ditto life after death. Out-of-body experiences occur on a daily basis and in the labs they’re conducting research into the reported collapse of sub-atomic randomness during periods when human consciousness is focused on particular events. Oh yes, and you can learn Remote Viewing techniques from alumni of the US military psychic spying programmes. It seems fair to say that it’s not your average rural retreat.

As F Holmes ‘Skip’ Atwater, Research Director at the Institute and, from 1977 to 1987, Operations and Training Officer for the Army Intelligence Branch of the US government’s RV programme, points out: “A week-long cruise in the Bahamas is about the same price as a week-long cruise in consciousness.” (cont.)

Remote Viewing Conference

Russell Targ, Ingo Swann, Stephan Schwartz, & Hal Puthoff
June, 2002 © Paola Harris

Welcome to the Remote Viewing Conference website. Here you will find information about upcoming and previous Remote Viewing Conferences, plus links to other in-depth sources of information about remote viewing. This website and the Remote Viewing Conferences are sponsored by the International Remote Viewing Association. (For more information , please visit the IRVA website homepage.)

* The Remote Viewing Conference was conceived to be an annual event that seeks to accomplish the following goals: To provide a stimulating environment for education, understanding, and expanded awareness in the rapidly growing remote viewing community.
* To bring together a wide range of remote viewing practitioners, trainers, and researchers to share their experiences and knowledge in a friendly and supportive group setting.
* To foster cooperation, expand friendships, and facilitate intellectual cross-pollination among those wishing to help expand the boundaries of human consciousness.
* To provide an accurate and responsible picture of remote viewing history and state-of-the-art.

You didn't attend the 2004 Remote Viewing Conference?Now you can bring the conference home and share it with friends.Select from 21 recorded presentations (audio & video) or purchase the entire set.

via LVX23

2005-01-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

Singing Sand Dunes: The Mystery of Desert Music

If you've never heard a sand dune rumble, listen up. Marco Polo in the 13th Century said the singing sands -- which he ascribed to evil desert spirits -- "at times fill the air with the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments, and also of drums and the clash of arms."

Yes, certain sand dunes will occasionally let out a loud, low-pitch rumble that lasts up to 15 minutes and can be heard up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) away. Some dunes are known to do it regularly, even daily. But why?

To try and uncover the underlying nature of these mysterious sounds, Bruno Andreotti from the University of Paris-7 took equipment out to the Atlantic Sahara in Morocco, one of only 35 known places where the mysterious natural music can be heard.

"Singing dunes constitute one of the most puzzling and impressive natural phenomenon I have ever encountered," Andreotti said. (con.)

2005-01-10T01:03:00.000-08:00

The Gnostic Theory of Alien Intrusion

The Nag Hammadi material contains reports of visionary experiences of the initiates, including first-hand encounters with inorganic beings called Archons. Gnostic teaching explains that these entities arose in the early stage of formation of the solar system, before the Earth was formed. Archons inhabit the solar system, the extraterrestrial realm as such, but they can intrude on Earth. Interestingly, this Gnostic insight accords closely with the view of Jacques Vallee, who maintains that ET/cyborgs probably belong to the local planetary realm. Vallee also proposes that the ET/UFO enigma is a “spiritual control system,” a phenomenon that “behaves like a conditioning process.” (Messengers of Deception). This is exactly what Gnostics said about the Archons: they can affect our minds by subliminal conditioning techniques. Their main tactics are mental error (intellectual virus, or false ideology, especially religious doctrines) and simulation. Archons are predatory, unlike a wide range of non-human and other-dimensional beings also know to the Gnostics, beings who are benevolent or neutral toward humanity.

Physical descriptions of Archons occur in several Gnostic codices. Two types are clearly identified: a neonate or embryonic type, and a draconic or reptilian type. Obviously, these descriptions fit the Greys and Reptilians of contemporary reports to a T. Or I should say, to an ET.

Delving into the Gnostic materials, it is quite a shock to discover that ancient seers detected and investigated the problem of alien intrusion during the first century CE, and certainly well before. (The Mysteries date from many centuries before the Christian Era.) What is amazing about the Gnostic theory of the Archons is not only the cosmological background (explaining the origin of these entities and the reason for their enmeshment with humanity), but the specificity of information on the alien m.o., describing how they operate and what they want from us. For one thing, Gnostics taught that these entities envy us and feed on our fear. Above all, they attempt to keep us from claiming and evolving our “inner light,” the gift of divine intelligence within. While I would not claim that Gnostic teachings on the Archons, or what remains of such teachings, have all the answers to the ET/UFO enigma, one thing is clear: they present a coherent and comprehensive analysis of alien intrusion, as well as specific practices for resisting it. They are far more complete and sophisticated than any theory in discussion today.

In short, the ancient seers of the Mysteries in Europe and the Levant seem to have accomplished 2000 years ago what many of us have been attempting to do since 1947: figure out who the ETs are, where they originate, how they relate to us, and most important of all, how we ought to relate to them.
(cont.)

Star Trek

The Return of the Archons The Enterprise arrives at Beta III in search of clues to the disappearance of the starship Archon some 100 years earlier. When the first landing party behaves erratically, Kirk assembles another and beams down to the surface. They arrive to find an incredibly static culture, with little or no individual expression.

The natives, however, do let loose occasionally at Festival, which begins at the Red Hour. The populace immediately goes wild at Red Hour, releasing pent up emotions and anxieties, destroying almost anything in sight. Kirk's landing party beams down just before Festival, and when it arrives, they seek lodging at a nearby boarding house. It is soon discovered that the owner of the boarding house, Reger, is a member of the underground movement, whose purpose it is to restore individuality and overthrow Landru, the reclusive dictator of Beta III. (cont.)

2005-01-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

China and India both know about underground UFO base in the Himalayan border area deep into the tectonic plates

Kongka La is the low ridge pass in the Himalayas (the blue oval in the map). It is in the disputed India-China border area in Ladakh. In the map the red zone is the disputed area still under Chinese control in the Aksai Chin area. The Chinese held northeastern part is known as Aksai Chin and Indian South West is known as Ladakh. This was where Indian and Chinese army fought major war in 1962. The area is one of the least accessed area in the world and by agreement the two countries do not patrol that part of the border. According to many tourists, Buddhist monks and the local people of Ladakh, Indian Army and Chinese Military maintain the line of control. But there is something much more serious happening in this area.According to the few locals people on the Indian and Chinese side, this is where the UFOs are seen coming out of the ground, According to many, the UFO underground bases are in this region and both the Indian and Chinese Government know this very well..

Recently, some Hindu pilgrims on their way to Mount Kailash from the Western pass, came across strange lights in the sky. The local guides while in the Chinese territory told them that this was nothing new and is a normal phenomenon from Kongka Pass area the tensed border between India and China. This strange lighted triangular silent crafts show up from underground and moves almost vertically up. Some of the adventurous pilgrims wanted to look into the site. They were first turned by the Chinese guard posts as they were refused entry from the Chinese side and then when they tried to approach the site from Indian side, the Indian border patrol also turned them down in spite of their permit to travel between the two countries. (cont.)

2005-01-09T20:18:00.000-08:00

X-Ray Mystery in RCW 38

A mere 6,000 light-years distant and sailing through the constellation Vela, star cluster RCW 38 is full of powerful stars. It's no surprise that these stars, only a million years young with hot outer atmospheres, appear as point-like x-ray sources dotting this x-ray image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory. But the diffuse cloud of x-rays surrounding them is a bit mysterious. The image is color coded by x-ray energy, with high energies in blue, medium in green, and low energy x-rays in red. Just a few light-years across, the cloud which pervades the cluster has colors suggesting the x-rays are produced by high energy electrons moving through magnetic fields. Yet a source of energetic electrons, such as shockwaves from exploding stars (supernova remnants), or rotating neutron stars (pulsars), is not apparent in the Chandra data. Whatever their origins, the energetic particles could leave an imprint on planetary systems forming in young star cluster RCW 38, just as nearby energetic events seem to have affected the chemistry and isotopes found in our own solar system.

2005-01-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

No firm explanation for icebergs near NZ

What is going on when icebergs are sighted off southern New Zealand?

Icebergs up to three kilometres wide were sighted just before Christmas, prompting navigation warnings from the Maritime Safety Authority. The iceberg struck by the Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1912 was estimated at up to 30 metres high and 120m long.

But why have icebergs appeared off southern New Zealand now, and is it further evidence of the end of the golden weather? Playwright Bruce Mason set his play of the same name, which evokes a classic New Zealand summer, in the hazy days of the early 1930s, a time when an iceberg was actually seen off the mainland. (cont.)

2005-01-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

ON WITNESS INTIMIDATION - THE DEBUNKERS' BASIC WEAPON
by Budd Hopkins

As evidence of this campaign of witness intimidation I would like to present a composite picture of the typical abduction experiencer as assembled from a number of debunking efforts over the past few years.

The abductee is "mentally ill." Who can forget the late Carl Sagan - no psychiatrist he - suggesting on "Nova" that while there is outer space, there is, more importantly also inner space, which he went on to describe as involving "hallucination and delusion," thereby conjuring up other such major psychological problems. Sagan subtly implied that severe mental illness - not merely neurosis - was central to abduction reports. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the words of this world-famous scientist was that abductees were to be regarded as sick and their accounts were not to be taken seriously. No mention was made of the work of even skeptical psychologists such as N. P. Spanos and Elizabeth Slater, which clearly demonstrated the absence of mental illness in abductees. On TV, before a large viewing public, the astronomer reversed the facts and trumped the psychologists.

According to a recent debunking book, these "mentally ill little nobodies" are also mostly gay and lesbian. (Even, presumably, prepubescent abductee children). The authors of this book provide no clue as to where they obtained this startling information. I know for a fact that they never asked David Jacobs, John Mack or myself if we, with over fifty years of research experience among us, had any statistics about the sexual orientation of the hundreds upon hundreds of abduction experiencers we have worked with. Most researchers I know - which is most of those active in the field - would probably say that the percentage of gay abductees roughly equals the percentage in the population as a whole. And this apart from the fact that no researcher I'm acquainted with routinely asks his or her clients about their sexual preferences. (Privacy issues are of paramount concern in this besieged field.) But the authors of this debunking book surely understand that by branding the abductee population as 50-60% gay, they are providing yet another reason for a potential abduction witness to refuse to come forward and make his or her name known.

UFO News Blog

Latest News

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Listing of Classified and Restricted Documents at the Air Force Historical Research Agency
Over 500,000 documents cover almost every aspect of US military history from the 1920s to the early 1980s
Click here to read more...

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

An enormous number of UFO sightings before Tsunami and earthquake in South and Southeast Asia
Was it a coincidence? Lots of people now from the Tsunami and earthquake hit areas are reporting about strange Unidentified Flying Objects they saw a few days before the mega quake and Tsunami. People in Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Island as well as many in Indonesia were reporting for some time about strange flying objects in the sky. (cont.)

Friday, December 31, 2004

Santiago University is offering a degree in UFOs
Santiago University is offering a degree in UFOs, and the course, called' Unexplainable Air Phenomena' is available to all local residents. (cont.)

2005-01-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Faded Discs

Digitally re-mastered and restored recordings

The Faded Discs Archive exists thanks to the generosity of many individuals and organizations who share the concept of preserving for future generations these often rare recordings. It is an on-going project with no end in sight

Faded Discs is non-profit and the amount of work and equipment needed to make these recordings available is both time consuming and expensive

Frank Edwards:
Flying Saucers & Radio News

11 Tracks Total Running Time: 07:51:50

Cops & Saucers:
Law Enforcement and UFOs
An Audio History
1957 - 1981

41 Tracks Total Running Time: 12:06:12

The First Ufologist:
Major Donald E. Keyhoe

20 Files Total Running Time: 10:07:30

The Contactees: Volume 01

Flying Saucers & Four Guys Named George:
Adamski, Van Tassel, Hunt Williamson & King

25 Files Total Running Time: 16:27:35

ETH
[The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis]
Dr. James E. McDonald

20 Files - Total Running Time: 11:03:43

CE IV
An Audio History of Alien Abduction and Animal Mutilation
1957 - 1976

56 Files - Total Running Time 25+ Hours

PROJECT MAGNET:
Wilbert Brockhouse Smith
Canada's Search for Flying Saucers

16 Files Total Running Time: 6+ Hours

HIGH STRANGNESS:
Men in Black, Mothman, Flatwoods Monster & Hairy Bi-Peds in UFOs

11 Files Total Running Time: 7+ Hours

UFOLOGY: A Primer in Audio

First Edition - No Longer Available

Second Edition Available Soon

2005-01-08T13:33:00.000-08:00

N Korea wages war on long hair

North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut.

Stressing hygiene and health, it showed various state-approved short hairstyles including the "flat-top crew cut," "middle hairstyle," "low hairstyle," and "high hairstyle" - variations from one to five centimetres in length.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy

Thank God for the sense of those folks...
We don't need this look or attitude
for that matter coming back anytime soon ...

Damn Hippie !

2005-01-08T13:30:00.000-08:00

* NEXUS'

Labs Presents:

Outline of Essential Networked Telepathic Communications Protocol Paradigm

(cont.)

*

2005-01-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

UFOs, Earthquakes, Magic Mushrooms and Urine
byPaul Devereux

The reindeer of these remote wastes also have a hankering for Amanita muscaria. When they eat it they become stupefied and stagger around. If a reindeer is killed at this point, the meat will pass on the intoxicating effects of the Amanita muscaria devoured by the animal -- but this is merely one part of a strange menage a trois involving human beings, reindeer and the mushroom itself. When they dine on certain mosses and lichen, reindeer also develop an insatiable passion for urine, their own and that of humans; so much so, Russian anthropologist Waldemar Jochelson reported in 1905, that men urinating in the open ran a real risk of alerting the sensitive sense of smell of reindeer in the vicinity and being run down by them galloping towards him from all sides! For reindeer, pee-stained snow is a delicacy (it takes all sorts to make a world).

The Koryak, and doubtless other tribes, made use of this strange fact by carrying sealskin containers they called "the reindeer's night-chamber," in which they collected their urine. This was used to attract reindeer who were proving difficult to gather into the herd. But there was another value in human urine: the active constituents in Amanita muscaria remain intact even when passed through a person's bladder. "The Koryaks know this by experience, and the urine of persons intoxicated with fly-agaric is not wasted. The drinker himself drinks it to prolong the state of hallucination, or offers it to others as a treat," Jochelson observed. "According to the Koryak, the urine of one intoxicated by fly agaric has an intoxicating effect like the fungus, though not to so great a degree." Filip Johann von Strahlenberg, a Swedish prisoner of war in the early eighteenth century, reported seeing Koryak tribespeople waiting outside huts where mushroom sessions were taking place, waiting for people to come out and urinate. When they did, the warm, steaming tawny-gold nectar was collected in wooden bowls and greedily gulped down. The Amanita muscaria effect could apparently be recycled up to five times in this manner, and, remarkably, was less likely to cause the vomiting often associated with the direct ingestion of the mushroom itself. (cont.)

2005-01-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

Folklore of Mount Shasta

Religion
Native American lore of the area held that Shasta is inhabited by the spirit chief Skell who descended from heaven to the mountain's summit. Since then many other faiths and cults have been attracted to Shasta (more than any other Cascade volcano). Mt. Shasta, California, a small town near Shasta's western base, is a focal point for many of these religions. Some examples: Association Sananda and Sanat Kemara, I AM Foundation, Knights of the White Rose, Radiant School of the Seekers and Servers, Rosicrucians, and Understanding, Inc.. Many of these cults hold that races of sentient beings, obstensibly superior to humans, live on Shasta or visit the mountain in UFOs. There are in fact disk or lens-shaped clouds that form sometimes over the mountain—a fairly typical meteorological phenomenon over high places on the earth. Lenticular clouds are often seen and mistaken for UFOs.
Mt. Shasta is also the site of a Buddhist monastery, Shasta Abbey, founded by Houn Jiyu-Kennett in 1971.

The Origin of the Lemurian Legend

Perhaps the most popular example of Mount Shasta lore, and a legend involving the first claim by non-Native Americans for a spiritual connection with the mountain, concerns the mystical brotherhood believed to roam through jeweled corridors deep inside the mountain. According to Miesse, "In the mid-19th Century paleontologists coined the term "Lemuria" to describe a hypothetical continent, bridging the Indian Ocean, which would have explained the migration of lemurs from Madagascar to India. Lemuria was a continent which submerged and was no longer to be seen. By the late 19th Century occult theories had developed, mostly through the theosophists, that the people of this lost continent of Lemuria were highly advanced beings. The location of the folklore 'Lemuria' changed over time to include much of the Pacific Ocean. In the 1880s a Siskiyou County, California, resident named Frederick Spencer Oliver wrote A Dweller on Two Plants, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mount Shasta, and in passing mentioned Lemuria. Edgar Lucian Larkin, a writer and astronomer, wrote in 1913 an article in which he reviewed the Oliver book. In 1925 a writer by the name of Selvius wrote "Descendants of Lemuria: A Description of an Ancient Cult in America" which was published in the Mystic Triangle, Aug., 1925 and which was entirely about the mystic Lemurian village at Mount Shasta. Selvius reported that Larkin had seen the Lemurian village through a telescope. In 1931 Wisar Spenle Cerve published a widely read book entitled Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific in which the Selvius material appeared in a slightly elaborated fashion. The Lemuria-Mount Shasta legend has developed into one of Mount Shasta's most prominent legends" (cont.)

2005-01-06T02:23:00.000-08:00

Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation

This is a magnificent new report (PDF file),

“It has recently been argued that anthropic reasoning applied to inflation theory reinforces the prediction that we should find ourselves part of a large, galaxy-sized civilisation, thus strengthening Fermi’s paradox concerning “Where are they?”

Furthermore, superstring and M-brane theory allow for the possibility of parallel universes, some of which in principle could be habitable. In addition, discussion of such exotic transport concepts as “traversable wormholes” now appears in the rigorous physics literature. As a result, the “We are alone” solution to Fermi’s paradox, based on the constraints of earlier 20th century viewpoints, appears today to be inconsistent with new developments in our best current physics and astrophysics theories.

Therefore we re-examine and re-evaluate the present assumption that extraterrestrials or their probes are not in the vicinity of Earth, and argue instead that some evidence of their presence might be found in certain high-quality UFO reports.

This study follows up on previous arguments that (1) interstellar travel for advanced civilizations is not a priori ruled out by physical principles and therefore may be practicable, and (2) such advanced civilisations may value the search for knowledge from uncontaminated species more than direct, interspecies communication, thereby accounting for apparent covertness regarding their presence.”

2005-01-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

Comet Machholz in View

Good views of Comet Machholz are in store for northern hemisphere comet watchers in January. Now making its closest approach to planet Earth, the comet will pass near the lovely Pleiades star cluster on January 7th and the double star cluster in Perseus on January 27th as Machholz moves relatively quickly through the evening sky. Currently just visible to the unaided eye from dark locations, the comet should be an easy target in binoculars or a small telescope. In fact, this telephoto time exposure from January 1, shows Comet Machholz sporting two lovely tails in skies over Colorado, USA. Extending to the left, strands of the comet's ion or gas tail are readily affected by the solar breeze and point away from the Sun. Dust, which tends to trail along the comet's orbit, forms the tail jutting down and to the right.

2005-01-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis:
- The Occult Overtones In Their Writings -

Map of Tolkien's Númenor, the island that sank into the ocean. The five corners of the island also form the shape of a Pentagram

...shortly after I had published the first version of this article on the Internet in 1998, I got a letter from a visitor, who was told by a high initiated witch, that both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were initiated in the H.O.G.D. (The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), which is a deeply occult, black magic secret society. The Golden Dawn is closely related to Madame Blavatsky's "Theosophical Society". During a discussion about Tolkien and his work, this male witch commented that "The Hobbit" and the rest of the Middle-Earth series was merely an elementary 'primer' for witchcraft. He was even a bit irritated at the lack of background knowledge about Tolkien among the people gathered. Later he added C.S. Lewis to the conversation as another well known literary figure who was initiated in the H.O.G.D. If this is true or not is hard to say, but it is interesting and well worth looking further into. However, there are more indications that both Tolkien and Lewis had Golden Dawn connections. The following website is no longer on the Internet, but I still have a saved copy of it, so I am hereby re-posting it: "Hermetic Imagination: The Effect Of The Golden Dawn On Fantasy Literature".

The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

Lewis and Williams are said to have helped to keep the Luciferian concept of the Holy Grail alive. "The symbol of the Grail as a mysterious object of search and as the source of the ultimate mystical, or even physical, experience has persisted into the present century in the novels of Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis..."(4) Lewis and his two writer buddies, Williams and J.R.R Tolkien, of the infamous Inklings, appear to be strongly connected with the Priory of Sion mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau; otherwise know as the so-called "holy bloodline" or "Merovingian" mystery which claims that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were wed, had children and that their descendants became the rightful royalty of Europe, particularly France and Scotland. (5) It would hardly be surprising that Lewis would believe this blasphemous, repulsive lie since he had such a high regard for myths and had studied them so extensively. [See quote above.] The so-called "holy bloodline" is also the same as or symbolised by the "holy grail."

Some of the strange story lines which Lewis "invented" for his stories may not be so strange when compared with the mythology that surrounds the Priory of Sion mystery. The simple fact that plain English school children could actually be royalty smacks of the hidden identity of the members of the "holy bloodline" today and for many years past. Also, we find the "Prince Caspian"marries a wife who has "the blood of the stars" in her. (See chapters 13&14 in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and pg. 50 of The Silver Chair.)

Add to this the fact that Narnia is not a "make believe" place somewhere in Lewis' imagination, but an actual town that existed in Italy (later called Narni)(5), and you can see that Lewis may have been writing about things that he believed to be true. Strangely enough, the Priory of Sion farce resurfaced during the Middle Ages in Calabria, Italy; and then moved to France! (6) (The existence of a Narnia as a real place on earth may account for Lewis' use of the expression "What on earth..." in the Chronicles thus placing all this fantastic story line soundly on our planet. This then makes sense to those in witchcraft and paganism who believe the myths and idolatry from which he gleaned his plots, characters, etc. It is the doctrine of an invisible reality that can only be reached through magical means.) (Photo: A tower in Narni, Italy.) (cont.)

2005-01-04T15:58:00.000-08:00

Secret Tunnels Used by Knights Templar and Illuminati in Hertford

A local newspaper in the UK has revealed an elaborate network of secret tunnels and passages beneath Hertford, the ancient county town of Hertfordshire.

Local historians were aware of only one part of the network which was mapped in a document on public record dated 1898. The newspaper details numerous tunnels, many of which were blocked during the last century, and shows photographs of two other entrances. The existence, extent and purpose of the tunnels were leaked to a journalist by members of a mysterious secret society in the area said to be related to the Knights Templar and the Illuminati.

These revelations are restoring Hertfordshire to its rightful place in Templar legend, and literally put Hertford on the map in the Quest for the Holy Grail, and there is more to come...

A Clue to the Secret of the Holy Grail

A legendary medieval Order, the Knights Templar, established a base in Hertfordshire during the Crusades. It is said that some of their descendents still live here today and maintain the original Templar tradition.

A rural county on the Northern boundary of London, Hertfordshire has been a sacred place since prehistoric times - particularly the county-town, Hertford, where ancient rivers meet.

In St Andrew's church in Hertford there are many beautiful stained glass windows. They are said in certain circles to hold a clue to the secrets of the Holy Grail.

There are similar rumours about other locations in the UK, such as Staffordshire in England and Rosslyn in Scotland. The windows of St Andrew's and the characters and symbols in them do seem rather like a riddle that can be unlocked by certain knowledge:

1. John holds a cup, a famous scene from the Last Supper, hence the cup is the Holy Grail. Jesus and Mary Magdalene gaze meaningfully at each others, resonating with the famous heresy regarding the Bloodline of Christ.

2. Joseph of Arimathea represents the famous legend that Jesus went with him to Britain (hence the hymn "And did those feet...") and his staff sprouts living shoots symbolising a new family tree.

3. Theodore of Tarsus is like a signpost pointing to Hertford, because he called the first ever church Synod, held in Hertford Castle, where the date of Easter Sunday was decided.

4. The craftsman who created the window based the cup on a genuine relic. The chalice has been dated to the century when the Knights Templar went underground, but it still exists today. (cont.)

The ET bloodline of the mysterious Templar kings
Were the Templars bred for rule on Earth by a higher intelligence?

excerpts:

The Quinotaur: an extraterrestrial?
One of the secrets of the Templars is that Mary Magdalene's heirs married into the Visigoth families of the time, and gave birth to the sacred Merovingian ruling family. The Visigoths of the area might have been descended from the House of Benjamin, which had fled to the Arcadia region of Greece, and thence north into France, a thousand years earlier. The Merovingians were not wiped out by the Carolingian usurpers, and their lineage survives in some of the other royal families of Europe; apparently the goal of the secret society known as the Prieure du Sion is a Merovingian restoration in France.

The code in the parchments is only decipherable through the use of the knight's tour -- a logic puzzle wherein one "jumps" a knight to every square on a chess board, once and only once. It is a puzzle that has only one solution -- as does the code, clearly. But the use of chessboard imagery at Rennes-le-Chateau is striking. Elizabeth van Buren, a "cottage industry" writer in the area, asserts that Rennes-le-Chateau is the site for a Manichean chess-like struggle between the cosmic forces of good (the Merovingians) and darkness (which would seem to be the Church). Van Buren feels that the "Quinotaur" (literally, "five-horn"), which mated with King Merovech's mother in the sea, giving King Merovech "double parentage," may have been an extraterrestrial.

Many writers are connected with the mystery of the Templars and Rennes-le-Chateau. It might be productive to reexamine their works with a new eye for such hidden codes. One, novelist Victor Hugo, and another, playwright Jean Cocteau, are said to have presided over the Prieure. But other writers appear to be strongly connected to the mystery. Three in particular are the so-called "Inklings": fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, "Screwtape" writer C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. Lionel Fanthorpe also suspects that Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, George McDonald, and Umberto Eco may somehow have provided clues to the mystery in their books. Sir Walter Raleigh, who is now thought to have been involved in an esoteric body known as "the School of Night" (whose motto was that "inspiration comes to the philosopher at night, when nature and the rest of humanity sleeps"), may have also been part of the Order of Sion.

The theme of "Arcadia" was prominent in Elizabethan literature, and it appears in the works of writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Phillip Sidney, and even Shakespeare, for whom the word was synonymous with the Golden Age. Through the historical detective work of Frances Yates, we now know that this era was a time when many "Rosicrucian" ideas were moving to the Continent, and esoteric thinkers were congregating around Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate of Bohemia, as the figure who would usher in the reforms of Church and State many expected.

and

The story of Sion only comes into focus in the Middle Ages. In 1070, a group of monks from Calabria, Italy, led by one Prince Ursus, founded the Abbey of Orval in France, near Stenay, in the Ardennes. These monks are said to have formed the basis for the Order de Sion, into which they were "folded" in 1099 by Godfroi de Bouillion. For about one hundred years, the Order of the Temple (Knights Templar) and Sion were apparently unified under one leadership, though they are said to have separated at the "cutting of the elm" at Gisors in 1188. It appears that there are vast connections between Sion and numerous sociocultural strata in European thought -- Roscicrucianism, Freemasonry, Arthurian and Grail legends, "Arcadianism," Catharism.

2005-01-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

White continent, dark secrets

The Oronteus Finaeus map, more than 300 years old, depicts Antarctica with ice-free areas.

Of all the research that takes place on this great continent, there is a suspicious lack of attention paid to certain theories that, while extraordinary, deserve closer examination. We are living on the edge of a largely unexplored land, and it's time we looked at more than just rocks, glaciers and penguins.

I am talking about evidence that has come up repeatedly, indicating that we are not the first beings to inhabit this place, nor is science the only activity here. When are we going to acknowledge that there may be more going on than meets the eye?

As everyone knows, the continent is almost completely covered by ice. What lies under that ice, miles deep in many places, is still unknown. The truth is coming out, however, as a few brave souls seek the answers to some troubling questions. (cont.)

Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings Display Prints and Key Texts

The Philippe Buache map of Antarctica, made in Paris in 1737, a century before Antarctica was discovered. Evidently copied frm maps surviving from ancient times, it shows Antarctica as two separate land masses, a fact no established until the Geophysical Year of 1958 through ice soundings, but evidently known to navigators of prehistory, who may have visited Antarctica before it was covered by ice.

From Mysteries of Forgotten Worlds by Charles Berlitz

The Lost Continent Of Atlantis

Atlantis as Antarctica was given birth by the theories of Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene College, New Hampshire. He announced the fact that the continent appears on ancientcharts that long predates the discovery of Antarctica by Capt. James Cooke in 1773. The charts also show the landmass as it was before the ice covered the continent. Hapgood proposed the "earth crustdisplacement theory" claiming that the ice only fully embellished Antarctica following a polar shift around 9500 BC, the end of the last Ice Age. Hapgood's extraordinary book Maps of the Ancient SeaKings, first published in 1966.

Influenced by Hapgood's theories, Canadian writers Rose and Rand Flem-ath claimed in their 1995 book "When the Sky Fell" that the Antarctic continent was Plato's Atlantis. RandFlem-ath's website Atlantis and the Earth's Shifting Crust. tempts the reader to embrace his views. A very convincing theory, although Antarctica is theonly continent lacking evidence of human settlements. In their book, Atlantis Blueprint, Wilson and Flem-ath describe an advanced civilization of people known as the Atlanteans, which lived in asnow-free Antarctica. Gifted with advanced technical and navigational skills they left a wealth of sacred sites through out the entire world. Atlantis as Antarctica, you be the judge.

2005-01-02T01:13:00.000-08:00

Skype - Free Internet telephony that just works

Skype is for calling other people on their computers or phones. Download Skype and start calling for free all over the world.

Download now | Get to know a bit more

I just used this service to talk to friends in Milan, and found the sound was great from their end...they said I sounded as though I was in outer space...heh...

2005-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

The Mothman

The following pages are scans of the VERY FIRST autographed edition of Gray Barker's book "The Silver Bridge" from 1970 concerning the Mothman, as well as other instances. What makes these pages so special is the fact that our friend and fellow Point Pleasant, WV native Tom Ury collaborated with Gray on his book. The book is also now out of print. Tom received several manuscripts from Gray to read and discuss. After passing several manuscripts and editing, editing, editing. . . The book was released. Tom's eyewitness account of a creature during the Mothman sightings was included in the book, and Tom said he would like to share this rare treasure that may otherwise be never seen with the viewers of MothmanLives.com. I have thanked him for you, and have added this section in Tom's honor so that you may enjoy it, as well. Thanks again Tom. NOTE: An exclusive interview with Tom's entire account will be on this website as soon as Tom and I get free time to conduct the interview. . . - Stay Tuned -

Mothman & The Thunderbird

Separated at Birth?
(A Striking Resemblance Between the "Mothman" and an Indian Thunderbird Artifact)

Introduction:

The purpose of this report is to draw attention to similarities between a circa 1600 Indian Thunderbird artifact, and the descriptions of an anomalous and frightening figure seen repeatedly in 1967, dubbed "The Mothman."

Mothman History:

The Mothman is one of the strangest and most terrifying of anomalous creatures ever to be recorded in America. Between November 12, 1966 and December 15, 1967, it terrorized citizens in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia. It was said to have been encountered by at least 100 people over the course of that year.

According to author John A. Keel (The Mothman Prophecies, 1975) who was on hand investigating the reports during the time of the sightings, the creature was reported to be roughly man-shaped, either grey or brown, and between five and seven feet tall. Its body was wider than a man's. It did not appear to have a head, but rather its "eyes" were set on the upper chest. These "eyes" were very large, and alternately described as glowing red lights, or a reflected red like a bicycle reflector. (Glowing red eyes are the surest sign of a paranormal entity.) When it walked it shuffled on what appeared to be human-like legs, but no feet were ever observed. Rather than arms it had bat-like wings which it did not flap. It was always seen to glide. The non-flapping of the wings, even in ascent, is particularly disturbing. Indeed, it was reported to regularly ascend straight up like a helicopter - and again be it noted, without any wing-action. (In regards to the wings, John Keel determined that a man the size and heft of the Mothman would require 24 foot wings to be able to glide.) It was fast in flight, able to pace cars going over 100 miles an hour. In flight it emitted a humming sound and often emitted a "mouse-like squeaking." Occasionally it was heard to also emit a screeching sound something like a woman screaming. (This "woman screaming" sound is common among anomalous creatures, particularly the Bigfoot creatures.) No one who saw it was indifferent to the creature - it struck terror into the hearts of all its viewers.

Recently, interest in Mothman has been rekindled due to the release of the movie The Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere. Cryptozoologist Loren Colman has also contributed a new book on the subject: Mothman & Other Curious Encounters (2002). For comprehensive accounts of the Point Pleasant/Mothman events, please refer to links such as: prairieghosts.com, and mothmanlives.com.

Thunderbird Artifact:

On June 15, 2002 I was visiting the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard Massachusetts. While in the Indian Museum, I noticed an artifact that bore a startling resemblance to Mothman descriptions. This artifact is ten inches tall and made of copper sheet. It was recovered in Amoskeag Falls, Manchester, New Hampshire, and was probably fashioned from a copper kettle acquired through trade with Europeans during the early Contact Period, circa 1550-1630 A.D. It is attributed to the Pennacook Indians and labeled "Thunderbird."

The main difference between the Mothman descriptions and the Thunderbird artifact is that the artifact is crafted with a head, while the Mothman is typically described as having no head. The general body shape - other then the head discrepancy - is identical. The most striking similarity is the "eye" placement. The Thunderbird artifact has two holes placed on the upper chest, same as Mothman descriptions. Presently, these "eyes" on the Thunderbird artifact are being used as string holes to lace the figure to a museum stand. I inquired of the Museum Staff if the holes were meant as "eyes", or were lacing holes. They did not know, but gave their opinion that as "eyes", they were very compelling. I also asked if the holes were part of the original creation or were added later as lacing holes, but the staff was unable to provide information on this.

A New England Koasek Abenaki who is familiar with both this item and with Thunderbird lore states that, "the two holes bored into the copper at the 'chest' would have had a braintan lace knotted through them to suspend the ornament/talisman from the wearer's neck." He goes on to state that, "We have our own theories as to the significance...."

Interestingly, the Fruitlands item I examined is only a reproduction - the original is in the collection of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, catalog number 88-45-10/46959. A Native American version of its acquisition by Harvard's Peabody Museum is that it was obtained from a robber of a Pennacook Abenaki gravesite in New Hampshire. (cont.)

Tunneling Through Space and Time

excerpt:

Instant travel through time and vast reaches of space will move from the remotely possible to the manifest.

Tunneling already exists
We already have evidence of spontaneous occurrences of tunneling. Besides teleportation, tunneling may explain some (but not necessarily all) mysterious disappearances, invisibility, UFO abductions, Men in Black, fairy abductions, Bermuda Triangle disappearances, mediumistic apports (objects materialized by mediums), Bigfoot, Mothman, and a wide range of Fortean phenomena such as sudden appearances of strange creatures, rainfalls of frogs and other oddities.

INTERESTING, USEFUL AND WEIRD FREQUENCIES

Magic windows are frequencies which (according to Thomas E. Bearden) are especially suited for coupling to and bringing energies from other dimensions. These are the frequencies:

38-40 kHz
150-160 kHz
1.1-1.3 MHz
1.057 GHz
Somewhere in the Infrared
The life energy frequency (in the near ultraviolet)

These frequencies were found in the "Excalibur Briefing", a book on the paranormal and new science, by Bearden.

38-40 kHz was mentioned in a incident of a strange light being seen, and it appears to be described as a promising frequency range. It is also low enough to be easy to experiment with.

150-160 kHz is also not too high. I also heard that 160-180 kHz is declared an experimenters band by the FCC, but I can not substantiate that. If so, 160 kHz would be a promising frequency indeed.

1.1-1.3 MHz is kind of high to easily produce. It also unfortunately is extremely regulated by the FCC, so watch your emissions! Why you ask?

1.1-1.3 MHz is 1100-1300 kHz which is ... 1100-1300 on your AM dial. It would be REALLY _bad_ to those commercial AM radio. Not nice at all. Bad for you, and bad for all those people who want to listen to their favorite radio station in that band. So don't do it!

1.057 GHz is the Lamb shift. Has something to do with emission lines shifting. Extremely high, hard to produce without a magnetron or something similar. Possibly could cook you. By the way, microwave ovens run at 2.45 GHz, so 1.057 GHz, being almost half that value, may be too close for comfort.

Somewhere in the infrared region is a magic window.

The last one, the "life energy" frequency is in the near ultraviolet. Obviously you can't use purely electronic means to produce it, since it is optical. Wavelength is the unit of choice here, as for the frequency, I think it is around 10**15 Hz (10 PHz, i.e. 10 petaHertz), i.e. extremely fast. This was probably the frequency used by the Russian scientist Vlail P. Kaznacheyev in his experiment. The result of the experiment, the Kaznacheyev effect, is that if a cell culture is killed or injured, and the "death" photons from it are sent to another culture, which in the absence of visible light (which would quench the paranormal effects, see the abovementioned Excalibur Briefing), suffers the same effects. This is called death transmission via the paranormal channel. Perhaps using different filters one could narrow down the wavelength and frequency. Possibly by phase-conjugating (time-reversing) death photons one could achieve cures for disease.

Divergence

2005-01-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

EXCALIBUR BRIEFING

Part Two: A Theoretical Background for Understanding PT, UFOs, and Psi Phenomena

Some Unexplained Mysteries of Physics
Uri Geller
My Approach to Psychotronics
Reality as a Paranormal Bridge with Two Ends
A Fundamental Correction to Classical Logic
A Physical Example
New Definition of Zero
Einstein's Postulate
Synchronicity of Concepts

Primitive Perception
Two-Slit Experiment
Photon Quenching of the Paranormal (Time) Channel.
Raindrop Model of Quantized Change.
Kindling Effect
Bioenergy Collectors
Psychometric Effect
All Mass Is Charged: Everything Is Electrical
A Funny Thing About Electromagnetic Field.
Extinguishing Electrical Currents.
Death Transmission Via the Paranormal Channel.
Disease and Death Induction
Dynamic Thought Constructs: Biofield Mechanisms
Radionics
Psychotronic Devices: A Simple Space (Quiton) Amplifier
Typical Hieronymus Device
Another Kind of Hieronymus Device and the Inceptive Cyborg Effect
Probability: Throw of a Die
Negative Time

QUITON/PERCEPTRON PHYSICS,
A THEORY OF EXISTENCE, PERCEPTION, AND
PHYSICAL PHENOMENA

ABSTRACT

A fundamental answer is attempted to the questions of being, time, space, existence, perception, and physical phenomena. Mass, empty space, reality, gravitational attraction, continuity, discontinuity, and relativity are among the "things" and "nonthings" for which relationships and explanations are provided.

Perception is defined as detection by a mass of change to itself and as a differentiating process. Perceived physical phenomena are revealed to be first derivatives of ultimate reality, and outputs of the physical perceiving device call the "perceptron." Using the operation of the physical perception process on action, the units of which are energy times time, an entirely different view is generated of both reality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. When superposition is imposed as a condition, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is revealed to be a quantized statement. A concept of the absolute value of a dimensional molecule is advanced.

A reality model is constructed of an action continuum and a nonaction continuum separated by an operational threshold whose magnitude is given by an uncertainty principle. Perception is modeled as a process which switches atomic quanta of action and nonaction back and forth across the threshold. Mass is explained as perceptron switch activity rate, and a mass definition equation is generated. One kilogram mass is shown to represent 17.053 x 1050 perceptron switches per second. From the model, Newton's laws of motion and gravity can be generated directly from the concept of the interaction of mass with space itself, space being taken as a massless fluid, or ether, composed of tiny nonaction particles called "quitons." Einstein's postulates of special relativity are also shown to follow from the model, and a statement of the equivalence principle is shown to be consistent with the model.

The concept of "lineception" as a causal chain of perceptron operations is advanced. "Inception" is developed as a noncausal modulation of lineception and as a distinguishing feature of a living system. The possibility is raised that inception could provide an explanation of the noncausal, statistical, ultramicroscopic universe and yet require large ensembles of ultramicroscopic events to conform to causality. Inception is shown to lead to karma. Perception is shown to be causal and to generate causality itself.

Some elementary philosophical implications of quiton/perceptron theory are pointed out and briefly discussed.

Time

This Section on Time is dedicated to the late Charles Muses

These diagrams of the 5-dimensional nature of Time are from his wonderful Foreword to Jerome Rothstein's
"Communication, Organization and Science"

2004-12-31T20:27:00.000-08:00

Sri Lanka: Gateway to Other Worlds?

Instantaneous transport between worlds, once the stuff of science fiction and long a favorite theme of lore and legend would ever dare to imagine, according to a growing consensus of researchers in the rapidly-emerging field of parallel universe theory. Now scientific interest appears to be focusing upon Sri Lanka’s living tradition of cosmography or sacred geography the understanding of which could lead to discoveries that are literally out of this world.

Theoretical physicists, backed by recent findings in the field of radio astronomy, are suggesting that the visible universe as we see it may in fact consist of multiple overlapping universes that are dependently inter-related in some yet unknown way. They point, for instance, to recent calculations indicating that nine-tenths of the universe’s postulated mass may consist of 'dark matter' that is yet undetected and unaccounted for -- a disturbing fact to astrophysicists that is neatly explainable in terms of parallel universe theory.

Not only is the universe more complex than we ever thought. It is far more mysterious and magical than we ever believed," argues Dr. Fred Alan Wolf , theoretical physicist and author of Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds , adding that I now see the universe as a gigantic magical mystery tour, far in excess of the Beatles’ verses. (cont.)

via ollapodrida

EPR paradox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In quantum mechanics, the EPR paradox is a thought experiment which demonstrates that the result of a measurement performed on one part of a quantum system can have an instantaneous effect on the result of a measurement performed on another part, regardless of the distance separating the two parts. This runs counter to the intuition of special relativity, which states that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. "EPR" stands for Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, who introduced the thought experiment in a 1935 paper to argue that quantum mechanics is not a complete physical theory. It is sometimes referred to as the EPRB paradox for David Bohm, who converted the original thought experiment into something closer to being experimentally testable.

The EPR paradox is a paradox in the following sense: if one takes quantum mechanics and adds some seemingly reasonable conditions (referred to as "locality", "realism", and "completeness"), then one obtains a contradiction. However, quantum mechanics by itself does not appear to be internally inconsistent, nor -- as it turns out -- does it contradict relativity. As a result of further theoretical and experimental developments since the original EPR paper, most physicists today regard the EPR paradox as an illustration of how quantum mechanics violates classical intuitions, and not as an indication that quantum mechanics is fundamentally flawed.

Description of the paradox

The EPR paradox draws on a phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics, known as quantum entanglement, to show that measurements performed on spatially separated parts of a quantum system can apparently have an instantaneous influence on one another. This effect is now known as "nonlocal behaviour" (or pejoratively as "quantum weirdness"). (cont.).

2004-12-31T01:25:00.000-08:00

Human Origins

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27

Subject Related Articles by Lloyd Pye:
THE LITERAL CREATION OF MANKIND AT THE HANDS OF YOU-KNOW-WHAT
Human Origins - Part 1
Human Origins - Part 2
Darwinism vs. Creationism
Life's True Beginnings
Our Earliest Human Ancestor?
Carpenter Genes
Related Links and Resources

2004-12-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

and now KIDS...I'll bring you
the updated tale
of Three Blind Mice ....

THE MORTON FILES

Revealing What Sean David Morton Doesn't Want Anyone To Know
The story that scared Sean David Morton into filing a $1,000,000 lawsuit against UFOWATCHDOG.COM in an attempt to surpress the investigation exposing...
THE SHAMELESS PSYCHIC AND HIS PROPHECY OF LIES
It's been 639 days since Sean David Morton's meritless lawsuit against UFOWATCHDOG.COM was tossed out of court. While Morton likes to appear on radio talk shows and talk about all the supposed evidence he has, he seems to have the inability to distinguish talking from actually providing proof. (cont.)

ED DAMES

Endless predictions of doom and gloom, death and destruction, wild hurricanes and killer solar flares. Yep, that's Ed Dames, the guy who has a worse hit ratio for successful predictions than Sean David Morton...now that's saying something!
Dames has continued throughout the years to appear on his favorite free-for-all spew fest Coast To Coast AM with Art Bell where Dames dribbles on and on about anything from supposed imminent terror attacks to Korea launching nukes, from millions of babies dying to making claims of solving the murders/kidnappings of teenaged girls. Let's not also forget the many other claims made by Dames invovling terrorism, UFOs/ETs, diseases, wars, and so on.
Dames also loves to promote the sale of his remote viewing kits and DVDs. Never mind that he claims the world is going to end soon, good old Dames still wants you to send in your cash so you can buy his remote viewing kits, his training video, your very own "Major Doom and Gloom" poster.
Ah, but it gets better...soon you can buy remote viewing kits specifically made for kids! Now little Johhny and little Suzy will be able to learn remote viewing in just minutes. Amazing...no more hiding those Christmas presents mom and dad! Stashing those after school cookies? Forget it mom, you can't hide anything now.
Not a single prediction Dames has made has come true. Nada, zip, zero, none. How many guesses does it take for Ed Dames to be right? Sooner or later you have to get something right. For those staunch supporters of Dames, someone recently asked this: Name ten predictions Ed Dames made that were accurate. Yeah, good luck on that one...here's just a sample of Dames' preditions... (cont.)

Examining The Record of Richard C. Hoagland

Let's start with Hoagland's claim that he should be credited with uncovering secret photograph of alleged glass-structures on the moon. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Don Ecker, founder and publisher of UFO Magazine. When I asked Ecker about said photos, here is what he had to say:

"Hoagland, if I could be so bold, actually found out about the moon from my old radio show, from Jim Saffron. When I had Saffron on the program, because of the work that Hoagland had done on the Cydonia region, Jim asked me if I could put him in touch with Hoagland. He wanted to send some of the lunar photographs to Hoagland. I did...he sent the photographs off. Hoagland, from what I understand, never did contact Jim back...but about six months later, Hoagland SUDDENLY discovered the alleged photographs on the moon, and he never did mention Jim... (cont.)

2004-12-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

NOAA GOES West Satellite Images

Northeast PacificUpdated every 30 minutes.

Latest VisibleJPEG (51K)GIF (524K)Java Animation

Latest InfraredJPEG (47K)GIF (406K)Java Animation

Latest Water VaporJPEG (42K)GIF (211K)Java Animation

2004-12-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

The Helix Nebula from Blanco and Hubble

How did a star create the Helix nebula? The shapes of planetary nebula like the Helix are important because they likely hold clues to how stars like the Sun end their lives. Recent observations by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and the 4-meter Blanco Telescope in Chile, however, have shown the Helix is not really a simple helix. Rather, it incorporates two nearly perpendicular disks as well as arcs, shocks, and even features not well understood. Even so, many strikingly geometric symmetries remain. How a single Sun-like star created such beautiful yet geometric complexity is a topic of research. The Helix Nebula is the nearest planetary nebula to Earth, lies only about 700 light years away toward the constellation of Aquarius, and spans about 3 light-years.

2004-12-29T01:07:00.000-08:00

HEH....Please Tell Me This Self-Deluded Moron Is Kidding !?

blah blah blah...Walter Cronkite...blah blah blah...Angstrom Award....Blah Blah Blah...19.5 degrees

blah blah blah...Walter Cronkite...blah blah blah...Angstrom Award....Blah Blah Blah...19.5 degrees

HEY...I got an IdeA...he could work for these guys !?

Maybe they could get him drunk enough to shut up and let someone else talk ...Eh!

2004-12-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

Medieval mural's tales of sorcery

A mural which has come to light in Tuscany has been identified by a British university lecturer as the earliest surviving representation of witchcraft in Christian Europe.

A book published in Italy by George Ferzoco, director of the centre for Tuscan studies at the University of Leicester, argues that at least two of the women in the porno-erotic wall painting are sorceresses.

"I have no doubt that this is by far the earliest depiction in art of women acting as witches," he said.

The 13th-century mural was discovered four years ago at Massa Marittima, a town south-west of Siena. Dr Ferzoco believes it was intended as a warning, by supporters of the papacy, of the anarchy and licentiousness that would supposedly engulf the town if it fell into the hands of their political rivals.

That would give the bizarre mural an additional significance as the only surviving example of a medieval political "poster".

"I'm not aware of any work that comes remotely close to this one in terms of being blatant 'party' propaganda," Dr Ferzoco said.

The big, richly coloured painting - seven metres high - was discovered under layers of subsequent over-painting next to a fountain in the centre of Massa Marittima. It shows a tall, spreading tree with two groups of women standing below it. (cont.)

2004-12-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

Please Donate To The Red Cross

2004-12-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

I'm so tired.

from AFoL

2004-12-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

5Invites To Giveaway

email request to

2004-12-27T20:41:00.000-08:00

Natural selection acts on the quantum world

Objective reality may owe its existence to a 'darwinian' process that advertises certain quantum states.

Macrocosm and microcosm

A team of US physicists has proved a theorem that explains how our objective, common reality emerges from the subtle and sensitive quantum world.

If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?

Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.

If it wasn't for quantum darwinism, the researchers suggest in Physical Review Letters1 , the world would be very unpredictable: different people might see very different versions of it. Life itself would then be hard to conduct, because we would not be able to obtain reliable information about our surroundings... it would typically conflict with what others were experiencing.

2004-12-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

Is Our Solar System's Red, Mysterious Sedna An Alien Planetoid?

In the December 2 issue of Nature, physicist Ben Bromley, from the University of Utah, and astronomer Scott Kenyon, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have come up with a startling hypothesis, based on their work with computer simulations. The team thinks that Sedna is an alien planetoid from somewhere else in our galaxy that was pulled into our solar system when an alien star passed by about 4 billion years ago. Astronomers have been looking at distant stars the past few years to find planets and now have a long list of extrasolar planets. So, how ironic that we might have an extrasolar planetoid in our own solar system. I talked this week with Dr. Bromley about mysterious Sedna and his computer simulation studies of Sedna's bizarre orbit that suggest the red object was left behind by a star that passed by our solar system about four billion years ago.

excerpt:

The Passing Alien Star Hypothesis

A passing star explains two things: first, it explains Sedna's peculiar orbit. Second, it also explains a structure of the solar system that has been somewhat mysterious. Outside of Neptune, there is a belt of objects a ring or disk of objects that are small about 1,000 miles in diameter and smaller. There are about 1,000 known of these objects and they are called Kuiper Belt objects. As we map the outer solar system at further distances from Neptune, we find that there is an edge to this Kuiper Belt. It sort of stops. There are no more objects outside about 50 times the Earth's orbital radius from the sun, compared with Neptune's 30 times that same distance.

So, the surprise is that this edge exists. When we look out at other stars where planet formation is occurring, we find evidence for planetary disks places where things like these Kuiper Belt objects form. There is no abrupt edge or signal that there is some mechanism that turns off the formation of these objects at some specific distance.

Kuiper Belt Is Sheared Off As If
Something Cut Through One Side

So, the fact that our Kuiper Belt has a sharp edge is a real surprise. A passing star can actually sharpen the Kuiper Belt. It can disrupt orbits of objects that are formed outside the observed Kuiper Belt. So, (the passing star) explains two things an important fact.

LET ME MAKE SURE THAT I FULLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN: IF THE HYPOTHESIZED ALIEN STAR HAD COME BY ABOUT 4 BILLION YEARS AGO AND WE ALREADY HAD THE KUIPER BELT RESIDUE OF ICY SNOWBALLS OUT THERE, THEN A PASSING SUN MIGHT HAVE SHEARED OFF COMING THROUGH THAT KUIPER BELT AREA?

That's perfect. I wish I had said it that way myself. So we ran simulations of this process of a passing star, trying to observe - using a computer - the formation of these objects and the shearing of the disk in which the Kuiper Belt objects lie by a passing star. And in addition, to the placement of one of these objects on a Sedna-like orbit.

The Oort cloud (sometimes called the Öpik-Oort Cloud) is a postulated spherical cloud of comets situated about 50,000 to 100,000 AU from the Sun. This is approximately 1000 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto or roughly one light year, almost a quarter of the distance from the Sun to Proxima Centauri, the star nearest the Sun.
The Oort cloud would have its inner disk at the ecliptic from the Kuiper belt. Although no direct observations have been made of such a cloud, it is believed to be the source of most or all comets entering the inner solar system (some short-period comets may come from the Kuiper belt), based on observations of the orbits of comets. (cont.)

This NASA diagram demonstrates the presumed distance of the Oort cloud compared to the solar system's planets, the Kuiper belt, and the 90377 Sedna planetoid. If Sedna does in fact belong to the Oort cloud, then the inner extent of the Oort cloud might be much closer than what is shown here.

2004-12-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

Cosmology and Culture

The Cosmic Uroboros
In daily speech "the universe" is essentially used as a basket term, a word invented to contain everything people can imagine, defined or undefined. In modern cosmology, however, the universe is something it itself, something evolving, something mysterious. But it cannot be pictured the way a galaxy, for example, can be pictured in a photograph or painting for at least three reasons: First, a photograph is of something outside the eye, and the universe is not outside us, and we are never outside it. We are it on our scale. Second, a photograph captures a moment in time, but the universe encompasses time itself and no slice of time can even suggest that. And third, the universe cannot be imagined as a picture because it's almost all invisible dark matter. Moreover, all the radiation in the universe is also invisible to us, except for the tiny band of frequencies between red and blue. It is essential to give up trying to imagine the universe through the eyes, yet people need something visual.

The best solution I have found is to represent the universe using one of the oldest symbols for it known to humankind, a symbol found in countless cultures around the globe. It is the snake swallowing its tail-an "uroboros" as the Greeks called it. Earlier peoples used it to represent eternal life, partly because snakes were often believed to live forever, since the sloughing of their skin was seen as a rebirth; and partly because the circle of its body was a cycle without end. The uroboros had different meanings in different cultures, but it tended to represent whatever was seen as fundamental in a culture. Now it might carry a new interpretation.

From the Planck scale to the cosmic horizon, the visible universe encompasses about 60 orders of magnitude. The size scales of the universe can thus be arrayed around the serpent like minutes around the face of a clock. Sheldon Glashow originally suggested this symbol, with the swallowing of the tail expressing his hope for a unification of the theories governing the largest and smallest scales [8]. I noticed [9] that there are many connections across the diagram: electromagnetism dominates the bottom; the strong and weak interactions not only dominate on nuclear scales but also describe energy generation in stars and deermine the composition of planetary systems; and dark matter, which is gravitationally dominant on galactic and larger scales, may be associated with the physics of still smaller scales.

The Cosmic Uroboros represents the universe as a continuity of vastly different size scales, of which the largest and smallest may be linked by gravity. Sixty orders of magnitude separate the very smallest from the very largest. Traveling around the serpent from head to tail, we move from the scale of the cosmic horizon to that of a galaxy supercluster, a single galaxy, the solar system, the sun, the moon, a mountain, a human, a single-celled creature, a strand of DNA, an atom, a nucleus, the scale of the weak interactions, and approaching the tail the extremely small size scales on which physicists hope to find evidence for Supersymmetry (SUSY), dark matter particles such as the axion, and a Grand Unified Theory. There are other connections between large and small: electromagnetic forces are most important from the scale of atoms to that of mountains; strong and weak forces govern both atomic nuclei and stars; cosmic inflation may have created the large-scale of the universe out of quantum-scale fluctuations.

Why is this symbol useful? People asked to visualize "the universe" will far more often think of the largest thing they know of than the smallest. Few realize that the universe exists on all scales, everywhere, all the time. This is a truly extravagant thought. Largeness is by no means the most important characteristic of the universe. Focusing on it makes people feel small, not because they are, but because they are simply ignoring all scales smaller than themselves in thinking about the universe. On the Cosmic Uroboros, as I call it, if the mouth swallowing the tail is drawn at the top, humans (at one meter or so) fall more or less at the bottom-i.e., at the center of all the size scales in the visible universe. Many students are so stunned by this apparently special place that they refuse to believe it and insist it must be a result of some tricky choice of units. I don't know if the center of the Cosmic Uroboros is in fact special, but finding themselves there certainly strikes a chord with most people. Perhaps it hearkens back to the soul-satisfying cosmology of the Middle Ages, where earth was truly the center of the universe. (cont.)

Goddess Mystery -A New Look at the Science of what Puts a SOUL In an Egg..

The origin of the goddess myth is more than the moment Enki (ab- Ra) used his own sperm with a CroMagnon egg in his half sister (the Draco - aSSa of RA - Sarah - from Ur - Uru) - Innana / Ninhursag - (story below) - It is the cultural urge older than Earth of this DrAGon line to produce an egg which COULD get a gene and memory line squirting (embedding) immortally back into stars. This quest (for the grail - of charge embedding in DNA ) was BOTH Enlil / Yalweh's problem of how to ensoul DNA - AND the Dragon (Goddess) ancestor Queen Mom (Reverend Mother) urge to MAKE an EGG which could IMPLODE (turn inside out recursively / con-sciously) ..and MAKE a soul. It is WHY the reverend Mother's in Dune sheparded blood lines for centuries - eggs-act-ly like the Essenes (Akhanaton's /Enki money renamed Moses) planned the Tut / Jeshua birth - TO PLAN MUAB DIB / Avatar / Messiah. One who could STEER whole genepools into star inhabiting. (cont.)

via Mythropolis

2004-12-27T13:52:00.000-08:00

[Greys, Nazis, Underground Bases, and the New World Order]

DOWNLOAD FULL OMEGA.TXT

DOWNLOAD compressed file OMEGA.ZIP

Introduction
Chapter 1 : The Beginning
Chapter 2 : Nazi Bases in Antarctica
Chapter 3 : Nazi History Part 1
Chapter 4 : Nazi History Part 2
Chapter 5 : David Emory's Talk radio

(cont.)

Operation Paperclip Casefile

After WWII ended in 1945, victorious Russian and American intelligence teams began a treasure hunt throughout occupied Germany for military and scientific booty. They were looking for things like new rocket and aircraft designs, medicines, and electronics. But they were also hunting down the most precious "spoils" of all: the scientists whose work had nearly won the war for Germany. The engineers and intelligence officers of the Nazi War Machine.

The U.S. Military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America. It had originally intended merely to debrief them and send them back to Germany. But when it realized the extent of the scientists knowledge and expertise, the War Department decided it would be a waste to send the scientists home. Following the discovery of flying discs (foo fighters), particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the War Department decided that NASA and the CIA must control this technology, and the Nazi engineers that had worked on this technology.

There was only one problem: it was illegal. U.S. law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America--and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question had been committed Nazis.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Operation PaperClip

Program officiallly acknowledged by US? - Yes. But Nazi connection origins of program "imports" are ignored in official accounts of the program.

"Origins of Fascism in the US" by Christian Dewar. Excellent nutshell background
Operation Paperclip Casefile By Agent Orange. Recommended.

NASA's Paperclip Account

Nazi War criminals who worked for the CIA

Official US Army Paperclip account

Secrets of the Third Reich By Roy Feddon. A five Part Series. Astounding! The series traces, specifically, the history of Nazi research into - advanced aviation, rocketry, and attempts to develop more unorthodox methods of propulsion - antigravity, for instance - and the appropriation of these programs by the US military: and "Paperclip" provided these key scientific expertise.

Atlantic Magazine Interview, Nick Cook "Nick Cook, a respected military journalist, describes his foray into a hidden "black world" where powerful technologies of warfare are born." Cook, a highly respected writer for Jane's Defense Weekly, talks of his new book, "The Hunt For Zero Point". The story is intimately tied to Paperclip.

2004-12-27T13:39:00.000-08:00

Sorcery, Magick & Extraterrestrial Intelligences:
The Material Reality of Telepathy

An entity does not need an organic nervous system with the exact same sensory complexities in order to be part of a telepathic pattern involving inter-species communication or communication with Advanced Intelligence. In my recent book Dark Frontier, I give the example of my whimsical attempt to direct by telepathy a lady bug away from the precipice of my bathtub rim toward a specific area on the adjoining window sill. This small beast seemed to register my exact directive. I had not wanted to handle the insect or re-run a bath which had become insect soup.

The Fluidice Transduction Model
How might this transmission from shared multidimensional timespace to linear material, neural cognition be accomplished? Various technical systems limited to four-dimensional electromagnetic possibilities lack a coherent configurational (i.e. intelligent "shaping") explanation for systems extended in linear time.(2) As presented in my talks on "Fluidice: a New Form of Transduction" (July 2000) and "Fluidice Enhancements" (July 2001) for the U.S. Psychotronics Association, I have begun to develop a comprehensible technical formulation, which includes the quantized atomic system within a larger structural context.(2) This is accomplished by embedding the electromagnetic quanta within a past-future interfaced "solid state" energy enclosure or "fluidice matrix" termed fluidice//traction fluidice, an information pattern which is guided by the "mind pilot wave" at various densities. The various levels of mind, supermind and teleological logos are not within the substance of this structural coding. The Fluidice remains separate as a "recording matrix" (similar to clairvoyant Edgar Cayce's "akashic records"), yet also structurally interpenetrates matter (similar to the "bioplasma" of the Kirlian formulations).(3)

The Fluidice matrix is not your "mind" or your "soul." It is the palpable means by which your mind knows itself and senses the environment. A disembodied or non-organic mind knows itself by this same means. Fluidice is a transmitting medium, like electricity is a transmitting medium. The mind or soul of whatever species is a different issue.

FLUIDICE ENHANCEMENTS

Cave of Mithra

The cosmos as we know it is inside a cave. In the walls of this cave are embedded the solid earth environment, sky, stars and planets. Mithra is said to be born from a rock. Modern apologists theorize that “Mithra” was an actor in a ritual drama who made his appearance into a cave filled with worshipers from a hidden, outside entrance, thus seeming to come through the rock wall.

Plato, in his cave allegory, may have drawn from the Mithraic paradigm, which is a belief system dating from antiquity, originating prior to the familiar pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece and Asia Minor . The tradition has roots so ancient and obscure that there arte no exact records of its origin.

In Plato’s version of the “cave scenario” people sitting in a cave beside a fire and facing away from the entrance see only the shadows of figures moving outside the cave entrance as projected onto the rock wall in front of them and think that these partial images are a “higher reality” and/or the only reality.

In the modern day, one might advance this allegory to include persons sitting in a cave with laptop computers and cable television who believe that the information and images of people and places they receive on their screens are the only reality. It is common to state that “the map is not the territory”. We know these partial images are only interconnective and that a larger, wilder world lies outside the communications cave.

Taking this one step further, and re-invoking the Mithraic source of Plato’s thought, let us now assume that our “cave” is exactly where we are at any one time within the limitations of our physical, bodily mechanism to perceive., either locally or non-locally, and including the attachments of physical memory.

Battery Cell (Fig 6 above)

It has been observed that battery cells which utilize ion flow within an arrangement of juxtaposed chemical components in layers often do not function normally in the presence of “ufo” phenomena and also sometimes when telepathic and/or spirit information has been transmitted. It can be inferred that the god Mithra is trying to come in through the stone wall in these battery cells and has thus displaced the literal, molecular structure of the cell itself.

But since Mithra can walk through this wall and back into Unknown Regions, the regular molecular structure closes behind him when the messenger has delivered that specific message. Batteries affected by the presence of (4+n) dimensional intelligence and information often (but not always) return to normal functioning afterward**See QUAISI QUANTUM MATERIAL SHIFT pdf paper attached below.

It is a jolt, a jump-start, an interjection, a message from afar which subtly changes the flow of events which has resumed after the swift delivery receipt has been signed.

But maybe the events do not significantly change until after the information in the swift mail missive has been parsed. The message may contain operative instructions such as: “Attack tonight at X location”.

This process is substantially the same as the download of an executable program into a computer. So, since we are still trying to design a global map of the (4+n) dimensional experience, the injection of a file followed by the file’s execution of instructions within the specific hard drive is somewhat of an allegory.

The personality of the operator, as in the appearance of the god Mithra enacted by different individuals at different times, may make the process of (4+n) dimensional transfer of information more like a courier delivery than a file transferal, even though this is accomplished by means of subtle energy.

In fact, this may be more than a simple allegory when synchronous behavior and selection is observed to operate on a computer, independent of the operator’s conscious (4d) volition.

(cont.)

2004-12-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

Dragon Key Press Articles

Welcome to the Arcadian Archives on dragonkeypress.com. Here you will find volumes of information on many fascinating subjects. Many of these articles originally appeared in Dagobert's Revenge Magazine

My Kingdom is Not of This World: An Interview with Prince Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg

Oct 26, 2004
Author: Tracy R. Twyman

Hidden Secrets of the Blanchefort Tombstone and the Sauniere Parchments

Oct 26, 2004
Author: Tracy R. Twyman

Rendezvous at Rennes-le-Chateau

Oct 26, 2004
Author: Tracy R. Twyman and Boyd Rice

(cont.)

2004-12-27T11:50:00.000-08:00

Satan, God, H.P. Lovecraft and Other Mephitic Models: An Interview With Paul Laffoley

excerpt:

I would have private conversations with him. I once had an argument, for four hours, about the existence of the Mobius strip. Because he believed in the Klein Bottle, you see. And I said, "How in hell can you claim to believe in the Klein Bottle and think that the Mobius strip is dubious?" He said, "Well, it's a torus." I don't know what he had in his mind as a mathematical background, because I don't think he got topology. Because, in other words, the Mobius strip didn't have angles in it. The tetrahedron was his big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles. And I said, "Well, why do you believe in the Klein Bottle?" He said, "Because I can imagine it." I said, "You don't have to imagine a Mobius strip. It's right there in front of you!" But he couldn't see how that could involve a cross cap, meaning something that couldn't be reduced to a two-dimensional surface. Which it does. It's because he was thinking that the matrix was the thing that a fly could walk over the edge of, like a torus. It's not. The Mobius strip is only an analog for the reality of what it is. And then he says, "Like a shadow... shadows don't exist, they're the absence of light." He was quite a Newtonian in certain ways. But he was an excellent inventor and kept people on their toes.

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society

The HPLHS is currently in production of a short film adaptation of Lovecraft's most famous story, "The Call of Cthulhu" With a cast of over 50 people, it is to be a faithful period adaptation of the story, done in the style of a 1920s silent movie, the way it might have been done if it had been done when he wrote it.

Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival... a survival of a hugely remote period when... consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity... forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds...

- Algernon Blackwood

via New World Disorder
&
Chapel Perilous

2004-12-26T11:27:00.000-08:00

Esoterica: The journal

Image from: Johann George Gichtel, a short opening
[ translated as Awakening ton of Divine Wisdom] 1696

A peer reviewed academic journal devoted ton the transdisciplinary study OF Western esotericism: Western esoteric tradition including alchemy, astrology, Gnosticism, gnosis, magic, mysticism, Rosicrucianism, and secret societies, and their ramifications in kind history, history, literature, and politics.

via Mythropolis

2004-12-25T13:44:00.000-08:00

Followers of Zoroaster share faith of 3 wise men

Silloo Tarapore,
one of 900 Zoroastrians
in Northern California,
explains how
to use frankincense.
Chronicle photo by Liz Hafalia

Almost everyone knows about the magi, the "wise men from the East" who herald the birth of Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

But few realize that these three kings of Orient are not Christians or Jews, but Zoroastrians -- members of an ancient faith that not only survives to this day, but holds its national convention next week -- Tuesday to Saturday -- in San Jose.

Who were these pagan astrologers, following yonder star into the Gospel according to Matthew and onto the set of countless Christmas cards and nativity scenes?

And what do they have to do with Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian faith that heavily influenced the development of Judaism and Christianity?

Zoroastrians are followers of the Prophet Zoroaster , a monotheistic philosopher whose teachings became the state religion of the Persian Empire in the seventh century B.C. (cont.)

In Search of the Birth of Jesus: The Real Journey of the Magi

Quick, what do tennis star Andre Agassi and renowned conductor Zubin Mehta have in common? They are both Zoroastrians. What, exactly, does that mean? Well, according to Paul William Roberts, the influential marks of Zoroastrianism are still visible in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, despite the Roman Catholic church's assiduous efforts to erase them over the centuries. In Search of the Birth of Jesus is a book of such stunning complexity and marvelous wit that to call it a travel book is to slight its profundity; to call it an exhaustively researched theological history is to deny the rollicking good read that it is. Roberts re-traces the steps of the Magi according to a tip in Marco Polo's Travels, and the self-styled "good Christian" then commences dismantling every common notion of the Nativity story with an iconoclastic aplomb.

From Booklist
What a valuable book! At the very least, it is an engaging travelogue, and Roberts' account of his journey through Iran, Iraq, and Syria to retrace the steps of the magi will easily hold an audience from beginning to end. But, more than travelogue, it is a provocative invitation to reexamine the Zoroastrian background of Christianity, providing an occasion for serious reflection on the intersection of religion and politics in one of the most troubled regions on the planet. The recent assassination of Yitzhak Rabin makes the discussion of the 1994 Hebron massacre in the epilogue especially poignant; but it is likely to retain its impact even when memories of such tragic events are not so immediate. Steve Schroeder

Meditation on the Prophet Zoroaster

According to the teachings of Zoroaster, it is light that overcomes deceit, lying, ambiguity, and manipulation - all those things that lurk in the darkness. Much of this darkness exists because, like creatures blind to the splendor that surrounds us, we live in a flattened universe devoid of all its bounty. We do not see, as Zoroaster taught, that there is "beingness" in matter. Through this attunement to the prophet Zoroaster, we enter into a resonance with the one true being who is concealed behind the appearance of all the wondrous, myriad forms of material reality.

2004-12-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

HAPPY FESTIVUS!

'Seinfeld' Festivus display vies with Nativity

Christmas scene allowed on public property, so are other religions

BARTOW, Florida (AP) -- When a Florida church group put a Nativity scene on public property, officials warned it might open the door to other religious -- and not-so-religious -- displays. They were right.

"The real spirit of Christmas is the birth of Christ," said Marvin Pittman, a retired law enforcement officer and member of the congregation. "We felt it needs to be in the public eye, so we did it."

Other displays are fine, too, he said, adding, "If somebody wants to do that, it's their right."

And true to form, the site almost immediately sprouted alternative displays, including a simple sign that reads: "Festivus for the Rest of Us -- Donated to Polk County by the Seinfeld Fan Club."

"A Festivus, For the Rest of Us!" - Frank Costanza

The Festivus Pole

The Airing of Grievances

The Feats of Strength

2004-12-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

The psychedelic secrets of Santa Claus

Modern Christmas traditions are based on ancient mushroom-using shamans.

Although most people see Christmas as a Christian holiday, most of the symbols and icons we associate with Christmas celebrations are actually derived from the shamanistic traditions of the tribal peoples of pre-Christian Northern Europe.

The sacred mushroom of these people was the red and white amanita muscaria mushroom, also known as "fly agaric." These mushrooms are now commonly seen in books of fairy tales, and are usually associated with magic and fairies. This is because they contain potent hallucinogenic compounds, and were used by ancient peoples for insight and transcendental experiences.

Most of the major elements of the modern Christmas celebration, such as Santa Claus, Christmas trees, magical reindeer and the giving of gifts, are originally based upon the traditions surrounding the harvest and consumption of these most sacred mushrooms. (cont.)

Mushroom Christmas Gallery

2004-12-23T21:04:00.000-08:00

UFO REVIEW

Thursday-December 22nd

The Spy Satellite So Stealthy that the Senate Couldn't Kill It

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB143/index.htm

National Archives Opens Additional JFK Assassination Materials

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/12/nara122004.html

Tremors 'due to aircraft boom'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4115043.stm

Transcript of Dr. Steven Greer's Interview on Coast to Coast AM Radio with Art Bell August 8/9, 2004 http://www.disclosureproject.org/TranscriptArtBellInterviewAugust82004.htm

Very nice picture of Stonehenge – beautifully taken.

Stonehenge wallpaper site

(cont.)

Ufo Review-Current Issue

PDF File

2004-12-23T20:38:00.000-08:00

ANTIQUITIES OF THE ILLUMINATI::::Version 6.2

"SHEPHERDESS, NO TEMPTATION, THAT POUSSIN, TENIERS, HOLD THE KEY, PEACE 681. BY THE CROSS AND THIS HORSE OF GOD. I CONPLETE--OR DESTROY--THIS DAEMON OF THE GUARDIAN AT NOON. BLUE APPLES."

[HERE ]

C O N T E N T S

Film
A film by Samuel Beckett
Directed by Alan Schneider
Starring Buster Keaton
(QuickTime)

Towers Open Fire
By Antony Balch, With William S. Burroughs
(right-click and save, QuickTime format, 7.3mb)

The Original ISO
The Incunabula Papers:
Ong's Hat and Other Gateways to New Dimensions
By Joseph Matheny

SECRET WARS
Phoenix Orion & Team Eloheem

Philip K Dick - A Day in the Afterlife
BBC Arena Documentary
(right-click and save, format Real Media, size 47mb)

Meshes of the Afternoon
By Maya Deren
(right-click and save, QuickTime format, 10.5mb)

Aldous Huxley, Speaking Personally...
Audio Interview recorded 1961

Destiny Matrix
By Jack Sarfatti, Ph. D. [PDF]
(Note: off-site source)

The Sarmoung brotherhood/Gurdjieff Movements
Excerpt from Peter Brook's film Meetings with Remarkable Men
(right-click and save, QuickTime format, 15.5mb)

The Waveries
By Fredric Brown

Surprise-Pack

Our Limitless Mind: Living in a Nonlocal Universe
By Russell Targ

Kenneth Anger on ARTE
2004 Television Interview
+downloads of two of his films

Metaphysics and the Mise en Scene
By Antonin Artaud

Entheogens and the Origins of Religion
By Andy Hall

Seduction
By Jean Baudrillard [PDF]

Rendezvous with the Damned
By John A. Keel [PDF]

The Scope of Orientalism
By Edward Said [PDF]

Rhapsody, A Dream Novel
By Arthur Schnitzler

HOME | GLORIDX | DISCLAIMER | ANTIQILLUM

2004-12-22T22:04:00.000-08:00

Scientists offer theories on physics of Santa Claus' flight

Scientists think they have figured out how Santa Claus does it. Employing Einstein's theory of relativity, Santa can zip around the world warping time and space and turning Rudolph's nose a blurry blue.

via Monochrom

2004-12-20T16:11:00.000-08:00

Faces in the Crowd: The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Cover

"So let me introduce to you,
the one and only Billy Shears... and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

At Chelsea Manor Studios in London on March 30, 1967, a crowd assembled to see Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Amoung those in attendence were writers Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells, comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, actress Marilyn Monroe, cowboy Tom Mix, Albert Einstein, and Lawrence of Arabia. Bob Dylan, Fred Astaire, and others in the cheap(er) seats clapped their hands, while Alice in Wonderland writer Lewis Carroll stood beside Destry Rides Again starlette Marlene Dietrich, who was no doubt rattling her jewelry. This website was created for anyone curious enough to wonder about the lives of those figures in the audience, cheering Billy Shears (Ringo) and his band in what was surely the greatest concert never performed!
The Sgt. Pepper album cover can be seen below as an image map. Simply click on the face of the person you wish to know more about and you will be taken to a short biography. Below the album cover, you will find more information about the cover's creation from art director Sir Peter Brown and Sir Paul McCartney, in addition to a list of attendees complete with links to their mini-bios. (cont.)

via J-Walk Blog

2004-12-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

Study Disputes the Randomness of Dreams

Researchers find brain compartmentalizes dreams in two sleep periods

Your wildest dreams probably start soon after your head hits the pillow.

A new study finds that more aggressive, emotionally charged dreams tend to occur in the early, rapid-eye-movement (REM) period of sleep, whereas deeper, non-REM slumber encourages gentler, kinder dreaming.

The finding that the brain compartmentalizes dreams into two separate sleep periods may also put to rest the theory that dreams are no more than a meaningless rehash of random images, according to the researchers.

"That's been a very dominant theory for the past decade, and if our study gets replicated, then the hypothesis that dreams are random and without purpose is refuted," said lead researcher Patrick McNamara, a professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine.

The findings will appear in the February issue of Psychological Science.

To sleep, perchance to dream: Although the two are fundamental human functions, the debate continues as to the exact purpose -- if any -- of dreaming. (cont.)

2004-12-18T18:49:00.000-08:00

Physics and Consciousness

Start Science Interconnection Frequency Shamanism Ascension Thought Closing Books Links Print Contact Home

Quantum Interconnectedness has received some attention in the last decades; physicists have come to realize that the universe is interconnected in much subtler ways than had once thought. In quantum physics the observer and the observed can no longer be separated and the whole is more fundamental that the part.

The mathematical principles of this "new" science may help explain and recognize consciousness as a fundamental part of reality. The similarities between mind and quantum theory undoubtedly abound. The intent of this web site, however, is an attempt to explain *some* of the dynamics of physics and how it quantumly relates to consciousness.

When we have a narrow perception of reality it creates illusionary lines of separation. This separation transverses from personal, societal, cultural and expanding into the world. The interconnectedness of the parts of the whole allows us to realize our oneness with all things. (cont.)

via Future Hi

2004-12-17T22:23:00.000-08:00

MYTHOLOGY & HISTORY CHAPTERS
Red, White & Black | The Great Reversal | Schrödinger’s Color | The Secret Blackness of Milk
Brown Trojan Atlantis | Weird Coincidence | Gilgamesh | Religion | Separation | The Stern & the Fox
A Yellow World | Sap | War & Peace in the Middle East | Islam & Christianity | The Holy Grail | Peace | SEARCH

Schrödinger’s Color

Why are the primary mythological colors black, white and red? Perhaps in part because these are the only colors that a newborn human can see. More importantly, black and white can be considered at once different in kind from each other and different in kind from color itself, black being the absence of all colors, white being the presence of all colors. Red, meanwhile, is the most profound color proper, at least inasmuch as it is the color of blood and thus of life in general. Color theory itself can be precisely if rather crudely based on such a trinity: “brightness” is a measure of the amount of black coupled to a color, “saturation” is a measure of the amount of white likewise coupled, and “hue” is a measure of the amount of the color itself.

One of the great color theorists of all time was the famous, aforementioned Red/Dionysian physicist Erwin Schrödinger of Vienna, Austria. Schrödinger became nearly as well known for his Eastern philosophical advocacy of the unity of minds/consciousnesses (i.e. of Mind) — which advocacy he expressed especially well in his Tarner Lectures of 1956, published as Mind and Matter — as he was for his physics; he considered Leibniz’s “doctrine of Monads” “unappealing,” “fearful,” even “horrible.” Color theory (Farbenlehre), as Schrödinger’s biographer Walter Moore points out, “stands at the crux of the ancient mind–body problem.” Coincidentally, Schrödinger was a deuteroanomalous trichromat: his perception of the color red was much greater than normal, a condition occurring in about 2 percent of the human population. Among Schrödinger’s favorite stories was Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Among his favorite paintings, Dürer’s All-Saints. Schrödinger worked chiefly on color theory from 1918–1920 CE at the University of Vienna. Through 1925 CE he continued to publish papers on the subject — becoming recognized as the world authority on color theory.

Indeed, Schrödinger arrived at his famous wave-mechanical formulation of atomic theory not — as did Bohr, Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, Born and company — via the essentially empirical, particular and newly discovered phenomenon of spectral lines but rather via the essentially general and principled notions of good old color theory. Schrödinger’s extreme interest in color theory is all too often explained-away as being a philosophical indulgence. But Schrödinger — following Einstein — intended to base his physics on principle, i.e. on philosophy, namely on a principle of reality (if not of relativity). It seems he expected that both atomic theory and Einstein’s general relativity could be understood as generalizations of color theory. In this respect, the following outtake from Moore’s excellent biography of Schrödinger (which outtake bears in square brackets several of my comments) is extremely interesting:

Erwin based his analysis of color vision on the three-color theory of Thomas Young (1806), surely the most prescient work in all of psychoanalysis, which was rediscovered, developed, and extended by Hermann Helmholtz in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Young–Helmholtz theory is based on the hypothesis (since proven) that the normal (trichromat) human retina contains three types of receptors, each with a particular spectral response curve; these may be called red, green, and blue receptors on the basis of their response curves. Any spectral color (light) F or any mixture of such colors can be matched by a linear combination of the three basic colors, R, G, B, so that one can write F = x1R + x2G + x3B.

… The geometry of color space is not the ordinary Euclidean v ariety that we learn in high school. It is more general geometry, called affine geometry, of which the Euclidean variety is a special restricted case. Affine [cognate with the word affinity] geometry deals with those properties of figures which are unchanged [i.e. they are “invariant”] when the original coordinates of the points, x, y, z, are transformed to new coordinates, x′, y′, z′, by a system of linear [my emphasis] equations.

x′ = a11x + a12y + a13z

y′ = a21x + a22y + a23z

z′ = a31x + a32y + a33z

This set of linear equations with constant coefficients aik defines an affine transformation, which plays the role in affine geometry that the concept of congruence has in Euclidean geometry. A general affine transformation corresponds to a displacement (e.g., translation, rotation, reflection in a plane) plus a dilation, i.e., an expansion or contraction of space in three mutually perpendicular directions. A dilation transforms each line into a parallel line. The importance of affine geometry is greatly enhanced owing to the fact that [its] more general transformations become linear in the limit of very small displacements. Thus any geometry that deals with infinitesimal displacements, i.e., differential geometry, is necessarily affine. [Importantly, the reverse is not true: a geometry which is affine is not necessarily differential. Schrödinger comments: “The color space owes its existence as well as its affine structure to the equality relation [i.e. transformation within any single dimension] quite without reference to the vectorial or point space which serves for its elucidation.” Which is to say, the concept of transformation is a principle whereas the number and kind of dimensions to which this principle applies is merely conventional. This is Einstein’s expression of the relativity principle.] (cont.)

2004-12-17T15:47:00.000-08:00

Letters to Walken

As Artist-in-Residence at Cornell's arts dorm, I am expected to come up with stimulating art-related programs for the students here to participate in. "Letters to Walken" allowed them the chance to write their yearly Christmas letter to Christopher Walken.

Kolb from PA

More Letters to Walken.

2004-12-17T01:42:00.000-08:00

Atomic Structure and Lifetimes

Research demystifies quantum properties of exotic materials

International team shows collapse of Fermi volume in quantum critical matters

Modern materials science has been a boon for electronics, providing average consumers with palm-sized computers that would have filled a room just a few years ago for instance. But the push to create materials with radically new electronic properties has also produced a host of experimental results that textbook theories simply cannot explain.

n the Dec. 16 issue of Nature magazine, a team of physicists from Rice University, Rutgers University and the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany, offers a new explanation of the way quantum effects could create some of the strange electronic properties that have been observed in the important class of "heavy fermion" materials.

"Our findings represent a clear-cut advance in the understanding of the electron's organizing principle in quantum-critical matters," said theoretical physist Qimiao Si, a paper co-author and professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. "The work could be important to the physics of a broad range of materials, including high-temperature superconductors and carbon nanotubes. In addition, it provides new insight for the field of phase transformations of matter, which is of interest in physics, chemistry and other disciplines."

The new research bolsters the growing body of theoretical and experimental work in a new subfield of condensed matter physics known as "correlated electron physics," a discipline that's grown up in the past decade with the aim of understanding all the electronic processes governing both natural and man-made materials.(cont.)

BASIC RESEARCH

The research interests of the group focus on materials where interactions between electrons, and electron-phonon interactions, often in combination with disorder may lead to new type of electron liquid, electron solid or electron glass states. The group explores the low energy electrodynamics of such states in order to gain insight on the collective and single particle charge excitations of such states.

Mathematicians crochet chaos

Mathematicians have made a crochet model of chaos - and are challenging anyone else to repeat the effort.

Dr Hinke Osinga and Professor Bernd Krauskopf, of Bristol University's engineering mathematics department, used 25,511 crochet stitches to represent the Lorenz equations.

The equations describe the nature of chaotic systems - such as the weather or a turbulent river.

The academics are offering a bottle of champagne to anyone who cares to follow the pattern published in the journal Mathematics Intelligencer. (cont.)

2004-12-16T19:51:00.000-08:00

In 1936, Salvador Dali, a huge fan of the Marx Brothers work, met Harpo Marx in Paris. Some time later, Harpo was surprised to receive a Christmas gift from the famed Surrealist artist. It was a harp - with barbed wire strings.

Giraffes on Horseback Salads

This is from the May 1996 issue of Harper's Magazine. They comment:

"From a previously unpublished film script by Salvador Dali, written in 1937 for the Marx Brothers. Dali, was a fan of the comedians. The film, entitled Giraffes on Horseback Salads, was never made, reportedly because MGM, which had an exclusive contract with the Marx Brothers, felt it was too surreal. The script, which Dali wrote in English, was recently discovered among Dali's papers; it is owned and was made available by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain. Apart from roles for the Marx Brothers, the script includes a character called the 'Surrealist woman' and a Spanish businessman named Jimmy."

The "Surrealist woman" is lying in the middle of a great bed, sixty feet long, with the rest of the guests seated around each side. Along the bed, as decorations, are a group of dwarfs caught by Harpo. Each is supported on a crystal base, decorated with climbing flowers. The dwarfs stay as still as statues, holding lighted candelabras, and change their positions every few minutes.

While love tears at Jimmy's heart, Groucho tries to crack a nut on the bald head of the dwarf in front of him. The dwarf, far from looking surprised, smiles at Groucho in the most amiable way possible. Suddenly in the middle of dinner, thunder and lightning begin inside the room. A squall of wind blows the things over on the table and brings in a whirl of dry leaves, which stick to everything. As Groucho opens his umbrella, it begins to rain slowly.

Although the guests show surprise, they try for a time to continue their meal, which is, however, brought to an end by showers of rain. In a panic, the guests rush in all directions, while from the hall a torrent of waters washes in, bringing with it all sorts of debris, including a drowned ox. A shepherd makes a desperate effort to collect his flock of sheep, which climb up on the sofas and the bed in an effort to avoid being carried away by the water. A cradle is carried in on the flood containing a baby crying piteously, followed by the mother, hair streaming behind her.

The "Surrealist woman" crosses several rooms - rain falling more and more heavily - but stops in front of a door and hesitates. She goes in, followed by Jimmy, who has never left her side. On the other side of the door, there is no more rain and everything changes. It is the childhood room of the "Surrealist woman," where by her orders nothing has been touched since she was ten. Overcome by emotion, she sits down in front of a mirror at a child's table.

Meanwhile, the Marx Brothers announce that a great fête is going to take place. For this, large preparations have to be made. Four acres of desert are cleared of cacti and of all vegatation and flattened out like a tennis court. The undergrowth that is cleared away is piled around the field to make a barrier, behind which stands are erected for spectators.

There is a competition for the person who can ride a bicycle the slowest with a stone balanced on his head. All the participants have to grow beards. In the middle is a tower in the form of a boat's prow to be used as a judge's box.

Before the spectacle begins, the vegetation around the fields is set alight. This prevents the spectators in the stands from seeing anything at all. From the top of the tower the sight is wonderful, with columns of smoke going up vertically, surrounding hundrds of cyclists - each balancing a rock on his head - threading their way with the sun setting behind.

In the tower, Harpo is playing his harp ecstatically, like a modern Nero. By his side, his back to the spectacle, Groucho is lying, smoking lazily. Nearby, the "Surrealist woman" and Jimmy watch the spectacle, lying side by side. Behind them, Chico, dressed in a diving suit, accompanies Harpo on the piano. Scattered across the gangway leading to the tower, an orchestra plays the theme song with Wagnerian intensity as the sun sinks under the horizon.

the adventures of dali and harpo

Drawing by Salvador Dali (right)
from an article in Theatre Arts Monthly, October 1939

2004-12-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

Psyche's Links: 15000++ Links to Esoteric Subjects on the Web: Dimensions and Dimensionality:

Dimensionality

Wiki: Dimension
Francois Labelle: Dimensionality Reduction
Units and Dimensionality
Types of Data and Dimensionality in Scientific Visualization

Flatland: A romance of many dimensions
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott
MatheMUSEments: Flatland
Math Forum (Math Awareness Month 2000): Yendred's Journey
Suttirat A. Larlaub: Dimensional Geographic
Yendred
Robert Heinlein: The House With Too Many Perpendiculars

Wolfram: Dimension | Mathworld: Four-Dimensional Geometry| Hypercube
dimensionality of mass part one | part two
Superstringtheory: Extra Dimensions XII
How Does One go From the 4th Dimension to the Fifth?
Nova: The Elegant Universe | Video: (3 hours)
Imagining Other Dimensions | Nova: A Conversation with Brian Greene
Max Tegmark: On the dimensionality of spacetime
Bill Price: Study of Dimensions
Re: Anthropic Principle IS a probability argument (dimensionality of time)
Visualization: Discrete Differential Geometry
Higher-Dimensional Geometry

What is the 4th Dimension?
The Fourth Dimension by Cliff Pickover
The 4th Dimension (not time)
Peek: N-dimensional polytope visualization by cross-section and projection
4D Visualization
How Does One Obtain the Ability to "See" in Four Spatial Dimensions?
Visualization of V3d+ Equations
Connections in Space: 4D Polytopes
Visualizing the Hypercube
Don Hatch: 4-D HyperRubiksCube
JonathansCorner: A Four Dimensional Maze
Eric Saltsman: The Fourth Dimension
Evolution through the Dimensions of Time and Space
Math Insight
Fourth Dimension: Tetraspace: Speculations on th: how the world would work if there was a fourth spatial dimension
Tetraspace: 4th dimensional links
Hypercubes: A glimpse into high-dimensional space
Some Notes on the Fourth Dimension (Movies: Visualization)
Uniform Polytopes in Four Dimensions
Monocosm: A Topos-Theoretic Look at the Foundations of Physics (the 4D problem)
4th Dimension
Visualizing 4-space
The 3-plane Array
Beyond the Third Dimension: virtual exhibition consists of mathematical objects that are visualized in the computer
Beyond 3D: Iced Cubes: Slicing 4D hypercube
Four Dimensional Objects
Fun with Hypercubes
Stereoscopic Animated Hypercube Mark Newbold: HyperSpace Polytope Slicer | Mathpoint: The 4th Dimension
Hypercube Awards
Hyperspace Structures: the Hypercube
Zometool: Hypercube (PDF)
Russell Towle: Why the Rhombic Dodecahedron is a Shadow of the 4-Dimensional Hypercube
Lagarias/Shor: Keller's Cube-Tiling Conjecture is False in Higher Dimensions
UWinnipeg: Dimensionality (GR) (ways of visualizing higher dimensions)
4D rotating cube
Perez: 4D Orthogonal Polytopes Analogies Between The Parallelotopes In the 1D, 2D, 3D and 4D space

The maximum dimensional fault-free subcube allocatable in faulty hypercube
Tamiko Thiel: The architecture of a new machine (hypercubic)
Cut The Knot: Tesseract: An interactive column using Java applets by Alex Bogomolny
Structures of Multidimensional Cubes
Hyperspace Structures: Exploring the fourth dimension
Ivars Peterson: Tesseracts: Cubes Get Hyper

Fime Theory: 5th Dimension
Fime Theory (Spirals & Helixes)
Extra-dimensional Simulator and Higher-Dimensional Theories
Hidden Extras: Unrolling the Other 6 Dimensions
Extra dimensions make new room to tackle old Mysteries
Ms. Guidance to Xtra Dimensions
Matti PitKanen: Topological Geometrodynamics: 8 Dimensional Manifolds
'Topological Geometrodynamics' and Consciousness
Michael Brown: Multidimensional Reality
Everything2: The Continuum Hypothesis
Michio Kaku: Black Holes, Wormholes, and the 10th Dimension
Michio Kaku: M-Theory: The Mother of all SuperStrings
Michio Kaku: Superstring Theory
Question & Answer Chat Event With Dr. Michio Kaku
Jian-Xin Lu: Branes
Explanation of M-theory
Paul E. Black: On The Composition of the Universe: The Universe is printed on recycled paper
Superstrings! | Supersymmetric Strings | M-Theory
B S Acharya: M theory, G2-manifolds and four-dimensional physics
Properties of Energy & Matter: Part I ... Dimensionality
An Alternative Perspective on Spatial Dimensionality By Edwin Eugene Ott
Lorentz contraction and dimensionality of reality
Physics Web: The hunt for new dimensions
Magnetic pull from ten dimensions
David Gross: Space-time has ten dimensions
A Proof of Ten Dimensions in Typical Space
The Ten Dimensions of Reality
Into the 11th Dimension
Generalised 11-Dimensional Supergravity Stephen Hawking's Theory Regarding Eleven Dimensions
Alternative formulation of duality-symmetric 11-dimensional supergravity
C.M.Hull: Exact pp-wave solutions of 11-dimensional supergravity
Yuuichirou Shibusa: 11-dimensional curved backgrounds for supermembrane in superspace
Astronomy Forum: 10/11 Dimensional Space-time
Meaning of dilaton field

SciAm: Max Tegmark: Parallel Universes
What are Parallel Universes?
Richard Dawkins: Synergetic Geometry
Cosma Shalizi: Review: Geometrical Methods of Mathematical Physics by Bernard Schutz
Into The Eleventh Dimension
Into The Eleventh Dimension: Superstrings, M-Theory
Shadows from Higher Dimensions
Interdimensional Physics
The Creation of Cosm: Understanding the Meaning of Dimensions
R. Coquereaux and A. Jadczyk: Geometry of Multidimensional Universes
Trans-dimensional/Time Travel
Rudy Rucker's Home Page
Interdimensional Force Concept: An experimental theory about forces as tensions between different sets of dimensions
Ian Pinsker: Treatise on Dimensional Physics
New Scientist: Taming the multiverse
Ximensions
4 Dimensional Reality: Space-Time_Energy-Consciousness
The Extradimensional Nature of God
Esoteric System of Dimensions
Zach's Interdimensional Page
Bill Price: A Study of Dimensions
Simon Yeager: The Ineffable Ten Dimensions: Geometric Model for a Universal GUT (alt site)

2004-12-16T11:02:00.000-08:00

Hellraiser Heads For TV

Producers are adapting Clive Barker's Hellraiser film series into an hourlong TV show, Variety reported. Panacea Entertainment, Park Avenue Entertainment and Blueprint Entertainment are behind the project; Larry Kuppin, whose New World Entertainment hatched the first two Hellraiser films, will executive produce with Eric Gardner, the trade paper reported. (cont.)

The Lament Configuration

LeMarchand's first and arguably most classic, puzzle construct. Its complexity was managed by expanding on the design of a similar box designed and constructed by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century. When operated properly, a pleasing melody issues from within which belies its true nature.
- excerpted from "Tucker's Encyclopedia of Mass Murderers" -

Lament Configuration Screen Saver Download

2004-12-15T17:11:00.000-08:00

Converting the first 10,000 digits of pi into a musical sequence

via J-Walk Blog

2004-12-15T16:48:00.000-08:00

Hellacious Riders -

Hriders.com 1 TB email

Hriders.com gives unlimited free 1 Terabyte email accounts that include 500 Megabyte attachments.

We have been asked why we would do such a thing. The answer is simple to help people store large amounts of information in a safe and secure environment.

We live in a world where natural and un-natural events take place, that can destroy homes or offices, when that happens many people loose all of their family pictures, their furnishings, office equipment and more.

We decided that Hriders.com should do something more than just provide a place to receive large quantities of emails. What we have done is provide our members with a place to store their family pictures or home videos as well as store pictures of their home or office furnishings, in case something might be lost to an unexpected event.

Homes burn, earthquakes happen, floods and un-natural events take place all the time, and all to often we hear people say, well at least I survived but I lost everything, my family pictures are gone, I did not plan on this ever happening to me so I did not take videos or pictures of my belongs for the insurance company to prove to them that I had a music collection that I have had for over 20 years, or a $10,000 home theater system or 5 computers.

We decided that yes a Terabyte of space may sound rather extreme to some, others will not think so.

If you have a free membership with Hriders.com then you will receive a free 1 Terabyte 500 Megabyte attachment email account. You will be able to store over 40 million emails, videos, games, mp3s, or pictures.

2004-12-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

Utopia Online Library

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

a collection of texts
and interviews
exploring possibilites
and boundaries
of social evolution

this library will be
regularly updated
so please check back!

via Technoccult

2004-12-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

Google to Index Major Libraries

As part of its effort to make offline information searchable online, Google Inc. today announced that it is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.

“We are exhilarated to join a partnership with Google that perfectly advances our mission as a great public university to share knowledge within the academic community and far beyond it,” said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. “This project signals an era when the printed record of civilization is accessible to every person in the world with Internet access. It is an initiative with tremendous impact today and endless future possibilities.”

Google will digitally scan and make searchable virtually the entire collection of the University of Michigan library. A person looking for information will gain the extraordinary capability to use Google to locate and read the full text of printed works that are out of copyright. For works in copyright, a search will point the way to the existence of relevant volumes by returning a snippet of text, along with information that identifies publishers or libraries where the work can be found.

Today’s announcement is an expansion of the Google Print™ programme, which assists publishers in making books and other offline information searchable online. Google is now working with libraries to digitally scan books from their collections, and over time will integrate this content into the Google index, to make it searchable for users worldwide.

“By placing the great works of the past on the Internet, this endeavor helps ensure that the texts that have informed the development of thought and human understanding throughout recorded history will continue to do so,” said Provost Paul N. Courant. “The fundamental mechanism of scholarship, making new ideas out of what is known or believed, will be more broadly available than ever before.” (cont.)

2004-12-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

Images of Earth-like clouds on Mars

New geologic and climatic discoveries being sent back by Mars rovers

SAN FRANCISCO, California (SPACE.com) -- NASA's Mars rovers have returned new evidence for past water, pictures of Earth-like clouds seen for the first time from the planet's surface, and a rock that doesn't look like anything scientists have ever seen.

Meanwhile, officials say both robots are in surprisingly good health and could continue their science investigations for months more, despite nagging health problems.

The Spirit rover, ambling through the Columbia Hills at the fringe of the Gusev crater, has uncovered a riot of rock forms and geochemical novelties, including a mineral called goethite, which had not been found on Mars before. Goethite is common on Earth and forms only in the presence of water, though the water can be liquid, frozen or vaporous, said Goestar Klingelhoefer of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. (cont.)

NASA Mars Picture of the Day:

Opportunity's Clouds
11 May 2004

This composite of 7.5 km (4.7 mi) per pixel daily global images, acquired by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), shows water ice clouds over and to the east (right) of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER-B), Opportunity, landing site in Meridiani Planum. The "+" indicates the location of the rover site. Clouds high in the atmosphere above the Opportunity site have been a common occurrence in the afternoon for the past several weeks. This picture was obtained on 1 May 2004. The scale bar, 120 km (~75 mi), is approximate. North is toward the top/upper right. The bright area to the west (left) of the landing site is sunlight glinting off particles in the atmosphere and on the ground. The sun illuminates the scene from the left.

»» NASA's Mars Rovers Spot Water-Clue Mineral, Frost, Clouds

[Monday, December 13, 2004] Scientists have identified a water-signature mineral called goethite in bedrock that the NASA's Mars rover Spirit examined in the "Columbia Hills," one of the mission's surest indicators yet for a wet history on Spirit's side of Mars.

° Full Story

» Conditions on vast plain on Mars could have been suitable for life

[Friday, December 03, 2004] Although present conditions on Mars would seem to be inhospitable to life, the data sent back by NASA's two exploration rovers showed a world that might once have been warmer and wetter.

° Full Story

2004-12-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

Rutgers researchers may have stopped HIV

Piscataway, N.J. — Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.

The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.

Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.

“This could be it,” Stephen Smith, the head of the department of infectious diseases at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said. “We're all looking for the next class of drugs.”

A research team led by Rutgers chemist Eddy Arnold pre-published details of the most promising of the three drugs, known as R278474, last month in the electronic edition of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Full details will be published in the journal in early 2005.

Dr. Arnold, 47, has worked at dismantling the AIDS virus over the last 20 years. He uses X-ray crystallography, a technique to determine the structure of molecules, the smallest particles that can retain all the characteristics of an element or compound.

The research has targeted reverse transcriptase, a submiscroscopic protein composed of two coiled chains of amino acids. It is considered HIV's key protein.

“Reverse transcriptase is very important in the biology of AIDS,” Dr. Smith said. “If you can really inhibit reverse transcriptase, you can stop AIDS.”

The optimism about R278474 stems from its potential to interfere with an enzyme that the virus needs to copy and insert itself into a human cell.

“We're onto something very, very special,” Dr. Arnold said. (cont.)

2004-12-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

Riding in Magnetic Bubbles

Concept of using superconducting magnets to shield electromagnetically charged particles from astronauts inside a prototype capsule.
Image Credit: MIT

New research has recently begun to examine the use of superconducting magnet technology to protect astronauts from radiation during long-duration spaceflights, such as the interplanetary flights to Mars that are proposed in NASA's current Vision for Space Exploration.

The principal investigator for this concept is former astronaut Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hoffman's concept is one of 12 proposals that began receiving funding last month from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Each gets $75,000 for six-months of research to make initial studies and identify challenges in developing it. Projects that make it through that phase are eligible for as much as $400,000 more over two years.

2004-12-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

Crowley's Egg: Secret Chiefs and Scarlet Women

by Vincent Bridges

Part One: The Egg Of Mystery

Like so much else about this tangled subject, synchronicity brought this singularly important piece of the puzzle to my attention. On an e-group usually devoted to the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and other western tradition themes, a post about mysterious eggs and meeting the Dalai Lama caught my attention. It seems that the list owner, a fine RLC researcher and esoteric scholar who goes by the name of Stella Maris, had a vision about an egg on a mountain top, purchased a glass egg in Hong Kong and then met the Dalai Lama in the airport.

She published the story in Duat, a CD journal, and the e-group was discussing it. The very first post on the subject grabbed my attention, and I anxiously watched the thread unfold, even chiming in on the Tibetan aspects. And then another group member posted quotes on the mystic significance of eggs from The Chymical Wedding and Crowley's 1918 Amalantrah workings. Suddenly, an almost forgotten piece of the puzzle surfaced, and as it snapped into place a new and somewhat surprising image emerged.

via Dr. Hyatt.Net Blog

2004-12-12T23:43:00.000-08:00

Physicists Discover Potential Way to Store Memory in Ferroelectric Nanodisks and Nanorods

The researchers studied ferroelectric materials at the nanometer scale. Ferroelectric materials possess spontaneous dipoles, or charge separations, that allow them to create the images seen in medical ultrasound and naval sonar, and also are used to convert signals to sound in cell phones and other audio devices. How these dipoles behave when the material is on the nanoscale is not well known.

"Our goal is to explore the possibility of using a single nanoparticle to store one data bit," Naumov said. However, the net polarization -- which is spontaneously formed in bulk materials and is so far the key to storing information -- does not normally exist in nanoparticles. Naumov, Bellaiche, and Fu decided to search instead for a new phase in the world of nano-ferroelectrics.

They found to their surprise that the dipoles in nanomaterials form a new state when the temperature is lowered. The researchers used computer simulations to determine what happens to the nanorods and nanodiscs when they reach this state.

They found that instead of polarization, the new phase creates what the researchers call a toroid moment, which rotates in a circular fashion like a vortex or a tornado. These moments can rotate in one direction or another, forming a bi-stable state that is capable of storing information, like polarization.

However, the toroid moment provides a different kind of order. Unlike polarization, the toroid moment can exist in tiny nanoparticles, which thus allows storage of one bit of information in a single particle, which has the advantage of increasing memory density. Also, unlike the polarization state, in which particles influence one another if moved in close proximity, the vortices created by this new phase do not interact strongly with one another. This means they can be packed together in a small space.

"This eliminates the 'cross-talk' problem. You can compact the materials very densely," Naumov said.

2004-12-12T23:38:00.000-08:00

MP3 Sunglasses

OAKLEY THUMP is the world's first digital music eyewear. Just high-performance optics forged with an integrated, state-of-the-art digital audio engine. Oakley's digital music eyewear delivers over 60 tracks or about 4 hours of head-thumping music directly to your brain without cables or wires. OAKLEY THUMP comes in seven color combinations and two types: a 128 MB version and a 256 MB version with polarized lenses.

2004-12-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) Is Here!!!

A comet discovered only this summer is brightening quickly and already visible to the unaided eye. Comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) is currently best visible in Earth's Southern Hemisphere where some observers report it brighter than magnitude 5. The comet is moving rapidly to northern skies and should continue to brighten until early January. By coincidence, Comet Machholz will be easy to view as it will be nearly opposite the Sun when appearing its brightest. How bright Comet Machholz will become then remains uncertain, but it will surely stay in northern skies for much of 2005, even approaching Polaris in early March. Pictured above, Comet Machholz was captured in early December already sporting a bright surrounding coma, a white oblong dust tail fading off toward the bottom, and a long wispy ion tail toward the right with a kink near the end.

2004-12-11T22:48:00.000-08:00

Dee's Crystal Ball stolen

A rare 16th Century clairvoyance crystal and valuable documents were snatched in a daylight raid on a gallery at the Science Museum, it was confirmed today.

The irreplaceable artefacts were taken at around 4.30pm yesterday, when thieves smashed a glass cabinet in an exhibition space on the fifth floor of the building in in South Kensington, London.

Museum staff have launched an internal inquiry, but do not yet know if the raiders were specifically targeting the items, estimated to be worth around £50,000.

The crystal, used as a tool by mediums and for curing disease, belonged to maverick philosopher, mathematician and astrologer John Dee, a consultant to Elizabeth I.

He lived between 1527 and the turn of the 17th Century, becoming a leading authority on “angel-magic” and beliefs that man had the potential for divine power.

Also taken was a statement about the crystal’s use by author and pharmacist Nicholas Culpeper, written on the reverse of ancient deed manuscripts in the mid-1600s.

A Science Museum spokeswoman said: “At approximately 4.30pm on Thursday, thieves broke into a cabinet at the Science Museum and stole two items from the museum’s collection belonging to the Wellcome Trust.

“The artefacts were transferred to the museum by as part of the permanent loan of the Wellcome Medical Collection in 1976.

“The items are unique and as such difficult to value but they could be worth as much as £50,000.”

It is thought there were two raiders, who waited until the gallery was empty before snatching the items.

“A member of staff was alerted by the sound of breaking glass and immediately informed our security workers, who reported the incident to the police,” said the spokeswoman.

Staff are reviewing security procedures and CCTV footage as part of an internal inquiry into the incident.

CID officers from Scotland Yard have also visited the scene and launched an investigation.

Jon Tucker, head of Science Museum, said: “This is a very distressing loss to the museum as these objects are of great historical significance and irreplaceable.”

“It is incredibly difficult striking the right balance between providing good public access to our unique collections for our millions of visitors, whilst providing enough protection against a tiny number of determined criminals.”

Manly P. Hall had a book, Orders of Universal Reformation in which a woodcut from 1655 by Jacob Cats , shows an emblem of an ancient man bearing likeness to John Dee , passing the lamp of tradition over an open grave to a young man with an extravagantly large rose on his shoe buckle. In Bacon's sixth book of the Advancement of Learning he defines his method as, Traditionem Lampadis, the delivery of the lamp.

2004-12-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

Publicly available sites on Canada's "Brain Drain"

South of the Border -- Graduates from the Class of '95 Who Moved to the United States, Human Resources Development Canada and Statistics Canada CAUT Education Review: "Have We Lost Our Minds?", Canadian Association of University Teachers, Volume 1 Number 2, July/August 1999 International Migration of Skilled Workers: Facts and Factors, PDF, 1.1 MB, Human Resources Development Canada and Industry Canada, December 1999
Trade Liberalisation and the Migration of Skilled Workers, by Steven Globerman, April 1999

2004-12-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

Strange-voiced whale wanders Pacific

LONDON - A lone whale, with a voice unlike any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years, American marine biologists said Wednesday.

Using signals recorded by the U.S. Navy to track submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the Northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean since 1992.

Its calls, despite being clearly those of a baleen, do not match those of any known species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of 15 to 20 hertz.

The mammal does not follow the migration patterns of any other species either, according to team leader Mary Anne Daher.

Internet audio
Listen to the whale’s call at NOAA
The calls of the whale, which roams the ocean every autumn and winter, have deepened slightly as a result of aging, but are still recognizable.
The study, by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, was published in the December issue of the journal Deep-Sea Research I and reported in the New Scientist magazine.

Acoustics Monitoring Program - Bioacoustics

NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Newport, Oregon and National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, Washington are collaborating on a joint study to assess the potential of long-range acoustic monitoring of free-ranging populations of large cetaceans.
For more details on this collaborationclick here.

2004-12-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

Review Summary

Mad scientist Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) tries to alter the course of evolution by breeding half-animal, half-human creatures. When Edward Parker-- Richard Arlen--arrives on Moreau's island, the doctor seeks to entice him into remaining by using one of his creations, Lota the Panther Woman, as bait. Strikingly photographed by Karl Struss, the movie is effectively atmospheric.

Of mice, men and in-between

Scientists debate blending of human, animal forms
In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.
These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.
Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses. (cont.)

2004-12-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

Jupiter and the Moon's Shadowed Horizon

Early Tuesday morning, December 7th, June Croft thought the southeastern sky above Atmore, Alabama, USA was beautiful. Watching the Moon rise through gossamer clouds, she noted, " ... the crescent Moon looked like it was held in the sky by a star just off its shadowed horizon." What was that star? Bright Jupiter of course, and some watched as the Moon actually occulted or passed in front of the Solar System's reigning gas giant planet. For astronomer Jimmy Westlake in Colorado, Jupiter was already hidden at moonrise that morning, but later he was able to record this lovely image, not unlike the view that inspired Croft. Seen through gossamer clouds, Jupiter along with large Jovian satellites Ganymede and Callisto (bottom to top) has emerged from behind the crescent Moon's shadowed horizon.

2004-12-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

Los Alamos quantum cryptography team is co-winner of prestigious European research prize

Los Alamos researchers and other members of a multi-nation collaboration that is developing a revolutionary technology for information security have captured half of the European Union's Descartes Prize for Research.
Los Alamos' quantum cryptography team and six other institutions in the Information Society Technologies (IST) QuComm collaboration received the prize for their project to build a secure global communication system using particles of light.
Quantum cryptography makes a more secure global infrastructure possible by enabling two parties to encode a secret key with single photons so they can communicate much more securely than with other cryptographic techniques. (cont.)

Vest-pocket beamer

The vest-pocket projector could soon become reality. It is based on a tilting micromirror that builds up the picture line by line. The designers of a laboratory prototype have managed to raise its operating speed and resolution to the point where graphics and text are clearly legible. (cont.)

Nano and Quantum Physics
Technology
Applied Physics
Space and Earth science
Electronic Devices
Striking research and developments
Books directory

2004-12-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

Das Concept Factory Panoramenportal

2004-12-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

This exploration into the moment-by-moment works of the brain uses cognitive neuroscience to present experiments, tricks, and tips related to vision, motor skills, attention, cognition, subliminal perception. Each "hack" examines specific operations of the brain. By seeing how the brain responds, you'll learn more about how the brain is put together. If you want to find out what's going on in your head, then Mind Hacks is the key. [Full Description]

Sample Hacks

Hack 11: Why People Don't Work Like Elevator Buttons (PDF)
Hack 16: Map Your Blind Spot (PDF)
Hack 17: Glimpse the Gaps in Your Vision (PDF)
Hack 24: Create Illusionary Depth with Sunglasses (PDF)
Hack 33: Neural Noise Isn't a Bug; It's a Feature (PDF)
Hack 43: Improve Visual Attention Through Video Games (PDF)
Hack 65: Why Can't You Tickle Yourself? (PDF)
Hack 92: Make the Caffeine Habit Taste Good (PDF)

2004-12-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Strawberry Fields Forever

Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out, it doesn’t matter much to me.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can’t you know tune in but it’s all right, that is I think it’s not too bad.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.

Always, no sometimes, think it’s me, but you know I know when it’s a dream.
I think I know I mean a ’yes’ but it’s all wrong, that is I think I disagree.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to strawberry fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry fields forever.
Strawberry fields forever.

Strawberry fields Panoramic View

via boing-boing

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

2004-12-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

'Brainwave' cap controls computer

A team of US researchers has shown that controlling devices with the brain is a step closer.

The cursor movements were recorded:
blue is slowest, and red fastest

Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes.

Previous research has shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.

The New York team reported their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The results show that people can learn to use scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control rapid and accurate movement of a cursor in two directions," said Jonathan Wolpaw and Dennis McFarlane.

The research team, from New York State Department of Health and State University of New York in Albany, said the research was another step towards people controlling wheelchairs or other electronic devices by thought. (cont.)

Brains can have wireless upgrades

It could well be the ultimate in hands-free adaptors: A researcher claims that in a decade, people will have wireless networks in their heads

An augmented brain will get so used to its powers--for example, being able to switch on a light by thought--that it will not be able to cope without the implant, he said.

"It will be such a trauma to remove it, the brain might not live. The implant goes in and stays in," Warwick said.

The brain implant will remain in his brain and will be permanent. In a widely-publicised experiment--some said stunt--a probe that was implanted in 2002 to link Warwick's nervous system to a computer and was removed after a few months.

He said that humans have limited capabilities to understand the world in three dimensions and communicate very slowly through speech, and hopes to use machine intelligence to expand human senses and to communicate through thought.

However, Warwick has yet to find a serious candidate to undergo the brain implant with him due to the possibility of operating-room complications and other life-endangering problems.

The U.K.-based researcher first implanted a chip in his arm that transmitted information to a computer in 1998, and claimed to be the world's first true cyborg, or cybernetic organism. This experiment allowed Warwick to be tracked as he moved about the department of cybernetics at the university.

In February 2002, Warwick implanted a probe into his left arm which allowed signals to be transmitted between his nervous system and a computer. The purpose was to investigate the transmission of movement, though or emotion signals from one person to another.

While we have come to rely on our machines over the past 50 years, we are about to become our machines during the first part of this millennium. We need not fear our machines because ... those of us alive today, over the course of our lifetimes, will morph ourselves into machines.

Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Any specific prediction we make about upcoming inventions is bound to be wrong ... usually completely different from anything we ever predicted. And much better, always much better.

Carver Mead, California Institute of Technology

2004-12-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

Unheard Lennon songs in musical

Two previously unreleased songs by John Lennon are to feature in a Broadway musical about the ex-Beatle's life.

Lennon's widow Yoko Ono has given writer and director Don Scardino permission to use the songs India, India and I Don't Want to Lose You.

Scardino said: "We will tell the story of John Lennon's life using Lennon's own words and songs."

Lennon was killed exactly 24 years ago outside his New York apartment after being shot by Mark Chapman.

Debut

The musical will make its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre, New York, on 7 July 2005.

"Our ensemble of 10 extraordinary and diverse performers and a 10-piece onstage band will guide the audience through Lennon's life and the eras he shaped," said Scardino.

India, India was written during the Beatles' visit to India in 1968 while I Don't Want to Lose You was provided by Yoko Ono to complete The Beatles Anthology in 1990, but an electronic glitch made it impossible to include the song.

Prior to being on Broadway the musical will have its world premiere in San Francisco on 12 April.

2004-12-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Carnegie Mellon Scientist Develops Way To Deliver Promising Genetic Tool Into Living Cells

PITTSBURGH -- By exploiting an HIV protein that readily traverses cell membranes, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have developed a new way to introduce a gene-like molecule called a peptide nucleic acid (PNA) directly into live mammalian cells, including human embryonic stem (ES) cells. The work, published online December 2 in Chemical Communications, holds considerable promise in genetic engineering, diagnostics and therapeutics. (cont.)

Hybridization of Peptide Nucleic Acid Probes to Structured DNA and RNA Targets

The use of synthetic DNA analogues to recognize and bind (i.e. hybridize) to complementary sequences in DNA and RNA is the basis for nucleic acid diagnostics, genomics analyses and antisense/antigene therapy. While it is straightforward to use the Watson-Crick rules to design a hybridization agent for a particular target sequence, achieving successful hybridization is much more complicated. One of the biggest obstacles is folding of the target nucleic acid. Thus, the three-dimensional shape of the target, defined by the secondary and tertiary structure, imposes kinetic and thermodynamic constraints on hybridization agents. We are currently studying model systems in which we quantitatively analyze the kinetics and thermodynamics of hybridization involving peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes and structured targets such as hairpins and quadruplexes (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Hybridization of PNA probes to structured DNA hairpin and quadruplex targets.

PNA is a synthetic mimic of DNA in which the natural nucleobases are appended to a polyamide backbone (Figure 4). The lack of a negative charge along the PNA backbone contributes to very high affinity for complementary DNA and RNA sequences, generating considerable interest in PNA for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Our group synthesizes PNA using standard solid-phase peptide synthesis methods. We study hybridization to targets using a variety of spectroscopic methods, including UV-vis, circular dichroism and fluorescence. As our knowledge pertaining to the restrictions imposed by target structure grows, we will be better positioned to design effective hybridization agents toward much larger targets such as ribozymes or ribonucleoprotein particles.

Figure 4. Chemical structures of DNA, RNA and PNA.

2004-12-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

Physics and metaphysics

A series of scientific experiments in the early 1980s changed forever our understanding of the nature of matter. It is likely that it will also prove to have been the greatest religious discovery of the 20th century.

Physicists call it entanglement, and it describes the state of two or more particles once they have interacted with one another. From then on, irrespective of time and space, a correlation will always exist between them. What happens to one will affect the other - even if they are now at opposite ends of the universe.

The word entanglement is really a misnomer. Some scientists use "non-separability" to describe the same condition. And the difference is significant. For if matter emerged from energy in the singularity of the big bang, it would seem to follow that all the particles of which it consists are in that state of correlation. They have not become entangled, but at the fundamental level they have never been - and can never be - separated.

Although it is now more than 20 years since non-separability was proved experimentally, its significance has yet to enter the public psyche. It seems to be too immense a concept, too remote from our everyday lives - until we view it from the spiritual perspective.

We are then reminded that it is this same matter which is both the physical manifestation of spirit and the means to redemptive action. This being so, then the correlation of all matter must also apply to all spirit. Our separateness is an illusion; the reality is an indivisible unity.

Quantum Entanglement

and Bell's Theorem

What are Parallel Universes?

Recent discoveries in quantum physics (the study of the physics of sub-atomic particles) and in cosmology (the branch of astronomy and astrophysics that deals with the universe taken as a whole) shed new light on how mind interacts with matter. These discoveries compel acceptance of the idea that there is far more than just one universe and that we constantly interact with many of these “hidden” universes.

What is needed is a resource that explains in understandable, non-mathematical terms everything from the big bang hypothesis to morphogenetic fields to Bell's Theorem to the Aspect experiment.

2004-12-07T18:41:00.000-08:00

Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind
by Julian Jaynes

Consciousness In The Cosmos

2004-12-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

Helix to Hologram

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat

Quantum Teleportation
from Bangor to the World in an Instant

It is a basic expectation of users of such communication channels that their transactions are entirely confidential or 'secure'. There is a particular need to ensure the correct transmission of information relevant to the growing volume of commercial transactions which utilise modern communications channels. The essential need is for the development of techniques which can ensure that 'eavesdroppers' cannot intercept transmitted messages - so that the information can be transmitted securely. The technology which is used to ensure secure transmission of data is termed cryptography. In recent years, effort has been given to two new kinds of cryptography - quantum cryptography and chaos cryptography. Research achievement related to both these topics have been made at the Optoelectronics Research Group in the University of Wales, Bangor. (cont.)

Reality and How it Works

Given our quantum hologram essence, our minds may well be omni-dimensional. I believe that consciousness has the innate capacity to tune and modulate to different domains. Implied here is the notion that there are within these resonant quantum fields of consciousness availability to different universes. Does this mean that the mind has the means to travel in time, to visit the time and place in ancient Palestine when Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount, to be present in consciousness at the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Is the past still present, nested in the many frequencies that make up the Quantum Mind of the Maker ?

THE FRACTAL MATRIX:
A PARADIGM FOR MULTIDIMENSIONAL REALITY

The Fractal Matrix reveals that all of creation, with its accompanying fractal levels, emerges from vortices---the double-helix spiral configuration (see figures 1, 2, and 3, Part I). These are centripetal spirals. The double-spiral vortex pairs create a stable standing-wave structure at their centres. If the reader wishes to attempt a visualisation of these 4D (at least) configurations follow the steps in Figure 7 (see below), starting with (a). For a more thorough description see articleThe Basic Energy Unit: The Vortex.

Figure 7

Schauberger had a unique understanding of the centripetal spiral, which he harnessed for the Germans towards the end of WW II for the production of antigravity units and the subsequent application to spacecrafts. This natural double vortex (spiral) is reproduced by advanced extraterrestrial spacecrafts (and secret government) for super-light speeds or teleportation. (New-Age channellings call it the Merkaba and claim that advanced beings can create their own Merkaba for individual dimensional transit.) (cont.)

2004-12-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

Realization Of Quantum Memory For Light Allows The Extension Of Quantum Communication Far Beyond 100 Km

In the macroscopic classical world, it is possible to copy information from one device into another. We do this everyday, when, for example, we copy files in a computer or we tape a conversation. In the microscopic world, however, it is not possible to copy the quantum information from one system into another one. It can only be transferred, without leaving any trace on the original one. The manipulation and transfer of quantum information is, in fact, a very active field of research in physics and informatics, since it is the basis of all the protocols and algorithms in the fields of quantum communication and computation, which may revolutionize the world of information. In the work published in Nature, November 25, 2004, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen have proposed a scheme to transfer the quantum state of a pulse of light onto a set of atoms and have demonstrated it experimentally. (cont.)

2004-12-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

The automatic writings of Jung

Carl Gustav Jung is notorious for being more “liberal” in his psychology than his friend Freud. But what is less known, is that Jung was more of an alchemist and Gnostic, then a psychotherapist.

...Jung stated that the start of the work was very identical to a possession. “Then it was as if my house began to be haunted. My eldest daughter saw a white figure passing through the room. My second daughter, independently of her elder sister, related that twice in the night her blanket had been snatched away; and that same night my nine-year-old son had an anxiety dream. Around five o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front doorbell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day; the two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open square outside the front door could be seen. Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the doorbell, and not only heard it but saw it moving. We all simply stared at one another.”
With such madness about the house, Jung felt he had to act. He shouted: “For God’s sake, what in the world is this?” Then they cried out in chorus, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.” Over the next three evenings, the book was written, and as soon as he had begun to write, “the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated. The room quieted and the atmosphere cleared. The haunting was over.” (cont.)

2004-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

What ... all orthodox moralists fear is the unfolding of the fifth neurological-rapture circuit, freedom from static imprints, disciplined release of right-lobe ecstasy, the joyful experience of Zen freedom, the spirit of levity which will free individual atoms to float loose from the gene-pool molecule and form higher units in neurological (and physical) Outer Space.
Neuropolitique, 1-56184-012-2

The Coming Atomic Age

A kind of nanotech network-in-exile -- left out in the cold when it comes to government or venture capital funding -- is making plans to fight back in the war for the public's hearts and minds.

This group of nanotech's early visionaries, led by Eric Drexler and the Foresight Institute think tank he founded, have been pushed to the margins of mainstream nanotech thought as commercial interests remake nanotech in their own image. So Drexler, whose seminal 1986 book, "Engines of Creation" first launched nanotech into mainstream public imagination, is fighting back with some new images of his own.

Unveiled recently before a group of true believers in bottom-up molecular assembly (as opposed to products such as stain-free pants and carbon nanotube tennis rackets being sold as "nanotechnology"), the partly finished "Productive Nanosystems: From Molecules to Superproducts" is meant, in part, to show that all this talk of futuristic-sounding molecular manufacturing is capable of producing a real product, too -- someday.

The product: "A billion-processor laptop computer," Drexler says, built atom by atom on a contraption that looks, at least in the animation, a bit like your average office copy machine.

Really, you just plug the thing into a wall socket (yes, the answer to the "out-of-control self-replicating nanobot gray goo" fear is to simply unplug the darn thing; sorry, Michael Crichton), and then something that resembles a nanoscale version of an automobile assembly line clanks out your product.

Tool tips grab individual atoms, conveyor belts with palettes and work pieces move the product down the line as more and more atoms are attached. And none of it so much as commits even the slightest misdemeanor against the laws of physics, say the producers.

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MegaScale Engineering and Nanotechnology

The Far Edge Party

Some new information can be obtained with large telescopes. And, given
really large space-based telescopes, we will be limited only by the amount of
material we want to move and tie up in mirrors. I expect we will resolve
continent-sized features on planets out to 1000 light years or better within a
few years following the breakthrough, and locate the oxygen atmospheres (if any)
out to a much further distance.

But there are real limits to what we can find out with remote sensing, so
someone will have to take a closer look. What is the optimum way to sweep out
the Galaxy and obtain most of the available information? Going out and sending
back information works, but takes too long for my taste. Besides I want to
*see* the wonders of our galaxy, all of them. There are 100-200 billion stars
in our galaxy alone and even with nanotechnology to help it will take a year or
two per star system, not counting travel time between stars. Visiting every
interesting object in serial is literally impossible, since the interesting
places won't last long enough. I don't want to take such a long time looking
over this one small flock of stars that most of them burn out.

The only way clearly available is to explore the Galaxy in parallel. This
is a topic that hard to discuss, even with readers of science fiction. Most of
my friends in the cryonics organizations are very uneasy about xeroxing people.

To explore the Galaxy in parallel, we need to make only a few starships, say
100 and recruit crews for perhaps 10, but we make copies of the crews to fill
all 100. At 1,000 people per ship, and 100 ships (100,000 adventurers) this
would probably be necessary anyway. I doubt there are as many as 10,000 people
in the entire world who would board a starship. Misfits who want to *do*
something as opposed to watching or reading about space exploration are a very
rare compared to the number of *Star Treck* fans. They may not be common even
amoung NSS memebers. An assembler doesn't care what it is making, and unless
there really is some special "vitalizing" force, we won't have to make hard
choices about which way to go--we take all roads (or at least a fair sample of
them).

People have talked about making a copy of themselves and having the copy do
the unpleasant chores. That's silly. A good copy would be indistinguishable
from the original right down to desires. You could neither make a copy to go
visit the stars nor one to stay on Earth that would be happy unless you didn't
care which you did (unlikely) or someone messed with their personalities
(unethical). In fact, I think it would be unethical to distinguish between
copies (a case where the Golden Rule applies in its strongest form). The only
case I can see where copies are justified is a situation where a person really
has no preference between two mutually exclusive choices. The copying process
might best be fixed so as to split the original material in half, so neither of
the individuals coming out of the process would have a better claim to being
"original". The ethical questions about copying people, reprogramming them,
mapping yourself into faster hardware, and the rights of constructed
personalities is a topic I would like to see getting more serious discussion.

Another problem is how to improve ourselves without getting completely lost.
Today the mental modules at the root of our personalities change slowly if at
all. When our deepest desires can be quickly modified with trivial effort, how
much of us will survive? The results of modifying ourselves could be as tragic
as being modified by others.* This and nanotechnology based "super dope" that
make everyone happy but without ambition (or even the desire to eat) are among
the subtle dangers we face. It is time for those of us who are concerned about
our futures to start thinking about these problems.

"There is, at this point in time, no other more elegant, comprehensive, advanced message from the DNA around. The model presented in Exopsychology (aka Info-Psychology) and the more recent Game of Life will be an adequate model for some time to come. The message: Imprint the DNA; tune in to the most fundamental set of directions we know from the miniaturized transceiver intelligence that builds us - and then playfully transcend them, summed up in the acronym SMI²LE for Space Migration, Intelligence increase, Life Extension, a precise statement of the genetic imperative driving us at the leading edge of our accelerating metamorphosis - and, not surprisingly, a precise description of the "gods" that truth, the real humility, requires us to acknowledge that we are. In light of the overwhelming evidence it would be arrogant not to."

Neil Freer

2004-12-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

Law to safeguard religion is no joke, warns Blackadder

Measure to protect Muslims puts free speech in jeopardy, MPs told

Criticising religion is a "fundamental freedom of society", a leading international comedian affirmed last night, as he headed a coalition opposing measures to outlaw the incitement of religious hatred.

Rowan Atkinson, the star of Blackadder, gave an impassioned defence of the right to lampoon religion as he joined Tory, Lib Dem, and Labour backbenchers, lawyers, and academics opposed to part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill - which today gets its second reading.

The government claims the bill would not prevent free speech or religious satire. But Mr Atkinson - who used to deliver mock sermons on the comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News - warned that British society would cease to permit "open and vigorous" debate and adopt "a veneer of tolerance concealing a snakepit of unaired and unchallenged views". At the meeting in Westminster, he insisted that "there should be no subjects about which you cannot make jokes".

There was, he said, a fundamental difference between race - already covered by legislation - and religion. "To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom. And a law that attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas, as long as they are not religious ideas, is a very peculiar law indeed.

"It all points to the promotion of the idea there should be a right not to be offended... In my view, the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended." (cont.)

2004-12-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Can science make Tolkien's The One Ring?

The most notable characteristic of the One Ring is that it turns its wearer invisible. In scientific terms, this means one of two things: either the wearer's index of refraction is reduced to that of air—which is unlikely without major changes in atomic structure—or else light waves are simply diverted around him. (I would say "him or her," except that the historical record shows all bearers of the One Ring to be male.) In fact, NASA and the U.S. Air Force have already experimented with "video camouflage" which places cameras on one side of an object and video screens on the other side. The object "disappears" before our very eyes, like the alien trophy-hunter in Predator, and with the hoped-for advent of projective holography, this technology can only improve.

The One Ring also seems to extend the lifespan of its owner, while causing gradual behavioral changes such as irritability, light-sensitivity, modified diet and megalomania. In fact, people in the vicinity of the Ring are often similarly affected, even if they don't touch it. This effect is consistent with various forms of heavy metal poisoning, combined with a slow release of the chemical superoxide dismutase (SOD), which has been implicated in the long lifespans of certain genetically modified worms. Possibly there is a reservoir in the ring, where liquid mercury is used as a catalyst for the production of SOD from chemicals in the wearer's sweat. This mixture's effects linger for many years after exposure ceases, although the cocktail also appears to be highly and permanently addictive, indicating that it may include a narcotic component as well.
Quantum dots, my precious
Notably, the Ring looks and feels like gold, but isn't. The heat of an ordinary fire can't melt it, although it does cause some glowing letters to appear. To destroy the Ring, you have to throw it into the boiling magma of Mount Doom, which from its description is probably at least 2,000 degrees Celsius. This leads me to believe that the ring is in fact made of silicon (melting point 1,410C), whose surface properties—as discussed in "The Heart of the (Programmable) Matter"—can be dramatically altered through the use of tiny electronic components called quantum dots . In this case, the quantum dots each contain 79 electrons, and behave optically and electrically as though they were atoms of gold. Some of the dots also emit light when excited thermally, which is perfectly consistent with their design and function. (cont.)

2004-12-05T17:07:00.000-08:00

Expansive Thinking
Edited by RU Sirius

As we approach the end of this highly politicized year, I look back on this period of NeoFiles reports with an intense sense of personal satisfaction. This gig has forced me to look at an alternative stream of data. Yes, I remain cognizant of the crimes of state, particularly those of the current administration. But working on these technologically progressive issues consistently reminds me that the human experience isn’t a zero sum game. Artistic creativity, invention, and future forecasting shares the same space and time as war, repression, and Donald Trump’s hit TV series. As H.L. Mencken might have said today, “neo-Puritanism is the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having an expansive thought.”

via Bruce Eisner's Vision Thing

2004-12-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

A history of Mondo 2000

A history of Mondo 2000 : "It had arrived at a particular moment where there was at least a subculture of people in the computer community that were ready for it," remembers Sirius. "At the time there was no competition at all. There was absolutely nothing to compare it to. It talked about how technology was important in our lives at a time when people were in denial about it."

via metafilter

2004-12-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

No Free Lunch: Homepage

11/06/04 Dealing in drugs. The Lancet.
11/04 Medical students' exposure to pharmaceutical marketing: A survey at one U.S. medical school. Academic Medicine.
10/28/04 Doctors and Drug Companies. NEJM.
10/28/04 Financial conflicts of interest in physician relationships with pharmaceutical companies--self regulation in the shadow of federal prosecution. NEJM.
10/12/04 Questions on the $3.8 Billion Drug Ad Business. NY Times.
5/04 What Residents Don't Know about Physician-Pharmaceutical Industry Interactions. Acad Med.
4/19/04 The ethics of pharmaceutical industry relationships with medical students. MJA.
4/17/04 Marketing in the lay media and prescriptions of terbinafine in primary care. BMJ.
4/04 Pharmaceutical advertising in emergency departments. Acad Emer Med.
2/04 Association between industry funding and pro-industry findings in randomized trials. CMAJ.
2/04 Will lower drug prices jeoparidize drug research? A policy fact sheet. AJOB.
1/04 Interactions between emergency medicine programs and the pharmaceutical industry. AEM.
1/04 Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors position on interactions between emergency medicine residents and the pharmaceutcial industry. AEM.

2004-12-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

American Antigravity

Lifter-4 Outdoor Performance
Outdoor testing of the Lifter 4 demonstrated some of the many strengths of the 4-foot long, multi-cell design. The Lifter 4 displayed good thrust and payload capacity, and was stable enough to allow tethered operation at a full 8-feet off the test-surface. (cont.)

2004-12-03T23:26:00.000-08:00

PureJPEG
Filter Unnecessary JPEG Data
Remove Unnecessary Disclosure And Reduce The Size Of Your Images
Download PureJPEG (Win32 Command Line)

Introduction

PureJPEG is an easy to use, high performance utility to remove unnecessary data from images you email or post on the net, without affecting the image quality whatsoever (no decompression/recompression is performed in the filtration), removing such extraneous information as:

* Digital camera technical data (EXIF)
* Comment blocks
* JPEG thumbnails
* Application blocks

While you should never use this application on your personal image archive (where this information may actually serve a purpose in some scenarios), it is generally worthwhile to purify JPEG files when sharing images, or when posting images online.
Usage

PureJPEG is a command line application, and has three primary methods of execution.

* purejpeg.exe : When no parameters are provided, files to process are taken from the console input, separated by linefeeds, until an EOF (Ctrl-Z) is encountered. Files are overwritten. This is most commonly used to pipe file lists between applications
* purejpeg.exe [infilename] : When one parameter is provided, the parameter is used as the input file, and is subsequently used as the output file -- the original file is overwritten with the filtered output
* purejpeg.exe [infilename] [outfilename] : When two parameters are provided, the first parameter is used as the input file, and the second is used as the output file

Examples

* purejpeg.exe dogs.jpg : Filter extraneous information out of dogs.jpg in the current directory, overwriting the original only if no errors occur
* purejpeg.exe dogs.jpg dogs_filtered.jpg : Filter extraneous information out of dogs.jpg, leaving the original while writing the new filtered output to dogs_filtered.jpg
* dir /B /S /A-D *.jpg purejpeg : This is a more complex piping for more advanced users. The first command (preceding the ) is a standard directory and subdirectory listing of all jpeg files in the current directory or any directory below it, with parameters causing the command to only list filenames without additional output. This filelist is piped to the pureJPEG application which very rapidly filters them one by one. If an error is encountered an error message will be emitted and the process will continue with the next file

2004-12-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

Reflecting Merope

In the well known Pleiades star cluster, a star's light is slowly destroying this wandering cloud of gas and dust. Above, the star Merope lies just off the upper left edge of this picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. The cloud, known as IC 349, and the star have been in existence for millions of years. In the past 100,000 years, however, part of the cloud has by chance moved so close to the star - only 3,500 times the Earth-Sun distance - that the starlight itself is having a very dramatic effect. Pressure of the star's light significantly repels the dust in the reflection nebula with smaller dust particles being repelled more strongly. Eventually parts of the dust cloud have become stratified and point toward Merope, with the closest particles being the most massive and so the least affected by the radiation pressure. A longer-term result will be the general destruction of the dust by the energetic starlight.

2004-12-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

The DNA construction set

DNA 'Velcro' binds nanoparticles

18:52 02 December 04

Strands of DNA have been used to fasten - and then separate - nanoparticles in experiments that could lead to the development of fundamentally "self-constructing" materials.

Christof Niemeyer and colleagues at the University of Dortmund, Germany, used sections of artificially synthesised DNA to attach gold nanoparticles together before separating them again.

DNA consists of two complementary strands that bind together depending on the chemical "bases" on either strand. Attaching nanoparticles by appending them to complementary strands of DNA is a tried and tested technique, already used in some protein sensing systems. But, until now, no one has shown that it is possible to separate the strands again afterwards.

Selectively binding nanoparticles could provide a way to construct complex nanostructures piece by piece, using different DNA strands to add different nanoparticles. These materials could have novel electrical and optical properties that cannot currently be obtained using conventional chemistry. (cont.)

2004-12-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

Weird Pixie's Friday Night Listenin' Hour
Spotlight: Silver Apples

In addition to their album The Garden, you can also listen to several others
(36 tracks in all) provided online, in-full (RealAudio format)...

via VitaminC

Silver Apples: The Band
Formed in 1967 as an electronic rock duo featuring Dan Taylor on drums and Simeon on a homemade synthesizer consisting of 12 oscillators and an assortment of sound filters, telegraph keys, radio parts, lab gear and a variety of second hand electronic junk, the band quickly gained a reputation as New York's leading underground musical expression. First full-length album was released in 1968 on KAPP Records. The self-titled album rode the Billboard Magazine Top 100 list for 10 weeks. The first cut on this album, Oscillations, was released as a single, and made the Top Ten list in numerous cities. One music critic wrote, "What's so amazing is that they make absolutely mind shattering music with all this junky equipment."

"Simple weird magic. It's pop from outer space."
New York Post