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News Briefs 23-08-2005

Tell us a lie, you’re the piano man…

  • Mystery ‘piano man‘ (who on closer inspection doesn’t seem to live up to his name) speaks up and is sent home to his parents in Germany.
  • Editor explains reasons for Intelligent Design article, and the witch-hunt that followed.
  • Allison Dubois sees dead people.
  • Sleep paralysis leaves people fearing for their sanity – and their lives.
  • Synthesiser pioneer Dr Robert Moog passes away, aged 71.
  • Scientists find a way around using embryonic stem cells.
  • Mars rover nears summit of the hill it has been climbing all year.
  • 2029: A Near-Miss Odyssey when Apophis skims the Earth.
  • Hubble scans for Moon base locations. ‘Future’ locations that is…
  • Plans for the world’s first silent aircraft unveiled.
  • NUFORC’s Peter Davenport speaks at Hopskinsville Green Man festival. More on the festival here.
  • NASA images show ancient bridge between India and Sri Lanka?
  • Peruvian pyramids rival the pharaohs’.
  • Mexico digs up Aztec sacrificial stone.
  • Our ‘junk DNA‘ may be quite helpful after all.
  • The cold, hard facts about cryonics…literally.
  • Japan aims for 3D TV by 2020. Perhaps the rest of us should focus on making TV watchable.
  • Chimpanzee culture confirmed. I could have told you that…do you see chimps watching reality TV?
  • Mugging goes hi-tech – man arrested in Japan for getting software bots to beat up and rob characters in online game, going on to exchange the virtual possessions for real-life cash. Mis-ter Anderson?
  • Student uncovers lost Einstein paper.
  • Researchers develop mass-production of carbon nanotube sheets.
  • Synthetic biologists attempt to create life from scratch. I wonder if one of their subjects at University is devoted to practice at saying “It’s alive, it’s alive” manically?
  • Scientists unveil plans for a digital library of all life on Earth. I recommend putting ‘Don’t Panic’ on the front cover.
  • VR goggles heal the scars of war.
  • But video games are linked to aggression. Hmm, so going by the previous story, the only decent VR thing is a simulation of war? That just makes me so angry, I’m off to play some Counterstrike.
  • New Google toolbar watches as you work, and gives you real-time help. If the CIA doesn’t have its fingers in Google and other search companies, it won’t take them long…
  • There’s no stopping them! Evangelical scientists move on from refuting evolution, now debunking gravity with their Intelligent Falling theory……

Quote of the Day:

Before Kuhn, most scientists followed the place-a-stone-in-the-bright-temple-of-knowledge tradition, and would have told you that they hoped, above all, to lay many of the bricks, perhaps even the keystone, of truth’s temple. Now most scientists of vision hope to foment revolution. We are, therefore, awash in revolutions, most self-proclaimed.

Stephen Jay Gould

Editor
  1. Piano Man
    So Billy Joel’s finally checked out of rehab?

    I saw this on the news last night. All the German kid did was draw a piano — who the hell decided drawing a piano made him a piano virtuoso?!?! Apparently he only hit one key when shown a real piano too. It’s a classic example of the media at its worst.

  2. Awake Paralysis
    I’ve suffered Sleep Paralysis a few times.

    I remember vividly, in 1998, I awoke paralysed. I was on my side, facing the wall, and I could sense someone in the room. They were sticking something sharp into my back, I could feel a sharp stabbing pain, like a needle. I tried screaming out, but I could only choke a muffled noise. I managed to turn my head, and kneeling beside my bed (I slept on a futon) — or perhaps it was very short — was a humanoid figure in a brown hooded robe. Its features were hidden in the shadows of its cowl. It was sticking a long, sharp needle-like object into my back. That’s all I can remember of the experience.

    In 1999, I started reading books about alien abductions. I picked up Whitley Streiber’s Breakthrough on a whim. Imagine my shock when I discovered other people have had the exact same experience! Even the description of the figure with the metal needle matched my experience.

    In late 2000, I watched a documentary about sleep paralysis. The experts said that most paralysis attacks can possibly be explained in medical terms, but there was a minority of cases that could not be explained — cases where people saw a figure, in a brown hooded robe, in the room. A religious man might see an angel or a demon. Someone else might see an alien Grey. An ancient Celt might have seen a fairy. What the researchers couldn’t explain is the perfectly identical description of a humanoid figure in a brown hooded robe, their features hidden by a cowl. This experience makes up a very small percentage of known sleep paralysis cases.

    Is the apparition real or imaginary? If it’s imaginary, then why do only a small group of people see exactly the same thing? Even the experts can’t answer that.

    1. Oh Rick, you didn’t tell us!
      Rick, why didn’t you tell us about this before?
      My goodness that must have been absolutely dreadful for you.I know some people would never recover from an experience like that.
      I have had sleep paralysis a couple of times but I was just concerned because I couldn’t move down one side of my body.I called out for help and no one came.
      The next morning I thought I might have had a seizure and asked the doctor.She just laughed and was so certain that it was nothing that I did not worry.
      With me though, I felt wide awake and the light was on but I couldn’t move, but the light couldn’t have been on as it was off in the morning.
      I imagine that if I had seen someone in the room and I couldn’t move I would have died from shock.
      There must be an ancestor memory or something going on that doctors don’t know about to make that happen.
      That’s why I have never ridiculed people who say they have been abducted by aliens even though I always thought it was a bit bizarre.
      Some, I felt, might have been hopping on the bandwagon but others, specially those who won’t talk about it must feel terrible.

      shadows

      1. But wait, there’s more …
        When I was about 15, I had a strange experience. I woke up to find myself sitting up in bed, banging on the window. The light was on and my parents and sisters were standing in the doorway asking me what was going on. Apparently they had been woken by me yelling out, “You’re not taking me! Go away! You’re not taking me again!”, and I had also been banging on the window fiercely. It’s a wonder I didn’t smash the window, they said. The next day, my father found the fly-wire screen for my window down the back garden about 50 yards away from my bedroom. The screen is on the outside of the window, and since my window had been locked all night (it was the first thing we checked when my family woke me up), there’s no way I could have knocked it off during my fierce window banging. The garden outside my window was also undisturbed — there were no footprints in the damp earth, and none of the plants were broken. No hooded figures sticking needles in my back were seen during this experience.

        1. Rick don’t tell me any more!
          Rick, you’re going to have me a nervous wreck if you keep this up.Have you ever thought that you might be psychic?
          Didn’t you see a UFO?
          You haven’t told us about that yet.Now you have experienced 3 things that are outside the norm.
          There must be something going on.
          Those stories are soooo spooky.

          shadows

  3. Intelligent falling
    I know all about this Intelligent Falling business.That’s what happened to me on Saturday when I went to vote.
    Now bear in mind that I had to vote because some numbnut tickled the peter and had to resign and a by-election was called.
    In my electorate.
    So I went to vote, feeling very put upon because I hate the way they do it here, herding you one by one as if you are cattle.
    When I was leaving I opened the car door and went to get in, completely falling off the kerb as I did so and breaking my ankle.
    I don’t think I was guilty of Intelligent Falling but I think Someone else was gulty of Intelligent Pushing me.
    Bloody politicians, I hate them all.

    So there really was a person called Moog.I always thought that was an adjective, something like mood but not mood.

    So the Piano Man wasn’t what everyone thought.What a bummer! I was hoping he’d be from another universe or something.Boring!
    Who wants to hear about some person who isn’t what we all projected onto him to be.

    Great stuff, thank you Greg,

    shadows

  4. re TV, 3D or otherwise
    Some programmes that are worth watching would be a good start – 3D isn’t going to make the present offering any more appealing any more than plasma screens will.

    Regards, Kathrinn

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