It’s back to the future today.
- Channel 4 and the makers of a popular documentary claiming to debunk global warming are accused by a distinguished scientist of grossly distorting and misrepresenting his views on climate change.
- Professor Carl Munsch’s letter to Channel 4 can be read here, it’s an eye-opener.
- Durkin and his team are also accused of manipulating and faking graph data.
- More than 1 billion people living in low-lying areas are at threat from a sudden surge in sea level.
- The low prices enjoyed by consumers at British supermarkets are paid for by poor wages, job insecurity and a denial of basic human rights in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to a new report.
- An open-source software activist crashed Bill Gates’ speech at Peking University in China on Friday. That’s what you call “Gates-crashing”.
- The activist may soon be breaking rocks in Tibet, but his brave actions have sparked a vigorous debate in China about open-source software.
- Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says he is keen to convince China to lift its ban.
- Microsoft will offer a stripped-down Windows OS for only $3 to developing and third-world nations, and also low-income communities in developed countries.
- Google again strikes fear into the hearts of those who value their right to privacy by launching a new service that will more easily collect users’ web surfing habits. Our news searching efforts here at TDG will be enough to cause a meltdown at Google.
- Britain’s top health protection watchdog says children are at risk from an electronic smog caused by WiFi.
- The lucky few who get to observe the Earth from space say they are moved to tears and reminded how precious the Earth is. Send Durkin to space.
- Do not however help Australian actor Gyton Grantley get a ride on Virgin Galactic — he’s falsely promoted a children’s charity on his website to help solicit donations for his own egotistical space trip.
- Software billionaire and space tourist Charles Simonyi has returned from his voyage to the international space station.
- The European Space Agency is preparing for a human mission to Mars, while NASA has its eye on the Jupiter system, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan.
- A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might be formed by the collective sigh of several supermassive black holes. We’re in trouble if they belch.
- Another article from PhysOrg says this could be evidence that Black Holes could be the source of elements that make life possible.
- Amazing Early Jurassic finds at a Utah site include a dinosaur that ate sharks.
- The Step Pyramid at Saqqara is under intensive care, and Zahi is nowhere to be found in this report on a restoration scheme to save Egypt’s oldest royal stone complex.
- The shiny new Giza Plateau Coast Club has released brilliant photographs of the Tomb of Osiris, including the blue-coloured stone of the sarcophagus, a colour mysteriously not shown by the 1999 Fox tv special.
- Rockart depicting an unprecedented collection of powerful ancestral beings and mythology has been found on an enormous slab of sandstone in the heart of Australia’s Wollemi wilderness. A shorter article with a photograph.
- Gary David’s Orion Zone website has a new gallery of petroglyphs, from Grapevine Canyon in southern Nevada.
- Here’s a grisly photo gallery of the bones of 24 decapitated children who were sacrificed almost 1000 years ago. Also at Tula are incredible 15-foot-high stone warrior figures.
- Outrage has been sparked by rumours that Ireland’s 2000-year-old Janus statue will be removed from its home and taken to a Belfast museum.
- India is one of many countries increasingly scrutinising New York’s international antiquities trade for looted artifacts and stolen treasures.
- Research on the island of Crete suggests the Minoan civilisation was destroyed by a massive tsunami almost 3’500-years-ago, possibly inspiring tales of Atlantis.
- A recent DNA-based survey suggests the roots of Etruscans, a pre-Roman civilisation in Italy, lie in Anatolia.
Thanks Kat and Gary.
Quote of the Day:
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.
Dr Albert Hoffman