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News Briefs 04-06-2014

By red pill junkieon

Thanks to Susan & King Babar

Quote of the Day:

““Were you on the square?” the immigration official asked.
“I was,” Chan said, expecting to be detained.
Frowning, the official leaned in.
“Then go and tell the world,” the official said softly, before waving him through.”

~Excerpt from the article The Tiananmen Massacre: 25 Years Later, Three Students Tell What They Saw

red pill junkie
Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the 'moron' part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or 'paranormal' --a term he personally detests... When he's not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City. absurdbydesign.com
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21 Comments

  1. The “Russian Yeti”
    The “Russian Yeti” documentary on Discovery Channel was fabulous – one of the best shows I have ever seen on the Yeti. There is a pile of information about the Dyaltov Pass incident that I had never seen before – much of it dragged out of Russian archives with doggedness and persistence as they say.

    1. i don’t know ._.
      I still think they were part of a Russian/Communist experiment the cooked there bodies from the inside or something. I don’t think it were aliens, but I’m not sure, knowing how horrible humans can be to other humans, I want to believe it’s Yeti. I DVR’d this and haven’t had time to watch it.

    2. Mixed reviews
      I haven’t seen it yet, but a listener of Micah Hanks’ Gralien Report wrote to him to say it was even worse than the mermaid mockumentary they did a while back :-/

      I might torrent it one day, to make my own opinion.

  2. Neil
    The comment section is more entertaining than the article. But that aside, yes “people” are stupid but not completely hopeless. Neil is starting to fade into the district of lost thought that Richard Dawkins rents a home in. To say that beings of another world don’t take an interest in us suggests that we shouldn’t take any interest in them – stop all science right here and go home 😛

    1. Neil on Grass funnier than Neil de Grasse
      Yeah, IMO it was a very idiotic thing to say; and it also shows this persistent notion that there’s just ONE worthy form of intelligence —the one akin to people like Neil.

      But even if our own species one can find several types of intelligence —spatial intelligence, creative intelligence, ‘street smart’ intelligence, etc— one can only imagine the diversity we could find out there in the Cosmos.

      Which brings me back to my notion that perhaps aliens find lonely farmers in Wichita far more interesting than charismatic science popularizers 😉

      1. The most fascinating part of
        The most fascinating part of the Russian Yeti documentary was the interviews with the local natives near the pass who had a deep knowledge of the local Yeti scene and heatedly advised the students not to camp on that mountain.
        There was also a photo of a yeti like creature on the recovered film of one of the murdered students, and there was a diary entry to the effect that “now we know the snow man is real.”

        I don’t know how these other people can be so blase about this film – it was extraordinary. There was however a sort of “reality based” part 2 that sprang from part 1 that was somewhat more suspect. That was called “Russian Yeti- The Killer Lives.” You must watch the first part first because the second part which was a slightly cheesy “adventure” back to the Dyaltov Pass area was inspired by the new stuff that had been discovered in the first part. The “Killer Lives” though included alleged Yeti nests in the back of caves in the area, and a sort of phony sounding generic Yeti call that I have heard before in other farces such as the Godawful “Mountain Monsters” series on TV. Watch the first part.

        1. http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/
          http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/A-Haunting/70157519?strkid=1735604577_8_0&strackid=6b5acc9eef235414_8_srl&trkid=222336

          This is a bit off subject but in looking over The Discover Channel’s Netflix offering to see if “Russian Yeti” might be there I ran into a total CD’d archive of the best shows of the excellent “A Haunting.” Some of these are very fine dramatic reenactments of very juicy hauntings along with interviews of the actual participants. In Casa de los Muertos you can see a very young Amy Allen being consulted as an expert before she in later years became the star of The Dead Files.

        2. Recovered film
          My dear emlong, you & I have debated this point numerous times, but here we go again:

          How do you know the ‘recovered footage’ was not fabricated by the network?

          I don’t know if you listened to The Paracast interview with Lloyd Auerbach, a parapsychologist who has studied hauntings & paranormal phenomena for many years; he’s also been involved with several ‘reality’ shows involving ghostbusters, and during the show he’s very explicit in saying the producers in these shows USE SPECIAL EFFECTS to simulate paranormal activity when need be.

          I should also point out Lloyd is NOT a debunker in any shape or form; he’s convinced ghosts are the spirits of dead people, and during the show mentioned some fascinating cases which accept that viewpoint.

          1. Of course they use “special
            Of course they use “special effects.” They are reenacting what witnesses have related. You do understand that the series “A Haunting” is not like the real time ghost busting shows? “A Haunting” is dramatic reconstructions of hauntings along with interviews from multiple witnesses who simultaneously saw with their own eyes the same phenomena.
            The special effects (and what else could they be for dramatic reenactment) may or may not be at times exaggerated. I certainly don’t watch this series for the quality of the special effects, and I resent the schlocky sound track. The real meat is the interviews with the witnesses that are interwoven into the show.
            That is what is well worth wading through the trite production values.
            When I brought up Amy Allen’s appearance in Casa de Los Muertos she was not real time ghost busting – she was being brought in as a consultant about the case and contributing her ideas about the mechanics of the haunting – a subject about which she is in my opinion a foremost expert. She was also brought in as a consultant on “A Haunting In Georgia.”
            Allens’s show The Dead Files by the way uses no footage of spectral phenomena either. That is just not how the that show is put together. You would have to watch at least one to understand their format.

          2. Recreations
            I was not talking about the recreations in “A Haunting.” I was talking about the so-called ‘found footage’ shown in the Dyatlov program, AND the tricks often employed in the ghost-hunting reality shows.

          3. What “found footage” in the
            What “found footage” in the Dyaltov show? The Yeti looking dude was part of a string of negatives found in a victim’s camera and were examined by a photographic forensics person, but that was not really some sort of definitive “evidence” of anything although the diary entry about the “snow man” was quite compelling. Far more compelling was the medical forensics performed on the bodies and scene in general, and then as I mentioned earlier the interviews with the local natives about their longstanding legends concerning the “Menk” (their word for a Yeti-like creature) and their begging the hikers not to go to the pass because of what they knew of the creature’s propensity for extreme violence.
            Look, this is just “interesting” to me. It wouldn’t hold up in court if that is what you mean. You will never see any single piece of alleged evidence about which you can say there is no chance of it being tampered with or faked, but does that stop us from looking? I did not, however, get an impression that the archived s material had been tampered with, but of course it could have. We always look at things with skepticism. I am just saying “looky here too.” For anyone interested in the subject there are definitely things to file away in this show even if the files are eventually thrown away. It is always worth looking at everything that comes across the transom.

          4. Wait a minute are you not
            Wait a minute are you not making a distinction between part 1 and the second part (Killer Lives) with the pretty Russian broad and her fearless adventurer on the snow machine who get into adventures and misadventures along the way? I am making a distinction between the two shows though the interviews with the local natives did take place in Killer Lives. In show # one I don;t recall what “special effects” were present. Perhaps I am unusual in that even if a show is enshrouded in schlocky stuff I will still tout it on the basis of only a few good things in it. I cannot castigate a show because it is 80 percent schlock as long as 20 percent is truly interesting. A lot of these stories get bent by producers looking for certain expected contemporary dramatic titillations, but in spite of themselves they still have to cover some information that is actually interesting and compelling. I am just saying there are fragments of that here.
            In a nutshell, I was taking issue with a perhaps misconstrued “Don’t bother watching” tenor to the critique.

          5. Negatives
            I’m suggesting the so-called ‘negatives’ found in the camera were completely made up by Discovery. In all the years I’ve read about that case —though I don’t profess to be an expert— I’d never heard of such footage; I’ve never seen them mentioned in the literature. ‘Til now that Discovery, with their track record of fabricating false vintage footage showing giant sharks & mermaids, decided to make a show about the incident.

            That’s why, if I’m going to see these programs, I’ll do so with a huge grain of salt.

          6. The Mermaids series was
            The Mermaids series was understood to be a fabrication and fantasy from the start – at least that is how and I some friends took it to be. The footage was obviously CGI. It was an exercise in CGI enhanced fantasy – sort of like Werner Herzog’s sly mockumentary of the the Nessie legend. I haven’t watched the Megalodon series.
            All of the so called “educational” channels that cluster around the same sector of my DirectTV satellite channel show a huge variety of stuff some of it at cross purposes editorially – there is a wide spectrum of inputs into these channels, and if you allow one flaky show to indict the entire channel then that is an oversight. One has to use discretion always and just assume that the programming is going to come from both left and right field as well as center.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Loch_Ness

            However, there has been a shift to a “blurring” between reality and fabrication it is true. Shoes like Duck Dynasty which are ostensibly reality shows are heavily scripted. Most of the reality shows are pre-scripted. It could be argued that media is slowly insinuating the blurring into everything it shows with the ultimate agenda being what the first Bushistas in the early 2000’s used to chant among themselves in private – “We make reality.” Watching them attempt that can be just as fascinating as watching “reality.” It’s like watching criminals in actions – you can hardly take your eyes off it even though you know that law is being broken, but watching how they break the law and for what reason is interesting too.

          7. Megalodon
            Gonna jump in here. The megalodon series was horrible. Absolutely horrible. Not just because it made sharks look bad but because the images that they used were horribly photoshopped. Granted they did have an edit at the end of the credits that stated that the images were dramatized and faked, but most viewers didn’t stay for the credits and thus took it as real (if you think an image of a Nazi U-boat casually floating by a giant fin would have gone unnoticed, then you are daft, not to mention they chose a photo I remember being in my 5th grade text book). I’m sure you could do some digging online and find out all about the anger that ensued. My problem with the series however was not the bad artwork [surprisingly] but the boring story telling. It was so boring! I love the megalodon and modern day sharks. I am lucky enough to have 2 of their massive teeth in my collection and I find them and modern sharks (well, technically none of them are modern they’ve all existed for millions of years) absolutely fascinating and an important part of our oceans’ ecosystem. This series failed to clarify that for me and focused to much on the “monster” part of it. That…is not how you help sharks.

            None of the educational channels are educational anymore and are starting to focus on things that get them ratings and that’s it. Discovery doesn’t care what really happened to those Russians on that mountain, they just want the ratings that came from saying the word “Yeti.” And when you get down to it, that’s all these shows are about. I personally don’t think a Yeti killed those hikers, I think it was a government plot. I like to first off NOT blame the animal, albeit bear or Yeti or wolf or whatever, for the tragedy. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen that way, we don’t know. I’m also not saying that these cryptids aren’t out there. I think there is every bit of possibility they are and will surface as time goes on…maybe.

          8. Wholesale indicting of The
            Wholesale indicting of The Discovery Channel because part of its fare is “fantastic” is not very fair. A lot of the viewing audience now is hep to the fantasy programming and was probably not taken in by megalodon either because for one thing a megalodon roaming the oceans would have been very hard to miss – just the debris from all the chewed up whales would have given it away long ago. Be that as it may, I still recommend the Russian yeti series, and people can figure it out on their own.
            “Mountain Monsters” is another case in point. Whether or not the intention of the producers is “serious” the show is very obviously ridiculous – they never will catch a monster especially in those goofy log traps and absurd cage traps they are always building. Even though some of the cryptids they go in search of are probably as real as paranormal cryptids can be real, the group of stooges engaged on Mountain Monsters are in no danger of catching one – nor shooting one. I watched 3 of the shows just to see if any of their firearms were ever shot. None of them were. I am sure they are not loaded weapons because there would be too much danger of them shooting one another as they careen across the landscape – most of them are obese and always taking tumbles – it is clearly a farce.
            One does have to be discriminating of course, but one does also have to “look.” Otherwise, something interesting might be missed.
            Ninety five percent of the “Alien” shows on H2 are also fairly ridiculous, but there are tidbits that are worth examining. It can be hard to sit through The Greek going on about ancient aliens, but there are smidgeons of information that compel. Likewise “America Unearthed” is mostly bad, but not all of it, so I sit through it and glean what I can.
            “The Dead Files” and “Ghost Adventures” – both Discovery Channel productions – are still top notch. Amy Allen and her sidekick private investigator are uncannily accurate, and The Sophomores led by Zak Bagan on Ghost Adventures just get more and more proficient at what they do and have also advanced the technology hugely over the years.

          9. Shots fired
            You are right emlong, not ALL of the shows are pandering or ridiculous. But you are also right that a lot are. Actually I have watch more than 3 of Mountain Monsters and they have shot in 3 separate episodes. One was the season finale of the first season with the Lizard Man and the giant bear episode which was last week. They also had another but I can’t remember what they were hunting, but it was in season 2. It might be they don’t shoot first and ask questions later because of environmental laws protecting certain animals. If they shot something that turned out to be a protected animal out of hunting season they could get a pretty hefty fine. I don’t know the laws in the area though, but usually if you feel a dangerous animal is approaching you with force you have the right to put it down by law. That part however is debatable, assuming what they saw was actually out there.

            I am actually watching the Yeti show now as I type from my DVR. It is not bad certainly not as bad as some other things I’ve seen and certainly more interesting than Mountain. I like that they do cover the many theories that go behind this tragedy and don’t focus on just one before going to the Yeti. It’s worth the watch.

            I watch some of the Alien shows just to laugh and have an argument with my TV. Some of their points are just so stupid I have to try to defend logic. I can’t knock America Unearthed as I watch it too and as someone who has found things that can’t be explained away I am always searching for people who want answers. Actually the bull carving stone on that show was on sale on ebay a while back for like $10,000, but it disappeared the next day so I’m not sure if it was real or someone stole the images from the show and tried to scam people.

            If you want, here is a link to someone on ask.com asking if Mountain Monsters is faked and getting a response from Trapper’s (one of the hosts) son. He doesn’t really explain why it isn’t fake though:

            http://www.ask.com/answers/391023481/is-mountain-monsters-show-on-destination-channel-real-or-fake

          10. Asking Trapper simply if
            Asking Trapper simply if it isn’t faked doesn’t get us anywhere. In a sense that everything you see on the screen isn’t faked it’s not faked, but my impression of the monsters is that everything seen on thermals looks pretty much the same. There is also this one-call-fits-all monster vocalization that is pretty darn funny to hear from show to show. Their “traps” are just spectacularly ridiculous. When they catch a monster let me know, but I bet they never will. All the shows end with something to the effect that “Dang, we got so close that time.” I wonder if that show is not actually making underhanded fun of the cryptid thing by making it seem the province of goofy and laughable clowns. With that show as with some others the most interesting part is the interviews with the locals who claim to have seen the cryptids – some of them are very convincing, but the chances of catching a monster with a 5 piece band clanging through the woods and doing pratfalls every few minutes is slim to none.

            If they actually catch a monster that will be a humbling experience for me, but I am not holding my breath.

          11. Point being to all of this?
            Point being to all of this? TV is a mine field, but still worth traversing at times.

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