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News Briefs 05-03-2015

By red pill junkieon

In light of our recent incidence of collective missing time –how else to explain we’re already in March!– today’s news have a little more UFO content than normal. Enjoy.

Thanks to Chuckycabra and a Baby Duck.

Quote of the Day:

“They need magic. That’s why. They’re taught from the very beginning, when they’re taught about Santa Claus, and angels, and devils, and demons out of the earth and into the sky. They’re told all this fanciful stuff as small children, and they get to believe that. And they want that to be theirs, that kind of magic to visit them. And they want to—pardon me [ noisily sneezes]. Ah yes, that shows my respect for them, so there.”

~James Randi, ‘splaining why ignorant people like to believe in paranormal lies [/sarcasm]

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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30 Comments

  1. James Randi ‘splaining ignornant “believers”
    “They need magic. That’s why. They’re taught from the very beginning, when they’re taught about Santa Claus, and angels, and devils, and demons out of the earth and into the sky. They’re told all this fanciful stuff as small children, and they get to believe that. And they want that to be theirs, that kind of magic to visit them. And they want to—pardon me [ noisily sneezes]. Ah yes, that shows my respect for them, so there.”

    …said the man who himself believed his own rectum was a perfectly wonderful place to put other men’s genitalia.

    (Yeah, let it rain down. My point, and I had one, was that one man’s ridiculous and even repugnant belief is another’s perfectly natural practice. But I understand Someone Must Be Seen To Pay, so go ahead.)

    1. well…….
      Square in the black, there.

      Randi is due for quite a comeuppance. I dislike him intently, not so much for his atheist view(s), but for his whole adolescent attitude. He is, to my mind, a nasty little man.

      But I look forward to seeing him at his funeral. He’ll be laying there in his casket, all dressed up and no where to go. 🙂

    2. Mmmmmmmmm…
      I’d have to disagree with you on this one. It’s not about aligning with some santimonious PC policy, but homosexuality is neither a “belief” nor a “choice.” It’s a way of life, pure and simple.

      (Now, that could certainly open a potentially interesting discussion on whether some people are “born” to be skeptics, because they’re less sensitive to things and energies so-called psychics might be more atuned to…)

      The reason I chose that particular paragraph as my quote of the day, it’s because it highlighted a strange cognitive dissonance I myself perceive in the modern skeptic movement: On the one hand they go after psychics because –they claim– they want to protect gullible people against charlatans and swindler; while at the same time showing a worrisome amount of CONTEMPT for said gullible people they claim to be working for!

  2. Race
    I am so tired of seeing discussions about “racism” and problems with “race”.

    The thing is, there is only one race: Human. Everything else is an artificial construct ginned up by folks who want to divide us up into groups, and pit us against each other. It’s how they gain power and hold it. The current US administration is a perfect example of this, and the Democrat party has a long a sullied history of using ethnic differences to further their individual and collective ambitions.

    It’s way part time that we removed questions about “race” from job applications, census forms, school admissions forms, etc. It’s no different than using hyphens to establish your heritage. “African-American” (what about the North Africans?) Irish-American, etc, are all repugnant to me. You are either an American, or you are not. It really is that simple.

    The best way for these United states (and any nation, really) to deal with ethnic issues is to stop discussing them. Treat everyone as equal, and hold people responsible for their own actions. It also requires us to eliminate welfare programs for all but the disabled and truly needy, and start reminding people once more, as we used to, that YOU are responsible for providing for yourself and your family. That doesn’t take away from our own responsibilities as neighbors, parishoners, etc, to help where and when we can, but it’s high time that every country severely cut back the dole and held people responsible for themselves. It really is that simple.

    1. Randi’s best comeuppance will
      Randi’s best comeuppance will happen in his post death state when all will become clear. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Randi’s ghost became one of those troublesome ones – always hanging around and making life difficult for us here once again?

    2. “You are either an American, or you’re not”
      Ah, but then what about those who have dual citizenship, and migh feel allegiance for 2 different countries? 😉

      Allegiances designated by lines drawn in some map are just as imaginary as racial categorizations.

    3. the only people who define each other as a race…
      …have a problem with race. Go to the comment section under any YouTube video and you will see many people saying THAT’S RACIST yet most of them are 12 year olds who don’t seem to know what it really means or how calling someone a racist can be just as judgmental. Parents really need to teach their kids because the internet isn’t helpful and teachers are afraid to talk to their students out of being sued.

      I think it’s cool to have ‘biracial’ twins. It just shows how amazing genetics really are! Must be hard to go through life though and have to explain that, Yes, this really is my sister.

  3. Tao Te Ching
    We are born gentle and weak, but at death are stiff and hard.
    Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
    At their death they are withered and dry.

    Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
    The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

    Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
    A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

    The hard and strong will fail.
    The soft and weak will overcome.

    I find it really hard to believe anyone who doesn’t have flexible beliefs. As the above says “The stiff and unbending is the disciple of death”.

  4. Natural Born Discriminator
    I can tell the difference between the “bi-racial twins” (probably only because of the hair styles rather than faces), but I couldn’t pick out the odd green square. Do I need a new computer monitor or brain re-training? Do you think they “colorized” the Gate of Babylon? Horrors!

    Is it ok for Americans to think of the rest of the world as “fellow Americans”? Has America’s insane “Vanilla Sky” culture become that invasive? Times are indeed dire! Well, at least the French and the Aussies still know how to live (ahem). Please tell me they haven’t also succumbed to watching “Are We Alone?” week on Science Channel (haha).

          2. “Ch’ooj”
            That’s the name for ‘blue’ in Maya.

            Don’t know if it was actually used by the ancient Mayas, though 😉

  5. X-Files and America’s obsession with conspiracy theories
    The author is wrong about one thing, America’s obsession with conspiracy theories began with President Kennedy’s assassination, which pre-dated Watergate by a decade. We were already full-blown into a conspiracy driven world view by the time Nixon was first elected President. I wish opinion mongers had a slightly better grasp of social and cultural history. Sigh.

    1. Even before then…….
      There was a small, but vocal, percentage of folks who believed that FDR conspired with Churchill to allow Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and thus force America’s entry into WWII.

      The majority of Americans felt that Hitler was Europe’s problem and that the country should not, once more, become involved in a war there. Selling arms & equipment was one thing, but actually going to war in Europe was quite another.

      FDR, the theory goes, knew that Europe would likely be lost to Hitlerism if the US didn’t also get involved, turning the war into one of attrition that Germany couldn’t possibly win.

      The conspiracy folks claim that FDR knew well in advance through Naval (and other) intelligence that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor. He decided, it is claimed, tp let the attack proceed knowing that it would brinf the US into conflict with Japan, and that Hitler, because of his pact(s) with Japan, would also declare war on the US.

      Thus it became a “hold on” in the Pacific, with a “Germany First” plan in Europe.

      It’s all bunkum, but to this day there are die-hards who claim to somehow “know” that this is what really happened.

        1. well…….
          It started shortly after WWII ended. The seeds were planted in late ’42 and by late ’44, and through 1945, there was a small but very vocal voice of dissidents in these United States who were upset at FDR/Truman and what they considered war profiteering.

          Most of these folks were from the “America First!” party and wanted no part in a world war, especially in Europe. Their anger was fueled by mounting US casualties coupled with rationing at home and what they considered too much overreach by the government, etc.

          Anyway, after the war it started building and there’s still a small but solid group that believes that FDR purposely got us into the war.

  6. ghost in a shell
    Only in Japan…but then again look at their tradition and history. Animism is rarely practiced in the Western world anymore, but in Japan it makes sense. Just like saying a rock has a soul/spirit. It looks ridiculous to us but not to them. That being said, no I don’t think the AIBOs have souls, but then again I know nothing of how the soul works. Are we born with a soul or do we earn one? If we earn one then logically so could a machine if it’s sentient enough. How do we then earn souls? Do organic beings just have the right? Does having the ability to imagine the existance of a soul mean you have one? Of course those who use logic probably don’t believe in souls. Think about it though. We have only just begun as a species to agree, for the most part, that animals have souls. The next argument shall be for automatons.

    1. Some of the biggest so called
      Some of the biggest so called “conspiracy theorists” are historians. History of chock full of people getting together to do bad things and keep it a secret. It is the oldest profession.

      By far, the biggest and most well sussed out conspiracy theory of our time is the 9/11 false flag attack. We know exactly who, when, how and why it was pulled off. If our legal system and governance can ever be wrangled back from the fascists there will be hell to pay. Lots of so called “prominent” people will be newly prominent for some very bad reasons.

    2. Kenji Ekuan
      Kenji Ekuan was a celebrated Japanese designer. He was the genius behind the famous Kikkoman soy sauce bottle and even the bullet train. He recently passed away.

      In one obituary I found this really interesting paragraph about why he decided to become a designer:

      His designs originate from the sights of Hiroshima’s devastation after the US atomic bombing of the city 70 years ago. He heard the voices of street cars, bicycles, and other objects mangled and abandoned, saying they had wished to have been utilized more, he is quoted as saying in a company pamphlet for his Hiroshima exhibit last year.

      Perhaps we humans ‘infuse’ our everyday objects with some sort of potency of ‘spirit’ when we use them in a way that is both fulfilling and enjoyable.

      My mom for example, who has always enjoyed cooking, refuses to part with this really old, little cutting board that belonged to her mother. I’m sure if we were to throw it away we might hear screams coming out of the trash bin 😉

      1. i agree
        I think we can infuse a part of our own spirit with both living and non living things. It is this connection that allows us to sense when something is out of place, and allows our pets, for example, to sense when we ate away or close by or in danger. I like to think of it a spiritual tripwires. I could always feel when my pets were getting sick before they started showing symptoms. And when I couldn’t find something, I could always sense what drawer it was in. On certain objects that I carry around with me on a daily basis, I get little “pulses” whenever I am too far away from them. So maybe the AIBOs are attached to these peoples’ spirits, and that’s what they sense going away, but that’s still not an individual soul. It’s part of someone else’s soul. I always wanted an AIBO but my real dog would have eaten it 😛

  7. Blue
    “The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye”.

    Well, that is a load of crap.

    Woad (Isatis tinctoria) has been used to dye cloth light blue all around the world since the ancient times and India is believed to be the oldest centre of indigo dyeing in the Old World.

    The first recorded synthetic pigment was, in fact, blue manufactured by Egyptians and the different Mesopotamian cultures from around 2500 BC. Both Sumerians and Egyptians made cobalt blue glass using pretty much the same method. The Sumerian word for blue is ZA.GIN, the same word used for lapis lazuli. The Akkadian word for the same exact thing is “uqnu”. A Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablet from the 7th century BC details a recipe for dyeing a lapis coloured wool by repeated immersion and airing of the cloth. This blue wool was called “uqnatu” (Note the same root word as in lapis lazuli, “uqnu”).

    The Greek used Egyptian Blue in the wall paintings of Knossos in 2100 BC. Greek also imported indigo from, well yeah, India, and called it indikón, which means, well yeah, “Indian”, which Romans then latinised to Indicum, whence the English word indigo stems from. By the way, in classical Greek dark blue is “kyaneos” and light blue “glaukos” (although both these words were used to describe other colours as well).

    The Romans had a couple of different expressions for varieties of blue, including caeruleus, caesius, glaucus, cyaneus, lividus, venetus, aerius, and ferrous, and then two borrowed words from other languages “blavus” and “azureus”. Romans were kind of fond of this particular colour, I guess. The Etruscans were quite fond of blue as well and they used woad to dye cloth and to produce blue paint.

    2. Literature
      Good counter-argument. I think the basis for these claims was caused by a revision of ancient literature. Do we have an example of Assyrian or Akkadian texts in which they describe the sky as ‘blue’?

      And what about Krishna? Was blue-blindness the reason he could get all those hot shepherd girls, despite the fact he looked like a freezing corpse? 😉

        1. Who Is Behind Randi?
          http://www.bollyn.com/the-less-than-amazing-randi-critic-of-9-11-truth-is-funded-by-military-contractors/?print=1

          About halfway down the page begins Chris Bollyn’s analysis of just who funds JREF and the Amazing Randi, and why Randi takes pointed stances on things like the 9/11 false flag research.

          “The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is funded by a high-level agent of the U.S. military industrial complex. The Randi “educational” foundation’s financial connection to major U.S. military contractors explains why the JREF is so hostile to 9-11 truth. The JREF is actually headquartered in the same building as General Dynamics – at 2941 Fairview Park Drive, Suite 105, Falls Church, Virginia. – See more at: http://www.bollyn.com/#article_14544.”

          My own take on JREF’s organized hostility to things like remote viewing jibes with Ingo Swann’s – the military industrial complex is threatened by such advanced and uncontrollable techniques for finding out information that might expose the greatest secrets of the war machine and the intelligence machine, and such abilities just generally empower people in ways that are inherently out of authoritarian control.

      2. Blue Sky
        Sumerian for blue sky is “an nisig-ga”, where “an” is heaven and “nisig-ga” denotes the colour or hue.

        In Akkadian we have “burumitu”, which is sky-blue lapis lazuli and then the already mentioned “iqnu” meaning lapis lazuli and azure. “Hinziribu” is the word for bluish green. There is yet another word for greenish lapis lazuli, which is “zaginduru”, where the Sumerian word for lapis lazuli makes an appearance (za.gin or za-gin).

        What has to be understood here is, that all the discussed Mesopotamian cultures regarded the colour of lapis lazuli the colour of heaven, and since the sky essentially was heaven, the colour of sky.

        “They inserted the wooden door frames, which were like a crown worn in the blue sky.” -The building of Ningisu’s temple (Gudea, cylinders A and B): c2.1.7.

        One has to be careful here. It is the cardinal rule of linguistics and etymology that one does not derive word meanings from either roots or synonyms. The meaning is determined by context. I double checked all the words provided here from multiple sources (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Universität Leipzig and Sources of Early Akkadian Literature Project, University of Helsinki) , and therefore I feel pretty confident about my claims.

        I have come across many “articles” while browsing, where the writer claims that there is no word for blue in Sumerian or Akkadian, or that the Egyptians were the only culture to have a name for blue, or some such. That is simply not true. One glance at the databases containing translations of ancient texts will prove this, provided that one can actually use academic databases.

        I already mentioned the use of woad in dyeing. Why would so many different cultures from the British isles to Central Asia bother using a plant which gives but one single distinctive colour, namely, blue, if they could not see the colour? Why did the Greeks or Romans go through all the trouble of importing indigo, and pay themselves silly while doing it, if the colour blue did not exist in their view? Not to mention all the different names for varieties of blue in Roman language.

        Krishna? I honestly don’t know much about that fella. I remember reading that blue is the colour of all-inclusiveness, which would mean that in art blue skin represents something completely different than the colour of skin. Good for him for gettin’ more shepherd ass than a toilet seat. One interesting ancient example of the use of different varieties of woad derived blue is the so-called “Tomb of Blue Demons” in Tarquinia from 420-400 BCE. The paintings on the wall depict numerous blue-skinned demons in the underworld.

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