“Science tried to take on the paranormal, and science got its ass kicked.” ~ George Knapp Knapp said this during his presentation at the McMinnville UFO conference. His talk was on the so-called “skinwalker” ranch in Utah. The skinwalker ranch is one of my favorite UFO/general high strangeness episodes; from the first moments I [...]

I have nothing much to say. Just wanted to put up a new post and see if it attracts an avalanche of comment spam like the last one.

TypePad says they've fixed the problem.

We'll see.

An anonymous reader writes "Having entered my personal details (full real name, home address) to websites with an 'https://' prefix in order to purchase goods, I am still being sent emails from companies (or their agents) which include, in plain text, those same details I have entered over a secure connection. These are often companies which are very keen to tell you how much they value your privacy and how they will not pass your details on to third parties. What recourse does one have to tell them to desist from such behaviour whilst still doing business with them if their products are otherwise desirable? I email the relevant IT team as a matter of course to tell them it's not appropriate (mostly to no avail), but is there any legislation — in any territory — which addresses this?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nerval's Lobster writes that a survey from the Uptime Institute "suggests something it calls 'green fatigue' is setting in when it comes to making data centers greener. 'Green fatigue' is exactly as it sounds: managers are getting tired of the increasingly difficult race to chop their PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness. The PUE is a measure of a data center's efficiency. The lower the PUE, the better — and Microsoft and Google, with nearly limitless resources, have set the bar so high (or low, depending on your perspective) that it's making less-capitalized firms frustrated. Just a few years ago, the Uptime Institute estimated that the average PUE of a data center was around 2.4, which meant for every dollar of electricity to power a data center, $1.4 dollars were spent to cool it. That dropped to 1.8 recently, an improvement to be sure. But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases). The Institute latest survey of data center operators shows only 50 percent of respondents in North America said they considered energy efficiency to be very important to their companies, down from 52 percent last year and 58 percent in 2011."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service. The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "The last thing Wired's Mat Honan remembered before awaking on the self-driving boat that dropped him on the island was sitting through a four-hour Google I/O keynote in Moscone Center and hearing Google CEO Larry Page promote a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. 'Welcome to Google Island,' a naked-save-for-a-pair-of-eyeglasses Larry Page tells Honan. 'As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws — or lack thereof — apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CryptoComic for the day.

puddingebola writes with an excerpt from the New York Times: "The Web site and several Twitter accounts belonging to The Financial Times were hacked on Friday by the Syrian Electronic Army in a continuing campaign that has aimed at an array of media outlets ranging from The Associated Press to the parody site The Onion, according to a claim by the so-called army. The Syrian Electronic Army said it seized control of several F.T. Twitter accounts and amended a number of the site's blog posts with the headline 'Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.' Hackers used their access to the F.T.'s Twitter feed to post messages, including one that said, 'Syrian Electronic Army Was Here,' and another that linked to a YouTube video of an execution. Both messages were quickly removed.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mikejuk writes "The new Arduino robot looks a bit like a robot vacuum cleaner, but it has a lot more going for it and it certainly doesn't suck — well not unless you add an air pump to it. As always, the Arduino Robot is completely open source and comes as an easy to assemble kit involving no soldering, just some plugging in of components. It consists of two circular boards, 19cm in diameter, each with its own Arduino controller. They fit together to create a stack about 10cm tall. The bottom board has two wheels and motors which allow it to move in any direction. The top board contains lots of sensors and a central display. The two communicate via a serial connection. There is also a lot of space for expansion. There is a new library which can be downloaded to help write programs for this fairly sophisticated robot. There is only one big problem with the Arduino robot — you can't buy one at the moment. If you really can't wait, until early July when they should start shipping from the Arduino shop and from distributors, then you will have to get to the Maker Faire San Mateo (May 17-19) where they are being demonstrated and sold."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the summer of 2006, two bigfoot hunters led a group of curious, young paranormal investigators into the hills of southern New York on a quest for evidence of the legendary beast. Often funny, sometimes creepy, but always entertaining, 'The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching' is a film that asks, what means more in the end: the destination or the journey; the evidence or the legend? Watch the entire film documenting this here at Cryptomundo!

On Saturday, Autodesk announced it is purchasing Tinkercad and reinstating the service. The move comes in time to prevent the previously announced shutdown of any accounts or services, and users can start creating new accounts immediately.

Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns can lead to declines in southeastern frog and salamander populations, but protecting ponds can improve their plight.

Medical researchers have come up with a new approach for developing effective, topical antibacterial agents -- one that draws on a naturally occurring substance recognized since antiquity for its medicinal properties: clay.

An old medicine for schizophrenia is effective at treating something completely different than it was designed for: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. So far it has been a mystery how this old schizophrenia medicine works, but now researchers have figured it out. This can lead to a new medicine against the increasingly threatening antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The earlier the age at which youth take their first alcoholic drink, the greater the risk of later alcohol problems.

In 1990, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism issued guidelines that define low-risk drinking, which differ for men and women. New research shows that female college student drinkers exceed NIAAA guidelines for weekly drinking more frequently than their male counterparts.

Alcohol treatment interventions work best when patients understand and are actively involved in the process. A first-of-its-kind study looks at the interactive effects of smoking status and age on neurocognition in one-month-abstinent alcohol dependent (AD) individuals in treatment. Results show that AD individuals who currently smoke have more problems with memory, ability to think quickly and efficiently, and problem-solving skills than those who do not smoke, effects which seem to become greater with increasing age.

Geologists reads rock, looking for the natural rules that govern the Earth’s climate in the absence of human activity. New work is challenging many assumptions about the ways drastic climate change unfolds – and what to expect next.

Chronic trauma can inflict lasting damage to brain regions associated with fear and anxiety. Previous imaging studies of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, have shown that these brain regions can over-or under-react in response to stressful tasks.

Regular consumption of coffee is associated with a reduced risk of primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), an autoimmune liver disease.