Just read the piece about Xerox and HP and other makers of printers, putting a secret tracking system of invisible dots into their products:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

I just have one question: Why?

Is this for real or a clever internet hoax?

http://giantology.typepad.com/giantology...

I could believe that tsunamis and global warming will reveal lost cities and wooly mammoths, but this?

Did anyone see the news item about an "acid nebula" headed our way that will destroy our solar system by 2014? sounds like a bad episode of Star Trek. Is this for real?

PLANET-DISSOLVING DUST CLOUD IS HEADED TOWARD EARTH!
Monday September 12, 2005

By MIKE FOSTER

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Scared-stiff astronomers have detected a mysterious mass they've dubbed a "chaos cloud" that dissolves everything in its path, including comets, asteroids, planets and entire stars -- and it's headed directly toward Earth!

Discovered April 6 by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the swirling, 10 million-mile- wide cosmic dust cloud has been likened to an "acid nebula" and is hurtling toward us at close to the speed of light -- making its estimated time of arrival 9:15 a.m. EDT on June 1, 2014.

"The good news is that this finding confirms several cutting- edge ideas in theoretical physics," announced Dr. Albert Sherwinski, a Cambridge based astrophysicist with close ties to NASA.

"The bad news is that the total annihilation of our solar system is imminent."

Experts believe the chaos cloud is composed of particles spawned near the event horizon of a black hole (a form of what's called Hawking Radiation) that have been distorted by mangled information spewed from the hole.

"A super-massive black hole lies about 28,000 light-years from Earth at the center of our galaxy," explained Dr. Sherwinski.

"Last year the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking revised his theory of black holes -- which previously held that nothing could escape the hole's powerful gravitational field. He demonstrated that information about objects that have been sucked in can be emitted in mangled form.

"It now appears that mangled information can distort matter.

"Just imagine our galaxy the Milky Way as a beautiful, handwritten letter.

"Now imagine pouring a glass of water on the paper and watching the words dissolve as the stain spreads. That's what the chaos cloud does to every star or planet it encounters."

To avoid widespread panic, NASA has declined to make the alarming discovery public. But Dr. Sherwinski's contacts at the agency's Chandra X-ray Observatory leaked to him striking images of the newly discovered chaos cloud obliterating a large asteroid.

"It's like watching a helpless hog being dissolved in a vat of acid," one NASA scientist told Dr. Sherwinski.

Ordinarily, Hawkings Radiation is harmless.

"It's produced when an electron- positron pair are at the event horizon of a black hole," Dr. Sherwinski explained. "The intense curvature of space-time of the hole can cause the positron to fall in, while the electron escapes."

But when "infected" by mangled information from the black hole, the particles become a chaos cloud, which in turn mangles everything it touches.

"If it continues unchecked, the chaos cloud will eventually reduce our galaxy to the state of absolute chaos that existed before the birth of the universe," the astrophysicist warned.

Some scientists say mankind's best hope would be to build a "space ark" and hightail it to the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.1 million light-years away.

"We wouldn't be able to save the entire human population, but perhaps the best and the brightest," observed British rocket scientist Dr. David Hall, when asked about the feasibility of such a project.

But even if such a craft could be built in time, evacuating Earth might prove fruitless if theories about the origin of the chaos cloud are correct.

"A black hole at the center of Andromeda is about 15 times the size of the one in our own galaxy," Dr. Sherwinski noted. "It might be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire."

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a senior White House official said the president's top science advisors are taking the findings in stride.

"This is a lot like global warming, where the jury is still out on whether it's real or not," said the official.

"The existence of this so called chaos cloud is only a theory. Americans shouldn't panic until all the facts are in."

My engineer brother-in-law told me the other day that we will soon see cars that run on garbage.

Is he full of you-know-what? or will we see this in our lifetime?

What technologies do you think have the best chance of replacing gasoline?

- electricity
- natural gas
- ethanol
- hydrogen
- others?

Will we ever have a car that runs on trash (ala Back to the Future)?

Okay everyone, this is your chance to give the new pope, Benedict XVI (formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) some advice.

The question is: What should the new pope do to make a real difference in the world?

when will we ever learn? OPEC gets richer while drivers get poorer.

the last time we had a gas crisis, didn't we say that we would pour millions into research in order to come up with alternative fuels? so why are we in a worse mess this time? and no alternative solutions in sight?

I read (http://www.middle-east-online.com/englis...) that a movie is planned, based on the scholarly work of Ahmed Osman.

Osman, whose 1990 book "Moses and Akhenaten: The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus," has posed a striking theory about ancient Egypt and Israel that is compelling and haunting in its implications.

I fear that a Hollywood-style treatment will sensationalize and even trivialize a great book.

I just read that a bunch of scientists were asked this question. Well, how about all of you Daily Grailers? What do you believe (and why) that you cannot prove?

The story about Mel Gibson visiting the last living person, Sr. Lucia, from the famous visitation of Mary at Fatima, has me wondering about the "third secret" and what it may still contain.

Some think that the Vatican only released a portion of the secret, the part about a pope being shot. If indeed that was only a part of the secret, what else was told to the children by Mary? Why, if this is true, did the Vatican hold back some of the information?

Does anyone know if the hidden portion of the secret has to do with:

1.the rise of militant Islamists;

2.the scandal in the Church;

3.and the natural changes (melting ice) and disasters (tsunamis) now occuring around the globe?

I look forward to some replies.