By now you may be aware that I have a book for sale: Inside Dan Brown's Inferno for just $2.99. Consider yourself double-aware now...

• Five strange theories about Stonehenge.
• X-Messiah! Shape-shifting Jesus described in 1200-year-old Egyptian text.
• New study confirms Egyptian pyramids are aligned to the cardinal points with remarkable accuracy.
• Mysterious labyrinth of tunnels beneath Liverpool unearthed by volunteers. Only mysterious if you didn't read John Reppion's Darklore Volume IV article "The Mole of Edge Hill"...
• Puzzling discovery about ancient techniques of measuring star brightness.
• Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are more common than previously thought.
• Mysterious SETI signal set the rules of alien engagement.
• Curiosity rover was sent to the right place: discovers evidence for a past environment that would have been suitable for Earth-like life.
• Is the Martian moon Phobos a mined asteroid?
• There's a new comet in the sky. What does it portend?
• 'Heavily-armed sex-crazed dolphins on rampage in Black Sea' would have been close to the headline of the year. If it was real. :(
• Come to Australia instead, where we've got Yowies and Jerrawerra and Junjudees (oh my!). Learn more via Tim Binnall's interview with the man behind Weird Australia, Andrew Nicholson.
• This is what happens when you run water through a 24hz sine wave. Burn the water witch!
• The mirroring mind.

Quote of the Day:

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be

Douglas Adams

Grab a copy of Inside Dan Brown's Inferno for just $2.99. Thanks so much for the support!

• Astrobiologists find ancient fossils in fireball fragments. Or not?
• Pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to our Sun and the closest discovered since 1916.
• Are we being watched? The search for life in the cosmos.
• 13 ways to hunt intelligent aliens. No tips from Sigourney or Arnie?
• Bring on the Worldships: toward a space-based civilisation.
• 'Grasshopper' rocket can hover and land again vertically.
• The Voynich Manuscript, due for a return to the spotlight.
• Europe's oldest-known fishhooks found in Germany, dating back to almost 15,000 years ago.
• So much for the paleo diet: mummies reveal that clogged arteries plagued the ancient world.
• Egypt's tomb raiders put precious monuments in real danger.
• The Psi Wars come to TED.
• A Darwinist mob goes after a serious philosopher.
• Sorry, astrologers -- this is what it really means when a planet is in retrograde. With the large assumption that "astrologers" did not know this already…
• Forget zombies - here comes the antibiotic apocalypse. Maybe if we make really, really small shotguns and baseball bats we'll be okay?
• Don't be afraid of genetic modification.
• A peek into the future? This is what Antarctica will look like without all that pesky ice.
• Global greening as plant life moves northward.
• Psychedelic glowing wings give planes a lift.
• Futuristic fixes that could help the blind see again.
• Britain is becoming obsessed with the spirit world.
• Mysterious mini door found in Golden Gate Park.
• Emperor Palpatine incarnates into our plane of reality.
• Image of the Day: Electric mountain.

Thanks to @Theremina, @AnomalistNews and @JoMarchant.

Quote of the Day:

If God dropped acid, would He see people?

Steven Wright

Hmmm. Aren't all photons real?

• Ex nihilo: Dynamical Casimir effect in metamaterial converts vacuum fluctuations into real photons.
• US teen designs compact nuclear reactor.
• DNA submitted to online project pushes advent of modern humans to 338,000 years ago.
• Ancient people and Neandertals were extreme travelers.
• Thousands of people came from all across Britain to help build Stonehenge, which may have been a burial site for Stone Age elite.
• Researchers surprised to find clogged arteries, or what's left of the arteries, in 4,000-year-old mummies.
• Crystal found in a shipwreck could be similar to a sunstone - a mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners.
• Crystal skulls deemed fake.
• Cicada wing structure able to kill bacteria on contact.
• Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents.
• Why paying attention is anything but elementary.
• Over half of Austrians think the Nazis would be elected if the party was readmitted to politics.
• Japanese government says, unless it allows the yakuza to make a f*cked-up mess of the Fukushima 'clean-up', it will never get done. (Or something to that effect.)
• Wealth inequality in America. Bill Maher's spot-on observations.
• The night sky that city-dwellers would see if they could turn off city lights.
• Video: Retired lab chimps see the sky for the first time.

A big thanks to my favorite Pill.

Quote of the Day:

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Albert Einstein

”You never change things by fighting the existing reality…”

• The oldest star.
• The oldest life.
• Antarctica without ice.
• The floods of Mars…. In 3-D.
• The oceans of Europa.
• Human settlement in Sudan may redefine history.
• Do galactic bubbles require interstellar gum?
• 11,300 year-old weather report predicts record warming.
• Is it… safe? Just ask Dr. Szell.
• The buzz of caffeinated honey?
• Lost supernova, found.
• ISO: Higgs, Boson required.
• New life under the ice. Complicating, circulating, new life.
• Planning otherworldly vacations.
• Living in acid.
• Nanomaterial reaches tiny milestone.
• Monitoring brainwaves and meditation... there’s an app for that.
• 1920-‘s-30’s blues gets notable re-release.
• Gladiator’s UFO, loses its U.
• New Star Wars returns to galaxy far, far away…
• This week’s proof of the looming robot uprising… Bard ‘bots.

Quote of the Day:

“…To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

You know, with all these world-rocking stories we've been having since 2013 started, I'm thinking Terrence was really on to something with his Timewave Zero theory.

• Chávez Conspiracy Galore: Either El Comandante was 'infected' with cancer by the CIA, believed in Reptilians, and/or he died in Cuba. Too bad we didn't have chance for a Parador conspiracy...
• Fake bishop --who kinda looks like John Keel-- tried to sneak into Vatican conclave. It wasn't the fedora, but the cheap shoes that gave him away.
• (Video) Can psychedelics and Jesus Mix? It can if you pour some LSD on the communal wine :3
• Only a guy named Magnus Magnusson could bring together Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking & Arthur C. Clarke.
• Europa's epsom salt may indicate ocean life --a rather stressed ocean life IMO
• Enjoy vintage Science Fiction from the classic Galaxy magazine, courtesy of the Internet Archive.
• Also from (other) archives: 18 giant skeletons found in Wisconsin.
• Consciousness signature warns of awareness during surgery. So keep it down with the golf jokes, k doc?
• Kruger Coli: 'Nightmare' bacterias on the rise in the US.
• Iran vs The United States giant mutant rats.
• What's with Nevada candidate VanDerBeek's remarks re. the FEMA zombie outbreak exercise?
• Spielberg told Larry King he supports UFO disclosure, sez James Fox.
• Russell Crowe posts pics of a UFO on Youtube. R U NOT ENTERTAINED??!
• Dr. Steven Greer in the Joe Rogan Experience. CAUTION: F#$%ery afoot.
• A Reddit member e-mailed former CIA director James Woolsey re. Greer's allegations on the JRE show. Here's the response.
• Red Pill of the Day: get ready to enroll at Joe Rogan University --the diploma is delivered inside a Fleshlight.

Thanks to Holly

Quote of the Day:

"If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe."

~Joe Rogan

Grab a copy of Inside Dan Brown's Inferno for just $2.99 Thanks so much for the support!

• Soviet war veteran found in Afghanistan after 33 years, living as a nomad and practicing herbal medicine.
• Lockheed's Skunk Works promises fusion power in four years. Easy to promise when you've had the alien technology since 1947 dudes.
• Want to find aliens? Look for the interstellar garbage trail.
• New radiation belt observed around the Earth, until a solar shock wave wiped it out.
• FBI investigates UFO drone sighting over New York City.
• This wireless brain implant could make telekinesis a reality.
• Ancient Egyptian pyramid boat hreatened by sewage burst. I bet Khufu never imagined his boat would be sailing on a sea of poo 5000 years in the future.
• Grotesque mummy head reveals advanced medieval science. Hopefully not by suddenly talking.
• Inside Sony’s research into possible business uses for E.S.P.
• Arxiv.org paper: "Probing the statistical properties of unknown texts: application to the Voynich Manuscript.
• Our established picture of the universe is supremely successful – maybe because most of it is completely made up.
• Letter to the Editor: James Randi, and the skeptic religion.
• Why 'survival of the fittest' is wrong. Just in case Randi is reading…
• New scientific paper: "Signs of increased cortical hyperexcitability selectively associated with spontaneous anomalous bodily experiences in a nonclinical population".
• Does a reading From a psychic medium help relieve grief?
• Psychic clairvoyant found guilty of sexually assaulting eight women and children.
• Hubble spots a space invader.

Quote of the Day:

We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

John Wheeler

I'm getting great feedback on my primer exploring the topics in the next Dan Brown book, Inside Dan Brown's Inferno. Grab a copy for $2.99 and help this site keep its head above water.

• Archaeological evidence of previously unknown ancient civilisation in Saudi Arabian desert.
• For rent: three bedroom house, solid construction, glorious hallway, large Sphinx on the front porch, situated on the edge of Cairo.
• Panel of scientists say a comet didn't kill Clovis culture in the Americas 15,000 years ago.
• Are popular scientists becoming modern day preachers?
• Locust plague in Egypt. I think we all know how this ends.
• Did adorable little bunnies kill off Neanderthals?
• American bees suffer colony collapse as well.
• Consciousness signature warns of awareness during surgery.
• New book suggests return from death is possible.
• The positive impact of dreams of the dead upon the bereaved.
• Are floating airships the future of aviation? But how will we tell them from the genuine UFOs?
• Sending postcards for aliens. "Wish you were here (please don't farm us)!"
• "Elves Blew His Mind". Mike Jay reviews Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations.
• Cottingley fairy cottage sold.
• This week's Binnall of America podcast interview is with Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, who shares her research into American Indian experiences with UFOs and ETs.
• How the occult fueled innovation in music and art.
• How safe is transcranial magnetic stimulation?
• James Randi responds to Social Darwinism controversy.
• James Randi and Social Darwinism revisited.
• Burning the mean and disparaging Skeptic straw man.
• Why the Pope really quit: 'The Filth' that inhabits the Vatican.

Thanks BadEye and RPJ.

Quote of the Day:

Oh dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within.

Plato

I'm not sure what I expected of Amazon, but it certainly wasn't this.

• Shoes deliberately hidden in an ancient Egyptian temple leave archaeologists baffled.
• The Holocaust just got more shocking.
• The true-life horror that inspired Moby Dick.
• The lost tribes of the Amazon.
• Amazon rainforest tribe at centre of new cultural storm.
• The shocking savagery of America's early history. The Barbarous Years by Bernard Bailyn is available at Amazon US/Kindle & UK/Kindle.
• In the 1890s, an Illinois naturalist collected 109 species of wild bees. Today's scientists can only find 54.
• Could disappearing wild insects trigger a global crop crisis?
• Crawl space: Invasive ant armies clash on US soil.
• World's sexiest octopus - and its 1991 discoverer - ostracized by biologists.
• Hearing voices.
• Most common psychiatric disorders share genetic roots.
• Melbourne researchers uncover HIV's genetic hiding place.
• The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. Why exactly are the bills so high?
• Cosmic Fuggedaboudit: Dark Matter May Not Exist At All.
• Asteroid behind Russian blast crossed Earth's orbit regularly for thousands of years, but its most-recent approach couldn't have been detected by ground-based optical telescopes.
• Spyware installed on computers leased from furniture renter Aaron's Inc. secretly sent 185,000 emails containing sensitive information — including photos of nude children and people having sex — back to the company's corporate computers.
• Amazon's human robots.

Quote of the Day:

'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'

George Orwell, 1984

"Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once."

• From matter to antimatter.
• The edge of the universe.
• Planetary birth, witnessed.
• X-rays reveal secrets of black hole.
• Black hole hits speed of light.
• Radiation belt around earth intrigues lab-coats.
• Wilbur offers evidence of telepathy. More.
• World War Sea?
• World War Bee?
• You monkeys only think you’re running things.
• Taking the piss out of climate change.
• An Inconvenient Truth gains traction thanks to new study.
• The next pandemic?
• Sahara sands linked to Sierra Nevada snow.
• Surviving T-Rex.
• One hat to spell them all.
• Printable cars.
• Scannable tattoos.
• Invention removes oreo creme… Proof some people just want to watch the world burn.
• The elegance of space telescopes.
• This week’s proof of the pending robo-revolution... 4D ‘bots ‘make themselves’.

Quote of the Day:

“In order to more fully understand this reality, we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.”

Raymond K. Cummings and John A. Wheeler

Pope resigns, Bigfoot turns out to be Chewbacca, and Dennis Rodman starts his career as a diplomatic ambassador. Somebody had better stop messing with the Irony algorithm in the Matrix!

• The Honey-martians: Millionaire Dennis Tito plans to send woman & man to the Red planet.
• Monster black-hole's spin revealed for the 1st time. Here's the appropriate soundtrack for this sort of news.
• Retired Montreal psychology professor is pretty convinced aliens --as in UFOs-- exist. UFOs, ETs, and Alien Abductions: A Scientist Looks at the Evidence [Amazon US & UK]
• "When you see this again, you will know it is time." Abdcutee Lucretia Heart shares some of her memories.
• Randall Carlson on Red Ice Radio, talking about cosmic patterns & sacred architecture.
• Stéphane Hessel, writer and inspiration behind Occupy movement, dies at 95. May he found no more cause for outrage at the other side.
• Behold! The 3d-printed car.
• Frankensparrow: Dead bird 're-animated' with off-the-shelf robotics.
• Carnivorous plants glow to attract prey. Why am I thinking of NDEs right now?
• Dark Matters Radio interview with Jerry Wills: Ingo Swann, psychic healing & giant mummies.
• Almost 40 years ago, the discovery of Mungo Man radically rewrote Australian aboriginal history.
• Melba Ketchum's paper cites April fools' joke as reference. That's a big-ass Sasquatch nest she's made, & sooner or later she's gonna have to sleep in it.
• Alleged screens from the secretive Erickson project show 'clearest face of Bigfoot yet'. So now we know: Patterson shot first.
• Frost shadows is Nature's way to keep you cheerful during the winter.
• Titanic replica could set sail by 2016. You know why it's gonna be a success? Because by then there won't be any icebergs left!
• Red Pill of the Day: Beware of good-will sweaters, for they may contain foul demons!

Thanks to Susan, Bojan & Rick.

Quote of the Day:

"To create is to resist, to resist is to create."

~Stéphane Hessel (1917-2013)