More accuracy is often just real change...

• Easy equals true.
• When your brain gets the joke.
• More evidence of water on Enceladus.
• Seemingly loopy technique could dramatically improve communications networks.
• Pentagon looks to breed immortal synthetic organisms.
• Paralyzing the frown muscles inhibits the ability to understand anger and sadness.
• Which organs can I live without and how much can I get for them?
• The interconnected sun. Part One. Part Two.
• At last we will know how bright the stars really are.
• Founders of British obstetrics were callous murderers.
• A tree carving in California: ancient astronomers?
• Photosynthetic slugs.
• Electric planes could transform how we fly.
• New theory on the origin of primates.

Quote of the Day:

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

William Blake

... not to reproduce what we can already see, but to make visible what we cannot

• Hedgehenge: Evidence of encircling hedges at Stonehenge. Hence the toy hedgehog found buried with a child there recently?!
• Last speaker of Bo, one of the world's most ancient languages, dies.
• Leon Botha, one of the world's oldest Progeria survivors, talks about spirituality, identity and leaving a lasting legacy. Here's more of his work. Great counterpoint to last week's Boing-Boing-facilitated viral explosion of the mock-trash Die Antwoord project.
• Fractal universe.
• African fractals and the origins of computing.
• If the universe is a fractal, is it a program?
• The Secret of Kells - a new animated movie based on the Book of Kells, from the creators of Skunk Fu.
• 'Zen' Bats hit their target by not aiming at it.
• Adam's family jewels and the uncensored bible.
• Pretty Suicide Machine, an in-progress essay from James Curcio's Immanence of Myth anthology.
• Eternal slavery: DARPA to breed immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms’ with molecular kill-switches.
• Japanese scientists create elastic water.
• Déjà Vu, Consciousness, Time & English Pubs, from the Dark Philosopher.
• Bruce Sterling on atemporality (if you have time).
• Wanted: mystery worshippers.
• Devotees track down an unwilling Messiah via the web. 'Now listen 'ere!...'.
• Neanderthals in Poland ate cave bears.
• Glorious Gargoyles.

Thanks Rick

Quote of the Day:

The invisible & the non-existent often look very much alike.

Julia Sweeney

Reality is the new myth

• Hot footage! Researcher Mike Green captures 'Bigfoot' on thermal imaging camera.
• If E.T. rings, let it go to voicemail?
• Beware of the cat. Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home. Or is it causing them?!
• 'Vegetative' patient communicates via brain scans (Original journal article here).
• Soon, everything you buy may be coated with spray-on liquid glass.
• How to teleport energy.
• The whale whisperer.
• The extinct Titanoboa, the largest ever snake, devoured crocs. Now who's the daddy?
• Some children in the UK think that sheep lay eggs, butterflies make cheese, and bacon comes from peacocks. Let's hope they don't become geneticists.
• What do you get when you cross endangered sea-life with the Women's Institute via the Institute for Figuring? Why, a crocheted hyperbolic coral reef, of course.
• What do you get when you search for the Illuminati backwards? itanimulli.com!
• Obscura Day 2010 - an international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places. Want to take part?
• Are you ignoring the news?
• Space junk on Moon to become 'World' Heritage Site?
• Is primordial soup off the menu?
• Going down on Virgin.
• The invisible man.
• 10 'false flags' that changed the world.
• And one for our resident designer in 3D, RPJ: the unhappy hipsters.

Quote of the Day:

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Alan Watts

I don't know about you, but I feel more like an alien from inner space.

• All humans are 'aliens from outer space', says a leading British scientist.
• Abstract thoughts? The body takes them literally.
• Hubble snaps hypervelocity collision between asteroids.
• Skeptics continue to offer profound wisdom on UFOs. Or not.
• Searching for signatures of interstellar archaeology.
• Did giant meteorites slam Earth around AD 500?
• Solar storms could disrupt TV coverage of 2012 Olympics; new NASA satellite will predict what's coming.
• Cosmic Log: Dodging the arrow of time.
• Scientists explain why Clint Eastwood and John Wayne always win their shoot-outs. Steven Seagal could have told them that years ago.
• Mice given extra doses of new magnesium compound had better working memory, long-term memory and greater learning ability.
• Everywhere in a Flash: The quantum physics of photosynthesis.
• The Lancet retracts 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines.
• Researcher who started the vaccine-autism debate accused of unethical behaviour.
• Sweat and blood: Why mosquitoes pick and choose between humans.
• New tyrannosaur had more teeth than T. Rex.
• Trails found in rocks dating back 565 million years are thought to be earliest evidence of animal locomotion ever found.
• Torrential rains in Bolivia cause partial collapse of a giant limestone wall covered with dinosaur tracks -- revealing more dinosaur tracks.
• Traditionally they've been painted as a noble mission. Now, two new books tell the gruesome reality of the Very Unholy Crusades.
• Archaeologists in Britain claim to have discovered a part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever.
• Long lost theory on Silbury Hill is uncovered.
• Early draft of US Constitution found in Philadelphia.
• China through Victorian eyes.
• In China underworld, hacking for fun and profit.
• Pentagon's black budget tops $56 billion, with total 'defense' spending to top $740 billion. Meanwhile...
• Pentagon funds Spider-Man tech for real-life wall crawlers.

Big thanks to Greg and Red Pill Junkie.

Quote of the Day:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Fnord is not a Norwegian word.

• Hubble photographs mysteriously-shaped UFO traveling at 10'000mph. That's right, Bad Astromoner -- the Hubble Space Telescope. Hrmm, looks Klingon...
• Jupiter's moon Europa is the solar system's best bet for ET life.
• Support for the panspermia theory (life on Earth was 'seeded' by microbes from space) gathers momentum.
• The UFO Mystic looks at hot women from Venus, but no snu-snu.
• Instead of waiting for UFO disclosure, sit back & watch a movie.
• Letters more than 230 years old detail forgotten theory on Silbury Hill.
• Ancient shipwreck off coast of Greek island new archaeological site.
• Egypt tightens penalties for relic thieves & smugglers. Forced to watch video of Zahi, A Clockwork Orange style.
• King Zahi to announce King Tut's family lineage this month.
• Paul Sussman shares his experiences excavating the Amarna Royal Tombs in Egypt.
• DNA tests reveal East Asian ancestory for 2000-year-old Roman bones.
• Three Neanderthal teeth were found in a cave in Poland.
• Brilliant photos from Nat Geo of the 'mythical' temple found in Peru.
• Shifting consciousness: six years with Yogis & Tibetan Buddhists.
• Jeremy Narby discusses ayahuasca, an excerpt from The Psychotropic Mind (Amazon).
• The birth of the Illuminati conspiracy. Imagine the pregnancy...
• Robert Anton Wilson: how many freemasons does it take to change a lightbulb?
• Pentagon's 'black ops' budget tops $56billion. Does it cover their lunches?
• U.S.A.'s Captain Obvious admits 'war on drugs' a disaster.
• U.S. Navy may limit sonar tests to prevent whale beachings. Emphasis on 'may'.
• Bonobos are more evolved than we bipedal apes -- they share communally.

Thanks to bleepingdeadalien.

Quote of the Day:

The Pope being a dick doesn't discredit religion just as Dawkins being a dick doesn't discredit science.

John Reppion, who's copping a lot of flak but -- we Grailers 'get' it. ;-)

Homeopathy is taking a bashing. Anyone remember Benveniste?

• Global warming science implodes overseas: American media silent.
• Mythical temple found in Peru.
• Smart Dust? Not quite, but we’re getting there.
• How Paulson's people colluded with Goldman to destroy AIG and get a backdoor bailout.
• Obama cancels moon project.
• Twins' different DNA sparks parents' divorce.
• Sceptics stage homeopathy overdose. More here.
• Bloom and bust: how volcanoes suffocated ocean life.
• The Grasping Hand: The modern democratic state pillages its productive citizens.
• A skeptic's skeptic.
• What to get the man who has everything? An underwater plane of course.
• Paying zero for public services.
• Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes.
• DNA testing on 2000 year-old bones in Italy reveal East Asian ancestry.
• Fetid fish revise understanding of fossil formation.

Quote of the Day:

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

Wernher von Braun

A palindrome of news:

• Zoooom! Bullet trains are coming to America —instead of a Moon base, I take it.
• Is 2010 the year of Nuclear Fusion? That all depends on the hohlraum —huh??.
• Time Travelling for Dummies, by Sean Carroll.
• 'Firefly' satellite to study terrestrial gamma-ray flashes —Is NASA preparing for 2012?
• What was that jellyfish thingy photographed near a Northern light? Craig Woolheater investigates this case at UFOMystic.
• HAARP deletes its records from 2010-1-11. Meanwhile, Colin Andrews investigates some pretty odd radar weather data in Australia —what the...
• Bin Laden, the ecologist —because Climategate was just not enough to demonize the environmental movement, was it?
• Internal warfare; environmental degradation; what caused the Mayan collapse? A newly discovered Mayan tomb may shed the answers.
• 6 creepy animal behaviors that Science can't explain —according to the Cracked foul-mouthed scholars.
• Playing with your food? 3 cheetahs spare tiny antelope's life *scratches his head* @_@
• New "destroyer" dinosaur found. Not as impressive as the Decepticon dinosaur in my imagination —kill the Autobots! kill!!
• Step aside, Archeopteryx: Haplocheirus sollers is 15 to 20 million years older in the bird family tree.
• 'Supersized' monarch butterflies evolved to fly far... and destroy Mexico city.
• Solastalgia: Is there an ecological unconscious?
• [Video] Wade Davis on the relevance of ancient wisdom in our modern world —or why you should learn how to make a knife out of s*#t like an Inuit.
• Finding a better way to grieve the death of a loved one. On Death and Dying [Amazon US & UK].
• The Da Vinci Drag: Did Leonardo paint himself as 'Mona Lisa'?
• The Japanese think the best engineer to design subway stations is slime mold— it doesn't complain about double shifts too.
• The French choose yet-another another battleground for their never ending quarrel with the British: the G spot. —Mon Dieu...
• First Russian stealth fighter takes flight... for what exactly, no one can see yet.
• Pee-Wee Herman gets an iPad... & I can't make a snarky comment on it, 'cause I used to <3 his program when I was a kid.

A howling thanks to Kat & Perceval.

Quote of the Day:

"What's real? What's not? That's what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality".

Andy Kaufman

”I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it…”

• J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, has gone to the great gig in the sky.
• In search of the Unhiggs.
• Building a star on earth.
• Is laser fusion the future of energy? For the name alone, it should be.
• NASA will *not* be returning to the moon… Presuming they ever went ☺.
• Speaking of La Luna… Was the Moon created through nuclear fission?
• Meanwhile, Mars and the Moon share the celestial stage tonight.
• That said, it's really all about Destination Phobos! Until then, enjoy a Mars flyover.
• Distant galaxies and dark matter.
• Entropy proves universe may have less time than we thought.
• Computer model shows how particle collisions *can* create black holes.
• Star shoots relativistic jets at close to speed of light.
• Squid and bacterium… a genetic love story.
• Making oil, one bacteria at a time.
• X-ray vision realized.
• Meet Dino, the oldest known fossilized bird ancestor.
• The color of dinosaurs. More here.
• And while we’re discussing extinct creatures, guess who caused the megafauna extinction in Australia? We did.
• Internet: The Photo. Hi-res version, here.
• 35 million years of sea level data.
• UFO or satellite reflection?
• The forgotten tale of the 1957 Levelland UFO in Texas.
• Could DNA be a fossil from the origin of life itself?
• Reversing the effect of aging blood stem cells.
• Water in the Himalayas, the great unknown.
• Could less water vapor decrease global warming trends?
• Anti-vaccine campaigner, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, finds himself in hot water.
• Zelda Rubinstein of Poltergeist and Teen Witch fame has crossed to the other side.
• New primate origin theory sparks controversy. In other news, water is wet.
• MST 3000, in lego.

Many thanks to RPJ, Greg, Kat, Holden Caulfield and the Glass Family.

Quote of the Day:

“What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse...”

J.D. Salinger

iPad?? Srsly Steve, that's the best name you could come up with? *sigh* I still want 4 of them, though —why need 4? well... you never know :-P

• Spirit rover won't get out of Martian sand trap —Tiger: this is a *golden* opportunity to clean up your act, man.
• ...In other words, baby kiss me ♪: New animations take you flying over Mars.
• An alternative hypothesis for the origin of the Moon —but if you're looking for "hollow artificial Moon" stuff, don't bother.
• Chances of Earth being detected by alien life forms are disappearing because of the digital revolution, Frank Drake says —oh sure! blame it on Google, will ya?
• An A to Z of UFO theories, by famed researcher Jenny Randles. "Science and the UFO's" [Amazon US & UK].
• Ambidextrous kids more prone to mental issues —I was born a leftie but was forced to use the right hand at school... it all makes sense now.
• Scientists turn mouse skin cells into nerve cells —Exfoliating for Dummies?
• In primate evolution, survival of the fittest can sometimes mean a decrease in brain size —something Mike Judge had already warned us about.
• Altruistic chimpanzees adopt orphans. What exactly separated us from animals, again? ties & lipstick?
• Jurassicoooo! Feathered dinosaurs leapt from trees, not the ground.
• Dr. Cave: Stone Age amputee proves Neolithic medics more advanced than previously thought.
• China collects DNA from men named Cao to prove legendary warlord's tomb. Wow...
• Either Joan of Arc was a Na'vi, or the relics held at Chinon (France) are false.
• Could a frozen camera dethrone Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as the first to summit Everest? Come on! we all know the Yeti was the first.
• [Video] Heavy rains strand thousands of tourists at Machu Picchu —sad, specially if you remember the Incas worshipped the sun.
• Howard Zinn, historian & author of "A People's History of the United States" [Amazon US & UK] dies at 87.
• Why the hell not: a Ouija board for Barby-collecting little girls —and Mr. Smithers.
• 117 Russians in hospital after drinking holy water —that's why my parents baptized me with Tequila ;)
• Japanese create elastic water —huh? I thought we had that already.
• 3D films can make you paranoid —quit peeking over my shoulder, Neytiri!!
• Yes! Yes! Yes! Tron Legacy bike appears in Meatspace.
• LOL *this* Teddy: Lion-hearted cat takes on a marauding bear [Video].

A plethora of thanks to Rick, Kat & Greg.

Quote of the Day:

"Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes."

All the colours of the alphabet...

• Children hear 'imaginary' voices, but most aren't bothered by it.
• Kingsmouth looks like a nice place to visit. Catch a glimpse of Bigfoot!
• How landscape shaped Bulgaria's mythology & folklore.
• Korean mountain spirits & their shrines (messy design, but packed with info).
• China renames mountain that inspired Avatar's Pandora.
• Images of Antarctica's Ghost Mountains, hidden miles beneath the ice.
• Which are safer than Antarctica's Mountains of Madness.
• Scientists who risk their lives searching for the Earth's rarest species.
• I left my pterodactyl in San Francisco: mystery beasts of the Bay area.
• Billy Cox lays the odds on the odd: Unidentified Flying Triangles.
• New Zealand releases military UFO files the same week Greg's there. Hrmm...
• The 1978 Kaikoura UFO remains an unsolved mystery. Kiwis can't fly.
• From Inexplicata, UFO in the Ravine: the Omar Gonza case.
• Parafactor interviews Nick Redfern about his new book, Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction (Amazon US & UK).
• Survey suggests religions won't be shaken by ET contact. Skepticism however...
• Stargazers will get their best view of Mars until 2014 this week.
• Giant stone Mayan head unearthed in Guatemala. No photos released yet.
• £27.5million Stonehenge visitor centre has been approved.
• Review of Greece's brilliant new Acropolis Museum in Athens.
• Zimbabwe's hidden treasure, the prehistoric rock art of the Inanke Caves.
• British Museum and Iran battle over ancient Persian 'Cyrus Cylinder'.
• U.S. military vets help sort out neglected collection of Native American artifacts.
• Wade Davis discusses the Haiti earthquake, voodoo, & Pat Robertson.
• Ethnobotanist & artist Kat Harrison on the evolutionary advantages of DMT.

Quote of the Day:

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

H.P. Lovecraft, The White Ship