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News Briefs 09-07-2004

I’m designing my home aided by a crash-course in Feng Shui. But we’ve all got time for the news…………

  • Dino-gold. German scientists have unearthed the biggest collection of dinosaur fossils ever found in the country, including bones that could belong to previously unknown species.
  • Fossil findings and a fresh analysis of a prized set of human bones challenge the art/creativity theory.
  • An ancient African skull fills a gap, but fuels a debate.
  • What happened in 30,000BC that caused a dramatic increase in human longevity?
  • An entire 2800-year-old Egyptian mummy has been explored in 3D stereo vision for the first time using imaging techniques better known to medicine.
  • Who circumnavigated the globe 87-years before Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and 114-years before Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)?
  • Lake Vostok, deep beneath the Antarctic ice, appears to be divided into two deep basins.
  • The Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians question the transfer of Utah’s Range Creek from private to federal ownership.
  • Bin Laden is guiding plots against U.S., hoping to influence the presidential vote.
  • Shhhh! Don’t tell Greg, but weblog authors are calling it quits or scaling back their sites.
  • Find yourself a sanctified chicken for the Loa. It is estimated that 60-million people practice voodoo worldwide.
  • Keep your distance. Residents in Canberra have been warned not to bother starving kangaroos.
  • Edinburgh alligator sellers are stung by undercover cops. Yes, that Edinburgh. With an alligator.
  • Scientists discover a pattern to whales beaching themselves.
  • Australian scientists have caught the world’s smallest fish.
  • Brain implants have been used to read the minds of monkeys. This makes me extremely uncomfortable.
  • The ‘Weed from hell’ has been found in Texas. Maybe the fire ants will like it.
  • Millions of people may have been injected with a tainted polio vaccine.
  • Researchers report the preferences for hourglass-figured women emerges around the age of puberty. Sounds like easy money on the reasearch grant scene.
  • Kim Jong Il introduces hamburgers to North Korea as quality food. He still has not given in to the allure of a Big Mac.
  • ‘Hey Dude, I’m dead.’ Talking tombstones bear a message from the grave. What will your message be?
  • Deep in the Congolese jungle, rebel groups unite in their desire to exterminate the pygmies.
  • Loud noise prompts women to eat. There’s a punch-line in there somewhere but it eludes me.
  • Estonia was accused of amorality and gross historical insensitivity after they honored veterans of the Nazi Waffen-SS. Go figure.
  • The Pentagon envisions a fleet of blimps guarding the U.S. coastlines.
  • Researchers look to tiny spheres of glass storing hydrogen in future cars.
  • The General Electric Company announced the development of the world’s best performing carbon nanotube diode.
  • Shabby crop circles made by sloppy humans were unceremoniously plowed under by the farmer who doesn’t need people the fields wearing aluminum-foil hats.
  • A rather exotic crop formation appeared in Solano County, California. With pics.
  • The fourth 2004 crop formation in Poland has multiple parts. With pics.
  • The Spanish Fork, Utah crop formation and was accompanied by mysterious lights.
  • Residents report bright lights In sky over five US states. Great video from police dash camera.
  • Here’s an interesting article, God Vs. UFOs by Angela V. Michaels.
  • Old galaxies shed a new light on a young universe.
  • SpaceShipOne, the world’s first private space craft, is back on course and ready for the next trip.
  • The JPL is planning on extended missions for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Maybe these robots need a union.
  • The Cassini space probe is sending back to earth ultraviolet photographs that tantalize astronomers. Expand the pics. More”.
  • Let’s take a peek at what the Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) at ESA’s European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) sees for the future.
  • Blast waves from solar storms are blowing through our solar system.
  • Hubble comes to home computers.
  • Better technology and robust funding fuel search for intelligent life beyond Earth.
  • Life is unlikely in our asteroid-ridden neighbor.
  • The month of July 2004 has two full moons, which means one of them is a Blue Moon. There was a time, not long ago, when people saw blue moons almost every night. Blue, the color.
  • The wicked winds of Titan are being measured from Hawaii.
  • Titan reveals its mysterious surface.
  • SG-1, Season Eight, begins tonight on the Sci-Fi Channel with New Order in the US. 2-hours of my life down the tube.

Thanks Greg.

Quote of the Day:

My findings at this time are that ample evidence exists that an estimated 80% of crop circles are man-made. On the other hand, 20% revealed no evidence of human involvement. A handful of these 20% also displayed the newly discovered magnetic profile (all these were simple formations).

Colin Andrews

  1. Colin’s infamous quote
    TDG should put a date on quotes like this…it makes it seem as if he said it today, when in fact, it is a quote from a few years back. Further, the quote is out of context, and was made specifically about a period of time, if I remember correctly, a one year period of time, as well as a specific geographical area.

    1. QOTD

      The QOTD was extracted from a statement made by Colin Andrews four-years ago or thereabouts. The full statement can be found here. He was referring to the UK following 17-years of involvement.

      That particular paragraph upset people that insist that all crop circles are non-human in origin, and also upset those that insist that all crop circles are made by humans. I don’t see that using the extraction for a QOTD changed the meaning or the flavor of what Mr. Andrews was conveying in the full statement. To my knowledge he has never recanted the statement.

      Colin Andrews has written two books on the crop circle phenomenon:

      • Circular Evidence (1991) is available at Amazon US and UK.
      • Crop Circles (2003) is available at Amazon US only.

      Bill

      1. quote unquote
        I think the problem is, on what basis should we accept Colin’s formula?

        To parse what he is saying using RAWlike techniques, what he appears to be saying is, “Of the crop circles I’VE EXAMINED, it APPEARS to me that around 20% show anomalies WHICH SUGGEST to me that they are of NONHUMAN origin.”

        Is that a sound basis to extrapolate to a more general principle of, say, 1 in 5 crop circles not being made by people? Has he REALLY made sure that 1 in 5 of all crop circles he’s ever examined possess these properties? If so, of what percentage of worldwide crop circles, especially those outside of England, has he examined?

        Assuming all these anomalies are present, isn’t there an assumption that humans lack the means for, say, generating magnetic fields, or irradiating crops so as to alter their node structure?

        After all, would not an equally valid explanation possible be (if we’re going to turn to unknowns as an answer), that these anomalies are being generated by human beings with technologies we don’t know about at the moment?

        There was a moment in early crop circle history (before the complex geometric formations starting appearing) where some suggested a type of natural phenomenon might be at work (such as dust devils, whirlwinds, plasma vortices, etc.) I notice Andrews in his statement seems to be suggesting that the circles which look intelligently made are made by intelligent humans, whereas everything else (his 20%, the simple formations) is nonhuman. But does that then mean a NONHUMAN INTELLIGENCE or simply a force of nature which is not intelligently directed?

        I just find it odd that for whatever reason, “genuine” has come to mean “not made by people”. I don’t see why one implies the other. Perhaps 20% are made by people whose intent is not defined as hoaxing. Could that mean “genuine”?

        Or perhaps they are people who are, as John Keel put it, being “used” by outside intelligences for brief periods of time, in which case they could both be paranormal and made by people.

        This is the main reason why I guess I can’t fully grok categorical declarations like this.

        Steven Mizrach
        Academic, Pop Culture Junkie, Grail Recycler

  2. What is Feng Shui ???
    I have heard that this term is unreal. That it really does not mean anything. It has been reported to me that Feng Shui is a recent scam developed by the design community to sell folks on a bogus concept.

    Is this true or what?

    1. It’s real – it means “wind & water”
      See
      http://www.qi-whiz.com/index.html

      The real stuff is a part of Chinese geomancy, astrology, and culture, and goes back 4000 years (as you’ll see from this site).

      The fake crap that involves non-Chinese conmen selling you $500 kits and consulting for $100/hour to tell you where to put your potted plants to maximize wealth generation, etc., is probably only a few decades old. Read about McFengShui and weep.

      But remember, just because there is McFengShui does not mean the real thing isn’t out there, any more than the existence of plastic medicine men invalidates real Native American traditions, or Madonna’s decision to endorse the Kabbalah Centre’s $5 a bottle “spiritually charged Kabbalah water” means there isn’t a real Kabbalistic tradition which is far more interesting and older.

      Just about every spiritual tradition has been commercialized and mcpackaged at this point;
      the flip side of our globalized world.

      Steven Mizrach
      Academic, Pop Culture Junkie, Grail Recycler

    2. Feng Shui
      Feng Shui is real and it means something. It is an ancient Chinese method of creating harmony and balance. One uses a tool called the bagau, an octagon, to determine the placement of areas in the home to improve the flow of energy (chi). The rest is just common sense and lessons learned developed over thousands of years, such as having only one entrance to the front of a house.

      There are people that believe that the flow of the chi is an absolute necessity. There are folks that believe Feng Shui is complete nonsense. I fall in the third group – those that believe it can’t hurt anything so why not do it.

      Of late there has developed a pseudo-Feng Shui. It’s sort of a New Age embellishment of Feng Shui that involves crystals and such. Seeker gave a good run-down of that.

      Bill

  3. cropcircles
    Hi,

    Croppicture puzzles, one can call them these days. The solana one is another interesting one, it displays all the hallmarks of a contraption of sorts, and oriented along the powerlines , aswell as been connected to it, it clearly tries to convey that this is supposed to be an instrument of sorts. This reminded me of another croppuzzle, were it was suggested that the picture looked like an tesla inventiontion http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2004/eastfield/eastfield2004a.html Whatever it is, its hardly the work of some overnite (solstice)passers through. Thusfar I have never seen any convincing evidence of sapienses performing this trick in daylight let alone in darkness. Therein lies the mystery for me, its allright people shouting the’re all bogus, human pranksters at work, but why haven’t they demonstrated this ability. Ok, they have but these were simple circles and rather recognizable by the way the wheat was bent, and by the marks they left entering the field in the first place. No account for the nodegrowth disorders- interesting too was the mentioning of the feeling of growing pain in the legs when walking in one of these ‘alien’circles.

    Anyway thusfar we haven’t come up with the goods as to what to make of them – in an explainatory sense-
    What has happened this last decade is that the circles have developped ever more complexity. Personally i believe that a lot of the geometric ones point to some bogus activity, i suspect the ‘aliens’ have reacted no more purely geometric circles anymore. Are they pointing us to that brilliant halfforgotten electro-magnetic wizard Tesla ? It could be.

    ps
    So, how about this one http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2004/milkhill/milkhill2004a.html In the comments section there’s talk of an insect and message of the gods (my oh my those damn sheep). Anyway i see a coil and something falling thru it , the ‘wings’ look like inverted magnetic field lines to me. Or just maybe it came of one off those glossy rave flyers- it surely is useable as a logo.

    ” Fear accomplishes nothing but destruction. Fear is the greatest enemy of all that exists on Planet Earth. Fear is bondage, fear is not freedom”

    1. thats a pretty circle
      that circle was created by the owner of the land, in just 2 days of his spare time. he used his tractor to lay it out.
      really is impressive. 🙂

      dd

        1. Would a Link convince you?
          If I provided you a Link to information as to how the owner of the farm laid out his crop design, would you read it and believe it? Most likely you would dispute the information presented to you, and willfully contest that it was made by superior creatures not of this earth. Look at the design. Look at the surrounding area. It would have taken a tractor entering the formation from the leading lines in the field to produce that formation.
          Or are you just going to dispute the obvious conclusion as to the visual evidence thats so abundantly pointed out to you in the photo’s that accompany the article that refered us all to it, conviently.

          dd “Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic!”

          1. proof
            Hi DD,
            I would love to see evidence of farmers on tractors making crop circles, particularly the one of which we speak because it would be an incredible talent.
            However I doubt that you could find a link to this.
            If I saw the whole work in progress I would be forced to believe.
            The strange thing though is that with all the talk in the crop circle arena there is no solid physical evidence of anyone making a crop circle.
            You would think that someone would have leaked photos or some sort of evidence of these brilliant people who go out there and make crop circles, specially those non believers.
            In all the years of this phenomenon taking place I have seen no photos of half-made or bodgied circles.
            Please show the evidence of which you speak so that the whole thing can be laid to rest.

            shadows

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