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News Briefs 11-02-2005

By Gregon

Bill’s away on black-ops, so I’m standing in for him…

  • Titanic director James Cameron to work with NASA on Mars mission. Minor correction to Space.com article: James Cameron was born in 1954, so I’d say he watched the Apollo 11 mission when he was 15, not the shuttle Columbia.
  • Did a cloud of interstellar dust cause Earth Ice Age?
  • Earth to Mars in a month, just by using a solar sail?
  • Veteran astronaut steps in as interim NASA chief.
  • SETI goes in to bat for evolution education.
  • Carrot compound a cancer killer?
  • Being a mother can take years off your life – literally.
  • Spitting cobras take dead aim at the eyes.
  • Bad weather may be bringing on the final years of the world’s second-biggest tree, at the tender young age of 2500 to 3200 years old.
  • Falling tree ants can glide back to the safety of their own tree, before they touch the ground.
  • Rupert Sheldrake’s controversial reply to The Edge magazine’s speculative question.
  • Discovery Channel glams it up, and reinvents Egyptian history during Egypt Week.
  • Researchers investigate a mummified menagerie.
  • Chinese tomb raiders crack a 2000-year-old vault…only to find that robbers had beaten them to it.
  • Islamic authorities blamed for destruction of Crusader excavations at the Temple Mount?
  • The new Willy Wonka who makes edible computer print-outs.
  • The latest issue of New Scientist features the race to create life, and Bill will be happy to see more mainstream coverage of skepticism regarding GW.
  • Dreams can come true…and sometimes even save lives. I’m glad some of my dreams don’t come true.
  • Why would you be a celebrity – hounded through life by the paparazzi, and now even in death.
  • Hawaian UFO a satellite or fuel dump from an Atlas 5 rocket. Apparently.
  • St Elmo’s Fire cause of light show?
  • Science sets out to barcode life.
  • Eritrea uses the Ethiopian obelisk controversy to ask for some of its own archaeological treasures back…from Ethiopia.
  • Who says rugby fans are meatheads? Welsh supporter cuts off his testicles to celebrate win over England.
Quote of the Day:

Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of the universe

Freeman Dyson

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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11 Comments

    1. Hmmm
      Well, I was going to say that he was probably trying show he was man enough to live up to his bet, but it’s a self-defeating exercise isn’t it? 😉

      Peace and Respect
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things

  2. footie fans
    There are none so dim as footie fans….this guy obviously did not have the testicular diameter to call off the stupid oath he made.

    Poor old Bill doing those Philadelphia type experiments again.I think its awful, he’s a family man and should not be doing that.
    What if he wanted more kids and couldn’t have them because of his awful job.
    He’s a clever man, why doesn’t he do something else!
    The government has a lot to answer for.

  3. mars in a month
    This is cool, getting to Mars in just a few weeks. However, they don’t have a method of slowing you down once you get there, and you would arrive at an impressive speed, so you would be “landing” considerably harder than, say, Beagle-2. Who says all those craters are old?

  4. That ancient tree….
    Oh well, at least when it does die, they can chop it down, count the rings and see EXACTLY how old it was.

    Perhaps someone should organise a sweep-stake before this happens….

  5. Destroying the Temple Mount
    “Barkay showed pictures of tractors demolishing structures dating to the Twelfth Century Crusades. The demolition went on without any regulation or archaeological supervision, he said. Builders at the Temple Mount took many of the ancient stones from earlier Jewish buildings and cut them down to make modern stones.”

    Impossible. When Hadrian built the Temple of Jupiter on this mount, he erased all traces of the earlier Jewish temple. Even the Wailing Wall, though by Jews to be part of the so-called Second Temple, was really part of Hadrian’s construction. But let’s not let facts get in the way of an eschatological fantasy.

    “Many of the Jewish and Christian artifacts dating to the Crusades and to the first and second temples were covered up, destroyed or removed.”

    There never was a first temple. It’s all Christian-Jewish supposition.

    “Christianity is a religion based on a God who acts,” Ortiz said. “Because of that [the Temple Mount] takes on a sacredness, not because of the space it occupies but because it provides tangible evidence for the historical events associated with the life of Jesus.”

    Yeah right.

  6. Evolution Ed…Mega Ed
    Why do we alway stop at Evolution? Of course there is so much more behind this thing we call existence. How dumb can we be to think that Evolution did all of this? Some just want to stop there and have a party. Are there no deep thinkers around this old idea. The Vedics knew a thing or two about being here…we need to check them out.

    Things just do not happen by themselves or by bumping into each other. Rene was right…I think therefore I am. Intelligent Design is everywhere present. Everyone should study the Theosophist’s version of existence and their minds would be virtually expanded to see the scope of material behind our being here.

    Personally, I think the Gnostics were on the right trail to try to reclaim an ancient knowledge of who and what we are. Would that we were as cool as the Gnostics.

    Not that one is, but that whereby Is, is.

    O.

    1. Descartes
      Oscar, I agree with you about the gnostics and probably the vedics as well, but Descartes always leaves me a little cold.
      His approach was highly mechanistic and he regarded animals as mechanised machines (nachinae animatae) and infinitely exploitable.
      Due in some ways to his theories the church developed the ideas that animals are on earth for the use and exploitation of man.
      If there is a god who created everything, then surely he created the animals as well.We are all his creatures.
      If the aliens created man, then it still behoves us to respect the other life on this planet.
      If we think of ourselves as just a product of evolution then we are just existing.But there is room for creation and evolution as well.
      Descartes maybe was a great philosopher but he did great damage to the cause of animals.

  7. Young Mothers and short lives
    Another pointless study. Who pays these people? I look around and I see a lot of old poeple – most of them are old women. The men presumably died off – or they always stay at home. Dont tell me the old women were never mothers. My mother is 91 and she had me when she was 24. She’s still going strong.

    But it doesn’t matter anyway. Are they trying to say “Look girls – dont get pregnant”? There are enough people saying that already.

    Neanderthal
    ‘Whatever you do, comes back to you’

    1. young mothers
      Hi Neanderthal,
      The study refers to women in the 18th and 19th century.Well you would have expected them to not live too long anyway, the conditions being what they were then.
      I prefer to think that motherhood brings more benefits than being without children.
      You have someone to look after you in your old age, and the joy of grandchildren is immense.
      It is a pity that some scientists don’t find something useful to do with all the money they constantly cry for.

      shadows

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