From the distant past, to distant moons, enjoy the ride…
- A palaeontologist says medieval manuscripts should be treated as fossils from extinct species.
- Was Chaucer murdered in 1400? Or did he go on a medieval pub crawl? Terry Jones of Monty Python fame asks these questions and more in his book Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery (Amazon US or UK).
- Pursuing an Afghan monk who may have discovered America. Dirk Gently is not involved in the pursuit, but President Bush has ordered several dozen copies for the Pentagon library.
- Seven cuneiform tablets dating to 4000-years-ago have been discovered in Iran. Excellent photo.
- Also found in Iran, Achaemenid-era stone fragments that could be part of a monument.
- And guess where again? In Iran, an 8000-year-old stone workshop is also being excavated. I guess Iranian archaeologists are excavating as much as they can before Bush bombs it all to pieces in June.
- An Australian archaeological team in Egypt has unearthed three coffins dating from 672 BC to 525 BC. The amazing thing is they did it without Zahi Hawass interfering.
- The mystery of UFOs: Unidentified Fossilised Objects.
- Twisting historical truth for Hollywood entertainment. Kids in schools these days, they are so disrespectful — I would never have eaten popcorn whilst Jerry Bruckheimer was teaching me about Pearl Harbour.
- A water witcher hangs up his rods after 50 years of successful dowsing. He will now spend his time drowsing.
- Some heart-transplant recipients report strange changes.
- Young blood can help old bodies heal. Vampire-fanged dentures are all the rage in Florida.
- An assistant professor wins scientific acclaim for demonstrating how an asteroid cooled the earth down 34-million-years-ago.
- Scientists are worried about changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. 2012 anyone?
- A bizarre heatwave affected Greenland earlier this month.
- Say hello to Methone, Pallene, and Polydeuces, Saturn’s previously undiscovered moons.
- Astronomers have discovered a star-less galaxy made of dark matter. My God, it’s not full of stars.
- Life exists in some of the most hostile places on Earth. The same can be said of Mars.
- If gases exist in the Martian atmosphere, then this could indicate Martian life according to an Italian scientist.
- Bacterium frozen in Antarctic ice for 30’000 years started swimming as soon as it thawed. I’ve got a bad feeling about this …
- The Ancient Chinese may have used diamonds to cut and polish tools 6000-years-ago.
- Why did prehistoric man crawl deep into caves and paint art? I don’t know why, but I find the statement, “Much nonsense has been published about “shamans”, hallucinations and the like, but these fantasies tell us a great deal about the theorists and nothing about the Ice Age artists”, quite offensive.
- Keanu Reeves says he saw the Devil. No Keanu, that was a Hollywood producer.
- A German tourist apparently took photographs of a Tasmanian Tiger. The article has no images because the tourist took the photographs back home with him and didn’t leave copies for study. Apparently a couple of experts did get to study the photographs before they were whisked away to Oktoberfest.
- The mystery of Orang Pendek: is the Flores Hobbit still alive in the Indonesian jungles today?
- In Moscow, a new television documentary series promises to be a Russian X-Files.
Much thanks to Kat and her amazing acidophilus.
Quote of the Day:
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
Tom Waits
