Click here to support the Daily Grail for as little as $US1 per month on Patreon

News Briefs 03-08-2007

As Living Colour once sang, information overload…

  • The curse of Highway 35: Loren Coleman notes similarities between yesterday’s bridge collapse and the Silver Bridge-Mothman mythos. Even Wired make note of it.
  • Minding the mind: how much of what you do is controlled by subliminal priming?
  • Original Star Trek series gets some digital enhancement. Maybe we’ll see Mr Spock taken aboard a ‘drone’ sometime soon?
  • TV producer revives the controversy over the alien autopsy film.
  • Cassini probe to fly through plume on Saturnian Moon.
  • Martian Dust: evidence for water and life on the Red Planet?
  • Russian submarine plants flag under the North Pole. Brings new meaning to ‘waving’ the flag I guess.
  • Radical new view of the birth of civlisation suggests that it extended well beyond Mesopotamia.
  • When you’ve got money and power, anything is possible on the Giza plateau…even a private tour with the Big Z.
  • Underwater 8,000-year-old Stone Age site in Britain to be studied by scientists.
  • Archaeologists find Aztec Temple destroyed by Spanish invaders.
  • Odd skull boosts Human-Neanderthal sex theory. Hey, check the right neighbourhoods and you’ll find abundant evidence that it’s ongoing.
  • Orangutans use ‘charades‘ to communicate.
  • Exorcism leaves autistic teenager seriously injured.
  • Underwater worm-like creature baffles scientists (video).
  • Pwnage news: Australian police given power to take DNA from offenders, regardless of the crime.
  • The trouble with transhumanists: a short review of the recent Transvision conference.
  • Is your printer polluting the air you breathe?
  • Brain electrodes awaken brain-injured man.
  • Electric fields have potential as cancer treatment.
  • First armed robots on patrol in Iraq. Dead or alive, you’re coming with me…

Quote of the Day:

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but seeing with new eyes.

Marcel Proust

Editor
  1. Who watches the watchmen
    Hrmm, the article says NSW police have the power to take a DNA sample from an offender “regardless of the severity of the crime”, yet later it’s stated “at present samples can only be taken for serious offences”. A little confusing, but for once I’m glad I live in Victoria.

  2. Flag planting in the Artic shelf.
    Apparently Vladimir Putin is no fan of James Cameron’s flicks. The russians should know better that ALL underwater regions belong to those funky jellyfish-angelic aliens that starred in “The Abyss”, and plating a flag is not going to impress them.

    If there’s a big ass Tsunami hitting St. Petersburg in the followng weeks, y’all know who to blame! 😉

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. not even shelf
      As far as I have heard, the flags were not put on the continental shelf, but at deeper that 4000 meters.

      So the Russians have no idea who they upset by this action, for all we know it might be Atlantis.

      Incidently, Atlantis hasn’t been located in months, what’s wrong with that?

      —-
      You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

      1. Atlantis
        Good morning everyone,
        Yes, the flags are sunk deep under water – everything Russia does seems to sink in the end, so they’ve short-circuited the system.
        Earthling, you ask why Atlantis hasn’t been found recently.Maybe because there is no social need at the moment. You see, Atlantis has to be separated from research into lost civilisations.
        When we do this, it is understandable. For instance, it is wrong that there has been constant interest in the subject. Rather, it has bursts of interest, and analysing these, a specific factor becomes clear.
        Atlantis is a metaphor of social change. It rises up into consciousness whenever a society is renewing itself. Even Plato conceived it for this very reason.
        I write about it here:

        http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/atlantis-or-utopia

        Reality, like time, is relative to the observer

        Anthony North

  3. robo-soldiers
    Man, I don’t know what disturbs me the most: the news about these SWORDS bots equipped with machine guns, or the gigantic thread in the Wired website filled with flamings supporting or attacking the Irak war!

    For my part, I will let the whole issue of the effort to impersonalize the combat situations for a later discussion. For the moment I just want to point out that I find ironic how, for the purpose of exploring Mars the US will spend billions of dollars in the next 50 years to go from Rovers to humans doing the exploring. But as for the military, the process is the complete oppposite -going from humans to rovers doing the fighting. Interesting, isn’t it?

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. Mars and warfare
      The US government spending billions putting a man on Mars? I’m afraid it was just hype from an administration that won’t have to spend the money. America wanted to ‘feel good’ at the time, so Bush replied with hollow words.
      Governments don’t do exploration, private enterprise does. The US would never have got to the Moon if the Soviets weren’t winning the Space Race at the time of Kennedy’s announcement.
      Robots in warfare is a different matter. Certainly, remote devices are useful for surveillance, targeting, etc – it releases manpower for fighting. But I dread the day when actual warfare is not painful. When that happens, it will never end.

      All the philosophy in all the world isn’t worth the spilling of a drop of blood

      Anthony North

      1. what we need
        What we need for progress in space exploration is some individuals.

        The US did not go to the moon because of JFK or Nixon, they went because of von Braun. The Soviets did not compete because of Stalin or Krhushchev, they competed because of Korolyev.

        These two guys wanted to go to the moon, and one of them did. By proxy, sure. You can blame von Braun as a Nazi, as an opportunist and such things. Probably true. You can blame Korolyev the same way. They both wanted to make rockets that could go to the moon, and didn’t care who let them do it.

        I say it was not government policy, it was individuals. Big empires could not stop them, they made the empires do what they wanted.

        A shame about Korolev’s early death.

        —-
        You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

        1. Disagree
          I think you will find dozens of individuals in NASA who want to go to Mars and have worked out exactly how to do it. And none of it means anything without the money and intent.
          Von Braun and Korolyev were only useful for making rockets – until politicians decided upon a bit of oneupmanship. That’s the problem with ‘individuals’ – they’re just play things for the powerful.
          Take Gandhi – a man who changed things in a real way. But he didn’t! A great man, yes, but he was virtually ignored, except in causing ‘people power’. THAT is what changed things. Gandhi – the individual – could not do it alone.

          Reality, like time, is relative to the observer

          Anthony North

          1. doing it
            Well yes, there are many engineers and scientists who want to go to Mars now and are held back.

            Probably just as many in the Russian space industry.

            We should turn them loose on this stuff, I don’t think it is as difficult as the politicians say.

            But as history goes, no, von Braun and Korolyev made their governments do this. Korolyev because he was the only one the Soviets had. Von Braun because he wanted it so bad.

            Maybe if von Braun had been an English guy, you would agree with me more?

            Just teasing you.

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

          2. Still disagree
            I like the idea of Von Braun changing US government direction and diverting effort to the Moon. But I guess you’d say I was being too flippant. Yet, if I am, then the government must have been heading in that way, anyway? After all, how best can you prove you have a bigger rocket than the other fella?

            By the way, I accept that not ALL geniuses can be British.

            The balanced adult retains an inner child

            Anthony North

          3. moon
            I say von Braun would had gotten the Soviets to the moon, if they had captured him.

            Sure he had to be in an environment where this was possible. If the English would have wanted to go, either von Braun or Korolyev would have made it work.

            But at that point in history, there really was nobody else who could have done it. Just those two guys.

            More importantly, today we are lacking people with that kind of ambition.

            Maybe Burt Rutan, maybe Richard Branson. I don’t know.

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

          4. Space
            Eaten, refreshed, a couple of beers, big burp – round two.
            Earthling, I don’t deny that only a couple of people are capable of doing something really brilliant at any one time. But they are only allowed to do so if the politicians or other powers permit it.
            With von Braun, he was the son of a government minister and an aristocrat, who got him into the best education; and he just happened to be doing a thesis on the subject of rocketry in 1934 when, through Hitler, it became a national preoccupation. He was noticed by an artillery officer and ‘presented’ to the right people.
            Without this – without the powers that be allowing it – he could well have gone no further than the fireworks he made when he was 12.
            Who could get us into space today? Richard Branson and co? Would that be businessmen?
            I think that’s what I said in the beginning.

            I’m certain of only one thing. Nothing is certain.

            Anthony North

  4. When???
    I remember buying a magazine in 1987 or something, with a really cool cover, and an even cooler title:

    “1992: US-URSS Mission to Mars”

    I was thrilled because I was born in 1973, so I missed the chance to experiencing the Apollo missions, but now there was this magazine that said a joint mission between the most powerful nations in the world would make them forget their differences for a moment, and embark in an effort to send men to surface of the Red Planet.

    1992 came and went…

    I’m 33 years old. I try to go to the gym in a somewhat regular basis. Not because I want to have a slim body or hit on the hot girls sweating on the treadmills. But because I want to be alive when the first men finally arrive to Mars; and that won’t happen for at least another 50 years. At least!

    Nevertheless, I strongly feel NASA should not forget about other important aspects of exploration, like replacing the Hubble telescope or send a probe to explore the oceans of Europa. Cooperation between all the nations is mandatory in XXIst century’s space endeavours; to see countries like China spending so much effort and money in trying to re-invent the wheel is just sad.

    I also feel we should urge all the governments in the world to start a program aimed to monitor potential killer meteorites, and try to destroy them or change their trajectory; because as the great Arthur C. Clarke said, the reason the dinosaurs disappeared is because they didn’t have a space program.

    PS: You need not remind us that Mr. Clarke is british, Anthony, we are well aware of it
    😉

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

    1. Space
      Hi Red Pill Junkie,
      There’s always other agendas. Oh yes, I want us to continue exploration, to get into space, to be curious, to be human. But equally important, it should be a world thing. Not something done by national governments, but all countries playing their part. Yes, the money, the inspiration, should come from trade – this is the way of history – but that is the tool. WE are the reason.

      I’m fanatical about moderation

      Anthony North

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Mobile menu - fractal