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News Briefs 13-05-2010

Further achieving escape velocity —I’m swooning, baby!

  • Men who stare at the funny colors: Pentagon details Cold War mind-control tests using LSD (Loony System of Defense?).
  • Changa: The Evolution of Ayahuasca. Combining ‘changa’ & ‘evolution’ in the same sentence is rather funny —if you speak Spanish that is 😉
  • Pope Benny blames the Virgin Mary and her damn 3rd secret of Fatima for the current Catholic controversy. Blaming your mother is such a nice display of maturity —I do it all the time!
  • After unleashing the Trickster with The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan plans to show us the coolness of lucid dreaming. Inception hits the theaters on July 16th.
  • Whitley Strieber has his 1st ‘clean’ OBE.
  • Is “Avatar” based on the Raelian cult? if that’s the case, shouldn’t the Na’vi have been *way* shorter… and greener? [H/T to the regal Regan Lee for this jewel]
  • Are Tories & Lib-dems in power good news for Gary McKinnon? Remember what they said about Obama & disclosure, guys…
  • Oh, in case you *don’t* remember what they said about Obama & disclosure, here’s my friend Micah to remind you.
  • Are supernovas the Death Beam of advanced life in the Universe? Just remember: if asked, the rebels are in Dantooine —NOT Alderaan.
  • In this corner: the first & last man to ever walk on the Moon; on the other: NASA. Let’s get ready to rumbleeeeee!
  • Life on Earth arose just once —angry reply from Paul Davies in 3… 2… 1…
  • Those nights at the cave were looong… and cold: Neanderthals not the only apes humans bred with [Psst: read my own musings on this sordid matter and its possible religious implication, here].
  • German historian Hubert Wolf has found damning evidence that Pope Pius XII, known to critics as “Hitler’s pope,” made a conscious decision to pass on the issue of the Nazi oppresion against the Jews. The “See no Evil” policy again at work…
  • If Russell Crowe hid in the real Sherwood Forest, you’d find him in a matter of hours —or he could just throw a cell phone from a tree and be done with it.
  • Glowing sea beasts: photos shed light on bioluminescence —so you see, there’s an upside to the Russkie plan to nuke the gulf 😛
  • Unprecedented nuclear fusion success! claimed by… North Korea. Ignorance is strength.
  • Our survival as a species may depend on emulating the plants. That doesn’t justify all the fertilizing done by some of us, though.
  • First stem cell regenerative drug could be filed for approval in Europe later this year. Are they planning to use stem cells to fix the euro?
  • Rare Javan rhino killed by poachers. I wonder what’s the Javanese word for pendejo
  • Don’t help me, bro: Failed DIY humanitarian plan to send 1 million t-shirts to Africa shows the dangers of misguided good intentions in the Information Age.
  • The *only* practical use for Twitter ever seen.

Thanks to Greg, Rick, Kat, Susan, Destiny Land & the Chemical Brothers —and to the guy who made the pill that brothered them, I guess?

Quote of the Day:

“This budget proposal presents no challenges, has no focus, and is in fact a blueprint for a mission to nowhere”

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, addressing the Senate Commerce Committee on May 12th, 2010.

        1. Indeed…
          Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Spain and realized I’d been learning Mexican. 🙂

          In Spain, a Tortilla is an omelette. I thought I was ordering a breakfast burrito. Plus, in Castillian, they lisp the “S”.

          Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. I hope to go back some time.

  1. NASA
    I have been a huge fan of manned space exploration for decades. Hopefully Armstrong and Cernan’s stance the last few days will make a huge difference in the NASA/Obama fiasco. Can’t for the life of me understand why Bolden would even support such a vision, being an astronaut himself. Bieng a NASA administrator with nothing to administer… He should be fighting for something he can be associated with in history books, not the caretaker role.

    1. Concur
      [quote=Sagittarius]I have been a huge fan of manned space exploration for decades. Hopefully Armstrong and Cernan’s stance the last few days will make a huge difference in the NASA/Obama fiasco. Can’t for the life of me understand why Bolden would even support such a vision, being an astronaut himself. Bieng a NASA administrator with nothing to administer… He should be fighting for something he can be associated with in history books, not the caretaker role.[/quote]

      Concur. This is an incredibly short-sighted and almost criminally naive decision by this administration.

      It amazes me that these socialist wannabes can work overtime to bankrupt these United States through unneeded (and unconstitutional) health care bills, industry bailouts for their union buddies, and cash & power grabs passed off as stimulus bills, yet with a straight face claim that the nation can’t afford either the space program nor defense spending.

      The Federal Government’s PRIMARY job is defense of the nation. The Space Program dovetails perfectly with that. Both deserve our full support. If we can toss a trillion dollars towards an unneeded health care bill, Nasa & defense spending ought to be a no-brainer.

      1. NASA
        Unfortunately the big O (not Oprah, but the other one) is proving to be a major disappointment as President on so many fronts. He won’t be around for a second term so NASA won’t get “dismantled” (even though I, for one, believe it should be torn down and rebuilt from the foundation up).

        1. Well…
          I’m not going to try to defend Obama. I will simply point out that’s easier to set a really cool and ambitious goal —let’s go back to the Moon, folks!— when you won’t have to actually WORRY about how exactly you’re going to achieve that, since it will be someone else’s problem after you leave office.

          Personally, I’m tired that all you people —and I’m including Chinese, Russians, Indians, Japanese and Europeans —are trying to do everything by yourselves. Space cannot be conquered by any one single country. It just can’t, so get over it and start cooperating.

          It’s not a matter of national pride, it’s a matter of survival of the species.

          1. yup….
            I have no problem with cooperation in space. In fact, that’s the only way we got the International Space Station built and operating. There is no reason NOT to cooperate on the larger ventures. You’ve no argument from me. 🙂

          2. NASA
            Agreed. The world is still treating space exploration as the “Space Race”. How 1960s is that for what should be a cutting edge human endeavor?

  2. african shirts
    I don’t get it. Why would Africans need t-shirts shipped there?

    It’s also interesting that the money collected for this noble, but pointless purpose was then re-tasked for some other purpose without bothering to ask the people who donated.

    1. misguided
      I dunno. For some reason this guy came to believe all people there are just walking around without a shirt to put on.

      And he didn’t consider shipping expenses at first.

      The first thing the Red Cross advises people when they ask donations is: do NOT send us clothing. Go figure.

    1. Difficult to ascertain.
      Those experiences are difficult to validate, specially for us who have yet to live them ourselves.

      Then again, what’s the *actual* difference between the dream world, and the ‘real’ world?

      Specially if you can’t wake up from the dream

  3. Raels
    I don’t think it was the intention of Cameron to make Avatar into a Satanic cult, but I’m sure that’s what the Vatican would want to say (not that they need any more bad press). I do believe that some humans are part of a greater alien project and that “they” are more connected to us than we like to think.

    On another point, “Lucifer” refers to the “light bearer” not necessarily Satan, in a sense it often has more to do with symbolism than with a specific deity. I really don’t like to compare individuals of Masonic, occult, or theosophist origin to “the darkness” because (A) it’s a touchy subject, and (B) it is often a pre-thought biased complaint that completely ignores the symbolism and the true wisdom found in the writings of these individuals (i.e. Blavatsky). I believe that of course darkness and light exist in everyone and it is the choice of one or the other which matters.

    They are blue cat people with no different a lifestyle than the tribes of people who lived hundreds of years ago, and some tribes still live today in places like the amazon. It has more in common with “Fern Gully” than the Vril!

    Either way I’m sure the Raelians (or whatever) watched the movie and like the rest of us, paid $20 for the popcorn.

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