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Reverses the spin of the media, the downward cultural spiral and seeks out wonders, the 'miraculous' and Spirit as it shows its fiery face.
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Reverses the spin of the media, the downward cultural spiral and seeks out wonders, the 'miraculous' and Spirit as it shows its fiery face.
Articles and Archives
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News Stories
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Palin resigns as governor, leaves plans secret-7/4 Colin Powell airs doubts on Obama agenda-7/4 MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising debt may be next crisis-7/4 US Marines push deeper into southern Afghan towns-7/3 Missile experts see Soviet parts in NKorean rocket-7/3 US, Russia to sign framework on missile treaty: Kremlin-7/3 Russian PM calls on U.S. to shelve missile shield-7/3 What China's minister of defense reportedly said about annihilating Americans-7/3 Iran: British embassy staff 'played part in post-election protests' and will be tried-7/3 Pelosi Won't Give Public a Week to Review Text of Health-Care Bill Before House Votes on It-7/3 Senate Bill: Refuse Health Care, face fines of more than $1,000-7/3 New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis-7/3 Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown ... CNNMoney: 'White House Staff Safe From Obama Tax Hike'-7/3 Goldman Sachs bankers in line for record bonuses-7/3 |
Energy job losers could get windfall-7/3 3 years' pay, benefits in bill ... Baaad news? Global warming now shrinking sheep-7/3 eBay seller claims certified Kenya birth certificate-7/3 Federal ‘organic’ label’s integrity under fire-7/3 Mexican gangs target outspoken priests in drug war-7/3 6.0-Magnitude Quake in Gulf of California Rattles Western Mexico-7/3 |
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Washington Post cancels lobbyist event amid uproar-7/3 The Washington Post-Pimp? Paper Offers Lobbyists Access to Top Officials at Publisher's House-7/3 WaPo Publisher Still Complaining Dinner Parties At Her House Didn't Compromise Journalism-7/3 Washington Post Kills 'Salon' for Lobbyists Program In The Crib-7/3 News
Busters,
By Marie Mazzanti--
In an update on Tim Graham's earlier post about The Washington Post’s flier that circulated to Beltway lobbyists, the Post abruptly canceled its "salon" program to offer "exclusive access" to "Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds" for between $25,000 and $250,000. (View an image of the flier.)
According to the Washington Examiner, Post company spokeswoman Kris Coratti issued a statement Thursday morning claiming that the flier was a "draft" that hadn't been "properly vetted" before being dispatched.
"As written, the newsroom could not participate in an event like this," Coratti said, "We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business and that the Post should be leading these conversations in Washington, big or small, while maintaining journalistic integrity. The newsroom will participate where appropriate."
There was an e-mail posted by Washington Independent columnist David Weigel from Brauchli which said that the "language in the flyer [sic] and the description of the event preclude our participation."
"We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable," Brauchli's e-mail states "There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values."
"This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted," Weymouth told her paper. "They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."
Who cares about Honduras?-7/3 Macon.com, by Erick Erickson-- Barack Obama has fundamentally shifted our foreign policy away from our own national interests in Honduras. He aligns us with the interests of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and a long list of South American drug cartels. The Honduran people, wise to the ways of Latin American politics, adopted a constitution that prohibits any president from serving more than one term. Presidents in Latin American countries, like herpes, have a habit of never going away. Further, the Honduran constitution requires that any referenda put to the voters must be approved by the Honduran Congress. The Hondurans are so concerned about potential despots, that Article 239 of their constitution states that any president who proposes extending his term in office is automatically removed from office. Article 313 of the Honduran constitution allows its Supreme Court to deputize the Honduran military to carry out its orders, including removing politicians from office who seek to extend a president’s term. Ignoring the constitution, President Manuel Zelaya, a man less popular in Honduras than George Bush was when he left office in this country, ordered a “non-binding” referendum be put to the voters on extending his stay in office. Glenn Garvin wrote in the Miami Herald, “After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country’s congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. ... When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.” The Honduran Supreme Court, congress, attorney general and members of Zelaya’s cabinet opposed his move as unconstitutional. The supreme court ordered the military to remove Zelaya from office. Honduras has no impeachment process as we know it. Last December, the Honduran vice president resigned. No replacement had been named. The Honduran constitution requires that in such circumstances the head of congress become provisional president, much like our speaker of the house would become president were both Joe Biden and Obama become incapacitated. Now Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own political party, is president of Honduras. Despite protests from Zelaya’s supporters, the nation’s trade unions, business groups, Catholic Church, and most citizens supported Zelaya’s ouster — no one wanted a tyrant, let alone one propped up by drug lords and marxist thugs like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Nonetheless, Barack Obama declared the Honduran government’s actions a coup — never mind the government was preserving its democracy instead of overthrowing it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all.” She called on Hondurans to uphold their constitutional processes, the very thing they were doing by ousting Zelaya. ...
Nasa reveals most complete terrain map of Earth that covers 99% of planet's surface-7/1 Daily Mail (UK), An astonishing new map has revealed the elevation of nearly every place on Earth. The Global Digital Elevation Model was created using nearly 1.3million images collected by a Japanese camera on board Nasa's Terra spacecraft. It is made up of a giant grid of 23,000 tiles, with each height point spaced 98ft apart. It shows a detailed representation of the planet's land mass. In this colourised version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white. ... The Declaration of Independence of these United Statef of America-7/3 LA Times, The United States' Declaration of Independence may well be the most cited yet least read or understood document in American history.
Some have suggested over the years that each responsible U.S. citizen should take the occasion of the Nation's birthday to read that precious document every year, something like pausing at Thanksgiving to give thanks or at New Year's to ponder what's past and ahead.
Obviously, we can't require that. But The Ticket can facilitate that. So here it is, in its historic entirety. For those who are curious to see how the document evolved, the wording refined and trimmed, through several writings, they can view side-by-side versions right here. And for those who'd like a little musical accompaniment, click the Faith Hill video down below.
The Speech of the Unknown-7/3 From the Editor of Reverse Spins: The following is taken from Washington and His Generals: or, Legends of the Revolution by George Lippard, published in 1847. The signers of the Declaration of Independence sat in Independence Hall at Philadelphia, contemplating losing their heads or being hanged. Their courage wavered. The document sat there unsigned. An extraordinary catalyst was needed to move them to action. An unknown man rose and gave an electrifying speech. He disappeared soon after.
What Atheists don't want you to know about Mark Twain's secret-7/3 Ministry Values,
By Stephen K. Ryan--
Mark Twain believed in the supernatural, apparitions, and loved a Catholic Saint.
Mark Twain, to the surprise of almost everyone, wrote a book, a biography no less, about the life and times of Joan of Arc. The book is call the "Personal Recollections of Joan of Ark" and astonishingly he called this virtually unknown volume his "best and favorite work".
Author Randel Sullivan told us recently in an e-mail
"Thanks for your letter regarding my book, The Miracle Detective. I was simultaneously stirred and chagrined by what you wrote about Mark Twain and his Joan of Arc book. I have to admit that I was among those who did not know that Twain had authored such a book, let alone that he considered it his most important work."
There are intriguing reasons why most folks are unaware of the beliefs of Mark Twain, but first here are the remarkable words from Mark Twain about a book he wrote about a Catholic Saint. |
Al Franken — Democrat From ACORN-7/3 IBD, The former Stuart Smalley becomes the 60th Democrat in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the community organizers at Acorn and the little-known Secretary of State Project. Is the system being rigged? ... Stop The Madness That's Killing Jobs-7/3 IBD, Stimulus: More grim news — 467,000 jobs lost in June, with unemployment hitting a 26-year high of 9.5%. Some people are rightly starting to wonder: Where's that stimulus we were promised? ... Complaints arise about White House kibitzing in key Senate primaries-7/3 CS Monitor, Team Obama has picked favorites for races in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York. Local party figures say that undermines democracy – and is not the national party's job. ... Czarred And Feathered-7/2 IBD, Government: It's been suggested that the White House has more czars than the Russian Romanov dynasty. Has the administration forgotten that we have a government of elected officials, not of imperial appointments? ... Chevron Refinery Expansion Halted; 1,000 Jobs To Be Lost-7/3 KTVU [Oakland, CA], The Chevron refinery in Richmond released 100 workers Thursday following a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge's ruling Wednesday ordering the refinery to stop construction of its Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project, Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen said. The refinery expects to release a total of about 1000 workers over the next 60 days as it demobilizes construction activities at the plant, Tippen said. Tippen estimated that the ruling would result in a loss of about 1 million labor hours and approximately $50 million to $75 million in income to the workforce in Richmond and the county within the next year. The city will also lose $61 million in various community benefits, Tippen said. ... Los Angeles will end use of coal-fired power-7/3 Reuters, by Bernie Woodall-- Los Angeles will eliminate the use of electricity made from coal by 2020, replacing it with power from cleaner renewable energy sources, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. Consumers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers, will see higher power bills in the fight against climate change, he added in his inaugural speech for his second four-year term as mayor on Wednesday. California does not have any coal-fired power plants, a leading contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, but the LADWP now gets 40 percent of its electricity from coal plants outside the state. ... Journalists protest Global Warming spin cycle-7/3 American Thinker, By William Tate-- Even journalists are beginning to revolt at tactics the government is now using to spin the Global Warming myth. Controversy erupted this week at the World Conference of Science Journalists over the National Science Foundation's "underwriting" of media projects. It turns out that the NSF, which is heavily invested in propagating the Global Warming party line, has been quietly producing content for news outlets, content which the casual observer might not recognize for the propaganda it is. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the NSF's Jeff Nesbit was met with "consternation" at the London conference for "attempting to 'disguise' publicity as objective reporting." As stated earlier, the NSF is a major player in the Global Warming cult, having funded studies which claim that, despite cooling temperatures, warming is inevitable this century, and that it will impact everything from vintners who produce Pinot Noir to the world's largest freshwater lake in Siberia. The NSF provides about twenty percent of all federal funding for scientific research. It is now also providing media outlets with content, such as the below from U.S. News & Report: ...
Taliban Test Chinese Weapons-7/3 Strategy Page, China is taking great interest in the war between the Taliban and the Pakistani army. That's because the Pakistani army is largely Chinese equipped. The Chinese are particularly keen to see how their armored vehicles perform. It's already been noted that the Chinese Type 59 tank was vulnerable to RPG attack. Pakistani armor units did not have some kind of screen (or "slat armor" as the Americans call it) affixed to the side to the tanks, where the armor is quite thin. China will also be interested in seeing how the entire range of Chinese weapons and equipment perform in combat. Chinese gear has not gotten a real (in combat) workout in several decades, and the manufacturers are eager to see what worked, and what has to be modified.
Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code-7/2 WSJ, by Rachel Emma Silverman-- Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms and Educated Guesses-- For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now. The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them. In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection." To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering." Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote. There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston. The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. ... Here's the Master Cipher. editor
Ancient Find Proves Christ's Words?-7/2 Netscape, Archaeologists have unearthed in Jordan what they believe to be the first Christian church in the world. Dating back almost 2,000 years to sometime between 33 AD to 70 AD, the church, which is actually a cave, was found underneath Saint Georgeous Church, which itself dates back to 230 AD, in Rihab in northern Jordan near the Syrian border. Agence France Presse and The Jordan Times report that the church is thought to have sheltered the world's earliest Christians from persecution and certain death. "We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians--the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," Abdul Qader al-Husan, the head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, told AFP. According to Wikipedia, the 70 disciples were early followers of Jesus. The Gospel of Luke 10:1-24 says that Jesus appointed them and sent them out in pairs to spread his message. Those 70 early Christians that created this church are described in a mosaic as "the 70 beloved by God and Divine," says Husan. They fled persecution in Jerusalem and founded churches in northern Jordan. Rihab is now home to a total of 30 churches, and Jesus and the Virgin Mary are believed to have passed through the area, Husan told AFP. ...
'Oldest' image of St Paul discovered-6/28 Telegraph (UK), By Nick Pisa-- Archaeologists have uncovered a 1,600 year old image of St Paul, the oldest one known of, in a Roman catacomb.-- The fresco, which dates back to the 4th Century AD, was discovered during restoration work at the Catacomb of Saint Thekla but was kept secret for ten days. During that time experts carefully removed centuries of grime from the fresco with a laser, before the news was officially announced through the Vatican's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. There are more than 40 known Catacombs or underground Christian burial places across Rome and because of their religious significance the Vatican's Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology has jurisdiction over them. A photograph of the icon shows the thin face of a bearded man with large eyes, sunken nose and face on a red background surrounded with a yellow circle – the classic image of St Paul. The image was found in the Catacomb of St Thekla, close to the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, which is said to be built on the site where he was buried. St Thekla was a follower of St Paul who lived in Rome and who was put to death under the Emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the 4th Century and who was subsequently made a saint but little else is known of her. ... I suppose it's no coincidence that the Saint of the Day is St. Peter and St. Paul-6/29. Editor Joy Behar Pooh-Poohs Her Psychic 'View'-7/3 ABC, 'View' Co-Host Calls Hypnotism, Reincarnation 'Bunch of Crap' By Sheila Marikar-- Call her lightheaded, call her a bit loopy, but don't for a second think that Joy Behar succumbed to the powers of hypnosis after watching her on "The View" today. The comedienne attempts to explore her previous lives with the help of otherworldly expert Dr. Brian Weiss on a special, pre-taped edition of the daytime talk show. "The Psychic View" also features the results of readings into Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck's pasts and futures. "The guy claims that he hypnotized me, but I don't believe it," Behar told ABCNews.com. "He can say whatever he wants, but I was just really relaxed. I felt like I was getting psychoanalyzed." "He told me to go back to some period in history in put myself someplace, so I went back to Louis XIV's court," she added. "But I was a cub reporter. I was just somebody watching. I wasn't getting my head cut off, I wasn't one of the peasants." Despite the "dream-like" experience, the Brooklyn-born Behar doesn't really think she was a 17th century courtesan back in the day. In a clip from today's show, she calls reincarnation "a bunch of crap." So what does she believe in? "Nothing," she said. ... I believe you Joy. Editor
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Prophecy
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Michelangelo signed fresco with self-portrait-7/2 Telegraph (UK), By Nick Squires -- A painstaking five-year restoration of a massive fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Vatican has revealed what experts believe is a self-portrait of the Renaissance genius.-- Restorers claim that a bearded man wearing a blue turban in the Crucifixion of St Peter bears a striking resemblance to portraits and bronze busts of the artist. "It's an extraordinary and moving discovery," said the Vatican's chief restorer, Maurizio De Luca. "The self-portrait is one of three knights on the left-hand top corner of the fresco who wears a lapis lazuli blue turban. His features are very similar to other known portraits of Michelangelo." The fresco shows the moment at which St Peter was raised on the cross by Roman soldiers, his face showing suffering but also defiance. It is not the first time the renowned Italian master included his portrait in one of his works. He painted a cleverly disguised self-portrait into The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. His face appears in a ghoulish image of St Bartholomew, with the saint holding a knife and his skin after it has been flayed from his body. The Vatican spent more than three million euros (£2.6 million) restoring the Crucifixion of St Peter along with another important fresco, the Conversion of Saul. Completed between 1542 and 1550, they were the last frescoes Michelangelo ever painted. "After the Pauline Chapel he ended his life as a painter and dedicated himself only to sculpture and architecture," said Mr De Luca. The frescoes adorn either side of the Pauline Chapel, which is closed to the public and used only by the Pope and his closest entourage. The chapel, in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, was commissioned by Pope Paul III in 1537 and completed in 1540. Michelangelo began work on the Pauline Chapel murals in 1542 after he had finished the work in the Sistine Chapel, finishing the project at the age of 75. ... |
 Ancient art: A wall temple inside Trupa Khakhang in Pusarong village, Kangding county Underneath the muck-6/30 The Star (Malaysia), by Marjorie Chiew-- It was a tour like no other for a team of volunteers who journeyed into the Asian heartland to restore age-old Buddhist paintings.-- In October 2007, seven volunteers headed for Wayao in the remote western part of Sichuan, China, to resume art restoration work that had begun the year before. The seven comprised three Americans, two Malaysian women and two Britons – all from diverse backgrounds but with a common interest in conservation, Asian art history and adventure travel. “Wayao, with its 14th century homes and wall paintings of the same age, was picked for its cultural and historic significance,” says Malaysian-born scientist Yap Hwee Boon, also known as Boon Yap. Yap was one of the two Malaysian volunteers who joined the group. They had signed up with Kham Aid Foundation as volunteer art conservators. Their mission: to help preserve sacred Buddhist murals, some hundreds of years old, which could be found in a handful of remote villages and temples on the eastern Tibetan plateau. The California-based foundation was set up in 1997 by three friends in Los Angeles, to make a difference in Kham Tibet. Its first undertaking was the conservation of Tibetan architecture and art. Since then, the foundation has developed a broad range of aid programmes. The 18-day trip coincided with autumn. “It was the most beautiful time of the year with its amazing fall colours,” says Yap, who is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. ... |
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Book Reviews The book just released.
Video: Child's Nightmares and Memories Prove Reincarnation-6/1 Fox8 TV, It is being called the most documented case of reincarnation ever. A little boy is able to recall over 50 memories from someone else's life. A World War II Pilot's family believes it is their reincarnated brother based on the child's memories. The boy's story is so compelling, it has been published in a new book called "Soul Survivor." Fox 8's Suzanne Stratford spoke exclusively to the child and his family. ...
Honor Yourself, A book review-4/5 Reviewed by Reverse Spins; Honor Yourself, by Patrica Spadaro.
Astrology Reverse Spins' Astrology section including recommended astrologers. For an excellent Vedic Astrologer who is charting new territory go here.
Reverse Spins is not a registered Non-Profit Organization. Donations to Reverse Spins are not tax-deductible but are used to support the maintenence of the website. |
Unearthing Mt. Shasta’s legends-7/2 Mt. Shasta News, By Charlie Unkefer-- Researcher, author and filmmaker Stephen Sindoni landed in Mt. Shasta determined to unveil one of the great mysteries of the mountain: the myth of Lemuria. As he was casting about for ideas for a screenplay in his New York home, Sindoni came across the longstanding Mt. Shasta legend of JC Brown, a geologist who, in 1904, is said to have found a tunnel that leads eleven miles underground to the lost civilization of Lemuria. Intrigued by the tale, Sinsion began to research the known details, wondering if there could be any factual basis for the story. His journey from some basic research in a New York City public library to a cross-country journey to Mt. Shasta has led to some findings that add a new dimension to the story.-- The Legend of JC Brown-- There are many accounts of the legend, one of the most common sources is Emile Frank’s book “Mt. Shasta: California’s Mystic Mountain.” Sindoni noted that access to the legends were readily available, but the accounts he heard left a lot to speculation. Had anyone, he wondered, attempted to follow up on any of alleged facts? The original story goes something like this: JC Brown, a geologist for the Lord Cowdray Mining company of London, was prospecting for precious metals in the Mt. Shasta area when he came across an interesting geological feature which, upon further investigation, turned out to be a tunnel. After excavating the opening, Brown entered the tunnel, following it for a couple of miles and eventually finding rooms full of gold and copper plates, as well as ornate statues. He also found a burial chamber that contained 27 skeletons that ranged from 6-foot-6 to 10 feet in length, two of which were shrouded in mysterious robes. According to the legend, Brown continued his explorations, yet little is know of what happened between 1904, when the cave was first discovered, and 1934, when the story first appeared in the Stockton Record newspaper. It was shortly after the newspaper story that Brown mysteriously disappeared. He was in the process of preparing an expedition party to fully excavate and explore his discovery, but the boat headed north never left the Stockton Harbor. Nobody ever heard from JC Brown after June 19, 1934.-- Legend busting-- For Sindoni, there were too many holes in the story and too many possible leads that, as he saw it, could be pursued. He noted, in particular, that a big part of what drew him to this subject in the first place is that there appeared to be enough factual evidence to provide the basis for a good research project. “When I take on a project, I want to deal with hard evidence,” he said. Working with the rough framework of the story, Sindoni set out to verify what he could. He said he began by tracing the records of the Lord Cowdray Mining Company. In doing so, he discovered that there was no record of a JC Brown, but he did find that a geologist by the name of JB Body had been employed by the company. Records indicated that Body had travelled to Mt. Shasta in 1904 along with Lord Cowdray himself, Sindoni said Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, Sindoni soon became convinced that “JC Brown” was the alias for the real life JB Body. After further research, Sindoni said he found out that the Cowdray Mining Company had been prospecting for oil in Mexico and, by 1904, had unearthed vast reserves under the name of the Mexican Aguilar Oil Company. Body was employed as one of the geologist who worked with Lord Cowdray, and the two together became very wealthy. Sindoni claims to have traced the roots of this company to today’s Shell Oil, and he notes that at his death in 1927, Cowdray was one of the wealthiest men in the country, and that at the time of his disappearance, Body was worth an estimated $45 million. Sindoni’s research eventually led him to believe that Cowdray and Body were originally in Mt. Shasta to visit the then famous Shasta Springs Resort, located along the Upper Sacramento River just north of Dunsmuir. (At that time, the resort was a popular destination for the San Francisco elite, who came to enjoy the region’s healing waters and stunning vistas.) As Sindoni sees it, the reason for their visit was most likely recreational, as the two may have been celebrating some recent oil discoveries. ...
Mysterious seasonal wobbles in the rate of radioactive decay may be caused by elusive particles from the sun (Image: Christian Montengero) Solar ghosts may haunt Earth's radioactive atoms-7/3 New Scientist, by Justin Mullins It's 1986, and there's a puzzle on Dave Alburger's desk. Not Ernö Rubik's latest toy, but the data from a four-year experiment to measure the half-life of the rare radioactive isotope silicon-32. On one level, the numbers fit together just fine, adding up to a half-life of 172 years, in keeping with previous estimates. There's a devil in the detail, however. The sample's radioactivity has not been dropping steadily over time, as the textbooks demand. It has fallen, to be sure, but superimposed on that decline is an odd, periodic wobble that seems to follow the seasons. Each year, the decay rate is at its greatest around February and reaches a minimum in August. If we know anything about radioactivity, it's that this kind of thing just doesn't happen. Radioactivity decreases predictably over time. That's why we can tell the age of rocks, fossils and prehistoric artefacts by the activity of radioactive atoms within them, and why nuclear waste becomes less toxic over time. The fault was surely in some detail of the experimental set-up. Yet try as they might, Alburger and his colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York - all nuclear physicists highly versed in this kind of painstaking measurement - couldn't find it. Eventually they published the result anyway, noting that although the variations were a puzzle, they had no bearing on their value for silicon-32's half-life (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 78, p 168). And there the result languished, a scientific skeleton in the closet. Until last year, that is, when it was rediscovered and dusted down by Ephraim Fischbach and Jere Jenkins of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. They think the data fits into an emerging pattern indicating that radioactivity is not quite the immutable process we assume it to be. Instead, it is susceptible to unseen interference from an unexpected quarter - the sun. ... Grains of Sand Reveal Possible Fifth State of Matter-6/29 Wired, By Brandon Keim-- In the formation of droplets in a stream of falling sand, scientists have witnessed a dynamic that points beyond the boundaries of traditional physics, and may represent one aspect of a fifth state of matter. “Here we have a material right underneath our noses, that everybody grows up playing with in a sandbox, yet it’s full of surprises for scientists,” physicist said Heinrich Jaeger of the University of Chicago. The droplets formed because of instabilities in the subtle atomic forces that attract sand grains to each other. Something similar happens to water falling from a faucet, but the forces acting on those molecules are 100,000 times stronger. Measurements of this phenomena, published Wednesday in Nature, overturn the previous explanation for sand droplets — that grains stick to each other after colliding — and quantify what’s called an “ultralow-surface-tension regime.” It’s entirely new territory for researchers, and just one of many dynamics governing the behavior of granular materials, which for reasons unknown to science act sometimes as solids, or liquids, or gases — or something in-between. “You walk on the beach, and the sand supports your weight. Pick up a handful, and it runs through your fingers, like a liquid. But you can’t walk on water,” said Jaeger. “In the top of an hourglass, sand is this strange solid. It’s at the verge of being a solid; it flows through the middle as something like a liquid, and then it’s a solid again,” he said. Since the early 1990s, Jaeger has treated granularity as both a form of matter unto itself and a model for investigating the dynamics of types of matter, as though molecules could be seen by a naked eye. Jaeger also sees in granularity a potentially universal dynamic, reflected in everything from highway traffic to crowd patterns to ecosystem function. “You have many interacting particles. Energy is put in, sometimes they get stuck, and sometimes it flows,” said Jaeger. “If it flows, what properties does it have? With many interacting players, that behavior is typically very complex and crosses between solid- and liquid-like behavior.” On a less-speculative level, research into granularity could be a boon for manufacturers. Most finished products and foods pass at some point through a granular stage — pellets of plastic, gravel in concrete, corn in a silo, powders in a pill, on and on. A report published by the Rand Corporation in 1986 found that granular industrial processes generally function at about 60% of capacity. “Semingly modest changes in conditions, such as temperature, humidity, and surface conditions routinely cause earth bound devices to fail,” concluded the authors of a 2005 NASA technical report on the importance of understanding granularity to exploring Mars and the Moon. ... Ancient Wisdom & Mythologies-7/3 Coast to Coast Recap, A lifelong student of world mythology and the pre-Christian Mysteries, John Lash discussed the ancient Gnostic texts known as the Nag Hammadi, as well as the Gaia Hypothesis, Archons, origins, and calendars. In studying ancient cultures such as those of Egypt, he realized their astronomical and building knowledge stemmed from inner resources rather than technology, and many of their myths were based around an interface between the sky and the human mind. The Archons, referred to in the Nag Hammadi, are inorganic entities that preceded humankind and live off planet. They can interact deceptively with humans as mind parasites, in a manner that is similar to reports of ET encounters and abductions, he detailed. Yet, there are also said to be benevolent Archons who defected from the main group, and live in the atmosphere of the sun. Known as "paralemptors," they may play a role in receiving people when they die, Lash said. He sees 2012 as a horizon point for the end of the great 26,000-year cosmic cycle of precession, but according to his research, the actual end date for this cycle doesn't arrive until 2216. In speaking about Earth's origin, he shared an account from the Nag Hammadi texts, about how a power spike exists in the center of our galaxy, and from there a plume shot out into the galactic limb where our solar system is located. This plume or "serpent of light" was the living entity known as Sophia, who willed the Earth into being. Lash also discussed his work adapting some of Jack Kerouac's novels into screenplays, including the Harry Potter-like Doctor Sax. UK researcher looking for people hearing music with their near-death experience-6/30 Examiner, UK researcher Dr. Melvyn J. Willin states that he is researching near-death experiences (NDEs). He hopes to interview people who have heard music during their NDE. He requests that individuals having this experience become part of his research project by answering questions about their experience. If you have had this type of experience, please contact Dr. Willin at melvyn.willin@tiscali.co.uk ... |
Let there be light!-7/1 Philip Coppens, Deep inside the crypts of the Egyptian temple complex of Denderah is an enigmatic room, which for some depicts evidence that the ancient Egyptians knew the secret of electricity. But could it be that the scenes reveal an even bigger mystery?-- The temple complex of Denderah has always been controversial as it contains a zodiac. As the complex was built during Ptolemaic times (when the Greeks had conquered Egypt), the zodiac is seen as cross fertilisation from ancient Greece to Egypt, whereby the Greek pantheon of gods was introduced within the Egyptian religion. Others argue that the Denderah zodiac is instead evidence of the Egyptians’ knowledge of the stars, and that their deities were identical to the Greek. After all, many of the most learned Greeks had gone to Egypt to study – an education they themselves never hid from their audience and were proud to mention in their writings, though since, historians have underplayed this vital piece of information. Still others have seen in the Denderah zodiac an attempt to marry the Greek zodiac with the Egyptian division of the skies, which was not done in 12, but in 36 sections – the so-called decans. Whatever theory is the likeliest, let alone the truth, fact is that far more light needs to be shed on this controversy. Light, however, is the key ingredient of another controversy in another part of the complex, specifically “Chamber C of South Crypt Number One”, which according to some alternative researchers, shows “clearly” that the ancient Egyptians were fully aware of electricity and used light bulbs similar to ours. The walls of contention are in a small chamber in the crypt of Denderah. The chamber is so small that photography is not easy and most have therefore relied on drawings published in 1947 by the French researcher Emile Chassinat, in “Le Temple de Dendera”. The depictions show a religious scene, in which Hathor – to whom the temple of Denderah is dedicated – features prominently. Around her, are what indeed appear to be oversized light bulbs, held by human beings; inside are serpents, suggestive – in these interpretations – of electrical energy. If we look at the walls in detail, the north wall depicts a scene with the god Sokar – lord of the underworld before Osiris – sitting on a plinth. The goddess Hathor receives an offering from one of her sons. A man in an underworld boat is sailing past, holding a lotus flower. The scene depicts one “serpent cell”, as Robert Temple has called the “light bulb”. The south wall has two such cells. Hathor is seated at the right, holding the uas sceptre. Again, an offering is made by one of her sons and again, Sokar, in his falcon form, is present. German “ancient astronaut authors” Peter Krassa and Reinhard Habeck have posited that these “serpent cells” are light bulbs. Firstly, they argue that some form of high-tech lighting system would have been required to do whatever was done in this crypt, it being far removed from natural daylight. They further argue that the snakes represent the electric current; the lotus flower, from which the snake issues forth, is seen as the socket of the bulb. Specifically, Geissler and Crookes tubes have been put forward as the “likeliest” devices that these light bulbs depict. Their conclusion is that the ancient Egyptians were, “light bulb wise”, as technically advanced as we were in the 20th century Though naturally sceptical of these interpretations, Egyptologists are nevertheless quite silent about the depictions in this chamber. They have explained the scene as lotus flowers spawning a snake, symbolising creation as a manifestation of consciousness. Some have interpreted the lotus flower as the blue lotus, whereby the pharaoh breathing in its scent, was to provide him immortality. Robert Temple speculates that a ritual was performed inside this chamber and hints at the presence of the scent of the blue lotus, and that the chamber might have been filled with the blossoms at the proper season, or “otherwise some method of capturing the scent and the alkaloids in concentrated form may have been used.” The blue lotus was linked with immortality, but also with ecstasy and access to the otherworld, perhaps through hallucinogenic means, as some researchers have tried to explore. ...
K.H. on Electro-Magnetism, Solar Forces and Attenuated Matter-6/23 New at Reverse Spins, [From The Mahatma Letters]: ... The reason why the particles -- since they call them so -- do not fall upon the sun's body, is self-evident. There are forces co-existent with gravitation of which they know nothing; besides that other fact that there is no gravitation properly speaking; only attraction and repulsion. (2) How could comets be affected by the said passage since their "passing through"s is simply an optical illusion; they could not pass within the area of attraction without being immediately annihilated by that force, of which no vril can give an adequate idea, since there can be nothing on earth that could be compared with it. Passing as the comets do through a "reflection" no wonder that the said vapour has "no visible effect on these light bodies." (3) The coronal line may not seem identical through the best "grating spectroscope," nevertheless, the corona contains iron as well as other vapours. To tell you of what it does consist is idle, since I am unable to translate the words we use for it, and that no such matter exists (not in our planetary system, at any rate) -- but in the sun. The fact is, that what you call the Sun is simply the reflection of the huge "store-house" of our System wherein ALL its forces are generated and preserved; the Sun being the heart and brain of our pigmy Universe, we might compare its faculae -- those millions of small, intensely brilliant bodies of which the Sun's surface away from the spots is made up -- with the blood corpuscles of that luminary -- though some of them as correctly conjectured by science are as large as Europe. Those blood corpuscles are the electric and magnetic matter in its sixth and seventh state. What are those long white filaments twisted like so many ropes, of which the penumbra of the Sun is made up? What -- the central part that is seen like a huge flame ending in fiery spires, and the transparent clouds, or rather vapours formed of delicate threads of silvery light, that hangs over those flames -- what -- but magneto-electric aura -- the phlogiston of the Sun? Science may go on speculating for ever, yet so long as she does not renounce two or three of her cardinal errors she will find herself groping for ever in the dark. Some of her greatest misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her denial that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term "force" and the absurd and tacitly accepted idea, that force is capable of existing per se, or of acting any more than life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter: in other words that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states, -- the last three on the ascending scale being denied because only science knows nothing of them; and her utter ignorance of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature -- magnetism and electricity. Tell Science that even in those days of the decline of the Roman Empire, when the tatooed Britisher used to offer to the Emperor Claudius his nazzur of "electron" in the shape of a string of amber beads that even then, there were yet men remaining aloof from the immoral masses, who knew more of electricity and magnetism than they, the men of science, do now, and science will laugh at you as bitterly as she now does over your kind dedication to me. Verily, when your astronomers speaking of sun-matter, term those lights and flames as "clouds of vapour" and "gases unknown to science" (rather!) -- chased by mighty whirlwinds and cyclones -- whereas we know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity -- we feel inclined to smile at the expressions. Can one imagine the "Sun's fires fed with purely mineral matter" -- with meteorites highly charged with hydrogen giving the "Sun a far-reaching atmosphere of ignited gas"? We know that the invisible Sun is composed of that which has neither name, nor can it be compared to anything known by your science -- on earth; and that its "reflection" contains still less of anything like "gases," mineral matter, or fire, though even we when treating of it in your civilized tongue are compelled to use such expressions as "vapour" and "magnetic matter." To close the subject, the coronal changes have no effect upon the earth's climate, though spots have -- and Professor N. Lockyer is mostly wrong in his deductions. The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid, nor yet a gaseous globe; but a gigantic ball of electro-magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life and motion, from which the latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the greatest genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug. ... More >>> Marian devotees flock to Cagayan Valley in the Philippines-7/1 In Annapolis, a miracle worthy of sainthood?-6/28 Woman's cancer vanishes after prayers to 19th-century Maryland priest ...
Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer-6/25 U.S. pensioners mentally '10 years younger' than those in England-6/25 Telegraph (UK), American pensioners are mentally 10 years younger than their English counterparts due to better education and quality of life, a new survey by the University of Michigan claims. ... Bath in diluted bleach relieves kids' eczema-6/30 Cancer: shock breakthrough-6/20 Patients with inoperable prostate disease recover after single dose of drug-- The results were so startling that researchers decided to release details of the two cases before the drug trial – in which the patients took part – was complete. Doctors said their progress had exceeded all expectations. The men were treated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in the US, one of the top medical centres in the world. Dr Eugene Kwon, the urologist who was in charge of their treatment, compared the results to the first pilot breaking the sound barrier. ... |
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