Since 2006, the major significance of Space Weather has become more apparent. What's more, it has now been proven that major religious institutions, metaphysical and esoteric groups have been tracking the date 2012 as the end/start of a major astronomical cycle. Geoscientists worldwide are adamant that our planet is experiencing a “global energy leap” and the inevitable consequence will be more mega-disasters. World governments have been warned that there is a new need for disaster preparedness and there is now a new sense of urgency. This blog provides my unique perspective as a Truth Seeker, based on the integration of science, metaphysics and ancient knowledge.

The Joyfire Space Weather “Facts” Introductory Slideshow Slideshow: The Joyfire Space Weather “Facts” Introductory Slideshow Click image above or here For new website visitors, please watch this introductory slideshow that summarises the main issues associated with the new phenomenon of Space Weather and the inevitable implications of energy driven evolutionary change.

Solar Prayer

Our Solar which art in heaven,
Solar Maximum be thy name.
Thy solar wind come, thy will be done,
but don't let the ACE satellite break down.
Give us this day our daily sunspots,
but shield us from X-rated solar flares,
full halo coronal mass ejections
and highly dangerous proton storms.
And lead us not into a Maunder Minimum,
but deliver us from a category 5
geomagnetic storm and transformer burnout.
For thine is the solar system, the IBEX and the ribbon,
Solar radiance for ever and ever.
Amen.

(In this NASA Enlil spaceweather prediction model, the Yellow dot is Earth. You can click the image here to access the animation.)

Skip JR Trial News

9 Years 8 Years 7 Years 6 Years 5 Years 4 Years 3 Years 2 Years 1 Year Probation

The countdown got stuck on 6 years, 2 years for killing 3 people. (Colleen Conaway was not even considered in this trial, verdict or sentence). However, it's 2 years each concurrent, so he only will need to serve 2 years behind bars with 4 years of probation. Not enough. He will come out telling people that he spent his jail time in silent meditation or other such baloney.
JR Sentencing: CNN Live CNN showed all of JR begging for forgiveness and cut the live feed when the sentence was handed out....

James Ray Court Apology - 18th November 2011
YouTube, 18th November 2011
JAR's Oscar award winning performance, that any psychopath facing the possibility of 9 years in prison would give.... this is not very good footage because I think it's a camcorder recording of the original court video that seems to be projected onto a screen, but I think it's better than nothing. Part 2

Psychopaths' 'early release con'
BBC News, 9 February 2009
"Psychopaths are so adept at "putting on a good show" and using crocodile tears that they can be convincing to psychologists as well as other professionals.
"They use non-verbal behaviour, a "gift of gab", and persuasive emotional displays to put on an Oscar award winning performance and move through the correctional system ultimately parole boards relatively quickly, despite their known diagnosis."
There is no real need to comment, because this article says it all. The use of use crocodile tears is exactly what we should have expected directly before JR received his sentence and he performed on cue.

Camille Kimball is doing a great job tweeting Bob Ortega not so. There are 2 reporters sending out info on the James Ray trial via Twitter, Bob Ortega & Camille Kimball.

James Ray trial, 18th November saved Camille Kimball tweets (text only): here

AP: Families Tearfully Tell of Sweat Lodge Deaths
YouTube/AP, 18th November 2011
"The families of three people who participated in an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony tearfully pleaded with a judge to give James Arthur Ray, the self-help author convicted in their deaths the maximum sentence."
James Ray faced the family of the people who died and told them in court that he is sad that he lost three friends. How can he say that now when he actually left them for dead and went off for his dinner and got angry when paramedics were called? Normal people don't leave their friends in the dirt displaying medical symptoms that indicate that they are obviously dying. Words fail...

Judge Warren Darrow Speech - James Ray Sentenced to Two Years
Celestial Reflections, 18th November 2011

James Arthur Ray :: Life Sentence
Salty Droid, 18th November 2011
"Two years isn’t fair … and it isn’t right. But this celebri-trial wasn’t a disaster :: far from it. It was an eye opening :: professionally run thing … that ended with a verdict. Ms. Polk and her people :: and Det. Diskin and his people :: managed to remind us that :: so many times :: good people in the government really are doing a surprisingly good job at doing a good job."
This is the victory speech from the Salty Droid, of course the language is bad and those in the comments are worse, but the overall message is the fight goes on... I totally agree about the Sweat Lodge deaths being an an eye opener. For me, it was the start point for really understanding the dynamics in the Cultic Milieu... It really is not what you think, it's far more evil than that... After thousands of hours of study, I have started to recognise the enemy, so maybe I should thank JR for the enlightenment, but of course it's not what he intended, I am sure about that...

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Sentencing Ends with a Wimper not a Bang (CNN Video: 'Deadly Cover-up?' )
My Gratitude Project, 19th November 2011
James Arthur Ray The Hollow Man

The Jury said Guilty: This is the way James Arthur Ray's privileged world ends

James Arthur Ray cried: This is the way James Arthur Ray's privileged world ends

The Judge gave him 2 years: This is the way James Arthur Ray's privileged world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

with apologies to T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"

Comment: Thanks Jeannika for posting the CNN video 'Deadly Cover-up?' link about the death of Colleen Conaway. I actually think the cover-up of Colleen's death is important because it demonstrates exactly what JR and his company were prepared to do to maintain a good clean public image... Quite frankly, it means that if people had not died very publicly at the sweat lodge event, then there would have been a trickle of people dying silently caused by the flaming used by JR and his staff of 'death' angels to break people down mentally and emotionally. In the LGAT business, deaths like this are called collateral damage and they are expected, which is why course participants are required to sign such lengthy disclaimers and waivers. Salty Droid (lawyer turned vigilante) made a YouTube video of the phone call of JR staff calling Colleen's phone asking her if she is OK when they KNEW she was already dead. Sick. I can't even see where there is suppose to be spirituality in any of this kind of behaviour.... The LGAT style personal development business model is really warped and sick, but it's attractive to sickos like James Ray who brag about wanting to become billionaires. Simply, there is a lot of sheep out there that can be easily fleeced if you know how to say all the right things and press all the right buttons... Upshot: This is all so frightening because the same methods employed by JR are widespread. Those with a sense of entitlement and no integrity are using methods that work against the unsuspecting because it gets what they want, despite working against people who they are supposed to be nuturing... sick, sick sick... Education is the only answer.

James Ray: Locked Up for 2 Years
Spirituality Is No Excuse, 19th November 2011
"Motivational torturer, James Arthur Ray, has been sentenced to two years in prison for three of the four lives he snuffed out. [...] The legal justice system has been kind to James Ray. The court excluded relevant evidence from previous life threatening sweat lodges and decided Ray was unaware of the danger of cooking people to death, as he was merely trying to cook them to within an inch of their lives."
From the comments here:

Yes, he has taken a powerful fall for the industry. An industry that does absolutely nothing to police itself also does nothing to protect it’s big names from getting themselves into hot water. It’s all cross promotion and absolutely no standards whatsoever. None of those who vouched for Ray bothered checking on any of his credentials – of course, because their credentials are just as bogus. The result is, of course, a culture of absolute and unconditional denial – and despite four deaths, it’s still in denial. [...]

But prison time at least sends a message, if not to Ray, then to his apologists who are still trying to claim it was an accident.

by Yakaru November 19, 2011 at 18:56

The standards are too low, there are just too many things wrong, but nobody seems to care either, enlightenment by heat stroke? Yes, crap sells...

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James Arthur Ray gets prison time in sweat-lodge deaths
AZ Central, 18th November 2011
PRESCOTT - James Arthur Ray was sentenced to prison on three counts of negligent homicide in the sweat-lodge trial. He was sentenced four days before his 54th birthday.

Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Warren Darrow imposed two-year sentences for each of the three deaths, but the sentences are to be served concurrently.

"I see and I find that the aggravating circumstance of emotional harm is so strong and such that probation is simply unwarranted in this case," Darrow said.

Ray must serve at least 85 percent of the term before being eligible for release. He's already spent 24 days behind bars and thus would need to serve a minimum of 600 more days in prison. He was also ordered to pay a total of $57,000 in restitution to the families of the victims.

Comment: Well, I think the message is clear. If you get involved with 'gurus' who think they know how to give you some enlightenment but instead mess up and kill or maim you, then society simply does not care very much. What is really sad is that 2 of the people who died were Dream Team members who had spent many thousands of dollars following James Ray over many years and thought that James Ray really cared about them. He showed how much he cared when he cooked their internal organs because he believed heat stroke would give them a bit of enlightenment. After his hellaciously hot 'sweat lodge', he stood around surveying the chaos of people who were obviously in serious trouble, some of who were blue and clearly dying and then went off for his dinner. Most people have absolutely no idea what JR was doing with all the high pressure sales techniques, NLP, persuasion techniques, hypnosis, suggestions, LGAT style conversion processing etc. Basically, if these LGAT guru types play amateur psychotherapists (which is part of the process of breaking you down so that you can be mentally reconfigured as they want) but instead cause a complete mental or emotional breakdown, then nobody gives a damn. My suggestion is be very careful around people who profess 'spirituality' of any kind. My experience is that some of these people are mentally ill, others are pure narcissists and some are extremely dangerous. Do not make any assumptions on their values because due to their 'conditioning' over many years, too many have very little in the way of integrity. As James Ray stated over and over again, 'Balance is Bogus' and that is the problem. Crap sells very well amongst people who are trained to stay ignorant. Beware!

CBS VIDEO: Sweat lodge families speak, October 20, 2009
CBS VIDEO: Sweat lodge horror eyewitness, October 16, 2009
CBS VIDEO: Sweat lodge tragedy, October 16, 2009

The James Ray Trial Sentencing 18th November 2011

The James Ray Trial Sentencing will be filmed live 9am (MST, AZ does not observe Daylight Savings Time, GMT/UTC - 7h)and there will be pool TV coverage whatever that means. Saved Twitter: Bob Ortega : This means the countdown has started!

This is not just about the lives of 4 people. This is about the general principal of psychopaths like James Ray pretending to be spiritual leaders whilst using heinous and dangerous "techniques" on people in order for them to be controlled and manipulated. A jail sentence will send a loud and clear message to all those other fraudsters out there that society is no longer interested in tolerating their dangerous behaviour. Oprah are you watching? Your New Age 'prince' is about to get his sentence. I hope Judge Darrow gets this right.

This is a new blog to me from PR professional Thomas McFeely about the JR trial, but I have not read enough to know whether he is related to any of the victims, but the name is familiar. here

James Ray trial, 15th, 16th & 17th November Camille Kimball tweets (text only): here

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Sweat lodge trial: Ray's sentencing to take place Friday
Daily Courier, 17th November 2011
In her closing statement to the court, Polk reiterated her stance that only prison will prevent Ray from putting more people in danger, calling him "a dangerous man without internal boundaries who needs to be locked up for the next nine years."

She reminded Darrow that, because of his lack of knowledge and qualifications, Ray "focused on creating the hottest sweat lodge ever," telling his clients that the altered mental state which is a reliable sign that someone is coming down with fatal heatstroke was instead a beneficial condition that brought about enlightenment.

Ray, she said, violated every tenet of leadership and, for added measure, continued after the tragedy to sell his materials online, learning nothing from the deaths he brought about.

"Individuals who offer themselves as experts and leaders must act responsibly," Polk said. "There has to be justice in the sentence you impose - justice for the family members of James, of Kirby, of Liz."

Comment: I would like to remind people who are unfamiliar with this case and the background story that the Rick Ross Cult Education Forum identified James Ray as dangerous, a full 2 years before he was made famous by Oprah. He was on the radar because he was reckless and many people were being injured at his events. The following report provides some detail:

These seminars were "much more intense, way more metaphysical, way more esoteric," Lauren said. "You're in kind of an altered state when you're in there."

It was during that altered state that Kurt and hundreds of others did something most people would see as reckless, he said. Participants were required to sign a waiver that released Ray of any responsibility if someone got hurt.

"They had us put the sharp side of the arrow … (a) true, real archery arrow right on the soft part of your neck," Kurt said. "There's no bone behind it, just the real soft area .. your trachea is right there and your spine behind it, and you lean forward into the arrow."

As Kurt leaned into the arrow -- a challenge designed to make him face his fears -- his fear was realized.

"When the shaft snapped, a large piece went up under my glasses and penetrated my eyelid," he said. "(It) just missed my eye by an eighth of an inch. It was a deep cut -- probably needed stitches."

"I was greatly concerned," Laura said. "We could not tell if his eye was intact. It was a bloody mess."

Kurt and Lauren said they believe Ray was not prepared for anything to go wrong.

The event did not have the proper medical staff, and it took time for them to dig around for a first aid kit, Kurt said.

"I thought, 'Wow, they are not prepared for the potential there,'" he said. "At that point I thought, 'This is reckless.'"

Original source: Man: Sweat Lodge Leader's Actions 'Reckless'
Former James Arthur Ray Followers Speak Out About Another Incident
kpho.com News, October 21, 2009, link content has gone, copy: here

Please note that people even realised that they were placed in an altered state by JR but few realise that their judgement is also impaired whilst in this state and continue to follow commands.... Moving to the present, what is really interesting is those who continue to support JR despite the fact that 'normal' people can immediately see that he is a dangerous con artist. The only conclusion that a psychologist could give is that these people have been experiencing 'thought reform' or brainwashing. The popular New Age belief is that there are no victims, people "attract" their fate, but this is very convenient if you are a predator and you want to con as many people as possible and blame them for being prey. It's a very slow burn, but the continuous thought reform process does have the same impact in the end as those who go through traumatic quick conversion processes. So, how are these people going to cope now that this New Age 'Hero' has been found by 'normal' unbrainedwashed people to require incarceration? Whatever happens, I now believe that there is a serious need for widespread deprogramming in the Cultic Mileu. It is the only sane conclusion that is possible when all the facts and details are examined.

Ray to be sentenced in AZ sweat lodge deaths (Video)
KPHO.com, 18th November 2011
James Ray video of him finally saying sorry, but it has taken 2 years for this first sign of remorse...

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Mitigating James Ray’s Conduct: What Can We Expect
Twinkie WranglerNews, 14th November 2011
What we haven’t heard very much about is the most crucial item of the sentencing phase — the probation report. The Judge relies heavily on the information provided in the pre-sentencing report prepared by the probation officer which contains his recommendation on how guidelines apply to a particular case and provides the judge with a baseline score. The public, and usually the attorneys, don’t get to know what James Ray’s baseline score is, but the judge depends on it heavily. A defendant must be sentenced under provisions passed by congress and the U.S. Sentencing commission. From everything I’ve read, it seems that the probation officer’s base adjusted level used for sentencing is quite high. If so, the dream team must convince Judge Darrow that the probation officer was wrong.

Acceptance of responsibility will give Ray a slight adjustment in the deduction of 2 points. This may not affect the length of sentence applied very much. The fact that his remorse came only after he was convicted is not in his favor. Usually, remorse is considered as a mitigating factor only if it is displayed before conviction. Also, from what I’ve heard Ray is claiming that he’s very sorry that an “accident” happened at Sedona and is not accepting any personal responsibility for the deaths. Judge Darrow still has discretion to go above or below the baseline sentence. Darrow can apply a harsher sentence if he finds an aggravating circumstance which has not been admitted in the case. The memorandum also suggests that Judge Darrow is free to think up mitigating factors himself that he use as justification for a more lenient sentence. This is all this highly paid legal team can come up with? Hey Judge, we’re fresh out of ideas. Do you think up some reasons to let our client off yourself? http://is.gd/hpYkVD

The fact that the defense has filed strong objections to the language in the probation officer’s report suggest that they are aware that the probation officer has recommended a stiff sentence. They want this sentence stricken from the report:

“While it does not appear that Mr. Ray’s actions were intentional. This officer would suggest that he does need to be held responsible for the deaths of three individuals. His actions appear to this officer to be reckless, dangerous and negligent and he should be held accountable.”

Because of the numerous documents the defense has filed in this case, we already know what arguments they intend to present on Monday. It looks like the dream team had a hard time coming up with mitigating factors.

Comment: This is a very good long read, but from what it says here and I have highlighted above, it looks like the judge is going to give JAR a tough sentence... There is a lot of things that raise concern, but the talk of JAR's involvement in a new New Age numerology scam is enough to make you heave...

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Occupy ‘bat-signal’ creator explains how he brought it off
Raw Story, 18th November 2011
As Occupy Wall Street protesters were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday evening, a mysterious series of images flashed across the facade of the Verizon building, located near the East River, starting with a circled “99%.”

“LOOK AROUND / YOU ARE A PART / OF A GLOBAL UPRISING / WE ARE A CRY / FROM THE HEART / OF THE WORLD / WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE / ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE … OCCUPY EARTH / WE ARE WINNING / IT IS THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING / DO NOT BE AFRAID / LOVE.”

Boing Boing tracked down the signal’s creator, Mark Read, to find out what had inspired the dramatic display and how he had brought it off.

Comment: Cool! Another nice non violent way to make a point...

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Photographer captures stunning images of UFOs above Hatfield [UK]
Welwyn Hatfiled Times, 18th November 2011
AFTER our story about the Welwyn Garden City man who couldn’t stop seeing UFOs, a Hatfield resident has sent us a series of snaps which show unexplained lights in the sky. Photographer Jason Reeve took the dazzling pictures from outside his north-west-facing bedroom window, in Chantry Court, with a 20-minute exposure. The images showed mysterious mushroom-shaped craft set against the starry night sky.

Fascinated Mr Reeve is desperate for people to try and explain what it was he photographed. He said: “I was lying on [my] bed and I glanced out of my window, I saw an odd light in the sky. “I am a photographer and I often photograph the night sky and I knew it looked different to anything I had seen before.

“I decided to set up my camera and photograph the object. “I set up my Canon 60D and took a series of photos. “The object appeared to be cone shaped very high up and not moving in any direction.”

He added: “After 20 minutes I looked at what I had captured and realised there were in fact four separate lights in the sky, but not visible to the naked eye. “And they where also apparently static and not moving. “The image shows a possible small trail behind the object, suggesting that the object had been moving, but in a completely different direction to everything else in the night sky.”

Comment: Hmmm.... these are plasma entities... another lifeform, that have been seen in the sky a few times over previous decades but in recent times, sightings are rising, (use the search term 'jelly-fish' for recent and historic examples in the archives: Best of the Blog - Orbs, UAP & UFO Traffic). Sprites that are an atmospheric phenomenon only exist for thousandths of a second but they take on the characteristic life-like properties of plasma and look extremely biological. These are different because they are real creatures literally swimming in the air but they also have the ability to literally stop and hang motionless. This lifeform lives alongside us in the sky and inside the Earth and are part of a vast shadow biosphere with many different characteristics but they are getting easier and easier to see and or capture with photography.

Video: Are those UFOs over Seattle?
Seattle Pi News, 17th November 2011
"We reported yesterday that Seattle was apparently under siege by UFOs Tuesday night, but we didn’t have video at that time. That’s changed. Lights seen glowing in the sky over Seattle have surfaced on YouTube with this description: “UFOs over Seattle, Washington around 8:30PM local time on 11/15/2011. Totally wild sight. Sure there is some practical explanation. Wish the video was better but it’s cell phone, of course. First “UFO” sighting so pretty fun.” NSFW warning: There’s some profanity in this video, because, well, seeing UFOs is apparently pretty upsetting."
Another classic... "The aliens are %&"*&%* landing!" If you don't mind the bad language, this is a great video! Of course the conclusion is Chinese lanterns, despite the fact some of these lights were locked in a triangle formation and other lights were moving in pairs but varying their distance which seems odd if this was being caused by the wind...

UFO sighting in Norway: Bright lights seen in night sky caught on video
Unexplained Phenomena Examiner, 18th November 2011
More bright orbs in formation in the sky.... The black triangle is a 'nulled' magnetic field. I note the ignorance here of people talking about drones in Norway. I lived in Norway for over 8 years.... Drones? What for? The Norwegians are not so ignorant as the rest of the world either, as they take their university students up to Hessdalen Valley in the summer to monitor orbs and UAPs as part of the ongoing scientific studies of this lifeform.

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“Law of Attraction” and “The Secret” are elitist disinformation
QBit.cc, 17th November 2011
Unfortunately there’s a big steaming piece of disinfo that I thought we put to bed which is making the rounds again, called the Law of Attraction. You may have seen the video called The Secret on YouTube, or read the book. I had a few friends send me links so I watched it and found it to be rife with faulty logic, but it goes far beyond just being incorrect. This time someone sent me an audio series called Your Wish is Your Command, which is The Secret dressed up in a more conspiratorial tone with some references to secret societies and elite agendas, but essentially the same idea. The premise of the Law of Attraction is this: Whatever you think about in your mind will manifest itself in reality. We’re not just talking about the very real and profound effect a person’s mental attitude can have on their life, health, and others’ perception of them. This takes it several steps further into the realm of superstition, occultism, magic, and general hokus pokus. Thru some unexplained cosmic force, if you visualize things in your mind they will come true, and of course if you don’t visualize things this will cost you dearly, because you’re obviously not visualizing correctly. They apply this to any and all aspects of life, including seemingly random events.

Comment: This article is useful if you are unfamiliar with this very popular New Age idea designed for people who are simple and unsophisticated and don't have much in the way of reasoning abilities. On investigation, it is clear that New Age gurus who promote this concept, do not follow their own advice because it does not work. Instead, they employ a wide variety of techniques that manipulate people whilst providing the appearance of free choice and simple people think they are getting help with applying this spiritual law in their life. The game is to manipulate simpletons into thinking they are a failure and they need the services of a guru who will show them the way for a fee. This is a game that can go on and on until the 'simpleton' has been drained of finances and therefore the principal can be applied to other promises to help people with xyz. More and more books, CDs, DVDs, trainings, seminars. However, I believe that due to different types of business models, not all guru types will try and create followers for life by using the most dangerous methods that can result in emotional and mental problems, injuries or even death.

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Radiation levels in Fukushima are lower than predicted
New Scientist, 16th November 2011
The fallout from the radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan may be less severe than predicted.

Radiology researcher Ikuo Kashiwakura of Hirosaki University, Japan, and colleagues responded immediately to the disaster, travelling south to Fukushima prefecture to measure radiation levels in more than 5000 people there between 15 March and 20 June.

They found just 10 people with unusually high levels of radiation, but those levels were still below the threshold at which acute radiation syndrome sets in and destroys the gastrointestinal tract. Geiger-counter readings categorised all others in the area at a "no contamination level".

Comment: Nobody who is keeping a close watch on what is happening in Japan believes this rubbish. See links below for some of what's really happening...

Japan nuclear minister with strange sores on face (PHOTOS) — Emperor unable to leave hospital: “He has lost his appetite”… New respiratory infection?
Energy News, 16th November 2011

#Fukushima I Nuke Plant Reactor 3 Video of Packbot Finding 1.32 Sievert/Hr Location
ex-skf.blogspot.com, 16th November 2011
"But here's the video of Packbot working at the 1.32 sievert/hr (or 1320 millisieverts/hour, or 1,320,000 microsieverts/hour) location in Reactor 3's reactor building where the human workers somehow will have to go in."

Video of J-Village, Fukushima I Nuke Plant by the Press, 11/12/2011
ex-skf.blogspot.com, 16th November 2011
"The video is from the November 12, 2011 press tour of J-Village and Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, first since the accident. The members of the press were limited to those who belong to the press club and the foreign correspondent club."

Fukushima Diary: “I’m under their surveillance… I can’t post everything I know” — Next day writes “4 men interrogated me”
Energy News, 16th November 2011
"4 men interrogated me. They wanted to make up a story that I was an international criminal or something. It was a strange spectacle. They tried to make me state I was involved in an international money laundering though I only bought an A-bike on eBay."
This is a classic! How funny is that! OK, I realise this is serious stuff but really, you have to see the funny side...

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UFOs and Government: Proposing a New Way Forward
Huffington Post News, 15th November 2011
In UFO circles, much fuss has been made about a recent response by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to two petitions on extraterrestrial/human communications, posted on a government website. Phil Larson, who was tasked to respond, has been accused of everything from lying, to cover-ups, to gross incompetence. But the real problem lies with the inappropriate and fundamentally flawed content of the petitions themselves -- not with the government reply to them. The critics seem to have lost sight of what the petitions actually said and did not say, while insulting and lashing out at Larson.

Comment: The best way forward is to talk about the existence of a Shadow Biosphere or UAPs exactly as Leslie kean is implying in this article. This woman is a lot smarter than her ufology brethen and much more likely to be able to put some kind of strategy in place to get something to actually work, but no doubt others will try to sabotage her efforts because they are not really interested in the truth. Whatever, education is required because people need it. Meanwhile, the UFO reports continue to rise...

UFO Traffic Report: Thursday, November 17, 2011
UFO Examiner, 17th November 2011
A Michigan witness ran outside after a bathroom window lit up orange and reports watching a "circular UFO" about 50 feet in diameter with 10 blinking, white lights that was low flying about 100 yards away and looked like it was following a car.
We have lots of amber lights in these reports...

Florida triangle UFO: 'Not a sound was coming from it'
UFO Examiner, 17th November 2011
"A Florida witness reports watching a UFO with a "perfect triangular shape" and three amber-colored lights that was silent as it hovered low before moving away on November 16, 2011, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database."

UFO fleet sails over Raven Street Church in New Orleans, Louisiana [video]
UFO Examiner, 15th November 2011
What on Earth are Bodhisattava lights doing over New Orleans? LOL!

I Just Saw A Real Life UFO
seattlepi.com's Wallingford, 16th November 2011
Of course, the Americans are now crazy about setting off Chinese lanterns too now... strange ones that can pulsate and blink on and off...

UFO expert speaks about nuclear sites
Collegiate Times, 16th November 2011

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Supervolcanoes: Not a Threat for 2012
Science Daily, 15th November 2011
ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2011) — The geological record holds clues that throughout Earth's 4.5-billion-year lifetime massive supervolcanoes, far larger than Mount St. Helens or Mount Pinatubo, have erupted. However, despite the claims of those who fear 2012, there's no evidence that such a supereruption is imminent.

What exactly is a "supervolcano" or a "supereruption?" Both terms are fairly new and favored by the media more than scientists, but geologists have begun to use them in recent years to refer to explosive volcanic eruptions that eject about ten thousand times the quantity of magma and ash that Mount St. Helens, one of the most explosive eruptions in recent years, expelled.

Comment: More efforts to panic people about 2012, and scientists seem to be fighting back... Life on Earth is being influenced by a new cosmic cycle, with LONG TERM IMPLICATIONS, therefore it's not about a specific apocalypse in 2012. However, if we don't start to take some issues seriously like space weather, then we will get a slow drawn out apocalypse, this is really not that difficult to work out...

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Ateroid 2005 YU55 Flyby
spaceweather.com, 16th November 2011
ASTEROID PARALLAX: "On November 9th, asteroid 2005 YU55 passed so close to Earth that viewers at separate locations saw the interloper appear in slightly different spots against the background star field," says amateur astronomer Mike Harms of San Francisco. To illustrate this parallax effect, he combined his own observations with those of Dennis di Cicco across the country in Boston:

At the time of the flyby, the 400m-wide space rock was only 324,600 kilometers away, about 85% the distance from Earth to the Moon. This allowed amateur and professional astronomers alike to study the asteroid in unprecedented detail.

In Australia, where the Boston vs. Brisbane parallax effect was even greater, Dennis Simmons video-recorded the flyby: "It was quite sobering to be able to view the almost full Moon some 20 degrees away, knowing that this lump of rock was now nearer to me than our Moon," he says. "I was astonished at how bright the NEO appeared, having read that results from the Arecibo radar indicated it to be a very dark, nearly spherical object some 400 meters in diameter."

Comment: OK, why did NASA et al. lie about the object and tell people it would be "very dark"? The asteroid was hugely bright but NASA et al. were still forced to use radar and infra-red... Actually, I know the answer, it is quite obvious if you have integrated the science and metaphysics of what is taking place in our solar system...

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Meet the seven-year-old Indian girl Kura Nitya who weeps stones!
IMDB News, 16th November 2011
Kuala Lumpur, Nov 16: Doctors in India were dumbfounded when they discovered that a 7-year-old girl wept stones, and are clueless as to what may be causing the phenomenon.

According to local newspaper Tamil Nesan, Kura Nitya from a village near Hyderabad has been discharging stones from her right eye for the past 15 days.

She has been weeping about 12 to 25 stones a day.

Comment: Humans have manifested crystals, glass and even needles out of their bodies.... I think some instances have a mundane answer, but others are a major mystery or maybe even examples of glitches in the matrix...

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The ongoing mystery of the magnetosensing cows
i09 News, 15th November 2011
Back in 2008, a team of German researchers published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that claimed to demonstrate that cattle, when resting or grazing, actually align their bodies along the Earth's magnetic fields.

The team's results — which were based on satellite imagery of over 8,500 cattle from different regions around the globe — were compelling, but a recent attempt to replicate the researchers' findings has failed, inciting some pretty serious scientific squabble. So where does the great magnetic cow debate stand today?

Comment: The original research was released in August 2008, but I did not pay much attention at the time. Whatever, it's interesting that we get press releases about cows (and strange reports like sheep forming crop circles) that implies animals orientate themselves by using Earth's magnetic field (also the existence of morphogenetic fields to explain creatures swarming), but most animals, birds, sea creatures and fish use the Earth's magnetic field so I can't see why there was such a big fuss about this particular research. I think more humans should be paying attention to commissions being set up due to monitor the impact of space weather on humans when we now have wildly fluctuating geomagnetic fields that do impact humans. Just because there is virtually nothing in the media does not mean that efforts are not being made, the general public may be paying, but sometimes they often don't get to find out what is most relevant to their lives.

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Defense science panel: climate Space weather a national security threat
USA Today, 14th November 2011
The Defense Department's highly-regarded science panel is calling for the U.S. military to improve intelligence-gathering related to climate change.

"Climate change has the potential for significant impacts on all three of the basic elements important to national and international security: defense, diplomacy and economics," says the Defense Science Board report. Particularly in Africa, the report warns of increasing challenges to national security caused by global warming.

The National Academy of Science has concluded that climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel use releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, has led to a 1.4 degree increase in average global surface temperatures over the last century, and will likely drive a 2 to 11 degree increase in the next century, depending on the size of future emissions.

Comment: I changed the title to reflect the true issue... as even GPS is becoming useless for military purposes, see archives for more info...

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James Ray's Presentencing Hearing: Week 1
celestial-reflections.blogspot, 13th November 2011
There comes a moment, in dealing with a personality like Ray, when it suddenly dawns that you've been making a lot of assumptions. You've assumed that they're like you. You've projected your own values and emotions onto them. You've rescripted all the inappropriate things they've said and done, telling yourself, Oh he didn't mean it like that. It just came out wrong.

And then the penny drops. The person does something so egregious that your increasingly tested state of denial shatters. And over a period of months, or even years, you recollect all the things that were gnawing at your subconscious all along.

Comment: Bingo! This was my no. 1 problem with certain people claiming to be spiritual, too many assumptions, but I could not figure this out into I learnt about how people can be manipulated using a vast selection of techniques and the existence of psychopaths, sociopaths and malignant narcisists etc. Btw, LaVaugh reveals the whopping great lie that Ray claimed that he was only a few credits short of being a psychologist. Wow. Judge Darrow what are you going to do about that! Update I have read the document filed by Colleen Conaway’s family in July, 2011 of her wrongful death (.pdf) here and I thought I knew all the circumstances but it turns out that Colleen was verbally abused, berated, humiliated, ridiculed and shamed by James Ray and his staff and it seems she was not strong enough to take it.... Well, at least the Judge Darrow now knows the background story and for the first time, I am thinking JR might get the maximum sentence of 9 years.

News flash!

Comment: There are 2 reporters sending out info on the James Ray trial via Twitter, Bob Ortega & Camille Kimball. So, just when you think that James Ray would do everything possible to portray himself as an 'angel of light' as psychopaths do, apparently, it has been revealed that he has been shooting energy in the courtroom using a 'triangle' hand technique that his dream team members were taught to do routinely in seminars! Apparently, a woman called Marilyn Moss, sent a letter to the State of Arizona who were the prosecutors and Detective Diskin read some of the letters out in court and confirmed/testified that James Ray has been firing 'energy' at witnesses on the witness stand!! See saved relevant Camille Kimball tweets Gobsmacking stuff! Unbelievable!! I wonder if Judge Warren Darrow will take this revelation into consideration... So.... psychopath James 'Death' Ray shoots 'death rays' that he also taught his 'death angels' who are also psychopaths in training to shoot at completely hapless seekers of enlightenment... Well, this is what the innocenti are up against.... Extra: This is for those who have been following this story and will apreciate the sentiment of playing "full on" see Twitter for the 16th Camille Kimball tweets.

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Armed forces minister sorry for misleading MPs over depleted uranium
MoD urged to phase out use of depleted uranium weapons after armed forces minister admits review was never carried out
Guardian News, 14th November 2011
The armed forces minister has been forced to apologise over misleading statements he made regarding the legality and dangers of depleted uranium weapons.

Nick Harvey admitted that he had inadvertently misled MPs about a Ministry of Defence review that he said had concluded the weapons were permissible on humanitarian and environmental grounds under the Geneva conventions.

Comment: I suppose warmonger countries that make liberally use of DU are not really interested in the consequences when they think they can send soldiers off to die and suffer the consequences, but unfortunately that is not the end of the story. The problem is blowback. In the article below written by an activist against the use of DU, we are provided with a chart of air circulation over Europe, Middle East and North Africa, showing us how DU literally blows back in the air. Since a certain bigtime warmonger country has announced a massive drop in sperm counts of 40% in 5 years, they are predicting that in 20 years their citizens will not be able to reproduce, hence it seems there will be some major quick karmic retribution for the rather short-sighted use of a substance derived from the fires of hell.

At last the British MoD admit to the dangers of Depleted Uranium
Eyre International, 14th November 2011
"DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear power industry that is included in weapons because it is an extremely hard material capable of piercing armour. Once the frontline has moved on, however, it can contaminate the environment, and has been linked to health problems in civilian populations.
I would like to add to this article by saying it stays in the environment for a half life of 4.5 billion years and it contaminates our own troops which was not stated in the article."

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Strangers Spot People With Compassionate Genes in Seconds
Live Science, 14th November 2011
Strangers can "see" a persons trustworthy genes through their behaviors, suggests a new study finding that a single genetic change makes a person seem more compassionate and kind to others. The gene in question is the "love hormone," or oxytocin, receptor. A single change in the receptor can result in higher or lower empathy, or how much you can emotionally relate to others. These changes can be detected by strangers from just 20 seconds of soundless video; these strangers could literally see the person's genes manifesting in their behavior.

Comment: I know this to be true... I went through a period in my life when people collecting for charities would ALWAYS stop me in the street and rattle their collection boxes, it got to the stage where I thought: Do I have something invisible written on my forehead or something? Of course, since I have spent thousands of hours researching, written my book and spent a huge amount of effort trying to make a difference and point out that of world has changed, I do attract the greedy sort. People begging for free, free, free, hoping they can cash in on an apparent gullible idiot... The worse example is someone who SOLD a book online and then came to me saying that they were too busy to write the book... I am sure there are few people who would not believe this story, yes it sounds 'unbelievable' but it's true. I have had nastiness from people who think that I don't have rights over my free time too... Oh well, soon there may be a 'free' mega blast from the sun and the consequences will be 'free' too!

Occupy Protester Serenades Obama & APEC Summit For 45 Minutes At Official Dinner
YouTube, 14th November 2011
Comment: This just goes to prove that you can make your point over dinner and do it nicely... Great job!

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Giant Filament - Hyder Flare Candidate
spaceweather.com, 14th November 2011
REMARKABLE SOLAR ACTIVITY: There haven't been any strong solar flares in days. Nevertheless, some impressive activity is underway on the sun. For one thing, an enormous wall of plasma is towering over the sun's southeastern horizon. Stephen Ramsden of Atlanta, Georgia, took this picture on Nov. 11th:

"Solar forums all over the world are buzzing with Sun-stronomers proclaiming this to be the biggest prominence that many of them had ever witnessed," he says.

Remarkably, though, this is not the biggest thing. A dark filament of magnetism is snaking more than halfway around the entire sun: SDO image. From end to end, it stretches more than a million km or about three times the distance between Earth and the Moon. If the filament becomes unstable, as solar filaments are prone to do, it could collapse and hit the stellar surface below, triggering a Hyder flare. No one can say if the eruption of such a sprawling structure would be Earth directed.

Comment: The latest picture of this prominence is incredible.... we are getting a reminder of one of the fundamental properties of plasma that likes to braid itself and create a powerline. For those who are unfamiliar with the plasma cosmology, plasma can achieve the same on a scale of trillions of miles. This is something that is still an issue for those astronomers who refuse to learn about plasma, even though it makes up 99.999% of the visible universe and is now detectable by telescopes at a variety of wavelengths and called The Cosmic Web.

Giant Filament Snaps
spaceweather.com, 15th November 2011
SNAP! ERUPTING FILAMENT: For the past few days, astronomers around the world have been monitoring a dark filament of magnetism sprawled more than 1,000,000 kilometers across the face of the sun. Make that 750,000 km. On Nov. 14th the filament snapped and flung a fraction of itself into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action:

The eruption hurled a cloud of plasma into space, but not toward Earth. The only effect on our planet would be to disappoint observers hoping for a longer filament.

Meanwhile, a wall of plasma towering over the sun's SE limb is seething with activity and may be poised to erupt as well.

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Tepco President apologizes for accident at Fukushima DAINI nuclear plant… not just Daiichi
Energy News, 14th November 2011
Comment: The news from Japan just gets worse and worse... I am linking to Energy News because you can get more of the same awful news there. The news about Fukushima DAINI is not a surprise, if you look in the archives, I registered details that implied there was radiation leaking from this site (10km south of Fukushima Daiichi) and it looks like the radiation readings did not lie... The talk of reporters complaining that there were not able to leave the tour bus is unbelievable... are these people completely stupid? See links below:

Press gain access to Fukushima plant / Media get firsthand look at devastation caused by tsunami, hydrogen blasts
Daily Yomiuri Online, 15th November 2011
"At that time, the dosimeter in the bus suddenly showed high readings. It measured 800 microsieverts per hour in front of the No. 4 turbine building and 1 millisieverts--or 1,000 microsieverts--per hour in front of the No. 3 building."
Just in case there are some who have not been following the aftermath of the disasters in Japan and are unfamiliar with what is considered normal. 1 -2 millisieverts was considered the normal radiation exposure on this planet PER YEAR, so Fukushima readings PER HOUR are horrendous!

Japan TV: Journalists on Fukushima tour ordered to put cameras down as radiation readings spiked (VIDEO)
Energy News, 15th November 2011
Description: ANN News from KHB Channel.8 months after nuclear disaster a Fukushima report was controlled by male on the bus after they passed 3-4 reactor probably heading to reactor Nr. 1 and dosimeters were shoving 300 microsievert /hour. [...] KHB Translation: “They were asked to put their cameras down… Excuse me put down your cameras please”

NYT: Reporters not allowed to leave bus during tour of Fukushima plant even though in full body contamination suits — CNN: “Radiation readings stood at 1,000 microsieverts” around reactors.
Energy News, 14th November 2011

Fukushima Worker: My shoes melted instantaneously when near reactor — Revealed during Tepco-affiliated forum.
Energy News, 14th November 2011

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Can you trust anything James Arthur Ray says?
My Gratitude Project, 12th November 2011
Over the years I've learned NOT to trust Mr Ray's statements. A lot of the things he states as fact, are pretty easy to check up on. As he's currently fighting so hard to get probation time, I thought I'd run a quick background check on some of his more recent statements.

James Arthur Ray has stated he has no company and that his corporation is no longer active. I ran a corporation search on the California Secretary of State's website, which still lists James Ray International as an active California Corporation. Additionally his corporate website has been redesigned with new graphics, a video showing him being touted by Oprah (I wonder if Oprah knows he's using her image and videos to sell himself online), and is offering James Arthur Ray products for sale.

Comment: There has been some sensational news, here is the snippet posted on the Rick Ross Cult Education Forum:

'Incidentally this was just on twitter from @TomMcFeeley:
Just an FYI for #jamesray watchers: Thursday in the courthouse he was served w/ a wrongful death lawsuit by Colleen Conaway’s family' .pdf here

(Tom McFeeley is the cousin of Kirby Brown, one of the sweat tent victims of James Ray)

Quite a lot of new information has emerged regarding Colleen's very mysterious, unexpected and unexplained death at another James Ray event, just a few months prior to the sweat tent event that killed three others. Witnesses who were previously in thrall to Ray and his 'superior man' posturing have broken free and come forward.

This comment string is interesting as it makes clear that the cover-up by JRI and its employees started immediately--no-one 'in the know' was in shock, they were prepared for just such an eventuality and moved smoothly into damage control. link

There are some links to the Salty Droid, but Salty has gone back to his old foul mouthed ways, so be warned, but this is where I found the details of the cover-up about Colleen Conaway's death and for me it is totally shocking. JR and his team of 'death angels' covered up a 'suicide' and then spent the night partying. This is not speculation it is fact. Totally sick.

If you have been following the JR trial and the background story, you may have come across a woman called Jeannika who JR badly verbally abused, there is a link in the archives. Jeannika is physically disabled but not mentally disabled and she is on the warpath in her attempts to bring down this monster. Therefore, I am highly amused that she has called her website My Gratitude Project, A Fat Old Woman's Opinionated Views on Life ~ Death ~ and James Arthur Ray -- Love it! Hilarious, Jeannika has posted an extremely long list of law suits against JR! Watch out New Age fraudsters that exist in abundance, you will be exposed! New Age packaged crap sold very well in the past, but with the acceleration of the evolution of consciousness on this planet, those days are over!

Sentencing in Single Sentences
Salty Droid, 14th November 2011
"Clancy (WOS): #JamesRay told us he was a few credits shy of being a psychologist."
What! This surpasses by a mile the total bullsh#t claim that he was a "Practical Mystic"...

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The Non-Response Response from The White House
After Disclosure, 12th November 2011
I would love to have been a fly on the wall when personnel of the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President at the New Executive Office Building in Washington , D.C., discussed how to respond to a petition about disclosing data on UFOs. I suspect that nobody brought up the enormous amount of information available indicating that not only are aliens visiting, but the US and other government have been withholding information for many decades. The response certainly indicates intentional lying and misrepresentation or total ignorance.

Comment: Stanton Friedman provides us will a summary concerning the case for UFO disclosure and I am quite impressed. However, I am also intrigued.... Some ufologists make it very clear that they know about the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). For example documentary maker Jose Escamilla whose documentaries include UFO: THE GREATEST STORY EVER DENIED is very clear about the existence of UAPs, but Friedmans only hints at the same thing. Here is a point of interest, but this whole article is worth a read. Friedman writes:

I, for one, was not one of more than 5000 persons signing the petition. My reason was straight forward. Having worked under security for 14 years and having researched the flying saucer phenomenon (certainly most UFOs are NOT alien flying saucers) for 53 years , I believe there is a very strong national security side to the question. I cannot see releasing technical data that could be of use to other countries also researching the phenomena and wanting to duplicate the extraordinary flying capabilities of the flying saucers… for military purposes

I am sorry, but I don't agree with this argument. It smacks of wanting the USA to be top dog, but clearly, the leadership of the USA has been busy trashing it's own country for decades now and the empire is clearly in decline, so I don't really understand the argument. I also think the statement, "certainly most UFOs are NOT alien flying saucers" is ambiguous too, but Friedman goes on to mention NARCAP who are very careful to only refer to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and so we are back to the Shadow Biosphere again. UAPs EXIST, that is a fact according to the UK Ministry of Defence. I think the only solution is educating the general public based on the what is already known, but the UFO community are largely only interested in ETs in spacecraft, which is not an accurate reflection of the fact that there is a completely different lifeform that inhabits this planet and is often mistaken for the possibility of ETs in spacecraft. Proper education is required, not the perpetuation of more mystery as the basis for the standard ufology business model.

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UFO Traffic Report: Friday, November 11, 2011
UFO Examiner, 10th November 2011
Just for fun
U.S. military explanations were partly cloudy today; retired military testimony was hampered again by a complete downpour of mainstream media blackout; witness accounts of military helicopters chasing UFOs reached an uncomfortably high humidity; while White House alien disclosure was obscured another day by Tropical Storm You-Can't-Handle-The-Truth. Elsewhere scattered around the country was a continuing UFO research effort hampered by low and partly windy funding.

Comment: Well, this bit made me laugh...

• Stunning Tijuana UFOs (Mexico) [6:15]
  YouTube, 10th November 2011
  Comment: I would call this a major UAP 'Event'. Again, where are the military? Obviously, they are nowhere to be seen because these are not 'craft'. Believe it or not, the BIG SECRET is that this is another lifeform (beings of light) and there is not much the miltary can do especially when these entities decide to switch off the lights and zoom off. You need to have a battery of state of the art stealth technology ready to monitor and that is only possible in remote locations where they are known to hang out. Well, what fun... Earth is now a cosmic acquarium, as plasma entities are arriving from all over the galaxy to enjoy the energy...
  
  
• Blue Star Kachina ? 4th September 2011 12am [NZ]
  YouTube, Sep 4, 2011
  Strange cross shaped star or planet! seen in east Auckland sky around midnight
  

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Mystery fault strands cars at Tesco
Yorkshire Post, 8th November 2011
Electrical interference at a supermarket petrol station is forcing drivers to push their cars off the forecourt as it causes chaos by immobilising their vehicles. Motorists filling up at Tesco in Clifton Moor, York, have been left puzzled by the mysterious defect, which is leaving some drivers unable to start the engine.

But strangely, the problem, which has been reccurring for over six weeks, stops as soon as cars are pushed off the forecourt. Martyn Lamb, 54, has been having trouble while filling up his Ford Focus since September.

Comment: In the archives, there are at least one other example of a zone in the UK where there are major issues with electromagnetic interference EMI, that could be natural (energy portals) or a more mundane artificial cause. To be honest, it amazes me with the high levels of EM pollution that there are not more problems. What's more as energy levels rise across the planet, we can expect more of the same kind of issues.

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LOUIS THEROUX and the INDIAN GURUS Part 1
YouTube, 2 Sep 2011

Comment: This BBC documentary is about 55 minutes long and broken into 4 parts. It is filmed in India and I think it is quite informative about the enlightenment business, but only if you have done your homework and can spot the techniques being used. I was amused by the day 2 wake up call, a classic NLP command of "Wake-up without your mind!" These manipulators must have to train themselves in how to keep a straight face! Whatever, once you have done the research, all this sort of stuff follows a basic pattern... Read my essay Spirtual Evolution in the Cultic Milieu and especially the bits of "Techniques of Experience" and then research Werner Erhard who apparently is still on the run from the authorities for tax evasion... He is famed for his New Age packaging and sharing his "honed techniques" with other cult guru figures, East and West... I must say, I was really creeped out by Swarmi G... But don't have a solid opinion about Amma who started her hugging campaign at an early age and after hugging so many people, she must have something about her to keep herself from being contaminated by so many people's energy. This is in contrast to someone who went after the feet of another guru and he was beaten off with the excuse of not letting all these people near you with their bad energies and I can see a point to that if you simply can't take it... India must be a wild place to be...

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Quotes of the Week:

“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.” -- Giordano Bruno

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.” -- Giordano Bruno

“The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.” -- Giordano Bruno

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Good news! Killer solar flare won't destroy Earth!
At least not in 2012, according to NASA, which also says to not sweat 'Planet X'
MSNBC News, 11th November 2011
If the world ends in 2012, the sun won't be to blame, NASA officials say.

Contrary to what some doomsayers would have you believe, our star isn't capable of blasting out a solar flare powerful enough to burn our planet to a crisp, according to the space agency.

"Most importantly, however, there simply isn't enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth," NASA officials wrote in a Nov. 10 statement. [...]

Space weather still an issue
The sun's rumblings can and do affect our planet, of course. Flares, for example, can temporarily alter Earth's upper atmosphere, causing disruptions in satellite communications.

Comment: I suppose the doomsday herd are still desperately trying to stir anxiety, whilst the majority are still oblivious to what is really happening on this planet. The real threat is Space Weather and the effect on our modern technological world that is being more and more affected. Basically, society needs to wake up and start doing business differently on this planet.

2012: Killer solar flares are a physical impossibility (NASA VIDEO)
PhysOrg News, 11th November 2011
There is a HUGE difference between the planet being fried to a crisp and a CME knocking out power grids. If 100 million people lose their electricty for months or even years, engineers and scientists know that the impact would be devastating on society, hence a selection of major reports pointing this out, plus lots of other issues associated with space weather. See archives.

CME Impact & Hyder Flare Candidate
Spaceweather.com, 14th November 2011
CME IMPACT: As predicted, a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on Nov. 12th at approximately 0600 UT. The impact was weak, however, so it is not yet clear whether the event will produce significant geomagnetic storms or auroras.

GRAND FILAMENT: A filament of magnetism more than 700,000 km long is curling around the sun's northeastern limb. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the vast structure during the early hours of Nov. 12th:

The filament is weighted down by solar plasma. If it erupts--as such filaments are prone to do--it could fall to the stellar surface below, setting off an explosion called a Hyder flare. Or it might fly upward, hurling fragments of itself into space. Amateur astronomers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor the region for developments. The only challenge will be fitting the whole thing into a single field of view.

Comment: The Hyder flare filament is worth a look... a whole half of one side of the sun could literally just peel off and get flung into space...

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Toxic Russian Mars Probe Heads Back to Earth
Discovery News, 11th November 2011
It's hard to believe that only last week we were getting excited for Russia's first interplanetary mission in 15 years to launch. By now, we should be happy in the knowledge that the ambitious -- and awesome -- mission is powering through space, toward the Martian moon Phobos.

The reality is that we are now discussing uncontrolled reentry scenarios.

As if that wasn't enough bad news, we are looking at an uncontrolled toxic reentry scenario. Phobos-Grunt -- correctly written "Fobos-Grunt," meaning "Phobos-Soil" or "Phobos-Ground" -- is fully-laden with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide; that's ten tons of fuel and oxidizer. The probe itself weighs-in at only three tons.

The majority of the fuel will likely vaporize during reentry, but everyone will be hoping for a splash-down in an ocean (which covers two-thirds of Earth, fortunately), as the wreckage will still be hazardous. There's also a small quantity of radioactive cobalt-57 in one of the science missions housed in the probe -- a fact that will most likely cause a media frenzy.

It is for these reasons that the Russian media is dubbing Phobos-Grunt "Most toxic falling satellite ever." [...]

So what now? As we await the inevitable reentry of Phobos-Grunt, it would appear the Russian authorities are looking for someone to blame after a string of mission failures. According to a (translated) Interfax bulletin, an anonymous (expert) source indicated this may force reform in the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. Also, "a number of positions of responsible persons" could face jail time.

Comment: So, that's 10 tonnes of explosives mixed with a nuclear device, but nobody can blame Al-Qaida... Ok, the situation in near Earth space appears to have now gone from bad to worse. The RT video says there is 7 tonnes of highly toxic fuel ready to fall anywhere on Earth.... Well, if you have followed this blog for some time, you will know that there has been murmurings in the space community about satellite launches that were persistently failing. I have only featured a few of these incidents, but this is now getting serious and it will be interesting to see what happens next... Has something changed in the space environment or have the recent Russian incidents all been a coincidence or pure incompetence? The fact the Russians are already whispering about people doing jail time means there will be an investigation and the world will find out the truth. As far as I am concerned, the failure of the world's satellite communication infrastructure has been on the cards for years, but most people will not be bothered until modern technological conveniences are no longer convenient.

Martian curse: Russian probe may crash in populated area (Video)
RT News, 11th November 2011

The Rachel Maddow show
MSNBC, November 2011
Rachel Maddow has been given the opportunity to be somewhat sarcastic, but quite frankly the apparently amateur video footage looks strange to me... what's more Rachel forgets to mention the nuclear device...

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Victim statements carry weight in Ray pre-sentence proceedings
Daily Courier, 11th November 2011
PRESCOTT - In the protracted pre-sentence hearing for James Arthur Ray, the state has presented eight witnesses over the past three days in its effort to prove additional aggravating factors that would convince Judge Warren Darrow to sentence the motivational speaker and author to the maximum allowable term of nine years in prison.

Led by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, the prosecution seeks to show that Ray exhibited a pattern of negligent conduct that led to harm, that the victims in the case placed trust in him to keep them safe, that he lacked qualifications to conduct his events, and that many people were harmed, both physically and emotionally, by his actions and omissions.

Comment: I can't wait for this trial to be over, apparently Judge Warren Darrow will sentence Ray, who was found guilty on three counts of negligent homicide, on Nov. 18. The sentencing possibilities range from probation to as long as nine years in prison. Here is the court document pleading for JR to be given probation Court doc pleading for leniency. I think it's the fact that when people were on the ground blue and virtually dead after the sweatlodge and JR walked off to have his dinner that I think shows just how heartless he really was. To think he was angry that the ambulances were called for and he only got concerned when the police turned up and he decided to blame the fire tender and then go on the run. There are people on his staff that should be prosecuted to for allowing people to be sent to hospital without ID, where they died as a Jane Doe. Words fail... and yet, there are still brainwashed people out there that think this kind of behaviour demonstrates "a spiritual warrior".

State witnesses criticize guru Ray
Guru's ex-backers: He lacks remorse
AZ Central, 9th November 2011
There is a picture here of JR supposedly wiping away a tear because his mother has cancer but since it's still hard to believe that he is anything but a psychopath and it's interesting that as time passes, more and more people who have been involved with him have realised this fact.

Sweat lodge victim's mother laments Ray's charisma
Daily Courier, 9th November 2011
"Earlier in the day, Margaret Clancy, a former Ray client, completed her testimony with a wish that some kind of regulatory agency existed to oversee the self-help industry. "There should be some kind of regulation," she said, "and certain standards that have to be met."
I don't agree with regulation despite my own awful experiences with the worse kind of New Age fakes. It is simply a matter of the whole of society teaching each other that there are people who are evil who act like 'angels of light' and they will prey on people (given the chance). The real professionals use a vast array of techniques to squeeze as much out of people as possible. If victims don't have cash, then they will try and get them to work for free. Unfortunately, I truly believe that if I did not have some bad experiences, then I think I would have remained naive. It's been painful, but I have been forced to study human development and spiritual evolution, education is the only way to avoid these manipulators.

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Egypt closes Pyramids over 11-11-11 'Ceremony of Love'
Jerusalem Post, 11th November 2011
November 11, 2011 – EGYPT – Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) closed the Great Pyramids on Friday after protesters said various groups, among them Jews, planned to attend a numerologist ceremony on the Giza Plateau. Egyptian media reported that some Egyptians feared that the event would be used by Jewish Masons to reclaim the Pyramids as ancient Hebrew structures, denying Egyptians their claim to the pharaonic monuments.[...]

According to a report from British daily the Telegraph, a Polish numerologist group had, in fact, received permission from the Egyptian government to hold a ceremony at the pyramids in order to protect the world from “cosmic forces” aimed at destroying Earth next year. The resulting commotion surrounding the event, including the attendance of Jewish Masons, pushed the SCA to cancel the event, called the “Ceremony of Love.”

Comment: This is very typical New Age 'let's all jump up and down' justified by a corrupted Gregorian calendar.

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X-ray facility to study conditions at Earth's core
BBC News, 11th November 2011
An experiment to recreate the extreme conditions of the centre of the Earth was officially opened on Thursday. The ID24 beam line at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) will use X-ray beams to subject iron and other materials to extraordinary temperatures and pressures.

How the X-rays are absorbed should give insight into the mysterious processes going on at and near the Earth's core. For example, the work could unravel why the Earth's magnetic field can "flip".

Comment: I wonder.... Experiments to understand what is happening in Earth's core... Do you think scientists have been given this important task because Earth's magnetic field is failing? Have you watch the sci-fi movie 'The Core' that was panned by critics? As I have already written, we are experiencing many of the things that the movie pointed out would happen if Earth's magnetic field breaks down, the only problem is the magnetic field of Earth does not all come from Earth's core but besides that, I really liked this terrible movie because I was enthralled with the scenes of the discovery of giants diamonds inside the Earth. Now I know a little bit more about what is really going on, this movie is a great introduction.

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Nuke agency reports unusual radiation in Europe
Yahoo News, 11th November 2011
VIENNA (AP) — Very low levels of radiation, which are higher than normal but don't seem to pose a health hazard, are being registered in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The agency said the cause was not known but was not the result of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which spread radiation across the globe in March.

The "very low levels of iodine-131 have been measured in the atmosphere," the agency said in a statement. It said such radioisotope will lose much of its radiation in about eight days.

Comment: Not much to say until we find out more information.

Radioactive Iodine Detected in Wide Areas of Europe Since Mid October
ex-skf.blogspot.com, 11th November 2011

Riddle of the radiation sweeping across Europe: UN nuclear agency mystified by soaring levels
Daily Mail, 12th November 2011
"Very low levels of radioactive iodine-131 have been detected throughout Europe, but the particles are not believed to pose a public health risk, the U.N.nuclear agency said on Friday.
NASA have released images of 2,400 stars, known as the Tarantula Nebula, that are producing intense radiation and powerful winds, believed to be the cause for the detection in the atmosphere.
???????

• Shukan Asahi reporter says he heard ambulances come to Fukushima plant “at least for 10 times a day” (VIDEO)
  Energy News, 9th November 2011
  Nov. 9 — “A journalist of Shukan Asahi, Mr. Imanishi was invited to go into the site by an actual Fukushima worker,” reports Mochizuki. Mochizuki reveals the reporter stated, “He heard ambulance comes to the plant at least for 10 times a day.”
  
  Comment: I call this headline a jaw dropper... Plutonium was named after the god of hell and we are clearly seeing hell on Earth with the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This is just the start... I tried to use the goggle translation option for the captions with this video to transcribe from Japanese into English but it was complete gibberish, so hopefully someone might do the job properly.
  
• Japanese Debris to Start Hitting Western U.S. and Canada THIS WEEK
  Washington's blog, 11th November 2011
  Japanese Debris to Hit Western U.S. and Canada
  

  I noted in June that debris from carried out to sea in the Japanese tsunami would hit the Western U.S. and Canada within a year or so, and that nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen urged us to demand testing of radioactivity from the American government.

  It turns out that scientists underestimated the speed with which the debris would reach the Western coast of North America.

  As Canada’s National Post reports today:

  The main part of the 20-million-tonne debris field, equivalent in size to the state of California, isn’t expected until about 2014, but houses, fishboats and even small freighters could already be close to Canadian shores, Mr. Ebbesmeyer said.

  
  Comment: ????????? Come on... what are all those hundreds of satellites doing in the sky then if they can't track stuff floating in the oceans properly?
  

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Strange Bright Skies
Spaceweather.com, 11th November 2011

SKY COLORS: Auroras in Nebraska are rare, but who needs auroras when you've got iridescence? University of Nebraska freshman Evan Ludes took this picture of cloud-colors over Omaha on the morning of Nov. 10th:

"I walked out of class this morning and was greeted by one of the best iridescence displays I've ever seen!" says Ludes. "The colors formed on the leading edge of a long stretch of cirrocumulus clouds."

Iridescent colors appear when sunlight shines through water droplets in the edges of clouds. The mechanism is diffraction. The colors are at their brightest and most distinct when the droplets are small and uniformly-sized. More Pics.

"I'm no optics expert," says Ludes, "but I'm guessing the colors were particularly vivid since these clouds were newly formed and therefore likely had water droplets of similar shape and size. It was incredible how distinct the bands of colors were even when zoomed in at 300mm!"

Comment: HUH! More amazing clouds over Norway too!

Doughnut Clouds over North Norway
Yr.no News, 11th November 2011

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Penn State President Fired
Climate Audit, 10th November 2011
On the same day that Nature published yet another editorial repudiating public examination of the conduct of academic institutions, Penn State President Graham Spanier was fired from his $813,000/year job for failing to ensure that a proper investigation was carried out in respect to pedophilia allegations in Penn State’s hugely profitable football program. The story is receiving massive coverage in North America because the iconic Penn State football coach, Joe Paterno, was also fired today.

CA readers are aware of Spanier’s failure to ensure proper investigation of Climategate emails and his untrue puffs about the ineffective Penn State Inquiry Committee, reported at CA here and by the the Penn State Collegian as follows:

Comment: OK, I am shocked, this story is being examined by Steve McIntyre at what I think is his usually staid Climate Audit website. His audience are usually much more interested in examining the statistics that generate climate warming 'Hockey Stick' graphs... But at the end of the day his mandate has been exposing the corrution of science and Penn State University is in the firing line...

Lying, cheating climate scientists caught lying, cheating again
Telgraph Delingpole blog, 30th October 2011
"Oh dear. I really didn't want my first blog post in a week to be yet another one about global bloody warming. Problem is, if those lying, cheating climate scientists will insist on going on lying and cheating what else can I do other than expose their lying and cheating?"
As usual, Delingpole gives nice summaries...

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Want weird weather? Come to Oklahoma!
Reuters News, 10th November 2011
(Reuters) - After one of the strangest local weather days in memory, an Oklahoma woman with a sense of humor asked on Twitter earlier this week: "Wanna experience the apocalypse before it happens? Visit Oklahoma!"

She posted that on Monday night shortly after a 4.7-magnitude aftershock earthquake shook the state. The temblor occurred not long after six tornadoes ripped through southwest Oklahoma, which was preceded by flash-flooding in an area that's been plagued by a historic drought.

"Seriously, WHAT'S GOING ON?" someone else tweeted that night. The answers vary. Global warning? Coincidence? Bad luck? Bad timing? End of time? There's agreement on only one thing: It's been weird all year. "Even for Oklahoma, this is crazy," said Rick Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman. "Since January, we've been setting records. People are just kind of amazed and shocked."

Comment: What I find interesting is the mention of "End of time" like everyone is supposed to already know that everything gets weird in the "End Times." Well, the problem we have is the general public have been generally badly informed. As I have worked out in the last 30 years and it's over 40 years if you count the fact I started Sunday School at age 5, the original religions were based on the worship of the heavens and other fantastic phenomena that were seen in the skies that became anthropomorphised over millenia. Hence, astronomers were the original priests and that is why even in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church insisted that their priests studied astronomy before they trained to be theologians or philosophers. Once you understand the nuances then it is much easier to understand all the references to End Times in ancient religious texts, because the knowledge of major astronomical cycles was buried very deep so that major important cycles like the 26,000 years precessional cycle would not be forgotten. This also served a religious purpose in that the priests could threaten the ignorant hordes by warning them that Judgement Day was coming etc etc. Well, I am not sure the strategy completely worked because the religious hierarchy became far too corrupt and much of the true meaning of the ancient text was lost. The other way that astronomical knowledge was preserved was by the use of allegorical storytelling that becane mythology... (Please note: bits and pieces of information have been retained in cultures all over the planet, the issue is that very few people have been able to reinterpret that info to become meaningful today, but a few know enough.) Well, the build up of energies around our solar system was noticed by the Russians in the 1960s, but we really started to notice a difference on Earth in the 1990s, the solar system is being flooded with what the religious have called 'Christ' or crystalline energy or other similar esoteric terms and space weather is a reality. Despite the fact that it seems that some people claimed they 'knew' this was coming, I really can't see any serious preparation except for the Russians who some commentators claim are the most 'balanced' nation on the planet. The indigenous people have made an effort but because of all the efforts ranged against them to destroy their culture, religious and spiritual heritage, they have been hampered in their efforts but they still knew enough to try and warn the rest of the world. All my adult life, I have been trying to understand my reality and now that I can see a much bigger picture, I stand by what I have written in my essay The Greatest Transition in the History of Mankind, but I think the general lack of interest in reality means that this is really not going to be an easy transition but that was our choice due to a major lack of interest in understanding the universe and what spirituality actually really means.

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Beaming me up: Extraordinary column of red light shines down from the sky
Daily Mail, 9th November 2011
This is the moment a stunning red pillar of light topping several hundred feet appears to shoot down from space. The eerie sight could be seen for miles around and left motorists gawking at the unusual spectacle.

It was spotted by Rick Stankiewicz as he travelled along the motorway near Hearst, Canada, following a fishing trip. Mr Stankiewicz, 55, an amateur photographer since the age of 12, said: 'It was both eerie and beautiful to see it. 'At first glance my immediate reaction was that it must be a close encounter of the third kind - it was that convincing.

'The deep colours and clouds just added to the foreboding appearence of the pillar. 'I remember mumbling to myself "beam me up, Scotty" when I spotted it.

Comment: Again, ice crystals are invoked and I have tried to explained this in various different comments about what this is telling us about the occurence of 'rare' atmospheric phenomena, please see archives. The colour is beautiful but I wonder especially after the wild blood red aurora 'bursts' over the United states, but this photo was taken on June 10. This fact makes me think about how the air could be cold enough for ice crystals, but as I have already stated, it's not really about air temperature, it's about the kind of charge on the dust that has formed the ice crystals and whether there has been a 'push' of energy down to much lower levels in the atmosphere.... Well, as far as I am concerned, this is just more evidence that unusual cosmic energies are now streaming onto the planet.

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Rugby player 'woke up gay' after stroke
Irish Times, 9th November 2011
A Welsh rugby player who suffered a stroke ditched his fiancee after claiming he woke up gay. Chris Birch (26), has since slimmed down from 19 stone to a lithe 11 stone, retrained as a hairdresser and moved in with a teenage boyfriend.

He now works at J’s Hair Salon in Ystrad Mynach, south Wales, after giving up his job in a bank. He was injured during a rugby training session when he attempted a back flip, broke his neck and suffered a stroke.

His parents and girlfriend endured an anxious bedside vigil waiting to discover whether he would recover. The man who eventually emerged was different in almost every way and found he hated sport and was no longer interested in women. Plans to get married and settle down were dropped as he embarked on a new life as a gay man.

Comment: I am very curious about these stories because it seems to be these 'transformational' experiences are happening more often. In the archives, there stories of people waking up and thinking and speaking in another language overnight; people who pick up a foreign accent overnight; and a woman who woke up thinking she was only 15, see Best of the Blog - Brain & Mind Science. However, in this case, it's almost like there is a completely different person inhabiliting the body rather like the stories of people who have received an organ transplant and there has been a transfer of consciousness... I am sure there must be some room for speculation that this person has reverted to 'another' life, whether you believe in previous lives or not. Whatever, this example is really quite interesting. Well, I am a believer in the concept of the holographic brain, but the mind and brain does not exist in isolation and there seems to be an intimate relationship with our emotions that is extremely difficult to quantify, but I made an attempt in my book. So, I am watching out for these stories because I think the environment will be doing a lot of 'resets' in the future, but at this stage, I am monitoring and I cannot state whether this is "good" or "bad".

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Residents of Lucerne were shocked recently to find that explosives had been buried beneath their streets
Federal Jack, 9th November 2011
(SWISS INFO) Relics of Switzerland’s Cold War defenses are turning up in surprising places. Residents of a quiet area of Lucerne were shocked recently to find that explosives had been buried beneath their streets. They were planted there by the Swiss army because the road was judged strategically important; in the event of invasion it would have been blown up.

But local people are angry that they didn’t know what was on their doorstep. They were only informed when the army decided to dig the devices up again. “I got a letter from the defense ministry, telling us there was dynamite buried here on our street, and that they were coming to take it away, “ Rieska Dommann told swissinfo.

Dommann, who is president of the local residents’ association, was particularly angry to discover that the explosives had been buried in 1989, just as the Cold War was ending. And Schuepbach admits that the Lucerne example is not unusual. There are in fact hundreds of strategic roads, tunnels and bridges in Switzerland which conceal permanent stores of explosives. “But I can’t tell you exactly how many, and exactly where they are, because that information is classified,” said Schuepbach.

Comment: I love Lucerne, it's a really magical place... but you really have to wonder about the warped mentality of the military, think about it, this really is deranged... So.... just in case robbers want to rob your house you plant a booby trap near the front door that you have to make sure you don't trigger yourself.... madness... Apparently this is all over Switzerland too.... read the complete article... this is complete military madness...

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Russian Engineers Race to Save Troubled Mars Moon Probe
Space.com, 9th November 2011
Russian engineers are scrambling to try to save the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was launched Tuesday (Nov. 8) but has failed to head toward Mars as planned.

The spacecraft appears to be stuck in Earth orbit instead, after its engine failed to ignite to send the probe on a trajectory to the Red Planet. Now Russian Space Agency officials say they have two weeks to figure out how to start up Phobos-Grunt's thrusters before the spacecraft is lost completely.

"They seem to be in a stable and relatively long-lived situation, so they have the most precious spaceflight resource -- TIME -- to figure out and implement an alternate command scheme," space consultant James Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle mission control engineer, told SPACE.com in an email. "It looks like they will try an orbit raise burn about 17:16 GMT [12:16 EST] today."

"The go-for-broke nature of this mission, aiming for the first Russian deep space success in a quarter century, always looked awfully bold, and now looks just plain reckless -- whatever happens next," Oberg said.

Comment: Oh dear! This project will only be reckless if the spacecraft comes crashing back down to Earth and we have another game (the third in about three months) of watching a piece of space junk before it completely disappears in a media blackout.

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Talking parrot woke owner with news of newborn puppies
The Mirror, 9th November 2011
A CARING parrot alerted his sleeping owner that her dog had given birth by squawking “come on, come on”. Suzanna Bolton was woken by the talking bird jumping on her head and mimicking her voice.

She took him back to his perch downstairs but he looked at her and squawked again – and she discovered her dog had delivered six puppies a week early. One had died and four-year-old Pomeranian Sally and her other five pups were in distress on a cold, wet, kitchen floor. Suzanna, 55, said of her African grey parrot Sam: “He seemed to know something was wrong and came looking for me to help. [...]

She added: “Sam is allowed to roam around out of his cage but he’d never been in my bedroom in the eight years I’ve had him.

Comment: As part of the massive evolutionary changes, metaphysical sources suggest that there will be a noticeable increase in the intelligence of animals but I presume this means all sentient life on this planet... As social scientists suggest, there is different types of intelligence and I am actually quite interested in demonstrations of emotion and spiritual intelligence. I actually believe these types of intelligence are linked to the development of compassion and empathy, but in society where people are brainwashed into justifying their actions by the notion that it's about the "survival of the fittest", the trends of encouraging excessive narcissism does not bode well for the future of humanity if all types of intelligence can be used as an indication of evolution. So, the whole planet is experiencing a MASSIVE deluge of cosmic energy, but few are actually even interested in the consequences, but maybe that is now changing as some fear kicks in that we have simply failed to comprehend what has been happening for the last two decades or so. Actually, I had an email today that reminded of the fact that the Russians do know exactly what is happening and have been building pyramids around Moscow since 1989. Due to the balancing abilities of pyramid geometry, they have stated this seems to help stop the build up of large earthquakes amongst lots of other wonders that they have discovered. Meanwhile in the UK, the Defence minister has to plead with big business and utilities to wake-up and take space weather seriously. Again, it crossed my mind about the biblical parable of the wise and foolish virgins not being prepared and since we know that this is ancient knowledge that has been preserved for just this moment even though it is allegorical, there is no doubt that the deepest hidden meaning is all about the return of the Christ ENERGY. All I can say is the Russians DID NOT FAIL TO COMPREHEND that there was a massive evolutionary shift of energies taking place that is sweeping through our entire solar system. What's more it was reported the week I published my book in September 2006, that the Russians would lead the world in the coming spiritual revolution. They are ready...

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Near-Death Experience After Effects Key to Understanding NDEs, Say Researcher P.M.H. Atwater
Skeptico, 8th November 2011
Long-time NDE researchers and author P.M.H. Atwater reveals what she’s learned from the nearly 4,000 near-death experieners she’s interviewed.

Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with NDE researcher and author, P.M.H. Atwater. During the interview Atwater discusses the after-effects associated with NDEs: [...]

PMH Atwater: How deeply affected that individual is. If they’re deeply affected enough that it changes the body as well as the brain as well as the spirit. When you look further into what’s happening to the human being, you begin to see what I saw and that is that this can become a biological thing.

One of the things I noticed in my research, and I spent a lot of time talking about it in the second half of the book, is that the near-death experience is not any kind of anomaly. It is rather part of the larger genre of transformations of consciousness. I say that again because of the after-effects and how deep those after-effects or intense those after-effects might be.

If you go even further and realize that near-death experiences, Kundalini breakthroughs, baptism of the Holy Spirit, spiritual transformations, on and on and on, all of these different parts of this broader genre, they all change the human being in significant ways almost as if a transmutation.

So if you study history, which I have done, and you look at those times in history throughout our globe, and you notice this communing throughout the evolutionary phase, a lot of people are suddenly coming out and being born this way, being changed this way, experiencing this kind of thing. What I began to notice is that near-death experiences are really a biological imperative.

Comment: All I can say is Amen! This woman has nailed this!

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Origins of Life on Earth & Beyond --New Harvard Discoveries
Daily Galaxy, 8th November 2011
Two of the world's preeminent scientists, Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov and Jack Szostak, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, co-founded the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative --an interdisciplinary center unlike any other in the world. It studies everything from planet formation and detection to the origin and early evolution of life.

The focus of Szostak's lab is to understand how life, which depends on self-replication and Darwinian evolution, emerges from chemistry. For decades, scientists have tried to understand the basics of life by taking existing life and attempting to trace it back to its origins. But their experiments all failed. [...]

So, did life originally spring from clay as some creation myths assert? Not necessarily, but it does provide a possible mechanism for explaining how life initially arose from nonliving molecules. [...]

"It's exciting because we know that a particular clay mineral helps with the assembly of RNA," Szostak said. "There certainly would have been lots of environments on early Earth with clay minerals. It's something that forms relatively easily as rocks weather." [...]

Szostak first showed how a simple membrane could form from clay available on the early Earth. More recently, he and others have been searching for a simple series of steps that can explain how primitive genetic material replicated itself.

If they succeed, "then, since we know there are probably hundreds of millions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone, it would make it seem pretty darn likely that there's life in other places out there," he says.

Comment: Hmmm... Now, this is interesting. If religious texts still have ancient knowledge from prior advanced cilvilisations secretly encoded, as most commentators who know about these things suggest, then it would make perfect sense that they would know that the original form of life on this planet was seeded from the stars (dust) and catalyzed with clay, but I still think that a few bolts of lightning are needed to infuse some 'life' into the dust and clay... Well, it does seem like a few scientists are working overtime making sure that some more people realise there is a possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. So what's up?

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Asteroid 2005 YU55 Flyby (Video)
Spaceweather.com, 8th November 2011

ASTEROID FLYBY: NASA radars are monitoring 2005 YU55, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier, as it heads for a flyby of the Earth-Moon system later today. There is no danger to our planet. At closest approach on Tuesday, Nov. 8th, at 3:28 pm PST (23:28 UT), the 400m-wide space rock will be 324,600 kilometers away, about 85% the distance from Earth to the Moon.

Professional astronomers are eagerly anticipating the flyby as the asteroid presents an exceptionally strong radar target. Powerful transmitters at Goldstone and Arecibo will ping the space rock as it passes by, revealing the asteroid's shape and texture in crisp detail, and pinpointing its orbit for future flyby calculations. A movie from JPL explains:

Comment: There is a sideshow going on with this asteroid fly-by but I don't want to comment just yet.

NASA Live Broadcast 11-1-11 Asteroid 2005 YU55
YouTube, 3rd November 2011
This is the NASA Live Broadcast Nov. 1 2011.

NASA Captures New Images of Large Asteroid Passing Earth
NASA News, 7th November 2011

Your guide to the asteroid encounter (Video)
MSNBC News, 8th November 2011
The NASA/JPL video here is 2 mins long but still quite informative

NASA releases radar movie of asteroid 2005 YU55
PhysOrg.com, 9th November 2011
""The movie shows the small subset of images obtained at Goldstone on November 7 that have finished processing. By animating a sequence of radar images, we can see more surface detail than is visible otherwise," said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 observations, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif."

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APOD: Crown Flash & Leaping Streams of Light
APOD NASA, 8th November 2011
What's happening above those clouds? In the past few years, videos have appeared on the web detailing an unusual but little known phenomenon: rapid light changes over clouds. Upon inspection and contemplation, a leading hypothesis for its cause has now emerged. In sum, this hypothesis holds that a lightning discharge in a thundercloud can temporarily change the electric field above the cloud where charged ice crystals were reflecting sunlight. The new electric field quickly re-orients the geometric crystals to a new orientation that reflects sunlight differently. In other words, a lightning discharge can cause a sundog to jump. Soon, the old electric field may be restored, causing the ice crystals to return to their original orientation. To help this curious phenomenon become better studied, sky enthusiasts with similar jumping or dancing sundog videos are encouraged to share them.

Comment: Well, I am pleased to see that NASA are acknowledging this 'rare' atmospheric phenomenon. However, as I have already noted so many times before, there are many different examples of atmospheric phenomena that signify that Earth's atmosphere is becoming more and more electrified. So, I am wondering at what point will more people stop and consider the implications and what this actually means for humans who will need to be able to cope with their bodies becoming more and more charged too.

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'No Aliens On Earth' Says Senior Obama Official
UK Yahoo News, 8th November 2011
A senior White House official has insisted there is "no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth".

And in a blow to millions of conspiracy theorists, the member of Barack Obama's administration, also said there was no credible information to suggest evidence of alien life is being kept from the public.

The unusual comments were contained in a response by senior space policy and communications official Phil Larson to several petitions lodged on a White House website.

Comment: Quite frankly, even if there were aliens, I think it would be more useful of the Obama Administration explained the existence of a Shadow Biosphere, as more and more people are seeing orbs and plasma entities in the sky or even just above ground level, that are clearly not alien spacecraft. It's time to move on.

Of Course, the US Government Officially Denies Any Contact With Aliens
Gizmodo, 8th November 2011
The retort at Gizmodo just made me laugh... But it also provides the entire US government official response.

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Router glitch causes widespread Internet outages
The Register, 7th November 2011
Internet services throughout the North America and Europe saw widespread outages and slowdowns on Monday after backbone provider Level 3 Communications suffered a global failure, network providers said.

Time Warner Cable in the US, Research in Motion services for BlackBerry subscribers, and UK ISPs Eclipse Internet, Easynet, and MerulaSupport were all reportedly experiencing problems on Monday. According to multiple accounts, including a variety of Twitter dispatches, at least some of the the outages were the result of a bug in Juniper routers that corrupted BGP, or border gateway protocol, tables.

“There are confirmed reports that this event within Level 3 has affected most of North America,” hosting provider Phyber Communications told its customers in a status report. “This outage has affected other networks running Juniper routers with the majority of them seeing their devices core dump and reload.”

A core dump is when a serious error causes a device to crash and the contents in its main memory are written to disk. As a result, the routers must reboot with little or no warning, creating problems for networks that rely on the devices to route email, webpages and other internet traffic.

Comment: I just think this is strange.... so I am making a note.

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What Is Peer Review for?
Scientific America, 2nd November 2011
There is a lot of back and forth right now amongst the academic technorati about the “future of peer review”. The more I read about this, the more I’ve begun to step back and ask, in all seriousness:

What is scientific peer-review for?

This is, I believe, a damn important question to have answered. To put my money where my mouth is I’m going to answer my own question, in my own words:

The scientific peer-review process increases the probability that the scientific literature converges–at long time scales–upon scientific truth via distributed fact-checking, replication, and validation by other scientists. Peer review publication gives the scientific process “memory”.

Comment: I picked this link up from the article Psychologist admits to faking dozens of scientific studies about the Diederik Stapel scandal. It stated: "Those of you who are curious about how something like this could happen despite well-established peer-review practices, or if you're simply looking for an incisive exploration of what the peer review process is, what it isn't, and what it's for, check out this timely piece by Scientific American's Bradley Voytek." Well, peer review does not work when there are vested interests that control what people believe in society and scientists generally 'succeed' if they comply within the current paradigm and scientific worldview controlled by invisible 'powers'... As some scientists make very clear, scientists are well trained like dogs. If they conform they get grants, like a dog will get dog biscuits, if they don't conform they don't get the grants they need and so they can't do the scientific research. Hence, those who have some integrity but want to do some real science that is outside of the normal concensus view tend to have quite a difficult time on many levels. As we have seen with the massive scandal of Climategate and many other examples of fakery, especially in the medical scientific community, scientists across the board admit that this is now a serious problem. However, it is just symptomatic of the corruption of society where people prefer lies and cheating to honour and truth. This is a quote I like:

"I think basically becoming famous has taken the place of going to heaven in modern society, hasn't it?" -- Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker: 'Music has changed. It's not as central, it's more like a scented candle'. The Guardian, 16th October 2011

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Japan’s Emperor hospitalized: “He appeared fatigued and has lost some resistance to fight his illness” — Traveled to disaster area in April
Energy News, 7th November 2011
Japanese emperor to be admitted to the hospital on bronchitis fears, Reuters, November 7, 2011:

“Japanese Emperor Akihito is due to be hospitalized on Sunday with a cold, fever and symptoms of bronchitis, Kyodo news agency reported [...] because the fever worsened the bronchitis symptoms and he appeared fatigued and has lost some resistance to fight his illness.”

“Five days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s northeast, Akihito made a rare public televised address and in April traveled to the disaster-struck area with Empress Michiko, 77.”

Comment: The headlines coming out of Japan are unbelievable... So... is the Japanese emperor suffering from radiation poisoning? There has been headlines since April about the increased numbers of people with pneumonia but now it's royalty too, see Japan Emperor’s granddaughter hospitalized with mycoplasmal pneumonia & apparently the the empress has been ill with aches and pains in the arms and legs. This is a quote:

The areas surrounding the imperial household in the center of Tokyo in Chiyoda-ku has elevated radiation levels. The foodstuff that is used in the imperial household - vegetables, milk, egg, beef - comes from the imperial farm in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture (Imperial Household Agency, announcement on 7/21/2011) where the radiation is even more elevated and where the meat cow nearby was found with high level of radioactive cesium.

#Radiation in Japan: Small News and Baseless Rumors, ex-skf.blogspot.com, 6th November 2011

I don't even know what to say anymore, what is wrong with the Japanese government? They can't even protect their own royalty... Look, these are two old people and they went to Fukushima and brought the food to eat! See, Japanese emperor visits Fukushima What is amazing is the constant sickness reports that keep making comparisons with Chernobyl, as if it's some kind of surprise... There are at least 6 nuclear reactors in trouble with three confirmed meltdowns or melt-throughs, so the Japanese are now busy allowing their water supply to be contaminated too... Where is the intelligence? THE COUNTRY HAD NO PLANS TO HANDLE A NUCLEAR DISASTER... What amazes me is why the Japanese royal family did not flee...

Scientist Marco Kaltofen Presents Data Confirming Hot Particles
Fairewinds, 31st November 2011
"Washington, DC - October 31, 2011 – Today Scientist Marco Kaltofen of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) presented his analysis of radioactive isotopic releases from the Fukushima accidents at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Mr. Kaltofen’s analysis confirms the detection of hot particles in the US and the extensive airborne and ground contamination in northern Japan due to the four nuclear power plant accidents at TEPCO’s Fukushima reactors. Fairewinds believes that this is a personal health issue in Japan and a public health issue in the United States and Canada."
YouTube version here.

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Searching for the origins of life... and our future
BBC News, 7th November 2011
Hollywood is wrong about aliens. They don't have oddly shaped heads, bulging eyes or even an eery green hue. Dimitar Sasselov is pretty convinced of that.

He's not even sure we'll know them when we see them. Prof Sasselov, an astrophysicist, thinks that if life exists elsewhere - and he believes it does - it will likely be based on different building blocks than ours, and so may not even be recognisable as life.

A project he's heading at Harvard University, called the Origins of Life, is trying to imagine what life would be like if it were based on different chemicals, conditions and history than we have on Earth. There's no reason life can only form under our set of circumstances, he says - or at least that's what he thinks and hopes the project will eventually prove. [...]

"One morning we'll wake up with a fundamentally different view of the world and who we are," he says. [...]

At Harvard, the Origins team also includes a geneticist, a chemist, a geochemist, an environmental chemist, and a palaeontologist - and that's just the steering committee.

Comment: I am suspicious.... Notice the article has a definite message that is given at the beginning, but the rest of the content is badly lacking and I wonder whether it's the media putting a spin on things rather than anything significant going on amongst the scientific community... But, you never know, maybe we have got to the stage where the elite have decided that the current situation of orbs and UAPs flying around in broad daylight has got untenable.... I am interested that we are being told that scientists from different disciplines have decided to talk to each other.. astrobiologists have been complaining for quite a long time about the definition of what we call life... two legged monsters like us humans cannot serve as the only model for defining life.

Theology professor asks: Are we alone in the universe?
Ventura County Star, 4th November 2011
"The idea that life could exist elsewhere and how it might relate to Christian and Catholic beliefs will be the topic of a free lecture Tuesday at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo. The Rev. Dr. Thomas O'Meara, retired University of Notre Dame theology professor and nationally renown author and speaker, will present his lecture, "Christian Theology and Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life," at 7 p.m. Members of the public are welcome."
Hmmm...

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Why more and more intelligent women are being forced to 'marry down' and find a less-educated man as females win out at work and school
Daily Mail, 7th November 2011
Women are overtaking men in education and in the workplace, a senior Government minister said yesterday – creating a new generation of stay-at-home fathers.

Universities minister David Willetts predicted relationships and traditional household structures will be transformed as the fairer sex powers ahead, and women earn more than their male partners.

Successful women will have to ‘marry down’ by choosing partners less qualified than them – and may increasingly select men based on how supportive they might be to their careers, rather than whether they can support them financially.

Comment: The BBC have just re-interviewed astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and if you have never heard her story then it might come as a shock. Briefly, Jocelyn Burnell is famed for being passed over for a Noble Prize in preference to her male boss for one of the biggest discoveries of the twentieth century. Male and female alike are still perturbed by this injustice nearly 40 years later. However, it's her story of long standing academic discrimination because she is a woman that is truly shocking. I have found a few shocked responses from people who don't realise how tough it has been for women to have good academic careers and therefore compete with men, especially when men like to close ranks because that is an easy way out for some to maintain their own positions (the old boys club). See: On Nobel Prizes, and why Girls Should eat Cake in History Lessons & Grace under pressure.

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Serious Health Scare in Houston
High School Rivals, 5th November 2011
Authorities in Houston are still searching for answers after an area high school football game was called off early after nearly two dozen fans were hospitalized after suddenly becoming sick in the stands of Barnett Stadium on Friday night.

During the second half of the game between Austin (Texas) High and Houston (Texas) Yates, many members of the band and dance team from Austin started suffering from nausea, vomiting and dizziness and began collapsing in the stands, according to numerous media reports.

Officials feared they had been exposed to some type of biohazard and called hazmet teams to the scene but no traces of gases or chemical agents were found. Nevertheless, the stadium was cleared and the game was called with Yates leading, 47-14.

The students, many complaining of nausea, were sent for more medical evaluation. "We ended up with 22 students being transported to five different hospitals," Houston Fire Department assistant chief David Almaguer told the local FOX affiliate, KTRK-TV.

Comment: Are we starting to see an increase in reports of mass hysteria? Maybe, it could have been just one person that was genuinely sick, but for some strange reason, the symptoms were quickly passed on to the group... There has been a lot of psychological studies about crowd or 'mob' dynamics and team games are a very easy way for humans to 'meld' into a group identity where the mob then acts as a single identity... The issue is whether there is something in the air (literally) that is acting as a unifier...

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Georgia witness videotapes silent 'glowing orbs' (Video)
UFO Examiner, 4th November 2011
A Georgia witness reports watching and videotaping "two glowing orbs" silently moving near her home on November 3, 2011, for about 90 minutes, according to testimony today from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

"They were definitely not planes or helicopters," the witness stated. "They were bright and moving around. The one over my neighbor's house across the street was much lower than the one all the way to the left. They were in the air for about an hour and a half. No noise."

Comment: Orbs, Orbs Orbs or magnetospheric plasmoids, magnetospheric plasmoids, magnetospheric plasmoids... This is a decent video despite the fact the eye witness was quite freaked out by her experience.

Georgia witness says UFO was too low and silent for a plane
UFO Examiner, 5th November 2011
""The object I saw was definitely much lower than that plane. I want to say that it was a box shape, but I'm only basing that on the fact that the two white lights and two red lights were at four corners, but they almost appeared to be on one flat side rather than around an object. The two white lights flashed together and the two red lights flashed together. So, I can't really say what shape it was, maybe flat, maybe square, maybe diamond shaped. It seemed more like it was meandering along quietly rather than hovering. Almost like it was making a sweep of the area."

Silent red orbs cross Pennsylvania skies as odd aircraft move in
UFO Examiner, 5th November 2011
About 30 seconds later a second Red Orb came into view following the same trajectory as the first. I ran back into the store and yelled that another Orb is coming a crossed the sky again. This time about 4 or 5 of us were now outside to watch the Orb and were amazed at what we were seeing. It again did the same exact thing as the first and blinked out. After all the excitement was over my wife and I went to get a bite to eat at Burger King in the same shopping center. When we came out 15 minutes later after eating we noticed 5 Large Aircraft circling and criss crossing as if in a grid search.
I don't think the "aircraft" were ours...

Boomerang UFO with red lights reported low over South Carolina
UFO Examiner, 5th November 2011
" ...it was boomarang shaped or V shaped, it had small red lights inside of it, but the lights were not blinking, and the object did not make a sound. it was low flying, it went right over the tree tops."
This is swarm behaviour that can be compared to a flock of geese flying in a V-shaped formation across the sky. See previous comments...

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From the X Files: "Giordano Bruno's Legacy" --Vatican New Views on Extraterrestrial Civilizations
Daily Galaxy, 26th October 2011
The chief astronomer of the church that burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations perhaps more evolved than humans.

"In my opinion this possibility exists," said the Reverend José Gabriel Funes, current director of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, referring to life on other planets.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. The large number of galaxies with their own planets makes this possible, he noted.

Asked if he was referring to beings similar to humans or even more evolved than humans, he said: "Certainly, in a universe this big you can't exclude this hypothesis."

"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom. Why can't we speak of a 'brother extraterrestrial'? It would still be part of creation."

Funes, who runs the observatory that is based south of Rome and in Arizona, held out the possibility that the human race might actually be the "lost sheep" of the universe. There could be other beings "who remained in full friendship with their creator," he said.

"The general opinion is not always the perfect truth..." Giordano Bruno is still quoted. Such remarks produced expensive, bitter consequences: On 17th of February 1600 he publicly was burnt at the stake after eight years of torture and dungeon detention. Today the Piazza Campo dei Fiori where this statue stands has become a monument to free thinking; adjacent to the statue, is the "Fahrenheit 451" bookstore, named after Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel expounding freedom of thought.

As the Spanish physicist Beatriz Gato-Rivera wrote, Bruno "claimed that the sun was only one star among the many thousands, and therrefore, like the sun, many other stars also have planets around them and living beings inhabiting them." Gato-Rivera goes on to note that to "appreciate the genius of Bruno one has to take into account that he lived at a time when more than 99% of the intellectuals believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and a few others, like Copernicus and Galileo, believed that it was the Sun, instead, at the center of the Universe, and the stars being some bright heavenly bodies of an unknown nature."

Comment: I think this is an incredibly thought provoking article. The Catholic idea of the "Lost sheep" fits in with a lot of Gnostic beliefs rather than an idea that those who don't know any better will try and claim are New Age... Whatever, the admission that 99% of the intellectuals could be wrong and the one person that is right could be figuratively burnt at the stake for trying to provide some enlightenment is something that strikes a deep chord with me... As I have said many times before, this is a long standing pattern amongst academics who are often intimidated by their education (or brainwashing) to re-think problems from a completely different perspective. What's more, for a lot of people, just regurgitating somebody else's thoughts without actually having the capacity to think them through and take into account new observations and evidence, creates a false sense of intellectual achievement. Here, Vatican astronomers are not providing us with enlightenment for our benefit, rather they have access to the writings of ancient astronomers and philosophers, they know what is taking place on this planet now as I have written over and over again, so this is just a desperate bid to stay in power.

Quote of the Week: Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. Winston Churchill [H/t WUWT]

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Twitter storm as HSBC systems crash affects millions across UK
Daily Mail, 4th November 2011
SBC was today hit by a nationwide systems crash thought to have affected millions of customers. The bank's cash machines, branches, debit cards, and internet banking services all stopped working at 2.45pm after a computer glitch.

The outage lasted more than two hours, with frantic HSBC staff finally finding a fix at 4.50pm. Earlier, a Twitter storm erupted with worried customers saying they could not withdraw money from HSBC cash machines and their cards had been declined in shops.

Comment: Oh well, we did have an X2 solar flare that would have affected Earth's atmosphere and Earth's magnetic shielding (magnetosphere) is in quite poor shape these days... Well, since so many major banks are having problems with their technology (see link below), we can only presume that the electromagnetic smog combined with cosmic rays and cosmic radiation is now starting to have quite a detrimental effect... It is most likely that due to space weather and Earth's weakening defences, things are likely to get far worse and if modern society is going to survive we need to do things very differently in the future.

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CHANCE OF FLARES
Spaceweather.com, 4th November 2011
CHANCE OF FLARES: NOAA forecasters have upgraded the chance of X-class solar flares today to 20%. The source would be AR1339, one of the biggest sunspots in many years. The active region rotated over the sun's eastern limb two days ago and now it is turning toward Earth. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.

The sunspot has already unleashed one X-flare on Nov. 3rd around 2027 UT. A movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the extreme ultraviolet flash:

Comment: So, a huge sunspot described as "one of the largest sunspots in years" has released a X-rated flare and quite an impressive CME that happened on the same day back on Nov 4, 2003, when the largest Solar Flare ever was recorded... I am sure there must be a few worried space weather forecasters hoping that Earth is not fried again with excessive radiation...

X28+ Solar Flare (Nov 4, 2003) - A Day in History
YouTube, 4th November 2011
"A Day in History: On this day back on Nov 4, 2003, the largest Solar Flare ever recorded took place around a Sunspot then numbered 486. The flare registered X28+, but was located on the southwest limb and out of direct Earth view. Some estimates are said that the flare was actually X40+. Watch the video below to relive the action." Thanks to solarham.com.

Monster sunspot poses threat of significant solar storms
Washington Post, 4th November 2011
The area is called Region 1339 and is being referred to as a “benevolent monster.” 8.3 times bigger than Earth, it generated a solar flare which shot out a burst of charged particles yesterday but - this time - was not aimed at Earth.

However, this extremely active area of the sun will be facing earth for about two weeks. At this time there is no way to predict whether new flares will generate significant solar storms aimed towards Earth and, if so, whether they could result in geomagnetic storms capable of dire consequences on “life as we know it” .

Comment: It is interesting that the author of this article is aware of the seriousness of space weather, but I am not sure about the description of dire consequences on “life as we know it” because it sounds too dramatic even if it is true... Personally, I have come to the conclusion that most people are oblivious to anything not mundane, so any effort has to be directed to finding the very small number of people who can make a difference.

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Japan Times: It is now a “grave situation” at Fukushima — “Plutonium fission” mentioned for first time — “Criticality is very likely to have occurred”
Energy News, 3rd November 2011

Nov. 3, 8:30 pm ET (Emphasis Added) — A report published at 8:30 pm ET by the Japan Times calls on Tepco and the Japan gov’t to “find out true reactor conditions” at Fukushima.

Tepco announced Wednesday that, according to the Times, “There is the possibility that criticality, a sustained nuclear chain reaction, had occurred ‘temporarily’ and ‘locally’ in the No. 2 reactor.”

During it’s testing, Tepco has detected xenon-133 and -135, “Products of uranium or plutonium fission.”

The half life of xenon-135 is about 9 hours, therefore, “Criticality is very likely to have occurred just before the gases were analyzed,” reports the Times.

Comment: How much worse can this get? I am wondering: are we actually seeing a situation that world controllers have no control over? Well, I have been saying for at least 6 months that Tokyo is finished and now there are new plans, for a backup city (with casinos?), but no interest in evacuating the children in Fukushima... What other conclusion is there, Japanese 'controllers' are completely insane....

Japan unveils plan to develop massive gov’t “backup city” 300 miles west of Tokyo — Room for 200,000 staff — May be built at Itami Airport
Energy News, 3rd November 2011

• OurPlanet TV: What's Happening to Children Now? (7/14/2011)
  ex-skf.blogspot.com, 30th October 2011
  Our Planet TV is an Internet-based station "with no religious or political affiliations. It was founded by a small group of producers, video journalists and other media professionals who questioned the way mainstream media covered 9.11 and the events that followed."
  
  One of the programs, ContAct, did an interview with Mika Noro, which was webcasted on July 14, 2011. Ms. Noro has been active in helping children in areas affected by the Chernobyl nuke plant accident, and after the Fukushima accident her organization has been setting up free medical consultations for mothers and children in Fukushima.
  
  Noro and the host of the program discussed health issues that were starting to get reported more widely around that time, and compared them to what Noro observed in Chernobyl. Her conclusion: weakened immune system due to exposure to radiation. She is no medical doctor or radiation expert, but considering what the medical doctors and radiation experts have been saying and doing since March 11 (remember Dr. Yamashita?), that doesn't necessarily disqualify her from commenting on health and radiation.
  
  Rather, as Dr. Nishio of Hokkaido Cancer Research Center says in the video, if this many people report almost identical symptoms (throat problems, nosebleed, diarrhea, fatigue, etc.) after being exposed to radiation from the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, "the doctors need to recognize them as new clinical symptoms of low-dose radiation exposure", instead of outright dismissing them (which is what almost all of them do). The Japanese authorities don't even care about the perpetuation of their own race and are spreading the radiation all over Japan by burning contaminated radioactive material, I think this is some serious psychopathy for the world to see. Are the people in charge humans or evil aliens?
  

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PHOTO OF THE DAY: UFO’s in the valley, Redux
Sky Valley Chronicle, 3rd November 2011
The most famous picture of UFO’s ever taken in Washington State, USA, home of the free land of the brave and so forth and so on.

A string of ten zippy-fast UFO’s (that stands for "Unidentified Funky Objects") flying in formation that a mighty Sky Valley Chronicle shooter captured on U.S.Highway 2 in Startup, WA around 9:00 p.m. August 15, 2010.

The huge line of cars are people heading Westbound on the “Highway of Death” after spending the weekend playing in Eastern Washington (sort of a ritual around here on summer weekends). There’s always a traffic jam coming back westbound on Sundays.

The image capture was a total freak accident. Our guy was standing there waiting for a burger at the Alpine Burger Hut and to pass the time was erasing some images from his camera (hey, what happens in Las Vegas should STAY in Vegas) heard a sound, looked up, saw the formation, got off one shot and then they were gone.

Comment: Isn't it strange that we live in a world where really strange things are happening all around us and most people prefer total ignorance.... It's something I just can't relate to.... What is worse is people claiming to seek enlightenment, but instead, they are being systematically shoved fodder by unscrupulous manipulative people and they are happy because in their complete and utter ignorance, anything sounds just about plausible... Rather like telling children great sounding fairy tales, children are easily thrilled... Anyway, returning to the skeptical scientific community... It was only one hundred years ago that most scientists were adamant that it was IMPOSSIBLE for stones to fall from the sky... It was only a few decades ago that scientists loudly proclaimed space as "empty" now we have studies telling us that bacteria thrive in the radioactive environment of space. There is evidence of microfossils in meteorites, dust is just freeze-dried bacteria, plasma sheaths which can be easily created with electricity create protection from hostile conditions in space, but scientists publicly don't want to admit the existence of other lifeforms in space which becomes the next logical conclusion. The evidence is mounting but not enough humans have grown up enough to learn the truth as too many still prefer fairy tales.

UFO: ‘Fireballs’ spotted over Harrismith and Bloemfontein
The Witness, 3rd Noveber 2011
“It was cloudy and the phenomenon was fairly low in the sky. Five of these objects appeared in a matter of 20 minutes.” Greuning said the fireballs moved from north to south, made no noise and were relatively slow moving.

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NASA conference about asteroid 2005 YU55 close flyby + Live stream!
The Watchers, 2nd November 2011
NASA scientists will have a unique observing opportunity with asteroid 2005 YU55, as the space rock “safely flies past Earth” at a distance slightly closer than the moon on Nov. 8, 2011.

At the point of closest approach, the asteroid will be no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers). The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet’s tides or tectonic plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth, the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.

During the close flyby, scientists will use the massive 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna to study the asteroid. The 70-meter (230-foot) diameter antenna is the largest, and therefore most sensitive, DSN antenna, and is capabile of tracking a spacecraft travelling more than 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) from Earth.

Comment: What is interesting about this event is that the steam has been taken out of conspiracy theorists with the ridiculous hype surrounding Comet Elenin that never came closer than 22 million miles, but this object is coming within the orbit of the moon, 201,700 miles... Just strange....

• Collision course: the space rocks that threaten our lives
  A 20 million ton asteroid is currently hurtling through space at 23,000 miles per hour, on a collision course with Earth. But fear not – Nasa has 25 years to stop it
  The Telegraph, 30th October 2011
  When Paul Chodas and Steve Chesley arrived at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a valley beneath the slopes of California’s San Gabriel Mountains, on October 6 2008, they assumed it would be a normal day. But it would prove to be anything but. The scientists worked for the space administration’s Near Earth Object (NEO) programme, a team tasked with identifying comets, asteroids and meteors that potentially pose a threat to Earth. A normal day meant scanning their screens for small white dots in our solar system — the vast majority of which were either too far away to ever be a problem or so small they would burn up in our atmosphere long before they could ever do any serious damage. On that Monday morning, however, Chodas noticed an asteroid about the size of a truck beyond the moon’s orbit. It was on a collision course with Earth.
  
  Comment: Since we are now in an interstellar debris cloud and rocks are flying pass on a regular basis, some of them will hit Earth. Hence, it is interesting to know what capabilities astronomers have to know what exactly is coming at us and this article provides some interesting details. This article is quite a revelation by informing us that astronomers don't necessarily understand the space environment hence the incredible revelation of "keyholes" that I have never come across before... It seems to imply that the only way they can tell where an asteroid is going is to keep tracking them, but that if they hit a keyhole all bets are off and that is just plain strange...
  

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Royal Society journal archive contains scientific articles about extraterrestrials
Open Minds, 2nd November 2011
On October 26, 2011, the Royal Society announced that its journal archive has been made available to the public, free-of-charge. The material that was once restricted to pay-per-view access is now freely accessible online. Approximately 60,000 historical scientific papers make up the free archive, and come from various Royal Society publications. The Royal Society publishes peer-reviewed papers on varying scientific topics, including extraterrestrials and UFOs.

According to the Royal Society’s announcement, Professor Uta Frith FRS, Chair of the Royal Society library committee, stated, “The release of these papers opens a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries and will be of interest to anybody who wants to understand how science has evolved since the days of the Royal Society’s foundation.” The society’s first publication appeared in 1665. Yes, you can read articles from 1665 in the archive.

...be aware that not all of the Royal Society’s content is currently available for free. Only content that was published more than 70 years ago is freely available. Newer content still requires a fee to view. So while you’re certainly welcome to browse writings by Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Ben Franklin, you still have to pay for most of the articles about extraterrestrials and UFOs..

Comment: I am sure there must be some interesting information now available that goes well beyond the pseudoscience of the Drake Equation. However, this move must be seen as another step towards some kind of disclosure, but hopefully about Earth's Shadow Biosphere which anyone who knows about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) and Light Phenomena and who can engage their thinking capacity will realise must represent a completely different lifeform.

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The Brightest Lights in the Universe --Black-Hole Powered Quasars (Today's Most Popular)
Daily Galaxy, 2nd November 2011
Movement of black holes power the persistent lights in the universe. Black holes not only spin, they can also move laterally across their host galaxy. And according to astrophysicists at Brigham Young University, both types of movement power massive jets of energy known as quasars. One black hole in the galaxy Centauras A propels radiation in a jet measuring 1 million light-years long.

These spectacular jets stream out of galaxies that contain discs of debris and gas, the remnants of stars ripped apart by the force from black holes.

"The black hole is like a generator spinning around in these magnetic fields," said BYU professor David Neilsen, lead author of the study. "The way the field lines get twisted around and pulled by the spinning black hole creates electromagnetic tension that gets turned into radiation and energy that goes out."

The spin of black holes has been believed to play a role since the idea was put forward in 1977. The new study confirms this theory while also introducing a totally new component: that a black hole's lateral movement also powers these jets.

Comment: The top astronomers in the world do not believe in Black Holes because theory does not match up with observations and so we find that some astronomers prefer to believe that the objects that can be seen in space emitting powerful jets of energy are actually dense magnetic balls of plasma, called Eternally Collapsing Objects (ECOs) or Magnetically Eternally Collapsing Objects (MECOs). Some mathematicians have been complaining bitterly for years that Black Hole theory allowed for some big assumptions that have NEVER been proven, but it seems just like Big Bang theory, 'average' scientists are allowed to throw away their initial assumptioms and adopt new ones which is basically NOT science. So today, Black Holes have now become any object in the universe emitting powerful jets of energy which seems to be in direct contradiction to the old belief that Black Holes are so gravitationally powerful that anything within a certain range gets swallowed up that's why they were called Black Holes.... Also, original Black Holes were not allowed to be magnetic, but all of a sudden theory has changed and they can be magnetic. Well, elite astronomers have realised that dense concentrations of plasma produce jets as a result of plasma instability and magnetism is expected for a 'hot' ball of plasma, so when initial erroneous ideas are discarded, observations make a lot more sense. [The BBC article Supermassive Black Holes from 2000, is a good example of a major shift in black hole theory explaining the light from black holes and the relationship between black holes and galaxy formation. Another intriguing theory based on the properties of superfluids is the Gravastar. This is nicely explained in 2006 New Scientist article, Is Space-Time Actually A Superfluid? which seems to echo MECO theory in that objects called black Holes never reach a true singularity. We have some real experimental observations for a reality check, so it's not all mathematical conjecture.] What is really interesting is this seems to be some proof of how the scientific community is layered with "elite" scientists that have very different views from the rest of the scientific herd and they simply don't have to worry about perpetuating popular myths (rather like a religious hierarchy), they are actually doing 'real', science but there does not seem to be that many of them and sometimes their work is shrouded in secrecy.

The Myth of the Black Hole
The Myth of the Black Hole by Miles Mathis is an amusing read but even he admits that:

"I leave open the possibility that black holes do exist in some form, and that a part of the astronomical data has been read correctly. But the greater part of current speculation could be called wild, and a significant part is demonstrably illogical."

Mathis talks about "story-telling with a physical flavor"... yes, we are back to the fairy tales for adults again...

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Unraveling the 'Fabric of the Cosmos': Q&A with Brian Greene
Space.com, 1st November 2011
The series, which is based on Greene's book of the same title, premieres Wednesday (Nov. 2) on PBS at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and the three subsequent episodes will air on consecutive Wednesday nights through Nov. 23. [Gallery: The History & Structure of the Universe (Infographics)]

SPACE.com caught up with Greene to discuss his new TV series, whether we're close to figuring out what dark matter is, and whether there are copies of us somewhere out there in another universe:

SPACE.com: This TV series is based on your book, "The Fabric of the Cosmos," which tackles some of the most compelling questions and ideas in modern physics. Taking all that material and condensing it into four one-hour episodes must have been challenging.

Comment: I don't call what Brian Greene provides as education, I call this perpetuating mystery. Using geometry to explain spacetime is just a diversionary tactic almost as bad as using the concepts of dimensions because none of it makes any sense until we start talking about energy which is what the fabric of the universe is really made from. These types of authors seem to make a great living from explaining the failures of modern physics, but I get really creeped out by the discussion of mathematics being used to provide hints on reality... See the long Rupert Sheldrake quote below... well, the planet is being invaded by another lifeform and all this person can suggest is more speculation over the religious doctrine called Big Bang theory.... it's so pathetic...

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Report finds massive fraud at Dutch universities
Nature News, 1st November 2011
When colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report (go.nature.com/tqmp5c) released on 31 October gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.

"We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come," says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work at the university.

The data were also suspicious, the report says: effects were large; missing data and outliers were rare; and hypotheses were rarely refuted. Journals publishing Stapel's papers did not question the omission of details about where the data came from. "We see that the scientific checks and balances process has failed at several levels," Levelt says.

Comment: I will admit, I burst out laughing when I read that nobody asked where the data was coming from... Obviously, this professor was too much of a god-guru to be a liar... Reports say he has already been fired but the Wikipedia entry for Diederik Stapel says that: "an extensive report will investigate all his 130 articles and 24 chapters in books." So............. he was so trusted because he was a professor that nobody bothered to check his work (however, I will admit I am impressed that three young researcher eventually turned him in....) but this scenario is probably being repeated all over the planet and then the results foisted onto society; morsels of crap like "meat eaters are more selfish than vegetarians...". Just wow...

Diederik Stapel: The Lying Dutchman
Washington Post, 1st November 2011
OK, I just liked the headline...

Stapel report finds faked data in at least 30 papers, possibly more
Retraction Watch, 31st October 2011
There is an interesting comment here that is worthy of being highlighted:

Recently, and for diverse reasons, I’ve looked back at the history of Marc Hauser, reviewed the extended American Anthropology Association saga, re-read parts of Pinker’s “Blank Slate,” pondered the peculiar collapse of Stephen Gould’s case against 19th century brain research, and now followed the Stapel story. The question, not to put too fine a point on it, is this: what do we do if an entire field of science is so infected with fraud and agenda-driven literature that it simply isn’t trustworthy any more?

Maybe that’s the case with social psychology. Maybe it’s not. But it’s a problem which is simply no longer excusable as some dilute Poisson-distributed behavior by a tiny group of three-sigma deviants. The Stapel matter isn’t a scandal. It’s one more symptom of a real level of systemic rot in this particular discipline. It needs to be addressed as such.

Actually, I have been having similar thoughts about the metaphysical community; is it just too rotten? Not enough spiritual intelligence combined with a great preference for childish beliefs, magical thinking and pseudoscience.

Tilburg professor faked data in at least 30 academic publications
Dutch News, 31st October 2011
"In total, statistics quoted in 150 papers dating back to 2004 when Stapel worked at Groningen University, are being examined."

In a written response to the allegations published on the Brabants Dagblad newspaper website, Stapels says he has ‘failed as a researcher and academic’. ‘I realize now that my behavior has stunned and angered my colleagues and put my area of expertise – social psychology – in a bad light,’ he wrote. ‘I am embarrassed and deeply sorry for this.’

Please note: we only get some remorse when he is caught... He was not overwhelmed with guilt and decided to turn himself in, so was this just some kind of game where he delighted in fooling everyone around him?

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"The art of devotional lying"
Cult Educational Forum, 2nd November 2011
"To them, telling the truth would have been the easy way out, and they even looked down on me when I advocated telling the truth, as if I were just not advanced enough to understand the subtleties of the art of devotional lying."

An honorable, honest guru needs no enablers.

Only a dishonest and abusive guru needs repeated apologists and needs a network of celebrity enablers. And a retinue of secret keepers

Adi Da was the first guru Ken Wilber endorsed--before he went on to endorse Andrew Cohen and Marc Gafni.

Broken Yogi, a former disciple of Adi Da, and a member of his inner circle has some most interesting things to say. That around Adi Da there developed a culture of 'devotional lying'.

Comment: I used to get scandalised but I think I have got to the stage where I have realised that there is absolutely no way that there can be any serious spiritual evolution until people wake up (I include myself here) and start to recognise the manipulators and the lying bar steward psychopaths. Well, I still spend time over at the Rick Ross Cult Education Forum, that has now become a little cult of it's own due to the general high levels of enthusiasm for exposing gurus and cults, but I have been so educated.... Anyway, I have decided to highlight this particular thread for a few reasons. 1) I hate "rude boy" guru thugs that think they can beat their followers up and get away with it. 2) I hate the idea of good research on human development being used by people to create a sense of elitism, but at the same time used to support predators. After spending at least 1 thousand hours over the last three years studying gurus and cult tactics, I now realise why so few people have any idea what the hell is happening on this planet and why so many so-called spiritual leaders are so clueless. The desperate search for followers and understanding how to manipulate them precludes any serious time spent on understanding spiritual evolution. Start at the beginning of this thread, for some people it might be quite a revelation.


Update So, Marc Gafni routinely uses blackmail to keep people in check... I don't know about you, but I think this kind of behaviour whiffs of the same methodology used by world controllers to control minions... Hence, I appreciate the full 'hilarious' confession (bad poetry?) of someone who has decided that blackmail will not work on them and that they are at liberty to tell the truth... Whatever, recognising the psychopaths at the helm of organisations by people seriously seeking spiritual truth, really has to become a serious priority... The reason being is that the traits of a psychopath can be transferred by the charismatic, hence those who are already Dharma-Lite become corrupted and warped, hence the occurrence of "devotional lying" and general deceitful behaviour. As far as I am concerned, this explains the New Age Law of Attraction hype and the 'blame the victim belief', initially promoted by psychopaths and then by their adherents who become 'psychopaths in training'. Of course, if you are ignorant of the machinations of the guru-culture then none of this makes sense and some effort is required to do some basic research.

• Thoughts of God Make Us Slackers, Study Suggests
  Live Science, 28th October 2011
  No matter if you're a believer, thinking about God and religion may turn you into a slacker, according to a new study.
  
  "More than 90 percent of people in the world agree that God or a similar spiritual power exists or may exist,"study researcher Kristin Laurin of the University of Waterloo in Canada, said in a statement. "This is the first empirical evidence that simple reminders of God can diminish some types of self-regulation, such as pursuing one's goals, yet can improve others, such as resisting temptation."
  
  Even for those without a personal belief in God, U.S. culture is saturated with religious references and imagery that could impact them, Laurin said. The study's results were independent of the participants' religious beliefs. Even without knowing it, these signs and signals can have a psychological effect.
  
  Comment:I found the choice of engineering students for this research quite interesting but the conclusion I have come to is rather more harsh than talk of Santa Claus. Another way to look at this result is that religious 'conditioning' actually sabotages people. It says this quite clearly with the statement: "When prompted with religious imagery or language beforehand, the students came up with fewer words, regardless of their religious background, than those who hadn't been primed with such imagery." Yes, that means that some people were literally pushed into another mental or even "trance" state and so were literally mentally incapacitated. I think this research should be linked to that of people who literally shut down their brains when listening to religious speakers They have the power to switch off your brain, my comments from April 2010 are in the archives. So, why do you think religion is such big business? For those who understand the dynamics, you can become very wealthy from finding hapless easily manipulated religious followers, but of course, this is a very major problem for genuine truth seekers, surrounded by those who can't see the dynamics in play.
  

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Mystery sighting baffles author [NZ]
stuff.co.nz, 2nd November 2011
An Auckland writer says mysterious lights she saw last month are beyond any science fiction she could have dreamed up.

Heather Royal, of Gulf Harbour, is baffled by two large, orange lights she saw near Manly Beach on October 9 and is appealing for further information about what they may have been.

The writer and her husband, Jeff, spotted the intriguing phenomena as they drove back from a friend's house where they had watched the All Blacks beat Argentina in the World Cup quarter final. "The sight which I saw was so unusual and so amazing I let out a huge expletive."

Comment: I don't understand why so many people cannot do enough basic research to discover the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Light Phenomena. I can understand how difficult this was 50 years ago or even 20 years ago but now we have the internet, educated and intelligent people don't have any excuse whatsoever, when so much good information is available in the public domain.

UFOs in Marblehead? Recent sightings defy easy explanation
Wicked Local Marblehead, 28th October 2011

Eerie green lights land in New Mexico
Open Minds, 31st October 2011
Interesting.... I now have seen some absolutely fabulous photographs revealing fan-shaped entities but with rainbow spectrums in high definition. This is a real problem for ufologists who are looking for metallic 'saucer' spacecraft when it is obvious that 'UFOs' belong to a Shadow Biosphere on this planet, made up of a huge variety of plasma entities, which can only be understood by studying the properties of plasma.

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Snowtober: US north-east coast hit by unseasonal October snow storm (21Pics)
Refreshing News, 1st November 2011
One of the darkest Hallowe'ens ever looms for roughly 2.8 million households in the US left without power by a rare October snowstorm in the Northeast that hit transportation and killed at least eight people over the weekend. The unseasonably early winter storm, known as a "nor'easter" due to its north-easterly movement, was being called "Snowtober" and affected up to 60 million people.

Record-breaking snow fell, the heaviest of which was 31.4 inches measured in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, according to the National Weather Service. Just 45 minutes northwest of New York City, in West Milford, New Jersey, 19 inches of snow fell.

Comment: If we are slowly moving into an Ice Age then this should not be a surprise... These are great pictures.

Inches of “Global Warming” Get Dumped on NASA-GISS HQ (PHOTO)
Watts Up With That, 29th October 2011
"[Update: New York City got more snow in October 2011 than ever before in recorded history, according to the NY Daily News (including some good photos). Special thanks to WUWT commenter NikFromNYC who posted this photo link of Snow near GISS HQ last evening.]"
Actually, I don't really think this is funny at all if this is another sign that we are moving into an Ice Age.

Record snowfall for “Climate Justice Day” in New York
WUWT, 30th October 2011
Obviously, I support both camps here, but I can see the funny side...

Reuters: Occupying Wall Street in the snow
YouTube, 29th October 2011

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Drunk naked taxi driver smashes into 17 cars in Moscow
A drunk taxi driver was caught naked by police in Moscow following a rampage in which he smashed into 17 cars. Metro News, 31st October 2011
City police became aware of Vitaly Grodi's erratic driving after he ignored a road sign and refused to stop. The driver bumped into 17 vehicles – reports The Russian News & Information Agency RIA Novosti –including a police van.

He also narrowly avoided hitting a school bus. The driver was finally caught by officers who were shocked to find him in nothing but his birthday suit when he emerged from his cab. The taxi driver told police he was unhappy and had decided to get into his cab following an argument with his girlfriend.

Comment: A crime of passion... but maybe excerbated by geomagnetic conditions... OK, nobody died but one mad man has caused a lot of chaos for a lot of people. This the reason why society is in such a mess because it only needs a small percent of chaos makers to dominate everybody elses' lives.

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Hero dog drags his owner home after he is knocked unconscious by lightning bolt
Daily Mail, 28th October 2011
A faithful dog rescued his owner by dragging him home after he was struck by an enormous lightning bolt.

Ian Thomas, 64, was taking his German schnauzer Monty out for an early morning walk when he was struck by a bolt so powerful he would have been killed if he had not been wearing wellington boots.

The bolt threw Mr Thomas, who is the Mayor of Redruth in Cornwall, into the air and knocked him out.

Comment: I am starting to understand why some people prefer animals to humans...

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Why near-death events are tricks of mind
Medical Express, 24th October 2011
Psychologists who reviewed a range of phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, visions of tunnels of light or encounters with dead relatives, say they are tricks of the mind rather than a glimpse of the afterlife.

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge say that most of the experiences can be explained by a reaction in the brain prompted by a traumatic and sometimes harmless event.

The researchers say that many common near-death experiences could be caused by the brain’s attempt to make sense of unusual sensations and perceptions occurring during a traumatic event.

Comment: The problem with this analysis is scientists cannot prove that the mind is a function of the brain or what the relationship is between the mind and the brain. They do know that the body actually has a mind and that is why there is a new study of the mindbody, normally referred to as psychoneuroimmunology. So trying to blame mind experiences as a brain malfunction is not really science it's guesswork. Yes, the brain can be re-wired due to the massive electrical discharge in the brain at the time of near death (and that is why so many of these shaman types try to nearly kill their followers by trying to literally electrically "shock" the brain to reconfigure, other religious traditions do exactly the same thing by various methods in the hope of advancement, but it is extremely dangerous), but how that affects the mind-brain relationship is not understood.

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Pollutants Linked to 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects in Rural China
Science Daily, 19th October 2011
ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2011) — Pesticides and pollutants are related to a 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.

Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane. Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds.

Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Spina bifida is a defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. Anencephaly is the absence of a large part of the brain and skull. [...]

"It's an extraordinary natural experiment," says Finnell, who was recently recruited to the university to help anchor the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. "It would be much harder to do this study in the United States, where neural tube defects are more rare. It's also an opportunity to assist the Chinese government in their efforts to lower their birth defect rates."

Comment: Well, the Chinese have create an evironmental nightmare and are admitting there is a serious problem. They must be fearing a Cosmic Darwin Award for the whole country.

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Life-like cells are made of metal
New Scientist, 14th September 2011
Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? Perhaps. In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible.

He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities.

"I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," says Lee Cronin (see photo, right) at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large "polyoxometalates" made of a range of metal atoms – most recently tungsten – linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres.

Comment: Talk about in your face... Now lets think: our universe has been around for billions of years, plenty of time for entities to have evolved from metals.... this has got to be one of the most interesting articles I have read for years... This is a Star Trek moment: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

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