News Briefs 12-09-2005

Hey Presto! Watch me pull the news out of a hat ...

• Astronomers who found our solar system's tenth planet have discovered two more bizarre objects.
• A band of ice once spanned the Martian equator.
• Saturn's moon, Titan, occupies a sweet spot in our solar system, just like Earth's moon. Sweet, moon ... mmm, moonpie.
• Remember NASA's Deep Impact? Comet Tempel 1 turns out to be surprisingly fragile and empty.
• The human brain is still evolving ... and some people have a looooong way to go.
• The archetypal cave-dwelling, brutish Neanderthal is now thought to have been a gentler and kinder man. No mention of Neanderthal women.
• Sites dating 6000-years-old are being excavated in Connacht, Ireland.
• A previously unknown prehistoric painting has been found deep inside Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar.
• A unique statue of a Persian goddess was found near Prague. No details are given about the erotic motif.
• Were humans altering the Earth's climate two-thousand years before the Industrial Revolution? Bloody Romans, what have they ever done for us?
• Treasures aboard a Chinese ship that sank in the Java Sea over 1000-years-ago shed light on 10th Century Asian trade.
• A replica reed boat capsizes after attempting to sail from India to Oman to celebrate 4000-years of history.
• The US Army is contemplating building an aircraft the size of a football field. Won't see that one coming.
• An orange UFO is seen in the UK sky undulating like a jellyfish. Any similarities to the orange lights seen over Hobart, Australia?
• Three orange lights were seen over Armidale in Australia last week too. I have an alibi. Does Greg?
• Phenomena Magazine has an intriguing retrospective on the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident.
• The 2005 World UFO Conference opened in Dalian, China recently. I knew I should have applied for that ESL job in Dalian ...
• A US television Weatherman claims Japanese Yakuza used Russian KGB inventions to cause Hurricane Katrina. His website is Weather Wars. Scott Stevens should cancel his trip to Osaka ...
• If you thought Oil Storm (click on synopsis) was disturbingly prescient of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, try reading the 1957 scifi classic, WASP, by Eric Frank Russell (Amazon US or UK). I highly recommend it.
• Remember the RRRGroup smugly asked why no UFOs are ever sighted during disasters such as Hurricane Katrina? Loren Coleman has a rebuttal.
• His wife refused an autopsy, and Palestinian leaders have never given a definitive cause of death for their former leader, Yasser Arafat.
• A tribal farmer was killed in northeastern India, for allegedly practicing witchcraft. The Bollywood release of Harry Potter and the Curry of Fire is blamed.
• The Flying Spaghetti Monster, a satirical attack on the teaching of Creationism in American schools, has become the world's fastest growing religion. The Force is good enough for me.
• Television shows may influence what people believe about the paranormal, according to a skeptical media lecturer. In related news, Reality TV may influence what people believe about reality.

Quote of the Day:

"I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Generic bad guy from Scooby Doo