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News Briefs 26-03-2010

By Grail-seekeron

Preparing for the false-flag UFO invasion…

  • Holographic images as a weapon.
  • Waiting for the end of the world: Georgia’s 30-year stone mystery. For more on the Georgia Guidestones, see this Daily Grail/Darklore feature.
  • Has Emily Howell passed the Musical Turing Test? Classical musicians refuse to perform Emily’s compositions.
  • Light bends matter. Is that why the edges of my marmite sandwiches curl up in the sun?
  • Neuroscientists don’t believe in souls, but that doesn’t mean they can’t sell theirs.
  • Computer-controlled bacteria build a miniature pyramid. So that’s how the pharaoh’s did it?
  • Caves of creation: subterranean clues to the origin of life.
  • Wikileaks editorial – stop spying on us.
  • Luminous entity spreads panic among Chilean bus passengers.
  • A star buzzing through the outer solar system? Bring it on.
  • The Great Moon Hoax of 1835.
  • Builder forced to design estate around rock… because locals say fairies live under it.
  • Do DNA tests prove famous "Star child" skull is not fully human?
  • The world’s only immortal animal. Until it’s eaten.
  • Voynich under the microscope.
  • The hairless blue horse of South Africa.
  • Richard Dawkins labels Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, a “Quisling” for being involved with the Templeton Foundation.
  • And in doing so, earns a rebuke for his “scientific fundamentalism” from today’s winner of the 2010 Templeton Prize, Professor Francisco Ayala.
  • The ten greatest modern-day recreations of ancient technologies.

Thanks Greg, Turner, Rick, RPJ, redoubt, Moezilla.

Quote of the Day:

The face, which was of a yellowish color, was an improvement upon that of the large orang-utan … so much so that but for their long wings they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia.

New York Sun , 1835

Grail-seeker
Related

15 Comments

  1. I’ve not heard of the
    I’ve not heard of the Starchild Skull before, but it sounds interesting.

    I hope he publishes soon so it can be checked and verified by others.

    I wish he had revealed where the abnormal portion was. Given the shape of the skull some abnormality in the DNA is entirely possible. I hope he hasn’t just found a weird skull, then found abnormal DNA, which is surely more likely than in a normal skull, then concluded aliens. Given you might predict that a portion of the DNA would be unlike normal DNA from the nature of the skull, irrespective of alien explanations.

    Also is it suggested the DNA is alien? Do we have evidence aliens have the same DNA as us or would we just speculate they are playing with ours? The former would be amazing, the latter spooky non the less. I wonder what the section does? That might be an interesting clue as to what these crazy aliens are up to.

    Wouldn’t it be funny if the section makes us produce slightly larger saliva glands for example, or makes us sweat a little differently. Perhaps we are a cosmic perfume factory 😛

    Then again, if it caused the big head i wonder if it can be shown that the portion, if divided up into smaller sections, occurs elsewhere in our DNA. I don’t think evidence of strange DNA will cut it in this case, but evidence that it is not a copying/re-combination error would help solidify the case much more strongly.

    1. Starchild
      The Starchild is an interesting mystery. I keep it in my ‘gray basket’ for the moment.

      Of course, reading through the article one can come to the conclusion that the absence of matching between those basepairs of the skull and the database of the NIH *DOES NOT* prove the kid had an extraterrestrial daddy.

      To prove, that, we would need to know the exact origin of the father, go there and conduct a gathering of DNA samples; then we could say with confidence that the Starchild’s parent was not of this Earth.

      However, I’ve been following this story for a quite a while, and it does seems that little by little it has managed to gain momentum. Maybe they will produce convincing enough evidence to justify further study done by independent researchers.

      Time will tell.

      1. Agreed!

        Indeed, I concur completely with your comments. I would like to believe that the skull is evidence of off-world life. However, we are in no position as yet to determine that.

        It’s sort of like the whole “Clovis Boundary” argument. Archeologists say that Indians first arrived in North America some 13K years ago because that’s the earliest confirmed level we’ve found tools at. However, just because we haven’t found something earlier doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

        Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 🙂

        Respects,

  2. *What?*

    The face, which was of a yellowish color, was an improvement upon that of the large orang-utan … so much so that but for their long wings they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia.

    New York Sun , 1835

    Somebody connect the dots for me, please.

  3. The irony…
    It’s a sad thing to watch the neo-atheists call other intelligent & eminent people, but of different opinions, nasty names – thus emulating the very fundamentalists and religious truth-mongers that the neo-As want to “rescue” us from. Really all the so-called “sins of religion” – aside from blatantly geocidal doctrine & myth – are features of all human groups based on self-definition according to some set of attributes. It’s humans, following their basest instincts as ‘followers’ and ‘leaders’ prove time and time again their imperfection and their need for a Healer.

    PS There’s a certain historical myopia about ‘witchcraft’ which needs correction. In societies that believe in *real* witchcraft, almost universally, do you know what they did with people accused of witchcraft? Kill them. Look at African tribal beliefs to that effect today. So all you witches can thank modern scepticism towards the supernatural that lynch mobs aren’t stringing you up in Western societies. Scepticism is good for something. Else how long do you think neighbours would remain nice if they really did believe you could invisibly harm them at a distance?

    1. Good point about witchcraft.
      Good point about witchcraft. When i worked out in Saudi it was explained to me how Islam says winged demons, which are invisible, fly in the sky above us. The can attack us apparently. Perhaps this isnt too different to normal demon stories. Either way, as much as i tried i don’t think you can really say how differently you would behave until you really did believe in something like that. They were afraid of them and obviously it alters how you look at a clear blue sky, but they generally just tried not to think about it too much i think.

      The ability to police behaviour is diminished if anyone can cast spells on you and you cannot discover how it was. It is little wonder, or at least to me, that people in the past decided to send suspects on their way to divine judgement. What systems did they have to protect themselves. Jail is not so good if you can affect the outside world with words alone, and don’t need to be some type of mafia Godfather.

      As for Dawkin’s i sort of tend to agree. He might be better to just stick to facts. This years Templeton winner has apparently won it by contributing to the idea of NOMA (or non overlapping magisteria). The idea that science and religion are about different questions and occupy different spaces in our intellectual endeavours. For many people though (myself included) if religion is not about where the universe came from, where the earth and the solar system came from, where life came from, where humans came from, and even questions such as why we are here, then what is it for. If religion is just about living in a fulfilling way then it is really a philosophy, not a claim about natural theology.

      Since science is about all of those questions, yes, even the why are we here bit (it is just that people don’t like the answer – not the same thing as not being able to provide one) then what space does NOMA give? A valid question is whether NOMA is more an intellectual attempt to provide cultural freedom for people to feel what they want, rather than a true division in scientific and philosophical space.

      Religion can live within the realm of faith. Jesus’s word was true. Mohammeds was true. Vishna is true. Scientology is true. Etc etc. But then NOMA is about creating cultural space, not about the reality of religion.

      The Templeton Award was specifically set up to be bigger (prize wise) than the Nobels. Yet comparing the intellectual merit of the two prizes it is very easy to see a difference in quality.

      The professor who won it this year claims ‘common sense’ as one of the evidences. Very scientific!

      1. Prize envy
        [quote=daydreamer]
        The Templeton Award was specifically set up to be bigger (prize wise) than the Nobels. Yet comparing the intellectual merit of the two prizes it is very easy to see a difference in quality.

        The professor who won it this year claims ‘common sense’ as one of the evidences. Very scientific![/quote]

        Dawkins speaks of “real scientists” and you infer intellectual inferiority. A bit of sobbery creeping in here, perhaps? Are we to assume that the likes of Paul Davies and Francisco Ayala are intellectual pygmies? What about Charles Townes? He won the Templeton *and* the Nobel Prize – how does that fit with your argument?

        Dave.

        1. Completely depends on how he
          Completely depends on how he won it!

          I sort of agree that Templeton Prize is being used to award scientists for making arguments furthing religion and spirituality because they are scientists. If they were fishermen or dare i say it – carpenters, i don’t think Templeton would be rewarding them. It is the fact that they are scientists. However as you often rightly point out, being a scientist doesn’t make you immune to mistakes. Richard Dawkins is wrong in many ways, so was Einstein, so was Newton. It is in the particulars.

          I would tender a guess that disagreement with plate tectonics is much higher among doctors than among geologists, or that of evolution is higher among structural engineers than biologists. To each his own subject (statistically). The point being that if a geologist strays into philosophy he is as well trained as the next person who has had the same education he has (or she of course). In fact, if we are to trade degrees what makes a physicist better than a biologist, or a doctor of law better than a doctor of psychology in determining positions in other fields, and as you know, especially in philosophy.

          I like a quote by Thomas Paine. It goes along the lines of ‘Only truth does not recede from inquiry’. With regard to this i would interpret this to mean that any idea is only as good as its ability to withstand critisism. It doesnt matter where the critisism comes from, whether it be a Nobel Laureate, or anyone without a single exam pass to their name. Though i would expect a person educated in a subject to be able to form more knowledgeable arguments – but this is the only difference.

          The problem with NOMA is that it isn’t particularly clever. It is just drawing a line, not saying where it is, but just that it surely exists somewhere, then asking people to respect it. I haven’t even seen anyone come up with an uncontroversial example of where this line is supposed to exist.

          NOMA only seems clever to me becuase it taps into a psychological response we have with funny questions. My 3 year old is having fun at the moment with infinite ‘whys?’. I love it. Just because we have an emotional response to a question like ‘why?’ when we cannot see an answer does not guarantee that that response is valid.

          NOMA is like an emotional conjecture. We ask a question of an object, such as why does this lego brick exist. We know who invented it, perhaps where it was made, what process it was made by, even what it is for, but we can still ask an infinite number of ‘whys?’. The experience of the infinite regression is emotionally unsettling. Nothing can withstand an infinite number of whys. Why this, why that, why, why, why? All that is left is to ringfence the infinite regression philosophically. NOMA is this fence. It fences a feeling we have in our heads when we cannot deal with the infinite. Theology has been adapted to compensate for the infinte by having Augustine’s infinite terminator, or infinite God. Note that previous versions of deities were not considered to be infinite, it has been a theological movement to tie up a logical loose end. This admittedly does places theology and science in different philosophical positions, but by design on the part of theology. Either way the man made differentiation acts to address a philosophical problem and does not help in saying what science can and cannot address other than the infinite regress of why.

          [edit]i had to write that very quicky and am not completely happy with it. Take it as the jist of a speculative argument and maybe i’ll firm it up later.

          1. Religion & Science
            I see no reason for the two sides to be at odds with each other. They are the two sides of the same coin.

            Religion recognizes that the Gods created everything.

            Science is our way of figuring out how they did it.

            That’s how I see it.

          2. I agree with you, sadly many
            I agree with you, sadly many do not. I suspect a tendency for any theologian of a particular creed to disagree.

            Any generic belief of the sort ‘the god(s) exist and science reveals their work’ will always be compatible with science, though what is revealed through science will reveal the nature of the God(s).

            Revelation is a little different and lending faith to revelation means that when science contradicts the revelatory claims you are backed into a position. A large amount of theological effort has been expended trying to reconcile revelatory positions with science.

            I have no problem with science informing our understanding of God or Gods. Or ghost evidence informing science, informing ideas of God. If we have evidence>testing>confirmation>informed concept of God, but where we have revelation>reinterpretation of evidence>justification of revelatory position, then i don’t find it very comfortable.

          3. Revelation
            We’ve discussed this previously, but I would like to return to it.

            We tend to dismiss the concept of revelation, because many times it has been proven this revelations to be completely inaccurate.

            Yet we know there have been numerous occasions where major scientific discoveries were the result of intuitive thinking or inspiration —the famous ‘Eureka’ moment.

            Couldn’t that be considered some sort of revelation, too?

            Maybe revelation works best at a symbolic non-verbal level, rather than explicit ‘language’. That’s why I tend to be cautious with information obtained through mediumship and the like —how much of it is being filtered by the mind of the recipient?

          4. virtual world
            This is related, really.

            I have said before that each of us lives in a virtual reality created by our unconscious brain, based on raw data it gets from our senses. Our consciousness observes this interpretation as the “real” world. Some people believe that our consciousness is the virtual reality, but that’s not the point here.

            That’s why this question
            [quote]
            That’s why I tend to be cautious with information obtained through mediumship and the like —how much of it is being filtered by the mind of the recipient?
            [/quote]
            has a straightforward answer: all of it is being filtered.

            And it gets worse, it is being filtered several times.

            First from whatever senses the medium has to receive the original information, into the virtual reality the medium understands as the “real” world. That is an interpretation, or filtering.

            Then the medium tells others about it in some way. That’s filtering through the limited ways we all have of expression the content of our thoughts.

            Then a third time (at least) when some qualified observers try to understand what the medium said, wrote, painted, or sang.

            Then the qualified observers write a book, then you read it…

          5. Dilluted
            I have absolutely no problem with your point of view there. I have often wondered if we humans are actually capable of true objectivity.

            I suppose that we have no option but conclude that there IS an objective reality outside of us, and then we are attempting to have as close a rendering of it in our minds as possible.

            But then com those pesky quantum physicists with their dead/undead cats and all hell breaks loose 😉

          6. I have no problem agreeing
            I have no problem agreeing either. The idea that our brains run a simulation of reality based on our senses is pretty standard fare. Throw in that the simulation is not evolved to be an accurate representation of reality but instead just be accurate enough to survive then we have a good start.

            Just like our arms and legs have evolved a pathway that is full of compromises so have our minds (from what i read).

            Are we capable of objectivity? Surely the question more begs whether we are capable of perfect objectivity. These notions of perfection are alot of trouble! We never achieve them.

            Over the past year or so of being here i have come to wonder whether different types of understanding/knowledge could really mean different systems of acceptance to different parts of the brain, so what parts of the frontal lobes accept might differ to what parts of the parietal lobes might accept (though find fulfilling or pleasing in some way might be better words than accept). Can we be objective when our brains compete with themselves? I suspect not. And objective for which part of the brain?

            As for comparing revelation with having an idea that after testing turns out to be correct:

            Its an interesting comparison and likely to be judged as a way of understanding it in a way that doesnt seem too remote from modern life experience. I guess if we pick a big example, such as a Nobel Prize winner (or a Templeton :)) or someone like Newton then we could see it that way, although it has implications for the idea being ‘theirs’. Modern brain theory seems to paint the picture of subsystems constantly processing data and passing it up to the neural network we call consciousness only once it has passed some sort of neural test, which would look very much the same as having a good idea.

            I have had fun recently with the thought that scientists are the ones proving they have the best access to some sort of universal knowledge field (i like to reverse the stereotype with my sci-fi). Forget the people down at the local fair sitting around their crystal balls and tarrot cards charging you dollars to tell you a dark stranger will come into your life tomorrow. If you want to see the people best accessing universal knowledge check out the Nobels. If having a good idea is revelation then perhaps that is not a bad place to start.

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