...but I'll be watching the MSNBC special this Sunday night

First uttered in 2006, what are inquiring Bigfooters and hominologists to make of this famous quotation in 2008? = "M.K.Davis has identified the subject of the famous film to be completely human." Will big news come out of Ohio today? Images.

Marine scientists in north Queensland have discovered the new species, right under their noses.

If not the Reptilian wonder, then what or who?

Rich Dolan, UFOs and National Security: Volume 2 is on the Horizon...

More information about what M. K. Davis has produced is leaking out.

John L. Johnsen, the filmmaker who has worked with M. K. Davis, sends along a comment.

"Loren Coleman [will have] the exclusive story on this and other things relating to my partnership with Davis and the true findings in the film," emails the producer of the promised documentary. What's the story here?

Image credit

Above, Pruthviraj Patil: an eleven-year-old from Sangil, Bombay has Hypertrichosis (sometimes known as Human Werewolf syndrome). According to today's Telegraph, Pruthviraj is seeking a cure to his excessive hair problem - laser treatment failed, the hair on his face grew back - and while he doesn't travel far from his home village due to the negative reaction from strangers, he is popular among his school friends.

Hirsutism (excess hair growth) is not a particularly uncommon disorder with it occurring in both males and females but Hypertrichosis (where thick hair covers the majority - if not all - of the body) apparently only affects 1 : 340 million of the population.

For a previous hairy entry on Damn Data:

World's Hairiest Man looking for love

A new view from Myakka? Video.

The Deros live!

Cattle-killings, UFOs (maybe...), and more...

Law died at his Los Angeles home. Video from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Other images.

What is a zeren? Why are thousands dying trying to get into Russia? Images.

There have been a recent religious gathering in the desert, notable because of the long running nature of the regular events:

[N]early 1,000 others assembled last month at a barren site known as Our Lady of the Rock. On the 13th of every month, they say, the Virgin Mary appears and speaks to a woman named Maria Paula Acuña. Crowds have gathered here, about 10 miles north of California City, for nearly 20 years.

Some visitors photograph the sun, saying they see Mary in the images. Some are just curious, some seek miracles and some say they want to feel closer to God. Each 13th they create a fleeting community of faith in the desert.

...

Scholars who have studied the phenomenon see a pattern: Publicity draws the curious and faithful, but the excitement quickly fizzles. Rarely is a lasting community forged, said Lisa Bitel, a professor of history and religion at USC who is co-writing a book on Our Lady of the Rock.

In 1990, Acuña said, she had a vision of the Virgin Mary in Lopez Canyon near her home in Pacoima. Her 3-year-old daughter, the youngest of six children, had leukemia, and the Virgin cured her, she said. Acuña returned to the site, and as word spread of her vision, bigger and bigger crowds joined her until the property owners complained, and the gathering soon moved to its current location.

...

Thirteen years ago, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese disavowed the reported apparitions, saying followers were "in danger of being misled" and that the archdiocese found doctrinal, canonical and financial irregularities among organizers of the ceremonies in the desert. The archdiocese has not changed its position on the desert gatherings.

Bitel said people who report apparitions are on the fringes of organized religion. Some of those drawn to these seers, as they are known, say they attend church regularly but are looking for a connection that eludes them inside the parish. Others have eschewed organized Christian denominations but still believe in the Virgin Mary.

Seers are often women or children, often poor or working class, Bitel said. They're "people who are disenfranchised from the traditional leadership of the church, people who couldn't be priests or bishops or popes but who obviously have some spiritual influence," she said.

...

Acuña, for her part, is reclusive, saying she cannot speak about her past without the permission of a "spiritual father," whom she refuses to name. Information about her past is scarce. She was born in Sonora, Mexico, and came to the United States 38 years ago "for the same reason everyone comes, to look for a better life for my children," she said.

Acuña says she lives in a trailer in California City, in Kern County, with four women, whom she calls "sisters," though they do not appear to be recognized by any church. They manage a nonprofit known as the Marian Movement of Southern California that reports tens of thousands of dollars in donations every year.

The group passes its days praying the rosary, making embroidered textiles for donations and preaching to inmates at the nearby jail, Acuña said.

"I am poor, but I am happy," she said.

Like others, Acuña's messages can tilt toward the apocalyptic. In one of her sermons a few years ago, she said the world would end in four years, Bitel said. But the majority of her followers seem not to dwell on these points.

"One feels closer to God here," said Alberto Ramos, 51, of Los Angeles, who has been coming to the site with his four brothers for nearly a year.

"I've seen the body of Christ. I've seen angels. I've seen the Virgin," Ramos said, flipping through a stack of Polaroid pictures. In one, dark rings appeared around the sun. In another, the silhouette of a woman seemed to shade the sun.

Others say they feel closer to Mary or even the Catholic Church by coming here.

Source

Hat tip

This case, and other examples (one which we touched on in passing the other day), clearly show there is a real need amongst some for a more direct connection with the divine than the Church provides and this seems to spin-off a lot of (usually unapproved) Marian cults.

Another interesting thing, for me anyway, is that this isn't the only "entity" encounter in the area. Read on below the fold.

Desert visitations

The Mojave Desert is a hotbed of odd activity. We noted the Death Valley Giants in the early days of the blog and it is famed for the UFOs cluttering up the airspace (The Integraton is out there for a reason!!). It is also the location of various government facilities, which, as you'd expect, leads us rapidly into conspiracy territory, an example of which can be seen below (Is that really a UFO? And yes he does talk about tinfoil hats too!! Bonus):

For those who want more (and more than they can handle I suspect) 13 part article called "Under Mojave" which drops in a lot of intriguing reports like:

The Mojave Desert is also, believe it or not, the very place where William Shatner claimed to have had his UFO encounter with a 'silvery disk', which he alleges saved his life after he became lost in the Mojave's other-worldly expanse, and this long before he was Christened 'Captain' of the U.S.S. Enterprise!

One can only wonder if he tried to get his leg over there too, as he did with innumerable alien "conquests" as Kirk.

However, it rapidly heads off into parts unknown throwing in such "facts" as:

Back to the Mojave Desert mystery -- it would seem that, based on the various reports (many of which we will record later on), that the Mojave Desert of Southern California and the deserts of western Nevada may in fact be a secret 'battleground' involving U.S. Government troops working in ALLIANCE with the alien races known as the 'Nordics'. Who are 'they' fighting? Their battle, according to SEVERAL sources is against the 'Grays' which have over the last century, possibly earlier, entrenched themselves below ground in underground 'bases' in the Mojave Desert region and elsewhere.

So we'll leave you to work through that on your own but there are intriguing things thrown into the mix that can be traced to more reliable, like Adamski's Nazi/occult connections (see also Dimensons, 1988 page 250-251) which make his alien encounters in the Mojave even more interesting considering it is claimed he found the impression of a Swastika in a Venusian footprint during his famed encounters out there. It certainly makes you look at the Nordics in a new light!!

Of course, we mentioned Adamski's encounter before, as there was a suggested Adamski-Hubbard connection (which I could never prove), made all the more intriguing (suspicious?) as it seems like Jack Parsons could be the earliest contactee of the Modern Era of UFOs as he appears to have met a Venusian out in the Mojave in 1946, the same period he was engaged in the Babalon Working (which itself has been linked into the Lam Hypothesis).

So I did some digging and posted a follow-up comment about Parsons and the Venusian. The main source seems to be from Vallee's Dimensions (1988, page 250):

Jack Parsons claimed to have met a Venusian in the desert in 1946

Although the source for that claim is unclear (Dimensions is, unfortunately, unreferenced), the timing and location could potentially connect this with Liber 49:

On February 28, Parsons made a solo trip back to the desert and received Liber 49 in an unexplained manner. Jacques Vall�e says Parsons claimed to have met a Venusian there in 1945 or 1946. Without the exact date, one cannot tell if the Venusian was the implied source of Liber 49. Parsons took this to be an affirmation of the need to produce a magical child.

Source

According to Sex and Rockets (page 132):

The day after she [Cameron] left for New York [i.e. Feb 28th], Parsons returned to the Mojave Desert without Hubbard, who had gone away for a while, perhaps to the VA hospital in San Francisco. Parsons invoked Babalon in the desert, presumably through a solo sexual rite of some sort, though he does not say. What resulted was phenomenal "The presence of the Goddess came upon me," he wrote, "and I was commanded to write the following communication.

The communication Parsons was commanded to write was Liber 49"

From Strange Angel (page 265):

When Cameron embarked on a brief trip to New York, Parsons went out into the desert once more. There he heard a voice speaking to him, dictating to him just as a spirit had dictated Crowley's own Book of the Law.

He then restarted the Babalon Working on 2nd March 1946, following the instructions given to him in Liber 49. This would make 1946 a busy year for Parsons, communicating with various entities in the desert, what is unclear is if Liber 49 actually came from the Venusians and if not then what were the details of this intriguing visit?

So running around in the desert you have fringe Marian cults, occult/sci-fi fraudsters (Adamski/Hubbard - take your pick), contactees, occultists and whole mixed bag of folks (far too many to list here) looking for... something. One can only wonder if there is something special about the desert, or something "special" about the people who are drawn there.

What we can say is that there is a heady fog of religious fervour, occult mysticism and flying saucer fever clinging to the Joshua Trees out there in the desert.

Marcel Cairo has put up a thoughtful piece on the newly discovered Albert Einstein letter in which the great physicist dismisses belief in God as a childish superstition.

I agree with Marcel that Einstein's view should come as no surprise, given his previously known statements on the subject.

I might add that Einstein seems to have doubted the existence of an individual soul also, opting instead for a sense of mystical oneness with all creation, as exemplified in this famous quote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

With all my focus on the problems caused by an overemphasis on the ego, sometimes I lose sight of the fact that the ego is a healthy and necessary stage of personal development. In fact, we need an ego if we're going to avoid becoming doormats in life. Perhaps some phenomenally advanced souls can tolerate being walked all over, but for the rest of us, the ability to stand up for ourselves when appropriate is essential. And if the Gospels are to be trusted, even Jesus placed a limit on how much crap he was will willing to take!

With that mind, I went Web surfing for information on assertiveness, and found this page, which includes, among other things, a list of the "ten assertive rights of an individual." Some of these rights are predictable enough, but others struck me as a little surprising. For instance:

Assertive Right  #2: I have the right to offer neither reason nor excuse to justify my behavior.

That's kind of interesting, don't you think? How many times are we called on to justify some opinion or action, not because the questioner genuinely wants more information, but because he or she is trying to intimidate us into backing down? 

The truth is that many of the things we say and do are hard to "justify" in strictly logical terms. I would rather watch a Ray Harryhausen movie than an Ingmar Bergman flick, but I can't say I could justify this preference through ratiocination. Any justification I came up with would probably be more of an excuse - a pretext  or a rationalization - than a valid reason. But why do I need a reason? What right does anyone have to demand a reason?

This ties in with another item on the list:

Assertive Right  #8: I have the right to be illogical in making decisions.

Refreshing, no? The Web page goes on to explain:

I sometimes employ logic as a reasoning process to assist me in making judgments. However, logic cannot predict what will happen in every situation. Logic is not much help in dealing with wants, motivations, and feelings. Logic generally deals with ''black or white,'' ''all or none,'' and ''yes or no'' issues. Logic and reasoning don't always work well when dealing with the gray areas of the human condition.

Hard to argue with that, though no doubt some bullying rationalistic types would try.

How about this next one? In an age when we are bombarded with demands for our attention and alerted to one "crisis" after another, here's an invigorating thought:

Assertive Right  #10: I have the right to say, ``I don't care.''

Do ya hear that, Save the Children/Whales/Planet? I don't care. I got my own stuff to deal with. Go away and leave me the frack alone. And that goes double for you, Sally Struthers.

There's a lot to be said for being able to stand up for yourself. At the same time, an out-of-control ego can be just as problematic as an underdeveloped one. Marcel Cairo sent me a link to an NPR story on Ayn Rand, which included this comment from a Rand supporter:

[Rand] gives egoists a positive case for why the world should revolve around them and around their efforts. If you are the person who is creating value, if you are the star, the sun really does revolve around you. And not only should it be that way, but that's the moral order of the universe.

Yikes! A philosophy that gives megalomaniacs even more reasons to admire themselves and expect the adulation of others! Just what the world doesn't need. (And what kind of metaphor has the sun revolving around a star, anyway?)

There's a proper balance to be struck here. Probably Aristotle had it right when he talked about the Golden Mean - the middle way between abject submissiveness and overweening arrogance. It's a fine line, sometimes as difficult to walk as a tightrope.

But, hey, no one ever said life was easy. Right?

Update: It turns out that the "Rand supporter" quoted above, Nick Gillespie, is not a Rand fan, after all. This was pointed out to me by Mark in the comments thread. I'm not sure how to interpret Gillespie's remarks - whether he was being sarcastically critical, or whether he does endorse this particular aspect of Rand's thought. Anyway, Rand's philosophy does inculcate this attitude in many of her followers, so I think the basic point is still valid.

UK-based researcher Dave Clarke on the newly-declassified British Ministry of Defense's UFO Files...

The Société Perillos focus their attention on Asmodeus, and wonder whether this demon might not have a mistaken identity. Could he, in fact, be Euronymos, whose images are consistent with those of the demon inside Saunière’s church?

I'm sure most parents find themselves wondering if their children aren't actually sleeping at all (in my family it was my brother, I was a sweet-natured child who slept through), but, of course, for the vast majority that isn't technically true - even if some nights it just feels like that.

However, for at least one little boy it does appear to be the case and, it is claimed, he hasn't slept in the three years since his birth (before that all bets are off):

A 3-year-old Florida boy with a rare condition has not slept in three years.

Doctors said Rhett Lamb of St. Petersburg apparently has a condition called chiari malformation that puts pressure on his brain.

Rhett has never taken a nap or gone to sleep at night, forcing his parents to keep watch day and night.

"(My husband) has the day shift and I kind of have the afternoon shift," mother Shannon Lamb said. "We share the night shift because no one can sleep in the house when he is up anyway."

...

According to the May Clinic, chiari malformation is a rare abnormality where brain tissue protrudes in the spinal canal.

Part of the skull is abnormally small and puts pressure on the brain.

Rhett checked into a hospital for an experimental surgery Thursday.

Source

Hat tip

It sounds like it is a real strain on the parents and hopefully the doctors will find a way to make life easier for everyone.

Other cases

Previously, we looked at the case of Hai Ngoc who says he hasn't slept since 1973.