“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”

• The future of our solar system?
• When comets and planets… collide.
• H2O, H2O everywhere.
• The science of bubbles.
• I stop the world and melt with you.
• Paper goes hi-tech.
• Ancient crater reveals distant future.
• We are family.
• Armchair eclipse.
• The UK’s Atlantis?
• From Indus with love.
• Stonehenge, where the demons dwell-- 5,000 years earlier.
• Sailing the seas of cheese and chocolate hills.
• Wheel, reinvented.
• Gravity… the trailer.
• This week’s proof of the 'bot revolution... 2100-- Robo-pocalypse start-date announced!

My endless and sincere gratitude to GT, RPJ and Perceval for their tireless assistance the past few weeks. Huge props!

Quote of the Day:

“Things do not change; we change.”

H.D. Thoreau

Once more into the breach...

• The Paracast: Citizen Hearing on Disclosure special edition.
• Former members of Congress who formed the panel on Basset's Hearing were "unanimously impressed" with the testimonies given during the 5-day event.
• The Night Ravagers: Cattle Mutilations in Argentina, by Scott Corrales.
• Video: A 2008 Canadian TV show featuring the late Mac Tonnies.
• Secret Sun's Chris Knowles explains why the members of Heaven's Gate were the ultimate Trekkies.
• io9 shares an excerpt from Jaron Lanier's new book Who Owns the Future? [Amazon US & UK].
• The age of the 3d-printed gun... has come.
• Israel's not amused by Google Palestine.
• British Indiana Jones claims the Lemba tribe in Papua New Guinea has Jewish origins --but with a name like that, I suspect Elves were involved too...
• Rocks found in Brazil were part of a hidden continent buried beneath the Atlantic 100 million years. But THEN the geologists decided to call it 'the Brazilian Atlantis', thus ensuing the ire of the Skeptoid blogosphere.
• Aging: It's all in the brain --Srsly.
• Flame retardants linked to low IQ & hyperactivity in children --even if exposed before they were born.
• A man whose brain was literally leaking out of his nose!
• Anne Strieber: Dog is an anagram for God.
• To get in the mood of Inferno, the people in charge of translating Dan Brown's new novel were submitted to hellish conditions.
• Red Pill of the Day: A serious contender for the greatest car commercial of all time —& I *am* being logical about it!

A huge thanks to Susan.

Quote of the Day:

"The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena."

~Jaron Lanier

Thanks to the mighty Tool, and the esteemed Blair MacKenzie Blake, for a music treat last night…

• Oldest Mayan Sun observatory hints at origin of civilisation.
• Stunning astronomical alignment found at Peruvian pyramid.
• European and Asian languages emerged from a single mother tongue just 15,000 years ago.
• Bizarre 6-inch long 'alien' skeleton shown to be human.
• Something noisy this way comes: after seventeen years, hundreds of millions of cicadas are about to emerge from beneath the soil.
• The apocalyptic 'colony collapse disorder' of honeybees has happened before - 18 times in the last 150 years.
• 'Magic mushrooms' could transform cancer treatment.
• Has the internet killed the Loch Ness monster? One blogger says…no!
• Iran cracks down on Sufi mystics.
• Lost Egyptian city revealed after 1200 years under the sea.
• The visionary notes of rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard.
• Meet the thousands of people ready to die on Mars.
• The mystery of John Titor: Hoax or time-traveler?
• Government lab reveals it has been running a quantum internet for over two years.
• It has begun: bizarre 'organism' appears after lightning strike, while weird 'bubble creatures' invade nature preserve during full moon.
• After a decade missing, three women escape from their alleged captor. Surprise, surprise, 'psychic' Sylvia Browne was wrong, telling one girl's mother that she was dead.
• Your fragmented self, reconstructed: artist collects DNA from discarded objects, and uses it to create 3D portraits.

Thanks Kat.

Quote of the Day:

I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them.

Robert Anton Wilson

Lovely...

• Archaeologists uncover hundreds of mysterious orbs buried deep beneath an ancient pyramid in Mexico City.
• Babylon's hanging garden: ancient scripts give clue to missing wonder.
• The odd things very young children sometimes say.
• Experience: I was swallowed by a hippo.
• Your body doesn't want to be an interface.
• The sights, smells, and sprays of 'Iron Man 3' in 4DX.
• Nuclear fusion rocket could allow travel to Mars in 30 days.
• Forget butterfly wings: Breaking ocean waves contribute most of their energy to the air, contrary to experts' previous belief.
• Lightning may be triggered by cosmic-ray particles.
• Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case.
• Do you want the government buying your data from corporations?
• Better living through chemistry: Toxic stew has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the US into one grand unnatural experiment.
• Students can’t resist media multitasking while learning, and it’s impairing their memory.
• Gross National Product: Two new books look at how we turn food into poop — and what happens to it afterward.

Quote of the Day:

We are transforming a wonderful, complex planet into piles of shit.

David Waltner-Toews

More cosmic weirdness:

• 82,000-manuscript collection Vatican Library goes online.
• Filming of 'Fishing with David Lynch' interrupted by 'sea monster'.
• The Oatmeal's campaign to buy Tesla's old lab for a museum succeeds.
• We are avatars: our online psyches are leaking into meatspace.
• Was the UFO that nearly hit an airliner above Glasgow a remote-control flying shark?
• Rupert Sheldrake on potential positive outcomes of the TED fiasco.
• Two free chapters of Graham Hancock's new novel 'War God'.
• 3D-printed bionic ear made of cells and nanoparticles detects radio frequencies beyond human hearing range.
• Scientists make transistor out of DNA and RNA. Next step - a transistor radio for the bionic ear to listen to.
• Our solar system is a cosmic weirdo. As above, so below.
• Giant rubber duck draws attention to the global bathtub.
• First Tunguska meteorite fragments discovered.
• Disappointingly, déjà vu not a glitch in the matrix.
• An exerpt from The New Science of Psychedelics (Amazon US/UK) by David Jay Brown.
• Do blind people believe in ghosts?
• BoA Audio returns with a discussion of Michael Bott's new book (Amazon US/UK) on subterranean mysteries.
• From Baltimore to Venus - in 1928.
• Scale the universe with a scroll bar.
• Shroom Trip Opera.

Thanks RPJ!

Quote of the Day:

Our eyes are the eyes of the earth; our knowledge is the earth's knowledge.

Joseph Campbell

The Daily Grail: Where all materialistic assumptions come to die.

• Citizen Hearing on Disclosure: Despite the fact it's likely a futile pursuit, Lee Spiegel is doing a yeoman's work covering the proceedings.
• US media: Come for the credible testimonies, stay for the highlight of woo.
• YESSS! Radio Misterioso is back: now it's time for Brent Raynes, head of the long-running magazine Alternate Perceptions.
• On to the 2nd cup of java? time to f#$k up with your eyes then, courtesy of New Scientist.
• Is Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd law flawed? --Do have a look on my comment thread, that guy (or gal) mxyzptlk is one smart cookie!
• Fusion is coming --at a #$%&ing snail pace, but it's coming.
• Time Crystals: not as interesting as Time Lords, but they could nonetheless upend the laws of physics.
• DIY God helmet.
• Tiniest. Animation. Ever!
• A monster in lough Foyle --& a MIB too!
• With Bigfoot there's weird, and there's beyond weird.
• From Paul to Patty: Seth Rogen producing a Bigfoot animated comedy.
• The aquatic ape theory: still hanging there after 50 years --Me? I'd rather explore the stoned ape theory...
• Catfish, beer & scorpions: The origins of Egypt.
• Good ole American traditions: 4th of July, apple pie & cannibalism.
• Red Pill of the Day: I <3 <3 <3 my madre, but this is freaking awesome!

Gracias, Ricardito! ojalá se te haya quitado lo huevón ;)

(thanks to Susan too)

Quote of the Day:

“To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself.”

~ Alan Moore

I think I remember how to post the news; now what does this button do...

• A William Blake print provides a portrait of May Day in London, 1764.
• Britain's ancient festival of Beltane is making a comeback.
• Spectacular images from Edinburgh's fiery Beltane festival.
• Loreena McKennitt's Huron 'Beltane' Fire Dance features a scorching violin performance, live in the Alhambra 2006.
• Fire & the Fire Bringers in mythology & folklore, by Heinz Insu Fenkl.
• UFOs & Oceans: close encounters of the submersible kind.
• Invisible Residents: The Reality of Underwater UFOs by Ivan T. Sanderson (Amazon US/Kindle & UK/Kindle).
• Australian man captures hundreds of UFO photos over Perth.
• Saturn's moon Enceladus ticks all the right boxes for habitability.
• Gaze into the spiraling eye of Saturn's 'hexagon' storm.
• Iran continues a ferocious crackdown on Sufi mystics.
• An ancient alien's satellite's view of the world's ancient sites.
• Robot finds mysterious spheres in ancient Mayan temple. Wait, what?
• Uncovered: ritual public drunkenness & sex in Australia ancient Egypt.
• The 150th issue of Parabola magazine is a Heaven & Hell special.
• 'I get paid to talk to dead people': interview with Australian medium Marilyn Whall.
• Cactus of Mystery: healing powers of San Pedro (Amazon US/Kindle & UK).
• New research suggests yoga can boost your immune system on a genetic level.
• Excerpt from Dean Radin's new book, Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities, available in July (Amazon).
• Can training your cat memory lead to extrasensory perception?
• Karate experts anticipate where an attack is coming from before their opponent has even moved. They can also anticipate Chuck Norris/Mr Miyagi jokes before you even think them.
• Death Valley Dreamlapse: stunning new timelapse video from the Sunchaser team includes a UFO!

Muchos Gracias to Perceval/Grailseeker/Richard, a terrific bunch of guys!

Quote of the Day:

When Rama spoke the secret mantras, the lords of the astras appeared before him. They were neither of this world nor yet in the next: they stood between the realms, their bodies of pristine light. The eyes of some were turquoise flames; others had locks of green tongues of fire.
They said to Rama, "Now we are your slaves; we will do your bidding, whenever you want."
Rama said to them, "Dwell in my mind, until I have need of you."

~ The Ramayana

Check out the latest Grail news briefs, and join us afterwards in the Scooby Lodge…

• Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has successful first powered flight.
• Is SETI science?
• ISON is not Nibiru: debunking Comet ISON conspiracy theories.
• ‘Bullet hole’ in the solar array of the International Space Station.
• UFO believers testify at Congressional-style hearings. Lee Speigel live blogs it for the Huffington Post.
• The unseen force that drives Ouija boards and fake bomb detectors.
• Association between belief in God and improved treatment outcomes in psychiatric care.
• Controversy brews over Santa Fe church’s hallucinogenic tea ritual.
• The latest 'Psi in the News' collection from David Metcalfe.
• The aquatic ape hypothesis, revisited.
• Zombies are attacking and destroying the Egyptian pyramids!! Oh wait, may have over-read that headline…
• Speed of light may not be constant, physicist say.
• EU reacts to bee deaths by banning implicated pesticides.
• The nine most incompetent wizards of all time.
• Ground-breaking digital technology allows researchers to recover Alexander Graham Bell's voice from a Smithsonian recording.
• 'Smart-dust computers' will be no bigger than a snowflake.
• Mysterious energy discovered in thunderclouds.
• Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker dead at 78.
• Image of the Day: the Rose of Saturn.
• Bonus Image of the Day: SpaceShipTwo, to infinity and beyond!

Quote of the Day:

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Plato

Running the gamut...

• City of Heracleion, which sank off the coast of Egypt nearly 1,200 years ago, brought back to the surface with the help of 3-D imaging and photos of artefacts.
• Earth's core far hotter than previously thought.
• Major earthquakes can permanently crack Earth's crust.
• DARPA: The element of surprise.
• Physicists say the quantum properties of space may change the speed of light.
• 'Part of 9/11 plane landing gear' - with a length of rope looped around it, and a broken pulley - found wedged between two buildings in New York.
• US Justice Department secretly granted immunity to companies that participate in cybersecurity monitoring programs, activity that might otherwise have violated federal wiretapping laws.
• New breathalyzer can detect 12 drugs in the body, including cocaine, marijuana, and amphetamines.
• Gut bugs produce artery-clogging compound linked to heart attacks, strokes.
• Microbes: The trillions of creatures governing your health.
• TB: For more than a million people each year, death arrives like a train wreck.
• GM E. coli converts sugar into oil that's almost identical to conventional diesel fuel.
• Why US supermarkets only sell 5 kinds of apples, and one man's quest to bring hundreds more back.
• Open your mind to the new psychedelic science.
• The biggest price-fixing scandal ever: There's no price the big banks can't don't fix.
• UFO carnival returns to National Press Club. Rebuttals aplenty in the comments.

Big thanks to my buddy Red Pill Junkie!

Quote of the Day:

I have frequently been asked why a person of my background—a former Chief of the Defense Staff, a former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee—why I think there is a cover-up of the facts about UFOs. Governments fear that if they did disclose those facts, people would panic. I don't believe that at all. There is a serious possibility that we are being visited—and have been visited for many years—by people from outer space, from other civilizations. It behooves us to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation, and not the subject of rubbishing by tabloid newspapers.

UK Chief of Defense and 5-star general Admiral Lord Peter Hill-Norton

Filling in for G.C. again. This time he mentioned something about 'trying out a new suit'...

• Red(dit) blood on their hands: Body of student wrongly accused for the Boston bombing found.
• The REAL international conspiracy.
• The American dream nightmare: Social mobility is a myth.
• Hidden Experience audio conversation with Jim Marrs: conspiracies, UFOs & the occult nature of Reality.
• Fireball UFOs over Ireland.
• Anthropologists explain how to approach aliens parked on Earth orbit --Hint: bring lots of canned cat food.
• So Greer's Atacama alien turned out to be human --that doesn't mean it's not a mystery.
• The origins of the Maya civilization, more enigmatic than previously thought.
• Dr. Sam Parnia: exploring the frontier between Life & Death.
• Weird Australia presents: The Coalbaggie hauntings.
• The modern sighting of... a plesiosaur?
• The tiny critter that has to cope with 7 sexes --and without resorting to colorful shirts.
• Bad news for captain Kirk: Sex in space may not be safe.
• Opening a century-old time capsule.
• The secret to longevity? First Person Shooters.
• Red Pill of the Day: If you're gonna ride a 14-foot-tall bicycle, at least wear a god-damn helmet, bro!

Thanks to my dad, for lending me a hand with my little tax problem.

Quote of the Day:

"There's an old saying; just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you. I have my own variation: just because you're insane that doesn't mean that things aren't slipping in unnoticed through dimensional gateways..."

~Christopher Knowles