Our good friend Mark Foster has just released the second novel in his "Messages From The Unseen World" sci-fi/fantasy series, titled The Story and the Teller. The first novel, Everywhere But No Place, was a cracker of a read, and I can't wait to bury my head in the sequel. Part cyber-techno thriller, part mythic and part magic, the series is a great tale well told.

And if you haven't yet read Everywhere But No Place, listen up: to celebrate the release of the new book The Story and the Teller, Mark has made the first book in the series A FREE DOWNLOAD for Kindle readers! Get in now folks, before he realises this madness and changes his mind. And while you're there, why not actually pay for a copy of the second novel, because (a) it's just a few bucks for two fantastic novels and (b) he fully deserves some money in his pocket for these wonderful books.

Note too, if you like to dip your toe in the water before submerging fully, the first few chapters of each book are also available as samples on the Messages From The Unseen World website.

"In dreams begin responsibility.”

• Life on Mars?
• Life under Mars?
• Life... Elsewhere?
• Solar systems: The new normal?
• El Sol's busy week.
• Billion year-old water.
• The cause of climate change.
• Melting Everest.
• Threat of rising seas less dramatic-- Unless we lose Antarctica.
• NASA computers go quantum.
• Winds of change, Neptune edition.
• Black triangles in the sky.
• Beware the black knight and other ‘satellite killers’.
• Kepler telescope… Lost in space?
• Love me, love my clone.
• Fukushima’s seismic fault.
• Beneath the conspiracies of DIA.
• Microscopic flowers, assemble thyself.
• Shocking solution to math troubles.
• Smallest liquid droplets, created.
• Artificial leaves in the nano-forest.
• A new golden age?
• The color of music.
• New York skyline, from 8 otherworldly points of view.
• This week’s evidence of the looming robot uprising… A.I. lawmakers .

Quote of the Day:

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”

W.B. Yeats

© Peter Greig

Now here's an image capturing some of my favourite things. Photographer Peter Greig traveled to Stonehenge for his 31st birthday, and managed to take this amazing photo of the Milky Way 'emanating' from the ancient megaliths...and captured a 'shooting star' (an Eta Aquarids meteor) at the same time! Click on the image above to be taken to a better quality, zoomable pic.

After juicing up my batteries back at the hotel I returned to Stonehenge around midnight. I stepped out of my car and was totally blown away by the crystal clear starry night sky above me. I knew I was in for a treat as this was one of the clearest night skies I've seen in the UK so far.

As I approached the perimeter fence I was suddenly blinded by torches, the security guards were onto me, my cover was blown!
After chatting with them for a while and explaining the reason why I was there I began my plea to gain access for a short period...I even resorted to monetary bribes but to their credit they declined and refused me entry (it's reassuring to know that this site is well protected, even from harmless photographers such as myself).

The best thing I could do was extend my tripod as high as it could possibly go to get a shot over the 6 foot fence, luckily it reached but only just. After half an hour of various compositions and exposures I noticed this shot had a meteor, I couldnt believe my luck!

Link: Peter Greig's Flickr Gallery

You might also like:

• Cosmic Sentinels: A Solar Eclipse on Easter Island
• Orion of the Maya
• Timescapes: Death is the Road to Awe

Bought your tickets yet?

• Welcome home, Major Tom Commander Chris!
• Dream Chaser spacecraft arrives at NASA.
• (Video) According to this anonymous source's deathbed confession, Eisenhower was ready to invade Area 51 to learn the truth about UFOs.
• Micah Hanks takes a critical look on retired Lt. Col. Richard French --& his alleged Jell-O drinking habits.
• Who can find a link between Roswell, John Keel, & 'screaming monkeys'? Why Nick Redfern of course!
• The 1994 UFO-humanoid case at Silbury Hill.
• Massachusetts: Invasion of the USOs! (Unidentified Stinking Objects) --or is it just the ocean's fault?
• Witches are banned from flying their broom sticks above 150m in Swaziland. What if they are flying over a goat and/or completely naked? Too many loopholes!!
• Skeptiko interview with Miguel Conner, another Gnostic red pill dealer --& his name is Miguel too!
• Death can be a pleasant experience.
• Kickstarter campaign for a mask that promises lucid dreams. --oh, wait... there's already one available.
• A review on Dennis McKenna's book The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss. [Amazon US & UK].
• "When computers are smarter than us, will they take our jobs?" asks Mother Jones. Clearly MJ is not a fan of Futurama...
• Cloning breakthrough with stem cells.
• Bigfoot shot in Pennsylvania... maybe. What happened to the 'city of brotherly love' rep, yo?
• Red Pill of the Day: Drunken man charges at wild elephant. Living proof that God favors the idiots.

Thanks to Rick, Susan, Kat & my Cosmic Compadre.

Quote of the Day:

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

~Albert Einstein

Issue 14 of the free PDF magazine EdgeScience is now available to download from the website of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE). In the new issue:

• Loyd Auerbach considers how to 'harness' the paranormal community.
• David Pratt debates "Sunken Continents versus Plate Tectonics".
• Michael Prescott reviews The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.
• Robert L. van de Castle considers "The Concept of Porosity in Dreams".

Grab a free PDF of EdgeScience 13 from the SSE website, or the print version from MagCloud. If you do grab the free PDF, please consider a small donation to help the EdgeScience team continue with this excellent publication, via the button on the webpage. There's also a link to join the SSE on that page if you want to keep up with the latest academic research into fringe science.

It's easy to be a Dan Brown critic: just laugh down your nose at his overly florid descriptive phrases, complain about other great authors being ignored, and encourage readers to join with you in hating the man and his books. Nearly all such reviews, however, miss the point – Brown's work is not meant for the literati, but simply as page-turning escapism. And that is where he excels - anyone that disputes the man's ability to keep readers up late at night reading 'just one more chapter' obviously hasn't tried to write a book of that type before. It's a talent, and it is what most of Brown's readers want from his work – not to 'work' their way through the novel as some sort of endurance event, but as a sprint, either after work or while on holiday, whisking them away to exotic locations on a thrill-a-minute adventure. The other arrow in Brown's quiver is his ability to take a location with fascinating history behind it, and use it as a city-size puzzle for the reader to try and fit together as the action progresses. Between the page-turning, and the hit of satisfaction to the reader as they complete more of the puzzle, his books are casual-reader-cocaine.

Dan Brown seems well aware of the ridiculousness of his fun thrillers occupying the stratosphere of book-selling – in the new book there seem to be parodic hat-tips to other publishing phenomena 50 Shades of Grey and The Girl Who... series. Certainly, there are plenty of other authors out there with Brown's skills (and more), and this doesn't seem to be something Brown doesn't know. They, however, weren't fortunate enough to hit upon the highly combustible mix that Brown put together with The Da Vinci Code - a combination of page-turner, puzzler, AND one 'big idea' that caught fire: that the Catholic Church covered up secrets, in particular the importance of the 'sacred feminine'. Though the success of that one book guaranteed Dan Brown massive sales of succeeding books regardless of their content, even Brown himself couldn't replicate the alchemy of The Da Vinci Code with his next book, The Lost Symbol, even though he seemed to have all the same ingredients, just with a change of big idea. To many though, it was the oversize helping of the 'big idea' in The Lost Symbol that ruined the mix, overwhelming the taste of the puzzles and making the meal difficult to digest quickly.

So with the release of his latest novel, Inferno, I was interested to see what approach Dan Brown might take to try and recapture the magic of The Da Vinci Code. I knew already that he had selected Florence as the location, and thought it an ingenious choice: the city has historical roots, both orthodox and esoteric, that stretched down as deep as the hell of one of its favourite sons, Dante Alighieri. And speaking of that famous Florentine, Brown also stated he was going to use the great Italian poet's classic of the same name as the basis for the plot of his new book. My expectations were high, and in my fun 'primer' Inside Dan Brown's Inferno, I explored the roads (and back-alleys) of Florentine history that I thought the best-selling author was likely to walk down in his own Inferno.

So how did I go in predicting the elements of Inferno? My chapter on Dante's life and literature would certainly have been helpful to readers of Brown's new novel, giving them essential background material to better understand the references made in the book (his love of Beatrice, his expulsion from Florence, the content of his Inferno, etc.). But those topics were a given really; not so much any sort of psychic skill on my part. In terms of locations in Florence I covered many that Brown placed within his adventure: the Boboli Gardens,

Enjoy.

• Rupert Sheldrake explains why bad science is like bad religion.
• Show me the evidence! cry the skeptics, so Dean Radin does.
• Why did nature choose quantum physics as a way to behave?
• Scientists refuse to say telepathy, like Republicans & vagina.
• Why science is taking Near Death Experiences seriously.
• On owls & the ambivalence of the place they hold in human culture.
• Electrickery! How Georgians reckoned cats can see in the dark.
• Living consciously at the center of a multidimensional universe.
• Dairy industry sells snakeoil over milk's effects on sleep & dreams.
• There are real benefits to rituals, religious or otherwise.
• Have archaeologists found the lost city of Ciudad Blanca in Honduras?
• More on the Maya pyramid of Noh Mul, bulldozed for local road works.
• In Afghanistan, a 2600-year-old Buddhist city faces destruction.
• Filmmaker Brent Huffman's fighting to save The Buddhas of Mes Aynak.
• Mes Aynak is a treasure trove of Buddhist & Silk Road artifacts.
• In Tibet's capital Lhasa, China paved paradise to put up a parking lot.
• Meet the last remaining shaman of Nicaragua's Rama people.
• The genome of the sacred lotus may hold the key to anti-ageing.
• New app lets you boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto & more.
• Miyoko Shida demonstrates the power of focusing your mind.
• Cornelia Funke on children's need for wilderness & shapeshifting.

A forest of thanks to Rob, Fiona, & the good folk at The Anomalist.

Quote of the Day:

Each plant is a library. When men destroy the jungle, they've burnt a library of books without even having been able to read them."

~ Pablo Amaringo

Happy reversed Pi day folks...

• Skylab was launched 40 years ago today. So why aren't we living in space yet?
• Three X-class solar flares erupt from our Sun within 24 hours. Somebody sacrifice something quickly dammit.
• Pulsar planets: strange worlds orbiting undead stars.
• 2012 Canadian UFO Survey released: twice as many UFOs reported in 2012 as 2011.
• Vanity Fair on the 'alien abduction' phenomenon, and the life and death of Dr. John Mack.
• Inner and outer space meet: Carl Sagan's letters to Timothy Leary.
• How many prime numbers come in pairs? See: angels dancing on the head of a pin.
• The Vatican doesn't like the cult of Santa Muerte. You can add that one to a very long list of things the Vatican doesn't like.
• Mayan pyramid bulldozed by construction crew. Now I understand the X-class solar flare problem.
• Noted religious scholar Geza Vermes passes away. More here.
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon…now sans Babylon!
• Ogham Stones digitised digitised for 3D project. Visit the website.
• One of the first cities in the world, Uruk, too, has been resurrected in 3D.
• Our Australopith ancestors wouldn't have been able to hear our words.
• While Neanderthals would have shook hands with us with their right hands. Or smashed our puny sapien skulls with them.
• U.N. urges people to start eating insects to fight world hunger.
• In Dan Brown's Inferno, numeric riddles and controversial science mix. Warning: contains me.
• The WaPo verdict on Dan Brown's new book Inferno. Have just finished it myself, and will discuss it here on TDG tomorrow (muuust sleeeeeep now).

Quote of the Day:

The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.

Werner Heisenberg

The Force was with photographer Rä di Martino when she accidentally stumbled upon the abandoned ruins of Luke Skywalker's Tattooine home. For over three decades, the Star Wars sets lay forgotten in the Tunisian desert, a little crumbled but still looking remarkably intact. No Jawas were spotted during the photoshoot, but the ruins are now home to a family of womp rats.

'Hardest OCD decision of my life.'

• A new theory about why Egypt stopped building pyramids.
• Have humans been abducted by extraterrestrials? A prestigious Harvard psychiatrist, John Edward Mack, thought so. His sudden death leaves behind many mysteries.
• Man and Wunderkammern: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert Ripley.
• In an excerpt adapted from his new book, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley, author Neal Thompson retraces the brilliant and belief-beggaring career of a man whose name lives on in American culture as a symbol of wit and wonder.
• The inscrutable proof of Japanese mathematician Inter-universal Geometer Shinichi Mochizuki.
• Up to 40 percent of patients with chronic back pain could be cured with a 100-day course of antibiotics rather than surgery -- a medical breakthrough 'worthy of a Nobel prize'.
• New pill which makes alcoholics want to drink less gives addicts fresh hope.
• Frequent marijuana use tied to reduced bladder cancer risk.
• Factories around the world are churning out synthetic recreational drugs, which have no history of human use, on an industrail scale. You'd probably be better off eating rat meat.
• The future of a globally warmed world has been revealed in a remote meteorite crater in Siberia.
• Melting Arctic prompts race for routes, resources.
• Our algorithms can predict future disasters. Now what?
• Why so many people - including scientists - suddenly believe in an afterlife.
• The trailer for Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity will turn your knuckles white.

Hat tip to @ClaudiaLives, and thanks to Rick and RPJ.

Quote of the Day:

In this issue of JAMA, Eappen et al1 reach the troublesome but not surprising conclusion that hospitals in the United States can profit handsomely from postsurgical complications, even if the hospitals could avoid them. The authors note that “Effective methods for reducing surgical complications have been identified. However, hospitals have been slow to implement them."

Although the authors do not expressly say so, readers may infer that the associated financial losses may discourage hospitals from reducing avoidable postsurgical complications as vigorously as they could. This brings to mind Shaw's famous lament in his play 'The Doctor's Dilemma' that “[i]t is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity. That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity."

Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, in his editorial on 'Making Surgical Complications Pay' (JAMA, April 17, 2013).