Everything's right here - the good, bad, and ugly. Oh yeah, don't forget unexpected and strange.

• In the name of poking holes in the theory of evolution, a man says he will pay $10,000 for one of the most mysterious artifacts ever dug up in Wyoming -- the Pedro Mountain Mummy.
• Was the Aztec and Mayan practice of human sacrifice as widespread and horrifying as the history books say?
• Archeologists plan to search for what they believe an ancient lost city in Malaysia's dense jungles.
• A unique book that purports to explain the past existence of giant beings referred to in the Bible as the Nephilim is skyrocketing up online best-sellers lists. Patrick Heron's web site is here. The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse is available at Amazon US and UK.
• An Arabic-language web site carried a hostage photo this week of a toy soldier with a gun to its head. All your toy soldiers are belong to us.
• Iran has conducted successful experiments on a crucial triggering mechanism for a nuclear weapon. We suppose the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that Iran ratified is off.
• Australian scientists are working on ways to make voice-operated booking systems, like ordering a taxi, recognize when callers are angry or stressed.
• Food scarcity predicted with rising temperatures. Seems to me that growing seasons would be extended in some places, but that's not mentioned.
• Coral reefs may start to dissolve in 30 years.
• What shall we do with all the notorious carbon dioxide? How about carbon burial in ageing oil wells?
• Lava lights up new spots on the Hawaiian coast. Wow, great pic.
• Older people get the big picture faster, and they are less inhibited.
• Tiny single-celled organisms are found beneath nearly 7-miles of water in the deepest part of the ocean.
• That damn groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, has forecast six more weeks of winter in the US. Animals clue weather watchers into trends.
• How do they all turn at the same instant? A study has revealed a remarkably simple mechanism that allows flocking birds, schooling fish or running herds to travel in unison without any recognized leaders or signaling system.
• In a place like no other place, where the Andes meet the Amazon, where icy peaks plunge straight down to steamy jungles, a monkey like no other monkey is discovered.
• Sour apples extend lifespan.
• The great evolution debate rages on.
• When mushrooms go wild.
• Home PCs to find Einstein's gravity waves.
• Lasers can help us fill in the gaps in one of Einstein's key theories on how particles move a century after he first published it.
• A South Korean professor has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing.
• Do you need speed? Here's a compendium of the fastest things the world has to offer, and a celebration of the technological breakthroughs that feed the rush.
• On Wednesday, Jameske gave you a link to an article that claimed that birds aren't stupid. Allow me to show you that birds are very clever. You look like you need to laugh anyway.
• A new study suggests that race fear isn't hard wired.
• A mirror is being developed to show you what you will look like in five years' time if you take no exercise, eat too much junk food and drink too much alcohol. Why is all the fun stuff bad for you?
• What should one make of the prophetic secrets of Fatima?
• Man holds mysterious stones that he believes may have once been alive.
• Here's a list of all of the scientists and microbiologists that have recently died under 'mysterious circumstances'. Make of it what you will.
• It is possible to say now that the Sun will cause a mess on Earth in the near future?
• Officials at the British defence ministry are refusing to rule out the existence of alien life forms visiting Earth.
• Researchers with the High Frequency Active Aurora Research Program (HAARP) project in Alaska tickled the upper atmosphere to the extent that it glowed with green speckles. Sometimes things don't like to be tickled.
• Alan Boyle has some great pics of Mars that were snapped by NASA's Mars Odyssey probe. The newest face on Mars looks like Bugs Bunny; close friend Marvin the Martian should be around somewhere.
• A night-side glow has been detected on Mars.
• Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2 Mars probe should never have been given the go-ahead by the ESA. Hindsight is always easier, isn't it?
• Injecting synthetic "super" greenhouse gases into the Martian atmosphere could raise the planet's temperature enough to melt its polar ice caps and create conditions suitable for sustaining biological life. This GW might even work because Mars has no green plants.
• In the most precise reading of Saturn's temperatures ever taken from Earth, a new set of infrared images suggests a warm polar vortex at Saturn's south pole - the first warm polar cap ever to be discovered in the solar system.
• Like dew or dust caught in a spider's web, much of the universe's ordinary matter appears to be trapped in a vast lattice of intergalactic gas clouds.

Quote of the Day:

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

Aleister Crowley

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A summary of the updates to the Phenomena website over the past week:

• Randall Fitzgerald asks us all to mentally influence the winning numbers in the lottery.

Nick Redfern reviews Cathedral of the Black Madonna (Amazon US and Amazon UK).

Stuart Miller interviews a British MP who comments on the asteroid threat: 'we live in a bowling alley'.
The site also has daily news reports and messageboards for further information.

Here's the full rundown on the radio schedules for the second half of the week:

Whitley Strieber's Dreamland: This week's show leads off with a 15 minute special report on the extraordinary worldwide earthquake situation with Linda Moulton Howe, followed by Whitley's interview with Frank Feschino on what may be the largest and most complex UFO case in history.

Coast to Coast AM: Friday night is open lines. Saturday and Sunday are still TBA, check the schedule later for updates.

More details including relevant websites are available at the linked pages above. Remember also that while Coast to Coast is subscription, it can be listened to through KOGO, while Dreamland is free.

Angelina Jolie in voudou shocker, crashing UFO's in Nepal, Opus Dei and some really cool science. Must be TDG news.

• The Edge magazine asked 120 great minds "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"
• The Sands Of Mars: future miners of raw materials will need to understand granular physics, including this newly discovered method for measuring 'granular temperature', and the reason why sand dunes sing.
• Space.com lists the top 100 people who've made a difference over the past 15 years. Who would be on your top five inspirations of all time?
• UK's colonial India records show tsunamis were common.
• Were the Dropas Stones a record of alien visitations over 12,000 years ago?
• As dump-sites go, there's nothing quite like Earth orbit.
• The dictator, the saint and the minister - why is the Opus Dei group attractive to members of our ruling elite?
• The inscription on a brick found in the archeological site of Jiroft is identified by experts as a manuscript belonging to the Elamite era.
• Israeli Forensics Unit Identifies 3,000-Year-Old Skeletal Remains.
• High-energy beam illuminates the mystery of the northern lights.
• The story of the only surviving member of the Volcano Tribe, who claims her tribe has the ‘power’ to calm the fury of the twin Marum and Benbow Volcanoes.
• Human remains, which were found in a bog in Co Roscommon last week, are believed to be approximately 2,000 years old.
• The "Mysterious Bog People" were all subjected to violent deaths.
• Entertainment news on TDG??? Is Angelina Jolie working voudou magic on Brad Pitt? Maybe it will help his zombie-like acting.
• Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate.
• Global Warming debate: it all started in 1827 when French mathematician Fourier coined the term "greenhouse effect".
• Antarctica, where 75% of the 400 mountain glaciers are in retreat, is an 'awakened giant'. It's a long time since I read the eda's but wasn't it when the ice giants woke that Ragnarock began?
• Complex networks, including the World Wide Web and patterns in cellular biochemistry, share a common architecture with snowflakes and trees.
• In a 17-mile tunnel deep beneath the Earth, the search for the God particle.
• Making Memories Stick: Why some moments become lasting recollections while others just evaporate.
• Laughter plays tricks with your eyes, literally changing the way you see the world.
• Weary of ET's lack of reply to SETI? Physicists need a million personal computers to look for gravity waves.
• Andaman quakes leave seismologists worried - events "unheard of in the history of seismology" have been recorded in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, with more than 120 such events being recorded in the last month.
• A series of moving bright lights spotted in the sky off Scarborough, England.
• Nine more 'biodiversity crisis areas' have been added to the 25 originally recognized in 2000; threatened 'hotspots' harbour half the world's plant species.
• Rumor of a UFO crash in Nepal China border. According to sources, the crash site may be close to Mount Everest and is totally inaccessible from either side. The rumor world is speculating that the Chinese military is actively looking at the crash site.
• The truth is out there: declassified reports of UFO sightings in the UK reveal 88 sightings last year
• In the Beginning was . . . the creationist debate. Author Stephen Strauss announces several truths about the debate as it takes place outside of the scientific/religious community.
• High-tech ship to patrol the coasts: sounds kinda cool. But if you say "tricked-out, ultra-fast, aluminum catamaran to test out all the latest gear" - awwwwww yeah!
• US Air Force leaders want a new squadron of killer drones, and soon. So the generals are ready to spend $161 million to get the new robots and their weapons right away.
• Still refining their list of "Nuts", doctors now say caffeine addiction is a 'Mental Disorder'. Sorry, got to go, they've come to take me away.

Thanks to Shadows and Kat for all their help and links.

Quote of the Day:

You'll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don't have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.

Sam Rayburn

More content of interest over at the website of author Filip Coppens. Filip has added some intriguing photographs to his site which augment an earlier essay titled "The Burrows cave: African gold in Illinois. There is also a new essay available, a fascinating commentary on the background behind the Johnny Depp movie, The Ninth Gate.

On a related note, the website of the Société Périllos (of which Filip is a member) has a new addition also, an article on the sacred landscape of Perillos. This essay takes a look at interesting alignments and history of the Perillos area.

The only kind of hypnotism that I think works is the kind Madonna used as a recipe for success.

• Dramatic change in West Antarctic ice could produce 16ft rise in sea levels.
• Sun exposure maybe a cure as well as a cause of skin cancer. Work that one out.
• US Dept. of Energy Cold fusion review.
• Study bolsters Greenhouse Effect theory and solves Ice Age mystery. Built on a house of cards.
• Hypnotism: a street crime weapon in Russia?
• Molecular breakthrough could lead to computers thousands of times faster.
• Cells energy factories linked to cancer.
• How the brain creates false memories.
• Russian wine anarchists use lake as a cellar.
• Rethinking what may look like a normal brain.
• Birdbrain doesn't mean stupid.
• Texas man refuses to yield mother's pacemaker.
• Fireball seen over Madrid.
• Centuries old UFO coin remains a mystery. Looks more like an impact or explosion on the dark portion of a waning crescent Moon.
• Spirits in the stones.
• Prehistoric knives suggest humans competed.
• Volcanoes, not asteroids, led to the Great Dying.
• The history of the world according to the Basques.
• Scientists watch Alaska volcanoes.
• Zero intelligence trading closely mimics the stock market.
• Bacteria show signs of ageing.
• 5% of people may suffer from mobile phone radiation.

Quote of the Day:

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Oscar Wilde

The apparently non-conservative government of the UK is pushing a bill through the House of Commons which will change the designation of psilocybin mushrooms to a Class A substance, putting them in the same category as cocaine and heroin. Home Secretary Charles Clarke preached on behalf of the new law, saying that it was to enable "measured and proportionate response to tackling harm caused by class A drugs". He also brushed aside civil liberty concerns, saying:

...it is the drug abuser who threatens the civil liberties of the law-abiding citizen rather than the reverse.

The problem with Mr Clarke's statements are that, in the first instance, he is not demonstrating (and cannot) the particular "harm" that psilocybin mushrooms have caused. Secondly, he assumes all users of entheogens are 'abusers' - I know a large number of ethnobotanists, and none of them fit that category. Beware the propaganda, this is government control of the individual, plain and simple.

For a perhaps more open view, there is also a New York Times article on one of the most respected pharmacologists in the entheogen field, Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin. While caustic in places, overall this article provides a fairly balanced view of a man who seems to have suffered little or no effects from 45 years of sustained use of entheogenic substances. "Harm" indeed, Mr Clarke...perhaps you should compare the health effects of alcohol?

'Maverick' scientist Rupert Sheldrake has presented the results of his online 'sense of being stared at' experiment, which appear to confirm previous research done by Sheldrake and others. The well-known biologist says that 343 pairs of people have taken part thus far, giving a total of 6,860 trials:

By chance people would be right 50% of the time. In fact the overall score is 60.6% correct...The statistical significance of this result is astronomical, with odds against chance of quadrillions to one.

Sheldrake does point out though that the experiment took place under uncontrolled and unsupervised conditions, and so cheating or unintentional cues cannot be ruled out. You can still take part in the experiment if you wish as it is ongoing.

The website of Masonic author Robert Lomas has been updated with details of his upcoming book, Turning the Hiram Key. There are in fact two areas of the website which feature information about the book, this official-looking section complete with countdown to the release date of April 18th, as well as this section which is more in theme with the rest of Robert's website. In each section you'll find sample material as well as plenty of other information regarding the upcoming release.