Come on, everybody – sing along: It’s a jungle out there! ‘Cause after reading today’s news, you’ll have a deeper appreciation of the line Do you know what’s in the water that you drink? Well, I do – and it’s amazing!
- UK Ministry of Defense inquiry says, ‘That (UFOs) exist is indisputable.’
- UFO sightings in the UK have more than tripled this year.
- Giant star blows glowing space bubble.
- Red rocks on Mars aren’t just rust.
- Got any ideas on how to clean up the space junk orbiting Earth? (Must be able to cope with rubbish up to ‘derelict spaceship’ size.) If so, DARPA awaits your call.
- The Holy Grail of the Unconscious: What the unearthing of Carl Jung’s Red book is doing to the Jungs and the Jungians (and maybe your dreams).
- Health ills abound from contaminated drinking water in the US. 19.5 million Americans fall ill from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria each year.
- Blurring the boundary between sci-fi and documentary, Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid (which premieres globally today) peers back in time from a climate crisis-wracked 2055 to lament our current inaction on the mother of all conflicts: The war on terra.
- Scientists worry the two python species currently slithering free in south Florida could morph into a man-eating hybrid.
- Tomatoes four times larger! Researchers discover the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser is human urine mixed with wood ash.
- New plant’s spinning flywheels – weighing a ton each, levitating in a vacuum chamber, and spinning at up to 16,000 times per minute – are to provide utility-scale frequency regulation in the electric grid.
- Yearning for a robot-powered bicycle?
- A website called Mendeley could spark a revolution in science.
- Nine mysterious palaces may help explain Mayan collapse.
- Viking travel guide warned about hostile natives in Scotland.
- The wonderful Viking hoard goes on display. How conservationists got the most out of the treasure.
- Hoard of 10,000 Roman coins uncovered in Shropshire by amateur treasure hunter.
- Top-secret Monopoly sets with concealed maps helped WWII prisoners escape.
- Hitler’s rocket scientists, a shadowy Army snatch squad — the incredible real-life events that inspired spymaster Ian Fleming’s Moonraker.
- Tolkien’s spy past inspires hunt for Hobbit, Rings spooks.
- The inaugural HG Wells festival, a new literary prize, and a search giant combine to ensure that the father of science fiction is no longer the invisible man.
- Google’s recent UFO doodles are HG Wells tribute.
- Gene Roddenberry’s Macintosh 128 – a gift from Apple – to be auctioned.
- Can we trust Dan Brown’s take on the Freemasons? Probably. As TIME’s review says, ‘the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown’s cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries – between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern – are actually extraordinarily messy.’
Quote of the Day:
I feel like King Canute, with the rising ocean tide I cannot stem.
I’m very slightly worried that if the next book focuses on the Freemasons, then there will be mention of the Knights Templar. [Which would be a problem because …] We were built by the Knights Templar. It will all start again.
Robin Griffith-Jones, master of the Temple Church in London, regarding the increased tourism at Temple Church spurred by The Da Vinci Code.
