Sometimes the news seems even weirder than usual.
- Update: Triumph of the authoritarians by John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel, and author of the just-published book Conservatives Without Conscience. Amazon US & UK.
- Douglas Erwin, author of Extinction (Amazon US & UK), says the ‘Mother of Mass Extinctions’, 252.4 million years ago, was so bad it almost killed all the cockroaches, the evolution of plants and animals came to a screeching halt and didn’t resume for another 4 million years, and there’s ‘no good evidence’ that an asteroid which hit Antarctica was the cause.
- Terrible Teens: New research suggests tyrannosaurs died just as they reached their sexual prime.
- Galloping sabre-toothed kangaroos roamed prehistoric Australia.
- The monster detectives: on the trail of the ninki-nanka.
- A couple of handwritten sentences in the margins of a book are claimed to have solved Britain’s greatest murder mystery: the identity of Jack the Ripper.
- Ancient Egyptian suicide note unearthed.
- Venus’s double vortex mystery deepens.
- ‘Space hotel’ inflates in orbit and beams back images.
- The search is on for 698 missing boxes (out of the original 700 boxes) of Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes (warning: large pdf file), which have a much higher resolution of man’s first walk on the moon than the tapes shown on TV (includes contrasting photos). Complicating matters, the only place which can read these SSTV tapes is scheduled to close this October.
- First direct observations of spinons and holons.
- Oz microbes found to have the Midas touch.
- Trees could be growing in the Antarctic within a century.
- Divine trash: Over the past few years, researchers have written hundreds of scientific papers on the psychology of celebrity obsession.
- Imaging study finds that political party allegiance impacts brain’s response to candidates.
- Genes function differently in males and females.
- Newly discovered ‘depression gene’ throws current treatments into question.
- Exposure to cigarette smoke in the womb makes for unruly toddlers.
- What you’re sleeping with could be the cause of your asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis and eczema.
- Meerkats make great teachers.
- Sorry chaps, but you are shortly to be written out of the reproductive script. Cheerio and please close the door behind you on your way out of history.
- Georgia’s stone circle a paean to age of reason.
- Heil, Professor!: The role of academic ideological indoctrination in the rise of Nazism.
- The spiritual insights of esotericists Leadbeater and Blavatsky regarding life on Mars and other planets. Blavatsky also had a lot to say about Atlantis.
- The ‘Global Security Fund’: Illuminati slush fund estimated at $65 trillion.
- Underground bases, missing children and extra-terrestrials: Former MI6 agent James Casbold tells what you need to know for your future.
- 9-11 Pentagon eyewitness IDs Global Hawk.
- Scholars for 9-11 truth are under attack.
- 9-11 truth scholar outfoxes spin attack.
- Saying their advice was ignored, disgusted religious leaders quit Katrina Fund panel.
- The religious beliefs of America’s Founding Fathers.
- Sir Menzies Campbell says government is trampling underfoot the historic freedoms built up over centuries.
- When Speech Becomes a Crime: One can now be put in prison, lose a job, be kicked out of school or be otherwise censored simply for uttering an unpopular opinion.
- MP investigating the death of David Kelly says his computer files have been wiped.
- Dead men don’t talk: The ‘suicide’ of a British banker tied to the Enron scandal is just the latest in a string of mysterious insider deaths in England and the US.
- Video (45 min.): Impersonating historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand, comedian Robert Newman comes to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years, blaming oil for all the commotion.
Quote of the Day:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.
Thomas Jefferson, who also referred to the Revelation of St. John as ‘the ravings of a maniac’.
