Causality

The older I get, the more I start to feel the Universe spitting at me. For instance, every night on my way home I pass by my grandmothers house. It is a huge house, and most of my immediate family calls it home. Every night, as I walk by on my way to my apartment, I find the gate open. Open gates are a bad thing. My grandfather, when he was alive, made sure the gate was shut at all times. It's not about not letting stray dogs in, etc. It's about keeping the good in and the bad out. Maybe it makes sense only to me and my superstitious clan, but it works. So, every night, I close the gate.

I close it and then I head on home.

But tonight, as I was approaching the last step up to the gate, I fell. I fell hard. Even as I am typing this my knee is throbbing. This is karma. This is what I get for giving attitude to people for that past few days because of my own disdain over what has become my life. Just like the other day when I helped a woman find her credit card and she likened me to an angel. I pretended not to acknowledge the compliment. And then 20 minutes later, as I was at the Harvard Square station, waiting for the train, I spotted a girl with cute pink sandals.

I told her they were nice. She ignored me. Karma.

Maybe I'm just becoming one of those disenchanted people who see everything as a slight against their existence, but honestly, I've always seen people get what they give. I gave out negative energy, and in return I am at home nursing a bum knee.

Causality.

Maybe next time I'll wear knee guards.

One for the books?

We've all heard the old 'UFO abducts COW' story. We've seen photoshopped pictures of a poor, unassuming cow dangling precariously in the air, under the invisible field of a flying saucer. But a car? A UFO just picking up a random car and dropping it as if to say, " Hey, Cleeclix, I think we have the wrong vehicle. The Earth-made gps is off..." And then dropping it like a hotcake.

Two New Hampshire teens claim a UFO lifted their car and then dropped them about 180 feet away. I have no idea why a UFO would behave in such a manner, so I am not going to dismiss this story based on what I DON'T KNOW. You can read the entire report here.

Steve Firmani, the New England State Director for MUFON is on the case so there could be something here
after all.

The Perfect Addition to an important Argument

Deirdre, over at The Interstellar Housewife besides being incredibly awesome, has some valid points to make regarding the argument of the week...

Which you can catch up on here and here.

Visitors Welcome!

I've been watching NASA (UFO) footage most of the morning, and I've come to
three conclusions...

1) There are various different kinds of craft and they all seem to be 'aware' of each other.
This, in my opinion, means that every other (possible) species in the universe knows of each
others existence. We are the only ones in the dark.

2) These are, for the most part, some very large craft. Very large as in, travelling longer distances
with more people on board. Which leads me to conclusion number 3...

3) They appear to hover near Earth and the moon. They seem entirely interested in our planet and
our species. Why are they there, and what do they want? Considering the size of their crafts, I'd
say they have NO home to go to, and that perhaps there aren't any more planets as habitable and
life sustaining as earth.

It's very possible that something happened that destroyed more than a few homeworlds, but somehow
earth was spared. Maybe these beings stick around for the water and the fresh air. They leave
their crafts occasionally, but in the end, they are refugees/moochers and they are following some
code that prevents them from just coming down and taking over.

Maybe whoever owns this planet is still around and carries a big stick.

...curiouser and curiouser....

Bill and Nancy Birnes @ BOA

Wrapping up our big return, BoA:Audio unleashes a 2nd episode this week which centers purely on the esoteric. First, we'll have a special dual-guest conversation with Bill and Nancy Birnes, of UFO Hunters & UFO Magazine. Envisioned as a fly-on-the-wall look at the UFO power couple, dubbed "Dinner with the Birnes," we find out about the demise of UFO Hunters, the pair's entrance into Ufology with The Day After Roswell, their perspective on today's world of UFO studies, and a whole bunch more as we travel down a number of sideroads that include Jamie Shandera, TWA Flight 800, strange Ufological "sources," the Birnes family's remarkable history in the entertainment world, and the duo's cameo in the recent Dwayne Johnson film Race to Witch Mountain. It's both a carefree and fascinating glimpse behind the curtain with two of Ufology's biggest players.

Pic of the day!

Over at Mysterious Universe, Micah Hanks related a story regarding a conversation he had with
one of my all-time favorite people, Brad Steiger. The topic: Giants. Anyone who's visited my blog at least once
before knows about my fascination with Giants...

The picture above is of a Mother and Child found in the Yosemite Valley in the 1800's. The woman was about
seven feet tall, and holding an infant in her arms. The way in which they were buried shows that someone took
the time and the care to make sure the dead were respected. This was surely a tribe of intelligent and incredibly
tall people. What happened to them, only time and really careful research will tell, for as Steiger relayed to
hanks, when you delve into this kind of mystery, it only leads to trouble.

Straight to the point...

Bruce Duensing has my brain in a tizzy. In a good way. You can read his entire post " Does Ufology Have A Future When It's Non-Existent?" at INTANGIBLE MATERIALITY.


So much is wrong with Ufology right now. In fact so much was wrong at the dawning of Ufology.
When I was a kid, I wanted to discover other civilizations, in the farther reaches of space. To
do that I knew I needed to devote my entire life to such a pursuit. I knew the chances of me ever
leaving Earth were slim-to-none. I knew that in all likely hood, I wouldn't succeed.

But I didn't care.

I didn't want to be famous. I didn't want anyone erecting any statues of me in a spacesuit, shaking
hands with some extraterrestrial. I just wanted to look into the void, see the things I could only
speculate about, and then move on.

That's the mentality of people who really want to find the truth. You work to support your 'hobby'...
your side passion. You know it's not a legit career. And why not? Because the world isn't like an
Indiana Jones movie. You can't go making your way through lost cities, tempting the unknown forces
of the Universe and expecting to be rewarded for it.

Because the world we live in just isn't that cool. There are no prehistoric monsters in the skies and
there are no Super Villains skulking in doorways, waiting for the opportunity
to take over the world. We have confused reality with imagination. Fact with fiction.

This is why Ufology fails. Because we let the fantastical, ridiculous things creep in and slowly mix
and congeal with the possible. The fact that people are seeing the same things they've been seeing
for thousands of years means nothing to mainstream science if the only people speaking out are
the clinically insane.

In essence, the world doesn't care about the Hybrids tapping your phone if a) The Hybrids don't
look like the 'Observers' from Fringe, b) Some 'famous' Ufologist isn't involved in your experience
in some way, and c) You aren't getting any special information about the Universe, Weapons of Mass
Destruction, or why Justin Bieber sounds like a girl. If it isn't 'Hollywood', no one's interested.

And at worst, if it isn't 'Scientifically' possible, then it's bunk. Even though Science is the business
of the Impossible. But who's keeping score?

If you want to find proof that UFO's/Extraterrestrials/Ghosts/Bigfoot/Mermaids/Nessie/Zombie Elvis
exist, don't go looking for the answers thinking you're going to headline a TV show on SYFY, a book deal
and be the major guest speaker at all the KOOK-Conventions. That's not the reality of the Quest for the Truth.

If you want to find proof because you believe that life is not just about waking up and going to work, worrying
about bills, watching countries blow each other up, people kill each other and children starve...if you believe
looking into the void gives you a purpose and some meaning...then by all means, do your thing. Just don't
go expecting any fame and fortune along the way.

And as for those who came before, who are still eking an existence out of this 'pursuit' of the truth we all hold so near and dear...keep on keeping on...but if you destroy what's left of Ufology with greed, ignorance and ego, try not to fuck it up for the rest of us.

I still wonder about this one...

!BLOOP!

Moon bases for alternate races

I found this piece at io9. The 60's was the era of space based thinking. Many of the illustrations accompanying the article were made in 1969 for the SCIENCE JOURNAL. The depictions made sense at the time. Because if you think about it, even though an artist can have some vague (yet imaginative), realization of something, when it comes to the actual finished product, the imagination rarely if ever compares.

But that is the beauty of concept art.

But therein lies the problem. For example: My generation was hoping for flying cars. We read about them. We saw movies depicting a society that relied on them. We saw them in cartoons and we dreamed about our very own vehicles on the wind. And now, we are all grown up and what do we have to compare our imaginations to? Nothing. Concept cars. Electric cars. Hybrids. No flying machines that would make the Jetsons look prophetic. So, seeing these artistic interpretations of Moonbases that even today, don't exist is humbling in a way. Because it says that even if we can't make it so when we want, we will eventually, so long as we keep dreaming it up.


I still want my flying car.

50-mile wide corridor of carnage...

That outta be a movie title, 'Corridor of Carnage'. Hungry aliens come to earth to feed. No, but seriously,
this is very intriguing. UFO hunters (probably the only hunters in the world who never bring any bacon
home, but I digress), have figured out that the reddish lights, dissecting sheep in the U.K., are moving
along an exact pattern.

Go here for more.

The Large Hadron Collider (for individuals who have no clue what Particle Physics has to do with American Idol and other American pasttimes...)

By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: April 2, 2010
(Via the New York Times)

For those whose physics knowledge was a bit rusty, the news about the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, might have been puzzling.
Related

European Collider Begins Its Subatomic Exploration (March 31, 2010)
Yes, the collider finally crashed subatomic particles into one another last week, but why, exactly, is that important? Here is a primer on the collider - with just enough information, hopefully, to impress guests at your next cocktail party.


Let’s be basic. What does a particle physicist do?

Particle physicists have one trick that they do over and over again, which is to smash things together and watch what comes tumbling out.



What does it mean to say that the collider will allow physicists to go back to the Big Bang? Is the collider a time machine?


Physicists suspect that the laws of physics evolved as the universe cooled from billions or trillions of degrees in the first moments of the Big Bang to superfrigid temperatures today (3 degrees Kelvin) — the way water changes from steam to liquid to ice as temperatures decline. As the universe cooled, physicists suspect, everything became more complicated. Particles and forces once indistinguishable developed their own identities, the way Spanish, French and Italian diverged from the original Latin.

By crashing together subatomic particles — protons — physicists create little fireballs that revisit the conditions of these earlier times and see what might have gone on back then, sort of like the scientists in Jurassic Park reincarnating dinosaurs.

The collider, which is outside Geneva, is 17 miles around. Why is it so big?

Einstein taught us that energy and mass are equivalent. So, the more energy packed into a fireball, the more massive it becomes. The collider has to be big and powerful enough to pack tremendous amounts of energy into a proton.

Moreover, the faster the particles travel, the harder it is to bend their paths in a circle, so that they come back around and bang into each other. The collider is designed so that protons travel down the centers of powerful electromagnets that are the size of redwood trunks, which bend the particles’ paths into circles, creating a collision. Although the electromagnets are among the strongest ever built, they still can’t achieve a turning radius for the protons of less than 2.7 miles.

All in all, the bigger the accelerator, the bigger the crash, and the better chance of seeing what is on nature’s menu.


What are physicists hoping to see?



According to some theories, a whole list of items that haven’t been seen yet — with names like gluinos, photinos, squarks and winos — because we haven’t had enough energy to create a big enough collision.

Any one of these particles, if they exist, could constitute the clouds of dark matter, which, astronomers tell us, produce the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.

Another missing link of physics is a particle known as the Higgs boson, after Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, which imbues other particles with mass by creating a cosmic molasses that sticks to them and bulks them up as they travel along, not unlike the way an entourage forms around a rock star when they walk into a club.


Have scientists ever seen dark matter?

It’s invisible, but astronomers have deduced from their measurements of galactic motions that the visible elements of the cosmos, like galaxies, are embedded in huge clouds of it.


Will physicists see these gluinos, photinos, squarks and winos?



There is no guarantee that any will be discovered, which is what makes science fun, as well as nerve-racking.


So how much energy do you need to create these fireballs?

At the Large Hadron Collider, that energy is now 3.5 trillion electron volts per proton — about as much energy as a flea requires to do a pushup. That may not sound like much, but for a tiny proton, it is a lot of energy. It is the equivalent of a 200-pound man bulking up by 700,000 pounds.


What’s an electron volt?

An electron volt is the amount of energy an electron would gain passing from the negative to the positive side of a one-volt battery. It is the basic unit of energy and of mass preferred by physicists.



When protons collide, is there a big bang?

There is no sound. It’s not like a bomb exploding.

In previous trials, there was an actual explosion.

All that current is dangerous. During the testing of the collider in September 2008, the electrical connection between a pair of the giant magnets vaporized. There are thousands of such connections in the collider, many of which are now believed to be defective. As a result the collider can only run at half-power for the next two years.


Could the collider make a black hole and destroy the Earth?

The collider is not going to do anything that high-energy cosmic rays have not done repeatedly on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. There is no evidence that such collisions have created black holes or that, if they have, the black holes have caused any damage. According to even the most speculative string theory variations on black holes, the Large Hadron Collider is not strong enough to produce a black hole.

Too bad, because many physicists would dearly like to see one.

An earlier version of this article misstated that the Earth began to cool in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

***A version of this article appeared in print on April 4

Loren Coleman, Nick Redfern and Giants

I can't help it. I have a fascination with giants. So these two books are going to sit side by side
on my bookshelf...if I ever put them down ;)

True Giants: Myth, Legend, Folklore and Fact (By Loren Coleman and Mark A. Hall)

The American Goliah (Edited by Tim Beckley, with contributions from Nick Redfern)

Strange pic of the day!

Cape Verde, MARS...

Is it just me, or is something serpentine (with eyes), staring out at the Rover?

Wish I was there...

A lead "fold-over" sarcophagus found in Rome may contain the remains of a famous Gladiator! This warms my heart. You can read the rest here.

I love MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE

Benjamin Grundy...be my friend.

Listen to M.U.

You will thank me.

The Gods and their MAN PURSES...

The Annunaki were gods of ancient Sumeria, and they wielded some pretty wicked power. The power to give rise to human society, from speech to a written language. Or so our historians say. We all know that this is all subjective, but sometimes, there are just certain things that turn up that make you wonder who the hell we are and what went on in our past.

The flying gods in things shooting across the skies that are subject to interpretation can make you wonder, but then their are things like these:





The manpurses are all over the place. Are they some fashion-forward statement of the gods? Do they hold the key to some kind of ancient technology? I mean, these guys never wore shirts and always wore skirts. Maybe it was a 'look' they were going for.

Okay, I am kidding. But things like this make me want to smack skeptics, because it's a zillion percent apparent the Annunaki new the Olmecs and so on. These things don't catch on so easily in a past that didn't have internet. So, what were our ancestors up to? Did they carry tri-corders? Were their manpurses actually boxes for them to control their starships?

I could go on all night. But honestly, I'm thinking, if those things existed, someone's gotta dig one up sooner or later. And yeah, maybe the Smithsonian will confiscate it and hide it...but the Smithsonian is only a building. Ya dig?

You can read more here.

Ningen

Ningen is the Japanese word for HUMAN. Only thing is, it's more often used in reference to a being that lives in the oceans. This thing is like a giant human-like fish. It first caught my attention 5 years ago, while I was messing around on Youtube. I have been intrigued ever since. I have an affinity for giants. If the Ningen is a giant water human, well then, how the eff did it evade our detection for so long?

A Physic(cal) smackdown...

I love entertainment in all its facets. Except reality tv of course. I am a writer. Regardless of whether I am good or not. I write because it's like breathing, and so for me, storytelling in every medium is gods gift to a sucky ass existence on earth. And so, I watch movies with half of my head empty, purposely, because entertainment should make you feel good, whether it's sensical or not. That having been said, sometimes, depending on how much awareness you have, you see stupidity and you can't tune it out.

Well Dave Goldberg saw a lot of stupidity in the HOT TUB TIME MACHINE and he couldn't tune it out. And you know what, I am happy he did , because the WORST thing in the world is a dumbed down society who can't accept real science. Seriously. I am tired of having arguments with idiots.

You can read Goldberg's gripe here.

Nick Redfern live chat at MabusIncarnate

Join Jeffery Pritchett and Nick Redfern for a live Q&A at MabusIncarnate.com, at 6pm Eastern time. Nick will discuss anything and everything, because no topic is off limits so long as it's respectful and insightful. M.I. hosts a chat every sunday, exclusively with some of the biggest names in Ufology, the Paranormal and beyond. Sign up now and be a part of the discussion.

Next week:

Angelia Joiner

Treading lightly...

I went out to dinner tonight, with my sister and mom. We ate, we made wise cracks about certain people we know who do stupid shit all the time. You know, normal girl talk. But slowly, as the good food (and champagne) simmered in our bellies, we got to talking about our house.

I grew up in a big grey house, formerly known as "The haunted house", but really just an old convent my grandfather bought for cheap back in the 60's. To live in that house was to know the difference between 'real' ghosts and bullshit stories people tell to pass the time.

We had the typical stuff, like hearing someone calling your name. Shadows darting around. Apparitions. Blood footsteps down the hall. TV's going off when you said, "On." On when you said, "Off." And of course, there was the running upstairs. Like an olympic sprinter was darting from room to room.

Only there wasn't anybody there.

This is also the house where I would hear the buzzing. The ominous humming and still to this day, mysterious deep hum that turned into a buzz that radiated through the walls and into my body. And the paralysis. I remember nights waking up on a metal slab in a dark room.

That's when I started to find far too many similarities between "alien abductions" and "hauntings". That's also when I started to believe in a higher, more powerful GOOD power. Because something protected me. Always. The house I grew up in was haunted. Simple as that.

But then something happened.

One day, my grandfather. My Superman in life, became my superhero in the afterlife. And this is where the conversation peaked. Because my mother, my sister and I remembered when the bad feelings in the house went away. When my grandfather died it was evident he was protecting us in that house. And in many ways, he was protecting us FROM the house.

There was a time I would never venture into the basement. You couldn't pay me. Now I go down there without a care. My mother wouldn't even walk passed the basement door, but as she went on to explain, she recently went down there at 2am to check on her thermostat.

Places that were a no go are now harmless and absent of all darkness. There is no evil there. Nothing to fear but cobwebs and old adidas sneakers. The closets have nothing but clothes in them. No one lurks. And most of all, if I sleep there, I sleep like a baby. From time to time, we see his shadow. We hear him whistle. He is everywhere and nowhere at once.

All I can say for sure is, I grew up in a haunted house. But if you came for a visit, you'd think I was full of shit.