OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

NASA Says Comet Elenin Gone and Should Be Forgotten - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Latest indications are this relatively small comet has broken into even smaller, even less significant, chunks of dust and ice. This trail of piffling particles will remain on the same path as the original comet, completing its unexceptional swing through the inner solar system this fall.

"Elenin did as new comets passing close by the sun do about two percent of the time: It broke apart," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Elenin's remnants will also act as other broken-up comets act. They will trail along in a debris cloud that will follow a well-understood path out of the inner solar system. After that, we won't see the scraps of comet Elenin around these parts for almost 12 millennia."

EARTH CHANGES

Sherpas warn ice melt is making Everest 'dangerous'

 

Sherpa mountaineers in Nepal say a rise in the rate of snow and ice melt on Mount Everest has exposed bare rock faces and made it dangerous to climb.

FLASHBACK: 2002 Everest Melting? High Signs of Climate Change

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

Homeland Security moves forward with 'pre-crime' detection

A US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on members of the public (DHS employees who "volunteered" to be test subjects).

DHS is building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues indicative of mal-intent". DHS calls its "pre-crime" system Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.

LIGHT FIELD

Lytro’s Light Field Camera Creates ‘Living’ Pictures

The Lytro camera is a light-field, or plenoptic, camera. An array of micro-lenses sits over the camera’s sensor, capturing all the light in the scene being photographed (11 million rays of light, to be precise). The Lytro then saves your image in a proprietary file format to deliver a “living picture” that you can manipulate on your computer, much like a raw file. By manipulating key attributes, you can effectively change the focus of the image. That’s right: After the image has been taken.

ECONOMIC WITH THE TRUTH

Seven big economic lies
Here's a 2:30 video rebutting the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take the US economy backwards.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

 

Iran actress sentenced to 90 lashes and one year in jail

Actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes for her role in a film about the limits imposed on artists in the Islamic republic, an Iranian opposition website reported Sunday.

"A verdict has been issued for Marzieh Vafamehr, sentencing her to a year in jail and 90 lashes," Kalameh.com reported.

WATCH THE SKIES

UFO sightings reported in Missouri


UFO experts in Missouri said strange lights were reported above Kansas City on three consecutive nights.

Margie Kay, assistant state director for the Mutual UFO Network, said Kansas City residents reported bright lights and hovering craft in the sky above the city Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, WDAF-TV, Kansas City, reported.



Nothing to see here. Move along.

The mystery of Kansas City's UFO lights has been explained.
KC Flight, a civilian air formation team out of Lee's Summit, Missouri, has come forward and said they're the "aliens" in the sky. Pilot Phillip Lamb said his eight-man team is to blame.

[Except, of course, formation teams don't hover.]

SKY NET

Virus strikes US drone fleet

A computer virus has hit the US Predator and Reaper drone fleet that Washington deploys to hunt down militants, logging the keystrokes of pilots remotely flying missions.

The virus was first detected about two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, but it had not halted missions flown remotely over Afghanistan and other warzones from Nevada's Creech Air Force Base.

DISCARNATE ENTITY

Living doll

Frightened at what she might find, Irene rushed to Holly's bedroom, and flung open the door - but all that met her eyes was Holly, fast asleep in her bed, and her doll sitting on the bed beside her.

Softly closing the door again, she went back to her friends, who were as puzzled as she was. There had certainly been a strange voice - but even as they spoke, they heard it again!

And this time it was much louder - and it was calling to Holly. "Will you get up, Holly Anne - get up and talk to me!"

BURN NOTICE

Spontaneous combustion killed Irish pensioner, inquest rules

Keiran McLoughlin, a West Galeway, Ireland coroner, gave his first spontaneous combustion verdict in 25-year career after man found dead in unexplained circumstances

Irish pensioner, Micheal O' Fatharta, was found burnt to death at his home due to spontaneous human combustion, an inquest has concluded.

The West Galway coroner, Kieran McLoughlin, said there was no other adequate explanation for the death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty, also known as Micheal O'Fatharta. He said it was the first time in his 25 years as a coroner that he had returned such a verdict.

FUN AT THE FAIR

Plane crashes into NSW ferris wheel

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Plane crashes into NSW ferris wheel

The pilot of a light plane that crashed into a ferris wheel at a fair on the New South Wales mid-north coast says he simply did not see it.

Two children had to be rescued from a basket at the top of the ferris wheel and Mr Cox and his son-in-law were rescued after dangling from the top of the wheel inside their plane for more than an hour.

Taree Mayor Paul Hogan says it is amazing no one was killed. "I had to open the ceremony and I said we've witnessed a miracle here today," he said.

THE EYES HAVE IT

Photo in The Australian (29 Sep 2011)

Iris ID - Iris Recognition Technology
Since 1997, Iris ID has been the key developer and driver of the commercialization of iris recognition technology. IrisAccess, now in a third generation, is the world's leading deployed iris recognition platform, identifying more people in more places than all other iris recognition products combined.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

A Saudi woman shows the result of a State-sanctioned lashing she received for the crime of being raped.
Two Steps Back: Saudi Woman Sentenced to 10 Lashes for Driving
Just days after King Abdullah granted Saudi women the right to vote and run in municipal elections scheduled for 2015, a court convicted a woman of driving without permission and sentenced her to lashing. It is the harshest sentence yet and a stark reminder that despite real gains, the Kingdom's rigid social order endures.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Wall Street protests reveal slice of America's barely tamed brutality

An amateur video shows a small group of women protesters, who are doing nothing menacing at all, having been kettled by police. As they stand there fenced in and defenceless, the two white shirts walk up to them, hold out a pepper-spray canister and zap them straight in the face.

It's the officers' insouciance that is most shocking. They engage the pepper spray as calmly as if they were handing out parking tickets, then turn and just as calmly walk away.

The video reminded me of another recent event at which I was present: last week's execution in Georgia of Troy Davis. The case drew international attention because there was no forensic evidence and seven out of nine key witnesses had recanted their testimony.

But it was the incidental details outside the prison that caught my eye. An impassioned but entirely peaceful crowd of protesters had gathered to make the pretty reasonable argument that states should not go around killing innocent people. Georgia's response was to line up a Swat team in black riot gear like extras in a Batman movie and fly police helicopters with spotlights overhead. Add to that the balmy night and the loud buzzing of the crickets and it was like stepping back in time into a pastiche of the old Deep South.

SACKS OF GOLD

The collapse is coming... and Goldman Sachs rules the world.


Alessio Rastani claimed on BBC news the Euro-zone market would crash and the economic problems were like a cancer.
"It's not a time right now for wishful thinking that the government is going to sort things out. Governments don't rule the world - Goldman Sachs rules the world," he said, as he offered tips on how to turn a tidy profit when things go pear-shaped.

[News Corp. goes into damage control]

Is the trader from hell actually a hoax?
The BBC said Mr Rastani was authentic. However, Mr Rastani is not registered with the Financial Services Authority and his website, leadingtrader.com, crashes when you try to load the contact page. [It loaded fine when I tried.]

But the truth could be far simpler: Mr Rastani told telegraph.co.uk that he's just likes to talk on TV.

Goldman eyes full control of Australian arm

Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is pushing ahead with the full buyout of the 55 per cent stake in its Australian offshoot it does not already own.
“Australia and New Zealand represent an important part of our growth strategy,” said Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO.
There are about 130 equity-owning partners in the Australia and New Zealand businesses.
The Australian business has been moving closer to its US shareholder in recent years. Last August, the unit changed its name from Goldman Sachs JBWere.
The venture's sale of most of its private client business to National Australia Bank in 2009 was seen as making a full takeover of the Australian business more attractive to Goldman Sachs.

SHIPPING NEWS

UFO hovered in front of Navy Destroyer

A UFO hovered in front of an Australian Navy destroyer for more than half an hour and did not appear on the warship’s radar, an Australian Navy reservist claims.

The 39-year-old man said he was working on the guided missile destroyer HMAS Brisbane in 1992 as quartermaster gunner when an “illuminating, bright light” appeared in front of the vessel.

“We were sailing in the Great Australia Bight when the light was suddenly in front of us, about 45 degrees, high in the sky.

“We watched it for about half an hour – but nothing was on the radar.”

The Navy Reservist said the light then “quickly moved to south east and then south west and gave a bit of a jiggle”, before it “shot up and disappeared”.

The man, who didn’t want to be named, came forward after visiting Katherine recently, where he heard about a spate of sightings of unexplained lights and objects in the sky.

SUPER LUMINAL

Particles travel faster than light, say scientists




Physicists have reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light, a finding that, if verified, would blast a hole in Einstein's theory of relativity.
The neutrinos, which were recently discovered to have mass, were clocked at  about 6 km/sec faster than light's 300,000 km/sec - while passing through a chord of the earth's crust.

GAME OF LIFE

Online gamers crack enzyme riddle

 

Foldit, developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids - the building blocks of proteins - using a set of online tools. To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

 

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Zero: an investigation into 9/11

ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11, has one central thesis - that the official version of the events surrounding the attacks on 9/11 can not be true. This brand new feature documentary from Italian production company Telemaco explores the latest scientific evidence and reveals dramatic new witness testimony, which directly conflicts with the US Government's account.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

The mysterious Saudi family that vanished two weeks before 9/11

Did you know that a Saudi family living in Sarasota, Fla., that met with 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta disappeared without a trace—leaving behind their cars, food, and furniture—two weeks before the attacks? Neither did Congress, or the 9/11 Commission! The FBI didn't think to tell them.

It turns out the couple, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, had ties to the 9/11 hijackers.