CONSCIOUS CONNECTIONS

Psychic looking for child's body finds adult's torso

A psychic trying to help find missing girl Kiesha Abrahams has discovered a woman's torso in bushland in Sydney's west.

The dismembered body was found near the edge of Eastern Creek at Doonside about 6:30pm (AEST) yesterday.
It is not believed the remains belong to Kiesha, the six-year-old who went missing from her home in nearby Mount Druitt about a fortnight ago.

Police say the woman who found the torso was walking through the bush because she had a feeling there was a body there.

'FREE' MARKET

Broadband a "no regrets" investment: World Bank

In the face of renewed economic turmoil in Europe and uncertainty of the pace of recovery in North America, Dr Tim Kelly told Computerworld Australia it would be prudent economic policy to forge ahead with expensive infrastructure spending like that of Australia's broadband plan.

“In principle, yes,” Kelly said in an emailed response. “It would send the wrong signal to the markets to back track on existing commitments to stimulus expenditure.”

[This 'free market' doesn't sound too free.]

TALIBAN RULES

Internet prank kids warned they face years in jail and $10,000 fines.

Four youths accused of hijacking a fellow student’s Facebook page and posting indecent photographs have been formally charged by South Australian Police.
A 16-year-old and three 13-year-olds were reported for exhibiting indecent material. The incident is part of an ongoing school bullying issue.
The allegedly indecent material was reported by the registered user of the page, a 13-year-old boy.
Police warned teenagers who swapped indecent material, no matter the original intent.
“What kids might see as a prank are serious offences,” he said.
“You cannot take photographs of minors of a sexual nature, it’s regarded as child pornography.
“You cannot take photographs of people’s private parts. You commit an offence by taking and you then commit an offence by posting them on the net or even sending them via SMS.”
The maximum penalty for obtaining or exchanging child pornography is a $10,000 fine and up to six years jail.

Police said issues that could constitute criminal activities included the practice in some sporting clubs of girls flashing their breasts and youths taking photographs of their genitalia “because they think it’s a joke”.

SECURITY BREACH

Aerial Disc Beam Penetrated Nuclear Weapons At Whiteman AFB

“I had climbed up on the nuclear weapons igloo looking at this bluish-red light that was coming straight down. Then the light started to do a grid pattern! And I was like, ‘This is not happening!’ Just like a grid, it went to one corner and then started going about every three inches backand forth doing a grid. And when it got to me, the light actually stopped because I put my hand into it.”
- Dale Hogan, Former USAF Airman 1st Class.

LOVE NOT WAR

Ecstasy may help traumatised veterans

United States scientists say the drug ecstasy may help war veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The trial study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, found that the drug seems to improve the effects of therapy in military veterans.

The researchers, led by Dr Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in California, say ecstasy could help reduce a patient's fear, enabling them to get more out of their therapy sessions.

The trial only studied 20 patients but the researchers have gained approval to complete a larger study.

SOFT IN THE HEAD

Expert won't rule out Octopus Paul's psychic ability

PETA is calling for him to be released back into the Mediterranean. I hope they achieve their aim. Paul has earned freedom for his dotage. Most octopuses only live to be one to three years old, and Paul is already two-and-a-half.

Some other interesting squiddy facts

One species impersonates poisonous black and white sea snakes by putting six arms down a hole and waving the other two around like a writhing sea snake
It can also impersonate poisonous lionfish with "barbs" sticking out on its body.

An animal 1m across could squeeze through a 30mm hole. They squeeze their eyes out of shape and pull their soft brains through the middle of these holes.
They're very, very fast growing creatures - a lot of them only live one year and then die of old age, they're very different to say deep sea fish.

Their nervous system is fundamentally different from that of vertebrates.
Cuttlefish, squid and octopuses are considered the most intelligent invertebrates and show an important example of advanced cognitive evolution in animals.

BAD, SAD MAC

Death by Gadget in Congo  by Nicholas d. kristof

An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.
With throngs waiting in lines in the last few days to buy the latest iPhone, I’m thinking: What if we could harness that desperation for new technologies to the desperate need to curb the killing in central Africa?
In Congo, I’ve seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides. Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold. For example, tantalum from Congo is used to make electrical capacitors that go into phones, computers and gaming devices.

Electronics manufacturers have tried to hush all this up. They want you to look at a gadget and think “sleek,” not “blood.”

I'm a Mac ... And I've Got a Dirty Secret

MARKET FORCES

Journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin.
(Photo: Razak / Ségolène Royal)

Monsanto, Big Brother of the New World Agricultural Order. Discuss

Award-winning French journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is the author of "The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply" (The New Press) and the creator of the film by the same name.

In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes:
"What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects - the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures - of Western society's economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet."

SOME LIKE IT COLD

X-Rays of Marilyn Monroe's Chest Sold for $45,000

A set of X-rays of Marilyn Monroe's chest was sold for $45,000 at an auction. The X-rays, which were taken during a 1954 hospital visit, were sold at a movie memorabilia auction. The pre-sale estimate was $3000.
A chair from the star's final photo shoot was purchased for $35,000.

Monroe died in 1962 at the age of 36. Her movies included Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

PREMONITION

Seven Australians injured in boat crash in Thailand

ONE of seven young Australians injured in a horror boat crash in Thailand almost didn't board the vessel because she had "a bad feeling" that something might happen.

Hairdresser Chloe Bucknell said yesterday she was lucky to be alive after the 40-seat speedboat she was in collided head-on with a similar vessel off the resort island of Koh Phangan on Saturday night.

The 21-year-old, from Bayview on Sydney's northern beaches, was on her way with three friends to a full moon party on the island as part of a two-week Thai trip. Up to 40 people, including Ms Bucknell, her three friends and three other Australians, were injured in the crash.

From her bed in Bandon International Hospital in Samui, Ms Bucknell said: "We all had a bad feeling about it but thought `We're here now, we might as well go'."

ET PHONE HOME

ET asks: do you want us to make ourselves known globally?

The main proposition in a letter purportedly from humanity's extraterestrial cousins is that the mass appearance of ET in the skies may help us clear away the veils of illusion and deceits, help settle many existential issues and dilemmas and provide an “attractor” to help pull positive mentalities out of the social death-vortex, enable us to refocus the next stage in evolution.

The main assertion in the letter is that human civilization is now in an uncontrollable free-fall implosion which cannot be “fixed” from within existing social systems.
The implosion is causing a major rupture in all human orders. There is a dark road down toward the use of technology to rapidly enslave human populations in a badly degraded and unhealthy environment.
Those who are defining this path, many of them unintentionally, have the greater advantage of power over resources and may gain the upper hand during the coming rupture.
There are many who would take a liberating path, they could gain the upper hand if they lose their fear, sense of isolation, and ignorance about the true state of affairs and understand their choice.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

FLASHBACK: Crop circle experts dies in unusual circumstances

The body of crop circle investigator Paul Vigay was found on the Hampshire coast at Southsea. Paul Vigay, a mathematician and computer expert, became one of the leading lights of the crop circle world.

His body was found on the shore at Southsea, near Portsmouth, last Thursday – police say the circumstances surrounding his death are not suspicious.

Mr Vigay, 44, was well known in the fields of Wiltshire and renowned among crop circle devotees as an expert at decoding the hidden meanings in crop circle patterns. "Paul was one of the brightest stars in the crop circle universe," said circle photographer and researcher Lucy Pringle.

"A talented mathematician, computer technician and a maker of electronic gadgets, he was one of the first researchers into the crop circle phenomenon in the early 1990s, where his talents were quickly recognised.

"He had an exceptional gift for investigation and often led the field in deciphering the mathematical aspects found in certain crop circles. He was amazingly articulate and he had a rare knack of being able to explain technical details in the simplest language. He has made a major contribution to the subject and his place will not be easily filled," she added.

Mr Vigay's friend of 23 years Claire Diestler, 39, from Bedhampton, said she visited him for a cup of coffee last Tuesday. She said: "He was absolutely fine, that's why I am so shocked. There was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong. In fact he was quite jokey. We all feel a bit guilty having seen him.

Mrs Diestler added: "He was really popular and had a lot of friends. He was very funny and we always had some great laughs."

MEANWHILE: The crop circle community was left stunned by the loss of two of its leading lights within hours of each other. Dorset investigator and conference organiser David Kingston also died last week after a year-long battle with cancer.

OIL ADDICTION

The Oil Spill's Worst-Case Scenario?

The grim video feed of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico got even worse on Wednesday after BP had to remove the containment cap because a robotic submarine collided with a vent.

Even before this setback to contain the massive flow of oil into the gulf, online speculation has fueled fears that the leaks could be much greater than what's been shown.
According to these theories, such leaks at the bottom—that is, below the sea floor—could present a new “worst-case scenario” for the disaster.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

FLASHBACK: Crop circle experts dies in unusual circumstances

The crop circle community has been left stunned after two of its leading lights died within hours of each other. Dorset investigator and conference organiser David Kingston passed away last week after a year-long battle with cancer.

Meanwhile, the body of crop circle investigator Paul Vigay was found on the Hampshire coast at Southsea.

Paul Vigay, a mathematician and computer expert, became one of the leading lights of the crop circle world.

His body was found on the shore at Southsea, near Portsmouth, last Thursday – police say the circumstances surrounding his death are not suspicious.

Mr Vigay, 44, was well known in the fields of Wiltshire and renowned among crop circle devotees as an expert at decoding the hidden meanings in crop circle patterns. "Paul was one of the brightest stars in the crop circle universe," said circle photographer and researcher Lucy Pringle.

"A talented mathematician, computer technician and a maker of electronic gadgets, he was one of the first researchers into the crop circle phenomenon in the early 1990s, where his talents were quickly recognised.

"He had an exceptional gift for investigation and often led the field in deciphering the mathematical aspects found in certain crop circles. He was amazingly articulate and he had a rare knack of being able to explain technical details in the simplest language. He has made a major contribution to the subject and his place will not be easily filled," she added.

Mr Vigay's friend of 23 years Claire Diestler, 39, from Bedhampton, said she visited him for a cup of coffee last Tuesday. She said: "He was absolutely fine, that's why I am so shocked. There was absolutely no indication that anything was wrong. In fact he was quite jokey. We all feel a bit guilty having seen him.

"We are all worried we did not pick up on something.'

Mrs Diestler added: "He was really interested in UFOs and anything a bit unusual like crop circles.

"He used to go to Wiltshire quite a lot to take photographs of them. He was really popular and had a lot of friends. He was very funny and we always had some great laughs," she said.

HOWARD HUGHES II

Entrepreneurs Enter the Commercial Space Race

At the Bigelow Aerospace factory here, the full-size space station mockups sitting on the warehouse floor look somewhat like puffy white watermelons. The interiors offer a hint of what spacious living in space might look like.
“Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

His space stations are not his only interest in space. “I’ve been a researcher and student of UFOs for many, many years,” Mr. Bigelow said.

“Anybody that does research, if people bother to do quality research, come away absolutely convinced. You don’t have to have personal encounters.”
He added: “People have been killed. People have been hurt. It’s more than observational kind of data.”

GADGET WAR

The iPed, left, and iPad, right.

The iPad Riped off with the iPed

According to this TBS news report, the iPed is on sale in Shenzhen, China, for a fifth of the price of the Apple iPad.
Shenzhen is the location of the largest Foxconn plant, where the iPhone and the iPad are manufactured.
The iPed comes packaged in a box that looks like the iPod.
While it is slightly heavier than the iPad, the device is powered by an Intel chip and runs on Google's open source operating system Android. But like the iPad, it is a multi-media device.

CROP CIRCLES

Typographical error in Euler crop glyph?

Transcrib the binary digits, each byte (8 bits) into its corresponding ASCII character, starting from the direction of the windmill and working clockwise around the circle and out from the centre. The result is: e^(hi)pi)1=0

In Google the top result was Euler's identity: e^iπ+1=0. "The most beautiful theorem in mathematics". Euler's formula demonstrates the deep relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function.

An anomalous 'h' in the glyph and an absent '+'

Perhaps significantly, the 'h', with the adjacent 'i', reads 'hi' but 'h' could be a reference to the Planck constant, taking us from the world of maths into the world of physics.

Could the makers have left a 'Planck' in the design as a subtle joke on all the croppies who might pronounce this a 'genuine' crop circle as opposed to a circle made with a plank?

Maybe the circle-makers made a mistake. The binary encoding for 'h' - 01101000 is just one binary digit different to that for '(' - 00101000. The extra opening bracket would pair up with the otherwise unpaired closing bracket in the message to give us e^((i)pi)1=0.

But then, The ASCII code for right parentheses ')' differs by just one digit from '+' so that is possibly what was meant.

Euler Identity - e^(i)pi+1=0
Crop ASCII - e^(hi)pi)1=0
Crop ASCII corrected - e^(hi)pi+1=0

wilton windmill crop circle may 2010

Going Around in (Crop) Circles

Over the past fortnight, legendary paranormal researcher Jacques Vallee has posted two guest-blogs on (the insanely popular website) Boing Boing, on the topic of crop circles. In the first, "In Search of Alien Glyphs", he details his own alternative theory for their construction (first set out in "Crop Circles: 'Signs from Above' or Human Artifacts?":

"In Sept. 1991, I published in a New Age magazine my own hypothesis about the Crop Circles phenomenon. I speculated they involved a military aerial device (not a space-based instrument) for generating such designs using focused microwave beams, such as a "maser." At the time nobody wanted to hear that the beautiful pictures in English corn fields might be crafted by a technical team inside some lab, bouncing signals from a hovering platform and using individual corn stalks as simple pixels to calibrate a lethal device. So my paper was met with dead silence."

More

WATCH THE SKIES

The truth is out there

An amazing number of high ranking military officers, government officials and generally sensible folk believe we are being visited by aliens from other planets. They have seen unidentified flying objects for themselves.

With the New Zealand Government soon to release previously classified material on UFO sightings, reporter Sarah Hall goes looking for the evidence.

YOGI BARE

Study on yogi Prahlad Jani’s fasting concludes

India’s Defense Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences concluded its study of 82-year-old yogi Prahlad Jani Jani, a hermit from Ahmedabad who claims to have lived without food or water for the last 70 years, was under the close watch of three video cameras 24 hours a day.

Researchers conducted various medical tests on him. The research team, consisting of 35 scientists, could not find any evidence that Jani ate or drank anything during the 15 days.

Doctors have not found any adverse effects in his body from hunger or dehydration. They think that yoga exercises may have caused Jani’s body to undergo a biological transformation. The researchers said tests found that his brain is equivalent to that of a 25-year-old. The doctors said that after fasting for two weeks, Jani was healthier than the average 40-year-old.

Jani said he left home when he was 7 to live as a wandering monk, and was blessed by a goddess a year later. He claims that there is a hole in his palate through which his head drops nectar, giving him nutrition and enabling him to live without food or water.

MORE: Indian Man Lives Seven Decades Without Food or Water | Researchers Find Miracles in Yogi’s Fasting

WHALE RESEARCH

Carbon neutral: A sperm whale swims in the Southern Ocean, leaving a cloud of poo behind it. (Flinders University, Adelaide: Peter Gill)

Whale poo fights climate change: study

The fight to stop whaling has been boosted with new research showing the southern ocean sperm whale can remove large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
A study has found that instead of increasing carbon levels through respiration, the sperm whale offsets its emissions by defecating.Flinders University researcher Trish Lavery says the poo is rich in iron, which stimulates phytoplankton to grow, and that traps the carbon dioxide.