What Kerry Should Have Said

"I concede that I misjudged the power of hate. That's pretty powerful stuff, and I didn't see it. So let me take a moment to congratulate the President's strategists: Putting the gay marriage amendments on the ballot in various swing states like Ohio... well, that was just genius. Genius. It got people, a certain kind of people, to the polls. The unprecedented number of folks who showed up and cited 'moral values' as their biggest issue, those people changed history. The folks who consider same sex marriage a more important issue than war, or terrorism, or the economy... Who'd have thought the election would belong to them? Well, Karl Rove did. Gotta give it up to him for that. Credit where it's due."

I think Kerry really should have said this stuff. No kidding. I heard a few minutes of the actual concession speech on the radio and man, was it ever spineless, predictable crap . . .

Everything is just fine. Global warming? Well, yeah, temperatures are increasing and lots of things are dying. And communities are, ah, relocating. But there's no evidence any of it's our fault. It's just, you know, the way things are. One of those things. It'll blow over. Don't panic. What are you, a fear-monger?

And what's with this crazy Mars talk? Alien structures on Mars? Jesus. First of all, it's impossible. I read this website by actual real scientists and they proved that it would be totally inefficient for beings in another solar system to come here. Because it's really expensive. And, I mean, we haven't done it, have we? If it were possible, they'd be here already.

And no, UFOs don't count as evidence. Don't even think of pulling that one. Because I read this other website by actual scientists and they said all sightings could be explained. Well, they didn't actually explain them, but they said they could be explained if they had all of the evidence.

Jesus. Some people.

Is Guilt Obsolete?





"Before Abu Ghraib, before Fallujah, in fact just weeks before the whole shock and awe campaign was to launch, came news of a preemptive strike -- on memory. The stealth attack was initiated by clever scientists who thought not of a cure for infectious greed, or a vaccine against the plague of moral relativism, but instead prepared to market a pill that will help us forget what we cannot bear to remember."

Fantastic. Nothing less than a pharmaceutical shock-and-awe attack against our collective conscience. Now we can slaughter whole cities of brown people with unfeigned neurological impunity.

Pangs of regret? Bring 'em on!

Cool site of the day: The Virtual Solar System

(Thanks to Chapel Perilous.)

Putting a face to 'Big Brother'





"This might sound like a scary vision of an Orwellian future. But it might all depend on the face that is watching you."

This piece is a cousin of the "virtual astronaut" article I posted not long ago, in which a spacecraft's dizzying array of controls is interfaced through an artificial "personality" not unlike HAL 9000.

Cool site of the day: 10x10

"10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds."

Chilling Mystery Hits Kent

"'She was frightened last night,' her mom Rachel said. 'She didn't want to come and get her pajamas out of her dresser and she slept in her brother's room (Thursday) night and then she came into our room last night scared that it might happen again.'"

Yet another "Donnie Darko" moment. Mad world, isn't it?

Everything Is Green at This Fair

"HP was just one of 350 exhibitors on hand for Green Festival at San Francisco's Concourse Exhibition Center. Also hawking all manner of pro-environment goods and services were a slew of solar energy, telecommunications, hemp food, fair trade clothing, animal rights and ecotourism companies."

Venice Sinks Under High Waters

"Flooding is a constant enemy of the fragile art city, with every new incursion damaging its medieval and Renaissance palaces. Officials on Sunday railed against decades of delay to a plan to build underwater barriers against the sea. 'My feeling is rage and recrimination for those who have wasted years and years before starting the work,' Giancarlo Galan, chairman of the Veneto region, told Ansa newsagency."

Rage and recrimination! We'll be experiencing a lot of that when U.S. coastal cities start taking the plunge. I think Giancarlo Galan's words should be emblazoned on a giant plaque and personally hauled to the doorstep of every American citizen. Because, beneath its fading allure, Venice is an alarming microcosm of the entire planet.





On another environmental note, I've become exasperated by people who take great pride in reminding us that "Our children are the future." No they're not. We are. Our children just get saddled with it, and by the time they take the reigns it's conceivable it might be too damned late to make an appreciable difference. Equating the next generation with the future is a thinly veiled attempt to escape the sheer fucking immediacy of the problems that haunt us now.

Bush's dubious election is indeed a huge step backward that may well be looked back on with an exceptionally fierce breed of Galan's "rage and recrimination." But what too many of miss is the fact that we're living the "good old days." Right now. The life we experience, as dystopian and threatening as it is, will seem acutely idyllic in 30 years. Of course, that makes it all-too-easy to slack off, to wait serenely for the last possible moment.

The biosphere is running through our fingers like fine sand. It's becoming clear that politics are not the answer, as we become increasingly mired in the solipsism that is the lifeblood of the New World Disorder.

These are the days of stagnation; these are Giancarlo Galan's "wasted years."

Radio Free Cydonia





I've just been alerted that I have a new audio interview online. This was conducted by host Hilly Rose a few weeks ago. Although I'm having technical problems actually downloading the file, you can reach it by clicking "Fate Radio" on this page.

Suspicious movements

"The object has also triggered speculations whether it was a device for covert surveillance. At IIT, Bombay, Dr Hemandra Arya says cutting-edge technology today makes it possible to build small electric-powered autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. A simple explanation is that it was a runaway balloon cluster; a sophisticated one is that it was an unmanned aerial vehicle powered by electric motors which would also explain the lack of sound, said Arya. 'We certainly don't need to invoke ET for this,' he said."

It was only a matter of time . . .

Hobbit folk 'were just sick humans'




"All life is a blur of Republicans and meat."


"Jacob said the tiny floresiensis skull is really that of a relatively recently deceased human who suffered from microcephaly, a congenital condition in which a person is born with a very small brain."

In other words, an island of pinheads. There are myriad reasons this "explanation" is untenable. Read the article above for just a few.

Man, Christmas is just around the corner, huh? I bet you're wondering what to give.





You probably don't want to spend that much, but you want your gift to be thoughtful and heart-felt.





And heaven knows you don't want to brave the crushing masses of holiday shoppers. Wouldn't it be great if you could find something online that you could order from the comfort of your home?

Run for your lives! An inexplicable meteorological malignancy has descended on our nation's capitol!

Fish fossil confirms origin of nostrils

"'It's as if we were to have a nostril located on the upper jaw margin between the canine and the adjacent incisor,' says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden, who did the study with Min Zhu of the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing."

Occasionally you hear of a scientific finding, such as the one above, that will supposedly make Creationists think again. Get real. "Creation Science" has nothing to do with science, name notwithstanding. The belief virus will trump rationality every time, given half a chance -- and Creation Scientists are in the business of giving it all possible chances.

Now reading: "Tower of Glass" by Robert Silverberg. I have yet to read a book by Silverberg I haven't really liked, with the exception of the over-long and meandering "The Alien Years." And even "The Alien Years" wasn't without a certain appeal.

Click here to read my review of UFO researcher Kevin Randle's fictional "Operation Roswell."

Man Living in Cave on Los Alamos Lab Land

"Authorities have evicted a man from a cave on Los Alamos National Laboratory land where they say he apparently lived for years with the comforts of home - a wood-burning stove, solar panels connected to car batteries for electricity and a satellite radio."

I envy this dude. Talk about "off the grid" -- he's sort of like the urban castaway of J.G. Ballard's "Concrete Island." And I bet he's got some cool UFO stories.

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked

"While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots -- fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking -- the results seem to contain substantial anomalies."

I'm actually less troubled by the possibility of electronic vote-fraud than the fact that Bush received so many irrefutable votes.

Thanks to everyone who's been using the Comment/Trackback feature. It definitely makes maintaining this blog more fun. If you have an idea for an extended discussion topic, feel free to click "Discuss!" (see sidebar, right below the genetically modified uber-chicken) and post your thoughts on the message board, where your comments will linger indefinitely*.

*Or until ProBoards pulls one of those unasked-for service "upgrades" that demands payment.

Hell, maybe I could be the next James Bond. I'd be the perfect spy; no one ever notices me. Just the other day I walked up to the Starbucks cafe counter at Barnes & Noble and the teenage baristas just kept on talking. Like I was invisible. I could have looted the cash drawer and no one would have seen me.

I'd be an exceptionally useful James Bond if the mission required infiltrating a complex of beautiful women. Women, especially, never notice me . . .

You know, something's telling me this just isn't box-office material.

P Diddy wants to be Bond

"The man formerly known as Puff Daddy said: 'The world is ready for a black James Bond.'" (Via CP.)

No doubt. But "Puff Daddy"? First of all, the Bond they've got now is doing just fine. My pick for a replacement would have to be Jude Law. Or Morrissey -- I can actually see that.

I suppose the upshot of "P Diddy" as Bond is that you could do away with the whole "007" thing; he changes his name so often it's little more than a code-name anyway. And even less comprehensible.

"Posthuman Blues: Your P Diddy News-Source"

Cosmic doomsday delayed





"Physicists are still divided about the fate of the Universe. Some say it will keep expanding forever, whereas others believe that at some point in the future it will begin to contract and ultimately collapse in a big crunch. 'All bets are off in terms of predicting the fate of the Universe,' says Caldwell, who has previously suggested that the Universe could ultimately end in a 'big rip' as it expands into infinity."

Either way makes the universe seem tantalizingly organic. The "big rip" scenario makes the cosmos seem like some vast living entity engaged in a literally endless quest to expand its domain -- shades of the alien "blob" battled by Steve McQueen. The "big crunch" is more earthy and accessible, in tune with the flux of seasons and the life cycles of more immediately comprehensible creatures -- and a little more along the lines of "The Incredible Shrinking Man."

Good news. John Shirley hasn't gone away; he still maintains a blog, of sorts, but it will be updated weekly instead of daily. I sympathize. And he's graciously added a link to Posthuman Blues. (You know, it's kind of cool seeing my name sandwiched between G.I. Gurdjieff and Bruce Sterling.)

I find it troubling that the mainstream press studiously avoids mentioning George W. Bush and John Kerry's documented involvement with a self-stated "secret society" -- Yale's Skull and Bones. A presidential candidate is judged, we're told, by his honesty and openness; witness the positively obsessive efforts to excavate Bush's exact military history or the nature of Kerry's performance in the Vietnam War.

So one might naturally assume a politician's loyalty to a "secret society" would preclude any politically meaningful form of trust. Yet Bush and Kerry's membership in what is, at the very least, an influential cabal of leaders and industrialists (that, for reasons unknown, chooses to keep its actions cloaked in secrecy) goes forever unremarked. Nothing to see here. Move on. Punch those chads.

The laughter curtain assembled by incompetent conspiracy theorists has apparently scared the mainstream off from investigating and exposing known breaches of public accountability. Most voters don't even know that Skull and Bones exists, let alone have an inkling of what its motives might be.

Unlike so many self-professed political mavens, I hesitate to claim I can fairly assess either of the candidate's motives. Not being a privileged member of the club, I can't tell you what agendas Skull and Bones supports and what issues it chooses to dismiss. But I bet Bush and Kerry might have an idea.

So why haven't they been asked?

Kerry Won. Here are the Facts.

"The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called 'spoilage.' Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote."

This is oh-so-creepily plausible . . .

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the patio at Starbucks (but sticking it to The Man by actually drinking a coffee brewed at the indie place up the street) and noticed a guy who looked quite a bit like Hugo Weaving ("The Matrix's" "Agent Smith") sitting nearby, inscrutable behind dark sunglasses. Whoa. Maybe I should have stuck with Starbucks.

Notes from the future

I've become transfixed by images from an imagined future forty or fifty years from now -- maybe less. Most of the "creative process" has been purely subliminal; I'm piecing it together from images harvested from dreams. Only occasionally do I indulge in wide-awake extrapolation.

I'm surprised how old the future looks, but perhaps I shouldn't be. Right now we're in the midst of a continent-wide suburban boom. New stripmalls, entertainment complexes and stand-alone stores crop up in endless profusion, sterile and oddly welcoming, only to be razed and supplanted by their Darwinian successors. Consequently, everything looks new, with an almost CGI luster.

This phase won't last. The present riot of consumer sprawl will wind down as resources become scarcer. Very soon, the available real-estate will be consumed and the fervor that fueled expansion will be forced to find new channels; the present obsession with prefab architecture will become a near-maniacal need to retrofit -- fulfilling William Gibson's sly prophecy that "the street finds its own use for things." The commercial sheen of today's store and restaurant interiors will become dingy by comparison with our own -- age-scuffed and time-battered utilitarianism seeking to subvert its millennial origins.

This reinvented world is hushed, stagnant; the excesses of today's fast-forward commercial ecology keep the population in virtual submission. It's not necessarily that there are fewer people; it's simply that humans will find themselves dwarfed by structures whose function seems to balance on the razor's edge of obsolescence. Ever seen a deserted shopping mall slated for demolition? Imagine a whole country with that same sad, desiccated atmosphere; a world thrown rudely upon the concrete shores of its own past.

A man sits on the jetee, bracketed by clammy concrete walls, and sips rice tea. He watches the tide -- warm and strangely odorless -- rush in, crashing against the fortified seawall with a peculiarly electric sound. Lukewarm spray beads the asphalt between his feet.

I am watching.

Science's latest frontier -- headless humans

"With Californians voting overwhelmingly to borrow $3 billion to begin cloning for stem-cell research, it's just a short leap to the suggestions of an Indian scientist who proposes breeding headless humans to be used for harvesting organs and other forms of commercial exploitation."

If this becomes medical reality -- and I hope it does -- imagine the dissent from the radical religious right, who simply won't get it no matter how many times it's explained to them that the bodies are simply life-saving tissue cultures in anthropomorphic form. There will be rioting and bombings. Geneticists will be killed. Fundamentalists will line up at the gates of biomedical clinics wielding inane placards and those sloppy wheeled crosses that are becoming more and more a part of the post-W cultural landscape.

Meanwhile, those of us actually wearing new custom-tailored bodies will glance furtively at each other and wonder how long till the stoning begins . . .

(For an excellent forecast of the potential abuses of cloning technology, I recommend Michael Marshall Smith's "Spares.")

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

The George W. Bush Book Club





Current featured titles:

1.) The Sheep Look Up (John Brunner)
2.) The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
3.) Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas)
4.) 1984 (George Orwell)
5.) Eclipse (John Shirley)
6.) Ghost of Chance (William S. Burroughs)
7.) Radio Free Albemuth (Philip K. Dick)
8.) Random Acts of Senseless Violence (Jack Womack)
9.) On the Beach (Nevil Shute)

Colorful UFO reports have been emanating from India recently. Unknown Country summarizes the latest:

Is Contact Under Way in India?

"Sumit Chatterjee reports that despite the military's usual tight lipped response on account of national security, some officials have responded bluntly and confirmed the presence of UFOs in the area. Indian ufologists suspect that the flurry of activity is related to the local rumor that beings from Sirius will land in the area within the next seven years, though not reveal themselves until 2012."

"My sister just got back from a vacation in Missouri. While down there, she visited a casino. She had to present identification to the bouncer to be let in. He looked at her ID, made a confused face and said, 'Canada. What state is that?'"

--The ShanMonster, "Trick or Treat" (Sunday, October 31, 2004)

I hereby take back all my anti-Kansas comments.

The making of the terror myth





"Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion."

Contrary to the above article, a radiological "dirty bomb" could be quite deadly, if competently made. Then again, making one in secret might prove exceptionally difficult, and the "evil-doer" mastermind could run the risk of radiation poisoning before he had a chance to detonate it.

Obligatory thoughts on the election

George W. Bush is a particularly obstinate turd in the increasingly stressed bowels of the American zeitgeist. But don't take my word for it . . .

IT'S YOUR FAULT AND YOU'RE GETTING WHAT YOU DESERVE (John Shirley)

"If you voted for George Bush then it's your own fault if you don't have health care; it's your own fault global warming continues unabated, wrecking the world for your grandchildren; it's your own fault your job will be outsourced; it's your own fault that terrorism will only get worse, because Bush will feed those fires; it's your fault that a fanatic religious cult will finish taking over the White House; it's your own fault that you're going to lose your civil liberties."

Four More Years (Dan Gillmor)

"Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state."

Disclaimer: Appearances aside, Posthuman Blues is not becoming a political blog. Frankly, I think all that can be said about Bush and his cronies has already been said, or will be said, and I'm perfectly happy to abandon this sad fuck and his destructive antics for the foreseeable future.

Welcome to idiocracy.

Stealth Now Old Hat - USAF Looks Into Teleportation

"Lest you think that our friends at DARPA are the only ones interested in science-fictional possibilities, the USAF recently took delivery of a new study regarding the military potential of teleportation."

23 UFOs Over Veracruz, Mexico - Police, Residents Watch





"Ricardo Antonio Lopez Morales, a resident of the port of Veracruz, describes the sighting of a UFO flotilla around 11:30 a.m. and with an approximate duration of 45 minutes."

Twenty-three of them! Why am I not surprised? The UFO literature is crammed with the number 23. Synchronicity? A message from beyond? Or are both simply different ways of addressing the same phenomenon?

Iraq: the crowning glory of George W. Bush

"Bush's Freedom and Democracy campaign, winning hearts and minds through shock and awe tactics is a stunning reminder of how jingoistic and xenophobic beliefs held by simpletons, applied as crisis management policies by the organisms of a nation such as the USA, can step over the line containing the lunacy which has only been seen before in cases such as Hitler's Nazi Germany."

You know you're in trouble when even Pravda manages to make a reasonably lucid stab at the Bush administration.

This is weird. The Girl Down the Hall just knocked on my door to see what I wanted. I apologized and told her I thought she'd be up, as we work a similar schedule, and that I felt like an idiot for waking her. Amazingly, she wasn't mad. And it turns out the "boyfriend" is an ex-boyfriend who leaves for New York tomorrow. Insert sensitive, self-deprecating Smiths lyric here.

Travelling to Mars and hibernating like a brown bear

"The research could also lead to far-reaching applications in the medical field such as prolonging the useful life of a transplant organ or even heart-transplant operations while patients are in a state of hypo-metabolism."

As the ESA article admits, hibernation is not a serious consideration for the first manned mission to Mars. I'm more intrigued by the biomedical applications. This is a step in the right direction for cryonics research, which seeks to freeze patients without destroying vital cell structures.

One of the biggest hurdles to cryonics at present is that the patient must be declared legally dead before cryonicists can set to work reducing cell damage; this invariably results in destruction that could be prevented if cryonicists were allowed access to a terminal patient before clinical death.

Long-term biostasis might bridge the schism between mainstream medicine and the cryonics community because it eliminates actual death ("deanimation"). A person suffering from an incurable disease might choose to have himself put into hibernation until such time as a cure is developed. It's the same gamble made by cryonics patients, of course, but cryonics must deal not only with curing present-day maladies, but "reanimating" patient's "dead" bodies -- presumably with the help of nanotechnology of the sort described in K. Eric Drexler's "Engines of Creation." Hibernation -- if we can achieve it -- does away with the need for quasi-exotic cell-repair technologies.

In college, I spoke at length with former CryoCare president Charles Platt (author of "The Silicon Man") about my prospects as a cryonaut. Truthfully, I imagined that I'd be signed up by now. So why aren't I?

Good question.

I just did something incredibly, titanically stupid. I knocked on the door of the Girl Down the Hall. I was going to see if she wanted to have a cup of coffee. Her boyfriend answered the door: "We're sleeping." And heaven knows I'm miserable now.

The Long Way Home





"The report demurely suggests this: 'Alternative fuels, greenhouse gas emissions controls and conservation efforts are worthy endeavors.' It concludes by posing the alternative: 'Abrupt climate change is likely to stretch [the Earth's] carrying capacity well beyond its already precarious limits. Disruption and conflict may well be endemic features of life ... Every time there is a choice between starving and raiding, humans raid.'"

Brain Scans May Unlock Candidates' Appeal

"Already, the scientists are predicting that brain scanning known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI will be a campaign staple four years from now, despite ethical concerns about 'neuromarketing.'"

Oh, yeah -- new stuff at The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension.

And I've updated the sidebar with several blogs that definitely deserve a look. Have fun.

China aims for five days in orbit




Watch 'em go!


"'The spacecraft will make new breakthroughs in China's manned space technology,' said a spokesperson for China Aerospace Science and Technology (Cast)."

Peter A. Gersten has given me permission to post the following essay. Enjoy!

--Mac

PAG ADVISORY: 11-01-04

Along with my conviction that our reality is a cosmic computer program is my belief that within our program are messages, signs, and clues to the nature of our reality. Sometimes a message takes the form of a warning.

Thus I am particularly attracted to coincidences since I have found that certain synchronistic ones provide useful information - especially when they involve specific numbers. As readers of my commentaries already know, I have a particular attraction to numerical palindromes and anything related to 11:11 and 2012. So when, within a short period of time, a certain numerical sequence taps me on the shoulder not once, not twice, but three times, I start to notice.

For the past few weeks we have been continuously hearing that the last time the Boston Red Sox won the World Series (before their present success) was in 1918. Until last Thursday night I hadn't thought twice about the significance of that year even though earlier that day I had written a commentary for an article that appeared in Friday's E-NEWS about an influenza pandemic that had also occurred in 1918 - and even though in that commentary I referred to the numerical coincidence and stated: "Things do tend to repeat themselves over time, now don't they?" But sooner or later the Universe does ensure that you get the "message" - one way or another, right?

Thursday evening I decided to rent a video for later that night. Searching the shelves for the latest releases at the Movie Gallery in Holbrook proved disappointing. The only two that looked interesting (of the newest horror movies I hadn't yet seen) - "Frankenfish" and some foreign Dracula flick - left me feeling unsatisfied - so I decided to check out the older videos. After a few minutes I found one that I had seen there on numerous occasions but had never given it a second thought - until then. Funny how certain things can only be appreciated at certain times. I picked up the box and saw that Naomi Watts was in a starring role. That was good enough for me - so even though the plot resembled every other "technology gone wild" theme I decided to rent - "The Shaft."

"The Shaft" is a 1999 horror film (released in 2003) about a group of high-speed elevators in a skyscraper in New York City (Millennium Building) that become malevolently self-aware and start killing people. Naomi Watts appears approximately 15 minutes into the plot as a reporter for a New York City newspaper. She is first seen at her desk experiencing a computer problem when the newsroom geek offers to help her. After the typical sexual banter he informs her that her computer has a virus. Naomi's boss then tells her that he wants her to cover a story about several pregnant women giving birth while in an elevator at the Millennium Building (the most unique aspect of the movie). She tells her boss that she needs to finish her current assignment about voting rights for women and when her boss asks her the year of that story she answers - 1918.

While hearing "1918" in conjunction with both the Red Sox and Flu dramas didn't get my attention, hearing it for a third time, and in the context of such irrelevant dialogue, rang a very loud bell - a warning bell to be exact. It was now time to see what other interesting things I could find about 1918.

A search on Google of "1918 events" led me to the fascinating article
"Venus Transit: Biohazard?"
(http://www.ebicom.net/~rsf1/vel/ven-tran.htm).

The thrust of the article is that "outbreaks of new strains of influenza and influenza related illnesses" occur shortly after Venus inferior conjunctions. The reasoning behind this theory is quite intriguing and worth the time to read the article even if my "message" proves to be a false alarm. Interestingly there was a Venus transit in 1918 - and coincidentally, one on June 8th of this year. Ironically, there also will be another one in 2012 - but that's a story for a future advisory.

The Red Sox won the World Series in 1918 and they won it again in 2004. There was a Venus transit in 1918 and another in 2004. There was an influenza pandemic in 1918. Will there be another one in the winter of 2004? Are there any other clues?

As I related above, the first scene with Naomi Watts included not only a reference to 1918 but also a reference to a virus, albeit a computer virus. Later in this 1999 movie there is a scene where FBI personnel take over the Millennium Building believing that the murders are due to a terrorist attack. The next scene is of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.

Could there be a terrorist attack involving a bio-weapon this winter? Sure - but will there be one? I don't know! Could there be a major viral pandemic this winter? Sure - but will there be one? I don't know! But isn't it better to be safe than sorry? The above-referenced URL also suggests a few preventative measures one can take - just in case.

Another coincidence and probably the most significant one for me as to the legitimacy of the "warning" is that 1918 is also the year that World War I ended - on the 11th hour of 11th day of 11th Month.

Things do tend to repeat themselves over time, now don't they?

PAG/11-1-2004

(Makes you wonder what would have happened if he'd rented "Frankenfish," huh? --Mac)