IBM search tool targets flying saucers, ghosts and goblins

With UFO sightings seemingly on the rise, Big Blue is teaming with The Anomalies Network to offer UFO Crawler, a new search engine specifically tuned to search for information about the paranormal, unexplained or just plain bizarre.

Today's Web-toy, courtesy of Reality Carnival.

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

"For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation," said Thomas Heimburg, an associate professor at the university's Niels Bohr Institute. "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced."

This immediately reminded me of my ongoing bout of tinnitus. Speaking of which, I have a hunch this site might be onto something:

The striking similarities between the Tinnitus sounds and the sound produced by positive feedback in electronic circuits processing audio signals suggest that Tinnitus sounds are caused by positive feedback between neurons in the auditory neural system in the brain by inappropriate axon connections.

There's definitely an "electronic" aspect to what I'm experiencing. It can range from a sort of hiss to a high-frequency whine that recalls microphone feedback. I woke up one morning and actually thought an insect had crawled into my ear.

Omega-3s may affect mood and behavior

Omega-3 fatty acids are associated with increased gray matter volume in areas of the brain commonly linked to mood and behavior, according to a University of Pittsburgh study.

The researchers discovered that participants who had high levels of long-chain omega-3 fatty acid intake had higher volumes of gray matter in areas of the brain associated with emotional arousal and regulation -- the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, the right amygdala and the right hippocampus.

I guess it's time to hit the fish-oil supplements again.

Despite the lurid "UFO WARNING" banner that underscores this interview, former MoD UFO investigator Nick Pope manages to address the topic with a commendable degree of finesse and skepticism.

(Thanks: The Other Side of Truth.)

Global warming or not, CO2 levels threaten marine life

Like a piece of chalk dissolving in vinegar, marine life with hard shells is in danger of being dissolved by increasing acidity in the oceans.

Ocean acidity is rising as sea water absorbs more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from power plants and automobiles. The higher acidity threatens marine life, including corals and shellfish, which may become extinct later this century from the chemical effects of carbon dioxide, even if the planet warms less than expected.

Smog is changing the face of Earth's water cycle

Smog may be having dramatic effects on the planet's water cycles, and in ways not previously apparent, researchers have warned. Revealing one aspect of this, they have shown that urban pollution and other aerosols have significantly reduced rainfall over hills in central China.

"Pollution is reducing rainfall in the areas where people need it most," says Daniel Rosenfeld, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. "Communities in semi-arid regions rely on the water from rain and snow that fall on mountains, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away. But the combination of the hills and the air pollution emitted by the same people means that the some of moisture in the clouds is evaporating before it ever hits the ground."

Holy cryptozoological cow! It appears Universal plans on making a movie out of Nick Redfern's "Three Men Seeking Monsters."

Congratulations, Nick!

(Lead: The Anomalist.)

The Society for Planetary SETI Research has posted a stinging, informed rebuttal to the European Space Agency's (presumably deliberate) misrepresentation of the Face on Mars.

Go to SPSR's site and click on "SPSR News" (top link in left-hand side-bar) to read "The Two Faces of ESA."

Yet another clip of me talking about indigenous ufonauts:



For commentary by Paul Kimball, click here.

There's a critical yet overlooked distinction between toleration and resignation.

Climate is big issue for U.S. hunters, anglers

Trout like cold water and become stressed on hot summer days, because water levels are lower and temperatures are higher than would have been the case if the run-off came at more traditional times from April to June.

"We are finding a lot of concern among anglers and hunters about climate change. These people value traditions and their family and it will affect their children and their ability to enjoy these kinds of outdoor experience," Williams said.

Yes, you read that correctly: hunters don't like global warming not because it signals the biosphere's ultimate collapse but because it threatens their valued "traditions" (which, of course, is a tactful euphemism for "killing things").

(Compare and contrast to this post about ocean-loving coast-dwellers who simply won't tolerate unsightly wind turbines.)

(Thanks, Nick.)

Robotic age poses ethical dilemma

The new guidelines could reflect the three laws of robotics put forward by author Isaac Asimov in his short story Runaround in 1942, she said.

Key considerations would include ensuring human control over robots, protecting data acquired by robots and preventing illegal use.

Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.

The European Robotics Research Network is also drawing up a set of guidelines on the use of robots.

This ethical roadmap has been assembled by researchers who believe that robotics will soon come under the same scrutiny as disciplines such as nuclear physics and Bioengineering.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

I'll be on Binnall of America Audio this Friday. Tune in!

NASA can't pay for killer asteroid hunt

NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done.

The cost to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets by 2020 would be about $1 billion, according to a report NASA will release later this week. The report was previewed Monday at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington.

(Via KurzweilAI.net.)

Approximate cost of the Iraq war (so far): $406 billion.

The Best in the Biz (Paul Kimball)

If you are even remotely interested in UFOs, or the paranormal, then here are some sites / blogs you should be checking every day.

I second Paul's recommendations. Here are a (very) few others worth perusing on a regular, if not positively obsessive, basis:

1.) Always skeptical, inspiring and forward-thinking, Mondolithic Sketchbook is perhaps the futurology blog, beautifully crafted by a couple of the best digital artists in the world.

2.) I'm an unrepentant Boing Boing addict. The definitive guide to geek-chic doo-dads and cultural curiosities.

3.) Updated daily, The Anomalist is a miasma of strange phenomena and unexpected discoveries -- sort of a fortean Boing Boing for scholars of the strange and curious bystanders alike.

4.) Centauri Dreams may not take you to the stars, but its meticulous approach, eye for notable space-science developments and penchant for speculation make it the best blog of its genre.

5.) A lot of the time I don't think humanity has a chance. I like World Changing because it tirelessly attempts to prove me wrong.

'Flying' in your sleep may be a paralysis

During sleep paralysis, people experience a kind of breakdown between states of consciousness which takes place on the fringe of sleep, either when falling asleep or waking. Because the brain turns off the body's ability to move during dreaming, muscles can lose their tone, or tension, causing paralysis.

(Via The Anomalist.)

OK, OK, we get it already!

Here's a comprehensive list of science fiction and fantasy authors with blogs. They've got me in pretty nice company!

Marijuana, the wonder drug

A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

[. . .]

If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

(Via Sentient Developments.)

My favorite artist of the moment is Jacek Yerka. His paintings manage to echo both Dali and Escher. And I appreciate his whimsical spin on Giger's "biomechanical" sensibility.

I finally saw "Napolean Dynamite." Here's a scene I liked:

Oy -- Nick Redfern's gone MySpace!

While ego-surfing, I discovered an album called "Post Human Blues." It's by a group called Trancendental Anarchists and sounds right up my alley.

And no, I'm not bothered by the Anarchists' use of the P-word; to my chagrin, a writer named Will Wilkinson beat me to the punch with this 2002 post (which I didn't know about until after christening this blog in a gesture of abortive originality).

That said, I do find it a bit suspicious that the Anarchists' cover art bears an unnerving resemblance to the Face on Mars.

Lesson: It's weird out there. You have to think fast.

A must-see:

Edo-period kappa sketches

Although kappa are typically about the size of a child and greenish in color, they can vary widely in appearance. They frequently have a turtle-like shell and scaly skin, but sometimes their skin is moist and slick, or coated in fur. Most walk upright on their hind legs, but they are occasionally seen on all fours. Regardless of body type, the top of the kappa's head usually features a bowl-shaped depression containing water. The water inside this bowl is the source of the kappa's power.

Incidentally, this account of a UFO-like boat (complete with mysterious occupant) dates to the same period. Are we looking at the historical equivalent to Weekly World News? If so, the similarities to beings allegedly seen today are uncommonly striking.

(Big thanks to Pink Tentacle.)

The celestial real-estate gimmick takes a quantum leap.

(Thanks, Reality Carnival!)

Active Hurricane Season Risk Grows - Meteorologists

The likelihood of an above-average Atlantic hurricane season is growing as a Pacific Ocean El Nino system, which drove storms away from the Gulf Coast in 2006, ended in the past few weeks, meteorologists said on Thursday.

Even worse for oil and natural gas interests along the U.S. Gulf Coast is the possible formation of a La Nina system in the Pacific. More than normal Atlantic hurricanes are usually seen during La Nina events, meteorologists said.

Ice age coming, ice age coming
Let me hear both sides
Let me hear both sides

--Radiohead

Veteran author/cryptozoologist Loren Coleman needs money. And he deserves it. More here.

Things like this make me wonder if perhaps some sort of "Fortean help fund" is feasible.

The 911 Script and the Age of Terror (Whitley Strieber)

But the BBC reporter is clearly seen reading from a teleprompter. Obviously, she was reading something written on it, and not making up what would have then seemed to be a wild tale. In other words, she was reading a script, and that script had been put up on her teleprompter early. Not only that, she was sitting in front of a live image of the still-intact Building 7.

Somebody wrote that script and did so while Building 7 was still standing. How could they know that it would collapse, even if it was unstable, even if there was a fire in the cellars?

No, the author of the script did not think the building had collapsed. He knew that it would, and the statement was read early as a miscue.

If the BBC had not lost the video of that entire day, it would be easier to believe that this was some sort of a mistake. But the idea that an organization like the BBC, which prides itself on the record it keeps, would lose an entire day of some of the most historic footage it has ever shot is just very difficult to believe. It seems more likely that there was something on that footage that they wanted to bury.

As, indeed, there was.

The video in question is indeed a puzzle. I've been trying to come up with explanations that exclude "conspiracy" . . . and the scenarios that emerge are strained. I'd really like to know what's going on here.

Scientists assess DNA Hair sample from Human being apparently not from Earth

Suddenly, he bolted wide awake and sat up. There "were two humanoid females sitting on the bed, both entirely naked," says Peter Khoury.

"These two women looked human in nearly every way. They had well proportioned adult bodies. One looked somewhat Asian, with straight dark shoulder-length hair and dark eyes. The other looked "perhaps Scandinavian-like", with light-coloured ("maybe bluish") eyes and long blond hair that fell half-way down her back."

We should all be so lucky.

Finally -- proof that eco-friendly cars needn't be soulless pods.

This morning I picked up a bottle of homeopathic tinnitus medicine. I'm skeptical but more than willing to give it a chance.

I'm in somewhat better spirits. This evening I brought a sketch pad to Barnes & Noble and drew for a couple hours while listening to my MP3 player. It's uniquely empowering to have the better part of my CD collection stored in a device the size of a cigarette lighter.

Rudy Rucker has posted a grab-bag of links to cool sites, including Stuck In Customs, a blog devoted to High Dynamic Range photography. I find this technique fascinating; it somehow manages to make the real even more real. (For my all-time favorite example, refer to this HDR photo of Tokyo.)

The aerostats hovered over the horizon as we made our way through the wastes. Their lights, already tenuous, played weakly across the ground, accentuating the heaped ash and leaving curved rungs of light dangling in my vision like baubles. I'd never adapted to the aerostats' presence. Even their shape seemed implacably wrong, as if they'd been snatched from some higher dimensional space and squeezed until they fit the contours of the known. As they moved they stirred up vast clouds of black dust that occluded the stars.

I mopped sweat from my brow with a peeling concert T-shirt and took a sip of ancient Gatorade from one of the bottles we'd taken from a convenience store somewhere outside St. Louis.

All this slide-show of smashed bugs needs is a Depeche Mode soundtrack.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing and Table of Malcontents.)

Paranormal Book Competition Results Near!

The Book of THoTH will shortly be announcing the winners of the competition held last year. The competition allowed previously unpublished writers a chance to get their work featured in a forthcoming new book entitled "The Book of THoTH - Wisdom of the Ages".

The response to the competition has been overwhelming, and the judges have had no easy task choosing which articles should appear in the new book, out of so many.

Longest underground river found

Cave divers in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula have discovered what may be the world's longest underground river, connecting two cave systems with a waterway at least 95 miles long.

A group of foreign divers exploring the area near the Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen have yet to name the stretch, but believe it could be connected to two other major systems, adding more than 125 miles to its length.

I'm filing this under "cryptoterrestrials." Just because.

SMART-1 views the edge of Luna Incognita: Mars on the Moon?

SMART-1 has investigated lunar areas at the edge of Luna Incognita. This area near the lunar poles can be used for lunar science studies, or even to prepare for human bases on the Moon and on Mars.

Mankind did not see the land called Luna Incognita, until the first probes sent images of the lunar farside.

Strange and Violent Weather Around the World

From an unprecedented locust swarm in southern Mexico to fearsome hailstorms in Australia to one of the deadliest winters in United States and European histories, world weather continues in a state of extreme violence.

I grew up hoping to live in an Arthur C. Clarke novel only to find myself inhabiting something out of Philip K. Dick. But never fear -- it looks like the future is J.G. Ballard all the way.

Here's one I want to read: "Biocosm" by James Gardner. Click here for reviews, etc.

More here.

Here's a truly grisly Nike shoe rendered in actual human flesh. Aside from its (presumed) attendant social statement, it looks vaguely c-punkish, like something grown in a vat.

Rudy Rucker now has an online gallery of original paintings. Wacky stuff for cyberpunks who refuse to take themselves too seriously.

Climate Change as Dangerous as War - UN Chief Ban

"The majority of the United Nations work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict," Ban said. "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming."

"In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict," Ban told an international UN school conference on global warming, meeting in the UN General Assembly hall.

BIGELOW SHOOTS FOR THE MOON

Even as Bigelow Aerospace gears up for launching its second prototype space station into orbit, the company has set its sights on something much, much bigger: a project to assemble full-blown space villages at a work site between Earth and the moon, then drop them to the lunar surface, ready for immediate move-in.

"In the Future When All's Well" (Morrissey)