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Thanks to Snow from Book of THoTH for pointing out this video.

Amazon explorers documented up to 40 new species in the midst of the rainforest. I really love hearing about expeditions like this, and I certainly hope that we manage to save as much of the unspoilt wilderness that's left on this planet as we can.

Congratulations to author, Book of THoTH member(valiens), and now filmmaker Jeremy Vaeni. His sometimes autobiographical, self-produced documentary about his continuing alien abductions, and other people's, just premiered at the Middle Country Library's film series. Good luck on your future endeavors Jeremy.

Be sure to check out best selling author Philip Gardiner's new blog.

In it he has one of his typically in depth analysis of the possibility that Atlantis is based on an ancient folk memory of Mexico. Philip makes some nice word associations with ancient languages, and makes a fairly compelling case.

Paul Kimball has put out a really great article on why he's interested in the UFO phenomenon.

It starts off with something I'm sure we're all thinking:

When I logged onto AOL today, the first thing I noticed was a headline in the News section that read, "Friends Again?" and asked the question, have Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie kissed and made up?

To which I can only ask - who gives a flying rat's ass? Really. Who cares??

Glad someone said it.

It was requested via e-mail that I open up my comments to anyone, not just blogger.com registered members, so I'm going to give it a shot and see how it goes. Too many spams, though, and I'll have to move it back. Hopefully that won't happen. Thanks for the comments!

I try not to bring too much politics here, even though my "other" degree is in political science. I'd like to mostly dedicate this blog to other interests.

However, this detention and interrogation bill(or the right to detain and torture anyone forever bill) that the Senate passed yesterday is truly disturbing. You can read all about the constitutional scholars talking about it and making their thoughts known on what it means for everyone elsewhere if you're interested(start with the center for constitutional rights). All I'd like to put here is the list of democrats who crossed party lines to help move this unconstitutional measure toward law:

Carper (Del.)
Johnson (S.D.)
Landrieu (La.)
Lautenberg (N.J.)
Lieberman (Conn.)
Menendez (N.J)
Nelson (Fla.)
Nelson (Neb.)
Pryor (Ark.)
Rockefeller (W. Va.)
Salazar (Co.)
Stabenow (Mich)

As much as I'd like to see congress in different hands than the party of the President, if any one those people are in your area, please don't vote for them ever again.

Philip Coppens has added a new article to his ever growing site. Today's article is titled, "Hell on Earth" and it's about an archaeological hunt to find sites written about in the story of the Sibyl of Cumae.

Click here for the latest Book of THoTH behind the scenes info from THoTH's blog.

Today at ScienceAGoGo.com there's an article on the possible dangers of nanotechnology. There's some really interesting news on nanotech advances before it goes into the possible dangers in the future. Being a scientist, I can certainly understand the need to understand all that you can about a technology before you release it. Once science is out, there's always going to be a risk. The article makes a good point that no one saw what kind of damage the automobile would do to the envirnonment when the first one was built. Similarly, just about any new technology has the capability to do harm if used improperly, or sometimes, properly.

Where I seem to deviate from the article, though, is the idea that scientific advances can be held back until everyone decides not to use the technology for any kind of evil or nefarious purpose. Is the Nanoethics Group really suggesting in the article that if nuclear technology had been held in a lab for a while longer there wouldn't have been an arms race? Or that any amount of talking amongst the people on this planet would stop some from trying to use nuclear weapons? It's my belief that science will move forward at its own speed, I know of no way to stop it, and that as humans we have to simply do our best to use new technology for the best. There always seem to be people out there who would seem to be perfectly happy to live without the latest scientific advances, until you take away their high-tech golf clubs, high definition TV and high speed internet, of course. There's certainly nothing wrong with understanding all that you can about any technology, new or old, but sometimes I wonder about the agenda of people who want to see science slowed or stopped.

Today I noticed that a couple of articles by television producer and author Tim Swartz, which I believe I once read in Fate Magazine, are now up, in full, on the Conspiracy Journal.

The first, titled, "ON THE EDGE OF TIME: The Mystery of Time Slips" deals with the nature of time. I've always been a bit fascinated with the idea of time, and how it enters our lives. I think one of the explanations for many "ghost" sightings is exactly this phenomenon. Many stories of ghost sightings revolve around a particular scene played out over and over throughout time, seemingly with no recognition from the "spirit" that anything unusual is going on around it. It might play into the ancient eastern philosophy which holds that time is circular, not a straight line. This, generally, is used to explain beliefs such as the idea that after you die you will be reborn, but maybe the idea of time being circular means more than just that. That which happened once, may happen again, and not just from refusing to learn history.

The second, titled, "AS TIME GOES BY: UFOs and Time DIstortion" deals with the reported phenomenon of UFOs and missing time. The theory put forward in this piece is that of distortions in time and space experienced by close UFO encounters, perhaps due to currently unknown, but plausible under quantum theory, technologies.

What wonderfully kind words from Paul Kimball and Mac Tonnies about my new blog!

Once again, Mac Tonnies, has posted some really interesting thoughts. This time on the enigma of UFO sightings with a corollary to playing with his cats.

It certainly got me thinking about things. What if, this phenomenon that so many have witnessed, is nothing more than an illusion. Possibly, an intelligently controlled illusion.

Then I remembered something I'd read on this thread. Book of THoTH member Nebula said:

That got me to wondering if this is the explanation for UFO sightings that seem to defy physics as we know it: UFOs suddenly changing speed, course, size, color, etc. Perhaps in some cases we are not seeing actual physical craft, but only some side effect of the intangible energies utilized to travel in that fashion, which manifest as peculiar visual and electromagnetic phenomena on Earth? Perhaps it's a wild goose chase to go in search of tangible, physical evidence if no actual ships are involved in the first place?

I'm certainly no expert on UFOs, and although I do follow this forum I don't study each case closely. And not only am I not a UFO expert, I'm also not a physics expert, so bear with me if I've phrased this in a clumsy manner.

Plus, I'm also not saying that all UFOs are merely intangible energy manifestations either, of course!

Food for thought. If there's not actually ships in some cases, only a visual representation from an energy discharge, or something similar, then you might find incidences in which the energy discharge left some physical mark behind, but in those cases you'd never be able to find the ship itself. Searching for pieces of the ship would be futile, and searching for evidence of this type of occurrence would certainly require a bit of a paradigm shift from researchers.

We're closing in on the date for the New Frontiers Symposium 2006 up north in Halifax. If you can check it out, do it. This looks like it's going to be terrific. I only wish I could go, so everyone who attends will just have to tell me all about it!

Keep an eye on their website, and Paul Kimball's blog for all the latest info on the symposium.

Also, don't forget Book of THoTH's ongoing interview series with the speakers. Next up will be William Wise, curator of the project blue book archive. Look for his interview on BoT over the weekend.

Make sure you get in your nominations for the prestigious Zorgy awards in late December.

In the continuing story of the recent ESA images of the face on Mars, check out the comment left by Mac Tonnies to the story yesterday, here. Make sure you keep an eye on his site for the latest news.

Also, AJ Gulyas has an interesting reply to Paul Kimball's article The Face on Mars vs. UFO's from a couple of days ago.

I think it's amazing how we always underestimate the intelligence of animals. One of my all time favorite animal videos is of New Caledonian Crows making and using tools. From THoTH over at Book of THoTH, here's a video of various animals doing pretty intelligent things as well.

The Book of THoTH is giving away more prizes! On top of all of the prizes to be given away, which of course includes your article being published, for the article writing competition, and all the prizes, including your artwork on the cover of the book, in the cover competition hosted by Renderosity.com, now BoT is having a competition to name the information resource currently called, simply, The Book. The winner will get the two latest editions of Atlantis Rising, while two runners up will each get the latest edition delivered to them. Go ahead and enter your ideas right HERE.

Be sure to check out Mac Tonnies' latest thoughts on the mysterious horn from the ESA data of the Face on Mars. Does it even exist?

On the environmental front today, here's an article from New Scientist(which I subscribe to and highly recommend for anyone, scientist or not) about global warming. Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says,"One degree and we're done for." His basic premise being that one more degree C, and we'll have hit a critical threshold in climate change which we wouldn't be able to undo. Scary stuff, for sure, but still, most people seem to be able to ignore it.

Pandora, over at Book of THoTH posted recently about the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition. I certainly agree with what they're trying to do there, which is specifically save a a genetically unique subspecies of the black bear found only on Canada’s west coast. They have a petition there, so sign up if you're interested.

Wired has a new article debating not whether to move people out into space, but where. It's pretty short, but there's an interesting debate on whether to put rotating space stations in Earth's orbit, for convenience sake, or if humans should move right onto the moon or Mars.

Here's a very small article on the Nazca lines, which suggest they were built by priests.

Unfortunately, I almost always find the typical explanation of, "We don't really know why people took so much time and energy to do this, so it must be religious" lacking in many historical cases. I can't be certain myself as to why the Nazca lines were put there, but I've always found it curious that they can only be seen up in the air. They must have had some reason for doing that. Why, if they couldn't see them without flight, would they do that? And how would they know they looked right? Did they get them perfectly right on their first attempts? Did they lay down some sort of grid pattern to enlarge their designs to that size? If they couldn't see them, who could?

Now, I'm not going to say that no civilizations took time to complete elaborate projects in the name of religion, because I think it's obvious that they have. In fact, in this case, I think the interesting discussion revloves around who did they do this for, and why. I think it's also interesting that in South America "zoomorphic" artifacts have been found that have characteristics of modern day planes. How does that tie in, if it does? Are we looking at more evidence of the ancient astronaut theory?

The Book of THoTH has another interesting front page article. This time, from Paul Schroeder titled Mind Control and Hypnosis. I honestly don't know much about Mr. Schroeder, but he seems to have an interesting story to tell.

Paul Kimball has written a little about the Mars Face, Richard Hoagland, and UFOlogy. I've found that quite a few people disregard Paul simply because he's not a blind believer, and keeps an open mind on all phenomenon. How ridiculous is that? If everyone had such an open mind I think we'd have a completely different world. Anyway, without any more editorializing, here's The Face on Mars vs. The UFOs.

Fermilab, in Illinois, has announced an interesting discovery. The Standard Model had predicted a particle, called the B sub s meson, which would shuttle back and forth between what we call the material world, and the world of antimatter, 3 trillion times a second. This had been unproven until now. Not only is this a major step forward in our understanding of the universe, and matter/antimatter relationships, but Fermilab is one of the only places in the world to do these kind of studies, and a great research facility in the US. Unfortunately, congress might not renew their funding, shutting down the lab in 2010. Hopefully they'll realize just how bad a descision that would be before then.

I'm not sure how the evidence will be evaluated, being a scientist myself I can only hope that it will be an objective analysis, but it might be interesting to take this survey about paranormal experiences from Monash University in Australia, and see what comes out of it.

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about what kind of blogger I am, titles sometimes bug me, but I was asked to take this quiz, I gave the little quiz a shot, and here's what came out:

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Is the recent archaeological work in Bosnia finding evidence of pyramids? Or is it a case of geological features and/or an outright hoax?

After reading through both sites, personally, I think that there's pretty good evidence of human construction rather than geological formations. There's entry ways that look fairly artificial to me, even if some of the writing may not be genuine. I think this is a case to keep an eye on as it develops with, apparently, Dr. Zahi Hawass'(of Egyptian pyramid fame) backing on the project. I'd imagine if he sees enough evidence to continue the research, there's probably a pretty good chance of there being something there.

Over at UFOevidence.org there's an informative article on USOs, or unidentified submarine objects. For all that you hear about flying objects, there are a lot of supposed sightings of objects coming out of the water, or going into the water. I have a friend who has just gotten out of the Navy. I'll have to ask him if he's heard of any quality sightings.

Going back about a week, or so, ago, there was a story that came out about the earliest writing found to date in the western hemisphere.

I'm constantly fascinated with our distant past, and what the full story about our heritage is. Thus, the picture of me on this page exploring ancient Mayan ruins. Research is continually pushing back the date of the earliest writing, the earliest villages, the earliest bread baking, etc. Will we ever find out exactly when and how our earliest civilizations came about? Or is it all too far buried in the past to discover?

The status of the food that we all are basically forced to eat really bothers me. I'm not really even talking about whatever the latest in spinach fiasco '06 is, either.

An article today from The Guardian discusses dangerous pesticide levels in food. Couple that with the always present mercury in seafood, mostly tied to coal burning power plants, and the fact that most meat is raised with antibiotics and growth hormone and I honestly can't imagine what it does to people who injest it all. Are children really able to be healthy when they're full of exotic chemicals from the day they're born? All of the potential problems that you can imagine from eating this stuff, and I haven't even gotten into the pollution that we breathe and bathe in everyday yet. It's pretty scary to think about what our bodies have to deal with on a daily basis.

So the question becomes, then, what do we do to remedy this problem? Do we go back to small, family owned farms that supply regionally? Do we force the idea of organic produce, all natural farm-raised meats, and stop buring coal? I don't know what the answer is, but I know that most people in the US have no idea what they're eating, and that's got to change before the system's going to get better.

Speaking of mercury, check out the local mercury levels and fish advisories in your area.

Scientific American has an article about six of the biggest debates in the scientific world today. They are:

Is String Theory Unraveling?

Is Global Warming Raising a Tempest?

How Does A Planet Grow?

Should Epidemiologists Swear Off Diet Trials?

Does Sprouting New Brain Cells Cure Depression?

Was the Hobbit Just a Sick Modern Human?

Why is it that government agencies are always so keen to cover up their own interest in UFO's? Is it because that shows them as being vulnerable to whatever the phenomenon is as well? Is it because they've invested so much time and effort telling people that there's nothing to see, and admitting that they're pretty curious to figure it out themselves would mean the end to that cover story? Is it because UFO's are just various government top secret planes from around the world and, thus, they're classified? Or is it because there's really something to the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence visiting the planet? Sometimes I wonder if anyone in the government even knows why they're covering it up anymore. Maybe it's just something that's so inherent in government anymore, that they'd feel strange not doing it anymore. I certainly get the feeling, though, as I'm sure many people do, that they spend a lot of time covering up and hiding something that supposedly doesn't exist. There's something to the phenomenon, whatever it may be. Whatever the reason for the secrecy and lies, and I certainly have my own beliefs, as I'm sure most people do, here's an article from The Guardian about how intent the MoD was in the UK to cover up their search for UFOs.

Interesting news on the environmental front. The state of california is suing General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chrysler and Nissan for the greenhouse emissions from the cars they produce.

I think while this is probably, ostensibly, a PR move, big time suits such as this are the only way that automakers are going to move onto cleaner technology. It'll be interesting to follow this one and see what happens.

Here's an odd story from the Mainichi Daily News out of Japan about a man who believes he catches invisible mountain skyfish with his bare hands.

Apparently "skyfishing" is catching on around the world.

With skyfishing growing in popularity, a follow-up DVD has recently been released onto the market featuring successful skyfishers from across the globe advising wannabe air anglers on how to catch the curious creatures. Ichikawa is delighted by the sequel.

To go along with the hubble video down below, here's an article about Hubble finding 500 more young galaxies. These galaxies apparently existed less then a billion years after the big bang, and finding them lets scientists get a good look at that class of galaxies, from which they can infer a lot about the formation of galaxies themselves.

Keep an eye out for Robert Zimmerman's book on the Hubble coming out fall 2007. As he put it in our interview:

"I am about to finish a history of the Hubble Space Telescope, telling the story of the men and women who conceived, designed, built, ruined, and saved this greatest of space telescopes."

Thanks to AnnuMela from Book of THoTH for this picture of a spider she found on her property that sure looks like it has a face on its behind. Isn't nature amazing?

According to the current discussion about it, it seems to be a jewel spider.

Here's a fairly amusing transcript of Bill Clinton of Fox News. I have a major problem with Fox News, honestly. I fail to see how a purely partisan, propaganda machine can be considered news, although I know that many of the major news organizations are no better. Fox News is just the worst, and not ever worth watching in my opinion, unless you happen to find Bill O'Reilly hysterical in a very disturbing way.

Here's the latest Book of THoTH interview with one of the speakers from the New Frontiers Symposium.

Click here for the interview

This time it's Nick Redfern sharing his thoughts on everything from UFO's to cryptozoology.

Don't forget to check out the other interviews with Paul Kimball, Mac Tonnies, and Robert Zimmerman as well.

Here's an interesting article from Book of THoTH member AnnuMela about communicating telepathically with animals. It's a really interesting idea, and one that, honestly, I'd have some trouble really believing if I didn't know AnnuMela personally. She's had amazing success with this, and has even worked with her local veteranarian's office on disgnosing animal's problems. I've seen her work myself, and she's uncannily accurate. Give it a read with an open mind.

With the new picture of the Mars face fron the ESA, there's been a new trickle of press releases and articles. Mac Tonnies has been on top of it with his own analysis and rebuttals.

Today, check out his latest thoughts on the subject.

Also, wish Mac some luck with his upcoming gall bladder removal, currently scheduled for tomorrow. Get well soon Mac!

I haven't gotten my copy of Philip Gardiner's new book, "Gnosis: the Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed" yet, but knowing him it's bound to be a fabulous read, and well worth it for only $12 on amazon.

Don't forget that Mr. Gardiner maintains a forum space over at Book of THoTH. So if you want to ask him anything about his books or research, go right ahead!

Whew. That was enough politics for the day. One more item for now. Check out Philip Gardiner's latest appearance on Coast 2 Coast with Art Bell HERE.

Here's a really interesting article from nytimes.com about avoiding the electoral college. John Koza has gotten a bill to the desk of Schwarzenegger in California, which, if enacted, it would give all of the state's electoral votes to the winner of the popular election in the entire united states. In effect, if each state took this on, whoever had the most votes nationwide would win the election, regardless of red and blue states.

I think that this is an interesting idea. I'd really like to see the person who gets the most votes win, it just makes sense. The way the system is set up now doesn't always work, in my opinion. We're supposedly one nation, but when we vote, all of the sudden we're just a collection of individual, independent states again. I'm not against the idea of presidential hopefuls having to campaign in every state, whether the population is small or large, but I think the system has become a little outdated. Polls have apparently said that upwards of 75% of the voters in the nation would like to see the electoral college abolished. While I'm not sure that this is the way to accomplish what Dr. Koza wants, I think it's good in the fact that it will, hopefully, get people thinking and talking about the current system.

According to this article from physorg.com, the ozone hole is reaching record size again in its seasonal growth this year.

Then from planetark.com, this article is about a climate study that seems to acquit the sun of the recent global warming trends and places it firmly on the laps of humans.

I don't want to rant and rave about climate change, because I think everyone has their minds made up one way or another on the issue and there's probably nothing that's going to change that. But can't we all just realize that it's happening, for whatever reason, quit arguing about whether it's going to get worse or not, and just focus on dealing with the consequences? We need to be prepared for what's coming, and I think there's only a very small percentage of people who really realize it.

There's an article in the September 9-15 New Scientist about exactly this. The president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Frances Cairncross, thinks that it's time to give up on the Kyoto protocol and spend the money on adaptation policies. I'm not quite ready to go that far, personally, I'd like to think that we can stem the tide a bit, but we probably need to start heading in that direction.

Ostensibly a 9-11 conspiracy theory overview by Sander Hicks, this article delves deeper into the deceptions of presidents and the government going back to Polk and the Mexican-American war.

Today from The Guardian there's an interesting look at a new fossil from Ethiopia. It seems these bones are of a baby ape-girl from about 3.3 million years ago which show a chimp-like upper body, good for climbing in trees, and a human-like lower body, good for walking upright. Scientists are quite excited to study the "missing link" fossil, between Australopithecus and Homo habilis, in more depth.

Have a look at the full article HERE

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

Thanks to Kira, from Book of THoTH for poiting this out to me. This is really a wonderful video full of Hubble images.

If you're not familiar with Gary David's work, here's an opportunity to start reading it. Over at The Book of THoTH there's a new article on the front page(I know it's hard to get past that Robert Zimmerman interview...but try) titled The Four Arms Of Destiny : Swastikas in the Hopi World.

Gary David's done a lot of research into how the cities of the Hopi in the US southwest, beginning in 1100 AD, were laid out to mirror constellations. Very similar to how Egyptian pyramids were laid out to correspond with the stars of Orion. An expanded version of his book The Orion Zone: Ancient Star Cities of the American Southwest will be available in November. I can't wait to give it a read.

I think everyone should have a look at Philip Coppens wonderful series of articles The Stargate Conundrum. This series was intended to be a follow up to The