Today I ran across a joint venture between Amnesty International and The Guardian to get out the word about the censorship on the internet that occurs around the world. At the previous link you can sign a petition that will be presented to the UN.

You'll also see that over on my sidebar, right above my links, there's a box that displays an item of censored material from somewhere in the world with each load of this page. If you want to add a box like it to your site, click here. I think it's a worthwhile campaign.

For anyone who doesn't know about the Book of THoTH's upcoming book competitions, here's a chance to get caught up.

The Book of THoTH, with the help of best selling author Philip Gardiner, has struck a deal with one of the world’s leading Music and DVD companies - Reality Entertainment - to provide thousands of dollars worth of prizes for written articles. The best articles will be chosen to appear in a new Book to be launched world-wide by Reality Press entitled "The Book of THoTH: Wisdom of the Ages".

Although there will be no royalty payments for articles used in the book, presently unpublished authors will have the chance to see their name in print in a major new book, they will then be able to use this as a catalyst to further their publishing career, or simply show to friends and family.

Basically, if you've ever wanted to break into being an author, get an article published, or even if you just have an idea you want to share with people, this is your chance. You have until December 31st to submit articles for the book release.

That's not all, though, as if that wasn't enough. There's an ongoing competition for graphic artists to design the cover of the book as well at Renderosity. This competition ends on the 13th, in about two weeks, so you'll have to hurry up and get something in for that. Even if you don't plan on submitting anything, register over at Renderosity and check out all of the entries we've received so far, there's over 80 of them right now.

For all the up to date information on each of the contests, check out the competition page before you start designing the cover and writing articles!

Loren Coleman from Cryptomundo has added to his list of the top 13 most credible cryptids and now has a list of the top 50 cryptids from around the world.

Certainly worth a read over, as most people have probably never even heard of most of them. Another good source of info on the subject is the Leaves of Wisdom information source at Book of THoTH. There's a cryptids page there that has a fairly extensive list.

While these two babies certainly don't look anything like each other, they're actually twins. In a very rare genetic occurrence, the boys each inherited a different set of genes from their mother, who is of mixed race, Nigerian and English.

How many genetic tests do you think it took to make the parents believe that one? I certainly would have been convinced the hospital made a mistake...

Perhaps the single biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the citizens of the United States of America is the election fraud to which we were submitted to in 2000 and 2004. I, personally, don't believe that Bush actually won either election. In the graph above, in the first row, you'll see a sample of paper votes and how the results compared with exit polling. Pretty close. In the bottom two rows you'll see electronic voting and how it compared with exit polls. Not even close, and inevitably in Bush's favor.

Below you'll see a video sent to me by my good friend John today of a computer programmer testifying in court that Tom Feeney(Speaker of the House of Florida in 2004) attempted to pay him to rig the machine vote count in the 2004 election.



I think anyone can draw their own conclusions about this. There's plenty of evidence out there, and it just grows more and more with each passing day. If there are vote counting machines in your district, particularly the Diebold variety, think about voting on a paper ballot via absentee voting.

Apparently the most detailed economic assessment to date on the effects of climate change has been completed, and a preview of the findings have been released. The findings are that, one, global leaders need to deal with climate change or face, perhaps, the biggest recession in the world yet. Two, if the $15 trillion investment in new energy sources required over the next fifteen years to move beyond our current energy systems is actually invested, it might bail out the economies of the countries who reap the benefits of the research. Seems like a no brainer to me, but I'm certainly not in charge of how we spend our research money here in the US.

New Scientist today has a list of the top ten list of the most controversial pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life, along with articles on each piece of evidence. It's certainly worth a read, and seems to speak to a more life filled universe than most people think.

1. 1976, The Viking Mars landers detect chemical signatures indicative of life

2. 1977, The unexplained extraterrestrial "Wow!" signal is detected by an Ohio State University radio telescope

3. 1996, Martian "fossils" are discovered in meteorite ALH80041 from Antarctica

4. 2001, A more rigorous estimate of the "Drake equation" suggests that our galaxy may contain hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets

5. 2001, The red tinge of Jupiter's moon Europa proposed to be due to frozen bits of bacteria, which also helps explain the mysterious infrared signal it gives off

6. 2002, Russian scientists argue that a mysterious radiation-proof microbe may have evolved on Mars

7. 2002, Chemical hints of life are found in old data from Venus probes and landers. Could microbes exist in Venusian clouds?

8. 2003, Sulphur traces on Jupiter's moon Europa may be the waste products of underground bacterial colonies

9. 2004, Methane in the Martian atmosphere hints at microbial metabolism

10. 2004, A mysterious radio signal is received by the SETI project on three occasions - from the same region of space

After yesterday's review of the Mothman episode of sci-fi investigates by Loren Coleman, today one of the members of the show, and possibly the only one worth watching, Richard Dolan, has written a response to Mr. Coleman at Cryptomundo.

Also today at Cryptomundo Loren Coleman has his list of the top thirteen most credible cryptids among others.

1. Bigfoot/Sasquatch (Pacific Northwest specific)
2. Orang Pendek
3. Giant Octopus
4. Cryptid Cetacean
5. Thylacine
6. Yeti
7. Nguoi Rung
8. Yeren
9. Queensland Tiger
10. Sea Serpent
11. Ogopogo
12. Spotted Lion
13. Loch Ness Monster/Nessie

There's an article today on Red Orbit about scientists studying ancient mythology to find geological hot spots. Two of the examples given are scientists finding ancient fault lines from the story of the Oracle of Delphi, and geologists finding a new fault line from stories from the Duwamish people near Seattle.

I've often wondered why mythology and ancient stories are so readily thrown away by the mainstream. Even though many of the stories seem to tell of such fantastic stories that they're easy to ignore as pure fiction, most of them are at least based on facts. Many of these myths and stories contain ancient knowledge that has somehow been forgotten by modern humanity.

Over at the Book of THoTH, there's been a lot of mythology sources added to The Book, aka. The Leaves of Wisdom over the last few months. It's worth the time to read some of the fascinating stories and legends, and maybe you'll even learn something about the world while you're at it.

C. Scott Littleton, a professor of anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, has posted an interesting write up of the Battle Of Los Angeles. As a boy, he was one of the many witnesses, and he's now written what looks like part one of his eyewitness account of that night's events.

The two of us stood side by side in front of the house, huddling together in the chill night air and staring up into the sky. The planes we’d heard were not in sight, but what captured our rapt attention was a silvery, lozenge-shaped “bug,” as my mother later described it, that was clearly visible in the searchlight beams that pinpointed it. Although it was a clear, moonlit night, no other details could be discerned, despite the fact that, when we first saw it, the object was hanging motionless almost directly overhead. Its altitude is hard to estimate, especially after all these years, but I’d guess that it was somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. This may explain why we didn’t see the orange glow reported by several eyewitnesses in Santa Monica and Culver City, where the object was apparently much lower. (One witness suggests that this glow may simply have been the reflection of shell bursts against the object’s “silvery” body.)

This is one of the most well known UFO sightings of all time, and was witnessed by over a million people on February 25th 1942, just three months after Pearl Harbor. Obviously, in that climate, the air defenses in the west coast were on heightened alert, so when something flew over California in the very early hours of the morning, the first response was that it was likely another attack. At that point the "target" was lit up with spotlights, and at least 1400 rounds of 12.8 pound, anti-aircraft artillery was fired at it. Much to their dismay, the object simply hung around for a while, and then flew off again, seemingly impervious to their attack. According to some reports, there were multiple crafts sighted during the late night of the 24th, and the early morning of the 25th, however, the one featured in the picture above seems to be the only one which was fired upon. Although the official word from the Navy about that night is that it was simply a case of "war nerves" and they were firing at nothing, the million or so people who witnessed the craft would probably disagree.

If you've watched any of the new sci-fi channel's show "Sci-Fi Investigates" you know that it's basically a waste of an hour of your life. At least, that's my personal take from the first two episodes.

Thankfully, I didn't watch any of last night's show on the Mothman investigation, but Loren Coleman, of Cryptomundo has a review of last night's episode, and the show in general, neither of which are too flattering. Seems to me he nailed the show and its demeanor exactly from what I've seen. But, as he points out, sizzle, and not substance, seems to be the characteristic of this show.

Bioluminescence? Eyes glowing on their own? Obviously not, but would you know this from watching this 2006 Sci-Fi television program? No, because it was scarier to talk about “searching the TNT for glowing red eyes”! And boring to talk about the reality of animal eyeshine.

Some of the points that Mr. Coleman make seem very slightly different than the Robert Goerman article featured on Book of THoTH recently, but I think that's part of the point Mr. Coleman was trying to make. It's extremely difficult to research such an old story at this point when people's recollections have been tainted by movies and stories over the years.

On the New Scientist website there's an interesting article about the Viking landers and some new interpretations of their Mars soil sampling. According to some researchers, there's two possible interpretations of the Viking data which support the current existence of microbial life on Mars. The first is that the landers simply didn't have sensitive enough sensors to find life in the first place. Using the same system on the Viking mission, researchers found that they couldn't detect life in some locations here on Earth, which certainly do contain life.

In some soils – including samples taken from Rio Tinto in Spain, which contain iron compounds similar to those detected in Mars soils by NASA's rover Opportunity, the sensitivity of the GCMS was actually a million times lower than its claimed threshold for detection.

The second interpretation is that microbes in Mars may have evolved to use water and hydrogen peroxide as an intracellular fluid, rather than just water, as Earth organisms do. This possibility would not only explain the low level of organics detected, since they would be oxidized by the hydrogen peroxide, and the high reactivity of the soil, it would also give the organisms a greater ability to maintain liquid in their cells at very cold temperatures.

It's amazing how we're still debating the results of experiments that were carried out so long ago. It certainly looks like the latest results may shed some light on the mysterious results obtained by the landers and boost the idea that there's currently life on Mars at the same time.

Here's an interesting article on the history of UFOs as vehicles of demons from hell. It also explores various Christian groups and the contradicting beliefs of UFOs as vehicles for angels sent by God to watch over Earth, as well as the other end of the spectrum, being the belief that UFOs simply can't be from other life sources because the Bible doesn't support the existence of life off of this planet. I'm not sure it was exactly what the author was going for, but I think it's an interesting look at certain belief systems and how people have tried to fit UFOs into their preconceived notions.

The photo above, from the Associated Press, is of the Yellow River in China after a discharge pipe was seen dumping "red and smelly" liquid into it for a couple of hours. Hundreds of millions of people live without clean water, and the city of Lanzhou(population 2 million) uses that stretch of the Yellow River for its water supply.

It never ceases to amaze me what human beings do to the environment. The really stupid part is that the same people who dumped the liquid into the river also have to use that river as their local water source. You'd think that might made them at least try to keep it clean.

Sorry again for more of our server issues. Looks like we're back, and hopefully to stick this time!

A team of British and American chemists have created the first interlocked molecules, which, while not chemically bonded, are still stuck together. They describe it as "a 'torso' with two or more 'limbs' that are completely enveloped in a one-piece 'suit'." They tout this as a step toward making artificial systems similar to a living cell. Is this one more step toward AI that's nearly impossible to tell apart from you or me? Time will tell...

While I understand that Richard Hoagland has made a lot of people think about the oddities of the solar system, and that's a good thing, I really have to wonder exactly what this latest post on his site is all about. Am I supposed to seriously consider the supposition that Data, from Star Trek, is stuck on the moon? If he's simply suggesting that there might be some interesting artifacts in various locations on the moon, then fine. I can buy it as a theory to be explored. If he's seriously suggesting that Star Trek is real and Data is on the moon, well, then he might want to lay off the LSD while watching sci-fi, in my opinion. Yes, he suggests that he doesn't care if it was really Data's head, or some other mechanical artifact, but please, someone, tell me why he even suggests that it might be Data's head in the first place...

Book of THoTH member Sol just keeps churning out great articles. I wish I could write as much and as well as he does! The latest article is about the Ark of Covenant and the rituals that came along with approaching it. Specifically he spends a large part of the article investigating the Biblical plant kanneh-bosem, and he follows the story to Ethiopia, said to be the resting place of the Ark. Many people will be surprised to see where this one ends up...

Don't miss this one, much like a couple of his articles, it'll probably get picked up by a magazine soon. Why pay to read it later when you can read it right now?

I read a really great article from Kevin Tillman today. Kevin is the brother of Pat Tillman, who many people know as the NFL football player who gave up tens of millions of dollars playing a game to join the army. He has now written an article about just how bad the direction the US is going really is.

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

...

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

That's as well said as anywhere I've ever read. Be sure to read the whole article and pass it on.

I'm working on some final research for writing an article today, so I don't really have all that much to say. While I do some writing, here's a UFO case that I've been keeping an eye on.



In 1953 a jet was scrambled over Lake Superior because of a UFO on an air force base radar screen. The jet never came back, and it and its crew, pilot Felix Moncla and radar observer Robert Wilson, had been lost ever since. This has been called the Kinross UFO case.

Apparently, in 2005, a dive company in the Great Lakes area found it. Using sonar, they mapped out the jet, missing a wing, under the water, and a disc shaped object in the water nearby. They released the sonar image of the jet a while back, and then the disc just recently. However, not too long after releasing the image, their website was shut down. Immediately the rumors started that they'd been shut down by the government, or some anti-UFO agencies. However, Dirk Vander Ploeg, the editor and publisher of UFODigest.com, seems to think, after speaking with them, that perhaps they just got scared off by all of the attention they were getting, and they decided to pull back, regroup, and then explore further at a later date.

Like he said, I guess after waiting 53 years to find out what happened, we can all wait another couple of months at this point.

I read a story today in the Guardian today about a study from New Scientist. The study showed that giving violent youth offenders vitamin supplements decreased their violent offenses by 37%. I remember when this study originally came out, in 2002(link for New Scientist subscribers only), and I couldn't believe back then that people seemed shocked that malnutrition led to violent and/or serious crime. I was also pretty disgusted that the US and UK governments decided that it was OK to prescribe powerful drugs for offenders in jail, even minors, but deemed a vitamin supplement unnecessary...but that's a blog for another day.

It's amazing what we, in the modern era, eat, and still we expect to maintain happy healthy lives. It's as if most people assume that it's McDonald's job to give you all the vitamins and minerals you need to be healthy. Somehow, someway, we've got to change the modern world's diet, and fast food simply isn't the answer.

As an example, here's an average daily diet for one of the offenders in the trial:

Breakfast: nothing (asleep)

Mid morning: nothing (asleep)

Lunchtime: 4 or 5 cups of coffee with milk and 2½ heaped teaspoons of sugar

Mid afternoon: 3 or 4 cups of coffee with milk and 2½ heaped sugars

Tea: chips, egg, ketchup, 2 slices of white bread, 5 cups of tea or coffee with milk and sugar

Evening: 5 cups of tea or coffee with milk and sugar, 20 cigarettes, £2 worth of sweets, cakes and if money available 3 or 4 pints of beer.

The sad fact is, this is probably what the kid ate his entire life, and probably all he's ever known. Sadly, I don't think there's any possible way his brain chemistry can be normal given that diet. Our culture's diet is actually making criminals, and then our society is prescribing them expensive, powerful drugs in an attempt to counteract it. Does that make any sense?

I think Keith Olbermann really explains the death of Habeas Corpus, put over upon us by the current administration, better than anyone else I've seen. Most people don't seem to understand the importance of the law that was signed by the President on the 17th. Watch how it's explained that by signing this one simple bill into law, 9 out of 10 items in the Bill of Rights are now gone.



And then a commentary on what it all means and how it happened.



I highly recommend telling everyone you know about exactly what's happened here in the US. Somehow, most people don't seem to have caught on yet.

You can also download these videos through TruthOut right here.

Michael Bourne, aka. THoTH, of Book of THoTH has written a nice front page article detailing some old UFO sightings in an attempt to show that the phenomenon extends far beyond the 1940's, as many people will have you believe. Taking his inspiration from an old book he recently found, he explores seven sightings from 1833 to 1904, including a "Huge Green Disc" from 1882 seen by a prominent astronomer of the day, "Missiles from Mars" in 1873, also seen by two astronomers, and "Impossible ‘Meteors’" in 1833 seen by astronomers and many others.

Hopefully, if I find a cure for writer's block, I'll write an article about older sightings...However, this is a must read for anyone who's interested in the UFO phenomenon and it's very well put together.

Author Philip Coppens continues to write great articles for his site. His latest is about Socrates. In it, he explores a really great question, namely, "Was Socrates a real philosopher, or was he just a literary tool Plato used to explore his own thoughts?"

I might be in the ignorant minority here, but I did not realize that nothing Socrates supposedly wrote has survived to this day, nor did I know most of the historical facts about the man that Philip writes about. Another great article by Mr. Coppens.

The wonders of modern technology...

A UNC professor has taken armchair archaeology to a whole new level. After hearing about google earth, Scott Madry sat down on his laptop and recorded 101 possible archeological sites using only the satellite images from google. 75 of them turned out to be known sites, and he's hoping the other 26 turn out to be new sites to explore.

After reading about the Italian man's good luck, Madry got out his laptop, fired up Google Earth and looked over lands in Burgundy near his research area. Google Earth displays that area in particularly good resolution. Immediately he spotted features that, to his trained eye, resembled outlines of Iron Age, Bronze Age, ancient Roman and medieval residences, forts, roads and monuments.

It's pretty cool being able to access such great data from your own living room whenever you want.

This story immediately reminded me of a site I used to check out all the time, but for some unknown reason hadn't been to in a while. Satellite Discoveries is a very cool site that analyzes satellite data looking for interesting images. Some of the things they've analyzed include:

Underwater linear anomalies have been documented off the Southern tip of Florida

An image study that includes 4 areas off the coast of Cuba that contain unexplained, linear features

Sub-surface anomalies have been detected in this area that may be an ancient burial site near Giza

Images of an extremely large gridded feature on the Eastern side of the Cay Sal Bank, which also include a large triangular and linear anomaly

Linear, Mound-like features have been found on the Great Bahama Bank near the Bimini Islands

And probably hundreds more...

Once you get into this site, you'll probably be there looking around for a while, so be sure to check it out when you have the time!

There's an article on future aircrafts which will morph during flight on Live Science. The experimental planes would morph their structure during flight to use less energy in flight, or to make for better maneuverability.

The reason I bring this up is because I've heard many times over the years I've looked at UFO reports that people claim that the structure of what they're seeing changes shape. I've previously written that maybe people aren't seeing solid objects in the first place, which would certainly account for "structure" which changes in flight. However, maybe this idea accounts for that as well. If so, it would seem to point to futuristic technology in sightings again.

Anyone who knows me knows that I enjoy beer. I enjoy making it, I enjoy tasting new beers, and I certainly enjoy just sitting down and drinking a couple of 'em. So, while surfing around yesterday, I came across a pretty good little blog on all things beer that you should check out.

There are some new updates from Mac and Paul on the recent New Frontiers Symposium.

Paul has part II of his New Frontiers Symposium Report. He talks a bit about each of the presentations and some of the things they all did over the weekend. The reports on each speaker sound very interesting and really make me wish I'd been able to attend!

Mac's got three posts today on the symposium, so you'd better just read his whole blog! You'll be thoroughly entertained everyday if you do...but...if you're like me and you like to know where certain subjects are, then here's a few links:

Halifax photos part 1

Halifax photos part 2

Those two form a pseudo photo blog of his trip to the symposium.

And, Mac commenting on Paul's commenting on his talk. Sounds like he did a great job to me.

And, while I'm at it, even though I'm adding it in a little late, lets not forget Jezzie's two part review. Really a great job by her, made me feel like I was there. Part One.
And part two.

The EU has pending legislation to prevent anyone from uploading video to the 'net without a license. Coming on the heels of the US government attempting to gather more data on social networking sites such as MySpace, and the pending of internet 2, I really wonder how much longer the fairly free exchange of information on the internet is going to be available. Lets hope the sucesses of the last decade don't get taken away for a system in which only "acceptable" data can be sent and received.

I found another pretty interesting political blog while surfing around the other day. It's called Pressing the Flesh, and the blog that got me there originally is a look at some political polls and a breakdown of the current standings of some close congressional races.

As many of you know, Book of THoTH is back up and on our new server. A big thanks goes out to THoTH who, probably, hasn't slept in days at this point. Great job bud!

Here's a video from a Princeton project showing just how easy it is to hack election results here in the US.

Paul Kimball's posted volume one of a review of the New Frontiers Symposium which happened over the weekend. The best news I've heard in a while is that he's planning a 2007 version, possibly in the spring, and possibly with some web video casting allowing more people to view it. Lets hope him and computer genius Will Wise are able to pull that one off. Hopefully, no matter what format, he'll be able to put together another one, because everything I've heard so far tells me that this was a great event. Personally, I can't wait to make it to NFS '07!

Speaking of Paul...I missed part two of his Binnall of America interview until I saw it at the Daily Grail today. If it's as good as part one, you really don't want to miss it.

Over at Jezzie's blog she's posted some really great panoramas of the Halifax area. Looks like a beautiful spot.

While I'm speaking about the symposium, there's a couple of news write-ups that I've seen today worth taking a look at.

First up is Mysteries Canada who did a nice write up of the symposium's afternoon speakers along with a couple of photos. Included is a bit about each of the afternoon topics, including Greg Bishop and the contactee movement, Paul Kimball and memorable UFO cases(even if they do call him Paul Bishop once...), and Stanton Friedman and physics and flight, along with a recounting of the Betty and Barney Hill abductee case with now known facts about a very accurate star-map which she drew under hypnosis.

The other write up comes from The Daily News, a local Halifax paper. In their review, they focused a bit on a question from Stanton Friedman, which doubled as the title of their article, "What if Earth is a penal colony for aliens?" While they focused on a little bit more of the "kooky" aspects of the conference, they gave it a fairly balanced look.

Overall, a big congratulations to Paul for pulling this off, and here's wishing you luck for the future. I hope this becomes a bigtime annual event.

Well, the continuing saga of the server change continues today. It looks like we're back up, but not fully functional yet. Look for an update later today as everything gets back to normal. Anyone who wants Book of THoTH updates should we ever go down again should join our new google group at:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/thebookofthoth/

Looks like in order to stay alive Book of THoTH is going to have to switch to a new server today. Hopefully we won't be down too long, and I'll try to post some new stories later in the day. Wish us luck on our move!

If we are down for an extended period of time, look at the Genetic Theory site for an update on when BoT will be back on-line.

Well, believe it or not, Book of THoTH is too popular for our server! The server outage today was due to the number of hits we've been getting, and while we're getting 30-50,000 page views a day it looks like we might have to move to a new server. So, if this blog goes down again, I apologize, it's beyond my control. Please bear with us as we prepare for bigger and better things!

Sorry about the server outage everyone. It was far beyond my control.

I'm off to go watch the Denver Broncos pound the Oakland Raiders into submission tonight, but I'll be back to blogging tomorrow!

Oh, and, how about those Buffs? They made this alumnus proud yesterday.

If you enjoyed the article from author and Book of THoTH member Gary David that I wrote about a couple of days ago, make sure you check out another article on his site. Titled "Mystery Mesa" it's about Gary's visit to a mesa in Arizona where there's an old freemason temple alongside some much older, interesting Anasazi inscriptions.

So what is going on here? We have a Freemasonry temple built in the early 20th century next to a pueblo constructed in the late 13th century. In the adjacent rock art we find Mayan and Egyptian symbology mixed with traditional Anasazi petroglyph designs. Why did the Masons chose this particular mesa to erect their open-air worship center? Did the crumbling foundations of the village remind them of their sacred office? Did they recognize the non-indigenous iconography of this rock art, which resonated with specific elements in their holy ceremonies? Was an elite cabal operating within the rural Arizona Masonic lodge privy to arcane lore which dictated that the site be established precisely where we find its ruins today?

This article's also got a lot of great pictures of petroglyphs, which I've grown to love having spent a lot of time in the southwest.

The New Frontiers Symposium is today. If you happen to be in Halifax, you know where you need to be!

In the interest of keeping politics and such to a minimum here, I won't really comment on this site. However, Physics 9-11: A Scientific Panel Investigating nine-eleven is well worth a thorough read, in my opinion.

Oh, and, by the way, the cost of the Iraq war is now over $334 billion.

And, while I'm at it, please take the time to read Glenn Greenwald's article on the torture of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. In case you don't remember, he's a US citizen, snatched up in the US, and declared an "enemy combatant" so that the administration could take away all his human rights.

Lets all hope that my alma mater, the University of Colorado, can end their big losing streak in football today against Texas Tech. It's up to ten straight games, and you just know that Tech's going to throw the ball all over the field. Lets just hope CU can keep pace offensively today. Go buffs!

There's another wonderful front page article on Book of THoTH today from member SolAris. For anyone who hasn't read anything he's written, check this one out. It's called "The Ghosts of Emmaus" and it's about his walking trip about 200 miles from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, then around the Jerusalem mountains and off south-west from there towards the old Philistine city of Gath, today the modern town of Kiryat Gat. Specifically, this one's about a night time excursion which he took one evening around some ruins. It contains ghosts, demolished cities, and an encounter with some very serious soldiers.

On the night in question, the full moon, I took my water bottle, walking stick and machete, and headed downhill towards the little lake, having decided it’s time to finally go up that old Roman watercourse all the way to the top. And of course it’s no fun at all just walking down an actual road, so I cut across the hillside to get there, through an old grove of olive and fig trees, interspersed with opuntia cactus. The moon was huge and I could see everything just like in sunlight, but silvery gray in the ambivalent shadows of the night.

...

Suddenly there was an unbelievable blood-curdling scream on the terrace right above me! As if a child screamed out in pain. It shattered the silence of the night...like an explosion.

It would be hard to describe the somersaults my heart did, as I dove down and tried to melt myself into a bush. It seemed obvious that I’ve been discovered, and "they" were coming. I braced myself and pulled out the machete.

This story is an enthralling read from start to finish, from a really quality storyteller. Be sure to check it out!

A big congratulations to my on-line friend and author Gary Osborn. The Amazingly Dense, Stubborn and Elusive Randi has mocked you in his latest newsletter. In the section News of Scientific Woo Woo he not only mocks you, but the entire idea of synchronicity. I only hope that someday, somehow, Randi will mock me as well. That'll be the day I know that I've made it to the bigtime.

Being a chemist, this interested me. A group of University of Pennsylvania researchers have created a new process for free radical polymerization, which takes place at room temperature, uses less metal catalyst to drive the reaction and requires a very short reaction time. If everything they claim in the story turns out to be reproducible, they've hit the jackpot for the plastics and rubbers industries, among many others, and the entire process of making millions of modern day materials could change practically overnight.

Soldiers in Afghanistan chasing the Taliban have encountered an unexpected problem...