Unpaid Blogger Hits ‘Slave Owner’ Huffington With $105M Class Action Lawsuit

Arianna Huffington is like a “slave owner on a plantation of bloggers,” according to the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit that seeks more than $100 million in damages on behalf of 9,000 unpaid bloggers who, he argues, should be paid for helping build the Huffington Post into the valuable media property AOL bought for $315 million.

The lawsuit, led by well-known New York labor activist and Huffington Post blogger Jonathan Tasini, alleges that thousands of writers and other contributors have been wrongly denied any compensation for the value they created for the Huffington Post.

While not an unprecedented legal action, the scale of the alleged infractions — and the high profile of both Huffington and AOL — means that the outcome of this case could set an important standard about the rights of freelancers in the internet age.

“This is about justice,” Tasini told Wired.com by phone Tuesday. “Arianna Huffington is like a slave owner on a plantation of bloggers. The truth is, without the bloggers there was no Huffington Post and there would be no sale to AOL. She has decided to rob all these bloggers of a fair share of this profit-making venture.”

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in New York federal court (.pdf), seeks at least $105 million in damages on behalf of the Huffington Post’s unpaid writers and other contributors. It names AOL, TheHuffingtonPost.com, Arianna Huffington, and Ken Lerer, the wealthy New York investor who co-founded the website with her, as defendants. They have 21 days to respond to the lawsuit.

In a statement e-mailed to Wired.com, Huffington Post spokesperson Mario Ruiz dismissed the complaint as “wholly without merit.” The lawsuit was first reported by Jeff Bercovici at Forbes.com.

“As we’ve said before, our bloggers use our platform — as well as other unpaid group blogs across the web — to connect and help their work be seen by as many people as possible,” Ruiz said. “It’s the same reason people go on TV shows: to promote their views and ideas. HuffPost bloggers can cross-post their work on other sites, including their own. Aside from our group blog, to which thousands of people from around the world contribute, we operate a journalistic enterprise with hundreds of paid staff editors, writers and reporters.”

AOL and Huffington have laid off more than 200 editorial staffers and freelancers over the last month, including some veteran journalists.

Tasini and his lawyers are pursuing a two-pronged legal strategy, with two separate legal claims. The first is “unjust enrichment” under federal law, and the second is a New York state statutory claim for “deceptive business practices.”

via Unpaid Blogger Hits ‘Slave Owner’ Huffington With $105M Class Action Lawsuit | Epicenter | Wired.com.

Word slaves? I don't understand the part where bloggers have to write for the HuffPost or else... or else what?

Superman comic stolen from Nicolas Cage is found

A 1938 comic featuring Superman's debut that has been recovered in a storage locker in the US appears to be the copy stolen from Nicolas Cage, police say.

The 47-year-old actor, who accepted an insurance payout after the 2000 theft, said last week's find, in Los Angeles, was "divine providence".

He said he was hopeful the "heirloom", a mint condition copy of Action Comics No 1, would be returned to his family.

In March 2010, a copy of the comic sold for $1.5m (£920,000) at a US auction.

Detective Don Hrycyk, of the Los Angeles Police Department's art theft department, said an investigation into the theft and recovery - from a locker in the San Fernando Valley - was in its early stages.

He said a number of false leads had been generated over the years, including a 2002 tip-off that the comic was in a safety deposit box in Tennessee.

When detectives followed the lead, they found a replica of the comic's cover wrapped around a woman's underwear catalogue.

Detective Hrycyk said it was unclear if Cage would be reunited with the comic and that the actor would have to work out details with the insurance company.

Action Comics No 1 - of which 100 are said to still be in existence - sold originally for 10 cents.

Comic book fan Cage was once linked to a film version of Superman and has a son called Kal-El - the birth name given to the indestructible hero.

via BBC News - Superman comic stolen from Nicolas Cage is found.

Superboy (Kal-El) is a native of the planet Krypton, the son of Jor-El, Krypton's most brilliant scientist and inventor, and his wife Lara. Finding evidence that the planet is about to be destroyed, Jor-El fails to convince the ruling Science Council, so he conducts tests with model rockets to enable his own family to escape. His tests meet with mixed success. In one experiment, Kal-El's pet dog Krypto is lost when a test rocket carrying Krypto is knocked off course by a meteor.

As Krypton's destruction approaches, Jor-El still has not built a rocket large enough to hold his family. With the planet coming apart beneath them, Jor-El and Lara put their two-year old son in a model rocket, launch it just minutes ahead of Krypton's destruction, and send Kal-El to the planet Earth. Found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, an older couple with no children of their own, the child is anonymously left at a Smallville orphanage. Some days later, the Kents successfully adopt the toddler. They name the boy Clark Kent, using Martha's maiden name for his first name. ...

On his eighth birthday, Clark dons an indestructible costume woven by Martha from the Kryptonian blankets that accompanied him on his journey to Earth. He becomes the costumed hero Superboy, the first superhero of Earth-One. Around the same time as his public debut, Superboy learns of his Kryptonian origin, and several weeks later, he gives reporter Perry White the exclusive story about his alien background. Though most of Superboy's early adventures occur in the vicinity of Smallville, he becomes famous for his superheroics around the globe. Superboy's status as both Smallville's hometown hero and as a national/global hero are reflected in the emergency-signal system that he establishes with Chief Parker of the Smallville Police and the President of the United States. As Superboy repeatedly ventures into interstellar space, his super-heroics also bring him fame on other worlds.

In Smallville, Superboy uses tunnels from the basement of the Kents' house and general store to make quick, concealed exits when Superboy is needed. Superboy also maintains a secret lab in the basement of the Kent house, where he builds Superboy and Clark Kent robots to cover for him when he is busy elsewhere or otherwise unavailable. ...

via Wikipedia

Holly Thompson Can't Shut Her Mouth After Yawning in Class

... Holly Thompson, 17, of Kingsthorpe, Northampton, was in the middle of a particularly enthralling class on politics when she reacted to the subject matter like many other students would -- she yawned.

But what happened next wasn't so typical. Her trap wouldn't shut, making her look like an anime character in a state of shock.

... Adding insult to injury was the reaction from teachers and classmates. "All my classmates and teachers thought it was really funny, everyone burst out laughing. It was awful," she said.

Although the school nurse tried everything..., including putting a hot water bottle under her chin and using ice packs, MSNBC reported that Thompson eventually was sent.... to the hospital for additional treatment.

The doctor on duty, Ejiro Obakponovwe, didn't think Thompson's injury was a laughing matter.

"It can be quite serious, because she can't eat, can't really drink, and you get really dehydrated," Obakponovwe told the BBC show "Bizarre E.R." "But again, it's quite painful as well."

The good doctor tried an unusual ... technique: She placed 26 tongue depressors in Thompson's mouth.

"The tongue depressors allowed the jaw to get tired, relax, so the jaw can click back into place," Obakponovwe said.

The treatment worked, but it still pains Thompson to talk about it.

"It was really bad at the hospital," she said. "I had to sit in the waiting room with a scarf over my mouth so nobody could see what had happened. It was really difficult to communicate with doctors as well. ....

via Holly Thompson Can't Shut Her Mouth After Yawning in Class.

She should have tried the Ellerbeck Maneuver. It has helped several people recover from a mouth stuck open according to the comments on michael's blog:

Some people don’t recommend putting your hands in your mouth because the force of the jaw closing could injure your fingers……but

This works for me: right after you notice the pop feeling that your jaw has locked, relax…it will come undone! Take your two pointer fingers and stick them in your mouth and grab your farthest back teeth (your molars or whatever), one side with each hand. Wrap your thumbs around your jawbone. Press down firmly with your pointer fingers sort of down and back while relaxing your jaw. Hopefully it will reset itself. The quicker you set it the better.

Also see your dentist about it. More Info

I’m not a medical person of any sorts, this just works for me. Once my mouth got stuck open for a half hour. That really sucks. If you hit this page I hope it helps a little.

Feel free to call this the Ellerbeck Maneuver if you so desire Not as life saving as the Heimlich but we all do our best!

- link

 

Early Christian Lead Codices: Artifacts Are Forgeries

Seventy metal books allegedly discovered in a cave in Jordan have been hailed as the earliest Christian documents. Dating them to mere decades after Jesus' death, scholars have called the "lead codices" the most important discovery in archaeological history, and leading media outlets have added fuel to the fire surrounding the books in recent weeks.

"Never has there been a discovery of relics on this scale from the early Christian movement, in its homeland and so early in its history," reported the BBC. [Image]

Slowly, though, more and more questions have arisen about the authenticity of the codices, whose credit-card-size pages are cast in lead and bound together by lead rings. Today, an Aramaic translator has completed his analysis of the artifacts, and has found what he says is incontrovertible evidence that they are fakes.

...

"I obtained photos of all the text that was available, and spent the past week looking over them," said Steve Caruso, a professional Aramaic translator and teacher who is consulted by dealers of antiquities to analyze inscriptions on ancient artifacts.

"I noticed there were a lot of Old Aramaic forms that were at least 2,500 years old. But they were mixed in with other

forms that were younger, so I took a closer look at that and pulled out all the distinct forms that I could find," Caruso told Life's Little Mysteries. "It was very, very odd — I've never seen this kind of mix before." The youngest scripts he identified, called Nabatean and Palmyrene, date from the second and third centuries, proving the documents could not possibly have been written during the dawn of Christianity, Caruso said.

Even the oldest scripts were written by someone who didn't know what he was doing, the new analysis shows. "There were inconsistencies in how they did the stroke order, which you would never have seen. Scribes had very specific ways of doing things," Caruso said. Furthermore, several characters appeared "flipped" — a mistake that would imply they were hastily copied rather than original. ...

"I was a little bit surprised that they did take on as much media coverage as they did," Caruso said. "The media took the press release hook, line and sinker without doing serious investigation. If they had they would have found that David Elkington, who brought them to the forefront, is in the fringe of academia."

Some good photos and good timing probably gave the artifacts a boost. "I think there were a lot of really, really good photos, and the whole thing seemed convincing on the surface. People are looking for something to write about in the Easter season and this is something that would make great news."

Fake Christian relics are relatively common, Bowes said. "Modern people's urge to find material evidence from the first two centuries of Christianity is much stronger than the actual evidence itself. ...via Exclusive: Early Christian Lead Codices Now Called Fakes | Christian Artifacts Are Forgeries | Life's Little Mysteries.

I wonder if the forger was the real "eerily familiar" face of Jesus in the forgery.

Archaeologists Uncover Evidence of a Minoan Presence Among Ancient Canaanites

A recent and ongoing excavation at the remains of an expansive Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace in the western Galilee region of present-day Israel is opening a new window on the possible presence of ancient Minoans at an ancient Canaanite palace, revealing what may be the earliest known Western art found in the eastern Mediterranean. Known as Tel Kabri located near its namesake kibbutz not far from historic Acco and the resort town of Nahariya on the coast of Israel, the site features an early Middle Bronze Age MB I palace dated to the 19th century B.C.E., making it, along with ancient Aphek and possibly Megiddo, the earliest MB palace discovered in present-day Israel. This conclusion was drawn as a result of excavations conducted there as recently as December 20, 2010 to January 10, 2011. But the tell-tale signs of an Aegean presence or influence at the site show up in a later developmental phase of the palace structure some 150 to 200 years later in the overlying MB II palace dated to the 17th century.

via Archaeologists Uncover Evidence of a Minoan Presence Among Ancient Canaanites | popular archaeology -.

Humans may owe life to pumice

Pumice, the rock used remove dry skin from feet, could have been responsible for the birth of life on Earth, scientists have claimed.

It is commonly known for its ability to remove dry skin from feet, but pumice stone may have had a far more important role in our lives than we realise.

Scientists claim the rock, which is produced as volcanic gases bubble through lava as it solidifies, may have been responsible for the birth of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.

In a surprising new theory for how life evolved our planet, palaeobiologists believe the tiny pores in the volcanic rock provided the perfect environment for the first living cells to develop.

They say they have found evidence that the essential cocktail of chemicals that make up all organisms on Earth can accumulated inside the pumice pores while other chemicals commonly found there could have kick started biological reactions in the presence of ultraviolet light.

Pumice is also well known for its ability to float and massive rafts of the rock have washed up on shorelines around the world decades after major volcanic eruptions.

via Humans may owe more than smooth feet to pumice, claim scientists - Telegraph.

Terrorists Using Online Games Undetected by CIA and NSA

A cartoon style World War 2 era action shooter game. Customize your character, join a faction and enter the fray.  (100 most popular free on line games)


Despite billions of dollars spent by intelligence agencies like NSA and CIA on technologies to intercept and monitor electronic messages and communications, terrorists all over the world are able to communicate without fear of discovery, using online computer games.

The CIA tentatively acknowledged this threat in its 2008 Data Mining Report and started the Reynard Project as a "seedling effort" to detect suspicious behaviour and actions in the virtual world. Although online gaming has exploded and hundreds of millions of people participate in these games, not much has been heard about the Reynard Project since.

Recently the danger of terrorists using computer games as a secure communication channel led to alarming news articles by major newspapers in Europe, following the release of the technothriller MMORPG: How a computer game becomes deadly serious.

Dutchman Emile van Veen spent two years researching how terrorists could utilise so called Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). These online games appear to be an unbreakable code for intelligence agencies and offer communication channels like email, chat and voice chat. They are violent by nature, making it virtually impossible to detect dangerous conversations. They can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, by using anonymous accounts. Van Veen's story is set in both the real and the virtual world, a novel concept in itself. Emile van Veen: "Especially reproductions of our real world are dangerous. Someone who wants to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge could examine the target in detail and scout his way in and out as well." He thinks the danger is imminent.

After the release of his thriller in Europe, Van Veen received a lot of worried press attention. "Many people accused me of bringing this to the attention of terrorists and criminals. That's unfair, it's already there. The Intelligence Community must act and they must act fast. I hope my novel helps in bringing about a sense of urgency," he says.

http://www.emilevanveen.com

via Terrorists Using Online Games Undetected by CIA and NSA -- SCHIEDAM, Netherlands and NEW YORK, April 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --.

Afghanistan: Drone missile 'killed two US soldiers'

A drone missile strike is suspected of killing two US soldiers by mistake in southern Afghanistan last week, US military officials have said.

The apparent case of "friendly fire" is being investigated - if it is confirmed it would be a rare instance of pilotless aircraft killing US forces.

The incident took place in Helmand province where US-led troops are trying to push back Taliban insurgents.

US drones frequently target suspected militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Critics say hundreds of civilians have also been killed in such strikes in recent years.

The two US soldiers who lost their lives - sergeant Jeremy Smith, 26, and seaman Benjamin Rast, 23 - were part of a unit sent to reinforce marines coming under heavy fire from insurgents outside the town of Sangin, US network NBC News, which first reported the incident, said.

The marines, who were watching a video feed from the armed Predator drone overhead, saw infrared images moving towards them on the feed and may have concluded that those were insurgents instead of fellow marines, NBC reported.

The Pentagon has yet to comment on the deaths, saying they are being investigated. ...

via BBC News - Afghanistan: Drone missile 'killed two US soldiers'.

Let's get to the point where everyone fights wars using robots and drones. And once your machines are defeated, the war is over. No more blowing real people to bits.

Cesium-137 forecast shows high altitude radiation cloud concentrate over western US on April 12

YouTube - Cesium-137 forecast shows high altitude radiation cloud concentrate over western US on April 12.

The orientation of the globe is strange. The US is on the upper left and it is almost upside down. See it now?

Japan ups nuke crisis severity to match Chernobyl

Japan raised the crisis level at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to a severity on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing high overall radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.

Japanese nuclear regulators said they raised the rating from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale of nuclear accidents overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.

The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA. But Japanese officials played down any health effects and stressed that the harm caused by Chernobyl still far outweighs that caused by the Fukushima plant.

The revision came a day after the government added five communities to a list of places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius already had been cleared around the plant.

The news was received with chagrin by residents in Iitate, one of the five communities, where high levels of radiation have been detected in the soil. The village of 6,200 people is about 40 kilometers from the Fukushima plant.

"It's very shocking to me," said Miyuki Ichisawa, 52, who runs a coffee shop in Iitate. "Now the government is officially telling us this accident is at the same level of Chernobyl." ...

via Japan ups nuke crisis severity to match Chernobyl - Yahoo! News.

This is from yesterday, April 11, 2011:

Breaking news flash being reported on CNN says a new 7.1 earthquake hit Japan today at 8:08 AM local time  or 4:08 PM EST. Shortly after a new fire was reported at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

A plant operator is reported to have phoned in the report of the fire describing a fire and smoke coming from the reactor.

CNN said details will follow but so far TEPCO and the government of Japan have not made any statement on the fire.

The news of the new fire is breaking at the same time as news that Japan has officially admitted the Fukushima disaster is equal to Chernobyl and Japan has officially upgraded the Fukushima nuclear disaster to a level 7 incident.

Pakistan Tells CIA to Halt Drone Strikes

Pakistan has privately demanded the Central Intelligence Agency suspend drone strikes against militants on its territory, one of the U.S.'s most effective weapons against al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, officials said.

Pakistan has also asked the U.S. to reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

The U.S. strategy in the war in Afghanistan hinges on going after militants taking refuge in Pakistan. The breakdown in intelligence cooperation has cast a pall over U.S.-Pakistani relations, with some officials in both countries saying intelligence ties are at their lowest point since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks spurred the alliance.

Beyond the Afghan battlefield, officials believe that without a robust counterterrorism relationship with Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups can operate with far greater impunity when planning attacks on the U.S. and Europe. The vast majority of attacks against the West in the last decade originated in Pakistan.

Relations have been under heightened strain since Pakistan's arrest in January of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was jailed after killing two armed Pakistani men in Lahore on Jan. 27. Mr. Davis was released last month, but the case fueled Pakistani resentment over the presence of U.S. operatives in their country.

Pakistani officials complained that Mr. Davis and potentially dozens of other CIA operatives were working without Islamabad's full knowledge.

Drone strikes are opposed by an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, and are widely seen as a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. ...

via Pakistan Tells CIA to Halt Drone Strikes - WSJ.com.

Cold asteroids may have a soft heart

A new analysis of one of the most well-known meteorites on Earth provides strong evidence that the prevailing view of many asteroids is wrong. Rather than randomly mixed blobs of rock and dust stuck together, it appears that the asteroid that was the source of the Allende meteorite was large enough to have had a molten core, even though its surface remained cold and solid. The new view also suggests that astronomers’ view of how planets like the Earth formed may need revision.

The Allende meteorite fell in Mexico in 1969, shattering into thousands of fragments as it slammed into the Earth's atmosphere and strewing them across dozens of miles of desert. More than two tons of scattered pieces have been found, and it has become perhaps the best-studied meteorite ever.

When the solar system formed, planets built up through the slow accumulation of smaller objects that collided and stuck together. When these growing collections of rubble reached a certain size, radioactive elements within them heated up enough so that the rock melted, and heavier elements tended to sink toward their cores. This separating process (known as differentiation) ended up producing concentric layers of different composition, structured like the layers of an onion. In the metallic cores at the centers of these bodies, swirling eddies of molten metal would produce a magnetic field. Planetary scientists have long thought that asteroids that formed cores must have completely differentiated and melted throughout their interiors. Now, new findings by planetary scientists at MIT and other institutions suggest that may not be the case: that many asteroids with cores might be only partially differentiated, with their outer regions largely unmelted. ...

The new analysis shows that while newly formed asteroids melted from the inside out because of their radioactive elements, their surfaces, exposed to the cold of space and continuing to accumulate layers of new, cold fragments, remained cold. Computer modeling of the cooling process by Elkins-Tanton clearly shows this disparity of a molten interior and cold, unmelted crust, she says.

The decisive new evidence came from studies of the way mineral grains within the meteorite are magnetized: the magnetic orientations of all the grains line up, showing that they became magnetized after the material had all become stuck together, rather than being a remnant of earlier magnetic fields in the swirling cloud of dust from which the object formed. In addition, using a form of radiometric dating involving isotopes of xenon, they could determine that the magnetization took place over a period of millions of years. That rules out an alternative theory that the grains could have become magnetized as a result of a brief pulse of magnetism in the cloud of dust itself.

The finding has implications far beyond the specific asteroid that was the source of this meteorite ...

via Cold asteroids may have a soft heart.

How a penniless mystic won Russia the space race

Rocket man: Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, aboard the Vostok spaceship in 1961

... the Soviet Union’s success in the “space race” was due not only to pioneering scientists, but also to a penniless 19th-century mystic.

Nikolai Fedorov was so poor that he rented not a flat but the corner of a room, and lived solely on bread, tea and water. It’s said that he died because one of his pupils gave him a fur coat – the coat made him sweat, the sweat led to a cold, and the cold turned into pneumonia. If anyone has ever died a death more Russian, I’d be fascinated to hear about it.

Fedorov’s philosophy, Cosmism, boiled down to the belief that man must conquer space. How this was to be achieved, he had no practical ideas – but he did inspire someone else to have them. He became the mentor of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a near-deaf teenager who’d struggled at school, and Tsiolkovsky, exhilarated by Fedorov’s dreams, set out to realise them. In 1903 – seven months before the flight of the first aeroplane, never mind the first spacecraft – he published detailed calculations explaining how to fire a rocket into space, at what speed it would have to travel, how much fuel it would need. Naturally, no one paid these calculations the least notice.

Years later, though, they were studied by Sergei Korolev, the leader of a group of space enthusiasts eager to build their own rocket. Stalin’s secret police, showing characteristic sagacity, sent him to the Gulag, but after his release he led the Soviet space programme, thanks to which, 50 years ago tomorrow, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth. ...

via How a penniless mystic won Russia the space race - Telegraph.

Fifty years ago today, on April 12, 1961, humanity finally overcame the gravity of our home planet and ventured for the first time into the space beyond. ...

To celebrate Yuri Gagarin's momentous journey aboard his Vostok 3KA spacecraft, a film has been created titled First Orbit. The movie is a real-time recreation of Gagarin's pioneering first orbit of the Earth, combining footage shot entirely in space from onboard the International Space Station with Gagarin's original mission audio and a musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.



via DailyGrail

Triangular UFOs: Close Encounters With Unidentified Dorito-Shaped Objects

This illustration shows a triangular UFO seen over North Carolina in 1975, witnessed by AOL News writer Lee Speigel and several law enforcement officers.

... are the mysterious flying, silent, hovering triangles the product of a top-secret military project reportedly called the Tactical Reconnaissance TR-3B aircraft, code-named Astra, as many people have speculated all over the Internet?

Whatever these things are, they've been seen, photographed and videotaped by lots of people around the world, so it doesn't seem likely that everybody's lying or confusing these crafts with the planet Venus or meteors streaking in the sky.

I called on retired Army Col. John Alexander to give some much-needed insight into all of this. For six decades, he's been involved in national security affairs, holding key positions in special operations, intelligence, and research and development.

"A few of these sightings can be attributed to development of secret aircraft, such as stealth vehicles, including Have Blue -- which was the prototype for the F-117 Nighthawk," Alexander told me.

"While there continue to be rumors of more modern experimental craft, they would certainly not display the characteristics reported by observers.

"Specifically, many of these UFOs are illuminated and appear in highly visible venues. Unlike any secret aircraft, they do not make any attempt to remain hidden," said Alexander...

Whenever I either see a new picture or video or read a report about one of these triangular UFOs, it transports me back to 1975 when I had a close encounter with one of these objects. And it was the kind of experience that solidified my interest in this subject, because it was so personal.

I was producing a documentary record album, "UFOs: The Credibility Factor," for CBS Inc. when I got a call from my friend, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the former scientific adviser on UFOs to the U.S. Air Force and the man who coined the expression "close encounters of the first, second and third kinds."

Hynek asked me to go to Lumberton, N.C., and investigate reports he'd received from several law enforcement agencies about a strange triangular-shaped craft that people had seen a few nights in a row.

Within hours of my arrival in the county sheriff's office, calls started coming in about the return of the UFO. A short time later, I, along with sheriff's deputies and police officers, converged at the side of a big field. It was a starry, moonless evening, and across the far side of the field, moving slowly above a line of trees from our left to right, was an object giving off a red-white appearance.

As we watched, the object stopped moving to the right and instead began to cross the field in our direction. When it got to the point where it was directly above us, we all noticed the same things (and not in any particular order of importance, since it all happened so fast):

• It was about the size of two police cars.


• It made absolutely no sound.


• It was V-shaped or triangular-shaped.


• It had a row of red lights up one side and white lights up the other side, with a larger, single white light at the apex. (See my illustration.)

At one point, the singular white light suddenly became very bright and shined down directly where we were all standing. It was so intense we had to cover our eyes and not look directly at it. After a few seconds of this, the light instantly turned off, the entire object turned a reddish color and, as it began pulsating in this red hue, it started slowly moving off in another direction away from us.

Staying in touch with one another on the car radios, we tracked the thing through a few counties, stopping along the way to talk to other law enforcement officers who told us of their own encounters with the object.

Subsequent calls to Pope Air Force Base in nearby Fayetteville yielded no explanation for what we had all experienced that night.

And ever since then, I've noticed an upswing in the number of worldwide reports of triangle UFOs. ...via Triangular UFOs: Close Encounters With Unidentified Dorito-Shaped Objects.

FBI file that shows how police and army officers saw a UFO explode over Utah

A secret FBI memo detailing how police and army officers witnessed a UFO exploding over Utah has been unearthed.

On April 4 1949 special agents sent a cable marked ‘urgent’ to the bureau director, Edgar Hoover.

The top secret document reveals how an army guard, a policeman and a highway patrol, who were all miles apart, each saw a UFO, which they said exploded over mountains near Logan, north of Salt Lake City.

The memo is one of thousands of previously unreleased classified files that the bureau has made public in a new online resource called The Vault.

Under the title ‘Flying Discs’, the document about the sightings in Utah said the three men each ‘saw a silver coloured object high up approaching the mountains at Sardine Canyon’ that ‘appeared to explode in a rash of fire.’

It added: ‘Several residents [reported] seeing what appeared to be two aerial explosions, followed by falling object.’

Documents show that an earlier UFO sighting had been investigated in Logan in September 1947.

It said numerous witnesses told the FBI they saw ‘flying discs’ in formation that were ‘circling the city at a high rate of speed’.

Also among the files, released for the first time, is a memo from Guy Hottel, the special agent in charge of the Washington field office in 1950, which appears to prove that aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico.

In the memo, whose subject line is 'Flying Saucers', Agent Hottel reveals that an Air Force investigator had stated that 'three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico'.

The investigator gave the information to a special agent, he said. The FBI has censored both the agent and the investigator's identity.

Agent Hottel went on to write: 'They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter.

'Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall,' he stated.

The bodies were 'dressed in a metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.'

He said that the informant, whose identity was censored in the memo, claimed the saucers had been found in New Mexico 'due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with teh controlling mechanism of the saucers'.

He then stated that the special agent did not attempt to investigate further.

The release of the secret memo is likely to fuel conspiracy theorists' claims of a government cover-up.

The town of Roswell in New Mexico became infamous after reports that a flying saucer had crashed in the desert near a military base there on or around July 2, 1947.

The bodies of aliens were said to have been recovered and autopsied by the U.S. military, but American authorities allegedly covered the incident up ...



via FBI file that shows how police and army officers saw a UFO explode over Utah | Mail Online.

J. Edgar Hoover's Saucer Crash Secrets

It is said that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover could find out “anything about everything.” His deep and unrelenting investigation of the secret activities of politicians, military, celebrities and foreign leaders is legendary. When determined to do so, he could learn the facts about any event or subject of interest. His compulsion to find out about such hidden things was insatiable and often even bordered on the perverse. But did Hoover’s interest in “things concealed” extend to ET? Did Hoover indeed discover the truth about the retrieval of crashed craft from another world? New information -and a fresh examination of a body of relevant FBI documents from decades ago - says “Yes.” ...

via The UFO Iconoclast(s): J. EDGAR HOOVER’S SAUCER CRASH SECRETS by Anthony Bragalia.

Anthony finds that Hoover was suspicious of what we did learn and likely dug deeper until he found the truth. He is filing a FOIA request  to obtain the Roswell crash analysis that Hoover was promised in another document.

Asteroid Stalks Earth in Weird Horseshoe-Shaped Orbit

A newfound asteroid has been discovered to be trailing Earth on an oddball course: an orbit that looks a lot like a horseshoe.The space rock, called asteroid 2010 SO16, has been following Earth as our planet orbits the sun for at least 250,000 years and is up to 1,312 feet 400 meters wide, scientists said. It was initially spotted by NASA's WISE infrared space observatory. [Photos of asteroid 2010 SO16 and its orbit]"Its average distance from the sun is identical to that of the Earth, but what really impressed me at the time was how Earth-like its orbit was," said Apostolos Christou, an astronomer at the Armagh Observatory in the United Kingdom, who led the study that pinned down the asteroid's orbit. Christou and study co-author David Asher found that asteroid 2010 SO16 takes about 175 years to travel from one end of its orbit to another before doubling back. In diagrams, the asteroid's orbit resembles a giant letter "C" with the Earth ticked between the endpoints. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]Currently, the asteroid is at a point in its orbit that brings it near the horseshoe's tip that trails the Earth. But despite its apparent attachment to Earth's orbit, the asteroid poses no risk of smacking our planet."This asteroid is terraphobic," Christou said. "It keeps well away from the Earth. So well, in fact, that it has likely been in this orbit for several hundred thousand years, never coming closer to our planet than 50 times the distance to the moon." The average distance between the Earth and the moon is about 238,000 miles 382,900 kilometers.

via Asteroid Stalks Earth in Weird Horseshoe-Shaped Orbit | Asteroid 2010 S016, Asteroids & Comets | Near-Earth Objects, Asteroid Belt | LiveScience.

Navy Phasers on Kill: Navy Uses Laser to Cripple Ship in First Sea Test

Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy hope to use similar lasers against small aerial targets and unarmored boats in the near future.


United States Navy ships each year face many threats. While large threats mandate heavy munitions or rockets, the majority of threats are from small motorboats with armed occupants. Dealing with these threats is tricky -- larger munitions are potentially lethal and expensive. But using smaller munitions places the ship's crew at risk. Thus the non-lethal accuracy of a laser weapon would be a highly desirable tool for the U.S. maritime warriors.

Sailors' dreams of having such a weapon at their disposal advanced a step forward to reality, with NorthropGrumman Corp. (NOC) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) completing the first live test [press release] of a solid state weapon laser at sea.

The laser strikes the engine of the moving motorboat.

On fire the ship is now crippled as it is struck by four foot waves.

On Wednesday the USS Paul Foster, a decommissioned destroyer, was retrofitted with Northrop Grumman's 15-kilowatt solid-state high-energy laser (HEL) prototype. The laser creates a high-energy burst of light by running electrons through specially designed pieces of glass or crystals.

The eventual goal of the $98M USD Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD) is to install 100-kilowatt lasers on ships. But the smaller 15-kilowatt system proved it might be sufficiently deadly for some applications.

Motoring into the U.S.'s Pacific testing range near San Nicholas Island off the coast of central California, the ship set its aim at a large inflatable motorboat, moving a mile away. Firing a pulse of light, the experimental laser struck a crippling blow damaging the engines and setting them on fire. The target was crippled, floating dead in the ocean. ...

via DailyTech - Navy Uses Laser to Cripple Ship in First Sea Test.

Don't worry, it could never be used against a human target. There are moisture detectors that shut it off if it gets too close and risks burning someone alive. :-/

A cat and a dolphin, buddies

... At one point the cat appears to be kissing the dolphin while holding the side of its face with the left paw. Two more dolphins show up, but this kitty only has eyes for its new pal.

The location of the video is unclear, but one thing is certain: The feline fine factor of the clip has proved to be a big hit.

It has been watched more than 31,000 times since it was posted last month.

via Some-fin special: A cat and a dolphin become best new buddies | Mail Online.

Olive branch solves a Bronze Age mystery

This collapsed main staircase is one of the remains uncovered at Akrotiri, once a major prehistoric settlement on Santorini

 

Compared to the well-studied world of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the civilizations that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean just before Homer’s time are still cloaked in mystery.

Even the basic chronology of the region during this time has been heatedly debated. Now, a resolution has finally emerged -- initiated, quite literally, by an olive branch.

Scientists have discovered the remains of a single olive tree, buried alive during a massive volcanic eruption during the Late Bronze Age. A study that dates this tree, plus another study that dates a series of objects from before, during and after the eruption, now offer a new timeline for one of the earliest chapters of European civilization.

The new results suggest that the sophisticated and powerful Minoan civilization (featured in the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur) and several other pre-Homeric civilizations arose about a century earlier and lasted for longer than previously thought.

The new timeframe also downplays Egypt’s role in the region,

suggesting that the cultures of the Levant, the stretch of land that includes Syria, Israel and Palestine, may have been a more important outside influence. ...

During the Late Bronze Age, large building complexes appeared on Crete and later on mainland Greece as part of the Minoan “New Palace” civilization. At its high point, this civilization seems to have been the dominant cultural and economic force across the region, as the result of trade rather than military strength. On Santorini, a major prehistoric settlement called Akrotiri was buried by the Minoan eruption, preserving what’s often called “the Pompeii of the Aegean.” Archeologists have uncovered three- and four-story houses and many other finds there, including an extraordinary collection of wall paintings that offer a glimpse into Minoan life. Women apparently played important civic and religious roles, including joining men in the sport of “bull-leaping,” which seems to have been religiously significant and as dangerous as the name implies. ...

via Olive branch solves a Bronze Age mystery - Technology & science - Science - Mysteries of the Universe - msnbc.com.