Month: May 2013
HAUNTING IMAGES OF THE PAST
Scott McMan, a staff writer for the prominent paranormal website Ghost Theory, has put together an impressive collection of eerie photos claiming to have captured images of ghosts and other phenomenon.
Scott states in his article, “The following pictorial is a gallery of nothing but (alleged) ghosts. Yes, you may have seen some of them and of course, a couple have been maligned as being hoaxes, but there are plenty which are unexplained to this day.”
He doesn’t point out which ones have been labeled truth or fiction, but they all are incredibly eerie. I’ve posted one example below.
To check out the rest of the images visit http://www.ghosttheory.com/2013/05/10/some-of-the-most-hair-raising-photos-youve-ever-seen.
BACON SALVATION
I’m not sure if this will be “weird news” worthy, but it is definitely going to be further fuel for the pro-bacon camp that steadfastly stands by their salty delight. One centenarian is swearing by her daily consumption of fried pork products as the key to her impressive longevity.
A 105-year-old Texan (why do these stories always originate in the South?) by the name of Pearl Cantrell, has come forth with an affirmation that bacon is not the devil’s delight, but a godsend. A widow since the age of 38 and a mother of 7, she has been a hard-working woman her entire life with labor-intensive jobs including both being a hay-bayler and a cotton-picker.
“I love bacon. I eat it everyday,” Pearl Cantrell told NBC affiliate KRBC. “I don’t feel as old as I am. That’s all I can say,” Cantrell added.
The centenarian still regularly waltzes and two-steps, and recently attended her birthday with a guest-list of over 200 people. Though the local papers still say that her active lifestyle, including mowing her own lawn until the age of 100, most likely is the cause of her unusual longevity, Cantrell still swears by bacon.
The scientific and medical communities are still on the fence about the pro’s and con’s of fried pork products in one’s health regiment. An over consumption, they have found, can decrease one’s lifespan by up to 20%, while a moderate intake has proven to actually increase one’s lifespan by nearly 3%. And, by “moderate” we’re talking a pat-of-butter-sized portion. That’s quite a big difference between life and death timelines. Perhaps, it all goes back to the simple mantras of “everything in moderation” and “remember to enjoy your life.”
Ms. Pearl Cantrell continues to stand by her processed pork products and was given a ride in Oscar Meyer’s Wienermobile through the streets of her hometown of Richland Springs, Texas, as well as a special pork delivery.
To each their own oink. Personally, I’ll take mine covered in chocolate.
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**Photo courtesy of the Huffington Post
TRIANGULAR UFOS OVER TENNESSEE AND COLORADO
On April 27, residents of Pleasant Hill, Tennessee and Denver, Colorado reported two separate sightings of a similar triangular UFO. The accounts happened within hours of one another, though 1,200 miles separated them. The Pleasant Hill witness claims to have seen the anomaly while driving down Highway 70, at exactly 9:59 p.m. ET, as they returned from a shopping trip in Crossville.
“I noticed a large triangular type shape with a big lit circle in the middle of it,” they stated in a testimony to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). “I could only see the underneath because I was passing under it. I couldn’t believe it was hovering over me a bit to the left and over the power lines. I observed the power lines were just a few inches underneath the object.”
They went on to describe the object in more detail. “I noticed four beams of light that went from one side to the other of the object and pulsed about four times on and off. The lights were about 6 to 8 feet across — larger than the circular light in the middle.”
Later that evening, at 10 p.m. MT, an Arapahoe County resident, just east of Denver, reported a similar experience while they were lying on their back porch gazing up at the night sky.
“I had just focused my eyes on an airplane when suddenly a giant white, triangular-shaped object appeared,” they said in Case 47032. “It was directly above me. It was enormous and it was moving amazingly fast. It traversed the entire sky – horizon to horizon in about two seconds. It was hard to reference the size, exactly, but I got the sense that it was a very large object very far away.”
No images or video of either account were captured.
A DRUID PRIEST EXPLAINS STONEHENGE
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFVDEM3UKbY&version=3&hl=en_US]
BEWARE THE MIGHTY BEAVER
One unfortunate man in Belarus found out the hard way that beavers are not fans of the paparazzi. According to Sky News, the man was on a fishing trip to Lake Shestakov when he and his traveling companion spied the wild animal on the side of the road. In an attempt to seize a quick pic with the creature, the man approached and tried to pose with the beaver. The beaver had other plans, however, and promptly sank its fangs into the man’s thigh twice, severing his femoral artery, causing him to bleed to death in a matter of minutes.
“It was early morning and already light when they saw a beaver by the road, which was unusual because beavers are nocturnal,” Sergei Shtyk, the deputy head of the region’s wildlife inspectorate, told The Daily Telegraph.
“One of them went up to be photographed with it, and the animal attacked him and bit him twice, cutting an artery in his thigh, before running away.”
Beware the mighty beaver! They have work to do building dams and little time for photo ops.
A BUG-EYE VIEW
“The compound design of the fly’s eye incorporates perhaps 28,000 small eyes, or ommatidia,” explained team-member Dr Jianliang Xiao from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US. “That’s the direction we want to move in,” he told BBC News.
According to the report on BBC News, the digital “bug eye” camera is designed to reflect the structure of an insect’s corneal lens with a crystalline cone and light-sensitive organ at the base. Together these sections of the bug’s eye form a “picture” of the world pieced together from the various sensory inputs. In the robotic adaptation, microlenses are positioned above photodetectors. Proprietary software designed for the bug-eye camera is used to sync the information and piece together the signals to form a full image. The initial image is flat and then stretched over a hemispherical shape to give the impression of a 180-degree view.
“Picture the following: a palm-sized micro aerial vehicle uses an artificial faceted eye to navigate autonomously through a collapsed building while other sensors onboard scan the environment for smoke, radioactivity or even people trapped beneath rubble and debris,” the research team reported in the Nature journal article.
A little buzz-worthy news about technological advancements, I’d say!
A CHUNK OF GRANITE OR, ATLANTIS?
The search for the legendary lost city of Atlantis has been humanity’s quest since Plato first mentioned it in the philosophical musings of his work, “Antiquity.” The elegant, utopian society romanticized by poets and playwrights has propelled the underwater archaeological efforts of scientists and explorers for centuries. Generation after generation has clung to the hopes of discovering proof of its existence and, once again, another team of researchers has come forth with what they claim to be evidence of Atlantis.
Recently, a large mass of granite was discovered at the bottom of the sea near Rio de Janeiro by a manned Shinkai 6500 Japanese submersible. Granite only forms on the surface of the Earth. Thus, the formation would have been above water at some point in history, giving rise to the theory that there was once a continent in the area, which eventually broke apart and sank into the ocean. The Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Brazilian government have since confirmed that the granite mass has actually been submersed for nearly ten million years. There has been no evidence of manmade structures located on or near the formation.
Regardless, the discovery is an interesting archaeological find and gives a further insight into the Earth’s history. A large volume of quartz sand and basalt rock, both of which could not have been formed below sea-level, have been detected in the formation linking it to the Rio Grande Rise, which would have been the only plausible location from which the segment could have been attached.
Shinichi Kawakami, a professor at Gifu University, theorizes, “South America and Africa used to be a huge, unified continent. The area in question may have been left in water as the continent was separated in line with the movements of plates.”
The search for the lost city of Atlantis continues.
STONEHENGE A SETTLEMENT 3,000 YEARS BEFORE ITS CONSTRUCTION
In Amesbury, in Wiltshire, archaeologists have unearthed new evidence that points to a human settlement that existed on the site nearly 3,000 years before the construction of Stonehenge. One mile from the location of the stone ring, archaeological remains of a human occupation dating back to 7,500BC were recently excavated. The dig was supported by Dr Josh Pollard from Southampton University and led by Open University archaeologist David Jacques, along with his team of volunteers, utilizing a small budget of redundancy money.
The project has been a quest of David Jacques since his time as a student at Cambridge University. During that time he spied an, until then, unnoticed “blind spot” in aerial-view photographs of Stonehenge taken in 1906 that showed a site referred to as Vespasian’s Camp a mile away. The area, at the time, was thought to have been landscaped during the 18th century. Thus, a full archaeological investigation of the area had never been conducted.
“The whole landscape is full of prehistoric monuments and it is extraordinary in a way that this has been such a blind spot for so long archaeologically,” he said in an interview with the BBC. “But in 1999 a group of student friends and myself started to survey this area of Amesbury.”
Due to the location of the site near a natural spring, it was only logical to Jacques that this would have been the ideal location for a human settlement at the time. He began his investigation by first exploring areas where he thought animals would visit in search of food and fresh water, which his reasoning predicted would also be the same locations for human settlements to form. His assumptions proved correct. Since first beginning to pursue the dig artifacts from one of the earliest semi-permanent settlements in the Stonehenge area (7,500 to 4,700BC) have been unearthed. Carbon dating of these relics revealed people resided in the area every other millennium during the Mesolithic era.
Sometimes it is the smaller projects that uncover the greatest mysteries. David Jacque’s excavation project is certainly a great example of this. Leading archaeologists around the world are abuzz with the news and its historical implications.
In the same article on the BBC website, Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy, from Durham University, said: “The site has the potential to become one of the most important Mesolithic sites in north-western Europe.”
The investigation of the site continues as additional funding is sought for a more in-depth pursuit. According to Dr Pollard of the Stonehenge Riverside Project this should hopefully prove easier going forth since “being able to demonstrate that there were repeated visits to this area from the 9th to the 5th millennia BC” is a crucial aspect of humanity’s history that has yet to be explored and further unravels the enigma that is Stonehenge. A deeper look at the people who resided in the area before its construction will give the world insight into its construction and its true purpose throughout the ages.