Posted by Santellana
An epic tale (an internet oldie but a still a goodie) of what-not-to-do and the moral of the story is –– you’ll irradiate yer eye out kid.

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DETROIT — A man who became the subject of a book called "The Radioactive Boy Scout" after trying to build a nuclear reactor in a shed as a teenager has been charged with stealing 16 smoke detectors. Police say it was a possible effort to experiment with radioactive materials.

David Hahn, 31, was being held Friday on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County Jail after he was arraigned Thursday on felony larceny charges.

Clinton Township police Capt. Richard Maierle said Hahn denied the charges. A district court clerk on Friday said Hahn did not have an attorney. The Associated Press called the jail in an effort to speak to Hahn, but a sheriff’s spokesman said the jail does not give messages to inmates. His preliminary examination was scheduled for Aug. 13.

Investigators say Hahn was arrested Wednesday after a maintenance worker saw him stealing a detector from a ceiling in an apartment complex where he lived. They later found the other detectors in his apartment in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township.

Police say that Hahn’s face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.

Hahn learned that a small amount of a radioactive isotope could be found in smoke detectors during his experiments in the 1990s, according to a 1998 article in Harper’s Magazine that later expanded into a book by journalist Ken Silverstein.

Maierle said his department evacuated the apartment complex and called the state police bomb squad, which found no hazardous materials.

He said officials learned in January that Hahn had returned to the area after serving in the U.S. Navy.

"Because of his past, we were a tad bit concerned," he said, adding his department alerted the FBI when they found out he was back in Michigan. "We didn’t want any other radioactive sites to pop up."

Hahn’s first brush with authorities came in August 1994, after police stopped him during an investigation into neighborhood tire thefts. Officers found radioactive materials, chemicals, rocks, plastic and glass bottles and two exploded pipes in his car, Maierle said.

In a subsequent interview with a state health official, Hahn said he had been trying to produce energy and hoped it would help him earn his Eagle Scout badge, according to the Harper’s article. Hahn also acknowledged having a backyard laboratory in a potting shed at his mother’s home in Oakland County’s Commerce Township, the article said.

Authorities declared the structure a hazardous materials site and sealed it. Crews from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency led a Superfund cleanup in 2005 that included dismantling the shed and shipping its remains to be buried at a low-level radioactive waste site in Utah, the article said.

Hahn received a Scouting merit badge for atomic energy in 1991, the article said. Maierle said Hahn’s 1994 arrest was expunged in 1996. His arrest this week was reported by The Macomb Daily of Mount Clemens.

Source: http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html

Posted by Santellana
UFO over Utah? So I guess I should start keeping an eye out for mass unexplained deaths in and around Utah?

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AMERICAN FORK, Utah (ABC 4 News) – Reports of strange lights in the night sky have people in Utah County talking about UFO’s. Three red lights appeared between 7:15 and 7:30 last night. Witnesses say they hovered in formation and dropped what appeared to be flares.

Lynette Chidester lives in Highland and is one of those puzzled by what she saw. "I don’t believe in extra-terrestrials.” But she also doesn’t believe the lights were from airplanes or helicopters. She says they didn’t make a sound, and there were no blinking lights, just a constant red.

"I noticed over the roof of the garage a red light and white light and the red light isn’t flashing like a plane light and that’s what draws my attention to it." She says soon there were three red lights and those lights started dropping white streams.

Mike Galbraith was a few miles away in American Fork. He was in the parking lot of a shopping plaza when he saw the lights hanging in the sky. Galbraith was in the Air Force and says his experience caused him to take special notice of the unusual lights. He grabbed his cell phone and started taking video.

Galbraith said, "They looked like they were flying in formation perfectly together and then whatever was dropping looked like it was burning real bright." Galbraith says he doesn’t believe the trails of white that dropped straight down from the red lights were flares. He says military flares don’t look like that. "They usually shoot out the sides, or they shoot down, and there are a lot of them and you could definitely hear them." He says there was no sound.

He says he could not make out the shape of the flying objects, but says they were unlike any plane or helicopter he has ever seen, and they were flying at an unusual altitude.

Lynette’s husband also witnessed the lights and streams. He was once an employee of a company that manufactured components for military flares.

Lynette says he could not identify what the flying objects were, but agrees with Galbraith’s assessment that what was being released was not a flare. “After a couple of seconds he knew it wasn’t a flare. He didn’t know what it was.”

No one else seems to know either. The control tower at the Provo airport had no reports of anything unusual last night, nor did the Utah County Sheriffs Department.

Salt Lake International’s control tower had no incidents documented, and officials at Camp Williams also had nothing to report. Both witnesses we talked to say the objects eventually just flew away.

Source: http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story/Strange-lights-appear-in-the-sky-above-Utah-County/Wo5f7K0sTEi6_tM5q_-hxg.cspx

Posted by Steve Busti
Amazing footage has surfaced on the internet in the past couple of days that shows not one, but two, unique video clips taken from two distinct vantage points of what can only be described as a UFO.
What makes this footage quite remarkable however is not only the fact that it was presumably shot by two different individuals at separate locales, but the fact that it appeared over one of the most sacred (and controversial) sites in three religions: The Dome of the Rock, which stands on the Temple Mount.
Check out these two videos, and let us know what you think, and if real, what it could possibly mean?

Posted by Steve Busti
In light of the recent UFO videos emerging from Jerusalem, one has to wonder if that can be the explanation for the following out-of-place objects that recently showed up in the news?
First we had this strangely errant piece of timber floating on top of — of all places — an iceberg:
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I’ve heard the Southern Ocean attracts a hardy individual but a block of wood on an iceberg is ridiculous.

This lonely piece of timber was spotted on the top of a small berg at 66 degrees south, just north of Commonwealth Bay.
Wildlife watchers near Aurora Australis’ bridge first thought it was a relaxing seal but it was soon apparent it was rectangular in shape.
How it got to such a prominent position, instead of just floating around, is anyone’s guess.

Read more: http://blogs.abc.net.au/news/2011/01/a-chip-off-the-old-block.html
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Then there was this story reported by Britain’s Daily Mail a couple of days ago about an out-of-place grand piano (gotta love their headline — “Were they trying to tuna fish?…”):
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It certainly strikes a discordant note – but then again, this is near the Florida Keys.
A 650lbs grand piano has mysteriously appeared on a sandbar in Miami’s Biscayne Bay – and no one appears to be coming Bach for it.

The piano was placed at the highest point along the sandbar, about 200 yards from shore, so that it doesn’t disappear underwater during high tide.
But who put it there – and, almost more importantly, why – remains unknown.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350590/Piano-beach-Biscayne-Bay-650lbs-grand-mysteriously-appears-Florida.html#ixzz1CfhUwv9o
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Obviously, in both cases, the UFOs are to blame.
And now, in the latest case of mass animal deaths, UFOs are really to blame. That is, if you ask the locals of El Llanitos, Columbia what’s responsible for killing off their fish:
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In Llanitos neighborhood, north of the city of Barrancabermeja, the collective death of two thousand fish is being attributed by the locals, to aliens. Witnesses said that saw an unidentified object that was hovering above the waters of a mangrove. The UFO emitted a bright light and then, in few seconds disappeared. After that, the fish began to appear floating dead in the water. These fish showed signs of burns on the scales and gills.

A woman that is community leader from El Llanitos reported that the apparition of UFO phenomenon’s lasted about 20 seconds. In the district of Puente Sogamoso, Puerto Wilches city, other people reported that they also saw the object, which was round and flew over the area with lateral movements.
Read more: http://brazilweirdnews.blogspot.com/2011/01/ufos-and-dead-fishes.html
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So what do you think, readers? Is this the result of aliens trying to send us a message?
I guess the crop circles weren’t working.

Posted by Santellana
Death Ray Satellite Dish?? You’ll shoot yer eye out kid!

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A ‘death ray’ satellite dish that could heat objects 5,000 times the power of the sun has got internet users hot under the collar.

Eric Jacqmain, from Indiana in the US, covered an ordinary fibreglass satellite dish with 5,800 tiny mirror tiles.

When aligned correctly it can generate a spot a couple of centimetres across, with an intensity of 5,000 suns, the 19-year-old claims.

The inventor then posted the video of his invention on YouTube, with people commenting in awe of the power of the satellite.

The ray generates enough power to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant.

It stands at 5ft 9 and is 42 inches across.

Jacqmain, commenting on YouTube said : ‘I drilled a small hole in the dish and glued a piece of PVC pipe on the back. ‘Light shines through the hole and hits the translucent plastic on the end of the pipe. All I had to do was aim the dish once and mark the spot. ‘As long as the target doesn’t conduct heat away too fast it will melt or vaporize just about anything eventually. ‘I have vaporized before carbon, which occurs above 6,500 Fahrenheit.’

The American teenager called his invention the R5800 solar ‘death ray’. Putting it into context, just the tiny fraction of the Sun’s energy that hits the Earth (around a hundredth of a millionth of a percent) is enough to meet all our power needs many times over. In fact, every minute, enough energy arrives at the Earth to meet our demands for a whole year – if only we could harness it properly.

Unfortunately for Jacqmain, his ‘death ray’ dish met it’s own grisly end when it was destroyed in a shed fire. Jacqmain added: ‘Yeah. It "committed suicide". It’s very likely that it was the cause of the fire. Nothing left of it but half melted wagon parts and the adjustable mount.’ If there was ever a case of self-destruction, this was it. But Jacqmain’s despair at the death of his ‘death ray’ has simply spurred him on to develop a yet more powerful alternative. ‘Plans already in place for the new one, he added. ‘The goal is to use about 32,000 mirrors this time.’

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351935/Eric-Jacqmain-invented-Death-ray-dish-intensity-5-000-suns.html

Posted by Santellana
If I ever get reincarnated as a plant, I think I’d be happy to be any plant except Nepenthes Rafflesiana.

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Carnivorous plants tend to make their homes in peat bogs and heaths—environments that have notoriously nutrient-deficient soils. They deal with these deficiencies by trapping insects, lizards, and even small mammals, absorbing nitrogen and other nutrients from their prey as they are slowly digested inside the plant.

For one pitcher plant however, survival is less dependent on snaring unsuspecting prey than it is on making a cozy home for a particular species of bat.

According to recent research, Nepenthes rafflesiana—native to Borneo, Sumatra, Malaysia, and Singapore—has adopted several unique adaptations that makes it less apt at catching insects and more hospitable for roosting Hardwicke’s woolly bats.

Typical pitcher plants have a conical shape and interior walls coated in a slippery liquid. When curious prey wanders into the pitcher’s mouth, they begin to slide to the bottom, where a pool of digestive liquid drowns them and slowly breaks down the carcass.

Nepenthes rafflesiana has considerably less slippery liquid and a more shallow pool at the bottom of its pitcher. In addition to this, it has a girdle, mid-way down, the helps keep bats from slipping to the bottom. This makes it easy for bats—which sometimes roost as whole families in one plant—to make their home in the pitcher, a container that provides parasite-free protection from the bat’s predators.

In exchange, the bats provide nutrients for the plant, delivered in the form of nitrogen-rich guano dropped down the pitcher. It’s only the second known instance in which a carnivorous plant has developed a mutualistic relationship with a mammal species.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01/carnivorous-plant-lures-bats-to-feed-on-their-guano.php

Posted by Santellana ( of “Tarot by Santellana”, one of the Sideshow Performers at the Museum of The Weird )
As a performer, hearing the sound of crickets from the audience is distressing. These poor crickets are no longer making a sound and well I think that is even more distressing.
The dead crickets article reminded me of this SATIRE article from the onion ~ http://www.theonion.com/articles/paranoid-duck-convinced-cia-killing-off-us-bird-po,18953/ ( and yes kiddos, satire means it ain’t real).
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PORT ALLEN, La. — A virus has killed millions of crickets raised to feed pet reptiles and those kept in zoos.

The cricket paralysis virus has disrupted supplies to pet shops across North America as a handful of operators have seen millions of their insects killed.

Some operations have gone bankrupt and others have closed indefinitely until they can rid their facilities of the virus.

Cricket farms started in the 1940s as a source of fish bait, but the bulk of sales now are to pet supply companies, reptile owners and zoos, although people also eat some.

Most U.S. farms are in the South, but suppliers from Pennsylvania to California also raise crickets.

The virus had swept through European cricket farms in 2002. It was first noticed in 2009 in the U.S. and Canada.

The virus marks the latest in a recent series of mass animal deaths.

Blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year’s Eve in Arkansas. In the days that followed, 2 million fish died in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world.

However, biologists say these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated. Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America.

In the past eight months, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that’s probably a dramatic undercount, officials say.

The list includes:

* 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys.
* 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota.
* 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho.
* 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas.
* And the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.

Officials blamed the deaths of 5,000 red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Ark., on New Year’s Eve fireworks. Experts say the loud cracks and booms likely sent the birds into such a tizzy that they crashed into homes, cars and each other before plummeting to their deaths.

Source:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41034340/ns/us_news-environment/?ocid=twitter

Posted by Santellana ( of “Tarot by Santellana”, one of the Sideshow Performers at the Museum of The Weird )
I’m sure die hard Avatar fans are just going wild.

When I want to glow in the dark I put on my Museum of the Weird t-shirt I bought from Lucky Lizard Curios & Gifts.

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Swimming is supposed to give you a healthy glow, but these swimmers weren’t quite sure what was going on when they took a late-night dip and turned a fluorescent shade of blue.

‘It was like we were playing with radioactive paint,’ said photographer Phil Hart who snapped the bizarre sight as his friends emerged from a lake in the dark of night.

The light is created by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which happens when a naturally-occuring micro-organism in the water is disturbed.

Phil, 34, put his camera on a very slow shutter speed and threw sand and stones into the water to cause the reaction and capture as much of the blue haze as possible.

These images are particularly stunning because the concentration of the micro-organism ‘Noctiluca Scintillans’ was abnormally high when he took the photos at Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, Australia.

Phil said: ‘To be there watching this bioluminescence is spellbinding and to see it like this is very rare.

‘I am a program director with an organisation that has been running canoeing camps on the Gippsland Lakes for 50 years. Nobody can remember the bioluminescence ever being as bright as this.

It is believed the combination of bushfires and floods created the high levels of nutrients in the lakes for the organisms to feed. ‘It may not happen again in my lifetime,’ said Phil. ‘I feel fortunate to have been there to see it and to have had my camera gear there to record it.’

Phil, from Melbourne, added: ‘While the luminescence was obvious to the eye, the bright blue colour is only apparent in photos. ‘When the first photo I took appeared on screen I could hardly believe it – the people in the water looked freakish.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350686/Glowing-dark-Eerie-phenomenon-turned-swimmers-brighter-shade-blue.html

10:00 PM CST, TONIGHT: For years, shamans and healers have used energies to influence people who have disease and other afflictions. Elizabeth Pellegrin is a Reiki practitioner who will share her insights about these techniques and what they might mean to us.

As always, the lines will be open and we encourage you to call in with your questions. The call in number for tonight’s show is (347) 826-9662 or call toll-free at (877) 867-0829.

Listen right here with our blogtalkradio widget below. You can listen to past broadcasts at any time, or tune in tonight (Wednesday, January 19th) at 10pm Central for the live broadcast. See you in the shadows…

Posted by Steve Busti
Although this latest claim would help solve Fermi’s paradox (which states that if there is such a high likelihood of intelligent life in the universe, where are all the aliens and why haven’t we been contacted yet), I just can’t believe that in all the infinite reaches of the universe we are utterly alone.

But what do you think? Are we really the only intelligent life forms in the universe? Read this story from Britain’s Daily Mail website and you decide.

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Still waiting for little green men to make contact? Don’t hold your breath.

A leading astronomer has concluded there probably aren’t any aliens out there – meaning we are entirely alone in the universe.

Even though there may be tens of thousands of other distant planets similar in size to Earth, the conditions on them are likely to be too hostile to support life-forms such as ET.

Dr Howard Smith, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard University, believes there is very little hope of discovering aliens and, even if we did, it would be almost impossible to make contact.

So far astronomers have discovered a total of 500 planets in distant solar systems – known as extrasolar systems – although they believe billions of others exist.

But Dr Smith points out that many of these planets are either too close to their sun or too far away, meaning their surface temperatures are so extreme they could not support life.

Others have unusual orbits which cause vast temperature variations making it impossible for water to exist as a liquid – an essential element for life.

Dr Smith said: ‘We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own.

‘They are very hostile to life as we know it.’

‘The new information we are getting suggests we could effectively be alone in the universe.

‘There are very few solar systems or planets like ours. It means it is highly unlikely there are any planets with intelligent life close enough for us to make contact.’ But his controversial suggestions contradict other leading scientists – who have claimed aliens almost certainly exist.

Read the entire article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1349786/Despite-discovering-planets-chance-finding-aliens-unlikely.html#ixzz1BynSkKwU