Because everyone loves cryptozoology come to life.

I mean really serious.

Because in case you have heard, the most credible believer in alien/human encounters since Dennis Kucinich has been recently thrust into the public eye. Actually, as an Apollo 14 spacedude who chilled on the surface of the moon for nine hours, he is a helluva lot more credible than Kucinich on these issues. His name is Dr. Edgar Mitchell. Here’s what he has to say:

Oh yeah by the way he grew up in Roswell, NM. Oh, and he’s also into some far out stuff, like dyadic models of consciousness. At any rate, after Mitchell recently renewed his claims that folks within the government were secretly covering up over 60 years of extraterrestrial contact, NASA released a delicately worded statement lauding Mitchell as a great American and “disagreeing with his opinions.”

A little more context - some of the more credible (eg less easily explained) UFO sightings in recent memory occurred over Texas earlier this year, with all the fanfare and t-shirt sales you might expect from a small town’s encounter with Aliens/international media.

So what’s up? Because talking about aliens in a serious way is so deeply coded to mean you are crazy (which is why asking Denny K the question during the presidential debate was a way to de-legitimize him), I almost hesitate to continue. But since the New York Times broke the ice today with a pretty rational, national security-related argument for investigating UFOs, perhaps the time is right. (more…)

Prepare the mission of conquest!

Scientists believe NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission’s principal investigator said.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in a statement Thursday.

“These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice,” Smith said. “There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can’t do that.”

Phoenix Mars is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable. The probe is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples, and scientists hope it will find frozen water.

I propose that the first condo units that go up on the North Pole of Mars be named after David Bowie.

Miller, who famously testified on behalf of the textbook he wrote after Georgia tried to slap an “Evolution is a Theory” bumper sticker on all of their biology primers, and in the landmark Dover, PA case, is a big macher on College Hill.

Kiss livestock-generated methane goodbye, thanks to some plucky New Zealand fart-doctors.

New Zealand scientists claim to have developed a “flatulence inoculation” aimed at cutting down on the massive amount of methane produced by its sheep and cows.

Such animals are believed to be responsible for more than half of the country’s greenhouse gases, causing huge environmental problems.

I smell a Nobel prize… by which I mean sheep flatulence. (more…)

This from the New York Times web site, specifically, the slide show which is a huge time-vampire.

Moving ice too on Mars? Examining images like this one of a canyon taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists at Brown University believe they see evidence of flowing glaciers on Mars within the last 10 million to 100 million years. That counts as very recently on a geological timescale and runs counter to the prevailing view that Mars’ climate has been largely quiet for the past 3.5 billion years. The Brown researchers believe rock debris seen in the image was left by a glacier that rose at least half a mile from the surrounding plain and flowed onto the canyon.

Brown researchers made the cover of the May issue of Geology with this work.

Whoa.

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds—that is, until he steps into an “exoskeleton” of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that local global defense contractor Raytheon, having purchased Jameson’s company, is producing these puppies. (more…)

Einstein rose from the grave this week to slam God and His believers via a 1954 letter. Thus Spake Albert:

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,” Einstein wrote.

The famed physicist also rocked the Jews some for good measure:

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions,” the letter said. “And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Burned!

Luckily, the Catholic Church struck back with the answer to one of sci-fi/theology’s most basic questions: did God create Aliens?

According to “Vatican’s chief astronomer,” which given Copernicus must be a pretty new position, the answer is yes!

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

The interview was headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom.

Booya! (more…)

If a person made a computer that could write a million books in a matter of seconds, then, still, no one would read them.

But if they sold two copies each, and owned the computers, then they’d be one rich automato-book-hustler. Enter one Dr. Parker. Explaineth the NYT:

Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

The technique basically uses a computer to search, compile manipulate and format data from different places into something new. That much I think I get (check the Youtube demonstration after the jump for more). But how does the computer write even a paragraph of original content? Is this powerful new stuff, or a complicated, noun-heavy mad-lib, or both?

Apparently, at least one person called Parker out on the fact that his book was just a big, fancily formatted google search.
(more…)

Oh, what a world. MSNBC notes:

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth’s southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

As the democrats spend their time bashing each others’ brains in, and McCain slowly loses his, the planet is literally falling apart. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the actual consequences of events like this, but it seems like two results are obvious. 1) A short term drop in the price of a bag of ice at your local convenience store, and 2) rising sea levels.

One is a joke, the other is a harbinger of global economic and human disaster. Guess ‘em! (more…)

Thanks to tipster Adam for letting us know about truckspills.com, which, as should be evident, covers all things related to truck spills. The spill of the week: a 50 foot Sperm Whale, beached in Taiwan, was being taken on the back of a semi to a research center for autopsy when the gasses trapped the behemoth’s stomach exploded across a thoroughfare, covering motorbikes in foul-smelling whale offal and half-ingested giant squid.

I wonder if that kind of stuff happened in our whaling days of yore. After all, Rhode Island’s Royal Charter did note that:

And ffurther, for the encouragement of the inhabitants of our sayd Collony of Providence Plantations to sett vpon the businesse of takeing whales, itt shall bee lawefull For them, or any of them, having struck whale, dubertus, or other greate ffish, itt or them, to pursue unto any parte of that coaste, and into any bay, river, cove, creeke or shoare, belonging thereto, and itt or them, vpon sayd coaste, or in the sand bay, river, cove, creeke or shoare, belonging thereto, to kill and order for the best advantage, without molestation, they makeing noe wilfull waste or spoyle, any thinge in these presents conteyned, or any other matter or thing, to the contrary notwithstanding.

All of which is of course now hella illegal.

You NEED to see the pics after the jump. (more…)

Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

If you’ve ever felt like doing a little exploratory surgery on your video IPod, here’s where to go. I have only one question for you Ryan, how did your IPod fall into the toilet?

The technology is now in place for me to go ahead and start a family. As reported this morning on NBC news, scientists in California have finally produced human embryo clones. All I have to do is provide the nucleus of a skin cell. But here’s where you come in! I will still be needing; an egg donor, a surrogate mom, several nannies and the name of a good boarding school. (And sperm donors are still required for my various side projects.)

Tonight at the Providence Geek Dinner AS220 was treated to an update on the progress of the mostly Rhode Island based Rentomatic (formerly iiProperty). Rentomatic.com is a website for both landlords and tenants which allows for online rent payment, maintenance requests and other landlord communication for tenants, and accounting, property and tenant tracking, etc. for landlords.

The new site rolled out just last week and they have grand plans for the future including connecting landlords with service providers and allowing tenants to communicate with each other. The company also runs rentometer.com which is a service that attempts to bring more transparency to the world of housing rentals, letting you view average rents for neighborhoods and even particular streets. Enter your address and see whether you are getting a great deal for your place or whether you should be demanding free laundry from your landlord for the dough you dole out every month.

Other news from around the webosphere:

• Google goes political: Google Checkout for Political Contributions allows candidates to easily and cheaply accept online donations. Even better it can be tied to a candidate’s YouTube page, meaning we may all get to see even more of our candidates favorite recipes!
• France says that Amazon’s free shipping is illegal, amazon says f*uck you and decides to pay a €1,000 fine per day instead.
• FDA sys cloned meat A-OK. Thank Dolly next time you next time you enjoy your lamb kabobs.
• “ Phraselator” lets cops take down perps in their own language. No, I didn’t make that name up.

I was getting all inspired and scared by this article, on the crazy stuff that we’re finding as astronomers peer further and further into deep space. And then the awe was sucked right out of me, as our science guys tried to describe their discoveries in more human terms:

—A spiral galaxy with two pairs of arms spinning in opposite directions, like a double pinwheel. It defies what astronomers believe should happen. It is akin to one of those spinning-armed flamingo lawn ornaments, said astronomer Gene Byrd of the University of Alabama.

—The equivalent of post-menopausal stars giving unlikely birth to new planets….

And then,

“Intellectually and spiritually, if I can use that word with a lower case ’s,’ it’s awe-inspiring,” Wheeler said. “It’s a great universe.”

It always was awe inspiring — and will be once I exorcise those metaphors from my brain in a few minutes. But nothing that can be described in terms of products I can buy at OOP! is gonna have me gushing.