AnAchRonisTic-MUFFuka!

Jan. 19, 2007 — That age-old stereotype about dangerous women drivers is shattered in a big new traffic analysis: Male drivers have a 77 percent higher risk of dying in a car accident than women, based on miles driven.And the author of the research says he takes it to heart when he travels — his wife takes the wheel."I put a mitt in my mouth and ride shotgun," said David Gerard, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher who co-authored a major new U.S. road risk analysis.The study holds plenty of surprises._The highway death rate is higher for cautious 82-year-old women than for risk-taking 16-year-old boys._New England is the safest region for drivers — despite all those stories about crazy Boston drivers._The safest passenger is a youngster strapped in a car seat and being driven during morning rush hour. The findings are from Traffic STATS, a detailed and searchable new risk analysis of road fatality statistics by Carnegie Mellon for the American Automobile Association. Plans are to make the report public next week, but The Associated Press got an early look.The analysis calculates that overall, about one death occurs for every 100 million passenger miles traveled. And it shows that some long-held assumptions about safety on U.S. highways don't jibe with hard numbers. It lists the risk of road death by age, gender, type of vehicle, time of day and geographic region."We are finding comparisons that are surprising all the time," said study co-author Paul Fischbeck, a Carnegie Mellon professor of social and decision sciences. "What is necessary now is to go through and do that second level of analysis to figure out why some of these things are true." For example, those dangerous 82-year-old women are 60 percent more likely to die on the road than a 16-year-old boy because they are so frail, said Anne McCartt, a research official at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who was not part of the study."It's an issue not of risk-taking behavior, but of fragility," McCartt said. The elderly are more likely to die when they are injured in an accident, she said, an explanation that Gerard and Fischbeck validate.These elderly women have the nation's highest road death risks even when they're not driving — five times higher than the national average. Right behind octogenarians in high risk are young male drivers, ages 16-23 with fatality rates four times higher than average.That can be attributed to "inexperience and immaturity," McCartt said.Drivers aged 40 and 50 tie for the lowest risk of dying in an accident. But if you're a male out at 2 a.m. Saturday on a motorcycle in the South, you may want to take out some more insurance.By combining a batch of data of all types, you can construct the safest possible scenario on the road: That would involve a 4-year-old girl in a van or school bus, stuck in a Wednesday morning rush hour in New England in February. Of all the ages to be in a car, 4-year-olds have the lowest death risks — probably because they are in child car seats and their parents drive more carefully, Fischbeck said."They are really protected, they're being driven around in times of day when it's very safe (and often in minivans)," Fischbeck said. "It's a win-win-win-win situation."As for men being more likely to die than women? McCartt and Fischbeck said men take more risks, speed more, drink and drive more. "They do stupider things," said Fischbeck, a former military pilot who has twin toddlers and a "totally unsafe" 1974 Volkswagen Thing.Fischbeck's study didn't get into specific car makes, but found larger vans to be the safest with a death rate less than half the national average for cars, and the drivers themselves played a role."It's a combination of they're safe and the people who drive them are dull," Fischbeck said.School buses, massive vehicles driven during normally safe hours, have a death rate that is one-50th that of average passenger vehicles.But the death rate on motorcycles was nearly 32 times higher than for cars. One of the riskiest combinations in the database are men between ages 21 and 24 who drive motorcycles between midnight and 4 a.m. Their road fatality risk is 45,000 times higher than normal. The most deadly hour is at 2 a.m., which is often when bars close and many deaths are alcohol-related, Fischbeck said.The fewest deaths per mile driven are at 8 a.m., mostly because the roads are so clogged with traffic — and teenage drivers are in school, McCartt said.That explains New England's No. 1 ranking for lowest death risk on the road, she said.Heavy traffic "makes it much more difficult for people to speed," McCartt said. . AHAHAHAHA NOW IS THIS YOU !!! DON'T LIE !!! HAHAHA DAMN THAT TRAFFIC ...GGGRRRRRR AHAHAHAH YES TRAFIC... Jan. 18, 2007 — China last week successfully tested a system that can destroy spacecraft, sending notice to the United States that it will not be the only country to be able to protect its satellites and spacecraft in orbit.The Chinese test, which will be reported in next week's issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, is believed to have occurred on Jan. 11. The magazine will report that a ballistic missile was fired from or near China's Xichang Space Center and that it successfully destroyed an old Chinese weather satellite as it flew about 530 miles above the planet.U.S. officials have expressed concern over the test."The U.S. believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. "We and other countries have expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese." The United States has not gone so far as to blow up a satellite in orbit. It has, however, flown spacecraft that can autonomously reach targets in orbit, such as defunct satellites and spent upper stage rocket bodies.The Bush Administration also removed prohibitions against anti-satellite tests in space last year when it revised the country's National Space Policy, setting the stage for more advanced orbital demonstrations. "Obviously we have a lot to lose and really nothing to gain from allowing space to become weaponized," said Leonor Tomero, a policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C."If China testing an ASAT (anti-satellite) weapon is confirmed, then there will be an arms race in space if we allow this to happen," Tomero added. "It's hard to tell if China is doing this as a result of U.S. policy, but we do know the current administration's position in space will do nothing to help prevent the militarization of space."For now, U.S. agencies are scrambling to uncover details of China's test and map space debris left in its wake. The White House on Thursday expressed its concerns about the Chinese anti-satellite test, saying it was throwback to another era. "It certainly shows they have a new capability and they're willing to test it, said Joan Johnson Freese, a noted space policy expert who heads the Naval War College's National Security Studies department."It's not a leap-frog over anything the U.S. hasn't done," she said, adding, "It is surprising that they have a willingness to test it."Johnson-Freese says the Chinese anti-satellite capability should not be viewed as a threat to U.S. space assets, which includes dozens of reconnaissance, communications and other military probes. "The U.S. released the new National Space Policy that says we are going to defend space assets. Well we can't. It's a fallacy to think that you can," she said. "The Chinese are showing us their ASAT capability. They are sending us a message." DDDDAAAAAMMNNN WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY FIGHTING?... ALIENS! BUT LIKE ALWAYS ITS PROBABLY GONNA HELP US ONE DAY...HOPEFULLY WE ALL STAY SAFE - - Jan. 18, 2007 — A new analysis of the world's toughest diamonds suggests they may not only be the most ancient objects on Earth — they may also be visitors from deep space. It's even possible they are the unaltered chunks of a long dead, exploded star.The evidence comes in the form of telltale traces of nitrogen and hydrogen in black "carbonado" diamonds, which don't match any terrestrial signature.Instead, the molecules seem to reflect a mixture of gases seen in interstellar space, says Steve Haggarty of Florida International University. He and colleagues Jozsef Garai, Sandeep Rekhi and Mark Chance have published a paper on the matter in a recent issue of Astrophysical Journal. "There is absolutely nothing to compare with these objects," Haggarty told Discovery News, adding that "600 metric tons of carbonado diamonds have been mined, stolen, bartered and adorned in the last century."That's but a small fraction of the world diamond supply and it all comes from just two places: the Central African Republic and Brazil. Oddly enough, neither place has any of the expected geological signs of being a diamond-bearing region.Interest in carbonados is more than academic.These diamonds are particularly prized because they are just as hard as regular diamonds but far tougher under stress. That makes them extremely sought after for industrial drilling and cutting uses. Finding out how carbonado diamonds were created would not only help geologists search for more, but help diamond makers figure out how to synthesize the useful gems, Haggarty explained.The extraterrestrial trace elements found by Haggarty and his team fits some other suspicious signs in the minerals, says Haggarty. For one thing, carbonado diamonds are very porous — a strange thing indeed for a mineral thought to have formed under extreme pressures deep in the Earth.What's more, the diamonds often have a glazed side which appears to be some sort of weathering, said Haggarty. No known Earth weather can do that to a diamond. So was it, perhaps, the hard radiation "weather" of interstellar space? Another puzzle is those two locations. Take plate tectonic movement of the continents back in time, and the Central African Republic and Brazil are joined."It's exactly the same piece of real estate," said Haggarty. "Not a single carbonado has been found in a conventional diamond setting." One possible explanation is that the carbonado diamonds are a chunk of a star that exploded long before the formation of the Sun. The chunk was floating through space and was caught up in the formation of Earth, and it's been here ever since."I think that is not an unreasonable idea," said geologist ancient mineral researcher Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C. "They are perhaps the oldest thing you can hold in your hand." DAMN LOOKS LIKE A METEOR ROCK TO ME Dec. 5, 2006 — Astronomers have identified the source of a mysterious radio emission from deep space as the call sign of a large, negatively-charged carbon molecule — the first negatively charged molecule ever found in interstellar space.Astronomers had previously identified more than a hundred positive and neutral-charged molecules in the space between stars in our galaxy, but no negative molecules, which are also called "anions.""There were no anions at all until our discovery," said astronomer Patrick Thaddeus of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Thaddeus is one of the authors of a report on the discovery in the latest issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The newfound anion is a train of six carbon atoms with a hydrogen atom as the caboose.The hydrogen atom has an extra electron, which gives it the negative charge, as well as the little kick that vibrates the molecule and makes the radio signal. Thaddeus and his colleagues confirmed the molecule's identity, which is dubbed simply C6H-, by recreating it in a laboratory and duplicating its radio emissions.The radio signal of C6H- was found in what are called molecular clouds— very cold, calm places in space where such a molecule can be protected by dust. Without that shield, harsh ultraviolet radiation from stars would normally knock off an electron or two and make the molecules neutral or positive, or slice them to pieces. The radio emission was first detected years ago by Japanese astronomers, but its origins remained unknown, said Thaddeus."This problem slumbered for ten years," Thaddeus told Discovery News. "It turned out to be this lovely carbon chain."C6H- has now been identified in two places — a sphere of gas around the cool, old red giant star IRC +10216 in the constellation Leo and in a molecular cloud called TMC-1, in Taurus.Most astro-chemists had expected the molecule behind the emission would be a shorter, smaller and simpler molecule, said Thaddeus. A long chain of carbons didn't look like a likely candidate, and that's why it wasn't investigated in any lab. Although C6H- is a far cry from finding evidence of life in space, the six-carbon-chain molecule does point in the right direction, said NASA astronomer Jan Hollis."We are all basically built of long strings of carbon," said Hollis, describing the basic nature of all biological compounds. And space appears to be a place where many of the potential building blocks, like C6H-, may just be fairly common. . DAMN ..! WELL NOW IF THERES A POSITVIE .. AND A NUTRAL .. THEN THERES GOTTA BE A NEGITVE THEN ... BUT THIS DISCOVERY COULD AND PROBABLY DID LAUNCH -- NASA -- AND ITS GLOBAL SURROUNDING STAFF ..ONTO A WHOLE NEW PAGE .. Dec. 1, 2006 — Scientists have known for years that meteorites and comets contain organic matter, bolstering theories of a cosmic origin for life. Now, they may have discovered what could be the transport system.After cutting into and thoroughly analyzing samples from a freshly fallen meteorite, researchers found tiny hollow spheres made of organic material that predates the birth of the solar system. "It is not a new idea that a lot of organic matter on Earth originally came from meteorites and comets," said Scott Messenger, a NASA scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston who studies the isotopic chemistry of extraterrestrial materials."What is new here is that we have identified a new physical form of the matter and the source."Of particular interest to astrobiologists, he added, is the shape of the globules."They're not all that different in space from cells and they're hollow, which is a good structure for protecting the earliest life forms," he said.One reason why Messenger and his colleagues believe they were able to find the globules is that the meteorite is one of the few that was seen falling to the Earth and recovered in a relatively short time. Residents of western Canada saw the meteorite arriving as a brilliant fireball in the Yukon sky on the morning of January 18, 2000. Chunks of the meteorite were soon found embedded in the ice of Tagish Lake in Ontario.The snow- and ice-covered lake essentially froze the meteorite and kept it from becoming contaminated."It was a clean place to fall and it was collected very carefully," Messenger said.The type of meteorite in which the globules were found is fragile and typically breaks up into dust during its entry into Earth's atmosphere. "If, as we suspect, this type of meteorite has been falling onto Earth throughout its entire history, then the Earth was seeded with these organic globules at the same time life was first forming here," said Mike Zolensky, a NASA cosmic mineralogist and co-author of a paper about the meteorite appearing in this week's issue of Science.Messenger's wife, Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, the lead author of the study, is credited with finding the globules and bringing them to the attention of her husband and others to chemically analyze.She sliced an extremely thin sample of the meteorite — so thin it was actually transparent — and looked at it with a specialized electron microscope."She noticed these donut-like structures immediately. They're really noticeable and they just jumped right out at her. Once you notice a few, then you look for more and they were everywhere," Messenger said. The scientists are continuing a difficult chemical analysis of the globules and are looking at other meteorites to see if others contain similar structures.The globules are impossibly small — on the order of one-trillionth of a gram, says Messenger — so there is not much material to analyze.The team was able to determine the material was formed in temperatures near absolute zero and deduce that it came from the cold dust cloud from which the solar system was formed."These were simple organic compounds free-floating in space and they condensed into something, like forming a raindrop," Messenger said. "It’s astounding to see the globules because we’re seeing how the organic matter formed, possibly in interstellar space. To see that is truly amazing." Even more provocative is the idea that the material may have been a hull for life to form."That doesn't mean these globules have anything to do with being alive," Messenger said, "But forming a structure may be essential for life." .. HA ... SO PEOPLE WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE TO BELEIVE? THE STORIES HANDED DOWN FROM GENERATION TO CONQUERED PEOPLE OF THE PAST ... EVIDENCE HERE IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE ...WILL YOU CHOOSE A STORY OF RELIGIOUS WARS AND POSITIONS OF POWER ..? TIME TO MAKE A BIG DECISION IN YOUR LIFE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY ... Psychic Phenomenaby Rich AndersIntroductionScience has reached out to the farthest ends of the universe and it is exploring the deepest oceans. Everything in between is being researched and human knowledge grows by leaps and bounds. Regrettably, the human psyche and its wondrous potential have been woefully neglected for a very long time. Only recently, Professor Fredric Schiffer of Harvard University published his findings about the binary functions of the mind and opened an exciting new frontier of human nature.There is, of course, a valid reason that anything that has to do with the invisible aspects of the human mind is approached with caution. For every respectable parapsychologist there are many others whose actions discredit the intangible realm, behind matter.To begin with, let's define the object of this consideration: The word psychic describes anything in connection with the psyche. This word dates back to ancient times when a goddess by the name of Psyche was in charge of the invisible but essential part of human existence. Over time the word and its meaning evolved and presently the thesaurus offers the following synonyms: Mind, soul, self, subconscious, spirit, subliminal self, inner self, ego and individuality. These words have wide range of meanings and, therefore, it makes sense not to use them in the context of this article. Instead, a definition of the source of psychic phenomena will be presented thereby establishing a clear conceptual basis these phenomena can be referenced to. .. There are two types of energy:The energy of matter and the energy behind matter, which religion calls the spiritual energy and science calls the energy of the quantum vacuum. The energy of matter oscillates between the stages of energy and of matter. In a movie consecutive frames give the impression of continued action, which progresses with each frame. The succession of matter phases marks the change, which was achieved in the energy phase and expresses it in a material dimension of width, height and length. The progression of matter phases creates time, the fourth dimension of matter.The energy behind matter is very different from the energy of matter. It always remains energy and, therefore, does not constitute space or time. In this realm of pure energy everything is interrelated. Most importantly, these energies can be programmed and they determine what happens in consecutive matter phases like software determines how a computer operates. For simplicity's reason let's call these the spiritual energies.Any kind of change for matter happens in its energy phase. Were the oscillation of matter to stop in a matter phase everything would stop dead at this instance. For instance, when a body moves the displacement takes place in the energy phases and matter follows energy's lead in consecutive matter phases thus expressing the movement, which has taken place in the preceding energy phases. For movement to take place a command has to be issued. The processes that determine what matter has to do take place in the spiritual energies, which give the appropriate command to the matter energies. These perform according to these commands and in the ensuing matter phases this performance is expressed by whatever kind of action the energies of matter took.For instance, someone thinks that he wants to go to the refrigerator. First comes the thought in his spiritual energies. This thought issues a command to the energies of matter, which then progress towards the refrigerator. The movement of the energies of matter is expressed in consecutive matter phases as this someone walks to the refrigerator. From the above it is clear that every moment of a person's life involves spiritual activity. Without the directions given to a person by the energies behind matter - the spiritual energies - nothing can happen in the realm of matter. Considering this it is logical to call these energies the spirit of a person. This means that from all the names given to these energies in the thesaurus "spirit" is the correct one.The way Professor Schiffer explains the difference between the left - the conscious - and the right side - the unconscious - of the brain it is clear that these two halves are designed like a biological computer. The conscious corresponds to the processor and the working memory, the unconscious corresponds to a hard drive i.e. memory storage. Consequently, every person has two minds. Together these constitute a personality.This opens a very interesting possibility. The conscious minds puts data into the unconscious mind with thoughts, words and actions. This data is stored and retrieved when a situation arises that it can be used. If such data is used to make the conscious mind do something specific on a specific occasion then this works like a computer program that makes a computer perform a certain task. Consequently, a person can program himself/herself with an easy trick: one just has to talk to oneself as a second person. To make a New Year resolution stick one should not say: next year I'll do this and I won't do that. We all know that does not work too well. Instead one should address oneself on a first name basis and say, for instance, "next year, Joe, you do this and don't do that". That programs one's own subconscious and a New Year resolution made this way has a good chance to succeed. Since it has no memory the conscious mind is blank at the time of birth. All of its skills have to be learned and developed as a person grows up. The unconscious mind is the spirit of a person and it contains all the data put in during all previous lifetimes. It consists of spiritual energies or energies of the quantum vacuum as they are called, as well. Such energies are all interconnected and, therefore, a person who can use his/her right side of the brain to tune into this type of energies can extract information from or make use of these energies.With its access to memories of previous lifetimes the unconscious mind also has access to a vast reservoir of previous experiences from which the conscious mind can draw if it pays attention to feelings and hunches etc. because the unconscious mind cannot talk, it just transmits images or feelings. Every time the conscious mind thinks or plans the unconscious mind checks on the information stored in its energies and issues responses in form of feelings and images. As this check is done by spiritual energies the information is provided instantly as in the spiritual realm time does not exist.For instance, someone nearly drowned at some point of time in the present or a previous lifetime. Such person's subconscious will issue a warning not to get too close to any kind of water deep enough to be dangerous. This person will feel uncomfortable whenever he/she gets close to open water. A general term for this kind of warnings if it is too strong is psychosis and the job of psychotherapist is to uncover the hidden reasons for this situation. Once these are detected the psychotherapist can "talk the person out" of his/her anxieties i.e. reprogram the unconscious energies. .. Everybody is a spiritual person for spirituality is the basis of life itself. Even though the words "spiritual" and "psychic" by our definition mean the same a psychic person is thought to be someone with special gifts or powers. Such person has abilities a normal "spiritual" person does not have. He/she can use his/her right side of the brain, to provide insights in or to establish connections with the spiritual realm and interpret the findings. Hence, we are not talking of spiritual but of psychic phenomena.The term "psychic" is applied to a wide range of abilities and situations. To facilitate understanding categories of psychic phenomena are presented, which sum up the ones that are related. In each category the ones that are closely related are grouped together.ESP = Extra Sensory Perception - Telepathy - Tele-empathy- Clairvoyance - Precognition - Premonition- Remote Viewing - Psychometry - Psi detectives- Dowsing - Earth Radiation- Deja Vu - Psychic archaeology .. Altered States of Consciousness - OBE - out of body experience - Near Death Experience - Dreams - Psychic Dreams -Hallucinations- HypnosisPowers of the Mind - Telekinesis = Psychokinesis - Levitation - Teleportation- Psychic healing - Influencing plants - Influencing weatherPsi Manifestations - Prophesies - Divination - auguri - Oracles- The pendulum - Reading cards- Automatic writing - Quija board- TV Psychics - Communication with animals- Trance mediums - Spirit doctors- Psychic photography - Psychic audio contacts - Hauntings - PoltergeistsIntroductionWhat turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?D.R. Hofstadter What is Parapsychology?Parapsychology is the scientific and scholarly study of certain unusual events associated with human experience. These experiences have been called "psychic" for want of a better term.A common misconception is that a parapsychologist is a psychic. Not so. Likewise, a child psychiatrist is not a child! Instead, a parapsychologist is a scientist or scholar who is seriously interested in the "paranormal." Unfortunately, many telephone books and on-line sites use "parapsychologist" as a synonym for psychic entertainer, mentalist, conjurer, astrologer, or psychic reader. This is an inappropriate use of the term "parapsychologist." The Parapsychological Association is an elected affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific organization in the world. In contrast, organizations of psychic readers and mentalists are not members of the AAAS because they are entertainers, not scientists.What does it mean to study psychic phenomena? A long-held, common-sense assumption is that the worlds of the subjective and objective are completely distinct, with no overlap. Subjective is "here, in the head," and objective is "there, out in the world." Parapsychology then is the study of phenomena suggesting that the assumption of a strict separation between subjective and objective may be wrong. Human experience suggests that some phenomena occasionally fall between the cracks, and are not purely subjective nor purely objective. From a scientific perspective, such phenomena are called "anomalous" because they are difficult to explain within current scientific models.These anomalies fall into three general categories: ESP (terms are defined below), PK, and phenomena suggestive of survival after bodily death, including near-death experiences, apparitions, and reincarnation. Most parapsychologists today expect that further research will eventually explain these anomalies in scientific terms, although it is not clear whether they can be adequately understood without significant (indeed, probably revolutionary) expansions of the current state of scientific knowledge. Other researchers take the stance that existing scientific models of perception and memory are adequate to explain some or all parapsychological phenomena.What is not parapsychology?In spite of what the media often imply, parapsychology is not the study of anything considered weird or bizarre. Nor is parapsychology concerned with astrology, UFOs, searching for Bigfoot, paganism, vampires, alchemy, or witchcraft.Many scientists have viewed parapsychology with great suspicion because the term has come to be associated with a huge variety of mysterious phenomena, fringe topics, and pseudoscience. Parapsychology is also often linked, again inappropriately, with a broad range of "psychic" entertainers, magicians, and so-called "paranormal investigators." In addition, some self-proclaimed "psychic practitioners" call themselves parapsychologists, but that is not what we do.What do parapsychologists study?Many feel that the strangest, and most interesting, aspect of parapsychological phenomena is that they do not appear to be limited by the known boundaries of space or time. In addition, they blur the sharp distinction usually made between mind and matter. In popular usage, the basic parapsychological phenomena are categorized as follows:* Psi : A neutral term for parapsychological phenomena. Psi, psychic, and psychical are synonyms. * Telepathy : Direct mind-to-mind communication. * Precognition: Also called premonition. Obtaining information about future events, where the information could not be inferred through normal means. Many people report dreams that appear to be precognitive. * Clairvoyance : Sometimes called remote viewing; obtaining information about events at remote locations, beyond the reach of the normal senses. * ESP: Extra-sensory perception; a general term for obtaining information about events beyond the reach of the normal senses. This term subsumes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. * Psychokinesis : Also called PK; direct mental interaction with physical objects, animate or inanimate. * Bio-PK : Direct mental interactions with living systems. * NDE : Near death experience; an experience reported by those who were revived from nearly dying. Often refers to a core experience that includes feelings of peace, OBE, seeing lights and other phenomena. * OBE : Out-of-body experience; the experience of feeling separated from the body, often accompanied by visual perceptions as though from above the body. * Reincarnation: The belief that we live successive lives, with primarily evidence coming from the apparent recollections of previous lives by very small children. * Haunting : Recurrent phenomena reported to occur in particular locations that include apparitions, sounds, movement of objects, and other effects. * Poltergeist: Large-scale PK phenomena often attributed to spirits, but which are now thought to be due to a living person, frequently an adolescent.Who is interested in Parapsychology?* Physicists tend to be interested in parapsychology because of the implication that we have a gross misunderstanding about space and time and the transmission of energy and information. * Biologists are interested because psi implies the existence of additional, unexplained methods of sensing the world. * Psychologists are interested for what psi implies about the nature of perception and memory. * Philosophers are interested because psi phenomena specifically address many age-old philosophical problems, including the role of the mind in the physical world, and the nature of the objective vs. the subjective. * Theologians and the general public tend to be interested because personal psi experiences are often accompanied by feelings of profound, ineffable meaning. As a result, psi is thought by some to have "spiritual" implications.From the materialistic perspective, one of the foundations of the current scientific worldview, human consciousness is nothing but an emergent product of the functioning of Brain, Body, and Nervous System (BBNS). That is, no matter how different mind may seem from solid stuff like bodies, it is generated solely by the electrochemical functioning of the BBNS, and so it is absolutely dependent on it. When the BBNS dies, so does consciousness. From this perspective, claims of survival of bodily death, or ghosts, or apparitions, must be due to wishful thinking. Furthermore, the limits of material functioning automatically determine the ultimate limits of mental functioning, thus ESP and PK appear to be impossible, given our current understanding about how the world works.And yet, psi phenomena have occurred in all cultures throughout history, they continue to occur, and some of the reported phenomena have been persuasively verified using scientific methods. Because psi seems to transcend the assumed limits of material functioning, and therefore the BBNS, some interpret psi as supporting the idea that there is something more to mind than just the BBNS, that there is some sort of "soul," or the like.This "non-physical" aspect, an aspect that does not seem to be as tightly bounded by space or time as present scientific models require, might survive bodily death. If so, there may be important truths contained in some spiritual ideas and practices. Of course, parapsychology is a very long way from being able to say that "the data shows that X" (insert your favorite religious group here) are specifically right about religious doctrines A, B, and C but dead wrong about dogmas P, Q and R.We must emphasize that there is a big difference between simply noting that the findings of parapsychology may have implications for spiritual concepts, versus the idea that parapsychologists are driven by some hidden spiritual agenda. Some critics of parapsychology seem to believe that all parapsychologists have hidden religious motives, and that they are really out to prove the existence of the soul. This is no more true than claiming that all chemists really harbor secret ambitions about alchemy, and thus their real agenda is to transmute mercury into gold. The reasons why serious investigators are drawn to any discipline are as diverse as their backgrounds. The Future Fate of the Milky Way Galaxy - Collision Scenario for the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies - The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are approaching each other with a speed of 300,000 miles per hour. It's not certain yet whether we're in store for a head-on collision or a simple sideswiping by the massive galaxy, which is a near twin to the Milky Way. Astronomers will first need to use powerful new telescopes to precisely measure Andromeda's tangential motion across the sky. (Just as a baseball outfielder estimates whether a ball is heading directly toward him or is going to miss him by determining whether the ball is moving sideways.)A direct collision would lead to a grand merger between the two behemoths, and the Milky Way would no longer be the pinwheel spiral we are familiar with, but would evolve into a huge elliptical galaxy.It would happen no sooner than five billion years in the future. By then the Sun may have burned out, and the Earth reduced to a frigid, lifeless cinder. It's impossible to predict if there would be any vestige of humanity colonized among the stars, not to mention extraterrestrial civilizations around to witness this great collision. The collision will take several billion years to fully run its course, so it will be hard for any one civilization, like ours, to fully understand the vast scale - both in time and space — of the collision.However, by studying pairs of other colliding galaxies and using computer simulations, astronomers can assemble a series of snapshots of the collision process and get a preview of what might eventually happen to our galaxy. Here is a scenario of how the Milky Way might change if it were to have a head-on collision with Andromeda.Milky Way/Andromeda CollisionThe Andromeda galaxy appears simply as a spindle-shaped smudge of light in the northern autumn sky. Because it is 2.2 million light-years away — or roughly 20 times the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy - it only appears four times the width of the full moon. As the two galaxies approach each other, Andromeda will grow ever larger in the sky, resembling an eerie glowing sword of light. Milky Way/Andromeda CollisionWhen the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy are close enough, huge clumps of cold, giant molecular clouds, each measuring tens to hundreds of light-years across, will be compressed. Like plugging in a string of Christmas light bulbs, these dark knots will light up as millions of stars burst into life. Most of these stars will be in brilliant blue clusters, many of them 100 times brighter than the original globular star clusters already present in the two galaxies.Milky Way/Andromeda CollisionThe disk of dust and stars that for billions of years marked the lanes of our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy, will also begin to come apart under the gravitational pull of the two galaxies. As Andromeda swings past our galaxy, the sky will grow increasingly jumbled with tattered lanes of dust, gas, and brilliant young stars and star clusters. So many new stars will be born that the fraction of massive stars that are present will increase dramatically. These stars will begin popping off like a string of firecrackers as they self-destruct as supernovae. Milky Way/Andromeda CollisionAfter swinging by our galaxy, Andromeda will take perhaps 100 million years to make a slow and graceful U-turn, before plunging nearly directly into the Milky Way's core. Another, even more spectacular burst of star formation will then occur, with the winds from the supernovae driving most of the remaining gas and dust out of the galaxy. Soon both the old and new stars of the two galaxies will intermingle to form a single elliptical-shaped galaxy. Milky Way/Andromeda CollisionAs the stars gravitationally settle into their new home, through a dynamic process called "violent relaxation", any hint of the Milky Way and Andromeda as majestic spiral galaxies will be gone. The band known as the Milky Way will be gone, but far in the future some astronomers might gaze out onto a starry sky and look all the way into the core of the new elliptical galaxy. They would have no clue that there were once two majestic spiral galaxies, called the Milky Way and Andromeda by a long forgotten civilization. . Oct. 17, 2006 — Scientists were excited when they pulled a 154-pound meteorite from deep below a Kansas wheat field, but what got them most electrified was the way they unearthed it. The team Monday uncovered the find 4 feet under a meteorite-strewn field using new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars.It was that technology which pinpointed the site and proved for the first time that it could be used to find objects buried deep in the ground and to make an accurate three-dimensional image of them."It validates the technique so we can use something similar to that instrument when we go to Mars," said Patricia Reiff, director of the Rice Space Institute. Such GPR systems had been used in the past to locate smaller meteorites in Antarctica where ice allows easier penetration of the sonar. But until the Kansas dig, the technology had not been successfully used for ground detection in heavy soils — like on Mars — to find meteorites or water there.The dig was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes. "When we find a piece of meteorite, each one is a new sentence we add to the book to understand the evolution of the solar system," Essam Heggy, planetary scientist at the Johnson Space Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.Even before they had the pallasite meteorite out of the ground, the scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago. Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer to 10,000 years ago. "We know it is recent," said Carolyn Sumners, director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, as she surveyed progress on the dig. "Native Americans could have seen it."The expedition was put together by the Houston Museum of Natural Science and led by meteorite hunters Steve Arnold and Philip Mani. Johnson Space Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute, the Rice Space Institute at Rice University and George Observatory in Houston also sent researchers.Fewer than 1 percent of the meteorites discovered on Earth are pallasite meteorites, known for their crystals embedded in iron, Mani said.Sophisticated metal detectors at the site initially detected what had been thought to be the largest pallasite meteorite ever discovered. But ground-penetrating radar showed that the object was only a steel cable. The Brenham field was discovered in 1882. Scientists have since traced pieces of the shower as far away as Indian mounds in Ohio, indicating the meteorites were traded as pieces of jewelry and ceremonial artifacts.The site was largely forgotten in recent decades until Arnold and Mani leased eight square miles of it and began looking deep below the surface. More than 15,000 pounds of meteorites have been recovered from the area.This week's find will end up as part of a new exhibit on comets, meteors and asteroids at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The museum will pay about $50,000 for it, Sumners said. It is valued at more than $100,000, she said. Landowner Alan Binford watched with interest as the scientists freed the meteorite, bagging clumps of his rich Kansas farmland around it."I didn't figure there would be that much scientific value," he said. "I never thought about them going to this extent. It is interesting history." . Oct. 17, 2006 — Revisiting one of physics' most embarrassing cases of scientific misconduct, researchers from Russia and the United States announced Monday that they have created a new super-heavy element, atomic number 118. Scientists said they smashed together calcium with the manmade element Californium to make an atom with 118 protons in its nucleus. The new element lasted for just one millisecond, but it was the heaviest element ever made and the first manmade inert gas — the atomic family that includes helium, neon and radon.If confirmed, the still-unnamed element would be placed beneath radon on the periodic table of elements, said Ken Moody of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, which was joined on the project by Russia's Joint Institute of Nuclear Research.The findings were published in the journal Physical Review C. The same research team has created four other elements. The experiment recalled an earlier attempt to create the same element.In 1999, scientists said they created element 118, only to withdraw their claims in 2002 amid charges of falsified data and the firing of a scientist. That group of researchers included three from the team that announced Monday's discovery.This time, Moody said, safeguards were adopted to minimize the possibility that just one scientist held critical data.Yale University physics professor Richard Casten, an associate editor of the physics journal, said the latest work was subject to intense scrutiny "because of the sensitivity of the issue."Casten said such new elements are not discoveries until they are confirmed by other scientists. That may take several years, Moody said. The element was created last year in Russia using a minuscule amount of Californium provided by the Americans. After a millisecond, it decayed into element 114, then into element 112 and then split in half, Moody said.Creating a new element "is sort of the Holy Grail of nuclear physics," said Konrad Gelbke, a scientist who was not on the team but directs the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. "It's extremely hard to do." Moody said the new element will not be named until it is approved by an international association of chemists. Elements 113, 114, 115, and 116 are still unnamed. . Oct. 17, 2006 —Beetles with the biggest horns have the smallest testes, say scientists who show that in evolutionary terms you can't have it all. They say their finding is clear evidence of an evolutionary trade-off between the ability to fight off sexual competitors and reproductive potency.Or put simply, the ability to find a mate and the ability to fertilize her.Professor Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia and U.S. researcher Professor Douglas Emlen of the University of Montana published their findings .. today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers looked at beetles of the genus Onthophagus, dung beetles known for the size and variety of their horns."What we did was test a fundamental assumption underlying evolution ... that males face a trade-off between competing for access to lots of females and investment in gaining fertilization with those females," Simmons says."They need to have big horns to win fights and get females and they need to have big testes in order to win in sperm competition. "But they can't do both, so species which invest very heavily in their horns tend to invest less in their testes."The study also demonstrates the theory of sperm competition, which occurs when females mate with more than one partner, Simmons says.According to this theory, male rivalry continues after a mate has been found as sperm from different males compete to fertilize an egg. "Theory predicts that males should increase their investment in sperm production as sperm competition in increased," he says.Simmons tested the theory by cauterizing the area of the developing beetle pupa, where the horns would grow, destroying cells and preventing horn growth.He found that if horn development was inhibited, the pupa compensated by developing larger testes.The principle is known as a resource allocation trade-off, he said. "They got a fixed amount of resources to allocate to various structures, to their legs, their wings, their horns and to their testes and other important organs," he said."If [the developing beetle] doesn't produce horns those males then produce bigger testes because they have resources that weren't used for horn growth." HAHhahahH ...now does this apply to the Homosapians of this planet?? . Sept. 28, 2006: Not so long ago, before electric lights, farmers relied on moonlight to harvest autumn crops. With everything ripening at once, there was too much work to to do to stop at sundown. A bright full moon—a "Harvest Moon"—allowed work to continue into the night. The moonlight was welcome, but as any farmer could tell you, it was strange stuff. How so? See for yourself. The Harvest Moon of 2006 rises on October 6th, and if you pay attention, you may notice a few puzzling things:1. Moonlight steals color from whatever it touches. Regard a rose. In full moonlight, the flower is brightly lit and even casts a shadow, but the red is gone, replaced by shades of gray. In fact, the whole landscape is that way. It's a bit like seeing the world through an old black and white TV set.Right: The Harvest Moon of 2005. Photo credit: Sr. Fins Eirexas of Pobra do Caramiñal, Galiza, Spain. "Moon gardens" turn this 1950s-quality of moonlight to advantage. White or silver flowers that bloom at night are both fragrant and vivid beneath a full moon. Favorites include Four-O'clocks, Moonflower Vines, Angel's Trumpets—but seldom red roses.2. If you stare at the gray landscape long enough, it turns blue. The best place to see this effect, called the "blueshift" or "Purkinje shift" after the 19th century scientist Johannes Purkinje who first described it, is in the countryside far from artificial lights. As your eyes become maximally dark adapted, the blue appears. Film producers often put a blue filter over the lens when filming night scenes to create a more natural feel, and artists add blue to paintings of nightscapes for the same reason. Yet if you look up at the full moon, it is certainly not blue. (Note: Fine ash from volcanoes or forest fires can turn moons blue, but that's another story.)3. Moonlight won't let you read. Open a book beneath the full moon. At first glance, the page seems bright enough. Yet when you try to make out the words, you can't. Moreover, if you stare too long at a word it might fade away. Moonlight not only blurs your vision but also makes a little blind spot. (Another note: As with all things human, there are exceptions. Some people have extra-sensitive cones or an extra helping of rods that do allow them to read in the brightest moonlight.)This is all very strange. Moonlight, remember, is no more exotic than sunlight reflected from the dusty surface of the moon. The only difference is intensity: Moonlight is about 400,000 times fainter than direct sunlight. So what do we make of it all? The answer lies in the eye of the beholder. The human retina is responsible.The retina is like an organic digital camera with two kinds of pixels: rods and cones. Cones allow us to see colors (red roses) and fine details (words in a book), but they only work in bright light. After sunset, the rods take over.Rods are marvelously sensitive (1000 times more so than cones) and are responsible for our night vision. According to some reports, rods can detect as little as a single photon of light! There's only one drawback: rods are colorblind. Roses at night thus appear gray.If rods are so sensitive, why can't we use them to read by moonlight? The problem is, rods are almost completely absent from a central patch of retina called the fovea, which the brain uses for reading. The fovea is densely packed with cones, so we can read during the day. At night, however, the fovea becomes a blind spot. The remaining peripheral vision isn't sharp enough to make out individual letters and words. Finally, we come to the blueshift. Consider this passage from a 2004 issue of the Journal of Vision:"It should be noted that the perception of blue color or any color for that matter in a purely moonlit environment is surprising, considering that the light intensity is below the detection threshold for cone cells. Therefore if the cones are not being stimulated how do we perceive the blueness?" --"Modeling Blueshift in Moonlit Scenes using Rod-Cone Interaction" by Saad M. Khan and Sumanta N. Pattanaik, University of Central Florida. The authors of the study went on to propose a bio-electrical explanation--that signals from rods can spill into adjacent blue-sensitive cones under conditions of full-moon illumination (see the diagram, right). This would create an illusion of blue. "Unfortunately," they point out, "direct physiological evidence to support or negate the hypothesis is not yet available."So there are still some mysteries in the moonlight. Look for them on Oct. 6th under the Harvest Moon.----SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIEND---- OCT. 6 people REmEBER to look for the HARVEST MOON .... it's a day that you dont wanna forget... . The survey, which took nine months of observations with NASA's Swift satellite, uncovered more than 200 supermassive black holes within 400 million light years of Earth, said Jack Tueller with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.These objects, also known as Active Galactic Nuclei or AGN, are millions or even