I'VE heard plenty of tales about freak weather that are strange, but nonetheless true. In August 2000, a shower of sprats, dead but conveniently still fresh, fell from the skies onto the English port of Great Yarmouth just after a thunderstorm. A torrent of live toads pelted a Mexican town in June 1997. And in 2001, 50 tonnes of alien life forms rained down from the clouds over India.
Actually, I'm not sure that the alien story is true. But it is surprisingly persistent. I first saw it in 2003 in a scientific paper written by Godfrey Louis, a physicist working in the Indian state of Kerala, on the country's southern tip. He described how, during two months in 2001, red rain fell sporadically right across the state. No one could explain it, but after lengthy studies of red particles in the rainwater, Louis came to the extraordinary conclusion that they were alien microbes that hitched a ride to Earth on a comet.
Science & Technology
Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list.
The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero."
The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102. However, Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, told New Scientist: "The most likely situation, by far, is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero."
"Comet Pojmanski (C/2006 A1) has a bright green head," says Chris Schur who took this picture yesterday at dawn from Payson, Arizona.
New York - Men who smoke cigarettes are about twice as likely to require root canal treatment as those who have never smoked, according to a prospective cohort study lasting for almost three decades.
The risk for cigarette smokers increased with more years of smoking and decreased with length of abstinence, suggesting a dose-response relationship.
The risk for cigarette smokers increased with more years of smoking and decreased with length of abstinence, suggesting a dose-response relationship.
"We have observed an object only 20 kilometers across [12 miles], on the other side of our galaxy, releasing more energy in a tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years."
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.
But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light.
The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
No known eruption beyond our solar system has ever appeared as bright upon arrival.
But you could not have seen it, unless you can top the X-ray vision of Superman: In gamma rays, the event equaled the brightness of the full Moon's reflected visible light.
The blast originated about 50,000 light-years away and was detected Dec. 27. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
If the site is not directly handled by COINTELPRO, if the Abovetopsecret.com "Amigos" are not conscious COINTELPRO agents, then they are by default; it serves the same purpose because the infection of pathological elements reigns supreme there.
The 3 Amigos (Owners) manipulate everything about this site. They have figured out a way to manipulate google (that is why they put a thread link called "CoIntelPro" in the banner of every thread page, to push any search results for cointelpro and abovetopsecret deep into the google search pages behind them).
They do much behind closed doors but they show their arrogance freely throughout the site. They push their rules right and left, but they, as owners and moderators break them freely and regularly, seemingly as they please.
In short, it is all one giant marketing manipulation and the owners do not give a flip about the members or what is actually produced as a public consumable, so as long as it serves what is obviously their targeted purpose : To suck in more members to post which creates more indexed pages, to attract more readers, to vector their thinking and make money, and around and around it goes. It is rather amazing how the entire thing is designed and how most posters there haven't got a clue.
The newly discovered 18th-dynasty tomb contains five mummies in intact sarcophagi with coloured funerary masks, along with more than 20 large storage jars sealed with pharaonic seals, according to Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The sarcophagi are carved in human form, like Tutankhamun's. The tomb is rectangular, and the wooden sarcophagi are surrounded by the jars, which seem to have been placed haphazardly, suggesting that the burial had been completed quickly, according to Dr Hawass.
The sarcophagi are carved in human form, like Tutankhamun's. The tomb is rectangular, and the wooden sarcophagi are surrounded by the jars, which seem to have been placed haphazardly, suggesting that the burial had been completed quickly, according to Dr Hawass.
We are all Alastair Campbells now. Spin doctors antennae whirred around this week when the volunteers who run Wikipedia discovered that staff of US senators and congressmen had been busy burnishing their bosses entries in the internet encyclopedia.
Millions of people turn to the reference site to look up facts - and change them. The non-profit making project to build an internet encyclopedia is the 19th most-visited site in the world. Three per cent of all webpages visited are Wikipedia pages. Its guiding, and democratic, principle: anyone can anonymously edit it. Increasingly, it seems, politicians and their staff are among the most dedicated editors.
Millions of people turn to the reference site to look up facts - and change them. The non-profit making project to build an internet encyclopedia is the 19th most-visited site in the world. Three per cent of all webpages visited are Wikipedia pages. Its guiding, and democratic, principle: anyone can anonymously edit it. Increasingly, it seems, politicians and their staff are among the most dedicated editors.
Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby;s cells linger in its mom's body for decades and -- like stem cells -- may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It's such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.
Comment: Comment: May the reader please imagine a very large hall in some old Gothic university building. Many of us gathered there early in our studies in order to listen to the lectures of outstanding philosophers.
We were herded back there the year before graduation in order to listen to the indoctrination lectures which recently had been introduced. Someone nobody knew appeared behind the lectern and informed us that he would now be the professor.
His speech was fluent, but there was nothing scientific about it: he failed to distinguish between scientific and everyday concepts and treated borderline imaginations as though it were wisdom that could not be doubted.
For ninety minutes each week, he flooded us with naive, presumptuous paralogistics and a pathological view of human reality. We were treated with contempt and poorly controlled hatred. Since fun poking could entail dreadful consequences, we had to listen attentively and with the utmost gravity.
The grapevine soon discovered this person's origins. He had come from a Cracow suburb and attended high school, although no one knew if he had graduated. Anyway, this was the first time he had crossed university portals, as a professor, at that! [Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology]
Comment: At the beginning of this article, there are some "Medpage Today Action Points": As a public service to our cherished readers, we thought we would add the following "warnings":