OF THE
TIMES
May you live in interesting timesThere were widespread reports from the Middle East to central Asia of a strange phenomenon in the late evening sky on June 7th. Emergency phone lines lit up as excited eyewitnesses reported a spectacular light display. Judging by the distribution of media coverage that followed, people in Israel and Lebanon were particularly excited about the event, reporting the extraordinary sighting of "multiple airborne objects". It was apparently unmissable across a vast area because there were also multiple reports in Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and several countries in the Caucasus. The earliest reports came from Lebanon where the daily L'Orient Le Jour reported that "meteorites were clearly visible" and LBCI News reported that "luminous objects and meteor bursts appeared over north Lebanon", before quoting Lebanese astronomers as saying they were the result of a large meteorite that exploded and left "visible trails of dust." Another Lebanese publication, Naharnet, described the phenomenon as a "meteoric downpour", while the state-run National News Agency reported that the objects were "clearly visible."
~ Ancient Chinese proverb
"There it was. This huge plume of turbulence over the Beebe birds just as they began their frenzied flight," Johnson said.Having homed in on the probable cause, Johnson then introduced some nonsense:
The turbulence appears above the birds between about 7,000 and 12,000 feet. Johnson realized there are only a few possible explanations for this phenomena.
"Birds don't fly that high, and he quickly ruled out military action, a sonic boom, meteor shower or alien invasion."While we can understand why Johnson ruled out military action or a sonic boom (there were no flights over the area at the time), Johnson never explained why he ruled out a "meteor shower", although we can understand the inclusion of "alien invasion" - to ridicule by association the idea of a "meteor shower" or other meteorite-related phenomenon.
"Something in the atmosphere, something mysterious, occurred over Beebe, Arkansas that night... And I believe it was part of what caused those birds to fly and then die."Indeed, but with the answer staring him in the face, Johnson lost the plot completely:
Johnson's research captured an unseen temperature reversal just above the birds' roosting area at about 1,500 feet above the ground. This temperature "inversion" acted like a megaphone, amplifying all the noises that occurred in Beebe at that time. As the fireworks exploded, the sound was amplified by the inversion and became much louder than normal. This appears to have startled the birds so much that they burst into flight, running into each other, and nearby buildings. Thousands of the now-disoriented birds then crashed to the ground, dying from blunt force trauma.Temperature reversal? At 1,500 feet? But previously Johnson stated that the 'turbulence' occurred between 7,000 and 12,000 feet. He even produced a graph of the Doppler radar images that shows this. While temperature inversion does occur and can amplify sound, when birds are startled by noise they don't generally fly into each other and buildings in large numbers. What's most likely, is that the bird deaths of January 2011 (and later) were caused by an overhead meteorite or comet fragment (MoCF) explosion, with either the actual shock wave killing the birds (through blunt force trauma) or associated electrical effects 'frying' their 'circuits'.
The first reports of a strange glow in the sky came from across Europe. Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1908, Londoners were intrigued to see a pink phosphorescent night sky over the capital. People who had retired awoke confused as the strange pink glow shone into their bedrooms. The same ruddy luminescence was reported over Belgium. The skies over Germany were curiously said to be bright green, while the heavens over Scotland were of an incredible intense whiteness which tricked the wildlife into believing it was dawn. Birdsong started and cocks crowed - at two o'clock in the morning. The skies over Moscow were so bright, photographs were taken of the streets without using a magnesium flash. A captain on a ship on the River Volga said he could see vessels on the river two miles away by the uncanny astral light. One golf game in England almost went on until four in the morning under the nocturnal glow, and in the following week The Times of London was inundated with letters from readers from all over the United Kingdom to report the curious 'false dawn'. A woman in Huntingdon wrote that she had been able to read a book in her bedroom solely by the peculiar rosy light. There were hundreds of letters from people reporting identical lighting conditions that went on for weeks... (Tom Slemen)None of the people witnessing this strange phenomenon had any idea that, in the central Siberian plateau, just after 7:15 a.m. local time, the planet had been hit by a cometary impactor that exploded - as most such impactors do - in the atmosphere just above the Earth's surface.
The Merah Case: A Trip to ConspiracyLand
Soren Seelow
Le Monde
Grey areas, contradictory statements, media hype, political hijacking, shades of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, police forces blunders, shady role of the Intelligence services... the Mohamed Merah case, where a young man was accused of murdering seven people last March in Toulouse and Montauban, has all the ingredients to feed conspiracy theories. Since the beginning of the case, suspicions of political manipulations have emerged, strengthened by the case's inconsistencies, and have spread around, giving rise to alternative theses running in parallel with the official version. Let's take a plunge into this shady world of conspiracy, and let's take a look at its reflexes, techniques and ideological agendas.
It is generally admitted that the effect of the Delphian oracle upon Greek culture was profoundly constructive. James Gardner sums up its influence in the following words: "Its responses revealed many a tyrant and foretold his fate. Through its means many an unhappy being was saved from destruction and many a perplexed mortal guided in the right way. It encouraged useful institutions, and promoted the progress of useful discoveries. Its moral influence was on the side of virtue, and its political influence in favor of the advancement of civil liberty."In other words, there's our answer to the second question: a good oracle (or spiritual source) doesn't shy away from politics. Like a Greek cynic, or the proverbial Cassandra, the prime role of an oracle is to present a vision of the world as it is, no matter how painful or unpopular the view, and provide the only alternative fit for a lie: the truth. So, yes, we track 'high strangeness', and our worldview is quite at odds with the materialistic dictum peddled and enforced by PhD's and media pundits the world over. Everything you 'know' is a lie, and that includes all your metaphysical assumptions about the way the 'reality' really works. Luckily there's a way out of the labyrinth, and (please excuse me for going Biblical here!) the truth will set you free.
"He [Eugene] was ripping into his [Poppo's] face with his teeth," said a witness to the ghoulish attack.
"He was ripping his skin, his neck. He had him held down. The guy couldn't move really, and he was just tearing into his flesh," Vega told WSVN TV in Miami.
The witness flagged down a police officer, who repeatedly ordered the assailant to stop and move away.
"The guy just stood his head up like that, with a piece of flesh in his mouth, and growled."
When Eugene did not comply with the officer's demands, he shot him once. Eugene, however, appeared unfazed, at which point the officer shot him four more times.
Comment: Continue to Part Eight: Letters From the Edge
See also: Mass Extinctions - Interruptions in the Orderly Process of Evolution for some great graphics!
Dinosaur Extinction Page
Crater Morphology; Some Major Impact Structures