The Mystery of the Abandoned Vomit Bag

June 5th. Radnor Township, Pennsylvania. A Bed Bath and Beyond employee encounters something horrible: a semi-hidden bag containing 35 pounds of human vomit.
The punchline? They found another one the week before.
So many questions, so few answers.
The bag was placed "about 10 parking rows from the store behind a tree." This makes it sound like it was tucked away in a far corner of the parking lot. Could it be the work of a crazed transient who is sleeping in brush alongside the parking lot?
Suburban parking lots often abut abandoned scrubby areas where transients sleep. So it's not entirely impossible. Satellite imagery shows that, although the Bed Bath and Beyond is on a commercial road with a lot of other big box stores, there is also a lot of green space around the margins.
Or was the "tree" one of those decorative trees in the middle of the parking lot itself? The overarching question being, was the bag meant to be found?
Not to state the obvious, but 35 pounds of vomit is a lot. A gallon of fresh water weighs eight pounds. Vomit would be somewhat more dense, so let's say a gallon of vomit weighs ten pounds. That would be three and a half gallons of vomit (more or less).
Is this the work of one mad barfer? Or is it the work of several people? Frankly, this smells like a fraternity prank. Vomiting into a bag and hiding it in a Bed Bath and Beyond parking lot is definitely the sort of thing that bored young men would be inclined to do, doesn't it?
It could also be the work of an ex-employee. (Or both!)
Would DNA evidence be able to identify and convict the person(s) responsible? According to the FBI's DNA website, "Samples such as feces and vomit can be tested, but may not be routinely accepted by laboratories for testing." Because they are too gross? Or because they are difficult to test? Doesn't say.
On a sadder note, bulimics are notorious for vomiting into containers and hiding them, in order to conceal evidence of their eating disorder from concerned friends and family. Anecdotes of bulimics hiding vomit abound on the internet. This could well be the work of some person with a mental illness who desperately needs clinical treatment.
That being said, only the rudest bulimic would stash their evidence in a parking lot for someone else to clean up. Bulimics of the world, please properly dispose of your collected vomit in a dumpster!

The Return of the Dust Bowl?

How the immense dust storm that hit Phoenix, AZ last week could become the new norm.

   

Last week a dust storm a 100 miles wide and nearly a mile high hit Phoenix, Arizona; the result of thunderstorm cooled air plummeting into the ground. Wired Science explained it like mist pouring out of an open freezer, "only exponentially more powerful." The extreme drought in the area allowed these powerful winds to kick up cubic tons of dust that rolled over the Phoenix area; the biggest, meteorologists say, in at least 30 years. Many have compared it to the bizarre dust storms in Sydney,  Australia and China's Gobi Desert.  Others call it a return to the devastating Dust Bowl storms that decimated agriculture land and livelihoods.

     The Phoenix dust storm is an example of a 'perfect storm' (no pun intended) of circumstances that seem increasing in latter years as climate change takes a greater hold on weather manifestations. Much of the southwest has been experiencing widespread drought, some areas since the 1990's. In fact, according to climatologists, precipitation in the southwest on average is 50% of what it was 75 years ago in the same region. Additionally, the average temperature of this area of the country has risen 1.5 degrees, and will rise more steeply, between 4 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, according to the USGCRP.  Whenever there is less precipitation and more heat the factors create ideal conditions for wild fires and dust storms. These factors also, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, decrease plant density. Understandably, fewer plants are able to grow in a region scorched by heat and lacking in precipitation. As plants die off there are less roots to provide topsoil stability, and to anchor that topsoil in place. Less moisture makes the soil more susceptible to wind erosion, and the result is more dust in the air. Combine these conditions with a weather event like a thunderstorm, or even more likely, shifting pressure cells, and the result is an enormous dust storm that removes precious topsoil, chokes plants, animals, and people, causes infrastructure damage, and over time can even lead to greater desertification and shrinking arable farmland, as happened in the 1930's.

    

In the early 20th century, decades of unsustainable farming practices lead to a decrease in the arability of the topsoil, lacking nutrients it was dry, cracked, and dusty. Add to that a drought that hit in the early 30's, and a series of powerful weather events created state-wide dust storms that literally removed millions of tons of topsoil from the farms and ranches of the Midwest and American Southwest and blew it as far as Washington D.C. and the Atlantic Ocean. One particularly bad dust storm stretched from Kansas City, Kansas to Chicago, Illinois in the same day. It was human activity that created these monsters, without question. However, others question whether these modern-day dust storms are.

     It's difficult to definitively say that these conditions are the result of climate change since decades, even century-long drought and heat waves are not uncommon in arid regions. However, As these dust storms become more common in other areas of the globe as well, virtually simultaneously, there's strong correlation to global warming, rather than just regional warming.

     Despite that, it is another chapter in a volume of evidence that is depicting climate change happening now, and manifesting in myriad ways in our nation alone; from gigantic dust storms in the American southwest, to thousand-year floods through the Midwest, tornadoes in New England, to measurable sea-rise in Florida. It astounds me that individuals in our own government can waves a dismissive hand at climate change, calling it a 'liberal lie', or 'sensationalism'. What happens to those individuals that were too cowardly, ignorant, or foolish to act when the global impacts of climate change become too devastating to ignore? By then, it probably won't matter.

New Gonorrhea Super-Strain Immune to Treatment

A super-STD capable of resisting all available antibiotics found in Sweden and Japan.

    

Swedish and Japanese researchers have isolated a strain of Gonorrhea that is resistant to all antibiotics, identifying it from the throat swab of a sex-worker in Japan. The strain of bacteria, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is particularly troubling because it is able to pass its resistance on to other strains of Gonorrhea within the same host. Researchers say that this makes other strains up to 500 times more resistant to antibiotics simply by the different strains of bacteria coming into contact. Dr. Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria calls it a, "potentially huge public health risk."

      "This is a both alarming and predictable discovery," Dr. Unemo included in a public statement. Gonorrhea is actually the oldest known human pathogen, and is uniquely evolved for human beings. In fact, late last month researchers discovered the part of the Gonorrhea bacterium's genome includes a fragment of human DNA. The organisms have developed so well to their human hosts that they've actually copied a bit of the human DNA sequence into their own genetic makeup. This explains, at least in part, why the bacterial strains of N. gonorrhoeae have been so adaptable to changing conditions and treatments. Starting in World War II, there was an incredible outbreak of Gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases as soldiers from many parts of the globe were moved en masse, having visited brothels in foreign countries and returned home carrying the bacteria. Soldiers received a standard of sulfonamides for a Gonorrheal infection, but shortly thereafter strains appeared that were resistant to it. Doctors moved on to other antibiotics, including penicillin, tetracycline, and Cipro; all of which no longer work. 

     As reported in Popular Science, Gonorrhea affects 700,000 individuals in the U.S. each year, all of which are largely treated by one remaining effective antibiotic, cephalosporins. In men, Gonorrhea generally manifests relatively early and includes swelling of the genitals and yellow pussy excretions. Long-term effects can include sterility, penile dysfunction, and the infection can spread to other parts of the body. In women the symptoms are much more subtle, but no less devastating. Women may not even know they carry the disease until he infection spreads, by which time it could have been transmitted to other partners and caused infertility. Transmission of Gonorrhea bacteria carries an increased threat of HIV, as well. Babies born to mothers suffering from Gonorrhea have a heightened risk of infection and blindness upon birth. In about 3 -4% of the cases Gonorrheal infection will spread to the blood, skin, heart and joints of infected adults.

     The L.A. Times reports that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported increasing numbers of Gonorrheal infections that require abnormally high doses of cephalosporins to treat. In such a widespread disease, it's a concern of many that these strains may develop independently of one another, simultaneously, and in many areas of the globe, which could result in a global epidemic. The highest growth rates domestically were in Hawaii and California. The CDC is asking physicians to treat new instances of Gonorrhea with a combination of antibiotics until a new type of antibiotic can be made available that will be effective in fighting the new resistant strains.

Japanese Debris Headed for U.S.

After the earthquake in Japan last month, the subsequent tsunami wiped huge sections of Japan's coastline clean. As the tsunami receded, it sucked all of the debris off the land and into the sea. Where it began slowly drifting into the Pacific Ocean's circulation, heading first for Hawaii and eventually to make landfall on the continental U.S.
"Can you imagine San Francisco put through a shredder?" oceanographer Curtis Ebbsmeyer asks.
It will take about three years for the debris plume to reach the beaches of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center has forecast the bulk of the debris to make landfall in California, sometime in the middle of the year 2016. But the leading edge of the debris plume will spread out along the entire western coastline, beginning as early as late 2013.
The debris field will be following the North Equatorial Current, which flows from east to west across the Pacific. After the North Equatorial Current hits the western coast of the United States it spins off into the Pacific Gyre, which is the home of the infamous Garbage Patch. Unfortunately, quite a lot of debris from the Japanese earthquake will end up in the Garbage Patch at the end of its journey, contributing unknown tons of debris to that already-clogged area of the ocean.
The debris which will make landfall on the continental United States will have been in the ocean for several years by that point. Although there were some early morbid theories that human remains might wash up on our shores, this seems extremely unlikely given the distance and the time frame. Even the infamous disembodied feet in sneakers which washed up on Pacific Northwest beaches had only been floating for a few months at the most.
Most of the beachcombing remains will likely be housing debris - wood frames, shingles, window frames, studs, floorboards, etc. And the rest will likely be plastic consumer waste (toys, bottles, cushions, wrappers), which unfortunately floats indefinitely. Mixed in with a heap of uprooted trees, tires, and other random bits that survive the journey.
There was some initial concern that the debris field might be radioactive, after the Fukushima plant's meltdown. However, most of this debris was pulled off the Japanese coastline several hours before the plant experienced problems. Even if it had been radioactive, several years floating in the ocean would typically be enough to render the items harmless by the time they reach us.

Comet Elenin: End of Days?

Comets, those occasional wanderers through our solar system, often get people all hot and panicked. Need we remember the arrival of the comet Hale-Bopp, which kicked off the mass suicide at the Heaven's Gate cult?
Heaven's Gate cultists killed themselves because they believed that Nibiru - which is a UFO or a mobile planet or both - was trailing along behind the comet Hale-Bopp, hiding in its brilliant tail. This October, a comet named Elenin will enter our solar system. So I suppose it is not surprising that some people believe that Elenin actually is Nibiru, and that, to coin a phrase, the end of the world is nigh.
The concept of Earth's destruction by collision with Nibiru began in 1995, when a woman named Nancy Lieder claimed to have been contacted by extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system. She says that they warned her of an interplanetary collision (or close call that would cause a pole shift, it's not clear which).
At the time, Hale-Bopp was scheduled to arrive in our solar system in 1997. Lieder claimed that Hale-Bopp was a hoax, designed to draw our attention away from the real threat, which she called "Planet X" that would roar past and destroy humanity.
Later, as Hale-Bopp drew nigh (and most people believed in its existence), remote viewer Courtney Brown claimed to have "viewed" Nibiru sneaking in on Hale-Bopp's tail. The rest is history. Sad, suicidal history.
These days the collision with Nibiru is frequently being conflated with the end of the Mayan calendar, which is scheduled for 2012. Some people believe that the Mayans somehow predicted that the world would face catastrophic destruction in 2012, which is why they stopped their calendar there.
(I like to imagine the Mayans being puzzled by this interpretation, then explaining that "No, silly! 2012 is when you turn the calendar over and start again!")
Elenin, the current candidate for Nibiru-like destruction, will pass closest to Earth on October 16 of this year. It will swing by at 21,730,000 miles from Earth, about the same distance as the planet Venus. Certain conspiracy theorists don't believe it, and they in fact believe that the comet's name - Elenin - is code for ELE, which stands for Extinction Level Event (this is why the comet is usually referred to as "ELEnin" on certain websites).
The panic about comet Elenin is nothing new, of course. It seems like every comet that has approached Earth has kicked off a mass panic. Comets have been seen as signs and portents for as long as humanity has been able to look upwards.

Heaven's Gate committed mass suicide in Nikes with 5-dollar bills

Yesterday, I went on a ghost tour of Seattle’s Pike Place market.  I got a perspective of the market I’ve never had before.  For example, our tour guide told us about how in the mid-eighties, the city let people purchase tiles for the market’s floor as a fundraiser to renovate the building.  Nothing ghostly about this--I’d seen these tiles plenty of times, but I’d never noticed one that said “Heaven’s Gate 6-8-85.”  I’d never heard of Heaven’s Gate before, but, according to our tour guides, it turns out that they were a pseudo-Christian cult that thought they could hitch a ride to space on the Hale-Bopp comet. They were recruiting members in Seattle in the ‘80s.

Heaven’s Gate was the third of three cult organizations started by Marshall Herff Applewhite. In 1975, Applewhite and his co-founder Bonnie Lu Trundle Nettles, Applewhite’s nurse following his heart attack, created the group Human Individual Metamorphosis and travelled to Colorado to await the arrival of a UFO. Applewhite and Nettles called themselves “The Two.” Undeterred after the space ship’s absence and Nettles’ death, Applewhite founded a group called Total Overcomers Anonymous in 1993.   

Heaven’s Gate believed that a group of UFO’s from the Kingdom of Heaven came to earth about 2000 years ago.  The leader of the group, “Do,” was given instructions from his female companion “Ti” to leave his extraterrestrial body behind and move into the human body of Jesus Christ.  If this sounds a bit like Star Wars meets the Bible, that’s because it was.  

In the 1920’s, inhabitants of the Kingdom of Heaven, including Do and Ti, returned to earth. They each inhabited a human body, but somehow the crew of this spaceship became scattered.  The extraterrestrials held meetings to talk about their religion and eventually tracked down the rest of the crew members.    

Applewhite changed the group’s name to Heaven’s Gate when they moved to San Diego. There, they rented a huge home, which they called a monastery, where all the members lived together. They lost most contact with their families and former friends.  All of the members wore the same thing--black shirts with Mandarin collars and black pants.  In preparation for the next world free of gender and sex, they were to remain celibate and eight of the members, including Applewhite, underwent a voluntary castration.  

Heaven’s Gate also believed that if the members of the group, also the crew members of the space ship, committed suicide at a certain time, they would leave their human bodies for bodies of another dimension. They believed that the space ship that would allow them to enter their next bodies was hidden in the Hale-Bopp comet. 

In March of 1997, 38 members dressed in black clothing and put on new black-and-white Nike sneakers and an arm band that read “Heaven’s Gate Away Team.”  They put five dollar bills in one pocket and quarters in the other, apparently an admission fee to the space craft.  Next, they committed suicide by ingesting cyanide or arsenic mixed with applesauce or pudding and followed it up with vodka.  After eating the mixture, plastic bags were wrapped around members’ heads so they would asphyxiate. 

Here’s the charismatic Marshall Applewhite, who died along with his members. Would you have been taken in?

dfisIG-QjTY

The Old Man of the Lake

Crater Lake is a pretty amazing place. It is a lake which exists inside a collapsed volcanic caldera. It is not fed by streams, but strictly from rainfall and snow melt. As such, its water is unbelievably - even impossibly - clear. So clear that mosses are able to grow and photosynthesize even under 350 feet of water.
The sides of the lake's caldera are suicidally steep, and lead straight down into the water in many places. This may be partly responsible for the lake's most famous resident, the Old Man of the Lake.
The Old Man is a stump, a length of hemlock trunk, which floats vertically in the lake. And has been for at least a hundred years. Originally, five feet of the stump projected up from the water, silvered with age. But tourists kept jumping on it, breaking off little bits, and now only two feet projects up from the water's surface. The rest of the Old Man, a long length of bark-less tree trunk, hangs straight down into the near-invisible water.
According to Mike Dash on the A Blast From the Past blog, an early ranger cut down several trees from the lake's flanks to make a raft. He found that when the trees slid down into the water, the angle of their descent was so steep that many of them came to rest bobbing vertically in the water. This may well be how the Old Man originally arrived in the lake: skidding down the steep slopes above.
No one knows why the Old Man hasn't just rotted. At the very least, you would think that underwater algae and microscopic creatures would have nibbled it down to nothing by now. Or enough to make it sink! But it seems that the submerged trunk is completely waterlogged, a process which can preserve logs for hundreds of years. (Many waterlogged trees lie at the bottom of Lake Washington, and are dredged up occasionally for cash.)
The Old Man drifts around the lake to a surprising extent, as a government survey in the 1930s discovered. The lake has no real current, but winds push the Old Man to and fro as the weather changes. And miraculously, the top of the log has retained enough buoyancy to act like a small sail, allowing the Old Man free range of the lake.
Crater Lake has no native fish, but in the olden days the Park Service stocked the lake. They want those fish gone now, which means that you may fish to your heart's content, no permit needed, no limit imposed. Cast away from the approved locations, into the nation's most beautiful and awe-inspiring lake, and keep an eye out for the Old Man!

BEWARE OF PSYCHIC ATTACKS FROM THE GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!

Mom,

I think someone is trying to influence and damage you through me. Please be careful to protect yourself against negative influences and mental imagery. Any mental projections coming your way, should be regarded with a high level of skepticism (they are not coming from me). If I die suddenly, it is due to assassination not suicide. I've been under psychic attack for the last month.

p.s. James, this goes for you too.
 

The light of God surrounds you,
The love of God enfolds you,
The power of God protects you,
And the presence of God watches over you;
Wherever you are, God is.
Amen.

 

Love,
Danielle

 

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f20/LaFeeVerte888/headband6.jpg

Siberia Sets Up Yeti Institute

So what if most people don’t believe in a yeti monster? That is no excuse to not set up a research institute on an animal that could be fake. Siberian scientists at Kemerovo University are planning on doing just that. Their goal in setting up a so-called Yeti Institute is to prove that the yeti does, in fact, exist—something that cryptozoologists have been trying to accomplish for decades, if not longer.

Is it a waste of money? I would say yes, unless it ends up being more of a tourist attraction for the area than anything else. As much fun as cryptozoology is, resources are becoming scarcer everywhere these days—from fuel to food to even funds—and I don’t think this is really the best way to spend them, whether the college has them or not.

All of that said, it sounds like the biggest endeavor to really discover who or what bigfoot is, if it exists in the first place, and if something is discovered, it would definitely be one of the most amazing things we’ve seen in a few hundred years. So good luck, Kemerovo researchers; I hope your efforts will not be wasted in vain.

Haunted Collector: Too Pat An Answer

I have watched a few episodes of the Syfy Channel's new show, Haunted Collector. And I have to admit, although I really want to like this show, I remain unimpressed and skeptical.
Haunted Collector is one of those "recombinant formula" shows that keeps popping up these days. It's a combination of Ghost Hunters, plus the genre of "finding stuff" shows (Pawn Stars, American Pickers, et al). The show's hook is that most (all?) hauntings are connected to an item in the household. That you can somehow narrow down the specific haunted item, and if you remove it, the haunting ends.
This is an interesting premise gone horribly awry. First of all, the lore of haunted objects is indeed vast and varied. Items with a strong emotional attachment are often considered haunted, as are "important" items like the Hope Diamond. The idea is that the psychic energy of a living human spirit often "rubs off" on an object, like an invisible residue, causing residual hauntings in the future.
(I'm thinking of a particularly awesome episode of Ghost Hunters where the team investigated a museum display of Titanic memorabilia. It did seem that some of the ghosts of the people who went down with the Titanic were silently following the objects on tour around the country.)
But I think most people would raise an eyebrow at the thought that all hauntings can be traced down to a particular item. (Unless you want to consider an entire house or parcel of property to be an "item.") And yet, that is exactly what happens on Haunted Collector.
I haven't watched all the episodes, not by a long shot. Maybe it's just coincidence that I only saw the episodes where the team identified a specific item that was causing the haunting. Maybe sometimes they show up and nothing happens. Maybe sometimes they pick out an object, but the haunting continues. If that's the case, then I'll definitely change my tune.
But as it stands, Haunted Collector strikes me as being more akin to those faith healers who palm a scrap of chicken, only to pluck it triumphantly from the chest of the patient. Behold, this vase was causing all your problems! I'll take it away, and your haunting will end!
The more ghost shows I watch, the more I appreciate Ghost Hunters. In this case, I appreciate the number of investigations when the Ghost Hunters team finds no evidence of paranormal activity. That feels real to me - in scientific terms, "falsifiable."

Pages