Rods Perennially Caught On Camera; Still Don't Exist

Rods or "skyfish" are a quirk of the way cameras work, but that doesn't stop people from continuing to believe that they are aliens, unknown flying animals, time travelers, or more.  The classic rod is a streak across a video camera frame, often with what appears to be an undulating single or double fin propelling it, not unlike the fin on the sides of a cuttlefish.

Every possible credible source has debunked the myth of "rods," and yet the idea persists in cryptozoology circles and in the public's consciousness.  Even the MonsterQuest episode devoted to rods admitted at the end that they were clearly an artifact of the way cameras work, after they were able to successfully replicate the appearance of a rod under near-laboratory testing.  But of course, you had to watch the first 40 minutes of the episode, chock full of experts talking about the nature of rods, before you got to that point!

It is only in the very last minutes of the episode that the MonsterQuest crew is able to reproduce the rods exactly.  And to confirm, through the use of a high speed camera focused on the exact same spot, that the "rod" was in fact a very fast moving moth.  Both the high speed camera and the regular camera were focused on a digital time clock, so that their readouts could be synched.  There is no question that the "rod" captured by MonsterQuest was in fact a moth.  And yet people still doubt the evidence!

One argument that rod believers use is that the rod appears to move at speeds far faster than what an ordinary moth or katydid is capable of.  Several pieces of footage show rods moving at what rod researchers calculate is several hundred miles per hour.  According to the rod believers, this explains why you and I don't see rods - they are moving too fast for us to notice.  

There are two problems with this theory.  The first is obvious: I am fairly certain that people would notice something zooming past their head at several hundred miles per hour.  After all, that is similar to the speed of a bullet, and one does hear the "zing" of a bullet flying past, as it disrupts the air in its quick passage.

The second problem is that it is completely impossible to determine the speed of the object from the video tape.  Speed is a function of distance + time.  We know the time (say 2 seconds to traverse the video camera's field).  But we cannot know the distance.  

It is impossible to determine whether you're seeing a small thing close to the camera lens, or a large thing far away from the lens.  A small thing close to the lens will appear to move much more quickly than a large thing farther away.  Think of the difference, for example, between the apparent speed of an airplane across the sky, versus that of a moth fluttering across your field of vision.

Exactly!

Sadly, there are still people who make a living from trying to propagate belief in these "creatures."  Self-styled "rod researchers" like Jose Escamilla should be given the pity they deserve - but certainly not belief. And definitely not your money!

Holiday Gift Idea's for the Supernatural Hunters in Your Life

Looking for that perfect gift for that adventurous family member or hard to buy for friend? Well have I got some ideas for you! As I was watching T.V. earlier this evening, I noticed there are quite a bit of paranormal type shows on these days. Shows about hauntings, people that hunt ghosts and spirits, psychic kids and so on. I then started googling some of these shows and came across some fun things. Like this ghost hunting kit. For the seemingly reasonable price of $99.75 you can equip yourself or someone you know with all the tools they need to get started in the world of ghost hunting.

Ghosts maybe not what you're looking for? How about vampire hunting? Well, look no further. This kit has everything you need to take down any bloodsucker that gets in your way. Wooden stakes, holy water, rosary, a mallet...Just add some fresh garlic, maybe some silver chains and you're all set. Edward Cullen, look out.

 

The MKULTRA Project

Based on the past “experiments” of the CIA, I seriously have to wonder what our nation’s so-called “Intelligence Agency” is up to today. I recently read an interesting article in Discover Magazine, which detailed the CIA’s use of LSD in its secret quest for mind-control.


While it sounds more like a movie plot line from either the “Manchurian Candidate” or the “Bourne Identity”, in the 1950’s the CIA was dosing volunteers and random brothel visitors with LSD. The MKULTRA Project was started in order to determine if LSD could be used for the general and terrifying purpose of “mind control” and "Operation Midnight Climax" was one of their more cleverly named operations. The “johns” were unwitting participants in the study and the prostitutes at the brothels were paid $100 each to participate in the study, and were then watched through secret mirrors by “undercover agents”.

Though the general purpose was mind control, I am uncertain what the specific objective of “Operation Midnight Climax” was.  I don't know why it was necessary to use people unknowingly for this bizarre experiment or how the agents justified watching the pairs in  the mirrors.

The MKULTRA project did not only focus on LSD and also included other drugs including heroin and meth and project was uncovered in the early 70’s. Back in 1973, when the New York Times still had some teeth in their reporting, the NYT revealed information about the experiments, which actually sparked a congressional investigation into the matter with the late Ted Kennedy leading the way.  Many of the files regarding MKULTRA were destroyed, leaving the rest of us to wonder not only what the specific intent of the project was, but what the conclusions of the experiments were.


According to a TIME Magazine article written right after the hearings, some of the goals of the project were to “incapiciate entire buildings of people, poison food to create ‘anxiety and fear’.....and produce amnesia in foreign spies.” In total there were 194 projects at 80 Canadian and American universities.


What kind of government willingly and knowingly poisons its citizens for such an insidious purpose in the first place? If this happened in the past without congressional oversight, how can we know what is being done now in the name of science, national security or death?

The Paranormal Activity Film

The $15,000 film Paranormal Activity has grossed $61.6 million in its first month.  It scores 85% on rottentomatoes.com, it gets two thumbs up from Roger Ebert and whoever works with him these days, and it is rivalling Blair Witch Project within its genre.

Some wit noted that Paranormal Activity holds the most terror for the F/X specialists who charge tens of millions to make movies that are nowhere near as scary as this one is. 

But Paranormal is plenty scary enough.  The word is that Hollywood planned to remake the movie, big-budget, but changed its mind when test audiences had 20% of their subjects walking out of the theaters.  At first, execs figured the walkouts were due to the home-made quality of the picture on screen.  Then, they realized that people were walking out because ... they could not withstand the intensity of the movie.  For jaded 21st-century American moviegoers, that boggles the imagination.

My 19-year-old daughter went with an 18-year-old girlfriend, which friend sits and laughs at the Saw and Final Destination movies and their ilk.  But just a half hour in, the 18-year-old was begging to leave.

.........

Paranormal is a remarkably high-quality movie for its budget, not least of all because it has two likeable, and believable, character-victims.  Think Jim Halpert and Pam Beasley from The Office and you'll have a pretty good triangulation on the personalities of the twenty-something snackables.

Like Jim Cameron says, if you get people caring what happens to two people on the boat, they'll start caring about the boat itself.  This home-made movie gets us caring about the couple, before the mayhem begins.

..........

I believe that Paranormal taps in to two basic fears, one of which is our latent dread of being defenseless while asleep.  Paranormal jumps on this theme and doesn't let up the whole way through, which is one chord that gives the movie its jackhammer impact.

...........

Paranormal has no gore at all.  It does not cheaply shock its way into your attention span; most horror movies have to rely on revulsion, profanity, skin, or all three to get your blood pumping.  Paranormal needs absolutely none.  Something is striking a very primal part of our brains here.

The second brain filament that the movie taps into, is our collective human conviction that there is such a thing as demons.  You are not going to get people walking out of scary movies about leprechauns, no matter what you do, especially if you can't use the tomato ketchup to bail you out.  You're not going to build terror-suspense around snipes, or Chucky dolls, or tooth fairies.

..........

As the nominal lead author at Spirituality in the 21st Century :- ) yours truly has probably studied demons more than the next movie-reviewer wannabe.  I don't personally believe that they possess people in modern days, but I am not typical in the fact that I rule it completely out.

Whether secular or spiritual, you probably value Jesus' statements on demons more highly than you value Peter Hurkos' or David Copperfield's.  Jesus said this:

Mat 12:43  When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.
Mat 12:44  Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
Mat 12:45  Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

Jesus' view of demons is echo'ed by the makers of Paranormal Activity. The pivot point of the movie comes when a visiting psychic warns them: the demon is making headway into your lives, exactly to the extent that you give it negativity to feed from.   This is what gives the movie its resonance, the barely-suppressed fear that we might be enabling the assault.  Sommmmebody STOP meh!

Paranormal's warning is a modern variant of the millenia-old warning that many have considered a warning from On High, and others have considered intuitively obvious -- if we want make ourselves vulnerable to demonic influence, it's our choice.

The heroine senses this herself -- when her boyfriend thinks it would be cool to buy a Ouija board and talk to the entity, she fights tooth-and-nail to keep the board out of the house.  Don't you know that's an engraved invitation?, she pleads. 

I liked Roger Ebert's point:  here's a guy who won't stop and ask a gas-station attendant for directions, and here's a guy more determined to get the episode on film than on sympathizing with his girl.  By the end of the movie, you're half-rooting for the sap to come out third in the love triangle.

Paranormal Activity did $21.1M last weekend.  What's $61.1M divided by $0.015M?

Cheers,

Jeff

Michio Kaku and String Theory

Michio Kaku is a physicist renowned for both his contributions to string theory and his books on physics, which offer those interested in the strange and unusual ways of Quantum Physics an entry point in understanding. I recently read an interview with him in Fate Magazine and was fascinated by his book “Parallel Worlds” which seemed to me to be an explanation of the physics behind one of my favorite childhood books, “A Wrinkle in Time”.


In his recent interview, Michio Kaku gives his best crack at explaining why String Theory proponents are no longer considered crackpots. String Theory, from what my tiny little brain can grasp of the concept, is the idea that we are living in a universe with ten or eleven dimensions instead of just the three dimensional (plus one added for time) in the universe we are living in today. In the dimensions are small, vibrating strings that we are unable to perceive. The beauty of the theory in Kaku’s eyes is two-fold. First, he views it as a beautiful musical symmetry and secondly, he believes that it solves the dream of many physicists to find a universal theory to everything.


As an example of what it might mean to have extra dimensions, he mentions that a fish living at the top a a koi pond is limited in its movements. The fish can travel left, right, backward and forward, but because the pond is the universe to the fish, it cannot go up. We have the same failure of imagination and movement with our own three dimensions of length, width, and depth. Time is a slightly different story. Although it is tricky to envision more dimensions, it does not mean they are not there. Michio Kaku imagines that the Large Hadron Collider at Cern will help establish proof of supersymmetry, but knows that it will be unable to prove the theory altogether.


Not everyone is a fan of String Theory. I’m currently reading “Warped Passages” by Lisa Randall which is an excellent introductory book into the world of Einstein and after for those who are still learning. She is apparently an agnostic on the issue of string theory, which from what I can tell through her writing, really means that she is an atheist on string theory, based on the fact that the theory is difficult to prove.


However, as a non-science person, I am pretty much convinced that the answer to everything is indeed 42.

Chupacabra Video?

I just ran across some video which CNN aired last month, of a supposed chupacabra found in Texas.  You can watch the video here and make your own decisions - personally, I am 110 percent sure that this is a coyote with mange.

We have seen this problem before, with coyotes, bears, foxes, and raccoons.  Although most cases of mange result merely in a patchy (or "mangy" if you will) coat, some cases can be so extreme that the animal loses every single hair on its body.  These poor suffering animals - who look quite alien by this point - are then driven to unusual lengths in order to get a meal.  Like raiding a rancher's barn, as happened with this Texas incident.

El Chupacabra (it's never "LA chupacabra," even though the word ending in -a should be female, shouldn't it?  And aren't there any lady chupacabras?) is a beast which hails from south of the border.  Central and South American ranchers and indigenous peoples have talked about the "goatsucker" which bites their livestock, then bleeds them dry.  In many cases, for unknown reasons, the chupacabra bites twice in the same hole.  (That's a weird detail, but it's common to many reports, so I wanted to pass it along.)

The original chupacabra was described as a sort of short, ground dwelling pterosaur.  It had a pointed beak-like face, and membranous wings stretched between its front and rear legs.  The kind of "wings" you would see on a gliding animal.  It was spotted at night in the darkness, either by flashlight or by a car's headlights, reflected upon the animal's eerie glowing eyes (probably just an everyday tapetum lucidum, like your cat or dog has).  In many reports, the animal had a row of sharp spines from the neck down to the base of the tail.

The earliest chupacabra sightings happened in 1995 in Puerto Rico, where the bodies of sheep and goats began to turn up with large puncture wounds.  At first, the reports blamed the killings on Satanic cults who needed the blood for their sacrifices.  Soon people began spotting the alien creature, and blaming it for the killings.  (Is that really fair?  It could just be a coincidence!)

Something about the chupacabra legend has proven to be quite "contagious," which is of intense interest to those who study the spread of urban legends.  Chupacabras have been reported as far afield as Maine, Russia, and Italy.  Just about everyone has heard of the chupacabra, which is a little surprising, considering that it was only "discovered" fourteen years ago.  Think of how many people have never heard of a capybara, and that's a real animal!

Many chupacabra sightings and carcasses have been tracked down, and so far all signs point to "mangy coyotes" or just plain old "overactive imaginations."  But that isn't to say that the chupacabra does not exist!  After all, one theory held that they were aliens visiting from another planet (or from the world inside the hollow core of our own).  In which case, maybe they just had to phone home for a little while!

Preparing for the End of the World: A 2012 Checklist

As 2012 fast approaches and the predictions of Nostradamus, the Mayan calendar, the Hopi Indians, Edgar Cayce, and the Jewish calendar have us all dancing foot to foot with antici........... pation, it might be a good time now to examine a few necessarys that may come in handy in the event of Armageddon. Exciting times! Let's break it down.

Energy: Worst case scenario- earthquake, extreme storms, bombs from Iran... prepare for massive power outages that last for weeks and months, not hours. You need a generator. There are many genearators out there that run on diesel or regular fuel. There are also generators that run on biofuels, solar energy, perpetual motion, wind, and hydro-electric energy. You can even make them yourself! This is not new technology! People have been making generators and wind turbines since the '30s using used car parts! Try to find a generator that does not rely on gasoline and make sure it is portable. You'll need a rechargable battery kit to plug into the generator for radios and flashlights. Better yet, buy solar flashlights and portable solar battery chargers that will recharge your laptop, cell phone, and other little USB cable compatible devices. They are relatively inexpensive these days. Here is a great invention being worked on by the U.S. Army, remember Mr. Fusion from 'Back to the Future'?

Water: No one lasts long without it. Water filters are key here. You have to prepare to be mobile and to filter water that may contain viruses in the case of chemical warfare. Boiling water is an excellent method, as is reverse osmosis, iodine, and water bottles that contain a built in filter. Should the power be out or your home destroyed with no access to power, conceptualize now how you will make fire for cooking or boiling water.

Heat: Eventually, you will run out of lighters and matches, get yourself a steel knife and flint set for making campfires. A firestick is a metal rod that you brush with the edge of a knife to create sparks. Having a good knife and flint or firestick, will ensure that you will always be able to make fire, wherever you are. Both are light and easily carried in your belt. A space blanket is another smart purchase to be made now. It is durable, incredibly light, and incredibly efficient, invented by N.A.S.A. and used by astronauts in space. Lugging around heavy blankets while you are on the run, admidst chaos, just won't do. Space blankets do not retain water or germs and are very easy to keep clean. It can also double as a shelter in a pinch, by laying it across a structure of branches if you find that you need to flee into the mountains.

Light: Having a good supply of emergency candles, votives, and lanterns is a great idea, as is the aforementioned solar flashlight. Supply yourself with months worth of candles. They don't take up much room and you will always need them to create ambience, whether or not the end of the world is approaching.

Food: Try to imagine no more grocery stores. Severe whether or war prevents trucks and planes from shipping food around, or maybe the fields of the midwest have been flooded and the California coast is rocked by severe earthquakes. Stock yourself up with a variety of seeds and beans. You could go all out and line your pantry shelves with preserves (forget anything that requires refrigeration) but, buying a few pounds of sprouting seeds and storing them in glass bell jars would be a mighty smart thing to do. Sprouts are extremely rich in vitamins and nutrients and in the worst case scenario- you could survive very well on sprouts alone. They require minimal water and sunlight to grow and are ready to eat in a matter of 24-72 hours depending on the seed. Alfalfa, mung, broccoli, cabbage, radish, clover and fenugreek are some of the seeds that provide you with great taste and lots of life bearing properties. Assorted dried mushrooms are also a great idea. You can buy large quantities of assorted dried mushrooms like reishi, shitake, porcini, oyster and more and reap the benefits later. Dried mushrooms require no refrigeration and provide essential nutrients, enzymes, and probiotics to your body. They are essential to an anti-radiation diet, as well. Stocking up on beans will also ensure that your protein requirements are met and they can also be sprouted for added cell renewal and good health. Garbanzo, black beans, red kidney beans, and lentils are some of the healthiest beans you can buy and taste excellent cooked or sprouted. Buy a few large boxes of green tea and assorted herbal teas for good measure. It will keep your immune system online and deliver further antioxidants your organs which may come under stress.

Medicine: Prepare to heal yourself and others, by yourself. Obtaining a small medical guide is a practical move. No one expects you to know how to deal with someone's broken leg or open flesh wound. Make sure the book is comprehensive but, lightweight and can easily be thrown into a bag to take with you. Essential oils are more than just aromatherapy. Lavender and tea tree oil are antiseptic and promote healing. For severe pain or hysteria, keep a few dried poppy pods and kava kava extract on hand. You can grind up the pods with a mortal and pestle. and make a hot tea for patients suffering from severe injury when no other painkillers or medical aid is available. Kava kava will help calm hysterical patients and still allow them to be alert. A conventional medical aid kit is also a practical investment now, containing gauze, peroxide, bandaids, etc.

Your (Im)Mortal Soul: Do you have any unfinished business? A guilty conscience? Haven't made peace with someone important in your life? Take some time now to get in touch with the people who matter most to you. Tell them that you love them. If you have never tried meditating, now is the time to give it a shot. If you believe in prayer, ritual, angels, God, or the almighty power of Love.... make sure you make some time to nourish your spiritual and emotional being now.

Whether or not the world as we know it is coming to an end in two years, the advice above is withstanding. These are practical steps to take to be prepared for any kind of natural disaster or emergency situation. However, there are a lot of arrows pointing to the year 2012 and they are all saying to prepare for some major catastrophes. Whether we are on the brink of embarking on a new age or are preparing for the worst.... prepare we must. Preparing for your own comfort and survival, and those you love around you, require only forethought and a few inexpensive purchases which will be consumed and enjoyed, no matter what happens in 2012.

If you choose to do nothing else, at least make peace with yourself and your loved ones and be sure to tell them how much they are loved. Having that peace of mind, is invaluable no matter what year it is. Meditate on the meaning of love and how you create, allow, and perpetuate it.

How to Meditate

Breaking News! What Happened to Balloon Boy?

 

Earlier this morning, a 6 year old boy lifted off in Fort Collins, Colorado in a homemade balloon constructed to look like a flying saucer. The boy's father and he had been working on it for months, constructing the large 20 x 5 ft helium balloon from mylar and thin plywood.

The balloon had been anchored to their home with a long rope and this morning his older brother watched him climb inside and take off. Shortly thereafter, the flying saucer shaped silver balloon was witnessed by local citizens, rising several thousands of feet in the air over eastern Colorado.

Officials followed in a helicopter, attempting rescue- but, a few minutes ago, the balloon landed and the boy was no longer inside. The world is watching with baited breath to learn whether or not the youngster is still alive. The door to the small compartment under the balloon was unlocked so it is possible he has fallen out. We can only pray that this little rebel is alright and that he is found somewhere safe and uninjured.

A known storm chaser, the boy's father Richard Heene appeared on the television program WifeSwap, where he and his wife, Mayumi, focused on their love of extreme weather and science.

In this case, little Heene took his father's curiosity and love for danger in the skies a little too far. Hopefully, he will be found alive in the next few hours. Stay tuned!

 

Really Big Birds: Roc, Thunderbird, and Cryptids

Really big birds are an interesting category in cryptozoology.  Most people consider these to be nothing but fictional legends, the simple up-scaling of existing large birds like bald eagles and condors.  It certainly doesn't take much imagination to invent "something just like that bird over there, only bigger."

However, there are also vexing reports of really big birds which occasionally surface every few years.  Cryptozoologists speculate that some of these reports could be sightings of surviving pterodactyls (which went extinct X million years ago), or of teratorns (which went extinct only 6,000 years ago).  Teratorns were larger relatives of the condor, and lived in North America.  Many excellent examples of teratorns have been recovered from the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.

One problem with thunderbird sightings is that they rely on A) correctly identifying a bird as "unknown," and B) correctly identifying the scale of something in the sky.  The ability of an untrained observer to perform both of these feats at once is unlikely, to say the least.  (Witness all the reports of various mysterious wild beasts which turn out simply to be house cats crossing a distant field.)  Most thunderbird reports are probably simply a case of mistaken identity, and can be attributed to eagles or great blue herons.

The Thunderbird is a sacred animal of Native American legend, representing power and strength.  Thunder is said to be the sound of the thunderbird's beating wings, and the bird itself is spotted riding before storms, perhaps because its large size can be born aloft on the thermal updrafts which accompany thunderstorms.

The Roc is the Old World version of the thunderbird.  Rocs derive from ancient Arabic and Persian legends.  They were said to subsist primarily on elephants, which they carried away to their nests.  The roc shares a mythic heritage with the phoenix, which can be considered a "related animal."  Although the phoenix is smaller, and is most noted for its habit of combusting and being reborn from its own ashes.

There is a sub-mystery to the thunderbird story: countless people remember having seen an antique photograph of a thunderbird nailed to the wall of a barn, with several men standing around it in old-timey period clothing.  However, it seems that this photograph never existed.

Several possibilities have been floated.  One is that we are all mis-remembering another photograph - possible candidates include an illustration plate in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," an illustration used by Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and a photograph of men holding an Andean condor which may have appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records (or a similar tome).  Another possibility is that the specificity of the description essentially creates a false memory in the reader.  "Oh yeah, I remember seeing that!"

Quite a lot of demonstrably false pictures of thunderbirds have been uncovered. All have been debunked as fairly recent forgeries, notably a "Civil War era" picture, which was used in the short-lived television show Freaky Links.

Jack the Ripper Identified?

An historian claims he knows the true identity of Jack the Ripper, and we can all take heart: it isn’t Elvis, Nixon or Michael Jackson.

Apparently the man behind the Whitechapel murders was named Robert Mann, a morgue attendant who has been identified through “modern police forensic techniques.” Whatever these are, they are said to include psychological and geographical profiling.

All of that said, can we really claim that ol’ Jack has been discovered without say, I don’t know, DNA evidence? Even death row inmates are cleared when the right DNA is finally matched to a crime; how can a case over a century old be suddenly solved without it?

Mei Trow says that he came to his conclusion after studying FBI files from 1988 for two years, and identified Jack the Ripper as a white male from the lower social classes. He says that Mann was such a person, and had come from a broken home.

The killer, Trow says, would have a menial labor job with some knowledge of anatomy—the kind of knowledge a morgue attendant would possess. Mann, the person Trow has identified as the killer, grew up without a father for the most part, and also worked in a workhouse as a child.

Trow also says that Jack the Ripper—or Mann—killed an additional two women to the five killings he was said to have done.

The historian says he wants to go beyond the myth created by the serial killer and show that in reality, he was an ordinary man. Of course, what’s ordinary about a man who slaughters women in the first place?

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence present to indicate that Mann could have been the killer. After all, he was called as a witness, and violated instructions to not touch the body of a victim. Trow says this is because he wanted to admire his own work. The Coroner also reported that Mann was unreliable and “subject to fits.”

That said, over 100 suspects have been examined since the 1888 murders, and Mann, though perhaps a viable suspect, is only one man in a line of many.

Is Trow on the right track, or just another Ripperologist in the stream of pseudohistorians that claim to know…whatever it is they know about the case? We could say only time will tell—but that’s just it. It may never reveal a thing.

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