Sun's Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activity | Sunspots, Solar Weather & Solar Storms | Solar Cycle | Space.com

Sun's Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activity Sunspots, Solar Weather & Solar Storms Solar Cycle Space.com

Article: Sun's Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activityby Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff WriterDate: 14 June 2011 Time: 03:50 PM ET Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years. The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated. "The solar cycle may be going into a hiatus," Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory's Solar Synoptic Network, said in a news briefing today (June 14). The studies looked at a missing jet stream in the solar interior, fading sunspots on the sun's visible surface, and changes in the corona and near the poles. [Photos: Sunspots on Earth's Star] "This is highly unusual and unexpected," Hill said. "But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation." Spots on the sun Sunspots are temporary patches on the surface of the sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity. These structures sometimes erupt into energetic solar storms that send streams of charged particles into space. Since powerful charged particles from solar storms can occasionally wreak havoc on Earth's magnetic field by knocking out power grids or disrupting satellites in orbit, a calmer solar cycle could have its advantages. Astronomers study mysterious sunspots because their number and frequency act as indicators of the sun's activity, which ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle. Typically, a cycle takes roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, when there are few sunspots, to the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified. Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle's period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots. [Video: Rivers of Fire Inflame Sunspots] Hill is the lead author of one of the studies that used data from the Global Oscillation Network Group to look at characteristics of the solar interior. (The group includes six observing stations around the world.) The astronomers examined an east-west zonal wind flow inside the sun, called torsional oscillation. The latitude of this jet stream matches the new sunspot formation in each cycle, and models successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24. "We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it," Hill said. "The flow for Cycle 25 should have appeared in 2008 or 2009. This leads us to believe that the next cycle will be very much delayed, with a minimum longer than the one we just went through." Hill estimated that the start of Cycle 25 could be delayed to 2021 or 2022 and will be very weak, if it even happens at all. The sun's magnetic field In the second study, researchers tracked a long-term weakening trend in the strength of sunspots, and predict that by the next solar cycle, magnetic fields erupting on the sun will be so weak that few, if any, sunspots will be formed. With more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, Matt Penn and William Livingston observed that the average magnetic field strength declined significantly during Cycle 23 and now into Cycle 24. Consequently, sunspot temperatures have risen, they observed. If the trend continues, the sun's magnetic field strength will drop below a certain threshold and sunspots will largely disappear; the field no longer will be strong enough to overcome such convective forces on the solar surface. In a separate study, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force's coronal research program at NSO's facility in New Mexico, examined the sun's corona and observed a slowdown of the magnetic activity's usual "rush to the poles." "A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the sun," Altrock said. "Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the sun." Altrock sifted through 40 years of observations from NSO's 16-inch (40 centimeters) coronagraphic telescope. New solar activity typically emerges at a latitude of about 70 degrees at the start of the solar cycle, then moves toward the equator. The new magnetic field simultaneously pushes remnants of the past cycle as far as 85 degrees toward the poles. The current cycle, however, is showing some different behavior. "Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we'll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all," Altrock said. "If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists, as it would mean that Cycle 23's magnetic field will not completely disappear from the polar regions. … No one knows what the sun will do in that case." If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching. "If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades," Hill said. "That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate."

Rare, Aggressive Fungus Strikes Joplin Tornado Victims « CBS St. Louis

Rare, Aggressive Fungus Strikes Joplin Tornado Victims « CBS St. Louis

You will thank me later!

I found this vid and thought it would be a real conversation starter at parties! LOL

Mitt Romney | The case for Mitt Romney | The Daily Caller

Mitt Romney | The case for Mitt Romney | The Daily Caller

After all, restoring conservative principles in America and securing our nation’s economic future will require a president willing to take political risks. Romney has proven himself up to the task of taking on challenges as insurmountable as the debt and entitlement reform. Throughout his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, for instance, he closed corporate tax loopholes, a move which increased state revenue to close the deficit. This is precisely the kind of necessary tax reform outlined in Representative Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future. Our problems require more than a truth-teller, and Romney’s pursuit of fiscal solvency demonstrates his ability to execute. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/30/the-case-for-mitt-romney/#ixzz1Nv7N8vFY

Mayor: Morgan City not under water, getting back to normal - WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, LA |

Mayor: Morgan City not under water, getting back to normal - WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, LA |

Dreamline by RUSH

My Fav video by RUSH

Who wants some CAKE?

One of those songs that you can't forget

Ever felt like this?

Not felt like Lindsey Lohan, felt like saying fuck you to everyone? Yeah, me too.

Ladies and Gentlemen .......Jodie Marsh

WHEW!

Sorry that I have been away for the last few weeks. I have been busy living me life and enjoying my girl. For a guy that has prided himself on never being tied down, it seems that I am acting like a married man. I come home, get a peck on the cheek, see what she cooked, eat, talk about our day, cleanup the kitchen, soak in the tub together, snuggle-up in bed and fall asleep while she watches "Dancing with the Stars." I guess I couldn't be more married if I was a divorced! lol I will be posting tonight, promise

Tavis Smiley: 2012 Will Be "The Most Racist" Election Ever

Tavis Smiley: 2012 Will Be "The Most Racist" Election Ever

PuPPs' - FASCISM IN AMERICA?

PuPPs' - FASCISM IN AMERICA?: "'The American people don't read.' ~ Allen Dulles speaking about how the American people would respond to the inconsistencies in the Warren Commission report"

A 100,000-Year-Old Civilisation? | Features | Fortean Times

A 100,000-Year-Old Civilisation? | Features | Fortean Times

My friend Stan Gooch spent his last years living on an old age pension on a caravan site in Wales. For a long time, his letters to me had revealed increasing cynicism and weari­ness, and friends who went to visit him – deeply impressed by the visionary scope of his books – were shocked to find him in an obvious state of indifference and discouragement. When tired of exchanging letters by ‘snail mail’, I offered to provide him with a computer; his reply was that he would never use it. It seems astonishing that this brilliant writer, author of more than a dozen books (some of them, like The Para­normal, classics in their field), should have been allowed to sink into the con­dition that the saints used to call accidia, but I suppose it has been the fate of many men of genius. Now he has gone, perhaps Stan’s highly original work will one day be given the credit it deserves. Certainly, it seems that the safe, academic world he turned his back on is catching up with him, as recent findings appear to confirm some of his long-held theories about the sophistication of Neanderthal man. CITIES OF DREAMS In 1999, I was engaged in pursuing an intriguing little problem. Charles Hapgood, best known as the author of Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, had died as the result of a car accident that happened in December 1982. Two months earlier, he had written to a librarian named Rand Flem-Ath telling him that he had made “recent exciting discoveries” that had convinced him that there had once been a 100,000-year-old civilisation with “advanced levels of science”. And since I had agreed to collaborate with Flem-Ath on a book about Atlantis, I set out to pursue Hapgood’s contacts to see if I could find out what he meant. Finally, through a tip-off from one of Hapgood’s acquaintances, I found myself in touch with an archæologist and science writer from New England, who staggered me when he declared that it was he who had given Hapgood this information. What he had told him, he said, was (a) that the Greek measure of distances proved that they knew the exact size of the Earth a millennium or so before Eratos­thenes discovered it (around 250 BC), and (b) that Neanderthal man had a remarkable degree of culture, and was studying the stars by 100,000 BC or earlier. Now, I had already stumbled on the information about the Greeks in a book called Historical Metrology by AE Berriman (1953), to which the historical researcher Henry Lincoln had introduced me. And the second assertion had been made by Stan Gooch in 1989, in a book called Cities of Dreams. Gooch was arguing that Neanderthal man had possessed a complex civilisation, but that it was not a civilisation of bricks and mortar, but of ‘dreams’. That hardly seemed to make sense. Surely civilisation is our defence against nature? Dreams are not much use against a hurricane or a sabre tooth tiger. Gooch launches his argument by comparing Neanderthal man with Native Americans, pointing out that in spite of their complex culture, the latter had no written language and built no houses. What would have happened, Gooch asks, if they had been exterminated by disease or some catastrophe, and had simply vanished? Archæologists would find their skeletons and dismiss them as ‘primitives’, just as we dismiss Neanderthals. Speaking of the Seven Sisters, Gooch remarks: “The Pleiades are the only [star grouping] noted and named by every culture on Earth, past and present, from the most advanced to the most primitive”. He points out the similarity of the legends of Australian aborigines, Wyom­ing Indians and the ancient Greeks. In the Greek legend, Orion the Hunter pursues the six maidens and their mother through the forest, until Zeus takes pity on them, and changes them all (including Orion) into stars. In the Australian legend, the hunter is called Wurunna, and he captures two of the seven maidens; but these escape up trees that suddenly grow until they reach the sky, where all the maidens live forever. According to the Wyoming Indians, the seven sisters are pursued by a bear, and climb up a high rock, which grows until it reaches the sky. Gooch goes on to mention that the Seven Sisters play an equally important role in the legends of the Aztecs, the Incas, the Poly­nesians, the Chinese, the Masai, the Kikuyu, the Hindus and the ancient Egyptians. This worldwide interest in the Pleiades, he argues, surely indicates that it originated in some very early and once central culture. In Gooch’s view, that culture was Neanderthal. We may doubt this, and prefer to believe that it was our own ancestor, Cro-Magnon. But Gooch certainly had accum­ulated some impressive evidence of the intellectual sophistication of Neanderthal man. He speaks, for example, of a find made at Drachenloch in the Swiss Alps, where a 75,000-year-old bear altar was discovered in a cave. In a rectangular stone chest, whose lid was a massive stone slab, archæologists found seven bear skulls, with their muzzles pointing towards the cave entrance. At the back of the cave, there were niches in the wall with six more bear skulls. Now seven is, of course, a number associated with shamanism. The Drachenloch cave was clearly a place of ritual – in effect, a church. Moreover, as historian of religion Mircea Eliade tells us, there is a worldwide connection between the bear and the Moon. And this might have been guessed from the fact that the number of skulls in the cave was 13 – the number of lunar months in the year. This, and many other clues, led Gooch to infer that the religion of Neanderthal man was based on Moon worship, and Neanderthals were the first ‘star gazers’. He argues that, among much else, the knowledge of precession of the equinoxes, noted by Giorgio de Santillana and Herta von Dechend in Hamlet’s Mill, probably originated with Neanderthal man. A ‘church’ implies a priest or shaman, so Neanderthal man must have had his sham­ans, ‘magicians’ who played an important part in the hunting rituals, as shamans do worldwide. Is it chance that the Moon godd­ess is Diana the Huntress? Is she perhaps also a legacy from Neanderthal man? NEANDERTHAL CULTURE Since Gooch’s book came out in 1989, new evidence has accumulated indicating that Neanderthal man also possessed his own technology. In 1996, it was announced that scientists from Tarragona’s Roviri i Virgili University had unearthed 15 furnaces near Capellades, north of Barcelona. Professor Eudald Carbonell stated that they prove that Neanderthal man possessed a skill level far more advanced than anyone had supposed. Homo sapiens, he said, was not an “evolutionary leap” beyond Cro-Magnon man, but only a gentle step from Neanderthal. Each of the furnaces served a different function according to its size: some ovens, some hearths, some even blast furnaces. The team also discovered an “astonishing variety” of stone and bone tools, as well as the most extensive traces of wooden utensils. (Times, 3 Sept 1996.) One of Gooch’s most amazing statements is that in South Africa, Neanderthal man was digging deep mines to obtain red ochre 100,000 years ago. “One of the largest sites evidenced the removal of a million kilos of ore.” Other mines were discovered dated to 45,000, 40,000 and 35,000 years ago. In all cases, the site had been painstakingly filled in again, presumably because the Earth was regarded as sacred. Neanderthal man seems to have used the red ochre for ritual­istic purposes, including burial. In 1950, Dr Ralph Solecki of the Smithsonian Institution had excavated the Shanidar cave in Iraqi Kurdistan and discovered evidence of ritualistic burial by Neanderthals, in which the dead had been covered with a quilt of woven wild flowers. His book Shanidar (1971) is subtitled The Humanity of Neanderthal Man. He was the first of many anthropologists to conclude that Neanderthal man was far more than an ape. Gooch points out that red ochre has been in use since at least 100,000 years ago until today, when it is still used by Australian Aborig­ines. He quotes one authority who calls it “the most spiritually rich and magical of all substances”. Now, red ochre is the oxidised form of a mineral called magnetite, which, as the name suggests, is magnetic. If a small sliver of magnetite is floated on the surface tension of water, it swings around and points to magnetic north. And in 1000 BC, the Olmecs were using it as a compass needle, floating on cork, a millennium before the Chinese invented the compass. Gooch points out that many creatures, including pigeons, have a cluster of magnetite in the brain, which is used for homing, and asks if it is not conceivable that Neanderthal man also had a magnetite cluster in the brain, which may have enabled him to detect hæmatite under the ground. This, of course, would be simply a variant of the power dowsers have to detect underground water. For whatever reason Neanderthal man sought red ochre, it seems clear that he must be credited with some kind of civilisation. In January 2002, it emerged that Neanderthal man made use of a variety of superglue. It was a kind of blackish-brown pitch discovered at a lignite-mining pit in the Harz Mountains, estimated to be 80,000 years old. One of the pieces bore the imprint of fingers and impressions of a flint tool and wood, suggesting that the pitch had served as a sort of glue to secure the wooden shaft to a flint blade. The pitch, from a birch tree, can only be produced at a temperature of 300–400ºC. Prof. Dietrich Mania of the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena said: “This implies that Neanderthals did not come across these pitches by accident, but must have produced them with intent”. Now clearly, all this is revolutionary. We take it for granted that human culture began with Cro-Magnon man, Homo sapiens. Our Cro-Magnon ancestors began making drawings in caves about 30,000 years ago and so, we had always assumed, our civilis­ation had its beginnings. But if the Pleiades were recognised 40,000 years ago, then Neanderthal man could have got there first. Again, an 82,000-year-old bone flute, discovered by Dr Ivan Turk of the Slovenia Academy of Sciences in 1995, demonstrates that Neanderthal man had his own music. It begins to look more and more as if Gooch’s comparison of Neanderthal man to Native Americans is valid. A 26,000-year-old bone sewing needle, complete with a hole for thread, was discovered at another Neanderthal site. But perhaps the most staggering piece of evidence so far is the small, carved statue known as the Berekhat Ram figur­ine, discovered on the Golan Heights in 1980 by the Israeli archæologist Professor Naama Goren-Inbar. Its age was established because it was found – along with 7,500 scrapers – between two layers of basalt, known as tuff, that could be dated. And the date was between 250,000 and 280,000 years ago. It resembles the famous Venus of Willen­dorf, but is far cruder. And examination under an electron microscope revealed that it was not just some odd-shaped stone, but that it had been carved – by Neanderthal man. His flint tool had left powder in the grooves. So Neanderthal man was carving a tiny female figure, probably the Moon goddess, more than a quarter of a million years ago. The implication is that he had already developed the religion to which the bear skulls in the Drachenloch cave bear witness – but 200,000 years earlier. In Uriel’s Machine, Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight also turn their attention to Neanderthals, and point out that they had larger brains than modern man, adding the startling information that they were around for 230,000 years before they vanished. Neanderthals thus had plenty of time to acquire a high level of sophistic­ation. They clearly believed in an afterlife, for they buried their dead with every sign of religious ritual, and with tools and meat to supply their needs in the beyond. They buried them in cloaks covered with ornate beads (with buttonholes), decor­ated caps, carved bracelets and pendants. They manufactured at least one perfectly circular chalk disc, which is almost certainly a Moon disc. And if Neanderthal man conducted relig­ious rituals, played the flute, studied the heavens, and built blast furnaces, he must have had some form of language other than grunts. So Stan Gooch’s insights, which struck most people as crazy in 1989 (they certainly struck me as crazy when I first read Cities of Dreams), are slowly being justified. THE MYSTERIOUS 'CARL' But to return to my New England academic, who claimed to have been the source of Hapgood’s statement that civilisation was 100,000 years old… I shall not give his real name, for reasons that will become clear, but shall call him Carl. During that first conversation, it was soon apparent that there was an unforeseen problem. Although our talk lasted two hours, I couldn’t understand more than one sentence in 10. Like certain brilliant people, whose heads are crammed with knowledge, Carl was unable – or unwilling – to express himself clearly and to the point. It was obvious that when I asked him a question, he wanted to say 30 things at once, and it was like a crowd trying to push through a narrow doorway. Nevertheless, I had no doubt that I had solved the problem of Hapgood’s “100,000 years”. I could hardly wait to tele­phone my collaborator. Here I was in for a surprise. Instead of the congratulations I expected, Rand reacted with deep suspicion. Who was this man, and if he had been Hapgood’s source, why had Rand not come across his name while studying the Hapgood papers at Yale? I pointed out that Hapgood had said: “In certain recent discoveries…” Probably Hapgood had not had time to write about them yet. But Rand made it clear that he felt Carl was some kind of fraud. But why should he be? I asked. What possible motive could he have for lying to me? Rand said he didn’t know, but he intended to find out. As to the suggestion that Neanderthal man might be more intelligent than we suppose, he was dismissive. And he told me later that he had mentioned it to a girl who taught in a nearby university, and she had burst into screams of laughter. I had arranged to ring Carl back in two weeks, and to install a recording machine that would play for an hour. But this proved to be quite inadequate. Carl simply talked non-stop for an hour, and when I told him the tape had ended, just went on talking – for another hour. But at least he said some fascinating things – basic­ally, that the antiquity of civilisation was proved by its measures. And if these measures could be shown to date back to the La Quina disc, carved by a Neanderthal 100,000 years ago, then the point was proven. I had to agree. He also talked about linguistic evidence in Greek, Hebrew, Sumerian and Sanskrit, and cited the exact words. I had never come across a man of such immense erudition. His theory was incredibly difficult, involving music, planetary distances, archæology and atomic numbers. His articles – of which he sent me several – might range from the Great Pyramid, Ice Age art and Chaco Canyon to alchemical symbolism. But I soon realised that I could not simply present him to the reader as an unrecognised genius, for some of his views left him wide open to the accusation of being a crank. He not only accepted the reality of the ‘Face on Mars’ (which I am also inclined to do), but believed it had been created by human beings, and that one of the satellites of Mars was some kind of artefact. Just as I was beginning to wonder if Rand could be right, and Carl might be an extraordinary and plausible fraud, I was confronted with evidence of his genuineness. An old friend, Andy Collins, came past our house on his way to see the eclipse in Cornwall, and when he overheard me telling someone in the pub about Carl, said he knew him. I was fascinated and asked for details. It seemed Andy had met Carl at a London party, and that Carl had quickly monopolised the conversation, until he held the whole room enthralled. Andy agreed that Carl was undoubtedly brilliant. He mentioned a friend of his who lived in the Midlands, and who had been on an archæo­logical expedition with Carl in Mexico. I rang him up, and as a result received some more interesting first-hand information about Carl. As a travelling companion, he could apparently be exacting, obsessive, and infuriating. In spite of which he was – as I had deduced from those long phone conversations – erudite, a brilliant loner, and certainly no fraud. Some of his claims, my informant agreed, might be startling – such as his story about meeting Einstein when he was 10 years old and having a conversation about the lost tribes of Israel – but then, he was a child prodigy, and came from a distinguished family who might well have had Einstein to tea. ATLANTIS RISING Unfortunately, Carl learned that Rand had been making enquiries about him, and was understandably infuriated. Although I assured him that I did not share Rand’s suspicions, Carl’s attitude cooled percept­ibly. Then I began to understand what Andy’s friend meant about him being exacting and infuriating. As hard as I tried to shore up our relationship, it quickly went to pieces. And after further exchanges, he ended by telling me that he would prefer to have his name removed from the book. I was unhappy at the idea, for it was obvious to me that he had to be the person who had told Hapgood about the “100,000-year-old civilisation”. But Rand remained convinced that Carl was some kind of conman, and our collaboration reached a deadlock. In due course, our book The Atlantis Blueprint was published in a hacked and truncated form. Every reference to Neanderthal man had been excised, and in one paragraph, had been altered to “people like us”, implying that I was talking about Cro-Magnon man. This upset me, not only on my own behalf, but on Stan Gooch’s, for I knew how much he was hoping to see his theories given an airing. All mention of Carl had gone too – although no reviewer seemed to notice that the book therefore failed to fulfil its promise to explain Hapgood’s 100,000-year-old science. I was much saddened, of course, but then a consoling thought occurred to me. So much of the book had been slashed that I was left with enough material to form the basis of another. In 2006, I published Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals; this time, I made sure that the achievements of Neanderthal man formed a central part of its thesis, and Stan Gooch finally received the credit he deserved. For more news on strange phenomena, weird experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents subscribe to Fortean Times magazine. Click here and get 3 issues for just £1! Bookmark this post with: ShareThis

Investigations Find ‘Unprecedented’ Political Review of FOIA Requests by Homeland Security Department | CNSnews.com

Investigations Find ‘Unprecedented’ Political Review of FOIA Requests by Homeland Security Department | CNSnews.com

Could America be Pushed over the Economic Edge?

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com It’s official. The U.S. transferred command of the Libyan no-fly-zone to NATO yesterday, but don’t think that ends U.S. involvement. Crienglish.com is reporting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be heading to London next week to discuss and coordinate military strategy.The story said, “Having eliminated Libyan air defenses, U.S. military officials said the campaign has entered a second phase that will focus on decimating Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s ground forces. Coalition air strikes also increased over Tripoli, capital of Libya, with warplanes targeting fuel depots and local military installations.” (Click here for the complete crienglish.com story.) So, it looks like America will still be on the hook both militarily and financially. This appears to be a political move to give the appearance of less U.S. involvement in the Libyan war. Nothing could be further from the truth because, the fact is, without the U.S. and its military might, the entire operation would fall apart. It has been reported that some UK Ministers say this intervention in Libya could last “30 years.” Yes, you read that right—30 years! The Daily Mail reported this week, “Asked for an estimate, British Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said: ‘How long is a piece of string? We don’t know how long this is going to go on. ‘We don’t know if this is going to result in a stalemate. We don’t know if his capabilities are going to be degraded quickly. Ask me again in a week.” (Click here for the complete Daily Mail story.) Many are not happy about how Libya is going. There are plenty of reports of infighting in NATO over how to proceed. The Germans want nothing to do with the Libyan war and have pulled out. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the no-fly-zone over Libya a “crusade.” Online Journal reported Tuesday Putin said, “The Security Council resolution is deficient and flawed; it allows everything and is reminiscent of a medieval call for a crusade,” Putin told workers at a ballistic missile factory in the Urals region. “It effectively allows intervention in a sovereign state.” (Click here to read the entire Online Journal post.) If this bothers Mr. Putin so much, why didn’t he have his U.N. Ambassador simply veto the resolution? Instead, Russia went along with the resolution by abstaining from the vote as did four other countries. Is Russia giving the U.S. enough rope to hang itself? The U.S. is already stuck in quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consider the spike in fuel prices because of revolutions and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa that are far from over. Could one more war push America over the financial edge into economic collapse? Sound far-fetched? Not if you listen to JR Nyquist. He writes about the economy and politics and recently did a story highlighting a Pentagon report called “Economic Warfare.” Nyquist writes, “The report suggests that unknown parties covertly exploited vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system to help trigger a crash as part of a three-phase process which is yet underway. The report admits that contributing factors, such as high-risk mortgage lending and poor federal regulation, were at work. Nonetheless, the report says there is evidence that foreign agencies have also been at work, attempting to magnify U.S. economic difficulties. Supposedly, what the U.S. faced in 2008 was a “normal downturn” which should not have grown into a “near collapse” of the financial system.” (Click here to read the entire JR Nyquist post.) Maybe the U.S. will not need a push by the invisible hand of economic warfare as it could fall into an economic collapse and nightmare with a push from the calamity in Japan. According to Jim Willie at Goldenjackass.com, the Japan disaster will cause many future economic problems. One big one is Japan will be forced to sell Treasuries and other bonds to pay for reconstruction. I touched on this recently, but Mr. Willie goes into great detail on how the Japan tsunami will cause an enormous financial tsunami. The rest of the world will have to soak up the Treasury debt Japan unloads. Mr. Willie wrote in his latest post, “QE will be global next.The central banker pact not only endorses the monetary hyper-inflation by the USFed, it extends it globally with a loud ring. . . .A vicious cycle has begun to take shape. Inflation will originate from the four corners of the earth, come in many forms, and have staggering effect on both the global recession and global price inflation. Assets and incomes will go into worse decline, while commodities including Gold & Silver rise powerful. Actually, Gold & Silver are money, the great anti-bubble. The USTreasury Bond will be under absolute siege for months until a climax conclusion . . .” (Click here to read the complete report from Mr. Willie.) Japan will also need both hard and soft commodities to rebuild and feed its people. This demand will put more upward pressure on prices for just about everything, and that includes interest rates. America will be especially hard hit. Folks should be heading for much higher ground, so as not to be swept away by waves of inflation.

Andrew Breitbart | Huffington Post | Color of Change Racism | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Andrew Breitbart | Huffington Post | Color of Change Racism | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment

Cryptomundo » Jinmenken: The Human-Faced Dogs of Japan

Cryptomundo » Jinmenken: The Human-Faced Dogs of Japan

Mayan crystal skull believed to have been owned by SS chief Heinrich Himmler discovered in Germany - mirror.co.uk

Mayan crystal skull believed to have been owned by SS chief Heinrich Himmler discovered in Germany - mirror.co.uk

Researchers seek causes of honeybee colony collapse | Reuters

Researchers seek causes of honeybee colony collapse | Reuters

How Can All This Be Reconciled? (A.D. After Disclosure)

How Can All This Be Reconciled? (A.D. After Disclosure)

Monsanto's Roundup Ready Crops Contain Organism Causing Animal Miscarriages, Scientist Says

Monsanto's Roundup Ready Crops Contain Organism Causing Animal Miscarriages, Scientist Says

Animals that don't suck!

Mystery of the Mummy's Travel Ban

Mystery of the mummy's Chinese travel ban By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Saturday, 5 February 2011 AP The 'Beauty of Xiaohe', which China has pulled out of an exhibition in the US. For her advanced years, she looks remarkable. Despite nearing the ripe old age of 4,000, long eyelashes still frame her half-open eyes and hair tumbles down to her remarkably well-preserved shoulders. But the opportunity for new audiences in the United States to view the "Beauty of Xiaohe" – a near perfectly preserved mummy from an inhospitable part of western China – has been dealt a blow after it was pulled from an exhibition following a sudden call from the Chinese authorities on the eve of opening. The reason for pulling the mummy and other artefacts from the show remained unclear yesterday (Chinese officials were on New Year holiday) but there were suggestions that the realities of modern Chinese politics may have had a part to play. The mummy was recovered from China's Tarim Basin, in Xinjiang province. But her Caucasian features raised the prospect that the region's inhabitants were European settlers. It raises the question about who first settled in Xinjiang and for how long the oil-rich region has been part of China. The questions are important – most notably for the Chinese authorities who face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang. The government-approved story of China's first contact with the West dates back to 200BC when China's emperor Wu Di wanted to establish an alliance with the West against the marauding Huns, then based in Mongolia. However, the discovery of the mummies suggests that Caucasians were settled in a part of China thousands of years before Wu Di: the notion that they arrived in Xinjiang before the first East Asians is truly explosive. Xinjiang is dominated by the Uighurs, who resent what they see as intrusion by the Han Chinese. The tensions which have spilled over into violent clashes in recent years. Whatever the reason for the Chinese decision, it has caused great disappointment at the Pennsylvania museum where the "Secrets of the Silk Road" were due to go on show after successful exhibitions in California and Texas without major reproductions. "It's going to be the rebirth of this museum," Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature, told the Associated Press last month. "It's going to put it back on the map." Professor Mair declined to comment on the current controversy.

Vietnam's Great Wall found

January 26, 2011 -- Updated 2044 GMT (0444 HKT) It's not on the same scale of China's Great Wall but is still significant for Vietnam's past and future. STORY HIGHLIGHTS Team uncovers what it calls the "longest monument in Southeast Asia" The Long Wall stretches for 127km and was used to regulate trade and travel It could help redefine tourism in Vietnam It's nicknamed Vietnam's Great Wall, by locals although it is not on the same scale as China's Editor's note: Adam Bray has written extensively on Vietnam and is the first journalist to have visited the Long Wall. Quang Ngai, Vietnam (CNN) -- Nestled in the mountain foothills of a remote province in central Vietnam, one of the country's most important archaeological discoveries in a century has recently come to light. After five years of exploration and excavation, a team of archaeologists has uncovered a 127-kilometer (79-mile) wall -- which locals have called "Vietnam's Great Wall." Professor Phan Huy Lê, president of the Vietnam Association of Historians, said: "This is the longest monument in Southeast Asia." The wall is built of alternating sections of stone and earth, with some sections reaching a height of up to four meters. In 2005, Dr. Andrew Hardy, associate professor and head of the Hanoi branch of École Française d'Extrême-Orient (French School of Asian Studies), found an odd reference to a "Long Wall of Quang Ngai" in an 1885 document compiled by the Nguyen Dynasty court entitled, "Descriptive Geography of the Emperor Dong Khanh." It sparked his imagination and a major exploration and excavation project for a team led by Hardy and Dr. Nguyen Tien Dong, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences). The wall was discovered after some five years of work. It stretches from northern Quang Ngai Province south into the province of Binh Dinh and is arguably the greatest engineering feat of the Nguyen Dynasty. Construction of the Long Wall started in 1819 under the direction of Le Van Duyet, a high-ranking mandarin serving Emperor Gia Long. Despite the locals' nickname referencing the Great Wall of China, the Vietnam Wall is more like Hadrian's Wall -- a Roman-era wall on the border of England and Scotland. Like Hadrian's Wall, the Quang Ngai wall was built along a pre-existing road. More than 50 ancient forts have been identified along its length, established to maintain security and levy taxes. There is evidence to suggest that many of the forts, markets and temples built along the road are much older than the wall itself. It served to demarcate territory and regulate trade and travel between the Viet in the plains and the Hrê tribes in the mountain valleys. Research suggests it may have been built in cooperation between both the Viet and the Hrê. According to experts, the wall's construction was in the interests of both communities, and inhabitants in both zones tell stories about how their respective ancestors built the wall to protect their territory from incursions by the other side. An application for National Heritage status is now being processed with the ambition of turning the Long Wall into an international tourist attraction. During a visit to Quang Ngai by international experts in 2010, Christopher Young, Head of International Advice at English Heritage, said: "The Long Wall presents an enormous opportunity for research, careful conservation and sustainable use." Quang Ngai's Long Wall is not the province's only potential resource for tourism. The area also boasts a lush, mountainous countryside, hot springs, an offshore volcanic island, coral reefs and miles of pristine beaches. Spread across the province, there are also sites of cultural interest, including vestiges of more than a dozen ancient Cham temples, citadels and Sa Huynh burial grounds dating as far back as 1000 BC. Most notable among them is the well-preserved Chau Sa Citadel, built in the ninth century. But the development of the wall for tourism is not without hurdles, given the history of the region. Quang Ngai is the province where the infamous My Lai massacre occurred in 1968 when U.S. servicemen killed more than 300 apparently unarmed civilians. Although a museum memorializing the tragedy was built in cooperation with U.S. specialists, the area has remained politically sensitive and under tight government control. Until recently, the government has been reluctant to allow foreigners to visit some minority communities. If the endeavor to develop the wall for tourism is successful, it will require the government to promote adventure trekking and cycling through previously isolated highland communities on an unprecedented scale. That would open Vietnam up to a new kind of tourism -- historical ecotourism -- which goes beyond the Ministry of Tourism's preference for packaged tours in coastal beach resorts. It may also create the greatest trek in Southeast Asia

History's Most Overlooked Mysteries | LiveScience

History's Most Overlooked Mysteries | LiveScience

What The F@#K???

I go to hell for eating pork rinds, but Abdul gets a pass for sodomy? That's BULLSH@T!!!!!!!!

My Favorite Show, REDEYE

WEDNESDAY'S GREGALOGUE: THE NEW AGE PARENT Because the State of the Union aired last night, I feel compelled to talk about it, if only because I noticed an odd evolution in our leader's voice. He's transformed himself from a Commander in Chief, to a fretful parent trying to get you to finish those remaining peas on the plate. As his voice strained higher - it reminded me of my favorite episode of the Brady Bunch, when Greg urged his family members to put on a show, to help pay for a gift for dad and mom's anniversary. I kept thinking Obama was gunna suggest we break up into small groups, and come up with collages that best express our drive to do better. Now, this "come on, everyone! Let's put on a play!" may work well in a tree house, where you can fashion old blankets into stage curtains...but in front of the country - it's weird. Maybe because I think he was trying to convince himself, not just us - that America was great. Or perhaps he felt he had to prove to us that he really felt that way, even if he didn't. Or maybe even he was simply exhausted - after years of banging on America's faults - and now it was time to come home and sleep in his own bed. In the end, the speech wasn't bad. It wasn't good. It was a fiery "Eh." I think he should have kept it fast and simple, like "America rules, now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go to work. And Black Swan was overrated." To me, confidence isn't built by sixty minutes of earnestness, but by relaxed optimism - made acceptable by an innate trust that you know what's really important in troubled times. I'm not sure it's solar shingles.

New Glyphs found in Nazca

Japanese team finds 2 new geoglyphs on Peru's Nazca Plateau Wednesday 19th January, 03:57 AM JST YAMAGATA — A Japanese research team said Tuesday it has discovered two new geoglyphs on Peru’s Nazca Plateau, which is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its gigantic lines and geoglyphs. The team, led by Masato Sakai, professor in state-run Yamagata University’s Faculty of Literature and Social Sciences, said the newly discovered geoglyphs appear to represent a human head and an animal. In 2006, the same team announced the discovery of about 100 new geoglyphs on the Nazca Plateau, many in the form of straight and triangular lines. Faculty chief Yoichi Watanabe told reporters that the new geoglyphs were found about 10 kilometers from northern Nazca where gigantic geoglyphs of animals, fish and insects are located. A temple is located near the site of the new discoveries. ‘‘It is unusual to find geoglyphs of living things in this part of the plateau,’’ Watanabe said. He said the geoglyph of what appears to be a human head measures around 4.2 meters long and 3.1 meters wide and that the researchers confirmed parts that look like two eyes, a mouth and the right ear. An analysis of earthenware discovered near the site indicates that the geoglyph of the human head was created in the early Nazca civilization period or earlier. The Nazca civilization flourished between around 200 B.C. and A.D. 600. The other geoglyph of what appears to be an animal measures about 2.7 meters long and 6.9 meters wide. It is not known when it was created. The Japanese team began studies at the site on the Nazca Plateau in August 2010 with the permission of Peru’s Culture Ministry. The two new geoglyphs were probably not identified in aerial surveys because of their small size, Watanabe said. He also said the team has filed a report on the new discoveries with Peru’s Culture Ministry and that it would look into the relations between the newly found geoglyphs and the nearby temple. Nazca is located on the southern coast of Peru, about 400 km south of the capital Lima. The lines and geoglyphs of Nazca and the Pampas of Jumana were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 1994. The lines, which were etched between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500, are among archaeology’s greatest mysteries because of their number, form and size. The lines and geoglyphs cover about 450 square km

Truth!

Policy Peril: Looking for an antidote to An Inconvenient Truth? Your search is over. Updated 8/10/09 | GlobalWarming.org

Policy Peril: Looking for an antidote to An Inconvenient Truth? Your search is over. Updated 8/10/09 GlobalWarming.org

Climate change study had 'significant error': experts (Update)

Climate change study had 'significant error': experts (Update)