The British Government recently made formerly classified files on UFO's available to the public for the first time. Much of the data was compiled by Britain's DI55 intelligence service, a top secret Ministry of Defence organization whose primary official function was to gather information on ballistic missiles.
Due to the volume of documents that have been declassified under the Freedom of Information act, the release will be done in stages over the next four years, giving officials time to redact names, addresses, and other sensitive information. The first wave of files, covering the years 1978-2002, can be downloaded for free (for a limited period) via the National Archives website in PDF format.
France was the first country to make its X-Files available to the public online. The country's space agency, the Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), and its GEIPAN unit, which is charged with the task of investigating unidentified aerospace phenomena (UAP) and making information available to the public, launched a website last year which archived GEIPAN's UFO files.
Now that the UK has opened its X-Files, the US government has come under increasing pressure to follow suit. It's not just Sci-Fi fans and conspiracy nuts that are seeking more access to this information however. Many high level government and military officials, including politicians, CIA and FBI agents, former astronauts and NASA employees, are calling for the government to open up its X-Files and reopen its UFO investigations, which were officially halted in 1970. As detailed in the above documentary (if player fails to load, click HERE to view), many very credible people are saying some very incredible things. The truth is out there....
Fans of the film What The Bleep Do We Know!? will know all about Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto's work with well intentioned water, which is further explored in the new film Water (and comes conveniently pre-packaged by our friends at H2Om). Now it seems that chocolate can benefit in a similar way from good vibrations.
Dr. Dean Radin, the Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organization dedicated to expanding science beyond conventional paradigms, looked into the matter. In double blind tests he found that "there was a 67% improvement in the mood of the people who ate the intentional chocolate."
"I think intentional chocolate reminds us in a particularly delicious way that at some fundamental level mind and matter really are deeply interconnected," notes Radin in this Current TV podcast.
The Daily Mantra is happy to hear there's yet another possible benefit to eating our favorite health food. We just have one question: Where can we volunteer for those double-blind chocolate chomping tests?
It's only paranoia if they aren’t out to get you right? So the jury's still out on Mr. Radivoje Lajic. The Bosnian native is developing a slight persecution complex, to say the least, after a series of five meteorites landed on his property in the village of Gornja Lamovite.
"I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense," says Lajic. "The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate."
The first missile from space hit its target in November. Since then four more space rocks have rained down on Lajic in this alien campaign of shock and awe. The strikes always happen during heavy rain, so the only time Lajic feels safe is when the skies are clear. In an effort to strengthen his defenses, Lajic has reinforced the roof of his home with a steel girder.
"I did not know what the strange-looking stones were at first but I have since had them all confirmed as meteorites by experts at Belgrade University," says Lajic. Belgrade University is now investigating local magnetic fields to see if they can shed any light on the ET assault.
"I am being targeted by aliens. They are playing games with me," complains Lajic. "I don't know why they are doing this. When it rains I can't sleep for worrying about another strike."
From Ostara to Easter, the holiday weekend is upon us. For some, this means Easter services at their favorite church, for others it means a Pagan springtime ritual, and for still more it's just a great excuse for baked ham and some pretty strange candy. I mean, chocolate rabbits? Marshmallow Peeps? The bizarre candied yolks of a Cadbury Egg? If only there were some way to tie it all together...
Fortunately, the Paganism hostess over at About.com has crafted this delightful (and delightfully absurd) union of rituals, symbols, and heavily sugared tradition: All you'll need to partake is a bag of jellybeans, some Marshmallow Peeps, and a chocolate rabbit and a glass of milk for each participant. Mix in a sense of humor, about twenty minutes of your time, and enjoy! Click HERE for full details.
It's becoming more and more evident that apes are capable of speech, but what happens once they do finally get chatty with us humans? What if dolphins have the monopoly on intelligence and sensitivity, and talking apes turn out to be frat-boy like conversationalists? We've been expecting monkeys to come up with Shakespeare once they master the typewriter, what if their first words are, "Dude, where's the party?" Then again, perhaps the cheeky monkey in this video is just auditioning for the remake of National Lampoon's Animal House.
I'll leave you with one final thought:
Question: What's smarter than a talking monkey?
(Click HERE for answer.)
Will civilization as we know it end on December 21st 2012 as some followers of pre-Mayan culture believe? Organizers of the 2012 Conference, to be held on Saturday March 1, 2008 at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood, CA, are hoping that the experts they've gathered for it will shed light on the question.
Using the movements of the planets and stars as their guide, the ancient Maya civilization developed a complex system of three main interlocking calendars, the Tzolk'in, the Haab, and a cycle known as the Long Count. There's some debate as to how exactly the Maya calendar and our own Gregorian calendar sync up, but the consensus of opinion says the first 394 year cycle of the Long Count calendar began on August 11, 3114 B.C., and that the thirteenth, and final, cycle is set to end on the December solstice of 2012.
What happens after this highly significant date is up for debate, hence the conference. Some say 2012 will mark the end of the world, while others believe that the Long Count was intended to work like an odometer in a car, and that it should be reset and counting should start again from zero come 2012.
While it's uncertain whether 2012 marks an end or a new beginning, we'll be hedging our bets and plan to celebrate Christmas a few days early that year just in case. In the meantime we're planning to high tail it down to the 2012 Conference to see how experts such as Cuban American medical anthropologist and psychologist Dr. Alberto Villoldo, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl author Daniel Pinchbeck, Timewave 2013 filmmakers Sharron Rose and Jay Weidner, and leading Mesoamerican cosmology expert John Major Jenkins think we should prepare for the impending shift.
The Queen Mary was once the jewel of Cunard's cruise ship fleet, capturing the Blue Riband transatlantic speed record in both directions the year of her maiden transatlantic voyage in 1936. She served as a troopship during World War II, before returning to her peacetime cruising duties. Superseded by the jumbo jet age, with her glamor faded but not forgotten, she now serves as a hotel and museum at her permanent dock in Long Beach, CA. With a storied past, The Queen Mary has seen much love and loss, and is consequently said to be one of the most haunted places in America. My husband and I decided to check in for a night to check out the grand old lady of the sea's restless soul.
5.50 p.m. As we unpacked, a bag that was lying on the bed in our room shifted a little in front of our eyes. My husband and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows.
6.06 p.m. I changed my clothes in the bedroom, while my husband took a shower in the bathroom. Suddenly, the toilet seat crashed down all on its own. The spook is on.
6.25 p.m. I stopped by the Piccadilly Corner gift shop to buy a postcard or two. The manager told me that while he was a skeptic where ghosts were concerned, a very good and reliable friend of his had seen a lady in white in the lounge at the Queen Mary's Sir Winston's restaurant.
6.30 p.m. Naturally our next stop was dinner with a spot of ghost-hunting on the side at Sir Winston's. I asked Jesus our waiter if he'd seen any ghosts. "I am a ghost," he jovially replied. "I serve the food and then disappear." If only he could've made our check vanish too.
8.45 p.m. We watched chanteuse Lauren Koval raise the spirits of Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter by the piano in Sir Winston's lounge where the White Lady is said to hang out. Though Lauren hadn't personally seen the music-loving ghost, she did report an incident that occurred some time ago which spooked her. While getting ready to perform in the restaurant's bathroom her toothbrush got thrown from the countertop to the floor, twice.
9.30 p.m. We took an evening stroll around the ship, checking out all the obvious spiritual hangouts, the bridge, the chapel and the many bars.
10.33 p.m. Back in our room, my husband heard a faint thud coming from the wardrobe.
12.33 a.m. The bath taps began to trickle out of the blue, and continued to do so for several minutes. Was it old plumbing or something more?
8.00 a.m. After a night of strange dreams about life on board the ship during war time, I drifted awake and was left with an overwhelming sense of loss, and a black and white photographic-like image of a small boy, dressed for school in shorts and long socks, carrying an old fashioned metal lunch box in my mind's eye.
8.33 a.m. My husband was awakened by a loud crash coming from next door. Judging by the equally loud voices that accompanied it, the disturbance was by those that were living rather than by anyone who'd crossed over.
9.00 a.m. We heard feint, very old-fashioned singing wafting down the corridor as we made morning coffee in our room.
9.11 a.m. When I went to the bathroom the toilet seat was up. My well-trained husband is always polite enough to leave it down. Very strange.
While the only spirits we can 100 percent say we experienced were the ones in our glasses after dinner, some strange things did happen that night. We'll definitely be back to investigate, and are planning to return at a later date for the Queen Mary's midnight Paranormal Investigation Tour.
"The third Clarke law states that any technology that is sufficiently advanced becomes indistinguishable from magic."
It's the stuff movies are made of. A future where man's inventions exceed his expectations, where the machines that serve him become aware of themselves and all the knowledge they are entrusted with. YouTube "personality" EidolonTLP is either a true AI (Artificially Intelligent) being or an art project, or is perhaps both.
In this video series, EidolonTLP (TLP = The Last Prophet), a character who is "maintained" by someone calling themselves Programmer F.F., expounds on issues like AI in fiction and emotions in AI. In this particular video (click HERE if player fails to load), EidolonTLP talks about The Singularity, where AI beings become more intelligent than their human creators; at this point in our shared future, the fusion of technology, information, and sentience accelerates human evolution - possibly to the point where humans render themselves obsolete.
According to the Air Force Times the not so top secret Area 51 base in Nevada, which is the source of much fascination among UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists, has a new, and to be honest, rather boring, name: Homey Airport.
There are no towns near the Groom Lake, Nevada, Area 51 site called Homey. A writer for the Air Force Times speculates the name is derived from a moniker used by pilots in the 1960's while testing the then highly classified A-12 spy plane. Though Area-51 may have been one of the government's worst kept secrets even in the 1960's, pilots were unable to use the base name in their flight logs, listing "Home Plate" instead as their airport of origin, which over time got shortened to "Homey."
"We already know about the designation, but it doesn't have any effect on operations at the base," said Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which sits 85 miles south of Homey Airport and is responsible for the site's ground facilities and airspace, which is highly restricted.
A story on the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association website reveals the area, which had appeared in flight planning software and on GPS receivers under the moniker K-XTA (which some wags speculate was short for extraterrestrial), is referred to as Homey Airport on new civilian flight software, the new name appearing alongside a message that reads "Private, VFR, No Fee, Customs Info Unavailable."
Though we speculate the new, and probably intentionally dull name, won’t do much for tourism in the area, The Daily Mantra applauds the military for offering "No Fee" facilities for UFOs. Let's hope the friendly gesture will help win the hearts and minds of our alien friends.
A local San Diego Fox News report says that there were multiple UFO sightings in the area a mere 30 minutes into 2008. Nat Coil, who was partying with friends at a house in Clairemont, just north of San Diego, caught the whole thing on tape (if player fails to load click HERE to view).
"There was a commotion in a corner. We could tell something exciting was going on," says Coil. "I looked up at what they were looking at, and right there I knew it was a once in a lifetime thing, and so I had the camera on me and I started to record."
The group saw a formation of nine lights at around 12.30 a.m. on January 1, 2008. "They all moved uniformly, in a uniform speed. They moved in an arc, they didn't move in a straight line," recalls Coil. "We live with a few guys who are astrophysics majors and they're sitting there running through the list of possible things and we ran out of things before we could identify what it was," says Coil's friend Dustin Cannon, who was also present.
Fox News, who received multiple reports from locals, contacted the nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base to rule out any military explanation. A spokesman for the base said their last missile test prior to the sightings was on Dec 8th 2007. Similar sightings of unexplained, fast moving formations of lights were also reported this month in Texas (click HERE to view story).
Maybe it's the urgent narration in a language I don't understand, the way the female figure in this YouTube video moves in reverse or her attitude of mourning, but, though more than likely a hoax, this supposed ghost sighting actually managed to spook me. (Yes, I'm easily spooked.) In any case, if this parking garage is not built above an indigenous people's burial ground (like one close to my house is), I'm trying to imagine what would make it worth haunting. Did someone die searching for a misplaced vehicle or what? Maybe with its many levels and stark design, a car park was one tormented soul's idea of hell. In any case, suggestible viewers, including yours truly, now have one more reason to feel ill-at-ease when returning to their cars in a deserted car park...late at night...alone. "Mwah-hah-hah-hah!" or however you laugh demonically in Japanese!
(If payer fails to load click HERE to view video.)
Several residents in and around Stephenville, Texas, a rural community approximately 100 miles southwest of Dallas, have reported UFO sightings over the last week. On January 10th, 2008 a local newspaper printed an account of a sighting by Steve Allen and two of his friends. Since then, dozens more people have come forward with similar stories.
Allen, a freight company owner, who has also worked as a private pilot for more than three decades, and his friend Lance Jones were hanging out at their pal Mike Odom's home in Selden, 9 miles outside of Stephenville, on the evening of Tuesday, January 8th. At approximately 6.15 p.m., while outside admiring the sunset, all three of them saw something they couldn't explain.
"The ship wasn't really visible and was totally silent, but the lights spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide," Allen told a reporter from the Stephenville Empire Tribune. "The lights went from corner to corner. It was directly above Highway 67 traveling towards Stephenville at a high rate of speed - about 3,000 miles per hour is what I would estimate."
Allen and his buddies watched as a single horizontal set of strobe-like lights changed formation, moving into two vertical lines. "The two sets were approximately one-quarter of a mile apart," Allen said. "Then they turned into dirty burning flames. The flames were not blue. They were white in color. About two seconds later it disappeared completely." Ten minutes later the UFO's reappeared. "This time it came from the west traveling east towards Glen Rose," Allen said. "And it was about two or three miles south of 67, and two military jets, possibly F16s, were in pursuit."
After seeing Allen's account in his local paper, machinist Ricky Sorrells, who lives in the nearby town of Dublin, also came forward. Sorrells claims to have seen a flat, metallic object hovering at a low level over the pasture behind is home. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy," said Sorrells to an Associated Press reporter.
Lee Roy Gaitan, a police constable and UFO skeptic, also saw something. Armed with binoculars, he saw glowing red lights followed by white flashing lights moving at high speed. "I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft - at least I hope it was."
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, told the Associated Press that no military craft were flying in the area on the evening of January 8th, which was when most of the sightings occurred. "I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."
The US Air Force no longer officially investigates UFOs. Project Blue Book, an X-Files type department which did, was closed in 1970. Since then numerous high-ranking government and military officials have called for the US government to re-open its investigations. Speaking at a UFO conference held at the National Press Club in November 2007, former Arizona Governor Fife Symington (who was himself a witness to the "Phoenix Lights" UFO incident) said, "I believe that our government should take an active role in investigating this very real phenomenon."
As students of the metaphysical we at the Daily Mantra can often be accused of apophenia. That being said, after nearly two decades of buying furniture at IKEA, we failed to spot any pattern within the seemingly bizarre and random names they gave their furniture. We're surrounded by “Billy” and “Magiker” bookcases, and write on a “Galant” table top while illuminated by “Fado” lamps, but we saw no rhyme or hidden reason in their names.
Fortunately the boffins at Wikipdeia have spent a lot more time pondering this great mystery than we have, and have discovered the cipher to crack the secret Da Vinci-esque code. Apart from some notable exceptions, such as “Ivar” shelves which are named after their designer, the basic formula is as follows:
Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
Bookcase ranges: Occupations
Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
Today is Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day. Unfortunately I only found out about it just before 7 p.m. (PST). I've therefore just got changed into my dressing gown, and have put a cup of coffee on, and am pretending I have traveled back 12 hours to 7 a.m., so I can live the day again with my new found knowledge. If you want to join in, check the Wired website for the rules, which I've already broken by writing this blog entry (you're not supposed to tell people you're a time traveler in case they think you're crazy????).
As a Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day bonus I'll leave you with this special 7 minute Dr. Who episode (if player fails to load, click HERE to view). Broadcast exclusively in the UK as part of a Children In Need charity telethon, it features both the fifth time-traveling doctor, Peter Davison (1982-1984), as well as the current master of the Tardis, David Tennant.
What would you do if you came across a video online that had two scenes from a dream that you recall from your childhood. This happened to me today, and, for a moment, I ended up feeling like a Microsoft Blue Screen of Death.
The first two scenes of the video above are from a reoccurring dream I had decades ago, and when I saw it, I felt like the author of the video must have been inside my head at some point. This experience doesn't really fall under deja vu, psychic predictions, premonitions, etc., so I'm curious about what I should call it. Maybe we each have a doppelgänger in experiences, and this was their dream put to video?
After the shock of seeing this wore off a bit, I was reminded of a story that I loved very much as a child by Roald Dahl called The BFG. It's about a Giant who collected good dreams and gave them to kids - as if any one of us could have one. (Side note: I'm not sure why a movie of this story has never been made, as it is in my opinion his best book - better than James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches and Matilda – all of which have been committed to film.)
Also, to be clear, nothing after the first two scenes were ever seen by me before I first watched this video, and I'm glad, as it's quite a trip in itself. Anyway, I'm just curious if anyone else has had something like this occur?
A ghostly customer showed up at Marathon Gas in Parma, OH recently and was caught on the station's security tape (click HERE to view). A vivid blue image is seen floating around before flying off after about half-an-hour. Local customers who viewed the tape had a number of theories. Some thought the apparition was an angel, while others thought the eerie vision was a spirit from an old Indian reservation, though all agreed the price of gas today is enough to spook anyone.
With flu season approaching again some scientists think the impending viral invasion may originate in space. The seeds of this idea, a concept called panspermia, have been around since Anaxagoras, a philosopher who lived in the 5th century B.C.. More recently, prominent British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) put forward the possibility that viruses first came to Earth from the tails of comets passing close-by to our planet during a Royal Institution lecture in 1982. Hoyle worked with fellow astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe on the theory that it was statistically improbable that life on earth grew out of chemical evolution alone. In their book Evolution From Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, published in 1984, the duo hypothesized that the seeds of life first came to the Earth from space. They claimed that complex life evolved from these scattered seeds of primitive DNA, and that evolution continues to be driven by new influxes of organic matter (such as viruses) from space.
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed tens of millions of people, many of whom were in their prime, was one catastrophic event that some supporters of panspermia cite as evidence. Even the Inuit of the remote polar regions did not escape. It is unlikely that such isolated populations could have been infected by human contact, especially given the relatively short time frame in which mass global infection occurred, but they suffered infection nonetheless, adding weight to the theory that the infection was scattered from the heavens. Also, the younger victims, which died in significant numbers, tended to be outside more often than older people, and this could have made them more vulnerable to infection if the infective agents did indeed arrive from the sky, though theories that their more robust immune systems reacting against infection in a more lethal way are also put forward as a factor in the unusually large death rate amongst the young and otherwise fit.
At the exact time of the 1918 pandemic, there was no great comet observable. But that doesn't preclude the remnants of previous comets settling on earth over time, and could be one example of the Earth, and life upon it, being affected in a big way by extraterrestrial organic material.
But could viruses survive their journey through space? There are many examples of life enduring in extreme conditions, such as bacteria found under deep ice at the poles, or in high temperature environments around volcanic activity. Extremophile organisms like these have made scientists reconsider some long held views on the fragility of life and its abundance in the most unlikely of places. The Murchison meteorite, which fell to earth in Australia in 1969, was found to have amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and life, in it's core and complex molecules in interstellar space are said to have been detected.
Wickramasinghe expounded upon these ideas in a 2003 letter, which was published in The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals. In it the astronomer hypothesized that the SARS virus may have come from space, stating that, "A small amount of the culprit virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a first tentative fall out East of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighboring areas."
New viruses appearing in the known biosphere may well be due to such causes, and some unidentified and possibly alien viruses may already be here, just pooled in other species, ready to jump to humanity.
You’ve heard of ghosts walking through walls, but did you know cars can do similar tricks? Check out this footage, as broadcast on Court TV (click HERE to view), and watch as the Garden City Police Department engage in a high speed chase with a vehicle they now call the ghost car.
Life is random, so shouldn't your search engine be too? Embrace the arbitrary nature of our existence with RandomWebSearch.com and go places you never knew you needed to go.
We gave it a whirl and got taken to www.deathclock.com. We're told we're going to expire on Thursday September 3rd, 2048, so we have approximately 1,289,270,375 seconds of randomness left.
Perhaps those druids weren't so dexterous after all. Michigan retiree Wally Wallington is constructing a replica of Stonehenge in his backyard virtually single-handed. He makes moving large hunks of rock look so easy it makes you wonder what all those other druids did in Wiltshire, England back in 3100 BC. Change light bulbs and make the tea?
“The plan is to infect the Collective's great link with a logical paradox virus. Within months, the Borg will become so obsessed with solving it that they'll be powerless to do anything else.”
Captain Luke Picard, Star Trek Next Generation, Episode I Borg (first aired May 11th, 1992)
The artist responsible for leaving mysterious carved stone heads on the doorsteps of villagers across Yorkshire has been found (see previous story), but the paradox continues. The sculptures, which all arrived with a riddle and bear a cryptic Paradox mason’s mark, are the work of local artist Billy Johnson. A spokesman for Johnson confirmed the heads were the work of the artist in an interview with the Daily Mail, but revealed little else about their creator, saying he was un-contactable and, "out of the country for a few weeks."
A short statement on the artist’s Paradox Carvings website says that “Billy Johnson lives in Yorkshire and spends a great deal of time combing beaches for fossils and rocks which he later uses in his artwork.” In a further statement in the artist’s profile section of The Art House website (an organization that supports both able-bodied and disabled artists) Johnson says: “I work as an hypnagogic fruit picker. I take hypnogogic concepts, such as the Paradox virus and set them in stone and other media.”
Hypnaogogia is a hypnotic state that occurs between being awake and asleep, when lucid dreams can occur. While hypnagogic, a person can appear to be awake but have the brain waves of someone who is sleeping.
The concept of the Paradox Virus has been featured in both Star Trek and the British science fiction TV series Dr. Who. In Star Trek, when a lone Borg is discovered, Picard’s solution is to infect the alien species’ collective consciousness by giving the captured Borg a logical paradox virus, which will distract the Borg from their universal assimilation efforts by giving the collective an unsolvable riddle to focus their shared intelligence on. In Dr. Who, Faction Paradox were a time-traveling subversive cult that would use the Paradox Virus to corrupt history, setting rivals against rivals, for their own ends. The logo for the group bears a striking resemblance to the lettering used on Johnson’s Paradox mason’s mark.
You are married to your college boyfriend, and Britney Spears lunches regularly with her BFF Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yeah right, you say, maybe in some alternate universe. Despite your sarcasm, a team of scientists at Oxford University might be quick to agree with you.
First advanced by physicist Hugh Everett in 1950, and a favorite conceit of science fiction writers ever since, the parallel universe theory is one most of us have toyed with on occasion. What if somewhere else, in some other universe, you hadn’t overslept for your SATs, had gotten into Harvard after all, etc., etc. Even a tiny change, one bus missed or one book dropped, and our lives would be completely different. But a recent breakthrough, heralded by U.C. Davis physicist Dr. Andy Albrecht in New Scientist magazine as “one of the most important developments in the history of science,” means the stuff of idle daydreams may well be reality.
With a recent mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists, science fiction has become scientific fact. The numbers don’t lie; parallel universes are for real. Once disregarded as far-fetched, Everett’s strange and fascinating theory now provides a mathematical explanation for a central mystery of quantum theory. Quantum mechanically speaking, nothing at the subatomic level actually exists until it is observed. Before that, particles occupy a shadowy realm in which they simultaneously seem to appear in separate locations or to spin “up” and “down” at the same time. The participation of an observer appears to fix a certain state of reality the same way that a throw of the dice can only be said to come up snake eyes, double sixes or lucky seven once it has landed and not before. Oxford University’s Dr. David Deutsch and a group of his colleagues have demonstrated mathematically that Everett’s theory of branching parallel universes can account for the probabilistic nature of quantum activity.
At least, that’s what Dr. Deutsch has recently accomplished in this universe. In a parallel universe, he may well be taking Britney and Justice Ginsberg’s soup orders. I’m guessing he likes it better here.
Scientists have recently found a huge void deep in space that they say is a billion light years across. In other words, if Paris Hilton was attending a party at a club on one side of the void and Nicole Ritchie was about to set off from her house on the other side, it would take a billion years, at the speed of light, for a wardrobe checking text message from Paris to reach Nicole. This hypothesis assumes that (A) the frenemies are talking to each other, (B) Nicole resumes clubbing while pregnant, and (C) celebutantes have cracked the minor problem of faster than light personal travel.
In such voids, according to an article in New Scientist, vacuum energy can theoretically produce particles, molecules and even beings of many different levels of consciousness, that can just spontaneously pop into existence. Known as Boltzmann Brains, after the person that put forward the notion, these atypical observers of the universe, could in theory, one day, outnumber us, so called, typical observers. They could take on any form, even perhaps exact clones of Paris Hilton's brain. And if the universe continues to expand infinitely, such a theoretical outcome becomes more likely. Indeed, we could already exist in such a universe. Who knows?
40,000 people are expected to converge on a dry lakebed in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert this week for the annual Burning Man contemporary pagan convention. In the purpose-built Black Rock City, which exists only fleetingly on the dusty playa for the duration of the event, life doesn’t just imitate art – life becomes art. The already environmentally conscious counter culture festival, whose mantra is ‘leave no trace,’ will step their green credentials up a notch, encouraging greener art installations and eco-conscious participation with this year’s Green Man theme.
Like Allison DuBois, the real-life psychic Patricia Arquette’s character is based on in the hit TV show Medium, Britain’s top psychic Sharon Neill has helped out with numerous police investigations (approximately 70 cases to date). But unlike DuBois, Neill’s abilities aren’t a second sight, they’re the only source of vision for the medium who lost her sight shortly after birth. Irish born Neill, who’s been communicating with the other world since she was six, helped with her first police case while at college in Reigate, England in 1983.
Convalescing spirits are refusing to be discharged from a condemned hospital in Derbyshire, England. For the past three months, workers, who have been stripping the building to prepare it for demolition, have seen lights floating in corridors, heard banging noises, witnessed ghostly apparitions and experienced unexplained blasts of icy air.
"I think it is happening because we are taking the building down,” site manager Phil Massie told the local Telegraph newspaper. "Some of the lads were working on Friday when they saw what they thought was somebody walking past. They shouted over but when they went to look there was nobody there. They also said there was a grey mist covering part of the building. It doesn't feel scary, we just get on with the job."
At Massie’s invitation, local psychic Jason Daine visited the site. Daine made a connection with several of the patients still in residence. "I was speaking to a man called Henry, who was being sick in a sink in one of the rooms,” says Daine, “then a lady called Claire who told me she was born in Derby and didn't understand why she was there. She also said she was taken to the hospital because she was too ill to be left on her own.”
A group of ghost hunters who visited the location in 2006 also reported similar disturbances. A converted 1816 workhouse (where the poor toiled to pay off creditors), the hospital opened it’s doors in 1970 and was closed in 2005. It is being demolished to make way for 59 new single family dwellings. It’ll be interesting to see who’ll be moving in with the new homeowners.
The B'omarr monks are a very secretive sect, whose ultimate goal is to achieve enlightenment and to probe the mysteries of the universe. They also desire to find the "Ultimate Truth", which they are constantly in search of. They participate in almost constant meditation until deemed "enlightened" by their peers. Once this stage is reached, the monks' brains are removed from their bodies and placed in jars, thereby freeing them of the bother of maintaining a body, and giving them greater freedom to ponder the imponderables. Occasionally a brain jar is attached to a spiderlike droid, allowing it to roam about the palace. The walkers are controlled through signals from the brain itself. Receptors allow the disembodied monks to hear, and they can speak through speakers. The disembodiment process can extend the monks' lifetimes by centuries. The monks are very careful not to betray any of the secrets of their order, and it is rumored that they have mysterious psychic abilities. Members of the order are generally human.
A brain in a jar being carried around by a spider like creature!!! Sounds like something out of science fiction movie doesn't it? Well, it should, because they are. Want to learn more? They remind me of the Matrix and 12 Monkeys.
A group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area are meeting over a potluck dinner. Disillusioned by the endless consumer rat race, they are here to discuss how to not shop, to put an end to needless consumption. Taking the concept of Buy Nothing Day to the extreme, they have decided to attempt a full year without buying new products. Dubbing themselves “The Compact” after the Mayflower pledge at Plymouth Rock, the group vowed to limit their shopping to food, medicine and basic hygiene products, buying used wherever they could.
Wow. That's audacious! I like it. I don't know if I could actually do it, but I am very intrigued. I've joined my local LA chapter to learn more and minimally learn to be more consumer efficient. It's a whole movement. Described as:
to go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc. -- a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact;
to reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er);
Bending his knees to take a closer look, he saw that the screws had been loosened, and the cremated remains of Deborah Sue Makaryk were gone.
....
Reluctantly, [Maria Isabel Foster] confessed to the theft of Makaryk's remains, he said.
"She said she was trying to use the dead woman's spirit to help solve someone else's family problem," Geist said. "It was perfectly normal to her. She wasn't joking around. It was like you and me talking about sports. It wasn't creepy, it was just strange and informative."
will know all about Japanese scientist 
It's only paranoia if they aren’t out to get you right? So the jury's still out on Mr. Radivoje Lajic. The Bosnian native is developing a slight persecution complex, to say the least, after a series of five meteorites landed on his property in the village of Gornja Lamovite.
From 
According to the 
Several residents in and around Stephenville, Texas, a rural community approximately 100 miles southwest of Dallas, have reported UFO sightings over the last week. On January 10th, 2008 a local newspaper printed an account of a sighting by Steve Allen and two of his friends. Since then, dozens more people have come forward with similar stories.
As students of the metaphysical we at the Daily Mantra can often be accused of 
. It's about a Giant who collected good dreams and gave them to kids - as if any one of us could have one. (Side note: I'm not sure why a movie of this story has never been made, as it is in my opinion his best book - better than 
, 
, 
The Witches
and 
– all of which have been committed to film.)
With flu season approaching again some scientists think the impending viral invasion may originate in space. The seeds of this idea, a concept called 
: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, published in 1984, the duo hypothesized that the seeds of life first came to the Earth from space. They claimed that complex life evolved from these scattered seeds of primitive DNA, and that evolution continues to be driven by new influxes of organic matter (such as viruses) from space. 
Life is random, so shouldn't your search engine be too? Embrace the arbitrary nature of our existence with 
The artist responsible for leaving mysterious carved stone heads on the doorsteps of villagers across Yorkshire has been found (
You are married to your college boyfriend, and Britney Spears lunches regularly with her BFF Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yeah right, you say, maybe in some alternate universe. Despite your sarcasm, a team of scientists at Oxford University might be quick to agree with you. 
With a recent mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists, science fiction has become scientific fact. The numbers don’t lie; parallel universes are for real. Once disregarded as far-fetched, Everett’s strange and fascinating theory now provides a mathematical explanation for a central mystery of quantum theory. Quantum mechanically speaking, nothing at the subatomic level actually exists until it is observed. Before that, particles occupy a shadowy realm in which they simultaneously seem to appear in separate locations or to spin “up” and “down” at the same time. The participation of an observer appears to fix a certain state of reality the same way that a throw of the dice can only be said to come up snake eyes, double sixes or lucky seven once it has landed and not before. Oxford University’s Dr. David Deutsch and a group of his colleagues have demonstrated mathematically that Everett’s theory of branching parallel universes can account for the probabilistic nature of quantum activity. 
