Free will is an illusion

Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.

“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said. – nytimes

We each do what we must do. There is a degree of chaos everywhere, outside of us and in. So, we are not predictable… but we are pre-programmed.  Your conscious self does not decide what to do. It only observes and claims ownership of your decisions after the fact.

Whereas the delay between decision and awareness detected by Libet lasted 500 milliseconds, the new research seems to show that decisions can be predicted up to ten seconds before the deciders are aware of having made up their minds. – cons

So, in other words, relax and enjoy the ride.

Fake Flying Saucers

A friend pointed out aerospaceweb.org’s fake flying saucers info via email and commented, “Why is someone faking US and Nazi built “flying saucer” photos?  Are they in some way trying to obfuscate the truth of ET-built craft?”

Hmmm…

The original:

The original

I’m impressed. Great image manipulation. The white plane was completely removed and replaced by clouds which did not exist in the original photo. Lots of work.

Source of the [Fake UFO] Photos

We’ve finally identified the origin of the modified photos described above as coming from the website usafflyingsaucers.com. The site purports to provide evidence that the US Air Force built and tested four different disk-shaped aircraft during the 1950s and 1960s. Illustrating the site are several computer generated drawings, models, and images of the flying discs superimposed into pictures of actual planes. Both the site and the illustrations appear to be the creation of Michael H. Schratt.

Schratt says that the information presented on the site comes from a writer named Jack D. Pickett. According to Pickett, he was asked to visit MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in 1967 to write an article on historic aircraft. Among the planes he says he saw stored at the base were these four saucer-shaped aircraft, and he also claims the base gave him access to hundreds of photos and videos of the craft. Despite this information, Pickett says the Air Force later decided to prevent him from publishing his article about the planes and they have remained a secret to this day.

While we cannot dismiss his story out of hand and the existence of these flying disks may be confirmed someday, there is presently no evidence to corroborate the tale. Perhaps more importantly, the pictures created to support these claims ought to be clearly marked as computer generated conceptual images…. The only disclaimer pointing out the conjectural nature of the site appears on one page in very small text that is easy to overlook. …

Note that the site usafflyingsaucers.com expired in January 2006 and is no longer available. An archive of the old site can be found at WayBackMachine.com. A brief overview of many of its claims including additional diagrams can also be seen here.
- answer by Greg Alexander, 30 December 2005

Signs of Life Found Inside Rock Salt

Scientists have long searched for traces of ancient life on Earth in order to understand the history of life on our planet.

Fossilized bones have helped us understand the age of the dinosaurs. Insects trapped in drops of amber have inspired Hollywood films and researchers alike. These remnants of ancient life on Earth provide important clues about our planet’s past.

Now, a team of researchers working in New Mexico has found traces of life inside salty halite crystals. The discovery is “an invaluable resource for understanding the evolutionary record [of Earth] over a geological time frame,” according to Jack Griffith of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and his colleagues, who recently published their work in the journal Astrobiology. … Halite is more commonly known as “rock salt” and can be found all over the planet in the form of salty crystals. These crystals may not seem all that interesting at first glance. However, inside of them are tiny pockets of water that can be very valuable for scientists. Halite crystals form in liquid as evaporation occurs. The crystals naturally trap small amounts of liquid during this process. These water pockets and all that they contain can be protected inside halite crystals for extremely long periods of time. The crystals in the recent study had drops of water that were 250 million years old. … cellulose is only formed by living organisms. If cellulose is present, there must have been life.

Luckily for the research team, cellulose is a very sturdy material and the fibers were stable enough to survive until today. Additionally, the samples were collected from deep below the ground, where they had been protected from radiation. The cellulose found in the New Mexico halite is now the oldest biological macromolecules ever isolated. In addition, the researchers were able to visualize the fibers and study their biochemistry. Because of this, the 250 million-year-old cellulose is now providing a window into the history of life on Earth.

Mars with salt

If cellulose can survive for 250 million years inside halite on Earth, it may be possible for similar molecules to survive in halite crystals on other planets. – yahoo

Bruce E. Ivins, the Anthrax Terrorist? 20 questions

Another “conspiracy theory” has just been proven true.

The anthrax attack letters were an inside job. The lunatic “conspiracy nuts” have been saying this for seven years based on the facts like the Ames strain being involved.

Perhaps Ivins was just a lone nut, but an inside nut nevertheless. Bruce E. Ivins (deceased some time before 1800 hours 7/29/08) was a highly decorated AMERICAN working for the US military. He used US military anthrax to kill Americans and he tried to blame it on Islamic extremists, by writing “Allah is great” in his letters.

CNN on 8/6/2008 said, “Some of the anthrax-laced letters, written in crude block letters, included the words “Take penacilin (sic) now,” according to photographs released by the FBI.” – No mention of the attempted frame job. Look at the actual letters on the FBI’s web site. Example:

Why the bizarre complete lack of mention of Israel by the mainstream press? Are the “Israel did 9/11″ nuts who talk about the white van and the spy ring right after all? Did Israel attack the USA and attempt to frame Muslims to get us to fight their enemies for them? This is from Whatreallyhappened.com.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by “Orwellizing” their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.

“Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying … is considered career suicide.”

– Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale

You can view the removed FOXNews report here.

Bruce E. Ivins, the supposed lone anthrax attacker, wrote, in his last letter to his local paper, “By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen, and have no need for dialogue with any gentile. End of dialogue.” – nypost Right wing religious zealot.

I still trust that there are mostly good people in the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon, etc. But the anthrax case proves at the very least that one or more bad egg government insiders can pull off a major act of terror and be undetected and/or unreported by the good guys for seven years.

Some things don’t add up.

1. Why did Ivins attempt to frame Muslims?
   
2. How could Ivins create weaponized anthrax?
3. Could the anthrax attack have come from another country?
   
4. What was Ivins motive?
5. What was the full nature of Ivins involvement in Operation Noble Eagle?
6. What did Ivins find when he evaluated the anthrax he also supposedly used in the attacks?
7. If Ivins wanted to profit by showing his vaccine worked, why didn’t he send it to any of the victims?
8. What was Ivins reaction to the 9/11 attacks?
9. Why did it take seven years for Ivins to be discovered as the anthrax attacker?
10. Why is the FBI sure Ivins did it when they were wrong about Hatfill?
11. Did Ivins drive to Trenton, New Jersey on Tuesday, September 18, 2001 the day the anthrax letters were postmarked?
12. Why were the particular targets of the attacks selected?
13. Was Ivins working alone?
14. How did Ivins get the Anthrax to use?
15. How can a homicidal sociopath end up working for 35 years at the US Army’s biological warfare defense labs?
16. Who are the three or four top White House staff members who told ABC News that the anthrax was from Iraq?
17. How did White House staff know to begin taking Cipro on September 11, 2001?
18. Now that the killer has been caught, will the FBI share everything it knows with Congress?
19. When Ivins did unauthorized testing, on who’s secretary’s desk and keyboard did he find spores where he worked?
    
20. Is it true that the FBI never investigated the one man actually CAUGHT ON THE SECURITY SYSTEM entering the storage area where the anthrax used in the letters was stored, without proper authorization and after being fired from his job over a racially motivated attack on an Egyptian co-worker?
21. Anthrax Trivia bonus question: Where did the anthrax used in the attacks originally come from?

These reader COMMENTS are interesting.

#1: The anthrax mailer wrote “Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great.” on the letters. Interesting, considering the man the FBI fingered, Bruce E. Ivins, wrote, in his last letter to his local paper, “By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen, and have no need for dialogue with any gentile. End of dialogue.”- nypost Any bets on Ivins being a member of the Anti-Arab “camel club” where he worked?

#2. A coworker said, “He did not have the skill set to make the powder. That is pretty sophisticated aerosol engineering, and he had no training in that whatsoever. None.”

the New York Times revealed the technology behind the letter to Senator Daschle. [The anthrax used was] a trillion spores per gram, [refined with] special electro-static treatment. This is superweapons-grade anthrax that even the United States government, in its openly proclaimed programs, had never developed before. – afterdown

Richard Spertzel, a former biodefense scientist who worked with Ivins at the lab at Fort Detrick, said a more advanced machine than a lyophilizer would have been necessary. “There is no way” that a lyophilizer could have created the fine spores contaminating the 2001 letters, he said. In addition, he said, no one working at a U.S. government lab could have produced such high quality anthrax in secret. – cnn

#3.

“…Different grades of anthrax were prepared at… Ness Ziona. Coarse brown granules that would cause only skin infections were prepared for the New York media letters. The deadlier “weapons grade” anthrax was reserved for Senators Daschle and Leahy.” – planetquo

#4. He was either trying to test his anthrax vaccine … or make money by selling more of his vaccine … or get billions in funding for bioweapons research.

#5. According to USA today, Ivins was “deeply involved” with Operation Noble Eagle, the government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

#6. Ivins was one of the people investigating the anthrax attacks. Incredible. This is like a child murder working on the team to investigate her disappearance.

Investigators believe the spores in the three letters sent to Daschle, NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post come from the same strain of anthrax. The anthrax in the media letters was in a heavier, grainier state than the material in Daschle’s letter, which was a finer, more dangerous grade. The Leahy letter is still being examined at a crime lab in Fort Detrick, Md. – salon

#7.

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned. Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines. – lat

#7. The entire country was still in shock one week after 9/11. So… Ivins thought up his plan alone and mailed anthrax letters in the midst of everything else that was going on?

#9. A new DNA technique took years develop and this is what linked the victims to the exact type of anthrax Ames strain Ivins was working with. Interesting. Could we have some technical details about this technique?

“… prosecutors worried that because the genome technology was so new, it might be questioned and eventually thrown out if the case against Ivins ever went to trial. Researchers tested it for many more months to make sure its conclusions were reliable.” – wtop

#10. Hatfill, the main FBI suspect in the case before Ivins, was proven innocent.

On June 27, 2008 Hatfill was exonerated by the government and a settlement was announced in which the Justice Department has agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle the lawsuit in which Hatfill claimed the Justice Department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.^wiki

Answer: The new DNA technique showed that the anthrax Ivins was working with was the same as the anthrax used the attacks.

#11. Where was he on that day? Did anyone see him on that day?

Update: “Investigators also can’t place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., when the letters were mailed from a mailbox there.” – ap

Wait, what? Princeton? The letters were mailed from Trenton, right? Well Trenton is only 12 miles (20 min) from Princeton, NJ.

The anthrax attacks came in two waves. The first set of anthrax letters had a Trenton, New Jersey postmark dated September 18, 2001, exactly one week after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Five letters are believed to have been mailed at this time, to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the New York Post, all located in New York City; and to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida.^[3]

#12. The National Enquirer and the New York Post, which I think were the first two hit and mailed a week after 9/11, had unflattering photos and articles of the Bush daughters. Was Bruce E. Ivins aware of this? Why did Ivins target Daschle and Leahy the top two Democrats who were about to block the Patriot Act?

#13. Answer: Unknown. The FBI will signal that they believe so if they close the investigation.

#14. I don’t understand why this stuff is not carefully monitored by multiple people. Wouldn’t the amount he used be detected as missing from the lab in daily checks and set off alarm bells?

Answer: He worked there for over 30 years, he had access.

#15. Are there any more undiscovered homicidal sociopaths employed by our government?

“Client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, plans and actions towards therapist,” Duley said, adding that his psychiatrist had described him as homicidal and sociopathic. -foxnews

#16. Why did they say this?

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.” ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue).

#17. The anthrax letters were supposedly mailed by lone-nut Ivins on or after 9/11/2001, so how did the White House know to start taking the antidote on September 11?

“…the Bush administration has failed to provide a complete and accurate response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request concerning the decision to place White House staff on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic, Cipro, the same day as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.” – jwatch

#18. There was previously a blackout of information due to media leaks.

Bonus. The original “Ames strain” came from Bush’s home state of Texas, not Ames Iowa.

The bacteria was isolated by the Texas Veterinary Medical Diagnostics Laboratory at Texas A&M University and shipped to USAMRIID in May 1981. – ucla

Holy cow! Rare red bovine sold for $1 million

Genes, breeding potential and rare color make her ‘very marketable’. Apple was certainly the apple of someone’s eye. The cow was sold for $1 million Monday at an auction in Litchfield, Conn.

When the 4-year-old show cow paraded in front of 800 onlookers down the runway at Arethusa Farm, bidding started at $200,000.

A small group of partners from Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin placed the winning bid. The reason for the steep price tag is her genes, her breeding potential and her rare red color. – msnbc

100-year-old mine jeans sold for $36,099

A pair of 100-year-old Levi jeans found in a California goldmine have sold on eBay for $36,099 (£18,229.)

The seller says the vintage blue jeans bear the original “Levi Strauss & Co” label and were discovered while exploring the Rand mining district in the Mojave Desert.

The 34 waist 33 leg jeans were found next to a paper bag from a local shop used by miners which stopped trading in 1898.

Though the jeans have not been verified by Levi, the seller (who has a 100 percent rating on the auction site) will allow the buyer to return them within seven days if they turn out to be fake.

On the site he described the jeans saying: “They are covered in candlewax from the candle’s the miner was using to light the tunnel he was working in. – nltv

Made to last. They still look good.

Astronaut’s alien claims fall short, says UFO researcher

A former NASA astronaut stunned the scientific world and divided UFO watchers when he claimed last week that UFOs and aliens do exist.

In 1971 during the Apollo 14 mission Edgar Mitchell became the sixth man to walk on the moon.

Thirty-seven years on he says he’s just one of a handful in the space community who has been briefed by US military and intelligence officials on the existence of aliens.

But UFO believers says these revelations may have done their cause more harm than good. Keith Basterfield is co-director of the Australian UFO research network and is author of several books on UFO sightings in Australia.

He says he believes Dr Mitchell may have damaged the work of serious scientific researchers into UFOs due to the former astronaut’s broad claims and his inability to source what he’s presenting as fact.

“Dr Mitchell declines to name the sources he is getting this information from,” Mr Basterfield says.

“It’s always an unnamed source, or a source close to the Minister of Defence. You cannot take that as evidence of fact.

“He’s making those statements, obviously he’s gone public with them, but there is always doubt that the sources he is talking to aren’t playing the disinformation game with him.” – abc

Someone is lying about aliens. Is the lie that they don’t exist, or that they do exist? I wonder if we will ever know for sure.

Survival Of The Fittest: Even Cancer Cells Follow The Laws Of Evolution

Scientists from The Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton and the University of California discovered that the underlying process in tumor formation is the same as for life itself—evolution. After analyzing a half million gene mutations, the researchers found that although different gene mutations control different cancer pathways, each pathway was controlled by only one set of gene mutations.  This suggests that a molecular “survival of the fittest” scenario plays out in every living creature as gene mutations strive for ultimate survival through cancerous tumors. This finding, which appears in the August 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal, improves our understanding of how evolution shapes life in all forms, while laying a foundation for new cancer drugs and treatments. – sd

Olympic link to early ‘computer’

The Antikythera Mechanism has puzzled experts since its discovery by Greek sponge divers in 1901…

A team has now found that one of the dials records the dates of the ancient Olympiad…

The device is made up of bronze gearwheels and dials, and scientists know of nothing like it until at least 1,000 years later.

… The technique of X-ray computed tomography gave the researchers a 3D view of its 29 surviving gears. High-resolution imaging provided them with a close-up of tiny letters engraved on the surface.

The device’s “subsidiary dial” was once thought to be a 76-year “callippic” calendar.

However, Mr Freeth and his colleagues have now been able to establish from its inscriptions that it displays the 4-year Olympiad cycle.

Instead of one Olympics as there is today, the ancient Olympiads, called the Panhellenic Games, comprised four games spread over four years.

‘Eureka’ moment

The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two Panhellenic Games: the “crown” games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea and Pythia; and two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been deciphered.

In addition, the team was able to identify the names of all 12 months, which belong to the Corinthian family of months.

Corinth, in central Greece, established colonies in north-western Greece, Corfu and Sicily, where Archimedes was established.

Archimedes, whose list of exploits included an explanation for the displacement of water and a screw pump that bears his name today, died there in 212 BC.

The Antikythera Mechanism was “almost certainly made many decades” after his death, according to Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York, US.

If it came from Syracuse, the dial could have been made by the school of scientists and instrument-makers he inspired.

The priceless artefact was found by a sponge diver amid other treasures on a wreck near the tiny island of Antikythera between Crete and the mainland. It is on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. – bbc

A Blind Painter

The picture you are looking at was painted by a man who has never seen a tree. He’s never seen a person carrying a pail. He’s never seen a mountain or a flower. He’s never seen anything, because he was born without eyes!

Esref Armagan, a Turkish painter, has turned the art world on its ear. I first saw him as part of a Discovery Channel special called, The Real Supehumans. They interviewed him and showed several of his paintings. It’s crazy to watch him do this stuff because he has nothing to reference, but he dips his fingers in the paint and proceeds to knock out some really impressive stuff:

… So, we ask, how do you know how long these poles should be as they recede? I was taught, he says. Not by any formal teacher, but by casual comments by friends and acquaintances. How do you know about shadows? He learned that too. He confides that for a long time he figured that if an object was red, its shadow would be red too. “But I was told it wasn’t,” he says. But how do you know about red? He knows that there’s an important visual quality to seen objects called “colour” and that it varies from object to object. He’s memorised what has what colour and even which ones clash. – xoom