Proof That the Loch Ness Monster Exists?

This amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists.

Sun reader Jason Cooke spotted “Nessie” while browsing the Web site’s satellite photos.

The shape seen on the surface of the 22-mile Scottish loch is 65ft long and appears to have an oval body, a tail and four legs or flippers.

Some experts believe Nessie may be a Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile with a shape like the Google image.

“This is really intriguing. It needs further study,” said researcher Adrian Shine, of the Loch Ness Project.

Sightings have been claimed for centuries.

To see the object, enter co-ordinates Latitude 57°12’52.13″N, Longitude 4°34’14.16″W in Google Earth.

via Proof That the Loch Ness Monster Exists? – Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News – FOXNews.com.

Looks like a squid, but I’d guess it is some debris.   Hard to say without seeing it moving. Anyone have the answer on this?

Dinosars really were … purple?

A team of paleontologists and ornithologists led by Yale University has discovered evidence of vivid iridescent colors in feather fossils more than 40 million years old.

The finding signifies the first evidence of a preserved color-producing nanostructure in a fossilized feather.

Iridescence is the quality of changing color depending on the angle of observation, such as the rainbow of colors seen in an oil slick.

The simplest iridescent feather colors are produced by light scattering off the feather’s surface and a smooth surface of melanin pigment granules within the feather protein.

Examining feather fossils from the Messel Shale in Germany with an electron microscope, scientists have documented this smooth layer of melanin structures, called melanosomes.

“These feathers produced a black background with a metallic greenish, bluish or coppery color at certain angles-much like the colors we see in starlings and grackles today,” said Richard Prum, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale and one of the research paper’s authors.

For more than 25 years, paleontologists have found microscopic tubular structures on fossilized feathers and hair.

These were long interpreted as bacteria that had digested the feathers at the time they were fossilized.

The team had previously discovered that these structures were in fact not bacteria but melanosomes, which then allowed them to document the original color patterns.

ollowing up on the new finding, they are racing to discover what additional coloration features may be found in fossil feathers.

“The discovery of ultra-structural detail in feather fossils opens up remarkable possibilities for the investigation of other features in soft-bodied fossils, like fur and even internal organs,” said Derek Briggs, Yale’s Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geology and Geophysics, an author of the study.

The discovery could pave the way for determining color features of other ancient birds and even dinosaurs, according to the team.

“Of course, the ‘Holy Grail’ in this program is reconstructing the colors of the feathered dinosaurs,” said Yale graduate student and lead author Jakob Vinther. “We are working hard to determine if this will be possible,” he added.

via Scientists find evidence of vivid iridescent colors in 40 mln-yr-old feather fossil.

The purple one’s would be rare but not impos…  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Jaycee Lee Dugard alive after 18 years in captivity.

A woman who has been missing from her South Lake Tahoe home has reportedly surfaced in Concord, 18 years after she was kidnapped.

Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 today, apparently walked into the Concord Police Department on Wednesday. Concord police have declined comment, referring inquiries to the El Dorado County sheriff’s office. A news conference is scheduled for today.

Dugard was last seen on June 10, 1991 as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. Dugard, a blue-eyed, blond 11-year-old dressed in a pink top and pink pants, set out to catch the bus to her school near South Lake Tahoe. She never made it.

As her stepfather watched helplessly from the family’s driveway on a hill about two blocks away, a two- tone gray sedan pulled up and someone yanked the girl into the car and sped off. Even though officers responded within minutes, no trace of the car or girl was ever found.

Dugard was last seen on June 10, 1991 as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe.

via Jaycee Lee Dugard Pictures.

The nightmare 18-year ordeal of a woman who was kidnapped on her way to school when she was 11 was revealed last night after she was found alive. Jaycee Lee Dugard mothered two daughters, now aged eleven and fifteen, with monster Phillip Garrido – one of them when she was just fourteen. And she was forced to spend the last eighteen years living in sheds and tents in a hidden garden behind her captor’s family house in a suburban California street. Last night’s revelations showed shocking parallels with the case of Austrian Josef Fritzl, who fathered seven children with his daughter and kept them prisoner in an underground warren under his home.

Both of Jaycee’s children were born at the house and had never been to school or even seen a doctor. Now 29, Jaycee had an emotional reunion last night with her mother, Terry, who was shocked and ‘overjoyed’ to learn that her daughter was still alive. Terry told ABC News that her daughter had been held against her will all these years and ‘confined in a box’ in the back of the Garrido’s house. Jaycee was dragged screaming and kicking off the street in South Lake Tahoe in northern California as she walked to the school bus stop in 1991. And her family heard nothing from her until her identity was discovered by police on Wednesday. …

The police spokesman said a campus officer at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley, California, became suspicious of Garrido when he tried to give out religious leaflets to students on Tuesday. With him were the two daughters and when the guard checked Garrido’s background, she discovered he was a listed sex offender and was on parole for a vicious rape and kidnapping in Nevada. He was ordered to visit his parole officer the next day.

When he arrived at the parole office in Concord, California, he brought with his wife, the two girls – and a woman he referred to as Allyssa. The parole officer immediately became suspicious because he had never seen Allyssa or the two girls during his visits to Garrido’s home. He called in police and officers quickly learned that Allyssa was, in fact, Jaycee Lee Dugard, the girl they had been searching for since 1991. The Garridos were arrested and a police raid on their home uncovered the secret compound where Jaycee and her daughters had lived. Police said Jaycee was ‘relatively co-operative and forthcoming’ and her remarks convinced them who she was.

Phillip Garrido – a registered sex offender – and his wife Nancy, pictured (right) yesterday, have been taken into custody. They had apparently gone into a police station in California with Miss Dugard to ask a question and were arrested when an officer became suspicious – dailymail

Image Left: Phillip Garrido’s secret backyard at 1554 Walnut Ave., Antioch, Calif., where he kept Jaycee Lee Dugard and the two childern he fathered with her isolated from the world. (Google Maps)

A press conference on Thursday, shed light on the circumstances under which Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped at age of 11 in 1991, was being held for 18 years. Authorities revealed that the residence of her kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy, 55, contained a hidden backyard within a backyard, and could only be accessed by tarps.

Jaycee bore Garrido two children, now ages 11 and 15, in this makeshift campground, where her alleged captor kept her and her children isolated from the world. Law enforcement reported that the area had a rudimentary outhouse and shower, and one of the sheds in which Jaycee lived with her children was sound proofed.

The Google Maps image show’s Garrido’s address of 1554 Walnut Ave., Antioch, Calif., according to the Megan’s Law registry, illustrating the multiple blue tarps he used to conceal his captives for so many years.

Reports indicate Garrido was out on parole for kidnapping at the time he abducted Jaycee.

via examiner

Look around you. Get to know your neighbors. Are any of them keeping secret human slaves? It is rare, but not impossible.

Update 9/3/09:

Antioch police say kidnapping suspect Phillip Garrido was arrested in 1972 on suspicion of raping a 14-year-old girl. Antioch police Lt. Leonard Orman said Thursday the girl and a friend met then-21-year-old Garrido and another man near the public library. Orman says Garrido gave the girl barbiturates and took her to a motel, where she was given more drugs. He says the girl awoke there and was repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted. Authorities say Garrido was set to be prosecuted in the case but the charges were later dropped when the victim refused to testify.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jaycee Dugard remembers her family and is enjoying getting to know her younger sister, who was a baby when Dugard was kidnapped 18 years ago, her aunt said Thursday. Tina Dugard spoke to reporters at the FBI’s Los Angeles office, describing her niece’s reunion with her mother and sister.

“The smile on my sister’s face was as wide as the sea. Her oldest daughter is finally home,” Tina Dugard said. Phillip and Nancy Garrido have pleaded not guilty to kidnap, rape and imprisonment charges related to Dugard’s 1991 abduction from South Lake Tahoe. Police say Garrido fathered Dugard’s two daughters and lived with them in a backyard encampment of tents and sheds in Antioch. Tina Dugard said her niece’s daughters, ages 11 and 15, appeared to be bright and educated, even though they did not attend school.

“Jaycee did a truly amazing job with the limited resources and education that she herself had, and we are so proud of her,” Dugard said. The family’s location has been a closely guarded secret since the 29-year-old woman reappeared last week. She was 11 when she was allegedly kidnapped. Tina Dugard said the family has been spending time “in a secluded place,” reconnecting and getting to know each other again.

“Not only have we laughed and cried together, but we’ve spent time sitting quietly, taking pleasure in each other’s company,” Dugard said. Tina Dugard took no questions from reporters and did not comment on the investigation into her niece’s abduction. A spokeswoman for the Dugard family, Erika Price Schulte, said they would have no further public comment for now.

FTC to ban most telemarketing ‘robocalls’ Sept. 1

Many of those annoying prerecorded telemarketing calls will be history starting Sept. 1.

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it is banning these “robocalls” to consumers, unless the telemarketer has written permission from a customer that he or she wants to receive these calls.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said American consumers have made it “crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year.”

Violaters will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call.

The ban is part of the amendments to the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule unveiled a year ago.

But there are exceptions. Calls that are not trying to sell goods and services to consumers will be exempt, such as those that provide information like flight cancellations and delivery notices and those from debt collectors.

Other calls not covered by the Telemarketing Sales Rule include those from politicians, charities that contact consumers directly, banks, insurers, phone companies, survey calls and certain health care messages such as prescription notifications. These don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the FTC, a commission spokesman said.

Before the ban, consumers had to specifically join a do-not-call list to avoid prerecorded telemarketing calls. But after Sept. 1, consumers shouldn’t get most of these calls anymore. If they do get one, they can file a complaint with the commission online through FTC.gov or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP.

via The Associated Press: FTC to ban most telemarketing ‘robocalls’ Sept. 1.

I rarely get these calls, but when I do, it seemed almost impossible to get them to stop calling. I usually say, “Yes, I’m very interested, please hold on a minute…” then put the phone down.

Ivanka Trump: monetary policy of the US will result in “massive inflation.” + Tip: Buy Palladium.

Ivanka Trump predicted that the monetary policy of the US will result in “massive inflation.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine that with this much money being dumped into the economy that we’re not going to expand into massive inflation,” Trump told CNBC’s Becky Quick.

via Developing: Ivanka On Squawk Box.

Warren Buffett has quietly been divesting himself of the dollar for years, and the latest Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) annual report contains a stark warning about our fiscal future. Whether or not these gloomy predictions will in fact come to fruition is impossible to predict with certainty, of course, but diversifying out of the dollar, a prudent move in any environment, appears to be an absolute necessity, now. There are a number of ways to prepare for, and even profit from, a period of high inflation. Among the best are to invest in real property, commodities, and foreign currencies. – seeking

I purchased a few Palladium coins.

Palladium is a natural white pure precious metal…. It enahances the beauty of diamonds (similar to platinum), is hypo-allergenic, nickel free and needs no rhodium plating (which makes it slightly more desireable than white gold, albeit more expensive as well). Palladium is 30 times more rare than gold, while sharing a similar patina and luster as precious platinum. Palladium is also a very strong and durable metal and will last a lifetime. It is less expensive than platinum, but more expensive than gold. – dv

Yeah, this is not true currently, because gold is around $950/oz.  You see, this is what makes palladium such a good buy. Buy low, sell high. Gold will keep going up for a while, so it is a good investment too, but I’m thinking you could have more growth potential with palladium because you can buy more of it.

I figure with the coming inflation, I’ll only have to wait a few years for the price to be driven up to $750 an ounce and I’ll double my money (including commission, shipping, safety deposit box, etc.).  The 5 year high is $579/oz, but these are extraordinary times.  There are layoffs in places which haven’t had layoffs for 35 years. People want stability. Precious metals are doing well.  In 2001 palladium hit an all time high of $1,075/oz in US dollars.  I’m hoping the use in fuel cells will cause a new surge of interest in this metal.

… palladium has several integral roles in a hydrogen economy. Palladium can be used to generate hydrogen, to purify hydrogen, to store hydrogen and to detect hydrogen. Since the fuel cell is dependent on hydrogen, palladium will be important to this technology. If, as some say, that the world’s oil supply peaks in the year 2010 then this technology is not that far off. – swpalladium

• Platinum is 15 times rarer than gold… and palladium is nearly as scarce as platinum.
• Both platinum and palladium are used primarily to control emissions in automobile catalytic converters, and secondarily in jewellery.
• These sister metals are only mined in about 12 regions worldwide, primarily in Russia and South Africa, and to a lesser extent in the United States and Canada.
• The Russian Federation accounts for approximately two-thirds of the world’s palladium supply.
• Russian palladium supplies come from three sources – the Norilsk Nickel mine, Gokhran (Russia’s gems and precious metals reserve) and the Russian Central Bank.
• Almazyuveliexport is a state-owned monopoly that controls all palladium exports to the world. …

Soaring Chinese demand for palladium jewellery

With platinum prices at four times that of palladium, the cheaper sister is looking more and more attractive. This is true in other sectors where the sibling metals are consumed as well. Of note is the jewellery industry.

When supply and demand statistics are released for 2005, most experts anticipate that we will have seen a 70% increase in Chinese consumption of palladium for jewellery. The reason for this considerable increase in consumption is, once again, the high Platinum price.

In the past, palladium had been primarily used with gold to create white gold. Now, for jewellery purposes, consumers are looking to purchase palladium jewellery. It is a pure, white metal with similar properties to platinum… but the price tag is a heck of a lot lower!

- fleetinvest

These coins and this metal is rare. Not impossible to imagine that the value will increase again… I just don’t know when.

Male tortoiseshell cat ‘genetically impossible’

Male cats, like human beings, have only one X chromosome in their DNA meaning that they should be unable to inherit different colours.

The cat’s new owner owner Karen Horne , 38, said: ”As a vet I can tell you that it is genetically impossible to get a male cat that is tortoiseshell coloured.

”My colleagues and I have 30 years of experience between us and we have never seen anything like this.”

Of eight million pet cats in Britain only a couple a year are born male tortoiseshells.

The eight-week-old kitten was brought into Mrs Horne’s veterinary surgery in Harpenden, Herts., with his three tortoiseshell sisters by local charity Cat and Kitten Rescue.

But asMrs Horne set about vaccinating the siblings she discovered to her amazement that one was a boy.

Mrs Horne, from nearby Markyate, immediately adopted Eddie into her family of five cats, four dogs and three children.

She said: ”I feel like the luckiest vet ever just to see a tortie tom cat, and even luckier to have him live with me.

”We’ve decided to call him Eddie after Eddie Izzard, the comedian, as he is essentially a boy dressed in girls’ clothing.

”He a perfect cute little fluffy bundle. When he came in to the surgery, we all wanted to offer him a home.”

via Male tortoiseshell cat ‘genetically impossible’ – Telegraph.

Not impossible. Just rare.  This is from wikipedia:

Male cats, like other mammalian males, have only a single X chromosome (XY) that does not undergo X-inactivation: coat color is determined by which allele is present on the X, and they will be either entirely black or orange. Very rarely (approximately 1 in 3,000^[3]) a male tortoiseshell or calico is born. These animals typically have an extra X chromosome (XXY), a condition known in humans as Klinefelter syndrome, and undergo an inactivation process like that in females. As in humans, these cats are almost always sterile because of the imbalance in sex chromosomes. Some male calico or tortoiseshell cats may be chimeras, which result from the fusion in early development of two embryos with different color genotypes. Others are mosaics, in which the XXY condition arises after conception and the cat is a mixture of cells with different numbers of X chromosomes.

Conspiracy theorists rejoice: Prized ‘moon rock’ in Dutch national museum is a fake

It’s not green cheese, but it might as well be.

The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood.

Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity.

“It’s a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered,” she said. “We can laugh about it.”

The museum acquired the rock after the death of former prime minister Willem Drees in 1988. Drees received it as a private gift on Oct. 9, 1969 from then-U.S. ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the three Apollo 11 astronauts, part of their “Giant Leap” goodwill tour after the first moon landing.

Middendorf, who lives in Rhode Island, told Dutch NOS news that he had gotten it from the U.S. State Department, but couldn’t recall the exact details.

The U.S. Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter.

The museum had vetted the moon rock early on by checking with NASA, Van Gelder said.

She said the space agency told the museum then that it was possible the country had received a rock: NASA gave moon rocks to more than 100 countries in the early 1970s, but those were from later missions.

“Apparently no one thought to doubt it, since it came from the prime minister’s collection,” Van Gelder said.

The rock is not usually on display; the museum is primarily known for its paintings and other works of fine art by masters such as Rembrandt.

It was on show in 2006 and a space expert informed the museum it was unlikely NASA would have given away any moon rocks three months after Apollo returned to Earth.

Researchers from Amsterdam’s Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was not from the moon.

“It’s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,” Geologist Frank Beunk said in an article published by the museum.

via Conspiracy theorists rejoice: Prized ‘moon rock’ in Dutch national museum is a fake.

It is a crime to sell fake moon rocks.

The Connecticut man who attempted to sell Moon rocks allegedly from the stash of lunar rocks snagged and tagged by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, has pled guilty to six counts of mail and wire fraud.

Richard Keith Mountain, alias Nicholas Parker Cole, pled guilty on October 30 his caper to sell alleged “Moon rocks” to interested buyers was unearthed and squashed. Mountain appeared before United States Magistrate Morton Silver of the District of Arizona.

Mountain had been previously indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, in April 1999, on 24 counts of mail and wire fraud for misrepresenting to the prospective buyers that the materials he was selling were collected from the surface of the Moon during the July 1969 Apollo 11 lunar landing.

Special Agents from the NASA Office of Inspector General, Office of Criminal Investigations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation carried out the investigation. – space.com

Since moon rocks are so rare, how would you know if you had a fake one? Did you know that you don’t need to go to the moon to get a moon rock?

YOU don’t have to visit the moon to hold a chunk of it in your hand. Every day around 160 tonnes of rubble from space rains down on Earth, and some of it comes from the moon. All you need to find a piece of moon rock is keen eyesight, patience and an expanse of ice or desert against which a dark little chunk of our neighbour will stand out.  …

Meteorite hunters like Labenne follow an approach pioneered in the 1930s by the American collector Harvey Nininger, working on the Great Plains that stretch west from the Mississippi river to the Rocky mountains. Nininger taught local people to seek out black stones on the pale ground, and thanks to their efforts he bagged more than 200 meteorites over three decades.

Another rich source was identified in 1969 by the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition, which found meteorites on a blue ice field near the Yamato mountains in East Antarctica. Other deserts became a focus of interest in the early 1990s, including the one that yielded our moon rock.

Lunar meteorites are exceedingly rare: only around 60 have been identified. And they don’t just interest collectors. Space scientists are also keen to get hold of them, because they hold clues to what the rock is like on parts of the moon beyond the areas explored by the Apollo and robotic landers.

The vast majority of the tens of thousands of meteorites that have been studied are not from the moon.- newsci

As you can see, it is rare, but not impossible to find a real moon rock.

Michael Jackson shown ‘still alive’ in conspiracy theorist video posted on web

Footage that purports to show Michael Jackson stepping out a Los Angeles coroner’s van after his death is circulating on the web.

The shaky 29-second clip will be seized upon by conspiracy theorists who believe that the King of Pop is still alive, although there is no evidence to suggest that it is genuine.

In the footage, which appears to have been filmed in an underground garage, a man is escorted from the back of a white van and through a doorway by a guard.

While the man appears to have Jackson’s build and dark hair, his face is entirely obscured.

The person who posted the video on Live Leak, the video-sharing website, claims to have been passed it by a “trustworthy source”, but offers no proof of its authenticity.

“This video shows that Michael was still alive after his dead body was transported to the Los Angeles Dept. of Coroner,” the video description states.

“I checked the license plate number and it looks like the King of Pop is jumping out of the same van, his dead body has been in.”

However, the van’s number plate is not clearly visible at any point of the clip and there is no date stamp to indicate when it may have filmed.

Even fellow users of Live Leak, which is known as a breeding ground for far-fetched conspiracy theories, were not convinced.

via Michael Jackson shown ‘still alive’ in conspiracy theorist video posted on web – Telegraph.

Hmm. MJ faking his death seems almost impossible.

Body refuses to go pale, family asks for death opinion

Relatives of a dead man in Spain asked a doctor to confirm his death a second time because his body showed no signs of going pale hours after he passed away, local officials say.

The 70-year-old died of a heart attack and his body was on display at a funeral home in Lorca, a city of some 90,000 people in southern Spain, when his family noticed that it still had a healthy pink glow, a spokesman for the funeral home said on Wednesday.

They then called in the doctor to confirm that their loved one was in fact dead. The doctor concluded that the man still had a healthy glow, despite having passed away, because the pacemaker he was wearing was still running.

via Body refuses to go pale, family asks for death opinion.

So, the pacemaker was keeping the blood circulating? Does that mean he had a pulse? How is his blood giving him a healthy glow if it has no oxygen? No breathing? A confusing case of someone somewhat undead.

My sky tonight

My sky tonight, originally uploaded by xeno735.

This is not edited.  Notice the alien spacecraft?  I don’t either. That’s how good they are at cloaking.