Turin Shroud–wanted by Hitler, who was a Christian, goes on display first time in 10 years

The Turin Shroud, which is believed by some Christians to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, has gone on display for the first time in 10 years.

The shroud is expected to draw some two million visitors to the northern Italian city over the next few weeks.

The cloth shows the faint image of a bearded man with stains of blood on his hands and feet.

Tests in 1988 suggested it dated from the medieval period but those carbon dating findings are contested.

Measuring just over 4m x 1m (14ft x 3.5ft), the frail linen sheet shows an image of a man’s body complete with bloodstains and what appear to be wounds from crucifixion.

Millions of Christians believe the cloth is the burial shroud of Jesus.

In 1988, special tests dated it to between 1260 and 1390, suggesting it was a medieval forgery.

But since then, other scientists have cast doubt on those findings and appealed to the Vatican to allow new tests using more modern techniques.

Some two million people are expected to visit Turin Cathedral to see the shroud, which will be on public view for six weeks, kept in a bullet-proof and climate-controlled case.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to fly to Turin on 2 May to pray before the shroud.

via BBC News – Turin Shroud goes on display for first time in 10 years.

The Turin Shroud, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, was secretly hidden in a Benedictine abbey during the Second World War because the Vatican feared that Adolf Hitler wanted to steal it. -telegraph

Hitler wanting to steal the shroud makes sense because by his own words, Hitler was a Christian.

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”

( Adolf Hitler, from John Toland [Pulitzer Prize winner], Adolf Hitler, New York: Anchor Publishing, 1992, p. 507. )

“The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God’s will, and actually fulfill God’s will, and not let God’s word be desecrated. For God’s will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord’s creation, the divine will.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 562. )

“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, p. 65. )

“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. …

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Munich, April 12, 1922; from Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press, 1942, pp. 19-20. )

“I say: my Christian feeling tells me that my lord and savior is a warrior. … I am convinced that I am really a devil and not a Christian if I do not feel compassion and do not wage war, as Christ did two thousand years ago, against those who are steeling and exploiting these poverty-stricken people.

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered on April 12, 1922; from Charles Bracelen Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power, Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989, pp. 261-262. )

“May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Berlin, February 1, 1933; from Adolf Hitler, My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 147. )

“The judgment whether a people is virtuous or not virtuous can hardly be passed by a human being. That should be left to God.”

( Adolf Hitler, in a speech delivered at Wilhelmshaven, April 1, 1939; from Adolf Hitler, My New Order. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 621. )

- http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html

Is the Shroud of Turin from the time of Jesus? I think not because another shroud—radiocarbon-dated to between A.D. 1 and 50 is notably different:

The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus’ burial cloth.

The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern, a type of cloth not known to have been available in the region until medieval times, Gibson said. – nationalgeographic

Controls for animals’ color designs revealed

The vivid colors and designs animals use to interact with their environments have awed and inspired since before people learned to draw on the cave wall.

But how different creatures in the animal kingdom — from colorful birds and reef fish to butterflies and snakes — make and deploy their artful designs is one of nature’s deepest secrets. Now, however, a team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has exposed the fine details of how animals make new body ornamentation from scratch. The work, the result of years-long and laborious experimentation, is published April 7 in the journal Nature.

“How do you generate complex patterns? This is a question that has interested biologists for a really long time,” says Sean Carroll, a UW-Madison molecular biologist and the senior author of the Nature report. “In this case, we at first had no clue. But now we think we’ve figured out all the key ingredients and we believe they are generally applicable (to many animals).”

The new study is important because it is the first to provide concrete evidence for a long-hypothesized system for generating animal color patterns, be they stripes, spots or any of the myriad designs animals use to camouflage themselves or find a mate. In particular, the Wisconsin group is the first to identify a color-inducing morphogen, a diffusible protein that tells certain cells to make pigment. …

The role of the Wingless morphogen was detailed by the painstaking genetic manipulation of flies that took three years and the injection of nearly 20,000 fly embryos to accomplish. Complicating the project is the fact that Drosophila guttifera is little used in research and its genome has not been sequenced.

However, by inserting the Wingless gene into different parts of the fly’s genome, the team was able to successfully manipulate the decoration of the fly’s wing, creating stripes instead of spots, and patterns not seen in nature. “We can make custom flies,” notes Carroll. By manipulating the gene, “we can make striped flies out of spotted flies.”

In addition to working out the molecular details of how the fly colors its wings, Carroll’s group was also able to deduce the evolutionary history of wing coloring in Drosophila guttifera.

In short, says Carroll, the patterns found on the wings of Drosophila guttifera came about through the fly’s manipulation of the Wingless gene: “It evolved by simply turning this gene on in places where it hadn’t been on before.”

Although the study was conducted in a lowly fruit fly, the principles uncovered by Carroll’s group, he argues, very likely apply to many animals, everything from butterflies to boa constrictors. “This is animal color patterning, how they are generated, how they evolved.”

via Controls for animals’ color designs revealed.

Video captures reptilian alien sounds?

This will be the final clip…the last 14 mins would not upload properly. May I suggest you use stereo earphones/headphones for this clip. In this video clip, at the 1:26 mark, the video slows and sound is cutoff for almost 15 seconds. At this point, I am almost certain there is human spiritual activity in this residence. I’m not discounting alien presence…in fact, there have been cases in which it seems alien activity was attracted and/or used human spiritual activity to help mask their presence. At the 6:09 mark, the bottom left candle disappears as if something moved in front of it. This could have been David while laying in bed, but soon after wards there are very loud, ominous ‘bangs’ and ‘rumbles’ heard. We have thought human spiritual activity was present in this case for some time now and considered it as part of the investigation. There is also more very interesting audio that follows. Please watch the series and read the descriptions. You can refer to this case at http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com and http://phantomsandmonsters.wetpaint.c… – NOTE: this is part of a 7 year ordeal by this family. A few days after this recording, the family members were abducted and taken to several locations. These abductions occurred off and on for the 7 year period. Other evidence is forthcoming. There is a discussion on this case at http://phantomsandmonsters.wetpaint.c…

NOTE: I realize that some people that view the video will need explanation. Yes, the witness (David) and his wife are in bed in the video. Yes, David does have a spotlight and in later clips a laser penlight. There is an explanation for this on the ongoing thread (link above). David does answer some questions there. I realize that filming the reflection of an 180 degree surveillance mirror is somewhat crude but David wanted to view the entire bedroom, as well, there is another reason for this (to be explained later) The strobe light was needed for various reasons also. I acknowledge the information is vague…but as we investigate the evidence, all of this will be covered. Thanks.

Sounds like a slowed down recording of a normal animal roar.  Might be interesting to pull the audio and speed it up.  Probably a hoaxer slowing down an alligator recording.  I think this because it sounds slowed down too much. A creature with a voice box big enough to make that sound would be as big as a T-Rex.

Cell phones that protect against deadly chemicals? Why not?

Do you carry a cell phone? Today, chances are it’s called a “smartphone” and it came with a three-to-five megapixel lens built-in—not to mention an MP3 player, GPS or even a bar code scanner. This ‘Swiss-Army-knife’ trend represents the natural progression of technology—as chips become smaller/more advanced, cell phones absorb new functions.

What if, in the future, new functions on our cell phones could also protect us from toxic chemicals?

Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)’s Cell-All is such an initiative. Cell-All aims to equip cell phones with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals. The technology is ingenious. A chip costing less than a dollar is embedded in a cell phone and programmed to either alert the cell phone carrier to the presence of toxic chemicals in the air, and/or a central station that can monitor how many alerts in an area are being received. One might be a false positive. Hundreds might indicate the need for evacuation.

“Our goal is to create a lightweight, cost-effective, power-efficient solution,” says Stephen Dennis, Cell-All‘s program manager.

How would this wizardry work? Just as antivirus software bides its time in the background and springs to life when it spies suspicious activity, so Cell-All would regularly sniffs the surrounding air for certain volatile chemical compounds.

When a threat is sensed, an alert ensues in one of two ways. For personal safety issues such as a chlorine gas leak, a warning is sounded; the user can choose a vibration, noise, text message or phone call. For catastrophes such as a sarin gas attack, details—including time, location and the compound—are phoned home to an emergency operations center. While the first warning is beamed to individuals, the second warning works best with crowds. And that’s where the genius of Cell-All lies—in crowd sourcing human safety.

Currently, if a person suspects that something is amiss, he might dial 9-1-1, though behavioral science tells us that it’s easier to do nothing. And, as is often the case when someone phones in an emergency, the caller may be difficult to understand, diminishing the quality of information that’s relayed to first responders. An even worse scenario: the person may not even be aware of the danger, like the South Carolina woman who last year drove into a colorless, odorless, and poisonous ammonia cloud.

In contrast, anywhere a chemical threat breaks out—a mall, a bus, subway or office—Cell-All will alert the authorities automatically. Detection, identification, and notification all take place in less than 60 seconds. Because the data are delivered digitally, Cell-All reduces the chance of human error. And by activating alerts from many people at once, Cell-All cleverly avoids the long-standing problem of false positives. The end result: emergency responders can get to the scene sooner and cover a larger area—essentially anywhere people are, casting a wider net than stationary sensors can.

And the privacy issue? Does this always-on surveillance mean that the government can track your precise whereabouts whenever it wants? To the contrary, Cell-All will operate only on an opt-in basis and will transmit data anonymously.

“Privacy is as important as technology,” says Dennis. “After all, for Cell-All to succeed, people must be comfortable enough to turn it on in the first place.” …

via Cell phones that protect against deadly chemicals? Why not?.

World Air Traffic 24 Hour Period (video)

YouTube – World Air Traffic 24 Hour Period.

Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species

A dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard that lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon has been confirmed as a new species, scientists reported on Tuesday.

Hunted for its tasty flesh, the brightly colored forest monitor lizard can grow to more than six feet in length but weighs only about 22 pounds (10 kg), said Rafe Brown of the University of Kansas, whose team confirmed the find.

“It lives up in trees, so it can’t get as massive as the Komodo dragon, a huge thing that eats large amounts of fresh meat,” Brown said by telephone. “This thing is a fruit-eater and it’s only the third fruit-eating lizard in the world.”

Discovering such a large vertebrate species is extremely rare, Brown said. The lizard, a new species of the genus Varanus, is skittish and able to hide from humans, its primary predators, which could explain why it has gone undetected by scientists for so long.

Biologists first saw photographs of the big, skinny lizard in 2001, when those surveying the area passed hunters carrying the lizards’ colorful carcasses, but the species at that point had never been given a scientific identification.

In the next few years, Brown said, ethnobiologists kept hearing stories “about these two kinds of lizard that everyone liked to eat because their flesh tasted better than the ones that lived on the ground; this thing was described as bigger and more brightly colored.”

The two kinds of lizard described by the local people were two names for the same animal, Brown said. …

In 2009, graduate students at the end of a two-month expedition kept seeing signs of the big lizard. There were claw-scratches on trees and clumps of pandanus trees, whose fruit the lizard prefers.

The clumps indicated that the lizards had eaten pandanus fruit and then excreted the seeds in clusters.

“It was literally in the last couple days of the expedition, we were running out of money and food and this was the payoff: they finally got this gigantic animal,” Brown said.

Hunters who had heard of the team’s interest brought a barely-alive adult male lizard to their camp. The team euthanized the animal and did genetic tests that confirmed it as a unique species, Brown said.

DNA analysis showed there was a deep genetic divergence between the new lizard and its closest relative, Gray’s monitor lizard, which is also a fruit-eater but lives on the southern end of Luzon, rather than the northern end where the forest monitor lizard lives.

“They are extremely secretive,” Brown said of the new species. “I think that centuries of humans hunting them have made the existing populations … very skittish and wary and we never see them. They see and hear us before we have a chance to see them, they scamper up trees before we have a chance to come around.”

These findings were published in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, with additional work by scientists in the Philippines and the Netherlands.

via Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species | Reuters.

Organs ‘removed for transplant without consent’

Organs may have been removed from deceased people without their consent after a data-handling error by the NHS.

The blunder meant 800,000 people on the UK donor register had their wishes about the use of organs for transplant after death wrongly recorded.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that 45 of them have now died – and 20 families let organs of relatives be taken based on incorrectly stored information.

NHS Blood and Transplant said it was urgently investigating.

Many donors give consent for some organs to be used for transplant but not others, such as eyes.

But the details of many donors’ preferences were accidentally deleted in 1999.

It first came to light in 2009 when NHS Blood and Transplant wrote to donors, reiterating what they had agreed to donate.

But many wrote back saying the information was incorrect.

Joyce Robins of pressure group Patient Concern told the Sunday Telegraph: “This government has got an absolutely dreadful record when it comes to data, but it is horrific that such sensitive details were handled in such a careless way.”

‘Small proportion’

NHS Blood and Transplant has since corrected 400,000 flawed records – but hundreds of thousands of people must now be contacted to confirm which organs may be taken. …

via BBC News – Organs ‘removed for transplant without consent’.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski dies in plane crash

President Lech Kaczynski and scores of other senior Polish figures have been killed in a plane crash in Russia.

Polish and Russian officials said no-one survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it approached Smolensk airport in thick fog.

Russian media reports said the pilots ignored advice from air traffic control to divert to another airport.

Poland’s army chief, central bank governor, MPs and leading historians were among more than 80 passengers.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the crash was the most tragic event of the country’s post-World War II history.

The Polish delegation was flying in from Warsaw to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of thousands of Poles by Soviet forces during WWII.

The BBC’s Adam Easton, in Warsaw, says the crash is a catastrophe for the Polish people.

He says Prime Minister Tusk was reportedly in tears when he was told.  …

A government spokesman said that according to the constitution there would be an early presidential election, and the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, would be acting president.

In Warsaw, people gathered outside the presidential palace to lay flowers and light candles.

“I’m all broken up… it cannot be expressed in words,” Ewa Robaczewska told Reuters news agency. …

The Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass news agency the plane crashed at 1056 Moscow time (0656 GMT) as it was coming in to land.

Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev told Russian TV that no-one had survived.

… Polish TV worker Slawomir Wisniewski said he had seen the crash from his hotel near the airport.

“I saw through the fog, the aeroplane flying very low with the left wing pointing to the ground,” he said.

“I heard something being broken and then that thudding sound. Two flashes of fire next to each other.”

Russian media carried claims that the plane’s crew were at fault for the crash.

“Flight controllers… suggested that the plane be forwarded to Minsk but as far as we know the crew took an independent decision to land the plane in Smolensk,” Smolensk regional government spokesman Andrei Yevseyenkov told Russian TV.

Russian officials said 97 people were killed in the crash, including eight crew. …

Mr Kaczynski’s twin brother, Jaroslaw, a former prime minister and now head of the main opposition party, was said to be “devastated”, an aide told AFP news agency.

Lech Kaczynski, who had fewer powers than the prime minister but had a significant say in foreign policy, was a controversial figure in Polish politics.

He had advocated a right-wing Catholic agenda, opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.

via BBC News – Polish President Lech Kaczynski dies in plane crash.