Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”

“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,” Leakey says, “then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

His friend, Paul Simon, performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million. A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed “much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.”

On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.

“If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one.”

Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.

“If we’re spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?” he asked. …

via Scientist: Evolution debate will soon be history – Technology & science – Science – msnbc.com.

Interesting prediction.

Man hit by six meteorites is being ‘targeted by aliens’

By Tom Phillips – 19th July, 2010

A Bosnian man who claims he is being targeted by extraterrestrials after a series of meteorite strikes on his house has now been hit by a sixth space rock in the space of a few years.

Radivoje Lajic first came to international attention in 2008, shortly after the fifth meteorite had crashed into the roof of his house in the northern village of Gornji Lajici.

And now, within the past month, another rock has hit the roof of his house, in defiance of all the odds – making it six strikes since the plague of meteorites began in 2007.

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the falling rocks he has handed over were meteorites. They are now trying to work out what exactly it is about his house that particularly attracts them. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, he says, never when there are clear skies.

Lajic has his own explanation, of course. After the fifth rock struck his house, he said: ‘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. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit six times has to be deliberate.’

50-year-old Lajic has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment – which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands.

‘I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens,’ he adds. ‘They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.’

via Man hit by six meteorites is being ‘targeted by aliens’ | Metro.co.uk.

This is one of the strangest stories.  Eric ( July 27, 2010 ) has a great humorous response:

Clearly Mr. Lajic knows more than he is letting on. He’s probably hiding something that the aliens want. One might ask, why would the aliens shoot meteorites at Mr. Lajic when they could simply slip into the Bosnian skies and suck Mr. Lajic from his dwelling in the dark of night? Well the answer to that question is more evidence that Mr. Lajic knows more than he is letting on. It’s likely that Radivoje Lajic has access to defenses of his own, possibly with the help of some sort of secret government agency or even a rival alien force as protection which keeps the alien overloads at bay and leaves them shooting meteorites at Mr. Lajic from thousands of miles away. Whatever the reason, the answer is clear… Radivoje Lajic must go.

I ask you Radivoje Lajic… don’t you want to do the right thing? Don’t you want to save earth and all it’s inhabitants? Turn yourself over and you will go down in history as the man who saved earth from obliteration.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Lajic’s house has not been hit for years, but after six hits with smaller samples, they may now be steering a big one at him and that takes time.

Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close Encounters

3 days ago

3 days ago

Two small asteroids buzzed by Earth, zooming well within the moon’s orbit, over the last 48 hours. Neither posed any danger, but the events were eagerly captured by amateur astronomers, and the second encounter was a record-setter.

The first asteroid, designated 2012 KP24, was first detected last week and passed within 32,000 miles of Earth on May 28. It is less than 70 feet across, approximately the size of a blue whale.

The second asteroid, named 2012 KT42, zipped by at midnight PDT on May 29, coming within 8,950 miles of Earth. That’s closer than the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, making the KT42 encounter one of the top 20 closest approaches ever recorded. The asteroid was discovered only a day before its flyby, but is a puny 15 feet across, not much bigger than a minivan.

To get a sense of how close each asteroid came, the moon orbits at a distance of 240,000 miles from Earth. Most near-Earth objects pass much farther away than lunar orbit.

Both NASA and amateur astronomers scan the skies for potentially dangerous asteroids. These two were detected so late because their small size made them hard to see. Officials with the Asteroid Watch program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted the passage of each rock, noting that each was at an intimate but safe distance.

Even if one had hit Earth, the damage would be modest. In the case of KT42, the rock “would likely disintegrate almost entirely in the atmosphere, peppering the ground below with relatively small meteorites,” wrote astronomer Tony Philips on Spaceweather.com. …

via Earth Experiences Back-to-Back Asteroid Close Encounters | Wired Science | Wired.com.

 

 

‘Montauk Chronicles’ Claims Time Travel, Mind Control, Aliens At Camp Hero

“When you walk through the area, you see this giant, imposing radar tower that still stands,” said Christopher Garetano, executive producer, writer and director of “Montauk Chronicles.” “Above ground, there are also huge doors, or bunkers, cemented and sealed into the sides of several hills in the forest area.”

Throughout the wooded park area are what appear to be manhole covers — capping passages that lead where?

“These obviously go down into something,” said Garetano, pictured left at Camp Hero. “Some people claim that these are entrances to underground tunnel systems that ran beneath the military base that would supposedly bring you to the actual entrance of the facility.”

Camp Hero’s roots are traceable to the Revolutionary War, when it was a facility to test military cannons. During World War II, the base was an important coastal defense against potential Nazi intrusions.

“Montauk Chronicles” tells the story of three men, Alfred Bielek, Stewart Swerdlow and Preston Nichols, who claim they were involved when Camp Hero reportedly became an underground site for scientific experiments and atrocities.

“At first I didn’t believe their stories,” Garetano told The Huffington Post. “These men have not benefited financially — they didn’t gain anything from this, and they’ve endured ridicule as they maintained their story.”

Bielek, a retired electrical engineer who recently died, told of being part of the legendary Philadelphia Experiment in 1943, in which the U.S. Navy is said to have tried to make a destroyer undetectable to radar.

The way Bielek’s story unfolded, the Navy test ended in disaster, causing the ship to supposedly travel through time. He maintained that he was recruited in 1970 to work on mind control and time travel projects at the Montauk secret facility.

“Alfred claimed he was a programmer who designed sequences where kidnapped boys were experimented on to become psychic spies and he said he was part of these psychic manipulations,” said Garetano.

Nichols, like Bielek, was an electrical engineer. He says he worked with Bielek at the Camp Hero location and that he also saw extraterrestrials there.

“We had the little grays and larger grays as well as a variety of reptilian beings,” said Nichols. “The large grays didn’t want anything to do with me. … When I entered a room, they would leave.”

via ‘Montauk Chronicles’ Claims Time Travel, Mind Control, Aliens At Camp Hero.

Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’

A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual ‘is a starting point, not the endgame’ in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.

via REVEALED: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you | Mail Online.

I’d never heard of the DNDO.

The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) is a jointly staffed agency within the Department of Homeland Security.  DNDO is the primary entity in the U.S. government for implementing domestic nuclear detection efforts for a managed and coordinated response to radiological and nuclear threats, as well as integration of federal nuclear forensics programs.  Additionally, DNDO is charged with coordinating the development of the global nuclear detection and reporting architecture, with partners from federal, state, local, and international governments and the private sector. ….

Strategic Objectives

• Develop the global nuclear detection and reporting architecture
• Develop, acquire, and support the domestic nuclear detection and reporting system
• Characterize detector system performance before deployment
• Facilitate situational awareness through information sharing and analysis
• Establish operational protocols to ensure detection leads to effective response
• Conduct a transformational research and development program
• Provide centralized planning, integration, and advancement of U.S. government nuclear forensics programs

 

A ‘Leap’ forward in gesture-control interfaces?

You know that bit in “The Avengers” where Tony Stark spreads his fingers apart in mid-air and the stuff on the screen in front of him instantly appears on displays throughout the room?

A company called Leap Motion wants to make that kind of gesture control a reality, and it hopes to take the first step with a new type of motion controller.

The Leap is a simple motion controller that you can plug into any USB port on your computer. Once it’s plugged in and you’ve installed the Leap software, it turns the 8-cubic feet of air in front of it into “3D interaction space” — basically, it’ll track any and all motion within that space, letting you use your hands to do whatever you could do with a mouse.

How is that different from Microsoft Kinect? Precision — the company claims the Leap is 200 times more sensitive than current gesture-based tech, able to track movements down to a hundredth of a millimeter. Users will be able to fine-tune the sensitivity, Leap says.

The camera, which is about the size of a business-card holder, can discern all 10 of your fingers individually, and even tell your thumbs apart. Such detailed scanning lets you perform actions like pinch-to-zoom, or zero in on fine details in a drawing app (check out the video below for more applications).

It all sounds a little too good to be true — especially for a device that costs a mere $69.99. The company even acknowledges how far-fetched it sounds on its web page. Leap’s goals are anything but humble: The device is all about “changing the world” by making interaction with computers more natural and intuitive.

Can’t wait to try it out? You’re going to have to wait — the controller doesn’t go on sale until the winter, but you can pre-order one now. The company is also accepting requests for developer kits, which should be available in the next few months. …

via A ‘Leap’ forward in gesture-control interfaces? – CNN.com.

This is not a touch screen. You just move your fingers in the air. I wrote about this years ago and predicted that gesturing at lights and appliances, as well as computers, will be the way we operate them in the future. Getting closer!

Leap represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

Available “this winter” for “$70″. Say goodbye to your mouse.

$49 Android PC System

Taiwan-based computer chip manufacturer VIA Technologies Inc. has unveiled an inexpensive and compact computer, hoping to help drive innovation in the compact computing market.

The PC, called the APC 8750, measures just 17cm x 8.5cm (almost half the size of Apple’s Mac mini). It is designed with the main focus of getting people connected to the internet and offers an alternative to (more expensive) Windows PCs.

The APC runs a customized version of Google’s Android operating system that is optimized for keyboard and mouse input.

…

APC was not built like an ordinary PC. For openers, we started with an awareness that the purpose of a computer is to connect to the Internet. It is the Internet that now defines computing. When you begin here, magic happens.

Expensive, overpowered CPUs and bloated software are no longer relevant. With this awareness, we were able to drop power consumption to the point of making an energy-saving light-bulb jealous.via LinkNotes.

Doomsday Prepper Sentenced To 21 Months In Federal Prison

A ‘Doomsday Prepper’ preparing for economic collapse was sentenced to 21 months in prison after show footage was used to gain a warrant and prosecute him for stockpiling destructive devices.

What this report highlights is that if you talk about your preps with anyone but those who will join you at your survival retreat, you are asking for trouble. Let’s say it together… The first rule of Fight Club is…

THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS…

YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.

-Fight Club Movie 1999 (link)

OpSec, or Operational Security, is an important rule to follow for those who have chosen to prepare for emergencies by stockpiling food, self defense armaments and disaster supplies.

It’s simple, really. Don’t talk about your preparedness supplies unless it is with trusted people with whom you will be working if a worst case scenario comes to pass. Otherwise, if the world around you collapses and your neighbors and acquintances known you have supplies, guess who they will turn to for help. If you deny them help when they come asking, and they have no place else to turn, you can be relatively certain they will do everything in their power to get at your larder – and that means collaborating with those who would do you harm.

The other key reason we don’t talk about our preps, especially the sharing of critical details like what we store and where we store it, is that you are a potential domestic terror suspect with respect to newly disseminated bulletins from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

Case in point: Alfred C. Dutton, known for his appearance on the National Geographic reality show Doomsday Preppers, was recently convicted of possession of unregistered destructive devices.

Off Grid Survival Reports:

A number of times in the past, I have warned about how dangerous I think T.V. shows like Doomsday Preppers are to the prepping community. In my opinion, these prepping shows do nothing to help people prepare and are designed to do only one thing – To make Preppers look like complete Wackjobs!

I hate to say I was right, but it seems the popular reality T.V. show about prepping is now being used to help obtain search warrants and convict preppers of crimes.

The case in question, involves a man from Kansas who was prepping for an economic collapse scenario. It seems law enforcement officials in Kansas used the T.V. show and images of preppers to not only obtain a warrant for a residents arrest, but also to convict the man of crimes in court.

Aflred Dutton, a military veteran and self described prepper from Kansas, was convicted last month of making and storing explosive devices. While what he did may have been a crime, this story should serve as a warning to other preppers. USE YOUR RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT WHEN IT COMES TO PREPPING……The fact that you prep can and will be used against you in the court of law.

… Mr. Dutton was subsequently charged with with knowingly possessing destructive devices, more fully described as five incendiary bombs (Count I) and nine grenades (Count II). He was convicted under Federal Law and sentenced to serve 21 months in prison.

As Off Grid Survival points out in their report, Mr. Dutton was breaking the law and there is a likelihood that he was endangering those living in his direct vicinity.

We’re not defending Mr. Dutton’s actions, though we suspect there is many a prepper out there that possess similar incendiary devices (or parts) intended for use to protect one’s property from looters and roaming gangs in the aftermath of a collapse. Likewise, there are preppers out there stockpiling other supplies that may not be fully compliant with the law or have been obtained by circumventing existing state and federal statutes.

As such, what this report highlights is that if you talk about your preps with anyone but those who will join you at your survival retreat, you are asking for trouble.

via Doomsday Prepper Sentenced To 21 Months In Federal Prison.