Noted Skeptic, James Randi has decided not to participate in ongoing research investigating Dr. Rupert Sheldrake telepathic dog claims.

Del Mar, CA, May 14, 2008 –(PR.com)– James Randi has a reputation of taking on challengers who claim psychic abilities, but his recent negotiations with a team of researchers investigating whether dogs are telepathic has ended in a stalemate. According to Skeptiko host and research sponsor, Alex Tsakiris, Randi’s about-face came as a surprise:

“…this is exactly the kind of independent research, by a major university, James Randi has been calling for. We even agreed to forgo the million dollar prize he offers in order to secure his involvement and resolve this question scientifically, but he refused.”

Tsakiris’ negotiations with Randi began in September of 2007, when Randi appeared on the Skeptiko Podcast and called for an independent investigation into claims of canine telepathy. In April of 2008, Skeptiko released a video showing the successful results of their first trial. Commenting on the future of the research, Tsakiris added:

“…of course the research will go forward. The real question is whether claims of unexplained canine to human communications are true. Our preliminary findings suggest they are, but much more work needs to be done before we’ll have a definitive answer.”

James Randi, and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offer a Million Dollar Challenge to those demonstrating telepathy, ESP or other psi phenomena. In recent years, James Randi has been an outspoken critic of research suggesting dogs have a telepathic ability that allows them to know when their owners are coming home.

About Skeptiko.com
Skeptiko is the first scientifically oriented Podcast exploring new research in controversial areas of science such as telepathy, psi, parapsychology, near-death-experience, reincarnation, and after-life encounters. Each episode features open, honest debate on new scientific discoveries. The show includes interviews with top research scientists and their critics. - pr.com

I wonder what Randy’s reason is? When I’ve seen him back out in the past it is because he has it explained.

ALIEN craft over Wallasey Town Hall and sightings of “a red, pipe-like object” in the skies above Liverpool are among the revelations contained in files about unexplained objects which have just been opened to the public.

In storylines more reminiscent of science-fiction films or The X-Files, hundreds of sightings of supposed Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in the skies above Britain were recorded by Ministry of Defence staff.

The information was considered sufficiently important for a form to be produced which is kept by police stations and airbases ready to record such reports.

But the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was not investigating the possibility of visitors from outer space making a stop at Earth.

Defence intelligence staff were more interested in checking that UFOs were not in fact signs of earthly covert spying missions by other countries.

Eight files have been released after a Freedom of Information request by UFO researchers. Over the next four years, more than 150 files will be thrown open.

Among the more bizarre stories to be recorded was one from a man in Wirral claiming to have met aliens on a regular basis.

One, he reports, visited frequently and was called Elgar. Sadly, he says, Elgar was killed by another race of beings in the 1980s.

It seems the visitors were again hit by tragedy when one of their craft crash-landed over Wallasey Town Hall, he claimed. A brief note by the recipient of the report at the MoD stated: “No Reply”.

One sighting in Liverpool, reported at 6.30am on April 14 last year, was of “a red, pipe-like object. It was seen for about 10-15 seconds, very close to the plane. It then disappeared into the clouds.”

Another, also from Liverpool, reports “six to eight gleaming lights, moving in a straight line across the sky, changing patterns from diamonds to pyramids.”

Briefing documents for government ministers facing questions about policy on UFOs also form part of the release at National Archives in Kew.

Nick Pope, who worked for the MoD for 21 years and was responsible for investigating the sightings said: “While there’s no evidence of little green men in these files, they should be of immense interest to sceptics and believers.

“Most of the UFO sightings here are probably misidentifications of aircraft lights and meteors, but some are more difficult to explain, and include UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, and cases where UFOs have been tracked on radar.”

Those hoping for proof of little green men will be disappointed, as an MoD memo, written in 1983, sets out their position very clearly.

“The sole interest of the Ministry of Defence in UFO reports is to establish whether they reveal anything of defence interest (eg, intruding aircraft). Reports are passed to operations staff who examine them as part of their normal duties.

“The Ministry of Defence does not deny that there are strange things to see in the sky.”

But the note goes on to say that there are adequate explanations for the phenomenon, including space junk burning up in the atmosphere, unusual cloud formations and meteorological balloons.

“It certainly has no evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on this planet.”

The power of suggestion also seems to have a strong influence on what people see in the sky. The number of reports doubled after the release of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in 1977.

Dr David Clarke, journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, has been campaigning for the release of the files.

He said: “It has taken 10 years of campaigning to get these papers out and now that they are it lays to rest some of the claims of a cover-up by the MoD

“But I don’t think for a minute that the conspiracy theorists will drop their theories.

“Personally, I think that some of the sightings have got to be of scientific interest. There are some that just cannot be explained.” - lpd

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Hmm. Does the debris really go behind the tether or does it just look that way due to the brightness.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Wow. This is pretty interesting. ET metal implants with connections to nerve endings found in people who were supposedly abducted by aliens.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Fun to watch, but one logical reason for the seeming “sudden” appearance of great monuments is that the precursors to the great monuments simply did not last.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

This is giving me goosebumps. I think it’s the music

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

There could be alien life forms and believing they exist isn’t contradictory to having faith in God, the top astronomer at the Vatican said in an interview published Tuesday.

In the Vatican newspaper piece, titled “The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother,” the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes said the expansiveness of the universe means there could be life on planets other than Earth.

“In my opinion this possibility exists,” Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory, told L’Osservatore Romano. “Astronomers believe the universe is made up of 100 billion galaxies, each of which consists of 100 billion stars. … Life forms could exist in theory even without oxygen or hydrogen.”

Funes said that there might even be other intelligent life out there, but believing in its existence doesn’t pose a problem for those of the Catholic faith.

“It is possible. So far we have no proof. But certainly in a universe so big we can not exclude this hypothesis,” he told the paper.

“As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.” - fox

That’s all very well and good, until the aliens show us the video they made of how they came down and geneticaly altered life on Earth to create … us. Then the Vatican will have to say that God created us by creating the aliens that created us… until the aliens that created the aliens that created us come down with their video.

Bush wants to keep filling the underground petroleum reserve, but legislators take the near-unanimous action in reaction to record gas prices. The House is expected to concur. The Senate, jittery about a political backlash over the rising price of gasoline, voted by a veto-proof majority today to halt deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over President Bush’s objections.

The House is expected to follow suit later today.

The action, supported by the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, comes as high fuel costs have contributed to the nation’s economic woes and become a hot issue on the campaign trail. It could be the only legislation that Congress passes this year in response to public angst at the fuel pump because of the parties’ differences over energy issues.

The Senate measure passed 97 to 1, with Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York breaking off from their campaigns to return to the Capitol to vote for the measure. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, supported the measure but was absent for the vote, continuing his campaigning in the Pacific Northwest.

“Why on earth should we be putting oil underground at a time of record high prices?” Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), the measure’s chief sponsor, argued.

Bush has resisted calls to suspend the delivery of about 70,000 barrels a day to the emergency stockpile, contending that it would have little impact on prices in a nation that uses about 21 million barrels a day and would weaken weakening the nation’s energy security. The reserve was established after the 1973 Arab oil embargo to protect against supply cutoffs and now holds about 702 million barrels in underground caverns on the Gulf Coast.

Bush has assailed Congress for not doing enough to spur more domestic production.

But members of Congress, who, unlike Bush, face reelection, are anxious to show they are doing something to respond to the high prices, even though there is little they can do in the short term to provide relief. Suspending deliveries to the reserve is a modest step that some supporters say could save motorists 2 to 5 cents a gallon, perhaps more.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), who is retiring from the Senate and has previously resisted suspending shipments to the reserve, was among those supporting the measure. “I have changed my mind,” he said, “and it’s simply because the price of oil is now up to $125 a barrel.”

The measure’s approval came as the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline hit a record of more than $3.73, up from $3.07 a year ago, according to the American Automobile Assn.

Earlier today, the Senate rejected a Republican-sponsored measure that called for increasing production by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration and relaxing a long-standing ban on new drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

A Democratic proposal to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and roll back tax breaks for the industry and new protections against price-gouging is expected to face a Republican-led filibuster when it reaches the Senate floor, perhaps next week. - lat

How much a suspension of strategic reserve purchases would sway price is a matter of dispute. Though the Strategic Petroleum Reserve purchases account for 0.3 percent of demand for that grade of petroleum, Verleger testified that it could add 10 percent to the price of light sweet crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Today House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put out a press release noting that Bush did in fact halt additions to the SPR in 2006 to blunt the rise in prices. But Bush now says that the oil bought by the reserve amounts to less than 0.1 percent of world oil demand.

If the purchases seem like a drop in the bucket of world demand, they also represent a drop in the bucket of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently has 701.3 million barrels, equal to 52 days of all U.S. petroleum imports. On Jan. 23, 2007, Bush announced plans to expand the reserve to 1.5 billion barrels.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) has been rallying lawmakers’ support since March. “All of us feel very strongly that it makes no sense at all for the administration to be taking action to put upward pressure on prices when the SPRO is 90 percent filled,” Dorgan told me. - newswk

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil. The federally-owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.Decisions to withdraw crude oil from the SPR are made by the President under the authorities of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. In the event of an energy emergency, SPR oil would be distributed by competitive sale. The SPR has been used under these circumstances only twice (during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005). Its formidable size (700-plus million barrels) makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool of foreign policy. - doe

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an emergency petroleum store maintained by the United States Department of Energy. The US SPR is the largest emergency supply in the world with the current capacity to hold up to 727 million barrels (115,600,000 m³) of crude oil. The second largest emergency supply of petroleum is Japan’s with a 2003 reported capacity of 579 million barrels (92,100,000 m³).

The current inventory is displayed on the SPR’s website. As of May 07, 2008, the current inventory was 702.0 million barrels (111,610,000 m³). At current market prices ($125 a barrel) the SPR holds over $88 billion worth of petroleum. - wiki

In the first terrorist attack in many months, seven bombs went off within minutes of each other on Tuesday evening in the crowded lanes of one of India’s main tourist hub, the historic city of Jaipur, with reports of deaths ranging from 50 upwards, with roughly 150 injured, officials said.

The bombs went off within a radius of 50 feet, police said, and that bombs may have been planted in the wheels of bicycles, the mangled remains of which were found near many of the blast sites.

There were no claims of responsibility, which is typical of terror attacks in India, but the junior minister for home affairs, Sriprakash Jaiswal, immediately said “foreign terrorists” were suspected, using a phrase understood to refer to India’s neighbor and nuclear rival, Pakistan. Pakistan routinely deny Indian accusations that it is involved in any way in attacks on India.

One blast went off around 7:30 p.m. near a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Hanuman that is especially crowded on Tuesday evenings. Six more went off in quick succession in the warrens of shops and monuments nearby, including the popular 18th-century tourist site called Hawa Mahal, and the Johri Bazaar, lined with jewelers. Panic set in immediately, officials said.

The police sealed off the walled city, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed for calm. Hospitals in Jaipur asked for blood donations.

Rohit Singh, the spokesman for Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is the capital, estimated the death toll to be over 50 about three hours after the blasts. The Indian federal government dispatched explosives experts with the National Security Group, and put several major cities on alert, including the capital.

Although Jaipur, known as the pink city, is a popular tourist destination, in mid-May, the peak of the Indian summer, is not a busy season, and there were no reports that any foreigners had been killed..

The last major bombing in India came in August, when a pair of bombs went off in an outdoor auditorium and restaurant in the southern city of Hyderabad, killing more than 40. Two years ago, serial blasts along the commuter train line in Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital, killed nearly 200.

Mr. Singh, speaking by telephone from Jaipur, said it was too early to say who was responsible, but that the attack, on a summer’s evening when the walled city was thronged, appeared to be designed to ignite religious fury between Hindus and Muslims. Similar terror attacks targeting religious sites in recent years have not succeeded in setting off sectarian violence.

The Hindu holy city of Varanasi was struck by a pair of bombings in March 2006, killing 14, and a blast killed two worshippers in one of the holiest Muslim shrines in Ajmer, also in Rajasthan, last September.

“It is usually crowded in the evening, but on Tuesday evening it is more crowded,” Mr. Singh immediately after the blasts. “There is a lot of panic.” - nyt