Immortals among us

A seemingly universal human trait is the fear of death. To some extent we all find ways to deal with the reality that one day, the life we live now, will come to an end. Historically, man has created tales of afterlives and heavens/paradises as a means of coming to terms with the inevitability of death. Another interesting wrinkle in the equation is the idea of immortality. That someone can find a way to completely conquer death and therefore live forever. Within the paranormal/fortean realm, the concept of immortality takes on a few forms which I want to spend some time talking about today.

The Comte de Saint Germain

A few months back, Greg Bishop interviewed the enigmatic Red Pill Junkie (of The Daily Grail, Mysterious Universe, and Intrepid Magazine fame) on Radio Misterioso. During their enlightening conversation (part 1, part 2), which I recommend you give a listen, RPJ mentioned a particular book which he found to be worth reading. I didn’t remember hearing about the book before, so I promptly went to amazon and ordered it. The book is The Morning of the Magicians, which I came to learn is considered a classic work on esotericism from the mid-1960’s. Topics within the book include; the works of Charles Fort, the ‘teachings’ of Gurdjieff, Alchemy, Fulcanelli, and possible ancient advanced civilizations.  I haven’t completely finished the book yet as there is a ton of content to digest. However the authors discussion on Alchemy really grabbed my attention and sent me off on a variety of internet web searches. The searches ended with me learning of the bizarre personage known as: The Comte de Saint Germain.

St. Germain is widely believed to have been born in 1690. He claimed to be the son of Francis II Rákóczi, the Prince of Transylvania, although Francis’ will claimed that he only had one heir, a Leopold George who is said to have died at age four. Other more extreme theories hold that Germain was born around the time of Christ and was actually in attendance at the wedding where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine. Regardless, actual historical evidence exists of a person named St. Germain who was often in the company of the aristocracy of 18th century Europe and France. Germain arrived on the scene around 1742 and began courting favor with the rich and famous of the time period. By all accounts Germain was an odd character who seemed to have great deal of knowledge on a variety of topics. Here are some attributed characteristics and facts about St. Germain courtesy of Stephen Wagner from paranormal.about.com:

• He could play the violin like a virtuoso.
• He was an accomplished painter.
• Wherever he traveled, he set up an elaborate laboratory, presumably for his alchemy work.
• He seemed to be a man of great wealth, but was not known to have any bank accounts. (If it was due to his ability to transmute base metals into gold, he never performed the feat for observers.)
• He dined often with friends because he enjoyed their company, but was rarely seen to eat food in public. He subsisted, it was said, on a diet of oatmeal.
• He prescribed recipes for the removal of facial wrinkles and for dyeing hair.
• He loved jewels, and much of his clothing - including his shoes - were studded with them.
• He had perfected a technique for painting jewels.
• He claimed to be able to fuse several small diamonds into one large one. He also said he could make pearls grow to incredible sizes.
• He has been linked to several secret societies, including the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Society of Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati and Order of the Templars.

Another interesting story about St. Germain comes from a 1760 meeting between St. Germain and a Countess von Georgy. Wagner relates the following:

An anecdote from 1760 most likely gave rise to the notion that Saint-Germain could be immortal. In Paris that year, Countess von Georgy heard that a Count de Saint-Germain had arrived for a soiree at the home of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France. The elderly countess was curious because she had known a Count de Saint-Germain while in Venice in 1710. Upon meeting the count again, she was astonished to see that he hadn't appeared to age, and asked him if it was his father she knew in Venice.

"No, Madame," he replied, "but I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last and the beginning of this century; I had the honor to pay you court then."

"Forgive me, but that it impossible!" the perplexed countess said. "The Count de Saint-Germain I knew in those days was at least forty-five years old. And you, at the outside, are that age at present."

"Madame, I am very old," he said with a knowing smile.

"But then you must be nearly 100 years old," said the astonished countess.

"That is not impossible," the count told her matter-of-factly, then continued to convince the countess that he was indeed the same man she knew with the details of their previous meetings and of life in Venice 50 years earlier.

The official record of The Comte de Saint Germain comes to an end on 1784 with his death. The unofficial record of St. Germain was just beginning. If, as he alluded to Countess von Georgy, Germain was an immortal (or discovered the secret of immortality through alchemy) it should come as no surprise that Germain continued to be sighted long after his death. Although it was often under an assumed name. I suppose continuing to use the same name after you’ve “died’ could prove problematic.  Stephen Wagner tells of a few encounters with Germain, or persons who claimed to be him, after his “death”:

• In 1785 he was seen in Germany with Anton Mesmer, the pioneer hypnotist. (Some claim that it was Saint-Germain who gave Mesmer the basic ideas for hypnotism and personal magnetism.)
• Official records of Freemasonry show that they chose Saint-Germain as their representative for a convention in 1785.
• After the taking of the Bastille in the French Revolution in 1789, the Comtesse d'Adhémar said she had a lengthy conversation with Count de Saint-Germain. He allegedly told her of France's immediate future, as if he knew what was to come. In 1821, she wrote: "I have seen Saint-Germain again, each time to my amazement. I saw him when the queen [Antoinette] was murdered, on the 18th of Brumaire, on the day following the death of the Duke d'Enghien, in January, 1815, and on the eve of the murder of the Duke de Berry." The last time she saw him was in 1820 - and each time he looked to be a man no older than his mid-40s.

Wagner continues:

After 1821, Saint-Germain may have taken on another identity. In his memoirs, Albert Vandam wrote of meeting a man who bore a striking resemblance to Count de Saint-Germain, but who went by the name of Major Fraser. Vandam wrote:

"He called himself Major Fraser, lived alone and never alluded to his family. Moreover he was lavish with money, though the source of his fortune remained a mystery to everyone. He possessed a marvelous knowledge of all the countries in Europe at all periods. His memory was absolutely incredible and, curiously enough, he often gave his hearers to understand that he had acquired his learning elsewhere than from books. Many is the time he has told me, with a strange smile, that he was certain he had known Nero, had spoken with Dante, and so on."

Major Fraser disappeared without a trace.

Coming full circle back to The Morning of the Magicians, the famed occultist Madame Helena Blavatsky and others of her Theosophical Society claimed many contacts with the still living Comte de Saint Germain as late as the early 20th century. Blavatsky stated that Germain was hard at work helping the spiritual development of the West, which just so happens to have been Blavatsky’s stated goal. A sad final note to the tale of St. Germain is related by Stephen Wagner again. He notes:

The most recent appearance of a man claiming to be Saint-Germain was in 1972 in Paris when a man named Richard Chanfray announced he was the legendary count. He appeared on French television, and to prove his claim apparently turned lead into gold on a camp stove before the cameras. Chanfray later committed suicide in 1983

Who or what was/is Comte de Saint Germain? Could he have actually been an immortal? Could it be that he was just an exceptionally bright individual which has had their legend grow overtime? If he was actually an immortal, he should still be out there somewhere right now. If that is the case, surely he would be doing what I know I would do in his position; Google himself. Assuming he is, if you’re reading this and I’ve misspoke about your history, St Germain, please drop me a line I’d be happy to edit as needed!

Immortal Celebrities

Moving on from more likely candidates who may have achieved immortality, we will now take a look at some less than credible speculation courtesy of everyone’s favorite website; Above Top Secret! A thread I stumbled across entitled Celebrity vampires/Time Travel, reminded me about the strange doppelganger effect some folks have noticed between modern day celebrities and photos from antiquity. This thread collates a variety of the many immortal celebrity stories which have been making the rounds on the internet.

As seen in the photo above, the idea that Nicholas Cage may be immortal first came out in 2011. A Civil War era photo popped up on ebay with the seller claiming that the photo was proof that Cage is immortal, although the seller came at it from the Vampire angle. He was asking a substantial amount of money for the photo, which did eventually sell. Cage refuted the claims on the David Letterman show, because why not?

The thread brings to light some other examples that I wasn’t familiar with previously. Writing for Examiner, Tom Rose discussed the possibility that funnyman Zach Galifianakis too was an immortal, or had time traveled. Rose writes:

On Jan. 22, 2013, another man, Steven Canfield Crowley, posed the same question about the actor Zach Galifianakis after unearthing a tintype photograph from the 1880s which bears a striking resemblance to the comedian.

In a YouTube video, Crowley makes the same claim. What's going on here?

Again, the resemblance is startling. The unidentified man in the tintype is somewhat older, but the two men could literally be brothers. Does time travel work in reverse as well?

Other examples from the thread include; Jay-Z, Keanu Reeves, and Queen Latifah. I highly recommend you take the opportunity to check out the thread and follow the various links you’ll find there to examine the “evidence” for this phenomena yourself. How do we explain the resemblances between the celebrities and their historical doppelgangers? Coincidence? Over-active imagination? Immortality? While it’s fun to look at these photos and imagine “What if?”, I have to say that, at least for the moment, I’m going to say it’s unlikely that these photos show proof of immortality. But like everything else, who knows?

Immortality: Nature vs Science

Our journey through the world of immortality ends with an examination of the possible future scientific breakthroughs in immortality. Could it be that one day, and maybe not that far off, science could effectively “cure” death? Some scientists seem to be hard at work doing just that. A quick Google search for “science of immortality” reveals a plethora of recent scientific articles which deal with this very idea.

A somewhat related idea to this is the “promise” of immortality which is sought by the Transhumanist movement. Believing that they can potentially achieve immortality by transcending the human body by way of technology.  This is thought to be achievable by perhaps reconstructing human consciousness in a computer or digital construct. Interesting stuff to be sure, but I’m not quite as optimistic about this technologies arrival as one of it’s main proponents, Ray Kurzweil is.

Along these same lines, I have to wonder if it’s not possible that someone has already discovered the key to immortality. There seems to be a lot about some ancient civilizations which was lost to us. Could it be that they knew this secret and passed it down only to the initiated, many of whom would still be alive today? Alchemical traditions speak of the concept of the Philosopher’s Stone which could, along with transmuting lead into gold, grant eternal life.  It’s entirely likely that modern science/medicine is simply retreading well-worn ground.

Conclusions?

Where do we go from here? It’s hard to settle this issue with any finality.  It’s likely that as long as we age and die, we will probably always entertain the ideas of immortality. As is often the case our fantasies of living forever don’t deal with the day-to-day issues which might come along with immortality.,We would watching family and friends age and die, dealing with advances in knowledge and technology, etc. So long as we continue to fear death, I imagine we will continue to invent ways to deal with it. Whether this takes the form of building up legends of already extraordinary people, “seeing” modern celebrities in images from the past, or literally making advances to wipe out death, it will go on and on.

Living Dinosaurs!

As a kid I was extremely fascinated by Dinosaurs and read voraciously on the topic. Every book on the topic I could find I would read. At one point I even thought I would grow up to be a Paleontologist when I was older so that I could spend everyday with these wonderfully fascinating beasts. As with many of my childhood ambitions, my dream of being a paleontologist was abandoned when I found out how terribly boring their day-to-day lives were, and as I discovered the wild and crazy world of Fortean phenomena.

Imagine my surprise when I found that these two seemingly disparate passions found an interesting intersection in the form of modern sightings of living dinosaurs! The current scientific theories suggest that the demise of the dinosaurs began some 65 million years ago, give a take a few years for stragglers to completely die out. This allowed our ancestors, the mammals, to gain a foothold on the planet and for humans to eventually arrive on the scene (thanks to the intervention of the Annunaki of course wink, wink).  

Since when has science ever had the final answer on anything? After all, prior to 1938 it was generally believed that the Coelacanth, a close relative to the lungfish, had been extent since the Cretaceous period. This turned out to not quite be the case as fisherman began collecting very-much alive specimens of the species. Who’s to say that some other dinosaurs also didn’t survive the decimation of their fellows and continued flourishing to this very day (aside from conventional wisdom, but who needs that?)

With this in mind I offer to you dear reader the following tales and accounts of interactions with giant terrible lizards who certainly should not be roaming around any longer. As always draw your own conclusions as to the validity of the reports. For myself, I will take these people by their word until sufficient evidence comes in to the contrary. 

Mokele-mbembe

Perhaps the most (in)famous of all living dinosaurs is Mokele-Mbembe which translates as "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the language of the people of the Congo river basin. Mokele is a favorite dinosaur of my wife and many others for that matter. Sightings of the creature have been reported in Western sources for a few hundred years. Mokele makes his home in the Congo River basin of Africa traditionally in Lake Tele. Local tradition holds that Mokele is an herbivore which seems to prefer shallow waters. The creature most clearly resembles a Sauropod.  

Some sightings:

One of the earlier “modern” accounts comes from just over 100 years ago. Commissioned by the German government, which had a colony in the area of the Congo, Capt. Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz came in the area to do a survey of the land. His writings report the following.

The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty

The above was reported by Jerome Clark in his Unexplained! 2nd edition, which as I’ve pointed out previously on this blog has a newly printed 3rd edition.

Expedition after expedition has been mounted to find this creature over time, all clearly unsuccessful. The thing that allows this creature to remain a possibility is the fact that this area is home to the second largest rainforest in the world. This is all to say that it’s not terribly unlikely that a small population of sauropods could have survived to this day. 

Pterosaurs

Relatively large-winged reptiles which took the skies some time in the late Jurassic Period. Some of them had wingspans upwards of 16 ft or more, with one of the largest being Hatzegopteryx thambema(having 33-36 ft). Like other dinosaurs, the Pterosaurs died out near the end of the Cretaceous period, or did they?

Writing for paranormal.about.com, Stephen Wagner relates the following accounts of people that claimed to have seen the Pterosaur very much alive.

January, 1976, Harlingen, Texas - Jackie Davis (14) and Tracey Lawson (11) reported seeing a "bird" on the ground that stood five feet tall, was dark in color with a bald head and a face like a gorilla's with a sharp, six-inch-long beak. A subsequent investigation by their parents uncovered tracks that had three toes and were eight inches across.

February, 1976, San Antonio, Texas - Three elementary school teachers saw what they described as a pterodactyl swooping low over their cars as they drove. They said its wingspan was between 15 and 20 feet. One of the teachers commented that it glided through the air on huge, bony wings - like a bat's.

September, 1982, Los Fresnos, Texas - An ambulance driver named James Thompson was stopped while driving on Highway 100 by his sighting of a "large birdlike object" flying low over the area. He described it as black or grayish with a rough texture, but no feathers. It had a five- to six-foot wingspan, a hump on the back of its head, and almost no neck at all. After consulting some books to identify the creature, he decided it most looked like a pterosaur.

These stories are anecdotal to the extreme of course, but as always I’m not sure what more we have to go on besides the stories. The accounts are interesting to say the least, but who knows how much validity there is to them.

Loch Ness ‘Monster’

Plesiosaurs first arrived on the scene, the scene being Earth’s oceans of course, some 205 million years ago during the the Triassic period. They officially lived until about 66 million years ago going extinct about the same time as all of their reptile brethren did. Except that one of them didn’t get the extinction memo and has shown up a number of times over the years in a lake in Scotland. The earliest “sighting” allegedly happened to a Saint Columba in the 6th century, who used his god powers to keep the beast at bay. The modern version of Nessie begins in 1933 with the following account by a George Spicer and his wife who claim to have seen  a creature which they described as “having a large body (about 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) high and 7.6 metres (25 ft) long), and long, narrow neck, slightly thicker than an elephant's trunk and as long as the 10–12-foot (3–4 m) width of the road; the neck had undulations in it. They saw no limbs, possibly because of a dip in the road obscuring the animal's lower portion” (Wikipedia).

1934 brought us the so called “Surgeon’s Photograph” (shown above) which was purportedly captured by Robert Kenneth Wilson and was later to be published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934. The good doctor claimed to have taken the picture after sighting the creature in the Loch, although the photo is generally believed to be a hoax.

As with Mokele, many expeditions have been mounted to capture on film Nessie and all have proven fruitless. The reason for this may be that Nessie isn’t as corporeal as one may assume. A blogger over at the aptly named LOCH NESS MONSTER blogspot page discusses the author, Ted Holiday’s more interesting explanation for the Loch Ness Monster posited in his 1979 work The Goblin Universe.

The blogger writes:

This theory essentially borrowed from the obscure work of a Professor Harold Burr in positing that Nessie was a three dimensional form which could be formed and held by something Burr called Life Fields which were electrical in nature and had some organic organising properties.

Burr proposed this as a biological principle but Holiday took it further in suggesting that a mind could control the process and cause unexpected forms to materialise. Indeed, he proposed a universal mind akin to God as the controller of these phenomemon though the discussion also included the human mind and the collective subconciousness of the entire human race.

I don’t have much more to say on the topic of Nessie, the creature is so iconic at this point I’m not too sure what I could add that hasn’t already been said. Although I do wish to point the reader towards something Greg Taylor wrote up about a Nick Redfern article for the Dark Lore Vol 2 anthology entitled “"What Lies Beneath"

Burrunjor

We come now to our final stop on today’s tour of “living dinosaurs” and what better place to wrap it up than with the ‘king’ himself? At some point during the Cretaceous period our friend the Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived on the scene instilling in all creatures living at the time mixed feelings. On the one hand, T. Rex was one of the largest land carnivores ever known to have lived. On the other, their arms were almost comically tiny. I digress. T. Rex were known to have roamed of much of what is now North America and, as with most of our other friends we’ve spoken about today,  to have gone extinct around 65 million years ago. Or perhaps not? Blogger Peter James Theiss, relates the following accounts on his Dinoplaza blog about sightings of a creature in Australia called the Burrunjor. This creature, by all accounts, sounds strikingly like our friend the T. Rex. Here are some of the accounts Theiss shares:

In 1922, north of Cloncurry, stock men saw a "big lizard monster" that was bipedal and moved its tail from side to side when walking.

In 1950, in the Burketown region, two reptile tracks were sighted by ranchers.

Back in 1950, cattlemen lost stock to some mysterious beast that left the mutilated, half-eaten remains of cows and bulls in its wake over a wide area, stretching between the border country and Burketown.  At first the cattlemen suspected crocodiles, but, Charles Waterman, a cattleman, described a "fearsome", mottled 20 foot tall beast carrying a cow in its jaws that bounded out of sight as he hid behind a bush.

Searchers on horseback found huge reptilian tracks of some bipedal-walking beast.  They followed these three-toed tracks with their cattle dogs through some rough jungle terrain until they entered swampland beyond which was more dense scrub.

However, it was at this point that the cattle dogs became uneasy and ran off.  The horses were also uneasy and obviously did not want to cross the swamp.  While most of the cattlemen decided their animals knew best, two men set off on foot with their carbines.

The story goes that they soon came across further tracks in an open area beyond the swamp.  While his mate searched about, the other man briefly spotted the dark form of an enormous creature, perhaps 30 ft. in height, further off in dense timber.  The men left the scene in haste.

Be sure to head over to Theiss’ blog in order to read more of the accounts that he shares. What is going on here? Is there some kind of Dinosaur living in Australia? We all know that the country has all sorts of bizarre and kooky animals, maybe living dinosaurs are just another part of the fauna of the land?

Conclusions?

One of the biggest criticisms of the continued existence of our friends the Pterosaurs, Mokele-Mbembe, T-Rex or Burrunjor, and the Loch Ness Monster are the locations where they are sighted don’t necessarily have a lot of good hiding places for them. Mokele could, at least in theory, hide in the rain forest, Pterosaurs? Not so much. After all, most of them are sighted in the Midwest of the United States. There aren't too many places for a giant flying creature to hide. Honestly the same can be said of the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, Loch Ness is actually quite large and deep. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a big enough population of creatures living in the Loch to sustain a Plesiosaur or family of them. Of course this is working under the assumption that these are actual physical creatures and not phantoms from another time. Which, seeing as this is the world of the Fortean, who can say they aren't?

For all we know these creatures could be slipping temporarily from their own time and invading ours. And really, is this any crazier than their existing currently living dinosaurs? That’s all for now dear readers, be sure to check back in on Monday for more from the strange world of the Fortean!

Print on Demand: UFOs?

If you don't make it a habit of visiting the Daily Grail uh daily, you are really missing out on some cool little gems that the guys over there are able to dig up. Take for instance one of today's news items.

Aeroplane created using a 3D printer in world first: Scientists build aircraft with 100mph max speed

This plane is the first in the world to be created using the groundbreaking new technology of '3D printing'.

The aircraft was built using only a computer - but it can get up to a speed of 100mph and has a two-metre wingspan.

It was produced using a special nylon laser printer that builds up an item layer-by-layer. The parts were made separately and attached using a 'snap fit' technique so the aircraft could be put together without tools in minutes.

No fasteners at all were used in the manufacture of the plane.

The "Print-on-demand plane"

Click here for the full article.

When I read this, and especially after looking at some of the accompanying photos, I was struck with a sudden thought. The plane appeared pretty seemless in design, at least once it was put together. Or in other words you couldn't really make out any kind of rivets or pieces; it looked like one solid piece. This reminded me of the physical descriptions of some UFOs, which are also said to be without discernible pieces that make them up.

I wondered if it's not possible that perhaps some UFOs are in fact military devices that can be printed “on demand” so to speak. There is a commonly held belief among a lot of people, especially more conspiracy-minded individuals, that the US Military's “Black Budget” technology is well ahead of the “White World” or mainstream budgets. So maybe the Military's of the world have been able to print up drones of any size.

You wouldn't have to worry about transporting anything other than the materials needed to print the “UFO”, and perhaps it would even be possible to have a computer assemble the parts for you. Just a thought that occurred to me. Either way the news story is really interesting and you should definitely read it.

Also be sure to check out the Daily Grail website at least everyday, because Greg and the rest of the folks over there always have some great content in addition to some of the weirdest Fortean stories you can find.

I'm super cereal, you guys!

Hey there dear readers, I realize that it's been quite a few days (4 to be exact I think). I have exams coming up this week so tonight's post will, unfortunately, be a little short. Hopefully towards the end of the week we will be back on a more regular schedule as far as posting goes.

Anyway on to tonight's story.  I caught this via both the Daily Grail and also over at ATS. This Science Daily story offers an alternative to the standard "rope and plank" explanation behind the Crop Circle phenomena. Now personally I have never been a huge fan of Crop Circles. I can't really say why for sure, they just never really grabbed me as something of interest.

This new article however purports to offer a new potential solution to the Crop Circle enigma. From the article:

According to Taylor, physics could potentially hold the answer, with crop-circle artists possibly using the Global Positioning System (GPS) as well as lasers and microwaves to create their patterns, dispensing with the rope, planks of wood and bar stools that have traditionally been used.
Microwaves, Taylor suggests, could be used to make crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position -- a technique that could explain the speed and efficiency of the artists and the incredible detail that some crop circles exhibit.

Follow this link in order to read the entire article. I feel fairly confident that this isn't a new theory in the field of Crop Circle research. As a matter of fact I believe that Jacques Vallee offered this same (or similar at least) opinion just a few years ago.

Turns out I was right, from that article written by Jacques Vallee:

These studies point to the crop formations as the result of sophisticated electronic warfare experiments conducted by defense contractors. The answer to question (1) provides the first clue: If you are trying to calibrate a beam, drawing a pattern on a wheat field can yield precision information within the diameter of one stalk over hundreds of feet, an ideal test situation. The answer to question (2) narrows down the type of energy that can be responsible, because the amount of heat radiation that needs to be coupled into one node of a stalk of wheat to vaporize the water content is a known quantity, as laboratory tests in France and in the United States soon established. The answer to question (3) points to the likely authors of the tests.

It is tempting to jump to the conclusion that some sort of space-based weapon is being developed. I am reluctant to assume this because of the cost involved. Even if satellites represent the ultimate platform for such a weapon, which does not seem obvious to me, the calibration tests can be carried out far more cheaply from a conventional aircraft. In those cases when witnesses on the ground have seen formations in the process of being created, they have described a reddish glow at ground level, with the vegetation bent over in a matter of minutes. This would be consistent with a beam directed at the field from a hovering dirigible, painting a figure very much in the same way as an electron beam "paints" a digital image on a computer screen. From conversations I have had with the investigators involved, the beam would be unlikely to be a simple infrared beam. Instead a combination of laser and microwave transmitters may be involved, or a form of maser. Perhaps the increasingly sophisticated tests are designed, precisely, to discover optimal combinations.

Here is the link to that original article. Well I'm happy that at least some scientists are looking at alternative theories to the Crop-circle enigma beyond just the straight forward “rope and plank” theory. I just wish that perhaps sometimes they would listen to some of the thinkers in this field first.

NASA vs Dr. Mitchell

Government sues Apollo 14 astronaut over lunar camera

(Reuters) - The U.S. government has sued a former NASA astronaut to recover a camera used to explore the moon's surface during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission after seeing it slated for sale in a New York auction. Click here to read the whole story. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on this one or am I the only one confused by the whole thing?  RedPillJunkie over at the Daily Grail has an interesting take on this:

What bothers me about this story is not that the government is fighting Mitchell over the ownership of this camera; what *does* bother me is that NASA is learning about the whereabouts of this historic piece of equipment after. 40. Years! (Full Article here)

The whole thing just strikes me as so arbitrary. As RedPillJunkie points out, the fact that NASA wants it's property back is fine, but why have they waited so long? I  don't really know what to think about this whole thing. It's not as if Dr. Mitchell has been keeping a low profile for the last 40 years or so. On the contrary he is one of the few other Astronauts who are probably at least casually known to people. Especially those that have an interest in Fortean and paranormal things.

Dr. Mitchell cofounded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in 1973 which according to its website:

is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research, education, and membership organization whose mission is supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential.

Basically this organizations researches all kinds of paranormal things. Psychic abilities, human potential, life after death, consciousness studies, etc. One of the few places left that I can think of that still takes a look at parapsychology from a scientific point of view. 

In addition to this Dr. Mitchell has been pretty vocal about his belief in the existence of Extraterrestrial life in many different mediums. But none of this really explains NASA's somewhat questionable behavior in this matter. Really I guess we don't know enough about the circumstances surrounding the lawsuit. Hopefully we will be able to learn more as time goes on. That's all for now, more to come later. Also be sure to let me know what you think about this whole lawsuit!