Mar 12, 2018

Esoterica



New Research Claims Bones Found 80 Years Ago On Pacific Atoll Likely Amelia Earhart's

There is no shortage of speculation on what became of legendary American aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 over the Pacific during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

Now, Richard Jantz, a researcher affiliated with the University of Tennessee, has re-examined data from bones found on a remote atoll three years after Earhart vanished and has determined they very likely belonged to her.

Three main theories about Earhart's disappearance — arguably the most enduring aviation mystery in history — have been bandied about over the years.

. . .

He took a closer look at data gathered in 1940 from skeletal remains recovered by a British expedition to Nikumaroro. The British found a human skull, humeri and radii (both arm bones), a tibia and fibula from the lower leg and two femurs (thigh bones). The bones were sent to Fiji, where they were examined and measured by physician D.W. Hoodless.



Elon Musk: SpaceX Mars spaceships ready by next year

Mars spaceships will be ready for short flights by the first half of next year, predicts Elon Musk. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO was taking questions during an on-stage appearance at the SXSW conference in Austin.

. . .

“I’m very close to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me. It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential.”

Musk believes that by the end of next year, self-driving will encompass all modes of driving and be “at least 100(%) to 200% safer than a person.” He says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did a study on Tesla’s “relatively primitive” Autopilot 1 and found that it was a 45% reduction in highway accidents, and “that’s despite being version 1.”

But he says that “we have to figure out some way to ensure that the advent of digital superintelligence is one that is symbiotic with humanity. That’s the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

Government Scientists Have A Plan For Blowing Up Asteroids With A Nuke

The asteroid Bennu, a boulder the size of a village, is circling the sun at 63,000 mph, now a comfortable 54 million miles from Earth.

But on Sept. 21, 2135, there is a 1 in 2,700 chance that it will hit us. What would we do?

Government scientists now have an official plan, just in case: They’ve designed a spacecraft to hit any large oncoming asteroids with a nuclear explosion.

The Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) spacecraft — a collaboration between the National Nuclear Security Administration, NASA, and two Energy Department weapons labs — would either steer its 8.8-ton bulk (called an “impactor”) into a small asteroid, or carry a nuclear device to deflect a big one.

Nasa is hiding evidence of soft-bodied aliens on Mars, claims controversial scientist who says he’ll prove the cover-up with a 'bombshell report'

Evidence of life on Mars is being covered up by Nasa, according to a researcher Barry DiGregorio at a Buckingham University.

The agency’s space explorer, the Curiosity rover, has snapped what may be trace fossils created by soft-bodied creatures on the red planet, he says.

An upcoming 'bombshell' report will reveal how Nasa is aware of the find and has chosen to keep it hidden from the public, the scientist claims.

The controversial scientist believes the space agency could be ignoring the find because of its plans for a manned mission in the 2030s, when astronauts will explore Mars in more depth.

However, according to Nasa, the shapes captured in images from Mars are simply rock crystals that are currently undergoing analysis.

Humans Will Hear from Intelligent Aliens This Century, Physicist Says

Humans will make contact with aliens by the end of the century, theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku told Redditers last week. However, Kaku said he wasn't sure whether we'd be able to communicate directly with this unknown extraterrestrial society — one that could run the gamut from hostile to pacifist, according to Kaku.

In his AMA on Reddit, Kaku responded to a question about alien civilizations, saying, "Let me stick my neck out. I personally feel that within this century, we will make contact with an alien civilization, by listening in on their radio communications. But talking to them will be difficult, since they could be tens of light years away. So, in the meantime, we must decipher their language to understand their level of technology. Are they Type I, II, or III??? [These represent three categories in the Kardashev scale, measuring technological achievement in civilizations based on their level of energy use for communication.] And what are their intentions. Are they expansive and aggressive, or peaceful."

Kaku added, "Another possibility is that they land on the White House lawn and announce their existence. But I think that is unlikely, since we would be like forest animals to them, i.e. not worth communicating with."

Long-lost North American Viking settlement was in Canada, say archaeologists

A long lost Viking settlement that featured in sagas passed down over hundreds of years, may have been located on the east coast of Canada.

Birgitta Wallace, an award-winning specialist in Norse archaeology and Viking evidence in the West, said she had uncovered evidence that the new site known as Hop – meaning tidal lagoon – is in the province of New Brunswick, on the country's east coast.

If she is proved correct, it would be the second Viking settlement to be discovered in North America.

Experts have known from Norse sagas that there was a settlement in North America of 11th-century Europeans, who grew wild grapes, ate salmon and made canoes out of animal hides.

The first site uncovered is at L'Anse aux Meadows, a United Nations (UN) World Heritage site, on the northern tip of Newfoundland.

These Popular Pesticides Are Really Bad for the Birds and the Bees

As spring approaches, US farmers are gearing up to plant about 180 million acres in corn and soybeans—a combined land mass nearly twice the size of California, mostly in the Midwest. The great majority of the seeds they sow will be coated with neonicotinoid pesticides: synthetic chemicals thought to be harmless to humans but that attack bugs’ central nervous systems—and, as new research shows, hinder birds’ navigation abilities.

Neonics, as they’re known, are the globe’s most widely used class of insecticide, representing a multi-billion-dollar market for their primary makers, the agrichemical giants Bayer and Syngenta. Meanwhile, a growing body of research suggests they harm pollinators like bees, birds, and water-borne insects (a major food source for birds and fish). The European Union has maintained a moratorium on several neonic uses since 2013.

. . .

Neonics aren’t worth all of the potential damage to bees, birds, and aquatic animals they appear to be causing, argues a new paper reviewing previous research. The chemicals don’t appear to boost crop yields for farmers who use them. That assessment is consistent with 2017 paper from Purdue University researchers, which found “no benefit of the insecticidal seed treatments in terms of crop yield” to US corn growers. (That study also found that when farmers plant treated seeds, surrounding bees are routinely exposed to harmful levels of “neonicotinoid dust drift.”)  Then there’s this 2014 paper by EPA scientists and economists, which revealed that for US soybean farmers, “most usage of neonicotinoid seed treatments does not protect soybean yield any better than doing no with pest control.”

Scientists have established a link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.

Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.

Male Escort Exposes 36 Gay Priests in File Sent to Vatican Containing Explicit WhatsApp Chats and Erotic Photos

A 1,200-page dossier containing the names of 34 "actively gay" priests and six seminarians in Italy has been sent to the Vatican by the archdiocese of Naples.

The allegations were compiled by Francesco Mangiacapra, a gay male escort who told local media he couldn’t put up with the priests’ "hypocrisy" any longer.

"The aim is not to hurt the people mentioned, but to help them understand that their double life, however seemingly convenient, is not useful to them or to all the people for whom they should be a guide and an example to follow," Mangiacapra said, as reported by the Corriere della Sera.

. . .

The large file contains explicit WhatsApp messages, erotic photos and other evidence, but none of the 40 priests and seminarians were accused of paedophilia or having sexual relations with minors. "We're talking about sins, not crimes," Mangiacapra said.

He Became A Celebrity For Putting Science Before God. Now Lawrence Krauss Faces Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct.

Krauss told BuzzFeed News that what happened with [Melody] Hensley in the hotel room was consensual. In that room, “we mutually decided, in a polite discussion in fact, that taking it any further would not be appropriate,” he told BuzzFeed News by email.

But Hensley said that is untrue. “It was definitely predatory,” she said. “I didn’t want that to happen. It wasn’t consensual.”

Later that night, Hensley told her boyfriend, now husband, that Krauss had made her feel uncomfortable, her husband confirmed to BuzzFeed News. Years later, she told him — as well as several employees at CFI — the full story.

BuzzFeed News has learned that the incident with Hensley is one of many wide-ranging allegations of Krauss’s inappropriate behavior over the last decade — including groping women, ogling and making sexist jokes to undergrads, and telling an employee at Arizona State University, where he is a tenured professor, that he was going to buy her birth control so she didn’t inconvenience him with maternity leave. In response to complaints, two institutions — Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario — have quietly restricted him from their campuses. Our reporting is based on official university documents, emails, and interviews with more than 50 people.

2 comments:

  1. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43555608

    I just can't...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh godz... how horrible. I can't either. Stories about parents seeing their own children die, I just can't. As a mother, I just can't. I don't know if you've seen any of the coverage of these bombings in Austin TX. Seventeen year old boy blown to bits in front of his mother. She survived. I would not have wanted to. Just gut-wrenching. I can't stand it.

      Delete

Opinions and ideas expressed in the comments on this page
belong the people who stated them. Management takes no
editorial responsibility for the content of public comments.