Unidentified Object‎, October 22, 2013, Novo Hamburgo, RS, Brazil

This is simply too pretty not to share…

Pretty slick. Looks like something the Electric Universe guys or the Plasma peeps would like.

From the post at Spaceweather.com entitled Unidentified Object:

Details:

I took this picture in Novo Hamburgo city, in the south of Brazil, photographed – between 8:30 and 9 PM on october 22nd – a strange object in the sky.
Canon Rebel T-4, ISO 100, f/4.5, 30s exposure, 35mm

EXIF Data:
Camera Used: Canon Canon EOS REBEL T4i
Exposure Time: 30/1
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 100
Date Taken: 2013:10:24 09:55:10

I usually shy away from UFO stuff these days, even though I have seen several, but, I like this one. As mentioned I think it is visually impressive. And it’s on Spaceweather, which doesn’t hurt. Also appearing here in the local paper/site (in Portuguese (Google translation)). They wrote:

Strange object (maybe an UFO?) In the sky

A citizen from Novo Hamburgo, in the south of Brazil, photographed – between 8:30 and 9 PM on 22nd october – a strange object in the sky. Specialists disagree on what it would be. One of Them que said it’s not a weather balloon. Another said that’s not a paramotor. Some say it’s a drone (unmanned the vehicle). And there are Those Who que defend it’s just lens flare.

Was included in this post for our readers foreign language, an English summary of the original text published in the print edition of the ABC Sunday.

Is it a UFO? Technically, yes, it is, but semantically it depends on what you personally think of when you hear that term. Lens flare is popular in the comments section, as expected. Could very well be lens flare. I don’t think it is at this moment, though. Could of course be lots of things.

Here’s the full photo:

Anyway, enjoy the eye candy, folks.

Peace.

ETA: Interesting date and time discrepancy in the EXIF data. Not sure what if anything that implies. Still like it…

Pale Blue Dot

On the 19th of July, 2013, the spacecraft called Cassini took about 20 minutes out of its mission at Saturn to look far, far away – 898 million miles back in the direction it had come, held itself very still… and took some inspiring pictures of its home…

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From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech’s news release… comes this snippet:

“We can’t see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Cassini’s picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth.”

Nicely put, Ms. Spilker…

Back in 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft also took Earth’s picture as it bid farewell to the solar system. A truly amazing image it is… one that prompted Carl Sagan to offer some thoughts on the implications of what thereafter became known as The Pale Blue Dot.

Here is that image, from 4 billion miles away – followed by Dr. Sagan’s words…

Image source, a fine article on NPR.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Inspiring times we live in. I still hope someday that we can heed the words above… just imagine what could be done… what wonders could be found,,, how rich our lives could be.

Arctic “Frost Flowers” – Neato!

Check this out…

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On Christmas Day, an article was posted online called Warmer Arctic Waters Sprout Frost Flower Meadows. It had been posted before, on the 19th of December to the NPR website as Suddenly There’s A Meadow In The Ocean With ‘Flowers’ Everywhere.

Here’s a tantalizing little taste:

“I was absolutely astounded,” he says. They were little protrusions of ice, delicate, like snowflakes. They began growing in the dry, cold air “like a meadow spreading off in all directions. Every available surface was covered with them.” What are they?

“Frost flowers,” he was told. “I’d never heard of them,” Jeff says, “but they were everywhere.”

Whoa. I’ve never heard of them, either!

Nature is just amazing. These form when the water is warmer than the air and at the surface the conditions are such that these are sort of drawn out of the water carrying the salt with them forming delicate structures with three times the salinity of the water.

Also fascinating is that the team found that these little ‘flowers’ are teeming with life! Which they did not expect. Each one is a home for one million bacteria! One million!

Read the article! Either one, for the full story.

Gives more hope for finding critters in other unexpected places… places like moons and planets!

Let the search continue!

Peace.

Doreen, Alligator Wrangler.

I thought this worthy of inclusion.

We certainly can get along just fine with ancient reptilian lifeforms.

And too much regulation spoils the fun.

Rock on, Doreen!

Peace.

Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, er, Lizard?

Now, then, if you were a Mwanza Flat Headed Agama and wanted to dominate your little group of mates, what would you do? Why, you’d dress up as Spiderman, of course!

Well. wouldn’t you?

And… our hero:

Knows how to strike a pose, doesn’t he?

So, is this art imitating life, or life imitating art?

A remarkable coincidence. Not that I believe in coincidence, but we’ll leave that bit out.

This is not cryptozoology at all… as this fellow, spotted in the Masia Mara National park near the Rongai river by photographer Cassio Lopes is pretty well known it would seem.

Apparently you can even buy them in pet stores. I really need to get out more, I guess.

Yes, I know I’m slow out the gate and I’m quite sure you’ve all seen this on your Facebooks and such. I saw it a couple of days ago myself at this ATS post but my head’s just not torqued down properly these days, as you may recall from my last post.

Maybe someone will see our little buddy for the first time! Or not. Sigh.

You can get some more details at The Daily Fail, er, Mail. They have more details and a pic of the photographer, too. Here’s an excerpt.

What a MARVEL! The blue and red lizard with a striking resemblance to comic book superhero Spiderman

By KERRY MCQUEENEY

PUBLISHED: 14:00 EST, 1 July 2012 | UPDATED: 16:56 EST, 1 July 2012

One has to wonder whether this lizard’s spider-senses are tingling. For the reptile bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marvel comic superhero Spiderman.

The lizard’s amazing red and blue markings are strikingly similar to the suit worn by the crime-fighting, web-weaving daredevil.

And – as the reptile was captured crawling around on his rock – he appeared to strike an identical pose to Spidey’s favoured crouching pose.

[…]

Ha! Will wonders never cease…

I just hope Marvel doesn’t try to sue the little creatures.

Peace.

I… Am Envious.

Of this kid’s childhood…

Seriously, now… is this not just lovely?

Serene, even.

Can you imagine spending your formative years in a place like that, so in tune with Nature that you can sit with a wild cat and just take in your surroundings, together? Buddies?

Wow.

I don’t know who this is or where it is, I got it off of Facebook. That saddens me as it seems our society just doesn’t care about such things anymore. That, in my humble opinion is not a good thing.

I think the scene is so telling about how nice things could be in this world.

I don’t think it will happen anytime soon, though, except in remote places. Not without some unspecified global event of epic proportions, anyway.

Just thought I’d share it.

Also…

Apologies for the lack of posts, I must give, as there are so many of you who subscribe. I am grateful that you feel good being here. I’m just not feeling well in my head of late and can’t seem to write. It should fix itself soon (I hope)… it seems a cyclical thing.

Grim Reaper.

Hey, it’s the Pope of Hope™’s favorite toy —

Nice. Very.

And the text is of course altogether fitting, proper and true.

Seriously… Who made this thing?

#1 War Tool of the 1%

Yes, it is, now that you mention it, especially culture-wise.

To have the OPotus casually joking by making threats about targeting with a couple of these would be suitors of his daughters at a nationally televised event… and have people laughing along… really says something about a country’s soul.

That helps bring the day closer, you know, the day that you see an MQ-9 Reaper in your neighborhood, lookin’ to make a nice round 16′ hole.

Yes, indeed.

Peace.

Dinochelus ausubeli, A Wicked-Clawed Deep Sea Nasty.

Author: Shapiro, Leo

Compiler: Hammock, Jen

Supplier: EOL Rapid Response Team

License: Some rights reserved

Source URL: View original data object

Indexed: October 01, 2010 Permalink

Dinochelus ausubeli is a new species of deepwater lobster (family Nephropidae) first collected in 2007 from the Philippine Sea off the island of Luzon and was formally described in 2010. The species is so distinct that it was not only described as a new species but placed in a newly erected genus as well (Dinochelus). “Dinochelus” is derived from the Greek dinos, meaning “terrible”, and chela, meaning “claw”, an allusion to the massive, spinose major claw. The specific epithet ausubeli honors Jesse Ausubel, an enthusiastic sponsor of the Census of Marine Life, a major effort to document marine life in the first decade of the 21st century. (Ahyong et al. 2010)

Wow, man, that’s one hell of a claw! I’m diggin’ it. It reminds one of a precision instrument that some technician might wield for maximum tweakage of something obscure and specialized.

And it is obviously extremely specialized. I would imagine it is designed to do one thing really well, whether that’s getting into a seriously narrow nook or similarly configured cranny wherein its main nutrient-filled nodule resides, or, perhaps it somehow conforms to said nutrient-filled nodule’s unique physiognomy.

Shivers, I surely wouldn’t want to be that unfortunate creature!

For additional perusal and introspection into the vastness of life’s catalog:

At AboveTopSecret: Newly Discovered Deep Sea Lobster *pic*

At ScienceDaily (source for the ATS discussion thread): Newly Discovered Deep Sea Lobster

At Encyclopedia of Life (source of the extract above): Dinochelus ausubeli

At WoRMS – World Register of Marine Species: WoRMS Image

Whenever I look at new creatures from the sea I am always, always reminded of the fact that we know more about the Moon and Mars than our own oceans. A LOT more. A situation I find very saddening. Indeed, don’t spend our resources on learning what’s out there… spend them on global acts of corporate criminality and on killing each other in support of the same. Great.

Every time a probe or submersible or anything goes down below, at least one lifeform is seen for the first time. Less than 5% of the world’s oceans have had any sort of exploration.

Interestingly, when humans briefly visited the deepest deepness that there is on this planet, the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the fabulous Trieste… right there on the bottom scurrying away… was a fish.

Absolutely amazing.

The Remarkable Cecconi UFO Case: Cover Up Italian Style.

Freakin’ fantabulous, isn’t it?!

This is just like one of those much dreamt of “gun camera” shots that we who dig UFOs want so much to get our hands on. The difference here is that this one isn’t from a gun camera at all, rather it was exposed by one of the four Vinten reconnaissance cameras flying aboard the Aeritalia/Fiat G.91R jet fighter aircraft piloted by Italian Air Force Marshal Giancarlo Cecconi on the 18th of June, 1979.

I stumbled across this obscure case due to the “bump” of an old ATS thread that was started on 1/11/2010 by a former member known as Imagir. While it was known to internos, it wasn’t known to the late Justin Krog, so, obscure is a most accurate word. Which is unfortunate really since it is an excellent radar/visual case with many witnesses; and, well, I mean, just look at that gol dang picture!

Some great information was added to the discussion on 11/18/2010 by ATS member Mark_Frost when he found a 1996 investigative report by Marco Orlandi of the Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici (CISU) published at the Brazilian site INPU. It’s quite a thorough investigation, covering all that’s known and was originally published in the Brazilian UFO Magazine (Rivista di Informazione Ufology), issue number 17 in February 1996. You really should read that report. Do take the time.

“It was a tank of at least eight meters. Five hundred years from now, maybe someone will tell us why and how to stand there, suspended in the sky, thirteen thousand feet.” – IAF Marshal Giancarlo Cecconi

Clearly, Giancarlo was pretty much gob-smacked by the thing.

I noted with much interest that although Cecconi tried very hard to get a photo of a side view of this object… he could not… it constantly reoriented itself to this nearly head on aspect.

OK, here’s the incident description from the CISU report (translated from Portuguese by Google Translate with slight edits by this author for readability.):

18 JUNE 1979 – 11:30 HOURS

Marshal pilot Giancarlo Cecconi, 14 of the second group of the Hunting Bomber Regiment of recognition of Aeronautics, was approaching to land at Sant’ Angelo Treviso Airport in Treviso. He was returning to base after a reconnaissance photo of the Ligure mountains, on board a fighter G-91R. Unexpectedly, in the sky over Sant’ Angelo Treviso Airport, the presence of an unknown object was noticed. Getting confirmation that the pilot had sufficient autonomy to intercept the object, the center of the city of Istrana radar, which showed the presence of the intruder, Cecconi gives the information to the approach maneuver, i.e., the usual practice of the Air Force to intercept the object that flew in the airspace in a forbidden area. Having also available in film cameras, the pilot hit all four cameras, thus initiating the chase to the object by a distance of approximately 80 meters and a speed  of 300 knots (450-500 km/h). Also land airport personnel following the scene with binoculars. Soon after, the Treviso control tower called  Cecconi by radio with which he communicated with Istrana, warning that the object left a strange blue trail. Cecconi, having approached very same object could not see the trail. When the pilot begins to approach the object, that he was at a distance of 2,100 meters. Then it began to rise and fall, with displacements ranging from 300 to 3,900 feet away. Cecconi made eight flights over the object, always shooting the cameras, getting a total of 82 photos. The UFO was  apparently stopped in relation to hunt G-91R. To the central radar Cecconi confirmed that this was moving with speed and route set. Several times, the pilot sought to position itself to photograph it aside, but failed because the object appeared to ”steer” in order to impose respect for him in the front position without ever exposing himself completely to one side. The appearance of the object resembled a ”tank” in black opaque. Its dimensions were approximately 8 meters long and up to 3 meters in diameter.

An interesting detail was noted by Cecconi, the presence of a sort of “mini” dome, white, not transparent, located at the top of the object, slightly wrinkled. While Cecconi was completing another lap to go back and make other pictures, Istrana called him, stating that at that moment, the object disappeared from radar. After a few seconds, the control tower of Treviso confirmed that those who were following the object with binoculars could no longer see the object. The object unexplainedly resolved within a few seconds. In effect, the pilot could not even see over the object. Soon after the game [Cecconi] landed at Treviso Airport. As usual the experts removed the film (negative) and took them to the laboratory to reveal the distribution.

Note that the above report says that 82 photos were taken. Other reports claim that 84 were taken. That’s a lot of photos and I’d surely bet that most of them are just as exciting as the lead photo here. Out of that total, however, only four have been released. Four! Now ain’t that a crying shame! Madonne!

In late 1979 an Italian ufologist named Antonio Chiumiento got involved and interviewed Cecconi, promising discretion which was later gone back on. Not so nice. What else is new, eh?

The cover-up activities that followed were pretty silly to my way of thinking, but, as usual, pretty effective in burying the whole affair.

It wasn’t until November 2, 1984 that the Ministry of Defense actually responded to the media circus. They said: “The subject matter alone was photographed with machinery on board a fighter and was identified as a rod-shaped flask, made with black plastic bags.” The newspapers immediately pounced on that one and took the same tack as ours do today in further treatment of this news.

The later “excuse” assigned to it by the authorities had morphed from the “privately made balloon” of the media to the commercially available UFO-Solar balloon,  a plastic toy apparently quite popular back then that, when filled with air and heated nicely, was supposedly able to reach such heights. Calls of foul were aired as the toy balloon was only three meters long by one across, a tad smaller than the 8 meters by three meters of the object. Did that phase the newspapers? Nope. I laugh at their next move which was to assert that what was seen was really a top secret toy balloon of a much greater size being tested by the UFO-Solar’s top competitor. Hahahaha! Pull the other one! Seriously. Interesting, though, to note that the product was later banned from the market because it was deemed a danger to air traffic. Hmmm. Note, too, that such things can be bought today… here in the USA at least.

The reality, which had been reported and was known to many laid bare that entire load of official codswallop which was immediately rejected by those in possession of operational gray matter. After all the object had been circled eight times by Cecconi, sometimes quite closely, with folks watching all this on the ground with binoculars.

One pass was close enough that the jet exhaust would have melted a balloon into nothing and I dare say any of them would have simply blown a balloon some distance away. But the object stayed right where it was, constantly reorienting itself to the jet as mentioned above. Ultimately at the end of the five minute encounter the object took off to invisibility at high altitude at a calculated rate of about 590 miles per hour (950km/h). Pretty sporty balloon, that eh, what? The balloon hypotheses is therefore decimated… if you’re into reality.

In 1984 the case was officially closed by the Italian Defense Ministry. The official conclusion was, you guessed it, the ridiculous “it was a matter of a plastic balloon.”

In 1995 the Italian Ministry Of Defense issued a “final” final statement. The statement follows:

• No other information or photos are available.
• No relationship of the pilot or the radar recorders or the meteorological conditions of the day of the sighting is available.
• The Defense Ministry is at least interested to start a study on the single phenomenon in consideration of the impact on the national security.

And that was the extent of it. They’re good at dragging things out aren’t they? Damn. Sixteen years. I propose we start writing tons of letters demanding at least the unreleased photos… we know they exist… at one point they said they were going to… but didn’t… and what about that last statement in the list? Did they or didn’t they study that ‘single phenomenon’?

I’m out of time again… The entire affair is so long and convoluted with more to it than appears here as to the media attention, or non-attention, at times; more wackiness from the Ministry; there are also other people noted throughout like the fellow who claimed to be the builder of the “balloon” and other weird things, not to mention even UFO Magazine‘s take; as noted it spans over a decade and a half. I highly recommend reading the aforementioned CISU article at the INPU site to follow all the odd little twists and turns this journey into obfuscation takes. It’ll be worth it if you like UFOs.

Peace.

Top Secret Custom iPad Protection from Speck and Apollo 15!

Apollo 15’s Top Secret Shot by iggymak
Browse iphone 4 cases

Let this custom Speck case and Apollo 15’s notorious Top Secret Shot protect your iPad from the rigors of reality.

just what did the crew see, anyway?
I really want to know, but I doubt any of us ever will.

This is the mysterious “final” frame from film magazine 83… the very existence of which was totally suppressed by NASA for over 30  long years.

This is image number AS15-83-11234, taken from inside either the LEM or the Command module, no one’s really sure about that. And no one’s talking.

No one knows just what this image shows, (except the crew and NASA), but I have a feeling that this was an exceptionally intense encounter with something quite terrifying and almost completely inexplicable.

Learn what’s known of this exceptionally bizarre incident by reading my earlier post about this strange encounter, which has some great commentary from LunaCognita providing even more vital information.

Enhancement by yours truly back in April 2010, using a 9 layer image stack to get the most detail out of those freaky deaky streamers.

Share this previously classified image with the world while treating your iPad to some serious Speck protection.

Catch all my designs at High Strangeness Art.

A word about the case itself…

Combining luxury with uncompromised protection, this sleek hard plastic case is covered with an easy-to-grip fabric, richly printed with your favorite design. The first of its kind to be offered anywhere, this lightweight and durable custom case allows optimal access to all of the sensors, ports and controls on your iPad, while offering superior comfort in-hand.

“He’s Got The Cutest Little Feet!”

Now then!

Here’s yet another amazing image.

What this actually is caught me by surprise when I read the description below. Always pictured an adhesive pad as, well, an adhesive pad. I would never have imagined that at least this species of beetle is perched on a large array of extremely tiny feet. Wicked! The things we learn…

So, do these tiny little feet move individually and “walk” along together in an orchestrated way, or do they just adhere to the surface and then the beetle picks up the whole group at once as it walks? I want to know. I do!

8th Place: Beetle leg

German researcher Jan Michels’ eighth-place image shows a lateral view of the adhesive pad on the leg of a beetle (Clytus sp.). The view was captured using autofluorescence.

This post’s title, by the way, refers to a line from one of those humorous radio ads for something that I can’t recall (shoes, maybe?) that played in the New York City market a few years ago. For some reason it came to mind and I thought it somehow fit in describing this extraordinary image. And yes, I know my mind is strange.

As this post is obviously a complement to the preceding post featuring the fabulous face of a weevil (and the microscopic minerals post with the added dragonfly face that has a very strange additional “face” on it), the photo is also from the very same Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition and you can see many more at this link. And there is that same discussion of the imagery as well.

This stuff rocks.

Well, Hi There!

I love this guy.

Seriously.

What a strange and lovely face.

Damned if he doesn’t just make this web page pop!

I was going to post this picture without comment, but doing that didn’t work too well last time I did it, really, although it gets downloaded a lot… when I had commented, though, the post seemed to do better… not enough to become a thread, but hey.

The info on this extraordinary image is just below. You can see many more at this link. Maybe you’d like to read or even join a discussion of the image and others.

The world we live in is fabulous, isn’t it?

10th Place: Weevil head.

The Olympus BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition honors the world’s most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects. This 10th-place picture, by British photographer Laurie Knight, shows the face of a weevil (possibly Curculio nucum or Curculio glandium). The image was captured using a lighting technique known as episcopic illumination.

You may also like the follow up post to this one, called “He’s Got The Cutest Little Feet!”.

What In The Hell Are They Doing?

Found this at one of those sites where strange, odd and funny pics are displayed.

So… do any of you have anything you can provide regarding the seemingly simple question of – “What In The Hell Are They Doing?” Anyone?

Such data will be appreciated. I am intrigued by this. Who are these people?

Thanks in advance.

Natural Angles… Plus

I just read most of an Abovetopsecret.com forum thread called Amazing Electron Microscope Images by Evasius, who fancies him- or herself as a timewave technician. Ha! Nice thought. There have been a lot of these picture posts of late. Actually it was several days ago as I have been quite bummed with living lately and have not been writing.

Anyway, as soon as I saw the above image the first thing I thought was about how all the “para-gurus” and other self-proclaimed “experts” are always going on about how Mrs. Nature doesn’t “do” right angles. This is especially prevalent in postings about anomalous space imagery.

To all of those people… shift your eyes up and down and let these two pictures sink into your head. Mkay? Got it? Good.

And this decidedly geometric and exceptionally complex object is a columnar snow crystal. Is that rad or what?

A snippet…

7Rime on a columnar snow crystal. Contact between the snow crystal and the supercooled droplets in the air resulted in freezing of the liquid droplets onto the surface of the crystal. Observations of snow crystals clearly show cloud droplets measuring up to 50 microns on the surface of the crystal. (Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture)

Okay, then, switching away from geometrics…

Above we have a remarkable, (and IMHO very cool), instance of pareidolia…

I’m quite sure you can spot what I am referring to on the head of this dragonfly.

Just an aside… when I was little, I was afraid of dragonflies… not sure why… maybe because they can maneuver just like a UFO…

And finally a little something that can cause peace in our minds… and the munchies.

The columnar snow crystal is from Boston.com’s Peering into the micro world.

The others are from a gallery, Amazing Electron Microscope Images (gallery) and an article in Perth Now (in Australia) called Creepy critters up close and terrifying, with images provided by the CSIRO’s site.

The Spirit Of America… In One Photo.

Photo by Lily E. via Wonkette

As Tara McGinley said today at Dangerous Minds… “This pretty much sums it up.”

Wow. What a classic shot. What Tara stated so succinctly is so tragically true. What was once the “greatest country in the world” has been turned into something far, far different. And that something is displayed – perfectly – in the fortuitous photo displayed above.

The photo goes deeper… as it also shows the state of the union regarding the dumbing down of our population, which has been official education policy since the mid-1860s.

I would bet, and quite safely, too, I believe, that the person who put those letters on that sign has absolutely no idea that he or she has erred. Jeezus.

There is no date on the photo, but I note that that gas price is about 60 cents less a gallon than it is around these parts.

Don’t know about you, but, I just don’t have any desire to try “a anus burger” at all, thanks all the same.

It would be entertaining to see the CEOs of these two companies wolf a couple down, though.

Alright, then. Peace out.

All of America Captured In Single Photograph

They Are Pens… Right? No? Whoa!

This interesting email just came in from my friend Rodolfo Comas…

– – –

What do you think these are?

look closely and guess what they could be…

Pens with hidden cams, right?

Wrong!

Any wild guesses now?

Ladies and gentlemen… congratulations! You’ve just seen the future of the lap top.
This will soon replace your PC.

Now see this…

In the revolution of miniature computers, the scientists are ahead with bluetooth technology…

###

Must check this out… is it real? If so… that’s amazing!

Apollo. 15. Magazine Of Mystery. Number 83.

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Strange. Very strange.

And disconcerting.

Disappointing, too.

Then again it is NASA. A rather bizarre organization, NASA.

You see, this post was initially inspired by my running across an interesting page at Lunar Explorer Italia last night titled  AS 15-83-11218 and the Stephenville UFO: a VERY SMART image-comparison (by Carlo Contu). As you no doubt have gathered from said title, Mr. Contu noticed that the Apollo image in question and the sportiest image of the infamous Stephenville, Texas UFO are remarkably similar. You know the one, the pretty rainbow colored squiggly line in the night sky…

So I Googled up the image number, all set to do a session in Photoshop. But it wasn’t available nice and large at  NASA History’s Apollo Image Library… in fact they don’t even list the magazine as existing at all! What’s up with that? Note that they do list magazines for which they have no pictures to show yet… so, why not 83?

All was not lost, as they are all shown on the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s Apollo Image Atlas… but the images at LPI are all small, all at low resolution and none are really suitable for delving into in hopes of doing any sort of confident analysis. Some clues came out, though…

Here’s the text at the LPI page for this magazine:

Apollo Image Atlas

70mm Hasselblad Image Catalog

Apollo 15, Magazine ??

Images AS15-83-11218 to AS15-83-11234

Why does it say “Magazine ??”? Huh? What was that? Note, of course, that right below that line, in the picture range it clearly states  AS15-83-xxx to AS15-83-xxx. 83, again, is the magazine number.

Ah, I see, when you go to the individual photos it lists right below them their confusion’s source, they don’t know the Letter sub-designation of magazine 83. Well, why not? And even so does not knowing the letter therefore qualify it’s contents for near oblivion, displayed small and low-res on a sub-site for the Apollo program?

Note: For those not familiar with magazines, they are a removable part of the Hasselblad camera, a film holding ‘magazine,’  pre-loaded with film that eliminates the need to string the film through the camera as in a standard 35mm camera. They just snap on and off the back.

Note, too, that 83 was not the first magazine used by the Apollo 15 crew, so although there seems to be some sort of labeling error, I don’t imagine that there were any other issues with it. The Image Atlas starts at 82… which naturally makes me wonder about the existence of 1 through 81, but that’s not completely relevant here. The ones they do show are otherwise sequential in content.

As you can see below, the images captured are intriguing… to say the least… especially the last one, the swoopy, streaky and oh so freaky AS15-83-11234.

What do they show? I can’t say as I know. I can speculate as well as you can, but unless the impossible happens and the crew of 15 give us a play-by-play description, speculation is all we’ve got. Another thing to speculate about is why are there only 17 pictures? Why did they stop snapping? Must see if I can find anything in the transcripts, but, I rather doubt that if there was anything exciting going on it’d still be within them.

I really do like that last one… what the hell is all that? It’s absolutely fascinating. Was there an encounter with something, something we can barely comprehend, way out there in the cold, vast darkness of space?

Hmmm?

Explain THIS! A Video by Lunar Explorer Italia

A sporty new video’s arrived from the boffins over at Lunar Explorer Italia − this one dealing with an interesting look at what is perhaps yet another fossil, a flat little round guy of a nice size this time, unfortunately broken. But, it’s “reconstructed” nicely… and shown to compare favorably with an Earthly organism called a Nummulite.

Nice little stream, too, or rather the remnant thereof… that looks, shall we say… recent!

Un flusso? Che cosa?

Sì, l’uomo!

Indeed, that got me going a bit more than the fossil did, as, well, there are tons of fossils. But rarely have I seen such close up, on the ground, positive indication of surface water. This is really great stuff.

Can’t you just see the water bubbling up from a spot under the Rover’s wheel… heading off down the slope… only to quickly get absorbed into the soil, all the while evaporating at the same time? Way cool, I say!

You know, having said that, the Rovers should really be giving us videos… maybe next time, as they’re so fond of saying. Yeah, right, that’ll happen.

Fantastico … godetevi lo spettacolo!

Following is the always interesting “description” that LEI attached to the video. Heady, these guys… :)

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LunarExplorerItalia
March 23, 2010

What are we looking at? Will be the usual – wonderful! – Photomosaic in natural colors that shows us a piece of Mars?

No, this is more.

More.

Go and look at the EDM below …

We already know what they say and write in many :”… but what is it? E ‘a detail that you do not understand … is too small … … is undefined does not explain anything and does not prove anything. .. “.

Yes, certainly.
And you know why? Why the “people” (like the Anomaly Hunters Sunday …) wants to be surprised and, to believe, wants to see – or rather: MUST SEE! – Something big: a pyramid – or perhaps a group of Pyramids! -, An amphitheater, a Cosmodrome, a “face” that looks toward the sky or maybe a “parable” that points to nowhere …

Yes, it’s true: you try the “Big Test”, because it is “common thought” that only the “Big Test” AND ‘ “the smoking gun.”

It does not work that way.

Those seeking the “Cathedral” – and that we have already said and written until the nausea (more ours than your, believe it …) – in the end, does not want to see anything and even if he stumbles and falls on a simple but essential “Brick” … I do not see it!
Not consider.
I do not even understand.

LORD, that (in our humble but informed opinion) is the brick!

Look at him, Study him and if you’re really good, explain and spiegatecelo.

The Tantalizingly Tempting Thing On The Moon Tshirt

The Thing On The Moon by iggymak

Ah, yes, well, here we have the lovely Luz along with righteous dude Darren both modeling variations of my Thing On The Moon Tshirt, which celebrates what may just be the strangest thing that I have ever clapped eyes on — namely, well, the “thing” — discovered back in the day by none other than the notorious Mr. John Lear.

It’s on a photo taken on the exceptionally notorious far side of the Moon… by the intrepid crew of Apollo 8.

A high resolution version, that is; obtained by Lear from his buds a bit before they got real strict about taking stuff like that out of circulation. Score!

This design is my enhancement of a crop of this particular anomaly from that very high res version.

If you’re motivated, the official NASA image number is AS8-12-2209.

High Strangeness at it’s best, eh?!

I mean… seriously… people… wtf is that?!

Something Wicked This Way Comes…

I am fond of saying that the further from Earth we go, the weirder things get in a general sense. You’ll never convince me of otherwise. Ever. This object is just the latest in the ever-so-wacky universe that lies way, way, way “out there.”

About the only thing agreed upon so far is that it isn’t a comet and has been therefore classed as an asteroid, based solely on composition… it’s assumed, more specifically to be the result of a high speed asteroidal hit-and-run. You know what happens when you assume.

So we need to know exactly how, if it’s a scooting junk pile of the shattered remains of two rocks whacking into each other, do we get this absolutely fabulous shape… a shape more reminiscent of some kind of alien battle cruiser from a slick Hollywood movie?

Assuming that the “crosspiece” is asteroid A’s trail, how did it make such a hard left turn? I’d always been taught that objects, especially objects in space, tend to go in pretty much straight lines, unless there’s something wickedly dense close by… right? Hence everyone’s, scientists and debunkers, too, reaction being something somewhat similar to … what’s all this, then?

Not to mention that 460 foot wide glowing “rock” at the leading edge of the aforementioned asteroid A’s trail… hmmm… anyone?

So strange is this thing that even arch NASA supporter and “ice crystals and debris” flogger Jim Oberg himself has called it a UFO… yes… he called it a UFO…

In fact, I spotted it first in the very thread started by Jim Oberg at the AboveTopSecret conspiracy site :

“Spiral UFO” Photographed by Hubble — in the Asteroid Belt!!

Sorta spiral shaped, maybe more cross-shaped…

but weird all the same…

Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern of Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern of Trailing Debris

hubblesite.org…

FEBRUARY 2, 2010: Something awfully curious is happening 100 million miles from Earth in the asteroid belt. There’s a newly discovered object that superficially looks like a comet but lives among the asteroids. The distinction? Comets swoop along elliptical orbits close in to the Sun and grow long gaseous and dusty tails, as ices near the surface turn into vapor and release dust. But asteroids are mostly in circular orbits in the asteroid belt and are not normally expected to be “volatile.”

photo – imgsrc.hubblesite.org…

And then there’s this piece, too, an article, Space UFO baffles boffins, at The Sun, a not too journalistic journal, but this they couldn’t mess up… for an additional perspective…

THIS amazing UFO has left scientists baffled — after boffins claimed it was NOT a comet streaking through space.

It was first spotted early last month so astronomers turned the Hubble telescope on it last week to get these close up images.

The object — named P/2010 A2 — is of a type never before seen by stargazers and orbits in a satellite belt between Mars and Jupiter. (emphasis mine)

Despite its tail they have ruled out it being a comet, as there is no gas in its trail.

The 140-metre nucleus is also offset from the centre of the tail and its structure is very unusual.

The most likely theory is that it is debris from a collision between two asteroids which were likely to have smashed together at a speed of 15,000 kilometres an hour, five times the speed of a rifle bullet.

The resulting collision would have released more energy than a nuclear bomb.

It is believed that pressure from sunlight then spread the debris out into a trail.

Dr Robert J Nemiroff, astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said: “Future study of P/2010 A2 may better indicate the nature of the original collision and may help humanity better understand the early years of our Solar System, when many similar collisions occurred.”

He added: “What is this strange object? First discovered on ground based LINEAR images on January 6, the object appeared unusual enough to investigate further with the Hubble Space Telescope last week.

“What Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet.

“Close inspection, however, shows a 140-metre nucleus offset from the tail centre, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail.

“Knowing that the object orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a preliminary hypothesis that appears to explain all of the known clues is that P/2010 A2 is the debris left over from a recent collision between two small asteroids.

“If true, the collision likely occurred at over 15,000 kilometres per hour, five times the speed of a rifle bullet, and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb.

“Pressure from sunlight would then spread out the debris into a trailing tail.”

The mysterious object was circling about 90 million miles (144 million km) away from Earth when it was spotted.

I just think it’s seriously beyond cool — and although I don’t think that it’s a cruiser by any means — I just want to know what in the hell that thing really is…