Monthly Archives: February 2010

“Aliens Staring Us In The Face”

Apparently our extrasolar brethren might be staring us in the face, for all that we know. That is the opinion of the Astronomer Royal, no less.

Now let’s backtrack a second here. This is the Astronomer Royal we are talking about. The word Royal gives us a clue as to exactly what kind of people he himself regularly finds staring him in the face. Is this the most indiscrete comment ever made by a royal adviser?

Come back, David Icke! All is forgiven! 😉

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Aliens: British Government admits cover-up

Our Extrasolar Brethren have been visiting us regularly for several years and what is more, the British Government has now fessed up to sitting on details of thousands of UFO sightings! However the government has decided to take the wind out of the sails of anyone expecting a juicy conspiracy story by going public with the files compiled by the Ministry of Defence.

For the next month, almost 900 MB of files will be available for free download. After that a certain amount of files will still be available, but for a small fee.

I intend to take a look through this lot to see if there are any good bits, although from what journalists have looked at so far, many of the reports seem to be of the kind “I was on my way home from the pub one night, and I saw a strange light in the sky, and then it disappeared and I went on my way,”  etc etc.

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Alex ama gli Italiani!

Excellent news from the Mediterranean – apparently Italians spend £5 billion a year on fortune tellers and astrology. And this apparently includes people seeking financial advice because they don’t trust bankers. Mind you, considering what people have put up with the world over, I’m surprised that more people in other countries have not done the same thing (perhaps they have but the papers have not reported it).

The long and the short of it is that I am adding Italy to my list of favourite countries, the first entry having been Norway. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that not only am I a tarot reader and astrologer amongst my many talents, but I also happen to like Italian cuisine. 🙂

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PVS Research – a step closer to Telepathy?

Exciting news this morning about scientists who claim they have been able to communicate with patients who are in a “Persistent Vegetative State”  (PVS).  They have found that not only are different parts of the brain stimulated by different activities – e.g. motor/spatial as opposed to motion – but the same parts also show stimulation when a person thinks of performing those sorts of activities. The different types of stimulus can be detected and distinguished by a “functional magnetic resonance scanner” (fMRI). Furthermore, they have found that PVS patients were aware enough of their environment to be able to answer Yes/No type questions – by thinking of one type of activity to denote yes, and a different one to denote no.

The most immediate implication for this research is in regards to patient care itself, including issues of analgesia and ultimately even euthanasia. Henceforth it will no longer be good enough to guess what is in the patient’s best interest, because there is now increased evidence to suggest that the patient may be asked directly.

However there is a far more “way-out” application I can conceive for this research, and that is in the field of scientifically investigating Telepathy, and TCUIs (Thought Controlled User Interfaces). Remember that this is only basic Yes / No communication in response to leading questions – extremely rudimentary. However, it is only one step away from the Telepathic equivalent of the invention of Morse code. We thus have the technology available now to send simple messages purely by thought – if we trouble ourselves to research this avenue.

It should be noted that the fMRI only detected types of brain activity, not the content of individual thoughts. Therefore in order to develop a more sophisticated form of artificial-telepathy, it would be necessary for the telepath to learn to think a whole new language – ironically though by not using traditional language learning skills (which after all are only one type of brain activity). Although this being done it would then be possible for a telepath to say, for example, activate a number of different tasks just by concentrating on different brain states.

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Take me home, country space-ways

Good things, like valuable parcels being delivered by the Royal Mail, often take a long time in arriving. Just this morning the Daily Telegraph reported that Sri Lankan-born scientist Chandra Wickramsinghe has claimed that all humans are in fact aliens from outer space. What the Daily Telegraph failed to point out that Wickramsinghe, along with his late mentor and colleague Fred Hoyle, has been saying the same thing for around thirty years or more. There’s nothing like up to the minute reportage!

Professor Chandra Wickramsinghe

The basis of Wickramsinghe’s claims is a phenomenon termed Panspermia, the notion life on this planet was in fact “seeded” by organic material brought to earth by passing (or in some cases impacting) comets. If you are thinking at this point that this sounds like a plot device from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, then you are correct – the show’s writers lifted the idea from Hoyle & Wickramsinghe’s work.

Note however that the theory of Panspermia does not by itself, contrary to the Telegraph’s headline writers, suggest that we are in fact aliens, or that alien life does exist elsewhere in the universe – merely that the seeds of life may come from outer space. However there is at least one theory by Francis Crick (he of DNA fame) that Panspermia might in fact be “directed” – i.e. brought either deliberately or inadvertantly by our extraterrestrial brethren. Apparently the rationale for directed Panspermia is that the probability of such life-seeds hitting earth by mere chance is literally astronomic.

See also: The Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology.

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Dawkins comes out as a religionist

Further to the developments in Haiti, Richard Dawkins has come out of the closet and revealed that he is in favour of religion after all! The Voodoo Religion that is – obviously it would be absurd if he had suddenly found the Lord and weighed in for the Christians.

I shit ye not! In the Punch Robertson controversy of Christianity vs Voodoo, Dawkins has come out in favour of Voodoo, as a way of getting back at Robertson and his brand of televangelism.

Dawkins used to be an evolutionary biologist – but now he is a gadfly. Oh the irony! 😉

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