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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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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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. 🙂
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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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.
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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Wonderful thing, digital communication. Nice compact data streams, zillions of channels, etc etc – and no signals which will leak into space. Yep – the more our telecommunications advance, the more invisible we become to our Exosolar Brethren – that is the theory according to a new paper by the head of SETI.
Hence, it is not the fact that we have not detected aliens because they have inferior technology, but because they are technologically superior! Note however, that it is the head of SETI that is suggesting this – he is clearly giving himself an escape route as to why his organisation is not coming up with the goods.
Who knows? These alien hunters might be coming round to my ideas about searching for aliens through advanced consciousness (as opposed to advanced technology) sooner than I had anticipated!
The earthquake has gripped the world’s consciousness, and whilst it has caused some prime examples of the best of human nature to display themselves, it has also caused a lamentable number of side-effects. I have therefore taken it upon myself to draw up a list of best and worst ways to help the people of Haiti, which have been respectively spawned and spewed this week.
The Worst
1. Pay US Income Tax
“We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the US Income Tax.”
Rush Limbaugh to a radio caller.
The United States government has pledged $100 million to Haiti. The European Union has pledged $560 million. By working this out as a per capita rate according to their respective populations, the EU has pledged $1.14 for each EU citizen, whilst the US has only pledged $0.33 per US citizen. Statistics alone would indicate that US Income Tax is certainly not the world’s most efficient means of getting money to Haiti.
2. Pray for their souls
Don’t get me wrong. I am not hating on Christians generally – indeed many of the Charities doing the most for humanitarian relief are in fact Christian organisations (see below). But come on – what about this from Pat Robertson, the US Televangelist:
And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come, but right now we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.
“Pat” apparently is not actually his real-name, but a childhood nickname derived from the fact that as a baby people liked to pat him a lot.
May I suggest that in the future he might consider changing it to Punch Robertson.
3. Buy Simon Cowell’s forthcoming charity single
Gordon Brown has apparently asked Simon Cowell to gather a bunch of X-Factor no-marks together as well as a few celebs in order to record a charity single. Oh please! Has Brown no taste? Surely if he wants to court popularity with the British electorate (and boy does he need to) surely he should be asking Rage Against The Machine to record a charity single instead???
The Best
1. Make an immediate donation
Here is a selection of sites where you can make a donation by credit card:
2. Write off Haiti’s Debts
According to the charity Christian Aid, Haiti as a country owes $890 million (approximately £550 million) in unpayable debts. Most of this is to the IMF. It is frightening to think that the great and the good have been calling for world financial institutions to cancel third world debt for at least twenty years or more, and it still has not happened to a discernible extent. Whilst it would be great if this happened in the case of Haiti, it is only the second best solution, because although it would make the country $890 million better off, it would not actually represent actual money in their pockets.
3. Buy Lionel Richie’s forthcoming charity single.
Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones are planning to re-record “We Are The World” twenty five years after it was first released, and are getting a load of American stars to perform on it. I actually liked this tune (which Richie originally co-wrote with Michael Jackson), so I think I will bag myself a copy. Much better than the crap Simon Cowell is bound to come up with.
“But Alex,” I hallucinate that you are imploring me. “Why be mean to Simon Cowell when he is trying to be nice this time? Why not buy a copy of both Cowell and Richie’s single?” No, quite frankly. If I were of a mind to pay for two singles recorded for Haitian disaster relief, I would actually download Richie’s single twice.
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Another blog post in my series of presenting an insider’s guide to the New World Order.
How quickly all talk of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol fades from the public consciousness. If Google News is to be believed at all, the only hot topic in Freemasonry at the moment would appear to be whether rapper Jay Z is on the square or not. However when I researched it, apparently it is not a new story at all, it goes back to at least 2007. Apparently the evidence goes like this:
Get real! By that definition any American can get into the club by reading their own currency.
OK the guy does look as if his thumb is bent at an unusual angle. But I would be slow to draw conclusions from this.
Hmm? Might this not be more to do with the fact that people have been buying his records? Masons cannot actually produce money out of thin air, you know.
In fact, the evidence for saying that Jay Z is a mason is pretty slim. He has not done anything which could not have been achieved by not being a mason. In my opinion, the only sign of a conspiracy would have been if his contacts had managed to get him an unusual gig, which he would not have been able to get otherwise – say for example headlining at a major British festival traditionally reserved for rock acts only. 😉
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
RIP Watkins Books
Watkins Books of Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road, London, is no more. Apparently they were lumbered with a massive tax bill from a previous owner – that, together with the collapse of price fixing in the book trade has seen it and other independant book stores go to the wall.
Watkins for those that do not know was until last week one of London’ – and the UK’s – leading occult booksellers. I myself have been a customer there! Now this means there are only two decent occult bookshops left in London – Atlantis, and Treadwells.
What is not generally known is that Watkins was the model for the Wizard’s Bookshop Flourish and Botts from the Harry Potter series of novels! I present the following evidence to back up my claim:
So all in all, QED.
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Tagged as atlantis, cecil court, credit crunch, diagon alley, flourish and botts, Harry Potter, london, occult, treadwells, watkins