gerald celente: internet nuke bomb waiting to go off

from russia today: Gerald Celente, the founder of the Trends Research Institute, believes that the Internet will empower the youth of the world to unite to start a revolution that will overthrow the existing deadlocked elitist establishment. He predicts that in 2011 every citizen is going to realize that the Great Recession the world has been living through is actually a Great Depression, because the American establishment is "running out of schemes."

infoporn: exoplanet atlas

There's an interesting exoplanet gallery, a possible first to chart known exoplanets at www.wired.co.uk. It's interesting eye-candy but definitely for astro-geeks. The comments section includes criticism of temperatures posted in Celsius not Kelvin. It's still worth a look, and for the astro-geek, it's pure infoporn!

nemesis theory

Nemesis is a theorized red dwarf star--a binary companion to our sun. The case for Nemesis was first proposed in the eighties by Richard A. Muller, a Berkeley physicist, as a theory to help explain periodic extinctions on Earth. The theory grew from an observation by Luis Alvarez, Muller's mentor, extinction events on Earth were periodic, estimated to occur every 26 to 30 million years as evidenced by anomalous iridium deposits. Iridium is extremely rare but more common in meteors. This led to a hypothesis the deposits were due to meteors and their age corresponded with the so-called "extinction events". Alvarez invited Muller to debunk his conclusions.

Muller couldn't debunk Alvarez, and theorized, the existence of Nemesis, an as-yet-to-be-detected red dwarf star that varies in distance from 1 to 3 light years from the Sun. Nemesis crosses through an area of the Oort cloud, as the theory goes, where trillions of comets are present in a halo around our solar system. This infrequent pass by the so-called "death star" Nemesis, every 26-30 million years, displaces comets into the inner planetary orbits of our solar system. Lynn Yarris provided a good history of Nemesis theory's development in this Berkeley Lab publication.

Muller's theory has held up surprisingly well over the years. Sedna, a planetoid discovered in 2003 in the outer reaches of our solar system, whose orbit cannot be explained without the presence of another large body such as Nemesis.

In a more recent Space.com article, via Sign of the Times, "Nemesis Does the Sun Have a 'Companion'?" by Robert Roy Britt, Muller believes Nemesis "...is a common red dwarf star that would be visible through binoculars or a small telescope, if only we knew which of some 3,000 stars to look at. These are stars that have been cataloged, but their distances are not known". A visible star has only to be identified as the Sun's binary companion, as Muller sees it. Here is a link on You Tube to an eight minute excerpt of a History Channel show, where Muller discusses Nemesis. Muller wrote a successful book several years ago, "Nemesis the Death Star".

There are sky surveys that may provide answers in the near future? The good news is, according to Yarris, another extinction event is not due until 15 million AD!

white house calls for 'identity ecosystem' to protect online users

from eweek: The Obama Administration is committed to reducing Internet fraud by developing a comprehensive, national online identity strategy, United State Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said on Jan. 7. Cyber-security and digital identity was a “national top priority” issue, said Locke. Locke was joined by Howard Schmidt, the White House Cybersecurity coordinator, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, where they outlined the framework for an “identity ecosystem” which will allow people to complete online transactions with confidence that their personal information was safe. “We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system,” Locke said.

flashbacks: white house prepping national internet identity authentication plan & cybersecurity measures would mandate govt 'id tokens' to use the net

weapons of mass deception

Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men, writes an excellent account of early ufology, from an intelligence point of view, in a Fortean Times article, "Weapons of Mass Deception". Pilkington begins with the Air Forces' "Project Grudge, an early effort "to study" unidentified flying objects (ufos), but intended primarily to suppress public interest. The effort proved successful, until Donald Keyhoe wrote a 1950 article that exposed the Air Force coverup in True Magazine, and later, expanded into a book, "The Flying Saucers Are Real". Keyhoe transformed ufos into a respectable topic, "the era of scientific ufology was born", writes Pilkington.

The ufo myth, as we know it, took form from a series of events, according to Pilkington, the first a film release in September 1951 of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (link to full film) that "perfectly crystallised" the hopes and fears of the flying saucer movement, what an alien encounter could bring with Christ-like Klaatu's message of peace and his robot enforcer, Gort, capable of destroying the Earth. The film sparked a surge of ufo sightings and many within the armed services, which prompted the Air Force to issue JANAP 146(B), where servicemen could be imprisoned for up to ten years and fined 10,000 dollars for release of ufo information.


Another boost to ufology came from a April 1952 Life Magazine article, "Have We Visitors from Space?", which surprised many by its pro-extraterrestrial message in light of the authors spending a year consulting with the Air Force.  US newspapers carried over 16,000 ufo news items in the first six months of 1952 alone. By this time, ufo phenomena made policymakers nervous, CIA Director Walter B. Smith wrote in a letter, "...problems associated with unidentified flying objects appear to have implications for psycho­logical warfare as well as for intelligence and operations.” Smith’s concerns would prove to be uncannily prescient." The nervousness--the result of a combination of technology and paranoia--that characterized the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. Authorities were at war with ufology.

"On two nights in July 1952, a number of unidentified objects blipped onto radar screens at Washington DC National Airport. At close to midnight on the first night, 19–20 July, seven objects were tracked 24km from the capital city, gradually homing in on the White House at about 160km/h. A bright, orange ball of light was seen from nearby Andrews Air Force Base, making “a kind of circular movement” according to an airman on the scene, before taking off at “an incredible speed” and disappearing. Six bright white, fast-moving lights were also spotted by the pilot of a passenger jet flying in the area," reports Pilkington.

The DC overflights resulted in a media flurry, a press conference called the largest since World War II. The event described by Edward Ruppelt, first head of the Air Force Project Blue Book and coined the term "ufo", as a chaotic affair in his 1956 memoir, "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects".  A link to a .mp3 recording of Ruppelt's book, which can be downloaded for free, is available here  from Librivox--very nice.

Leon Davidson, a chemical engineer at Los Alamos in the late forties, is the lost prophet of ufology, according to Pilkington.  The engineer joined a ufo group at Los Alamos fascinated by the green fireballs seen in New Mexico.  Davidson came to believe "...secret military tests lay behind these and most other UFO incidents, including the Washington overflights."

Davidson recognized similarities between descriptions of radar blips over Washington DC and those created by electronic counter measures and felt he knew who was behind it. "ECM + CIA = UFO or How to Cause a Radar Sighting" was an essay written by Davidson to expose the intelligence source responsible for the sightings. A great case is made for an intelligence operation by the engineer and points out the DC event was predicted by a CIA scientist and related to Ruppelt just a few days before it occurred!

"So were the Washington UFOs an early attempt to put the galloping ghosts under human control,"  Pilkington asks rhetorically in conclusion?   The author believes the ufo community would look different today if it had paid attention to the lost prophet, Davidson!  Pilkington's conclusion is the sightings are black operations not aliens!  A great read--a story that just keeps on giving!

cassini flies just 76km above rhea surface on jan. 11

It's an exciting time for Cassini imaging team scientists as the spacecraft drops to just 47 miles above the surface of Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon, on January 11th!  "These will be by far the best images we've ever had of Rhea's surface - details down to just a few meters will become recognizable," said Thomas Roatsch, a team scientist at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin.  "New Images Indicate Tectonic Activity On Rhea ", a brief article at Space Daily, reveals sharp fractures on the Saturn moon's surface--an indication of tectonic activity.  Cassini will continue to chart the terrain of Saturn's moons until 2017.

1/6 defcon: bad calls & fake claims

warrantless cell phone search gets green light in california*
voip decision means skype now illegal*
first solar eclipse of the year jan4*
quadrantid meteor shower due jan4 night*
reporter behind wmd claims calls assange 'bad journalist'*
fake white house holiday email is cyber attack*