Retro Fifties Sci-Fi Weekend: 'The Thing From Another World'

"The Thing" is Howard Hawke's effort to capitalize on alien invasion craze of early fifties. A brief synopsis supplied by Wikipedia offers "...a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell (writing under the pseudonym of "Don A. Stuart"). It tells the story of an Air Force crew and scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost who are forced to defend themselves from a malevolent plant-based alien being." Huffington Post writer John Farr places "The Thing" as a top sci-fi film of the fifties. "The great director Howard Hawks was quick to jump on the bandwagon [following release of The Day the Earth Stood Still], and that same year produced The Thing From Another World. Here, another spaceship lands in a remote frozen tundra, and when thawed out, another visitor makes itself known, one considerably more frightening than Michael Rennie's erudite alien. It is no less than a pre-Gunsmoke James Arness, playing a very large and frightening creature who clearly should have stayed frozen. The Thing remains gripping, suspenseful entertainment." Kenneth Tobey stars in colorized version in parts on You Tube with James Arness as you've never seen him.  You better watch or the Thing may get you!

Why So Many UFO Sightings?

Have you noticed a rising number of UFO sightings?  You can keep up with the most current reports at www.latest-ufo-sightings.net. Is it an embargo on truth about existence of extraterrestrials or something else?  A prominent conspiracy theory centers on a faked alien invasion at the 2012 London Olympics.  In a 2010 article, "Are the 2012 Olympics part of a plot to take over the world?", Steve Rose compiles conspiracy that's grown into cottage industry. The writer observes a small minority believe they see something besides poor creativity in odd Olympic logo and mascots, and come up with "...a very different answer: we were being primed for the establishment of the New World Order, by means of the greatest hoax in history." The official logo, mascots, brand consultant Wally Olin's Khazarian ancestry or biblical-sounding street names that surround Olympic site, may not be enough to convince you?  A ten minute You Tube video submits a faked alien invasion and landing will be staged with suppressed technology at the Olympic village on 8-11.  The video also illustrates lexagrams encoded in Olympic title (6:15 mark), revealing veiled esoteric symbols and concepts.  You still may not be convinced, but you should be wondering?  The present writer can only ask much as Rose, "are the 2012 Olympics part of a plot to take over the world?"

'Saturn Myth': Symbols of an Alien Sky

Comparative mythologist David Talbott, author of 'The Saturn Myth', suggests our skies have changed dramatically in just a few thousand years. Mythology only makes sense if the Earth's skies appeared differently to ancient sky-watchers. Talbott refers to a time when heaven was close and towering bodies, in a great conjunction, dominated Earth's skies. Was Saturn our planet's first Sun? You may watch 78 minute You Tube video for free. A free download is available of the 1950 book by Immanuel Velikovsky, "When Worlds Collide," a great influence on Talbott and Electric Universe proponents. A previous post on the Saturn Theory adds interpretation of Troy McLachlan. It's still good stuff!

#DataDump: #Discovery, Debacle, #David8 and more

Space Shuttle #Discovery Wows DC in 45min Flyover*

Video: Space shuttle Discovery arrives in Washington*
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Video Playlist: Space Shuttle Discovery*
US military intelligence critic to lead spy agency*
Contradicting Fed. Judge, FCC Clears Google in WiFi Sniffing Debacle*
FCC's Ruling on Google's WiFi Snooping Sets Horrible Precedent*
Video: New App Helps St. George Parents Know Student Progress*
CISPA Isn’t ‘Son of SOPA’ (But That’s Not Saying Much)*
Human brain to be built using supercomputer*
#Pistons Giving Season Ticket Holders Jackets With #Microchips*
Video: Creepy, #Verizon-powered, android #David8 introduced in latest #Prometheus viral video*

US-trained Terrorist Group MKO Plants Stuxnet Malware

from @nilebowie: While both CIA chief David H. Petraeus and US National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper Jr. concede that no credible evidence exists to accuse Iran of constructing a nuclear weapon, the brazen criminality of intelligence operations against Iran’s civil nuclear program remain deeply troubling. ISSSource has recently confirmed that the individuals responsible for planting the Stuxnet computer worm used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz were members of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), a US State Department-listed terrorist organization (#29).

Crowd-Sourcing Brain Research Leads to Breakthrough

from nytimes.com: In the largest collaborative study of the brain to date, scientists using imaging technology at more than 100 centers worldwide have for the first time zeroed in on genes that they agree play a role in intelligence and memory.

Scientists working to understand the biology of brain function — and especially those using brain imaging, a blunt tool — have been badly stalled. But the new work, involving more than 200 scientists, lays out a strategy for breaking the logjam. The findings appear in a series of papers published online Sunday in the journal Nature Genetics.

“What’s really new here is this movement toward crowd-sourcing brain research,” said Paul Thompson, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and senior author of one of the papers. “This is an example of social networking in science, and it gives us a power we have not had.”



The genes, which influence elements of brain size, may have subtle effects on how people think and behave, though many other factors, including education and general health, play a role in intelligence and could easily offset the effect of any single gene.

Still, size matters, in brain research at least as much as in brain function.

“I like this work a lot, because these guys finally did what needed to be done to take a real stab at merging imaging and genomics,” said Dr. Matthew W. State, a professor of psychiatry at Yale, who was not one of the collaborators.

Brain imaging studies are expensive and, as a result, far too small to reliably tease out the effects of common gene variations. These effects tend to be tiny, for one thing, and difficult to distinguish from the background “noise” of other influences. And brain imaging is notoriously noisy: not only does overall brain size vary from person to person, for instance, but so do the sizes of specialized brain regions like the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation.

To solve the numbers problem, Dr. Thompson and three geneticists — Nick Martin and Margaret Wright, both of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Australia, and Barbara Franke of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands — persuaded research centers around the world to pool their resources and create one large database. It included genetic and extensive brain imaging results from about 21,000 people. The team then analyzed the collective data to see whether any genes were linked to brain structure. As the study was being completed, the Thompson group learned that another consortium, led by Boston University researchers, was doing a similar analysis using its own large group.

The two teams’ findings did not completely line up. One found size-related genes that the other did not. But they agreed on two findings: one gene that correlated strongly with overall brain size, and another that correlated with the rate at which the hippocampus atrophies, or shrinks, with age.

People who carried one variant of the overall-size gene had brains that were about 1 percent larger than those of people who carried another variant. The two variants are equally distributed — about half of people have one and half have the other.

In a separate analysis in Australia, Dr. Martin and Dr. Wright found that size correlated with I.Q. People with the larger brains scored slightly higher on a standardized test. The results are all averages, meaning that they hold for the group but say nothing about any individual. (Some very smart people have relatively small brains.)

The collaborators also found that about 10 percent of people carried a gene variant that correlated with a slightly accelerated rate of atrophy in the hippocampus. The hippocampi — there are two, each deep in the brain, one in the right side and one in the left, about level with the ears — are needed to form new memories. People with dementia often show pronounced atrophy in this region. The study was not set up to find a link between the gene variant and dementia, but experts suspect a connection.

The collaboration is not likely to lead to new treatments any time soon, the authors said, and, as always, the findings will need replication before they are conclusive. It is more a beginning than an end, and it illustrates how far the field has to go to get any real traction — and what it will take.

“It means sharing your data, pooling everything,” Dr. Thompson said, “and this is not usually how scientists work.”

Intel Hub Series Underground Bases: Part 2

Richard Sauder is your tour guide to underground bases in America.  Sauder doing fine job with Intel Hub five part series, stirring clear of speculation to report on known bases.   In Part 2, Sauder lists by state bases such as Camp David, Fort Meade and Site R.  Also known as the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, Site R is location former Vice President Dick Cheney spent considerable time, following 9-11 tragedy.  There are fascinating factoids about who runs each base.  Site R is under the auspices of US Army's Fort Detrick.  Fort Meade and Camp David are under direction, respectively, of the NSA and the Navy.  Sauder returns to his hometown, Williamsburg,VA to advise us of low profile Camp Peary, also known as "the Farm," "nominally administered by the U.S. Navy" but run by the CIA.

Sauder shares an anecdote associated with Camp Peary he feels is instructive about feasibility of underground even underwater bases and it's nothing new:

"Camp Peary lies on the York River; immediately to the southeast lies the U.S. Navy’s Cheatham Annex, a major weapons supply depot for the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, part of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station. This interests me, because many years ago I spoke with a woman whose father worked at the Cheatham Annex/Yorktown Naval Weapons Station complex in the years after World War II. He was a construction worker, and at that time, about 60 years ago, the U.S. Navy was building a facility deep below the water line...the instructive part of the story is that even then, 60 years ago, military engineers had the capability to construct facilities below the water line, using high powered pumps and quick setting concrete."

The replies to Sauder's story are also interesting.  Someone with a clearance pass wandered below the Capitol.  The government worker-explorer attests to possibly 14 levels below ground the lowest little more than hollowed out caves.  Another reply believes Sauder is correct in his representation of the Tidewater area  (includes Williamsburg and Camp Peary) of Virginia.  Sauder relates, last in part two, about elevator technology that could provide access to sub-seafloor bases.  The elevator could be located in a leg of an oil rig platform, citing his source. You may access part one of the series here. Sauder convinces readers there are huge facilities not only underground but bases also underwater.