RealityCarnival

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"The nature of reality is this:
It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden.
--Rumi, 13th-century Sufi mystic

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Headlines: December 22, 2002

Quiet resurgence of psychedelic compounds as instruments of spiritual & scientific exploration
(Source: Brockman's Edge)

The story that has gripped me lately is the quiet resurgence of psychedelic compounds as instruments of both spiritual and scientific exploration. This trend is unfolding worldwide. I just attended a conference in Switzerland at which scholars presented findings on the physiological and psychological effects of drugs such as psilocybin, LSD and MDMA (Ecstacy). At the meeting, I met an American chemist who had synthesized a new compound that seems to induce transcendent experiences as reliably as LSD does but with a greatly reduced risk of bad trips... (Read more...)

Indigo Children have attention deficit disorder
(Source: Carroll's Skeptic's Dictionary)

The main thesis of The Indigo Children is that many children diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder (ADD) or ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are actually space aliens. These children don't need drugs like Ritalin, but special care and training. The book consists of dozens of articles by authors from many walks of life. (Read more...)

Dearborn teens create antigravity machine
(Source: WDHS Radio)

Dearborn Highschool video/computer students are the first high school students in the world to build an "antigravity" machine for 2002-2003 Metro-Detroit Science Fair. Yes, you can say impossible. Yes, you can say it defies Newton's 3rd law of gravity. Yes, you can say it's done with smoke and mirrors. Nevertheless three teenage Dearborn High students, Luke Duncan, 16, Ethan Rein, 17, and Jim Bergren, 16, built and flew an "antigravity" aircraft last Sunday in the school video/computer studio. (Read more...)

Ken Schei founds "Atheists for Jesus"
(Source: Shei's Atheist for Jesus)

My name is Ken Schei, I'm the founder and President of "Atheists for Jesus". And yes, as the name implies, I am an atheist for Jesus. Now, I'm sure that at least some of you (perhaps it would be more accurate to say all of you) are asking: "Just what in the heck is an Atheist for Jesus?" Fair enough! I realize that this may well appear to be a contradiction of terms, so I'd best start out with an explanation of just what I mean by my use of the terms. (Read more...)

Artist coaxes insect larva to make art
(Source: Duprat and Besson, Leonardo)

Since the early 1980s, artist Hubert Duprat has been utilizing insects to construct some of his "sculptures." By removing caddis fly larvae from their natural habitat and providing them with precious materials, he prompts them to manufacture cases that resemble jewelers' creations. Information theory, as explained by biologists such as Jacques Monod and Henri Atlan, helps us understand what seems to be the insect's aesthetic behavior. The activities of the caddis worm, as manipulated by Hubert Duprat, are prompted by the "noise"---beads, pearls and 18-karat gold pieces---introduced by the artist into the insect's environment. This article is based on a conversation between the artist and art critic Christian Besson. (Read more...)

More extramarital flings means happier marriage
(Source: Weekly World News)

TURIN, Italy -- Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . unless you want a stronger marriage! According to a new study, husbands and wives who cheat on each other are more likely to stay together. Dr. Lucielle Ostertag from the Italian Institute of Social Sciences conducted the controversial research. "I started the analysis project to discover how damaging infidelity was to marriages," says Dr. Ostertag. "I was as surprised as everyone when the numbers proved that cheating on your spouse is actually good for your marriage." (Read more...)

Natasha Vita More
(Source: Natasha Vita More)

CREATE/RECREATE: The 3rd Millennial Culture by Natasha Vita-More covers the presently emerging culture by casting a light on the escalating memes, emerging art of creativity, and our possible and quixotic future. It gives a cogent history of the beginnings of transhumanist ideas. The book's "Transhuman Timeline" brings to light the biological, communication, technological, memetic evolution of transhuman ideas and FM-2030's definition of transhuman (Read more...)

People eat living, moving sushi. Why?
(Source: MyInky)

LOS ANGELES - You order sweet shrimp at Haneda Sushi & Seafood restaurant in Koreatown and the chef nods his acknowledgment. On the television above the bar, ESPN is blasting baseball highlights. After a moment, the chef hands you your dish: two shrimp tails wrapped around two heads. You take the plate and the antennae start to wiggle. It's as if they're waving hello, or, more appropriately, goodbye. (Read more...)

People with strange brains
(Source: Pickover)

The strange range of human behavior continues to draw us like moths to a flame. Consider Amanda Fielding who continually performed self-surgery on her braincase, Catharina Geisslerin, the woman who vomited frogs, and the Collyer brothers, who collected so much junk that it crushed them in their own home. Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first dictionary of the English language, was compelled to whirl, twist, and make highly ritualized hand motions when going through doors. When he went for a walk, he touched every post he passed. If he missed one, he went back to touch it. Recent research suggests that obsessive-compulsive child behaviors can be caused by strep infection. Who do you think are the most interesting, eccentric, and compulsive personalities?

Headlines: December 21, 2002

World's most frightening and mysterious tombstone
(Source: Tombstone Traveller's Guide Home)

Mr. Maloney has had this intriguing photo in his possession for many years but has very little information about it. This headstone is located in a cemetery somewhere in Switzerland. It was created by an artist called "G. Pepe," who "currently resides several feet below it." Pepe, whose signature is carved on the side of the stone, sculpted it for use as his own headstone. (Read more...)

The world's longest tongue found in schoolgirl
(Source: BBC)

Here's a world record to set tongues wagging. German schoolgirl Annika Irmler has licked her way into the Guinness Book of Records with her whopping seven centimetre tongue. "My friends always said I had an incredibly long tongue - I could make lots of money with it one day," said Annika. (Read more...)

Parallel universes in science fiction and science
(Source: IncuBLOGula)

Alternate universes may exist besides our own in some ghostly manner. Various science-fiction series explore parallel universes, but what do serious physicists think? Hugh Everett III's doctoral thesis outlines a controversial theory in which the universe at every instant branches into countless parallel worlds. Physicist Andrei Linde's theory of self-reproducing universes implies that new universes are being created all the time through a budding process. Stephen Hawking's quantum cosmology also suggests the possibility of other universes connected by wormholes. (Read more...)

Are Science and Religion Compatible?
(Source: Kurtz, CSICOP)

We need separations between religion and science, ethics, and the state. But there is an appropriate domain for religion, and in this sense science and religion are not necessarily incompatible. That domain is evocative, expressive, emotive. Religion presents moral poetry, aesthetic inspiration, and dramatic expressions of existential hope and yearnings. (Read more...)

Britney Spears to speak at MIT
(Source: MIT News)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Britney Spears will visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, April 16, to deliver a major address on the history of western music that will be broadcast live in the United States and around the world. Attendance in the 1,200-seat Kresge Auditorium will be limited to the MIT community and invited guests. Notable national personalities including former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Laureate Professor Paul Samuelson will be expected to attend the address. MIT President Charles M. Vest commented, "I am very pleased that Britney Spears will visit MIT and share her thoughts with us. We are very fortunate to host the nation's revolutionaries from time to time. As an educational institution, it is our duty to clarify the misconceptions people have had about music over the past thousand years, and introduce them to the truth about the heroes of western music." (Read more...)

Spencer Tunick has naked people lie on road
(Source: Something is Burning)

Spencer Tunick, Williamsburg Bridge, NYC. "Sometimes I feel like I am an explorer, sometimes I feel like I am a criminal, sometimes I feel like I am an artist. I create my work under very stressful conditions." (Read more...)

Susannah Breslin
(Source: Via BoingBoing)

Porn connoisseur, intellectual, and sex-culture critic Susannah Breslin is an L.A.-based writer whose work explores sexuality and technology, among other things. She's also a photographer and a comics artist. Her Reverse Cowgirl's Blog, in which she "attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection" is presently being transformed into a TV pilot for A Big Network (Read more...)

Sushi boat photo of the week
(Source: Kai)

Sushi boats delight the eye. (Read more...)

Science and humor
(Source: Pickover)

Consider funny science cartoons appeal to many of us, like this one or this. Whacky patents also delight the mind and tickle the funny bone. Absurd humor makes us wonder what the heck is going on. And what the hell is Cindogu really all about? What are you favorite science sites with humor or absurdity?

Headlines: December 20, 2002

Police hunt hallucinogenic toad thief
(Source: Lycos)

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police are investigating whether drug addicts raided a pet shop and stole three exotic toads whose warty skin can induce hallucinations when licked. The animals were snatched from a pet shop near a drug addicts' center in the city of Leeuwarden in the northeast of the Netherlands on Wednesday. "There has been quite a bit of trouble with junkies and there is a drugs crisis center near the shop, so it is quite possible, naturally we are looking in that direction too," police spokesman Harry Oenema told Reuters. (Read more...)

Beware the skinwalkers
(Source: Knapp, Los Vegas Mercury)

But run-of-the-mill UFO events don't begin to describe the rich array of unusual phenomena in this area. The Ute Indian tribe has been here far longer than white settlers. Tribal leaders are reluctant to speak to outsiders, but their oral history is replete with examples of strange creatures and sightings. Indian lore refers to some of these beings as Skinwalkers. (Read more...)

Researchers create their own mathematical spider art
(Source: Pickover)

Consider a race of spider-beings named Mygalomorphs who spend their days spinning webs upon circular frames. Status in their society is based on the beauty of their webs. To create the web patterns, the spiders string a straight piece of web from one point on the circle to another. Usually the patterns are dull and uninspiring, and therefore most spiders are relegated to lower societal classes. (Read more...)

Eye-popping discovery of Elizabeth Targ, M.D.
(Source: Bronson, Wired)

Astonishing story of doctor who subjected faith to rigors of science and then became a test subject herself. In July 1995, back when AIDS was still a death sentence, psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ and her co-researchers enrolled 20 patients with advanced AIDS in a randomized, double-blind pilot study at the UC San Francisco Medical Center. All patients received standard care, but psychic healers prayed for the 10 in the treatment group. The healers lived an average of 1,500 miles away from the patients. None of the patients knew which group they had been randomly assigned to, and thus whether they were being prayed for. During the six-month study, four of the patients died - a typical mortality rate. When the data was unblinded, the researchers learned that the four who had died were in the control group. All 10 who were prayed for were still alive. (Read more...)

Weird woman has a taste for harboring frogs in her bod!
(Source: Pickover)

In 1642, Mrs. Catharina Geisslerin was widely known as "the toad-vomiting woman of Germany." She told people that she had swallowed tadpoles in swamp water, and that frogs were thriving in her intestinal tract. Whenever she drank milk, the frogs would hop about madly. Despite initial skepticism, she convinced physicians that amphibians were in her digestive system -- especially after she vomited fully-grown frogs (sometimes living) for two years in front of famous professors and medical consultants (Read more...)

42 Percent Of Office Drones Have Sex At Work
(Source: NCBuy)

CHICAGO (Wireless Flash) -- It's amazing any work gets done at the office because 42 percent of Americans say they've had sex on the job. According to a new sex survey in the upcoming "Playboy" magazine, 38 percent of men and 48 percent of women have been working their bodies on company time. However, when it comes to workplace whoopee, the ladies have the men beat. -- 46 percent of women have bedded their boss compared to only 18 percent of men. -- 45 percent of women have had sex on their desk, compared to only 33 percent of guys. -- Finally, 20 percent of ladies will gladly sleep with interns compared to only 12 percent of men. (Read more...)

Dr. Kushnareva Yulia Efimovna
(Source: Aeiveos Research Library)

Research Interest: Life extension. Mechanisms of longevity and the role of mitochondria in aging process. Education: Department of Biophysics, Biology Faculty, Moscow State University. Graduate Student in Department of Biophysics, Biology Faculty, Moscow State University December 17, 1990 PhD in Biophysics, (Biology Faculty, Moscow State University) Dissertation: Regulation of ion permeability of mitochondria under conditions of free-radical reactions. (Read more...)

Sushi Jewlery
(Source: Kai)

Sushi necklace contains various sushi; nigiri, maki and temaki. It also includes pickled ginger and wasabi. (Read more...)

Art from Physics
(Source: Pickover)

Art from physics: it's a groovy gas. It's transonic flight. It's a pi-muon death cycle. It's a dark matter detector. It's a Super-Kamiokande with 9000 neutrino eyes. Dream on!

Headlines: December 19, 2002

People near death see a silver cord
(Source: Near-death.com)

NDE researchers have documented experiences of people who leave their physical body at death and see a "silver cord" connecting their physical body to their spirit body. This silver cord seen at death operates in a similar function to the umbilical cord seen at birth. The existence of this silver cord can even be found in the Bible: "Remember him, before the silver cord is severed ... and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." (Eccl. 12:6-7) (Read more...)

Bigfoot is dead
(Source: MSNBC)

This is a 1977 still photo made from a 16mm film reportedly showing the legendary Bigfoot cavorting in northern California. The man who launched the "Bigfoot" legend has died, and family members say they can now reveal the truth: Ray L. Wallace was the Bigfoot in the movie. Was �Bigfoot� hoax meant to scare thieves? (Read more...)

Google Search patterns, trends, and surprises
(Source: Google)

2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world. Whether you are tracking the global progression of the "Las Ketchup" craze or finding out who really is the queen of the Internet, the 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist enables you to look at the past year through the collective eyes of the world on the Internet: 1. spiderman, 2. shakira... (Read more...)

Isaac Asimov, Ronald Regan, and God
(Source: Positive Atheism)

Some time ago, Ronald Reagan pointed out that one couldn't trust the Soviet government because the Soviets didn't believe in God or in an afterlife and therefore had no reason to behave honorably, but would be willing to lie and cheat and do all sorts of wicked things to aid their cause. Naturally, I firmly believe that the president of the United States knows what he is talking about, so I've done my very best to puzzle out the meaning of that statement. (Read more...)

Bloody teeth boost memory
(Source: Nature)

Watching a gory tooth extraction helps people remember unrelated facts, brain researchers have shown. Excitement, they suggest, aids memory formation - students or the elderly could capitalize on this to improve their recall. Psychologists have long known that emotionally charged events are easier to remember than boring ones. They thought that this was because we mull over poignant moments, strengthening the memory. Not so, says Kristy Nielson of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A flood of emotion boosts people's memories for totally unrelated events, she revealed yesterday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Orlando, Florida. (Read more...)

Women More Likely to Sleep with Interns?
(Source: Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Women are more likely than men to have sex with an intern at work, according to a Playboy magazine poll that also found that two-thirds of female respondents had slept with a co-worker. Among male respondents, half had slept with co-workers, said Playboy, which polled more than 10,000 men and women in an online survey in August. (Read more...)

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi
(Source: Fiorella.com)

Described by Time Magazine as "a cross between Carl Sagan and Madonna", astrophysicist, author and recording artist Dr. Fiorella Terenzi received her doctorate in physics from the University of Milan, has studied opera and composition at Conservatory G. Verdi, and taught mathematics and physics at Liceo Scientifico, Milan. In research at the Computer Audio Research Laboratory, University of California, San Diego, she developed techniques to convert radio waves from galaxies into sound - released by Island Records on her acclaimed CD "Music from the Galaxies". (Read more...)

The World's Most Deadly Feast?
(Source: About.com)

Fugu is a fish which contains deadly poison in the organs. Despite the risk, fugu dishes remain as special feasts in Japan. Even the milt is considered as a great delicacy. Fugu is referred to as blow/globe/puffer fish since it blows its body up. The kanji (Chinese characters) used to write fugu indicates "river pig." In western Japan, fugu is called "fuku," which means "to blow" or "happiness." It's reported that about 40 kinds of fugu are caught and cultured in Japan and that 10000 tons of fugu are consumed each year. Shimonoseki-city in Yamaguchi, is known as fugu city and supplies a large amount of fugu. (Read more...)

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." --Albert Einstein