Last year, the Commission released a review of the Act, after an increase in the number of false accusations of sorcery were slammed by human rights groups.
But it’s making headlines again as six people accused of sorcery or witchcraft were killed in West Sepik Province by people who had taken the law into their own hands. Read full story from radioaustralia.net.au
Magic Mushrooms Could Treat Depression
After a psychedelic trip on magic mushrooms, people often describe the experience as mind-expanding, consciousness altering, emotionally insightful and even spiritually transcendent. Now, scientists have peered into the brains of people tripping on psilocybin — the active ingredient in mushrooms — and their results revealed a few surprises.
Instead of opening lines of communication between sensory-oriented regions of the brain, psilocybin appears to shut down activity in two key areas of the brain that regulate our sense of self and integrate our sense of awareness with our sense of the present. Read full story from discovery.com
Now an archaeological dig hopes to find out just what happened to a granite cross which vanished 60 years ago.
Legend has it that a Catholic priest ordered it to be removed from the front of St Patrick’s Church in Wicklow town because of its explicit carvings.
Other rumours say local residents had complained it attracted fairies.
Some residents, though, believe the cross may have been buried in the church grounds by Fr Matthew Blake, now deceased, because he disliked the carvings of nude women on it. Read full story from independent.ie
Paranormal:
UFO spotted in Devon
Gary McDermott snapped the glowing red object, with bright flashing lights, after stopping his car to photograph a low-flying helicopter in Plymouth.
The disc-shaped UFO flashed across the sky – just as he was taking the picture – before it disappeared into the night at 9pm on Sunday.
Mr McDermott, who was working night shifts on the city’s famous Royal Albert Bridge, said: “I just couldn’t believe what I had just seen.
“It must have been a UFO – and I cannot believe I am saying that because I don’t believe in them usually. I am always sceptical.
“But this was definitely not a normal aircraft. It was red, the shape they say UFO aircraft is, and had two bright lights coming out of it. Read full story from telegraph.co.uk
The father of two was visiting a friend who was having surgery in the Archway Road hospital when he was told by nurses of “a strange presence” in the 19th Century arches deep underground.
Armed with his camera and accompanied by a curious Whittington administrator, he descended down to the basement to investigate the paranormal tales. Read full story from london24.com
Pictures: Oldest Dinosaur Nests Found in South Africa
The oldest known dinosaur nests have been found at the same South African park where scientists previously unearthed the oldest known dinosaur embryo (pictured), a new study says.
Paleontologists recently found ten nests—each containing up to 34 tightly clustered eggs—in a nearly vertical cliff in Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Both the nests and the previously discovered embryo date back 190 million years. Read full story from nationalgeographic.com
Media:
The Rise and Fall of the ‘C’ word (Celts)
Currently, the term ‘Celtic’, and its variations, is alternatively loved of loathed by archaeologists, historians, the general public and the media. Why is this? What has happened to the way the word is defined that causes disparity? How did this word mean previously rational archaeologists such as John Collis, Simon James and the Megaws spentd years arguing about the use of ‘Celtic’ as an archaeoligical term? Read full story from heritagedaily.com
“THE WICKER TREE” grows in the U.S.
Fango has learned that writer/director Robin Hardy’s THE WICKER TREE—the British helmer’s semi-sequel to his 1973 classic THE WICKER MAN—has been picked up for distribution in North America and the UK, as early as this fall. The film’s international sales agent, High Point Media Group, will screen THE WICKER TREE at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival on May 14 and 16. Read full story from fangoria.com
Art exhibition offers a psychedelic experience
Visitors are invited to take a trip through hallucinogenic patterns, optical illusions and cosmic landscapes when the latest exhibition at The University of Queensland opens this weekend.
New Psychedelia takes over the entire ground floor of the UQ Art Museum from Saturday, May 7 with pieces by 43 contemporary Australian artists, including one that requires 3D glasses.
“A new psychedelia has undoubtedly emerged in the past decade as an off-spring of the rave party, but also out of the décor of virtual reality and what William Gibson dubbed the ‘consensual hallucination’ of cyberspace,” Dr Edward Colless writes in the exhibition catalogue.
Curator Sebastian Moody said it was debatable whether recent explorations of psychedelia are in fact a countermovement to the “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” mentality of the 1960s. Read full story from ug.edu.au
Environment:
Deadly weather in US could become the norm
It’s been a severe start to the spring season in the United States. Tornadoes have ravaged the southeastern US, flooding threatens much of the Midwest, and wildfires are scorching Texas. But according to researchers, a confluence of seasonal oscillations in weather patterns, rather than climate change, is to blame. And growing populations mean that grim casualty figures from such events may become the norm.
“I don’t think there’s any way of proving climate change is responsible for the weather patterns this week and week before,” says meteorologist Howard Bluestein, of the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Read full story from newscientist.com
Native American:
Apache Leader Jeff Houser on Use of Geronimo’s Name
The day after the news spread that the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, or bin Laden himself, was code-named Geronimo, Fort Sill Apache Tribe Chairman Jeff Houser asked President Obama to issue a formal apology for associating one of the most enduring and heroic figures in Indian country with the name of the man who epitomized global terrorism. Read full story from indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com
News:
Barack Obama pays 9/11 respects at Ground Zero Barack Obama spoke no words as he laid a red, white and blue wreath at the centre of Ground Zero. But then he didn’t need to: the location and the identity of the individuals gathered round him spoke for him.
The location was in the shade cast by the Survivor Tree, an oak that was recently planted at the World Trade Centre for a second time. The first time was in the 1970s, but the tree was later engulfed in rubble on 11 September 2001. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
The archbishop of Canterbury has said the killing of Osama bin Laden left a “very uncomfortable feeling” because it appeared as if justice had not been done.
Bin Laden was shot dead in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. It has since emerged that he was unarmed when US Navy Seals fired at him.
Lambeth Palace had previously refused to comment on the death of Bin Laden but, when asked at a press conference what he thought of the killing, Dr Rowan Williams replied: “I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling; it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
Paranormal:
How Many Intelligent Aliens are Out There?
OK, I’ve had enough. I’ve been looking up at the night sky for 20 years and not once have I ever seen anything that has aroused my suspicion that an alien visitor has popped by Earth to take a look.
The thing is, I am contacted far too often by people saying they have seen an unidentified flying object, or UFO. Being terribly literal, they probably have seen something “unidentified,” and it may look like it’s flying; whatever it is, it certainly is an “object,” but it doesn’t mean it’s aliens. Read full story from discovery.com
UFO, zombie, ghost and witch sightings revealed
DYFED Powys Police has revealed how many sightings of UFOs, zombies, ghosts, witches and vampires occurred in the county in the past five years.
The figures, made public because of a Freedom of Information Request Act, reveal 14 recorded UFO sightings in the past five years, along with 26 reports of ghosts, 11 witches and two of zombies and vampires respectively. Read full story from countrytimes.co.uk
What is often not fully absorbed by onlookers, though, is the underlying role that religious doctrine – or “pulpit power” – plays in the environmental debate in the US. On the one hand, you have the “Creation Care” movement which is prevalent in some quarters of the Christian Church. On the other, particularly among evangelicals, you often see a vitriolic reaction aimed towards environmentalism. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
Police in Munkyuong said they were overwhelmed with the investigation and declined to provide further details.
But local media depicted an elaborate reconstruction of the crucifixion of Jesus, with the victim wearing a crown of thorns and dressed only in his underwear. He put nails into the cross first, then drilled holes in his hands and hung himself on the cross, reports said. Read full story from cnn.com
Zam Zam water is taken from a well in Mecca and is considered sacred to Muslims, but samples from the source suggested it held dangerous chemicals.
Tourists can bring back small amounts from Saudi Arabia, but it cannot be exported for commercial use.
An undercover researcher found large quantities of bottles being sold in east and south London, and in Luton.
The president of the Association of Public Analysts said he would “certainly would not recommend” drinking it. Read full story from bbc.co.uk
World:
Nigerian kids ‘slain as witches’
HUNDREDS of Nigerian children have been severely beaten, burnt or killed after being accused of witchcraft, a British charity was to tell an inquiry overnight.
Stepping Stones Nigeria has compiled a dossier of more than 250 cases of severe violence against children accused of being witches in Akwa Ibom state. Children as young as two have been burnt, poisoned, buried alive or chained up because their families believed they were witches, according to the report. Read full story from australian.com
‘Witch’ killings described in book
A 350-year-old notebook which describes the execution of innocent women in East Anglia for consorting with the devil has been published online.
Puritan writer Nehemiah Wallington wrote passages on his attitudes to life, religion, the civil war as well as the witchcraft trials of the period.
By 1654 Wallington had catalogued 50 notebooks, of which only seven are known to have survived. Four are in the British Library, one in the Guildhall Library, one in the Folger Library in Washington DC, and one at Tatton Park in Cheshire.
The Tatton notebook describes battles and skirmishes of the English Civil War period and the disturbing violence of the 1640s in which dozens of East Anglian women were killed. Read full story from newsletter.co.uk
Government releases UFO sighting and policy files
(Reuters) – The government Thursday released 35 previously classified files documenting sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by the military and members of the public dating back to the 1950s.
The files contain around 8,500 pages which mainly cover the period from 1997 to 2005 and include photographs, drawings and descriptions of flying saucer sightings, as well as letters the Ministry of Defence sent eyewitnesses in response to their accounts.
Policemen, a soldier, a RAF officer and members of the public report sightings of objects including a “chewy mint shaped solid craft” and aerial objects resembling a “ring,” a “jellyfish” and a “silver voile spin top.”
In one account a man said he believed he had been “abducted” by aliens in October 1998 after seeing an unidentified craft hover over his London home and finding he had gained an hour of time in the process. Read full story from reuters.com
As a scholar who has written books and articles on the Bible and homosexual practice, I can say that the reality is the opposite of her claim. It’s shocking that in her editorial and even her book, Unprotected Texts, Knust ignores a mountain of evidence against her positions.
It raises a serious question: does the Left read significant works that disagree with pro-gay interpretations of Scripture and choose to simply ignore them?
Owing to space limitations I will focus on her two key arguments: the ideal of gender-neutral humanity and slavery arguments. Read full story from cnn.com
Spiritual panel explores ideals
The Nordic Lounge was host to the Anthropology Student Association and Pagan club’s Spirituality Panel on Thursday Feb. 24, where leaders and teachers from different faiths shared their personal stories and discussed the main aspects of their respective faiths.
Hinduism; Spirituality of Recovery Programs, also known as the 12 -Step Program; Asatru, a Norse/Germanic Paganism; Soka Gakkai, a form of Buddhism; and Wicca were represented.
The speakers talked about their faiths and shared with the audience their gods, myths and history.
Dennis Price, an undecided major, said, “I really am grateful that the Anthropology and Pagan Clubs make this possible for us. I think it is essential for us to know about the spiritual paths that they took. It’s like putting on different glasses to see different effects.” Read full story from lbcvikingnews.com
US declares eastern cougar extinct
WASHINGTON – The US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the eastern cougar officially extinct Wednesday, even though the big cat is believe to have first disappeared in the 1930s.
The eastern cougar is often called the “ghost cat” because it has been so rarely glimpsed in northeastern states in recent decades. It was first placed on the endangered species list in 1973. Read full story from rawstory.com
13 face charges of arson
THERE was pandemonium at the Naphuno magistrate’s court in Limpopo when 13 people appeared in court for allegedly burning the houses of people they accused of practising witchcraft.
The accused, all aged between 19 and 50 years, were arrested on Monday and appeared on Tuesday on charges of public violence.
Their appearance follows an incident at Santeng village outside Hoedspruit on Sunday when a group of angry villagers allegedly set alight seven houses belonging to people accused of practising witchcraft.
This followed allegations that a 13-year-old girl was caught naked casting a spell over a neighbour’s house just after midnight.
The girl was allegedly arrested and forced to appear before the village’s kangaroo court where she was grilled by the villagers. Read full story from sowetanlive.co.za
Grandmothers get support from safe
In most rural areas in Malawi, elderly people, who are not longer active and need the support of canes to walk, are always suspected of being witches.
One such victim of old age is Daitoni Wala of Nyanu Village, T/A Malemia in Zomba. He lost his wife and two children in 1954 due to a flood that hit Mulanje in the year. Since then, his life has been a misery. Wala says he used to live a good life until he lost his family. And as he grew older, he says, society became hostile towards him.
He says people in the community always suspect elderly people of witchcraft and blame them for any bad thing that happens in the community. Wala says he has no one to assist him and he lives alone in a house which is in a bad state.
However, his dream to live a better life may one day be realised even though he is old. The Sub-Saharan Family Enrichement (Safe), a non-governmental organisation working in Malawi, introduced a group called goo Grandmothers, to provide a support system for the elderly. Read full story from nationnw.net
Sweat lodge trial fuels Native American frustrations
Growing up on a reservation in lower Saskatchewan, Alvin Manitopyes learned early to respect the sweat lodge. He was 10 when he attended his first sweat ceremony, and for more than 15 years tribe elders instructed him in his people’s ways.
He understands the spiritual mandate he was given as a healer to serve as an intermediary between people and the spirit world. He carries with him the ancient ceremonial songs, passed on through generations.
He knows how the natural elements – earth, fire, water and air – work together to cleanse people, inside and out, and create balance. At 55, he has spent more than 20 years conducting ceremonies in sweat lodges, where water is poured over hot lava rocks as part of a purifying ritual.
“If you have the right to do it, then the environment you’re creating is a safe place,” says Manitopyes, a public health consultant in Calgary, Alberta, who is Plains Cree and Anishnawbe. “But today we have all kinds of people who observe what’s going on and think they can do it themselves. … And that’s not a safe place to be.” Read full story from cnn.com
Funeral protest ruling painful but right (CNN) — The Supreme Court ruled that a Kansas church whose members travel the country to protest at military funerals, holding signs that say “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God blew up the troops,” has a right to continue such demonstrations.
The case was brought by Albert Snyder, whose 20-year-old son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was killed in Iraq in 2006. The family-dominated Westboro Baptist Church, run by Fred Phelps, protested at Matthew Snyder’s funeral to spread their opinion that American deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq are God’s punishment for U.S. immorality and tolerance of homosexuality and abortion.
CNN.com talked to CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin about Snyder v. Phelps, which pitted the right of families to grieve in privacy against the First Amendment right to free expression. Read full story from cnn.com
Cracked Mayan Code May Pave Way to Lost Gold
Led by Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing, a group of scientists and journalists left Germany Tuesday, on a mission to Guatemala in search of a lost Maya treasure allegedly submerged under Lake Izabal.
According to the German newspaper Bild, which sponsored the expedition, the expedition includes two reporters from the publication, a photographer, a television camera, and a professional diver who will submerge into Lake Izabal in an attempt to find eight tons of gold said to have been lost there. Read full story from foxnews.com
Charlie Sheen, you are sooo hexed!
A trio of Salem witches, offended by Hollywood hell-raiser Charlie Sheen’s proclamation that he is a “warlock,” are planning a spiritual housecleaning for the “Two and a Half Men” train wreck in the Witch City on Sunday.
“If he doesn’t get some spiritual help, he could end up dead,” said a witch who goes by the name of Lorelei. Just Lorelei. She’s hosting the Sheen-orcism at her witchcraft emporium Crow Haven Corner.
So what will you do Sunday, Loreliei?
“Sacrifice him,” deadpanned the witch, who was immediately chastised by her conjuring colleague Christian Day.
“We’re going to use high ritual and high magic to give him all the help he needs,” declared Christian.
Salem’s sorcerers have their cloaks in a twist ever since Sheen, in an interview with “Today,” said CBS had “picked a fight with a warlock.” Day, a self-proclaimed warlock and the owner of Hex, an “Olde World Witchery” shop, said Charlie seems to be confusing warlocks with warlords. Read full story from bostonherald.com
Tom Paladino, captain of two ferry boats from the Rockaways, says pods of aquatic mammals off the city’s coast have “increased tenfold.”
“We used to see 10 whales a year – now we see 100,” he said. “We saw dolphins almost on a daily basis between June and September.” Read full story from nydailynews.com
The Muslim Brotherhood may gain power in Egypt by default
The spread of the contagion of protest across north Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, has not just been exhilarating, it has also given the lie to the myth that people in Muslim countries have a different mindset to those in the west, and that democracy and secularism are western concepts alien to the political culture of Egypt or Jordan or Yemen. What the demonstrators in Cairo and Tunis have been demanding is not an Islamic state, but a more open, democratic society, with freedom of expression and the protection of individual liberties.
For many, however, the worry remains that the fall of Hosni Mubarak may lead not to a secular, democratic Egypt but to one in thrall to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood; the fear, in other words, that Egypt in 2011 could go the way of Iran in 1979. The outcome of change – especially change as dramatic and anarchic as in Egypt – can never be certain. It could be that the Muslim Brotherhood grasps the reins of power in a post-Mubarak Egypt. But if it does so, it is as likely to have been because of the bad faith of secular politicians as of popular support for Islamism. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
‘Ghost Hunters International’s’ Kris Williams Compares Foreign and Domestic Haunts
As the newest member of Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters International” team, Kris Williams is among the few paranormal investigators qualified to answer the question of whether stories of hauntings are alike or different in North America and other parts of the world.
She says, “There is a difference in that there is so much history overseas.” With the domestic version of “Ghost Hunters,” “The 1700s seemed old. But, well, for example we walked into a castle in Germany and asked how old it was, and they very matter-of-factly said it was built in 1190. Also, you hear more stories of torture.” Ew.
Williams says the team has been exploring stories of hauntings that date back to World War II and World War I as well. Next Wednesday’s (2/2) show has the team “at a fort in Serbia that dates back to the late 1600s, but there was a settlement at the same location that goes back thousands of years. There were some battles. There was an execution wall where they’d line up prisoners. It was creepy. People felt like they were being watched. There were lights and apparitions.” Read full story from bethsmithhollywood.com
Jeffs’ pre-trial hearing scheduled for today
Leader of breakaway church accused of sex assault, bigamy
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS, is scheduled for a pretrial hearing today as his trial date for sexual assault is less than a month from now.
Jeffs is charged with two counts of sexual assault of a child and bigamy.
“Pretrial motions will be heard beginning at 9 a.m. in preparation for trial scheduled for Feb. 21,” said Jerry Strickland, spokesman for the state attorney general’s office.
The venue of the trial has not been determined.
Jeffs has undergone five pretrial hearings since November, when he arrived to Texas. Read full story from gosangelo.com
Great Pyramid has two secret chambers: French architect
A French architect campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza said on Thursday that the edifice may contain two chambers housing funereal furniture.
Jean-Pierre Houdin — who was rebuffed three years ago by Egypt in his appeal for a probe into how the Pyramid was built — said 3-D simulation and data from a US egyptologist, Bob Brier, pointed to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure.
The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference.
“I am convinced there are antechambers in this pyramid. What I want is to find them,” he said.
In March 2007, Houdin advanced the theory that the Great Pyramid had been built inside-out using an internal spiral ramp, as opposed to an external ramp as had long been suggested. Read full story from physorg.com
Tools Suggest Earlier Human Exit From Africa
A cache of stone tools found on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula has reopened the critical question of when and how modern humans escaped from their ancestral homeland in eastern Africa.
The present view, based on both archaeological and genetic evidence, holds that modern humans, although they first emerged in Africa some 200,000 years ago, were hemmed in by deserts and other human species like Neanderthals and did not escape to the rest of the world until some 50,000 years ago.
An archaeological team led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tübingen in Germany now reports the discovery of stone tools 127,000 years old from a site called Jebel Faya in what is now the United Arab Emirates, just south of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. If the new tools were made by modern humans, as the researchers assert, then modern humans got out of Africa much earlier than believed. Read full story from nytimes.com
Did Vikings navigate by polarized light?
A Viking legend tells of a glowing “sunstone” that, when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the sun even on a cloudy day. It sounds like magic, but scientists measuring the properties of light in the sky say that polarizing crystals–which function in the same way as the mythical sunstone–could have helped ancient sailors to cross the northern Atlantic. A review of their evidence was published January 31 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
The Vikings, seafarers from Scandinavia who traveled widely and settled in swathes of Northern Europe, the British Isles and the northern Atlantic from around 750 to 1050 AD, were skilled navigators, able to cross thousands of kilometers of open sea between Norway, Iceland and Greenland. Perpetual daylight during the summer sailing season in the far north would have prevented them from using the stars as a guide to their positions, and the magnetic compass had yet to be introduced in Europe–in any case, it would have been of limited use so close to the North Pole. Read full story from scientificamerican.com
On January 28, 2011 at 1 AM, a UFO orb appeared over the Mount Zion and the Dome of the Rock-Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A video of the UFO orb states, “Two men capture a film of what might be one of the most interesting UFO clips ever caught.
“Witnesses noticed the large oval shaped UFO suspended on the night skyline. At about one minute into the clip the UFO descends almost to ground level directly over the Dome of the Rock-Temple Mount. The oval UFO hovers there for a short while, flashes lights into surrounding buildings then shoots upwards at an incredible speed. Witnesses were totally taken back and amazed at what they had just seen.” Read full story from examiner.com
Hundreds of people staged sit-ins at high street stores around the country as part of a day of action designed to highlight companies it says are avoiding millions of pounds in tax.
In London, protesters successfully forced a Boots (one of the companies campaigners accuse of tax avoidance) branch in Oxford Street to close when police tried to arrest a woman for pushing a leaflet through the store’s doors. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
Haiti one year on: “living in a tent is not really a life”
The angelical voices of a choir dressed in pristine white singing hallelujahs do not match the hellish scenery that surrounds them: piles of debris, an acid stingy smell of rotten rubbish, women crying while waving their hands at the skeleton of what used to be the country’s main Catholic church, Cathédrale Notre Dame de L’Assomption, thanking God for still being alive, but some also blaming him for plunging the Caribbean country into an abyss.
Exactly a year ago the earth grumbled violently, killing 230,000 people and flattening the cities along the centre of an impoverished country that is now no more than a mass of rubble and twisted iron. Today, broken Haitians are commemorating their losses following their hearts and their faiths. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
When Bryan Weinert saw the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in September of last year, including the stabbing of a New York cab driver for being Muslim, vandalismofmosques and a burnt Qur’an left outside a mosque in East Lansing, he felt that it was important for the community to respond.
Weinert, who serves as the board president for the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice (ICPJ), explains, “I saw the hatred, the animosity and the violence, and I thought, ‘This isn’t how we should be treating members of our community.’” So ICPJ began working with local faith leaders, the Ann Arbor City Council and others to respond to the anti-Muslim activities and promote a community that welcomes and respects all. Read full story from annarbor.com
Phelps won’t picket girl’s funeral
Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church won’t picket the funeral of a 9-year-old girl killed in Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., in exchange for getting airtime on two radio stations, a church spokeswoman said Wednesday morning.
Church members earlier had announced plans to picket the funeral of the girl, Christina Taylor Green, who was one of six people killed during Saturday’s shooting spree that also wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
However, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a spokeswoman for the Westboro church, said KXXT-AM, a 50,000-watt radio station in the Phoenix suburb of Tolleson, Ariz., and Canadian station CFNY-FM, 102.1 “The Edge” in Toronto, offered to give the Topeka church airtime to discuss its views in exchange for its members not picketing the girl’s funeral. Read full story from cjonline.com
Interview with P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, Founder of Ekklesía Antínoou
I was fortunate enough to spend some time this past week with Pagan author P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, a scholar, devotee of Antinous, and author of the book The Phillupic Hymns through Bibliotheca Alexandrina and The Syncretisms of Antinous through The Red Lotus Library. He’s been doing some fascinating work in reviving the cultus of the God Antinous within contemporary Reconstructionist Paganisms, so I was very happy when he agreed to answer a few questions.
This interview took place on November 7, 2010. Read full story from patheos.com
Residents of Constanta in eastern Romania found dozens of dead starlings on the outskirts of the city on Saturday.
They alerted authorities, fearing the birds had died from avian flu.
But local veterinary officials decided the starlings had died after eating grape ‘marc’ – the leftovers from the wine-making process. Read full story from bbc.co.uk
So here’s their chance to do something about VAT and all those hidden taxes.
Simply consult their Romanian sisters like Bratara Buzea, who, although she sounds like a Mafia hitman, is actually the Queen Witch of that country. For years Romanian witches have gone about their eerie business untaxed. Read full story from walesonline.co.uk
I asked my nine-year-old son, who attends an ordinary – though high-achieving – primary school in Clapham, what the “collective worship” mandated by English law in his school assemblies consists of. He reports that his assemblies feature a hodgepodge of broad brush-stroke outlines of a variety of religious festivals – Diwali, Eid, harvest festival – mixed in with basic moral messages about things like bullying (bad), being kind (good) and the dangers of Facebook (many). God, he was pretty sure, has never been mentioned and nothing he would describe (within his admittedly limited experience) as “worship” has ever taken place. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
Why people abandon religion
The question of why some people lose their faith and what to do about it has long vexed those who don’t – check the Old Testament for some heated discourse on the topic. Recent polling indicates that the trend toward secularism has increased – even in the United States, one of the most religious countries in the world. The results of the latest American Religious Identification Survey (Aris) reveal that the “nones” – people whose stated religious affiliation is “none” – have grown from 8.1% in 1990, the first year the study was conducted, to 15% in 2008.
A November 2010 article in Christianity Today sought to discover why, and cited “moral compromise” as the first reason, meaning that people leave religion because they want to do things religion forbids, such as have premarital sex. Other reasons include intellectual doubts and being hurt in some way by a church.
Recognising the necessity of understanding specific reasons for specific departures, I propose an overarching reason for why people abandon religion: they leave when the tension becomes too great between what they want and need, and what religion tells them they should want and need. Read full story from guardian.co.uk
But it became an unwelcome place for a new user, who joined the site in early 2009 and called himself “Erad3.” Now – based on the language in his postings, and information about where he logged on – the site’s operators believe Erad3 was accused Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner, 22.
“I’d go with 99 percent,” said Bill Irvine, chief executive of the site’s parent company, when asked how certain he was that Erad3 and Loughner were the same person.
Skull pulled from box renews Bradenton mystery
BRADENTON – Police here are trying to solve a mystery over how an unidentified human skull sat in a box in their property room for more than 35 years until it was discovered last week.
And they have virtually no records to indicate to whom it belongs or what happened to the person.
In late 1974, someone found a human skull submerged in 4 inches of water in an area vaguely described as “near Bradenton.”
The skull was apparently sent by the Bradenton Police Department to the FBI and back again to the local agency’s evidence room, where it was wrapped in newspaper, put in a box, marked with the word “SKULL” and forgotten.
Until last week. Detectives, sifting through old evidence to see if any of it could be used to crack cold cases, found the box, and the skull, and are now trying to figure out to whom it belongs. Read full story from heraldtribune.com
Authorities handling fallout of breaking up polygamist cult One year after police raided the Tel Aviv headquarters of a suspected polygamist cult that involved some 40 children and 20 women, welfare authorities say they are still dealing intensely with the fallout and rehabilitation process of the cult members as they return to live a normative life.
According to information published Tuesday by the Welfare and Social Services Ministry, the 20 wives and 40 children of the yet-to-be convicted cult leader Goel Ratzon continue to receive a wide range of welfare services, including constant psychological monitoring.
“The Goel Ratzon affair is a clear sign that we have a policy of zero tolerance to cults and other groups that prey on vulnerable women and children,” Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog said in a statement Tuesday. Read full story from jpost.com
How would you have ranked them? Has their influence been harmful or constructive? What issue or person do you expect to have the biggest impact in the year to come?
Many of the noted figures making the biggest waves in the world of religion journalism in 2010 have a troubled, sometimes hostile, relationship to religious minorities in general, and modern Paganism in particular. Their prominence and influence are a constant reminder that our freedoms are sustained by secular ideals of a separation between church and state, a concept under constant attack by those who would prefer a “Christian America,” or at least one that gave special dispensation to their majorities. This tension is often characterized as a mere difference of opinion, but this is a fundamental disconnect that allows outlandish statements and associations to be ignored by mainstream media outlets. Read full story from washingtonpost.com
Berwyn Mountains “UFO” mystery deepens
THE mystery behind the famous Berwyn Mountains “UFO” incident has deepened after a document revealed a major military operation was underway that night.
Dubbed the “Welsh Roswell”, on January 23 in 1974 locals reported hearing a huge bang, felt earth tremors and saw a brilliant light in the sky over the Berwyn Mountains.
Now a document from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has surfaced, which reveals a military operation – codenamed Photoflash – was scheduled for that evening.
It involved about 10 military aircraft and a series of powerful flashes across the North Wales coast and Liverpool Bay. Read full story from dailypost.co.uk
Ice Sheets Act as Giant Solar Mirrors Controlling Future Climate Change
Recent Antarctica research may provide critical clues to understanding one of the most dramatic periods of climatic change in Earth’s history – and a glimpse into what might lie far ahead in the planet’s climate’s future.
The giant ice sheets of Antarctica behave like mirrors, reflecting the sun’s energy and moderating the world’s temperatures. The waxing and waning of these ice sheets contribute to changes in sea level and affect ocean circulation, which regulates our climate by transporting heat around the planet Read full story from dailygalaxy.com
Year in Review: Top Stories of July 2010
As the year 2010 draws to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the top stories we’ve seen here at About Pagan/Wiccan. There were archaeological discoveries, tales of religious discrimination, news stories about church/state separation issues, and more. Let’s take a look at some of the most significant stories of 2010, and see how July played out for us. Read full story from Patti’s Paganism / Wicca Blog
Image of the Year: Billion-Year Old “Black Widow” Pulsar Ripping Through Milky Way at 1 Million KPH
The “Black Widow” pulsar is zipping through the galaxy at a speed of almost a million kilometers per hour. A bow shock wave due to this motion is visible to optical telescopes, shown in this image as the greenish crescent shape. The pressure behind the bow shock creates a second shock wave that sweeps the cloud of high-energy particles back from the pulsar to form a cocoon.
The Black Widow, a class of extremely rapid rotating neutron stars called millisecond pulsars, is emitting intense high-energy radiation that appears to be destroying a companion star through evaporation. Read full story from dailygalaxy.com
For Immediate Release Contact: Amanda Knief, Government Relations Manager Phone: 202-495-9974 Email: amanda@secular.org
December 28, 2010 (Washington, D.C.) – Atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other nontheistic Washington, D.C. residents will have no representation at Mayor-Elect Vincent Gray’s first official inaugural event—an ecumenical prayer service entitled “One City … Praying Together” at 8 a.m. Sunday, January 2, 2011.
“We would prefer that a government function such as an inauguration not be entwined with religion,” said Amanda Knief, a Humanist Celebrant and government relations manager for the Secular Coalition for America (SCA). “However, we find it overtly discriminatory when we request to be part of an ecumenical prayer service that is supposed to unite the entire city and are told there is no place for nontheists.” Read full story from richarddawkins.com
A ‘Thing’, or open-air meeting place where Vikings gathered to discuss the law, was discovered in the Birklands, Sherwood Forest, five years ago.
In January 2011 experts plan to survey the hill and see if they can detect signs of buried archaeology and the extent of the site. Read full story from bbc.co.uk
Celebrate the New Year with Intoxicated Animals
When someone starts getting a little too sloshed at a New Year’s Eve party, you can tell them to stop acting like an animal, literally. Many animals seem to enjoy getting a good buzz on just as much as humans.
In fact, some animals may have introduced humans to a number of drugs, including psychedelic mushrooms, alcohol, caffeine, and cocaine.
Even the legend behind Santa’s flying reindeer may have its roots in a psychedelic experience.
Reindeer are known to feed on the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), then stumble about, twitching and making strange noises. The mushrooms contain the hallucinogen muscimol. Read full story from discovery.com
World Religion Day offers spiritual party
World Religion Day will be held Jan. 23 at The Highland Center. As a treat for many locals, keynote speaker will be neurosurgeon Dr. Anil Nanda.
Nanda will represent the Hindu faith.
“I don’t think faith is something you wear on your arm,” Nanda said. “Thomas Jefferson said faith is how you treat other people.”
Each year at World Religion Day there are upwards of 17 different religions represented along with educational services about the different religions. Read full story from shreveporttimes.com
Situated high in the Hollywood Hills, the Hollywood sign has been a cultural landmark since it’s erection back in 1923. Now a group of environmentalists are hoping to light the sign using solar energy. Read full story from treehugger.com
The Medical Power of Ritual
Harvard researcher Ted Kaptchuk trained for five years in traditional Chinese medicine, but then became one of the leading researchers into the placebo effect. In his hands, the fact that patients with some kinds of illnesses get better with dummy pills is a gateway into the ways that other aspects of medicine, including the capacity of doctors to generate feelings of hope, are overlooked in our technology-obsessed health care system.
This morning, Kaptchuk is out with his latest salvo in this research: a study that showed that patients with irritable bowel syndrome improved more if they were given inert sugar pills – even though they were told the pills had no active ingredients and the bottles were labeled “placebo.” Fifty-nine percent of patients who got the obviously fake pill got adequate symptom relief, compared to 35% of those who got nothing. In a press release put out by the Public Library of Science, the medical journal that published the study, Kaptchuk’s co-author, fellow Harvard professor Anthony Lembo, says: “I didn’t think it would work. I felt awkward asking patients to literally take a placebo. But to my surprise, it seemed to work for many of them.” Read full story from forbes.com
An atheist view of December
“Christians don’t deserve a monopoly on holiday cheer,” reads a simple yet loaded statement on the American Atheists’ website.
But how could Christians monopolize a holiday that is based on their beliefs?
It turns out that traditions associated with Christmas have morphed into social norms adopted even among nonbelievers.
Everywhere you turn there are decorations, cookies, and music. But for many of the 5% of Americans who say they don’t believe in God, December is not that different from what it’s like for those affiliated with a Christian religion. Those who don’t believe in the reason behind the holiday still celebrate the season’s concentration on values, family, and kindness. Read full story from cnn.com
The X-rays are helping to build up a 3D picture of this ferocious predator, called a pliosaur, which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago.
The 2.4m-long (7.9ft) fossil skull was recently unearthed along the UK’s Jurassic coast, and is thought to belong to one of the biggest pliosaurs ever found.
The scans could establish if the giant is a species that is new to science.
Pliosaurs are aquatic reptiles belonging to the plesiosaur family. Paddle-like limbs would have powered their huge bulky bodies through the water, and they had enormous crocodile-like heads, packed full of razor-sharp teeth. Read full story from bbc.co.uk
French village threatens to call in army amid flood of doomsday survivalists
Residents of a tiny French village say it is being overwhelmed by outsiders who are intrigued by reports of aliens in the area and believe that the peak looming above may be a sacred mountain that will be a shelter at the end of human civilization.
Villagers in Bugarach, population 189, told The Daily Telegraph these visitors believe that the end of the world corresponds with the conclusion of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012, and that the Pic de Bugarach, highest mountain in the Corbieres wine region, could provide some sort of sanctuary. Read full story from msnbc.msn.com
Do Supernova Explosions Impact Earth Every Few Hundred Million Years?
A University of Kansas research team is exploring the energy of cosmic rays and a possible link to massive prehistoric extinction events. Fossils and cosmic rays appear to have nothing in common. But Adrian Melott, a professor at the University of Kansas, is doing work with high energy cosmic rays to investigate the possibility that one may be linked to the other.
“There are a lot of things that can happen to the Earth that would cause it to get hit by more high-energy cosmic rays,” says Melott. “A supernova fairly nearby (within about 30 light-years) is an obvious one. Another one would be a gamma ray burst in our galaxy that’s pointed at us. And some people think that as we move up and down in the disc of the galaxy, when we get to the top we would get hit by more high-energy cosmic rays. So we don’t know. We have a general idea of the effects on the atmosphere, but people haven’t modeled it very much. Normally they don’t matter, because most of the cosmic rays that hit us are medium and low energy.” Read full story from dailygalaxy.com
Genome of Mystery Human Relative Revealed by 30,000 Year-Old Fossil
A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives, called “Denisovans” after the cave where the fossils were found, who may have lived throughout much of Asia during the late Pleistocene epoch.
Although the fossil evidence consists of just a bone fragment and one tooth, DNA extracted from the bone has yielded a draft genome sequence, enabling scientists to reach some startling conclusions about this extinct branch of the human family tree. Read full story from dailygalaxy.com
Slideshow: Winter Solstice, lunar eclipse met by Druids at Stonehenge (photos)
The winter solstice, lunar eclipse combination may have been a wonder to some, but for Druids at Stonehenge it was a significant spiritual experience. The winter solstice occurs when the Earth’s axis is tilted the furthest from the sun and marks the first official day of winter. The day is often referred to as midwinter and the winter solstice is marked by being the shortest day and longest night. Winter solstice 2010 occurred on December 21, 2010 at 6:38 pm ET. The lunar eclipse of 2010 ushered in the solstice as the eclipse was completed by approximately 5:00 am, December 21, 2010. Read full story from examiner.com
Organisers plan to put up thousands of placards around the UK claiming the season of goodwill is responsible for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime and paedophilia.
They hope the campaign will help ‘destroy Christmas’ in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead. Read full story from dailymail.com
Fact and fiction of Paganism
THE cult film The Wicker Man has a lot to answer for. It featured a naked Britt Ekland tempting virgin cop Edward Woodward on a remote Scottish island before he is burned alive as a sacrifice to appease their Pagan Gods because of a crop failure – a bit different from your average Christian harvest festival. Now there are calls for Paganism to be put on the school curriculum. Should we be worried? Mike Kelly reports
THERE are many misconceptions about Paganism. The most obvious one is that it is somehow related to devil worship or satanism.
One of the reasons for this is an item of jewellery Pagans wear as a symbol of their beliefs – most commonly a pentacle or pentagram, a five-pointed star in a circle. For them it represents perfect balance and wisdom. Read full story from sundaysun.co.uk
Katy Guest: We wish you a merry Solstice. Or whatever…
The next time two smartly dressed young people knock at your door, keep you chatting as if they’re casing the joint and then ask you whether you really understand the true meaning of Christmas, try this: invite them in, brew up some hot mead, and explain to them patiently about a time 2,000 years ago when early Christians went in search of an arbitrary date on which to celebrate an event of middling theological importance in their fledgling religion.
Sitting around a festive Yule tree (redolent of the Norse god Ullr), decorated in tiny, glittering symbols of the end of darkness and the return to light, watch their little faces light up as you share seasonal offerings of meat and sprouts, in communion with the seasonal generosity of nature. Soon they will understand the true meaning of the Winter Solstice. Read full story from independent.co.uk
Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism
PRINCETON, NJ — Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. Thirty-eight percent believe God guided a process by which humans developed over millions of years from less advanced life forms, while 16%, up slightly from years past, believe humans developed over millions of years, without God’s involvement. Read full story from gallup.com
Mysterious craft and lights around the airbases of Woodbridge and Bentwaters in Suffolk were reported around Christmas 1980.
BBC Suffolk’s Mark Murphy presented a special 30th anniversary radio show from the forest in December 2010.
Mr Murphy promoted his favourite theory, but questions remained. Read full story from bbc.co.uk
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart’s
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.
“There’s no guarantee,” said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii. Read full story from yahoo.com
The 5,000-year-old Stone Age tomb is older than the pyramids, and over 32,000 people worldwide applied to witness last year’s magnificent winter solstice.
The tomb’s chamber lights up when the sun rises on a winter solstice morning. It is the only time of the year when the tomb lights up with natural sunlight. Read full story from irishcentral.com
Christmas wrapped up in many cultures
I grew up singing in Greek and English Silent Night and Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly, but why we are decking the “halls” at all? Each year at this time (December), we take the time to decorate our homes during the festive holiday season, hanging baubles on the Christmas tree and placing holly and ivy around the house. But how many of us stop to wonder why we participate in such traditions?
There are countless myths and legends as to why we place a pine tree in our home and hang wreaths on our doors during the winter holiday season.
The festivities of Christmas originate in the fourth century, when Pope Julius I declared that Dec. 25 would be the celebration of Christ’s birth. This can be seen as an attempt to Christianise Pagan rituals during the darkest days of the year and, as such, much of the folklore surrounding Christmas decoration originates from Pagan tradition. Read full story from thestarpress.com
Santa has little connection with Jesus
What connection does Santa Claus have with Christ?What is the real meaning of mistletoe, the holly wreath and orbs on trees?Was Jesus really born on December 25?
Christmas no matter the origin is the most important commercial season of the year. Without the centuries old tradition of exchanging gifts the national economy would be dealt a terrible blow.
Thousands of businesses would go bankrupt. You would be astonished to discover the real truth about the most of all Christian holidays. Anyone can discover the real truth about the pagan origins of Christmas simply by looking up the word and all its accouterments and symbols in the major encyclopedias and history books with the Internet it’s even easier. Read full story from godanriver.com
what can we do now? You and I and all living things
Freeport, Ill. — This is the time of the winter solstice when all people north of the equator experience the shortest days of the year. From earliest times, the turning point to longer days has been a time for celebrations – something that all people around the world have in common.
People have more in common with each other than celebrations. David Suzuki, a highly acclaimed geneticist, in his book, “The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature” explains that it is a scientifically supported fact that each of us is quite literally air, water, soil and sunlight. We have fundamental elements of life in common with other people and with all living things on our planet. And it is a web of living things that maintains these fundamental elements of life. Read full story from journalstandard.com
Prison governors have been issued with a list of eight annual pagan holidays and told pagan inmates can choose four to celebrate.
The festivals include Imbolc – The Festival of the Lactating Sheep – which falls on February 1 and is dedicated to the goddess Brighid. Read full story from dailymail.co.uk
Kinky pagan has appeal rejected by rights tribunal
The man who claimed Vancouver police discriminated against him and refused to give him a chauffeur’s permit because he was a pagan whose sexual practices included bondage, domination, sadism and masochism has lost his appeal to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
Peter Hayes had filed a complaint against the Vancouver Police Board and Const. Kevin Barker after Barker refused to give him the permit needed for his employment as a limousine driver in May 2005.
Hayes said he was denied the permit on the grounds of his religion and sexual orientation. Read full story from edmontonjournal.com
“Wonders in the Sky”: Why we’ve always been obsessed with UFOs
UFO skeptics take note: Strange flying objects have been haunting our planet for much longer than many people think. Over 3,000 years ago, in the Egyptian Nile Valley, a man reported looking into the sky to see a “shining disk” descend and tell him to build a new city. On Sept. 11, 1787, in Edinburgh, Scotland, a group of people reported, “a fiery globe larger than the sun” moving eastward in a horizontal direction and dipping below the horizon before exploding behind a cloud. Eight years later, in the Quangxi province of China, a “large star” rose and fell three times, followed by another star that “crashed in a village.”
According to Jacques Vallee, the French-born astronomer and co-author (with Chris Aubeck) of the hypnotic new book “Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times,” these stories are important not only because they show that flying things have been capturing our imagination for centuries, but because of what they say about our most cherished beliefs and deepest fears. In the book, Vallee and Aubeck list 500 claims of sightings, in chronological order, between the years 1460 BC and 1879, and argue that the commonalities — references to light, round shapes, erratic flight and terror in the observer — offer us real insight into human behavior and our need to find explanation for things we cannot explain.
Salon spoke with Vallee from his home in San Francisco about our religious connection to UFOs, the controversy surrounding his own work — and our endless cultural obsession with flying objects. Read full story from salon.com
Has Environmentalism Lost Its Spiritual Core?
Environmentalism began as a religion. Certainly that’s how paleo-greens like John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, would have seen it. Muir was awakened to nature when he first explored Yosemite in the 1860s, and he felt it in a religious way — he called what would become one of the nation’s first national parks “the grandest of all special temples of Nature.”
Muir’s biographer, Donald Worster, has written that Muir saw his mission as “saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism.” David Brower, a spiritual successor to Muir who would found Friends of the Earth, would say of his staunchest green allies that they had “the religion.” Environmentalism — rooted in nature and the outdoors — was an antidote to secular, technological modern life. Read full story from time.com
“Swamp Loggers” Stumble Upon Bigfoot Nest?
According to the Bigfoot research team, Discover Bigfoot, on one of the latest episodes of the reality television show Swamp Loggers, the crew stumbles upon a Bigfoot nest out in the forests of North Carolina. Some of the crew members from the show photographed their find. The photos show matted grass and large mounds of scat surrounding the nest. The Discover Bigfoot team makes an argument about the similarities of gorilla nests and these so-called Bigfoot nests. Read full story from ghosttheory.com
Ocean Acidification Threatens Global Fisheries
Ocean acidification is likely to threaten the world’s fisheries without sharp cuts to carbon dioxide emissions produced by human activities, the U.N. Environment Programme said Friday.
As CO2 emissions have risen, largely from the world’s increasing appetite for burning fossil fuels, oceans have absorbed more and more of the greenhouse gas. That has shifted the chemistry of the seas, which are now 30 percent more acidic than they were before the start of the Industrial Revolution. Read full story from scientificamerican.com
Cynthia Owie came to Britain on Boxing Day 2008 with her baby daughter, Daniella. She was given leave to remain when Daniella contracted meningitis and required hospital treatment.
Ms Owie was told she would be deported after her daughter died last year, as she had no grounds to extend her stay. Read full story from thisislondon.co.uk
Brave Atheist Activists Illegally Arrested, Later Vindicated A recent episode at the Hawaiian Capitol is stirring public consciousness on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which calls for a separation of Church and State. Atheist activists Mitch Kahle and Kevin Hughes stood up in protest when the Hawaiian Senate president introduced a reverend to say an invocation prayer. Kahle bravely declared the following,
“I object. My name is Mitch Kahle and I object to this prayer on the grounds that it’s a violation of the first amendment of the constitution of the United States. I object”
Guess what happened next? Read full story from ISSA
A season for everyone
ST. GEORGE – Christmas may dominate the holiday schedule, but December is a special and spiritual month for many local residents, regardless of their religious beliefs.
Cedar City resident Melanie Cottam is clear evidence of that.
Though her Cedar City home is adorned with wreaths, candles and even a decorated tree, Cottam said she doesn’t focus her celebrations on Christmas each winter. As a pagan, she and her family observe a different December celebration. Read full story from thespectrum.com
It’s the “when” that we think of — seasons past, what’s to come.
But in astronomical terms, as Mr. Steele notes in his wonderful poem, the seasons also fall under the “where” category.
Where our Earth is tilted determines the seasons. At winter solstice, which this year occurs on the evening of Dec. 21, the axis of our planet is tilted the farthest away from the sun. Read full story from thechronicleharold.ca
Misconceptions about voodoo abound
It’s common for people familiar with Haiti to joke that 90 percent of the country’s inhabitants are practicing Catholics, 10 percent practice a Protestant faith and 100 percent practice voodoo.
But the truth is that “voodoo is a very important part of Haitian life. Americans often just dismiss it as superstition or witchcraft,” said University of Kentucky history professor Jeremy Popkin, who teaches a class called “Haiti in the Modern World.” “It is a religion with deep roots in the African beliefs that were brought by slaves” to the Caribbean nation.
Popkin’s class, which includes a section on the religion, grew out of interest in the country that followed the devastating earthquake in January. Popkin, who wrote a book about the 13-year-long Haitian revolution, said his class was formed in response to a talk about the country held on campus after the earthquake. Read full story from kentucky.com
Wooden cross work of vandals at Alaska store SOLDOTNA, Alaska – A store owner says a wooden cross wrapped to the store sign in Soldotna was an unwelcome act of vandalism that goes against her pagan and spiritual beliefs.
Rondell Gonzalez arrived Thursday at her store, the Pye’ Wackets on the Kenai Spur Highway, and found a makeshift cross about 7 feet tall attached to her business sign with plastic food wrap, the Peninsula Clarion reported. Read full story from adn.com
WikiLeaks to publish files on aliens, UFOs
LONDON: WikiLeaks will publish more secret US diplomatic files relating to aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), said the founder of the whistleblower website Julian Assange and claimed his life was at risk after the recent expose.
Assange revealed he would publish classified US files about aliens and UFOs.
According to the Daily Mail, none had so far satisfied the twin publishing criteria for WikiLeaks: that the documents are original and not self-authored. Read full story from indiatimes.com
Follow up: Does this answer the question of the ghost child?
After examining bobdezon’s modified photo above it all becomes quite clear….At least to me. Of course there are hard core believers out there that will never be convinced but it’s awfully hard to deny. Bea and Red are right in that it’s getting more and more difficult to pass an authentic picture. Sometimes technology can be a bad thing but it’s not going to stop anytime soon. However something tells me that if there ever was an authentic picture to come along there would be something about it that would indicate authenticity. Of course that’s just my opinion but we have to hold out some sort of hope. Read full story from ghosttheory.com
Fossil fish and space shuttle radar images have defined the bed and drainage channels of the long lost lake, which at times was larger than Lake Michigan, stretching as far as 250 miles west of the Nile in southwestern Egypt.
The discovery pushes back the origin of the “Gift of the Nile” floods to more than a quarter million years ago and paints a drastically different picture of Egypt’s environment than is seen today. It also explains the longstanding puzzle of the fossilized fish found in the desert — fish that are of the same kinds that live in today’s Nile River. Read full story from discovery.com
Atheist Ad Campaigns Are All the Rage
Atheists have been trying to get out their message, from city bus ads to the recent controversial billboard displayed at the Lincoln Tunnel which prompted a counter-billboard from the Catholic League. The latest: Co-opting rich billionaires into the act. Recently, the Illini Secular Student Alliance (ISSA), at the University of Illinois, launched a bus ad campaign to set the record straight when it comes to the charitable atheists of our world. Read full story from gothamist.com
Cancun talks start with a call to the gods
With United Nations climate negotiators facing an uphill battle to advance their goal of reducing emissions linked to global warming, it’s no surprise that the woman steering the talks appealed to a Mayan goddess Monday.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you — because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.” Read full story from washingtonpost.com
The report is the result of a large body of data collected by scientists along with indigenous Wapishana and Makushi Indians of Guyana who were trained to conduct wildlife population counts. Read full story from survivalinternational.org
