Hosted by Dr.G., a Renegade Illuminati with Thee Temple [link].
Stranger News
[futurism.com] [kurzweilai.net] [eurekalert.org]
* "True visionary: Scientists find woman who sees 99mn more colors than everyone else" (2016-07-25, rt.com) [archive.is/NMudE] [begin excerpt]: Scientists have discovered a woman with perhaps the most amazing, superhuman eyes ever, as she can recognize millions more colors than the rest of us.
After more than 25 years of searching, neuroscientists have found a woman with an extra cone cell in her eye. This means she has the ability to see a staggering 99 million more colors than the average person.
What’s even more interesting is that the scientists believe she is just one of a number blessed with the same special power. They call them ‘tetrachromats’, while those of us with more ordinary eyes are called trichromats, meaning we have three different types of cone cells in our eyes. [end excerpt]
An approximate version of how a Tetrachromats view the visual spectrum [is.gd/8yx46y]
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* "The birth of quantum holography—making holograms of single light particles" (2016-07-19, phys.org) [archive.is/V1F82]
* "Scientists generate first direct short-wavelength spin waves" (2016-07-19, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/2hEdc]
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* "Researchers use tough sea slug muscles to build a biohybrid robot The bot can crawl like a turtle, but it's slower than a slug" (2016-07-19, theverge.com) [archive.is/5iA6I]
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* "Science analyzes rare rapport between birds, people" (2016-07-21, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/LeYsu]: For generations, people in Africa have partnered with wild birds called honeyguides to find bees' nests and honey, and scientists said Thursday they have analyzed this rare rapport for the first time.
The bond has benefits for both -- the humans subdue the bees with smoke and harvest the honey, while the birds eat the wax from the hive.But just how this communication works took on a new dimension when scientists found that certain calls used by hunters from the local Yao community in Mozambique were far more likely to encourage birds to lead them to honey.
The birds themselves use certain calls to find humans, and when humans respond with a call that sounds like a loud trill followed by a short grunt, "brrr-hm," the birds were far more likely to lead them to honey than if the people responded with a simple word or another kind of bird's call.
"The traditional 'brrr-hm' call increased the probability of being guided by a honeyguide from 33 percent to 66 percent," said researcher Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town.
"And the overall probability of being shown a bees' nest from 16 percent to 54 percent compared to the control sounds."
Honeyguides are found across sub-Saharan Africa, and depending on the area, people use different calls to recruit them.
The small brown birds also exploit other birds for their own gain. For instance, honeyguides lay their eggs in cuckoo nests. Within days of hatching, their young use sharp hooks on the end of their beaks to kill baby cuckoos so they can have the nest to themselves.
"The greater honeyguide is a master of deception and exploitation as well as cooperation -- a proper Jekyll and Hyde of the bird world," said Spottiswoode.
"What's remarkable about the honeyguide-human relationship is that it involves free-living wild animals whose interactions with humans have probably evolved through natural selection, probably over the course of hundreds of thousands of years."
This partnership was first written down in 1588, when a Portuguese missionary, Joao dos Santos, saw a petite bird making its way into his church -- in what is now Mozambique -- to nibble on candles.
He also described how the bird led men to bees' nests by calling and flying from tree to tree. Once the people harvested the honey, the bird fed on the wax.
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* "Monkeys in Brazil have used stone tools for hundreds of years at least; New archaeological evidence suggests that Brazilian capuchins have been using stone tools to crack open cashew nuts for at least 700 years, and the new research paper asks whether human behaviour was influenced through watching the monkeys" (2016-07-11, ox.ac.uk) [archive.is/Yyc2p]
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* "Orangutan wows scientists by aping human speech" (2016-07-27, rt.com) [archive.is/Uet5t]
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* "How plants sense electric fields; An international group of researchers has pinpointed the sensor plants use to sense electric fields. A beneficial side effect: Their work could contribute to the understanding of how the Ebola virus enters human cells" (2016-07-06, uni-wuerzburg.de) [archive.is/C5wFP]
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The Kingdom of North Sudan [kingdomsudan.org]
* "The Man Who Would Be King; Virginian Jeremiah Heaton went viral last year by proclaiming himself king of “North Sudan.” Now he says he did it all to save mankind" (2015-05-21, slate.com) [archive.is/TvoBW] [begin excerpt]: Last summer, the Internet was briefly captivated by the story of a Virginia farmer who traveled to an uninhabited patch of desert known as Bir Tawil in northeast Africa to plant a flag and proclaim the new “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess [archive.is/KTSV3].
“I was not prepared for this story to go viral. I posted one Facebook post about it, then the local newspaper picked it up, and from there it went to the AP wire,” he says. “Unfortunately, the media was very focused on me making Emily a princess, and we never had the opportunity to delve into detail about what our plans are.”
In a bid to put those plans into action, Heaton launched an IndieGogo campaign this month [archive.is/uEb4e] for what he’s calling the “world’s first crowdfunded nation,” devoted to finding innovative solutions for energy efficiency and growing food in an era of climate change. Heaton is currently aiming to raise $250,000, for “concept development.” If that comes together, he says he will go on to “identify and solicit the world’s best agricultural scientists, renewable energy experts, water purification specialists, plant nutritionists, social scientists, geologists, climatologists urban planners, regional experts and other consultants needed to create the North Sudan Scientific Fund Committee.”
If Heaton’s plan sound a little (or a lot) pie-in-the-sky—well, it is. “With this experiment, we get to see what happens when you fully fund a nation to be energy efficient from the very beginning,” Heaton tells me, noting that even in the green belt of Virginia, more erratic weather patterns have made growing crops more difficult. “With climate getting worse and worse, if you can overcome the difficulties of growing food in the desert, you can take those lessons and apply them to more temperate areas.” He points to Japan’s experiments with LED-powered indoor farms as a potential model [archive.is/C30y0].
Heaton told me that he envisions “a city in the desert that maximizes the use of space and maximizes energy efficiency,” providing a “home for people who have a love for this Earth that want to work to help advance this science.” He says he hopes to one day foster efficiency innovation “in a very similar way to how Elon Musk developed the electric car,” though he concedes that “the difference between myself and Elon is that we need to raise the money, and he’s already got it available.”
Heaton did recently get some money from Disney, which bought the rights to make The Princess of North Sudan into a feature film [archive.is/aoxuH]. Given that he felt too much attention had been paid to the princess angle before, I asked if the film would also include his environmental plans. “Due to contractual obligations I cannot discuss the movie project at this time,” he answered. News of the Disney deal prompted an online backlash [archive.is/X6AK1], with critics objecting to a movie presenting a white American man claiming territory in Africa as a heartwarming fairy tale. Heaton dismisses the notion of colonialism leveled at him. “Bir Tawil was not a country nor does it have a population,” he told me. “Basically, colonialism is when one country takes over another for purposes of exploitation of people and resources. My actions do not fit the definition of colonialism in any way. The term for what I have done is establishment of a new nation, something that has not been seen using terra nullius land in hundreds of years.” He says he has “never viewed the world through any type of racial lens.” [...]
The fate of North Sudan might not really be up to the visionary or the skilled. North Sudan is located on a patch of land on the border between Sudan and Egypt that, due to an odd quirk of geopolitical history, is claimed by neither country [archive.is/iclzI]. Heaton claims he has spoken with Egyptian officials and that once funding is in place, “we’ll formalize our diplomatic ties.” He acknowledges that things could be more complicated with Sudan, given tensions between that country and the United States. “At the end of the day, I still have the United States of America stamped on my passport. I have to be very careful as leader of North Sudan in developing business relations in ways that won’t fall afoul of sanctions,” he says. [end excerpt]
* "Disney’s ‘The Princess of North Sudan’ Will Depict a White Child From Virginia as African Royalty" (2015-05-22, atlantablackstar.com) [archive.is/2VsI8]
* "Here's Why Everyone's Is Outraged Over Disney's New "Princess of North Sudan" Movie; Who thought this was a good idea?" (2016-05-16, seventeen.com) [archive.is/awFKt]
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Space News
* "Taiwan to make lunar lander for NASA moon-mining mission" (2016-07-18, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/hns4a]: Taiwan is building a $47 million lunar lander as part of the first ever moon-mining project, officials said Monday.
The lander, to be made by the island's Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, will carry a rover and touch down on the moon's surface after a three-day journey from Earth.
US space agency NASA is leading the project, which is called Resource Prospector and aims to be the first mining expedition on another world.
The rover is designed to excavate hydrogen, oxygen and water from the moon, NASA says on its website.
"To be honest, the schedule is pressing," Han Kuo-chang, the head of CSIST's international cooperation programme, told AFP, adding that the US would supply the rover and the lander's descent propulsion system.
"Should the Resource Prospector prove to be successful, the moon could be used as a base for space journeys into Mars," Han said.
It is the first time Taiwan has built a lunar lander. CSIST is required to deliver the 3.7-tonne vehicle to NASA before the end of 2018, according to the agreement signed between Taiwan and the US space agency.
NASA is due to launch the moon-mining mission early in the 2020s.
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* "Was NASA’s codename for UFOs accidentally revealed?" (2016-07-23, rt.com) [archive.is/di1KZ]:
A recent recording from the International Space Station has rumors flying that a ‘nervous’ astronaut may have accidentally revealed NASA’s secret code word for a UFO.
According to UFO blogger Scott Waring, the live recording from the ISS contained some suspicious references to the gospel, a word that appears to be out of the ordinary for astronaut chatter.
"On a personal level I look forward to this partnership with the gospel, really around the world,” the astronaut – likely Commander Jeff Williams – can be heard saying.
This caused UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists to claim that the word ‘gospel’ was a code word for aliens, and that the astronaut was about to head off to meet some extraterrestrial beings.
Video footage from the feed shows a mysterious dot of light on camera, which some say is the UFO the astronauts were discussing.
Despite the excitement surrounding the discovery, the theory was dismissed by hoax-buster Scott Brando, who runs ufoofinterest.org [archive.is/G4Tca], "Don't be fooled by the hoaxer SecureTeam10: this is not a #UFO but another lens flare."
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Ancient News
* "Stoned Age: Did pot dealers found Western civilization?" (2016-07-20, bohemian.com) [archive.is/shsfy]
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* "Prehistoric genomes from the world's first farmers in the Zagros mountains reveal different Neolithic ancestry for Europeans and South Asians; International research team demonstrates that populations in the ancient Fertile Crescent are the ancestors of modern-day South Asians but not of Europeans" (2016-07-14, uni-mainz.de) [archive.is/nnZlL]
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* "Was Noah's Ark ROUND? 3,700-year-old clay tablet reveals giant boat was made out of reeds and bitumen; Dr Irving Finkel has translated cuneiform text on an 3,700-old clay tablet; The ancient script details the Mesopotamian story of Noah's Ark; The text also contains instructions on how to build an ark to escape a flood; But its describes the craft as being a round 220-ft diameter coracle; The design is very different to the popular imagining of a traditional ship" (2014-01-24, dailymail.co.uk) [archive.is/ILtfg] [begin excerpt]:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AN ARK -
The text describes god speaking to Atram-Hasis, a Sumerian king who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the ark story.
He says: 'Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the boat that you will built with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same.'
The ancient Babylonian text describes the ark as a round 220-ft diameter coracle with walls 20-ft high.
According to the tablet, the ark had two levels and a roof on the top.
The craft was divided into sections to divide the various animals into their own sections.
The 60 lines of text, which Dr Finkel describes as a 'detailed construction manual for building an ark', claims the craft was built using ropes and reeds before being smeared with bitumen to make it waterproof. [end excerpt]
Photo caption: Irving Finkel, curator in charge of cuneiform clay tablets at the British Museum, poses with the 4000 year old clay tablet containing the story of the Ark and the flood, that claims the Ark was actually round
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* Root Race Research @RootRaceResearch [facebook.com/RootRaceResearch], with Mike Laplume [facebook.com/mark.laplume.5]
* Brien Foerster [facebook.com/Shipibospirit]
* Chris Dunn [facebook.com/chris.dunn.5817]
* "DNA Results For Paracas Elongated Skulls" (by Brian Forester, via hiddenincatours.com) [archive.is/yDBdL]:
The results are in from the recent testing of 4 skulls from Paracas, and said results are both amazing and mystifying. The standard story of the populating of the Americas believes that all of the ancestors of Native Americans, prior to the arrival of Columbus was via the Bering Strait, more than 10,000 years ago…period.
What the above map shows is that most academics believe that both sea and land routes were used, but again that basically all migration, prior to about 530 years ago was from the extreme area of eastern Asia…
And the above map shows the genetic haplogroups associated with these migrations; A, B, C, D and X…and that is all…what is amazing about the Paracas DNA results are that they WERE NOT from any of the above haplogroups…
Above right is a 20 month old baby Paracas whose DNA was analyzed. He died 1950 years ago and was found in a royal tomb. The only haplogroup that was recovered showed that at least some of the ancestry of this child was from northern Europe. Its hair colour when unwrapped was distinctly light red. Curious to say the least!
This mummified head was found in the same ancient cemetery as the above baby, and the only haplogroup that could be distinguished showed ancestry from the Middle East; not eastern Asia. As you can see it too has red hair. It is believed to be about 2000 years old.
This skull was also found in the same cemetery, has thin wavy red hair as can be seen, is thought to have died about 2000 years ago, and also showed only Middle Eastern ancestry. It is not known if all of the 4 tested skulls also had Native American ancestors, as no other haplogroups showed up in the tests.
And finally, the above skull, which was in fact found in the same tomb as the baby, and is presumed to be a relative, also has thin and wavy red hair. It too is presumed to be about 2000 years old since it would be contemporary with the baby, and the only haplogroup present from its tests showed again Middle Eastern ancestry.
Thus, so far we are looking at people with European and Middle Eastern ancestry population the coast of Peru 2000 years ago. Many more skulls will be part of an advanced series of DNA tests once permission for sample extraction and shipping out of Peru is allowed by the Peruvian government. So far we have been waiting 18 months for this.
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This grand Indian irrigation system near Pisco, a coastal town south of Lima, fell to developers' bulldozers—the photograph dates from 1931.
Cymatic stone cutting demonstration [https://youtu.be/y9lcLNZKtcM]
* "The Star Hole in Volda, Norway" (skyoye.com) [archive.is/LfqXD]
* "Pentagonal & Star Holes at the Flynt Quarry, Monson MA" (stonestructures.org) [archive.is/J4h9j]
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* "Study Reveals Queen Elizabeth II Is A Descendant Of Prophet Muhammad; Queen Elizabeth, as claimed by some historians, is a descendant of a Muslim King whom himself is a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad. While this may be a little too overwhelming to digest for the layman but to genealogists, this is common sense" (foundily.com) pg. 1 [archive.is/uLAlT], pg. 2 [archive.is/iZF85]
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* "Cave art reveals religious encounters between Europeans and Native Americans" (2016-07-19, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/ieirX]
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