A cobra has escaped from its enclosure and is on the loose at the Bronx Zoo. Everything is FINE, just stay away from the Reptile House.
“While the roughly 20-inch-long Egyptian cobra – a highly venomous species of snake – has been unaccounted for since Friday afternoon, zoo officials say they’re confident it hasn’t gone far and isn’t in a public area. Its enclosure was in an isolation area not open to visitors.”
[Aol News]
According to a new documentary airing in Europe, the God of all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam… had a wife.
And her name Asherah.
And she has largely been scrubbed out of the Bible.
And she is probably pissed.
“You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him,” writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. “He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many … or so we like to believe.”
“After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife,” she added.
Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.
The Asherah theory has been around since 1967 but the recent work of Exeter’s Francesca Stavrakopoulou is most credible evidence found to substantiate the claim.
As many of you may remember, last year J. Craig Venter and his team created the first synthetic life form by replacing the genetic code of the bacterium Mycoplasma capricolum with DNA that they created themselves. In order to create and identify thier own DNA, they composed it from two quotes. One quote was from Richard Feynman (and was actually misquoted), and the second quote was from James Joyce’s A Potrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Not long after this announcement Venter received a cease and desist letter from the Joyce estate claiming violation of fair use. So now there is a situation where life was created using information that falls under copyright and is faced with a cease and desist letter. Does this mean that the life must be destroyed? The bacterium has already reproduced and is a viable life form.
“Which brings to mind the question…are we now nearing a point where copyright law can result in the retraction of a life form?”
It will be interesting to see where this case ends up.
Although slowly killing the trees, the phenomenon is seemingly helping the local population. People in Sindh have reported fewer mosquitos than they would have expected given the amount of stagnant water in the area. It is thought the mosquitoes are getting caught in the spiders’ webs, reducing their numbers and the associated risk of malaria.
As reported on UFO Casebook, a Louisiana star gazer looking to get some shots of the recent Supermoon might have snapped a pic or two of an unsuspecting space craft not used to being visible in regular moonlight.
The object apparently held perfectly still while the entirety of the photographers family took turns locating it with the camera.
Ever wondered if there was a degree ever more impractical than your double major of philosophy and sociology? We encourage you to submit your application to Kemerovo State University where you can become culturally enriched and educated at their recently announced Yeti Institute.
The facility comes after a recent run of Abominable Snowman sightings in the Siberian mountains. It will be headed up by Igor Burtsev who believes the current creatures being spotted are surviving Neanderthals.
He explains:
‘We spoke to local residents’, said Dr Igor Burtsev, who conducted an expedition last summer and will head the new institute at Kemerovo State University. ‘They told us Yetis were stealing their animals.’
The academic claims around 30 Yetis live in a remote region of Mount Shoria in in southern Siberia.
He strongly denies accusations that the ’sightings’ are a bizarre ruse to attract tourists to the far-flung region.
Reports say the two-legged creatures are heavy-set, more around 7ft tall and resemble bears.
‘Their bodies were covered in red and black fur, and they could climb trees,’ said one account.
We immediately have two questions. Is there anything more awesome than this? Will they accept transfer credits from community college?
[Daily Mail via Cryptomundo]
What’s more surprising, that we’ve radically reshaped our understanding of physics or that it happened by way of a violent message board flame war? Brian longs (via a series of increasingly complicated metaphors) for the day when we can find life under the frozen waves of a far away planet. Justin joins the Nation of Islam in their belief that a Wheel In The Sky keeps on turning. Andrew wrestles with an email which credits him for inventing a device that opens up a line of communication to the great beyond.
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We aren’t out and out saying this is definitive video proof that a ghost came down from heaven and blocked this goal from going in so the LA Kings could secure a better seeding in the NHL playoffs, but consider the similarities between this and the 1994 family comedy Angels In The Outfield.
First, both took place in the greater Los Angeles area.
Okay, that’s pretty much it. Unless Christopher Lloyd is dead and turned into a ghost so he could replay his role as Al the mischievous head angel in reality. But Christopher Lloyd isn’t dead.
Is he?
[YouTube]
“[It] just latched on to my shoulder, and I went back and it’s a gray squirrel,” victim Kevin McDonald told the TV station.
McDonald was shoveling snow outside his home when the sneak attack began. “He was holding on. He wouldn’t let go. I was finally able to get him off, and as soon as I got him off, he just jumped right at me again.”
Did the Chupacabra mythos start as fan art for the 1995 Sci Fi thriller Species?
That is the assertion of Benjamin Radford who tracked the legend to it’s roots on the island protectorate of Puerto Rico. According to new research, all Chupacabra references can be traced back to a newspaper article in the second week of August in 1995. The alleged eye witness Madelyne Tolentino who provided the illustration depicted a lanky bobble headed creature with spikes jutting from the spine area.
Radford’s theory is that the creature might have been inspired by the 1995 erotic, science fiction thriller Species. In that film, a shape-shifting alien Natasha Henstridge attempts to mate with a human male. Her true form most notably bares resemblance to Tolentino’s drawing in the spikes and boney hands.
Which might be no coincidence, since according to Radford, Tolentino admits that she saw the film before penning her illustration and confesses that it might have inspired her final product. Species was released in theaters on July 7th, only a month and a half before the original newspaper report.
It’s pretty apparent the sky is going effing bananas. Moon’s are going super and now the sun is frigging multiplying. Or, at least is seemed like it was. This shot from Chinese television appears to show a pair of suns shining down like this was a contemplative shot from the sands of Tatooine.
As it turns out, it was just an optical illusion. Although, no one is quite sure what that illusion is exactly:
What’s going on? Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to Space.com, asked Jim Kaler, the University of Illinois astronomer who squelched the excitement over the aforementioned exploding Betelgeuse and who has written books on the day and night sky.
The double sun image is an effect of optical refraction, Kaler said, but it’s a “pretty darn rare” one, and one not fully explained by science.
“I doubt it’s been computer modeled,” he said. “There must have been some blob of atmosphere somewhere that caused this truly spectacular phenomenon, which in a sense is a mirage.”
In short, we cannot be sure that the sun has not, in fact, multiplied and is preparing to bleach all of our bones with their combined heat beam.
[MSNBC]
Iran decided that they needed a spy drone that looks like something from a bad 1950s movie. Released at an exhibition, the machine is named “Zohal” and at least it has some modern characteristics.
The flying machine is equipped with an auto-pilot system, GPS (Global Positioning System) and two separate imaging systems with full HD 10 mega-pixel picture quality and is able to take and send images simultaneously.
Zohal uses a small, portable navigation and monitoring center for transmission of data and images and can fly in both outdoor and indoor spaces.
You’re in space. But not for long.
The capsule you was unfit to leave Earth and you knew it before you left. Power failed and your orbit trajectory is about to send you screaming to your death. Atmospheric reentry will turn your body to goo before you hit the ground.
With your last moments of radio communication you make sure that those with your blood on their hands know it. You curse the officials who sent you up in this death trap. You begin to weep in anger. Unsaid is why you went up knowing full well that you’d not come back alive: to protect a national hero who happens to be a drinking buddy.
These were the last moments of Vladimir Komarov. His extraordinary story of bravery, friendship and barbaric bureaucracy behind the Iron Curtain are told in the book Starman.
The mission was to stage a mid-space meeting between two Russian vessels where the crews would exchange one passenger each and come back to earth. It was to be a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution, a very important moment for current head of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev.
The problem was the Soyuz 1 capsule meant to carry Komarov was found to have 203 structural problems before it even left the ground. When it became clear that Brezhnev’s desire to see the mission take place would overrule any kind of safety concern, Komarov insisted on completing his mission because his back-up pilot was Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space and an icon of the Soviet space program. Not to mention a friend.
So Komarov went up and his legend reverberates to this day.
[NPR]
