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In Case You Missed It

"Change" is coming in the realms of science, too:
So Happy New Year, everybody.

MadV: "One World"

I just read about this in WIRED, in an article by Clive Thompson (who wrote about Townsend Brown and the lifters a few years ago).  So this YouTube magician who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and does 'anti-gravity' tricks with playing cards does a short video (seen at the end of this clip) that generates like THOUSANDS of video responses, making this the most-video-responded clip on YouTube.  And the resulting compilation is really quite compelling.  See for yourself:

Elvis Lives...

...and  George W. Bush is just the Comissioner of Baseball...or, at least, these are among the possibilities that some leading physicists postulate might live among an infinite number of parallel universes. 

A recent episode of The History Channel's "The Universe" series explores the same concepts that we dance around here in our own "Parallel Universe of T. Townsend Brown."  You can view the episode in short videos online.

Some of the world's leading physicists believe they have found startling new evidence showing the existence of universes other than our own. One possibility is that the universe is so vast that an exact replica of our Solar System, our planet and ourselves exists many times over. These Doppelganger Universes exist within our own Universe; in what scientist now call 'The Multiverse.' Today, trailblazing experiments by state of the art particle colliders are looking for evidence of higher dimensions and Parallel Universes. If proof is found, it will change our lives, our minds, our planet, our science and our universe.

The argument is presented that even the word "universe" is obsolete in cosmological terms, because the root "uni" means "one."  So, now it's the "multiverse."  Or maybe it's the "megaverse."  Or the "infiniverse."  Take your pick.  Just, please, don't let George W. Bush be president in any of them.  Come to think of it "Commissioner of Baseball" is probably over his head, too.

A Cautionary Tale

Oh yeah, "fact checking."  What a concept: 

A man whose memoir about his experience during the Holocaust was to have been published in February has admitted that his story was embellished, and on Saturday evening his publisher canceled the release of the book.

And once again a New York publisher and Oprah Winfrey were among those fooled by a too-good-to-be-true story.

This time, it was the tale of Herman Rosenblat, who said he first met his wife while he was a child imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and she, disguised as a Christian farm girl, tossed apples over the camp’s fence to him. He said they met again on a blind date 12 years after the end of war in Coney Island and married. The couple celebrated their 50th anniversary this year...

This latest literary hoax is likely to trigger yet more questions as to why the publishing industry has such a poor track record of fact-checking.

It's Also Isaac Newton's Birthday

 ..although that depends on which calendar you're using:

Some years ago, the evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins pointed out to me that Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics and mathematics, and arguably the greatest scientist of all time, was born on Christmas Day, and that therefore Newton’s Birthday could be an alternative, if somewhat nerdy, excuse for a winter holiday.

All very jolly — but then, ’tis the season. Yet things are not so simple. It turns out that the date of Newton’s birthday is a little contentious. Newton was born in England on Christmas Day 1642 according to the Julian calendar — the calendar in use in England at the time. But by the 1640s, much of the rest of Europe was using the Gregorian calendar (the one in general use today); according to this calendar, Newton was born on Jan. 4, 1643.

Merry Ho Ho

And Happy Ha Ha:

Best wishes to all for a safe and warm holiday, wherever you are whatever you're having. --Ann, Paul... and Zoe

"Free Energy" ?

Here's a ten-minute interview with Paul LaViolette, author of "The Secrets of Anti-Gravity Propulsion"

"He discloses the existence of advanced gravity-control technologies, under secret military development for decades, that could revolutionize air travel and energy production. Included among the secret projects he reveals is the research of Project Skyvault to develop an aerospace propulsion system using intense beams of microwave energy similar to that used by the strange crafts seen flying over Area 51."

Now Playing At A Theater Near You

Those of you who have been following along will recall that the original 1951 release of the "The Day The Earth Stood Still" was one of Townsend Brown's favorite movies.  The story is he shut his lab down for an afternoon so that everybody could go see the film together.

But it's hard to imagine what he would think of the remake, which opens nationwide today:

So far, the reviews I have read have not been kind. Typical is this synopsis from A. O. Scott of The New York Times:

Long after we are gone, science fiction movies about our impending extinction will instruct whoever comes next that we were a strange, neurotic species indeed. We could not — cannot — get enough of fantasies of destruction, meant at once to inflame and soothe our fear of vanishing altogether. We know we have it coming, and a movie like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” either in its 1951 version or in this “reimagining,” invites us to feel fleetingly bad about that even as we are encouraged to laugh it off. Any hope that the new “Day,” directed by Scott Derrickson from a script by David Scarpa, might also someday rise above its pulpy, corny, somber silliness rests mainly on the shoulders of Keanu Reeves. Those shoulders are perfect for filling out a dark, narrow suit, just as Mr. Reeves’s deadpan basso and permanently perplexed features make him an ideal Klaatu, as the space visitor is called. Klaatu’s job is to assist, calmly and methodically, in the extermination of the human race, a task he tries, with evident fatigue, to explain to his hysterical, violent would-be victims.

The good news I did not know until I looked at the clip on YouTube is that one of the stars of the film is Jennifer Connolly. Who needs plot, theme, or production values when you can sit in a darkened room and look at her for two hours... ?

Klaatu barada nikto,anyone?