More Anomalies in the Origin of Petroleum (con't from Reader article)

More Anomalies in the Conventional Theory of the Origin of Petroleum (quotes from The Deep Hot Biosphere by Dr. Thomas Gold)

"The regional chemical signatures effect." Across large regions, oil is drilled from "a wide variety of geological formations"(gold59) of "varied composition (and) geological ages"(gold 58). The fossil fuel theory predicts that the distinct composition and age of a given geological formation will produce a particular chemical signature special to that formation, such as "abundance ratios of … minor constituents"(gold 58) and trace metals. However, "deposits of a large area often show common chemical features regardless of the … formations in which they are found." This indicates that the oil of a given region is formed from some common process at great depths, beneath the varied sedimentary formations near the surface from which it is eventually extracted. The fossil fuel theory cannot explain this effect.

"The self-refilling petroleum reservoirs anomaly." According to the fossil fuel theory, once a reservoir of oil or gas has been fully exploited it will run dry. A "given volume of production"(gold 59) from an oil or gas field results in a pressure drop which is then "used to estimate the total volume accessible to the wellbore."(gold59) These pressure measurements and their subsequent volume estimates are collated worldwide and were "the reason for the belief, widely publicized in the early 1970s, that the global supply of crude oil would be exhausted within fifteen years."(gold60) Sound familiar? Well turns out that "such estimates are nearly always much lower than the actual production over the course of many years."(gold 60) This is because of the widely reported phenomenon of petroleum reservoirs that seem to be refilling themselves. Only the abiogenic theory can account for this phenomenon, as only the abiogenic theory has hydrocarbons continually upwelling from deep below.

"The Hydrocarbon-Helium connection." Helium, an inert gas, is not able to be used by life and is therefore not expected to be associated with biological remains in any way. And yet helium is strongly associated with the supposedly biological fossil fuels. Since the helium comes from deep within the planet, we may assume that the hydrocarbons are too and they become entangled on their way up here to the sedimentary strata.

"The migration anomaly." Oil is assumed to have formed from vast stagnant swamps the likes of which cannot be found today, and then migrated laterally underground for long distances in some as yet unexplained fashion to the vast reservoir spaces in which it is found today. The mechanism of its migration has never been worked out.

"The depth effect." "Fossil fuel" hydrocarbons would be expected to be confined to the relatively shallow sedimentary stratas of the fossils, corresponding to the assumed geological epoch of their origin. However, "hydrocarbon-rich areas tend to be hydrocarbon-rich at all lower levels, corresponding to quite different geological epochs"(gold 58)

"The methane anomaly." " …methane is found in many locations where a (fossil fuel) explanation for its presence is improbable or where biological deposits seem inadequate to account for the size and extent of the methane resource …. (methane’s) widespread distribution indicates that many or most regions of the crust emit some methane,"(gold 58) a fact that the fossil-fuel view cannot account for with the same ease as the Abiogenic theory.

Bigfoot update

Since our Bigfoot article ran we have heard from 4 outdoorsy people who all have said the tracks are deer, like the following nice person's comment:

"I have just spent the last two weeks running all over in mature stands ofwoods around the western part of Lk Vermilion doing goshawk surveying forthe DNR. There are bigfoot tracks all over the place up there (similar snowlevels). I have been an avid outdoors person all my life. The tracks in thephotos were that of a smaller whitetail deer running through deep snow. Itwas spooked for some reason and was in full bound, and when moving like thisthey will plant their back legs where their front legs have been (they knowit is good footing). So the track you get has a rounded back end because ofthe deer ass being rounded (crouches a bit to launch out of the contactpoint) and the front of the track is rounded too because the front of thedeer is rounded to a degree. So if you feel really freaky you can easilyimagine that they are the elusive bigfoot. The problem is that if they hadfollowed these tracks long enough they would have ended and bigfoot wouldhave become a small deer walking."

The other comments we have recieved have all made virtually the same argument, and this was in fact the top prosaic contender all along. So make up your own mind, looks like we may have some deer tracks after all...

Get Yer T-Rex Meat

Juicy photos of soft, moist T-Rex.

Gonzo Science column in Reader

...last week's anyway, took forever for this to get on their site, but we love them anyway ... it's a breakdown of the recent local bigfoot flap.

Ball Lightning Research in India

Ball lightning and family play a large role in the "paranormal."

Good story here spun as: "cutting edge scientist cracks paranormal mystery."

More On That Breaking Genetics Anomaly

Link is to another well-written article reporting on the phenomenon.

The essence of what's going on is: the entire world has believed something to be "scientifically true" for 150 years, and a single set of experiments has managed to undo this idea in front of everyone like a magic trick drawing oohs and ahhs: the scientists at the end of the article call the results of these experiments "spectacular." And without anyone questioning the credentials of the scientists involved or the design of the experiment or anything; everyone seems to agree that this anomaly is real and unexplained. It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen very often and it's kind of special: a genuine scientific anomaly up close, bizarre, defying everyone.

Basically they got some flowers that don't open right if they have inherited a genetic defect from their parents. That is strict Mendelian genetics: you inherit stuff from your parents. You know, how else is it going to work? It's not even possible to think outside that box ... Except 1 in 10 of these children's flowers open right anyway, which appears to mean they inherited genetic material from their grandparents somehow. And the results are ironclad so no one's trying to wriggle out of the implications. Right now they're looking for where a presumed molecular back-up copy of the normal gene might hide, which may mean they've misunderstood the problem: what if instead of looking for a mechanistic molecular back-up copy, why not use this opportunity to explore a more holistic and/or field theory explanation. Perhaps such an approach would be fruitful, since the mechanistic theory failed to predict this anomaly. At least on the face of it, a systems theory or field theory explanation could probably fare well here in terms of explanatory power.

One of the implications: genetic systems are too complex, and too little understood, to go around tinkering with the genome and growing genetically modified crops in the open air. Even if 1 in 10 might anomalously repair themselves. If there are still major unexpected/unknown/unexplained effects of simple inheritance fer chrissakes, then we have no business unleashing lab-born genetic constructs on the natural world.

Unapproved Genetically Modified Corn Contaminates US Food Supply

...Again.

Keep in mind that, the way these companies (and their legions of scientists-for-hire) abuse patent law, if your crop gets contaminated with their seed, then suddenly you owe them money.

They have a profit incentive to contaminate the genome.

Breaking News: Dominant paradigm bitch-slapped by anomaly

Link is to what smells like the biggest development in genetics in 50 years. Not sure what to make of this one yet; updates as events warrant.

More conclusive evidence that GMOs suck

Latest scientific study from UK field trial finds against biotech.

UNICEF poised to start dumping GMO foods on impoverished countries

Follow link to pitch in and help stop this abuse of corporate power and technology.

U.S. cancels Agent Orange study

The very study that promised to document the link between Agent Orange and dioxin. Hm.

Cancellation of the study constitutes another misuse of science by government.

Attention "Nature" magazine: science and technology are different

Link is to an article at nature.com about whether or not science education increases acceptance of "the field of science," or some such idea. It is assumed in the article that all technology (specifically genetically modified foods), being "scientific," are a necessary good.

Here we blame the editors of Nature, who do this all the time, as do all of the ruling science intelligentsia. But the writer of the article conflates the method of doing science with a knee-jerk, uncritical acceptance of technology for its own sake.

Science is a method. Technology gets used. Being scientifically literate does not entail gee-whiz support of the latest scientist-approved abuse of technology. To suggest that is the case is to pretend that dissent does not exist within the ranks of science, for instance on the issue of genetically modified food, which is legitimately opposed by many actual scientists and everything, on the grounds that irreversible genetic pollution is a very scientific way to screw the environment up even worse.

RIP: Tommy Gold, a gonzo scientist's gonzo scientist

Turns out Dr. Tommy Gold died last summer - first we've heard of it. The link is to an excellent obit that touches on many of Gold's controversial theories (which always turned out right).

Supposed "black hole" created in lab that warned, a few years ago, that such an event could destroy the planet, but they decided to do it anyway.

A couple things going on here -

A. It might not have been a black hole but just something that looks and acts like a black hole, like a supermassive object.
B. This lab cited other dangers to the entire planet from their experiments, like the creation of exotic particles with weird effects.

Science marches on.

"BIGFOOT FLAP" STORY IN READER: THEORIES WANTED

All theories and/or witness reports welcome.

Yucca Mountain All-Stars

Falsified safety documents/nuclear industry says it's fine.

Catastrophic glacial melting on the horizon

Putting the brakes on global warming now won't even begin to reverse it for another century or two.

The climatologists are freaking. There's some quotes at the end of this article from one of the scientists involved in the studies, and he sounds very, very worried ...

Mercury/autism link finally shown this time for real

Late in coming, this.

The autism community and the vaccination-safety community have known about this for years. Meanwhile it's been poo-pooed the whole time by the medical establishment.

Well here ya go folks. Of course they'll have to try and replicate it for years before anything comes of it and then they'll say they knew it all along ...

Mercury pollution off the hizzies

"Much worse" than previously thought....

Get outside and enjoy nature because it might not be around much longer -- to paraphrase Edward Abbey.

Top 13 scientific anomalies according to New Scientist magazine

Nice to see New Scientist putting these out there. The scientific community needs to be more aware of the fact that their paradigms are shifting right out from under them. Is it not clear from reading this article that scientists may not have any idea what they're talking about? There are whole encyclopedias of scientific anomalies, not just these 13.

Careers are lost for pointing at these elephants in the room. The politics of doing science prevents these kinds of mysteries from being solved. That's why it's so refreshing to see a mainstream, "serious science" magazine do a piece like this.

Fluoridation increases tooth decay

... and sometimes has no effect whatsoever.

Is the conventional wisdom ALWAYS wrong?

Report: Scientists Part of World Around Them

Tagging animals may affect their survival chances/skew the gender of their offspring through stress.

Science of Quantities: 0.
Science of Qualities: 1.

Anthropomorphizing Animals is Underated II

Link is to an article at New Scientist about mating behavior in flies.

Turns out males give females gifts in order to get them to mate. The gifts are either food or inedible things like twigs or cotton. The article makes a big point of wondering what the evolutionary value is in the giving of non-food like twigs.

And here I want to say: it seems like an expression of love. But I won't say that because they will call me crazy. All the same, not every gift I give to my girlfriend enhances her inclusive fitness.

The whole thing reminds me of the incredible collecting behaviour of some birds, and the elaborate nests and ornate groundskeeping some maintain ... at what stage do we say that aethetics plays a role? Do flies think twigs are pretty?

Amazing example of cognitive dissonance in science

Link is to an article about how physicists et al are grappling with the fact there's old, dead galaxies at the beginning of the universe, and all the while without (openly) questioning their fundamental assumptions or using irony of any sort.

Long story short: that's not the beginning of the universe, and therefore old galaxies are no surprise when found there.

One scientist actually says of the galaxies they're finding at (what they believe is) the infancy of the universe: "They're displaying properties we never thought they'd have!"

Properties like: great age.

1985 report of 9-foot creature in Lake County Minnesota: same county with recent unidentified prints with 4-6 foot stride

Found this at the Bigfoot Field Researcher's Organization site. This report is from close to Silver Bay. Interesting in that Lake County, near Isabella, is the site of the recent unidentified tracks up there.

Did Hitler test a small atom bomb?

What if the moon landings weren't faked, but some of the photos were?

Link is to an article about how some European satellite is going to take pictures of Apollo landing sites and prove that they happened.

We have never doubted that the Apollo missions happened. What is in doubt is the veracity of some of the photographs.

People act like photographic anomalies disprove the entire mission. No -- they disprove the veracity of the photograph in question.

BBC Article: Corruption of Science by Industry = Bad

The UK seems light-years ahead of us in terms of the conversations about science they're having.

Was Saddam's Spider-Hole Capture Faked by "Military Production Team"?

Possible intriguing example (anecdotal) of psy-ops in action, on the conspiracy tip...

And of course there is a crowd of people who say the real Saddam remains at large ...

Photos of unidentified tracks up on PDD

This blog can't take photos yet so I have linked to the Perfect Duluth Day post where they are up. Check 'em out now while they're hot... prosaic explanations so far have included a hoaxer on stilt-snoeshoes, grouses, and bounding deer/dogs. This last one is my favorite although seems like you'd get snow everywhere if you were a bounding animal and these tracks look so clean. So I don't know. We here at Gonzo Science Headquarters are waiting to hear back from our stable of Bigfoot experts to see what they think of these. Updates as events warrant.

We get more irate mail on this one issue ...

Link is to an article ("In Memoriam: Terence McKenna") on our website. This article was one reprinted in our book on page 229-230 for those of you following along at home.

In the piece, we state that Terence's death was "probably" caused by his heavy use of DMT.

The article on the website, which came out first, caused such a steady stream of comments about that statement that we softened it a touch for the book, although not much. For instance we were sure to mention that it was an opinion, and that we meant not just casual but chronic use of DMT. Meanwhile people are still reading the website and writing us emails like this one:

i just came across your site while surfing. I like the name gonzo science but after reading your piece about the passing of Terence McKenna i wonder if the marriage of science and gonzo was such a good idea. You are bluntly stating that his drug use was the cause of his death. In no way will science back up that claim. Show me studies that show damage to the frontal lobes from ... dmt, you will not be able to. I agree that the man was pretty crazy, and believe all his ideas are little more than entertaining. But what you are stating is without any substance (pun intended!).
I hope you might think about changing your text, so as not to add even more misinformation and confusion about what are and what aren't the real dangers of drug use.

So you see, the people writng these emails are mostly drug law liberalization advocates like us, which is ironic.

Look people, for the record, that line in the Terence McKenna piece is mostly expressing my (Jim R) opinion. It is a considered opinion. Allen is sympathetic but generally more reluctant to use the word "probably." We will probably wind up changing that line in any future printings to express a shade more doubt, okay?

But what Allen and I are agreed upon is that when the world's most visible living advocate of exotic psychedelics dies of an extremely rare brain cancer, it is the smart choice to closely examine the case. Everyone knows that a single case study can't be generalized to the general population, but only a fool would continue smoking mad DMT without at least raising an eyebrow after Terence died the way he did.

The irate letter-writers are right to caution against a fearmongering approach to drugs. This is of course the farthest thing from our mind since in our "In Memoriam: Carl Sagan" piece, we praise Sagan's use of cannabis as a source and inspiration for scientific insights, as Sagan himself attested.

The irate letter-writers all point to the fact that humankind has ingested DMT-containing plants and plant mixtures for eons. And so, they argue, DMT may be considered as safe as cannabis or mushrooms, which are considered GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) by most well-informed people.

The salient point I want to make is this: Terence was mostly smoking synthetic DMT, okay? He was not downing the DMT-containing brew ayahuasca every time he wanted to do it, since by his own admission his ayahuasca experiences were relatively tame next to his experiences on the synthetic, lab-produced DMT molecule.

The difference may have been enough to kill him. Produced in the lab, DMT will be bereft of its natural context of the other molecules and enzymes and alkaloids and whathaveyou that it has been traditionally consumed with as part of a whole plant. Humanity's GRAS history with the DMT molecule has been largely spent with DMT supported by, and couched within, a rich natural context of accompanying plant constituents. Stripped of those, pared down to the bare naked molecule and replicated in the lab, its long-term safety is not necessarily going to be assured in the same way.

The case in my mind could essentially be the same as those experiments to see if Vitamin A could arrest advanced cancer. I mean hey, Vitamin A could only help, right? Hell, it's in carrots and tomatoes and those ain't killing anybody! So they got a synthesized bunch of Vitamin A and shot it into these advanced cancer cases, and had to halt the experiments when it became evident that it was killing them even faster. Same thing with a recent study on the supposedly benevolent and GRAS use of Vitamin E.

I submit that the same phenomenon may have been at work in the case of Terence McKenna. The systems theorists, naturopaths, and holistic health crowd are starting to understand this effect way better than practitioners of mainstream allopathic medicine, or mechanistic chemistry, or physics. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Chimp Prison Break Resolution

Just saw this. I guess four chimps escaped their cage and made a break for it, mauled someone near to death in the process, ending with two chimps shot and two captured.

Still no word on how they got out.

Ball Lightning in the UK

Cool ball lightning report out of the UK.

Ball lightning and related phenomena are the best scientific explanation of the UFO phenomenon, and a great many other so-called "paranormal" phenomena. Ghosts and so on. Some of the physics have to be worked out but this case is wrapped up...

Another report of unidentified local tracks

Cut and pasted from www.perfectduluthday.com:

"Yesterday I went out to check on the yurt I built in Lake County to see if it had collapsed under the weight of the snow (it was still standing...three winters now...those Mongolinas are so smart!). Sans snowshoes, my dog and I walked through knee-to-hip deep snow for about a half-mile. Even as a tall person my tracks were a foot apart or less. Yes, it was exhausting. My dog loved it. Along with many obvious deer trails and smaller tracks in the snow, I came upon a single set of very large, wide and elongated human-like tracks. Each "step" was 4 to 5 feet apart and each imprint went to the bottom of the snowpack, unlike snowshoes. My first thought was maybe a moose was "hopping" through the woods, but upon inspection they were clearly single-footed tracks. Not even the tallest person in the world wearing snowshoes could stride like that through such deep snow. What the?"

It is noted in the comments at perfect duluth day that moose step their hind feet straight into the tracks made by their front feet, so seemingly bipedal tracks do not rule out a moose origin.

UPDATE: ... but as Vicarious says in the comments, the tracks spotted are not all-in-a-line like a moose leaves. So there you have it...

Possible Exciting Example of Innate Language Genius

If the purported story in the Beijing Times can be believed, we have here an example of a two-month old baby that can speak two words already.

Would be interesting to know how many months late this kid was born, if any.

Truth be told however, it's not too big of a stretch to suppose that this sort of thing goes on all the time but goes unrecognized. I for one remain convinced that when my daughter was four months old, she tried to say kittycat, but people generally have a hard time believing that. This alleged story in the Beijing Times, if true, supports the possibility that she really could have been picking up language at that stage. The thing is, it didn't stick, and after this brief phase of saying "keeka" whenever she saw the cat, she seemed to lose the ability. Perhaps this Chinese baby will also drop the language game for a time, who knows ...

Proposing a simple parroting instinct may seem to solve it all, but there's still the intriguing issue of how my daughter said "keeka" only in the context of the appearance of the cat.

Anthropomorphizing Animals is Underated

Link is to an article discussing the latest science on animal cognition. Each study that comes out shows animals are smarter than commonly supposed and for all the world just like people.

Yet some scientists still caution against anthropomorphizing animals. Um, why exactly? Research seems to be converging on the conclusion that this may be the best way to understand animals after all.

The conventional logic goes like this: to ascribe human qualities to animals is to assume, without foundation, that they are just like us.

The new logic goes like this: Since the foundation now exists to assume animals are just like us, anthropomorphizing animals is justified and necessary to understand them.

Not to mention, as Allen just reminded me, all the really very salient very recent examples of animal intelligence, like the dog with the vocabulary and the crow making tools.

And there was just a chimpanzee escape from some chimp holding facility in California (I think) that sounds for all the world like a prison break, losing one of their number while overwhelming a couple of armed guards, with an unknown number of chimps still at large as of this writing. What if they know sign language and are coordinating their activities? How long before a situation like this results in something like a list of demands?

Anti-Pain Research Used to Make "Maximum Pain" Weapon

"Science, you are SOOOOOO smart. And moral, too! Good thing the military doesn't have you over a barrel or anything or we'd all be in trouble." - The Candidate

"No job too dirty for a fucking scientist." - William S. Burroughs


(Story linked above contains contact info for a couple of the scientists involved. They might like to hear what your opinion is on the matter. I can tell you that I will have something to say to them if I or my daughter gets hit with one of their maximum pain weapons while peacefully demonstrating someday. Welcome to the 21st Century.)

Lies, Damned Lies, and Nuclear Lies

Turns out you can't trust your government to tell you how badly they have put you at risk.