Aspartame in Diet Pepsi Linked to Pepsi Spokesman Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease

Not a surprise.

Link to our Reader story about comet-smashing and the Big Bang

Link to our Reader Story About the Possibility That the Sun Has a Solid Surface

Pretty picture in this one.

Bay of Pigs to be considered as US act of terrorism?

Temperature in hell today: a bit cooler.

Activities of Psychedelic Psychologist Stanislov Grof in Russia

Trying to develop protocols for psychedelics usage in medicine. Good luck Groffy!

Tenth Planet Discovered

Bigger than Pluto, way far out in the Kuiper belt (which Tom Van Flandern points out is probably the remains of one or more exploded planets, like the asteroid belt). Dips way beneath the ecliptic at a crazy angle. Is it a planet, a Kuiper belt object, or a giant comet?

Velikovskians would say this the kind of object that occasionally wanders into the middle of the solar system, has its orbit circularized somehow, and becomes a new planet, but not before wreaking havoc throughout the solar system ... the Velikovskians say Venus is such a former giant comet, which supposedly settled into its present orbit just a few thousand years ago.

Could something like that actually happen? Well, leaving aside the issue of circularizing an elliptical orbit, looking at this new planet's crazy, comet-like orbit gives me the eerie feeling of being haunted by Velikovsky's ghost. Wild speculation dept.: could a Van Flandern style planetary explosion have caused a Velikovskian style catastrophe? Although we don't like to mention them in the same breath (mainly to avoid conflating the two), there is some overlap. They focus on many of the same anomalies.

Non-Native Species Get Ass Kicked by New Zealand

File under "good news about the environment (if it's not too late already)." An exciting article about adventurous and glamourously-set pest-eradication efforts. These folks are clearing introduced rodents (rats and mice) from remote New Zealandy islands, using hi-tech methods like GPS to coat these islands just so with rat and mice poison. They go island to island - which all have non-native mice and rats, which were accidentally introduced in the Captain Cook days, one presumes. Each island is GPSed into a grid, and an airplane drops poison bait. Then teams go in and get all the nooks and crannies, to make sure every possible alien rodent on the island has access to the goods. I suppose it is concievable the mass use of rodent poison will eventually be shown to have an environmental effect, but them's the breaks in this case, it seems. These people are cleaning up someone else's mess; one can't fault them too much for using what's available, especially since they are being so effective. The introduced vermin feed on baby birds, and in the wake of vermin eradication, the native bird species are rebounding. Go New Zealand!

Senator Clinton Steps In It

Off-topic, but innarestin and juicy.

Rove's Affair

Reported by a blogger no less. What the fuck have the "journalists" of the country been doing this whole time, to get scooped by a BLOGGER? But that's not real journalmalism!!

Great Dissection of the USDA Food Pyramid

Mostly about the misleading info on essential fatty acids and how Americans can eat low/zero fat diets and still be obese and unhealthy. This is a fairly technical article but thorough.

Possible life on Titan

No surprises here. The interesting thing is that this case boils down to trying to exlain the brownish/rust-colored clouds of Titan, which could indicate byproducts of methane-eating microbes.

Jupiter has clouds like that too...

New Crowd-Control Microwave Weapon Won't Hurt You! ...

... unless you are unable to get out of the beam fast enough, or wearing anything metal, or wearing glasses or contact lenses, or if it is accidentally used on the wrong power setting! Other than that, you should be fine. Soon to be used in Iraq to disperse riots; also coming soon to your local police department.

So depressing.

Article with photo of boulder-strewn surface of Enceladus

These scientists are idiots. Everything they need to know is right here: http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/asteroids/near/NEARChallengeResults.asp, which discusses Tom Van Flandern's predictions of a boulder strewn surface on the asteroid Eros. Strewn boulders on an airless body in space indicate moonlets that have come to rest, or ejecta from impacts. This ain't rocket science people. Or maybe it is.

In the case of Eros, a much smaller body than Enceladus, Van Flandern predicted roll-marks to be in evidence behind the boulders, indicating a rolling touchdown after the boulders'/moonlets' orbits degraded. Our point here is NOT that Van Flandern specifically predicted boulders on Enceladus, but that by the terms of his theory, boulder-strewn surfaces are emphatically NOT a surprise. There may be no roll-marks behind these boulders but it is clear that the planet has been through some changes since the touchdown of its debris cloud, what with the fresh, giant fissures and all. The fields of boulders represent a former debris cloud in orbit around this moon, whose origin may have been in the planetary explosion that created the asteroid belt itself. (Enceladus in this scenario is a piece or remnant of the exploded planet, and was captured by Saturn.) Aternatively, the boulders could possibly be ejecta from impacts, possibly a single giant impact. In the case of a single giant impact, Enceladus could have been nearly shattered, or completely shattered with the separate pieces still bound gravitationally. In these cases, extrusions of crustal grinding may force material out of the breaks, ie the giant fissures that criss-cross Enceladus, which also explains why the boulders have not filled in the cracks - because they are ejected/extruded from the cracks. Any one of these scenarios stays comfortably within the limits of Van Flandern's analysis of the history of the solar system, which led to his demonstrably correct understanding of its orbital mechanics. None of these scenarios are available to the idiot-scientists and their world-view. Van Flandern and his small coterie of conspirators are the only scientists in the world not surprised by the surface of Enceladus.

The reason the mainstream will not investigate Van Flandern's record of correct predictions is that they do not acknowledge his starting point: that the asteroid belt is the remains of an exploded planet. All his orbital mechanics stem from his analysis of the physics of that event. That is why Ton Van Flandern understands these results better than anybody else in the field: He has done extra-credit work that they have not. He has all their training and experience PLUS the extra insight into orbital mechanics that his theory yields. It predicts these kinds of results, and is therefore the most correct theory on the block. The idiot-scientists are constantly saying things like, "I don't understand what I'm seeing," which they said in this case and the case of the Eros asteroid. Van Flandern can point to the fruitfulness of his theory and can legitimately put this one in his column as well. Nice work Tom. Don't let the bastards get you down.

Parrot develops "zero" concept

File under "amazing feats of animal cognition."

NASA may have contaminated Mars with Earth bacteria

Thanks a lot, numbskulls. They are saying "odds are astronomical against" but the odds are in fact far better than they admit. It's called contamination, and it has vast implications for any future mission. NASA: WTF? Science and technology HAS to be done better than just "science-by-crossing-one's-fingers."

Asteroid dating method in doubt

A good reminder that all assumptions need to be thrown out as they are usually subject to revision. Also time to re-examine all alternative theories of asteroid formation.

Saturn's moon strewn with boulders, scientists perplexed

But they would not be perplexed if they listened to Tom Van Flandern, who says the boulders are small moonlets which came to rest on the surface as their orbits degraded.

Stop the Presses: The Sun May Be Solid and Metallic, Not Gas

This website by an amateur astronomer, thesurfaceofthesun.com, makes the case that the sun is composed of heavy metals, not burning hydrogen, and has a solid metal surface beneath a plasma (granular, 'gooey,' liquidy) atmosphere. This guy has assembled movies from satellite images of the sun and identifies relatively stable surface features, although erosion is apparently fierce ... amazing if true. It's certainly got that gonzo science feel of things the establishment will eventually admit... the link in the title of this post is to a page that gives some particularly vivid explanation of this complex and technical theory.

Coincidence re: London Bombings

Grist for the conspiracy mill. Parapolitics community (Alex Jones et al.) are making hash out of this. The gist: anti-subway bombing exercises were taking place as the bombings occurred, feeding conspiratorial speculation that the "bombers" were patsies who thought they were taking part in an exercise, but unknowingly were given real bombs. Of course all this is from the internets so you don't HAVE to believe it.

Political pressure to change scientific findings

So much for objectivity.

Another link found between mercury and autism

Autism rates falling as mercury in vaccines is being reduced. Gosh, who'd have thought that injecting poison into babies might harm them? Anyone who'd been paying attention, that's who, a category which fails to include the entire medical establishment.

More Plame leak info

A poorly-written NYT piece that nonetheless details the excruciating twists and turns of the lawyers to date...

Europe once again ahead of the curve: chemical ban

Europe has banned the plastics-softener family of chemicals.

So refreshing to read a European politician saying, "Based on the precautionary principle, with the advice of scientists, we must act." Wow! Something you don't hear much over here.

Take that, anti-diffusionist archeologists! Zap! Zap!

Americas settled 30,000 years earlier than commonly thought.

The only people who still believe in the Bering land bridge are those who willfully ignore the evidence.

Van Flandern's stated predictions for Deep Impact as per our post below

Attention mainstream scientists: you are full of crap. Give Tom Van Flandern a call today and tell him you are sorry for keeping his correct ass out of your journals and conferences. He predicted every surprise in your field for the past 15 years.

Comet-smashers flummoxed by solidity of comet

They thought their impactor might pass right through the comet, but it hit something solid instead. This supports Tom Van Flandern's Exploded Planet Hypothesis, which ays the comets and the asteroids are chunks of the planet that exploded to make the asteroid belt. These comet-smasher results are no surprise to him or us.

More Plame Leak: The Newsweek Article

More Plame Leak Info

Lengthy discussion of all the agents and sources and operations compromised by the Plame leaker. Bet the top Bushies feel pretty compromised right now. They sabotaged their own WMD-tracking network in a move of petty politics. Even if done unknowingly (unlikely), put the bastards away. To quote Garry Trudeau: "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"