Madam Lichtenstein's Cosmic World

UFO Beams Up Buffalo

I had to re-read this headline because I first thought that a UFO beamed up in Buffalo - New York that is. In fact it looks like a UFO beamed up a buffalo, as in animal.

STUNNED Derek Bridges has revealed how he shot extraordinary footage which UFO experts say shows aliens beaming a BUFFALO into their spaceship. The abduction story also has a fascinating video.

 

In a nutsheel here is what happened -

Derek Bridges hears a noise and looks out of his window. He sees two bright lights hover high over the fields next to his house and grabs his camcorder and starts filming. All of a sudden, an animal appears to dangle below before vanishing into the lights. A high-pitched screeching noise can be heard before the UFOs finally disappear into the night.

UFO experts claim there is a long history of cattle being abducted by aliens for research,  sometimes being returned alive or mutilated. There are often reports of animal carcasses found lying in fields with body parts mysteriously missing and their blood drained without the skin being spilt. Derek told how he spoke to a farm worker who said they had found a couple of dead animals around the time the lights were filmed.

The farm insists no cattle have gone missing. But the area is a hotspot for UFO sightings. In June last year, families in the area reported seeing a dozen glowing orange objects hovering in the sky above the town. The "alien" fleet was captured on video, changing formation for half an hour. A trucker also reported seeing aliens just six miles from the farm in August 2007.

Derek told how he looked out of his window the next evening to see if the lights came back - and saw three helicopters flying around the field as if searching the site. The Ministry of Defense yesterday declined to comment on the incident, saying only: "The MoD examines UFO reports solely to establish whether the airspace may have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised military activity.

 

I can never get enough of these reportings of alien siteings and abductions. Here is a great array of Alien Abductions materials - books and DVDs.

Hi-tech holy water calms flu fear

In a nod to the current flu epidemic, the Catholic churches in Italy are installing automatic holy water dispensers to help reduce the risk of spreading swine flu. It is a wise idea and nice to know that religions with long histories and rigid dogma can still (sometimes) change protocol when faced with contemporary issues. Read more here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8356019.stm

 

 

Alchemy Website and Virtual Library

The Alchemy website is one of the best resources on alchemy I have seen. There are ancient texts, concoctions, philosophies, imagery, art, articles, courses and separate texts in several languages besides English. Alchemy is much more than trying to turn elements into gold!

The best overall description of the site is right on their home page:

Over 150 megabytes online of information on alchemy in all its facets. Divided into over 2400 sections and providing tens of thousands of pages of text, over 2500 images, over 240 complete alchemical texts, extensive bibliographical material on the printed books and manuscripts, numerous articles, introductory and general reference material on alchemy. This site is organised by Adam McLean, the well known authority on alchemical texts and symbolism, author and publisher of over 50 books on alchemical and Hermetic ideas.
Alchemy is a complex subject with many different interconnected aspects. Many people still only think of the quest of the philosophers' stone to change base metals into gold. On this web site you will be able to explore the riches of alchemical texts, some of which are wonderful works of allegorical literature, delve into its amazing, beautiful and enigmatic symbolism, and ponder its underlying hermetic philosophy, which holds a picture of the interconnection of the Macrocosm and Microcosm.

There are also a number of good books on the subject including Real Alchemy: A Primer of Practical Alchemy

Antioxidant Supplements - Do They Help Cancer Cells?

My friend Arthur sends me many emails on health related subjects. This latest one is really an eye opener. I can't say for sure that this research is definitive but the concept behind it is compelling to me.

Derek Lowe in his blog writes that certain tests show that taking anti-oxidant supplements and vitamins containing antioxidents may help cancer cells grow and travel through the body. This is because antioxidants help feed cells rather than starve cells - feed all cells including cancerous ones. The blog post is full of medical language but the upshot is that cells eventually die off which is what we especially want in cancer cells. However antioxidants kept this from happening:

"The normal process is for the central cells in such growths to eventually die off (luminal clearance), but antioxidant treatment kept this from happening. Even more alarmingly, they showed that tumor cells expressing various oncogenes colonized an in vitro cell growth matrix much more effectively in the presence of antioxidants as well."

The article concludes: "The biggest questions, though, are the most immediate: first, does it make any sense at all to give antioxidants to cancer patients? Right now, I'd very much have to wonder. And second, could taking antioxidants actually have a long-term cancer-promoting effect under normal conditions? I'd very much like to know that one, and so would a lot of other people."

What is someone to do here? Do we stop taking certain vitamins? Do we avoid antioxidants? Anyone have an opinion on this? The comments to Derek's post are also interesting - here are a few:

Antioxidants will act to suppress cancer before it occurs. After cancer develops these studies suggest that antioxidants may enhance cancers ability to survive, proliferate and metastasize.

A couple of lung cancer prevention trials have shown elevated cancer rates in groups taking vitamin E supplements IIRC

This was very technical research, aimed at finding the WHY behind what observational studies of cancer patients have been telling them for years. The thing to keep in mind for practical purposes is that there is a huge different between antioxidant supplementation, and the antioxidants you get from food. They've known for ages, and recent research confirms, that eating antioxidant rich foods helps immune function and very slightly reduces cancer risk. Antioxidant supplements, on the other hand, have been shown in scads of studies to produce variable and often contradictory effects. This study doesn't change anything, it just sheds a little more light, at the biochemical level, on why this is so.

 

Japanese Algorithm Can Predict Death?

This post comes at an auspicious time - it's release coincides with the Day of The Dead Festival which takes place on November 2. Ceridyn writes about Day of the Dead on her blog.

A few years ago I bought a slim little volume of an astrology book on how to predict your time of death. As I wended though the book I realized that I really did not want to know when I would die. So when I stumbled upon this article on Japanese doomware, I was hesitant.

The medical paper behind the doomsday algorithm explains that this was developed to ascertain who among those who called for emergency medical help via 911 was most likely to die. And, I suppose if we were to go the next step, then ascertain who really didn't need medical emergency help because help is already too late. Ouch.

The resulting newspaper article from the UK's Register newspaper explains:

Apparently respectable programmers in Japan claim to have developed an algorithm which can tell, merely by listening to a person briefly, whether or not they are about to die. The revolutionary doomsniffer software was developed by Kenji Ohshige at the Yokohama City University. It was developed to assist in answering emergency calls from members of the public.

The programmers sifted through thousands of phone calls to ascertain strength of voice and level of consiousness. They then tried to match these attributes with whether the actual cases were severe and death threatening. I suppose they want to use it as a triage method - who need help immediately compared to those who can wait. However it is not fail safe and they say that the predictive quailty is "moderately successful".

 

Might I suggest astrology instead of phone calls? Try Predicting Events With Astrology which is due to come out soon.