Category: strange events

Keep Your Loved Ones Sort of Alive Forever REPRINT

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From  October 27, 2015

It looks like computer technology is finally catching up to the old-fashioned seance. Which is the bigger crock?

This just in–

Some academic computer guy in England says that, in 50 years or so, no one will ever again have to mourn the death of a loved one–because red-hot technology will create “synthetic digital life” which will have the effect of keeping your family members alive (sort of) forever ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11955835/Family-members-could-be-kept-alive-forever-using-social-media-history.html ).

Not really alive. But as good as! You’ll be able to talk and interact with them just as if they were really still here.

This miracle will be achieved by mining the dear departed’s collected words and works as recorded over many years in the social media! Wowee. Would that also include a lifetime’s worth of text messages? As an added bonus, they’ll make your loved one’s avatar so it’ll be able to talk with you, with whatever regional accents and turns of phrase are appropriate.

Could anything be more superficial? “I am the sum total of all my Tweets?” Ugh.

So once again we have Science stepping into God’s shoes. God offers us eternal life, by Jesus Christ? Well, so what–we can do that, too! And our version of eternal life will be better than that stale old Bible stuff, because you won’t need to have any faith. Like, this will be even better than having a robot because you won’t need any storage space.

God save us from the banality of humanism.

‘Alternate Reality Gaming’–in Spades REPRINT

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From February 22, 2016

As you read this, remind yourself that our country boasts the biggest, costliest public education system ever devised by human beings.

Here is some of what we get for it.

A dot on a map of New Jersey called “Ong’s Hat,” in the heart of the Pine Barrens, has fascinated people for years. What kind of town would have a name like that? Patty and I went there once, just to see it for ourselves. But there was nothing to see: just a lot of trees and a little-traveled road.

And then one Joseph Matheny in the 1990s invented an Internet game called “Ong’s Hat,” billed as “the secret to interdimensional travel.” And it took off.

“Alternate reality gaming” fans flocked to Ong’s Hat–which, remember, is nothing in particular–looking for a secret laboratory where rogue scientists discovered a way to visit parallel universes: not to mention the parallel universe now inhabited by some of these gamers. The most popular local legend had it that the place got its name from a man named Mr. Ong who, exasperated by a fight with his girlfriend, threw his hat into the air and lost it when it got caught in a tree. But now it was seen to be the nexus of a lot of far-out, conspiratorial goings-on. Gamers even went to Matheny’s house in California to peer through his windows, trying to spy out clues to the secret.

Finally, having decided that enough was enough already, Matheny discontinued the game in 2001. But a lot of people didn’t believe him when he said it was only a game that he’d made up. Sort of like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle refusing to believe Houdini’s admission that he had no genuine magical powers. “Yeah, right!” said Doyle.

Just this morning my editor, Susan, and I were talking about people who can’t seem to understand that science fiction isn’t real; and then Patty read me this article about the Ong’s Hat game which, for some, mutated into a full-blown delusion.

There is no interdimensional travel. There are no starships capable of faster-than-light “warp speed.” No time travel, no evidence that anything like a parallel universe exists, no Slender Man–and there was no secret science project headquartered in the nowhere that is Ong’s Hat.

And they say we’re credulous for believing the Bible.

Maybe we should’ve spent more time in college.

Oops! Media Almost Set Off WWIII REPRINT

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From April 17, 2017

There’s fake news that’s done on purpose, and then there’s fake news that just happens because people make mistakes.

This weekend, the world almost went to war because of a cock-up by a couple of nooze agencies .

North Korea was having its annual “Day of the Sun” parade, honoring the depraved homicidal maniacs who run the place: this after repeatedly declaring they were going to test a nuclear weapon, breaking an international treaty, and threatening to bomb America’s allies and military bases. So that made a lot of people nervous.

Well, they haven’t set off the nuke yet. What they did was to trot out their new improved long-range missile for the parade.

First China’s Xinhua news agency reported–oh, boy!–“North Korea Fires Projectile.” Shoulda been North Korea displays projectile. America’s Bloomberg news agency picked up the Chicoms’ fumble and ran with it, full speed to the wrong goal line. And it seems there was a bit of a military scramble started until someone sorted out the error before anyone could start shooting.

Remember, in Jaws, Roy Scheider sees the giant monster shark and tells Robert Shaw, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”? And Shaw doesn’t listen to him, does he–and his boat gets wrecked and sunk and he gets eaten by the shark.

We need a bigger boat than the one designed and built by what passes for human wisdom.

God is the only one who has such a boat. Reminds me of a boat He once lent to Noah and his family…

I Think I’ve Been There REPRINT

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Entelodon | Cool Dino Facts Wiki | Fandom

From July 5, 2020

This is Charles R. Knight’s 1894 painting of Elotherium, an extinct animal that resembled a wild boar. That’s cool–but what I’m really interested in is the backdrop.

This reproduction, the only one I could find, doesn’t quite capture the dried-out yellowish tones of the banks of this gully. You’ll have to imagine that. The gully is full of water and the animals are crossing it. Farther up toward the horizon, the gully feeds into a more permanent stream. And then a river? Then the sea?

The thing is–I think I’ve been there! Years and years and years ago. You got there if you went all the way down Orchard Street, back when there was still an orchard there, well past all the houses, and then just park your bike where this little bridge went across the gully. You could easily climb down and wade in the water–which of course you wouldn’t do if  there were Elotheriums present. They look irritable.

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Knight used real places as the backdrops for his paintings of prehistoric life. I wonder: did he wander into my childhood, or did I wander into one of his paintings?

When TV Personalities Spout Gibberish REPRINT

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From January 21, 2015

Remember, back in 2011, there was a spate of TV reporters, live and on the air, uncontrollably spouting gibberish? ( http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/judge-judy-the-4th-to-talk-gibberish-on-air/ ) The most famous victim of this mysterious affliction, was Judge Judy, who aborted a taping session because all that would come out of her mouth was nonsense. Judge Judy was immediately taken to a hospital and thoroughly examined. Doctors were unable to find any cause for what had happened to her.

There’s video, all over the internet, of this happening to reporters in and out of the studio–all of it at roughly the same time. Various explanations came and went. Reporter was having a mini-stroke; about to have a stroke; a mild epileptic seizure; some rare kind of migraine. None of these stuck. A few commenters suggested that someone was doing this on purpose, using experimental technology to interfere with the victim’s ability to function mentally. That didn’t stick, either.

So yesterday I found myself reading a novel in which the members of a scientific team working on a top-secret missile project, one by one become unable to talk anything but gibberish. Naturally I thought of that spate of on-air gibbering in 2011.

The book was written in 1957: The Electronic Mind Reader, a Rick Brant Science Adventure by John G. Blaine, the pen name for Hal Goodwin.

Goodwin, who during his career worked for just about every government agency you can think of, was on the cutting edge of his era’s technology. His Rick Brant books are full of insights into the electronics wizardry of the time–which was a lot more sophisticated than you might think.

The point is, Hal Goodwin was very well-informed and knew what he was talking about. In 1957 he described something that we didn’t see until 2011. I haven’t finished the book yet, so I don’t know how the bad guys made this happen–but what was Goodwin on to? I’m sure he wouldn’t have used his books to leak official secrets. But was there someone in 1957 who had found a way to foul up your brain by remote control? Imagine a hand-held device–something that maybe looks like a video camera–that gets pointed at you and suddenly you can’t express a coherent thought anymore. Would that be scary, or what?

Check out the link above, and watch the videos. Watch what happens to those poor reporters as they try to speak.

Hmmm….

Be sure to read the comments–there is a clip of Al Roker freezing for a number of seconds  almost as if he heard a trigger word…

Beware! Here Come Killer Robots! REPRINT

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From May 29, 2015

A computer science professor at Berkeley has warned that “research” by the Defense Dept. (B. Hussein Obama, proprietor) could create “drones which can track and kill targets even when out of contact with their handlers…. the research could breach the Geneva Convention and leave humanity in the hands of amoral machines” ( http://godfatherpolitics.com/22681/killer-robots-will-destroy-us-scientist-warns/ ).

How much worse is that than being at the mercy of immoral and wicked human beings?

I believe Professor Stuart Russell means well, and that he’s trying to warn us against what he sees as a very real danger. He may even be right. Who knows what the DOD lab-rats get up to, behind closed doors?

Naturally, this conjures up visions of The Terminator and other robot menaces. Oh, dear–another thing to worry about! Aaagh, we’re all gonna die! From Global Warming… or Income Inequality, or Homophobia, or Too Much Red Meat in Our Diet and Not Enough Tofu… or the ocean is going to dry up, or else flood over all our coastal cities.. from overpopulation, underpopulation, or simply not enough Trans People to go around. From whatever.

See what terrors you get into, when you don’t believe in God.

If your god is such a patzer that he can’t protect his own creation from little ants and fleas like us, then your god is not God. If your god sent his only son to earth to redeem the human race, and it didn’t work because the human race totally destroyed itself, then your god is not God and your savior is not Jesus Christ.

Wise up, O men of God.

Memory Lane: The Shark Arm Murders REPRINT

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From August 21, 2015

Let us stroll down Memory Lane to Sydney, Australia, 1935, and one of the most strange and baffling murder  mysteries of all time: the “Shark Arm Murders” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Arm_case ).

Why does it have such a weird name? Attendez-vous.

Some Australian fishermen caught, alive, a 14.5-foot tiger shark and brought it to the city aquarium. The big shark did nothing for a week, and didn’t eat, but then fell ill and vomited up a bunch of interesting objects–including a severed human arm. (Note: I’m going by the account of the case given in The Book of Sharks by Richard Ellis, Knopf, New York, 1989, which differs from the Wikipedia article in a few details.)

They killed the shark–for no good reason I can think of–but the medical examiner found that the arm had been removed from its original owner by dint of a very sharp knife. The shark had certainly not bitten it off.

Based on fingerprints, and a well-preserved tattoo of two boxers, investigators were able to identify the owner of the arm–an ex-boxer now augmenting his income by being a police informant. He was in a risky line of work, and I suppose it caught up to him. He went missing some days before the fishermen caught the shark, and was never seen or heard from again.

Anyhow, detectives did their best, they finally arrested someone whom they considered a highly likely suspect, but the court said it couldn’t render a Guilty verdict on the  basis of a loose arm in the belly of the shark. (Offstage we hear Robert Shaw singing, “Farewell and adieu to ye, fair Spanish ladies…”)

There’s some controversy about whether the arm was actually inside the great big tiger shark or the much smaller shark swallowed by the tiger earlier. We shall let Mr. Ellis have the last word.

“An animal so indiscriminate in its eating habits that it eats coal, boat cushions, and tom-toms, would be only too eager to taste a swimmer or a diver–which must look more edible than an unopened can of salmon. Perhaps the label was still on the can; maybe tiger sharks can read.” (pg. 126)

Satanic, or Just Plain Loony? REPRINT

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I went back and tried to bring over the video to this post, but I couldn’t. If you wish, you can watch it on YouTube    PD  2/24/2026

From June 8, 2016

 

On June 1 this wack-fest was held to celebrate the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps, in Switzerland. I have selected the shortest of many videos that illustrate–well, I don’t know what it illustrates.

To me the images created for this event seem like something from a badly damaged brain shorting out just before it flat-lines. To others, it’s a lot of New World Order/Illuminati code and symbolism that reveals a satanic origin. Or maybe the Swiss are just trying to one-up the Presbyterian Church USA: their General Conference opening ceremonies are generally a hoot.

I don’t believe in secret cabals of fiendishly clever villains micro-managing world history in the service of their master, Satan. But I do believe in fiendishly stupid or demented, overpaid, overpraised, in-love-with-themselves big shots who blunder into one folly, one mass sin, after another… in the service of their master, Satan.

As weird and apparently lunatic as the images in this ceremony are, what’s weirder still is the gallery of well-dressed, obviously upper-crust ninnies soberly and sagely watching it all.

They’re the ones, I think, we have to watch out for.

‘The Learning Channel,’ Culture Killer REPRINT

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From July 20, 2015

You didn’t really think I’d post a picture of some “transgender teen” up here, did you? Here is a monarch butterfly instead–in total contrast to the grotesque content of this post, for which I apologize in advance.

I suppose we can’t expect much from a cable TV channel that airs Say Yes to the Dress. But really–when you take ideas and practices that the whole human race has emphatically rejected for untold thousands of years, and suddenly try to make them the groundwork of your morality… well, you wind up with something like TLC’s All That Jazz: a “documentary series following the life of transgender teenager, Jazz Jennings, as she [sic: every cell in this person’s body continues to be male] balances school, family [note that school comes first] and her [sic] social life” ( http://www.locatetv.com/tv/i-am-jazz/season-1/9260065 ).

In this week’s episode, “Worried about keeping puberty at bay, Jazz and her [sic] mother visit the doctor to discuss her [sic] hormone test results.” Did your mother ever worry about keeping your puberty at bay?

As Jazz himself explains, “I was assigned male at birth {what? what kind of talk is this?] but happily live as a girl!”

I shouldn’t have to be the one to say this: but there is something evil and twisted going on in that family, and to celebrate it on TV, and pretend it’s good and praiseworthy, is more evil and twisted still.

Possibly some of this is just the age-old nooze media fascination with anything outlandish and bizarre. Dog bites man, so what? Man bites dog, it’s news.  But the man-bites-dog stories always go away in a few days, while this transgender stuff, already rancid, just keeps getting heaped higher and higher. Our popular culture is coming to resemble a Superfund site.

At the root of this is rebellion against God and the perverse desire to proclaim oneself as God. “Assign me male at birth–oh, yeah? Well, I’m gonna make myself a girl–so there!” Or as Satan put it to Eve, “Ye shall be as gods” (Genesis 3:5).

And in this case, it’s all crap, to boot. If you are male, every cell in your body has a Y-chromosome. No matter how you have yourself mutilated surgically, no matter how much you have yourself shot full of drugs and hormones, you’ve still got several million Y-chromosomes. You are still male.

Learn to live with it… if your demonically inspired parents give you a chance.

Flying Man Races Airbus (What???) REPRINT

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From October 19, 2014

This is one of those news stories that just sits there thumbing its nose at everybody.

As reported by The Daily Mail, the pilots of Airbus 320, descending to land at Manchester Airport, were “stunned” when a flying man zipped past their airplane at 3,500 feet ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798083/is-bird-plane-no-s-passengers-flew-macclesfield.html ).

No, they did not see a flying saucer. They saw a flying man. They estimated he came within 100 meters of the plane. Nobody saw a parachute, a balloon, a wire, or a magic carpet. We are not told whether any of the passengers saw the flying man, who was in view only “fleetingly,” the pilots said.

Don’t you love this story? It’s better than the one about the guy who attached a multitude of helium balloons to his lawn chair and went way up into the sky and freaked out airplane pilots and passengers. That turned out to be true. But doing it with balloons is one thing. Just being a flying man with no visible means of support or propulsion–well, that’s another.

Don’t bother to suspect those Airbus pilots of lying. Handing in a report that you saw a flying man at 3,500 feet is not a resume enhancement. I’m surprised the pilots mentioned it at all.

But what does it mean? Who was the flying man? How did he get up there–or was he just on his way down from somewhere else? Was he really flying, or just falling? But radar checks failed to pick up any sign of anything up there other than the Airbus.

Where is Charles Fort when you need him?

I was going to try to make a hypothesis about this incident, but it’s just too strange. We’ll have to wait until a lot more flying men are seen.

Somehow that’s not a thought that makes me comfortable.