Tag: Keep Austin Weird

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EXPLODING METEORS AND ASTEROID NEAR-MISSES

The skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia light up after a meteorite breaks up in the atmosphere.
The skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia light up after a meteorite breaks up in the atmosphere.

Could it be the Mayans were a couple of months off?

It might seem like something out of the movie Armageddon, but within a day of each other two frightening and spectacular astronomical events occurred that show just how close we could get to a real doomsday scenario.

The first happened in the skies over Russia, when on Thursday a meteor streaked through the skies over Russia, exploding with a shockwave that shattered glass windows for miles around, injuring up to 1000 people.

 

The second event occurred yesterday when an asteroid labeled 2012 DA-14 flew by Earth at a record-breaking distance of just 17,200 miles — the closest ever recorded for an asteroid of its size.

While that may still seem like quite a distance, to put it in perspective, the asteroid came closer to our planet than some communications satellites we have in orbit. In the grand scheme of our universe, that’s just a hair’s breadth away.

Had the 50 meter rock actually hit the Earth, it would have enough destructive force to level a city the size of New York, not to mention the environmental catastrophe it would cause. It is believed by scientists that a large asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Watch this video, which shows Nasa’s coverage of the asteroid’s near-miss fly-by.

 

The interesting thing is neither of these events are related to each other. Apparently it’s just a cosmic coincidence.

“Information is still being collected about the Russian meteorite and analysis is preliminary at this point,” NASA said in a statement. “In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14′s trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.”

 

SOURCES:

Asteroid 2012 DA14 in record-breaking Earth pass

Russian Meteor Not Related to Asteroid Flyby, NASA Confirms

 

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BREAKING NEWS: HAS SCIENCE PROVEN THE EXISTENCE OF BIGFOOT?

Bigfoot Lives blog image

Today may go down in history as the day the legendary creature known as Bigfoot is finally scientifically proven to exist.

In the scientific journal DeNovo, Dr. Melba Ketchum has published her long-awaited peer-reviewed paper on Sasquatch DNA entitled “Novel North American Hominins, Next Generation Sequencing of Three Whole Genomes and Associated Studies.”

From the DeNovo website:

One hundred eleven samples of blood, tissue, hair, and other types of specimens were studied, characterized and hypothesized to be obtained from elusive hominins in North America commonly referred to as Sasquatch. DNA was extracted and purified from a subset of these samples that survived rigorous screening for wildlife species identification. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing, specific genetic loci sequencing, forensic short tandem repeat (STR) testing, whole genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) bead array analysis, and next generation whole genome sequencing were conducted on purported Sasquatch DNA samples gathered from various locations in North America. Additionally, histopathologic and electron microscopic examination were performed on a large tissue sample. vel non-human DNA.

In addition to the publication of Dr. Ketchum’S paper, DeNovo has released this brief but tantalizing video clip from the Erickson Project’s upcoming Bigfoot documentary that appears to show a sleeping Sasquatch named Matilda.


Not surprisingly, it appears some others are jumping on the “DNA Proves Sasquatch is Real” bandwagon. From Denver CBS 4 comes this report about a group of Colorado researchers who are making their own claims that they have proof of Sasquatch DNA. According to researcher Dave Paulides, “This DNA is like nothing else in the world.”

Paulides says his research group has collected hundreds of samples of DNA evidence. He focused his search in Northern California’s redwoods. He says strands of hair are from a Sasquatch, genetically tested to reveal a previously unknown species.

“This isn’t an animal. This is a subspecies of a human, and we believe they travel in groups,” Paulides said.

What does all of this mean?  Are we any closer to the scientific community accepting the reality of the existence of Bigfoot?

Only time will tell…

 

SOURCES:

DeNovo Scientific Journal

Colorado Researchers Say DNA Proves Bigfoot Is Real

 

VIDEO FOOTAGE:
Clip licensed to the Sasquatch Genome Project. Any use must give proper attribution.
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“UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD” GIVEN PROPER BURIAL AFTER 150 YEARS

JuliaPastrana

I’ve always found the life and death of Julia Pastrana to be one of the most interesting, albeit profoundly sad (and at times downright horrifying), stories that has ever happened in the annuls of sideshow history.  You can read a little about her short and tragic life on The Circus No Spin Zone blog.

Today’s story is one that I have been following since word of the planned burial of Julia and her child were first announced late last year.

MEXICO CITY — The “ugliest woman in the world” was buried in her native northern Mexico on Tuesday, more than 150 years after her death and a tragic life spent exhibited as a freak of nature at circuses around the world.

Born in Mexico in 1834, Julia Pastrana suffered from hypertrichosis and gingival hyperplasia, diseases that gave her copious facial hair and a thick-set jaw. These features led to her being called a “bear woman” or “ape woman.”

During the mid-1850s, Pastrana met Theodore Lent, a U.S. impresario who toured the singing and dancing Pastrana at freak shows across the United States and Europe before marrying her.

In 1860, Pastrana died in Moscow after giving birth to Lent’s son, who inherited his mother’s condition. The son died a few days later, and Lent then toured with the mother and son’s embalmed remains. After changing hands over the ensuing decades, both bodies ended up at the University of Oslo in Norway.

“Imagine the aggression and cruelty of humankind she had to face, and how she overcame it. It’s a very dignified story,” said Mario Lopez, the governor of Sinaloa state who lobbied to have her remains repatriated to her home state for burial.

 

Read more:  ‘Ugliest woman in the world’ buried 150 years after end of tragic life

 

 

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SATURDAY, 1/26/13: CRYPTOMUNDO NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM!

Cryptomundo Night at the Museum web
This event is going on this weekend at the Museum of the Weird in downtown Austin. We’re going to have several famous cryptozoologists and authors as well as maybe a surprise appearance by Bigfoot himself!  It’s going to be an awesome event!
UPDATE: all advance tickets are sold out, but we’ll still be selling regular admission to the Museum.  Even though our advance tickets to the lectures and the movie screening are already sold out, we will still have the museum open for general admission, and you’ll still be able to meet the guests and get some signed books and swag, as well as attend dinner and drinks with the group afterwards at the Chupacabra Cantina and The Jackalope Bar next door. Hope to see you here!
Saturday, January 26th, 2013
3:00pm to 10:00pm
Museum of the Weird, in conjunction with the world’s foremost website on all things cryptid, Cryptomundo.com, will be hosting a very special event on January 26th at the Museum of the Weird in Austin, TX:
Cryptomundo Night at the Museum!
Featuring an all-star line up of world famous cryptozoologists, experts and authors, it’s sure to be a night of entertainment, intrigue and mystery as we explore the unknown creatures that lurk in the darker corners of the world we live in! Please come out and join us for the festivities!
Speaker presentations and author book signings include:
Lyle Blackburn, frontman for rock band Ghoultown, writer for Rue Morgue magazine and author of “The Beast of Boggy Creek”
Nick Redfern, author of “Wildman! The Monstrous and Mysterious Saga of the British Bigfoot”, “Monster Diary: On the Road in Search of Strange and Sinister Creatures”, “The World’s Weirdest Places,” “Memoirs of a Monster Hunter,” and “Monsters of Texas.”
Ken Gerhard, author of “Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters” and “Monsters of Texas.”
Dave Coleman, author of “The Bigfoot Filmography”
The event starts at 3:00pm and goes until 6:00pm, then a break for dinner and to explore 6th Street and downtown Austin.
It resumes again at 8:00pm with a special screening in the Museum’s Weird Theater of the ’70s drive-in classic “Creature from Black Lake.”
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GIANT SQUID FILMED ALIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Discovery Channel will air the first-ever footage of a live giant squid.
Discovery Channel will air the first-ever footage of a live giant squid.

 

For the first time ever, we finally have video footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat, deep in the ocean’s abyss. The footage, which will air on a future Discovery Channel special, was captured by a film crew approximately 3,000 feet down in the Northern Pacific Ocean.

According to Richard Ellis, author of The Search for the Giant Squid, “It’s an exciting, exciting discovery.”

“We can learn how this thing moves, how it swims, what it does with its arms when it swims… Because it’s the first time anybody has ever seen one alive, it is an enormous breakthrough for science — and for mythology, of all things — because for a long time people didn’t even think they existed.”

I think this is great news for the field of cryptozoology, since here is a perfect example of something that has been described in sightings and legends like that of the Kraken (a giant tentacled sea monster); for centuries people dismissed it as fantasy, but yet modern scientists, who took great steps to seek out the creature, actually succeeded in proving and documenting its existence.

Here’s the CNN interview with Richard Ellis, unfortunately they don’t show any of the actual footage of the giant squid, just a few stills (I guess we’ll have to wait for that Discovery Channel special):

 

SOURCE:  http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/world/2013/01/08/exp-early-ellis-giant-squid.cnn

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IS THIS A PHOTO OF A GROUNDED ALIEN CRAFT?

Photo of the supposed UFO caught by a security camera and detailed in a January 5, 2013 MUFON report.
Photo of the supposed UFO caught by a security camera and detailed in a January 5, 2013 MUFON report.

 

Could the above photo be that of an actual landed alien spacecraft?  So claims a witness in Texas who filed a report with MUFON on January 5, 2013.

In the report the person alleges his father works for an oil company in Cotulla, Texas, and goes on to explain: “…They had noticed that some people were taking the crude oil in the night… they started putting cameras up around the areas. One night one camera caught a UFO.”

The witness alleges that the photo had already been circulated among the workers before it was seen by his father, who then gave the image to his son who consequently filed the report.

What do you think?  Is this a real photo of an alien craft, a hoax, or just a case of mistaken identity?  Or perhaps this is the vehicle of the theives that were stealing the crude oil?  Please share any thoughts or theories you may have.

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SENATOR HAS ANGELIC VISITATION FOLLOWING STROKE

Senator Mark Kirk claims he was visited by angels while in the hospital.
Senator Mark Kirk claims he was visited by angels while in the hospital.

Each year, millions of people worldwide report what has commonly become known as Near-Death Experiences, or NDEs. Add Illinois Senator Mark Kirk to that growing list of people who claim to have had an otherworldly experience with what they can only describe as angels.

For Mark Kirk, there was no white light, no tunnel.

What Illinois’ junior U.S. senator experienced was three angels standing at the foot of his bed.

“You want to come with us?” Kirk was asked.

“No,” he told them. “I’ll hold off.”

The Highland Park Republican, who plans to return to the Senate when Congress convenes Thursday, recounted the story in his first in-depth interview since he suffered a massive stroke nearly a year ago.

Awakening from what he says might have been a dream, a side effect of medication or a near-death experience, Kirk found himself lying in a hospital bed in Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, hooked up to monitors and tubes.

He had no way of immediately knowing what had transpired in the days after he suffered an ischemic stroke on Jan. 21, 2012; that doctors had put him in a coma and performed several surgeries, temporarily removing a 4-by-8 inch portion of skull to allow his brain to swell and heal.

What Kirk did know was how close he had been to death.

“A thing goes off in your head that this is the end,” he remembered.

Kirk’s life and outlook would be dramatically changed, the stroke serving as a defining moment that he said deepened his faith and altered his sense of purpose.

Sitting at the dining room table of his suburban townhouse, his left arm slack, Kirk gestures emphatically with his right hand as he says the experience made him resolve “to never, ever give up.”

He is determined “to just keep going, even when things feel like we’re at the end here. Which is what the ICU was like for me.”

What do you think?  Did Senator Kirk actually have a visitation by three angels as he lay semi-concious in his hospital bed? Or could this have been merely a hallucination created by his brain due to the drugs he was being administered? Or perhaps it was a combination of both?  Maybe our brain isn’t a transmitter, but rather a receiver, and when certain factors affect our brain function, we are actually able to perceive things that normally we would not?

Have you ever had a Near Death Experience of your own? If so, please feel free to share your experience here.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE:   Senator Kirk speaks for the first time about his stroke

 

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THE MAYAN APOCALYPSE DIDN’T HAPPEN, SO IS THIS THE NEW AGE? IT CAN BE.

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Many people believed the end of the world would come on December 21, 2012, the date that marked the end of the Mayan calendar. That date has come and gone, and I can’t help but wonder what all the die-hard Mayan Apocalypse believers are thinking now.

There were two general ways of thinking about how this end would come: it would either be a horrific doomsday scenario that would be the end of all life as we know it, or it would mark the beginning of a new age of human enlightenment and responsibility.

One idea dwelt on the negative, the other positive.

So since the world didn’t end, where does that leave us now?

Since several days have passed and still no apocalypse in sight, I’d like to make a proposition to you, the person reading this, and to myself as well. I propose that you and I abandon all ideologies that promote fear, anger, hatred, and ridicule. Instead, let’s make a daily, conscious decision to live both our lives as positive and loving as we can be.

And how can we do this?  There are two things that we must remember and embrace with the core of our being.

My high school track coach, Mr. Tintle, instilled in me one of the basic tenets of my being that I hold to this day. That is, one must have PMA, short for Positive Mental Attitude. With a positive mental attitude, you can achieve the impossible.

My other basic tenet is I live by the Golden Rule. I try not to do anything to anyone that I wouldn’t want done to myself. It’s that simple.

Keeping a Positive Mental Attitude and following the Golden Rule.

Adopt it. Embrace it. Teach it to your kids.

And with these two tenets in mind, I’d like to make a call to action to you and myself as well. Let’s do something in the world today, right now, that will make a positive difference. I’m writing an open letter to the world, now it’s your turn. What will you do?

Want to fight global warming and climate change? Plant a tree in your backyard. Can’t stand the partisanship that has taken over politics?  Turn off the news and volunteer in your township.  Upset about kids shooting other kids? Become a Big Brother or Big Sister to a troubled child… or simply a high school track coach.

The point I’m trying to make is, no matter how big the problems of our world seem to be… no matter what the difficulties we face… even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant action we take can make all the difference in the world.

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To the Mayans a Baktun was a measurement of time lasting approximately 400 years. December 21, 2012 marked the end of the 13th Baktun on the Mayan calendar, and the beginning of a new one.  Descendants of the Mayans never believed the world was going to end on that date; instead, they look at the 14th Baktun as a period of hope and change.

So as we begin another year and another Baktun, I’d like to propose not just a new year’s resolution, but a “New Baktun Resolution” we all can adopt (after all, the next one won’t be for another 400 years). Let’s take this opportunity to leave all the hatred, negativity and baggage the human race has been carrying around with us for all the millennia we’ve walked this great earth and leave it in the past. Let’s take control of our destiny and stop living in fear. Let us start the new Bakun as a loving, more mature, and enlightened human race.

Not the end of the world, but the beginning of a new one.

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WHAT KNOWLEDGE OF UFOS DID OUR PAST PRESIDENTS REALLY HAVE?

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The folks over at ghosttheory.com have pulled together a fantastic review of our past presidents and their relationship/ knowledge of UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Ghost Theory writes:

E Pluribus Unum: Out of many, One is what it says on the Seal of the President of the United States of America. Traditionally the phrase is meant to express that out of the many colonies that formed the nascent new country a single nation was born. In a more modern context it could be interpreted equally to mean that out of many cultures and beliefs the people who form a nation are derived. In the context of this article it could also be said that out of many in power there is one we presume to have answers. Even out of many who have held the office, the one currently in office should be in possession of the answers so many of us would like to hear. The question is; What do we really know about UFOs?

There have been a number of US Presidents who have addressed the UFO issue and it makes you wonder. Twelve Presidents have held office in what we will call the UFO Age, that period of time during which UFOs have been both figuratively and literally on the radar of the population of the Earth. During that time the United States has evolved from a partner to other nations in attaining peace from threats, to a parent scolding others for threatening actions and seemingly falling back again to a partner who must work with others in place of imposing rules upon them. Still the question of whether or not there is a larger threat, or greater parent hangs over our heads. Yet whenever a question faces the world at large there are few if any who do not turn to the United States for their knowledge, their influence, their protection, or for someone to blame soIF there are UFO secrets to be had, and there almost certainly are whether they be to prove or disprove, it seems likely those secrets reside within the borders of the United States at the very least.

Which brings us back to asking “What does the President know?” It is a facet of short term thinking to believe that the office of President gives some sort of ultimate power when it comes to running the government, when in truth it is a temporary posting lasting just four to eight years, at least during the time frame of the UFO Age, while those who keep the wheels turning, or I guess put on the brakes in some regards, have longer careers that are not dependant upon current office holders. If there is a secret to be kept, a secret that has implications far beyond the immediate state of affairs of any nation who do you tell? If you are one of the secret keepers a person who has a short term agenda would not be on that list. So far several Presidents have announced an intent to learn the truth of the UFO phenomenon, but none have done carried out that intent, at least so far as to inform the public.

Let’s start at the beginning.
Two events mark the start of the UFO Age; those being the Kenneth Arnold sighting at Mt Ranier on June 24th 1947, and the Roswell crash(s) of July 1947. Harry Truman as Vice_President to Franklin Roosevelt assumed office in April of 1945, following the death of Roosevelt, and so became the first US President to be faced with the real potential of contact with beings from another world here on Earth…

Read more at ghosttheroy.com