A Liberated Zone on the FM, to enhance alternative culture and cognitive freedom!
Broadcast Thursdays at 89.5 FM KZCT in Vallejo, California, to a worldwide audience. Tune-in online [http://tunein.com/popout/player/s130679].
Convened by Dr.G., a Renegade Illuminati, convening Thee Temple, for knowledge, whimsy, and inspiration. Everything is true, nothing is forbidden!
Introductory track: Covenant - Ritual Noise [youtube.com/watch?v=dnlGEQ1NUsk]
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Futurism & Strange Science
Broadcast Thursdays at 89.5 FM KZCT in Vallejo, California, to a worldwide audience. Tune-in online [http://tunein.com/popout/player/s130679].
Convened by Dr.G., a Renegade Illuminati, convening Thee Temple, for knowledge, whimsy, and inspiration. Everything is true, nothing is forbidden!
Introductory track: Covenant - Ritual Noise [youtube.com/watch?v=dnlGEQ1NUsk]
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Futurism & Strange Science
* "Space Elevators Are Getting Closer to Reality; Scientists say not only would such technology change humanity, but that we could have built one by now" (2022-02-17, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/building-a-space-elevator-may-be-getting-closer-to-reality) [archive.is/WLHyf]
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* "MIT researchers create new material as strong as steel and light as plastic" (2022-02-06, usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/02/06/mit-new-material-stronger-than-steel/6684075001/) [archive.is/zIrEr]
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* "The Stunning New 'Air Yacht' Is a Catamaran That Floats to the Skies; Thanks to two solar-powered blimps instead of traditional parallel hulls" (2022-01-12, interestingengineering.com/the-stunning-new-air-yacht-is-a-catamaran-that-floats-to-the-skies) [archive.is/X6Vuu]
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* "A new hydrogen-powered hypersonic plane offers emission-free, rapid air transport; The hydrogen-powered aircraft will be a hybrid between a plane and a rocket" (2022-02-09, interestingengineering.com/a-new-hydrogen-powered-hypersonic-plane-offers-emission-free-rapid-air-transport) [archive.is/j2ZdE]
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* "The quantum ‘boomerang’ effect has been seen for the first time; Jostled particles return to their starting points in certain materials" (2022-02-08, sciencenews.org/article/quantum-boomerang-effect-seen-first-time) [archive.is/lfKNX]
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* "You're (Maybe) Gonna Need a Patent for That Woolly Mammoth; Scientists are racing to bring extinct species back from the dead. But does a resurrected mammoth belong to nature, or us?" (2022-02-09, wired.com/story/de-extinction-patents/) [archive.is/ILJor]
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Space News
"NASA Administrator: Alien Life Is More Likely Than We Thought" (2019, futurism.com) [archive.is/d6n46]
* "The Atmosphere of This Extreme Exoplanet Has an Intriguing Similarity to Earth" (2022-01-31, sciencealert.com/the-atmosphere-of-this-extreme-exoplanet-has-an-intriguing-similarity-to-earth-s) [archive.is/kO283]
* "NASA unveils first image from newly launched satellite; The image shows the Cassiopeia, a supernova, a star that exploded 400 years ago" (2022-02-16, rt.com/news/549601-nasa-first-image-remnant-supernova/) [archive.is/6q8Uw]
Space News
"NASA Administrator: Alien Life Is More Likely Than We Thought" (2019, futurism.com) [archive.is/d6n46]
* "Astronomers just discovered a new black hole that’s unlike anything seen before" (2022-02-08, bgr.com/science/astronomers-just-discovered-a-new-black-hole-thats-unlike-anything-seen-before/) [archive.is/7RoVF]
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* "Scientists say there may be a 'major planet' that could potentially support life for at least 1 billion years into the future" (2022-02-11, cbsnews.com/news/major-planet-possible-support-life-scientists/) [archive.is/Kih8m]
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* "The Atmosphere of This Extreme Exoplanet Has an Intriguing Similarity to Earth" (2022-01-31, sciencealert.com/the-atmosphere-of-this-extreme-exoplanet-has-an-intriguing-similarity-to-earth-s) [archive.is/kO283]
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* "Our Solar System in True Color Is Really Something Else Venus is white. So is the sun. They’re beautiful anyway" (2022-02-03, theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/02/venus-true-color-solar-system/621460/) [archive.is/pwHLU]
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* "An 85-Mile-Wide Comet Is Officially The Largest Comet Ever Observed" (2022-02-12, sciencealert.com/an-85-mile-wide-comet-is-officially-the-largest-comet-ever-observed) [archive.is/EDMcU]
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* "Toxic volcanic lake reveals how life may have been possible on ancient Mars" (2022-02-03, cnn.com/2022/02/03/world/mars-analog-poas-volcano-lake-scn/index.html) [archive.is/MYYZg]
* "NASA's Mars rover captures clouds drifting across the Martian sky; The images allow scientists to calculate how fast the clouds are moving and how high they are" (2022-02-20, interestingengineering.com/mars-rover-martian-clouds) [archive.is/4YlM5]
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NEO Watch
B612 Foundation [b612foundation.org] to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.
* "2nd 'Trojan Asteroid' confirmed orbiting with Earth; Asteroid 2020 XL5 will be Earth's buddy for the next 4,000 years" (2022-02-02, livescience.com/2nd-trojan-asteroid-orbiting-earth) [archive.is/o6PBH]
NEO Watch
B612 Foundation [b612foundation.org] to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.
* "2nd 'Trojan Asteroid' confirmed orbiting with Earth; Asteroid 2020 XL5 will be Earth's buddy for the next 4,000 years" (2022-02-02, livescience.com/2nd-trojan-asteroid-orbiting-earth) [archive.is/o6PBH]
Ancient News
* "Archeologists find cache of Ancient Egyptian mummification materials; Czech and Egyptian archaeologists have found a cache of mummification materials in Abu Sir, south of the Pyramids of Giza, located in Greater Cairo, an official source reported Wednesday" (2022-02-09, plenglish.com/news/2022/02/09/archeologists-find-cache-of-ancient-egyptian-mummification-materials/) [archive.is/wlDn1]
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* "Researchers Now Know Where the Ancient Maya Planted Their Sacred Cacao Groves; Sinkholes across the Yucatan Peninsula provided perfect growing conditions for the plant, used as currency in the Mesoamerican civilization" (2022-02-07, smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-now-know-where-the-ancient-maya-planted-their-sacred-cacao-groves-180979535/) [archive.is/szDm7]
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* "London's largest Roman mosaic in 50 years discovered by archaeologists" (2022-02-23, cnn.com/style/article/roman-mosaic-london-discovery-scli-scn-intl-gbr/index.html) [archive.is/cqGNU]
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* "Ancient Reptilians: The Unanswered Mystery of the 7,000-Year-Old Ubaid Lizardmen" (2022-02-26, ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/ubaid-lizardmen-001116) [archive.ph/e2IFb]
- image caption: Examples of the Ubaid lizardmen discovered in Iraq.
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* "Did the ‘Black Death’ Really Kill Half of Europe? New Research Says No. Looking at ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction in Europe" (2022-02-10, nytimes.com/2022/02/10/science/black-death.html) [archive.is/BuWka]
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* " 'World's oldest calendar' discovered in Scottish field" (2013-07-15, bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-23286928) [archive.is/UEtno] [begin excerpt]:
Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world's oldest lunar "calendar" in an Aberdeenshire field.
Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months.
A team led by the University of Birmingham suggests the ancient monument was created by hunter-gatherers about 10,000 years ago.
The pit alignment, at Warren Field, was first excavated in 2004.
The experts who analysed the pits said they may have contained a wooden post.
The Mesolithic "calendar" is thousands of years older than previous known formal time-measuring monuments created in Mesopotamia. [end excerpt]
- image caption: An illustration of how the pits would have worked
- [comments]: ahem, I like to trace my "White" heritage (more like northern Eurasian ancestry). So I find this fascinating. Our ancestors are descended from Steppe "Turks" (whatever that means), or, from isolated populations in the northern Atlantic region of the Americas. If the latter theory holds true, then, this archeological site you posted may be a relic from those days gone yore, before our ancestral tribes were inundated by rapid rising sea levels (re: 10,000 BCE) and the survivors trekked inland into Eurasia...
Damn, that would make for a fine Conan tale of the post-Diluvial era.
I would be interested if these stone observatories are also found further south than Morocco. As "Northern Eurasian" may not have been a phenotype haplogroup yet by 4000 years ago, these archeological sites could be "Ethiopian", a highlands community with a continuity of history back to 10,000 BCE... in other words ancient Egyptian before Egypt was a thing, producing precursors to cubits, and basic mathematics.
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* "How this vast ancient underground city was accidentally discovered in Turkey" (2015-03-27, washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/how-this-vast-ancient-underground-city-was-accidentally-discovered-in-turkey/) [archive.is/BO04p]
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Mexica (Aztec) Sacrifice Debunked?: "This may explain why no massive catacombs with what would have been the bones of sacrifice victims have ever been found in Mesoamerica."
"There is absolutely no proof that the Mexika (Aztecs) practiced mass human sacrifice. Spanish lies and archeological evidence are NOT I repeat, are NOT proof. Everything that has been written on anything pertaining to the Mexika was written by the Spanish or codex writers under the guidance and supervision of Spanish monks. Allow me to introduce this article by a world expert, ethnologist on this matter...
"After careful and systematic study of the sources, I find no sign of evidence of institutionalized mass human sacrifice among the Aztecs. The phenomenon to be studied, therefore, may be not these supposed sacrifices but the deeply rooted belief that they occurred." - Peter Hassler, ethnologist at the University of Zurich.
Copyright World Press Review.
"An aura of lurid fascination surrounds our interest in the Aztecs, the people who, at the beginning of the 16th century, inhabited one of the largest cities of the world: Tenochtitlan. In 1521, this metropolis was erased from the face of the Earth by the Spanish conquerors under Hernando Cortes and his Indian allies.
As a justification for their destructive acts, the conquistadors generated propaganda designed to offend the sensibilities of their Christian audience: They described the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. Later chronicles by Spanish writers, missionaries, and even Indian converts also told repeatedly of this cult. Even when scientists called these reports grossly exaggerated, the fact that the Aztecs sacrificed humans remained undisputed. Cutting out the victim's heart with an obsidian knife [fashioned from volcanic glass] was supposedly the most common method of sacrifice, although other forms were practiced as well.
These included beheading, piercing with spears or arrows, and setting victims against each other in unequal duels. We are also told that some victims were literally skinned alive; a priest then donned this macabre "skin suit" to perform a ritual dance.
There has been no shortage of theories and explanations for what lay behind these archaic cults.
Some researchers have deemed them religious rituals. Others have called them displays of repressed aggression and even a method of regulating population.
Although human sacrifice has been the subject of much writing, there has been almost no critical examination of the sources of information about it.
A critical review is urgently needed.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo is the classic source of information about mass sacrifice by the Aztecs. A literate soldier in Cortes' company, Diaz claimed to have witnessed such a ritual. "We looked over toward the Great Pyramids and watched as [the Aztecs] ... dragged [our comrades] up the steps and prepared to sacrifice them," he wrote in his Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain), published posthumously in 1632. "After they danced, they placed our comrades face up atop square, narrow stones erected for the sacrifices. Then, with obsidian knives, they sawed their breasts open, pulled out their still-beating hearts, and offered these to their idols."
The scene of these sacrificial rituals was the main temple in the island-city of Tenochtitlan. The observers, however, were watching from their camp on the shore of a lake three or four miles away.
From that point, Diaz could have neither seen nor heard anything. To follow the action at the foot of the pyramid, he would have to have been inside the temple grounds. But this would have been impossible: The Aztecs had just beaten back the Spanish and their allies, who had been besieging the city from all sides.
But Diaz is not the inventor of the legend of ritual murder. Cortes fathered the lie in 1522, when he wrote a shorter version of the tale to Emperor Charles V. He would have been confident that his reports would find ready ears, for in the 15th and 16th centuries many lies were being spread in Spain about ritual murders carried out by the Jews, who were being expelled from the Iberian peninsula along with the Moors. Cortes' lies were a tremendous success: They have endured for almost 500 years without challenge.
Along with the lies of the conquistadors, there also have been secondhand reports--what could be called "hearsay evidence"--in the writings of Spanish missionaries and their Indian converts, who, in their new-found zeal, scorned their old religion.
The accounts are filled with vague and banal phrases such as, "And thus they sacrificed," which indicates that the writers cannot have witnessed a real human sacrifice.
The only concrete evidence comes to us not from the Aztecs but from the Mayan civilization of the Yucatan. These depictions are found in the records of trials conducted during the Inquisition, between 1561 and 1565. These supposed testimonies about human sacrifice, however, were coerced from the Indians under torture and have been judged worthless as ethnographic evidence.
Along with the written accounts, many archeological finds--sculptures, frescoes, wall paintings, and pictographs--have been declared by the Spanish, their Indian converts, and later anthropologists to be connected to human sacrifice. Yet these images are in no way proof that humans were in fact sacrificed. Until now, scientists have started from a position of believing the lies and hearsay reports and interpreting the archeological evidence accordingly.
The circularity of such reasoning is obvious. There are plenty of possible interpretations of the images of hearts and even killings in these artifacts. They could depict myths or legends.
They could present narrativ images--allegories, symbols, and metaphors. They could even be images of ordinary executions or murders.
Human bones that appear to have been cut also do not serve as evidence of human sacrifice. In tantric Buddhism, skulls and leg bones are used to make musical instruments used in religious rituals; this is in no way connected to human sacrifice.
Leslie J. Furst, a student of symbols used by the Aztecs, has seen depictions of magic where others have seen tales of human sacrifice.
For example, one image shows the incarnation of a female god "beheaded" in the same way that a plant's blossom is removed in the ritual connected to the making of pulque, an alcoholic drink.
Why scholars have interpreted images of self-beheadings and other things that depart from physical reality as evidence of human sacrifice will puzzle future generations.
There is another important symbolic background for images of killing in Aztec artifacts: the initiation ceremony, whose central event is the mystical death. The candidate "dies" in order to be reborn. This "death" in imaginary or symbolic forms often takes on a dramatic shape in imagery--such as being chopped to pieces or swallowed by a monster.
There has been no research into the symbolism of death in the high culture of the Indians of Mesoamerica, however, even though there were many reincarnation myths among these peoples.
The ritual of "human skinning" surely belongs in this same category. In our depictions, we see the skin removed quickly from the victim, with a single cut along the spine, and coming off the body in a single piece.
This is scarcely practicable. This "human skin suit" may be nothing but a metaphorical-symbolic representation, as indeed is appropriate for the image-rich Aztec language.
All of the heart and blood symbolism may be just a metaphor for one of the Aztecs' favorite drinks, made from cacao. The heart is a symbolically important organ in more than just European cultures.
In the Indian languages, as well, it is a symbol of courage and the soul. "Cutting the soul from the body," after all, is not a surgical operation. This may explain why no massive catacombs with what would have been the bones of sacrifice victims have ever been found in Mesoamerica."
From the liberal weekly "Die Zeit" of Hamburg. Peter Hassler, an ethnologist at the University of Zurich, is the author of "Human Sacrifice Among the Aztecs? A Critical Study," published recently in Switzerland."
Miscellany & Errata
* "NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Shows AMAZING Image in Deep Space That Resembles a Cross, Perhaps the Gateway to Heaven" (2022-02-22, thedcpatriot.com/nasas-hubble-space-telescope-shows-amazing-image-in-deep-space-that-resembles-a-cross-perhaps-the-gateway-to-heaven/) [archive.is/dHdUY]
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Curiata
* "Brain scans on a dying man suggest his life flashed before his eyes, researchers say" (2022-02-23, insider.com/brain-scans-dying-man-study-life-flashed-before-his-eyes-2022-2) [archive.is/9YWk2]
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* Stare directly/intently at the plus sign in the middle and the purply dots disappear.
* Stare directly/intently at the plus sign in the middle and the purply dots disappear.
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* "Arctic Sponges Survive Dark, Hostile Conditions by Feasting on The Extinct" (2022-02-08, sciencealert.com/sponges-in-one-of-the-world-s-most-barren-habitats-survive-by-digesting-fossils) [archive.is/Fy3Pj]
* "Trekking California’s mysterious Bigfoot trail" (2022-01-31, timesheraldonline.com/2022/01/31/trekking-californias-mysterious-bigfoot-trail-2/) [archive.is/HMf4d]
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* "New ‘Megaflash Lightning’ Records Are the Definition of Extreme; Steady advances in satellite technology means even greater megaflashes could be detected in the near future" (2022-02-02, gizmodo.com/new-megaflash-lightning-records-wmo-1848466556) [archive.is/Twgcx]
* "World record 477-mile-long lightning ‘megaflash’ confirmed over U.S. ; The World Meteorological Organization also certified a flash over South America that lasted a record 17 seconds" (2022-01-31, washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/01/31/world-record-lightning-megaflash-us/) [archive.is/Xz7ni]
* "World record 477-mile-long lightning ‘megaflash’ confirmed over U.S. ; The World Meteorological Organization also certified a flash over South America that lasted a record 17 seconds" (2022-01-31, washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/01/31/world-record-lightning-megaflash-us/) [archive.is/Xz7ni]
- image caption: Lightning image from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on NOAA's GOES-16 satellite from April 29, 2020. (NOAA)
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* "Sinbad's 'Shazaam': The Strange Case of a Movie That Doesn't Exist" (2020-11-16, ourcommunitynow.com/film/sinbads-shazaam-the-strange-case-of-a-movie-that-doesnt-exist) [archive.is/QC0Nt]
- [note]: I read "Power of Shazam", a superhero comic book series published by DC comics in the late 1990s. I also was an avid reader of Wizard magazine. So, it was around 1997 that I read in Wizard's "Trailer Park" section about comics-related movies, that Sinbad was tapped to star in "Shazaam", which I thought was a horrible idea because Disney was coopting the "Shazam" trademark owned by DC comics, a subsidiary of TimesWarner, and this would lead to a billion dollar lawsuit.
Needless to say, I've met others who recall watching "Shazaam" on a passenger jet, "y'know, the one with Sinbad"... as opposed to the "Kazaam" film starring Shaquille O'Neill. Nobody seems to have a copy of Sinbad's movie, and, now it is central to some kind of conspiracy theory concerning time travel changing reality. Whatever. As a fan of DC Comic's "Power of Shazam", I know what I read in 1997 Wizard Magazine. No, I never saw the movie. But I can recall the photostill showing Sinbad dressed as a genie accompanying the article.
Ongoing research
[https://archive.org/details/161VariousArticlesOnEMEtc2]
[https://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Moon_Images_Menu.html] 01) Image Information
[http://web.archive.org/web/20170627004538/http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20170603072841/frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/]
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