JustGetThere

Crime Families, Buggery and Boat Riding Dreams.

nospam@example.com (Les Visible) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:42:58 -0700

A certain segment of the readership is leaving this site in droves because I’ve become too nice and stopped (for the moment) breathing fire and giving voice to outrage. Yes, there’s plenty to feel outraged about but I’m not feeling it. I’m not feeling any anger about anything at all; don’t know why that is, it just is. I’ll be saying a few things today with an added disclaimer and maybe even a few caveats that might get the blood up; if so- it’s accidental to my state of the mind at the moment.

This thing with The Pope is a major event in our times. At the moment it just looks like another dustup in a long line of dustups but I suspect this one is going to get legs. I was more than a little surprised that Ratsinger got the position of the world’s richest drag queen. He doesn’t even look right besides not being right. He’s bent, as my English friends might say. Deals got done in the back room and up he popped or is that poped?

Here’s the disclaimer; I’ve nothing against Catholics or anyone in the rank and file of that particular tradition. I’m quite certain you can reach the divinity through that particular tradition, just like you can reach divinity through any tradition, depending on the state of your heart and your intentions. I’ve nothing against people who consider themselves Democrats or Republicans but... their leadership is something else and so it is for the leadership of the Catholic Church and the history of its operations on this planet. I don’t think I need mention the conquistadors, the inquisitions, or any of the other murder operations that have evolved out of forced conversion by the sword (in any religion)... and the looting and enslavement of primitive cultures. That’s all in the record.

The thing with people who don’t want things to be the way they are or the way they were is that they either rewrite history (as the Zionists have been doing) or they say, “That’s all in the past now and has nothing to do with us; we’re different (as the Catholic hierarchy implies). It’s become painfully obvious that the victors do write the history and history is a lie.

I happen to mention this debacle with The Pope because it fits in with a few other alarming events that aren’t on the hilltops with ten foot horns but which are going to be making a lot of noise sooner or later. One of these is the capture of someone reputed to be the Taliban’s #2 guy. Apparently the Afghan government is very angry about this because this Talibani had a promise of safe passage and was engaged in strategic talks; please forgive my linking to a Zionist manufactured news site. It’s what I could find handy and sometimes they tell the truth just to keep the borderline mentalities guessing.

Another thing is the tug of war between the US and the Rothschild Crime Family; also known as Israel. The Rothschild Crime Syndicate has been expanding their housing programs in order to take physical control of Jerusalem and also gain some strategic advantage in the area when they ‘go to the mattresses’ during the later stages of their present ethnic cleansing operation.

The Crime Family doesn’t need this housing. They are scrambling all over the planet to find anyone who has some amount of Jewish blood in order to displace Palestinians and justify the hegemony and genocide in which they are engaged. The result has been importing thug mentalities from Eastern European countries with money paid by the United States. But Crime Families need foot soldiers and they aren’t’ expected to be humane or intelligent. It’s also easy to convince them of the wildest fantasies and get them to operate in defense of them.

The backroom US policy makers have retarded Israel’s desire to accomplish in Iran what they have so far accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re real unhappy about this. Like a spoiled child who is used to getting its own way at all times, the Crime Family is showboating with spiteful behavior (the settlement building) to show that, “I can to do whatever I want to and you can’t stop me”. They need somewhere to put the overflow of the population burst in holocaust survivors. No one knows where they are coming from but there are more and more of them every day. Some of them don’t look old enough to shave.

The papal brushfire... the kidnapping of the Taliban leader and the Crime Family settlement issue are all precursors of big possibilities to come. The future is an uncertain thing. It’s modified each day by both predictable and surprising behavior on the part of humanity and Nature, not to mention the Joker and unseen motivations of the ineffable. Some of it is set and some of it is liquid.

The Taliban is not going to roll over for what just happened in this act of treachery. The Pope’s hangnail is showing all the signs of a systemic infection and The Crime Family is extremely pissed off about not being able to kill countless thousands of Iranians who are presently occupying a portion of Ersatz Rothschildlandia. They’ve been there for millennium and the Kosher Nostra doesn’t like that one bit so... it’s past time for a little false flag activity but... they have to be careful. They are being watched.

The Crime Family has orchestrated a financial holocaust among the residents of a certain super power which they took control of some time ago and, contrary to their intentions, a lot of the citizens of that country actually think they are responsible. That’s gaining credibility all around the world. Even the Chinese know about it and are publishing best selling books about how to take advantage of some of The Crime Family’s strategies.

One thing generally leads to another and all three of these scenarios are going to do just that. The relentless surfacing of united interests for having a deeper investigation into the 9/11 false flag is also having a telling impact on human consciousness and though it is still mostly below the wider surface, it’s breaking out here and there in ways unpleasant to the greater intentions of the Crime Collective, which is an association of various crime families around the world.

As the good weather- or whatever is standing in for it- takes over for the previous bad weather we are going to see all sorts of unusual happenings.

I had a dream last night that was pretty interesting. The meaning has been coming together in my mind over the last couple of hours. It’s not like most dreams which can mean any number of different things.

I was at a party near the docks somewhere. Someone suggested we go out in a boat. One of us commented on the state of the weather, which was stormy. We got into this boat which resembled a houseboat but which was much bigger than most houseboats and had only one room. It was operated by foot pedals like those plastic jobbies you can get at most resorts. Since this was a dream, it didn’t matter that it would have been impossible to power something this size with just a small amount of leg action.

We got out on the water and everything seemed fine. For whatever reason, I went to a window and saw that there was a pretty furious storm on the waters outside. I also noticed one fellow in a corner, energetically bailing and crying out that the boat was sinking. It was only sinking in his part of the boat. There wasn’t any water anywhere else. I said to someone that we should probably head for shore because the storm was getting worse. This person said that he didn’t think there was a problem but, “sure, we can go back”. We went back and docked and when we got off the boat it was a bright and sunny day and there hadn’t ever been a problem.

Well... that’s pretty clear to me. I’ll let you have your own conclusions about the matter. In any case, keep your eye on these particular matters that we’ve been discussing this morning and let’s see what happens out there on that great sea of life.

Then You Let Go

The New Shangri-La

Sunday’s show is now ready for download.

Sailing into the Kingdom on a Magic Carpet of Sound.

nospam@example.com (Les Visible) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:45:13 -0700

The beloved spiritual master, A.C, Bhaktivedanta wrote a book called “Easy Journey to other Planets”. Although I have never read the book, I know what it’s about because I came into the same reality by another route and that’s what I want to talk about tonight. That book, the title of that book, has been running through my head for weeks now. It keeps coming up. Sometimes I see the book cover in my mind when I close my eyes.

So many seriously strange things have happened to me in this life that the present, regular appearance of inexplicable phenomena is just more of the same. It’s strange now? It’s always been strange. The intensity and landscape vary but supernatural coffee is always percolating underneath the stage sets.

Before I went on my internet free journey I had begun doing the Hare Krishna-Hare Rama chant. It gradually increased its presence and replaced the Tara Chant which had previously replaced the Ganesha chant. It wasn’t long before I began to notice the particular power of the chant and also that it was much more personally in tune with me than the others.

All of my life I’ve been searching for the divine, even when I didn’t know what I was searching for. It’s led me for a period of time into just about every religious tapestry. One thing remained true through it all. The Eastern Traditions proved to be a more comfortable fit.

I wonder sometimes about Christians. I believe that Jesus was the son of God and I believe in what he had to say. As far as the miracles and the rising from the dead, that’s easy. I know God can accomplish anything. Rising from the dead is small potatoes in relation to what the divine is capable of. If we knew what we were capable of we would very quickly find ourselves deeply committed to seeking union with the divine.

I don’t see where any of what is said here conflicts with Jesus Christ. There’s an important thing that I think is generally overlooked and that is that the Bible does not contain everything that happened. People think the story is complete. It’s very much incomplete. Jesus went missing in the book for 17 years. It’s not a wrong assumption to believe that there’s a lot more to the story than what’s on paper.

Believing that the Bible contains everything is a limiting condition. It confines us to only what is written down and cuts off reflection upon the immeasurable possibilities of the divine. Do you catch my drift? There’s an unconscious assumption across the board that it all got written down. It didn’t.

This is why one will never realize the divine unless they go within where it all is. The body is a grave that conceals a spark of light. In our lives there is a period of time that we are given to connect with this light. This is the purpose of life. It has no other purpose. The divine experiences and realizes itself in the human state. If you don’t connect to the light during the time period; the length of your particular cassette, you get recycled. You might get recycled anyway but after a different fashion. “We shall not all die but we shall all be changed”.

I remember Christians coming up to me with a messianic gleam and asking me if I was saved. I would reply, “Yes” because it happens to be true. That was too easy for them and so they had to dissect the elements of my salvation. This inevitably led to my not being saved, according to them. There were some very specific agreements and understandings that had to take place. I was in agreement and understanding of all of them, according to the way I interpreted the meaning. This would lead inevitably to finding something, somewhere, somehow that indicated that I was not saved. It reminded me of lawyers looking for case histories that they could enter into evidence or present to the judge to show precedence, only in reverse; if that makes sense (grin).

You look at the word Christ and the word Krishna and it’s a no brainer. I can find parallels for nearly everything in Eastern thought that Western thought presents. During the night of my kundalini awakening, I remember looking at some western pen and ink pictures on the wall. They were of knights on horseback. As I looked at them they morphed back and forth from West to East and I was given to understand in no uncertain terms that they are the same, only differing in appearance. This is what everyone argues about… appearances.

The divine is invisible but we can see it in operation all around us should we choose to. We can see, convincingly, the total absence of God or the total presence of God depending on what we prefer to believe. In my own case, I have had so much direct experience that it’s beyond doubt, yet… I still experience doubt and separation every single day. I’m learning that these conditions automatically present themselves at regular intervals and our job is not to attach to them; not to think that the doubt and separation are our own. Everything that comes into our minds is not born of our being. There’s only one mind and these thoughts are fishes that swim in it. They travel all over the world and enter into every head. A master is subjected to this just as we are but it doesn’t affect.

Everything real and enduring is built out of love… Love is the key to success in anything and everything; loving what you do makes it come alive. Loving another makes both of you glow. The enemy of love is selfishness. We learn to be selfish. Life shows us the practicality of it and implies we would have much less without it.

Chanting, for me, is a way of weaving a magic carpet. Like a real carpet, it takes time and industry. Eventually you can ride that carpet to other worlds. I am not the only one to discover this. Other readers here know this. Love holds the particles of the carpet together and the sound current is very much like a highway ocean you sail on… vibrate over… swim along.

Personally I have no beef with anyone. Smoking Mirrors is an enigma to me but then I realize that it’s a kind of bait for this place. This place has, all along, gotten 10% of what Mirrors gets. Of course, Mirrors gets linked much, much more but still… that’s the way it goes. The general interest is much more upon the operation of the world than the operation of the divine, even though the world is just a small extension of it

When one chants one can travel on a carpet of sound to the land of one’s focus. I remember two years ago… one afternoon during a meditation that lasted several hours that I found myself looking into a long and very large corridor that ended in a brilliant light. There were shapes and forms all around it and they grew brighter the closer they were to the light. I hovered there on the edge of seeing but never actually seeing. Still, it was an impressive period and a memorable experience.

As we dig deeper into the dirt and darkness of ourselves, we create a larger and larger opening through which the light can pass and also illuminate our progress. Some have to dig harder and deeper than others and those are the ones who are less inclined to dig; for some reason it works like that, the same way that more talents got added unto that particular servant in that particular parable.

I look at chanting and devotional practice as power tools and even when using real power tools, which I do most days, I imagine that they are also being applied to a similar end, regardless of the actual project I am engaged in. It seems fruitful to me to turn every activity into an act of celebrating and recognizing the presence of the divine. No doubt there are other modalities but these serve here for the moment.

In the tension and uncertainty of the times we should not forget that immense blessings of awareness are being conferred to those who put themselves in a position to receive them and there are other blessings too. Personally, I can visualize doing anything else. Everything else is ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Every Day

The New Shangri-La

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:31:00 -0700

American Drug War - The Last White Hope

AMERICAN DRUG WAR shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. 35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars. The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from "legal drugs" Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure.

Click here to watch in widescreen format

Hacked Mattel Brain Toy Delivers Painful Electric Shocks for Thinking

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:45:32 -0700

By Caleb Johnson

Switched | A toy that reads your brain waves to manipulate a foam ball sounds fun -- until said toy begins manipulating other things, too. Like your body’s pain receptors. Doesn’t sound too thrilling to us, but a few geeks apparently thought it’d be a great idea.

According to GeekoSystem, some folks at Harcos Laboratories took Mattel’s Mindflex and hacked it to deliver a painful electric shock to the user. Strap the device on your head, and challenge yourself not to think -- not even a little bit. If your brain is a little active, you’ll get a little shock. The more activity inside your head, the more intense of a shock you’ll feel. If you’re into this kind of thing, there’s a step-by-step how-to on the Harcos blog. Attempt at your own risk.

[Warning: Extreme stupidity]

Drill Held at D.C. Transit Station Days Before Pentagon Shooting

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:55:14 -0700

Kurt Nimmo

Infowars | Coincidence? Several days before John Patrick Bedell attacked two Pentagon cops and was killed, D.C. police staged a drill at the Friendship Heights Metro station in in Northwest Washington.

“Metro police and other emergency personnel will descend on the Friendship Heights Station starting at 11:30 Wednesday night for an anti-terrorist exercise in which mock gunmen open fire, killing or wounding several passengers,” Ann Scott Tyson reported for the Washington Post on February 22. “Agencies responding will include the Metro police special response team, as well as fire, police and emergency medical personnel from the District, Montgomery County and the FBI, according to a Metro statement.”

Washington Post video report on Blue TIDE, an anti-terrorism exercise conducted by the D.C. Metro Transit Police.

Prior to the Friendship Heights Metro station drill, on February 3, D.C. Metro Transit Police staged their largest anti-terrorism sweep ever, “some toting M-4 rifles and others guiding bomb-sniffing dogs,” according to the Post. “In coming months, they plan to hold similar drills for the effort, dubbed Blue TIDE (Terrorism Identification and Deterrence Effort).”

Drills are a prominent and highly suspicious feature of the attacks on September 11, 2001. New York City was scheduled to have a major terrorism training exercise September 11. It was called Tripod and was intended to test how well the city’s Office of Emergency Management would administer treatment in the event of a biological-terrorism attack. FEMA and the FBI were scheduled to participate.

FEMA spokesman Tom Kenney confirmed Tripod was scheduled to take place. He told Dan Rather on September 12, 2001, that FEMA was deployed to New York on Monday night, September 10th, to be ready to go into action on Tuesday morning, September 11th. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani confirmed FEMA’s presence in the city during his testimony before the 9-11 Commission in 2004.

During its Vigilant Guardian exercise held on September 6, 2001, NORAD practiced for dealing with the simulated hijackings of two commercial aircraft by terrorists. The simulated hijackings were to occur on September 9, 10, and the morning of September 11.

The previous month, on August 30, the Department of Transportation held a tabletop exercise as part of its preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. “During that exercise, part of the scenario, interestingly enough, involved a potentially hijacked plane and someone calling on a cell phone, among other aspects of the scenario that were very strange when 12 days later, as you know, we had the actual event [of 9/11],” Ellen Engleman, the administrator of the DOT’s Research and Special Programs Administration, said in October, 2001.

In early August of 2001, a mass casualty exercise was held at the Pentagon. The scenario envisioned a hijacked plane hitting the Pentagon. “[It was] purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise included a plane hitting the building,” General Lance Lord, the assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force who was one of the participants in the exercise, told the Air Force Space Command News in September, 2002.

On the morning of September 11, within minutes of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the CIA was engaged in “a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” The Bush administration described the event as “a bizarre coincidence.”

And then there was the terrorist drill held in London during the July 7, 2005, attack. “At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now,” Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, a private firm on contract to the London Metropolitan Police, told the BBC.

After the London attack, math on the odds of a drill occurring at the same time was calculated. “The odds were one in 3,715,592,613,265,750,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is obviously a figure open to conjecture but it gives you an idea of the ballpark improbability we are talking about,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote for Prison Planet on July 23, 2005. (See Probability of 7/7 Drill and Attack Coinciding.)

The odds on the drill at the Friendship Heights Metro station in in Northwest Washington and the Blue TIDE exercise held earlier prior to the Pentagon shooting are much lower, but suspicious nonetheless.

The exercises were not mentioned by the corporate media after the Pentagon shooting. The fact drills and exercises parallel such events are irrelevant to the corporate media. Its primary agenda is to engage in hysterical fear-mongering about “rightwing extremists” and 9/11 truthers and fallaciously connect them to a shooting by a mentally deranged man who not only wrote about 9/11 truth but the bizarre idea that marijuana should be the basis for the nation’s currency.

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:28:00 -0700

Drill Held at D.C. Transit Station Days Before Pentagon Shooting

Coincidence? Several days before John Patrick Bedell attacked two Pentagon cops and was killed, D.C. police staged a drill at the Friendship Heights Metro station in in Northwest Washington.

As Predicted, Pentagon Shooting Blamed On 9/11 Truth

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:35:25 -0700

Two days after we warned that anti-government activists were about to be framed for violence, Californian man attacks police officers, media cites motivation as advocacy for 9/11 truth

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet | Just two days after we warned of false flag domestic attacks that would be blamed on the federal government’s political adversaries were all but inevitable, a Californian man attacked the Pentagon last night in a shooting that wounded two police officers and has since been blamed on the John Patrick Bedell’s advocacy for 9/11 truth.

On Wednesday we explained how a Southern Poverty Law Center report which demonized We Are Change 9/11 truth organizations in the same breath as violent racist skinhead groups was part of a preparatory set-up for violent domestic acts that would be blamed on anti-government extremists.

We pointed out that since examples of Americans committing violence in pursuit of their political beliefs, FBI patsy Timothy McVeigh aside, were thin on the ground, organizations like the SPLC were begging for such incidents to occur in order to provide the federal government with the pretext to crack down on dissent and silence free speech on the Internet.

Low and behold, last night 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell calmly walked up to a subway station immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, pulled out a gun and opened fire at point blank range.

“He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face,” said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police.

Two officers were injured before Bedell was gunned down and later confirmed dead in the early hours of the morning.

Authorities said they were investigating reports of a second man at the scene who was apparently aiding the shooter.

As is routine, people who knew Bedell expressed shock that he would attempt such an attack.

“He just seemed like a normal guy to me,” Ronald Domingues said. “I wouldn’t suspect he would be involved in anything like this.”

Under the headline, Pentagon Shooter Railed Against U.S. on Internet, the Associated Press reports that one of the primary motivations for the attack was Bedell’s “Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attack.”

“Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” according to the article.

Bedell was also “determined to see that justice is served,” according to another Internet posting, in response to the death of Marine Col. James Sabo, which was ruled a suicide but suspected by Bedell to be a cover-up.

“Officials said they’d found no immediate connection to terrorism but had not ruled it out,” states the report.

The proximity of the incident to the release of the SPLC report is seamless and the implication is clear – anyone who demands that ‘justice be served’ in response to government corruption or anyone who demands the truth behind 9/11 be made public is a dangerous extremist who is likely to go on a shooting rampage.

The media attempted to craft a similar scenario following the Richard Poplawski shooting, which killed three Pittsburgh police officers, despite the fact that the incident arose as a result of a domestic dispute between Poplawski and his mother, and not as a consequence of Poplawski’s political beliefs, as the media attempted to spin the events.

The debunkers and the establishment can now have a field day with the Pentagon shooting and use it to make the case that 9/11 truthers are violent and should be silenced, ignoring the fact that not a single 9/11 truther has committed an act of violence in pursuit of their beliefs, and despite efforts to frame 9/11 truther Gary Talis when he was falsely accused of attacking a girl in a wheelchair. Talis was acquitted by a New York jury despite New York police officers and one Secret Service agent lying in claiming Talis had assaulted the girl when in fact he was the one being assaulted by the girl’s father.

There can be little doubt that we will see more incidents like last night’s shooting and, whether genuine or staged, they will be exploited to the maximum by the establishment media and the government to portray anyone who questions 9/11 and anyone who expresses “resentment” about how they have been looted for trillions of dollars as violent extremists who need to be silenced.

Such incidents will dovetail perfectly with the rapid advancement of cybersecurity and Internet censorship laws that will force people to obtain licenses to exercise free speech on the web, while providing Homeland Security with the perfect pretext to increase surveillance of all Internet traffic and communications.

Shooting suspect believed 9/11 was staged by criminal elements of the government

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:58:34 -0700

By MATT APUZZO and EILEEN SULLIVAN

AP | Internet postings linked to the suspected gunman in a Pentagon subway shooting suggest long-held frustration with the government's reach into the private life of Americans.

The suspect, John Patrick Bedell, died after exchanging gunfire with two police officers.

A blog connected to him via the social networking site LinkedIn outlines a growing distrust of the federal government. The blog suggests a criminal enterprise run out of the government could have staged the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

It's the latest batch of conspiracy-laden Internet postings to surface since Thursday night's shooting.

AP's earlier story is below.
________

WASHINGTON (AP) - There are emerging signs that the suspect in a Pentagon subway station shooting may have harbored resentment for the military and had doubts about the facts behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The suspect, John Patrick Bedell, died after exchanging gunfire with two police officers.

In an Internet posting, a user named JPatrickBedell wrote he was determined to see justice for the 1991 death of a Marine in California. The death was ruled a suicide but has long been the source of coverup theories. The writer said the case would be a step toward revealing the truth behind 9/11.

The user also railed against enforcement of marijuana laws.

The screen name can be linked to the suspect in Thursday's attack through documents about a marijuana arrest that were posted on the site, which match the date of birth of the shooter and official court records available online.

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:08:00 -0700

As Predicted, Pentagon Shooting Blamed On 9/11 Truth

Two days after we warned that anti-government activists were about to be framed for violence, Californian man attacks police officers, media cites motivation as advocacy for 9/11 truth

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:52:00 -0700

Shooting suspect believed 9/11 was staged by criminal elements of the government

Internet postings linked to the suspected gunman in a Pentagon subway shooting suggest long-held frustration with the government's reach into the private life of Americans.

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0700

Freedom or Fascism by David Icke

This is part 2 of the presentation, skipping the introductory material.

May 2006, before a gripped audience of over 2000 people at London's famous Brixton Academy, David Icke pulled together over fifteen years of painstaking research and determined investigation into The Global Elite, The Shadow Government, The Global Conspiracy and the monumentous "sting" perpetrated on a cosmically and spiritually asleep human race. He reveals who, how and more importantly why we are controlled, manipulated and trapped in the five sense illusion of "reality" that we manifest as our everyday experience.

Click here to watch in widescreen format

Cops & Judges Caught Using Secret Codes On Tickets

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:39:36 -0700

Millions of Tons of Water Ice Found at Moon’s North Pole

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:12:30 -0700

Wired | A moon probe has found millions of tons of water on the moon’s north pole, NASA reported Monday. The vast source of water could one day be used to generate oxygen or sustain a moon base.

A NASA radar aboard India’s Chandrayaan-I lunar orbiter found 40 craters, ranging in size from 1 to 9 miles across, with pockets of ice. Scientists estimate at least 600 million tons of ice could be entombed in these craters.

The radar, called the Mini-SAR, sends pulses of left-polarized radio waves out to measure the surface roughness of the moon. While smooth surfaces send back a reversed, right-polarized wave, rough areas return left-polarized waves.

Ice, which is transparent to radio waves, also sends back left-polarized waves. The Mini-SAR measures the ratio of left to right circular polarized power sent back, or the circular polarized ratio (CPR). However, a high CPR alone can’t distinguish between rough patches and regions with ice.

The north pole craters had a high CPR on the inside, with a low CPR on the edges. That suggests a material enclosed in the craters, rather than surface roughness, caused the high CPR signal. According to NASA, the ice would have to be relatively pure ice and at least several feet thick to give this signature.

In November, NASA crashed a probe into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole and also found evidence of water.

One in four Germans wants microchip under skin: Poll

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:33:03 -0700

Raw Story | It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it, a poll Monday showed.

The survey, by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM, was intended to show how the division between real life and the virtual world is increasingly coming down, one of the main themes of the CeBIT trade fair that kicks off Tuesday.

In all, 23 percent of around 1,000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin "for certain benefits."

Around one in six (16 percent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.

And five percent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.

But 72 percent said they would not "under any circumstances" allow electronics in their body.

The results appeared to surprise even the high-tech sector.

"This is of course an extreme example of how far people can imagine networks going," said BITKOM chief August-Wilhelm Scheer.

The CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public on Tuesday, with Spain, the current EU president, this year's guest of honour.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were due to speak later Monday in an official opening ceremony before touring the exhibition early Tuesday.

A total of 4,157 firms from 68 countries are to unveil their latest gadgets, a decline of three percent on last year as many high-tech firms stay away amid strong competition from other events.

NASA: Quake Shifted Earth's Axis, Shortened Day

nospam@example.com (JGT) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:39:54 -0700

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.

David Knowles

AOL News | Apart from claiming the lives of hundreds of people and wreaking enormous property damage, Chile's massive earthquake has likely altered the distribution of the Earth's overall mass, scientists from NASA say.

As a result, the length of a day is now a little shorter than it was before Saturday's magnitude 8.8 earthquake.

"The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds [millionths of a second]," Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Bloomberg. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds [about 8 centimeters or 3 inches]."

The speed that the Earth rotates also increased slightly in 2004 following the earthquake that struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. That 9.1 earthquake shortened the length of an Earth day by 6.8 microseconds, scientists say.

The reason is that sudden changes in the dimensions of the Earth's tectonic plates, like those experienced in the earthquakes in Chile and Indonesia, can alter the velocity.

David Kerridge, the head of Earth hazards and systems at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, likened the change in rotation speed to what happens when a figure skater draws her arms in close to her body while spinning. "As she pulls her arms in," Kerridge told Bloomberg, "she gets faster and faster. It's the same idea with the Earth going around: If you change the distribution of mass, the rotation rate changes."