/ 12 May 2004

The sky is falling?

Local radio is retarded. There’s no other way of putting it. Local radio sounds like Down-syndrome patients on cocaine would sound like — given a microphone, a fetish for gardening, a flag to wave and no accountability or taste.

Do yourself a favour and consider the fun to be had from pirate radio broadcasting — seeing as we have local, zombie-like Independent Broadcast Authority government stooges blocking you and I from starting private radio stations. Read Stealing Back the Airwaves.

What do you do if you’re bored and have a camera, time on your hands and a back garden? Correct. You dig a hole. But how far do you go before it starts getting a little odd? Take a look at one man’s quest for the perfect hole — no, I didn’t mean it like that. Go to The Hole. Or perhaps you’d like to hear the X-rated reaction of someone to a very low, high-speed flyby of a Spitfire? Watch Oh My God.

And speaking of X-rated, be warned there are a couple of dirty words — and even more dirty ideas — on this next site. Read this short online experiment by a cheerfully twisted individual, looking at what happens when you rename innocent music video file names as something sexual, for people to waste their time downloading. Go to Renaming Files.

Remember the fuss over the Hale-Bopp comet? You couldn’t open a paper without comet-related media or pix — yet right now, there are three comets visible in our night skies at the same time, and there are a couple of asteroids inbound towards Earth. (And at least one of those is going to fly by closer to us than the distance from here to the moon.) Odd how there seems to be a virtual media blackout on comet information and news, given this info. There’s also a growing sense of unease online. Yes, I know there’s always a “growing sense of unease” online — but maybe this time it’s different 🙂 If you knew you had only a maximum of four months to live, would you want to know? If so, then read on.

Start off — just to show you that these new comets are real — by reading Three Chances to Spy Comets.

Then take a look at this Japanese site (just cancel when your Windows tries to tell you it needs to download Japanese-language fonts) and see the amazingly cool animation showing the three comets moving around Earth at the moment. You’ll notice that we’re going to go through the tail of Comet Linear sometime soon, so keep an eye out for unusual breaking news a few days either side of May 17, assuming that the powers that be might want to keep your attention elsewhere ahead of the bigger, nastier stuff that might be coming: Comet Animation.

Now let’s back up a little. In mid-April Nasa’s Soho camera (positioned in space between the sun and the Earth) spotted a new comet, which was discovered by an amateur astronomer — the Bradfield comet. See Comet Bradfield here and here.

Soho began showing images, and just as the comet got to point X, the Soho camera “went dark”: Soho Bradfield.

Twenty hours later, it came back online, and those with some knowledge compared the sequences of the photographs it was showing, and said that there was some kind of faking and cutting and pasting going on by Nasa. Look at this site.

Then compare it with this site, followed by this next photograph of Bradfield, which doesn’t seem to even look like the same comet.

(Longtime readers will recall me pointing out apparent Soho image fakery, previously — and the rather strange fact that whenever something large or interesting appears to come by the sun, the Soho camera “goes offline”.)

And you might want to read Sixth-Century Comet Caused the First Plague Epidemic?.

So not only is there a strange silence regarding the visible comets in our skies right now, there is also a silence from astronomers about the multiple asteroids heading towards us. One of them will be close to us by the end of June. That’s Itokawa. There’s also Toutatis, which has an “unpredictable” orbit, and which will be here by September 30. Read City-Sized Asteroid to Pass Earth or browse through Astronomical Aspects of Mankind’s Past and Present.

Itokawa is big enough and apparently interesting enough for a probe, Hayabusa, to have been sent out towards it (launched in May 2003). From April to June this asteroid “chases” Earth, coming relatively close — as in “closer to us than the moon is”. Go to this Nasa applet page, and advance the date towards the end of June: Itokawa.

Now, scientists will say that “orbits” have to be smooth. Take a look at this Nasa applet for Comet Neat, which shows a very strange orbit. Either it is a mistake by Nasa — or else it’s detailing the collision of a comet with something else, and knocking it towards and (hopefully) past us: Comet Neat’s Hexagonal Orbit. Combine this orbit with the following orbit of another asteroid that was “chasing” us for a while.

And in case you don’t think you’ll notice Itokawa — according to this report, Itokawa will not only be mainly visible in the southern hemisphere, it’s going to become very, very bright — 1 500 times brighter than what it is now: Itokawa.

James Mccanney is a rogue scientist who has some radically different ideas than the mainstream over the nature of our solar system and the make-up of comets. (He’s also involved in legal battles with Nasa over its alleged theft of some of his theories on solar structure.) Many of his radio shows are available online and for download, along with downloadable lecture notes. He rambles a bit, but he’s focusing a lot on the unfolding saga around us. Go to James Mccanney. (He has put his head on the block recently, though, by — with his conspiracy cap on — suggesting that an attack on the United States might be about to occur on or around May 11). So grains of salt and aluminium foil hats should be worn.

Recall the bizarre and strange comment by US President George Bush to Bob Woodward, and recorded by Woodward — Bush, when asked how history will judge the invasion of Iraq, replied: “History? We’ll all be dead.” Read We Finally Get a Look at This War. Then read the very angry We’ll All Be Dead.

Now let’s add to the confusion and paranoia, and point out the following, which is doing the rounds on the net in sky-watching paranoid circles. Read this online post of an apparent radio communication between “Snowball Net” and another unknown station, recorded on January 20, referring to 146 days before an unknown impact. The relevant section is midway down the page of assorted postings: Snowball.

Note that “Snowball” name. A fairly routine sniff through radio-monitoring sites reveals that Snowball is one of the names of the networks used by US Strategic Armed Forces — whose job is to “provide the US with the capability to strike back in the event of nuclear war, even after being struck first, and otherwise command forces in the event of a national emergency”. Take a look at the list of US forces, including the name “Snowball”.

Counting down from when the purported message was heard (at January 20 it was 146 days) puts spilled-coffee-day at about June 20. You may recall the very strange alert put out last year by the US Department of Homeland Security, telling people to duct-tape windows closed and seal rooms. What kind of terrorist attack or disaster causes the phrase “If you see large amounts of debris in the air…” to be used? Look closely at the official page of the Department of Homeland Security.

And finally, just in case we are living in the end times, and bills aren’t going to be a worry for much longer, take a look at what happens when you combine a fetish for Star Trek, some money and a previously normal living space. You end up with the amazingly cool Star Trek Apartment.

Until the next time, if on-air ‘tards don’t get me.