Empire of the Odd

jtotheizzoe:

A Solar System Across Sweden

A 1:20 million scale solar system has been built that covers the entire nation of Sweden. With different buildings and sculptures representing different planets and solar bodies, the replicas begin in Stockholm (with the Sun and inner planets) and stretch all the way to the far north town of Kiruna (the point of termination shock), 950 km away from the “Sun”.

I’ve put the names of what the above sculptures represent in the photo captions.

To see the full list of pseudo-planetary landmarks, check here. Any Swedish followers seen any of these?

Russian scientists have been slowly and meticulously drilling down into the sealed Lake Vostok in Antarctica and were expected to break through pretty soon, into a lake that’s been completely cut off from anything and everything for 20 million years. But unexpectedly, the Russian crew has been unreachable by radio for the last seven days. This sounds like the build-up to an awesome horror movie.

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?A colleague of mine once explained to me why he keeps away from Scientology stories at his publication (which will remain nameless).
He wasn’t concerned about the church’s reputation for litigiousness, and he wasn’t worried that a story about Scientology’s most recent controversies and excesses wouldn’t resonate with readers.

No, his reluctance was much more quotidian. “The problem I always have with Scientology stories is the massive backstory, which is an obstacle that fails the cost-benefit test,” he told me.

I completely understood where he was coming from. It isn’t easy dealing with the steamer trunks of baggage that come with explaining new developments in Scientology. Which is why I’m all the more impressed with the job Jim Lippard pulls off while he deals with all of the complex backstory in an upcoming issue of Skeptic magazine, and which editor Michael Shermer gave me an advance look at.

Keying off the publication of two books about Scientology published last year — Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology and Hugh Urban’s The Church of Scientology — Lippard puts together a robust yet concise history of the church, and along the way makes the case that L. Ron Hubbard’s creation is in serious trouble.

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Over the past 50 years, billions of dollars have been spent visiting our nearest neighbor in space, the moon. It’s the only extraterrestrial body humans have ever walked on. Besides the United States and Russia, Japan, China, India and the European Space Agency have all sent robotic spacecraft moonward.

Probably the most prolific of these missions, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), is stockpiling close to 1 million pictures of the lunar surface that are so sharp, you could see a coffee table nestled among the boulders.

Astrobiologist and physicist Paul Davies recently said that LRO’s public-accessible photos should be perused by a citizen science program to look for any alien artifacts left on the moon.

ANALYSIS: SETI to Scour the Moon for Alien Footprints?

But why bother? says a group of parapsychology sleuths who accuse NASA of hiding evidence of aliens on the lunar surface. Their wild tales sound like an amalgamation of Hollywood sci-fi movies: “Apollo 18,” “Minority Report” and “Alien.”

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I’ll tell you what it is. It’s TROGDOR!

Social media channels like Twitter and Facebook have developed into valuable news delivering and receiving platforms. Social media services are accessible on desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones, and even televisions. In this constantly connected world, social media has become the fastest way to disseminate breaking news. It stands to reason then that social media will be used to broadcast news of extraterrestrial contact. And those who actively follow social media channels will likely be among the first to know about any such contact.

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In an election climate where candidates succeed by discouraging citizens from engaging in independent cognitive activity, repeat Candidate Vermin Love Supreme , (the only bona-fide American Presidential Candidate to actually donate a living organ,) has broken away from the rat pack.

Whatever public office he’s seeking, Vermin’s participation in electoral forums raises the critical questions that your run-of-the-mill apparatchicks will necessarily ignore. But once raised, these issues have refused to die.

Only through Vermin Supreme’s dilligent campaigning over the years have certain questions and issues of policy come to the foreground, specifically…

• Dental Hygiene Law
• Flying Monkey Public Safety Assurance Program
• Time Travel Research Funding

The Odd Emperor approves of this candidate.

http://www.verminsupreme.com/

 

DON’T BLINK

For years, scientists in both North America have been trying to figure out what has been killing off bees. Environmental changes? Pollution? Aliens? The actual answer however, could be more sinister: Flies that have learned they can attack the bees, turning them into ZOMBEES by laying eggs in their body. The bees then leave the colony, going on a flight of the living dead, where the eggs hatch and look for more bees.

This is only one possibility, since so far, the parasite has only been detected in California and South Dakota, but the bees have no natural defense against the flies. But if it turns out to be an emerging parasite, that “underlines the danger that could threaten honey bee colonies throughout North America,” said the study led by San Francisco State University professor of biology John Hafernik.

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By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Space, 29th December 2011 12:49 GMT

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