News and features

 

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
Israeli scientists can fabricate DNA evidence

 

 

I have been mulling over a particularly rich and thought provoking entry from Jacques Vallee’s journals (Forbidden Science, Volume Two), about a synchronistic walk he took one day in October, 1973 with Hal Puthoff, head of the Stanford Research Institute program researching ESP. Vallee was telling his companion he thought the UFO problem and parapsychology were connected and that they were both more than scientific questions but also Hermetic quests or initiations, “an enigma like that of the Sphinx” … at which point, the two men turned a corner and found themselves face to face with a pair of sphinxes behind barbed wire. Vallee writes with amusement that “[Puthoff] must have thought I had known about the statues all along and had maneuvered him to the spot deliberately.”

We live in a vast precognitive soup, and at least some artists seem to draw not only from past influences but also from their own future timelines, precognizing their own books they have yet to write as well as books by others they have yet to read.

Where to begin when the story is a loop?
Altered States of Reading (Part 1): VALIS, Vallee, and Vaal

 

Part 1 concerns the International Space Station hoax. Part 2 concerns details of the reentry vehicles and how they would burn up on atmospheric entry. I’ll put link to part 2 here when it’s done.

All manned space travel is fake. The real reason we don’t have a moon base, a floating space dock, and a Jetsons-like future is that we can’t even get into low earth orbit.

The International Space Station is a hoax faked with tricks that simulate zero gravity. Some shots are taken in an airplane simulating zero gravity, other scenes are taken with CGI and suspension of the astronauts by wires in front of a blue screen. Space walks are faked in a custom built swimming pool.
Bogus Reentry Vehicles part 1 of 2

 

Even within the realm of cryptozoology and Forteana, there are creatures that seem to defy easy classification. To me there is absolutely a distinct line between the field of cryptozoology, which by definition deals with undiscovered organisms which are real, flesh and blood animals, that of paranormal phenomena, and that of folklore. While they may at times cross paths or briefly converge, typically these fields are as different as night and day, and deal with entirely different sets of phenomena with different areas of study, classifications, methods, aims and goals. Yet there are times when the gulf between them is not clear cut, when something that on the surface appears to be an uncategorized animal evades such a simple identification. These are the times when the mystery creature in question is not easily classifiable as real animal, paranormal apparition, nor mere legend, but rather a sort of subspecies of cryptozoology wherein we have something that cannot be readily identified as flesh and blood nor something more supernatural in origin, and so it remains in a kind of limbo between the realm of the tangible flesh and blood, and the world of ghosts, demons, and inter-dimensional beings. One such enigmatic beast has surely got to be the infamous black hellhounds of the United Kingdom, a category of creature so bizarre that it transcends any attempts to safely label it.
The Black Hellhounds of the United Kingdom

 

Named after their very distinctive body tattoos, the Picts (‘painted people’) inhabited northeastern Scotland as a separate tribe from c.300 AD to 850 AD, after which they were united with the Celtic Scots under the reign of King Kenneth I. The Picts can boast as their principal claim to archaeological fame their ornately-carved symbol stones. These are elaborately decorated with various creatures, objects, and other depictions, especially the earlier, pre-Christian stones – which are designated as Class I (dating from the 6th Century, generally unshaped, and bearing line-incised symbols on at least one flat face) or Class II (of rather later date, and bearing much more intricate, flamboyant designs). Class III stones, conversely, date from when Christianity reached the Picts, so on these stones the earlier Pictish symbols have been mostly replaced by Christian ones.
When Trunko met Nessie?? – Paradox of the Pictish Beast

 

The Declaration of Independence was drafted on it. The American Founding Fathers urged the fledgling country to grow it. And the first paper was made from it 1,900 years ago. Hemp. It’s one of the most versatile and sustainable cash crops on the planet. For all it’s merits, however, the plant has also been on a “no-grow” list for over seventy years in the United States, due to draconian laws established by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Thankfully, that’s all about to change.
Move Over Cotton, Say Hello to Hemp – The ‘Forbidden’ Crop That’s Taking the World by Storm