Probe Events conference

24th & 25th March 2018

NEXT WEEKEND

The Y.M.C.A. St. Annes, Lancashire FY8 1XD

www.probe.events

 

Tools of Medieval Wisdom Unearthed Beneath England’s Ancient Academic Hub…..
Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human (and Neanderthal) History…..
Blood on the Shroud: An Interview with the Blood Investigator of the Shroud of Turin Research Project…..
Computer Problems? It Could be Possessed by a Demon…..
Toxic Tory Tom Tugendhat Accuses BBC Of Peddling Russian Propaganda. Richie Responds!…..
The Monologue: Leicester Academic Tara McCormack Destroys SKY News Kay Burley In Russia Debate!…..
Keep it clean…..
How Psychopaths See the World…..
An Alzheimer’s Drug Has Been Shown to Help Teeth Repair Cavities Naturally…..
The Lost Charms and Incantations That Molded Celtic Reality…..
Who are the ‘little people’ ?…..
Spielberg’s A.I.: Blue Fairies as Alien Ambassadors…..
The Fortean Chronicles of Ray Bradbury…..
Long John Baldry – Walk me out in the morning dew…..
Joni Mitchell ~ Big Yellow Taxi + Both Sides Now (BBC – 1969)…..
Michio Kaku foretells humanity’s extraordinary future…..
The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News…..
How Did Astronaut DNA Become ‘Fake News’?…..
The ‘Most Elusive’ Man in North America…..

Most recent interviews on The Trufaux Sho

Archaeologists in England have unearthed in excess of 10,000 medieval artifacts in central Oxford and every single one of them is providing a clearer picture of day to day life at Oxford University, as it was seven centuries ago.

Oxford University has become England’s academic pulsing heart, but it began as part of a friary established by Franciscan friars in 1224, known as Greyfriars. The massive archaeological dig is being directed by archaeologist, Ben Ford of the heritage consultancy, Oxford Archaeology, who told reporters at The Independent, among the smaller finds were “writing equipment, refectory cutlery and even ceramic beer mugs used by students and teachers back in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries.” They also recovered “Ultra-rare octagonal oak columns, possibly from the friary’s 13th century timber church,” and a “beautiful mediaeval tiled pavement from the friary… discovered very near the new Westgate shopping center in central Oxford, archaeologists told reporters.”
Tools of Medieval Wisdom Unearthed Beneath England’s Ancient Academic Hub

 

Geneticist David Reich used to study the living, but now he studies the dead.

The precipitating event came in the form of 40,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found in a Croatian cave. So well-preserved were the bones that they yielded enough DNA for sequencing, and it became Reich’s job in 2007 to analyze the DNA for signs that Neanderthals interbred with humans—a idea he was “deeply suspicious” of at the time.

To his surprise, the DNA revealed that humans and Neanderthals did interbreed in their time together in Europe. Possibly even more than once. Today, surprisingly, the people carrying the most Neanderthal DNA are not in Europe but in East Asia—likely due to the patterns of ancient human migration in Eurasia in the thousands of years after Neanderthals died out. All this painted a complicated but dynamic picture of human prehistory. Since the very beginning of our species, humans have been on the move; at times they replaced and at other times they mixed with the local population, first hominids like Neanderthals and later other humans.
Ancient DNA Is Rewriting Human (and Neanderthal) History

 

In 1978 a large team of American scientists under the auspices of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) spent over two years prior to embarking for Turin, planning a large number of specific data gathering tests, on the sacred Shroud of Turin, believed by millions of Catholics around the world to be the shroud in which the body of Christ was wrapped following his crucifixion.

In Turin, the expedition was joined by colleagues from around the world. This was to be the first

extensive scientific examination of the shroud and remains to this date the most extensive study of the shroud ever undertaken. To support the effort, they carried several tons of equipment and scientific instruments. The team arrived in Turin in early October 1978. For five full days beginning October 8th and lasting through the 13th, the STURP team studied the Shroud around the clock in a room at the Royal Palace adjoining the Turin Cathedral.
Blood on the Shroud: An Interview with the Blood Investigator of the Shroud of Turin Research Project

 

Do you have trouble with your computer? Does is freeze or shut down at the most inopportune times? Does it go haywire suddenly or arbitrarily erase important data for no reason? Does it vomit forth long dead languages in a deep, growling voice? If so, then you may have a serious problem. According to some reports, your computer or even your smartphone may actually be possessed by an evil spirit.

Demonic possession is a very well-documented phenomenon among human beings, and has been for centuries, but what of modern devices such as computers and smartphones? Can these machines serve as some sort of conduit for evil forces? One person who would say yes to that is a Reverend Jim Peasboro, of Savannah, Georgia, in the United States, who has spent a lot of time denouncing how computers are powerful tools of the Devil for corrupting our souls. So far, so standard, but Peasboro goes beyond just using the Devil working through computers as a metaphor for their bad influence on our youth, and rather seems to believe that demonic forces can literally possess computers.
Computer Problems? It Could be Possessed by a Demon

 

 

 

There are many popular articles and writers on the net that concern me in as much as they perform the function of a subliminal loop tape whether intentional or not. It is a good thing to inform people of how they are being filed and programmed but I question the need to constantly point and spray the same such details at viewers over and over again. I am discerning and watchful myself when it comes to material on the web and I encourage everyone else to be; but it isn’t enough to be aware and informed people also need to know how to deal with what they allow in to their minds and virtually nobody does.
Keep it clean

 

It’s a rare person who goes out of their way to spend time with psychopaths, and a rarer one still who repeatedly calls a prison to do so. But after more than a year of meetings and negotiation, Arielle Baskin-Sommers from Yale University finally persuaded a maximum-security prison in Connecticut to let her work with their inmates, and to study those with psychopathic tendencies.

Psychopaths, by definition, have problems understanding the emotions of other people, which partly explains why they are so selfish, why they so callously disregard the welfare of others, and why they commit violent crimes at up to three times the rate of other people.

But curiously, they seem to have no difficulty in understanding what other people think, want, or believe—the skill variously known as perspective-taking, mentalizing, or theory of mind. “Their behavior seems to suggest that they don’t consider the thoughts of others,” says Baskin-Sommers, but their performance on experiments suggests otherwise. When they hear a story and are asked to explicitly say what a character is thinking, they can.
How Psychopaths See the World

 

Dental fillings may soon be left in the ash heap of history, thanks to a recent discovery about a drug called Tideglusib.

Developed for and trialled to treat Alzheimer’s disease, last year scientists found the drug also happens to promote the natural tooth regrowth mechanism in mice, allowing the tooth to repair cavities.

Tideglusib works by stimulating stem cells in the pulp of teeth, the source of new dentine. Dentine is the mineralised substance beneath tooth enamel that gets eaten away by tooth decay.

Teeth can naturally regenerate dentine without assistance, but only under certain circumstances. The pulp must be exposed through infection (such as decay) or trauma to prompt the manufacture of dentine.
An Alzheimer’s Drug Has Been Shown to Help Teeth Repair Cavities Naturally

 

Since men and woman have been capable of making vocal sounds, incantations have been floated on airwaves by enchanters, who whispering charms, spells in rituals, hymns and prayers, invoked curses, raised protection deities and summoned demons. This article looks at the ancient records of the northern nations of Scotland and England and features a selection of the most famous incantations from these magical Celtic Kingdoms where the spoken word and oral traditions were akin to community glue.
The Lost Charms and Incantations That Molded Celtic Reality

 

No doubt they are tales most of us grew up with – there are thousands and thousands of stories featuring pixies, elves, little people, fairies – in fact the Fairy Investigation Society is still alive and well in the UK.
But what do we really know of these miniature creatures?
Could they exist?
And if not, where do the stories spring from?
Graham Seal is a professor of Folklore at Curtin University. He established the WA Folklore Archive in 1985 and is the Director of the Australian Folklore Research Unit.
He spoke to Michelle about his incredible area of research.
Who are the ‘little people’ ?

 

I think it’s safe to say Steven Spielberg is my favourite film director of all time. Since my tenderest years I’ve been exposed to his work, and I’ve watched his career progress from the traditionally frowned-upon genre of Science Fiction – that is, before del Toro’s aquatic monster received the grandest honour at the Oscars – to more serious cinematic subjects for which his genius was finally universally acclaimed.

Which Spielberg film is my favourite I can’t really say, but one thing I’m sure of is that his 2001 film Artificial Intelligence holds a very special place in my heart. Just the other weekend I rewatched it for the umpteenth time, now that it’s available on Netflix, and although some of the special effects look understandably dated, in my opinion the film hasn’t lost one iota of its emotional potency.
Spielberg’s A.I.: Blue Fairies as Alien Ambassadors

 

Once upon a time –as every good story should start– there was independent filmmaker and writer Paul Davids sitting at a luncheon right next to none other than the Ray Bradbury, arguably one of the greatest American writers of the XXth century. Curiously enough, and like many other authors who made a living out of imagining interstellar adventures and life on other planets, Mr. Bradbury was very skeptic about the topic of UFOs.

Paul Davids is definitely not a skeptic. Not only did he have a personal sighting of a classic saucer-shaped object along with his two young children at their home in 1987, but he was also involved in the TV film Roswell based on the book by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt, which Paul had just finished producing by the time he was breaking bread with Bradbury. When the legendary writer learned about this he became angrier than a Martian white ape in heat and started yelling at poor Paul:
The Fortean Chronicles of Ray Bradbury

 

 

 

Michio Kaku talks about his vision of the Internet, A.I., robots, humanity, immortality, UFOs, space exploration, moon colonies, Mars, climate change, and more.
Michio Kaku foretells humanity’s extraordinary future

Interesting stuff but he talketh mighty bollox when answering this question: DF: Some people are beginning to worry that robots are going to steal our jobs and reach a level of intelligence where they’ll turn on us. Do you worry about those things?…and because he is such a deep and lateral thinker one has to consider, surely, whether he is intentionally doing so.  He begins well enough 61111, moves to an admirable 7111 but when all said and done, it may be that he’s chosen to be a system-man o’ conveyor-belt science 11-8. – Ellis

 

Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and deeper into the social network than accurate information.

“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it,” Jonathan Swift once wrote.
The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

 

“After year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly no longer has same DNA as identical twin,” the headline of a story on the Today show’s website, published Thursday, declared. Seven percent of his DNA, the story says, “has not returned to normal since he returned from space.”

Pretty amazing news, right? Too bad it’s not true.
How Did Astronaut DNA Become ‘Fake News’?

 

Somewhere in the mountains of Vernon, British Columbia lives a 76-year-old man by the name of Dag Aabye. He has no cell phone or email address. Revered by locals for having escaped from the shackles of modern society, he is the champion of the 80-mile ultramarathon aptly named the “death race.” Aabye is the oldest person to have ever finished the race.

Determined to locate and interview Aabye, filmmakers Adam Maruniak and Justin Pelletier spent weeks canvassing the nearby town, leaving postcards with their contact information. They visited the bar that the reclusive septuagenarian is said to frequent and even summited a mountain in search of him—to no avail. Then…
The ‘Most Elusive’ Man in North America