CHINA’S TRIADS

Secret societies have a long and even honorable history in China, where they were forced to operate in secret to counter the cruelties of imperial rule. China’s Triads were born out of the struggle against detested Manchu regime, but somehow these crusaders for justice embraced the dark forces and turned to crime. Today the triads are among the most feared criminal societies in the world, with activities ranging from the heroin trade to the smuggling of illegal immigrants.

The origins of China’s secret societies lie as far back as 200 BC. Over the centuries, secret societies flourished in opposition to the Confucian upper class, which prohibited any form of opposition to imperial rule. In those days, the societies attempted to stand up for the rights of the dissatisfied and oppressed lower classes. In the 17^th century when the ruling Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu, whose origins lay in Central Asia, many secret societies directed their efforts towards the expulsion of the ‘Barbarian’ Manchu.

Out of this liberation struggle emerged the Society of the Three in One, also called the triadic league or Triad. The emblem of the league was an isosceles triangle – whose three sides symbolized the basic forces in Chinese cosmology: heaven, earth and man.

During the 19^th century, the huge and increasingly fragmented Chinese empire gave rise to two systems of secret societies: White Lotus in the North, and the Triad in the South.

Their resistance was not directed solely towards the Manchu rulers, but also against the encroachment of European colonial powers. The 19^th century saw the establishment of more and more foreign administered enclaves, with China forced again and again to accept treaties that favored foreign powers.

Not only did the ‘Long Noses’ destroyed the existing economic structures, they were the first ones to introduce Opium trade, because of which millions of natives became helpless drug addicts.

When the Manchu emperor abdicated in 1911, the Triads lost their most important political goal:  the re-establishment of Ming rule. Over the next three decades, as rival warlords divided up the country, the societies degenerated more and more into criminal gangs. Initially they made money through piracy, extortion, gambling and kidnapping, but soon they entered into opium trade.

The British colony of Hong Kong became the center of many such gangs.  After the Communists assumed power in China in 1949, the colony became the main base for the powerful Triads Sun Yee On, Wo Sing So, and 14 K.

By the early 1990s, these groups totaled over 75,000 members.

Rise of the Dragon

Because of the impenetrable structure of the Triads, it is difficult to gather information about their activities. The Triads are known to have operated in the UK and Netherlands since the 1970s, where they specialize in Loan- Sharking, Prostitution and Extortion.

According to senior officials of the Metropolitan Police, nearly every Chinese restaurant in London has to pay a percentage of its takings to the Eastern Mafia. The Triads are also active in drug trafficking, exporting heroin from the Golden triangle – a region covering the remote interior of Burma, Loas and Northern Thailand. In the US, the Drug Enforcement Administration maintains that 14K Triad is the biggest supplier of heroin in New York.

There is another cruel business that earns millions for the Hong Kong syndicates: the trade of Human Beings. Thousands of illegal immigrants are smuggled into Europe and North America each year. In most cases they are desperate people in search of a better life, and generally have to pat the triads a fee of around US $ 35,000.

Few of the applicants have money, so you’ll find the men working for gangsters in restaurants and gambling dens paying their debts off.

The women must earn the money through Prostitution.

More on Triads:

 Traid (Underground Society)

 Traid Facts

 Movies on Triads

Ancient Nubians, Drugs & Beer- 1,500 yr old connection

Article from Daily Mail

The ancient Nubians consumed large quantities of antibiotics that were produced in their beer almost 1,500 years ago, new research suggests.
Chemical analysis of bones shows that the people were taking large doses of tetracycline which was produced as a by-product in the beer that they made from grain.
And scientists believe that the production of the antibiotic was intentional.


Analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. It was spotted in this photo as a green product on the bones under UV light
The ancient Nubian kingdom was located in present-day Sudan, south of ancient Egypt.
The discovery, by anthropologist George Armelagos and medicinal chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

'We tend to associate drugs that cure diseases with modern medicine,' Armelagos said.

'But it's becoming increasingly clear that this prehistoric population was using empirical evidence to develop therapeutic agents. I have no doubt that they knew what they were doing.'

The ancient Nubians were a race with no written language
Tetracycline latches on to calcium and is deposited in bones so it can be detected in fossils.


In 1980, Armelagoa discovered what appeared to be traces of tetracycline in human bones from Nubia dated between A.D. 350 and 550, populations that left no written record. Armelagos and his fellow researchers later tied the source of the antibiotic to the Nubian beer.


The grain used to make the fermented gruel contained the soil bacteria streptomyces, which produces tetracycline.


Mr Nelson said: ‘The bones of these ancient people were saturated with tetracycline, showing that they had been taking it for a long time.‘I'm convinced that they had the science of fermentation under control and were purposely producing the drug.'
Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness, Nelson says.
The first of the modern day tetracyclines was discovered in 1948. It was given the name auereomycin, after the Latin word 'aerous,' which means containing gold.'Streptomyces produce a golden colony of bacteria, and if it was floating on a batch of beer, it must have look pretty impressive to ancient people who revered gold,' Nelson said.


The ancient Egyptians and Jordanians also used beer to treat gum disease and other ailments.
The team now intends to try and work out exactly when the knowledge of the antibiotic properties of the beer was lost to history.


Alexander Fleming is credited with discovering the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928

Ruins of Bhangarh

Bhangarh is a place on way from Jaipur to Alwar city in Rajasthan state of India. Today Bhangarh is known for its ruins where nobody dares to stay after sunset. Looking through history we find that this town was established by Madho Singh, younger brother of King Akbar’s General Raja Man Singh, in 1631. But the city seems to have been abandoned in a hurry some centuries later.

The local folks say that due to a curse the whole town was vacated overnight. According to the story of the curse, if the town was ever rediscovered the township would not be found, but only temples would show up.

True to the story only temples dot the landscape and even far up on the mountains only shrines can be seen. It is said that nobody returns from there who stays after dark.

By the Government of India rules there has to be an office of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) beside every historical structure in India. But even government authorities did not dare to open an office there. They opened their office about one kilometer away from the ruins of Bhangarh. Even this office is close to a temple because of this myth. ASI has put a signboard at Bhangarh saying, "Staying after sunset is strictly prohibited in this area."

People who visit this place out of tourist interest say that there is a strange feeling in the atmosphere of Bhangarh, which causes sort of anxiety and restlessness.
The story of this restlessness goes as the following. The charm of princess of Bhangarh Ratnawati was said to be matchless in entire Rajasthan. Being merely eighteen years old, the princess started getting wedding offers from other states. In the same region there also lived a tantrik, a magician using black magic, named Singhia who was desperately in love with the princess and who also knew that king would never even allow him to see the princess.

Once he saw princess's maid in the market buying scented oil for princess. Seeing this he got a wicked idea of getting the princess. He used his black magic and put a spell on the oil which would hypnotise the princess by her mere touching the oil and she would immedialely walk towards the tantrik to satisfy him sexually. But as soon as the princess got the oil she threw it on the block of a stone as she had seen the tantrik eying the oil. As soon as the oil touched the stone, the stone started rolling towards the wicked tantrik Singhia and crushed him. While dying Singhia cursed the palace that there will be such an incident that everybody in the palace would die and their souls will stay there for centuries without rebirth. The very next year there was a battle between Bhangarh-Ajabgarh and no one survived in the battle nor in the palace, not even the princess Ratnawati.

 

Havelis are elaborate residences, almost miniature palaces, built around large courtyards. The walls are painted in bright colors with detailed frescoes. If the old city of Jaipur is anything to go by, Bhangarh must have been an extremely prosperous city. Today nothing remains but the temples.

 It is said by the local villagers that whenever a house has been built there its roof has collapsed. It seems to be true because inside Bhangarh all the houses are without a roof and even at the closest village where people reside, they still have roofs made of straw but not bricks.

THE BEAST OF BODMIN MOOR

Whether it is a native cat, previously thought extinct,or an escaped exotic pet, the Beast of Bodmin is a creature that refuses to disappear. Indeed, sightings of the panther-like creature continue and, unlike other mysterious beasts, modern technology is actually helping to prove its existence.

Location of the sightings : Bodmin Moor-Cornwall (SW England-UK)

This creature has been reported as looking like a black panther or dark colored mountain lion. The creature has large white-yellow eyes. It's size has been reported as ranging from 3-5 feet long for the body, with a tail of roughly 18-24 inches.

There have been about 60 big cat sightings recorded in the area since 1983 but in 1995 a government report concluded there was no evidence that big cats existed on the moor.

However, since 1995 some quite startling, tangible evidence has been produced. A 20-second video released in August 1998 clearly shows a large black animal roaming the moor. Experts believe the footage is the best evidence yet to support the idea that big cats are living in the area.
Many also suggest the beasts may be a native species of cat which was thought to have become extinct over a hundred years ago.

Real biological evidence has also been found in recent years. A large skull with huge fangs was found near the River Fowey on Bodmin Moor. The bones were sent to mammal specialists at the British Natural History

Museum who, when they examined it, quickly realised that the skull did not belong to a creature normally found in the English countryside. Because of the size and position of the teeth, they also deduced that it was the head of a large cat.

In November 1999 a spate of farm animal mutilations on Bodmin Moor caused a high tech option to be introduced in finding the beast. When a calf and two sheep were attacked and torn apart by an unknown creature, a motion-activated infrared video camera was installed on the moor.

Similarly, in January 2001, reserve volunteers from a nearby Royal Air Force base used state-of- the-art night-vision military equipment to hunt for the creature. Rather than practice exercises against an imaginary foe, RAF commanders thought that it would be more interesting for the troops to look for the fabled Beast of Bodmin. {Whatever happened can be viewed here.}

Farmers in southwest England do not agree that these creatures are so benign, and many skeptics believe the Beast of Bodmin is, if anything, an escaped foreign cat. A number go missing from zoos and wildlife parks each year, and Britain’s 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act made ownership of exotic big cats illegal.

Some people believe that if such a pet were to escape from a private collection, its owner would be hesitant to report it missing. Whatever the truth about its origin, there is growing, indisputable evidence that a large, black, feral cat is stalking the land of Bodmin Moor.

Related Links : Beast of Bodmin

UFOs and the Truman syndrome

That Harry Truman instigated the Majestic group and was privy to the alleged flying saucer crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 - is what MJ-12 advocates contends.

Let’s assume that the is all true…

How did Truman react to the Earth-shattering revelation that extraterrestrials were visiting this planet, and had provided tangible evidence of those visits, with a clue to their technology, when they had an accident over the New Mexico skies?

Truman seems have been to be nonplussed.

He didn’t rearrange his life or the Presidency in any inordinate way, even becoming more mundane and folksy after leaving office.

During the 1947-1952 period of his Presidency, Truman contended with lots of Earthly matters, including the Cold War, the Korean War, Communists in the United States government, establishment of the Jewish State of Israel, domestic crises (labor strikes, taxes, etc.), and his daughter Margaret’s imbroglios with critics of her music-making.

Truman didn’t react to an interplanetary visit as a normal Earthling would. He virtually ignored the supposed intrusion (as did his successor, Dwight Eisenhower).

Truman, if he did have access to flying saucer crashes and other UFO events, he wasn’t affected by them, privately or publically.

Truman lived until the end of 1972, never altering his daily existence or snarky attitude toward news media and the public generally; he remained an Earth-bound S.O.B. right up to his last days on Earth.

(Eisenhower, who followed him in Office, played golf regularly, obsessively, and also wasn’t affected by the insertion of an inter-galactic alien presence that many ufologists say he was aware of, even having communicated with some extraterrestrials held captive at secret military facilities.)

The Truman Syndrome may be described as a lackluster reaction to life on other planets that had the temerity to visit Earth on various occasions, making their presence known by accident and/or direct contact.

This is where ufologist go haywire. They make MJ-12 a reality but the patina of those documents and the committee that forged them doesn’t ring true: those involved remained oriented to everyday life, in ways that indicated nothing out of the ordinary had been experienced or occurred during their sojourn on the so-called Top Secret Majestic committee.

If flying saucer/UFO beings had come to Earth, these men, Truman mostly, would have reacted differently, in overt ways but, more importantly, in subtle ways. And those subtle ways would have been discerned by observation and scrutiny of their lives. This didn’t happen.

And there is no evidence of changes in behavior or lives, by others who were provided information and proof that alien visitors had come to Earth, and were here in droves by some estimations.

Truman was a folksy curmudgeon during his Presidency and for all of his life, right up to 1972, well after the Betty/Barney Hill event, the Socorro episode and dozens of other UFO manifestations.

Would this be the case if he had knowledge of an alien presence? Would Truman have gone about his life, after experiencing a UFO reality, in the way that he did, oblivious to the ramifications and impact of an extraterrestrial visitation, maybe many of them?

We think not.

So, for us, MJ-12, and a secret, government cover-up of actual flying saucer accounts seems outside the realm of how humans would act – even political types – if such things were true.

How Many Species Exist on Earth?

The question takes on increasing significance as plants and animals vanish before scientists can even identify them.

Taxonomists -- biologists who specialize in identifying and classifying life on the planet -- have named approximately 1.7 million species so far. Each year, about 13,000 more species are added to the list of known organisms. While scientists continue to turn up surprises -- new species of whales, monkeys and deer within the past few years, for instance -- a large portion of the world's mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and flowering plants are named. In contrast, the lion's share of unknown species are small, mostly microscopic organisms that live in some of Earth's least-accessible habitats: beneath the ground, in the deep sea, in the crowns of tropical trees, and on the backs or in the guts of other creatures. Such insects, worms, mites, fungi, bacteria and other tiny life forms are what Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson calls "the black hole of taxonomy." Unimaginably abundant, their numbers could alter overall species totals by a factor of 10 or more.

The prospect of discovering little green men on other planets has long captured our imaginations, but many scientists are just as excited about finding new life forms in our own backyard.

Though humans have shared the planet with millions of other creatures for thousands of years, we know surprisingly little about our neighbors—we don’t even know exactly how many flora and fauna call Earth home.

The National Science Foundation’s “Tree of Life” project estimates that there could be anywhere from 5 million to 100 million species on the planet, but science has only identified about 2 million.

“We’ve only touched the surface of understanding animal life,” said entomologist Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. “We’ve discovered just 10 percent of all living things on this planet.”

Environmental index

Taking an exact count of Earth’s creatures may not seem like the most important task, but taxonomy, the science of discovering, describing and categorizing living things, is “the foundation for understanding life on this planet,” Fisher said.

Knowing just who we share the planet with is of particular concern now because global warming, deforestation and other signs of human development are threatening many species, which may be essential to the functioning of ecosystems or may have inherent value in terms of developing medicines or other products.

As Fisher puts it, knowing what kind and how much life is out there could make society more “bio-literate”—we would better understand the impacts that human activities have on other living things.

“We could have kind of a Dow Jones index of the environment,” Fisher said.

No simple answer

Though taxonomists have been cataloguing plants and animals for more than 250 years, they still have no exact answer to the question, “How many species are on Earth?”

“It’s a very simple question, but we have no simple answer,” Fisher said.

One of the reasons we can’t get an accurate count is that the bulk of the things that have yet to be discovered and described are in the realm of the very small: insects, bacteria and other microbes.

“We’ve done a pretty good job of categorizing from the size of a fly up,” but anything below that is far less known, said Joel Cracraft of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Another part of the problem is that the tradition of taxonomy has been confined to the developed world for the bulk of its existence, leaving out the enormous diversity of much of the southern hemisphere, which is less developed on average.

“Species aren’t equally distributed across the Earth; they have these hotspots,” Fisher said.

For example, says AMNH entomologist Randall Schuh, there are about 2,000 known insect species in North America, but only 200 in Australia, while the sampling of Australia’s plant diversity that Schuh has done suggests that there could be as many as 3,000 insect species in Australia.

Complicating the matter are “cryptic” species, which look the same to the human eye, but genetically are quite different, making them that much harder for scientists to classify.

“When we go out in nature and we see individual organisms, they don’t wear little name tags, they don’t tell us what they are,” Schuh said.

New tools

But taxonomists now have new tools such as DNA sequencing that are making distinguishing one species from another, particularly “cryptic species” and smaller creatures, much easier.

“We’re going to find more and more things through these tools, there’s no doubt about it,” Schuh said.

Biologists are also combining their knowledge in projects such as the “Tree of Life,” the bug-focused Planetary Biodiversity Inventory co-headed by Schuh and the Census for Marine Life (a network of researchers in more than 70 nations engaged in a 10-year initiative to assess the diversity and abundance of marine life), all of which are intended to identify, catalogue and connect lineages of Earth’s millions of species.

“I think now we can, if we put some resources behind it, address this exciting fact that 90 percent of life is yet to be discovered on the planet,” Fisher said.

Of course, the only way to really find out how many species inhabit the planet is to go out and count them, one by one. Spurred by concern over species extinctions, several scientists over the past decade have advocated such a complete global biological survey. To date, however, not even a single country has attempted to comprehensively survey its own biota. Now a new U.S. program called Discover Life in America -- made up of some 60 U.S. government agencies, universities and other groups -- is making a significant start with the launch of an "all-taxa biodiversity inventory" of species in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The organizers' goals are not only to identify the park's estimated 100,000 species, but to collect data on their distribution and natural history.

Djavolja Varos "Devil's Town"

The Djavolja Varos natural landmark is situated on the south slopes of Mt. Radan, on the right bank of the tuta reka (Yellow river), in the central part of eastern Yugoslavia.Djavolja varos is a unique example of the action of erosion. It is a complex of stone pyramids located in the watershed between Djavolja jaruga and Paklena jaruga (Devil's Gully and Hellts Gully). On an area of 4,300 sq.m. water erosion has shaped andesite material and volcanic tufa into over 200 pyramids - towers standing from 2 -15 m. tall, width at base 4 to 6 m. and at the summit 1 - 2 m.
Most of these pyramids have caps or heads - andesite blocks protecting them from fast decey. The absolute height of the locality is 700-720 m. Stone pyramids are ephemeral forms, for they disintegrate relatively quickly (when they lose their protective "cap"), and are formed equally quickly through water erosion. Hence the name Djavolja Varos (Devil's Town), because the locals believe that these changes occur as devils fight each other for power.

These pyramids came into existence by water erosion, in heterogeneous material; the more massive block on the surface prevented the material beneath it from being destroyed and eroded away, resulting in the formation of the "towers" - pyramids. Two hydrological phenomena characterize the locality: one known as Devil's Water ( a highly mineralized spring, the water of which is used in traditional medicine), and another called the Devil's Well (a pressurized spring). The water is of a markedly red colour, while the area surrounding this natural phenomenon, the soil and the rocks, as well as the pyramids themselves, are of different colours giving a bizarre appearance to the entire scenery. This miraculous worid also features acoustic phenomena which justity the designation "Devil's Town": the wind which hums between the pyramids crestes strange murmurs, howling, sighs, squeaking, which has frightened the local population for centuries and is behind their superstitious lore.

The remains of two old churches stand in the vicinity of this natural sculpture; the rich tradition and folk customs of this region are closely associated with this natural phenomenon. Throughout the centuries this area has seen an intertwining of natural phenomena and the life of man.

INTELLIGENCE : What is it?

Christian Heinecken, an 18^th century child prodigy and historian, died in 1725 at the age of four and a half years.His knowledge of sacred and secular history, geography, anatomy and law, and his perfect command of Latin and French, astonished all who met him.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart learned to play the harpsichord at the age of four, composed his first sonata at the age of six and wrote his first opera at the age of 12.

The age-old question regarding intelligence still remains.. Why are some people more intelligent than others?

Some children are exceptionally gifted from an early age, they learn more quickly and efficiently than most adults and soon outstand them in the areas of science, literature, music , painting and sports.

Psychologists use the term ‘precocious’.While they are in every way normal there are specific features of the brain that are more developed.Hence it is not the anatomy but their ability to possess information that makes them gifted.

But since not enough is known about the complex network of the brain, scientists do not know yet these individual abilities in the micro structures of the brain.

Another difficulty is the lack of general definition of intelligence.We know it as a general term to combine a number of brain functions.We know that everybody has intelligence, even animals.

There are also many aspects related to it such as ability to understand , and ability to convert information into action, the capacity for abstraction, recalling information and the most important- common sense.It is therefore found difficult to evolve a definition that the would completely define the term INTELLIGENCE.

WHAT IS A GENIUS ?

Moderately gifted people are much more common than geniuses, of course.The modern world has seen great strides in many fields with people attracting public attention and acclaim.

One of the most popular is physicist Albert Einstein.His contemporaries were also remarkably knowledgeable, and perhaps just as creative and inventive, But he stood out from the crowd because of his genius.

THE IQ TEST: how we measure intelligence.

Our intelligence quotient [IQ] is measured with specially designed tests that assess different aspects of intelligence, such as logical thinking, numerical ability, spatial ability and memory.Each exercise varies in difficulty, and each one has a time limit.

REASON FOR CAUTION

Did you know that Louis Pasteur was a weak student and yet bacame France’s greatest scientist.

Albert Einstein also showed no special distinction in at school.Yet in later life his research and theories caused a revolution in science and philosophy.

Similarly Thomas Edison gave no reason to suspect intellectual brilliance.

Then how do we spot such children? Do the definition of intelligence explain such a change in mental abilities ? Are IQ tests sufficient?

I think NOT. Since IQ test do not take a person’s creativity and imagination into account, they cannot provide a full measure of intelligence.A precocious child tends to be an IQ whiz; while the average value is about 100, the gifted people typically exceed 125 points at an early age.

I am not making vague comments.I support my views with the following example-

The American twins Charles and George could name the day of the week for any randomly selected calender date- in addition to coping with several other complex mathematical challenges.And yet in a test taken in 1964, when they were 24 years old, both were classified as ‘MENTALLY RETARDED’, as the IQ test score was between 60 and 70 !!!

What Causes Mass Extinctions?

They are known ominously as the Big Five—the five greatest mass extinctions over the past 500 million years, each of which is thought to have annihilated anywhere from 50 to 95 percent of all species on the planet.

Many unsolved mysteries remain regarding these disasters, perhaps the greatest of which is what caused each of them. But research is uncovering how these extinction events dictated the fate of life on this planet—for instance, determining which animals first crawled onto land and which ruled the oceans.

    * The K-T extinction

The most recent of the Big Five is the most familiar one—the cataclysm that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. The end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, otherwise known as K-T, killed off all dinosaurs save birds roughly 65 million years ago, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet, including pterosaurs.

Not only did mammals sweep across the planet after K-T, but sharks expanded across the seas, explained American Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Jack Conrad.

"Throughout the Age of Dinosaurs, you always had these large reptile carnivores dominating the water, such as ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs," Conrad explained. "Only after they die do you see big sharks becoming really prevalent. You probably wouldn't have seen orcas or blue whales either had reptile dominance of the seas not gone by the wayside."

Although research suggests the planet was on the verge of environmental upheaval before the K-T extinction event, the straw that broke the dinosaur's back is widely thought to have been an impact with an asteroid or comet. Still, a number of researchers contend evidence commonly linked with such an impact, such as the metal iridium, which is rare on the Earth's crust, could also be caused by the massive volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Flats in India, another popular contender for the dinosaur-killing catastrophe.

    * The Triassic-Jurassic extinction

The end-Triassic, or Triassic-Jurassic extinction event about 200 million years ago is thought by many to possibly have set dinosaurs on the path to their 135-million-year domination of much of life on Earth. It also ended life for roughly half of all species.

Until this disaster, mammal-like creatures known as therapsids were actually more numerous than the ancestors of the dinosaurs, known as archosaurs.

"The dinosaurs definitely survived better than the early proto-mammals did, and the extinction event might have entirely tipped it in their favor," said Rutgers University paleobiologist George McGhee.

Of the Big Five, the Triassic-Jurassic extinction has the fewest number of scientists currently researching it, "although that's changing right now," said Columbia University paleoecologist Paul Olsen. Its cause remains under great debate, with the best contender so far being the massive volcanic eruptions at the "Central Atlantic magmatic province," a region that encompassed a staggering 4.2 million square miles (11 million square kilometers), an area larger than Canada. Another main possibility could be an astronomical impact, Olsen said, although as with the K-T event, the evidence for both types of catastrophe can get maddeningly blurry.

    * The Permian-Triassic extinction

The largest of the Big Five was the end-Permian or Permian-Triassic extinction event roughly 250 million years ago, which eliminated as much as 95 percent of the planet's species.

Before this extinction, marine animals were mostly filter feeders stuck in place on the seafloor, such as crinoids or "sea lilies." Afterward, the seas became far more complex with mobile creatures such as snails, urchins and crabs.

The most likely final trigger for the end-Permian was again massive volcanism, this time at the Siberian Traps, which spewed as much as 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers) of lava out, an area nearly as large as Australia.

Recent evidence suggests, however, that the end-Permian may have been long in the making.

    * The late Devonian extinctions

The late Devonian extinction events were actually two sharp pulses of death about 360 million years ago, each just 100,000 to 300,000 years apart.

Each pulse was accompanied by a massive drop in temperature, with the steaming seas of the Devonian—surface temperatures of which were about 93 degrees F (34 degrees C)—dropping to about 78 degrees F (26 degrees C), "and marine organisms would not have liked that at all," McGhee said. As to what caused these cold snaps, the ever-popular suspects are ash and dust kicked up by either astronomical impacts or massive volcanism.

At that time, plants had made it onto land, as had spiders, scorpions and similar creatures. Right before the extinction events, the first proto-amphibians made it onto shore. However, the invasion of the so-called elpistostegalians—distant relatives of the coelacanth—"got wiped out by these extinction events," McGhee explained. "It wasn't until at least another 10 million years later that we got footprints from vertebrates on land again, this time from the ichthyostegalians, the proto-amphibians we're all descended from. Who knows how the world might have been different."

    * The Ordovician-Silurian extinctions

The earliest of the Big Five, the end-Ordovician or Ordovician-Silurian extinction events some 444 million years ago, are reckoned by many to be the second largest.

These also consisted of a pair of die-offs, apparently involving massive glaciation and a resulting fall in sea levels. The cause of this glaciation remains a mystery, but one idea was that land plants actually caused it, pulling so much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that global cooling resulted, McGhee explained.

Curiously, even though the end-Ordovician led to a huge loss of life, in a way it actually had very little impact on the persistence of lineages. Although the four other Big Five extinction events led to huge changes in which animals rose to prominence, the same animals that dominated before the end-Ordovician dominated afterward.

Otherwise, "one neat thing about mass extinction events is that they're often reset buttons, where you change what dominates the globe," Conrad said. "You open the door to things like us to live."

FULL MOON & ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

I know you're thinking of all those movies where under the light of a full moon, a man would transform into the Werewolf: a ferocious monster who would prowl the area searching for victims, ofcourse..
But thats not it.There are several other myths associated with LUNAR CYCLES.
The full moon has been linked to crime, suicide, mental illness, disasters, accidents, birthrates, fertility, and werewolves, among other things. Some people even buy and sell stocks according to phases of the moon..
The new study suggests that pets get into more mischief and are injured more often during certain phases of the lunar cycle, particularly when the moon is fullest.It revealed a link between an increase in emergency room visits for dogs and cats during days when the moon is at or near its fullest.

The data, compiled from case histories of 11,940 dogs and cats treated at the university's Veterinary Medical Center, indicates that the risk of emergencies on fuller moon days was 23 percent greater in cats and 28 percent greater in dogs when compared with other days. The types of emergencies ranged from cardiac arrest to epileptic seizures and trauma, and the increase was most pronounced during the moon's three fullest stages—waxing gibbous, full and waning gibbous.
Modern studies have associated the full Moon with insanity, traffic accidents, increased aggression, unintentional poisonings and absenteeism, and the female menstrual cycle, but many of the connections are thin and vary widely from study to study.

Historically there has been a widespread belief that a full moon can effect people and animals causing them to act strangely. In fact, the word ‘Lunatic’ came about due to the belief that the Moon can make one mad.
But just what is behind the pet emergency and full moon correlation, however, is not at all clear. One theory is that since there’s more light out, people and their pets may be more likely to be out getting into mischief. So, what does all this mean for pet owners?
Regarding HUMANS, Ivan Kelly, James Rotton and Roger Culver (1996) examined over 100 studies on lunar effects and concluded that the studies have failed to show a reliable and significant correlation between the full moon, or any other phase of the moon, and each of the following phases :

-the homicide rate
-traffic accidents
-crisis calls to police or fire stations
-domestic violence
-births of babies
-suicide
-major disasters
-casino payout rates
-assassinations
-kidnappings
-aggression by professional hockey players
-violence in prisons
-psychiatric admissions
-agitated behavior by nursing home residents
-assaults
-gunshot wounds
-stabbings
-emergency room admissions
-behavioral outbursts of psychologically challenged rural adults
-lycanthropy
-vampirism
-alcoholism
-sleep walking
-epilepsy
Why do so many people believe in these lunar myths these? Kelly, Rotton, and Culver suspect four factors: media effects, folklore and tradition, misconceptions, and cognitive biases. A fifth factor should be considered, as well: communal reinforcement.

ALCHEMY

Alchemy is generally defined as an art which aims to change impure metals into silver or gold. The goal of the Great Work of alchemy, called also the Art, is the "Philosopher's Stone".

The Stone was viewed as a magical touchstone that could immediately perfect any substance or situation. The Philosopher's Stone has been associated with the Salt of the World, the Astral Body, the Elixir, and even Jesus Christ.

The Elixir of the alchemists has essentially the same ability to perfect any substance. When applied to the human body, the Elixir cures diseases and restores youth. The alchemists' dream is to attain knowledge of the mysterious Philosopher's Stone, or "that Elixir by which such wonders are performed".

The basis of all the alchemical transformations required to obtain the Stone (called the Great Work) is seven-stepped formula described by the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.

The Emerald Tablet of Hermes The Tablet probably first appeared in the West in editions of the psuedo-Aristotlean Secretum Secretorum which was actually a translation of the Kitab Sirr al-Asar, a book of advice to kings which was translated into latin by Johannes Hispalensis c. 1140 and by Philip of Tripoli c.1243. Other translations of the Tablet may have been made during the same period by Plato of Tivoli and Hugh of Santalla, perhaps from different sources.

• The Emerald Tablet of Hermes - Translation

1. This true without lying, certain & most true. That which is below is like that which is above & that wch is above is like yet which is below to do ye miracles of one only thing.

2. And as all things have been & arose from one by ye mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

3. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nourse.
4. The father of all perfection in ye whole world is here.

5. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. Seperate thou ye earth from ye fire, ye subtile from the gross sweetly wth great indoustry.

6. It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven & again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior & inferior.

7. By this means you shall have ye glory of ye whole world & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.

8. Its force is above all force. for it vanquishes every subtile thing & penetrates every solid thing. So was ye world created.

9. From this are & do come admirable adaptaions whereof ye means (Or process) is here in this.
10. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of ye philosophy of ye whole world.
11. That which I have said of ye operation of ye Sun is accomplished & ended.

• Translation of Issac Newton c. 1680

Seven Steps of the Philosopher's Stone Formula Although the alchemists went to great pains to conceal the true order of the steps of the formula for making the Stone, the correct order according to the Emerald Tablet is: Calcination, Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction, Fermentation, Distillation, Coagulation. The first four steps take place Below, in the realm of matter. The last three steps take place Above, in the realm of mind and creative imagination.

BLACK WORK
Saturn / black crow perching on top of a skull / Visita = Putrefaction Jupiter / black crow watching itself dissolving / Interiora = Dissolution

WHITE WORK
Mars / two white soul birds retrieving the remains / Terra = Separation Sun / ascending soul & spirit birds leave Earth and lift the five-spiked crown / Rectificanto = Conjunction
RED WORK
Venus / soul & spirit birds nest in a tree and brood over their egg / Inveniens = Fermentation Mercury / unicorn lying in front of a rose bush / Occultum = Distillation Moon / androgynous youth emerging from an open grave / Lapidem = Coagulation.

The Stone of the Philosophers

There are two primary ways of knowing reality:
1. The rational, deductive, argumentative, intellectual thinking that is accepted by the science and our patriarchal Western culture. The alchemists called this Solar Consciousness and assigned it many code words, such as the Sun, Sulfur, the King, the Father, Spirit, and ultimately, the One Mind of the universe. This involves left-brain activity like linear thought, schematics, formulae, arguments and logic.
2. The intuitive way of thinking, also called intelligence of the heart, a non-linear, image-driven way of thinking that is an accepted tool of the arts and religion. The alchemists called the other way of knowing Lunar Consciousness. Among its many symbols are the Moon, Mercury, the Queen, the Holy Ghost, Soul, and ultimately, the One Thing of the universe. This involves right-brain activity dealing with drawings, paintings, mandalas, symbols, music, and meditation.The alchemists believed that perfection could only be achieved by working with both Solar and Lunar ways of knowing and ultimately uniting them in a third state of Stellar Consciousness. Stellar Consciousness is a state of incorruptible wisdom symbolized by the heroic Child that resulted from the marriage of the King and Queen, as well as by Salt, Gold, the Philosopher's Stone, the Astral Body, and of course, the Stars themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS [UFOs]

For the last sixty years stories of UFOs, Flying Saucers, Aliens and Cover-ups have intrigued the World.
UFO, is any flying object that cannot be identified by the observer and have been spotted in many different places around the world.

Reports of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but modern reports and first official investigations began during World War II with sightings of so-called foo fighters by Allied airplane crews and in 1946 with widespread sightings of European "ghost rockets." UFO reports became even more common after the first widely publicized United States UFO sighting, by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in the summer of 1947. Many tens of thousands of UFO reports have since been made worldwide.

The notion that unidentified objects or lights in the sky might be craft from other worlds appears to have been first suggested following the earliest wave of such sightings.

In the post 1947 era however, explanations for the saucers, or "flying disks" as they were also known at the time, included natural phenomena, such as Venus or unusual clouds, illusions, hoaxes, balloons, prototype aircraft and secret weapons (friendly or hostile), and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. The last possibility was not initially given much credence but rapidly gained favor as a result of intense media speculation.

From the outset, the systematic investigation of UFOs was made problematic by the fact that the alleged phenomenon was both transient and unpredictable. Although data were plentiful, these largely took the form of individual and uncorroborated eyewitness reports – a notoriously unreliable source of information. Yet enough sightings were made by what appeared to be reliable, experienced observers, including military personnel and police officers, for the phenomenon to be taken seriously (see Roswell Incident; Mantell, Captain Thomas F.). The United States military, concerned about a possible threat to national security and following the recommendations of General Twining, launched the first of its investigations, Project Sign. This was followed by Project Grudge and, finally, beginning in 1952, Project Blue Book.

Besides visual sightings, cases sometimes have an indirect physical evidence like :
#Radar contact and tracking, sometimes from multiple sites.
#Photographic evidence, including still photos, movie film, and video, including some in the infrared spectrum .
# Recorded visual spectrograms # Recorded gravimetric and magnetic disturbances
#Biological effects on plants such as increased or decreased growth, germination effects on seeds, and blown-out stem nodes (usually associated with physical trace cases or crop circles) #Electromagnetic interference (EM) effects, including stalled cars, power black-outs, radio/TV interference, magnetic compass deflections, and aircraft navigation, communication, and engine disruption,etc.

There are different opinions about the UFO phenomenon. Among proponents, some of the more common explanations for UFOs are:

* The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) : that UFOs are best explained as being creatures from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.
* The interdimensional hypothesis : advanced by astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, holds that these phenomena are visitations from other universes (or dimensions) that coexist separately alongside our own. It further proposes that they are a modern manifestation of entities or phenomena which have appeared throughout and possibly before recorded history, and which were previously explained as mythological or supernatural creatures.

It is an alternative to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which proposes that UFOs are from distant worlds in our own universe, as well as to the hypothesis that UFOs are merely terrestrial phenomena. This hypothesis is generally considered to be a fringe view, even among UFO researchers.

According to this theory, the phenomenon manifests itself as a control mechanism, whose function appears to be to challenge the observer's accepted notions of reality, by appearing to be things that common sense would disregard as being impossible, and in our modern age, as technological objects which always seem to appear to be one step ahead of our own technological horizon.
*The Paranormal/Occult Hypothesis
* The hypothesis that they are time machines or vehicles built in a future time.

Skeptics usually propose one of the following explanations:

* The man-made craft hypothesis
* The unknown natural phenomena hypothesis, e.g. ball lightning, sprites * The Psychological-Social Hypothesis * The Earthquake lights/Tectonic Strain hypothesis.

What appears interesting is that UFO sightings depend on the technological environment of their times. In the late 1800s, UFOs were described as airships larger, sturdier and more maneuverable than those commonly used. As planes were developed UFO descriptions involved those of planes with speed and maneuverability greater than in any known design. Nowadays UFOs are described as having many shapes, but are still described as performing maneuvers that no known contemporary aircraft is capable of doing; these include complete or near-complete silence when spotted, hovering, flight at very great speeds with very small turn radii, as well as the ability to make unusually rapid changes in altitude.

It should also be noted that UFOs are usually observed by untrained sky watchers and almost never by professional or amateur astronomers, people who spend inordinate amounts of time observing the heavens above. These untrained observers have been aided by the availability of inexpensive video cameras, yet despite the enormous increase in volume of such cameras, there has been a drop in the number of UFO observations. Anyway, one would think that astronomers would have spotted some of these alien craft by now. [Perhaps the crafty aliens know that good scientists are skeptical and inquisitive !]

GREATEST HOAX : BOOK OF MORMON

The Book of Mormon is one of the sacred texts of the Latter Day Saint movement. It is regarded by most, if not all, Latter Day Saint groups as divinely revealed and is named after the prophet–historian Mormon who, according to the text, compiled most of the book. It was published by the founder of the LDS movement, Joseph Smith, Jr., in March 1830 in Palmyra, New York, USA.

It is considered to be a divinely inspired book of equal value to the Bible. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, claimed that he was directed by an Angel to a hill near his home in which he found golden tablets containing the full text of the book. With the books he found two objects called the Urim and Thummim which he described as a pair of crystals joined in the form of a large pair of spectacles. Unfortunately, after Smith finished his translation, he had to return the tablets to the Angel, so there is no physical evidence that they ever existed.

WHY THE BOOK OF MORMON IS A FRAUD

First of all, despite claims to the contrary, the Book of Mormon is the work of man and is not inspired by God. Since its original publication there have been over 4,000 alterations made to this supposedly inspired writing. These changes include deletions of entire sections, the changing of characters named in the book, changes of the names of locations, and much more. Yet despite all these alterations, this book still contains numerous errors and contradictions.

The book refers to a group of Jews that moved to and settled in America where Jesus visited them. Some segments of the Book of Mormon contain sections copied directly from the King James version of the Bible - the Bible that was most popular at the time and used by Joseph Smith. One example is Mark 16:15-18 which is quoted nearly word-for-word in Mormon 9:22-24. In addition, the book mimics the literary and linguistic style of the King James Bible. Linguistic experts have stated that the entire book is written by one man, and is not written by a combination of authors (the prophets as claimed by Smith).

The Book of Mormon discusses metals being used in weapons, coins, and buildings. It mentions things such as chariots, swords, scimitars, and breastplates. It talks about crops of wheat and barley. It mentions the donkey, cattle, oxen, horse, pig, and elephants. It also talks about the use of linen and silk. There is absolutely NO archaeological evidence to support any of this.

The Book of Mormon claims that those who lived here used a calendar consisting of a seven-day week. Yet none of the archaeological evidence has ever produced any such calendar. The calendars that have been found mostly used a 20-day period, repeating over and over.

The most compelling proof that Joseph Smith was perpetuating a fraud is the Book of Abraham. In 1835 Smith was able to use his Urim and Thummim to translate some Egyptian scrolls that he was given access to (at that time no one could read hieroglyphics). Upon inspection, Smith declared that they contained the Book of Abraham. He promptly translated the lot and it was accepted as scripture by the church. The scrolls vanished and everyone thought the story would end there. But it didn’t - in 1966 the original scrolls were found in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scrolls turned out to be a standard Egyptian text that was often buried with the dead. To this day the Book of Abraham is a source of discomfort for the Mormon religion.

DO ANIMALS USE LANGUAGE ??

Canines as wolves and coyotes may adopt an aggressive posture, such as growling with their teeth bared, to indicate they will fight if necessary, and rattlesnakes use their well-known rattle to warn potential predators of their poisonous bite ; and on a rainy night concert of a frog fills the darkness.. these are but few examples of the way animals communicate. Sounds of nature are all around us.Some are funny, while some threatening . Are they coded messages ? Is it possible that they are using a language ?

Language is defined as a form of symbolic and creative communication . Animals use communication to attract mates, warn off predators, mark territory,to exchange information about food sources and to identify themselves. The study of animal communication is called zoosemiotics .

The sender and receiver of a communication may be of the same species or of different species. The majority of animal communication is intra specific (between two or more individuals of the same species). However, there are some important instances of inter specific communication as warning colouration , mimicry , stotting, etc.

Some predators communicate to prey in ways that change their behaviour and make them easier to catch, in effect deceiving them.

Inter species communication also occurs in various kinds of mutualism and symbiosis.

Various ways in which humans interpret the behaviour of domestic animals, or give commands to them, fit the definition of inter specific communication.

Another important forms of communication is bird song, usually performed mainly by males. It is just the best known case of vocal communication; other instances include the warning cries of many monkeys, the territorial calls of gibbons, and the mating calls of many species of frog.

IMITATION OF HUMANS

I guess the most fascinating to us are the animals that can imitate our speech - as parrots.They are so good at imitation that every sound we say they are capable of repeating it .Could it be a genuine form of communication ?

A psychologist Irene Pepperberg has bee trying to answer this question.She started with with very simple words as cork and carrot and then started teaching a grey parrot simple sentences.Soon it could respond to questions as What colour is the box ?. Now the parrot has the ability to distinguish between more than 300 objects by form , size and colour.

FORMS OF ANIMALS COMMUNICATION

It has been observed that all animal communication can be divided into :

Visual / Optical Communication - such as patterns of fur, colour change or sign language.

Auditory / Acoustic Communication - animals make lots of different sounds to communicate, as singing shouting ,ultra- or infra- sound calls. From the roar of a lion to the song of the whale, sound is a way for animals to "talk" to other animals.

Tactile Communication - animals use touch in many different ways. When a cat rubs up against you or a dog offers you its paw, they are communicating. Chicks beg food from their parents using this form .

Chemical Communication - animals emit certain chemicals and odours from them conveys the message, many animals mark their paths and territories this way ,as dogs.

Electrical Communication - sometimes animals , esp. some fishes send electrical signals to improve orientation.

EXAMPLES FROM NATURE

These are some examples of animal communication :

Species such as wasps that are capable of harming potential predators are often brightly coloured, and this modifies the behaviour of the predator, who either instinctively or as the result of experience will avoid attacking such an animal.

Hover flies are coloured in the same way as wasps, and although they are unable to sting, the strong avoidance of wasps by predators gives the hover fly some protection. This is an example of MIMICRY for protection.

In certain species of amphibians which have a brightly coloured belly, but on which the rest of their body is coloured to blend in with their surroundings. When confronted with a potential threat, they show their belly, indicating that they are poisonous in some way.

Some antelopes such as Thomson's gazelle in the presence of a predator run in a particular fashion , referred to as stotting ; it has been argued that this demonstrates to the predator that the particular prey individual is fit and healthy and therefore not worth pursuing.

The Herring Gull has a brightly coloured bill, yellow with a red spot on the lower mandible near the tip. When it returns to the nest with food, the parent stands over its chick and taps the bill on the ground in front of it; this elicits a begging response from a hungry chick (pecking at the red spot), which stimulates the parent to regurgitate food in front of it. The complete signal therefore involves a distinctive morphological feature (body part), the red-spotted bill, and a distinctive movement (tapping towards the ground) which makes the red spot highly visible to the chick.

However ,my favourite is the amazingly sophisticated communication that takes place among the honey-bees. When one of them discovers a source of food ,it returns to the hive and passes on the information.This is done by certain dances.Now here's the amazing part :If the food is located less than 100 m from the hive , the bee will dance around in a circle .If the distance is more , it becomes a waggling dance, in the form of figure of eight. The speed is supposed to indicate the distance of food. The orientation of the dance gives the direction of food.The bee through its dancing also reports the richness of the food to be found !!

The chief characteristic of animal communication is that every signal corresponds to only one message , and vice versa.To decide whether animals communicate by using language , scientists will have to decide the basic features of a language.