This video has recently been floating around the internet.   It is reported to show footage transmitted from a secret Apollo mission conducted in the mid 1970’s, sometimes called “Apollo-20.”   According to some sites, it was a joint US-Soviet, like the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program.   Others claim that it was just America.  What they all say is that it went to the moon and found evidence of extra-terrestrial life, including some kind of mummified alien body.

Of course, there was no Apollo-20. There would have been, but the program was cut short early on to include only missions up to Apollo-19.   Then, further cuts resulted in Apollo 18 and 19 being axed, although some of their mission objectives were rolled into Apollo 15, 16 and 17.

The launch of a Saturn-V is pretty hard to hide.   The only facilities equipped to handle and launch the rocket were at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which is not far from populated areas that can easily observe the launch.   The flights were fairly easy to track into orbit and even beyond, even with amateur telescopes and radio receivers.   Not only that, but all the hardware from Apollo was accounted for.   All rockets were either used for the Skylab program or left as museum pieces.

I have a Christmas present for the commenter who usually posts as “anonymous” and likes to make completely off-topic rants about how the end is near.   This commenter will usually post totally off topic stuff in whatever the latest post on this blog is and then when challenged for being incredibly rude and spamming will then say that it’s because the issue is urgent and nobody will address it otherwise (sometimes because the comment is not responded to immediately).

Most recently said commenter has been all about the Gulf oil spill.  Yes, I know, it was plugged a while ago, but  apparently he still believes it will be the end of the world.

Anyway, here’s your gift:  Your very own blog post and comment thread.   From now on you can post any of your doomsday theories on here rather than spewing them into other comment threads.   I will add:  ANY FURTHER OFF TOPIC COMMENTS WILL BE MOVED TO THIS POST, so don’t bother posting them elsewhere, you’ll just irritate me further.

In seriousness, however, I will repeat what I have said to this person before, despite the fact that I know they’re not going to do it:

GET HELP!   Seriously, go get some help.   Don’t do it on web forums or chat rooms.  Get some real help from a professional.

There are many places you can go.    If you’re in school (High School, College or whatever) go to your school councilor and they can help you get the help you need.   If you have a primary care physician, go to them and they can help you find what you need – be sure to explain to them that you need more than a single appointment, you want to be directed  to a continuing program.

You can go to a hospital or to a community health center, but be warned that these places are not necessarily the best because they tend to offer short term care and may just give you a tranquilizer and discharge you.  Therefore, if you do go to that kind of a facility, be sure to tell them repeatedly that you are interested in finding out about some kind of ongoing therapy.   Even if you do not have insurance, there are programs, local, state, federal and private charities.  They do exist – there is help there, but you have to take the initiative to go looking for it.   You can ask about your state’s social services agencies.

As a last resort you can go to your local police.   That might not sound like a logical place to go, but community police officers can be very helpful.   Asking a police officer for help does not mean you’re saying you’re a criminal or anything.   Police officers are forced to become mediators in all kinds of disputes and frequently respond to minor domestic disturbances and highly unsettled people all the time.   They deal with people with problems all the time and because of this, they are often very well versed in what kind of programs and services are available in your area.  They know where to refer people to deal with substance, social and mental problems.

But… since you refuse to do that, and continue to post doomsday fantasies, do it here.

This is not the first time I’ve complained about the quality of the content on the History Channel, or as it now is called, simply “History.” However, recently things have gone from dumb to absolutely moronic, as the channel is now running the show “Ancient Aliens” almost daily. In case, the title does not clue you in, it’s a rather one-sided show presentation of the supposed evidence that generations of humans past were contacted by extra-terrestrial visitors and that this influenced their culture.

Here’s just a small sample of what kind of thing the series contains:

Damn… I feel dumber every time I see a video from it.

However I also feel compelled to answer a number of the contentions made by the series.
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Global slowing!   Are you worried?   At least one website is. The creates of which seem to have as good a grasp of logic as they do of web design.   By global slowing, they mean the slowing of the rotation of the earth, which is alleged to be a doomsday-scale problem, which the governments of the world have been hiding for more than 50 years.

The earth’s is indeed slowing, although ever so slightly (more on that bellow), but it’s hardly a reason for concern and despite the claims of the site, it’s not being caused by any human activity.

This page describes some of the things which the site claims are responsible for global slowing.

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Watching this video, one might think that it’s a spoof of some sort.  The content is so ridiculous it would be fitting of “The Onion” or some other humor outlet.   I mean, can anyone really take this seriously?

No, it’s real.   I didn’t believe it at first, but having checked out the source, this is not a joke.   It’s a video from a newscast on RT-America.   RT or Russia Today is a Russian television news network based in Moscow.  Russia Today broadcasts in a number of languages and has several regional television networks aimed at providing Russian-centered news for the areas served, in the local language.

RT America is one of those networks.  It’s analogous to BBC America or NHK International.  RT America opened relatively recently – January 2010.  It does not broadcast continuously, but does produce daily news telecasts.   It can be found on a few extended lineups on cable systems, but has struggled to gain widespread acceptance.   Aside from internet content, the only way to receive the channel is with a FTA satellite system via Galaxy-19.

Given that the network has the stated purpose RT-America is “coverage of the Americas from an international and Russian perspective,” it’s not hard to see how it would struggle to gain much in the way of viewership – there aren’t all that many Russian expats living in the US, at least not enough for a cable or satellite operator to bother dedicating some of their bandwidth to an English-language Russian-centric news source.

In light of this, RT-America has found a niche in the extreme wacky conspiracy theory community.  In the quest to gain attention and viewership, RT-America has been in a race to the bottom, besting even mainstream American news services for sheer idiocy.   This would appear to be the result.

By the way:  Do I even really need to go into all the reasons this video is stupid?  the fact that the phenomena was a common illusion produced by a contrail, or the fact that a missile would not be shot at Iran by firing it from the Pacific ocean on an eastward trajectory?   Or for that matter, the fact that an EMP weapon would not disable a ship? (the communications electronics, perhaps, but not the heavy duty power systems deep in the metal hull)

Alright, lets consider what this video is claiming: These vaults are for mass graves for Americans or others who the government is planning on killing. Apparently the government is planning on putting all the victims in nice clean burial vaults.

That does seem a bit strange, considering that historically, pretty much all mass graves have been just a big pit into which bodies are dumped. Alternatively, groups that have killed large numbers of people have used everything from cremation ovens to open-air burning piles to eliminate the bodies. Vaults, on the other hand, are generally reserved for formal burials where the dead get the dignity of a headstone and a memorial ceremony.

In reality these vaults and other cemetery upgrades are part of a project to accommodate additional burials at the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona. The cemetery is a large veterans cemetery which provides burial services to present and past US service men and women. Spouses and children of veterans may also qualify for burial in a national cemetery.

There has been a huge increase in the number of burial requests for veterans over the past few years. World War II veterans are now in their 80’s and 90’s and are rapidly dying. Veterans from Korea and Vietnam are now also reaching their later years, not to mention the military personnel who served stateside or in foreign bases during the decades of the Cold War.

Information on the upgrade to this facility can be found here:

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS NATIONAL CEMETERY ADMINISTRATION CONSTRUCTION SUPPORT DIVISION (41D3B) 810 VERMONT AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20420 DATE: MARCH 17, 2008 TO: SERVICE DISABLED VETERAN OWNED SMALL BUSINESSES SUBJ: POTENTIAL ACQUISITION OPPORTUNITY – CONSTRUCTION PROJECT FOR THE DESIGN-BUILD, OFF LOADING AND INSTALLATION OF APPROXIMATLEY 7600 GOVERNMENT FURNISHED PREPLACED CRYPTS, DRAINAGE ITEMS, EXCAVATION, BACKFILLING AND GRADING, LANDSCAPING AND IRRIGATION AT THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL CEMETERY OF ARIZONA IN PHOENIX, ARIZONA.

Clearly the VA is not hiding the fact that they are planning on installing the large number of crypts at the cemetery, which already has more than forty thousand graves. The vaults are crypts are necessary to prevent coffins from collapsing, posing a hazard to maintenance vehicles that traverse the cemetery. They may also be required for sanitary reasons, to provide some level of isolation between the local water table and the embalmed bodies.

The “Web Bot” is a software program which crawls the web looking for patterns in searches and other internet traffic with the goal of predicting events based on collective human subconsciousness.  So far, the program has shown an uncanny ability to predict events of all kinds, so long as the reporting of those predictions is not made until after the event. (post diction)

It recently came to my attention that the Web Bot had made a starting prediction:  World War III is about to happen.  It will be an all out nuclear war that will involved billions of casualties.   Exactly when the “tipping point” will happen is a matter of some debate.   Some claim that the Web Bot has placed the start of the nuclear war on November 8, while others say it will be sometime between November 5 and 8.   The most common date cited as the date that will signal the beginning of the end is November 6.   Which was… yesterday

Still others now say that we’re living in a false sense of security if we believe that getting past November 6 means we’re safe. They claim that a refined estimate puts the beginning of the end on November 14.

So when will it start? Has the nuclear war started?   If you answer yes to any of these questions please report to us here so that we know it has started!

• Have you noticed a blinding flash accompanied by a searing feeling of radiant heat?
• Have you experienced a rapid burst of overpressure totaling 30 psi or more?
• Have you noticed any areas that are devoid of major surface features and covered with a shallow crater of fused glass where there had not been such a crater before?
• Has your body been rapidly converted into a superheated gas?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, please contact me so that I can report that the massive nuclear war world war has started.

In a related story, the BP oil spill, which you may remember was capped a couple of months ago and has mostly since dispersed, is predicted to kill 1.2 billion people. Also, there’s supposed to be an Israeli-lead attack on Iran in July 2010.

If there’s one thing amazing about things like the Web Bot it’s the fact that they can fail so epically so many times and yet when they are even vaguely correct, which they are bound to occasionally be just due to dumb luck, people will see this as an affirmation of their power.

I would hardly call them “public interest groups,” but they are certainly very unhappy about some recent changes in the FCC’s statements. This would seem such a small thing that you might think nobody would notice, but they did…

Via the Washington Post:

FCC changes position on cell phone radiation and safety guidelines

The Federal Communications Commission has updated its views on cellphone safety in a move criticized by a public interest group for downplaying the potential risks that radio frequencies could pose to users.

The agency, without issuing a press release, made the update on its Web site, saying that its guidelines on radio frequency limits were confusing and did not necessarily show whether one phone is safer than another.

Specifically, the FCC revamped its Web entry on cell phone health guidelines, removing a suggestion that users concerned about the radiation emitted from cellphones could choose devices with lower SAR values. SAR stands for “specific absorption rate,” which is a measure of the rate of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body.

“The FCC requires that cell phone manufacturers conduct their SAR testing to include the most severe, worst-case (and highest power) operating conditions for all the frequency bands used in the USA for that cell phone,” the agency wrote on its consumer and governmental affairs section.

The issue of cellphone health risks has captured the attention of several jurisdictions, most notably San Francisco, which adopted a “Right to Know” ordinance that requires cell phone companies to label phones with radiation levels. San Francisco is scheduled to hold public hearings Thursday on the ordinance. A similar measure is also being considered by nearby Burlingame, Calif.

Public interest groups, scientists and some lawmakers have called for an overhaul of the way regulators assess the safety of cellphones. They say that testing of phones’ specific absorption rates should be conducted by regulators, and they cautioned that the current testing approach does not account for the fastest growing group of users: youth.

All of this has put the cellphone industry trade group, CTIA, on the defensive. It filed a lawsuit against San Francisco seeking to block the ordinance, said it would not longer consider the city for future trade shows and ramped up a lobbying campaign against similar measures elsewhere.

Scientists say the higher the SAR, the greater the potential danger to humans. To be sure, scientists do not agree on the effects of cellphone use on humans. Some studies show that radio frequencies absorbed by brain tissue have led to cell mutations and tumors – with the greatest threat posed to children. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and state lawmakers in Maine and California have called for a sweeping federal review of its oversight of cell phone safety.

The Environmental Working Group says the FCC’s changes mimic a message pushed by CTIA. The FCC said that measuring safety by SAR ratings can be misleading and cause confusion. A phone has different SAR levels depending on how far the phone is located from a cell tower base station and how closely it is being held to the body.

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When someone says “Kennedy Assassination” you probably think of US President John F. Kennedy.   If someone says “The Other Kennedy Assassination”, you might think of his brother Robert F. Kennedy.   But what about the other other Kennedy Assassination?

Well, if you’re nutty enough, you might think there is one, his son John F. Kennedy Junior, the playboy and publisher of a failing magazine apparently was important enough to murder.    At least that’s what some think.

In the past I’ve made a number of posts and videos mentioning the fact that uranium is a rather common mineral and that it’s been used in a number of consumer products.   Indeed, thousands of kitchen cabinets contain uranium-glazed dinnerware, some of which was mass produced as recently as the 1980’s.

This has been met with a curious response on numerous occasions.   Many concede that uranium is not all that harmful when touched or even ingested but then say “but what about the nano-particles.”   The dust, or “nanoparticles” resulting from uranium combustion are one thing that seems to come up again and again.  They are often credited with nearly magical properties, like the ability to stay suspended in the air indefinitely or to cause horrible health problems even in those far from the location where the uranium projectile was fired.

Indeed uranium tends to be more hazardous when inhaled than when exposure is by other routes, but that’s the extent of the truth to these statements.  Uranium is hardly unique in this respect.  Exposure to dust in general can cause respiratory problems, and certain metallic particles, such as beryllium, are well known to be especially hazardous if inhaled.   By comparison, uranium less dangerous, though it can be a hazard in high concentrations.

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