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Indented text surrounded by a dotted line is a quoted excerpt. A link to the full article or source is included.  Be sure to bookmark xenophilia.com in case this blog goes away mysteriously some day.

WordPress.com may shut your blog down with no explanation

If things look screwy (double posts, “>” symbols all over the place, etc.) it is because I’ve had a crummy day, staying up until 4 AM  trying to salvage my blog’s 10,000+ posts after an unexplained blog suspension which I believe to be an error.

As far as I can tell, the suspension of my several year old blog with millions of hits ( Xenophilius.wordpress.com ) is a repeat of a mistake WordPress.com made four months ago. I had no explanation in December of 2010. They just said it was a mistake and restored it.

Today, starting this morning, I’ve tried every channel available to contact support and have had no reply. So I decided all I can do is start this new blog.

Do you know how angry it makes me to have someone trash with the push of a button, something I spent years making? On a scale of one to five thousand, it’s a five thousand.

Why a scale of five thousand? Because I feel a responsibility to you, one of the 5,000 or so viewers per day who (used to) visit my blog.  That’s close to 2 million views per year!

I hope the good people at WordPress.com are just too busy (like perhaps a storm blew the roof off of their command center and half of the staff was swallowed by a tornado) and shutting down my blog is just another mistake.  Time will tell.

Not again. WordPress.com disabled my blog this morning. April 29, 2011

Dear Automattic,

Come on you WordPress.com people, this is getting annoying. I do not believe I am in violation of any of your terms of service. Could you please set up a policy where you send an email to the blog owner before you disable a blog?

This happened before Friday, December 10, 2010. My blog was restored and I was told it was an error, but not what caused the error.

Could you please send long term WordPress.com blog owners an email BEFORE you disable our blogs?

Was there really a complaint this time, or is this just another technical error? If there is any complaint, please allow me to fix the problem so I can continue blogging.

Thanks,

Xeno

Links to strange news today, Friday April 29, 2011

• Russia and Ukraine in bun fight over fairy tales
• US military looks to squid for camouflage tips
• Phoney doctors hand out sedatives then commit burglary
• Museum of swallowed objects
• Robbery suspect escapes while handcuffed to a chair
• Do animals really feel insulted by the use of the word “pet”?
• Fashion colours blamed on early human food gathering
• Atheists want to be army chaplains
• Whirlwind filmed in Glasgow carpark
• Leoprosy cases in southern USA linked to armadillos
• African rock art linked to giant extinct buffaloes
• Curse of the Pharaoh’s DNA.
• Can dogs smell cancer on your breath?
• How meditation might ward off the effects of ageing.
• Reclaiming the lost third of your life via lucid dreaming.
• Eternal sunshine of the snail’s mind: could this new research allow us to erase bad memories?
• Monkeys show advanced memory powers.
• Jeff Meldrum, professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, says it’s possible there are 500 to 750 living sasquatch.
• UFOs: the secret to a long life.
• It’s showtime for antimatter hunters.
• Squids in spaaaaaaaace.
• Mind-controlled prosthetics could be available to paralysed people within a year.
• Bad news for the Dogon: no sign of Sirius C in exoplanet search of the Sirian system.
• Also of interest at Arxiv: gravity-field spacecraft propulsion and the maximum sufficient range of interstellar vessels.
• California may use vibrational energy of driving to generate power. And people thought SUVs were bad economics…
• Do animals have emotions?
• Image of the day: a stormy finale for space shuttle Endeavour.

Wedding entrance dance to top all wedding entrance dances

T-Mobile’s Royal Wedding Dance celebrates the marriage of William and Kate with the help of a host of royal look alikes and music from East 17! T-Mobile wishes William and Kate a long and happy marriage.

Expert reveals evidence of Sasquatch species

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“My goal is not to convince, my goal is to open minds,”said Jeff Meldrum, professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University. Meldrum has been researching the specimen of Sasquatch for more than 15 years and has received national attention for his work, both positive and negative.

His research examines various evidences which suggest that the mythical creature Sasquatch may in fact be real. In particular, he hypothesizes there may be not only one creature living today, but as many as 500-750 of the Sasquatch species.

“People have been so conditioned that this isn’t possible that when they finally see it, it upsets their whole equilibrium,” he said.

Meldrum said many people, both inside and outside of academia, don’t believe that Sasquatch could be real.

“Some of the naysayers adapt that position because such a creature, such a species could not exist under our noses and not have been discovered,” he said.

Others, he said, don’t accept the possibility out of stubbornness. …

via Expert reveals evidence of Sasquatch species – USU Statesman.

Since no evidence is revealed in this article, it should have been titled, “Expert believes there may be up to 700 living Sasquatches”. If, for example, a timeline and map showing where different modern sightings have been supports a population of 700, then that would be evidence. So what is the evidence supporting this belief?

A Secret to Long Life: UFOs?

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Ralph Gardner – … I met Alexander Imich at a party where he was the oldest person in the room. That may not sound like a big deal—more and more frequently these days I attend events where I am the oldest person. But the party where I met Dr. Imich was for people over the age of 100, and there were a couple dozen of them.

Dr. Imich, a chemist born in 1903, and I had a brief conversation at the Queens event. I vowed to see him again, and not because he was ancient, or at least not just because he was ancient. My grandmother lived to almost 105, but she was just a shadow of herself after 100. Dr. Imich, on the other hand, remains a dynamo. But it was his interests that most intrigued me. At the party, he regaled me with tales of paranormal events he claimed he’d witnessed—at his West End Avenue apartment, no less.

I don’t believe in parapsychology or UFOs, another of the centenarian’s interests, but I was impressed with his passion on the subject and his claim to have published dozens of scholarly papers in several languages. So I asked Arthur Solomon, the gentleman who had invited me to the party back in October, whether he could reconnect me with Dr. Imich (the honorific from a Ph.D. he earned in zoology in 1929).

Mr. Solomon checked and reported that unfortunately Dr. Imich had entered the hospital with some unspecified ailment. A couple of months later, Mr. Solomon contacted me. “I bet you never expected to hear from me again,” his email began. “But here I am with news about Dr. Imich. I was told he is feeling better and would like to do the interview.”

So on Monday afternoon I visited him at his apartment at the Esplanade, a senior-citizens residence on West End Avenue. He has lived there 50 years, actually since before it became a senior residence and was a hotel, according to Robin Kaufman, his social worker.

If there were any doubts about Dr. Imich’s mental acuity, he dispelled them within seconds of our arrival at his cluttered one-bedroom apartment with excellent views of the Hudson River. He complimented Natalie Keyssar, our photographer (“You’re beautiful,” he said); commented that he wasn’t aware that The Wall Street Journal ran photographs; and then patiently spelled out the name of the Polish city where he was born, Czestochowa, launching into its history. …

Occasionally Dr. Imich would lapse into silence—only for a few seconds—and I’d wonder whether it was a sign of senility, or at least flagging stamina. But that wasn’t it, because his next recollection, or retrieval of a name or date from the distant past, was just as confident, his voice just as robust, as anything that he’d said previously  ….

But on to the paranormal, though Dr. Imich doesn’t claim to possess such powers himself. He produced bottles filled with objects such as bottle caps and plastic utensils that couldn’t have fit through their holes. He also told the story of the time he heard an explosion in his apartment and discovered a visitor, whose arrival he’d been awaiting at his front door, seated on the floor behind him. He also believes in UFOs and has a photograph on his desk of friends he says were abducted by aliens. Finally, he believes that humans can survive largely without food, and attributes his longevity, at least in part, to how little he eats.

Whether he’s right about any or all these things scarcely matters. “I’ve never seen Alex tired,” said Ms. Kaufman, who works for Selfhelp, a support organization for Holocaust survivors. “All that stuff he was talking about keeps him going.”

via A Secret to Long Life: UFOs – WSJ.com.

Awesome. But it would be nice to hear what Dr. Imich actually said about UFOs.  I don’t understand how someone can get to the point where he is writing for the WSJ, and yet is able to get away with saying he does not believe that some flying objects are unidentified.

“I don’t believe in parapsychology or UFOs”.

Why, then, write an article titled “A Secret to Long Life: UFOs”?

Saying you “don’t believe in UFOs” is a bone headed statement.  So, do you believe in … “objects”? Do you believe some objects fly, float, reflect, or otherwise appear to be in the sky? Okay, last question: Do you believe some objects that appear to be in the sky are unidentified?  If you answered YES to all three, then you DO believe in UFOs, so stop lying. If you do not believe some flying objects are unidentified, then kindly explain exactly what was picked up by forward looking infrared radar by the Mexican military, for starters.

And, Ralph, parapsychology is a field of study. It really exists! Do you understand what I’m saying? The field of study, parapsychology, exists. I think you intended to say that you believe people are mistaken who believe in ghosts, life after death, telekinesis, telepathy, regression memories, out of body experiences, and anything else parapsychologists research.  I guess your way of saying it is shorter.

Our most traumatic memories could be erased, thanks to the marine snail

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Our most traumatic memories could be erased, thanks to the marine snail

Alasdair Wilkins — Although the idea of erasing your memories may sound horrific, there may be nothing better for those dealing with severe trauma. Now we’re one step closer to making it a reality, with a little help from the tiny marine snail.

UCLA researcher David Glanzman led the study, which discovered that it’s possible to erase long-term memories in snails by inhibiting a specific protein kinase known as PKM. While researchers have previously made headway with memory-erasing drugs, this new work focuses on the actual neurons of the brain, potentially allowing far finer control over the memory erasure process. If the methods used here could be adapted to humans, Glanzman hopes it could be used to help treat severe post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, and possible long-term memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Glanzman explains how it all works:

“Almost all the processes that are involved in memory in the snail also have been shown to be involved in memory in the brains of mammals. We found that if we inhibit PKM in the marine snail, we will erase the memory for long-term sensitization. In addition, we can erase the long-term change at a single synapse that underlies long-term memory in the snail.”

…

via Our most traumatic memories could be erased, thanks to the marine snail.

Many negative behaviors, I think, can be attributed to bad memories. You can reprogram your bad memories, because the way memory works, you only remember the last time you remembered something. You don’t remember the actual event. You rebuild your memories every time you remember them.

Reprogramming takes time … although if you do it in lucid dreams, you might reclaim the lost 1/3rd of your life as well as making your waking life better. I’d like to be able to get into my head and switch off a few things, make it as if they never happened. … with the option to switch them back on later.

Here’s how. Step 1: Start having lucid dreams. Step 2: Meditate and cultivate your objective observer. Step 3: Observe your dream as you dream. If fun stuff happens, enjoy it. If anything bad happens, take the opportunity to solve the problem. It’s your world in the dream, so create a solution and see how it feels.

California may use vibrational energy of driving to generate power

When you get into your car, for the daily commute or for a relaxing weekend visit to a friend house you give off energy. Not just the energy from the fossil fuels that you burn, but a different kind of energy, vibrational energy. Most of us do not give that energy a second thought, unless we’re trying to do something that requires fine motor skills, such as putting the lid back onto your slightly deformed cup of scalding hot coffee, but it is there.It is also a potential source of a green, and renewable energy. California Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a democrat from the Burbank district, hopes to help his home state to use it effectively. He has put in motion a legislation proposing that, if it passes, would create a pilot program designed to capture those vibrations.

The system, if implemented, would place sensors under a stretch of California roads. These sensors would be able to collect the vibrations caused by traffic and covert them into power. This system, know as piezoelectric generation, has the potential to add significantly to the power supply, if the system were implemented on a larger scale. A potential test patch, a one mile stretch of a two lane highway, would be able to create enough new electricity to power roughly 500 homes for an entire year, or give juice to 120 electrical vehicles each day. Not to mention the powering of street lights and traffic signals.

The proposal does not divert funds from any areas, since California regularly sets aside funds for these types of projects. It also would not represent any interruption to the flow of traffic in the state, since the sensors would only be placed under the ground during the regular repaving of roads. No word yet on when this bill will go to a vote or when residents of the state of California can expect to see these changes, should the bill pass in the state legislation.

via California may use vibrational energy of driving to generate power.

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xifc15

Massive Lightning Near Space Shuttle Endeavour

>The space shuttle Endeavour is seen on launch pad 39a as a storm passes by prior to the rollback of the Rotating Service Structure (RSS), Thursday, April 28, 2011, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. During the 14-day mission, Endeavour and the STS-134 crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre. Launch is targeted for Friday, April 29 at 3:47 p.m. EDT. Photo credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

via Space Shuttle Endeavour (201104280022HQ) | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.