Did You Know.....

[Warph]

Mayan Apocalypse 12-21-2012 - Just Another Day (According To NASA)


....that Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put out a new video to address false claims about the "Mayan apocalypse," a non-event that some people believe will bring the world to an end on Dec. 21.

                                           

In the video, which was posted online Wednesday (Mar. 7), Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Objects Program Office at NASA/JPL, explains away many of the most frequently cited doomsday scenarios.

Addressing the belief that the calendar used by the ancient Mayan civilization comes to a sudden end in December 2012, and that this will coincide with a cataclysmic, world-ending event, Yeomans said: "Their calendar does not end on December 21, 2012; it's just the end of the cycle and the beginning of a new one. It's just like on December 31, our calendar comes to an end, but a new calendar begins on January 1."

Yeomans also attempted to allay fears regarding potential causes of a Mayan apocalypse, including Nibiru, an imaginary planet that some people think is swinging in from the outer solar system just in time to collide with Earth in December. "This enormous planet is supposed to be coming toward Earth, but if it were, we would have seen it long ago. And if it were invisible somehow, we would have seen the [gravitational] effects of this planet on neighboring planets. Thousands of astronomers who scan the sky on a daily basis have not seen this," he said.

He added that there is zero possibility of a NASA cover-up. "Can you imagine thousands of astronomers who observe the skies on a daily basis keeping the same secret from the public for several years?"

As for solar flares, Yeomans explained that these do exist — in fact, two massive solar flares erupted just days ago, sending bursts of solar radiation into space — but they are part of the sun's normal 11-year cycle. Radiation from solar flares can damage orbiting satellites, but Earth's magnetosphere shields its inhabitants from the blasts, and the flares are not a health concern.

"Then we have planetary alignments," Yeomans said. Some doomsayers believe the other planets and the sun will align with the Earth in December and cause catastrophic tidal effects. "Well, first of all, there are no planetary alignments in December of 2012, and even if there were, there are no tidal effects on the Earth as a result. The only two bodies in the solar system that can affect the Earth's tides are the moon, which is very close, and the sun, which is massive and also fairly close. But the other planets have a negligible effect on the Earth."

(Incidentally, it is perfectly normal for the sun and moon to align, bolstering each other's  gravitational pulls on Earth and generating higher-than-normal ocean tides. This happens twice each month.)

Addressing the claim that Earth's axes are going to shift on Dec. 21, 2012, he said: "The rotation axis can't shift because the orbit of the moon around the Earth stabilizes it and doesn't allow it to shift." He noted that the magnetic field does shift every half-million years or so, but "there's no evidence it's going to happen in December, and even if it were to be shifting, it takes thousands of years to do so. And even if it did shift, it's not going to cause a problem on the Earth apart from the fact that we're going to have to recalibrate our compasses."

Invoking the astronomer Carl Sagan's famous maxim, he said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Since the beginning of time there have been literally hundreds of thousands of predictions for the end of the world, and we're still here."[/color][/font][/size]

[Warph]

"El Castillo," a Mayan temple on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, with a mysterious "light beam" emerging from the top.  (Picture credit: Hector Siliezar)


When Hector Siliezar visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza with his wife and kids in 2009, he snapped three iPhone photos of El Castillo, a pyramid that once served as a sacred temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan.  A thunderstorm was brewing near the temple, and Siliezar was trying to capture lightning crackling dramatically over the ruins.

In the first two images, dark clouds loom above the pyramid, but nothing is amiss.  However, in the third photo, a powerful beam of light appears to shoot up from the pyramid toward the heavens, and a thunderbolt flashes in the background.

Siliezar, who recently shared his photographs with occult investigators, told Earthfiles.com that he and his family didn't see the light beam in person; it appeared only on camera.  "It was amazing!" he said.  He showed the iPhone photo to his fellow tourists.  "No one, not even the tour guide, had ever seen anything like it before."

The photo has surfaced on several Mayan doomsday discussion forums.  But was the light beam a sign from the gods...  a warning about Dec. 21, 2012, the date that marks the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, and when some people fear the world will end?   Or is it simply the result of an iPhone glitch?

[Warph]

                                             

....that Asteroid 2012 DA14 is making headlines this week, despite the fact that the "incoming" space rock, as it has been described, definitely won't hit Earth.

The 150-foot-wide asteroid will pass within 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) of us next February 2013. That's nearer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites, and the closest shave of a mid-size asteroid ever predicted before the flyby has actually occurred. But even so, NASA assures the world that there is no chance of 2012 DA14 hitting Earth next year. Zero, zip, zilch.

Why, then, all the terror about this unthreatening space rock? And why the recent doom and gloom about another asteroid, called 2011 AG5 — a football-field-size rock that NASA says will almost certainly not collide with the planet in 2040? Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, blames the upsurge in asteroid panic on two main factors.

"One problem is that the Internet is wide open to anyone to say anything," Yeomans said. In the past, claims about asteroids were written up by scientists and submitted to peer-reviewed journals, a critical process that "would filter out nonsense," he said. "If something was published, it was reliable."

But today, hundreds of scary blurbs about the latest asteroid get written and posted to blogs and tabloid-like sites before NASA scientists can vet the claim and publish their official, less-terrifying statement regarding the asteroid's trajectory. "In the case of this asteroid, you get hundreds of hits on the Internet, and in the case of the 2012 [Mayan calendar] business, millions of hits suggesting disaster. And you get a few folks in the media and at NASA who put out the truth. But people go online and see millions about disasters and a few saying 'no disaster' and they think, well, the majority of these say I should be worried," Yeomans said.

The other half of the problem is that many people do not know how to judge the validity of the pseudo-scientific information they read. "There are millions of people out there who have not been trained in the scientific method, and don't understand that evidence is critical for supporting any new idea — especially any dramatic departure from the current state," he said.

In psychology, this is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who lack knowledge in a given area, such as science, are unable to accurately assess their own abilities in that area, and so they aren't aware that they are coming to blatantly false conclusions. David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University who first characterized the phenomenon, recently explained, "Many people don't have training in science, and so they may very well misunderstand the science. But because they don't have the knowledge to evaluate it, they don't realize how off their evaluations might be."

There is no obvious remedy for the one-two punch of widespread misinformation and a scarcity of mental tools for evaluating it, but Yeomans said scientists need to do a better job engaging with the public. He and his group regularly address people's fears regarding near-Earth asteroids by making statements and issuing news releases. "The hope is that people will understand that we are the more trusted sources of information," he said.

And in the case of 2012 DA14, the information is this: There is zero chance of the asteroid hitting Earth next year. The chance of a collision is slightly higher — 1 in 80,000 — when it swings past in 2020, but radar and optical observations of the space rock during next year's flyby will help the scientists nail down its trajectory, which will in all likelihood reduce the 2020 risk estimate to zero.

There are better things to worry about even than the absolute worst-case scenario. If observations next year show that current estimates are way off and the asteroid and Earth are on track to collide in 2020, then NASA would try to deflect it by bumping it with a space probe sometime before then — a move Yeomans says is doable. Even if that failed, any Earthbound asteroid has a 70 percent chance of plunging into the ocean, and a higher chance still of impacting onlyan ocean or an unoccupied land region.

An asteroid this size strikes Earth every 700 years or so, Yeomans said. Humanity has survived innumerable such events.

[Warph]

...that for many years it has been a question that music historians have been fighting over for decades:
What was the first rock 'n' roll song?

               

"That's All Right, Mama" – Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup (1946)
In 1940, Arthur Crudup was reportedly living in a packing crate near an L train station in Chicago, playing songs on the street for tips. Things got better for him as the decade went on, and he landed a recording contract that led to a career as a well-known blues singer and songwriter. In 1946, Crudup recorded his song "That's All Right, Mama." Though it wasn't a hit at the time, it stands as a convincing front-runner for rock 'n' roll's ground zero. With a tight combo of guitar, upright bass and drums bashing out accompaniment behind Crudup's raw, powerful voice, it sounds a decade ahead of its time. There's even a wild guitar solo, prefaced by Crudup shouting, "Yeah, man." Very rock 'n' roll. And the last thirty seconds of the record pick up steam with the kind of unhinged energy that would become an essential element of all great rock records.

Eight years later, a 19-year old Elvis Presley did a cover record of it for his first single. Soon, Crudup was being called "the Father of Rock 'n' Roll.

Is this the ONE:

[Warph]

...or was it this one from 1948:

"Good Rockin' Tonight" – Wynonie Harris (1948)

"Well, I heard the news, there's good rockin' tonight. . ." How's that for an opening line that could double as a rallying call for rock 'n' roll.

This song was written and recorded in 1947 by R & B artist Roy Brown. Brown had originally offered the tune to raspy-voiced singer Wynonie "Mr. Blues" Harris, but Harris turned it down. After Brown had a hit with it, Harris reconsidered, cutting a version that upped the ante. Bouncing boogie woogie piano, honking tenor sax, drums and handclaps accenting the backbeat, and Harris shouting "Hoy, hoy, hoy!" – it all adds up to a raucous glimpse into the future.

Again, a young Elvis Presley was listening. In 1954, he released his version of the song. He was also watching. Harris's stage moves included pelvic jabs, lip curls and evangelical wavings of his arms and hands. All would become part of Elvis's stage persona.

[Warph]

The first time I heard a Rock & Roll song was in May 1956.  I was a senior in high school when our English teacher  (Miss Martin, who was fresh out of college and was teaching her first year) brought a record to class one day of Elvis singing "Heartbreak Hotel."  Needless to say, the whole class went nuts.  We wore it out by graduation.  Miss Martin?  Oh yeah, baby!  All the guys were in love with her, me included... dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn.
...Warph

It was released as a single on January 27, 1956, Elvis Presley's first on his new record label RCA Victor. His first number-one pop record, "Heartbreak Hotel" topped Billboard's Top 100 chart, became his first million-seller, and was the best-selling single of 1956. It was written by Tommy Durden and Mae Boren Axton.

The lyrics were based on a newspaper article about the suicide of a lonely man who jumped from a hotel window. Axton subsequently presented the song to Presley in November 1955 at a country music convention in Nashville. Presley agreed to record it, and did so on January 10, 1956 in a session that featured his band, The Blue Moon Boys, as well as guitarist Chet Atkins and pianist Floyd Cramer.

The single topped Billboard's Top 100 chart for seven weeks, was number one on the Country and Western chart and reached number five on the R&B chart, becoming Presley's first million-seller, and the best-selling single of 1956. It would eventually be certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Presley had first performed "Heartbreak Hotel" during a live show in December 1955 during a tour of the Louisiana Hayride, but the song gained strong popularity after his appearance on Stage Show in March 1956. It became a staple of Presley's repertoire in live appearances, last performed by him on May 29, 1977 at the Civic Center in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1995 "Heartbreak Hotel" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". That year it was also included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". A rock and roll standard, since its original release "Heartbreak Hotel" has been covered by several rock and pop acts, including Willie Nelson and Leon Russell, who recorded a duet version that topped the Country charts in 1979. (Wikipedia)[/font][/size]

[Warph]

....that these are actual toilet signs:






Earths Clock Of Life

....that an illustration from "The Life and Death of Planet Earth" shows the authors' view of the Earth's clock of life. (Image credit: Donald Brownlee/Peter Ward)

In its 4.5 billion years, Earth has evolved from its hot, violent birth to the celebrated watery blue planet that stands out in pictures from space. But in a new book, two noted University of Washington astrobiologists say the planet already has begun the long process of devolving into a burned-out cinder, eventually to be swallowed by the sun.

By their reckoning, Earth's "day in the sun" has reached 4:30 a.m., corresponding to its 4.5 billion-year age. By 5 a.m., the 1 billion-year reign of animals and plants will come to an end. At 8 a.m. the oceans will vaporize. At noon – after 12 billion years – the ever-expanding sun, transformed into a red giant, will engulf the planet, melting away any evidence it ever existed and sending molecules and atoms that once were Earth floating off into space.

"The disappearance of our planet is still 7.5 billion years away, but people really should consider the fate of our world and have a realistic understanding of where we are going," said UW astrophysicist Donald Brownlee. "We live in a fabulous place at a fabulous time. It's a healthy thing for people to realize what a treasure this is in space and time, and fully appreciate and protect their environment as much as possible."

In "The Life and Death of Planet Earth," Brownlee and UW paleontologist Peter Ward use current scientific understanding of planets and stars, as well as the parameters of life, to provide a glimpse of the second half of life on Earth and what comes after.


.....that sleep positions may determine your personality?

[Diane Amberg]

            Warning essay ahead. Read at your own risk.
  Did you know that people with Antisocial Personality Disorders, also know as Sociopaths, can be hard to detect because they can be very disarmingly charming and can hide behind that false personality until they think they have made a connection with certain kinds of open accepting people and then will spring a trap?
They can be very narcissistic and are drawn to the internet because they can easily find people who will stoke them and tell them how great they are and will be encouraged by those who feel sorry for their hardships.
 They will totally buffalo people for a very long time, but when people  finally start to figure out there is something really wrong, they will defend themselves at all costs and may even try to convince the person they THEY are one one with the problem.
 They often have run ins with authority of one kind or another; of course the authority figure is always wrong.They will try to avoid answering direct questions and will usually bounce the question back to the questioner.
 They are master manipulators and will often choose a subject they are unhappy about and return to it over and over and over, going over the same information as if eventually they will get a different result and will try to line up followers to shore up their complaint.  They need that feeling of power.
They have no consideration for the rights of others, can be very arrogant, and never feel shame or remorse for the emotional pain or upset they cause people. Usually they are satisfied that the other person had it coming, so they are justified in whatever and however they say hurtful things.
 They are never wrong. In fact they will accuse the person who is starting to see through them with all manner of wrong doing to shift the concern away from themselves. They will not hesitate to resort to outright lies and attempts at defamation of character, or worse, if they think anybody has figured them out. Eventually they will set up an exit plan and will move on the next victim, leaving all manner of human wreckage behind.
 Unfortunately a dear child hood friend married one of these people, who charmed her whole family until they married.Then he started with all manner of nastiness. He even threw her down the steps when she was pregnant with their only child.  She left him and he went to court to have HER declared an unfit mother and tried to take the daughter. He managed to get unsupervised visitations and the daughter twice tried to commit suicide while with him. He eventually married someone else and moved away. I hope he didn't kill her. The daughter is grown now and has finally been convinced that he was the problem, not she or her mother. She has nothing to do with him.

[Catwoman]

   I would say that we have at least two who fit this description here on the Forum.  Interesting...And a bit scary, especially given that they have a tendency to influence at least two others and God knows how many others. 

[larryJ]

Kinda along those lines.....................a true story.......

There is a brother and sister.  The sister is older by 22 months.  She is the oldest of three children with the brother second and a much younger sister.  The brother left home as soon as he was 18, leaving a domineering mother and striking out on his own because he felt confident enough in himself that he didn't need anyone but him.  He tried college but that didn't work for him so he got a good job and was able to support himself without anybody's help. 

He was close to his older sister because of the closeness of their ages, but he knew in his heart and mind that he was superior in intelligence and ability to take care of himself.  This is not to mean that he disliked his sister just that he felt he didn't need her to help him.  Having a good job and being single he bought presents, expensive presents, for both his sisters on their birthdays and at Christmas.  His suggestions of what brands of which items were the best were thrust upon his sisters as being the only kind to buy.  His suggestions of places to go or places to eat were not up for discussion.  He became overbearing through the years.  This led to occasional "fallouts" that lasted for months without them speaking to each other.  They communicated important issues through other family members. 

His sister married and had children and he was delighted with them.  He showered them with expensive gifts like he did his sisters.  He arranged vacations for them to go with him to places he wanted to go.  You couldn't ask for a better uncle.  Then the sister's children had children and he was overjoyed and lavished them with gifts and clothes.  He attended family gatherings on holidays and usually had to be the center of attention at some point during the gathering.  Once he had given his gifts and eaten some food, he would say goodbye and leave, usually way earlier than the others. 

He became invincible in his mind.  As he and his sister approached their sixties, he was almost impossible to be around because of his "holier than thou" attitude.  But his family put up with him because he was a member of the family and could be quite impossible to be around if you did or said something he didn't agree with.  He walked tall and straight and proud, taking on his daily routine and the problems that arose with ease.  Nobody or anything could be as good as he was. 

Then, he had another "fallout" with his sister and would not call her.  Many months went by and she was just as stubborn as he was and did not call him either.  Again, communication was through other members of the family.  There would be family gatherings and he would attend.  He would be pleasant and dote on the nieces and nephews and their children.  But brother and sister did not talk to each other.  In short, he would make his appearance, get the attention he required and leave early as usual.  As far as he was concerned, his world was perfect and nobody could change that.  Nothing could bring him down.  He never married mostly because he didn't want to be committed to someone else.  There was even some speculation as to his gender preference, but was kept hush hush.

He was secretive, not even telling his family exactly where he lived.  But they knew.  They had found out, but were afraid to confront him not wanting to drive him even farther away.  He never discussed anything about himself such as health or finances, etc.  Of course, they knew where he worked.  He was still with the same employer he started with after high school, over 40 years on the job.

Then one day, his world crashed.  He was diagnosed with cancer.  All of a sudden here was a problem that scared him, scared him because things like that didn't happen to someone as good as he was.  But there it was.......

With a lot of courage and and realization that this was a problem he could not handle by himself, he went to his sister.  He showed up at her house one day and they talked.  He told her about the cancer, talking like a brother would to an older sister.  He was humble.  He was scared.  All of a sudden, he needed someone.  And, his sister was the only person he could turn to for support.  They talked all day and spoke of their feelings and their love for one another. 

As he left her house at the end of the day, she noticed that the once proud and confident man that was her brother was now walking with his head bowed..................in defeat.............but knowing that his sister would be there to help him.  They made arrangements for her to take him to the hospital when he would have the surgery.  He would come the night before and spend the night so she could drive him there. 

What happens next is yet to be seen.  They are both scared, but the bond of brother and sister is strong and so they will get through this ordeal together. 

Larryj