by Ian Punnett
I hope you had a chance to catch the Perseid Meteor Shower earlier this week, away from light pollution, in a comfortable place without too many mosquitoes around. I did. I was staying for a couple days at a lodge in the middle of a lake, in the middle of the woods, lying on the grass with my kids for an hour just watching one shooting star after another. The only light around was from the campfire 50 feet away and only when the smoke wasn’t enough to keep away the skeeters did we go back inside. Magic.
But, as cool as they were, they were nothing compared to what families saw in Liberty Lake, Washington:
(KXLY) LIBERTY LAKE, WA - Several families are looking for answers after they saw strange lights in the night sky Wednesday night they swear were signs of a UFO.
Amateur video shot from the scene shows strange lights in the night time sky moving erratically, changing in both color and size. And it wasn't just one or two people who saw the lights. Up to a dozen members of several families say they saw the same thing and now they're trying to figure out what exactly they saw.
These are normal people from a normal neighborhood who say what they saw last night in the skies southeast of Liberty Lake was anything but normal. It started about 8:45 Wednesday evening when they saw two lights far above the horizon, one white and one green, and they weren't moving in concert with each other.
One person described their movement, "was left to right, up and down, hide behind the cloud, then come out."
After about an hour the green light "eventually took off slowly, then fast" and then the "white light started acting up after the green light left ... bigger and smaller."
An hour after the green light vanished from view the white light, "moved across the sky and went north and it stayed stationary, then it changed all kinds of different colors ... like red blue, green" and then disappeared over the horizon.
What has been confirmed is that Fairchild Air Force Base reports they had no aircraft of any kind in the area Wednesday night.
From white lights to white spiders:
By Rossella Lorenzi
An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.
Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.
"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.
And by white widow, I don’t mean Scarlett Johansson in “Iron Man 2.” Oh, wait, I guess she’s “Black Widow,” the mysterious new Stark Industries employee with that famed “widow’s bite.” Never mind. I was just trying to find a way to work in a plug for the movie which I’m going to have to wait to May 7, 2010 for.
If you’re bitten by a white widow, maybe some white tea will help:
Next time you’re making a nice cup of tea, new research shows it might be wise to opt for a white tea if you want to reduce your risk of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis or even just age-associated wrinkles.
The researchers were blown away by exactly how well the white tea had performed. “We were testing very small amounts far less than you would find in a drink,” said a scientist involved in the study, “The early indicators are that white tea reduces the risk of inflammation which is characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers as well as wrinkles.” (Physorg.com)
Which is great news if you’re not only old but you’re old and wrinkly.
From the mystery of white lights, white widows, white tea to red salmon:
Millions of sockeye salmon have disappeared mysteriously from a river on Canada's Pacific Coast that was once known as the world's most fertile spawning ground for sockeye.
Up to 10.6 million bright-red sockeye salmon were expected to return to spawn this summer on the Fraser River, which empties into the Pacific ocean near Vancouver, British Columbia. The latest estimates say fewer than one million have returned.
The Canadian Government has closed the river to commercial and recreational sockeye fishing for the third straight year, hitting the livelihood of nearby Indian reserves.
"It's quite the shocking drop," said Stan Proboszcz, fisheries biologist at the Watershed Watch Salmon Society. "No one's exactly sure what happened to these fish."
Several theories have been put forward to try to explain the sockeye's disappearance, including that climate change may have reduced food supply for salmon in the ocean, or that they may have been infected with sea lice en route to the Fraser River.
Another theory is that the rising temperature of the river may have weakened the fish. (Reuters)
Here’s a photo of another suspect in the disappearance of all that salmon:
fm1071.com/show_elements/link.php?entryI...
My friend Joey, whose bear-encircled Wisconsin cabin was the one I stayed in a few months ago, decided he liked shooting photos of bears so much that he went to Alaska to find grizzlies. Dude’s my hero for getting that close to such a perfect human eating machine. Not only is Joey a notoriously bad runner but he was covered in heavy camera equipment. That’s bravery:
fm1071.com/show_elements/link.php?entryI...
In an endurance race between grizzlies and the participants of the Badwater Ultramarathon, my money’s on the runners. Did you see this CNN story?
(CNN) The Adventurecorps Badwater Ultramarathon is infamous in endurance sports circles. It is the running equivalent of summiting Everest, the ultimate test of mental fortitude, a hippy communion with the desert of epic highs and lows (literally -- the race starts at 280 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, covers three mountain ranges for descents and ascents totaling 9,000 feet and ends halfway up Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States).
For all the nonsweaters out there -- consider how long it takes to drive from Baltimore to New York. Now imagine running that distance...without sleep...with 10,000 blow dryers pointed at you the entire time. Watch what it takes to battle Badwater »
The prize at the race often called Satan's Fun Run, should one finish in less than 48 hours, is a thick silver belt buckle. See the runners, the finish and the buckle »
"To talk about the buckle is to miss the point," said Marshall Ulrich, a 58-year-old endurance sensei who has done Badwater more than a dozen times and has summited Everest. Notorious for having his toenails surgically removed -- toenails fall off anyway when you're an endurance runner -- Marshall is, contrary to what most people assume, not a machine.
He started running when he was 28, after his doctor told him to get off his butt and lower his blood pressure or expect an early grave.
"You run Badwater because there's something in you that wants to get out there, in the middle of nowhere, and think about something.”
No, dude, that’s why YOU run Badwater. If I want to think about something, I go to a coffee shop. If I’m out in the middle of nowhere and I want to think about something, I make some coffee and listen to the radio.