Monthly Archives: August 2012

Weather Historian C.C. Burt on July’s extreme Temps Worldwide

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Recap of record-breaking heat this past July in the U.S. + Asian heat record?
Published: 8:52 PM GMT on August 02, 2012

Recap of record-breaking heat this past July in the U.S. Possible new heat record for Asia observed

Although the final ranking of this past July will not be released by the NCDC until around August 7th, it would appear that the month will almost certainly rank in the top five warmest July’s on record since official records began in 1895 (and perhaps even in the top three). Here is a summary of some of the more notable records set so far this summer. In addition, I have included a brief message concerning a potential new heat record for the continent of Asia.

Although this map is specifically for July 5th, it represents the overall pattern that most of the country has been stuck with for almost the entire month of July 2012.

Warmest Single Month on Record (any month)

Preliminary data from the NCDC reports that 4,313 record daily highs, 293 monthly record highs, and 171 all-time record highs were observed this past July (among the approximately 5,500 various official weather sites across the nation). Many of these sites, however, have limited periods of record that do not extend back to the 1930s when the country’s greatest heat waves occurred.

The WU extremes U.S. database follows 298 significant sites in the country, all of which have long periods of record (almost all back to the 19th century) and represent a mosaic of evenly spaced geographic locations representing all the climate zones in the country. About 90% of the country’s population resides within a 50-mile radius of one of these sites. From this list the following cities recorded their single-warmest month on record:

The following cities from the WU extremes database have broken or tied their all-time absolute maximum temperatures on record (including this past June):

Comparing this July to July of 2011

Perhaps what is truly astonishing is that this July (2012) piggybacks upon the equally torrid summer (and July) of 2011. Although, back-to-back record-breaking hot summers are not unheard of (summers in the 1930s and 1950s come to mind) it is nevertheless disconcerting.

Here is a comparison of extremes reached in July 2012 versus July 2011. Also, to put this in context, is a comparison to July of 1936, still almost certainly the hottest July (and single month) in U.S. records. Again this list includes only the 298 cities in the WU database:

This table shows the number of cities (out of 298 in all) that recorded their respective single-warmest month on record and absolute maximum temperature on record for the June-July month timeframes in 2012, 2011, and 1936.

Honorable Mentions

Other major cities came VERY close to breaking their all-time warmest single month on record including Washington, D.C. (National Airport) with a July average of 84.0° just shy of the record 84.5° set last July (2011). The Dulles Airport location was also close with 80.6° vs. 81.0° in July 2011. Raleigh, North Carolina averaged 83.5°, shy of their record 84.1° set in August 2007. Chicago, Illinois official site at O’Hare Airport registered an average of 81.1° just short of the 81.3° record set in July 1995. However, the Chicago Midway Airport location, which is more representative of the city itself and also has a much longer period of record (POR) than O’Hare, smashed its all-time warmest month record with an average of 82.6° versus 81.3° in July 1955. Louisville, Kentucky experienced its warmest ever July with an average of 84.5°, but fell short of its single-hottest-month record of 85.0° set in August 2007. Madison, Wisconsin (home of my alma matter!) has just endured its 2nd hottest month on record with a 79.4° average, just short of the record 79.8° set way back in July 1901.

Of course, this is just a short list of the many amazing ‘heat feats’ this past July. I should also mention a couple of the many endurance records that have been set:

Fort Wayne, Indiana: 22 consecutive days above 90° ending on July 18 (old record was 14).

St. Louis, Missouri: 11 days above 105° (old record was 10 in 1934). Also, St. Louis tied its warmest night on record with a low of 86° on July 25th (also occurred on July 24, 1901).

New Asian Heat Record Set?

On a similar topic but different continent, I have late word in from temperature detective Maximiliano Herrera that on July 31st a temperature of 53.6°C (128.5°F) was measured at Sulaibya (Sulaibiya), Kuwait. This location is on the outskirts of Kuwait city and is a water treatment facility.

A Google map image of the location in Kuwait of Sulaibya. Google Earth image.

Although the Kuwaiti meteorological office must make a final determination towards the records validity, a local expert, Dr. Juergen Herrmann (Team Leader Meteorology Specialists, Stanley Consultants, Int’l based in Kuwait) has the following comments in response to a request from Max for additional details:

“We are aware of the new record temperatures. There is no reason why these should not be considered records. Everything is technically OK at the station. You may have detected that the same day we had quiet an amount of other stations in the “vicinity” also have high to record temperatures.

The microclimate at this agro-station is surrounded by high sand dunes and thus has very low wind speeds at 2m height [which] results in a local heat island. Therefore I would not consider this temperature representative for an area bigger than 0.5×0.5km. The next station to Sulaibiya which gives a proper picture for the surrounding area is Jahra – 40586 – and had maximum temperature at the same day of 51.8 deg C. To my best guess this verifies both stations are working properly. Especially as a number of other stations also had really high temperatures that day due to generally low wind speeds with nearly no dust reducing the incoming solar radiation.”

If verified, this would surpass the 53.5°C (128.3°F) measured at Moen Jo-Daro, Pakistan on May 26, 2010. The reading of 54°C (129.2°F) from Tirat Tsvi, Israel on June 22, 1942 remains under suspicion. The Israeli Met. Office pursued an investigation of the record this past year (prompted by an enquiry from the WMO and myself) and concluded it was valid. However, they have refused to make public the details leading to their conclusions, so until they do so the record remains suspect.

KUDOS: Maximiliano Herrera for uncovering yet another possible world record temperature.

Christopher C. Burt
Weather Historian

from:    http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/article.html

Dr. Jeff Masters on Ernesto, Florence, & Oklahoma Conditions

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Tropical Storm Ernesto is undergoing significant strengthening, and is not far from hurricane strength, according to data from this morning’s Hurricane Hunter mission. The Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft in the storm found the pressure had dropped to 997 mb at 8:13 am EDT, and had dropped another 3 mb to 994 mb at 9:17 am. Surface winds as seen by their SFMR instrument had increased to 68 mph, and the plane found 89 mph winds at their flight level of 5,000 feet, on the northwest side of the eye. A full eyewall surrounding a small 9-mile diameter eye had formed. Ernesto’s forward speed has slowed down to 12 mph–just half of what it was 24 hours ago, and this has allowed the surface center to align itself with the circulation at middle levels of the atmosphere. Visible satellite loops show that Ernesto’s heaviest thunderstorms are now located near the center of the storm, and these thunderstorms have expanded in areal extent and intensity to form a Central Dense Overcast (CDO), a feature of intensifying tropical storms. Ernesto is still battling moderate wind shear of 10 – 15 knots, due to strong upper-level winds out of the west. Water vapor satellite loops show dry air to the west, but the environment around Ernesto is the moistest we’ve seen since it entered the Caribbean. On Sunday, Ernesto brought 1.73″ of rain to Kingston, Jamaica, and top sustained winds of 37 mph.


Figure 1. Morning satellite image of Ernesto.

Forecast for Ernesto
Now that Ernesto has slowed down in response to a trough of low pressure passing to the north, continued steady intensification appears likely. While wind shear is expected to remain in the moderate range the next two days, Ernesto is over warm ocean waters of 28°C with very high heat content, and rapid intensification to a Category 2 hurricane is possible today. The 8 am EDT SHIPS model forecast predicts a 26% chance of rapid intensification–a 30 mph increase in winds over a 24-hour period. The main obstacle to intensification will probably be proximity to land, as the center of Ernesto is likely to pass very close to the coast of Honduras late Monday night. This will put a portion of the storm’s circulation over land, limiting intensification potential.

The winds this Monday morning at Puerto Lempira on the northeast coast of Honduras have not yet begun to increase, but will begin to rise this afternoon and peak near midnight tonight. High winds and heavy rains will spread westwards along the coast of Honduras early Tuesday morning, and reach coastal Belize near 2 pm Tuesday. If Ernesto survives its crossing of the Yucatan Peninsula, the potential exists for it to re-strengthen over the Bay of Campeche, and make a second landfall on Mexico’s coast Thursday night south of Veracruz. However, most of the computer models predict that Ernesto will pop out so far south in the Bay of Campeche that the storm will have less than 24 hours over water. This makes significant re-intensification unlikely. I don’t expect rain from Ernesto will get as far north as Brownsville, Texas.

Tropical Storm Florence
Tropical Depression Florence is dissipating due to dry air and cool waters, and is not a threat to re-develop.

Historic heat wave ends in Oklahoma
The high temperature in Oklahoma City on Sunday reached 99°, snapping a string of 18 straight days the temperature had reached 100° or greater. The latest forecast calls for a few more days of temperatures in excess of 100° this week, but nothing like the heat wave last week that brought an unprecedented three straight days of 112° heat. The winds today in Oklahoma will be considerably lower than we saw over the weekend, which will aid firefighting efforts.

from:   http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2173

Activity at Tongariro Volcano (New Zealand)

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Possible Eruption Reported at New Zealand’s Tongariro

The webicorder trace for Tongariro in New Zealand showing a potential explosion (near bottom) at the volcano. Image courtesy of GNS Science.

I just saw this come across Twitter but there are reports of ash fall near Tongariro in New Zealand (apparently upwards of 5 cm[!] on state highway 46, north of the volcano) along with an unconfirmed report of “red/orange glow” from the Te Mari Crater. The Desert Road near Tongariro has also now been closed, which suggests an eruption (or hydrothermal explosion) has occurred and rescue teams are headed up to hikers’ huts to make sure no one is trapped near the volcano. GNS Science has raised the alert status to Level 2 after these reports. I’m trying to find some more information so we can confirm this, but the webicorders for Tongariro show what could be an explosion signal (see above). Sadly, there isn’t much of a view in the webcam for the volcano.

Tongariro has been rumbling for the past few weeks, with a sharp increase in seismicity along with a higher proportion of volcanic gases measured at the crater. Interestingly, a news report came out last night saying that the seismicity at Tongariro had recently decreased in size and number.

I will update this post as I get more information – and you can leave what you find in the comments below.

UPDATE 8/6 10:15 AM EDT: The New Zealand Civil Defense is warning people stay indoors and keep doors/windows shut for the time being.

from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/eruptions/

Earthquake — Central California

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Moderate earthquake in Central California

Last update: August 6, 2012 at 1:09 pm by By

information from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/08/05/major-earthquakes-list-august-6-2012/

Moderate earthquake in Central California
A moderate M4.6 earthquake (preliminary data) just occurred at 8 km from Parkfield, CA.  The epicenter is located in a wilderness area south of Coalinga (25 km from the epicenter).
USGS has recalculated the Magnitude to M4.4. Geofon (Germany) reports a 4.3 magnitude.
It must be hard to be woken up from the first part of the night (Earthquake occurred 35 minutes after midnight local time).

USGS Central California Aug 06 07:35 AM 4.5 11.6 MAP

Studying Immortality

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US Philosopher Given $5M Grant To Study Immortality

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

A University of California at Riverside (UCR) philosopher will be placed in charge of a new project analyzing the concept of immortality after receiving the largest grant ever presented to a humanities professor at the school, various media outlets reported last week.

According to a July 31 UCR press release announcing the grant, the university announced that philosopher John Martin Fischer would oversee research on all aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact that believing in life-after-death has on human behavior.

The $5 million grant was presented to the school by the John Templeton Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based organization founded by the late businessman, philanthropist, and stock market pioneer that is dedicated to studying the deepest, most complex questions about the nature of life and the purpose of mankind, Los Angeles Times blogger Larry Gordon said.

“We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions,” Fischer said in a statement, according to Christopher Shea of the Wall Street Journal.

“Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous. We’re not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports. We will look at near-death experiences and try to find out what’s going on there — what is promising, what is nonsense, and what is scientifically debunked. We may find something important about our lives and our values, even if not glimpses into an afterlife,” he added.

The research, which is being dubbed the Immortality Project, will be a collaborative study involving scientists, philosophers, and theological experts. The inclusion of that last group has led to some criticism of the project, Business Insider’s Adam Taylor said.

Opponents are arguing that the religious aspects of the immortality issue have no place in serious scientific research, he said, and atheists have long been critical of the Templeton Foundation’s handling of the interaction between science and theology, Shea added.

Fischer, who is a member of the Templeton Foundation’s board, describes himself as a man who is not religious but has a great deal of respect for religion. Regardless, he told Gordon that his personal views, the inclusion of religious experts and the source of the grant “doesn’t mean we are trying to prove anything or the other. We will be trying to be very scientific and rigorous and be very open-minded.”

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

redOrbit (http://s.tt/1jZFx)

J.T. Phillips on the Top 10 Spiritual Counterculture Books

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Top 10 Books of the New Edge

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 (This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post).

With the rapid rise of the new spiritual counterculture, a generation of young avant-garde writers are making conscious magazine headlines and electrifying the festival-speakers’ circuit. Featuring a brutally honest look at the shadow aspects of the Self, and society at large, these books — while often focused on healing — are not fluffy New Age “Celestine Prophecy” reads nor “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Materialism.” They are harder to define, hosting a multidimensional mix of spiritual awakening, new media activism, visionary art, punk attitude, permaculture principles, Burning Man aesthetic and Occupy ideologies.

As if exploring some quantum physics conundrum, they fuse the world of observer and observed, where the researcher flies third-eye-first into the mystical fields they are investigating. In a similar manner that LSD influenced the Keseys and Ginsbergs of the 60s, newly introduced “entheogens” (God-inducing substances), like the Amazonian shaman’s brew ayahuasca and the synthesized “spirit molecule” DMT, are influencing the style and transformational arcs of these stories. Also, like the 60s, there is a regrettable dearth of female voices, something I hope changes over the coming years.

This is my “informal, unofficial, thoroughly unscientific” list of the top 10 books of the New Edge. I’m hardly an expert on this subject, but I have bared witness to some of this burgeoning literary movement over the last few years as a co-founder of Reality Sandwich and the Evolver Social Movement. For those of you following this literary scene, I welcome you to expand and improve upon the list, adding your choices in the comments section below.
10. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and The Origins of Knowledge
Author: Jeremy Narby

Amazed by the complex “botanic mastery” of the Ashaninca’s polycultural gardens in the Amazon, anthropologist Jeremy Narby broke ranks with the detached scientific model when drinking the hallucinatory tea ayahuasca, which the Ashaninca claimed had taught them their agricultural knowledge. Composed of two plants – one containing the psychoactive chemical DMT (dimethyltryptamine), the other a double-helix-shaped vine with MAO inhibitors, the brew exposed Narby to a potent spiritual reality where talking telepathic serpents launched him on a study on how shamans might access the consciousness of DNA for healing. It was a serious career risk for a scientist, connecting empirical study with spirituality.

9.  Dharma Punx
Author: Noah Levine

Who would have imagined that the son of bestselling Buddhist author/teacher Stephen Levine would spend his teenage years “fueled by the music of revolution, anger, fear, and despair… Eating acid like it was candy and chasing speed with cheap vodka, smoking truckloads of weed, all in a vain attempt to get numb and stay numb”? Eventually Levine’s rebellious spirit would lead him to the liberation of Buddhist meditation, but without abandoning his love of punk music as an agent of change.

8. Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest
Author: Adam Elenbaas

Unfortunately under-promoted in bookstores, “Fishers” is the most hauntingly beautiful book about ayahuasca that I’ve come across. Elenbaas fully exposes his sentimental, wounded soul when detailing his trek from troubled Minnesota minister’s son to sex-and-substance abuser in Chicago and New York, finally finding refuge with ayahuasca visions of Jesus in Peru. With a sweetly maudlin tone, ghostly lyrical imagery, and poetic switches in time sequences, the book is as if Garrison Keller and William Faulkner spent a few years binging with Charles Bukowski and getting high with Terence McKenna. When I asked Elenbaas how he crafted his unusual style, he said, “Ayahausca taught me.”

7. This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground
Author: Brian Doherty

While the writing style may slip on occasion, Doherty gives Burning Man aficionados exactly what they are looking for – the myth behind America’s most creatively extravagant festival. Tracing the event from its humble origins with a few dozen onlookers at San Francisco’s Baker Beach to its five-square-mile explosion of radical self-expression in the Nevada desert. One early scene (before the festival instigated a number of guidelines) has co-founder John Law racing his rental car across the desert flats, “flying on mushrooms,” drinking wine and having sex with his girlfriend while shooting guns out the window at teddy-bear targets. Hedonistic, yes, but also the stuff of legends.

6. Black Smoke: A Woman’s Journey of Healing, Wild Love, and Transformation in the Amazon
Author: Margaret De Wys

The curing of her breast cancer through the use of ayahuasca only covers one piece of De Wys’ epic tale of ditching her comfortable life as a Bard College music professor to apprentice with a charismatic Shuar healer, Carlos, deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Steeped in the magical lineage of the Shuar tradition, De Wys and her companion encounter near-death initiations, giant anacondas, and the iron fist of the industrialized North when bringing their Schedule 1 controlled healing substance to Native American tribes. She can handle it all, except for rule number 1 of ayahuasca apprenticeship: don’t sleep with your shaman.
5. Exile Nation: Drugs, Prison, Politics, and SpiritualityExile Nation: Drugs, Prison, Politics, and Spirituality
Author: Charles Shaw

Spiritual memoirs don’t get grittier, or more provocative, than this. After being arrested for possession of 14 MDMA capsules (which the author uses as a controversial method for overcoming PTSD), Shaw’s story opens in the nightmare of Chicago’s Cook County Jail, being sentenced to 1 year in the penitentiary. What follows is a despairing first-hand examination of our utterly failing prison systems and the collateral damage that the war on drugs inflicts on American lives. But Shaw embodies the warrior spirit, fighting for a personal rebirth through “unorthodox spiritual and healing practices” with the “evolutionary counterculture.”
4. The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape
Author: Erik Davis, Photographs by Michael Ruaner

It might seem strange for a coffee table book to make this list, until you realize that’s exactly how it made the list. Traveling on my “Electric Jesus” tour throughout the West Coast, I was hard pressed to find a living room, or home hangout lounge, that didn’t boast this title as some type of flag, or stamp, of membership in the rising transformational tribe. Claiming to be “the first book to address the full story of ‘California consciousness” and featuring the po-mo mystical writings of Davis, the book tracks the landscapes and lives of UFO cults, Zen Buddhists, neopagans, and of course, Burning Man.
3. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Author: Charles Eisenstein

Part-time Goddard College faculty member Eisenstein gained a large number of admirers through his pioneering essays on Reality Sandwich, but it’s his Evolver Editions/North Atlantic Books release “Sacred Economics” that has propelled him to the forefront of the Occupy movement with viral videos like “The Revolution is Love” and countless speaking engagements. In 496 pages, Eisenstein unpacks the entire history of money from a visionary prospective, providing the “radical yet gentle” transitions we can make to reboot and redesign the global (and local) economy. In the end, you believe the impossible: money can become sacred.
2. DMT: The Spirit Molecule
Author: Rick Strassman

At the University of New Mexico, Dr. Rick Strassman conducted DEA-approved research, injecting 60 volunteers with the powerful tryptamine DMT. Many readers skip the academic jargon on finagling FDA approval to indulge in the wild trip accounts of subjects rocketing out of their bodies and across the universe, breaking out of the limits of time and space, exploring realms of “pure living energy,” and perhaps most disturbingly, contacting bizarre extraterrestrial beings. While Strassman’s writing is all dry-scientist, the DMT accounts have influenced the imagination of countless writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians in the consciousness movement.

1. Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into Contemporary Shamanism
Author: Daniel Pinchbeck

Although “2012: The Return to Quetzalcoatl” made my Evolver and Reality Sandwich colleague the go-to guy on the Mayan calendar, it was “Breaking Open the Head” that first exposed ayahuasca journeys, initiations with the hallucinatory West African rootbark iboga, and DMT “galactivations” to the hipster world. Blending a healthy dose of Marxist philosophy, Burning Man chic, and Manhattan skepticism, this book pulled off a counterculture coup – it made embarking on a mystical awakening wild and transgressive. Part memoir, part exegesis on Western philosophy, Pinchbeck’s trailblazing work would set the structure, tone, and trajectory for a whole new generation of writers.

Honorable Mentions

“God vs. Gay” by Jay Michaelson
“Tryptamine Palace” by James Oroc
“The Four Global Truths” by Darrin Drda
“The Red Book” by Sera Beak
“Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey” by Rak Razam
“Star Sister” by Stella Osorojos

Elders Circle (Books by older authors who have influenced this genre)

“Supernatural” by Graham Hancock
“The Fifth Sacred Thing” by Starhawk
“The Mission of Art” by Alex Grey
“The Archaic Revival” by Terence McKenna
“Nothing in this Book Is True But It’s Exactly How Things Are” by Bob Frissell
“Antipodes of the Mind” by Benny Shanon
“PIHKAL” and “TIHKAL” by Alexander and Ann Shulgin
“The Mayan Factor” by Jose Arguelles
“Be Here Now” by Ram Dass
“Ayahuasca In My Blood” by Peter Gorman
“Singing to the Plants” by Stephan V. Beyer
“The Secret Teaching of Plants” by Stephen Harrod Buhner

 

Image by moriza, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing. 

 

Jonathan Talat Phillips is author of The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic.

from:   http://www.realitysandwich.com/top_10_books_new_edge

 

Vikram Zutshi on The Stargate Project

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The Stargate Project : Psychic Warriors and the CIA

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Metaphysical and psychic phenomena have long existed on the fringes of conventional science and academia. ESP, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis and Astral traveling have all been relegated to the back seat of mainstream, accepted belief systems in spite of an extensive mention of these practices down the ages, across myriad cultures. It has always been challenging for practitioners of the science to be validated by the prevailing status quo.

That however changed in 1995 when the CIA declassified a top secret program that had been training individuals in the esoteric science of ‘Remote Viewing’ in which, it was claimed, people were able to envision ongoing activities in distant places and future events.

Although reminiscent of a Sci-Fi yarn, Remote viewing was tested and deployed under rigorous scientific conditions to obtain data about foreign espionage activities, counter terrorism efforts, secret military bases abroad and hidden missiles. It recognized the inherent psychic potential in humans and attempted to harness these special faculties or ‘powers’ for the purposes of intelligence gathering, often of a vital nature.

The initial testing was done at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) where extensive investigations were carried out into the human mind’s capacity to transcend all bounds of time and space. SRI’s research was supported by the CIA and other government agencies for over two decades.

Russell Targ, Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swann were the original founders of this once-secret program. Their task was to learn to understand psychic abilities, and to use these abilities to gather information about the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They found from years of experience that people can quickly learn to do remote viewing, and can frequently incorporate this direct knowing of the world — both present and future — into their lives.

They were the original ‘Psi Spies’ named after the title of Jim Marrs’ exhaustive study of the phenomenon. The project produced some remarkable results. Among them were detailed renderings of secret Soviet bases, the whereabouts of Red Brigade terrorism hostages in Italy, location of victims in the Israeli hostage crisis, locations of Scud missiles during the first Gulf War and even the impending attack on the Twin Towers in NY! (done by a private contractor and ignored until after the event). The program eventually came to be called ‘Operation Stargate’.

The initial media flurry (Ted Koppel’s Nightline, ABC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc.) that surrounded the declassification in 1995 uncovered some surprising details. The names that surfaced at the time were of Ingo Swann, who initially helmed the project, Dr.Russell Targ, Pat Price, Dr. Hal Puthoff, Joseph McMoneagle and others, an interesting group comprised of respected senior military personnel, path breaking scientists and academic luminaries. On ABC’s Nightline, one of the operatives, Joe McMoneagle was put to the test by none other than Ted Koppel. He was able to prove the authenticity of the system with flying colors.

Remote viewers can often contact, experience and describe a hidden object, or a remote natural or architectural site, based on the presence of a cooperative person at the distant location, or when given geographical coordinates, or some other target demarcation — which they call an ‘address’.  Shape, form and color are described much more reliably than the target’s name, function, or other analytical information. In addition to vivid visual imagery, viewers sometimes describe associated feelings, sounds, smells and even electrical or magnetic fields.  Blueprint accuracy has occasionally been achieved in these double-blind experiments, and reliability in a series can be as high as 80 per cent.
Case Studies

In 1984 Targ organized a pair of successful 10,000-mile remote viewing experiments between Moscow and San Francisco with famed Russian healer Djuna Davitashvili.  Djuna’s task was to describe where a colleague would be hiding in San Francisco. She had to focus her attention ten thousand miles to the west and two hours into the future to correctly describe his location. These experiments were performed under the auspices and control of the USSR Academy of Sciences.  Djuna hit the mark on all counts and the experiment was declared a resounding success.

Ten years earlier, in 1974, Russell Targ and his colleague Hal Puthoff carried out a demonstration of psychic abilities for the CIA. Pat Price, a retired police commissioner, described the inside and outside of a secret Soviet weapons laboratory in the far reaches of Siberia — given only the geographical coordinates of latitude and longitude for a reference. (That is, with no on- site cooperation.) This trial was such a stunning success that they were forced to undergo a formal Congressional investigation to determine if there had been a breach in National Security. Of course, none was ever found, and the government supported them for another fifteen years.

Data from these formal and controlled SRI investigations were highly statistically significant (thousands of times greater than chance expectation), and have been published in the world’s most prestigious journals, such as Nature, The Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and The Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences. The twenty years of remote viewing research conducted for the CIA is outlined in ‘Miracles of Mind: Exploring Non-local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing’, co-authored by Targ and Katra.

Recent research in areas as different as distant healing and quantum physics are in agreement with the oldest spiritual teachings of the sages of India, who taught that “separation is an illusion.” The powers we are discovering now are described by Rishis as ‘Siddhis’, or fruits of deep penance and arcane Yogic techniques, verbally transmitted, only known to inner circles.

The military and institutional exploitation of this timeless phenomenon is alarming. It is being harnessed by world governments in a game of cosmic brinkmanship, none of whom can possibly know the complete ramifications of unleashing such latently devastating forces without comprehending the holistic nature of the universe and interconnectedness of all life.
What is remarkable however, is the fact that the cat is out of the bag finally with regard to parapsychology, metaphysics and the occult. The so-called ‘mainstream’ has not only recognized the stunning potential of psychic energy but has gone so far as to harness it for territorial one-upmanship. The human race only needs to realize the vast reserves of raw power that it has at its disposal to effect profound and genuine transformation of the human condition on a global scale.

 

Image by Western, courtesy of Creative Commons license.

from:    http://www.realitysandwich.com/stargate_psychic_warriors_cia

August 5-11

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Overall Color for the Week:    Dark Violet

It is curious that the old stuff can still affect us the way it does.  This is a week in which you will be aware of this on may different levels.  Because of all of the changes that are going on it is important to be strong in your Core Self.  When you are confronted by situations in which you feel challenged or out of control. Take a moment, breathe, center, and allow your greater perspective to take over.  There are twists and turns in things and relationships, jobs and acquaintances that will become obvious.  Emotions are at the surface.  Allow them to come out.  This is about you.  Never doubt that you have the power and the resources to succeed in any endeavor.  You must make the choice to be the winner.  Do not believe other’s illusions.  They can become yours if you let them.

This will be a tough week.  You are going to be called upon to see things as they really are, including yourself and many of the things that you have been trying to ignore.  Just realize that there is always assistance available if you call on it.  Things are changing.  You are being asked to walk your true path.  This means knowing what is right for you, what is sacred for you, what is meaningful for you, what is important for you.  AS the week goes on, be kind to yourself.  Be willing to take time out when you need it.  The other stuff will always be there.  You need to know where you stand in the midst of it all and how much of it is real for you. Continue reading →

Magnetic Solar FIlament

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ERUPTING MAGNETIC FILAMENT: A filament of magnetism connecting sunspots AR1538 and AR1540 rose up and erupted on August 4th. Look for the extreme UV glow of hot plasma in this movie recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

As the filament ripped through the sun’s atmosphere, it propelled a massive CME into space: movie. The expanding cloud does not appear to be on a collision course with Earth, although a glancing blow might be possible 2 to 3 days hence.

fr/spaceweather.com