One of my favorite stories to come out of the World Cup is the tale of Paul the Octopus, the seemingly psychic German cephalopod.

If you missed the story (say due to all the racket being caused by vuvuzelas), apparently Paul correctly “predicted” the winner in each of Germany’s World Cup matches, going 7-0, including Germany’s loss to Spain, and then predicted Spain’s eventual win over the Netherlands in the final game. His highly scientific “selections” were made when he picked one of two plastic boxes with food and a flag from each team that had been lowered into his tank — whichever box he chose first was expected to be the winning team.

Of course the chances of him randomly getting eight games in a row correct are only 254 to 1 (not especially long odds in terms of pure chance) but that didn’t stop more than a few people from being suckered in hook, line and sinker by his picks — when Paul predicted Germany’s loss to Spain, there were even calls from angry German futbol fans to cook and eat him. (Hey, he didn’t play!)

Despite possibly being worth millions, Paul “retired” from prognostication, according to his keeper at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany. Although fear not, you can still get “answers” from him with a new iPhone app: Ask Paul the Octopus.

For the record, cephalopods are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet, and certainly the most advanced invertebrates.

Here’s a video to give you an idea — the script is in Spanish, but you don’t have to be read it to understand what you’re seeing.

Note to self: Don’t accidentally get trapped in a mason jar inside the octopus tank during feeding time.

Anyway, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if after Paul’s exploits, there were a few studies and experiments done to try and gauge the mental limits of cephalopods, including their ability to prognosticate (although they might see it coming and try to avoid it).

Cephalopods are not the first creatures believed to be “psychic” or to possess extrasensory powers. For years, it’s been believed that animals can sense doom or major disasters, such as earthquakes, before they happen. Others, like Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, are eager to point out how animals like dogs know that their owners are coming home before they arrive, or how other creatures can find their way over long distances, such as homing pigeons. It seems that despite the anecdotal evidence, more research needs to be done before all these claims can be accepted as true.

Of course, there are those out there who believe that animals already have the ability to communicate psychically. A quick Google search turns up at least one pet communicator and psychic right here in Connecticut — Sharon Warner, who according to her site, “can communicate with alive and deceased pets.” One bark for no, two for yes?

If you have questions you’ve been wanting to ask your pet or if want to test Ms. Warner and her abilities, she will be at PHD Psychic Fair in Danbury on July 25 — although she may already know you’re coming!

Courtesy of Yale University

I saw this story the other day — about Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral assistant at Yale, who discovered and named a new species of dinosaur: The Mojoceratops.

As you can see from the picture at right, the dino had quite an ornate skull, so apparently, when they were discussing what to name it, in jest, Longrich suggested the name. As it turns out, the name stuck, which works out.

From the article –

It was only after coming up with the unusual name that Longrich looked into its etymology. Surprisingly, he found that it was a perfect fit for the species, which sported a flamboyant, heart-shaped frill on its head.

“I discovered that ‘mojo’ is an early 20th-century African-American term meaning a magic charm or talisman, often used to attract members of the opposite sex,” he said. “This dinosaur probably used its frill to attract mates, so the name made sense.” The full name is Mojoceratops perifania, with “perifania” meaning pride in Greek. (The other part of the name mojoceratops follows the convention of other related species, with “ceras” being Greek for horn and “ops” being Greek for face.)

While all ceratopsids have frills on the tops of their skulls, “Mojoceratops is the most ostentatious,” Longrich said, adding that their frill is also the most heart-shaped of all the related species.

As most of you already know, despite its size, Connecticut is a regular hotbed for dino lovers. From Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill to the wonderful specimens (and mural) in the great hall of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University in New Haven to The Dinosaur Place near Ledyard, there’s plenty of dino history for nearly any level of aspiring paleontologist.

Of course, like any one who is enthralled by dinosaurs, I’m envious of Nicholas Longrich. The idea of being the first to discover a new species of anything is very exciting, especially when that something that has been dead for a few hundred million years — sort of like finding a needle under a prehistoric haystack.

When you think about it, the whole process of dinosaur fossilization is remarkable — it requires a set of very specific circumstances, including the creature having died a quick death in a spot with the appropriate sediment, like a riverbed or lake. And then the creature would have had to been covered quickly with sediment before it could decompose properly.

Talk about being in the wrong spot at the right time!

I heard one paleontologist speculate that we still really don’t have a good idea of what that time on the planet was like because all we have to go on are the fossils of creatures that were lucky (or unlucky) enough to become fossils. In other words, who knows how many more species of creatures, plants, etc. that there may have been in the Earth’s history that just died and decomposed under normal circumstances, leaving no trace.

Think about it this way — forgetting about what we’ve built as a civilization, it’d be like trying to figure out the entire human race by the relatively few human fossils that have been discovered  in the occasional lake bed, peat bog or cave, as well as a few mummies, bodies that ended up dumped in heavy sediment conditions and, of course, the body of Jimmy Hoffa. Not exactly a complete picture.

On a side note, if you Google “How does a dinosaur fossil form?” (or something similar), there are a disturbingly high number of responses by Christian groups suggesting that dinos didn’t exist or were placed under the earth by Satan. Really — try it. It’s more scary than facing a T-Rex!

courtesy of orgonite.info

So I was recently reading this article from Fortean Times about the alleged “miracle” of orgonite — especially when used in vegetable gardens.

Essentially, the article suggests plants that were exposed to “pucks” of orgonite — featuring a simple mix of resin, metal shavings and crystal — generally produced larger and more significant vegetables.

Okay, you’re probably asking the same thing I am at this point: “What in the name of Joe Willie Namath is ‘orgonite’?”

Fortunately for you, within my limited skills set is an uncanny ability to use Google and Wikipedia to get to the bottom of such mysteries, and then bring them back here for your reading convenience!

From Wikipedia –

Orgone energy is an idea which was proposed and promoted in the 1930s by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who originated the term to describe a universal life force. Beginning with a materialist concept of the Freudian libido, Reich ultimately came to see orgone as a massless, omnipresent substance, similar to luminiferous aether, but more closely associated with vital, living energy than inert matter.

Not surprisingly, Reich had a hard time selling his tough-to-prove concept to the mainstream science establishment. Part of his numerous experiments included efforts with “cloudbusters” — devices he created to drain clouds of their orgone and thereby freeing the rains trapped within. Despite decades of work by Reich and his followers, no definitive proof of orgone and its effects was ever established.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped others from following up on Reich’s ideas — hence, sites like orgonite.info, where the many benefits of orgonite are extolled.

From that site –

This is not a joke, or a game, or an advertisement. This is not a business opportunity. We don’t want your money. Orgonite vendors exist only to serve those who are not able to or interested in making orgonite themselves. Orgonite does not require belief or conscious intention in order to work. This is not a religion, a cult, or a product of disinformation of any kind. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the “new age movement.”

We have found that tactical deployment of orgonite (e.g., “gifting”) by throwing, hiding or burying it near sources of electromagnetic radiation or other pollution or in polluted areas, such as near cellphone/TV/radio towers, power plants, in lakes, rivers and ocean harbors, has a powerful and noticeable effect on the area. The skies get clearer and return to the deep blue color you remember from your childhood, complete with normal puffy white clouds. Water pollution levels decrease precipitously, as documented in Toronto, Ontario. Drought conditions are reversed, as documented in South Africa and in Death Valley, California. The general mood or “vibe” in the area improves dramatically as people are kinder, happier and more easy-going. Neighbors either become friendlier or suddenly leave town. A renewed sense of hope begins to pervade the community. We have seen this effect in our own communities as a direct result of tactical orgonite gifting, and have found it truly self-empowering, but don’t take our word for it. Try it yourself and see what happens!

Blue skies, decreased pollution, friendlier neighbors — can it cure cancer and fix the effects of global warming, too?

For the record, I’ve never come into contact with orgonite and have absolutely no idea if it works or not. But I understand the skepticism. As I tell my kids, “If something sounds too good to be true, then it usually is.”

But hey, the apparent beauty of orgonite is that it’s something you can make yourself for a very reasonable cost. Considering the vast benefits, maybe it’s worth the investment? Any takers?

It’s been a while since we’ve had any mainstream UFO stories here, so when I saw this story about how we might be overlooking signals from alien worlds, I thought it was worth a read.

From the article:

In a recently published paper by James Benford and Dominic Benford of Microwave Sciences in Lafayette, California, the authors imagine that SETI beacons might be much like a lighthouse, sweeping the galactic plane in a raster pattern. Depending on beam size and scan rate, many days could pass between the brief Twitter-like bursts of “here we are” flashes from alien civilizations.

“We should learn how to identify any such beacons,” the authors say. For starters they expect the beam would pulsate to conserve energy and also have amplitude or frequency modulation of the carrier to draw attention to itself.

The problem is that pulsars (powerful bursts of radiation from rotating neutron star magnetospheres) look just what an alien transmission might look like according to this SETI “lighthouse” model. In fact when pulsars were first discovered in the mid 1960’s they were nicknamed “LGMs” for “Little Green Men.”

There are certain unusual transient phenomena that are likely due to pulsars behaving, well, unusually. These occasionally repeat, but others do not. The authors say that we should consider SETI beacons as a candidate explanation when perplexing non-repeating signals that are seen in the radio sky.

The article also suggests that because of the vast distances in space, it might make more sense for other civilizations to try and make contact by sending radio signals or other types of beamed messages rather than trying to launch actual interstellar craft. Considering the challenges we’ve had trying to explore our own solar system, that’s not an unreasonable thought. I mean, we’re now sending robots and satellites to do our exploring rather than living beings, so a long-range intergalactic signal or beamed message would be the natural next step.

I also think we all expect that other civilizations are eager to make contact with other worlds, but that might not be the case. For all we know, the  inhabitants of next closest civilization might not be eager space explorers bent on universal colonization, but a bunch of peace-loving blobs content with just living on their own world, blissfully minding their own business. Heck, I know I feel like that most days.

Regardless, as a civilization, we will no doubt continue to scan the heavens searching for someone else in the Universe. Of course, there are those who believe they are a lot closer than most of us believe.

A quick check of the reports page of MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network) shows that there’s been at least a dozen reports of unusual things in the skies over Connecticut in this calendar year alone.

Here’s one report from last week, marked June 17, 2010 –

Ok i was fishing at the bridge on rt six in danielson right on my street..I seen a object flying towrds me.. this happens all the time cause i live next to a small airport so i just figured it to be a plane comming in till it stoped….it got reall bright and was just hoving in one spot.. i called my mom and dad cause they live 3 houses down from me and my dad came running i was scared..my dad and i watched this thing for like 15 min.. it just stayed right there no sound..would just glow some differnt colors..im still shooken up over this …so at like 10 300 we wa;lked back home i came in the house took a quik shower and grabed some binoculors and went back to the bridge..i new if it were a star or it would have still benn there…it wasnt it was gone.. i dont care if anyone belives me i seen it it was reall and it was gone.. i tried to get this on my cell it not very distinct at all

Spelling and grammar issues aside, it’s just a sample of the kind of events that are regularly reported to happen here. As long as there are skies, we will keep looking up at them at night!

To that end, I know that MUFON is trying to get reorganized in the state — as a matter of fact, New England MUFON is meeting this Saturday, June 26, 2010.

From the site:

We are pleased to annunce the next statewide meeting of New England Mufon in Connecticut: Saturday, June 26, 1pm – at: Panera Bread, 533 South Broad St. (Rte 5), Meriden (This is located in the Town Line Square Shopping Center, on the border of Meriden and Wallingford. Panera Bread is located behind Pier 1 Imports, on the right hand side of the mall as you enter) To find this location, I recommend using Google Maps for directions; enter this address:
Panera Bread
533 South Broad Street
Meriden, CT 06450-6661

Agenda:
* The Mufon Mission.
* New England Mufon Chapter and state areas.
* Introductions: ourselves, our interests.
* Next meeting: date and place.

Check it out if you’re interested. Or just keep your eyes to the skies!

So as I tried to watch some of the World Cup this past weekend, like many others, I kept trying to adjust my TV to eliminate that annoying constant droning/buzzing sound!

Of course, you probably already know that the source of my frustration — and apparently, the frustration of the players and many fans as well — is the vuvuzela, a $6 South African plastic horn that seems like something right out of Dr. Seuss and emits a loud “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!” at an ear-splitting 127 decibels! (By comparison, a jet taking off only scores 201 decibels.) The companies that make these “instruments” have seen an incredible surge in popularity, and now that FIFA, the ruling organization for the World Cup, says that the vuvuzelas can stay, expect the audio assault to continue.

Actually, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that such a loud item could be found to be so obnoxious. Sonic weapons have a long history, used for years by police and military for non-lethal confrontations. Others have suggested that extreme bass vibrations, known as infrasound, may not be able to be heard consciously by the human ear, but could be responsible for causing odd sensations and strong hallucinations that are often mistaken as ghosts or otherworldly contacts.

From the Skeptic’s Dictionary entry on infrasound –

In 1998, Vic Tandy, experimental officer and part-time lecturer in the school of international studies and law at Coventry University, and Dr. Tony Lawrence of the psychology department wrote a paper called “Ghosts in the Machine” for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. They cited infrasound as the cause of apparitions seen by staff at a so-called haunted laboratory in Warwick.

Several years earlier, Tandy was working late in the “haunted” Warwick laboratory when he saw a gray thing coming for him. “I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck,” he said. “It seemed to be between me and the door, so the only thing I could do was turn and face it.” But the thing disappeared. However, it reappeared in a different form the next day when Tandy was doing some work on his fencing foil. “The handle was clamped in a vice on a workbench, yet the blade started vibrating like mad,” he said. He wondered why the blade vibrated in one part of room but not in another. The explanation, he discovered, was that infrasound was coming from an extractor fan. “When we finally switched it off, it was as if a huge weight was lifted,” he said. “It makes me think that one of the applications of this ongoing research could be a link between infrasound and sick-building syndrome.” When he measured the infrasound in the laboratory, the showing was 18.98 hertz–the exact frequency at which a human eyeball starts resonating. The sound waves made his eyeballs resonate and produced an optical illusion: He saw a figure that didn’t exist.

Personally, if I’ve been in a loud room (like a night club)  or at a concert for too long, I’ve come out feeling a bit wonky, almost drunk, even if I haven’t imbibed anything alcoholic, so I can appreciate this phenomena.

Another audio phenomena that is among my all-time favorites is The Bloop, which I’ve discussed here before. If you’re not familiar with The Bloop, it was a strange undersea sound picked up by underwater microphones in 1997 that no one has been able to explain. Apparently, it was a sound emitted by a living creature, yet it was heard on microphones over 3,000 miles apart — anything alive that could make a noise like that would have to be bigger than any known creature on Earth, which is where the good times begin. Some speculate it could be anything from a colossal squid to The Kraken to the legendary monster Cthulhu!

Speaking of The Bloop, I recently read this article from Web Urbanist featuring 8 Mysterious Unsolved Sounds. Fun stuff!

Of course, when I think of weird local noises, the first thing to come to mind are the legendary Moodus noises, the spooky rumblings heard in the Southeastern area of the state. For centuries, the noises were thought to be caused by supernatural causes, everything from angry spirits to the undead; more recently, scientific research has suggested that the sounds are the result of shallow micro-earthquakes.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve heard about. For now!

Like so many of these blog posts, it started when I saw a story somewhere on the intranets.

AP Image

This time, it was this story about Gallileo’s fingers being put on display in a museum in Florence, Italy. In the picture to the right, you can see the middle finger and thumb of the great scientist in that skinny glass-and-wood container — basically ol’ Gallileo is flippin’ off everyone, which I would want to do if a few of my body parts were being paraded around for all to gawk at!

(Okay, that’s a bit of a lie because when I die, I sort of want to be stuffed and mounted with animatronics with my hand reaching out to shake with everyone who comes to my funeral and my mouth moving to a tape I’ve recorded of me saying, “Hey, glad you can make it — sorry I’m dead!” That or I want to be cremated, loaded into a Coke can and shot out of a cannon. I can’t decide …)

Anyway, from the AP story –

In 1737, admirers of Galileo Galilei removed the three fingers, plus the tooth and a vertebra, from his body as it was being moved from a storage place to a monumental tomb — opposite that of Michelangelo, in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence.

The vertebra is kept at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught for many years.

The tooth and the thumb and middle finger were held in a container that was passed from generation to generation in the same family, but in the early 20th century all traces of the relics disappeared. The container turned up at auction late last year, and detailed historical documents and the family’s own records helped experts to identify them as the scientist’s, according to museum officials.

My first reaction when I hear a story like this — or about how pieces of Einstein’s brain seem to be scattered among scientists like sections of the “true” cross — is utter revulsion. I mean, come on! Other than serial killers and voodoo priestesses, who in their right mind keeps mementos of dead people around?

And then I remembered the story of Father Michael J. McGivney.

You may recognize the name — the Catholic priest from Waterbury who founded the mighty Knights of Columbus fraternal service organization in 1882. At the time, he was assigned to St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, and with a few parishioners, organized the group to help provide support for families who lost the head of the household. Unfortunately, Father McGiveny died in 1890 at age 38 from tuberculosis, long before he could see what a powerful, influential and rich organization his purely altruistic aims would spawn.

Honestly, I didn’t know too much about the gentleman until I was on assignment and had to tour the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven. While I was going through the opulent museum — and the place reminds you that the Catholic Church, despite preaching charity and selflessness, also really likes to spend its donated monies quite lavishly on itself — I visited the gallery dedicated to Father McGivney. And it was while I was innocently looking through here that I made a troubling (for me) realization.

For as I was looking at the gallery, I noticed there were a few of Father McGiveny’s personal objects on display, things like pictures, letters, bibles, notes, the rosary he had been holding and the vestments he had been buried in, more letters–

Wait, what?!

Yeah, apparently as part of the process of trying to get Father McGiveny canonized, in 1982 he was dug up from his original resting place in Waterbury on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Knights of Columbus and then re-interred at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven, you know, after the remains apparently were picked clean for holy relics and other mementos, which are now on display in the KOFC Museum.

Okay, with all due respect to those of the Catholic faith, but I’m not quite sure how this is different from all the Egyptian tombs and mummies that have been pillaged and displayed over the centuries, which I still contend is out-and-out grave robbing, and pretty much abhorrent to nature. I mean, they say “Rest in peace” at the end of funerals for a reason, right? Couldn’t the guy have been made a saint from the place he was originally interred?

Call it what you want, invoke science or religion, but to me, it’s just freaky. And weird. Apparently though, these types of grave-robbing traditions have been going on for centuries (see Gallileo’s and Einstein’s stories above), so I guess it’s accepted in numerous places. To each his own, I suppose — just keep your pieces of dead away from me, thanks!

Not that I’m about to turn this site into a “Damned Book of the Month” club, but I do like to share some fun stuff when I find it. This week’s “find” (hard to “find” one of the biggest bestsellers in history) is Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.

And yes, I know it came out last year — I have a large pile of books I’m trying to work through, a blog I update a few times a week and two active sons. The math for fast reading doesn’t exactly work out on that equation. Stupid day = only 24 hours! My dad loaned me Lost Symbol when he was done with it (since my sisters and I haven’t lived with him for about 20 years or so, he has time to read, apparently).

As far as an actual piece of literature, I have to rate it: “Meh.” Having already read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, it’s clear that Brown has a formula he likes to stick to, both in terms of pacing, forced unnatural dialogue and literary devices. (And with his mindboggling success, who could blame him?) Knowing all the puzzles, secrets, plot twists and turns from those books, there was really nothing in Lost Symbol that truly came as any sort of surprise, no matter how hard Brown reaches or how many coincidences or plot holes he seems to be able to have “symbologist” Robert Langdon miraculously wind his way through. Still, Brown knows how to craft a page-turner and this one was as fun as the others.

The original reason I wanted to read this book was my interest in Freemasonry — I was curious how Brown would treat the group and to what depth he would “expose” its secrets. Without giving any plot away, he did a nice job weaving the various elements and legends of the organization with the actual buildings, paintings, sculpture and other structures that have been inspired by it. (For specifics, the blog Secrets of The Lost Symbol compares the book to reality in great detail.)

As you might expect, I did a little Connecticut-Mason research, and as Brown rightly points out in the book, the group does suffer from a bit of stereotyping — the Grand Lodge of Connecticut is “hidden” right out in view for everyone to see. Despite that the History Channel and their ilk like to hint that the group is somehow nefarious, from reading through the Masons’ site, it seems like they are generally dedicated to dressing up in odd costumes and doing charitable works. I was a little surprised to realize that the Shelton lodge is a building that I pass all the time and is less than a mile from my current home (and right around the corner from my old apartment) — again, “hidden” in plain sight. Are they exactly what they portray themselves to be? I’ll let others have that debate but I would say, “Is anyone?”

But as I was reading, I was fascinated by a subplot of sorts, involving noetic sciences. If you’re not familiar with the field, it’s the study of mind over matter, of how human thought is an actual tangible force that can affect matter. In the book, Brown references the work of Lynne McTaggert, who has written extensively about noetic sciences.

In response, McTaggert has written a guide to the information that Brown uses in the book.

It’s pretty interesting stuff — from her site:

Katherine’s lab uses random event generators. These electronic tosses of the coin were famously the equipment used in 25 years of consciousness research by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne’s at Princeton’s PEAR lab (The Field, chapter 6).

Her lab also uses CCD cameras that have photographed a faith healer’s energy pouring from his hands. Dr. Gary Schwartz, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, and frequent partner in our Intention Experiments, has a CCD camera that photographs biophoton emissions from living things. He has photographed light emanating from the dominant hands of healers while sending healing (The Intention Experiment, chapter 2).

Katherine’s lab is electromagnetically sealed – so much so that human thought can’t penetrate it. Possibly. In most cases, thoughts traverse anything (hence why we can run an Intention Experiment from Sydney, Australia to affect seeds in Tucson, Arizona). However, Stanford University physicist William Tiller has experimented with magnetically-shielded rooms, which tend to block the effectiveness of trained healers ((The Intention Experiment, chapter 2).

REGs dotted all over the world recorded an effect on September 11, 2001. Former Princeton PEAR researcher Dr. Roger Nelson’s Global Consciousness Project has shown an association between major catastrophic global events and changes in REG machine output (The Field, chapter 11).

The last one — about REGs — Random Event Generators — around the world recording an effect on 9/11, I’d heard about. The power of thought, right?

Anyway, there’s much more than I can cover here — check it out if you’re interested.

Okay, even the mere name of this celestial mystery sounds like something ominously foreboding, as if plucked from Star Trek: THE ERIDANUS VOID.

(You know, as in, “The Klingons have disabled the ship, Captain, and we only have an hour before we are sucked into the Eridanus Void … forever!”)

The void takes its name from the constellation in which it dwells, Eridanus (“the river”), which is between Taurus and Cetus. Like many unusual deep-space discoveries, it’s not something that necessarily has been seen by eyes as much as it’s been detected by special telescopes. In this case, it’s actually the lack of a heat signature (sort of seen as a blue “cold spot” in this image to the right) that has signaled its existence to astronomers, who “discovered” it in 2007. From what they can tell, it’s a vast region of our universe with absolutely nothing in it — no stars, galaxies or gases, nor does it contain dark matter. It appears to be a mindbogglingly giant nothing in the middle of the universe, which apparently defies some cosmological models.

If that isn’t troubling enough, there are now theories that rather than a void, this deep-space anomaly may actually be a galaxy-swallowing black hole that could be over 1 billion light years across. The good news is that it’s over 6 billion light years away, so it’s not anything we have to worry about … for now. Besides, we have a super massive black hole at the center of own Milky Way galaxy to deal with first.

Another more radical theory is that it’s the mark of another universe beyond our own — sort of like a flat area if you press two balloons together. Okay, not exactly like that — I don’t fully understand multiverse theory and quantum entanglements, but that’s sort of how I picture it after trying to read about it.

Of course, as with any deep-space object that’s on the farthest edge of our observational limits, it’s probably going to take decades of study with equipment that hasn’t even been developed yet to figure out exactly what it is. (Hanny’s Voorwerp, anybody?)

In the meantime, the best we can do is just continue to look deeper and deeper into the heavens — the mysteries are just out there, waiting for us.

This story about Plum Island ran in a few papers last week as the fate of the former U.S. animal-disease research facility is about to be decided.

If you’re not familiar with Plum Island, it is an 840-acre island just off of the north fork of Long Island, less than a dozen miles across Long Island Sound from the Southeastern Connecticut coast (as you can see by my crudely rendered MS paint map of a Bing satellite screen capture, at right). For the early part of the 20th century, it used to be home to Fort Terry, a strategic U.S. military outpost, but in 1952, it was taken over by U.S. Army Chemical Corps, and that’s when the place began to gain a mythic stature.

The government has contended that within the island’s 70 buildings, various animal diseases — particularly, foot-and-mouth disease — have been researched. Others allege that the island is a more nefarious place where various chemical and biological secret weapons were researched and developed over the course of the Cold War. Supposedly, the facility’s freezers even contain samples of many dangerous diseases, such as polio, and anthrax has also been studied here. In short, it’s not a place where you want to lick any of the walls — you know, if you were prone to doing anything like that. (Just sayin’.)

In 2004, author Michael Carroll wrote a book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, referring to one of the research labs on the island. Carroll’s book suggests that Lyme disease was let loose on the unsuspecting public from this facility because of the faulty research and poor conditions at the lab, in addition to the release of other dangerous diseases and biological pathogens. None of his conspiracy-type allegations have been proven true, then again, they haven’t exactly been proven false, either. Which is were all the fun begins!

Anyway, Plum Island is in the news because the government is transferring its animal disease research facilities to Kansas (lucky them!) and putting the island up for sale! Apparently, if you have $50 to $80 million — not counting the clean-up costs — you can have the entire place for your own. (No word if the hideous mutated creatures that no doubt live on the island are included, but you have to assume they are.) Unfortunately, those dang-blasted environmentalists want to preserve the place as a nature refuge, which probably means they’ll want to destroy all the really cool supersecret research labs so that piping plovers can nest in peace. Ugh! We can only hope that some more enterprising folks will buy the place, open the beaches for sunbathing and the research labs for conspiracy-type tourists! (Besides, the birds have been around since the dinosaurs, they don’t need our help.) Sounds like a win-win to me.

If you’re interested in getting near the island, the Orient Point to Groton Ferry passes it — I took this photo (and others, although I can’t find the rest of them right now) in the summer of 2009 while going past. The lighthouse makes for great ambiance and the beaches look really great — with its prime location at the tip of Long Island and on the Sound, it would definitely draw the sun-loving crowd, you know, other than the dilapidated research buildings (which we would want them to keep up anyway). Definitely a place we would want to visit.

Just don’t expect us to drink the local tap water or lick the walls.

I recently posted this article about the Timexpo Museum in Waterbury, so I’ve been in sort of an Easter Island frame of mind. I guess I can relate to giant moai, what with having a big head and all myself …

As coincidence would have it, less that 24 hours after I was done writing about how the owners of the Timexpo museum (and of Timex Watches) were good friends and supporters of Easter Island researcher Thor Heyerdahl, I came across this story talking about the latest findings in regard to how the enormous stone sculptures were moved around the island.

The debate, from the article:

Many researchers have long believed the island’s complex network of roads was built, beginning 800 years ago, specifically to transport the moai. The theory was that statues found lying on their backs and faces near the roads were abandoned during transportation.

But archeologists with University College London and the University of Manchester said Wednesday the roads were built primarily for ceremonial purposes.

Manchester’s Colin Richards and UCL’s Sue Hamilton used geophysical survey equipment to pass electrical currents below the ground and measure its resistance. That allowed them to create subsurface maps that suggested the statues were not abandoned, but toppled from platforms with the passage of time.

I guess I never gave it much thought, but those big rocks probably weren’t just conveniently sitting in the proper places when the natives of the island were ready to turn them into works of art and worship. Ditto the pyramids, Stonehenge and all other ancient structures made of stone.

Speaking of heads and stone structures, one of my favorites is The Circle of Life in the Sachem Head area of Guilford. I wrote about it around this time last year — to quote myself (for once):

In 2003, Dr. Jonathan Rothberg decided he wanted to build an observatory on his property but was thwarted by the local zoning board. Being resourceful, he instead circumvented the board and commissioned renowned architect Cesar Pelli to design an astronomically correct and working replica of Stonehenge, an enormous celestial clock using 700 tons of granite . . . as a pure work of art.

According to the New York Times story linked above, Dr. Rothberg said, “My position is, if I put up a piece of art, I don’t need permission.”

Man, I love that story. I don’t know Dr. Rothberg personally, but he sounds like my kind of ingenious Yankee! Although, unlike the residents of Easter Island, he didn’t have to come up with creative ways to haul tons of stone over great distances — he just paid a few truckers and crane operators!

Anyway, if you just can’t get enough Connecticut head, you can always check out our article about the world’s largest jack-in-the-box — made with a freakishly huge replica of Claribel the Clown’s head — which is located in Middletown. That’s about 30 miles away from my house, but it’s still closer than I want to be to a giant clown head. Just sayin’.