Sunday, July 31, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Was This Photo of an Amazon Tribe A Hoax? Not this time...

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Photo of Amazon Tribe Not a Hoax | LiveScience:

Well, sometimes, what may seem like a hoax - isn't.  The photo of an Amazonian tribe coated in paint and shooting arrows at an aerial photographer, at first glance, screams "Hoax!".  Upon further investigation, it seems it's actually real...




The photographs were released in late May 2008 by Survival International, a London-based organization that advocates for tribal people worldwide. The release stated that 'members of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been spotted and photographed from the air,' and quoted the Brazilian government photographer saying, 'there are some who doubt [the tribe's] existence' as justification for flying over the site and taking the pictures.'


Some of the media published the images with stories saying the tribe had been previously "lost.".  Suspicions about the organization's motivations and the authenticity of the scene were raised. On June 22, The Observer, a London-based newspaper, ran a story, "Secret of the 'lost' tribe that wasn't," saying that the tribe's existence "has been noted since 1910." A succession of other stories followed on the Web, claiming that reports of the tribe's discovery were a hoax


Two days later, Survival International released a statement to try to clarify things, including: "The story is not a hoax, and none of those involved in working to protect these Indians' rights have ever claimed they were 'undiscovered.'"


"Some of the media got very carried away and started talking about undiscovered tribes," Watson told LiveScience (from where this article originated). "There was this interpretation that this was a completely new tribe, completely undiscovered, without bothering to check with sources. Neither the Brazilian government nor Survival International has ever used that word, and 'uncontacted' means they don't have any contact with outsiders."  Tribes like this one, "whilst not 'lost,' simply reject contact with the outside world."


The good news?  The photos have had a positive effect.  The Peruvian government has since "formed a commission of experts to look into the illegal logging and into the status of the uncontacted groups on the Peru side," Watson said.






References:
Story courtesy LiveScience:  http://www.livescience.com/7519-photo-amazon-tribe-hoax.html
Image courtesy:  Survival International on May 29, 2008:  Uncontacted Indians in Brazil seen from the air, May 2008 © Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Ontario Insects, Arachnids, and Crustaceans - oh my!

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Each year, I travel and camp or cottage in "Northern" Ontario.  This year was no different, and I thought I'd share some of the creatures I managed to photograph while on my adventure.  I think these photos serve as a reminder that we need not look to aliens, ghosts, and monsters to find exquisitely creepy creatures - you only have to look by the water's edge of a small lake...

It's Dr. Zoidberg!  No, it's just a crayfish, located at Big Glamour Lake near Haliburton, Ontario.  These freshwater crustaceans are all over the place, and their exoskeletons would wash up on the shore.  Click on the image to see them in higher resolution.

Among the thousands of mosquitoes and deer flies that were attacking us, to our rescue came the dragonflies.  These camera shy insects flew away before I could get a good macro shot, but this one turned out pretty well.


 Not sure what this little guy is... The photo was taken on the back of a lawn chair.

Disgusting. Arachnid.  Spider.  Nuff' said.

I caught this little spider in the act of devouring a small fly.  I watched for about 20 minutes while he ate.  The shot doesn't due it justice:  the backside of this spider is a light green with little black/brown spots.

Finally, an ant enjoying the water's edge of Big Glamour Lake.

If you like these photos, you might also enjoy the other 5 Creepy Insects From Northern Ontario that I photographed last summer. 

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Sea Monster in Alaska... Could it be the elusive Cadborosaurus?

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Something big is swimming in the sea near Alaska...  A video captured in 2009 by an Alaskan fisherman shows a creature moving along the surface of the water that resembles the sea monster, Nessie.  Some are claiming that the animal is a "Cadborosaurus", a creature that was got its name from Cadboro Bay, in British Columbia, Canada.


People who have seen the creature generally describe it as having a horse-like head, large eyes, a long neck, and bumps on its back.


Andy Hillstrand (from the show Deadliest Catch) and his brother Johnathan traveled to sites in Alaska where Cadborosaurus has been spotted. Referring to one location, he said, "We saw a big, long white thing moving in the water. We chased it for about 20 minutes.  Spray came out of its head... it was definitely not a shark. A giant eel may be possible, but eels don't have humps that all move in unison. I've never seen anything like it before.".  Kind of sounds like a whale to me...


Watch the video here:


Sightings of "Cadborosaurus" have been reported for years.  In 1937, a supposed body of the animal was found in the stomach of a whale captured by the Naden Harbour whaling station in the Queen Charlotte Islands, in British Columbia. Samples of the animal were brought to the Provincial Museum in Victoria, where it was concluded that they belonged to a fetal baleen whale.


Like other cryptids (Bigfoot, El-Chupacabra, Mokele-Mbmembe, to name a few), "Cadborosaurus" has existed only in grainy photographs, shaky videos, and eyewitness accounts.  And there it shall remain, until legitimate scientific evidence is presented.

Monday, July 18, 2011 ~ Have your say...

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft: An Infographic

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On Saturday, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived at the 330 mile wide asteroid, Vesta. It’s the first space probe to orbit a protoplanet in the asteroid belt.


Dawn will conduct a year-long study of Vesta where NASA hopes to gain an understanding of the origins and earliest conditions of the solar system. The research will also help determine why Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system.


NASA chief, Charles Bolden said, “Dawn’s study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years. President Obama has directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and Dawn is gathering crucial data that will inform that mission.”


Dawn will then visit the dwarf planet Ceres (arriving in 2015).


Here’s an infographic detailing Dawn’s mission:




Image Credit:   Space.com:  http://www.space.com/12279-nasa-dawn-asteroid-mission-works-infographic.html

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Michael Shermer: On Patternicity

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Patternicity:  The tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.


 "Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? 


A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. UFOlogists see a face on Mars. Religionists see the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. Paranormalists hear dead people speaking to them through a radio receiver. Conspiracy theorists think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. 


Is there a deeper ultimate cause for why people believe such weird things? There is. I call it “patternicity,” or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise."


Such patternicities, then, mean that people believe weird things because of our evolved need to believe nonweird things.


Read all about this fascinating subject on Michael Shermer's post for Scientific American:
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2008/12/patternicity/ 

Thursday, July 7, 2011 ~ Have your say...

First iPhones in Space: Final Shuttle Astronauts to Deliver $1 App

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This news item, courtesy of Mashable, got my attention because it is oh-so-very-cool.  "The final, much-delayed mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis, which has a 30% chance of lifting off this Friday, will be carrying with it the planet’s first astro-phones — a pair of Apple iPhone 4s, ready for a first-of-its-kind experiment aboard the International Space Station, using a $1 app.


The app, SpaceLab for iOS, uses the iPhone 4′s in-built three-axis gyroscope to replace far more expensive custom-built equipment. It will measure altitude, the curvature of the Earth, and locate itself by looking for recognizable coastline via the iPhone camera. (Astronauts aboard the ISS will be taking the snapshots...)"


From the iTunes description... "The primary purpose of these experiments is to collect data for future flights, to improve the sensor accuracy and precision, and to demonstrate some of the basic capabilities intrinsic to iPhone but uniquely applied to the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) space environment."


Once the experiment and iPhones are returned to Earth and analyzed, it will be made available to users as part of a new release."


You can pick up the app here.  Remarkable, I still haven't jumped on to the iPhone bandwagon... I have to resort to my second generation iPod Touch.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011 ~ Have your say...

The hunt for mokele-mbembe: the Congo dinosaur

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Mokele-mbembe - Almost Like Nessie

In the Lingala language, Mokele-mbembe literally means, "the one who stops the river". Just like Nessie, the Mokele-mbembe is said to be a living dinosaur of the sauropod kind which dwells in the Republic of Congo in the depths of the Likouala swamp region. Loosely, it is analogously comparable to Nessie, or the Loch Ness Monster of the Scottish Highlands.

According to eyewitnesses, especially the natives, the Mokele-mbembe have the body of an elephant, three clawed feet, with long reptile-like neck. It is hairless, and is said to be gray, brown, or reddish brown in color with very a long tail.

The First Mention

The first recorded mention of witness related to the Mokele-mbembe is dated back to 1776, in a book by Abbe Lievain Bonaventure which reports the exhibition of the French missionary to the Republic of Congo to explore the animals, plants and people of the region. The team stumbled upon a three clawed foot print, which was said to be three feet wide. When they asked the natives, they told the story of the river monster.

Spirit of the Congo River Basin

While most who had witnessed it believes that it is a living sauropod dinosaur, many elderly pygmies believe the folklore that the Mokele-mbembe is only an apparition of the spirits dwelling in the Congo River Basin. They believe in animism, that an immortal godlike being inhabits the Mokele-mbembe and serves as the guardian of the region. Because of these, they believe that Westerners should stop doing expeditions, leave it alone and treat the Mokele-mbembe with respect, or macabre shall befall them.

The Smithsonian Tragedy

During 1919 to 1920, the Smithsonian Institution sent 32 men on an expedition to the Republic of Congo to collect specimens of plants and animals. They often heard mysterious roars, which were described to be as 'unheard of and didn't belonged to any known being'. They also stumbled upon huge, unexplained trails. During a train ride, they had to go through a flooded area. It was said that villagers around there were screaming and terrified because they saw the Mokele-mbembe, and it was the cause of the flood (consistent to its name, 'one who stops the river').

However, it ended in tragedy as the train suddenly derailed, which killed four members, and seriously injuring 6 others. This was consistent to the folklore of the macabre befalling those who angers the Mokele-mbembe. This expedition was documented in the H.L. Shantz papers.


According to the Skeptic's Dictionary...

"Cryptozoologists argue that since a coelacanth was caught off the coast of South Africa, it is reasonable to think that a dinosaur might also have avoided detection for a few million years. However, there is a big difference between finding a fish thought to be extinct and finding a dinosaur. The fish is small and lives in the ocean. Oceans cover two-thirds of the earth and have depths of up to 35,000 feet. That is a lot of space to hide specimens and fragments of specimens. Dinosaurs are massive (at least the mokele-mbembe kind), occupied the third of the earth mostly visible to its other inhabitants, and thus would be much more likely to be detected than the coelacanth."  Well said.


Forever In Pursuit

So, is it a spirit? Is it a cryptic animal yet to be discovered that has eluded humans for ages? Dubbed as the 'last living dinosaur', the Mokele-mbembe is still hot in pursuit. Most believe that eye witnesses see what they want to see, or actually see the shape of another animal, thinking it is the Mokele-mbembe.

Even after 30+ expeditions over the years, the Mokele-mbembe still had not been found. There is no genuine, legitimate physical evidence that has been collected. Although ardent researchers and cryptozoologists do believe that there are living dinosaurs hiding in the depths of the wild today, with the Mokele-mbembe being one of them, there's no evidence ample enough to prove its existence.





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