Welcome fans of the strange and bizarre to another mind-blowing issue of your favorite e-mail newsletter, Conspiracy Journal!  This week we take a hairy look at Bigfoot and whether or not recent reports in Arizona have any credibility. We also examine the possibility that the human brain can transcend time and space, and of course what would an issue of CJ be without a UFO story?  So this week we check out the media's responsibility with accurate reporting on UFO sightings and investigations...no giggling allowed.  So sit back and let your mind drift away to the wild world of conspiracies, the paranormal and everything else weird and strange that THEY don't want you to know!

[I’m writing this article at the risk of venturing awfully close to the world of parapsychology. I've included several links and references, which you, fine readers, can assess for yourselves in terms of determining legitimacy. Comments and criticisms are always welcomed.]

While researching my protopanpsychism article, I came across the work of Dean Radin and Dick Bierman whose research has yielded some very eerie results.

Before I get to this, however, I’d like you to conduct a short experiment. While looking at your feet, stomp on the ground. You will notice that your visual perception of your foot hitting the floor matches your sensation of touching it. This would be fine except for one thing: the speed of light is vastly faster than the conduction times and synaptic delays through the long nerves and spinal cord from your feet. As a result, you should be seeing the event before you feel it – and the delay should be noticeable.

But it’s not.

Benjamin Libet and his associates first documented this phenomenon in 1979, which is now referred to as the ‘delay-and-antedating hypothesis/paradox.’ A number of explanations have been posited to reconcile this strange observation.

Perhaps there is a lag in the visual information. If this is the case, then the visual cortex is set for a time delay such that it can keep up with the slow pulses from the extremities. This would be a rather bizarre revelation if true, meaning that we are constantly viewing the world with a small degree of latency. This is almost certainly not the case, as Darwinian selection would favor those animals that do not experience any kind of visual delay. Living in the past would be grossly disadvantageous out in the wild.

Another possible solution is that sight and feel are experienced at separate times, but are remembered as happening simultaneously. Problems with this hypothesis are similar to the previous one – a suggestion that we are not meaningfully rooted in the present and that our brain “edits” reality for us.

A third solution, one that seems ludicrous at first glance, is that the slow sensory information is referred backwards in time from the near future to match the fast information.

Impossible, right?

Well, that’s where the work of Radin and Bierman come in. They have performed experiments in which it appears that the brain is reacting to stimuli before it is experienced. Radin and Bierman have conducted experiments in which subjects viewed random images flashing on a computer screen. Some of the images were rather neutral while others were meant to invoke a highly emotional response. The researchers discovered that the subjects responded strongly to the emotional images compared to the neutral ones, and that the response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds before the images appeared.

Bierman recently repeated these experiments using an fMRI brain scanner and documented emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Other laboratories have made similar findings.

Assuming the data is being recorded and interpreted correctly, what's going on here? How is it possible that information can run backwards in time? Roger Penrose believes that quantum effects in the brain could explain backwards referral. He suggests that such effects may occur commonly and even routinely. “If in some manifestation of consciousness,” says Penrose, “classical reasoning about the temporal ordering of events leads us to a contradictory conclusion, then this is strong indication that quantum actions are indeed at work!" Neuroscientist Fred Alan Wolf has come to a similar conclusion and has offered his ‘Two-Time Observable Transactional Interpretation Model’ (TTOTIM) of consciousness.

Stuart Hameroff notes that quantum information can indeed run backwards, or be time indeterminate, citing the Aharonov formulation which suggests that each quantum state reduction has a dual vector, both forward and backwards in time.

What does this all mean? As Wolf notes, “we need to look toward altering our concept of time in some manner, not that this is an easy thing to do. Perhaps we should begin with the idea that a single event in time is really as meaningless as a single event in space or a single velocity. Meaningful relation arises as a correspondence, a relationship with some reference object.”

In addition, this not also adds further credence to the quantum consciousness hypothesis, but to panpsychist notions as well.

References:

Fred Alan Wolf: "A Quantum Physics Model of the Timing of Conscious Experience"
Stuart Hameroff: "Time Flies (Backwards?)"

Source: Sentient Developments
http://sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com/2006/10/does-brain-tap-into-future.html

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WHITERIVER - For centuries, tiny spirit people have been a part of Apache culture, haunting the night with mischief, playing tricks in the shadows.

Now, the White Mountain Apache Tribe has another mystical being to watch for after dark: Bigfoot.

In recent months, the legendary creature purportedly has been chased by police officers, spotted by campers and caught peeking through windows of tribal residents' homes.
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Investigators even made plaster casts of what appear to be footprints and sent hair samples from a reported Sasquatch-like creature to a state lab for testing. Reports snowballed so much that, over the weekend, controversial Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi visited the Fort Apache Reservation northeast of Globe for the second time this year to interview witnesses and launch a mini-expedition.

During a broadcast Saturday on the tribe's radio station, Biscardi exhorted witnesses to come forward.

"We're here for the white Bigfoot, the monkey-type creature with a tail, the one that was throwing rocks at people here," Biscardi said. "I gotta tell you, people, it's here."

By day's end, at least a half-dozen tribal members had told of seeing a strange beast, hearing blood-curdling screams in the night or surviving other experiences.

Several offered to join Biscardi's Searching for Bigfoot Inc. team on mini-expeditions. Most backed out, but 18-year-old Laramie Smith came through after explaining that he'd heard Bigfoot noises near a place called Diamond Creek. He said he had found a cave that might be the beast's lair.

Smith led the team deep into piney woods, stopping under a full moon. Searchers geared up with infrared and thermal-imaging devices. They had a Taser, a tranquilizer gun and a net-shooting canon, just in case. At 11 p.m., the search began in earnest.

A stinky prowler
According to Biscardi, a former Las Vegas show producer, there are at least 3,500 Bigfoots nationwide, a number he derived by counting up one year of reported encounters, then subtracting suspected hoaxes and mistakes.

He has been trying to capture a specimen for 33 years, and his team has visited nearly every state in that quest. Biscardi claims to have seen a half-dozen Bigfoots personally. Recently, team members reportedly chased one into a Texas swamp. Biscardi first visited the Apache reservation in August, after a flurry of strange incidents. The most noteworthy occurred around 2:30 a.m. Aug. 14, when Barry and Tammy Lupe of Whiteriver called 911 to report an un-humanly large prowler peering through their window.

In a police report, White Mountain tribal Officer Katherine Montoya described what happened when she responded to the call:

"It stood approximately 6'7" tall. It appeared to be about 220 pounds or more. It had exceptionally long arms; it did not appear to be wearing any clothes, and just appeared black. When it turned towards me, the most obvious feature was its eyes. The skin around his eyes was a lighter color than the rest of the face. It appeared almost white while the rest of the suspect was black. I could smell a distinct odor, like a stink bug. You know, when you squish a stinkbug it smells. It never made any sounds until it crashed through the fence (while running away)."

Myth or beast?
Beast legends - Yeti, Yowie, the Abominable Snowman - have been recounted around the world for centuries. Bigfoot is among the more recent figures, first described in 1958 after giant footprints were discovered around a logging camp in Humboldt County, Calif.

Academic researchers today are generally skeptical. Last week, faculty at Idaho State University complained that a colleague, anatomy Professor Jeffrey Meldrum, is embarrassing them by promoting the Bigfoot myth.

According to Wikipedia.org, "The majority of scientists reject the likelihood of such a creature's existence and consider the stories of Bigfoot to be a combination of unsubstantiated folklore and hoax."

Another online publication, The Skeptics Dictionary, scoffs: "There are no bones, no scat, no artifacts, no dead bodies . . . no fur, no nothing."

Stan Lindstedt, a regents professor of biology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, said new animal species are discovered only in the most remote places on Earth and it is unfathomable that a huge subhuman creature would remain concealed over wide sections of the country. "I put that in the category of mythology that can certainly make our culture interesting, but has nothing to do with science."

Biscardi shrugs off the doubters: "The scientific world does not believe. But you know what? Who cares? We've had the experiences."

True believers point to the number of sightings, rejecting the idea that every encounter can be explained as a prank or misidentified wildlife. Their position has suffered serious setbacks in the new millennium, however.

Four years ago, the family of Ray L. Wallace, a northern California logger, announced upon his death that he had created the first Sasquatch footprints as a prank, wearing shoes of carved wood.

Then, in 2004, author Greg Long published The Making of Bigfoot, a book that says the most famous film footage was another hoax involving an ape costume made in Hollywood. Bob Heironimus, a Pepsi bottling company employee from Washington, admitted wearing the outfit.

'Hoodwinked'
That dubious history has been compounded by questions about Biscardi and his Searching for Bigfoot Inc., which elicits criticism even within the community of Sasquatch enthusiasts.

Last year, Biscardi declared on a national radio show that a wounded specimen had been captured in Nevada, and subscribers who paid $59.95 to access his Web site would see it on streaming video. Instead of film footage, however, the public got a bizarre story that the critter, and its mate, had been abducted by a veterinarian. Eventually, Biscardi conceded that there was no caged specimen. He insisted he had been "hoodwinked" by associates.

Leonard Coleman, a self-described cryptozoologist who has written two books on Bigfoot, said Biscardi first entered the arena decades ago as an associate of Ivan Marx, who created notoriously phony films. Biscardi has since produced documentaries of his own.

"He seems very much to be in this to make money," Coleman said. "He is just shunned in this whole community. He's been a continuation of the hoax legacy of Ivan Marx."

Biscardi said he got victimized in Nevada by a charade, a chronic risk in the Bigfoot business. "I refunded every damned penny," he said. "I was hoaxed. Everybody's human."

Biscardi, who sells memorabilia and has sought corporate sponsors, makes no apology for trying to make money. He said he has transformed his passion into a career, and there are payroll expenses to cover.

The anticlimax
Back in Apache country on Saturday, searchers splashed across Diamond Creek and climbed a hill.

There was no cave, no Bigfoot nest.

One team member, noting that Sasquatches sometimes communicate by knocking sounds, picked up a stick and began beating on a log.

Another stood on a rock and cupped her hands to her mouth - "Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!" - using "vocalizations" to lure the beast.

A coyote howled in the distance. All was quiet.

Biscardi, who had stationed himself next to a campfire back at the truck, said it was time to move on: "If they did not respond to the whooping and tree knocking, and there's no signs, then there's nothing here."

Source: The Arizona Republic
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1106bigfoot1106.html
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The Associated Press is carrying a summary article out of Arizona, telling of Tom Biscardi (above) going on an expedition there. The piece leaves out any examination of Biscardi’s past and is a chopped up version of a longer article, which is found below. But what is the background story on this original Arizona news item? Can we pull back the drapes surrounding this media Oz, and figure out how this article was constructed? Here’s some details.

On Thursday, November 2, 2006, a reporter from the Arizona Republic named Dennis Wagner emailed me. He said he was “working on a story about [the] Bigfoot furor on the Apache reservation [there], and Tom Biscardi’s role in it. I’d like to speak with you. Deadline is Saturday afternoon.”

Dennis Wagner and I spoke later that day. I was not too hopeful that reporter Wagner would be doing a thorough or complete story as

(1) he said he only started studying Bigfoot two days ago (please note, not the Apache sightings of Bigfoot, but Bigfoot in general);

(2) he thought that the 1958 Bluff Creek prints and the “Patterson film” had both been completely debunked and Bigfoot evidence was based on hoaxes;

(3) he felt Natives have more acceptance of the “spirit world,” so are more open to “believing” in Bigfoot;

(4) he was using as one of his main sources Tom Biscardi; and

(5) he had done most of his research online, including finding the Coast to Coast recap of Biscardi’s flip-flops.

There’s other disturbing indicators, as well, in Wagner’s article, such as referencing “Wikipedia” as a source, and carrying as a factual statement from an allegedly discredited book that the “most famous film footage was another hoax involving an ape costume made in Hollywood. Bob Heironimus, a Pepsi bottling company employee from Washington, admitted wearing the outfit.”

The reality is the “outfit,” according to that book, was said to have been made from (1) pony skins, and then separately in another place in that volume, as (2) an artificial gorilla costume from the Carolinas. You can’t have it both ways. Hollywood was not part of the confused explanations either, at least for the costume. Likewise there is no definite truths in Heironimus’ “confession.” Wagner’s article merely carries forth these items as foundation points, but they are theories with holes in them, not facts.

Reporter Dennis Wagner has fulfilled my prediction that this article would continue in line with other recent debunking media treatments of Bigfoot. For this Arizona Republic reporter to summarize the entire weekend article about Jeff Meldrum as: “Last week, faculty at Idaho State University complained that a colleague, anatomy Professor Jeffrey Meldrum, is embarrassing them by promoting the Bigfoot myth,” merely reinforced my thoughts.

Hey, lol, the reporter couldn’t even spell my name correctly (yep, that’s me, “Leonard Coleman,” sort of quoted below), despite the fact he emailed me, via my LorenColeman.com website.

This article reflects a level of media mythmaking that appears to be the standard resportage to be expected these days.

Source: Loren Coleman Cryptomundo
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/biscardi-az/

- WHAT TO DO ABOUT UFOS DEPARTMENT -

Life in the Stars

It's Time to Question Your Beliefs!

If you have a voracious appetite for stories of lost treasure, are fascinated by the occult, or savor tales of the unexplained, conspiracies, and other strange stories of the weird world we live in, then Mysteries Magazine is for you.

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