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- EAT FROM THE TREE OF LIFE DEPARTMENT -

2050 - and Immortality is Within our Grasp

Britain's leading thinker on the future offers an extraordinary vision of life in the next 45 years.

Airplanes will be too afraid to crash, yogurts will wish you good morning before being eaten and human consciousness will be stored on supercomputers, promising immortality for all - though it will help to be rich.

These fantastic claims are not made by a science fiction writer or a crystal ball-gazing lunatic. They are the deadly earnest predictions of Ian Pearson, head of the futurology unit at BT.

'If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem,' Pearson told The Observer. 'If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine. We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT.'

Pearson, 44, has formed his mind-boggling vision of the future after graduating in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, spending four years working in missile design and the past 20 years working in optical networks, broadband network evolution and cybernetics in BT's laboratories. He admits his prophecies are both 'very exciting' and 'very scary'.

He believes that today's youngsters may never have to die, and points to the rapid advances in computing power demonstrated last week, when Sony released the first details of its PlayStation 3. It is 35 times more powerful than previous games consoles. 'The new PlayStation is 1 per cent as powerful as a human brain,' he said. 'It is into supercomputer status compared to 10 years ago. PlayStation 5 will probably be as powerful as the human brain.'

The world's fastest computer, IBM's BlueGene, can perform 70.72 trillion calculations per second (teraflops) and is accelerating all the time. But anyone who believes in the uniqueness of consciousness or the soul will find Pearson's next suggestion hard to swallow. 'We're already looking at how you might structure a computer that could possibly become conscious. There are quite a lot of us now who believe it's entirely feasible.

'We don't know how to do it yet but we've begun looking in the same directions, for example at the techniques we think that consciousness is based on: information comes in from the outside world but also from other parts of your brain and each part processes it on an internal sensing basis. Consciousness is just another sense, effectively, and that's what we're trying to design in a computer. Not everyone agrees, but it's my conclusion that it is possible to make a conscious computer with superhuman levels of intelligence before 2020.'

He continued: 'It would definitely have emotions - that's one of the primary reasons for doing it. If I'm on an aeroplane I want the computer to be more terrified of crashing than I am so it does everything to stay in the air until it's supposed to be on the ground.

'You can also start automating an awful lots of jobs. Instead of phoning up a call centre and getting a machine that says, "Type 1 for this and 2 for that and 3 for the other," if you had machine personalities you could have any number of call staff, so you can be dealt with without ever waiting in a queue at a call centre again.'

Pearson, from Whitehaven in Cumbria, collaborates on technology with some developers and keeps a watching brief on advances around the world. He concedes the need to debate the implications of progress. 'You need a completely global debate. Whether we should be building machines as smart as people is a really big one. Whether we should be allowed to modify bacteria to assemble electronic circuitry and make themselves smart is already being researched.

'We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it's possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium. You could have a conversation with your strawberry yogurt before you eat it.'

In the shorter term, Pearson identifies the next phase of progress as 'ambient intelligence': chips with everything. He explained: 'For example, if you have a pollen count sensor in your car you take some antihistamine before you get out. Chips will come small enough that you can start impregnating them into the skin. We're talking about video tattoos as very, very thin sheets of polymer that you just literally stick on to the skin and they stay there for several days. You could even build in cellphones and connect it to the network, use it as a video phone and download videos or receive emails.'

Philips, the electronics giant, is developing the world's first rollable display which is just a millimetre thick and has a 12.5cm screen which can be wrapped around the arm. It expects to start production within two years.

The next age, he predicts, will be that of 'simplicity' in around 2013-2015. 'This is where the IT has actually become mature enough that people will be able to drive it without having to go on a training course.

'Forget this notion that you have to have one single chip in the computer which does everything. Why not just get a stack of little self-organising chips in a box and they'll hook up and do it themselves. It won't be able to get any viruses because most of the operating system will be stored in hardware which the hackers can't write to. If your machine starts going wrong, you just push a button and it's reset to the factory setting.'

Pearson's third age is 'virtual worlds' in around 2020. 'We will spend a lot of time in virtual space, using high quality, 3D, immersive, computer generated environments to socialise and do business in. When technology gives you a life-size 3D image and the links to your nervous system allow you to shake hands, it's like being in the other person's office. It's impossible to believe that won't be the normal way of communicating.

Source: The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1489635,00.html

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- THE WILD WORLD OF FREE ENERGY DEPARTMENT -

Searl Effect: A Tantalizing Technology and a Sad Coda

An elderly Searl recalls achievements, blames former associates for stealing Searl's Electromagnetic Generator (SEG), and outlines the basis of both the generator and flight without pollution or G-forces.

In 1946, at age fourteen and with the help of kindly owners of a generator factory, John R.R. Searl built devices based on his dreams. These devices allegedly flew without any batteries, fuel or wires. The flight aspect was a surprise; the youth was attempting to build a magnetic generator. As long-time associate and supporter John Thomas explains, at that time the young Searl ???had such conviction in his theory that he was able to convince the factory owners to help him. All he had to do was pay for the materials used in his experiment. He was given the use of the facility and the help of a number of magnetics engineers.??? No longer having access to these resources, Searl has spent a lifetime attempting to get this technology duplicated so that it can be made available.

The sad aspect is the amount of time, space, money and effort he has been forced to devote to defending himself and trying to re-acquire what he says has been stolen from him by former associates. In a lengthy, complicated document the now elderly John R.R. Searl jumps back and forth between this theories and the interpersonal tensions that stood in the way of achieving this goal of clean energy and anti-gravity devices. These personality conflicts culminated in the theft of the elderly inventor??�s technology, apparently with the advance knowledge if not consent of the police, while he was in hospital. It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for this man, who points out that he was depriving himself of basic necessities in order to buy with his pension money the expensive cameras and other equipment that others felt they had the right to take.

On the home page of Searl's site, SearlEffect.com, is a list of data that is available to non-members. Standing out among these is a report by a team of Russian researchers who built a reduced-sized model based on Searl??�s concepts and ran it through several tests. In proper scientific manner befitting their association with the Russian Institute for High Temperatures in the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, researchers V.V. Roschin and S.M. Godin carefully explain what changes they made to the design, while attempting to respect its basic principles. To reduce cost and complexity, they used only one magnetized ring and set of rollers, not three as in the fully-fledged SEG. Their experimental method is outlined in orderly steps, specifying the use of an electric starter motor to get the assembly rotating, and then the point at which they switched off the electrical input as the SEG model began back-feeding energy when its rotational speed increased.

Their experimental results are striking. In many repetitions of the SEG warm-up procedure and independent mode of operating, they recorded reduction in the registered weight of the device on its mounting stand of 30-35 percent after the device reaches 550 rpms. They were able to determine the electrical load capacity of their version of the device as 6-7 kW. Above that limit, attempting to attach additional load caused the SEG to exit its self-generation mode and to slow down to a stop. They tried using clockwise and anti-clockwise motion, and found that while an anti-gravity effect occurs with the former, the latter causes the force to reverse and to increase weight (gravity effect) by the same percentage at 600 rpms. Concerned for the mechanical stability of their device, they did not test it at any faster rotation.

Even more dramatic effects including concentric thermal ???walls??? were reported. These rings of magnetic fields around the device felt discernibly colder to the physical senses in addition to registering 6-8 degrees Celsius below the ambient temperature. And when the laboratory was darkened, the Russian scientists observed an unusual toroidal field of blue-pink glowing luminescence around the converter when it was in operation. Godin and Roschin admit they cannot explain these phenomena using the conventional models of physics. Please see:
http://www.searleffect.com/free/russianseg/russianseg.htm

If the Russian document is valid, Searl does ???have something??? even if it seems that he??�s his own worst enemy given his communication style. He glories in not being educated in the conventional school system. Though the lack of this education inhibits his expression and clarity, it does, he gloats, leave him free to discover ideas for himself.

Many experts have condemned Searl??�s Law of Squares and unusual mathematical theories as useless or ignorant ramblings. However, as Searl points out, his loudest critics have not invented a clean-energy technology and been robbed of it, so he does not consider their criticism to be based on real knowledge. He devotes many pages and photos to the 2003 robbery, in which his former associates entered his house and took his equipment, and also to complaints about the burning of his papers. Naturally enough this incident was a huge setback, has cost the 73-year old inventor a great deal of time and struggle merely to regain the level he had reached. Focused the author is on that act of theft and his reasons for stating that the perpetrators still fail to understand the technology properly although they claim to be its owners, the continuing references to this conflict distract the reader from wanting to study these unique theories. However, this idiosyncratic thought framework is said to be more fully explained in other books and papers authored by Searl. There are DVD films available of public lectures that might also be more accessible than this convoluted essay.

Searl does not intend to demolish conventional physics, but just to stretch its rigid frame a bit. He is approaching from a different direction but using many of the known principles. Searl mentions that Newton??�s law of motion includes the fact that motion is perpetual until acted upon by a different force. He writes:

"Based on the evidence so far achieved, I can confirm now that I do have absolute faith that we can with the correct team of personal [sic]; obtain the functions which are required to cause a mass that is free to move and will do so on its own accord. It will rotate around another unit of similar material but of greater mass until such time that another force is applied to change its course of direction according to Newton??�s law; that being in this case a stop!"

This is a significant point. Regularly the mass media trots out the meme ???perpetual motion machine?????� tightly linked to the concept ???fake??? ??� in order to make us turn off our minds and not even consider the possibility that this might be valid. In one of his informal letters found at http://www.cheniere.org/correspondence/011905b.htm, Bearden says:

Isn??�t it sad, when one is attacked as a ???perpetual motion nut??? as a ???knee-jerk reaction??? to the mere mention of electrical systems taking their energy from the vacuum? Perpetual motion is supposed to be the epitome of foolishness ??� when it fact it is Newton??�s first law. Place an object or system into a state of motion, and it will remain forever in that state of motion unless and until some external force is brought in to forcefully change it into a different state of motion. Then that SECOND one is eternal, until the intervention of an outside force again.

While clean and safe in normal circumstances, Searl argues that extreme precision and expert knowledge of his principles are both essential. He states that his technology could be dangerous if mishandled. He even compares it to atomic power getting out of control. Is this exaggeration intended to scare people away from supporting his competitors who he claims lack adequate knowledge to build and run the SEG? Or could this clean energy system pose a danger if not understood and managed with knowledge? Apparently the Russian experimenters did not run into any danger; but they were concerned enough to install a braking system to ensure that the SEG did not escape from their control. In their rather conservative tests they had no ill effects, but were also not exposed to the working device for a long time. Searl claims health improves with exposure to the properly-working device, and as proof mentions the healing of burns he had suffered in a kitchen accident. If the SEG device is tapping into and running on orgone or life-energy, beneficial effects rather than harm would be expected.

Is the Searl effect genuine? Timely funding and support for the aging inventor may bring back to reality in useful size what the young boy Searl achieved in miniature in 1946. We would all do well to hope that day will come! The alternative is the status quo: the monopoly held by the wealthy on finite forms of energy that is destructive of our environment.

Since Tesla discovered aetheric energy almost a century ago, the tantalizing possibility has existed that there is a cleaner, healthier way to power our transportation and other energy needs. What stands in the way, as all who walk that independent path have discovered, is human greed and entrenched economic interests. It is not governments that have stopped this. As Searl explains, prime ministers and presidents have sent him letters of encouragement, but have not had the clout to order the energy companies and their wealthy bosses to step aside once money has been invested in hydroelectric dams, nuclear plants, oil wells and distribution systems, and so on ad nauseam.

It may take nothing less than a total spiritual transformation of humanity to bring about the change to clean energy.

However, Searl??�s robust personality carries him on through difficulties that would stop many others. He asserts, ???I am not a rebel or have rebel ideas, for if I did airlines would be under my control now. ??� The relationship in the phrase MY JOY simply means that these conditions will all contribute to the acceptance of the INVERSE ??� G ??� VEHICLE as the rightful means of transportation in the atmosphere and space.???

The following treatise is written in reference to and with c 49523/81679_SEGREV.pdf : http://www.searleffect.com/free/SEGREV/SEGREV.pdf

Source: Pure Energy Systems
http://pesn.com/2005/05/22/6900100_Searl_Effect/

- THROUGH TIME AND SPACE DEPARTMENT -

Scientists Now Say That Wormhole 'No Use' Fo 49523/81686_wormhole.jpg

For budding time travellers, the future (or should that be the past?) is starting to look bleak.

Hypothetical tunnels called wormholes once looked like the best bet for constructing a real time machine.

These cosmic shortcuts, which link one point in the Universe to another, are favoured by science fiction writers as a means both of explaining time travel and of circumventing the limitations imposed by the speed of light.

The concept of wormholes will be familiar to anyone who has watched the TV programmes Farscape, Stargate SG1 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The opening sequence of the BBC's new Doctor Who series shows the Tardis hurtling through a "vortex" that suspiciously resembles a wormhole - although the Doctor's preferred method of travel is not explained in detail.

But the idea of building these so-called traversable wormholes is looking increasingly shaky, according to two new scientific analyses.

A common analogy used to visualise these phenomena involves marking two holes at opposite ends of a sheet of paper, to represent distant points in the Universe. One can then bend the paper over so that the two remote points are positioned on top of each other.

If it were possible to contort space-time in this way, a person might step through a wormhole and emerge at a remote time or distant location.

The person would pass through a region of the wormhole called the throat, which flares out on either side.

According to one idea, a wormhole could be kept open by filling its throat, or the region around it, with an ingredient called exotic matter.

This is strange stuff indeed, and explaining it requires scientists to look beyond the laws of classical physics to the world of quantum mechanics.

Exotic matter is repelled, rather than attracted, by gravity and is said to have negative energy - meaning it has even less than empty space.

But according to a new study by Stephen Hsu and Roman Buniy, of the University of Oregon, US, this method of building a traversable wormhole may be fatally flawed. In a paper published on the arXiv pre-print server, the authors looked at a kind of wormhole in which the space-time "tube" shows only weak deviations from the laws of classical physics.

These "semi-classical" wormholes are the most desirable type for time travel because they potentially allow travellers to predict where and when they would emerge.

Wormholes entirely governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, on the other hand, would likely transport their payloads to an undesired time and place.

Calculations by the Oregon researchers show a wormhole that combines exotic matter with semi-classical space-time would be fundamentally unstable.

This result relies in part on a previous paper in which Hsu and Buniy argued that systems which violate a physical principle known as the null energy condition become unstable.

"We aren't saying you can't build a wormhole. But the ones you would like to build - the predictable ones where you can say Mr Spock will land in New York at 2pm on this day - those look like they will fall apart," Dr Hsu said.

A separate study by Chris Fewster, of the University of York, UK, and Thomas Roman, of Central Connecticut State University, US, takes a different approach to tackling the question of wormholes.

Amongst other things, their analysis deals with the proposal that wormhole throats could be kept open using arbitrarily small amounts of exotic matter.

Fewster and Roman calculated that, even if it were possible to build such a wormhole, its throat would probably be too small for time travel.

It might - in theory - be possible to carefully fine-tune the geometry of the wormhole so that the wormhole throat became big enough for a person to fit through, says Fewster.

But building a wormhole with a throat radius big enough to just fit a proton would require fine-tuning to within one part in 10 to the power of 30. A human-sized wormhole would require fine-tuning to within one part in 10 to the power of 60.

"Frankly no engineer is going to be able to do that," said the York researcher.

The authors are currently preparing a manuscript for publication.

However, there is still support for the idea of traversable wormholes in the scientific community. One physicist told BBC News there could be problems with Hsu's and Buniy's conclusions.

"Violations of the null energy condition are known to occur in a number of situations. And their argument would prohibit any violation of it," the scientist commented.

"If that's true, then don't worry about Hawking radiation from a black hole; the entire black hole vacuum becomes unstable."

The underlying physics was not in doubt, the researcher argued. The real challenge was in explaining how to engineer wormholes big enough to be of practical use.

Cambridge astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is amongst those researchers who have pondered the question of wormholes.

In the 1980s, he argued that something fundamental in the laws of physics would prevent wormholes being used for time travel. This idea forms the basis of Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture.

Source: BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4564477.stm

- RADIO ROUND-UP DEPARTMENT -

It's been busy, busy, busy for Tim Swartz, your beloved editor of Conspiracy Journal, as he is the guest this week on the Martian Revelation Radio Show with host Gary Leggiere. You can listen to this fascinating program online at: http://www.martianrevelation.com/radio63.html
Tim and Gary talk about life on Mars, Nikola Tesla and secret space programs. This is a show not to be missed!

- BOOK REVIEW DEPARTMENT -

Our Alien Planet by Sean Casteel wi 49523/81684_alienplanet.jpg

~ Review by Colin Bennett ~

Both Sean Casteel and Timothy Beckley are known for their combined refusal to accept the world and experience as being both essentially mundane things following iron-bound rules.

Many of the subjects discussed in this book have been analysed for many years. But nevertheless, the authors manage to present new and update perspectives. The first thing that strikes a reader about this book is the energy and excitement of its vision. We hear about ley lines and earth??�s ???psychic network???, UFOs Nessie, Bigfoot, and even the Beast of Boleskin. Included are essays on time warps, crop circles, ghost lights, glowing orbs, violations of the laws of physics and ???warps??? in space and time.

The authors take the Fortean view that the world is an utterly fantastic place in which anything that can be imagined can happen. This book is certainly an antidote to those who regard the world as one big ???harmonised??? number system working in an ???objective??? fashion according to ???scientific rules.??? It is not a book for those who would wish to work out intellectually ???how the world works.??? In this book there is no step by step mechanical piling of ???factual??? sand grain upon sand grain until, as always, the structure of bourgeois reason collapses. What the book reveals is that Nature and experience both are full of hair-line cracks which reveal utterly fantastic dimensions.

After that, the world become as mad as it ever was, and those who regard Measurement as Truth become equally as profound as those who believe in the prophecies of the sacred monkeys of Bali.

As writers and thinkers the authors take the Fortean view of ???reality??? being like the ???average??? man, that it always something of a Platonic approximation. This is not the ???facts versus fiction??? curtain-twitching view of the Victorian Station Masters of mundane science who see anomalies as ???noise in the sytem??? and who are about as welcome as a someone who jumps out of a cake at a party holding a Rubic Cube.

Here is vision ??� not angles times, document numbers, data banks beyond the sun and moon which reveal nothing, but a demonstration of the Fortean principle that the world never ever behaves itself, a ???truth??? which most receive with profound thanks from Casteel and Beckley.

Review By Colin Bennett - The Combat Diaries
http://www.combat-diaries.co.uk/

- SEARCHING OUTSIDE THE BOX DEPARTMENT -

Astronaut Says S 49523/81680_mitchelledgar.jpg

The sixth man to walk on the moon spoke about his experience with unexplainable phenomena Thursday to a skeptical audience of about 100 scientists.

Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut on Apollo 14, talked of the experiences that led him to research the unexplainable at the 24th annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration at the Best Western Gateway Grand Hotel in Gainesville.

"It isn't science, but personal experience, that stimulates you to do good science," he said.

Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked on the first extended research trip to the moon in 1971. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to sponsor the study of unconventional scientific models, such as intuition and feeling, and he was inducted into the Space Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1998.

His interest in the unexplainable began on his way back to Earth aboard Apollo 14. He gazed out the window and realized he was connected to the stars, his colleagues and the planet through his own molecules, he said.

"You could see the Earth, the moon and the stars with each rotation of the spacecraft," Mitchell said. "The stars were literally brighter for me. It was an awesome, awe-inspiring view of the heavens."

He could not find scientific literature on his experience, and he had to delve into Sanskrit literature to define his personal moment, inspiring him to begin scientific research on unexplainable occurrences.

Further incidents spiked his interest in topics that traditional science labeled as hoaxes.

Mitchell said a telepathic partner "teleported" tie pins from a jewelry box Mitchell had lost years before, and a Tibetan healer cured his mother's glaucoma.

As a scientist, he had a hard time believing it, he said, but he could not deny it either.

"I was used to looking at science in theory and in abstract, not in what I was experiencing personally," he said.

Further research showed him that all cultures have unexplainable occurrences, but most have been attributed to religion instead of science, causing confusion and misunderstanding, he said.

Audience members were willing to acknowledge Mitchell's controversial opinion.

Granted, his anomalies are hard to understand," said Marilyn Schmidt, an SSE member from San Diego. "If we understood them, we wouldn't be here. Trying to understand them gives us a way to look at life's meaning and go into deeper issues."

SSE wants to provide a forum for discussions as controversial as Mitchell's experiences, said Thomas Dykstra, society secretary and host of the meeting. Still, Mitchell's speech is not to be taken as fact, Dykstra said.

"Scientists normally come up with reasons to deny or ignore Mitchell's experiences," he said. "In this setting, we're willing to accept it as a topic of conversation, not necessarily as truth. The society doesn't want to endorse any of the speeches given today. It simply hopes to provide a forum."

Source: The Gainesville Sun
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050520/LOCAL
/205200322/1078/news

- A HAUNTING WE WILL GO DEPARTMENT -

Joshua Warren, our tour leader, and his assistant Caleb Hanks stand outside Barley's Taproom smoking a final pre-tour cigarette. As he chats with our small crowd, Warren emits the confidence of a well-practiced magician. He seems far older than his mere 28 years, and if he's nervous, he doesn't show it.

But he'd have good reason to be nervous, frankly. This isn't just some early-evening walk around scenic downtown Asheville. Tonight, we're hunting ghosts.

Warren is president of the League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained phenomena Research, or LEMUR, and he's spent the last 10 years in serious study of ethereal presences, phantom lights and other strange occurrences that most scientific researchers would likely dismiss as paranormal bunk. He's even written a book about area ghosts, Haunted Asheville (Shadowbox, 1996), which has since become the de facto guide for area spook seekers.

The tours remain a little rough, having started only a few weeks ago, and Warren is still in the process of training his guides. As a result, the aura is anything but frightening. In spite of this lighthearted mood, though, Warren makes it clear that he takes his pursuit of the unseen very seriously.

He remarks: "One thing about this tour, as opposed to other tours, is that we are ghost hunters" (read: not everyday tour guides). His voice is as clear and professional as a radio announcer's ??� not surprising, since he also hosts the Saturday-night paranormal call-in show "Speaking of Strange" on AM 570 WWNC.

"Let's go."

As we walk toward Church Street, Warren begins telling us about the old unmarked graves said to have been paved over to make room for the roads. This street, he says, is home to many strange sightings. Before we get to the row of churches that give the street its name, however, our leader stops us and begins fishing around in the bag his assistant is carrying.

"Sometimes you get lucky," says Warren, pulling out a few strange items from the satchel. "You get to see something anomalous or ghostly with your naked eyes. Other times, if you take a picture, you get something you might not be able to see. I'll give you a demonstration of what I'm talking about."

He pulls out a tiny electric pocket fan, and turns it on. Like the twirling blades of the fan, he says, many extra-natural events happen too fast to see unaided. In his other hand is something that looks like a 1950s sci-fi movie weapon ??� a miniature strobe light. He flicks a switch and makes the beam hover over the whirring blades. In the flashes, we see what he means: frozen glimpses of ghostly propellers.

"Your camera's shutter speed," says Warren, "allows the invisible to become visible."

At this point, Warren's assistant begins passing out "EMF Meters," the tour's prime ghost-hunting tools. We are each handed a smallish box, roughly the size of a Zippo lighter, made of milky-white plastic. (According to Warren, they also glow in the dark.) On top is a thin antenna, flexible and coated in black plastic. There's a single, unmarked switch along the side. At the very bottom, next to the seam that joins the two plastic halves that conceal the inner workings, is a red light.

When that light turns on, Warren says, this tiny machine is detecting a powerful electromagnetic field.

"What we find is that there is some kind of strange connection between electromagnetic anomalies and the places where people experience ghostly activities," he explains.

We are told to keep an eye on our meters throughout the tour. If they come on, we could be in the presence of something not of this world.
Why Barley's has red pool tables

Warren leads us on a meandering tour of downtown Asheville. We walk by a building said to be plagued by apparitions of the falling bodies of Depression-era bankers; past unassuming hotels with histories of grim murders; through a placid city park that supposedly hosts the spirits of forgotten Civil War soldiers; and along a storefront allegedly troubled by, of all things, a phantom intercom system.

Not unexpectedly, concrete details are scarce. Most of these stories are rumors, or at best, curious anecdotes ??� but Warren doesn't seem bothered by this. Each new story is another hunt he has yet to go on, and tonight, we are his field researchers.

At one point, as we walk up Walnut Street, one of the EMF meters suddenly shudders to life. The red glow of the meter's light seems to be picking up something on the street just outside Gypsy Moon. For a moment, there is excitement.

After a brief examination, however, Warren tells us the meters are detecting the row of lights lining the window. Unless those lights are also haunted with the spirits of the waking dead, there's nothing more to see here.

Of course, not everything on the tour is quite as intangible as Warren's ghosts. Some of the stories are rooted in real blood ??� for instance, the strange events at Barley's Tap Room, which also serves as the tour's home base.

Here, we are told, is the scene of Asheville's biggest mass murder, a 1906 shooting spree that claimed the lives of five people, including two police officers. Step by red step, Warren leads us through a tale about a man named Will Harris, who killed his way up Eagle Street and down Broadway in a drunken, jealous rage.

These bloody events, Warren says, center around the very site where Barley's now stands.

Warren then tells about brief snippets of spooky happenings inside the bar, from unexplained sounds and ghostly voices to the odd story of the seemingly possessed service elevator. Ghosts or no ghosts, these are good yarns spun elegantly around a real-life tale of horror. (Later, however, over drinks at the bar, Doug Beatty, Barley's owner ??� and partner in the Haunted Asheville Ghost Tours ??� confirms most of these stories, and adds a few of his own.)

At the end of the tour, we stare at a grainy post-manhunt photo of Harris' bullet-riddled corpse while Warren collects the tiny EMF detectors. They are for sale, he reminds us, just in case we'd like to do a little freelance ghost hunting of our own.

[Joshua Warren's Haunted Asheville Ghost Tour is currently available by reservation only, although regular hours will likely start this summer. The tour lasts 60 minutes, and involves light walking. $13/adults, $7/children age 14 and under. For times and availability, call 216-3383 or visit www.hauntedasheville.com.]

Source: Mountain Xpress, Asheville, NC
http://www.mountainx.com/features/2005/0525ghosts.php

- THEY ALL DISCOVERED AMERICA DEPARTMENT -

49523/81682_kensingtonrunestone.jpg 'DaVinci Code'

Kensington, Minn. - Researchers have found new evidence of a secret code concealed on the Kensington Runestone, one of the most controversial pieces of Minnesota history.

The rock was found near Alexandria, Minn. a century ago. It bears an inscription that places Norwegians here in 1362.

Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is the Kensington Runestone an elaborate hoax?

New research suggests the rune stone is genuine, and a hidden code can prove it.

"Eight Goths and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey ... 10 men red with blood and dead ... 14 days journey from this island ... year 1362."

The Kensington Runestone's carved words have haunted the Ohman family for more than 100 years.

Olof Ohman has been accused of authoring Minnesota's most famous fraud. The farmer claimed he found the stone buried under a tree in 1898.

Critics believe the language on the rune stone is too modern and that some of the runes are made up. They say Ohman carved it himself to fool the learned.

The Ohman family's faith in the stone has never wavered, however.

"I just never had any doubt," said grandson Darwin Ohman. "I mean, I was very emphatic about it. Absolutely it's real. There's no doubt."

"(Critics are) calling (Olof Ohman) a liar," Minnesota geologist Scott Wolter said. "If this is a hoax, he lied to his two sons, he lied to his family, lied to his neighbors and friends and lied to the world."

Wolter and Texas engineer Dick Nielsen believe hidden secrets are carved in the Kensington Runestone.

"It changes history in a big way," Wolter said.

In 2000, Wolter performed one of the very few geological studies on the Kensington Runestone. He said the breakdown of minerals in the inscription shows the carving is at least 200 years old, placing it before Olof Ohman's time.

Wolter's findings support the first geological study that also found the stone to be genuine, which was performed in 1910.

"In my mind, the geology settled it once and for all," Wolter said.

Linguistic experts believe some of the stone's runes are made up, but Nielsen said he found one of the disputed runes in a Swedish rune document dating back to the 14th century.

"If they were wrong about that, what else were they wrong about?" Wolter said.

Wolter documented every individual rune on the stone with a microscope.

"I started finding things that I didn't expect," Wolter said.

Wolter discovered a dot inside each of four R-shaped runes.

"These are intentional, and they mean something," Wolter said.

Wolter and Nielsen scoured rune catalogs and found the dotted R's.

"It's an extremely rare rune that only appeared during medieval times," Wolter said. "This absolutely fingerprints it to the 14th century. This is linguistic proof this is medieval. Period."

Wolter and Nielsen traced the dotted R to rune-covered graves inside ancient churches on the island of Gotland off the coast of Sweden.

"The next thing that happened is, we started finding on these grave slabs these very interesting crosses," Wolter said.

Templar crosses are the symbol of a religious order of knights formed during the Crusades and persecuted by the Catholic Church in the 1300s.

"This was the genesis of their secret societies, secret codes, secret symbols, secret signs -- all this stuff," Wolter said. "If they carved the rune stone, why did they come here? And why did they carve this thing?"

Wolter has uncovered new evidence that has taken his research in a very different direction. He now believes the words on the stone may not be the record of the death of 10 men, but instead a secret code concealing the true purpose of the stone.

Linguists single out two runes representing the letters L and U as evidence Olof Ohman carved the stone. They are crossed, and linguists say they should not be. A third rune has a punch at the end of one line.

"Maybe they're saying, 'Pay attention to me,'" Wolter said.

Each rune on the stone has a numerical value. Wolter and Nielsen took the three marked runes and plotted them on a medieval dating system called the Easter Table.

When we plotted these three things we got a year: 1362," Wolter said. "It was like, oh my God, is this an accident? Is this a coincidence? I don't think so.

"We think, if it??�s the Templars, they confirmed the date which is on the stone -- 1362 -- by using a code in the inscription."

But why would Templars come to America, carve this stone and code the date?

"If it's the Templars, who were under religious persecution at the time, that would be a pretty good reason to come over here," Wolter said. "Maybe the rune stone is a land claim.

"I'm sure a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and say, 'Oh, it's "The DaVinci Code,"' and if they do, they do. This is the evidence, this is who was there, this is what the grave slabs tell us. It is what it is."

Wolter and Nielsen said they expected their work to be criticized. The developments in their research are too recent to have been reviewed by other rune stone experts.

The pair are preparing a book, "The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence," for future publication.

Source: WCCO-4
http://www.wcco.com/topstories/

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