The “Universal Church” is really starting to live up to it’s name.

From the Honolulu Exopolitics Examiner

The Vatican has just completed a five day conference astrobiology where scientists convened to discuss the detection and implications of extraterrestrial life. A major driving force behind the conference was the Director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes. In May 2008, Funes gave an interview to the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper saying that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials posed no problems to Catholic theology…

…the conference demonstrates a welcome openness by the Vatican on the possibility and implications of extraterrestrial life.  The Vatican’s openness to discussion of extraterrestrial life is no accident. It is part of an openness policy secretly adopted by the United Nations in February 2008. In fact, the Vatican is playing a leading role in preparing the world for extraterrestrial disclosure.

Read the Article in much more detail Here >>.

Maybe  the Vatican is still trying to make up for that whole “Galileo Thing” by being forward thinking when it comes to the implications of extraterrestrial life for Catholic theology. The good news is that the church is leaning toward considering Aliens to be “brothers of humanity”; with the added bonus that as “our brothers” they also qualify for the salvation of Jesus Christ (note how quickly the church is willing to accept extraterrestrials into the flock but the homosexual crowd is still left waiting at the door – just sayin’).

The acknowledgement of extraterrestrial  souls-in-waiting-to-be-saved  portends well for the Vatican as the present earth-bound market appears grossly to be over saturated and inefficient a this time.

From The Kitchener-Waterloo Record

LIMA, PERU — “They call me the hardware store,” says Requelme Abanto from his hospital bed in northern Peru.

Doctors in the city of Cajamarca say they removed 1.5 pounds of metal from Abanto’s stomach, including nails, coins, and rusted copper wire and scrap metal…

…The 26-year-old construction worker ate the metal for months, and told Peru’s Channel 9 television that he may now do it in public “as sport.”

“I swallowed 17 nails in February and didn’t die,” he said. “Five-inch nails, all in one day.”

Full Story Here >>.

Two Things.

First of all the competitive eating world could always use a few more “extreme” events like eating scrap metal, so I whole-heartedly support Abanto’s dream of making his neurosis a career.

Second, I just happen think the proclamation  “I ate 17 nails last February and didn’t die” is an instant classic.

From Slashfilm.com

…Hasbro’s Brian Goldner points to the success of toys Transformers and G.I. Joe, claiming that audiences have “shown a great desire for films that bring to life everything that has made these franchise properties stand the test of time. The strategic thinking and the tactical gambles that players must take in the game are what make RISK a classic, thoroughly engaging game. Those elements translated into an action-packed, thrilling story are what will make this a uniquely exciting movie.”

Read the full story here >>.

Wow. It never ceases to amaze how risk-averse (no pun intended) Hollywood is becoming – at least in theory. In Lala-land it seems that anything whatsoever that can be connected to an “existing franchise” is worth a shot. I mean, making a movie about world domination might not attract audiences, but if you slap a “trusted” brand-name on it (i.e. Transformers, GI Joe) then surely they’ll come out in droves. So far it seems to it work well enough.

The most popular movies this year reached back into the 80s toy-chest with big results; so perhaps this is an attempt to go back even further into the collective geek consciousness by dusting off the oh-so compelling narratives of yesteryear’s board games. And if “Risk: the Movie” is successful can a Hungry, Hungry Hippos movie be far off? Operation could be adapted into something quite terrifying if you let the right people do it; and Ants in the Pants has comedy gold written all over it.

But anyone that’s played Risk knows that the real action isn’t on the board anyways –  it’s sitting around the table watching grown men act like rabid maniacs, occasionally breaking down in tears, exchanging blows, and strutting about like boastful cocks. Go ahead and try to remember that “its just a game” the next time you lose Europe those 5 extra armies.

Watch what happens to this poor bastard when he trys to keep this cat on a leash.

Hahaha. I love cats.

From Canoe.ca

Members of Sasquatch Watch of Virginia went camping in the rugged Allegheny Mountain highlands of the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area with GPS navigators, cameras, voice recorders and plaster of Paris to make casts of huge footprints, West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported…

…The group took plaster casts of suspicious prints but didn’t spot the creature during the expedition last weekend.

Full article here >>.

The explosion of relatively inexpensive and powerful consumer gadgets has been called a major boon in the “democratization” of media technology. Things (films, games, music, books, software, experiments, prototypes, investigations, etc.) that once required tens thousands of dollars and crews of trained professionals can now be produced in a basement or backyard with only a few hundred bucks, some spare time, and a half decent computer.

Perhaps no other “industry” has felt this impact more than professional seekers of the paranormal. For only a relatively small amount of cash (or credit) and access to a Best Buy you can too can get yourself enough equipment to call yourself a “pro” mystery hunter and perhaps even get a reality t.v show while you’re at it. Personal Voice Recorder, err I mean EVP monitor? Check. Apparition Image Capture Device AKA a digital camera? Check. GPS? Fuck, you don’t wanna get lost in a haunted house do ya? Check!

However, can we really pass this shit off as “going high tech” anymore? You’d hope that by now the bar for “high tech” would have been set higher than mp3 players and cell phones. Not that I don’t appreciate how useful, productive, and even liberating these technologies potentially are; the fact that I can bitch with a straight face about how banal and ubiquitous they’ve become is actually something quite incredible. I’m just getting a bit tired of hearing “golly gee-whiz that’s so high tech” about anything that’s got more functionality than a potato peeler. A personal organizer/portable gaming system is simply not on the cutting edge anymore.

And to top it all off in true “paranormal investigator” reality t.v. show style, after playing around with all their “high tech” gear for hours, the only thing these wannabe yeti wranglers were able to successfully collect any sort of “evidence” with turns out to be the plaster of Paris cast – which is about as “low-tech” as you can get.

From Yahoo Buzz:

An obscure blogger unearths some pages of President Obama’s college thesis. The report supposedly comes from big-time journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine. And the thesis has some real gems: like Obama’s disdain for the Constitution.

The whole thing was nothing more than a satirical post on a humor blog. But Rush Limbaugh, who quoted from the supposed thesis on his radio show, sure wasn’t laughing. Here’s how it went down.

An unknown blogger picked up on a made-up post meant as a joke, which claimed that Joe Klein had gotten his hands on 10 pages of student Obama’s college thesis. Rush Limbaugh jumped on it, which immediately sparked Web searches on “obama thesis.”

Supposedly titled “Aristocracy Revisited,” the excerpt revealed the president had “doubts” about the “so-called founders.” Juicy. Except not true. Limbaugh discovered halfway through his show that he’d been had, but defended himself by saying basically the thesis felt true.

Read the rest here >>.

Now, I’m sure that whipping Rush Limbaugh into a hysterical frenzy is probably easier than shooting fish in a barrel; and guys like him are always looking for the next morsel of “scandalous” flame-bait for their audience. This directive often overrides any sense of journalistic integrity they may have, so you can expect this sort of thing to happen every so often.

But while it might feel good to see ol’ Rush played for a fool it points to another disturbing trend. The 24/7 news-opinion media is a voracious machine and it’s really expensive to feed, so having all this “free” information online at less than arm’s length away  is really tempting – sometimes too tempting. As the news media continues to rely more heavily on easy, cheap, and unregulated sources of information we should expect to see more such hoax’s being passed off (initially) as news – followed of course by the “real media’s” indignant whining every time the work of some “charlatan” exposes their news departments as being the lazy, opportunistic, and sometimes just under-funded beasts they are.

Oh, and notice how often in this crazy new world information that can’t be proven, or even flat-out wrong, is increasingly justified on the basis that it simply “rings true” with the reader – as Rush’s response to being “had” makes abundantly clear.

Story From Telegraph.co.uk.

An actor dressed as pop culture icon “Colonel” Harland Sanders managed to sneak his way past security and into the United Nations posing for photos, shaking hands, and even attending a meeting.

Usually these sort of pranks are pulled off by political activists or artists, but this time the whole thing was cooked in a KFC marketing department;

“As part of its campaign to promote a new menu range, KFC is “lobbying” the UN for the fictional Grilled Nation to be accepted as a member state.” Read the rest here >>.

Fast-food makers in particular seem desperate to launch ad campaigns exploiting so-called guerilla and/or viral “marketing” techniques to boost sales. Unfortunately so far most of these efforts are considered to be abject failures by industry watchers.

Too bad no one warned Richard Heene about this.

From Reuters:

Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister has just released his new book “Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male” in which he makes the case that compared to our tribal ancestors, we modern men are, well, a giant bunch of wimps.

“No ifs, no buts — the worst man, period…As a class we are in fact the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.” – excerpt from prologue to Manthropology.

As one can imagine the argument goes something like this; since the industrial revolution we’ve gotten fat and lazy and dependant on technology and convenience. Nothing really new about that – deriding and belittling contemporary masculinity has become something of a sport for both conservatives and radical feminists alike these days .

Surprisingly though, McAllister isn’t just taking shots at beer swilling couch potatoes or “effeminate” metro-sexuals.  He goes as far as claiming even our modern Olympic athletes would be bowled over again and again in sports involving running, jumping, and throwing shit around.

One example from the article,

An analysis of the footsteps of one of the men, dubbed T8, shows he reached speeds of 37 kph on a soft, muddy lake edge. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 42 kph during his then world 100 meters record of 9.69 seconds at last year’s Beijing Olympics.

In an interview in the English university town of Cambridge where he was temporarily resident, McAllister said that, with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberized tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 45 kph.

Fair enough, but let’s see how well they can collect action figures or play Guitar Hero.

Read the full story here >>.

Anyone with half a brain knows you can’t trust the mainstream for reporting anything except the outcomes of major sporting events, and that’s most likely because there are  usually upward of 50,000 eye-witnesses on the scene at any given time. Luckily, the Internet seems full of enough “alternative media” to keep all our heads fat and happy. Not so fortunate is  that quite often these sources feature poorly researched and ethically questionable “news reports” with production values worse than the shoe-box diorama I made in kindergarten.

Which is why one of news and opinion sites I do recommend is The Reality News Network. Featuring a good chunk of high quality video reporting as well as  interviews with real experts and other people you’ve actually heard of, RNN is worth a visit or two.

Fuck Balloon Boy, here’s a hoax you can really appreciate;

On the 20th anniversary of the notorious chemical plant disaster in Bhopal, India, Bichlbaum appeared on the BBC as a representative of Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, the company responsible for the 1984 calamity. He announced a $12 billion plan to provide medical care to the 120,000 victims of the disaster and to fully remediate the factory site. The company’s market value dropped $2 billion in 23 minutes before the hoax was discovered and Dow rushed to explain that it was still refusing to meet the victims’ demands for justice.

Excerpt from an interview with Andy Bichlbaum, one half of anti-corporate tricksters “The Yes Men”.

Sorry Michael Moore, I haven’t seen your film yet. I want to, but to tell you the truth I’ve really been holding out for “Yes Men Fix the World” set to hit theatres October 23, 2009.

For the uninitiated, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are collectively know as the Yes Men and in Andy’s words what they do “pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like. We make fake websites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences.”

You  have likely already heard about one of their stunts which involved  presenting the “Global Warming SurvivaBall” to gullible execs who lept at the chance to profit off fear, anxiety, and any potential future human suffering that accompany severe climate change (speaking of Hoax’s check out Brother Greg’s thoughts on the subject).

Check out the rest of  the interview on Counterpunch.org and take a second to gawk at the trailer too.