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| August 31st 2009 The Real Roswell Story Video The world changed on July 8, 1947 - the day the military announced that a silvery, disk-shaped object crashed into the desert near an Army Air Field outside Roswell, New Mexico. And now, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., the son of the first military officer at the crash site, has published stunning new evidence of UFOs on Earth in the block-buster book, The Roswell Legacy: The Untold Story of the First Military Officer at the 1947 Crash Site (New Page Books). When Major Jesse Marcel found a scorched field strewn with strange debris, he brought some of it home to show his family. The debris included a tough, ultra-light metallic foil, and a brownish-black, plastic-like material. But mixed in with this were tiny support beams made of feather-light metal, which were covered in bizarre purple writing. "As we examined the debris and carefully handled it, my dad's excitement was almost palpable," explains Marcel Jr., an Iraq veteran and VA Hospital physician. "To his dying day, my father was absolutely firm in his conviction that the material we examined was, as he described it, 'not of this Earth,' and that the truth about Roswell had yet to be revealed to the public." Within 24 hours of the first report, the government announced that the object was a weather balloon carrying a radio transmitter. But Marcel's father, a trained radar man, was intimately familiar with weather balloons and the radio devices commonly flown beneath them. This debris was different. There was too much of it, and it was made of unknown materials. General Ramey, Commander of the 8th Air Force, went so far as to have Marcel's father pose for an official picture, holding a portion of a crashed radar target, as if that was the retrieved debris. "I think it was at this time my dad realized that the coverup had begun, and that he was going to be stuck in the middle of it, whether he liked it or not," Marcel declares. "As of today, the government is still holding to its story, although the particulars have changed many times in the years since the crash occurred." |
| August 30th 2009 Get The Book Gospel According To Springsteen Working class troubadour Bruce Springsteen belts out down-to-earth songs about hard knocks and rocky roads, but one pastor insists he brings spiritual hope to a nation struggling to cope with depressing times. "It's a tough hope in a tough world - a world that isn't, on the surface, getting any better," says Jeffrey Symynkywicz, a Unitarian Universalist minister on Boston's South Shore. "'Everybody has a reason to begin again,' he sings in Long Walk Home. There's always a reason to go on." Springsteen was raised Roman Catholic and attended parochial schools where, he admits, he used to fight with the nuns. He also admits he doesn't go to church anymore. But Symynkywicz, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, says his song lyrics convey the message that "no principality or power, no forces seen or unseen, no terror-mad souls or devilish plots can ever separate us from the love that is in our souls." In his new book, The Gospel According To Bruce Springsteen, Symynkywicz, 53, calls the Boss' career "a religious undertaking, a ministry of healing." The pastor doesn't claim that Springsteen's songs are conventionally religious - he's no gospel singer - but that they help listeners mend rifts in their souls and find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, even if the world seems filled with danger and sadness. "His music helps us make sense of the tangled threads of our lives," Symynkwicz says. |
| August 29th 2009 West Des Moines Nativity Six years ago, a thief snatched a statue of baby Jesus from the Christmas Nativity display on Tricia Hoffman's front lawn in West Des Moines, Iowa. A few weeks later, police found a statue of the Christ child - wit ha swastika scrawled on his tummy - dumped in a yard. They didn't connect the two events. Hoffman was faced with a dilemma. Since she couldn't buy a baby Jesus statue alone, she had either to spend $1,000 on a whole new Nativity scene or improvise. "Who needs six kings, two Josephs and two Marys?" she asked. Hoffman enlisted her son, Jack, to lie in the display's manger, but he rebelled at spending so much time outdoors in the winter cold. The mystery of the missing Jesus came to a dramatic conclusion in June, when the West Des Moines police department held an auction to sell off confiscated or unclaimed missing items. Hoffman noticed a picture of her statue accompanying a newspaper article about the auction. She tried to buy it back, but the police insisted on returning it to her for free. Now that Jesus is no longer away from his manger, Hoffman has forgiven the anonymous thief who stole him. "It's quite an end of the story," she says. |
| August 28th 2009 Video The Family Sheep This pet is really pulling the wool over Dad's eyes! The 3-year, 300-pound sheep, named Nick Boing (for his bouncy personality), has his own private bungalow in the family's backyard, complete with carpet and windows. He's also taken for regular walks, just like a dog. In return, he mows the lawn for free! Former bus driver Nathan Palmer, 53, discovered Nick three years ago. The sick newborn lamb was hidden in the tall grass of a nature preserve near their home in Rhiwbina, Wales. Palmer, his partner Caroline Clements and their 13-year-old son Nathan nursed Nick back to health. But when they tried sending him to live with other sheep, he refused to join the flock. Instead, he insisted on returning to the only home he's known, where he watches TV on the sofa every night before trotting out back to sleep. "He's part of the family," Palmer explains. "He's more intelligent than your average sheep." "He's good company and he knows what's what." |
| August 26th 2009 Angel Saves Plane? A trainee pilot and her flight instructor are giving thanks to a heavenly messenger for saving their lives during a midair breakdown. Nicole Meurer, 20, was flying at 2,500 feet over Columbus, Georgia, on a clear summer day when her teacher, Richard Acosta, 48, noticed something wrong. "Two of the instruments, the suction gauge and the oil pressure gauge, started dropping at the same time," Acosta explains. "On a car, it'd be like blowing a gasket and blowing a fuse at the same time - there's no oil in the engine and no power for the instrument panel." "In a small Cessna at that altitude, it's very, very dangerous." The engine began sputtering and Meurer was on the verge of panicking at the controls when suddenly, the cabin was filled with a brilliant light. "I was crying, I didn't know what to do, and then, when the light appeared, everything became totally calm," Meurer recalls. "I looked past Mr. Acosta out of the co-pilot's window and I saw this beautiful person out there in the clouds." "I didn't believe my eyes, but then he saw it, too." "She was only there for a second, but I have no doubt she was real," Acosta says. "A second later, we stopped losing oil and the instrument system started working again." "Nicole turned back to the airport and we had a safe landing." But, Meurer recalls, the engine died as soon as the plane was back on the ground. "We had to get towed off the taxiway," she explains. "And once they looked at the engine, the mechanics couldn't understand how we got back without making a crash landing." "But we know someone was looking out for us!" |
| August 25th 2009 70 Years Of Superman One of America's most influential immigrants - an upstanding citizen who came to Kansas from the doomed planet Krypton - has just celebrated his 70th birthday. Superman, the world's first superhero, sprang into life in Action Comics No. 1 in June 1938. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, the caped crusader laid a solid foundation for the comic book industry before barreling into radio, TV, movies and more. "Without Superman, I don't know if we would have pop culture as we know it today," explains Jerry Robinson, president and editorial director of CartoonArts International and Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate. "Movies have been made out of Superman. We've had songs. We've had plays, toys, magazines - you name it." "It also had a great influence on modern painting and pop art." "I've traveled to over 40 countries and wherever I go, everyone knows Superman." |
| August 24th 2009 The Baobab Fruit An exotic fruit from Africa called baobab packs six times more vitamin C than oranges - a powerful punch in the fight against aging. The high concentration of vitamin C also decreases bad cholesterol while increasing the good, lowers blood pressure and helps prevent plaque deposits in your arteries. The coconut look-alike has been a revered food in Africa for thousands of years and is extremely high in anti-oxidants, iron and potassium. And now, it's being imported to America and Europe for the first time ever. "Baobab is an ideal ingredient for smoothies and cereal bars, and its well documented nutritional benefits provide manufacturers with a new opportunity to target the booming market in health foods," say trade executive Gus Le Breton. Allowing baobab to be sold in new markets will also be a boon to millions of African families, who'll be able to earn a living by cultivating the nutritious fruit. |
| August 23rd 2009 Models Missed A bevy of beauties is competing on a new reality TV show with a twist - all the contestants are disabled. The eight young women will compete in a series of eliminations, and the last girl standing will star in a high-fashion photo shoot for Marie Claire magazine. Jenny Johnson, a 22-year-old from Seattle, Washington, says a serious car accident in 2002 left her physically and mentally challenged. "Because of my brain injury, I have a slight limp in my gait and my personality is nothing like it was before," explains Johnson, a pouty-lipped blonde. "But modeling is still my dream." Debbie Van der Putten, 22, lost her right arm in a bus wreck, while Kellie Moody, 24, and Lilli Risner, 20, are both profoundly deaf. Jessica Kellgren-Hayes, 19, suffers from a progressive hereditary disorder; Kelly Knox, 23, was born without a left forearm; Sophie Morgan, 23, was paralyzed from the chest down in a car crash and Rebecca Le'gon,27, was born with half her left leg missing. The contestants say performing before the panel of judges on Britain's Missing Top Model has given them new confidence. And one participant in particular believes she's making a difference. "There's nothing about the job that my disability leaves me unable to do," declares Van der Putten. "I want to show everyone that you can be beautiful, successful and an inspiration, even if you are missing a limb." |
| August 21st 2009 Giant Sea Monsters!!! Sea monsters are surging out of the world's oceans, mystifying scientists and leaving boaters and bathers terrified. Tales of sea serpents, giant octopuses and other creatures of the deep have long been dismissed as legends. But recently, colossal beasts have washed ashore or been caught by deep-sea fisherman. "Commerical fishing, chemical pollution and global warming are all driving little-known predators into populated areas," explains marine biologist Carter Johns, of Fort Pierce, Florida. "We could soon see an epidemic of monsters." Here are just a few of the massive creatures that have recently come to light: Giant Spider Crab Scientists aren't sure exactly how big crabs can actually grow, so the 7-pound monster recently found off the British coast could be just the tip of the iceberg. Fisherman Phil Trebilcock donated the record-breaking male spiny spider crab to a local aquarium, where the creature with the 3-foot leg-span was dubbed Titan. "It looks like it's shed its shell recently, so it's still growing," says Douglas Herdson of the National Marine Aquarium. "There does seem to be something strange going on in our waters." Beach Creatures In Santa Cruz, California, a 45-foot-long creature with a snake-like neck and massive head has experts stumped. Renowned naturalist E.L. Wallace declared the bones were unlike any known whale, and guessed that the body was a plesiosaur - a marine dinosaur thought to be extinct for 65 million years - that drifted free from a melting glacier. In 1977, a similar corpse was accidentally snared in the nets of the Japanese trawler Zuiyo-maru. And in 1969, scientists were baffled by a badly decomposed 70-foot body that washed up near Tecolutla, Mexico. The carcass weighed 22 tons and was covered in armored plating. Super Stringray Zeb Hogan, a biologist on a three-year mission to document the world's largest freshwater fish, caught a giant stingray in the Maeklong River in Cambodia. Locals say the titanic creature - 6 feet wide and 485 pounds - is less than half the size of the real river giants, which can grow as much as 1,100 pounds. Like their smaller cousins, these gigantic stingrays bear a venomous barb capable of stabbing through muscle and bone. Fortunately, the shy creatures tend to avoid humans - and ones this size are exceedingly rare. Colossal Squid Earlier this year, marine biologists studied a colossal squid caught 3,000 feet under the sea near Antarctica. These mysterious predators are nearly twice as long as the elusive giant squid and have the largest eyes of any creature on Earth. "There is little out there that can tackle a 990-pound squid armed to the beak with powerful arms, each lined with vicious hooks and suckers," explains Dutch biologist Olaf Blaauw, who traveled to New Zealand to study the frozen remains. Based on even larger squid beaks found in the stomachs of sperm whales, researchers believe the specimen, which measured 12 feet long and weighed 1,090 pounds, was a baby. |
| August 20th 2009 Charles Fort The world's first paranormal researcher - a hard-nosed reporter from Brooklyn - raised questions that modern science is still struggling to answer more than 70 years later. Historian Jim Steinmeyer pulls back the veil on the strange life and stranger stories of Charles Fort in his new blockbuster biography, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin). In the 1920s, Fort wrote a series of books and articles that shocked the world. The pioneering journalist dedicated himself to recording inexplicable events, from talking dogs to visits from mysterious otherworldly airships - vehicles we now call UFOs. Fort had a name for these anomalies. He called them The Damned. "By the damned, I mean the excluded," he wrote. "We shall have a procession of data that science has excluded." Fort defied critics by using a cold scientific approach to such events as rains of frogs. To those who suggested the living creatures had been swept up by a tornado, he asked why there was never any mud, weeds or tadpoles with them - only frogs. "Also, a pond going up would be quite as interesting as frogs coming down," he added. "It seems to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be heard from." Renowned novelist Theodore Dreiser hailed Fort as a misunderstood genius. Visionary inventor R. Buckminster Fuller was one of the earliest members of the Charles Fort Society, dedicated to studying his ideas. On the other hand, science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells criticized Fort as "one of the most damnable bores who ever cut scraps from out-of-the-way newspapers." But no one could deny that the strange stories he discovered were 100 percent true. In addition to rains of frogs - and stones, and blood - Fort catalogued hundreds of cases of poltergeists, missing persons, mysterious fires, vanishing cats and puzzling visions. He was the first investigator to look into the disappearance of the crew of the ghost ship Mary Celeste, and the sudden appearance of hoofprints on the snowy rooftops of Devonshire, England, one winter morning. "Charles Fort could demonstrate that the world was even stranger than anyone suspected," explains Steinmeyer. "He asked why, but even more vexing, he asked why we weren't paying attention." |
| August 19th 2009 Good Old Bath Day Ever wonder why we have June weddings - or how anyone could throw the baby out with the bathwater? Look no farther than the 1500s! Back in the good old days, people took one bath a year, as part of their spring cleaning in May. June was a good time for weddings because folks still smelled comparatively fresh - although brides carried bouquets to cover up the odors that were already developing. The yearly bath took place in a big tub of hot water. The man of the house bathed first, followed by his sons, then his wife, then any daughters. At the end came the babies, and by then the water was so murky, you could actually lose a child in the depths. That's where we get the expression, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!" If you were "dirt poor," all you could afford was a house with a dirt floor. Wealthier citizens had floors paved with slate, which was fine in the summer. In the winter, slate floors got slippery and icy, so housekeepers spread thresh - straw from the threshing process - to create traction. Clever builders would put a board across the doorway to keep the straw inside, and called it a "thresh-hold." |
| August 18th 2009 Galaktika Building Stunning saucer-like complexes are making Mother Russia look more like a UFO mother ship! A futuristic structure, appropriately dubbed the Galaktika building, will hover over a busy Moscow intersection. Instead of whisking cars away to faraway planets, the complex will feature a luxurious shopping center, fine restaurants, a one-of-a-kind hotel and even a rooftop helipad. Further north, in historic St. Petersburg, the Gazprom petroleum giant is planning a corporate headquarters that will overshadow the bay like a science-fiction rocket. Locals have previously opposed massive construction projects, to preserve the city's "cultural and architectural unity," but Gazprom - which provides fuel for all of Europe - is simply too powerful to refuse. |
| August 17th 2009 Looking Back On Kent Couch's Trip The third time was the charm for Kent Couch, who flew 235 miles from Oregon to Idaho in a lawn chair held aloft by balloons! Not only had the 48-year-old gas station owner failed twice before, but his family and friends were baffled by his dangerous hobby, flying thousands of feet high while dangling from balloons in a flimsy chair. "Nobody wanted to be involved," Couch admits. "They thought I was a balloonatic!" This time, he had plenty of support from a corporate sponsor that paid $6,00 for 160 helium-filled balloons and a gang of volunteers to assist liftoff on July 5. His equipment included a parachute, a GPS tracking device, 15 gallon jugs of Kool-Aid for ballast, a satellite phone and a Red Ryder BB gun to pop the balloons to allow a landing. "It's really quite peaceful," Couch declares. "There's a few navigational issues you've got to deal with, but I really enjoyed it." The amateur aviator reached a height of 10,000 feet during the nine-hour flight. Residents followed the progress of his red, blue and yellow balloons along the skyline and applauded as he drifted down to Earth. "Everyone knows everyone here and word got around fast," says Mark Hetz, of Cambridge, Idaho. "It was a big party out there in the middle of the road." |
| August 16th 2009 Pigeon Home After A Decade! Boomerang the racing pigeon has returned to her original owner - 10 years after she flew the coop! Dino Rearden, 76, trained the incredible bird beforee giving her to his pal Alf Pennington in 1998. After his friend died, Boomerang's whereabouts were unknown until she appeared at Rearden's home on Father's Day. "She recognized me and walked straight toward me," says Rearden, who vows to give Boomerang a permanent home with him after her feat. "It was only when I checked her ring that I realized who it was." "This is even more remarkable because I've moved from where Boomerang was born and bred." |
| August 15th 2009 Spiritual Water Banking on the belief that religion sells, a couple of entrepreneurs are hawking Spiritual Water, claiming the bottled drink can save your soul while slaking your thirst. "There's a great history of people using religious images to sell products," claims Daniel Sack, an administrator at the University of Chicago Divinity School. "You're talking about combining the great American traditions of religion and consumption." Elicko Taieb, 33, of Sunrise, Florida, and his pal Eitan Peer, 36, were looking for a way to deliver a positive message about God's love when they stumbled upon the purified water produced in Santa Ana, California. "Water just made sense," says Taieb. "Everybody has bottled water with them in the car, at home, in the gym." Spiritual Water comes in an 11-bottle collection that offers a variety of prayers and detailed portraits, including Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St. Michael, printed on the containers. "With a story behind every bottle, it gives people something positive to talk about," Peer explains. The bottles also bear these simple instructions: Read the Prayer/Drink the Water/Believe in God!/Believe in Yourself! "You drink it and you just feel like you're in church," enthuses customer Cecilia Joseph. "The pictures are so beautiful." "You look at them and read the prayer, and it just feels good." Taieb emphasizes that although their enterprise is making money, the venture has a higher purpose. 'We're trying to connect people with God, not take advantage of them," he declares. "Water is just the vehicle for a positive message." |
| August 14th 2009 Human For Under 4 Grand A man who put his soul up for sale on the Internet got a devil of a deal with a restaurant chain named Hell Pizza! The New Zealand eatery snatched up the deed to Walter Scot's soul for $3,800 after his auction on the Web site TradeMe was shut down. Officials say that although bidding on the 24-year-old's soul had reached $3,799, the highest genuine bod was only for $456 - the rest appeared to be from online pranksters. But Scott was serious about his offer, and Rachel Allison, head of marketing for Hell Pizza, thought it was a bargain. "The soul belongs to Hell," she declared. "There's simply no better place for it." "He was pretty delighted." |
| August 13th 2009 Extinct Tiger Or Not? Gene scientists are on the verge of bringing back an extinct predator from Down Under - a breakthrough that experts say opens the door to a real-life Jurassic Park! The last known Tasmanian tiger died in a zoo in 1936. The bizarre predator was like nothing else on Earth - it resembled a cross between a wolf and a tiger, but carried its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. Experts at the University of New South Wales in Australia pulled a gene from a preserved specimen and brought it back to life by implanting it in a mouse embryo. By repeating the process, they say they could recreate an entire Tasmanian tiger. "There used to be a time when extinction meant forever, but no more," says research leader Professor Mike Archer. "We're now able to seriously challenge whether those animals that have gone have gone forever." |
| August 11th 2009 Singing Dentist A dentist with a passion for opera has given up filling teeth for a singing career after winning a $2 million recording contract. Andrew Bain has been warbling since he was 8 years old and performed in numerous amateur opera and musical productions. But all his attempts to make it as a professional failed, so he earned a degree in dentistry to pay the bills while singing in his spare time. After chasing his dream for 10 frustrating years, he made one last attempt to grab the brass ring by sending out a home recording of his rendition of Prince's Purple Rain to several major music companies Amazingly, bigwigs at SonyBMG were finally listening and offered the 35-year-old crooner a four-album deal. "This is the ultimate fantasy come true!" Bain exclaims. "Not only have I got a record deal, but they understand my eclectic taste in music. Who needs another version of an Aria?" In fact, it was the tenor's unorthodox styling on such pop hits as Abba's The Winner Takes It All that charmed his new bosses. "Andrew is a refreshingly different talent," explains SonyMBG executive Richard Hinkley. "He is performing opera with a uniquely contemporary touch." "He's taken what is traditionally elitist and made it resonate with fans of popular music in a style familiar to millions." |
| August 10th 2009 Robot Conducts Symphony! A robot with a song in his electric heart has accomplished what even the most sensitive humans rarely do and conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. After the performance, celebrity cellist Yo-Yo Ma shook hands with Honda's ASIMO robot - a humanoid machine capable of running, walking over uneven ground and even leading human musicians in creating glorious music. And ASIMO's song of choice? The Impossible Dream, of course! |
| August 9th 2009 Car In The Pool Vacationing Melissa Campasino was confused when she got a panicked phone call from her neighbor in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania. The neighbor, Kim Taylor, babbled something about a car, an emergency break and Campasino's backyard swimming pool - and that sent Campasino's imagination into overdrive. "I said 'What! What!' about five times," she recalls. Finally, Campasino's daughter, Ashley, called to set the record straight. Taylor's red Mazda Miata had rolled downhill, picking up speed all the way, plowed through a garden, crashed through a fence, launched itself into the air and did a belly-flop into the deep end of Campasino's pool. Police estimate the car was zooming along at 40 miles per hour when it hit the water. Ashley took 105 photos of thesubmerged car and its rescue by a local towing company and posted them on the Internet so her parents, who were visiting in Florida, could see it all for themselves. Melissa and her husband, Dan, took it in stride. "What could you do?" she asks. "We were in Florida. We just laughed - and then went out for drinks." |
| August 8th 2009 Uday's Cars The citizens of beleaguered Baghdad, tired of looking at ugly Humvees and the hideous burned-out wrecks of cars demolished by roadside bombs, got a treat of sorts when the government displayed five ultra-expensive cars once owned by Saddam Hussein's mad-dog son, Uday. Playboy Uday used to amuse himself by driving the two Rolls-Royces and three antique classics through the desert - when he wasn't feeding ex-girlfriends to his pet lions. The cars were stolen after Uday and his equally savage brother, Qusay, were killed in a shootout with U.S. troops. Police found them buried in the Baghdad suburb of Dora, dug them up, dusted them off and put them on public display. Three car thieves were arrested after authorities got a tip they were planning to smuggle the cars out of the country and sell them to collectors with a taste for diabolic souvenirs. |
| August 7th 2009 Cloaking Tech The cloaking device that hid spaceships in the cheesy space movies and the invisibility cloak that enabled Harry Truman to disappear from view are about to make the giant leap from science fiction to real life. Graeme Milton, a mathematician at the University of Utah, with funding by the federal government's National Science Foundation, has come up with the design for a lens that can bend light in such a way as to render any object behind the lens invisible. The "superlens," as Milton calls his invention, consists of an array of coated cylinders that focus light in peculiar ways. Light reflecting off an object is canceled out by the lens, making the object impossible to see. "We're a long way off from the device that killed Nixon, but some of the experimental results achieved so far are surprising and exciting," Milton says. |
| August 6th 2009 Noah's Ark On The Moon! The European Space Agency has launched a plan to build a bunker on the moon that would store everything needed to restart civilization if Earth were ever to be destroyed by a catastrophic event like an asteroid strike or an all-out nuclear war. Inspired by the biblical story of Noah, who took a male and female of every kind of animal on his ark so creation could recommence after the Great Flood, the experts are planning to salt away DNA of every species of animal and plant, plus detailed instructions on how to recreate the marvels of modern technology. The data will be available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish, and will automatically be beamed to receiving stations on Earth in the wake of disaster. The information will enable survivors to build an launch a space mission to the moon to retrieve the DNA. |
| August 5th 2009 Harbin Hover Craft A remote-controlled flying saucer will soon be hovering over disaster areas, guiding rescue workers on their missions of mercy. The saucers are 4 feet in diameter and can fly at 50 miles per hour. Hovering at altitudes of up to 3,200 feet, they can spot survivors down below, take pictures and radio the images back to Earth to pinpoint the location. The unmanned discs, which are driven by propeller, can be controlled remotely or programmed to follow a preset flight path. In addition to rescue work, they can be used for geographical surveys and can provide emergency lighting. The Harbin Smart Special Aircraft Company in Heilongjiang Province, China, spent $4 million and 12 years of research to develop the craft, which will be on sale this year. |
| August 4th 2009 Brain-Wave Technology Two amazing breakthroughs in brain-wave technology will allow you to make phone calls without uttering a sound and move objects just by thinking about it. Audeo is a phone that consists of a neckband that can translate your thoughts into speech by picking up nerve signals in your throat. The signal are then transmitted wirelessly to a computer that converts them into sounds spoken by an electronic voice. The device, made by the Ambient Corporation, will allow you to make private phone calls in public places - and greatly reduce the annoyance cell phones cause to those who have to listen to other people yammer away. There's no danger of transmitting your secret thoughts - you have to concentrate really hard on formulating silent words for the device to work. At present, Audeo has a vocabulary of 150 words, but a new version, scheduled for release later this year, will have no restrictions on the number of words it can understand. In a related development, German scientists have perfected a "thinking cap" that will let you control objects remotely just by visualizing how you want them to move. A helmet picks up your brain waves and transmits them to a computer contained in the object. The device has been successfully tested on remote-control cars, but future applications include wheelchairs and other tools to help the disabled lead near-normal lives. |
| August 3rd 2009 Pet Heroes Pet owners know how much joy their chrished animals bring to their lives. And scores of research studies have also proven that a loving pal can add years to your life. But some critters go above and beyond by performing heroic deeds that can save their owners' lives. Here are six of them: Happy the golden retriever prevented a tragedy when she saved a drowning toddler. "Ryan, a 3-year-old bot from next door, got into our pool," says Heidi Rice, of Miami. "I was alerted by Happy's furious barking, and she'd dragged him to safety by the time I got there." "Since the daring rescue, Ryan's parents regularly send over steak for Happy's supper." Mugsie, a talkative parrot from Cheyenne, Wyoming, squawked up a storm when he saw smoke coming from a fire in the kitchen. "My wife, four kids and I were all sound asleep when the parrot's yells of 'Help! Help!' woke us," recalls Eric Simpson. "A short in the kitchen stove had sparked a fire, and we would have died if not for Mugsie. God bless her!" Bowser, a tiny Chhuahua, proved he was worthy of his macho name when a burglar broke into Jill Macon's Chicago apartment. "When he stuck his foot inside the living room window, Bowser jumped on his ankle and started biting," Macon says. "By the time the cops arrived, the thief had fallen backward and knocked himself out cold on the brick border around my shrubs." "I'm so proud of my pint-sized crime fighter!" Cleo, a Snowshoe cat in Taos, New Mexico, saved the day with her keen sense of smell. "There was a carbon monoxide leak in our house that knocked my wife Amy and I out one Saturday afternoon," says Tom Miller. "Cleo got on the couch and kept nudging me and yowling." "I managed to call 9-1-1 before passing out and the firemen got us just in time. Our cat is definitely worth her weight in gold." Harry, a border collie living in Detroit, diagnosed his owner's heart attack an hour before it occurred! "Harry kept jumping into my lap and patting my chest with his paw before running to the front door," recalls Frank Ancetti. "My wife got the message and drove us to the hospital, where the doctors began immediate treatment for heart seizure. "Now, Harry sticks to me like glue. He's helping me recover!" Scamp is a mutt adopted by the Baker family from an animal shelter in San Antonio, Texas. "My boys have a small fort they built in our backyard, and Scamp kept the kids out when a rattlesnake slithered in," says mom Samantha. "He got a bite on his nose before my husband killed it. Luckily, the vet cured Scamp with antivenin and blood plasma, and we hope our little hero lives forever!" |
| August 2nd 2009 Pastor Poses As Homeless Man A minister attended church dressed like a bum to prove his parishioners lacked Christian charity. And to their shame, the congregation DID shun the dirty tramp in their midst. There was a collective gasp when the Reverend Derek Rigby removed his disguise before stepping up to the pulpit to deliver a powerful sermon based on the disciples' failure to recognize Jesus Christ after his resurrection. "It was interesting to see the reaction from people who had totally ignored me," Rigby says. "It showed that we don't recognize God at work and in each other." The former police officer, who's been a pastor for 20 years, has used the same ruse to trick congregations at other churches he's served. And he has the routine down pat. "I don't shave for three days, made my hands and face dirty and drew on tattoos," says Rigby, of Trinity Methodist Church in Prestatyn, North Wales. "I bought some scruffy clothes at a charity shop, ripped the trousers, put on a straggly, long-haired wig and splashed beer over myself so I was stinking." Then he plopped himself down on a pew in the church surrounded by empty syringes and chugged a can of beer. "Everyone was amazed and later complimented me on my acting skill, although some said I made them feel terrible," Rigby says. For his part , the minister was bitterly disappointed by the 70 churchgoers who ignored their unwanted guest. "In other parishes, I was given as much as $10, a packet of cookies and a blanket," recalls the 51-year-old minister. "But here at Trinity, I got nothing. I told the congregation they are a stingy lot." |
| August 1st 2009 Russian UFO School Russia is preparing for contact with visitors from other planets with classes for UFO spotters. "We teach people how to identify a flying saucer, where you should go to see one and how to react if you meet an extraterrestrial," explains Tatiana Markova, chairwoman of the Ufology Commission. "We have studied several of the most popular flying saucer routes and filmed the phenomena we saw." "We have lots of video footage featuring the type of UFOs called Belgian triangles, which are frequent visitors to Moscow." |