Wiccan Witch Sells 'Booty Enhancement' Spells on eBay
asylum - Amelia, better known as eBay seller moonstruck9000, has been a Wiccan spellcaster for over 20 years. More recently, as Asylum discovered, she moved her business to the Internet and is now offering booty-enhancement spells.
That's right, folks, if you have a Leo girlfriend, this would make the ideal birthday gift ... for you. Amelia will take your $8.95 and you'll just have to trust that the witch will actually follow through on the deal and cast a spell over the Interwebs.
Moonstruck9000 swears by this practice: "Upon purchase of a spell I will set up an alter [sic] solely for your spell to be cast," she claims on her eBay listing. "Be assured your desired outcome will receive my undivided attention. This will include the use of candles, herbs, oils, gemstones, tools and some other items that may be required to bring results. Your spell will be complete within 24–48 hours of purchase depending on the complexity of your spell."
She says you should "feel positive energy immediately" -- although, of course, she'll also email you a confirmation message to let you know something should be happening in the badunkadunk zone.
Keep reading for some testimonials of her Wiccan wares from her time of butt-swelling over the Internet.
Moonstruck9000 has satisfied ass fans for years, judging by these reports:
"I felt a surge of good energy the night spell was cast A++++."
"A DARK CLOUD HAS BEEN LIFTED!!"
"GOT MY 9TH GRADE GIRLFRIEND BACK 20 YRS LATER."
"SHE IS AMAZING, NOT KIDDING AROUND. I FELT IT WITH IN THE FIRST WEEK!"
Of course, the ultimate review is her own, from the Disclaimers section: "You must be 18 years old to purchase," she writes. "Psychic, paranormal, haunted and/or magical items are for entertainment purposes only. I am not responsible for any paranormal activity you may or may not experience."
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Coin-Operated Benches in China...Pain in the Arse!
Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long - by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.
If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.
The spikes are too short to cause any serious harm - but long enough to prevent people from sitting on them comfortably.
Park bosses got the idea from an art installation in Germany where sculptor Fabian Brunsing created a similar bench as a protest against the commercialization of modern life.
"He thought he was exaggerating. He didn't foresee that a very practical country like China might actually use them for real," said one critic.
Parks in China suffer from chronic overcrowding at weekends when millions of people try to escape the country's teeming cities.
"We have to make sure the facilities are shared out evenly and this seems like a fair way to stop people grabbing a bench at dawn and staying there all day," said one park official.
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Proof of Aliens Could Come Within 25 Years, Scientist Says
space - Proof of extraterrestrial intelligence could come within 25 years, an astronomer who works on the search said Sunday.
"I actually think the chances that we'll find ET are pretty good," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, Calif., here at the SETI con convention. "Young people in the audience, I think there's a really good chance you're going to see this happen."
Shostak bases this estimation on the Drake Equation, a formula conceived by SETI pioneer Frank Drake to calculate the number (N) of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. That equation takes into account a variety of factors, including the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, the fraction of planets that are habitable, the percent of those that actually develop life, the percent of those that develop intelligent life, the fraction of civilizations that have a technology that can broadcast their presence into space, and the length of time those signals would be broadcasted.
Reliable figures for many of those factors are not known, but some of the leaders in the field of SETI have put together their best guesses. Late great astronomer Carl Sagan, another SETI pioneer, estimated that the Drake Equation amounted to N = 1 million. Scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov calculated 670,000. Drake himself estimates a more conservative 10,000.
But even if that lower value turns out to be correct, at the rate they're going, it wouldn't take scientists too long to discover an alien signal, Shostak said.
"This range, from Sagan's million down to 10,000 – that's the range of estimates from people who have started and worked on SETI," said Shostak. "These people may know what they're talking about. If they do, then the point is we trip across somebody in the next several dozen or two dozen years."
The SETI quest is set to take a leap forward when the Allen Telescope Array, a network of radio dishes under construction in northern California, is fully operational. By 2015, the array should be able to scan hundreds of thousands of stars for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, Shostak said.
But while humans might be able to discover an alien signal within that timeframe, interpreting what ET is trying to tell us could take much, much longer.
Shostak admitted such a task would be very difficult. An alien civilization may be as technologically advanced compared to us as Homo sapiens are to our hominid relatives Neanderthals.
"We could give our digital television signals to the Neanderthals, and they'll never figure it out. And they're not stupid," he said.
Yet simply having proof that we are not alone in the universe would likely be a world-changing achievement, Shostak added.
NOTE: Proof?! How much 'proof' do you need? Lon
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The Market For UFO Tourism
cyprus-mail - It may sound like the stuff of pure fantasy, but several leading British travel companies think UFO spotting could prove to be a money-spinning tourist attraction for Cyprus.
The unusual new marketing offensive has prompted Jet 2, Late Deals and airflights.co.uk all attempt to lure UFO hunters via a series of press releases.
Experts say Cyprus is experiencing a concentrated period of sightings, with countless reports of strange lights in the sky.
“It is an area of growth. We have actually had a few enquiries about the UFOs over the months. Holidaymakers want to know the best time of year to spot one,” says Calum MacDonald of holiday consultants Latedeals.co.uk.
Nick Pope the former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defence told the Cyprus Mail that such tourism initiatives had proved beneficial in other countries.
“UFO tourism is a fascinating possibility and there are some previous examples. Many people believe a UFO crashed in Roswell, in America, in 1947. Nowadays the town has a UFO museum, conferences and a city parade where everyone dresses up as aliens. It's a huge tourist attraction.
“In the UK, tourists come to the parts of the country where crop circles appear. If Cyprus is currently a UFO hot-spot, tourists may come to see if they can have their own sighting. It could turn out to be an out-of-this-world holiday,” Pope added.
Despite the laughable factor, there is a strong case to be made, with Scotland, Chile and parts of Nevada - the famous Area 51 - all investing in specially designated ‘UFO spotting zones’.
Suggestions by local enthusiasts for adapting UFO tourism include a visitor’s centre in Troodos, which would exhibit photographs, accounts and details of extra-terrestrial incidents recorded in Cyprus.
Locals in Chile have reported so many UFO sightings during the past two decades that on local official is declaring his Maipo River region just outside the capital of Santiago an official UFO tourism zone.
There are plans to erect two observation centres, place signs where there have been sightings and offer workshops on, among other topics, how best to photograph alien visitors.
The Scottish town of Bonnybridge has also cashed in on the UFO boom after recently been dubbed the UFO capital of the world. Dozens of unexplained sightings have been recorded in the area, which attracts visitors from across the globe.
Troodos and the east coast are the undisputed epicentres of significant sightings, with yet another bizarre close encounter by British military personnel having been published recently describing an incident near Dhekelia in 1971.
An unnamed soldier, who provided photographic evidence of the incident recalled, “Everybody on the exercise, about 1400 men, saw the light, which was extremely bright and when I’m talking about extremely bright, I’ve never seen anything as bright in my life.”
Increasing number of accounts of UFO encounters are being published online, especially by former servicemen and pilots.
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Infamous "Satanic Panic" Case in New York Reopened
AP - A man who has been trying for decades to take back his guilty plea in a notorious child molestation case won a huge moral victory Monday when a federal appeals court encouraged prosecutors to reopen their investigation.
Although the judges on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied Jesse Friedman's request to withdraw his plea, saying there was no legal basis to allow that, the panel criticized interrogation techniques by investigators in the 1988 case and actions by prosecutors and the trial judge.
"The record here suggests 'a reasonable likelihood' that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted," the judges said in a 31-page decision. "While the law may require us to deny relief in this case, it does not compel us to do so without voicing some concern regarding the process by which the petitioner's conviction was obtained."
A teenage Friedman and his father, Arnold, pleaded guilty in 1988 to molesting 13 children during computer classes in the basement of their home in Great Neck, on Long Island. Jesse Friedman, now 40, was paroled in 2001; his father committed suicide in prison in 1995. The pair were charged with several hundred counts of sex abuse.
Their case was the subject of the 2003 Oscar-nominated documentary "Capturing the Friedmans."
The federal judges said the allegations against Jesse Friedman must be viewed in the context of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which they called "a period in which allegations of outrageously bizarre and often ritualistic child abuse spread like wildfire across the country and garnered worldwide media attention."
They cited statistics that of 72 people convicted in nearly a dozen major child sex abuse and satanic ritual prosecutions between 1984 and 1995, almost all convictions have since been reversed.
The judges recommended that Friedman's remedy lies in state courts, and they suggested Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice reopen her office's investigation. Rice, who was elected in 2005 and wasn't involved in the original prosecution, currently is seeking the Democratic nomination to run for state attorney general.
"We are reviewing the decision and will be giving the court's opinion serious thought and consideration," Rice spokeswoman Carole Trottere said in a statement.
The documentary, which featured archive video footage of the Friedmans, revealed evidence prosecutors had withheld — that at least one of the children who accused Friedman did so under hypnosis arranged by police.
Because his case never went to trial, Friedman, the court said, never had an opportunity to explore how evidence against him was obtained.
"On the contrary, the police, prosecutors and the judge did everything they could to coerce a guilty plea and avoid a trial," the appeals court said.
A spokesman for the Nassau County courts said the trial judge, Abbey Boklan, has since retired and no contact information for her was available.
Friedman's attorney, Ron Kuby, said his client is married and lives at an undisclosed location on the East Coast. He declined to say what his client does for a living.
"Having been denied justice for decades, I came to believe the system does not work," Friedman said in a statement released by his attorney. "The court's decision today makes me feel that it is holding fast to the truth; there is still hope for justice."
Kuby said he would wait a day or two before contacting Rice's office about what might happen next.
Fortean / Oddball News - 8/17/2010
