VIDEO: Blue-Colored UFO in Centreville, VA
myfoxdc - Some people in Centreville are talking about a bright blue light spotted moving in the sky Wednesday night. But no one seems to have an explanation for this unidentified flying object.
It was in the night sky just above Lee Highway when shoppers looked up and saw something weird in Centreville and it was all of it caught on camera.
“All of a sudden, it would stop and go back like this,” said Bryan Fains, using his finger to point out the direction of the blue light in the sky. “At one point, it stopped and went up and up.
Fains quickly grabbed his phone, turned on the camera and recorded the erratic blue light in the night sky. It flew around for about 10 minutes.
“[There] was no sound. It was a distinct blue light. It never flashed or blinked or nothing. It was just blue,” said Fains. “It’s weird. You only see this type of stuff in movies. Just as long as we're here, I'm sure there are other things somewhere.
Fains has not seen it since. Only just the occasional airplane from Dulles Airport. He is all too familiar with those flying objects and their loud sounds. Fains says this one had no sound. The apparent UFO sighting has him baffled.
Click for video
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Man performs CPR on his dog after alligator attack
kentucky - A Florida man shot at an alligator to free his dog from its jaws. Tom Martino said he and his Jack Russell terrier Lizabeth were walking along the Hillsborough River in Tampa on Thursday when the alligator wrestled the 15-pound dog into the water.
Martino started shooting into the water around the alligator to scare it into releasing the 9-year-old dog. He performed CPR on the dog until it coughed up water and started breathing again.
Lizabeth was being treated for alligator bites and lung injuries from being underwater.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission trapper captured the 5- to 6-foot alligator Thursday night.
Martino has a concealed weapons permit.
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NASA Deep Impact spacecraft flies by small comet
yahoo - A NASA spacecraft sped past a small comet Thursday, beaming pictures back to Earth that gave scientists a rare close-up view of its center. Mission controllers burst into applause upon seeing images from the flyby that revealed a peanut-shaped comet belching jets of poisonous gases.
"It's hyperactive, small and feisty," said mission scientist Don Yeomans of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The close encounter occurred 13 million miles from Earth when the Deep Impact craft, hurtling through space, flew within 435 miles of comet Hartley 2. It's only the fifth time that a comet's core has been viewed up close.
Scientists are interested in comets because they're icy leftovers from the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Studying them could provide clues to how Earth and the planets formed and evolved.
"The scientific work is just beginning now," principal investigator Michael A'Hearn, of the University of Maryland, said at a post-mission news conference. "The engineers did a fantastic job of getting us data. Now we have to make sense of it."
Thursday's flyby is actually an encore mission for Deep Impact. It set off cosmic fireworks on July 4, 2005, when it fired a copper probe that crashed into comet Tempel 1. The high-speed collision spewed a cloud of debris into space, giving scientists their first peek of the interior.
After the $333 million comet-buster, NASA recycled Deep Impact for a new mission to visit another comet. It was supposed to target comet Boethin in 2008, but it was nowhere to be found. Scientists theorized the comet may have broken up into small pieces.
Deep Impact was then redirected to Hartley 2. Roughly 1 1/2 miles long, Hartley 2 is the smallest comet to be photographed up close. On its way there, the craft spent several months scanning a cluster of nearby stars with known planets circling them.
While its latest task lacks the Hollywood drama of the Tempel 1 crash, researchers still consider it an important mission. Unlike in 2005, viewers could not see Thursday's comet encounter in real time since the craft's antenna was not pointed at Earth as it flew past Hartley 2.
"There are a lot of open questions about comets and their life cycle," said project manager Tim Larson of JPL, which manages the $42 million encore mission. "We have so little data that every time we have an opportunity to go near a comet, it's a chance to expand our knowledge."
Since September, Deep Impact has been stalking Hartley 2 like a paparazzo, taking images every 5 minutes and gathering data. It's the first craft to visit two comets.
Deep Impact will observe Hartley 2 until Thanksgiving and then wait for further instructions from NASA. The space agency has not decided whether to reuse Deep Impact again. The craft does not have enough fuel on board to do another flyby.
The latest images add to scientists' cometary photo album, said astronomer David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the project.
"We're visual animals and nothing seems wholly real to us until we have a nice picture of it," Jewitt said.
Hartley 2 passed within 11 million miles of Earth on Oct. 20 — the closest it has been to our planet since its discovery in 1986.
British-born astronomer Malcolm Hartley, who discovered the comet, said he never imagined a spacecraft would get so close to his namesake find.
"When I saw the comet, it was millions and millions of kilometers away," he said. "I'm extremely excited and feel very privileged. After all, I only discovered it."
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Bacterial infection used in convenience store robbery
news-herald - Three area residents were indicted Wednesday after they were accused of using a woman's bacterial infection to rob a Cleveland convenience store.
According to a Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office news release:
-- Caroline Slusher, 32, of Chester Township, and Austin Tenerove, 27, of Mentor, entered the BP gas station at 552 E. 152nd St. about 6 p.m. Oct. 3.
-- Once in the store, they began taking candy off of shelves and putting it in bags or into their clothing.
-- When an attendant confronted the duo, Slusher, who was infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), pulled up her sleeve. Prosecutors said she then showed her arm to the attendant, stated that she was infected with MRSA and warned the attendant to get away from her.
-- As the attendant backed away, Slusher and Tenerove fled the store. Michael Slusher, 27, of Chester Township, was waiting in a van outside.
All three are charged with robbery, a second-degree felony and theft, a first-degree misdemeanor. Arrest warrants were issued following Wednesday's indictment.
Arraignments for the Slushers and Tenerove are scheduled for Nov. 17.
If convicted on the felony charge, they could each spend two to eight years in prison.
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Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness: Job Done!
November 6, 2010
“Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness: a sceptic’s take on paranormal experience”
is now published in full, after appearing as a serial for most of 2010. The memoir has been laid out on this site in a form which is easily accessible for people who wish to ‘dip in’ to the various true stories, as well as for those who wish to read the whole book.
It has been important to me that I have told those stories, partly to ‘make peace’ with many very unsettling experiences for which the contemporary reductionist paradigm has no satisfactory explanation. As a stubbornly sceptical (in the open-minded sense of the word!) rationalist, whose spiritual life and occasional but persistent paranormal experiences did not retreat as a result of being ignored, I finally decided that the way forward was openness.
What I have presented in this memoir is a range of my personal experiences which many other people have also had, as part of the whole experience of humanity down the ages – but which most conceal, for fear of being thought mad or deluded. I no longer harbour that fear. (And my nearest and dearest find me boringly sane, if mildly eccentric….)
My hope is that my openness will help people in a similar position to be more open themselves – and to feel less peculiar as a result. As a famous scientist once observed – we live in a universe which is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we CAN suppose.
So – do read my stories, and my reflective musings on what their function and meaning may be. There is an extensive and interesting booklist to help you in furthering your own explorations.
As long as I am given a credit for my work, and there is a link included which takes the reader back to my main site Writing from the Twelfth House, I do not mind any of this material being re-published, unedited, on reputable sites under my name and URL. I would appreciate those readers who find this material valuable, and wish to tell their friends and networks about it, passing the site link around.
Nor would I be offended if any prospective publisher were to approach me with a view to giving “Wisps….” an airing in print!
