huliq - It’s been 50 years since Jim Mead witnessed his first close encounter with a UFO in a suburb of San Francisco while serving as a night watchman; now, looking back at that 1961 UFO sighting, Mead realizes that “it changed me for the better because it gave me a third-eye and opened my mind to a much bigger universe where we’re a part of it.”
Having a “third eye,” or an inner eye that expands clairvoyance has long been viewed as a perk for those who’ve had a close encounter or witnessed a UFO. The third eye is also an ancient and mystical concept that’s tied to certain Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.
“I was working as a security guard at a Montgomery Ward store outside of San Francisco. It was late at night and over the parking lot was a huge disc hovering with bright lights. There was no sound. It was also silent. It hovered for awhile and then went straight-up, sideways and disappeared. I will never forget it,” says Mead, who later became a L.A. police officer and then a psychologist before retiring due to a stroke.
He now lives in Reedsport, and operates an antique store.
When discussing this close encounter, Mead says he still feels apprehension and a faint though distant nervous anxiety.
“Seeing something like that never leaves you,” he says with a look that’s compassionate, troubled and still.
“At the time, I told my supervisor and he saw it also. But, we decided not to tell anyone because, after all this was the early Sixties, and people would have thought us nuts,” Mead adds.
As for how this UFO sighting has impacted his life, Mead said it simply makes him feel more aggressive and alive, and he was almost up on his toes telling this story about something that happened 50 years ago.
“Seeing it changed me,” he adds while pointing to his career choices afterwards. Mead said it “somehow” opened my eyes, or gave him a third-eye that served him well as a police officer in Los Angeles and later as a psychologist investing child abuse cases.
“I was able to see the evil in a person’s eyes, and just know what was on the up and up and what was not real or truthful. It was certainly one of those life moments that you never forget,” he says.
Today, Mead still thinks his story about his first UFO sighting seems too fragile for a world that spends more time debunking than proving alien life on Earth is real, and here now.
“Why is the government, and world governments not telling us the truth about UFOs,” asks the former cop as he smiles suggestively. "Maybe it's because nobody will believe it, and that's the best way to cover something up. Simply admit it's crazy and unbelieveable."
There are no easy or clear answers as to why Mead’s question remains unanswered now 50 years later, despite the intense scrutiny of the UFO community to prove the authenticity of decades of UFO evidence.
It’s also interesting to note that Mead’s 1961 UFO sighting happened at a time in the early 1960’s when “Project Blue Book” was being criticized by politicians, scientists and law enforcement that told the public it was just pie in the sky, and not real.
Still, there’s always been conspiracy theories about UFOs that simply won’t go away, says Mead.
A news story in a local Bend, Oregon, newspaper from back in 1949 noted pairs of disc-shaped UFOs “dancing” in the sky over Bend. During this say period, these disc-shaped UFOs were spotted up and down the ancient and winding Umpqua River that runs past Reedsport where Mead now lives.
While Reedsport has long been considered a timber town, that’s not been the case over the past few decades with the collapse of the Oregon timber industry. Today, it’s a quiet town that sits on the estuary of the Umpqua River where ancient Native American tribes once lived.
Steve Hallett is a retired logger from the region who’s hobby is collecting artifacts of the Lower Umpqua Native American tribe that “worshipped the hovering flying discs.”
Hallett points to Native American oral history records that go back to the 1850’s “where the Indians would speak of seeing the lights over their river.
Moreover, when the town of Reedsport was first established and named for a local settler, Alfred W. Reed, historical records state that Reed noted the local Indians fascination with “lights in the sky.”
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More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010
good - For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn't vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.
Earlier this month, military authorities announced that suicides amongst active-duty soldiers had slowed in 2010, while suicides amongst reservists and people in the National Guard had increased. It was proof, they said, that the frequent psychological screenings active-duty personnel receive were working, and that reservists and guardsmen, who are more removed from the military's medical bureaucracy, simply need to begin undergoing more health checks. This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are "working." Even if something's working, the system is still very, very broken.
One of the problems hindering the military's attempt to address soldier suicides is that there's no real rhyme or reason to what kind of soldier is killing himself. While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil.
"If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, "because we don't know what it is."
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Professor breeds bomb-detecting plants
gizmodo - The next hydrangea you grow could literally save your life. With the help of the Department of Defense, a biologist at the Colorado State University has taught plant proteins how to detect explosives.
Never let it be said that horticulture can't fight terrorism.
Picture this at an airport, perhaps in as soon as four years: a terrorist rolls through the sliding doors of a terminal with a bomb packed into his luggage (or his underwear). All of a sudden, the leafy, verdant gardenscape ringing the gates goes white as a sheet. That's the proteins inside the plants telling authorities that they've picked up the chemical trace of the guy's arsenal.
It only took a small engineering nudge to deputize a plant's natural, evolutionary self-defense mechanisms for threat detection. "Plants can't run and hide," says June Medford, the biologist who's spent the last seven years figuring out how to deputize plants for counterterrorism. "If a bug comes by, it has to respond to it. And it already has the infrastructure to respond."
That would be the "receptor" proteins in its DNA, which respond naturally to threatening stimuli. If a bug chews on a leaf, for instance, the plant releases a series of chemical signals called terpenoids - "a cavalry call," Medford says, that thickens the leaf cuticle in defense. Medford and her team designed a computer model to manipulate the receptors: basically, the model instructs the protein to react when coming in contact with chemicals found in explosives or common air or water pollutants.
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FAA warns of ongoing GPS issues in southeastern US due to Defense Department 'tests'
engadget - Don't panic, but anyone planning on using GPS in the southeastern US for the next month or so will likely want to make sure they have a fallback option. That's according to a flight advisory just issued by the FAA, which warns pilots that their GPS signal "may be unreliable or unavailable" due to "GPS tests" that the Department of Defense will be conducting between January 20th and February 22nd. Details are fairly light beyond that, but the FAA does note that when the "tests" occur they will be active for 45 minutes, and be followed by 15 minutes of off time -- additional notices to pilots will apparently be issued at least 24 hours prior to any test. Of course, while this particular advisory is directed at pilots, it will presumably will also affect all other GPS devices, as the FAA doesn't mention any GPS issues specific to aviation. The real question, however, is just what those mysterious "GPS tests" are -- if they're, in fact, GPS tests at all... - Official FAA warning PDF