Here at SRI we are quite often contacted by paranormal investigators who have, through the way they investigate, attracted an entity to themselves that eventually causes a big problem.
When looking into their cases we have found that the majority of these entities have been attracted to the investigator by them performing EVP sessions, thus opening a door the investigator is unable to close.
Most people that gather EVPs are not careful with what they are saying, ex. 'do you want to talk to me?' or 'you are welcome'...and one of the worst 'come closer', etc. Think about it...would you say this to a physical human being who may intend you harm? Making statements like this to an entity is no different than on the earth plane. The paranormal holds not only good, but also evil, and as I have said once that door is open there is NO closure for the victim...the entity of dark force has been released.
These entities do not care for your welfare. You are just the host for them...a battery to draw from.
It's not only paranormal investigators who have problems. The onset of unlimited paranormal programs on TV many ordinary people think it would be a bit of fun to try EVPs in their own homes. Once hearing their first EVP they are hooked and they want to do more until it then becomes an obsession...more and more, each time attracting more entities to themselves or their home until it becomes really and truly out-of-hand.
These entities can move from you to a weaker member of the family...for instance, a child. Is that fair your entertainment becomes their nightmare? I don't think so. It does not stop there...it can start to spread like a plague to family members, friends, work mates...anyone you are in contact with. Many will not even notice anything different until that time comes when the entity starts to play up.
Many people who do not really understand or know if they are open to the spirit world have no business searching for these things. No protection, whether it is a circle of salt, a prayer, smudging with a sage stick, surrounding yourself with a white light or whatever you have read or been told will not always stop these entities...there are those that know how to get past it.
I am writing this because, in the 50 years I have been performing my services, there has been an enormous recent increase in attachment cases. In just the last couple of days SRI has received 5 cases that are each as bad as the other. Attachments like these are one of the most difficult to remove. So please, for your sake and those around you, (and to make my job easier) THINK FIRST! Irene Block
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Want to talk with aliens? Learn to speak with dolphins
wired - The Kepler Space Telescope announced a new bonanza of distant planets this month, reconfirming that solar systems, some possibly hosting life, are common in the universe.
So if humanity someday arrives at an extraterrestrial cocktail party, will we be ready to mingle? At the Wild Dolphin Project in Jupiter, Florida, researchers train for contact by trying to talk with dolphins.
Behavioral biologist Denise Herzing started studying free-ranging spotted dolphins in the Bahamas more than two decades ago. Over the years, she noticed some dolphins seeking human company, seemingly out of curiosity.
“We thought, ‘This is fascinating, let’s see if we can take it further,’” Herzing said. “Many studies communicate with dolphins, especially in captivity, using fish as a reward. But it’s rare to ask dolphins to communicate with us.”
Dolphins have large, sophisticated brains, elaborately developed in the areas linked to higher-order thinking. They have a complex social structure, form alliances, share duties and display personalities. Put a mirror in their tank and they can recognize themselves, indicating a sense of self.
When trained, they have a remarkable capacity to pick up language. At the Dolphin Institute in Hawaii, Louis Herman and his team taught dolphins hundreds of words using gestures and symbols. Dolphins, they found, could understand the difference between statements and questions, concepts like “none” or “absent,” and that changing word order changes the meaning of a sentence. Essentially, they get syntax.
Some tantalizing studies even suggest dolphins share their own language (see sidebar, “Easier Language Through Math”). All are qualities we’d hope to see in an alien, and no daydream of contact is complete without some attempt at communication. Yet with dolphins, our attempts have involved teaching them to speak our language, rather than meeting in the middle.
Herzing created an open-ended framework for communication, using sounds, symbols and props to interact with the dolphins. The goal was to create a shared, primitive language that would allow dolphins and humans to ask for props, such as balls or scarves.
Divers demonstrated the system by pressing keys on a large submerged keyboard. Other humans would throw them the corresponding prop. In addition to being labeled with a symbol, each key was paired with a whistle that dolphins could mimic. A dolphin could ask for a toy either by pushing the key with her nose, or whistling.
Herzing’s study is the first of its kind. No one has tried to establish two-way communication in the wild.
“This is an authentic way to approach this, she’s not imposing herself on them,” said Lori Marino, the Emory University biologist who, with Hunter College psychologist Diana Reiss, pioneered dolphin self-recognition studies. “She’s cultivated a relationship with these dolphins over a very long time and it’s entirely on their terms. I think this is the future of working with dolphins.”
For each session, the researchers played with the dolphins for about half-an-hour, for a total of roughly 40 hours over the course of three years. They reported their findings of this pilot study in the December issue of Acta Astronautica.
Herzing’s team found that six dolphins, all young females, were interested in the game, and would come to play when the game was on. Young males were typically less social and less interested in humans. “This is when the females have a lot of play time,” Herzing said, “before they are busy being mothers.”
To Herzing’s surprise, some of her spotted dolphins recruited bottlenose dolphins, another species, to the game. This shows their natural curiosity, Herzing said. In the wild, dolphins communicate across cetacean species lines, coordinating hunting with other dolphins and even sharing babysitting duties.
Herzing found the study sessions were most successful when, before playing, the humans and dolphins swam together slowly and in synchrony, mimicked each other and made eye contact. These are signs of good etiquette among dolphins. Humans also signal their interest in someone with eye contact and similar body language. Perhaps these are universal — and extraterrestrial — signs of good manners.
Before we hope to understand extraterrestrials, then, perhaps we should practice with smart animals right here on Earth. Astronomer Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute was struck by this thought at a recent conference.
“From the way the presenter was speaking, I thought he was going to announce that he had found a signal of extraterrestrial intelligence,” Doyle said. “We’ve been waiting for this for years, but I thought, ‘We’re not ready!’ We can’t even speak to the intelligent animals on Earth.”
NOTE: someone's been watching too much Star Trek IV. "Captain, there be whales here!"...Lon
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Cyber war threat exaggerated claims security expert
BBC - The threat of cyber warfare is greatly exaggerated, according to a leading security expert.
Bruce Schneier claims that emotive rhetoric around the term does not match the reality.
He warned that using sensational phrases such as "cyber armageddon" only inflames the situation.
Mr Schneier, who is chief security officer for BT, is due to address the RSA security conference in San Francisco this week
Speaking ahead of the event, he told BBC News that there was a power struggle going on, involving a "battle of metaphors".
He suggested that the notion of a cyber war was based on several high-profile incidents from recent years.
They include blackouts in Brazil in 1998, attacks by China on Google in 2009 and the Stuxnet virus that attacked Iran's nuclear facilities.
He also pointed to the fallout from Wikileaks and the hacking of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail.
"What we are seeing is not cyber war but an increasing use of war-like tactics and that is what is confusing us.
"We don't have good definitions of what cyber war is, what it looks like and how to fight it," said Mr Schneier.
Sarah Palin Casualty of war? Attacks such as Sarah Palin's e-mail hack have been lumped into the debate
His point of view was backed by Howard Schmidt, cyber security co-ordinator for the White House.
"We really need to define this word because words do matter," said Mr Schmidt.
"Cyber war is a turbo metaphor that does not address the issues we are looking at like cyber espionage, cyber crime, identity theft, credit card fraud.
"When you look at the conflict environment - military to military - command and control is always part of the thing.
"Don't make it something that it is not," Mr Schmidt told a small group of reporters on the opening day of the conference.
A report last month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development also concluded that the vast majority of hi-tech attacks, described as acts of cyber war, do not deserve the name.
Tanks and bombs
The issue is likely to receive a lot of attention at RSA this week as a number of panels seek to define what is and what is not cyber warfare.
"Stuxnet and the Google infiltration are not cyber war - who died?" asked Mr Schneier.
"We know what war looks like and it involves tanks and bombs.
"However all wars in the future will have a cyber space component.
"Just like we saw in the Iraqi war we [the US] used an air attack to soften up the country for a ground offensive.
"It is probably reasonable you will see a cyber attack to soften up the country for an air attack or ground offensive," he added.
Mr Schneier claimed that the heated rhetoric is driving policy in ways that might not be appropriate.
"The fear is that we are going to see an increased militarisation of the internet," he said.
Recently the FBI and Department of Defence squared off over who got to control defence in cyber space and the multimillion dollar budget that goes with the job.
Mr Schneier said that battle was won by the defence department.
He also claimed there was a worrying trend of politicians who try to introduce legislation as a way to deal with the issue as nothing short of knee-jerk politics.
"My worry is these ill thought-out bills will pass," said Mr Schneier.
Talk of drawing up the equivalent of a Geneva Convention for cyber space has been gaining attention.
The proposal was raised by international affairs think-tank, the EastWest Institute at a security conference in Munich last week.
Mr Schmidt said he is sceptical because he does not believe every country will sign up to an agreed set of norms or standards.
"I don't know that a treaty is going to solve anything at this juncture.
"Not everyone thinks about this unilaterally around the world. We can't do this by ourselves," he said.
Industry commentator Declan McCullagh, who is chief potlicial writer for online news site CNET.com, believes the idea of doing nothing is untenable.
"Before we get to the stage of having to launch a cyber war, and that will eventually come, lets have a public discussion about what this involves," he said.
"A Geneva Convention for cyber war makes sense at least to start that discussion.
"What that would do is put certain types of attacks off the table like you are not going to target the enemy's hospitals or certain types of civilian systems that innocents depend on for their livelihood.
"I don't think everyone is going to respect it, and maybe the US won't respect it at times, but at least it starts the discussion and will probably have a positive effect," said Mr McCullagh.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the RSA event, which began as a purely technical cryptography conference and has evolved into a broader forum that includes issues of policy and governance as well as technology.
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Killing one native owl species to save another?
seattleweekly - The phrase "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" comes to mind when considering a new plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to save the endangered Northern spotted owl.
That plan: shoot barred owls--a principal competitor of the spotted owl.
Though the USFWS policy hasn't officially been released yet, The Oregonian reports that it's likely to include a strategy to kill off between 1,200 and 1,500 barred owls from northern California through Oregon and Washington:
It's a wrenching decision that splits wildlife biologists and environmentalists. Killing one native animal to benefit another -- especially a "big, beautiful raptor, a fantastic bird," as one biologist puts it -- is such a leap that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hired an environmental ethicist to guide its discussions.
Killing off invasive species is a common practice in wildlife management, but barred owls aren't invasive--they're native. And several environmental groups are arguing that killing them won't help the problem unless people are prepared to shoot the owls by the thousands every single year.
One biologist estimates the cost of such a plan to be $1 million annually.
Plus, by seemingly all accounts, the barred owl is simply a stronger and better-adapted species. It eats a wider variety of food and nests in a wider variety of places than the spotted owl.
Thus, the classic Darwinian argument comes into play:
"Population dynamics between two native species should not be artificially manipulated," says Blake Murden, wildlife and fisheries director for Port Blakely Tree Farms in Tumwater, Wash. "It's a generalist and a specialist," Murden says, "and invariably the generalist will win."
At the same time, there are experiments that suggest shooting the barred owls works in bringing back its spotted cousin.
A limited experiment on private California timberland showed spotted owls returned to their original nesting and roosting areas in every instance when barred owls were killed. In one case, a pair that hadn't been seen for more than two years reappeared just 10 days after a pair of barred owls were shot.
So the question comes down to whether a long, expensive, and morally objectionable plan to protect a rare and--many would argue--inferior species of bird is worth the effort--and really, if killing one native species is ever justified in preserving another.
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Two huge holes spotted on the Sun
ibtimes - Japanese scientists have spotted two huge holes on the sun's magnetic field, and it has been observed that the holes look darker than other parts of the sun.
The holes, called coronal holes, are gateways for solar material and gas to spill out into space, according to space.com. The gaps in the sun's magnetic field make a hole through its atmosphere, letting gas out, NASA has said.
The new finding was made by Japan's Hinode sun-watching satellite which has been observing sun since 2006. "Japan's Hinode sun-watching satellite photographed the sun's two coronal holes on Feb. 1. In the image, one coronal hole appears near the top center of the sun while another one – a polar coronal hole – is visible near the bottom of the view", space.com said in an article.