Mystery medallion on unidentified man found executed near Elsa

EDINBURG — Investigators hope a medallion on the bullet-riddled body of a man found executed Wednesday morning will help reveal his identity.

A passing truck driver discovered the unidentified body along Mile 19 North Road, just west of Mile 4 Road near Elsa, shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday.

More than 20 bullets penetrated the man’s back and head, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. Investigators believe he was not slain where his body was found.

"Most of the projectiles, if not all of them, are going to be inside his body," the sheriff said. "It’s an obvious execution because of the way he was shot."

Investigators describe the victim as a Hispanic man who was in his mid-30s, stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs about 210 pounds and was wearing a medallion around his neck. He was wearing blue-jean shorts and a green sleeveless shirt, as well as an elastic band on his left elbow.

Treviño said investigators have little information about the medallion, a representation of Eliphas Levi’s Tetragrammaton pentagram, an occult symbol of the human being. Levi was a 19th-century French occultist and magician.

No identification was found on the man and he had no tattoos or scars, the sheriff said. Investigators found no matches after checking local, state and federal fingerprint databases.

The apparent execution is the 16th homicide Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies have investigated by this year. Local law enforcement agencies in Hidalgo County have now investigated at least 27 new homicides so far in 2009.

Rhode Island woman catches 'Ghost' behind child in cell phone image

Lite Rock 105 in Rhode Island has made public a very creepy picture of what appears to be the ghost of an older woman behind a little child of one of the employees. Details on the website explain that,the photo was taken by a babysitter, a teenager named Kasey,was babysitting her niece, Penny (age 22 months), last week and snapped several pictures of the little girl with her phone cam. A couple days later, Kasey was going through the images and noticed there was someone behind her niece in one of the photos. More on this from Reporter John Guice from ABC6:

Email loved ones From Your Grave

This service allows personal notes written prior to their death to be sent to loved ones in the future. Important documents such as wills and insurance details can also be accessed through the service.

Organizers insist The Last Messages Club is in no way ghoulish but eases the stress and trauma associated with the death of a loved one.

A member can write up to 100 emails that can be released once they die at times of their choosing, such as when a relative or loved one marries or has a child. The Last Messages Club works by giving each member a secure and private vault.

They are then able to create messages to be sent specifically to their chosen recipient.

These messages can range from a final love letter, guidance for someone left behind, a list of instructions, details on life insurance and other financial information. Photos, videos and documents can also be attached.

Friday afternoon meditation aid music: GREG DAVIS

Download: “Hall Of Pure Bliss” — Greg Davis

Excerpt from “Hall of Pure Bliss,” the second of the two lengthy pieces that comprise Greg Davis’s new album, Mutually Arising, just out on Kranky. Use as often as needed—it is impossible to overdose.

Album purchase info: http://kranky.net/

The restless dead of the War of 1812

It was the winter of 1813, after a brilliant naval victory in September that secured the strategic waters of Lake Erie for the American forces, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry weathered out the harsh winter at Presque Isle’s Little Bay.

But fate would turn the safe harbor of Little Bay into what we would know today as Misery Bay.

Small Pox had begun to spread onboard Commodore Perry’s Flagship, the Niagara. But being quarantined in the bottom of ship’s hold did little to stem the tide of the disease and the plague was quickly spreading ship wide. When those of his crew were struck down with the disease, Perry ordered that their bodies be buried at sea in the lagoons of the pond near the bay. Now, as the plague’s ferocious force began to unleash itself upon all the crew Perry made a radical decision to bury all those infected with disease at the bottom of the adjacent pond. There was little hope for them; Perry did what he had to do in a remote region of the then wilderness with little help coming for a long time. He buried the dying who yet had the breath of life into the little pond; tying stones around their bodies he surrendered them beneath the waves before death had the chance to naturally take their lives.

Perception - The reality beyond matter

Vampires and Zombies: No mere pop culture trend

Vampires and zombies, both of which became a popular phenomenon in Victorian Britain, are all the rage. Temple English Professor Peter Logan believes this is no mere pop culture trend, but rather a reflection of the strong parallels between that period in Britain and our own here in the U.S.

Victorian Britain was the first industrialized society and the dominant world super power of the nineteenth century. At the height of the Victorian period, one quarter of the world’s population were British subjects.

Temple English professor says vampires popularity lives as long as they do -- forever.

“It was the beginning of the world as we know it today, and it was beset with some of the same problems associated with being a world power that we are currently facing,” Logan said.

But, while vampires were popular during the nineteenth century — just as we see today in the hit HBO series True Blood and the Twilight series of books and movies — the phenomenon didn’t start with Dracula.

The title character in Varney the Vampire (1847) was an aristocrat who walked around in daylight, but he needed the moonlight to survive, said Logan.

“The classic scene during this time is of a weakened vampire soaking up the moonlight and being revivified,” he said.

Appearing at the end of the nineteenth century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula reflects a changed social environment in which the British Empire was at its height and conflicts with the colonies in Africa and Asia were a major concern.

“For these changed times, Count Dracula is still an aristocrat, but he is also an outsider from the fringe of Europe, and he brings his mysterious ways to London, the heart of England and the center of the empire,” said Logan.

Transparent Aluminium Created

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’

A report of the research, 'Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization', is published in Nature Physics. The research was carried out by an international team led by Oxford University scientists Professor Justin Wark, Dr Bob Nagler, Dr Gianluca Gregori, William Murphy, Sam Vinko and Thomas Whitcher.