Carl Sagan on The Drake Equation

Looking for ET: Signs of life

The Economist-- HALF a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens. He suggested the following figures should be multiplied: how many stars are formed in the galaxy in a year; what fraction of these have planets and thus form solar systems; the average number of planets per solar system that have the potential to support life; on what percentage of those where it is possible do such biospheres actually form; what percentage of such biospheres give rise to intelligent species; what percentage of intelligent life is able to transmit signals into space; and for how long could such intelligence keeps sending signals.

This calculation became celebrated as the Drake equation—perhaps the best attempt so far to tame a wild guess. Most of the terms remain hard to tie down, although there is a consensus that about ten stars are formed per year in the galaxy. Also, recent searches for extrasolar planets have concluded that planets are not rare.

Dark, dangerous asteroids found lurking near Earth

New Scientist-- An infrared space telescope has spotted several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near Earth's orbit. Their obscurity and tilted orbits have kept them hidden from surveys designed to detect things that might hit our planet.

Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It began its survey in mid-January.

In its first six weeks of observations, it has discovered 16 previously unknown asteroids with orbits close to Earth's. Of these, 55 per cent reflect less than one-tenth of the sunlight that falls on them, which makes them difficult to spot with visible-light telescopes. One of these objects is as dark as fresh asphalt, reflecting less than 5 per cent of the light it receives.

Can This Black Box See Into the Future?

DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream.

At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.

But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.

Rep. Bart Stupak's Connection to Govt Sponsored Religous Cult "The Family"

Backers of public prayer may regret ruling

Now that District Judge Joseph Farnan has divined that opening school board meetings with prayer is constitutional, supporters should consider the costs of what they've won.
 It's a tough prospect, perhaps, for many of the majority Christian faith to consider, but this most recent ruling makes it necessary. Farnan's 57-page opinion threw out the lawsuit brought against the Indian River School District filed in 2005 by two Jewish families. They charged the district created an environment of exclusion by allowing explicitly Christian prayers at school events. One family had a student in the district, the other family complained of harassment after objecting to a Christian prayer at their daughter's graduation the previous year. They even moved out of state because of the intimidation. Farnan found that elected school boards are closer to a legislative body than a school, and therefore a prayer is permissible. Both Houses of open sessions with prayers.

Wiccan Chaplain Battles for State Recognition

(RNS) A volunteer Wiccan chaplain is headed to a federal appeals court in an attempt to get California to hire prison clergy outside five religious categories.
Supported by interfaith scholars and church-state separationists, the Rev. Patrick McCollum argues that the state policy has the "pernicious effect" of depriving inmates of other religious backgrounds from getting the services they need and deserve.
The court challenge began when McCollum, 59, a prominent leader in Wiccan and correctional circles, applied and was rejected for a full-time position as a chaplain in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"When I got to the personnel office, they refused to give me an application to apply for a state job because they knew that I was a Wiccan," said McCollum, director of Our Lady of the Wells Church in Moraga, Calif., and leader of the National Correctional Chaplaincy Directors Association.
"They never reviewed my qualifications."
At this point, McCollum's appeal concerns whether he has legal standing to bring his suit; McCollum hopes the appeals court will rule on the broad issues in his claims, or send the case back to the lower court for another trial.
Wiccans practice a nature-based pagan faith that's rooted in pre-Christian celebrations of the cycles of the seasons.

Teacher suspended for denying Wiccan altar

A Guthrie Center teacher this week received a five-day unpaid suspension for insubordination for not allowing a student to build a Wiccan altar in his shop class - discipline he said he still doesn't agree with.

Dale Halferty, who has taught industrial arts at Guthrie Center High School for three years, said he was asked to meet with the school district superintendent and high school principal when he returns to work Tuesday.

Halferty said Wednesday he still doesn't understand why school officials are forcing him to act against his own beliefs as a Christian and allow the student to disrupt his class with a project based on a religion he believes is wrong and bad for youth.

"Personally, I think it's offensive to worship rocks and trees," Halferty said of Wicca, a religion based on ancient beliefs and a reverence for the Earth. "I am just trying to be moral. I don't know how we can profess to be Christians and let this go on."

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Satanic Teen Cannibals on Trial for Dismembering and Eating Their Four Friends

Legal trial with regard to the notorious Satanists case has commenced in the regional court of Yaroslavl, Russia. Eight teenagers are being accused of cannibalism and brutal murder of their four friends. The Satanists spent a year and a half in a detention facility, and are now finally in court.


Last week, the first hearing was held. The case details are so shocking that the hearings are closed to the general public. Eight teenagers, sect members, murdered their friends, ate their hearts, dismembered their bodies and buried them in several places. The mothers of the innocent victims who are to find out all the case details have demanded that the judge gave the criminals a life sentence.
Indictments were handed out to Alexei Chistyakov, Konstantin Baranov, Ksenia Kovaleva, Nikolai Ogolobyak, Alexander Voronov, Aleksei Soloviev, Sergey Karpenko and Anton Makovkin. The teenagers enjoyed watching their friends die a painful death.

The teenagers who fell victims of the Satanists were Varya Kuzmina, age 16, Olya Pukhova, age 16, Andrey Sorokin, age 16, and Anya Gorokhova, age 15. The ritual murders were committed in June of 2008 in the wastelands that served as the Satanists meeting grounds. The Satanists installed an upside down crucifix on the ground and immolated animals there. The sect members often raided cemeteries where they dug out graves and turned crucifixes upside down. Having spent two years immolating animals, the teenagers decided to try their “skill” on humans. According to the investigators, they murdered their victims in couples. They first made the victims drunk, and then cut them with a knife, stabbing each victim 666 times, the sacred Number of the Beast. Then the murderers made bonfires and fried their victims’ body parts to eat them.

“During the nights between June 28 and June 30 of 2008, the Satanists went through the ceremony of initiating new members of their clan,” says Lubov Bashkirova, the head of the investigative department. Ksenia Kovaleva was the first one to be initiated. During the ritual, 16 year-old Olga Pukhova and 15 year-old Anna Gorokhova were sacrificed.

The next night, during the initiation ritual of Alexei Solovyev, the monsters enticed to the wasteland and brutally murdered Varvara Kuzmina and Andrey Sorokin.

The Dalnegorsk UFO Crash: Roswell Incident of the Soviet Union

This internationally famous UFO incident took place in 1986, on January 29, at 7:55 p.m. Some have called it the Roswell Incident of the Soviet Union. The information concerning this incident was sent to us by a number of Russian ufologists.

	Mesh-like objects found at the site

Dalnegorsk is a small mining town in the Far East of Russia. That cold January day a reddish sphere flew into this town from the southeastern direction, crossed part of Dalnegorsk, and crashed at the Izvestkovaya Mountain (also known as Height or Hill 611, because of its size). The object flew noiselessly, and parallel to the ground; it was approximately three meters in diameter, of a near-perfect round shape, with no projections or cavities, its colour similar to that of burning stainless steel. One eyewitness, V. Kandakov, said that the speed of the UFO was close to 15 meters per hour. The object slowly ascended and descended, and its glow would heat up every time it rose up. On its approach to Hill 611 the object "jerked", and fell down like a rock.

True Terror: Do you dare watch? Rumored to drive people mad.