Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Abandoned Places: Six Flags New Orleans

All of us are like excited children when turned loose for a fun-filled day at an amusement park. The commotion of the enthusiastic crowd combines with mouthwatering scents of delicious snacks waiting to be gobbled up, and then mingles with flashing lights and pounding music from rides and attractions. Yet when an amusement park becomes abandoned and an eerie silence descends to blanket the decay, the atmosphere seems to twist and takes on a nightmarish vibe. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving Six Flags as another of its victims. Here are uber-creepy urban exploration photographs as we tour the abandoned amusement park Six Flags New Orleans.

Everyone knows that Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans in utter devastation. That happened on August 29, 2005, and by August 31, New Orleans, Louisiana, was 80% flooded. Parts of it were under 15 feet of water, but the storm surged to over 20-feet high in some areas. This drowning of the city included Six Flags. At the time, an amusement park was the least of people’s worries. However,  years have passed, and the good people of New Orleans have suffered more than their share. Does that mean they will also never regain this former place to play? In theory, the fate of Six Flags is undecided.

Vatican Joins Search For Alien Life

VATICAN CITY — E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.
"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.
Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology – the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.
Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.