Places Of Power: The Town of FENG-DU The Realm of the Dead

The town of Fengdu, said to be the abode of devils, is one of the first stops on your Yangtze River cruise. The famous 'Ghost City' Situated on the northern bank of the river between Zhongxian and Fuling, the city was depicted as the 'City of Ghosts' in two ancient, classic Chinese works - "Monkey King" and "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio". The origin of the town's extraordinary reputation can be traced back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.) when two officials, Yin and Wang, became Taoist recluses here and eventually Immortals. Later in the Tang Dynasty, their names were combined to mean "King of the Underworld".

Thereafter, Mt. Mingshan gained its reputation as the 'City of Ghosts' where the king lived.There is a necropolis called Fengdu modelled after the Chinese Hell in Taoist mythology, built over 1800 years ago. The famous ghost town will become an island after Three Gorges Dam project. Specifically, part of the ghost town of Fengdu will be submerged, but scenery above the "Door of Hell" will remain.
Today, the town throngs with many tourists who come to visit temples and shrines dedicated to the gods of the underworld. Landmarks here bear horrific names - Last Glance at Home Tower, Nothing-to-be-done Bridge, and Ghost Torturing Pass - the three trials for ghosts who wanted to enter the nether world.
 

Chinese ghosts

There are a variety of Chinese supernatural beings in Chinese folklore and fictional culture, originating from traditional folk culture, as well as contemporary literature.

A Partial List of Chinese Ghosts 

* Ba Jiao Gui 芭蕉鬼 - "Banana-tree ghost", a female ghost which dwells in a banana tree, often haunting under the tree by appearing at night and wailing sadly, sometimes carrying a baby. Folk tales in Singapore and Malaysia tell stories of greedy people asking for lottery numbers from this ghost by tying a red string around the tree trunk and sticking sharp needles into it, then tie the other end of the string to his/her bed. At night, the ghost will appear at the bed of the person asking for mercy and granting the person lottery numbers. After winning the lottery prize money, if the person did not fulfill the promise to set the ghost free, he/she will meet with a tragic death.

* Nu Gui 女鬼 - A female ghost often with long hair and clothed in a long white dress. In the legend, women who commit suicide in a red dress return as a ghost in a red dress to take revenge on the living. Some ancient folk tales tell stories of beautiful female ghosts appearing like a woman, seducing lecherous men and then killing them for their blood or for revenge.

Cyberwar: (UK) Home Office website blocked; 'Anonymous' hackers blamed

The hacking group Anonymous says it will launch online attacks every weekend, following claims it disrupted access to the Home Office website.

Anonymous Twitter messages warned of the attack on 4 April, and said: "Expect a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) every Saturday on the UK Government sites."

The Home Office site was inaccessible for several hours on Saturday night.

Officials say no sensitive information was lost, and it is now back to normal.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack floods a webserver with so many requests that it can no longer respond to legitimate users.

The Home Office website became inaccessible around 21:00 BST on Saturday, and was patchy from 05:00 on Sunday.

It is not clear whether the protest was against email surveillance or extradition, but it could be both.

One message on Twitter said it was a protest against "draconian surveillance proposals", but another claimed it was over extradition from the UK to the US.

One tweet claiming to be from Anonymous said: "You should not give UK citizens to foreign countries without evidence. If an offence happened in the UK, so should the trial."

There were also claims on Twitter that the 10 Downing Street website had been targeted as part of the same protest.

Mars' Whirling Dust Devil

The Pagan Origins of Lent and Easter

PCs in the Sky with Diamonds?

If you like the concept of a computer that could double as an engagement ring, you'll love this. Just expect to pay quite a bit more than three month's salary for the quantum computer in a 1mm-by-1mm diamond that an international team of scientists has created.

The tiny computer, created by researchers from the University of Southern California, Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, Iowa State University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara features a pair of quantum bits, or qubits, composed of subatomic particles, the team reported in the current issue of Nature.

Quantum computing, first proposed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in 1981, is still highly theoretical, with experiments in the science and its cousin, quantum cryptography, limited to laboratory settings thus far. In other words, there are no practical quantum computers yet, just experimental ones.

Movie Trailer: A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) Trailer [HD]

Anonymous: Scientology The Cult of Abuse (Part 1 and 2)

Scientology: Inside the Cult

Cult leader Charles Manson up for parole

LOS ANGELES -- Charles Manson, who will go before the parole board for the 12th time this week, has not been a model prisoner.

Twice in the last few years, guards at Corcoran State Prison found phones in the notorious killer's possession. Manson called people in California, New Jersey and Florida with an LG flip phone found under his prison bunk in March 2009, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2011. A second cellphone was found a year later. Thirty days were added to his sentence for the first offense, officials said.

Earlier, a homemade weapon was found in his possession.

A parole board will consider whether Manson should be released from prison on Wednesday, though the chances of that happening are pretty slim. The board has rejected parole for Manson 11 times before.

Manson, now 77, refused to participate in his last parole hearing, in 2007, describing himself as a "prisoner of the political system." He also declined to participate in any psychological evaluations that were part of that process.

A&E Biography Charles Manson part 1/5 (video)

UFO Fireball seen over Texas

Texans report multiple lights overhead April 6 from four locations

Multiple reports of fireballs, meteors or hovering lights were filed from Central Texas on April 6, 2012, from four locations spanning about 237 miles, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

At 9:20 p.m. CST, a parent and two sons reported watching an "orange fireball" three times in the north-northwest sky in Case 37169. The second object appeared about 5 minutes after the first; and the third object was seen at about 10 p.m.

"The size of the object appeared similar to Venus, which was higher in the sky," the reporting witness stated. "The object was orange in color and pulsated in brightness. The object seemed to be moving north-northwest and eventually faded from view.

Parallel Universe - National Geographic Channel

Japanese 'ghost ship' sunk by U.S. Coast Guard off Alaska

A Japanese "ghost ship" cast adrift by last year's devastating earthquake and tsunami sank to the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf of Alaska on Thursday night after the U.S. Coast Guard pum-meled it with explosives.

The USCGC Anacapa levelled can-non shots at the derelict fishing vessel in a "slow and deliberate" manner to ensure accuracy, said Veronica Colbath, a coast guard public affairs officer.

The explosives were fired shortly after a failed salvage attempt by a Canadian fishing vessel that delayed the planned sinking.

Q&A: The Anthropology of Searching for Aliens

Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own.

To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the very human way that scientists, engineers and members of the public think about space exploration and the search for alien life.

From Star Trek to SETI, our modern world is constantly imagining possible futures where we dart around the galaxy engaging with bizarre alien races. Denning points out that when people talk about these futures, they often invoke the past. But they frequently seem to have a poor understanding of history.

For instance, in September at the 100 Year Starship Conference — a symposium created by DARPA for thinking about long-term spaceflight goals — Denning noted that the conference was framed as an extension of old traditions of exploration, for example mentioning Ferdinand Magellan as an exemplary hero who circumnavigated the globe. Not only did Magellan not circumnavigate the globe (he was dismembered in the Philippines before finishing the task), his mission was not entirely laudable.

How Dangerous is the Fukushima Radioactive Wave Headed Toward the US?

TheBigPictureRT: Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear, joins Thom Hartmann. California beware! A radioactive wave is headed toward the West Coast of the United States courtesy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster? So with nuclear power still wreaking havoc on the environment - why are the Japanese about to flip on more of their nuclear reactors?