Man Ticketed After Saving Son From Cliff, Jeep Plunges Into River

He may have been ticketed for not saving his Jeep from a cliff dive, but his other option was to let his 5-year-old son die and go to jail.

Frank Roder of New Jersey was ticketed on Thursday for failing to use his emergency brake, after which his Jeep flew into the Rahway River. Roder had leaped out of the vehicle because his son opened the door and was running straight toward a 35-foot embankment, according to Fox News.

"He hopped out, and I thought that was OK. I was just going to park," Roder, 38, told the station. "He just took off, made a beeline for the edge."

Roder said he narrowly saved his little boy Aidan, but his 2006 Jeep Commander wasn't so lucky. Roder knew something was wrong when the kid said, "Um, Daddy ..."

And then, the Jeep was gone. It slid down an embankment and into the muddy water below.

A cop on the scene reportedly handed him a pair of tickets -- one for the brake, and another for failure to produce his insurance card, which was in the water-bound Jeep -- and told Roder he should have just applied the brake.

"I say, 'Really? And if I did and my boy stepped over the edge and fell instead of the Jeep, then where would I be?' He says, 'Jail, for child endangerment'."

Though miffed and carless, Roder plans on paying his $50 and $60 tickets.

[Huffington Post]

Bigfoot Conference Cites No Hard Evidence...Again

By: Benjamin Radford, Life's Little Mysteries contributor
Published: 05/17/2012 12:32 PM EDT on Lifes Little Mysteries

It may surprise people to know there are several Bigfoot conferences in the United States each year; in fact, the Ohio Bigfoot Conference, held recently in a town some 100 miles south of Cleveland, is considered one of the biggest in the world and provides insight into the monster-hunting community.

Guests at the Ohio Bigfoot Conference in Cambridge April 29 included biologist John Bindernagel, who was part of a group of researchers claiming to have found hard evidence and "Bigfoot nests" in Russia last year. (Other prominent Bigfoot researchers denounced the event as a hoax for the publicity.) Also on hand was veteran investigator Peter Byrne, who has led many unsuccessful expeditions searching for Bigfoot and Yeti evidence over several decades.

There's rarely much new in the way of Bigfoot evidence to offer or discuss; after all, it's not as if researchers can give presentations comparing, say, a Bigfoot body found in Oregon in 1984 with a Bigfoot body found last year in British Columbia. Without hard evidence grounding the discussion, conferences are often heavy on personal stories by people who swear they encountered the world's most famous mystery monster, if only indirectly.

Cryptozoologist explains his studies of mysterious creatures

The first reported sighting of the Loch Ness Monster made the local news May 2, 1933. Since then, more than 40 sightings have been reported. But that's not the only mysterious sea creature that has been reported but never conclusively proven to exist.

Loren Coleman makes a living investigating creatures whose existence has not yet been proven.

Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, working to uncover animals whose existence is disputed or unsubstantiated. Some 68 years ago, the first photo of the Loch Ness monster was shot and published in a U.K. newspaper. But the mystery continues.

According to Coleman there’s not just one Loch Ness Monster, yeti, or mysterious creature, but rather, an entire population exists. In the book he cowrote, "The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep," Coleman said the population probably doesn't live in Loch Ness, either.

Queen of SETI retires from research

The real-life astronomer who inspired the central character in "Contact," the book and movie about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is retiring from her research post at the age of 68. But that doesn't mean Jill Tarter is giving up on the SETI quest. Instead, she's focusing on the search for funding for the non-profit SETI Institute.

For most of the institute's 28-year history, Tarter has been serving as director of the Center for SETI Research as well as holding the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI. "I've worn two hats," she explained. Now she's passing along the center's top research hat to physicist Gerry Harp, a colleague at the institute — and wearing the Oliver Chair hat full-time as a fundraiser.

"We have got to get this endeavor stably funded," she told me.

Tarter knows as well as anyone on Earth how much of a challenge that will be. In the 1980s and 1990s, she participated in NASA-funded efforts to search for alien radio signals — efforts that drew intense fire from some members of Congress. The fire became so intense that NASA as well as the National Science Foundation were barred from funding SETI research in 1993. To keep hope alive, Tarter spearheaded a program to continue the search with private donations.

US artist buys French ghost village

Courbefy village, 30 miles from Limoges, was abandoned in 2008 by its previous owner owing to bankruptcy. 

It was the village no one wanted: an abandoned hamlet of 21 buildings including the ruins of a 13th century castle, a chapel, an empty swimming pool, overgrown tennis courts and falling down stables in the unspoilt central region of Limousin.

But on Monday the ghost village of Courbefy, 30 miles from Limoges, went under the hammer for a second time and was bought by an American photographer.

The buyer, a South Korean-born artist whose name is Ahae, was not present for the auction in which he made the final bid at €520,000, nearly €200,000 more than the asking price.

Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek’s James Doohan ashes finally sent to space

A new generation of space travel is happening as we speak. You could, perhaps, call it the next generation of space travel. Private space flights are going to start happening more and more often and we’ll get closer to the future science fiction stories have told us to much about. But before all that, one Star Trek alum will experience space a very different way. Actor James Doohan’s ashes will make their way into outer space when a privately owned rocket is sent up this week.

We recently shared a story with you about action figures of Captains Kirk and Picard being launched into the atmosphere but this is so much cooler.

Doohan, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, from the original Star Trek series, passed away in 2005. If this particular story sounds familiar, it’s because some of the actor’s ashes were already sent to space in 2008, as per his will. The problem was, they never made it. “When SpaceX launched the remains on its Falcon1 rocket, the rocket never made it to space. When the rocket failed to get to orbit, neither did the cremated remains, or, for that matter, some small satellites sent by NASA and the Department of Defense,” writes ABC News.

Celestis Inc. will give it another shot as they launch a private rocket on a trial run to the International Space Station tomorrow. The company made their first private launch back in 1982 and specializes in memorial space flights.