One of the coolest stops Hillary and I made on our recent trip to Texas was at the Austin Museum of the Weird. The museum is on 6th Street and it’s open until 11 PM, so it’s easy to stroll in during a night out on the town.

It’s a tripped out collection. The museum itself is pretty small, but the eclectic display they’ve packed into it is very impressive.

Classic movie monster props combine with an arcane mix of occult artifacts and sideshow curiosities. Featuring the Fiji Mermaid, a two-headed sheep, and a fish with a human face.

There is a fairy fossil displayed on a wall. . .

A voodoo guardian stands in one corner. . .

And for all those fans of The Invisibles out there, there is even a Hand of Glory.

Supernatural, Travel | 3 Comments »

(Link via Wired)

Art, Science | No Comments »

I can’t believe the last episode is this Friday. There are rallies being held all over the country.

Conan Blasts NBC Over Tonight Show Shake Up

Leno Announces Cancellation, Slams NBC

Conan the Ho

Conan: If NBC Doesn’t Want People to See Me, Just Leave Me on NBC

Conan and Leno Joke About Each Other in Monologues

Letterman on the NBC Debacle

Jimmy Fallon Weighs in on Conan and Leno

Conan Puts The Tonight Show on Craigslist

Letterman Slams NBC Executives

Conan Ponders Career in Porn

Seth Meyers: NBC is Killing Conan

David Letterman: Leno Victims Unit

Saturday Night Live on the Leno/Conan Shuffle

Conan Puts Himself on Craigslist

Letterman Rips Leno

Leno Rips Letterman

Jimmy Kimmel as Leno

Conan Trashes NBC Execs in Monologue

Kenneth the Page Interrupts the Tonight Show

Jimmy Kimmel Goes After Leno on His Own Show

Howard Stern Warned Conan Three Years Ago

Conan/Leno Animated in Hong Kong

Conan Blasts NBC’s “Incompetent Morons” in Song

Ed Helms Sings Farewell Song to Conan

Letterman on Leno: “A Look Back”

Jay Leno: “I Told NBC That Prime Time ‘Will Never Work’”

Conan Spends 1.5 Million Dollars in One Sketch as Revenge Against NBC

Adam Sandler Sings to Conan

Hundreds Arrive at Conan Rally, Conan Appears with Free Pizzas

Obama Supports Conan

The Return of The Masterbating Bear

This article from Vanity Fair adds some very interesting background to the story.

Is Conan the Victim of Harvard’s Crimson/Lampoon Rivalry?

As O’Brien once told Business Week, “My first meeting with Jeff Zucker was in handcuffs, with a Cambridge police officer reading me my rights.”

One very positive aspect of the I’m With Coco movement is that, self-aware of how ultimately silly it is, it has doubled as a fundraising effort for Haitian relief. Click here, here, and here for a few different ways that you can help.

I’m With Coco on Facebook

The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien

Late Night with Conan O’Brien

Late Night With Conan O’Brien: 10th Anniversary Special/The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

The Max Weinberg 7

If They Mated

Andy Richter Controls the Universe

All hail Conan.

Norm MacDonald Declares Conan the King of Late Night

See also:

Andy Richter is Back on Conan

Andy Barker, P.I.

Comic Con Coverage Part 4: Robin Vs. Triumph The Insult Comic Dog

UPDATE: NBC has scrubbed all of it’s Conan footage from the net. If you’re looking for Conan videos, I would suggest going to The Pirate Bay to download them illegally.

UPDATE: Conan O’Brien is now on Twitter.

News, Revolution | No Comments »

“God Helmet” Inventor, Dr. Michael Persinger Discovers Telepathy Link in Lab Experiments

In the 1980’s Persinger made headlines with his “God Helmet”, a device that stimulates temporal lobes with a weak magnetic field in order to produce religious states.

Now, Persinger has discovered the same type of brain stimulation can create metal states conducive to human telepathy. “What we have found is that if you place two different people at a distance and put a circular magnetic field around both, and you make sure they are connected to the same computer so they get the same stimulation, then if you flash a light in one person’s eye the person in the other room receiving just the magnetic field will show changes in their brain as if they saw the flash of light. We think that’s tremendous because it may be the first macro demonstration of a quantum connection, or so-called quantum entanglement. If true, then there’s another way of potential communication that may have physical applications, for example, in space travel.”

(Found via Prefessor Hex)

The God Helmet on Wikipedia

The leading researcher in this area is Michael Persinger. Persinger uses a modified snowmobile helmet (the “Koren Helmet”) that contains solenoids placed over the temporal lobes, or a device nicknamed the Octopus that uses solenoids, both of which output “weak but complex” magnetic fields. The Octopus uses solenoids around the whole brain, in a circle just above subject’s ears, eyes and the bony ridge at the back of the skull, a region that includes the temporal lobes. Persinger reports that at least 80 percent of his participants (working with the Koren Helmet) experience a presence beside them in the room, which ranges from a simple ‘sensed presence’ to God. About one percent experienced God, while many more had less evocative, but still significant experiences of ‘another being’.

You can purchase your own god helmet here from Shakti Technology.

It’s called the Shiva Neural Stimulation System.

Science, Supernatural | 1 Comment »

(via The Daily Superman)

Comics | No Comments »

And as our species continues to evolve. . .

Pakistan Recognizes Third Gender

Late on Wednesday, the Supreme Court in Pakistan ordered that the government officially recognize a separate gender for Pakistan’s hijra community, which includes transgendered people, transvestites, and eunuchs. The court told the federal government to begin allowing people to identify as hijras when registering for a national identity card.

Such cards are necessary for everything from voting to more informal situations; patrons must present the card at cybercafes before surfing the Internet, for example. Not having an identity card, or having one with incorrect information, leaves a person vulnerable and easily excluded from society.

Way to go, Pakistan. Even MySpace and Facebook don’t recognize the third gender yet.

A similar decision was recently made in India as well.

The transexual movement for equal rights in South Asia is fascinating and ancient, distinct in many ways from their Western counterparts.

The right to an ID card for a third sexed individual is a recent development there, but in India there are several hijras (or aravanis, as some prefer to be called, after the god Aravan) already who have succeeded in being elected as political officials.

One very interesting development that I did not expect. . .

Are governments in India and Pakistan using the aravanis to recover bank loans?

Transvestites Say it’s Payback Time

The transgender community in Sindh is thrilled by the recent advice given by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to the government to use the services of transvestites for the recovery of outstanding bank loans from defaulters.

. . .

“If we are asked to recover loans, we will constitute special teams and right after getting the list we would rush to the houses of these defaulters with drums and other musical instruments and would sing and dance to ask them for the money,” said Shabnam, who usually stands on the main roundabout of Regal Chock.

One can’t help but wonder if the legendary mystical powers of the hijras are another reason why their governments want them for this job.

Whatever we say…for good or for bad, will come true. Just as we bless with such intensity so also we curse with such power that if we curse any person the food in their house will get spoiled. I know this is so because I have done it myself.

Link

To this day, many Indians believe eunuchs have occult powers so they pay for their dancing and singing.

According to the Sanskrit epic Ramayana, which dates from around the third century BC, the god king Ram blessed eunuchs. When Ram was banished, he urged all male and female followers to go home.

Being neither, the eunuchs waited 14 years for his return from exile. Ram blessed the eunuchs for their devotion.

Link

Do you know why we hijras travel free on the trains from Poona northward? There is no rule to ask us for the train fare. Not even the central Government can ask us. What happened was that there was a hijra who had just got operated on, she had become nirvan. The people, after the operation, put her on a train. It was just the seventh day after the operation. The people traveling in the train were making fun of her and bullying her. The ticket collector and the others made her get down from the train. On top of this the ticket collector kicked her.

“Mata,” she prayed, “if you’re true, and it is true that you’ve given me back my life, and if my procession is to be done after 30 days, if you want to same my life, this train must not start from here. Then only will I realize you are the truth.”

Then the signal was given and the train had to start, but it could not start. There was a big crowd around the hijra and the people asked her what had happened. She said, “I’m an old hijra and I’ve just got the operation done under the name of the Mata. If you want the train to start, put me back on the train.” Then they made her sit in the train, but still the train would not start. Then she realized that she had prayed wrong, so she put a cloth on her head and prayed to Mata: “I want this train to start. Then only I can reach my place and also the other passengers can go with difficulty.”

Then the train immediately started. From this time on there was no rule to ask a ticket from the hijras on any train. We can even dance in the train, beg in the train, nobody will say anything. From Poona onward, the whole of North India we can travel.

Link

Reality-warping transvestites and transexuals hired by South Asian governments to recover defaulted loans? The future is amazing.

(Image by That Gypsy Boy)

Revolution, Supernatural | 1 Comment »

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as ‘non-human persons’

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

Anyone who disagrees has clearly never experienced SeaQuest.

See also:

The Pink Dolphin

UPDATE:

Heroic Animals More Common Than Previously Thought, Say Scientists

Cryptozoology, Revolution, Science | 1 Comment »

These are a pair of articles from Damn Data about an occasionally recurring phenomenon in some of the stranger UFO cases over the years, that of aliens communicating through cold, metallic voices.

Cold Mechanical Voices

Says Sarfatti, “In 1952 and 1953, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I received a phone call…in which a mechanical sounding voice at the other end said it was a computer on board a flying saucer. They wanted to teach me something and would I be willing? This was my free choice. Would I be willing to be taught—to communicate with them? I remember a shiver going up my spine, because I said, ‘Hey, man, this is real.’ Of course, I was a kid…but I said, yes.”

. . .

According to Palmer, shortly after the success of “I Remember Lemuria,” he went to visit Shaver and his wife Dorothy in Pennsylvania, “a novel experience and an eerie one.” On his first evening there, Palmer heard Shaver’s tero for himself: a chorus of five voices, sometimes speaking at once, describing awful tortures in a cave four miles below. Palmer searched the room for recording devices and microphones without result, and soon “returned to Chicago determined the run the Shaver Mystery out of [sic] its final conclusion.”

The “Palmer” referred to in the paragraph above is Raymond Palmer, the four foot tall sci-fi publisher for whom The Atom, Ray Palmer, was named. He was a significant figure in the early UFO scene, putting out magazines on the subject from the 1930s into the 1950s.

Broadcasts from the Stars

Whether or not Paredes is really in contact with “beings from Jupiter” is debatable, but the fact that they endeavor to make contact through his radio signal – it is unclear if Prof. Cid meant a “ham radio” frequency or something else – is very interesting. In the late 1970s, Puerto Rican UFO researcher Orlando Rimax played a recording of an alleged alien transmission on his Otros Mundos broadcast, which aired every Sunday morning in the city of San Juan. The recording could have been a hoax, naturally, but the heavily distorted voice of a being calling itself “Omicron” was definitely disturbing. It had a quality often associated with recorded sounds involving hauntings and paranormal goings-on, even though the entity professed an interplanetary origin, and they always do.

It’s an interesting piece of the ever expanding puzzle.

. . . A puzzle that’s made out of mercury.

Supernatural, UFO | No Comments »