A TOWN in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a ‘creepy gnome’ that locals claim stalks the streets at night.
The midget – which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk – was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.
(Thanks Brenden).
“Timothy K. Beal is Florence Harkness Professor of Religion and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. He has published eight books, including Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith (Beacon, 2005), which was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and one of Publishers Weekly‘s ten Best Religion Books of 2005; Religion and Its Monsters (Routledge, 2002), which was a Reviews in Religion and Theology Editor’s Choice; and The Book of Hiding: Gender, Ethnicity, and Annihilation in Esther (Routledge, 2007).
He has published essays on religion and American culture for The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. He has been featured on radio shows including NPR’s All Things Considered and The Bob Edwards Show. He is co-editor, with Tod Linafelt, Georgetown University, of the book series Afterlives of the Bible with the University of Chicago Press. I was impressed with the perspective that Timothy brought to one of his books, Religion and Its Monsters, and Timothy made some time to discuss various aspects of the book with me.”
(via TheoFantastique)
“A 15-year-old boy kicked and stamped to death a woman because she was dressed as a Goth, a court heard. The drunk teenager was among a gang of five who ‘savagely and mercilessly’ attacked Sophie Lancaster, 20, and her boyfriend, Preston Crown Court heard.
Miss Lancaster was begging the gang to stop beating Robert Maltby, 21, when they turned on her in Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, the jury was told. The 15-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, denies murder. At an earlier hearing a 16-year-old boy, who was aged 15 at the time of the attack, admitted Miss Lancaster’s murder and admitted attacking Mr Maltby.
The accused, and four other youths, two aged 17 and one 16, have already pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm to Mr Maltby. The court heard Miss Lancaster’s facial injuries were so severe, paramedics did not know what sex she was. Tests indicated she had been kicked and stamped to death, with the pattern of some footwear still on her head. Miss Lancaster, a gap-year student, died two weeks after the attack.”
(via Religion News Blog)
“Researchers from EPFL and Caltech have made an important neurobiological discovery of how humans learn to predict risk. The research, appearing in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, will shed light on why certain kinds of risk, notably financial risk, are often underestimated, and whether abnormal behavior such as addiction (e.g. to gambling or drugs) could be caused by an erroneous evaluation of risk.
Planning entails making predictions. In an uncertain environment, however, our predictions often don’t pan out. And erroneous prediction of risk often leads to unusual behaviour: euphoria or excessive gambling when risk is underestimated, and panic attacks or depression when we predict that things are riskier than they really are. To understand these anomalous reactions to uncertain situations, we need to look to the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie how we learn to predict risk. Surprisingly little research has been done in this topic, and we do not yet know precisely how the brain is involved in our estimation of risk.”
(via Medical New Today)
(Thanks Kaos829!)
“A “neurotheology” researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the “God Helmet” lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it’s much more interesting than that.Persinger is a proper scientist. The temporal lobes have long been implicated in religious experiences: epileptic seizures in that part of the brain, for example, can produce mystical experiences and visions. Persinger’s helmet stimulates these temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields through the skull, and in various published papers this stimulation has been shown to induce a “sensed presence”, under blinded conditions.
There is controversy around these findings: some people have tried to replicate them, although not using exactly the same methods, and got different results. But however improbable or theologically offensive you might find his evidence, because it is published and written up in full, you can try to replicate it for yourself and find out whether it works. In fact, you really can try this at home: the kit needed to make a God Helmet is fabulously rudimentary.”
(via Pure Pedantry)
“Silicon nanowires grow more densely when blasted with Deep Purple than any other music tested, says an Australian researcher. But the exact potential of music in growing nanowires remains a little hazy. David Parlevliet, a PhD student at Murdoch University in Perth, presented his findings at a recent Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network symposium in Melbourne. Parlevliet is testing nanowires for their ability to absorb sunlight in the hope of developing solar cells from them.
[..] Parlevliet says one day his supervisor wondered what would happen if the usual method of generating the pulsed plasma was replaced with music instead. After a very long morning in the lab listening to the radio waiting for nanowires to grow, Parlevliet says he worked out a way to investigate the matter.
“Instead of using the pulse from the pulse generator, I plugged the music player in,” he says. Parlevliet tested the effect of Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’, Chopin’s ‘Nocturne Opus 9 No 1′, Josh Abrahams’ ‘Addicted to Bass’, Rammstein’s ‘Das Modell’ and ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’.”
(via ABC Online)
“An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.
The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.
According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:
The artifact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures. Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.”
So here’s the drill. We’ve got a good core of workshops going, and a lot of interest. I will say to the HiVE collectively what I say to anyone that inquires about doing a workshop at esoZone. Give me a write up of how you will spend an hour of everyone’s time.
That said, I’m very open about what form workshops can take. So far as I’m concerned the larger number of presenters the better. However there are some rough guidelines I’d like to lay out to give people a bit of focus:
It seems besides the point to say that we expect the same level of quality from all participants as regards use of workshop time. Simply put, the time at the event is precious and it’s a major letdown for all parties involved when that time is wasted. I wish we had footage of last year’s workshops because they were super fucking cool.
* All workshops should somehow be linked to the esoZone: The Other Tomorrow idea however you understand that. Build it together, people.
* Interactivity is a major plus. One directional lectures are not what this event is about.
What I’m going to need in the way of submissions is some kind of proof that you have planned how you are going to spend an hour of time at esoZone.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what people put together. Some of the best stuff from last year was in the workshops. Your prize, in addition to street cred is getting in for free. Which really ain’t bad if you’re planning on coming anyway.
BE THIS YEAR’S JOHN HARRIGAN AND STEAL THE BLOODY SHOW WITH YOUR WORKSHOP ZOMG!
Srsly, guys…
Send me some stuff. Good thoughts. Think of the absolute worst MegaPaganCon thing that you have ever seen and then do the exact opposite. What would you want to see?
As It Is, So Be It,
Nick Pell
nicholasjpell@gmail.com
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