BRIEF REPORTS from Investigator Magazine 90 - 99
INVESTIGATOR 90, 2003 MAY
NASCA LINES
The Nasca area in
southern Peru has 1,000 giant-sized, animal and other figures etched
onto the ground. Commonly referred to a "Nasca lines" the technical
name is "geoglyphs". Many are difficult to identify by someone at
ground level and therefore public knowledge of them delayed until the
1920s with the increasing use of aeroplanes. The figures were created
by removing stones and soil from the surface thus leaving
lighter-colored material exposed.
A 1940s theory, that the
lines were a calendar, was refuted in 1968 by Gerald Hawkins who
previously researched Stonehenge. Erich von Daniken, a Swiss mythmaker
of the 1960s-1980s, interpreted the Nasca lines as guides to help alien
flying saucers to land. A newer interpretation is that the lines
indicated water sources in the desert.
For more-detailed
information see:
A F Aveni, 2000. Nasca:
Eighth Wonder of the World? British Museum Press.
L Eddie, The Nasca Lines,
Investigator 61, 1998 July.
WITCHCRAFT
According to the Sunday
Mail, citing a 2001 census, witchcraft is increasing in Australia.
Registered witches increased from 2,000 in 1996 to 9,000 in 2001. In
South Australia they increased from 154 in 1996 to 841 in 50 covens.
(Sunday Mail, 2002, July 21, p.19)
INVESTIGATOR 91, 2003
JULY
FLAT EARTH
The common belief that
mediaeval thinkers believed the Earth is flat may be wrong. A letter in
Fortean Times magazine (No. 144, p. 51) refers to the book Inventing
the Flat Earth (J B Russell, 1991) and says, "This shows that
mediaeval
thinkers assumed the roundness of the Earth. The myth of mediaeval
belief in a Flat Earth was begun by Washington Irving in 1828 and
popularised by the anti-clerical writers John W Draper and Andrew
Dickson White in the late 19th century."
SOME USEFUL BOOKS and
WEBSITES
Martyr, P. 2002. Paradise
of Quacks: An Alternative History of Medicine in Australia.
Macleay Press. 394 pages.
Randles, J. 2000. The
UFOs That Never Were. London House.
Rickard, B & Michell,
J 2000. Unexplained Phenomena: A Rough Guide Special. [This is
an
update of Phenomena, 1977, and Living Wonders, 1982.]
www.forteantimes.com/
Related to Fortean
Times
magazine this website has lots of bizarre stories and reports of
strange happenings.
www.silentlambs.org/index.cfm
Reports and discussions
about child sexual abuse among Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Watchtower
Bible & Tract Society of New York allegedly has a database of over
23,000 JW child molesters!
INVESTIGATOR 93, 2003
November
DANGEROUS MEDICINE
Reader’s Digest
has had
useful articles in recent years about dangerous or useless, but
expensive, medical treatment. For example:
Hidden Dangers of
Herbal
Medicine (2001 November). This article shows that some herbal
medicines
can interact dangerously with other, medically prescribed, drugs.
Anyone taking herbal treatments should therefore get their doctor’s
advice first.
The Truth About
Natural
Therapists (2000 July). The Reader’s Digest reporter
comments on, "the
contradictory advice I received. My irises revealed different symptoms
almost daily." She says, "Only two of the 25 naturopaths gave me
what I considered to be sensible and harmless advice…" She quotes an
Adelaide University professor who said, "their contradictions highlight
the industry’s complete lack of scientific credibility."
IS THE BIBLE TRUE?
A Reader’s Digest article
titled "Is The Bible True?" (2001 April) says "Archaeologists are
making believers of sceptics." Perhaps, but they’ve done this in a
narrow range of points. Reader’s Digest mentions confirmation
of
Pontius Pilate, and the Old Testament’s apparently accurate reflection
of the price of slaves. Give sceptics — or skeptics — free reign to
reply
and raise what points they want, as in Investigator Magazine,
and
proving the Bible becomes much more challenging!
THE SOURCE OF GOD’S
WORDS
FOUND
For 1100 years until the
4th century AD the oracle at Delphi in Greece gave people advice from
Apollo. Apollo, son of Zeus, was their god of music, poetry, healing
and prophecy.
The priestess or "Pythia"
at the Temple of Apollo spoke after entering a trance, "by inhaling
sulphureous vapours which issued from the ground from a hole over which
she sat on a three-legged stool or tripod." (Brewer’s Dictionary of
Phrase and Fable, 14th edition, p897)
The "vapours", long
dismissed by scholars, may be factual. Reader’s Digest (2002
September)
reported the discovery, in 1981 and 1998, of two faults that intersect
under the temple. Underlying strata contain petrochemicals that release
methane, ethane and ethylene, chemicals that produce altered mental
states.
INVESTIGATOR 94, 2004
January
ONE LESS WORRY FOR
CHINESE
Many Chinese immigrants
to Australia dislike phone numbers, numberplates, and house addresses
containing the digit "4" and will pay extra to change or avoid it. The
reason is superstition — "four", to them, smacks of bad luck and death.
The Cantonese word for
"four" sounds like the word for "death". Number 14 sounds like "must
die" and "24" sounds like "easy to die". In Hong Kong some high-rise
buildings lack floors numbered 4th, 14th and 24th. Presumably they
nevertheless have such floors even if labelled 5th, 16th and 27th!
The third and eighth days
of each month, in contrast, are considered lucky. "Three" sounds like
"life" or "longevity" and "eight" is associated to prosperity.
The Medical Journal
of
Australia (Volume 179, Dec. 11, 644-645) reported research, "To
determine whether more cardiac deaths occur in Hong Kong Chinese people
on days of the month with deathly connotations."
Based on 17,346 cardiac
deaths the researchers concluded, "Our study of Hong Kong Chinese
people does not support the concept that more cardiac deaths occur in
Cantonese people on the 4th, 14th and 24th day of the month."
The researchers, led by
Associate Professor Nirmal Panesar from the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, investigated cardiac death statistics for different days of the
month in Hong Kong where 95% of people speak Cantonese.
The researchers looked at
cardiac mortality on the lucky and unlucky days for all months from
1995 to 2000 in both the Gregorian and lunar calendars. They found no
difference between lucky days or unlucky days compared to other days.
HORRIFIED VILLAGERS
SHUN "GHOST"
People of Ban Maed
village, northeastern Thailand, were horrified in May 2003 when a man
they believed dead and cremated reappeared.
Believing Thanom
Wongsupheng, 35, to be a ghost his own relatives rejected him. The misunderstanding came
about because his identity card had been found on a man killed in a
motorcycle accident and later cremated.
(The Advertiser 2003, May
17, p55; The Weekend Australian May 17-18, p17)
INVESTIGATOR 96, 2004
May
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
In What’s the Harm?
Michael Shermer writes:
"The choice is not between
scientific medicine that doesn’t work and alternative medicine that
might work. Instead there is only scientific medicine that has been
tested and everything else…that has not been tested." (Scientific
American 2003, December)
Users of alternative
medicine often do not inform their doctor and, as a consequence, may
harm themselves. For example, St John’s wort, a popular herb, impairs
the effectiveness of some prescription medications.
SUPERSTITION
In South Africa people
commonly believe that accidents are due to witchcraft and that
prevention has more to do with "medicine" than being careful. This may
partly explain the high rate of fatal road accidents in that country.
Comparison of the
accident rates of 130 minibus drivers with their level of superstition
showed a positive correlation — the more-superstitious drivers had more
accidents.
(Accident Analysis and
Prevention, Volume 35, 2003 July, 619-623;
www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00014575)
ATLANTIS
A new theory of Atlantis
surfaced in 2001.
The new theory identifies
Atlantis with a small island named Spartel that existed west of the
Pillars of Hercules during the last ice age when sea levels were over
100 metres lower than now. 19,000 years ago Spartel was above sea
level and was about 14km by 5km in size. Rising sea levels swamped the
island about 11,000 years ago.
The oldest account of
Atlantis was put together by Plato from stories in Egypt and appears in
his works Timaeus and Critias.
(New Scientist 2001,
September 22, p17)
SUPREME DIVINITY
Many Chinese are misusing
the freedoms they’re gaining as Communism declines by starting or
joining new cults. Liu
Jiaguo of Hunan
province, China, called himself a god and founded the Supreme Divinity
cult and had thousands of followers. He lived in luxury on money
obtained from selling salvation. In October 1999 Liu Jiaguo, 44, was
executed for having raped 11 women and two girls.
WEREWOLF CULT
If you’ve come across
students howling at houses at midnight, devouring raw meat and
generally acting like werewolves there’s a simple explanation. They’ve
joined a cult which requires such conduct.
Religion News
Blog is a
website by a Christian counter cult group with many unusual stories.
The werewolf cult is supposedly active in Australia; the story was
posted November 8.
INVESTIGATOR 97, 2004
July
SCIENCE SOLVES ANOTHER
MYSTERY
In Spitzbergen and other
polar regions are extensive areas containing hundreds of circles with
elevated circumferences composed of gravel or small stones. The
doughnut-shaped circles are one or two metres wide.
The process of their
formation is now explained. The circles result from repeated
winter-freezing and summer-thawing across several centuries. As the
surface freezes, capillary action sucks up water and grains of soil.
This slightly displaces stones that lie loosely and randomly on the
surface. The displacement increases year by year and gradually results
in circular heaps. (New Scientist 2003, January 25, p20)
BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS CAN
BE
DANGEROUS
Over 20,000 Australians
received the hepatitis C virus from blood transfusions in the 1980s and
1990s.
In 1991 the Red Cross
asked the Federal Government to issue a warning to advise blood
transfusion recipients to be tested but this was not done. Many people
infected were women giving birth and these passed the virus to their
babies and their partners.
Hepatitis C can stay in
the blood for 30 years and cause liver cancer. (Sunday Mail 2004, June
13)
NEANDERTHALS
Anthropologists compared
the craniofacial features of 1,089 skull specimens from 7 modern human
populations, 12 species of primates and 5 Neanderthals. The current
conclusion is: "Neanderthals and modern humans are not related
subspecies, but rather two entirely different species." (New Scientist
2004, January 31, p16)
Furthermore, in genetic
studies of mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and modern
humans the latter two could not be distinguished from each other but
both differed to Neanderthals. (New Scientist 2004, May 1 p.16)
END OF THE WORLD — JUNE
2004
In recent months White
Wolf, a Cherokee Indian, spread the message the world would end by
comet impact in June. An Adelaide investigator of the paranormal said:
"I have taken him off my mail list, as all I have been getting from him
is all this garbage about the earth ending this month."
In addition, someone
claiming to be "Dr Gartrell" posted messages on Internet sites from
"Aussie Bloke" and foretold a comet impact for June 18-20.
Dr Grant Gartrell, a
retired physicist of Adelaide, wrote about comets for the Australian
Journal of Physics in 1975 but is not the originator of the hoax.
His
identity was stolen by an imposter.
INVESTIGATOR 98, 2004
September
ZOMBIE ALERT
Don’t let zombies — the
living dead — harass you any longer. New technology now makes it easy
for you to keep your distance. Onko Enterprises sells zombie detection
devices at reasonable cost. The devices come in four models — Standard,
Industrial, Personal and Mobile. The Standard model will usually be
adequate. It uses "the cyclon kinetic energy radiation server" to
detect zombie presence within a radius of 1,700 yards. That’s almost
one mile or 1½ kilometres. The three payments of $39.95 come
with a guarantee of $1million if it fails in a "documented zombie
attack." Further details on the Internet.
EXTINCTION THEORY
GAINS
SUPPORT
The Permian-Triassic
Extinction, 250 million years ago, killed off over 90% of all species
on Earth. (See Investigator #62) In 2001 came the first evidence that
the main cause may have been an impact of an asteroid into the ocean.
This led to a debate between "Anonymous" and Kirk Straughen about the
interpretation of the first verses in Genesis. (#79, p22)
Now, the crater from the
impact may have been discovered. Bedout Crater in the ocean off
north-west Australia was discovered when core samples taken during a
search for oil contained shocked quartz and meteorite fragments. (The
Advertiser, May 15, 2004, p21) Reports on the Internet suggest the
crater is over 200 kilometres wide.
HEALTHY EATING THE
BIBLE
WAY
Investigator
once had an
articles on The Bible Helps Your Health and Bible Tucker is
Good
Tucker. It seems others have had similar insight. Rev George
Malkmus
advocates the Hallelujah Diet. He recommends 80% raw food and excludes
all animal products except honey. It’s based on Genesis 1:29
"And God said, ‘Behold, I
have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all
the Earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding
seed; to you it shall be for meat."
Rev Malkmus says that in
early Old Testament times people followed this diet and lived hundreds
of years. His website has stories of people today following the
Hallelujah Diet and experiencing miraculous recoveries from illness.
Author Jordan Rubin in
The Maker’s Diet allows for more variety. Using the Old
Testament he
additionally promotes poultry, various other meats and dairy products.
SETI AND THE BIBLE
The senior astronomer at
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain
View, California, predicts we’ll detect other intelligent life in our
galaxy — if it exists — within 20 years. (New Scientist, 2004, July 24,
p24)
Seth Shostak used the
formula proposed in 1961 by Frank Drake (Investigator 94 p16) and
calculated that between 10,000 and 1,000,000 alien civilizations in our
galaxy might be transmitting radio signals.
In coming up with 20
years Shostak estimates that computer processing power will keep on
doubling every few years and radio telescope technology will also
advance.
In Investigator
71 "Anonymous" explained why an all-powerful God who loves us humans —
if
such a God exists — would let humans suffer so much. From the
explanation it apparently followed that: "Alien civilizations,
therefore, either don’t exist or if they do exist they would be at
peace with God and therefore forbidden from contacting us and telling
us." (p35)
Detection of aliens
versus no detection — opposing predictions!
This looks like a major
showdown between science and the Bible except for one problem — if
science loses the defeat is already explained. New Scientist
(2004,
August 14, p4) says, "broadcast television services are giving way to
technologies that do not leak radio signals into space." Similarly, if
alien civilizations exist, their planets might not be emitting
detectable radio signals!
INVESTIGATOR 99, 2004
November
FAIRY CIRCLES
The mysterious "fairy
circles" of Namibia consist of circular patches of bare soil two to ten
metres across.
Three theories to explain
them have failed:
•
Radioactive soil;
•
Termites;
•
Milkbrush plants poisoning the soil.
New Scientist (2004,
April 3) reported that:
•
Soil
samples showed no radioactivity;
• No
termite nests were found;
•
Grass
species flourished in the laboratory in soil taken from beneath
Milkbrushes.
Unlike with the cereal
circles of England, hoax is not suspected. Nor, so far, are flying
saucers!
NEW "HUMAN" SPECIES
An extinct human-like
species has been unearthed in Indonesia on the island of Flores east of
Java.
Homo floresiensis existed
for about 850,000 years and was wiped out by a volcanic eruption about
12,000 years ago.
They used stone tools and
fire and cooked food and hunted dwarf elephants and giant rats. However, they were small
guys, only 1-metre tall and weighed 25 kilogram, but were proportioned
like us and walked upright. Their brain was the size of a chimpanzee
brain.
The current idea is that
H floresiensis descended from Homo erectus – an "ape-man" species that
lived about 1,600,000 to 300,000 years ago. H floresiensis was
therefore "neither an ancestor nor a descendant of modern humans."
It’s believed that modern
humans reached Indonesia over 40,000 years ago. Therefore H
floresiensis and humans were neighbors for over 25,000 years! (The
Australian 2004, October 28, pp 1, 16)
GERMAN IMPACT
An asteroid of diameter
1,100 metres hit Germany around 200 BC about 100km south-east of Munich
near Lake Chiemsee. (Sunday Mail 2004, October 17, p46)
A formula
supplied by "Anonymous" in Investigator 62 p47 gives the energy
of such an impact
as 99,000 megatons. That’s about six times the explosive power of the
combined American and Soviet nuclear arsenals in the 1980s!
Such an explosion would
have had major climatic and hence political consequences. Yet standard histories
indicate nothing so unusual in the period around 200 BC. Rome won the
war against Carthage; the Great Wall of China was being built; Syria
defeated Egypt; etc.