A Fireball the Size of the Earth, Meteor Shower From Halley's Comet

On May 2nd, amateur astronomer Jan Timmermans of Valkenswaard, The Netherlands captured something spectacular. When the sun rose, he was surprised to see that a fully detached solar prominence at the southwestern edge of the solar disk. A prominence is a large, bright feature extending outwards from the sun. While most prominences are in the shapes of loops connected to the suns surface. This detached "fireball" prominence, the size of the earth, is unique.

The annual Eta Aquariids meteor shower is here again. The Earth is passing through a stream of dusty debris from Halley's Comet. Although visible from mid April to late May each year, it's going to peak between 3:30 am and 5:30 am on Saturday May 7th. The meteors will be appearing near the constellation Aquarius, which is where they get their name. An estimated 10 to 12 meteors per hour will be visible, which should make for a very good show.

Oregon Women Awakens From Surgery With British Accent

Karen Butler, from Madras, OR, was put under for oral surgery a year and half ago, when she woke up, her face swollen and sore, but something else was very different, she had a British accent. Although the pain and swelling went away eventually, the unexplained accent did not. So what happened? It's a phenomena known as foreign accent syndrome, a rare disorder of which only 60 documented cases have been identified worldwide between 1949 and 2009. It is often associated with stroke, multiple sclerosis, migraines and head trauma.

The Guantanamo Bay Wikileaks Files, Grand Jury possibly Investigating Wikileaks

On Sunday April 24th, Wikileaks began publishing 779 secret files of all Guantanamo Bay prisoners. The files included information about the prisoners identity, health assessment, detainee's account of events, capture information, evaluation of detainee's accounts, detainee threat, detainee intelligence value assessment, and enemy combatant status. The UK paper The Telegraph was passed the files and leaked the information in an easy to read database on their website with pictures and nationality of the prisoners as well as time spent in the prison and an easy search system here. The original Wikileak site here.

In wake of the release, the FBI has served a Grand Jury subpoena in Boston to a Cambridge resident with ties to Wikileak, to testify in Alexandria, VA, the site where the Grand Jury has convened to investigate Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Assange had warned before in the past that any attempt to shut the Wikileaks site down or to bring about charges on him would result in the huge release of state and commercial secrets in a so called "insurance file" a 1.4 GB file.

Your Perception of Gravity is Relative

According to a new study, You are able judge how objects will fall when you are upright then when you are on your side. The study took 15 volunteers with laptops and showed computer generated pictures of vases positioned at different angles at the edge of a table and asked which way they'd fall. They were then tested both upright and lying down. The researches found that people were able to judge the fall better when they were upright then when lying down, presumably because we spend most of our time upright and are in our equilibrium.

And our senses do play tricks on us and since our brain perceives gravity's direction through multiple senses, our perception of gravity can be a little well... Off. Stand up hold your right arm out to you side and stand on your right leg with yours eyes open, now do the same with your eyes closed and see how by lacking that extra sensory information, your balance goes off and your brain has tricked you.

More Here

Ron Paul 2012 Run

Rep. Ron Paul announced Last tuesday that he had formed a presidential exploratory committee, a crucial step that will allow the congressman to raise money for his presidential campaign. A May 5th moneybomb, planned to coincide with the first debate, will help Paul decide a full run. In 2008 Paul drew an intense following for being the only anti-iraq war republican candidate, for his ideals of personal freedoms and for his view of the role of limited government. As his popularity on the Internet exploded, Paul drew in some impressive figures, including on November 5th, 2007 raising a record $4 million online in 24 hours, on December 16th, he broke that record raising over $6 million. After the 2008 elections, as we see issues such as the economy, the national debt and role of government head towards the front of everyones mind this year, it seems that Paul's popularity continues to expand. For two consecutive years he has won the CPAC polls, perhaps a sign that indeed revolution is in the air.

I feel sad enough to eat myself, Osama bin laden dead.

A new Zealand man struggling with derp-pression cut off his own finger and cooked it with vegetables than ate them, joining only eight identified such cases of self cannibalization. The 28 year old man amputated and ate his finger without testing for any substance abuse or impaired reality.

In other news, as I'm sure your heard, Osama Bin Laden was killed in a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan, outside of the capital Islamabad. Working without Pakastani knowledge or permission, a team of over 9000 navy seals working with the CIA raided his compound using two roflcoptors, to which a firefight ensued with three men and a woman being killed along with Bin Laden. Bin Laden's body was taken into US custody and carried onto a ship heading for guantanamo bay, when Bin Laden found out about the destination he said "fuck this" and jumped off the side into the sea. Ending the war on terror forever... the end...

Life sentence for Hashish

The Oklahoma State Senate passed a bill where converting marijuana into hashish could land you a life sentence in prison. The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBNDD) spokesman Mark Woodward said the goal of the bill is to “send a message” that illegal drugs won’t be tolerated in Oklahoma. A first time convinction would be punishable from anywhere from two years to life imprisonment, a second offense would be life imprisonment, and those convicted would not be eligible for suspend sentence or probation.

For those who don't know Hash is a concentrate, it's to marijuana, as a can of frozen OJ is to an orange, it's not more dangerous than marijuana, just more potent than marijuana, so I wonder how the OBNDD will react when they discover Schedule III dronabinol (legal even in Oklahoma) is even more potent than hash?