Noticed anything strange lately?

[GrandmasterP]

"Walrus Stampede"

There's a line I never thought to read here on TTB.

Edited October 1, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Apech]

"Walrus Stampede"

There's a line I never thought to read here on TTB.

 

 

'tusk tusk'

[Nungali]

Aside from my dislike of 'beardies' .....

 

 

As well as fireflies I have the spiders ... but that is normal this time of years. They took me by surprise, when I first discovered them here years ago; one night in the back yard spot lighting gliders I noticed my LED head light was reflecting 1000s of tiny pinpoints of light, I thought it was dew at first but they were slowly moving ... 1000s and 1000s of these little, on the ground between the blades of grass, spiders, tiny and high bodied with a ring of eyes around the top, that is what was reflecting ... they were sparkling like little diamonds. ... so stars above, fireflies in between and diamond spider eyes on the ground.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Nungali

[GrandmasterP]

Yesterday I was covered head and shoulders with spider web.

Like a mask on my face it was, really thick.

Measuring for some fence posts and inadvertently walked through a whole series of webs across a path.

That is strong stuff and quite sticky.

Worst of it was the fly corpses.

Those took some washing off.

No bites though thank goodness.

Edited October 3, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Nungali]

Do you get 'bird spiders' there ? You need to grab their web with both hands and pull to break just one strand.

 

We got little skinny type ones;

 

 

 

 

 

 

and rather bigger fat hairy ones :

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nestentrie]

Noticed that there wasn't much wind for September here in Australia (Melbourne) this year. If November doesn't rain much then I guess I can join in in saying things are weird.

 

I'm a pretty indoors type so I haven't noticed much in the way of wildlife or out of season plant happenings. But I have noticed a wattle bird coming to feed on the wattle trees we have. I'm not sure if they're flowering at the proper time or not but I've seen no bees near them... so I dunno.

 

The thread re-ignites my want to be a little more outdoorsy and learn about some of these things.

Edited October 4, 2014 by nestentrie

[wallum]

Lots of baby version of these:

 

 

... in the house for some reason and yes enormous spiders!!!!

 

We had lots in the house last season (Australia). I've not seen them in the house before, but there were an unusually large number (of baby ones) in the garden for the last 2 seasons.

 

Also, the weather is not as humid, with less rain, and less extreme winters for the past few years.

[silent thunder]

Over the last three years, I've noticed that in the lives of myself, my wife and every single one of my closest friends... (folks I've known more than 20 years, nine of them in all, there has been intense, often catastrophic change. Sudden, life altering change ranging from ending 20 year relationships and careers, to losing children and spouses and parents... to remembering long buried abuse and taking out restraining orders on abusive parents... pets being kidnapped. When looked at in retrospect like this, the pattern is overwhelming. Complete reality shifting kind of change.

 

It's been a steady stream of life change being experienced by the people I've come to claim as my chosen family. Spread out across the globe.

 

Hundreds of hours spent in soul opening conversations about what's most important, what is the nature of evil, what abides, what is completely fucked up...

 

Through it all, I've come away noticing that even in the harshest of instances... in every case... each of my friends is still thriving.

 

And as we abide in each others' company... as we seek each other out to share our pain, I've come to realize something for which I am profoundly grateful; that as we share our grief, it lessens. It's so important to reach out. Make the connection.

 

When we reach out, grief lessens and love grows.

[joeblast]

I dont think I've seen a praying mantis in 10 years or more, but just saw two within 3 days this past week

[Marblehead]

I dont think I've seen a praying mantis in 10 years or more, but just saw two within 3 days this past week

If they are a mating pair that boy needs to run away very fast because otherwise he is going to be food for his babies.

[joeblast]

one at my house, one at the studio. the one at my house was bigger but he was rather brown, like he's been out for too many cold nights. I only thought after the fact I should have offered my sweatshirt sleeve to help 'im up on the roof, he tried to climb on the siding of the house from the deck and he slipped and weeeee down to the driveway. the one down the studio was funny, it looked at me and was like why are you so excited about me

[Taomeow]

Kudos to all the observant people.

 

If I see an uncommon creature, or a common one that behaves in an uncommon way, I go online and to my collection of books on "superstitions" of the world, and research what kind of an omen it is. There's always something. I also go to the Plum Blossom Oracle, a version of the I Ching that connects the hexagram you get to the things you observe in your environment on the day of the reading.

 

A few days ago, e.g., a hawk was circling over my and friend's regular taiji practice (usually we get a yellow butterfly, I mentioned him in the Butterfly of the Day thread), and he started crying loudly and urgently (the hawk that is, not the yellow butterfly) and was at it for a couple of minutes, then flew away. So of course I researched. The outcome was unexpected...

Edited October 12, 2014 by Taomeow

[joeblast]

If Praying Mantis has crawled into your space;

Usually the Praying Mantis makes an appearance when we’ve flooded our lives with so much business, activity, or chaos that we can no longer hear the still small voice within us. Taking a step back and some simple meditation would be in order here because the external din we’ve created needs to be quieted so that we can come back to our own truth. The Praying Mantis always comes to us when we need peace, quiet and calm in our lives.

 

oh, no, I havent flooded my life with busybusybusybusybusybusybusy at ALL lately

[Taomeow]

oh, no, I havent flooded my life with busybusybusybusybusybusybusy at ALL lately

 

You are forgetting Nature's Rule Number 4: "95% of everything online is shit."

 

Here's a better take on the mantis symbolism:

 

“Excellent hunter with an efficient attack strategy, the praying mantis always knows the right moment for attack and for retreat. Time in the linear sense is irrelevant to the mantis. They move according to their inner instincts and remind us to do the same. Moving effortlessly between worlds, the mantis is associated with time travel. They help us break out of linear time and move according to our personal bio rhythms.

 

The praying mantis can remain motionless for an indefinite period. This ability helps them blend with their environment becoming invisible to predators. They hold the secrets of materialization and de-materialization and awaken this ability in people who hold this medicine. Perception through stillness is part of its teaching.”

 

“Patient, perceptive and focused, this little totem holds a powerful message. When it appears in your life, it is asking you to direct your energy, your thoughts or your actions in a different way. Asking the following questions can give you the insight necessary to motivate appropriate changes. Have I lost patience with a particular situation? Have I been too patient, and if so, has this had a detrimental affect on me? Is my perception correct regarding a situation? Have I become narrow-minded? Am I focused on my objective?”

[Aetherous]

"When in years, months and days the season has no yi, the hundred cereals ripen, the administration is enlightened, talented men of the people are distinguished, the house is peaceful and at ease. When in days, months and years the season has yi, the hundred cereals do not ripen, the administration is dark and unenlightened, talented men of the people are in petty positions, the house is not at peace." -- Shu Jing, Book of Documents.

 

The "yi" here is that of the Yi Jing (I Ching) -- signifying irregular, out-of-sync, unpredictable changes, unlike the regular, orderly, harmonious changes of the seasons of tao.

 

"We have yi when things are off track, when chaos irrupts into our life and the usual bearings no longer suffice for orientation." -- The Eranos I Ching

 

The way I see things, the administration (of the US) was quite dark and unenlightened up until recently...and basically our collective luck was quite bad until recently. At least this is the case for myself and most people that I know in my life. This year has been a good one, for those who are trying their best. I think it's the very beginning of another good period, in contrast to the last several years which were pretty much extraordinarily bad. Even just looking at what types of music are being released the past several months...there has been good stuff lately compared to quite a long stretch of nonsense.

[joeblast]

You are forgetting Nature's Rule Number 4: "95% of everything online is shit."

 

Here's a better take on the mantis symbolism:

 

“Excellent hunter with an efficient attack strategy, the praying mantis always knows the right moment for attack and for retreat. Time in the linear sense is irrelevant to the mantis. They move according to their inner instincts and remind us to do the same. Moving effortlessly between worlds, the mantis is associated with time travel. They help us break out of linear time and move according to our personal bio rhythms.

 

The praying mantis can remain motionless for an indefinite period. This ability helps them blend with their environment becoming invisible to predators. They hold the secrets of materialization and de-materialization and awaken this ability in people who hold this medicine. Perception through stillness is part of its teaching.”

 

“Patient, perceptive and focused, this little totem holds a powerful message. When it appears in your life, it is asking you to direct your energy, your thoughts or your actions in a different way. Asking the following questions can give you the insight necessary to motivate appropriate changes. Have I lost patience with a particular situation? Have I been too patient, and if so, has this had a detrimental affect on me? Is my perception correct regarding a situation? Have I become narrow-minded? Am I focused on my objective?”

Had to laugh because that was the description I ascribed more value to, but the other one felt simpler and more...somethin

 

The way I see things, the administration (of the US) was quite dark and unenlightened up until recently...and basically our collective luck was quite bad until recently. At least this is the case for myself and most people that I know in my life. This year has been a good one, for those who are trying their best. I think it's the very beginning of another good period, in contrast to the last several years which were pretty much extraordinarily bad. Even just looking at what types of music are being released the past several months...there has been good stuff lately compared to quite a long stretch of nonsense.

went from dark and unenlightened to dark and unenlightened. notice anything strange, why yes, "puppet" so obvious you have to wonder what's going on for them to let a poor golfer and suggestion maker "be president." with obamacare we saw the supreme court show its bought and purchased true colors (not to mention break the law in confirming and rewriting it)

 

...so really if there's one highlighted aspect, its that its pretty clear with so many bought and purchased puppets "calling the shots"....they aint really calling the shots to begin with. they dont let squeaky clean judges onto the high bench for no reason, and bathhouse barry knows he's a bought and paid for lackey half-man.

[Aetherous]

went from dark and unenlightened to dark and unenlightened. notice anything strange, why yes, "puppet" so obvious you have to wonder what's going on for them to let a poor golfer and suggestion maker "be president." with obamacare we saw the supreme court show its bought and purchased true colors (not to mention break the law in confirming and rewriting it)

 

...so really if there's one highlighted aspect, its that its pretty clear with so many bought and purchased puppets "calling the shots"....they aint really calling the shots to begin with. they dont let squeaky clean judges onto the high bench for no reason, and bathhouse barry knows he's a bought and paid for lackey half-man.

 

Well yeah I'm with you, but the administration as well as its supreme court were making noticeably worse decisions previously, compared to this year. Maybe not in all aspects but definitely something I noticed.

[Brian]

 

Well yeah I'm with you, but the administration as well as its supreme court were making noticeably worse decisions previously, compared to this year. Maybe not in all aspects but definitely something I noticed.

I would argue just the opposite, actually. I think the darkness is growing and spreading -- but that's a topic for a different thread!

[Aetherous]

I would argue just the opposite, actually. I think the darkness is growing and spreading -- but that's a topic for a different thread!

 

Maybe so...but just to get an idea of what you mean, what's an example of it?

[joeblast]

personally, I dont ever recall the supreme court rewriting a law and calling it something entirely different than what was passed by the legislature...I dont understand how in a supposedly constitutional republic you could have a worse thing happen where the judiciary is concerned. It is explicitly forbidden for the judiciary to do the legislature's job.

 

I dont understand how accelerating drone warfare is a step in the right direction

I dont understand how smuggling arms through libya and turkey in order to arm and finance both sides of a war is in any way shape or form a step in the right direction

or getting together with the saudis and israelis and hey where's that pipeline going, through who's back yard, and to offset whose oil/gas again? and the attendant proxy war in ukraine?

I dont understand how appointing ol grandma to head the federal reserve is supposed to put the warming love of grandma as the face of the federal reserve's policies.

ebola response...are ya kidding, its backwards day

 

sorry scotty, the only beneficial thing obama has done is to go and play golf. but yeah, like brian said... for another thread. noticing anything strange about the government, there's just too much fodder, its corrupt and evil and people cant get mad at ebola causing the financial crash, fundamentals of any sane measure would have dictated such an explosion long ago.

[joeblast]

Well heck, cant be all bad things that are strange. I was very happy to see this thing go net energy positive.

 

http://ecat.com/

 

 

 

By Sebastian Anthony on October 9, 2014

E-cat cold fusion/LENR device

 

Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat — the device that purports to use cold fusion to generate massive amounts of cheap, green energy – has been verified by third-party researchers, according to a new 54-page report. The researchers observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, or “far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.” The researchers were also allowed to analyze the fuel before and after the 32-day run, noting that the isotopes in the spent fuel could only have been obtained by “nuclear reactions” — a conclusion that boggles the researchers: “… It is of course very hard to comprehend how these fusion processes can take place in the fuel compound at low energies.”

This new report [PDF] on the E-Cat was carried out by six (reputable) researchers from Italy and Sweden. While the new E-Cat looks very different from previous iterations, the researchers say that it uses the same “hydrogen-loaded nickel” and additives (most notably lithium) as a fuel. The device’s inventor, Andrea Rossi, claims that the E-Cat uses cold fusion — low-energy nuclear reactions, LENR — to fuse nickel and hydrogen atoms into copper, releasing oodles of energy. The researchers, analyzing the fuel before and after the 32-day burn, note that there is an isotope shift from a “natural” mix of Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to almost entirely Nickel-62 — a reaction that, the researchers say, cannot occur without nuclear reactions (i.e. fusion). The researchers say there is just 1 gram of fuel inside the E-Cat. For more info about the science/chemistry behind LENR, read our previous story about Rossi’s E-Cat.


The researchers are very careful about not actually saying that cold fusion/LENR is the source of the E-Cat’s energy, instead merely saying that an “unknown reaction” is at work. In serious scientific circles, LENR is still a bit of a joke/taboo topic. The paper is actually somewhat comical in this regard: The researchers really try to work out how the E-Cat produces so much darn energy — and they conclude that fusion is the only answer — but then they reel it all back in by adding: “The reaction speculation above should only be considered as an example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”

Anyway, now that we’ve got the necessary cynicism/scrutiny out of the way, let’s get down to what everyone’s really interested in: The utterly insane amounts of energy produced by the E-Cat. In the table below you can see some figures from the 32-day test. The most important figures are on the right hand side: a COP (coefficient of performance) of up to 3.74, and net power production of 2,373 watts. Remember that this is a small device that produced these kinds of figures for 32 days straight. Total energy obtained over 32 days was 1.5 MWh.

 

 

E-Cat power input vs. output

To put this into perspective, the E-Cat tested by the researchers has an energy density of 1.6×109 Wh/kg and power density of 2.1×106 W/kg. This is orders (plural) of magnitude higher than anything else ever tested — somewhere in the region of 100 times more power than the best supercapacitors, and maybe a million times more energy than gasoline. In the words of the researchers, “These values place the E-Cat beyond any other known conventional source of energy.”

 

 

This is what a commercialized E-Cat will apparently look like, when Rossi finally gets around to changing the world.
Obviously, if these third-party findings are to be believed — if the E-Cat really is performing cold fusion — then this is rather exciting. We are talking about an extremely cheap, green, and dense power source that could quite literally change the world.

Before the world can be changed, however, there will now be a very extensive period of scrutiny from the scientific community at large. The previous third-party analysis of the E-Cat device, published in March 2013, was attacked and debunked very rapidly. It seems this new report has been intentionally designed so that there are fewer plot holes and logical leaps. The research paper has reportedly been submitted to the Arxiv pre-print server, with the hope of eventually being published in the Journal of Nuclear Physics.

The next few weeks could be very interesting indeed. According to one report at Sifferkoll, a big bank downloaded the new E-Cat report just minutes after it was made available online — and “oil futures have stayed volatile since.” And of course this morning Glasgow University announced that it would be selling its fossil fuel investments. Hmm…

[Aetherous]

I dont understand how accelerating drone warfare is a step in the right direction

 

Well, if it's for attacking the IS, then it definitely is a step in the right direction. Anyway, I think most of the stuff you listed is from years prior to this one...

[Brian]

Time to buy stock in a nickel mine?

[joeblast]

"Lately"

 

Attacking IS...well, yeah, I already mentioned arming and funding both sides of a war.

[Aetherous]

"Lately"

 

Attacking IS...well, yeah, I already mentioned arming and funding both sides of a war.

 

"Lately" is what this thread is about and is the only reason I mentioned this stuff. And IS was not solely funded and armed by US...it's not that simple, and they are a global threat. While it was an incredibly stupid move to send our help that way, again that was prior to this past year. I'm not talking about how the Obama administration sucks, which is a great topic...I'm talking about the spiritual tides changing this past year after numerous years of bad juju.