Phantoms and Monsters

Mount St. Helens Strangeness
Fortean / Alternative News: Paranormal Investigators Beware! Hole-y Sun and Talking to Aliens
A Peculiar Encounter

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 11:24 AM PST

Because of recent rumblings at the Mount St. Helens volcano, I decided to once again offer some strangeness associated with the area. The first anecdote is similar to an account I read several years ago. I noticed that it had been posted again but with a few more details. I don't know the validity of the story but it is definitely worth the read:

THE 'TWO VISITORS'

In 1973 I met two very tall persons, about 8 to 12 feet tall; a man and woman on the side of Mt St Helens. I went there as a prep trip to go canoeing on the, not there now, Spirit Lake. Since it was March, I found the lake under snow drifts so I went up to the top of the mountain to climb it.

As I got out of my VW super Beatle I was overcome with fear. Terror gripped me.

Try as I might I could not force myself to cross the parking lot to the beginning of the trail where a family were beginning their ascent. I could not move because the fear within me petrified my body.

I then saw in my mind's eye, through my third eye, the mountain blowing up right underneath me. I saw the mountain and the rocks and the trees below me and all around me being superheated and exploding into shreds.

I shouted to the family to get out of there because the mountain was about to blow. They looked at me like I was some nut probably on drugs. I did have long hair in those days.

The day was a beautiful, clear day, and I quickly realized that the sensation I was receiving was only a premonition of an event to come. I fell back into my car and got outta there.

On the way down I stopped at the Lodge where I bought some beer from the owner, Harry Truman, who made a snide comment to me when I stopped to debate getting a bag of chips after buying some beer. I almost, with knowing, said to him that some day he would die up there with his mountain; I didn't, and I left.

Farther down the mountain top as I turned a sharp corner I passed by two persons who were dressed in white robes. At first glance I thought that they were Harri Krishna's out for a hike, and being twenty miles from Toledo, WA I pulled over and got out to offer them a ride to town.

Immediately, two things happened.

First, as I walked up to them I realized that I had to look up at them like I was looking at the top of a basketball net. That realization freaked me out, but I love an adventure. As I walked up to them, I offered to give them a lift to town.

The woman then turned to the man and said quietly, "I thought we were supposed to meet someone here." The man who also had long hair only slightly raised his right hand in my direction to indicate that I was the contactee they were waiting for.

This point was not lost on me.

Next, a car pulled up and asked me if I was alright. Again my senses told me all was not normal...at all. I "knew" the man and car load of four persons, perhaps a man and his wife in the front seat with his daughter and son in the back seat could not see the tall persons towering over me.

I said that I was simply overtaken by the beauty of the scenery and just had to get out and look at it. Slowly, very slowly, they drove away. I had covered for what to then seemed like me talking to imaginary persons.

But they were real, very real.

The woman again turned to the man and said, "He can see us," to which he replied, "He's in an altered state of consciousness."

Then the man turned to me and said, "You deceived them?"

Thinking that I had done them a favor by covering for them, I did not have a ready reply. I then asked them if they wanted a ride to town. I was torn at this point between what I know about my reality on this dimension and what really knew I knew who were standing before me were beings who were not from this dimension.Yet, I could not wholly accept that fact.

The man turned to the woman and said with a sweeping gesture toward the car "Shall we?"

So they walked to the car. I wanted to tell them about what had just happened on top of Mt. St. Helen. As they approached my Super Beatle I knew that they were very very tall; not normally tall but way tall and would not fit in my car.

I said, "Maybe it's not such a good idea," to which the man replied, "We'll fit fine."

Before my eyes those two beings began to shrink. The man got into the back seat along with the lady, which in our culture the man would usually get into the front, right?

After they got in the man turned to the woman and said, "Are you okay?" she said, "I'm fine."

I needed a beer. I opened a Bud (this was rural backwoods Washington State and 1973) and offered them a beer too. I took in my now normal sized guest in the back seat of my souped up Super Beatle.

Their robes were somewhat soiled, and had dirt marks and signs of wear like they had been hiking through the woods. I did not expect this from what I had come to accept as aliens or some kind of angels.

They really looked real. The guy had very long fingers and that's when I saw that, to my surprise, that he had six fingers on his hands!

Since I was driving at the time the man said in a polite but commanding voice, "Turn around and watch the road," to which I replied as any young twenty year old who had already totaled three cars doing stunts...

"I'm good man. I can drive and talk at the same time."

"What are you drinking?" He said,

"It's a Bud," I said.

"What is that," he said.

"Beer, you know, alcohol."

That's when he said, "Alcohol? That's poison."

My guest hesitated for a few seconds before he spoke again,

"Alcohol is going to cause you a lot of problems in your lifetime." He was right about that.

I turned around again to scope out these two hitchhikers. The young woman smiled. They both looked to be in their early thirties. She had long brown hair. His hair was as long as hers which was at least shoulder length

I said, "Toledo's twenty miles away. That would have been a long walk," I said.

"What were you doing on the mountain?" he asked.

My mind was fighting with the thought now of that I just may have two aliens who just shape shifted in size in the back of my car, and who just chewed me out for drinking. I was beginning to question my rationality, and what if they wanted to eat me or something?

I told them all about my experience on the mountain and the feeling and the vision I had just had. That's when he began to give me specific details about the date, the time eruption of Mount St Helen. He even told me how many people were going to die up there.

"About 60 to 70 people will die on that mountain when it erupts," he said.

Sixty eight died on it that May 18th in 1980.

Seven years later I would find myself working for Lewis County as a transporter for Senior Services. I had something to do with the red zone being established, but that's another story. I had told so many predictions about the mountain that came true before the eruption that one grandma, just after it erupted, said "You did it! You made that mountain blow up!"

The alien, or whatever, said something that triggered a repressed memory I had. He said it would happen because of the flood that we had prevented that year.

Then I began to feel real strange about this encounter. I was sure that he could not have known about the topographical map I had drawn in my cabin last year, and how I had highlighted in blue everything in the state of Washington under 3,000 feet and wrote a short story about me and my family living on Mt St Helen Island after the flood, or could he?

"Who are you," I asked.

The woman leaned over to him and quietly with her easy smile asked him, "Should we tell him who we are?"

"No," he said.

Then he said to me, "We're Watchers," he said.

Right about then I knew I had stepped into a forest I did not know the way through.

"I mean what's your names?"

He said his name was, "My name is Geruisyumain."

I said I would not be able to remember his name, and I didn't for thirty three years. Then in a dream I heard his name as he had spoken it.

"And my name is Isyu. It's real easy to remember. Just think about it this way. Say "Is you," and you will remember it."

I did remember it. Also I read something unique about the name IS You and a significance about that name...but again, I can't place what that importance is.. you guys know?

Of all the wonderful questions I could have asked them I failed to do so. I still beat myself up for letting a great opportunity slip through my fingers out of primal fear of the unknown.

We were about ten miles out of Toledo, Washington by then and Gerisyumain said "Pull over, here and when we get out don't look back."

So I pulled over, and let them out. And of course as I pulled away I looked back to see them grow back to their ten-ish or so feet height and then vanish.

Later, the next year in a total accident, I was pinned inside my Super Beatle on an bridge over a river. With no way out and not knowing how to swim, I was lifted out of the window and flown out over the river. I was set down in front of a car and the driver took me to the hospital.

"Who are you?" she asked.

I'm just a man," I replied. It's all that any of us can be.

NOTE: yeah, it's sound a bit fabricated...but who knows. Lon

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The following is something I originally posted last Spring:

Sasquatch and the U.S. Government

The following are accounts and links that suggest the government has more than a curious interest in Sasquatch:

Cowlitz County, Washington - 1980 May - at one of Ray Crowe's Western Bigfoot Meetings, someone brought up the topic of corpses of sasquatch after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. The witness heard of two sasquatch the Army Corps of Engineers had taken out of the volcanic devistation...two months after the inital blast.

Terry Reams heard of a dredging operation of the Cowlitz River and two bodies were found in the sand (probably same case?). A chopper flew them off.

Joe Beelart offered that the crane doing the dredging was from the Manatowaka Company and that the bodies were found two weeks after the Mt. St. Helen's blast of May 18, 1980. He suggested that somebody might want to track down the company and find out who was working the shift that the bodies had been found on.

During a tour of the devastation by helicopter in 1985, the Viet veteran helo pilot mentioned a similar tale to Bobbie Short saying there were military helos that choppered out nets full of burned and semi burned elk, deer, bear and something with hairy charred arms hanging out of the drop nets. They were taken to a common pit where the bodies were burned to avoid disease and contamination of the rivers.
______________________

The International Bigfoot Society

IBS Report #3493

Location: COWLITZ county, WA. UNITED STATES

Fred Bradshaw report concerning dead Bigfoot bodies near Mt. St. Helens.

My father worked for Weyerhauser Co. at Green Mountain ,WA, east of Vancouver. The site has security on their roads to check on the equipment and check closed areas to keep people out.

My father was working the day Mt. St. Helens blew up. He was at a meeting in Kelso, WA, and as he was a supervisor, when Mt. St. Helens blew it's side out, all heck cut lose.

My father was sent back to Green Mountain right away but like most he wasn't allowed to go very far because of the mud slide coming down the river. He did get to the town of Toutle, WA, on highway 504 off I-5. He and his crew were placed at different spots to watch mud flow and of course help people get out of the blast zone after the major blow up. He was sent to the area of Spirit Lake to keep people out.

When the second major blow up of the mountain came, my father and the other guy with him reported in, and they got out of there.

He was then placed in charge of the helicopter landing zone. It was his job to help keep people out of the landing zone and let aid crews in so they could care for injured.

Later. when all the people were out and bodies out, the National Guard was brought in to clean up. They hauled dead animals out that they placed in piles; deer in one, elk in another and so on. They were covered up with tarps and later burned.

But my father was placed in charge of one pile of dead that were covered and no one was allowed to go near. Armed U.S. National Guard personal were around this pile, and one day when they were going to move this group of bodies, and my father was very close to it and was told to keep his mouth closed. And when the tarps were removed he saw the creatures, some badly burned and some not. They placed them in a net and lifted them into a truck and covered it over. My father asked a guardsmen what will they do with them and he said study them or what ever...he didn't want to know. He said it's like other things you don't ask, and off they went . AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM. My father and the rest were debriefed and sent home.

NOTE: After I had posted the following Oh-Mah - The 'Boss of the Woods' in November 2008, I received an email from a man in southern Washington who stated that he had heard anecdotes from Yakima native people in reference Oh-Mah or Sasquatch after the Mt. St. Helen's eruption. The most prominent account was that of a large male Oh-Mah that was badly burned, but still alive, that took refuge in an area east of the devastation near traditional tribal lands. He was told that government agents in military gear captured the Oh-Mah and airlifted it to an undisclosed location. I have no way of knowing if this is a true account but it does seem to suggest that there was an effort made to take advantage of the eruption in order to capture specimans either dead or alive...Lon

Sources:
www.goia.wa.gov/
sasquatch-pg.net/
www.photoseek.com/
www.wsdot.wa.gov
www.bfro.net/
www.bigfootencounters.com

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The following is an interesting post from July 2008:

Woman Claims She Was Abducted By Aliens Near Mount St. Helens

Joy French is fully aware that it sounds a little far-fetched to say that she might have been abducted by an alien near Mount St. Helens more than two decades ago.

But since she began hosting UFO meetings in April 2007, she has seen and heard so much evidence of extraterrestrial encounters that she wishes she had spoken up earlier. Now the energetic octogenarian devotes her life to opening closed minds.

"We are the only country trying not to tell the truth about UFOs," she said. "The government is not being honest with people."

French, 84, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, will host a meeting for believers in UFO sightings — and those who want to believe — at 7 p.m. Friday in the Cowlitz County PUD meeting room.

French lived in Longview from 1965 to '67. In the early 1980s she was staying in a small trailer on Lake Merwin. A friend camping in the area, Don McMann, called her on the CB radio and invited her to watch a video with him.

Most of that night is a blank. She remembers starting to drive downhill to his trailer, and the next thing she remembers is being a passenger in her car, with him driving.

"I'm an independent person," she said, so being a passenger made no sense to her. "I usually drive my own car."

She doesn't recall watching the movie. She said neither of them drank.

This took place around 10 or 11 p.m., in the thick darkness of a mountain forest. Suddenly the sky lit up as bright as daylight, and her 1966 Cadillac stopped dead.

McMann, a mechanic, hopped out and lifted the hood. He checked the engine and shrugged.

"There's nothing wrong with your car," he said. He slammed the hood, and the car started.

"That's the last thing I remember until the next day," French said.

In the morning, she called McMann on the CB and arranged to meet at the community kitchen.

"I told him, 'What happened last night, that's what happens when a UFO's around,' " she said. "He said, 'I thought of that, too.' "

They never spoke of it again, nor did they mention it to the other campers at Merwin because they were afraid of ridicule.

"Now I wonder if the others saw and didn't tell," she said.

She believes the light came from a spaceship, and that she and McMann were taken into the craft and examined. Their memories of the incident were erased before they were returned to her car, she believes.

McMann died in 1998. A couple of years ago, French, now living in Idaho, discussed the incident with a childhood friend — and discovered the friend once saw a UFO when she was picking huckleberries.

"The government told her never to speak of it," French said.

She has read numerous books about extraterrestrials, met investigators and scientists and heard many people share their experiences, including Gloria Hawker, author of "Morning Glory," an account of being impregnated by an alien.

"Some of this stuff blows my mind," French said. "It's kind of hard to swallow."

She's positive she didn't have the same experience as Hawker.

"If they took me and checked me out, they probably threw me back because I had a complete hysterectomy and I'm no good to them," she said.

French believes extraterrestrials have been visiting Earth for centuries, citing the Egyptian pyramids as one example of their work. She also believes aliens can be credited with the world's rapid advancements in technology during her own lifetime.

"I can't believe the government is still covering up," she said.

She thinks extraterrestrials want to save our world.

"I don't think they want to hurt us. I think they want to save us from destroying our planet," she said. "Or pick us up after we destroy it."

She understands that many people are afraid to come forward and admit they believe in UFOs. She offers her meetings as a safe place to learn more.

"People with closed minds never learn a thing."

Fortean / Alternative News: Paranormal Investigators Beware! Hole-y Sun and Talking to Aliens

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 11:45 AM PST

Want to Investigate the Paranormal? BEWARE!

Here at SRI we are quite often contacted by paranormal investigators who have, through the way they investigate, attracted an entity to themselves that eventually causes a big problem.

When looking into their cases we have found that the majority of these entities have been attracted to the investigator by them performing EVP sessions, thus opening a door the investigator is unable to close.

Most people that gather EVPs are not careful with what they are saying, ex. 'do you want to talk to me?' or 'you are welcome'...and one of the worst 'come closer', etc. Think about it...would you say this to a physical human being who may intend you harm? Making statements like this to an entity is no different than on the earth plane. The paranormal holds not only good, but also evil, and as I have said once that door is open there is NO closure for the victim...the entity of dark force has been released.

These entities do not care for your welfare. You are just the host for them...a battery to draw from.

It's not only paranormal investigators who have problems. The onset of unlimited paranormal programs on TV many ordinary people think it would be a bit of fun to try EVPs in their own homes. Once hearing their first EVP they are hooked and they want to do more until it then becomes an obsession...more and more, each time attracting more entities to themselves or their home until it becomes really and truly out-of-hand.

These entities can move from you to a weaker member of the family...for instance, a child. Is that fair your entertainment becomes their nightmare? I don't think so. It does not stop there...it can start to spread like a plague to family members, friends, work mates...anyone you are in contact with. Many will not even notice anything different until that time comes when the entity starts to play up.

Many people who do not really understand or know if they are open to the spirit world have no business searching for these things. No protection, whether it is a circle of salt, a prayer, smudging with a sage stick, surrounding yourself with a white light or whatever you have read or been told will not always stop these entities...there are those that know how to get past it.

I am writing this because, in the 50 years I have been performing my services, there has been an enormous recent increase in attachment cases. In just the last couple of days SRI has received 5 cases that are each as bad as the other. Attachments like these are one of the most difficult to remove. So please, for your sake and those around you, (and to make my job easier) THINK FIRST! Irene Block

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Want to talk with aliens? Learn to speak with dolphins

wired - The Kepler Space Telescope announced a new bonanza of distant planets this month, reconfirming that solar systems, some possibly hosting life, are common in the universe.

So if humanity someday arrives at an extraterrestrial cocktail party, will we be ready to mingle? At the Wild Dolphin Project in Jupiter, Florida, researchers train for contact by trying to talk with dolphins.

Behavioral biologist Denise Herzing started studying free-ranging spotted dolphins in the Bahamas more than two decades ago. Over the years, she noticed some dolphins seeking human company, seemingly out of curiosity.

"We thought, 'This is fascinating, let's see if we can take it further,'" Herzing said. "Many studies communicate with dolphins, especially in captivity, using fish as a reward. But it's rare to ask dolphins to communicate with us."

Dolphins have large, sophisticated brains, elaborately developed in the areas linked to higher-order thinking. They have a complex social structure, form alliances, share duties and display personalities. Put a mirror in their tank and they can recognize themselves, indicating a sense of self.

When trained, they have a remarkable capacity to pick up language. At the Dolphin Institute in Hawaii, Louis Herman and his team taught dolphins hundreds of words using gestures and symbols. Dolphins, they found, could understand the difference between statements and questions, concepts like "none" or "absent," and that changing word order changes the meaning of a sentence. Essentially, they get syntax.

Some tantalizing studies even suggest dolphins share their own language (see sidebar, "Easier Language Through Math"). All are qualities we'd hope to see in an alien, and no daydream of contact is complete without some attempt at communication. Yet with dolphins, our attempts have involved teaching them to speak our language, rather than meeting in the middle.

Herzing created an open-ended framework for communication, using sounds, symbols and props to interact with the dolphins. The goal was to create a shared, primitive language that would allow dolphins and humans to ask for props, such as balls or scarves.

Divers demonstrated the system by pressing keys on a large submerged keyboard. Other humans would throw them the corresponding prop. In addition to being labeled with a symbol, each key was paired with a whistle that dolphins could mimic. A dolphin could ask for a toy either by pushing the key with her nose, or whistling.

Herzing's study is the first of its kind. No one has tried to establish two-way communication in the wild.

"This is an authentic way to approach this, she's not imposing herself on them," said Lori Marino, the Emory University biologist who, with Hunter College psychologist Diana Reiss, pioneered dolphin self-recognition studies. "She's cultivated a relationship with these dolphins over a very long time and it's entirely on their terms. I think this is the future of working with dolphins."

For each session, the researchers played with the dolphins for about half-an-hour, for a total of roughly 40 hours over the course of three years. They reported their findings of this pilot study in the December issue of Acta Astronautica.

Herzing's team found that six dolphins, all young females, were interested in the game, and would come to play when the game was on. Young males were typically less social and less interested in humans. "This is when the females have a lot of play time," Herzing said, "before they are busy being mothers."

To Herzing's surprise, some of her spotted dolphins recruited bottlenose dolphins, another species, to the game. This shows their natural curiosity, Herzing said. In the wild, dolphins communicate across cetacean species lines, coordinating hunting with other dolphins and even sharing babysitting duties.

Herzing found the study sessions were most successful when, before playing, the humans and dolphins swam together slowly and in synchrony, mimicked each other and made eye contact. These are signs of good etiquette among dolphins. Humans also signal their interest in someone with eye contact and similar body language. Perhaps these are universal — and extraterrestrial — signs of good manners.

Before we hope to understand extraterrestrials, then, perhaps we should practice with smart animals right here on Earth. Astronomer Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute was struck by this thought at a recent conference.

"From the way the presenter was speaking, I thought he was going to announce that he had found a signal of extraterrestrial intelligence," Doyle said. "We've been waiting for this for years, but I thought, 'We're not ready!' We can't even speak to the intelligent animals on Earth."

NOTE: someone's been watching too much Star Trek IV. "Captain, there be whales here!"...Lon

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Cyber war threat exaggerated claims security expert

BBC - The threat of cyber warfare is greatly exaggerated, according to a leading security expert.

Bruce Schneier claims that emotive rhetoric around the term does not match the reality.

He warned that using sensational phrases such as "cyber armageddon" only inflames the situation.

Mr Schneier, who is chief security officer for BT, is due to address the RSA security conference in San Francisco this week

Speaking ahead of the event, he told BBC News that there was a power struggle going on, involving a "battle of metaphors".

He suggested that the notion of a cyber war was based on several high-profile incidents from recent years.

They include blackouts in Brazil in 1998, attacks by China on Google in 2009 and the Stuxnet virus that attacked Iran's nuclear facilities.

He also pointed to the fallout from Wikileaks and the hacking of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail.

"What we are seeing is not cyber war but an increasing use of war-like tactics and that is what is confusing us.

"We don't have good definitions of what cyber war is, what it looks like and how to fight it," said Mr Schneier.
Sarah Palin Casualty of war? Attacks such as Sarah Palin's e-mail hack have been lumped into the debate

His point of view was backed by Howard Schmidt, cyber security co-ordinator for the White House.

"We really need to define this word because words do matter," said Mr Schmidt.

"Cyber war is a turbo metaphor that does not address the issues we are looking at like cyber espionage, cyber crime, identity theft, credit card fraud.

"When you look at the conflict environment - military to military - command and control is always part of the thing.

"Don't make it something that it is not," Mr Schmidt told a small group of reporters on the opening day of the conference.

A report last month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development also concluded that the vast majority of hi-tech attacks, described as acts of cyber war, do not deserve the name.
Tanks and bombs

The issue is likely to receive a lot of attention at RSA this week as a number of panels seek to define what is and what is not cyber warfare.

"Stuxnet and the Google infiltration are not cyber war - who died?" asked Mr Schneier.

"We know what war looks like and it involves tanks and bombs.

"However all wars in the future will have a cyber space component.

"Just like we saw in the Iraqi war we [the US] used an air attack to soften up the country for a ground offensive.

"It is probably reasonable you will see a cyber attack to soften up the country for an air attack or ground offensive," he added.

Mr Schneier claimed that the heated rhetoric is driving policy in ways that might not be appropriate.

"The fear is that we are going to see an increased militarisation of the internet," he said.

Recently the FBI and Department of Defence squared off over who got to control defence in cyber space and the multimillion dollar budget that goes with the job.

Mr Schneier said that battle was won by the defence department.

He also claimed there was a worrying trend of politicians who try to introduce legislation as a way to deal with the issue as nothing short of knee-jerk politics.

"My worry is these ill thought-out bills will pass," said Mr Schneier.

Talk of drawing up the equivalent of a Geneva Convention for cyber space has been gaining attention.

The proposal was raised by international affairs think-tank, the EastWest Institute at a security conference in Munich last week.

Mr Schmidt said he is sceptical because he does not believe every country will sign up to an agreed set of norms or standards.

"I don't know that a treaty is going to solve anything at this juncture.

"Not everyone thinks about this unilaterally around the world. We can't do this by ourselves," he said.

Industry commentator Declan McCullagh, who is chief potlicial writer for online news site CNET.com, believes the idea of doing nothing is untenable.

"Before we get to the stage of having to launch a cyber war, and that will eventually come, lets have a public discussion about what this involves," he said.

"A Geneva Convention for cyber war makes sense at least to start that discussion.

"What that would do is put certain types of attacks off the table like you are not going to target the enemy's hospitals or certain types of civilian systems that innocents depend on for their livelihood.

"I don't think everyone is going to respect it, and maybe the US won't respect it at times, but at least it starts the discussion and will probably have a positive effect," said Mr McCullagh.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the RSA event, which began as a purely technical cryptography conference and has evolved into a broader forum that includes issues of policy and governance as well as technology.

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Killing one native owl species to save another?

seattleweekly - The phrase "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" comes to mind when considering a new plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to save the endangered Northern spotted owl.

That plan: shoot barred owls--a principal competitor of the spotted owl.

Though the USFWS policy hasn't officially been released yet, The Oregonian reports that it's likely to include a strategy to kill off between 1,200 and 1,500 barred owls from northern California through Oregon and Washington:

It's a wrenching decision that splits wildlife biologists and environmentalists. Killing one native animal to benefit another -- especially a "big, beautiful raptor, a fantastic bird," as one biologist puts it -- is such a leap that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hired an environmental ethicist to guide its discussions.

Killing off invasive species is a common practice in wildlife management, but barred owls aren't invasive--they're native. And several environmental groups are arguing that killing them won't help the problem unless people are prepared to shoot the owls by the thousands every single year.

One biologist estimates the cost of such a plan to be $1 million annually.

Plus, by seemingly all accounts, the barred owl is simply a stronger and better-adapted species. It eats a wider variety of food and nests in a wider variety of places than the spotted owl.

Thus, the classic Darwinian argument comes into play:

"Population dynamics between two native species should not be artificially manipulated," says Blake Murden, wildlife and fisheries director for Port Blakely Tree Farms in Tumwater, Wash. "It's a generalist and a specialist," Murden says, "and invariably the generalist will win."

At the same time, there are experiments that suggest shooting the barred owls works in bringing back its spotted cousin.

A limited experiment on private California timberland showed spotted owls returned to their original nesting and roosting areas in every instance when barred owls were killed. In one case, a pair that hadn't been seen for more than two years reappeared just 10 days after a pair of barred owls were shot.

So the question comes down to whether a long, expensive, and morally objectionable plan to protect a rare and--many would argue--inferior species of bird is worth the effort--and really, if killing one native species is ever justified in preserving another.

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Two huge holes spotted on the Sun

ibtimes - Japanese scientists have spotted two huge holes on the sun's magnetic field, and it has been observed that the holes look darker than other parts of the sun.

The holes, called coronal holes, are gateways for solar material and gas to spill out into space, according to space.com. The gaps in the sun's magnetic field make a hole through its atmosphere, letting gas out, NASA has said.

The new finding was made by Japan's Hinode sun-watching satellite which has been observing sun since 2006. "Japan's Hinode sun-watching satellite photographed the sun's two coronal holes on Feb. 1. In the image, one coronal hole appears near the top center of the sun while another one – a polar coronal hole – is visible near the bottom of the view", space.com said in an article.

A Peculiar Encounter

Posted: 16 Feb 2011 09:05 AM PST

I received the following anecdote from a British reader:

One day, in the the eighties, I boarded a bus in Freshbrook with the intention of going to Swindon town centre. It was early evening and the bus was a single-decker. Sitting in the seat opposite the driver was a very odd looking person with his head down. He was dressed in dark, untidy clothing, disheveled in appearance. He did not look at me at all but there was something of a vibe emanating from him that made the hairs on my neck and arms stand up. I sat on the same side of the bus as him at least ten seats behind him. There were several other people between us and others also to the right hand side.

As I sat down in my seat I noticed a new pound note on the floor, I had placed my shoe inadvertently on it. Looking around I could tell that the other passengers nearby were ignoring me and not about to lay claim to it. I placed it in my pocket. No sooner had I done so than the strange looking man at the front of the bus sat upright and then stood up. He turned and made his way slowly up the bus, focusing on me. The other passengers ignored him as if he was not there. Stopping alongside me, he held out his hand..."I will have my pound note back now", he said. My hairs stood on end once more as I looked at him. He seemed dark in complexion and almost sub normal. How could he know I just found a pound note...he wasn't anywhere near...he was at the front of the bus and curled up...his head down...it didn't add up and felt eerie. Was he testing me in some way?

"What pound note is that, mate?" I found myself replying. He laughed to himself and returned to his seat at the front of the bus where he sat down again and lowered his head as if had all been a draining effort for him. He got off the bus in town and vanished, leaving me perplexed and confused at the silliness of it all.

The next day I was in the town centre once again and decided to go into the Paperback Parade bookshop, near the townhall to find an interesting book to read. As I worked around the shelves, taking my time (Thatcher's Britain...we were all unemployed). I was drawn to look out the window facing toward the College. There crossing the road and coming down toward the precinct was the same dark stranger dressed as he was the night before. Looking as if he was bypassing the bookshop, he made a sudden right turn and entered the Paperback Parade. My hairs stood on end once more as I watched him from the corner of my eye. He copied my movements around the shop until he was stood close to me on my left hand side. I pretended to ignore him,difficult as I felt cold and all my hairs on end. He leaned forward and spoke into my ear...telling me what was in my thoughts and in my mind. He laughed again and left the shop.

I never saw him again or told a soul what he spoke into my ear that moment. Certainly I was left in no doubt that this was an otherworldy encounter of the strangest kind. Later I was to come across stories of Men in Black and Trickster spirits who confuse their victims in this manner. Certainly the strangest of bus rides ever. - K

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