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A few months ago, the French government complained that eBay was auctioning Nazi memorabilia, which is illegal in France. Now New York wants to ban the sale of murder memorabilia, such as strands of a murder’s hair or artifacts recovered from a crime scene. The legislation was prompted by people trying to sell debris from the World Trade Center towers, as well as the bullet-riddled front door of shooting victim Amadou Diallo. Debris from the crashed Columbia shuttle has also been for sale. “It’s disturbing, to say the least, that some individuals would seek to profit from crime scene souvenirs,” says New York Assemblyman Patrick Manning, who is sponsoring the bill.
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An ancient manuscript written in the 4th Century BC that was found in Tibet by the Chinese in a bundle of Sanskrit documents contains directions for building interstellar spaceships with a method of propulsion that is anti-gravitational. It’s described as “a centrifugal force strong enough to counteract all gravitational pull.” The machines described are called “astras.” The text says ancient Indians were able to travel to any planet, and even mentions a planned trip to the moon!

The propulsion method described resembles laghima, which refers to the power the ego. Hindu Yogis claim that a person’s laghima is what allows his body to levitate. It also tells the secrets of antima (invisibility) and garima (a way of making one’s body as heavy as “a mountain of lead”).
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The engineers who decided the space shuttle Columbia could safely return to Earth were studying the wrong computer model. Their analysis, carried out during the flight, concluded that little harm had been done by the piece of foam came off the fuel tank during lift-off. But former astronaut Sally Ride, who is investigating the accident, says the computer model they used wasn’t accurate. When a group of Boeing engineers carrying out a computer analysis during the flight realized they needed more data about where the foam had hit, they asked NASA to take pictures of the orbiting shuttle to assess the potential damage?but no pictures were ever taken. “I’m think I’m hearing an echo here,” Ride says, referring to the earlier Challenger explosion.
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Researchers think that some people may be more susceptible to SARS than others, and that some may be “Super Spreaders”?Typhoid Mary types who are able to spread SARS rapidly to others. 26-year-old flight attendant Esther Mok is one of these. She went to Hong Kong to shop but came home with SARS, and spread it to over 100 people in Singapore, killing both of her parents and her pastor.
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