When Whitley and Art Bell wrote “The Coming Global Superstorm” in 1999, based in part on information that Whitley received from the Master of the Key, (which went on to become the hit film The Day After Tomorrow), meteorologists scoffed at the idea that global warming could lead to massive storms, but now the authors have been vindicated.
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Zombies are now showing up in movies and books, but these didn’t originate in Haiti: A 48-million-year-old fossilized leaf gives us the oldest known evidence of parasites taking control of their hosts to turn them into zombies.
Researcher David P Hughes, who studies parasites that can take over the minds of their hosts, says, “This leaf shows clear signs of one well documented form of zombie-parasite, a fungus which infects ants and then manipulates their behavior.”
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Some may harbor intelligent life – It has now been found that there must be many small, rocky planets in our galaxy, and probably spread across the universe. This means that the likelihood of there being intelligent life elsewhere could be very substantial, and a radio survey of such plants could become possible, that might lead to the discovery of signals from civilizations using technology similar to our own.
The powerful new Keper satellite space observatory has discovered more than 700 of these planets. Will we be hearing from any of them soon? Probably only if the inhabitants think it’s safe.
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in politics – It’s so unfair: Attractive people are less likely to get convicted (and short people commit more crimes), and it turns out that attractive politicians are more likely to get elected. With such widespread TV coverage of candidates, this shouldn’t surprise us, but we do need to be careful.
A new study shows that the better a politician’s looks, the higher the frequency of television news coverage (which means he or she is more likely to be elected). The researchers say, “Earlier studies have shown that people generally tend to prefer the company of people who are physically attractive and even value them as more worthy people. Our study reveals that journalists probably behave just like the rest.”
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