Sunday, June 23, 2019

SUNDAY SERMON 


THE SKEPTIC FEMINIST
We have worked with the Satanic Temple in the past to push back against Church/State violation in public schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENNwZkqv7Zg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd4-40z_z20


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqQg-pWa4tM




Podcasts
audio

















GUERNICA 2.0 CYBERWAR ON CIVILIANS

Cyber Bombs, the Russian Grid and the Threat of War

The NYT report shows what the doctrine of “deep forward defense” adopted by the US Cyber Command really is: planting cyber bombs in its opponents’ infrastructure, leading to grid failures that can paralyze the country.
21 Jun 2019

Image Courtesy: The New York Times


The New York Times (NYT) recent report that the United States Cyber Command has planted “malware” – read cyber bombs – deep into the Russian grid, should worry not just the Russian people, but all of us. Taking down a country’s grid leads to blackouts, and disrupts a country’s vital infrastructure: communication networks such as metros, railways, airports, hospitals, telecommunications including cell phones; it can lead to failure of hydroelectric plants and dams causing devastating floods, nuclear plants’ outages and possible meltdown. As we have seen in India, grid failures of the kind we saw in 2012 are major events that can paralyse any country.

The US itself has signalled the importance it attaches to its electrical grid. In its Nuclear Posture Review, 2018, it made explicit that any country attacking its grid – either physically or with cyber weapons – would face US retaliation including even a nuclear response. The US Cyber Command, set up in 2017 as an independent command on par with its Strategic Command that controls its nuclear weapons, had formulated its doctrine of “deep forward defence”. The NYT report shows what the doctrine of “deep forward defence” for what it really is: planting cyber bombs in its opponents’ infrastructure.

This also gives credence to what the Venezuelan government had earlier said, that they were under cyber attack from the US during Guaido’s attempted coup, and that had led to repeated grid failures.

What exactly is a cyber bomb and what does it do to an electrical grid? Most industrial systems and electrical networks depend on what are called digital controllers for their operations. As most of these systems are highly automated, these controllers send commands to various physical equipment for their functions. This is, by the way, what happens in our lowly washing machines and in our refrigerators as well. If malicious software can be injected into these controllers, they can not only shut down such equipment, but also make them behave in ways that damage the equipment. And this damage can even cause catastrophic failures.

An example of this is the Stuxnet, now admitted to be a US-Israeli joint operations against Iran’s uranium enrichment program. This led to extensive damage of the Iranian centrifuges in their Natanz uranium enrichment plant, as the Siemens controllers which were controlling the centrifuges were attacked. In a more recent case, in a Saudi Aramco’s petrochemical plant, the Triconex safety system was infected leading to a plant shutdown.

What both these cases show is, that once state actors get involved, the level of sophistication and complexity of these weapons make protection a very difficult task. Cyber weapons are not different from physical weapons as they have the same impact; and unlike other malware, they cause physical damage and destruction.


Discussions on cyber weapons and demilitarising the cyber space has been on the United Nations’ disarmament table for quite some time. Russia and China have demanded a number of times that the world should have a treaty that bans cyber weapons and they should be treated differently from viruses, worms and other malware. In 2011, Russia and China had proposed a treaty to limit cyber weapons modelled on the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention that outlawed chemical weapons. This was followed up by a revised proposal in 2015 by the same countries, asking for a UN discussion on how to prevent the use of cyberspace for acts of war.

The proposals were similar to what the world has already achieved in the field of chemical and biological weapons. No major country today develops such weapons, even though such weapons are easy to develop and use. And as the cult Aum Shinrikyo, in its sarin attack in Tokyo subway showed, it can be done in anybody’s backyard.

The US has stonewalled any attempt of demilitarising the cyber space. In the UN, a Group of Governmental Experts set up under the aegis of its Office of Disarmament Affairs, discussed the Russia-China proposals. The US countered the demand of demilitarising or de-weaponising the cyberspace, with a demand for free speech and a completely “open” internet with no restriction by nation states. After five such UN expert bodies were set up over years and their failure to create a consensus, the UN has ceased to be a platform for future discussions on disarming cyberspace.

The Trump administration is now moving ahead its own strategic vision of cyberspace as a contested domain, and the need to “defend forward”, presumably the basis of the decision to plant cyber bombs in the Russian grid.


This is not to argue that the US is the only player that uses or has cyber weapon capability. Once such weapons are available, every country will try and develop offensive and defensive capabilities. Almost every major country is developing these capabilities. Even non-state actors are involved in developing malware. The difference is that if a state actor gets involved in developing cyber weapons, it is almost impossible to defend against such attacks. What countries can do is only limit the attack, reduce damage and work out how to recover.

Why did the US, and it still does, refuse to demilitarise cyberspace? After all, there were the precedents of banning chemical and biological weapons; and also treaties such as demilitarising outer space. We can blame the US administration under Trump of being war mongers, but much of this period was under the Bush and Obama administration. Bruce Schneier, one of the leading security experts in the US, wrote in 2012, “There's a common belief within the U.S. military that cyberweapons treaties are not in our best interest: that we currently have a military advantage in cyberspace that we should not squander.” He went on to say that this was foolish because by its very nature cyber war is asymmetric – it is much easier to attack than to defend, and therefore the US would not only have no major advantage in defending itself from attacks, but is more vulnerable. Its infrastructure – from physical infrastructure to information and financial infrastructure – is far more networked than most other countries.

The danger to the world from cyber weapons has become worse, as the US has failed to protect its cyber weapons and malware developed by National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Two cache of tools – and they are two independent set of tools – are now in public domain. Shadow Brokers, a criminal group dumped NSA’s tools online. WikiLeaks posted details of another set of such tools that were created by the CIA, and that have also been hacked. These tools are far more sophisticated than what criminal groups, even sophisticated ones can develop on their own. Now criminal gangs and other state actors have all these tools available for the asking.

After the leak of NSA and CIA's cyber weapons, we should be asking the question whether nation states can really be trusted to develop such weapons? This is what certain leading companies within the industry – Microsoft, Deutsch Telekom and others – had raised in 2017, calling for a new Geneva Convention banning cyberweapons. Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, and no peacenik or leftist wrote, “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage...”


The climate in the world, particularly in the US is rapidly turning towards war. With Bolton and Pompeo leading the Trump administration’s charge against Russia, China and Iran, it is clear the US is unwilling to be only one among major global players and reconcile with a multipolar world. It wants to regain its position as the only global power, and a return to a unipolar world. Trump’s worldview of threats and blackmail combines with this war lobby to create a world in which the US is threatening a war on three fronts – a shooting war with Iran, a cyber war with Russia, and a tech-cum-trade war with China.

The problem is not that we have a war-mongering US administration. It is the near silence of the larger global community and the weakness of global forces for peace that is the real cause for worry. We only have a delusional US administration, which seems to live in a post-truth world, teetering on the brink of war with no real opposition.


YOUTUBE.COM
Engineers, factory workers, journalists, philosophers and Isaac Asimov (Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics)…


SEE Killer Robots in my essay: Gothic Capitalism
https://archive.org/details/TheHorrorOfAccumulationAndTheCommodificationOfHumanity

USONA***
A TOWN IN ALBERTA 
ALSO 
US OUT OF NORTH AMERICA 

*** United States of North America 

Fitting comfortably into this mould, British and American migrants also arrived and were part of the early fabric of the region. This presence is reflected in the names of rural districts. For example, a district in the Wetaskiwin area called Usona is reputedly an acronym for 'United States of North American' and other districts carry the names of individual states, such as Nebraska and Dakota. Prior to World War I, most American immigrants worked in agriculture and arrived seeking homesteads in Alberta at that time. American immigrants were largely dry land farmers from the United States and many of them returning to Canada. 
Read more: https://www.unlockthepast.ca/Social-and-Economic-Life
Copyright © Unlock the Past with Central Alberta Regional Museum Network

A look at the American-Canadian relationship – Red Deer Express
https://www.reddeerexpress.com/opinion/a-look-at-the-american-canadian-relationship/
Jul 4, 2018 - In the early days of Alberta's history (i.e. the 1860s and 1870s), one of the main ... Another was Usona, short for United States of North America.

A Place Called Peculiar: Stories About Unusual American Place-Names
https://books.google.ca/books?isbn=0486310817
Frank K. Gallant - 2012 - ‎Travel
Stories About Unusual American Place-Names Frank K. Gallant ... their rising little community after the United States of North America— U.S.O.N.A. 

United States of North America - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_North_America
United States of North America may refer to: A term used before 11 July 1778 to refer to the United States of America; Maurice Gomberg's 1942 Outline of the ...

Usona - Wiktionary
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Usona
An acronym of the United States of North America, a 19th-century name for the United States of America, variously attributed to "a St. Louis professor" or "a ...

USONA - United States of North America | AcronymFinder
https://www.acronymfinder.com/United-States-of-North-America-(USONA).html
How is United States of North America abbreviated? USONA stands for United States of North America. USONA is defined as United States of North America ..

Usona - Wiktionary 
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Usona
See also: usona ... referring to any one except himself and his fellow citizens choked off any chance of life the expression [Usona] might have had at that time.” ...

Usona Esperantisto - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usona_Esperantisto
Usona Esperantisto (English: American Esperantist) is the bi-monthly publication of Esperanto-USA, the organization for Esperanto speakers in the United ...

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REPORTING CENTER
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UFO UAP* NEWS TOO

CT UFO sightings in 2019


By Jim Shay 

Updated Thursday, March 21, 2019

*UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA THE NEW NAVY DESIGNATION



Photo: Steven Peters, Getty Images

IMAGE 1 OF 14
>>Click through to see some of the reported UFO sightings in Connecticut in 2019. Click here for more info.

A new year brings new UFO sightings in Connecticut, according to National UFO Reporting Center.

Last year, the center reported more than 100 UFO sightings across the state.
The center, based in Davenport, Wash., says it makes no claims as to the validity of the information in any of these reports. “Obvious hoaxes have been omitted, however most reports have been posted exactly as received in the author's own words.”

“We hope that this information will prove to be useful to the general public and the UFO community at large.”

Here are the sightings from Connecticut reported this year:

Greenwich, Jan. 11: “I saw a bright object hovering outside my window that moved in a fashion unlike anything else I've seen

“I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, when I looked out into the horizon and notices two white lights hovering lower than planes would be. The two lights were coming from a single saucer-like object. The object did not move in a linear fashion at first; it was almost moving in small circles. After about 30 seconds it moved quickly to my left and disappeared into the sky. My neighbors have a small farm, which is rare for Greenwich, and the object seemed be hovering around their property.”


Southington, Jan 11: “UFO falling so fast, nothing would’ve could’ve stopped in time before ground contact.

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10 flying objects people have mistaken for alien spaceships

“Was traveling on Route 84 west, between exits 31 and 30, at 6:30am, when in front of me, off in the distance some three miles away one triangular shaped object (with three points aiming up) was descending rapidly straight down. It was bright white/silver thinking the sun was reflecting off of it. As it disappeared I expected a large sound thinking it was going to crash and explode. As I was driving on Route 84 towards where I figured it crashed. Kept looking for any orange glow and/or smoke but nothing. Tried to rationalize by thinking it was a satellite or other space debris. Nothing on the news.”

Storrs, Jan. 12: “Disk with spokes of light

“Circular disk angled with face visible from my perspective, illuminated with glowing pattern of lights spreading like spokes from the center. The lights pulsated red and green with the top section of spokes red and the bottom section green.

“I was woken up by a sound like a helicopter and thought that’s what I was seeing, but it remained in the same relative place for some time and the lights did not behave like any aircraft I’ve seen before. It was reminiscent of a drone in some ways but definitely much larger.”


Brookfield, Jan. 21: “Dog barking at round white light with orange flame around it in evening sky for about 10 minutes.

“It was a clear night with moon and stars. I was sitting on my front steps while my dogs were sniffing around in the front yard. One of the dogs started barking at the north eastern sky. I looked up and saw a cluster of round white lights with a wide orange circle around it, looked like a flame. My dog was barking like crazy and I called my husband to hurry and come out with his camera to see it. He took some pictures and some came out, but no orange flame. It looked like it was moving slowly to the east. After about 10 minutes the orange flame went out and there was just the cluster of round white lights.

“I am emailing images. you need to blow them up to see anything. The one withs the rings around it is closest to what we saw, except the outer ring was orange.

“If you want latitude and longitude, look up the Brookfield high school, that would be close.”

Stamford, Jan. 27: “I had been admiring an orange moon out my balcony window, when I noticed something floating and tumbling in the sky. At first I thought it was a runaway kite or balloon, until I noticed there was a duplicate shape alongside it. They seemed to have a reflective surface on them where only the outer edges could be seen. They would fly normally for a few seconds and then they would fly in a tumbling motion.

“I grabbed my binoculars and when I looked at them they had very bright, but blurry white lights around them. However, when I looked up at them without the binoculars they didn’t seem to have the same bright lights at all, just enough reflection to see their shape. If I had to guess their altitude, I would say 3500-5000ft. and a few hundred feet apart from each other. But I could be wrong since I didn’t know what I was looking at or what their relative size was.

“I’m an avid planes potter and usually watch planes through my binoculars. Planes that leave JFK or Newark are usually at 10,000-13,000ft. Incoming planes to White Plains airport, are usually 1800-2500ft, but much smaller jets. These UFO’s were in the same sky where I watch all the planes pass by, however according to my planefinder app, there were no planes over my place when I saw these objects. They made no noise and flew out of sight within 30 seconds, which makes me believe they were small. A regular jet, on a clear night, would stay in sight for a few mins.”

Waterbury, Jan. 28: “Formations started to come out in 2 directions from behind a mountain. Another formation of 3 were high, then descended and scrambled.

Madison, Feb 6: “I was walking my dog on Middlebeach Road around 6:00am this morning, when I noticed what appeared to be a strange round cloud with a trail behind it. It appeared to to be leaving a trail behind it. It stood out because in the Eastern sky, the sun was rising and I had just taken a few Photos and videos of sunrise. It was 29 degrees, under partly cloudy skies .

“A man happened to be jogging by me while I was seeing this and I stopped him to ask him what he thought it was. He was as perplexed as I was. I continued to photograph the object. It appeared to move extremely slowly and was leaving a cloud like trail behind it. There were no lights. There was no sound other than the sound of the water and at times I would seem to blend into the sky and then reappear. I would put the object somewhere over Long Island sound or over Nassau County, NY. I have at least 30 still shots taken with iPhone 10s Plus 256.”

NUFORC Note: We spoke via telephone with the witness, and he seemed to us to be quite sober-minded and eloquent. He occupies a very responsible job, and we suspect he is an exceptionally qualified, and reliable, witness.

East Hartford: Feb. 22: “Object was seen on Main Street in East Hartford, CT, above the city lights, large starlike bright light only shining in sky changed as it moved closer to large triangular lit aircraft with red and white lights at all 3 points, two bright white lights pointing forward on underside, when directly overhead the bottom appeared grid-like, slight humming sound, slow moving. I followed a distance from a distance. Noticed other red and white blinking aircraft at approximately same height but more distant. Continued to see one or more vehicles at a distance for about half an hour.”

North Branford: Feb. 24: “Bright green slow flashes (2) one after another lasting 2-3 secs. through solid cloud deck. No aircraft heard in vicinity.

“Walking while looking directly north (clouds deck overhead no visibility of stars) first one slow 2 to 3 sec flash GREEN like maybe a meteor, but extremely bright to be able to see thru clouds, followed by a second slow 2-3 sec flash of equal brightness.

“Best guess 2 green meteors coming down. Both were lighting the sky from horizon up to 60' above north horizon and from northwest to northeast expansion. No sound or blast wave followed. But they did look close to be so bright through a solid cloud deck. I was standing just 50 yards north of highway 80 and totoket road intersection walking north in RV park. I am a pilot and amatuer astronomer and well versed in sky phenomenon. I only saw the flashes which were green and lit up the cloud deck above me as described above. No other visible indications. I waited but nothing followed. I can say by the color of flash etc... it was not a ground vehicle lights or any ground based lights causing this. Nothing to north but trees and countryside.”

Killingworth, March 3: “Two bright greenish flashes illuminated the entire area greenish light. Second flash was very alarming and unnatural giving all three of us in vehicle a panicked bracing for impact feeling. No sounds at all heard. Silent.”

To see the list of all Connecticut UFO sightings click here


Welcome to the NATIONAL UFO 
REPORTING CENTER
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In continuous operation since 1974

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CRYPTOZOOLOGY NEWZ BIGFOOT


The FBI Just Released Bigfoot’s Official File And It Is Beyond Fascinating



Andrew Daniels
Women's Health
June 22, 2019



Photo credit: Bettmann - Getty Images

The FBI’s Vault is a fascinating corner of the Internet, and a fantastic waste of time. The Bureau’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) library houses thousands of previously sealed or long-buried files on very famous-and very dead-celebrities, criminals, politicians, and other persons of interest. And they’re all on display for free public perusal, which is how you suddenly find yourself scrutinizing reports on everyone from Al Capone to Anna Nicole Smith for three hours one afternoon. No judging.

Now, the FBI usually doesn’t make such documents public until after the person dies, which makes the latest release from the vault-22 glorious pages concerning one Bigfoot-particularly notable for two reasons: It appears to be confirmation that a.) Bigfoot is dead, and b.) Bigfoot was real. Probably.


Bigfoot: https://t.co/Dk93p4zbJO- FBI Records Vault (@FBIRecordsVault) June 5, 2019

The mythical creature known as Bigfoot-or, if you prefer, Sasquatch, Yowie, Skunk Ape, or Yayali-has a long, murky history. People swear they’ve been seeing him for centuries, usually in the woods of North America and often in the Pacific Northwest. And the part-hairy ape, part-hairy human, part-hairy bear-thing has inspired such fervor among his fanatics that the fiercest devotees have even gotten the government involved in their pursuit of the truth.

Bigfoot’s official file, which we gleefully examined in full like the proud investigative journalists we are, mostly follows the correspondence between the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition (BIC) in The Dalles, Oregon and the FBI’s Scientific and Technical Services Division from 1976 to 1977.

Photo credit: FBI

In 1976, BIC director Peter Byrne requested the FBI test a strange hair sample. “We do not often come across hair which we are able to identify and the hair that we have now, about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin, is the first that we have obtained in six years which we feel may be of importance.”

Photo credit: FBI

In a letter back to Byrne, the FBI admitted its lab “primarily conducts exams for law enforcement agencies in connection with criminal investigations,” but eventually agreed to inspect the hairs after several newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Star-News, brought light to Bigfoot’s possible existence.



Photo credit: FBI

Eventually, after several months of follow-ups, which are documented in the file, the FBI delivered the results of the test to both Byrne and the organization that supported his research, the Academy of Applied Science. Sadly, Bigfoot was a bust.

“It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin,” the FBI wrote, crushing the dreams of Bigfoot believers everywhere.

View photos

Photo credit: FBI

While this is a disappointing revelation, by no means is the case closed. For all we know, the FBI could have Bigfoot documents it isn’t showing us, and this is all just a clever ploy to throw us off his scent.

In the meantime, we’ll keep searching-and hold out hope that the FBI finally releases the Loch Ness Monster’s file to keep us occupied until then.
UFO UAP* NEWS 

UNIDENTIFIED DOES NOT MEAN ALIEN OR EXTRATERRESTRIAL  
'No explanation': Flying objects over Kansas City leave locals suspecting aliens
Two flying objects in Kansas City, Missouri, left locals suspecting aliens and the National Weather Service with "no explanation."
'No explanation': Flying objects over Kansas City leave locals suspecting aliens
Flying objects over Kansas City on Thursday night sparked the interest of locals and — for a while — had stumped people looking for answers. KMBC 9 in Kansas City said on Twitter it had fielded "several calls" regarding two strange orbs floating over Kansas City International Airport.
NOT ONE OF OUR WEATHER BALLOONS SAYS NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE


*UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA THE NEW NAVY DESIGNATION


MEANWHILE IN WASHINGTON DC 


Military officials brief president and Congress on UFO sightings after growing concerns







NEWS POSTED: 
Servicemen and women have brought frequent UFO sightings to the attention of the president and other lawmakers.
A veteran fighter-pilot saw an unidentified flying object outside his cockpit window on a U.S. military training mission in Florida in 2015.

“There’s a whole fleet of them. Look on the S.A. My gosh. They’re going against the wind. The wind is 120 knots to the West. Look at that thing dude!”

Many other UFO’s have been sighted by American military pilots.

The Navy briefed members of Congress on these sightings, calling the UFO’s a “threat to the safety and security of our aviators.”

“That was one of the most amazing things, to us or at least to me, is that these things would be out there all day. And the speeds that they were exhibiting, as well as the flight characteristics, there’s no platform or really energy source that I’m aware of that can allow something to stay in the air as long as these objects were,” said former Navy Fighter Pilot, Ryan Graves.

The UFO’s haven’t exactly kept their distance from the pilots.

“Someone accidentally had one of the objects fly in between his aircraft at a very close range and gained a visual. Realized it was very unlikely that it was a U.S. drone program,” said Graves.

As expected, there are skeptics of this UFO activity, including Bill Nye and President Trump.

“It’s probably one part of the military not telling the other part of the military what they’re up top, for a good reason,” said Nye ‘The Science Guy’.

The president said that he had a very short briefing on the topic and wasn’t sure if he believed it.

Other skeptics believe that the objects could simply be military hardware being tested on classified missions unbeknownst to the pilots who spotted them.

A Navy official said that they are working with the Air Force and other branches to better understand what pilots are seeing.


BUT IT JUST MIGHT BE ONE OF DARPA'S WEATHER BALLOONS

Three Days Ago, DARPA Launched Some Balloons. Then People Started Seeing UFOs.

Andrew Daniels,
Popular Mechanics•June 21, 2019




Photo credit: Twitter/@NWSKansasCityMore


UFOs are having a bit of a moment right now. This week, Politico revealed that several Senators were briefed by the Pentagon about UFO sightings for unknown reasons, with President Trump admitting that he, too, was also in the loop. (“Do I believe it? Not particularly,” Trump said.) And on the same day we questioned the government’s renewed interest in mysterious aircraft, the National Weather Service in Kansas City stoked even more curiosity with a tweet alerting locals to two suspicious white orbs hanging out in the sky:


We honestly have no explanation for the floating objects over Kansas City.- NWS Kansas City (@NWSKansasCity) June 21, 2019

Predictably, the tweet didn’t just cause a commotion in KC on Thursday night, but across the country, too. Generally, when we can’t initially explain a strange occurrence and there’s even the faintest possibility that extraterrestrials could be involved-especially when there’s a cool video of the strange object in motion, as shown below-we’re bound to indulge in some irresponsible speculation.

Alas, despite a few fleeting hours of ET excitement, we arrived at an answer for the floating orbs thanks to some sleuthing by Gizmodo. That site originally suspected the orbs could be the property of Google’s Project Loon, which sends large LTE balloons to places like Peru, a spot recently hit with an 8.0 earthquake that badly needed emergency cell service.

But Loon didn’t know anything about the UFOs. “While Loon does routinely fly balloons over the [U.S.] from our launch site in Nevada,” Loon’s Scott Coriell told Gizmodo, “we do not currently have balloons in the area where the sightings have been reported.”

Gizmodo then reached out to the Department of Defense, which didn’t technically claim ownership of the UFOs, but did say that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched three balloons from Cumberland, Maryland on June 18 in a flight test for its Adaptable Lighter Than Air (ALTA) program. A tweet from DARPA on that day confirmed the flight test:

Last night, DARPA launched 3 balloons from Cumberland, Maryland, in a flight test for the Adaptable Lighter Than Air prgm. Over next few days, ALTA will demonstrate capability for wind-borne navigation of a lighter-than-air vehicle over extended ranges. https://t.co/Og8dWCvszc pic.twitter.com/NjUB6Got94- DARPA (@DARPA) June 18, 2019

Indeed, a “source with knowledge of DARPA’s programs” told Gizmodo that the balloons belonged to ALTA. So what’s that program, anyway?

ALTA’s mission is to “develop and demonstrate a high altitude lighter-than-air vehicle capable of wind-borne navigation over extended ranges,” according to the program’s brief description on its bare-bones website. ALTA balloons, which don’t have independent propulsion, can navigate changing altitudes in excess of 75,000 feet. ALTA is also developing a Winds Aloft Sensor (WAS), which will send real-time stratospheric wind measurements back to DARPA.

We first learned about ALTA last fall, when it was revealed that the program was testing the balloons to see if they can ride the wind and stay in the stratosphere indefinitely.

Right now, balloons can only stay in one area for a few days before shifting winds take them elsewhere. But as the MIT Technology Review reported, ALTA’s wind sensor-originally designed for NASA satellites-is built to spot wind speed and direction from long distances and recalibrate as necessary to stay in one area as long as needed.

That sensor, called Strat-OAWL (“stratospheric optical autocovariance wind lidar”) shines pulses of laser light into the air, and a telescope picks up the reflected light, per the Technology Review. “The wavelength of the reflected light is changed slightly depending on how fast the air it bounced back from is moving, a change known as doppler shift,” MIT reports. “By analyzing this shift, OAWL can determine the speed and direction of the wind.”

We don’t know additional details beyond what DARPA tweeted on Tuesday, so it remains unclear what this specific test is designed to accomplish (besides briefly getting our hopes up). But at least we’re now sure-well, pretty sure-that the UFOs floating above Kansas City last night come from the U.S. military, and not, sadly, some strange, distant galaxy.

BUT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DID NOT RECOGNIZE IT AS A WEATHER BALLOON 

Welcome to the NATIONAL UFO 
REPORTING CENTER
 World Wide Web Site

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In continuous operation since 1974

ENTER SITE   FILE REPORT


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An investigation of the DNA of the crew of King Henry VIII's battleship 'Mary Rose', which sank in 1545, reveals more diversity than historians expected.

 Stuart McDill reports.

Saturday, June 22, 2019


A 12-foot alligator was found on a Florida highway: 'He wasn't happy'


MarKeith Cromartie
June 20, 2019




TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – It's not every day you see a 12-foot, 463-pound alligator wandering on an interstate. But that was the case earlier this month in Florida.

Broderick Vaughan, who has been trapping nuisance alligators in Leon County, Florida, for nearly 10 years, was in awe when he got the call about the behemoth wandering on Interstate 10 in Tallahassee.

“I’ve been the trapper here in Leon County since April 2010 and that was the third-biggest gator I’ve captured,” said Vaughan, the owner of Vaughan’s Gators. “That was a pretty big one and he wasn’t happy that we were trying to remove him.”

The Tallahassee Police Department and Florida Highway Patrol responded to calls at about midnight on June 3 about the massive reptile. The exit had to be closed for a few hours to keep drivers away from the huge gator, which had apparently wandered onto the highway.

The alligator was injured after being hit in the snout by a semi-truck. It was stunned and walking in circles when law enforcement officers arrived.

Vaughan was called and arrived less than an hour later. He was able to wrap his snare pole around the tired creature, tape its snout shut and load it on his truck using a hoist machine.

The gator was safely removed, but it had to be euthanized later because of the severity of its injuries.