Elderly US man attacked by flesh - eating ants as he lay on his hospital bed...

Image via Wikipedia An elderly man has been attacked by a swarm of flesh-eating ants as he lay in a hospital bed in Florida receiving treatment for a heart condition.


Cornelius Lewis, 76, was recovering from an operation to fit a pacemaker when the ants, which have been spotted in the hospital previously, bit him hundreds of times on the legs and genitals, The Daily Mail reported.



The attack went unnoticed by hospital staff for hours because the pavement ants, a common household pest, were hidden by the bedcovers.



Mr Lewis's son said the hospital was supposed to check his father more regularly.



"He was supposed to be monitored every 10 minutes," Neil Lewis told Newspress.com.



Neil said when the hospital finally did discover the ants and try to move Mr Lewis they found ants in the new room as well.



Lee Memorial Health System, which runs the Gulf Coast Medical Centre, confirmed there was an ant problem and said staff were taking steps to make sure nobody else was attacked.



"There are no reports of other patients being bitten by ants and Gulf Coast is the only hospital with an ant problem," public relations director Karen Krieder said.



All the companies' hospitals are now being treated by pest control experts.



Lewis is still being treated at the Gulf Coast Medical Centre

Related articles

• Male Patient Attacked By Ants in the ICU Of Gulf Coast Medical Center in Florida (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Man 'Attacked' by Ants in Florida Hospital ICU (aolhealth.com)
• Weather Forecast: Partly Cloudy & Drop in Temperature (israelnationalnews.com)
• Weather Forecast: Partly Cloudy, Temperatures Dropping (israelnationalnews.com)
• Partly cloudy day in Delhi (topinews.com)
• Reverse trick-or-treat helps patients say `thank you' ()
• Today's logo: Partly cloudy with a change of shape. (makethelogobigger.blogspot.com)
• Woman Attacked By Rival In Hospital After Giving Birth (dreamindemon.com)
• New Hampshire Weather Forecast: It's Official, We're Dry (sbnation.com)
• Impulse Monitoring and Children's Hospital of Central California Ink IONM Agreement (eon.businesswire.com)

Fall gardening tips for gay gardeners born without green thumbs

Fall gardening tips for gay gardeners  born without green thumbs.

Looking for a place to stalk the Great Pumpkin? Try pumpkinstation.co



“I believe in God, only I spell it N A T U R E.”

—Frank Lloyd Wright, architect



Ah … fall is in the air. The mad hustle of the holidays is nearly upon us as our non-existent summer fades away. The light is changing and the mornings are darker and sleepier. There’s something exceptionally beautiful about fall. It’s one of the rare times in San Diego when you can actually see the seasons starting to change—green leaves take on warm hues and crunch beneath our feet; evenings are chillier and a misty fog blankets our seaside town.



I love to stroll my neighborhood at dusk, just after the sun has set. Little cottages and their gardens begin to take on a new appearance and everything seems to have a seasonal orange glow. Gourds are perched on shadowy porches and Halloween pirates and skeletons keep guard over picket fences. Plants are moist with dew and occasionally, when we’re lucky, there is the smell of rain. Glancing in windows you can see friends and lovers sharing a meal or huddling over tables preparing crafts and costumes. Fall signals a change and mixes things up for us a bit. Unlike the spring, where it’s all about renewal and growth, the fall is more about introspection. It’s a quieter time for us to enjoy being inside and a chance for us to tend to our homes and gardens.



Walking through our gayberhood I’m often struck by how beautiful some of the yards and gardens are—even in the fall. From exotic succulents to seasonal flowers, there are quite a few of us who have obviously been gifted with the gay green thumb. My partner David and I have not been so fortunate. We attempt to “garden,” but for us the endeavor should really be called “death prevention.” We usually have our standard quibble over whether to hire a gardener or just do it ourselves. I succumb to the theory that it’s meditative, and that by doing the work myself I am reconnecting with nature. But let’s be clear: There is a difference between enjoying a hike in the woods and fishing thousands of palm tree seedlings from your Buddha fountain. I’ve taken to naming certain plants and will often whisper sweet nothings to them, pet them and beg them not to die. We do a fair job pruning and wrestling with unruly vines. Sometimes it works out and other times it looks as if our trees have been struck by lightning. Occasionally I’ll call one of my more Martha-inclined friends for a gardening intervention, in which he or she helps me pull David and his electric chainsaw out of the trees.



Fortunately, for those of us less gifted in the garden there are plenty of local experts in our community who can offer advice on how to keep a garden fresh and tame this fall. Landscape designers Joel Berlin and James Kressley of Anandascapes have some professional tips on how to keep the lightning strikes at bay. “In the fall a clean-up is usually necessary for salvias and ornamental grasses. Many of these plants will get ‘leggy’ or simply turn brown by the end of the summer. When I see leaves sprouting from the bottom blades or stalks, I often cut them down, leaving the new sprouts to begin the cycle again.” Kressley said.



Kressley assured me that planting options are bountiful in the fall. “I always encourage edibles in your garden,” he said. “Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, collards, kale, greens, peas, spinach, beets, carrots, turnips, garlic, onions and lettuces are all great vegetables you can grow in the cooler months here in San Diego.”



Kressley also stressed the importance of knowing what plants are in your yard. “If you have Australian plants like the Anigozanthos or Kangaroo Paw they are used to wet summers and dry winters. You can either adjust the water amount for them or plant a complementing specimen along with it—one which likes winter water, like a succulent. The plants will actually “share” the water through the seasons.



In the spirit of the season I asked James where we might be able to source great pumpkins. “If you don’t have the space to grow your own pumpkins this season (and they do take a lot of space), I would suggest going to one of our local Pumpkin Station locations (pumpkinstation.com). There’s even fun activities for children. The Rancho Bernardo location even has a 6-foot tall corn field maze,” Kressley said.



Special thanks to James Kressley for the seasonal tips. He and Berlin can be seen on HGTV’s “Ground Force.” You can reach them via their website at anandascapes.com or at (619) 701-9875 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (619) 701-9875 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.



— Jimmy Sullivan holds a B.A. in architecture and is the owner of CitiZen Design Studio, a design firm located in Hillcrest. Write to Jimmy at jimmy@citizenarch.com or visit his website at citizenarch.com.



Tool Box:

Acknowledgements: Jimmy Sullivan

Related articles

• Gifts for the Gardener with a Green Thumb (brighthub.com)
• Update From Our Garden (suddenlyfrugal.com)
• Succulent 'Autumn Joy' a colorful perennial (sfgate.com)
• From the Garden to the Record Books, a Supersize Pumpkin (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Kinds of Plants Which Grow Well in Winter (brighthub.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Facebook ads may inadvertantly out gay members...

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook users may inadvertently reveal their sexual preference to advertisers in an apparent wrinkle in the social-networking site's advertising system, researchers have found.



The researchers set up six Facebook accounts, analyzing the type of advertisements served to them and way those advertisements differed based on the profile's declared sexual preference.



Two of the profiles purported to be males interested in females, and two females interested in males. Another profile was for a male interested in other males, and the last a female interested in other females. All six profiles claimed to be 25-year-olds living in Washington, D.C.



Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that ads that explicitly mentioned sexual preference, such as ads for gay bars, were served to the gay profiles. But they found that many ads that did not explicitly refer to sexual preference were shown exclusively to the gay profiles.



One example was an advertisement for a nursing program at a medical college in Florida, which was only shown to gay men.



The researchers said that persons seeing the ad would not know that it had been exclusively aimed at them solely based on their sexuality, nor would they realize that clicking on the ad would reveal to the advertiser, by implication, their sexual preference in addition to other information they might expect to be sent, such as their IP (Internet Protocol) address.



"The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual preference and a unique identifier (cookie, IP address, or e-mail address if he signs up on the advertiser's site)," the researchers wrote in a paper. "Furthermore, such deceptive ads are not uncommon; indeed exactly half of the 66 ads shown exclusively to gay men (more than 50 times) during our experiment did not mention 'gay' anywhere in the ad text."



The scenario would appear to violate Facebook's advertising policy, which says "Any targeting of adverts based on a user attribute such as age, gender, location or interest, must be directly relevant to the offer and cannot be done by a method inconsistent with privacy and data policies."



A Facebook spokeswoman downplayed the study, saying that the site does not pass any personally identifiable information back to an advertiser.



Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, wrote on his blog that Facebook could deal with the issue in a couple of ways.



The site could simply stop allowing advertisers to target ads based on sensitive information, such as sexual preference or political affiliations, or it could inform users that an ad was targeted based on a specific attribute of their profile, Soghoian wrote.



"Users should also be told, after clicking on the ad, but before being directed to the site, that the advertiser may be able to learn this sensitive information about them, simply by visiting the site," Soghoian wrote. "I suspect that neither option is going to be something that Facebook is going to want to embrace."



The research paper, "Challenges in Measuring Online Advertising Systems," was written by Saikat Guha of Microsoft Research India, and Bin Cheng and Paul Francis, both of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany.

Related articles

• Facebook Ads Could 'out' Gay Users, Researchers Say (pcworld.com)
• Marketers Can Glean Private Data on Facebook (nytimes.com)
• Is Facebook Outing Gay Users to Advertisers? [Privacy] (gawker.com)
• Facebook Ads Could 'Out' Gay Users (yro.slashdot.org)
• Does Targeting Gays With Facebook Ads Push The Limits Of Privacy? (allfacebook.com)
• More privacy headaches for Facebook: gay users outed to advertisers (arstechnica.com)

Where did Adam go when he was kicked out of Eden?

Image via Wikipedia

WHERE DID ADAM GO WHEN HE WAS KICKED OUT OF EDEN?





WHEN ADAM (CREATED BY YAHWEH ILDABAOTH THE DEMIURGE) WAS KICKED OUT OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN, WHERE DID HE GO?



EUROPE WAS PART OF HYPERBOREA ORIGINALLY

The Hyperborean migrations took different paths all of which eventually moved into America. As they migrated they bred with each other. More recently in our history, these blended migrating tribes became the Scythians, Aryans etc.

The “Tribe of Cain” kept their bloodline separate originally however as time passed these tribes inner bred or married. The “Tribe of Cain” was one of the first hybrid bloodlines that were forced to leave Hyperborea. . The first bloodlines were those who were forced out of Hyperborea for mingling with the gods. The gods were the various entities we wrongly refer to today as “Aliens.”

The Scandinavians were the second migration, which left Hyperborea. The Nazarenes were a separate bloodline that remained pure. They carried the PURE Rh Negative bloodline factor. The Nazarene tribes appears to have been Scandinavian. They may have been the second bloodline to leave Hyperborea, before they migrated into Northern Israel. Jesus (Yashua) was a Nazarene.

If we read the Koran what we find is that a people group known as Adam, were flown out of Agharta from the Steppes Mountainous regions which some say were the Himalayas. They traveled all over the world in flying machines, which appear to be what we call UFO’s today.

They were eventually flown back to Jiddah Saudi Arabia where they started their tribal migrations into Israel.

In the map below you will find Jiddah Saudi Arabia on the coast of the Red Sea. Jiddah Saudi Arabia is along the center point of the Red Sea across from the word Sudan.

This is essentially what the Koran account states.

The Koran tells us that Adam (the Turkish word for Mankind), after being cast out of Eden (in the Siberian Steppes) flew to Ceylon or Serindip,” landing on what is now Adam’s Peak. The name Serindip derived from the Sanskrit Ceren-dvipa. Eventually this people group known as Adam went to Ceylon on some kind of flying ship. From there, he traveled around the world. Finally, he returned to Central Asia, reuniting his group with Eves people group who had stayed behind in Jiddah, Arabia.”

Read more:

http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_11916.shtml

A red-headed man...

Related articles

• Phil Pauley envisions world's largest biosphere for Saudi Arabia (greendiary.com)
• Saudi Arabia to deport Chinese workers over protests (topinews.com)
• Is the oil in Saudi Arabia running out? (greenanswers.com)
• You: Women in Saudi Arabia get chance at first acting lessons (earthtimes.org)
• And How Eden Changes from The Spirits of Eden " RPG (spiritsofeden.com)

The destruction of Atlantis and Europe

Image via Wikipedia

 


THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS AND EUROPE:


According to Plato, the legendary continent of Atlantis was situated west of the Pillars of Hercules(Straight of Gibralter) in what is now the mid-Atlantic ocean. Atlantis was to the world then in many ways what America is to the world today -a superpower with advanced technology. Some twelve to thirteen thousand years ago, a pole shift shook the Earth ripping its way through Atlantis where it became the planet's new south polar opening. Atlantis was now no longer a tropical paradise but became a frozen polar land mass which we know today as the Antarctic. Recent secret expeditions by both American and Russian scientists have detected underground lakes and signs of civilization two miles beneath the antarctic ice. Our planet practices a kind of crop rotation tecnique with its landmasses every six to twelve thousand years so that what was once ice, desert, or sea becomes land and vice-versa. The next shift-accompanied rotation may well occur within the next twenty-five years, and this time the magnetic north or "path of the Lord" is supposed to rip its way through Europe where it will become the new north polar opening. This abyss or opening will be some 1400 to 1600 miles across. Along the path of destruction and through the newly formed polar opening will shine the light of the Lord(inner sun) which every eye shall see. Both Hitler and Edgar Cayce foresaw the destruction or sinking of much of Europe, as did Nostradamus and others.
Read about other prophecies and conspiracies:


http://www.librarising.com/conspiracy/prophecy.html

Related articles

• DVD Review: Atlantis, The Lost Continent (blogcritics.org)
• Atlantis - The Lost Continent (socyberty.com)
• Man Knowledge: Lost Cities Every Man Should Know (artofmanliness.com)
• Atlantis World's Fair (lostworldsfairs.com)

The Gnosis Links: Hercolubus and the Seven Races...

Image via Wikipedia

The Gnosis Link: Hercolubus and the Seven Races






Hercolubus and the Seven Races









The subject of Gnostic anthropology explores the history of our planet Earth, and describes in detail the civilizations that have inhabited the Earth in the past and that will inhabit it in the future. Gnostic anthropology is radically different than what present-day historical, anthropological, and archaeological texts teach us, and is best studied with an open mind and with the help of inner meditation. A study of Gnostic anthropology will enable us to see more clearly where our present civilization stands, as well as where we personally stand, with respect to the overall history of the planet. "History repeats itself" is a profound statement, not only because social and political incidents seem to recur, but because larger cosmic cycles and events also repeat themselves. These major cycles determine the final destiny of humanity, and by understanding them we are able to grasp where our civilization is headed.



Gnostic anthropology is primarily concerned with the major races of humanity that inhabit the Earth at different times. Every planet must support seven major races of humanity, called "root races", during the planet's existence. After these seven races have emerged, subsisted, and dissipated from its surface, the planet becomes a lifeless moon. During the previous cosmic day our moon was a planet full of life. Following the course of every planet, however, it supported its seven root races and eventually became what it is today - a barren, lifeless moon that now orbits the Earth.



Present-day humanity is part of the fifth root race of the Earth, called the Arian race. The first root race was the Protoplasmatic race. These beings were fully awake, divine individuals, with bodies that were semi-physical, semi-etheric. They were androgynous beings, having neither male nor female sexual organs. They lived on the continent of Thule, which was located where the North Pole is now found. The second root race was the Hyperborean race. These beings lived on the continent of Hyperborea, in what in now Northern Europe. They were also awake, divine, and androgynous beings, and reproduced by fragmentation. The third root race was the Lemurian civilization. The Lemurians inhabited the great continent of Mu, which was found where the Pacific Ocean is now located. The first half of the Lemurian race consisted of beings that were hermaphrodite, whose bodies had both sets of sexual organs. The splitting of the sexes into male and female occurred during the second half of the Lemurian civilization. The fourth root race was the Atlantean race. These beings inhabited the continent of Atlantis, located where the Atlantic Ocean now stands. After the submersion of Atlantis, the fifth root race to inhabit the Earth is our current Arian race. The sixth and seventh root races are yet to come, following the end of our Arian civilization.

Read more:  http://home.earthlink.net/~gnosisla/march5.html#anchor747118

Related articles

• Atlantis - The Lost Continent (socyberty.com)
• Ancient Civilizations and Ufos (socyberty.com)
• RaK added a blog post (humanityhealing.ning.com)
• Reptoids have infiltrated the world of heavy metal [Video] (io9.com)
• The Gnostic Revolution (terranova.blogs.com)

The mystery location of the Garden of Eden...

Image by oak37 via Flickr

The mystery location of the Garden of Eden:

It has been written that there is a great mystery that is concealed in the  Torah story about Avraham's burial of his wife Sarah. And it is also written that this mystery is not just another piece of boring mumbo-jumbo philosophical religious lesson. Interesting!

No, it is claimed that this mystery is about a geological & geographical reality that has been spoken about for centuries in  Torah literature and echoed  in the literature  of numerous cultures around the globe. It is written that this mystery is about the Garden of Eden being a real physical place,  and about its exact location today.

The first two links below have been withdrawn. I wonder why? Read the third.

http://www.koshertorah.com/PDF/eden/pdf

http://idolphin.org/eden/

http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_11916.shtml


Southern Iraq:

Biblical scholars reportedly believe tthat the wetlands in southern Iraq are the site of the Garden of Eden. In the 1990's Saddam Hussein had the area drained by diverting its waters in order to punish the locals who had allegedly supported a rebellion against his regime. Nearly two decades later, Azzam an Iraqi American and founder of Nature Iraq, returned in the middle of a war to help restore the area.


But there is another theory about the location of the Garden of Eden: Keep reading Huttriver8.

Related articles

• Akira Garden of Eden Folklorique at Galleria Marchetti: Photo gallery (timeoutny.com)
• Iraqi-American Seeks To Restore 'Garden Of Eden' (npr.org)
• NYFW Day 4: Monique Lhulilier's garden of Eden (charlestoncitypaper.com)
• Garden of Eden at NV Penthouse Lounge: Photo gallery (timeoutny.com)
• Garden of Eden - the models' hangout (teabreak.pk)
• POM Wonderful : Aphrodite [Video] (scaryideas.com)
• 72 Virgins Sent 2,499,928 Reinforcements (michellemalkin.com)

Atlantis Reborn Again - a lost civilization?

Atlantis Reborn Again  -  a lost civilization?

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

  The BBC Headquarters.




Atlantis Reborn Again  -  a lost civilization?




Horizon puts Graham Hancock's controversial theories about the past to the test, dissecting his evidence for a lost civilisation.



Although scientists believe they have categorically disproved the myth of Atlantis, the idea is more popular now than ever before. The latest exponent of the theory of a single lost source for all civilisation, is Graham Hancock. Although he doesn't call it Atlantis, his compelling ideas about a sophisticated society destroyed in a flood 12,000 years ago seem to be based on a reworking of the original Atlantis myth, whose survivors brought culture, religion, monument-building and civilisation to the rest of the world.



Graham Hancock offers various pieces of evidence to support his theory. He claims that the mysterious lost civilisation left its mark in ancient monuments, which he calculates were built to mirror certain constellations of stars. His hugely popular ideas have attracted such a wide audience that they stand to replace the conventional view of the past, which is based on scientific evidence that the civilisations of the ancient world were developed independently, by different peoples, on different continents.



Horizon journeys across the world to examine Hancock's evidence for a lost civilisation and puts his theory to the test.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/atlantisbornagain.shtml

Related articles

• Will Computer Age Really End on 2012? (crazzycool.blogspot.com)
• The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, and other histories | Book reviews (guardian.co.uk)
• Atlantis - The Lost Continent (socyberty.com)
• Simon Hoggart's week: Ed Miliband, the Martian (guardian.co.uk)
• DVD Review: Atlantis, The Lost Continent (blogcritics.org)

Operation Dark Heart book bought out, censored and burnt - shades of Nazi Germany...

Image via Wikipedia

"Operation Dark Heart"  book bought out, censored and burnt - shades of Nazi Germany book burnings...





Operation Dark Heart joins the censorship "Hall of Futility".



"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"  -  President Obama speaking on open government.



In a novel approach to censorship, the US Department of Defense [DOD] recently bought up the entire 10,000-copy first run of Operation Dark Heart, a memoir that it doesn’t want us to read. DOD says that the book, written by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, reveals classified information about US operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan that threatens national security. This action may mark the first time in history that a government has used purchasing power to take a controversial book out of circulation.



The buyout actually works to the financial benefit of the author, who might not otherwise have sold out his first printing. The second edition—replete with blacked-out text—may also sell more briskly than otherwise expected. The tactic also has inspired a bit of humor. On a recent edition of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” news quiz, panelists joked about similar ways to enhance sales of other books, such as: Where the Wild Things (and our Troops) Are, and Eat, Pray, Love, Reveal Nuclear Codes.







Operation Dark Heart: Censored





In a nod to more traditional book-banning tactics, DOD is reported to have destroyed the books after buying them [for a reported $47,000]. [No word, yet, as to whether they were destroyed the old-fashioned way—by burning—or whether book-broiling has morphed into a more 21st century format—shredding and recycling.]



Either way, this episode is not the first time a work of non-fiction has been outlawed or censored for national-security reasons—with or without justification. And there’s no reason to think it will be the last. Here are a few other examples:


Read more: http://www/. occasionalplanet.org/?p=5157

http://www.operationdarkheart.com/media-attention

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Not to Censor a Book: The Pentagon and Operation Dark Heart (time.com)
• Pentagon Burns 'Operation Dark Heart': Censorship Gaffe? (time.com)
• How Not to Censor a Book: The Pentagon Makes a Best Seller (time.com)
• Matt Kane: The Obama Administration's Desire to Keep Citizens in the Dark is Inexcusable (huffingtonpost.com)
• Author of Pentagon-censored memoir on book-burning in the digital age: "It's ludicrous." (boingboing.net)
• 'Operation Dark Heart' Turned To Pulp: Military Officials Watched Publisher Destroy 9,500 Books (huffingtonpost.com)
• Pentagon-censored author can't believe his book was burned (shortformblog.com)
• Not A Joke: The Pentagon Just Destroyed Thousands Of Books (mediaite.com)

• Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer Speaks About His Book That Made Pentagon Bureaucrats Piss Their Pants (disquietreservations.blogspot.com)

Scientific search on for death star that throws out deadly comets at earth...

Image via Wikipedia The star, also known as Nemesis, is five times the size of Jupiter and could be to blame for the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.



Nasa 'elated' after new telescope uncovers 'previously invisible space objects'.



Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope discovers 'superheated planet with comet tail'Nemesis is predicted to lie at a distance equal to 25,000 times that of the Earth from the Sun, or a third of a light-year.



Astronomers believe it is of a type called a red or brown dwarf – a "failed star" that has not managed to generate enough energy to burn like the Sun.



But it should be detectable by a heat-sensitive space telescope called WISE, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer.



Launched last year, WISE began surveying the skies in January. It is expected to discover a 1000 brown dwarfs within 25 light-years of the Sun – right on our cosmic doorstep – before its coolant runs out in October.



The nearest normal star to us is around 4.5 light-year away.



Our solar system is thought to be surrounded by a vast sphere of icy bodies, twice as far away as Nemesis, called the Oort Cloud.



Some get kicked in towards the planets as comets – giant snowballs of ice, dust and rock – and the suggestion is that the Death Star's gravitational influence is to blame.



The paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski discovered that, over the last 250 million years, life on Earth has been devastated on a 26-million-year cycle. Comet impacts are suggested as a likely cause for these catastrophes.



A similar impact by an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a major inquest by scientists concluded last week, though that is not being blamed on Nemesis.



Most stars have one or more companion stars orbiting around each other, which would make the sun's single status unusual.



A major clue to Nemesis's existence is a mysterious dwarf planet called Sedna that was spotted on an elongated 12,000-year-long orbit around the sun.



Mike Brown, who discovered Sedna in 2003, said: "Sedna is a very odd object – it shouldn't be there! It never comes anywhere close to any of the giant planets or the sun. It's way, way out there on this incredibly eccentric orbit.



The only way to get on an eccentric orbit is to have some giant body kick you – so what is out there?"



Professor John Matese, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says most comets in the inner solar system seem to come from the same region of the Oort Cloud – launched by the pull of a companion star to the sun that scatters comets in its wake.



He suggests it is up to five times the size of Jupiter or 7,000 times the size of Earth.



He said: "There is statistically significant evidence that this concentration of comets could be caused by a companion to the Sun."

Acknowledgements: Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study: A Death Star Named Nemesis Isn't to Blame for Mass Extinctions | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Comet and Earth to Have Rare Close Encounter (space.com)
• Comet and Earth to have rare close encounter (msnbc.msn.com)
• Death Star Off The Hook For Mass Extinctions (wired.com)
• Where Comets Form (brighthub.com)

Dutch close to a Burka ban in right-wing party deal...

Image by screenpunk via Flickr. Dutch Close to Burka Ban in Right-Wing Party Deal
 The usually über-tolerant Dutch will likely soon make the Netherlands the latest European nation to ban the burka. The ban—as well as a deal to cut immigration in half—is part of a pact to form a new minority coalition government that will include the right-wing Party for Freedom. "We want the Islamisation to be stopped," said party leader and member of parliament Geert Wilders, who's going on trial next week for inciting hatred against Muslims.



The three-party pact hasn't yet been approved, but is expected to pass with most provisions intact. Belgium and France have already instituted burka bans in public areas. The Dutch law would likely affect some two dozen women, reports the Telegraph. Muslims make up 900,000 of the 16.5 million Dutch population. Wilders also wants a tax on all Muslim veils and a ban on the building of new mosques, but those issues aren't part of the pact.

Acknowledgements: Newser News

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dutch Close to Burka Ban in Party Deal (newser.com)
• Netherlands to ban burka, says anti-Islam MP (telegraph.co.uk)
• "Dutch agree coalition with support from anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders" and related posts (blogs.reuters.com)
• Dutch Government Pact Bans Burqa (nytimes.com)

• Dutch veil ban in coalition deal (bbc.co.uk)