I Wonder Why Russia May Be Paranoid?
Wishful Thinking!
A peculiar piece of footage from England shows a puzzling winged anomaly, which some have likened to the legendary Tooth Fairy, fluttering outside a family’s home. The strange scene was reportedly captured last Sunday evening by the doorbell camera of Alicia Stoddart’s residence in the town of Hemel Hempstead. While visiting her parent’s house in the community of Clacton that night, the security system alerted her to something strange happening back at her home. When she checked her phone to see what had triggered the camera, Stoddart was stunned to see what appears to be a small white figure bearing a sizeable set of wings.
“My first thought was ‘oh my God, it’s a fairy,'” she recalled, “we were racking our brains trying to think of what it could be and Googling possible culprits.” However, Stoddart says, they were unable to find what sort of prosaic creature could account for the sprite-like anomaly. “None were matching the outline and size of the image,” she explained, leaving her family “convinced it’s the Tooth Fairy.” As one might imagine, Stoddart’s three children were particularly enchanted by the video, specifically her son, who is “a believer of all things magical” and just so happens to sporting a loose tooth at the moment.
No doubt skeptical observers will suggest that the ‘fairy’ in the footage is simply an insect, perhaps a moth, that flew past the camera and its supernatural appearance is simply a trick of light and shadow. While that is very likely the case, Stoddart mused “we all need a bit of magic and belief in our lives,” especially during these tumultuous times. Can you identify the curious visitor who stopped by the family’s house last Sunday evening?
Meatloaf has expired
Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday; September 27, 1947 – January 20, 2022), better known as Meat Loaf, was an American singer and actor. He was noted for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical live shows. His Bat Out of Hell trilogy—Bat Out of Hell, Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose—has sold more than 65 million albums worldwide. The first album stayed on the charts for over nine years and more than four decades after its release still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually, making it one of the best-selling albums in history.
After the commercial success of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, and earning a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song “I’d Do Anything for Love”, Aday nevertheless experienced some difficulty establishing a steady career within the United States. This did not stop him from becoming one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with worldwide sales of more than 100 million records. The key to this success was his retention of iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, where he received the 1994 Brit Award for best-selling album and single, appeared in the 1997 film Spice World, and ranked 23rd for the number of weeks spent on the UK charts in 2006. He ranks 96th on VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock”.
Behind the scenes…
Behind the Scenes at National Geographic.
Behind closed doors at the dog daycare…
Snow falls in Algeria’s Sahara Desert
Snow has fallen in the Sahara Desert in north-western Algeria as temperatures plummeted to below freezing.
For children from nearby towns such as Mekalis, it was a welcome relief from the scorching heat of the world’s largest hot desert.
The ice crystals formed stunning patterns in the desert sands.
Dunes – ideal for sliding – were also partially covered by the snow and ice.
The snow in the town of Ain Sefra – known as the gateway to the Sahara Desert – was only a light dusting.
Temperatures in the town, which is surrounded by the Atlas mountains, dropped below -2 for the last three nights but this is only a few degrees colder than average at this time of year, says BBC Weather’s Nicky Berry.
The snow was not a complete surprise – there were also falls in 2021, 2018 and 2017.
But the snow on the red sand dunes in December 2016 did come as a shock. Residents of Ain Sefra said that it was the first time since 1979 they had seen snow, suggesting the phenomenon is now becoming more common.
UFO? What in the hell is this thing?
UFO’s are the ultimate mystery. Many sightings can be explained as natural phenomena or some strange type of aircraft. But there are some incidents that are so perplexing that no explanation holds water. I have been interested in the UFO subject for years and there are some really strange incidents that I will name below.
The Rendlesham Forest encounter from 1980 is very weird. The forest was located between two U.S. air force bases in southern England. Up to 60-70 U.S. air force personnel saw up close very strange craft and lights.
The Washington D.C. UFO flap of 1952 was perhaps one of the most observed UFO phenomena ever. The 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap or the Washington National Airport Sightings, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. The objects were picked up on radar.
The Stephenville, Texas UFO event of 2008 was very strange indeed. On January 8, 2008, Stephenville gained national media attention when dozens of residents reported observations of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Several residents described the crafts as the size of a football field, while others said they were nearly a mile long, similar to the historic Arizona mass sighting of March 13, 1997. Some observers reported military aircraft pursuing the objects.
The Phoenix Lights were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over Arizona, Nevada in the United States, and Sonora, Mexico on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles (480 km), from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson.
The Belgian UFO wave of 1990 can’t be explained away easily. The Belgian UFO wave peaked with the events of the night of 30/31 March 1990. On that night unknown objects were tracked on radar, chased by two Belgian Air Force F-16’s, photographed, and were sighted by an estimated 13,500 people on the ground – 2,600 of whom filed written statements describing in detail what they had seen. Following the incident the Belgian air force released a report detailing the events of that night.
Another incident worthy of mention was the Travis Walton incident. There was a movie made about it titled “Fire In The Sky.” Besides Walton himself there were six witnesses. Walton (born February 10, 1953) is an American logger who claims to have been abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working with a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton could not be found, but reappeared after a five-day search. TheWalton case received mainstream publicity and remains one of the best-known instances of alleged alien abduction. UFO historian Jerome Clark writes that “Few abduction reports have generated as much controversy” as the Walton case. It is furthermore one of the very few alien abduction cases with corroborative eyewitnesses, and one of few abduction cases where the time allegedly spent in the custody of aliens plays a rather minor role in the overall account.
I am not including the Roswell Incident here because there was nothing to the incident in terms of Alien Spacecraft. Roswell was the (supersecret) Project Mogul balloon system that crashed in the New Mexico desert. The Mogul project was an extremely secret and sensitive system the U.S. military was developing to spy on Russian nuclear weapons tests. There is no actual evidence of any Aliens or Spaceships at all, it is all hearsay, speculation and conjecture. And for the life of me, the Aliens can travel over billions of light years through space to get to Earth, and then when they get here the spaceship blows a gasket and it crashes, come on believers, that just doesn’t make any bloody sense at all.
The incident below is another enigma, very strange stuff. Video at the bottom.
Daily Mail
Does this surveillance footage really show a UFO visiting a Florida swimming pool?
- Condo security officer Debralee Thomas witnessed a strange object by the community pool Monday night
- The object was UFO-shaped and pulsed above the pool for 30 minutes
- The video has been sent off to a UFO organization in Ohio for analysis
It seems even extra-terrestrials retire to Florida.
Residents of a Naples condo building swear that a UFO came to Earth to check out the swimming pool and stayed for 30 minutes Monday night.
Security guard Debralee Thomas says she was monitoring the surveillance camera feeds when she noticed an unusual pair of lights that appeared to be hovering over the water.
What is it? The video shows a disc-like object hovering over the pool before expanding and dipping into the waters, pulsing for half an hour
The lights appear to be illuminating a saucer-shaped object in the sky, residents claim
The strange object stuck around for about 30 minutes and then vanished without explanation
‘I realized that it was something that wasn’t normal, so I was like “Oh my, what is that,” she told WBBH-TV.
As a security guard who stares at video screens for hours, Thomas said she’s seen some bizarre-looking things on her screens that turn out to be nothing at all.
Bug that fly into the camera lenses, for instance, can offer a frightening spectacle for someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking at.
But this was no bug. When she taped the encounter and showed the footage to her friends, they agreed that it indeed looked like something extraterrestrial.
‘We watched it on tape and to be honest, I was so grateful that it was there so I could say it was real…it really happened,’ Thomas said.
Video evidence: Security officer Debralee Thomas was glad she caught the happening on tape
What’s the interest? It’s unknown why extra-terrestrials might be interested in this condo swimming pool in Naples
Thomas sent the video to the Mutual UFO Network, an Ohio-based UFO organization, for analysis. The leaders of the organization said they don’t believe the video is a hoax.
But, they can’t say what the strange lights are.
A wildlife biologist that examined the video for WBBH said the images could not have been an animal.
Residents have been going into the condo’s offices just to watch the video and see the event for themselves.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ said resident Curtis Kate. ‘The electrical charges coming from it, it’s truly unbelievable.’
The mystery of the UFO remains unsolved for now, and Thomas is OK with that just as long as it doesn’t happen under her watch again.
A Florida wildlife biologist examined the tape and concluded that no animal could have made the bizarre shapes seen on the tape.
Supersonic Business Passenger Jet Zooming in Over the Horizon
The Aerion AS2 is a supersonic business jet under development by Aerion Corporation. In May 2014, it was announced that the Aerion AS2 would be part of a larger Aerion SBJ redesign, which aimed for release after a seven-year developmental period. Aerion partnered with Airbus in September the same year. In December 2017, Airbus was replaced by Lockheed Martin. Its General Electric Affinity engine was unveiled in October 2018. In February 2019, Boeing replaced Lockheed Martin.
The Aerion AS2 12-passenger aircraft aims for Mach 1.6 with a supersonic natural laminar flow wing for a minimum projected range of 4,750 nm (8,800 km). A $4 billion development cost is anticipated, for a market of 300 over 10 years and 500 overall for $120 million each.
In December 2017, Aerion and Lockheed Martin announced that they would explore its joint development without Airbus, aiming to fly in 2023 and be certificated in 2025. On December 15, after discussions with Lockheed’s Skunk Works, they announced a MoU to explore over a year the joint development of the supersonic business jet: engineering, certification and production. Lockheed previously developed supersonic aircraft like the F-16, the F-35, F-22, and the Mach 3+ SR-71, and they concluded that the AS2 concept warranted time and resource investment after reviewing Aerion’s aerodynamic technology. Throughout the two-and-a-half-year engineering collaboration with Airbus, Aerion advanced the AS2 aerodynamics and designed preliminary wing and airframe structures, a systems layout, and a fly-by-wire control system concept. Between May and December 2017, the GE collaboration resulted in moving the engines from the trailing edge to the wing leading edge, featuring a T-tail, and a higher wing aspect ratio.
Aerion said it is spending $1 billion for the AS2. Aerion and Lockheed wanted to freeze its engines, wings, and fuselage configuration in summer 2018, with the goal of selling 30 jets per year for $3.6 billion over 20 years.
While military jets have had supersonic capabilities for decades, the economics are daunting for civilian operations. High ticket prices helped do in the Concorde after 27 years of service, which slurped twice as much fuel as a Boeing Co. jumbo jet while carrying only one-fourth as many passengers.
In the years since Air France and British Airways parked their Concordes, would-be supersonic jet developers have turned to business aircraft in hopes of putting newer technology in a smaller airframe to attract wealthy buyers and globe-trotting chief executive officers.
The MarkoZen Blog 