Aztec "crystal skulls" make neat displays and fiction. But recent Crystal Skullanalyses of several in museums show they're fake. CLICK HERE to read the full story.

J. Allan Danelek: The Great Airship of 1897: a Provocative The Great Airship of 1897Look at the Most Mysterious Aviation Event in History. Adventures Unlimited Press 2009. (A review by Norman Sperling, February 10, 2013.)

A mysterious bright light in the night sky sparked this big flap at the end of the 1800s. It was unexpected and unexplained. Reports grossly contradict one another, so investigators can favor very different inferences, interpretations, and explanations simply by selecting different reports to prefer.

In the 1800s, no one considered the light to be a space ship from another planet. Paranormal boosters have made that case more recently. Since this book's author energetically investigates paranormal and Fortean matters, I was all prepared for the author to go Paranormal.

He never did. The one place where the paranormal is invoked by others, Danelek dismisses it tersely. This book has nothing at all to do with the paranormal. Every explanation is purely naturalistic. Danelek invokes real physics,

The Voynich Manuscript is just as good a story now as when I first read about it 50 years ago. If you're not familiar with Voynich Manuscript it, Wikipedia's article hits the highlights, and its bibliography gives a number of ways to dig deeper.

The Voynich Manuscript was probably written in the early 1400s, probably in Europe, possibly in Northern Italy. Most of it resembles an herbal (though the plants are unrecognizable), plus sections whose pictures suggest astrology and pharmacy, plus lots of naked and clothed women (only the naked ones get mentioned much), and less-understandable illustrations and pure-text pages. The text appears to be written in a cipher, which has tantalized and taunted people since the 1500s. No one has ever cracked it.

Not only is this book truly, deeply weird, so are several of t

The Church of Scientology is known for its famous followers and its reputation for secrecy. In an interview with CBS 5, the great grandson of the church’s founder L. Ron Hubbard blasts Scientology, accusing it of  destroying his family. CLICK HERE to read the article, and watch the embedded video of the interview.

Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez / APThe 90-year-old Alameda preacher who convinced hundreds of followers that the world was going to end last May now acknowledges he was wrong. "Events in the last year have proved that no man can be fully trusted," Harold Camping wrote... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/09/BASF1NIFIL.DTL

Yeti FingerPhysical evidence, scientifically analyzed, reveals reality far better than anecdotes, story-telling, and wishful thinking. Proponents of the "Yeti" (Himalayan "abominable snowman") touted a finger taken from a "Yeti" hand displayed at the Pangboche Temple's monastery in Nepal in 1958. If the Yeti is a real species, that wouldn't contradict Science, but it would add a fascinating complication to the complex story of humanity's heritage. The finger's DNA has now been analyzed. It's human. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16264752 The news report pointedly doesn't state *which* finger it is, but I have my suspicions.