Killer Dolphins Have Gone Missing

Out of what can only be reasonably described as that of a B movie about rogue mutant animals trained by mad scientists to kill all humans, comes the reality that the Ukrainian Navy may have a "broken arrow" situation on their hands!

Not some wayward missile, but initially a report I read on the Justin Gregg blog!  It started with a report from the Russian New Agency that reported that three of the Ukrainian military’s trained and armed dolphins had gone AWOL. 

Oh and hey wait, it gets stranger!  This report spread like wildfire over the web with photo-shopped photos of what the "armed" creatures looked like.   Check out the photos here!

But as all good things come to an end, so did this crazy story thread.  It seems that the voice of Russia, RIA Novosti appear to have sources at Sebastopol.  However the "sources" information would prove to be fictitious.  But not before the web had spread this "true" story to every corner. 

You can read more at the RIA Novosti page

and where I found it first on the Justin Gregg site

Ghosts With Shit Jobs

Here is a five minute block of a biting satire from Jim Munroe which debuted at the Sci - fi London film festival called Ghosts With Shit Jobs. The premise of the mockumentary is the western economy has collapsed. A Chinese film crew is touring Toronto documenting the living and working conditions of the new poor. It seems (according to the film's premise) that after the collapse a whole new group of "workers" has evolved that will do anything that the average Chinese worker would never condescend to. The Chinese call these workers "Ghosts"

The complete film was made for about five thousand dollars by a group of film makers in Toronto, with the writing going to Munroe.

Check this preview short or you can get more info at the official site here

Here is the IO9 article

The Faking Hoaxer's Shuttle Collision

Here is a very scary example of how difficult it is to trust and believe what you are seeing. From the very capable hands of The Faking Hoaxer is a shockingly realistic short film of a catastrophic collision of a shuttle with an unknown object. This very clever person has put out several short and VERY believable films, that on occasion have been so good that some nefarious folks have renamed as official NASA documents and have foisted them on the public as the real thing.

TFH has quite a list of very realistic video. Click here for his youtube page

Dutch "Moon Rock" discovered to be fake

I wasn't going to give this any airtime, mainly because it is such a major embarrassment, but then Shaun sent in the BBC article. I got to thinking, at what time or point did this EVER seem like the thing to do? Huh?

Here are the details, in case you missed them from the bbc article:

• A treasured piece at the Dutch national museum - a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing - is nothing more than petrified wood.
  
• It was given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the ... Apollo-11 crew.
  

China's Space launch news is FAKETASTIC!

News of China's successful launch of it's first space walk flight hit the web hours before the actual launch of the rocket. Creepier still was that the news release had transcripts of conversations between the astronauts and mission control. Shades of Capricorn 1 huh guys? Like the Yahoo News article said - "No wonder (people) think we never went to the Moon!" Said to be a technical glitch, it still means that reports of the whole event were to be completely manufactured and have no relationship to the actual mission! Gizmodo has it right - they exclaim "Faketastic!"

<- Yahoo News via Gizmodo ->

Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad - Fear Mongering at its Best!

When I first saw this commercial, I burst out laughing. I really thought it was a joke. You see this satellite in low earth orbit thats suppose to be a GPS or communication bird and the orbit barely looks high enough to even be that of the ISS and in comes a rocket on a clearly balistic trajectory!??? Excuse me? But it seems the AirForce is serious but more serious about generating fear and praying on those that do not understand clearly the dynamics of the systems they use daily. The goal, clearly is to not keep you better informed. And the funny thing is who is running the commercial gleefully? The Sci-Fi channel...It played while I was doing this article during Dr. Who of all things....lol

Wired is taking on the armed forces media with it's latest foray into propaganda. At question is the air-force's commercial, about the perils of an attack in space, which does more than stretch the truth, it violates quite a few laws of physics. The commercial says:

"What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?" the military ad asks. "They can."

Well, No, they can't. Not unless there's some new missile out there that can strike dozens and dozens of targets, spread out over thousands and thousands of miles. As the article points out "Communication, television and navigational systems are handled by different arrays of satellites." And each set of satellites is thousands of miles from the other. At least ten thousand miles, for example, separates the arrays of communications and GPS satellites. Systems like the GPS satellites are in fixed or stationary obits called MEO or medium Earth orbit which are 12 thousand miles above the earth's surface. Still others are in fixed or stationary obits called geo-stationary which are twice that far out. There's no missile that can hit two targets that far away from one other. (In fact, there's no anti-satellite missile, taking off from Earth, that can even reach GEO or MEO. Even the much vanted Chineese satellite killer reached only 540 miles. But should such a missle someday be invented that could reach and kill a high flying satellite no system depends on just one bird let alone several systems. Even today, satellites fail or are rotated out of service. Very few people even notice when this happens because of the redundancy of the system. And for what it is worth many systems like banking use terrestrial fiberoptics as backup, so that even if the complete satellite system went down, the could continue to operate.

It is clear that the Air Force is preying on the lack of public understanding of the threat (and space in general) in an attempt to convince voters that space is important too and only the US Air Force can protect America in space.....

Here is the Air Forces peice if you haven't seen it yet

Wired's article

China says moon pictures not faked from NASA

Wow, you got to love this! As most of you know, China launched its first lunar probe, the Chang'e 1, in October. After a sucessful launch, the Chinese space agency released a photo featuring a patch of grey moon surface with the requisite amount of craters.....or so it would seem. Astute Chinese internet users soon cried foul though. It seems the photo that was released is almost a carbon copy of a photo released by NASA years ago! What makes this even weirder is that the Chinese photo has what appears to be photoshopped craters added in. (no I am not making this up! LOL)

The Chinese scientist insist that the photo is genuine and that the reason that the photos are alike is that the probe's camera was pointed in the same area on the Moon. As for the extra crater well, China says that The American photo was not of significant resolution to resolve the smaller structures.

Click here for the complete article

photo Reuters

Need some Moon Dirt?

How about Fake moon dirt? I read it! Right in Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing...check it...

Short on real moondust to study, NASA scientists are planning to manufacture huge amounts of fake moon dirt.

Tons of it as it would seem! Ok, there IS a reason, I confess...but it's so weird to see FAKE MOONDUST! Ok, here is the skinny..

Apparently, samples acquired during the Apollo missions aren't nearly enough to test how machinery will act on the lunar surface. As a result, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has contracted with aerospace R&D firm ORBITEC to manufacture 16 tonnes of three varieties of simulated moon dirt.

Click the title link for more info!