Thursday, April 28, 2011

Ramsey TFM3C Tri Field Meter and "Ghost" Detector Kit

Call it a Tri-Field Meter, an Electrical, Magnetic, and RF Detector, a Ghost Detector, or a Tricorder that even Mr. Spock would like, but what ever you call it, it works great to detect all three invisible fields!

The TFM3C has three separate field sensors that are user selectable to provide a really cool readout on two highly graphical LED bargraphs! Utilizing the latest technology, including Hall Effect sensors, you can walk around your house and actually "SEE" these fields around you! You will be amazed at what you see. How sensitive is it? Well, you can see the magnetic field of the earth... THAT'S sensitive!

The technical applications are endless. Use it to detect radiation from monitors and TV's, electrical discharges from appliances, RF emissions from unknown or hidden transmitters and RF sources, and a whole lot more! A 3-position switch in the center allows you to select electric, magnetic, or RF fields. A front panel "zero adjust" allows you to set the sensors and displays to a known clean "starting point".

If the TFM3C looks familiar, it's probably because you saw it in use on the CBS show Ghost Whisperer! It was used throughout one episode (#78, 02-27-2009) to detect the presence of ghosts! The concept is simple, it is believed (by the believers!) that ghosts give off an electric field that can be detected with the appropriate equipment. Even Thomas Edison believed this as he made recordings of "voices from beyond". In the electric mode, the TFM3C's displays will wander away from zero even though there isn't a clear reason for it (not scientifically explainable, aka paranormal!). This would mean something has begun to give off an electric field. What it was in the Ghost Whisperer was a friendly ghost. What it will be in your house... who knows!

Makes a great teaching tool too! Learn all about the three types of fields and the sensors needed to detect them. Runs on 6VDC (4 AA batteries, not included).

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Saturday, April 23, 2011

Star Wars Yoda - "Happy Birthday You Must Have" 18 inch Mylar Balloon

This mylar foil balloon will add something extra to a Star Wars or Sci-Fi themed birthday party. The balloon comes sealed in the package and is uninflated.

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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Halo, Books 1-3 (The Flood; First Strike; The Fall of Reach)

The official novels of the award-winning Xbox game! This set contains The Fall of Reach, First Strike, and The Flood -- the complete chronicles of the bloody Human-Covenant War on Halo.

The Fall of Reach
As the bloody Human-Covenant War rages on Halo, the fate of humankind may rest with one warrior, the lone SPARTAN survivor of another legendary battle . . . the desperate, take-no-prisoners struggle that led humanity to Halo--the fall of the planet Reach. Now, brought to life for the first time, here is the full story of that glorious, doomed conflict.

First Strike
The Human-Covenant war rages on as the alien juggernaut sweeps inexorably toward its final goal: destruction of all human life!

The Flood
The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankindâ??s very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious, ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force known, are not the only peril lying in wait.

Bungie, Halo, Xbox, and the Xbox Logos are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Used under license. (c) 2001-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved

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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Chewbacca Back Buddy

Take Chewbacca with you everywhere! Great for carrying school supplies and more. This stylish and unique Star Wars Chewbacca back buddy is made of 100% polyester.

Need a backpack? Chewbacca's got your back! Well, actually in this case, he really does have your back. Behold, the Chewbacca Backpack Buddy. Have a wonderful wookie protecting you each day. Simple installation to PC or Notebook - Easy to install, the bus-powered USB 2.0 Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro does not require an extra power adapter.

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Investigators claim ghosts haunt old fairground. Ruh-roh!

DEL MAR, Calif., April 11 (UPI) -- Paranormal investigators in California say they have collected 130 recordings of ghostly voices from the Del Mar Fairgrounds grandstand.  What they voices are 'saying', isn't clear.  But they're really sure that they are voices, nonetheless.  South Coast Paranormal, a group of San Diego-based ghost hunters, said they have been collecting recordings for their ongoing investigation from the fifth floor of the building since April 2010, when they were called in by Linda Zweig, a spokeswoman for the fairgrounds since 2001, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday.

"We believe it's voices from the disembodied," David Walters, an investigator with South Coast Paranormal, said of the recordings.  However, Joe Harper, chief executive of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, said he is skeptical.  "I have never seen a ghost here, but I have seen quite a few people who I thought had died," he said. "And, of course, a number of folks that looked as if they had died."

Just what the hell is going on with this so-called 'Fair Ground' anyway?

'Real-life' warlock angered at Hollywood for portrayal of witches and warlocks in "Your Highness."

We could take him seriously, if only he didn't look like Ricky Gervais after inhaling 200 pounds of donuts.  However, Christian Day (if that is his real name)  owns a witchcraft shop in Salem and is calling for a world-wide boycott of "Your Highness" because it's unfair to the witch & warlock community.

According to Day, warlocks aren't people who want to deflower virgins and rule the world and portraying them as such is 'an assault on taste'.  His goal is to influence hollywood to create more positive and uplifting films such as Harry Potter and rid the movies of undesirable sterotypes like the Wicked Witch of the West, in the Wizard of Oz.

What's next, vampires boycotting "Twilight" for making them seem gay?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Sun's gravity could be used to create an interstellar communications network, that Al Gore will then take credit for inventing many years down the line

The Sun's tremendous gravitational pull actually warps the fabric of space around it, creating focal points where light comes together. We could use these focal points to build the most powerful telescopes ever and communicate with spaceships in Alpha Centauri.  It's true!

General relativity tells us that the Sun's huge mass actually warps the space-time around it, which in turn bends the light passing around it. This creates focal points away from the Sun where the bent light converges, in much the same way a lens can focus all the light that passes through it onto a single point. If we were to put a detector at one of these focal points, all the image and information drawn from the light passing through would be intensely magnified, instantly creating an extremely powerful telescope.

Now, the nearest focal point isn't anywhere near Earth - about 550 astronomical units away, or 550 time the distance between Earth and the Sun. For the sake of comparison, Neptune is only 30 AU away, while the Kuiper Belt only extends out to 55 AU. Still, by comparison to the solar system's really distant objects, like the Oort Cloud, which is perhaps as much as 50,000 AU away, 550 AU doesn't seem so bad. Still, it's much further than any previous human exploration has taken us - the Voyager probes are still only about 100 AU away, and it's taken them nearly four decades to get that far.

So, setting up a detector on one of these focal points is possible but very difficult. But what will we get out of it? Well, a detector could pick up great magnified visible light as well as other types of radio signals. This would allow us to view distant objects with the kind of clarity the Hubble Space Telescope could only dream of, and it might just give us the sort of resolution necessary to get a good look at Earth-like planets around other stars.

The Sun's gravity could also massively boost our communications abilities. We would be able to keep track of deep space probes for far longer and with far more clarity than we're currently able to. Right now, the Voyager probes remain in contact using the Deep Space Network, NASA's powerful communications array. It still works OK over billions of miles, but even communicating with a spacecraft orbiting the nearest stars would probably be impossible with the current technology.

Experts estimate that, over the 26 trillion miles between us and the Alpha Centauri star system, various forms of space noise like the cosmic microwave background radiation would interfere with signals, scrambling as much as half of all transmissions. That sort of error level would be a massive stumbling block for any interstellar probes, even if they sent the same messages over and over again.

The alternative would to be to build an interstellar radio bridge by placing another detector at a focal point around Alpha Centauri. That means the first mission to Alpha Centauri would just be to allow ourselves to make contact. Once the detectors around the Sun and Alpha Centauri start communicating, the error rate in transmissions would drop from 50% to .00005%, the same error rate the Deep Space Network currently has within our own solar system. Amazingly, the interstellar radio bridge would operate with a tiny fraction of the power it takes to run the current DSN.

This also gives up a possible new approach in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. An advanced alien race might well set up a radio bridge between its own star and its stellar neighbors, and if the Earth was positioned just right with respect to the two communication points, we might be able to listen in on the alien conversations.  There is one major drawback, however. The two sides of the radio bridge would need to be extremely precisely aligned, and currently we don't have the technology to maintain that level of accuracy over light-years. We do know of a possible theoretical solution: a sort of galactic GPS powered by intensely magnetized neutron stars known as pulsars. And besides, even with the bridge in place, the messages still won't travel faster than the speed of light.

Even so, for all these caveats, this is still fundamentally a highly awesome idea, and a pretty cool piece of tech to throw into your slightly more realistic space-based science fiction. It's going to take us a lot longer than we'd like to reach the stars, but at least we'll be able to clearly announce our arrival when we finally get there.

For the extraterrestrial on the move: the UFO motel

"The Gateway to Death Valley" -- as blistering Baker, Calif., is known -- is also where Argentina-born Luis Ramallo parked his now-famous Alien Fresh Jerky store several years.  Ramallo, a deeply serious believer in extra-terrestrials, had first opened a jerky stand near infamous Area 51 (the Air Force base central to many UFO conspiracy theories), out along the Extraterrestrial Highway in Rachel, Nev.

UFO Motel Soon To Be Landing in California Desert
One of the displays inside Alien Fresh Jerky in Baker, California.  But he was pressured out by what Ramallo describes as "mysterious government forces."

"They harassed me all the time," Ramallo told AOL News. "People who actually worked at Area 51 would come in and take pictures of my business. We had displays featuring alien news and photos along with other things, and they'd just come in, photograph and leave. Never say a word. Not buy any jerky. It was strange. Then we got lots of harassment and pressure from the local government. So we knew we had to get out."

Several years ago, Ramallo landed in Baker. And business took off like a rocket ship.  So much so that Ramallo is now planning the launch of his UFO Motel, which will be just behind the jerky store.  "The building will be in the shape of a saucer, and it will include 20 UFO-themed rooms," Ramallo said. "We are very excited and got some important approvals just this week to move forward, so we are all set. I'm hoping to have it open within two years. And there will be nothing else like it in this world."

Until the UFO Motel opens, Alien Fresh Jerky will no doubt continue to attract all sorts of interesting human visitors. The store boasts dozens of gourmet jerkys, dried fruits, nuts, stuffed olives, candies, BBQ sauces and more tasty edibles.  But there are also many alien displays and models, alien swag, even bottles of Area 51 dirt for sale. It's akin to an alien museum. Alien videos play throughout the store, Roswell newspaper clippings hang in frames, and they all stem from Ramallo's firmly held belief in ETs.

He talked about one of the more recent, highly publicized sightings.


"The recent video from Israel was extremely compelling," he said. "The speeds that thing reached are not of this world. That kind of technology, that sort of light speed is just not attainable here."Ramallo says that his store has become an unofficial meeting ground from believers all over the world, who make special visits to share stories, photos and even mysterious videos.

"In addition to offering delicious, high-quality jerky, we've been able to create a place here that's like a haven for believers," he said. "That's important because for many of us, it's hard to tell who to trust with these stories. Here, there is trust. Just as there will be at the UFO Motel."

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter

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