xenophilius

Have an iPhone? Like chess? Let’s play! Directions: Go to the App Store, search for “chess with friends free”, install it, enter your email address (I wont see that), choose a user name (I will see this), scroll down and tap “Create Game”, tap “User Name”, enter “xenophilius.wordpress.com”, then tap “Search”! I’ll get an offer to join a game with you. I typically have about 20 games going at once. Good luck! If you still call a rook a “castle” and a knight a “horsey” then try the free... Read Full Story

ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the orbiter found surface features were not quite where they should be. … In the 1980s and 1990s, the Venera and Magellan orbiters made radar maps of the surface of Venus, long shrouded in mystery as well as a dense, crushing and poisonous atmosphere. These maps gave us our first detailed global view of this... Read Full Story

The parasite T. gondii , [right] may be changing connections between our neurones, altering how we act and feel. (Dennis Kunkel Microscropy, Inc./Visuals Unlimited/Corbis Images) Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it... Read Full Story

In the tiny mountain village of Tenna, a farming village in eastern Switzerland not far from resorts such as St. Moritz and Davos, big green ideas have been introduced. Although larger, well-known ski resorts overshadow it, when their aging ski lift needed replacing, locals raised enough money to update it and then went a step further: They invested in building one of the world’s first solar-powered ski lifts. This tiny Swiss town with a population of about 110 inhabitants is now home of... Read Full Story

Well, if nothing else, my web site and others like it have raise awareness of Nazi UFOs like the Foo Fighters (no, not the band) to the level that the general public gets a crazy fun movie out of it. Read Full Story

NORTH-coast crofters are being warned to be on the lookout for a “killer beast” which is rumoured to be prowling the fields of the Far North. It comes after the carcase of a ewe was found stripped to the bone at Swordly, near Bettyhill, in north Sutherland. Andy McLachlan (54), of Kirtomy, said a big cat has been spotted on the border between Caithness and north Sutherland on a number of occasions. He said the potential danger the animal presents was displayed last month when the sheep... Read Full Story

Pennsylvania State Police say Patricia Deshong, 25, and Quentin Deshong, 22, were arrested Jan. 7 in Metal Township, Penn., after allegedly attempting to blow up a vehicle outside of a bar using flaming feminine hygiene products, according to documents obtained by The Smoking Gun. The incident took place outside the Hillside Tavern at around 2:50 a.m., after officers got a report that a man and woman were allegedly vandalizing a green 2006 Ford Fusion car in the bar parking lot, the website... Read Full Story

Structural and functional brain imaging analyses, combined with computational analyses, reveal highly connected, centrally located regions of the human cortex (front part of the brain) that form a “structural core” of the brain.  Liza Gross, Wikimedia Commons  For the first five years of life, human cognition slowly comes to fruition, receiving and storing information and experience from the environment and enabling humans to advance beyond the capabilities of their primate cousins... Read Full Story

Mammoth, or just a bear carrying a fish in its mouth? Mr. Snuffleupagus perhaps? As with all anomalous videos, the questions that need to be asked are things like: what happened before and after the video? Did they follow it, or at least alert authorities who would be able to track it? In short: fun video, but a lot more information and context needed from serious investigators before anyone should treat it seriously. In the meantime, here’s a tabloid report. via Daily Grail Frontpage... Read Full Story

Why zebras evolved their characteristic black-and-white stripes has been the subject of decades of debate among scientists. Now researchers from Hungary and Sweden claim to have solved the mystery. The stripes, they say, came about to keep away blood-sucking flies. They report in the Journal of Experimental Biology that this pattern of narrow stripes makes zebras “unattractive” to the flies. They key to this effect is in how the striped patterns reflect light. … Prof Matthew Cobb... Read Full Story