29 July 2010

SLIDE RULES

Hilary Evans. Sliders: The Enigma of Streetlight Interference. Anomalist Books, 2010.

This interesting but ultimately frustrating book presents the results of Hilary Evans's years of investigation into 'streetlight interference'; the experience of streetlights going off (or sometimes on) when walking near them. He presents the experiences and comments of 215 correspondents, the upshot of which tends to be that there is no one consistent pattern to SLI.
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28 July 2010

CLOUD ATLAS


Richard Hamblyn. Extraordinary Clouds: Skies of the Unexpected from the Beautiful to the Bizarre. David and Charles for the Met. Office, 2009

If you are of a certain age, like Magonia's editors, you might recall Aimé Michel and the great Cloud Cigars. Michel and others argued passionately that these could not have been natural cloud formations. In this beautifully illustrated little book however, there are several examples of very ufological looking clouds, most particularly, but not entirely limited to, the lenticular clouds. 
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27 July 2010

VAMPIRES

Mark Collins Jenkins. Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend. National Geographic, 2010.

M. J. Trow. A Brief History of Vampires. Constable and Robinson, 2010.

Vampires are the in thing, especially if these books are to be believed, among teenage girls; pop stars with fangs as it were. Jenkins and Trow both track the vampire down through his/her manifestations in popular culture, each manifestation showing the changing times, and attitudes to and perceptions of the forbidden. 

26 July 2010

STALKING THE TRICKSTERS

Christopher O'Brien. Stalking the Tricksters: Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, Dark Adepts and 2012. Adventures Unlimited, 2009.

Just before reading this book, I was out walking in one of the tiny patches of wilderness left in my suburb, thinking of the story of the urban fox attacking two children as reported HERE. I was wondering about using it as a Northern Echoes piece, noting that this was a classic example of how the wilderness is, literally in this case, biting back, and it reminds us that nothing is really truly known, nothing is really tame and nowhere is really safe.
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24 July 2010

THE DEVIL RIDES ON ... AND ON ... AND ON

In the early 1990s Magonia magazine published a number of articles by Roger Sandell and others, which examined the stories of 'Satanic Abuse' that were current at that time. The writers could see that these allegations, which in many cases were splitting families and sending innocent people to jail, were similar in nature to many of the reported experiences which we were discussing in Magonia, such as alien abductions, false memories, hypnotic regression and guided recall. It was very clear that many of the people involved in these cases such as police, social workers, lawyers and magistrates, were totally unaware of the broader history and social background to such allegations. You may wish to read some of the articles:

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22 July 2010

MIRAGES AND MIRRORS

Mark Pilkington. The Mirage Men. Constable, 2010 -- Reviewed by John Rimmer

It's hard to imagine how difficult it must be writing about a topic when you're quite sure that most of the people you talk to, and a great deal of the documents you read on the subject, are deliberately lying to you, or at least attempting to direct you away from what they consider the truth.
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13 July 2010

NO COMMENT

From MUFON UFO Journal, July 2010.

12 July 2010

SCIENTIFIC ERRORS AND OMISSIONS

Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden. Science Was Wrong: Startling Truths About Cures, Theories, and Inventions 'They' Declared Impossible. New Page Books. 2010.

The main theme of this book is concerned with how scientific and technological progress has been retarded by authoritative persons who have declared innovations and inventions be either wrong or of no practical use. The authors deal with the emergence of a number of new technologies, most of which, with the benefit of hindsight, one would have thought would have been immediately adopted. 
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