"The truth is out there" was the catchphrase for the mid-1990s paranormal drama "The X-Files," but an actress and former extra on the more recent "Lost" is trying to bring the truth -- or at least alleged encounters with the unknown -- into American homes.
Brenda Carey is the host of "The Brenda Carey Show," an Internet talk show that also airs on public access TV in West Hollywood, Calif. The show, which has been in production for about a year, features interviews with paranormal experts and people who say they had close encounters. There are also reenactments of those brushes with the paranormal using state-of-the-art special effects -- if you've taken a time machine to 1980.
For instance, an episode on out-of-body experiences features a demonstration of astral projection that involves two of Carey's pets floating in mid-air thanks to the magic of antiquated technology.
Another recent episode depicts a strange encounter one of her friends, Los Angeles-based rock guitarist Ronny North, had with the ghost of his dead grandmother.
"He was lying in bed when his dead grandmother came to him," Carey said in a slight southern accent that betrays her roots in the Mississippi gulf coast. "According to him, she was transparently green and only speaking in Spanish -- which he doesn't speak."
North's grandmother died when he was 14 or 15 and the experience took place when he was 32. He hasn't seen his granny again, but other strange stuff has transpired.
"I believe that it happened, but other than her appearing, nothing has happened since, except for some furniture that's been moved around," North said.
Once Carey heard his tale, she wanted to put it on the show, but was shocked at how nonchalant he was about it.
"I was surprised by his reaction. He didn't really try to figure out what she was saying," Carey said. "If it was me, I would have been on a computer trying to get English-Spanish translations."
Blase as he may have been, North was still happy to recreate the experience on Carey's show with a little comedic embellishment.
"In the reenactment, I played his grandmother," said Carey, "and I kept telling him there was a million dollars under his bed -- in Spanish -- and he keeps saying, 'I don't understand you.' It was really funny."
That's the secret to Carey's show. Although she strives to report paranormal information as accurately as possible, she admits that bringing humor to the mix is crucial. Still, it took her some time to realize the show could benefit from comic relief.
"The first two episodes were more serious because I didn't want people to think I was making fun of the guests," Carey said. "At first, I put the humor at the end of the show, but I asked my first guest, Stephen Murrillo, the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, for advice and he told me humor was fine and added, 'The more cleavage and leg, the better.'"
Working on the show, Carey has learned an important lesson about people who are into the paranormal: Even though many of them face public ridicule, they have a sense of humor about their unusual experiences.
"The die-hard science people do want to make sure the information is serious, but they have great senses of humor," Carey said.
Carey shares that combination of seriousness and humor. On one hand, she's a licensed attorney in Washington, D.C. with a specialty in environmental law. She's also an actor and comedian who proudly mentions her former reign as Miss Hawaiian Tropic Mississippi of 1990.
Oh, and there was the time she was an extra on "Lost."
"I was a featured extra," she explained. "I didn't get any lines, but they referred to my character. I keep it on my resume in case any producers or casting agents are 'Lost' fans."
The gig helped her when it came time to doing special effects for her own show.
"When I saw how they did things on a big budget show, I knew I'd have to accept my limitations," she said.
In fact, she considers her low-grade special effects a virtue.
Each show takes as much as six months to produce because Carey and her husband Brian Acree do everything, including writing scripts, editing episodes and staging those special effects.
Although the show is getting support among paranormal researchers and fans, Carey hopes to attract the interest of a network like the SyFy Channel. But the network executives seem to have been alienated by her lack of professional representation.
"I don't have an agent or manager and these executives are so busy that they view whether you have one as sort of a screening process," she said.
Still, one person who predicts the show's eventual success is North, even though he makes no claim of having psychic powers.
"Everyone who's seen it wonders why it hasn't gotten more attention," he said. "She's good-hearted and the show brings more attention to the subjects."
CARDIFF-BY-THE-SEA, Calif. -- A bronze surfer statue near San Diego that's been the target of many gags has been hit again.
Unknown pre-dawn pranksters on Saturday constructed an elaborate scene of a pterodactyl seemingly about to pluck the sculpture of a young surfer off his board. The pranksters placed a painted backdrop of a volcanic eruption behind the surfer statue.
Last year someone surrounded the roadside statue in Cardiff-by-the-Sea with a papier mache model of a great white shark that appeared to be swallowing it whole.
The $120,000 sculpture called "Magic Carpet Ride" has been derided by local surfers who criticize the boy's pose as too awkward.
The statue has been bedecked with bras, skirts and witch hats so often that locals have come to call it "The Cardiff Kook." ___
Don't let the name "Tasmanian devil" fool you. These four baby devils, or joeys, are super cute.
In the video below, the Tasmanian devil keepers at Syndey, Australia's Taronga Zoo hold the four babies for the first time, during the zoo's breeding season.
According to ZooBorns, their mother Nina snuggles around them as a keeper lifts each out to determine its gender. The litter includes one girl and three baby boys.
This comes as good news to the zoo. Tasmanian devil breeding centers have been working to fight extinction, as the devils are threatened by Devil Facial Tumor Disease. The disease, which already wiped out sixty percent of the wild devil population, causes tumors to form around the animal's face. This limits their eating ability and eventually results in starvation.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- An array of 42 radio telescopes seeking signs of intelligent life in the universe will continue that work after private donors raised enough money to keep them going.
The array was originally a joint project between the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley Astronomy Laboratory, which pulled out earlier this year because of the loss of National Science Foundation grants and state budget cuts.
Senior SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak said he was gratified the money could be raised during these tough economic times.
"But people still think this very fundamental question – is there somebody out there as intelligent or more so than us? – is important and worth doing," he said.
The telescopes will be turned back on in September, recalibrated and operated 24 hours a day for the rest of the year as more funds are sought.
The array costs $2.5 million a year to operate with a full staff of 10 people. As a whole, the SETI Institute has an $18 million budget and 140 employees. The funding which comes from donors, NASA and the National Science Foundation.
SETI Institute CEO Tom Pierson told supporters in a letter that his goal is to raise $5 million so that the radio dishes can be pointed at 1,235 new so-called "exoplanets" that were announced in February by NASA's Kepler mission.
The array is not only used to search for E.T.s, but is also contributing to research into black holes, pulsars and magnetic fields in the Milky Way.
We all know that taking the train is one of the greenest ways to get around, but we wouldn't exactly call being jam-packed into a metal compartment with a bunch of strangers "fun." Well one station in Utrecht is trying to change all of that with their new 'Transfer Accelerator' - a slide that lets commuters skip the stairs and experience a thrill we all loved as kids. Designed by HIK Ontwerpers, the slide and the rest of the station revamp are already making taking the train a more pleasurable experience. All photos and captions courtesy of Inhabitat.
New sources of fuel are being explored, and some are pretty weird. French farmers recently told Reuters they've found a way to run vehicles on duck fat, inspring us to look at a few other alternative fuels.
Does "the weirder the better" apply when it comes to alternative fuels?
L.A. based artist Jason Mecier has captured Amy Winehouse in this incredible portrait made out of 5,000 multi-colored painkillers.
The soul singer died last month, bringing to an end her battle with drugs and alcohol. Since 2006, she earned a reputation for her struggle with eating disorders and addiction.
The Winehouse pill popping portrait is part of Jason Mecier's series of celebrity mosaics using everything from aspirin to candy and newspaper. Celebrities such as Amy Sedaris and Florence Henderson even send him their own junk. Flip through the photo gallery of Kelly Osbourne, Nicolas Cage, Michael Jackson and other stars.
Correction: A previous version of this post had the artist's name spelled incorrectly. It has since been changed to the true spelling.
(RNS) When congregants of West Side Church and the Christian Life Center in Bend, Ore., awoke in June to news that their churches had been vandalized, they expected to be frustrated.
What they didn't expect was to be confused.
In addition to the anti-Christian slogans scrawled on the walls of the two buildings, the words "Praise the FSM" were painted everywhere. Churchgoers were left scratching their heads.
"We were pretty much in the dark," said Jason Myhre, a staffer at West Side Church.
But after a Google search, they learned "FSM" stood for "Flying Spaghetti Monster," the noodly appendaged deity of a fictitious religion called "Pastafarianism" that's popular among some atheists and agnostics. Suddenly, it looked like atheists were on the attack.
"It was obviously sad," Myhre said. "It was more sadness that people would destroy the property to communicate their belief."
But mere hours after news of the vandalism broke, the story changed.
Bobby Henderson, the head of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, publicly condemned the vandals; Hemant Mehta, author of the Friendly Atheist blog, posted an online plea for donations to help fund repairs. In less than 24 hours, he had raised more than $3,000.
"We think (atheists) can win in a civil dialogue, so there is no reason to resort to violence or vandalism," Mehta said. "We said, OK, look, we've raised money for other causes before. Why don't we raise money to help clean up the graffiti? This is not what (our religion) is about."
But while the vandalism seemed to be an isolated incident, it and other developments have spurred a discussion among atheists about the usefulness of so-called "joke" or "invented" religions in the nonreligious movement.
Some are wondering: has the joke gone too far?
Pastafarianism was founded in 2005 when Henderson, then a physics student, sent a letter to a Kansas school board satirically critiquing the theory of intelligent design by citing "evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe."
The joke grew into something of a cultural phenomenon for atheists, especially online and on college campuses. Adherents brandish Pastafarian bumper stickers ("He Boiled For Your Sins"), clutch Flying Spaghetti Monster holy books (the "Loose Canon"), and even celebrate holidays such as "Ramendan" (a parody of Muslim Ramadan), all in the spirit of poking fun at religion.
For many atheists like Mehta, the satire is a positive part of the atheist experience and provides a safe haven for nonbelievers.
"If I go to a Christian church, some people have a habit of speaking 'Christianese.' Atheists don't have that," Mehta said. "But you can say 'I'm a Pastafarian,' and people will say, 'Oh, you're one of us.' It gives us a way to bond over our nonreligion."
But Carole Cusack, professor of religious studies at the University of Sydney and author of the book "Invented Religions," notes that members of the eclectic and diverse atheist communities view the sarcasm in different ways.
"The first is as fellow warriors in the ongoing campaign to make religion look ridiculous," she said. "The second is as a nuisance, muddying the waters by proposing parody religions instead of calling for the end of religion."
Others, however, think the whole silly discussion is, well, kind of silly.
"The Flying Spaghetti Monster ... may be hysterically funny, but just cracking ramen jokes ... does not constitute a meaningful alternative to traditional religion," he said.
"If we can take the energy that goes into cracking jokes and put it into positive acts, we could really change the world for the better."
Epstein is not alone: Atheists in Australia are also divided over another parody religion called "Jediism," based on George Lucas' "Star Wars" film franchise.
Jediism gained attention after some 500,000 people listed "Jedi Knight" as a tongue-in-cheek religious affiliation on 2001 census forms in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
As Australia readied for its 2011 census, however, some atheists called for an end to the wisecracking. Arguing that many who listed their religion as "Jedi" were just atheists making a joke, the Atheist Foundation of Australia launched a campaign urging nonbelievers to "Mark 'No Religion' and take religion out of politics."
Their reasoning, they said, was practical since "Jedi" gets counted as "not defined" instead of "no religion," which only serves to undercount the nonreligious population.
"It was funny to write Jedi once, now it is a serious mistake to do so," the organization wrote on its website.
But despite the group's efforts and similar campaigns in the U.K., not everyone agreed. Henderson posted a message on the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster website urging Australians to embrace their Pastafarianism, calling it "a reasonable and legitimate choice."
Ultimately, even Epstein admits the allure of humor is a powerful one.
"When (religious) people try to dominate public discourse and dominate the political landscape," he said, "sometimes the humor you find in things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a very subtle and powerful way of pushing back."
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Shoppers and employees say an Ohio convenience store has fewer people hanging around and hassling customers since the business started blaring classical music.
Shopper Allie Beck says the classical music is loud – she can hear it all the way down the street. But she says it's an improvement over all the people who used to ask for change or bother passers-by outside the store.
This was a discovery for the ages. Archaeologists in Ireland have uncovered a dead body that may date back to many centuries ago.
The human remains are thought to be of a woman. While it's missing a head and torso, its legs appear to be well preserved by chemicals from an Irish bog.
The bat was captured on camera wandering around Delta flight 5121, which departed from Madison, Wisconsin to Atlanta, Georgia at 6:45 a.m. on Friday, August 5th. News.com.au reports that "shocked passengers ducked and dived" as the bat swooped close to their heads.
Some have suggested the animal may have just been a bird, and Delta officials and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention aren't certain the bat had rabies. If it was rabid, passengers could have been inflicted with the disease from a bite or contact with the animal's saliva.
CDC officials have asked that anyone who was on the flight call 1-866-613-2683.
Although just two to three people die every year from rabies, according to the Associated Press, if anyone on the plane was infected, it could take over two months for them to become sick:
The early symptoms are unremarkable – fever, headache and general weakness or discomfort. As the disease progresses, more telling symptoms appear like insomnia, anxiety, confusion, paralysis, hallucinations, agitation, an increase in salivation and a fear of water.
A 27-year-old man is in custody on Friday after allegedly stabbing his mother repeatedly when she offered to make him a sandwich.
Alexander Georg of suburban Naperville, Illinois, is charged with the attempted murder of his mother, whose "bone-chilling screams" alerted the neighbors to the crime. She is being treated for stab wounds and other injuries at Edward Hospital, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The victim had just picked up her son from Adventist GlenOaks Hospital in nearby Glendale Heights, where he had been checked in following a domestic incident at the home. Prosecutors wouldn't describe why he was hospitalized, the Chicago Tribune writes, and there's no court record of the incident.
Shortly after arriving home, Georg's mother offered him a sandwich. At that point, according to investigators, he knocked her down and began slamming her head into the ground. He then stabbed her in the chest and neck so brutally that the butcher knife snapped at the handle, the suburban Daily Herald reports.
When police arrived, the woman was bleeding profusely, and the blade of the knife was lying in a pool of blood. Georg was standing in the driveway outside the home, and he gave himself up without resisting.
Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft have discovered a "Jupiter-sized gas giant" believed to be the darkest planet in the galaxy.
The planet -- named TrES-2b -- is located 750 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Draco, and according to lead author David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, it is indeed a remarkable find.
"TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," Kipping said in a statement.
Unlike planets in our solar system, TrES-2b lacks reflective clouds due to its extreme heat, a condition which researchers believe explains the planet's extraordinary darkness. The clouds that surround Jupiter, for example, reflect over a third of the sunlight in their path.
A few more details from the press release:
TrES-2b orbits its star at a distance of only three million miles. The star's intense light heats TrES-2b to a temperature of more than 1,800° Fahrenheit - much too hot for ammonia clouds. Instead, its exotic atmosphere contains light-absorbing chemicals like vaporized sodium and potassium, or gaseous titanium oxide. Yet none of these chemicals fully explain the extreme blackness of TrES-2b.
According to Space.com, the discovery "reinforces the idea that our solar system may not be as typical as we once thought, with an extraordinary variety of worlds potentially filling our galaxy."
And while the planet is indeed really, really dark, it's not a complete blackout.
"It's not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark," co-author David Spiegel added. "However, it's not completely pitch black. It's so hot that it emits a faint red glow, much like a burning ember or the coils on an electric stove."
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