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On March 9th 2011, the space shuttle Discovery landed after the completion of its final mission in space. But I supposed after 30 years it was about time to retire the shuttle and move on to something more modern—whatever that’s going to be. I hear we’re going back to launching rockets up into orbit, no different than what NASA was doing back in the 1960s.

I remember the first time I saw the shuttle. No, it wasn’t taking off from a launch pad. I saw it sitting in a hangar in Huntsville, Alabama. It was a long time ago, and before the first shuttle take-off. In those days, I was a struggling photographer. I would get ideas for photo-shoots from reading the newspapers. One day I found a tiny blurb in a news article about women being included in NASA’s astronaut program. I thought this would make an interesting photo essay, so I immediately wrote a letter to NASA. A week later, I was invited down to the Johnson Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama to do a photo essay on the first women astronauts in training.

As part of the story I photographed the candidates at home with their family. I can’t remember the woman’s name in the photo, I know she was an engineer. There were four women in the Space Shuttle Astronaut Training Program. However, when the first shuttle flew—after several years of delay—these women were not part of the crew. I have more photos from NASA, and if I ever get my darkroom set up again, I’ll post those photos, too.

Here’s an amazing scene from an ultra-rare, kitschy, trippy, Soviet-style SF film Ikarie XB 1 (aka Ikaria XB1, Icarus XB1 and Voyage to the End of the Universe). This is Czechoslovakia’s first science fiction film. Made in 1963, the movie takes place in the year 2163 and tells the story of Starship Ikaria XB 1’s voyage to Alpha Centari. (“Voyage” was the savagely cut, English-dubbed version released by American International Pictures.)

In this remarkable scene, the explorers enter a derelict 20th Century space craft, littered with evidence of elitist immorality. The visuals are striking. Vacuum preserved corpses dressed in tuxedo and evening gowns who died in the middle of gambling and partying. The crew killed by their own chemical hand-weapons as they fought over dwindling oxygen. The ship laden with nuclear weapons—still active after centuries.

Ikarie XB 1 is an ambitious, thoughtful, intelligent film decades ahead of its time. It’s an ultra-rare “must-see” for any serious SF fan. The film has high-concept elements galore: a trip to proxima centauri; time dilation; future foods, fashion, music and dance; first-contact protocols; increased longevity; artificial intelligence; bulky socialist robots.

It’s said the screenplay was inspired by the work of Stanislaw Lem, including “The Magellanic Cloud” from 1955. (Credit: trekfancvg)

I know B-films are bad. But, this has to be a comedy. Aside from the wooden acting and an out-of-place operatic duet, watch for the little nuances and props. Gotta love those clunky robots.

The new year has started off with some weird stuff. Birds falling from the sky in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Sweden, and Canada. In Italy, a thousand turtle doves fell from the sky and all had a strange blue stain on their beaks. The explanation for the bird deaths has ranged from fireworks, thunderstorms, flying into invisible UFOs (that’s a good one), and disease. As for the turtle doves, Rodolfo Ridolfi, a director at the regional zoological institute, said:‘We are fairly confident the birds died as a result of massive indigestion brought on by over-eating. The most likely cause are discarded sunflower seeds that were found on an industrial estate close to where the bodies of the turtle doves were found.

‘In essence the birds were greedy, ate too many of the seeds – which we have found inside them during autopsies – and this brought on the indigestion that led to their death.’

An upset stomach killed them? OK. Where did the blue stain on their beaks come from? Blue-dyed M&Ms?

How about a river turning bright neon-green? This story is from Canada:

Horrified nature-lovers at Goldstream Provincial Park watched as the Goldstream River turned bright green late Wednesday afternoon.

The fluorescent green colouring appeared to start about 500 metres on the Victoria side of the entrance to the park and, over the course of an hour, the substance flowed down into the environmentally sensitive estuary.

By 5:30 p.m. the river, known for its dramatic salmon runs, eagles and other wildlife, was back to its normal colour.

Ministry of Environment teams were immediately sent to the area to investigate and members of Langford Fire Department collected samples for analysis.

No dead fish or animals had been found by early evening.

Earlier in the day a fountain beside Veterans Memorial Parkway in Langford also turned bright green, said Langford Fire Chief Bob Beckett.

The fountain turned green, too? How? Is it connected to the river? Do they know how the chemical got in the river and fountain? Duh.

Anyway, Canada’s Pacific Environmental Science Centre in North Vancouver tested the water from the river and the fountain and it turned out to be fluorescein. This is a chemical used to trace leaks from septic tanks and water systems.

I love the way the article says it’s not toxic, and then goes on to say: Fluorescein is also used in medical diagnosis and guidelines warn it can cause reactions ranging from nausea and hives to death from anaphylactic shock.

I don’t know why this video is entitled “Fallen Angel,” there’s nothing angelic about it. To me, it looks more like a nasty gnome. Then on second look, there was something familiar like I’ve seen this image before. But no, it wasn’t an image, it was a story. No, more than a story—an urban legend.

Legend says the domesticated house cat was created by beings from the Sirius A star system. They combined the energetics of a high-astral level cat-like being called the Ari with the DNA of human and lions. The purpose of the cat was to spy on humans. In Ancient Egypt, every household was given a cat. At night, the cat would sneak off to report to their alien controllers. And that’s why even today the cat instinctively wants to go out at night, although it no longer has anyone to report to. Hmmm. I wonder what my cats would say about me?

Underneath Lake Titicaca are two cities. One is directly on the bottom of the Lake, and the other is a subterranean city. At night, if you look directly at the Lake you’ll see lights, like fast moving vehicles, under the water.

In the Andes, weird things happen to people.

Stewart continues with his story of Bolivia: Later that night, back in the City (La Paz), I was in my hotel room. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw at my window, inside my room, a woman with a cat-like face. She pointed outside the window, and then disappeared. The next day, the archeologist stopped by my room and told me a story about some European back-packers who had gone up to the Andes. One of the travelers went behind a rock to relieve himself. Suddenly an apparition of a head & torso of a woman with a cat-like face appeared. It is believed these beings come from under the lakes and mountains of the Andes.

In the Andes Mountains, Peru, some where between 15,000 to 20,000 feet elevation, a German mountain climber found a 11-year boy frozen in the snow. He thought the child was lost and he lifted him in his arms and carried him down to a cave where he was camping for the night.

In the cave, the child began to defrost, and as he thawed a drop of blood came out of his ear, indicating he was still alive and breathing. But, unfortunately, the elevation drop and the sudden and rapid unfreezing of the body resulted in the child’s death.

That child was an Inca who had been up in the mountains for several hundred years. And since then, three other Inca children in the Andes region had been found in the same condition. The Incas had put them in a state of suspended animation for all those years to be guardians, or an energetic anchor, for that particular location.

In South America, there are so many secrets yet to be revealed.

Remember back in the good ole days of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s when somebody saw an “UFO’—or as they were called back then, a ‘flying saucer’—you saw a REAL ufo? Those old fashion ufos were big. They were detailed. Elaborate. Ornate. Sometimes they looked like wedding cakes, or two plates stuck together. They hovered 10 feet over your head and shot laser beams at your cows. They landed in your front yard, and the ‘aliens’ would pose for the camera.

What do we get now? Teeny, tiny, blurry dots in the sky. You’d think with all this advancement in photo equipment somebody could hold a camera steady and zoom in for a close-up.

But, no. Instead of those upclose and personal “Billy Meir or Howard Menger”-type photos of ‘flying saucers’—in the days before photoshop and CGIs—we get instead, out-of-focus crap of some ‘dot of light’ that’s thousands of feet away.

How did we go from those cool looking flying saucers to teeny tiny dots in the sky? Are the ‘aliens’ having a recession, too? Have they forgotten how to build a ‘space ship’? Who’s getting lazy here? Us, or them?

What do we get now? Dots, dots, dots, & more dots (Yeah, yeah. OK. Occasionally, somebody snaps a triangular-shaped craft that you can barely see against a black sky).

One of the things I’ve noticed as a cop, is: we see alotta naked people. I’d have to guess that 3 out of 10 jobs I’ve handled involved nudity in one way or another. Usually it’s somebody answering the door completely nude. I said to my partner once: “If you dialed 911, and you knew company was coming, and you knew the cops were gonna be at your door any minute, wouldn’t you put your pants on?”

Most people answered “Yes.”

One day during the changing-of-tour, a stark naked woman walked nonchalantly into the station house and right up to the front desk. Her nudity meant nothing to her. However, it was causing quite a ruckus amongst the troops.

“Quick! Somebody get this woman a sheet,” ordered the lieutenant.

A cop rushed up to the precinct dorm, grabbed a sheet off a bed, ran back downstairs, and handed the sheet to the naked woman. It was expected she’d wrap the sheet around her body. Instead, she took the sheet and wrapped it around the top of her head like a turban. Then the woman turned and casually walked out the station house—still naked as a jay-bird.

One time I was sitting in my police car, stopped at a red light. I saw across the street, on the other side of the avenue, a naked man wearing only thigh-high, rubber fishing boots, held up by suspenders. He was walking away from me and all I could see was his backside flashing in the sunlight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was anxious for the light to change so I could drive over and double-check if this was real or not. But by the time the light turned green, the bare-butt “fisherman” disappeared down an alley.

There used to be this guy, who, every Friday night, would strip down to his running shoes and jog through the neighborhood in his birthday suit. And every Friday night the cops were called to take the naked jogger back home to his very fed-up-I’ve-had-it-with-this wife.

Why do cops see all this nakedness? Well, a lady on the street explained it to me. I, and another (male) cop, were standing on a footpost near a busy intersection. A woman walked up to us and said, “I wanna show you something.” And, she lifted up her shirt and exposed her bare breasts to us. Alarmed, we said, “Lady, put your shirt back on!”

She said, “But I want you to tell me what this rash is.”

“Ma’m,” we said. “You can’t take your shirt off like that.”

“Why not?” she said. “You’re like doctors, aren’t you?”

Duh?

This podcast originally aired October 8th 2010:

My guest tonight is JO ANN RICHARDS. Jo Ann is the Executive Director of educational non-profit Earth Defense Headquarters. Her husband, Mark Richards, and his father, Ellis Lloyd Richards, were involved with top-level military intelligence operations since World War II. Many of these operations included on-world and off-world contact and battles with various alien species. Mark’s family history includes some very interesting bloodlines and personal connections. Both of his grandfathers worked with Nikola Tesla. Grandfather Richards worked on the Manhattan Project. Mark’s father spent summers with Tesla, Goddard, and Hubble. Both he and Mark were involved with top-secret things since they were teens. It runs in the family. Jo Ann has been a guest on several radio and TV shows including Through the Keyhole with Karyn Dolan, Rob Simone, Light of Day, Sedona Lights, Vortex Network News, Cosmic Connections, Out There TV, and is featured in Ed Grimsley’s video. She spoke at the PROBE UK conference in October 2007 and at Ed Grimsley’s Skywatch Conference in May 2009. Jo Ann speaks about her knowledge of a few military operations and meetings that these men were involved with. In 1984, Mark was falsely convicted of a murder and has been incarcerated ever since. The family now believes it was to keep him quiet about what he knows and to keep him from fighting the New World Order. Jo Ann has an incredible story to tell about human-ET contact and OUR space fleet! www.edhca.org