Christine Ranck

Liar Liar Plants on Fire

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If a human tells a lie while hooked up to a polygraph machine, they will probably get busted. That’s because telling a lie apparently creates a measurable, electrical, Pants-On-Fire reaction in almost all of us. But now it turns out that a lie detector test can be used on plants! And this discovery potentially changes [...]

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Quantum Pigeon: There’s No Place Like Home

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In New York City, we tend to think (affectionately) of pigeons as kind of dirty, irritating birds—-but no one can deny that they can fly like the wind. Pigeons are sort of like NYC itself—stinky, infuriating, but still soaring. Mike Tyson has been in the news lately because he has raised hundreds of homing pigeons [...]

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New Year, New You

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As we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century (where did the FIRST one go????), it is good to get a little perspective on things. For example, will radio DJs continue to exhort us to listen to the hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now the “00′s?” How [...]

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Just a Spoonful of Sugar: The Placebo Effect

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Mary Poppins, Nanny Extraordinaire, quickly had her young charges believing that cleaning their room could be magical and fun. In essence, she gave them the placebo effect! Any “sugar” treatment that we believe to be real medicine is called a placebo. Throughout human history, lots and lots of people have been cured of serious illnesses [...]

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What Ants Know

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For every single human being on the planet, there are at least 1.5 million ants. That basically means that the total mass of all the ants on the Earth is equal to the total mass of all the people on Earth. Did you know this???? Of all insects in the world, the ant has the [...]

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There’s no there there

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Science has come to an indisputable conclusion: Everything we perceive through our senses as external stuff, or matter, like the coffee table, a bumble bee, the sidewalk, the mountains, your neighbor, the earth, the cosmos, is only electrical signals in our brain. That’s it. Electrical signals. We see a colorful bird in our external world. [...]

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Everything AND the Kitchen Sink

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Our place in the universe is about to be clarified. The LISA satellite is going up next year (2011). LISA is three satellites that are connected by laser beams in a triangle 3,000,000 miles across, the largest satellite system ever. LISA will actually be able to look back in time and detect the shock waves [...]

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You’re Already There

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“We are non-local awareness residing temporarily in a physical body” Russell Targ, physicist and really smart guy, said this. Russell helped to develop the laser beam. He also co-founded the Stargate Project, a 23-year, $25-million, top-secret program of research funded by the US government, into psychic abilities and their use for the CIA and the [...]

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Dolphin GPS

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Dolphins (like homing pigeons and other extraordinary animals) have navigational powers that seem inexplicable by Consensus Reality standards (the “reality” we all agree upon). Their extrasensory feats simply defy belief. Basically, humans have tried to invent highly advanced machines that end up barely mimicking what dolphins can do with their hands tied behind their backs. [...]

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There’s That White Rabbit Again!

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“Real” means the perceptions that most people agree on. From the moment we are born, we are taught that most of our perceptions are (and should be) the same as our neighbor’s. What I perceive as a street sign or an orangutan will most surely be agreed upon by the lady across the street. That [...]

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