Well, the Ashmore Experiment has begun.  I’m sitting with my production crew and Todd Bates, our official paranormal investigator.  As you know, I’m a true skeptic, but ready to believe if something happens I can’t explain.  Todd Bates has all the equipment necessary to detect anything that might be unusual.  I’m looking forward to picking his brain about his experiences.  In a little while, we’re going to get some dinner and have some great conversation.  I’ll check back in before we head back out to Ashmore Estates.  By the way, you can check out the Ashmore Estates web site on our web site.  You can order tickets there and check out their hours.  I’ll have another update after dinner, and we’ll be streaming on the web all night.

My friend Ron sent me some information you might find interesting.  iPhone has an APP called Spiritcam.  It randomly adds ghostly apparitions to any photos you take…but not all the time.  Next time somebody shows you a picture with a ’spirit’, ask if it was taken with an iPhone.  Here are some examples:

From JefferyM. Schwartz, M.D., author of, “The Mind & The Brain”:  ‘To the mainstream materialist way of thinking, only the physical is real.  Anything nonphysical is at best an artifact, at worst an illusion.’

But is all we experience simply an activity of the brain?  That’s the question we most want to explore in the Ashmore Experiment.

Schwartz continues: ‘Every conscious state has a certain feel to it, and possibly a unique one: when you bite into a hamburger, it feels different from the experience of chewing a steak……you can explain red, but how does it feel?’  Schwartz then quotes philosopher John Searle, “As far as we know, the fundamental features of the physical world are described by physics, chemistry and other natural sciences. But the existence of phenomena that are not in any way physical or chemical gives rise to a puzzlement ……..then we have an explanatory gap”.

So, do the experiences people have had fall into the ‘explanatory gap’?  We shall see……….In the Ashmore Experiment.

More than anyone else, my personality, dress and sense of humor was influended by Soupy Sales.  I remember my Mom made me a little bow tie like Soupy’s when I was in first grade.  It is because of Soupy Sales that I wear bow ties today and have a leaning toward slapstick comedy and silly jokes.  Soupy wore a top hat.  I now own several.  It saddened me today to learn that Soupy had died.  He was 83.  Still, Soupy will live on deep in my consciousness and if you watch closely, you’ll see how this dear man influenced my life and career.  Good-bye, Soupy, and thanks for the laughs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJfuWhMQ3Tc&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-HM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv3rVV1mfs

The overnight low for tonight and tomorrow night will be in the 50s.  Here is an observation I would like to pass along to you.  50 degrees feels warmer in October than it does in February.  Yes, the air temperature is the same, but there is one big difference.

In October, the Earth is still radiating summertime heat.  In Feburary, however, the Earth has probably been frozen and has certainly lost most of its radiant heat.  The result is that 50 degrees in October FEELS warmer because the Earth is still warm.  In February 50 degrees FEELS colder because the Earth itself is cold!

Today, we celebrate Columbus Day.  But, what I was taught in school in no way revealed the truth about the man we claim,”discovered America”.  Below is only a fragment of the truth about the man we called, “Columbus”.  Read this, then I suggest you continue to seek truthful information about Christopher Columbus.  Personally, I think he was a scoundrel.

The Truth About Columbus
“Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus” 

Christopher Columbus’ reputation has not survived the scrutiny of history, and today we know that he was no more the discoverer of America than Pocahontas was the discoverer of Great Britain. Native Americans had built great civilizations with many millions of people long before Columbus wandered lost into the Caribbean.Columbus’ voyage has even less meaning for North Americans than for South Americans because Columbus never set foot on our continent, nor did he open it to European trade. Scandinavian Vikings already had settlements here in the eleventh century, and British fisherman probably fished the shores of Canada for decades before Columbus. The first European explorer to thoroughly document his visit to North America was the Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto, who sailed for England’s King Henry VII and became known by his anglicized name, John Cabot. Caboto arrived in 1497 and claimed North America for the English sovereign while Columbus was still searching for India in the Caribbean. After three voyages to America and more than a decade of study, Columbus still believed that Cuba was a part of the continent of Asia, South America was only an island, and the coast of Central America was close to the Ganges River.

Unable to celebrate Columbus’ exploration as a great discovery, some apologists now want to commemorate it as the great “cultural encounter.” Under this interpretation, Columbus becomes a sensitive genius thinking beyond his time in the passionate pursuit of knowledge and understanding. The historical record refutes this, too.

Contrary to popular legend, Columbus did not prove that the world was round; educated people had known that for centuries. The Egyptian-Greek scientist Erastosthenes, working for Alexandria and Aswan, already had measured the circumference and diameter of the world in the third century B.C. Arab scientists had developed a whole discipline of geography and measurement, and in the tenth century A.D., Al Maqdisi described the earth with 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude. The Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai still has an icon – painted 500 years before Columbus – which shows Jesus ruling over a spherical earth. Nevertheless, Americans have embroidered many such legends around Columbus, and he has become part of a secular mythology for schoolchildren. Autumn would hardly be complete in any elementary school without construction-paper replicas of the three cute ships that Columbus sailed to America, or without drawings of Queen Isabella pawning her jewels to finance Columbus’ trip.

This myth of the pawned jewels obscures the true and more sinister story of how Columbus financed his trip. The Spanish monarch invested in his excursion, but only on the condition that Columbus would repay this investment with profit by bringing back gold, spices, and other tribute from Asia. This pressing need to repay his debt underlies the frantic tone of Columbus’ diaries as he raced from one Caribbean island to the next, stealing anything of value.

After he failed to contact the emperor of China, the traders of India or the merchants of Japan, Columbus decided to pay for his voyage in the one important commodity he had found in ample supply – human lives. He seized 1,200 Taino Indians from the island of Hispaniola, crammed as many onto his ships as would fit and sent them to Spain, where they were paraded naked through the streets of Seville and sold as slaves in 1495. Columbus tore children from their parents, husbands from wives. On board Columbus’ slave ships, hundreds died; the sailors tossed the Indian bodies into the Atlantic.

Because Columbus captured more Indian slaves than he could transport to Spain in his small ships, he put them to work in mines and plantations which he, his family and followers created throughout the Caribbean. His marauding band hunted Indians for sport and profit – beating, raping, torturing, killing, and then using the Indian bodies as food for their hunting dogs. Within four years of Columbus’ arrival on Hispaniola, his men had killed or exported one-third of the original Indian population of 300,000. Within another 50 years, the Taino people had been made extinct [editor's note: the old assumption that the Taino became extinct is now open to serious question] – the first casualties of the holocaust of American Indians. The plantation owners then turned to the American mainland and to Africa for new slaves to follow the tragic path of the Taino.

This was the great cultural encounter initiated by Christopher Columbus. This is the event we celebrate each year on Columbus Day. The United States honors only two men with federal holidays bearing their names. In January we commemorate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., who struggled to lift the blinders of racial prejudice and to cut the remaining bonds of slavery in America. In October, we honor Christopher Columbus, who opened the Atlantic slave trade and launched one of the greatest waves of genocide known in history.

Jack Weatherford is an anthropologist at Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minn., and the author of “Indian Givers”. This article was originally written for the Baltimore Evening Sun. Reprinted by Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) / Westchester.To get involved in Rediscovering the History of the Americas, or for more information, resources, or action ideas, WESPAC, 255 Grove Street, White Plains, NY 10601. (914)682-0488. Peacenet:cscheiner. This article is available as a one-page printed leaflet.

Written by Jack Weatherford
“Author of ‘Indian Givers’” Copyright © 2000 Weatherford
All Rights Reserved

For all the latest on the LCROSS space probe crashing into the Moon, here’s a great link: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/moon-shot-part-deux-even-more-ways-of-observing-the-lcross-impact/http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/moon-shot-part-deux-even-more-ways-of-observing-the-lcross-impact/http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/10/moon-shot-part-deux-even-more-ways-of-observing-the-lcross-impact/

Tonight is the most famous of all the Full Moons….the Harvest Moon.  There’s a wonderful old song about this Moon.  Here are the lyrics:

SHINE ON HARVEST MOON
(Words by Jack Norworth / Music by Nora Bayes-Norworth, 1908)

“OH, SHINE ON, SHINE ON HARVEST MOON UP IN THE SKY.
I AIN’T HAD NO LOVIN’ SINCE JANUARY, FEBRUARY, JUNE OR JULY
SNOWTIME AIN’T NO TIME TO STAY OUTDOORS AND SPOON
SO SHINE ON, SHINE ON HARVEST MOON – FOR ME AND MY GAL !”

Now, here is the song played as it should be….on stride piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEIfvZOCvNU

Now, here’s some information on this famous Moon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_moon

Enjoy!  Maybe a family sing-along would be fun.  Certainly, you’ll want to see this Moon for yourself )if the sky is clear enough!)  The Moon will rise at 7:21pm Eastern.  Have Fun, and send me any pics you might get.

Here’s something I thought you might enjoy….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

“October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came-
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.”
-   George Cooper, October’s Party