Bigfoot and Mind Reading and Soldiers

I really should drink more coffee before attempting to read the morning news...

Back in early June, two hikers, one a police officer on leave, discovered this body of a 500 pound, 7-foot-7-inch, half-man, half-ape creature. Armed with their video camera, they taped three other such creatures shadowing them along a wooded trail in North Georgia woods. Scientists say it's unlikely that a tribe of these creatures would go unnoticed in such a popular hiking area of the state, so the men handed the body over to Tom Biscardi, a "real" bigfoot hunter who knowingly promoted a false claim of a bigfoot discovery in 1995. Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer insist their claim is not a hoax, even though they put together a video and posted it to YouTube that said, ""It seems that the stalkers have busted us in a hoax,...but we still have a corpse. We just wanted to give you something to do for the weekend."  Quite the publicity stunt to run in the national headlines for two days and counting.

The US Military is now funding research into mind reading in the hopes to be able to hear the thoughts of soldiers that suffered brain injury, and, by the way, it would even work with stroke victims.  Instead of Mr. Spock's five-fingered mind-meld, they place EEG electrodes to the scalp, then ask the participant to think of a particular word. A computer catalogs the brain waves associated with the word so that thought recognition software can then translate and speak it out loud.  Forget that this could be used in interrogation.  I say every parent of a teenager needs one of these! Unfortunately, scientists say, "This will never be used in a way without somebody's real, active cooperation." Darn.

Take a moment this weekend to remember our soldiers in Iraq and their families waiting for their return.  This is a homecoming photo of  an Air Force Senior Airman when he arrives home after a six-month deployment in Iraq. While the air force deploys in 4-6 month rotations, the Army and Army Reserves deploy for 12-15 months at a time. Imagine the incredible sacrifice of our service members.