In a Nutshell

What a story! An inquisitive boy lives in a poor village in the middle of a poor region of Africa, yet has the courage to turn away from ridicule and keep working, failing, and eventually succeeding, to construct a fully-functioning wind-driven electric generator. From that time forward, his family would rarely be without electric light in the darkness of night.

The teenager would eventually be found by a Western reporter and his biography would be titled The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope.

The story of William Kamkwamba, of Malawi, Africa

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind in Africa

“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the inspiring story of a young man in Africa who used the only resources available to him to build a windmill and elevate the lives and spirits of those in his community. Will Kamkwamba’s achievements with wind energy should serve as a model of what one person, with an inspired idea, can do to tackle the crisis we face.

On December 18, 2012, an apparent home video appeared on Youtube, apparently showing a large bird of prey grabbing a toddler in a public park in Montreal, Canada. Skeptics quickly pointed out suspicious elements of the video, including a mother who is too slow in reacting to her baby being carried up into the air. It also seemed suspicious that the mother did not scream and seemed to just slowly jog over towards where the baby was eventually dropped by the eagle.

Other skeptics revealed aspects of the video which severely brought into question its authenticity, strange combinations of shadows and an artificial look to the “toddler” when individual frames were magnified. News professionals were suspicious of the apparent attack when they learned that nobody had reported any problem, to the Montreal police or newspapers, regarding any bird in any park.

Did an eagle actually carry a toddler?

An animation studio in Montreal soon admitted the hoax, for students at their school fabricated the attack with computer-generated models of a bird and a baby. The special effects video was said to have taken 400 student-hours of work.

Eagle Video Hoax

You’d think small children were no longer safe in city parks. From among those 36 millions viewers, perhaps hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents became concerned about the safety of toddlers in open areas like that park in the video. It was unfortunate but unnecessary, for the pickup never happened.

Monkey Bird or Pterosaur in State of Washington

The flying creatures were named by the eyewitness “monkey-birds,” not from an appearance resembling any monkey or bird but from the strange sound they make.

Protecting the environment should include protecting humans from giant flying predators, at least in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The American nonfiction author Jonathan Whitcomb has just written a new cryptozoology book: Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea, and some of the flying creatures are large enough to carry away a human.

One of the huge “ropens,” or giant Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs, almost collided with a plane piloted by two professional pilots, according to the book:

The two men were flying a Britten-Norman Islander, past the halfway point from Broome, Australia, to Bali, Indonesia, at 6500 feet, when they nearly collided with a large flying creature . . . “At that moment, its wings took one enormous, slow, articulated flap. This was no aircraft! I banked left and it went down our starboard side in the opposite direction . . . [My co-pilot] looked again at the chart, searching for any island off the Indonesian coast – which, he joked, must be called Jurassic Park!!

Both pilots later communicated with Whitcomb, describing to the American what they had encountered on that flight. They did not insist that they had seen a “pterodactyl,” but were puzzled as to what the flying creature could have been.

New Cryptozoology Book in Kindle Format

Many cryptozoology ebooks are about cryptids in general, others about a particular cryptid in a particular U. S. state, others about Bigfoot. My new book may be the only one about sightings of live pterosaurs in the southwest Pacific.

Pterosaur in Australia

Flying cryptids like giant pterosaurs have been spotted in various parts of Australia, including coastal areas and the outback. A common feature described by eyewitnesses is a long tail and an apparent absence of feathers.

Press Release on Strange Flying Creatures in Australia

Hayward had been a real estate agent for 15 years, before working in the Commonwealth Public Service for 18 years prior to his retirement. He told the American author about what he had seen while working in government service:

It was something flying that appeared to be at the height of light planes that fly around here, as Moorabbin Airport is not far away. This thing was at least as large as a light plane, say a Cesna.

In Louisiana, two deaths have been linked to tap water improperly used to rinse out sinus cavities.

Brain-Eating Amoeba (Fox News)

Louisiana’s state health department has issued a warning about the dangers of improperly using nasal-irrigation devices called neti pots, responding to two recent deaths in the state that are thought to have resulted from “brain-eating amoebas” entering people’s brains through their sinuses while they were using the devices.

Both victims are believed to have filled their neti pots with tap water instead of manufacturer-recommended distilled or sterilized water. When they used these pots to force the water up their noses and flush out their sinus cavities — a treatment for colds and hay fever — a deadly amoeba living in the tap water, called Naegleria fowleri, worked its way from their sinuses into their brains.

The deaths are still under investigation, and health officials are sure that almost all dangerous microorganisms are killed in the purification processes commonly used on tap water. Nevertheless, there is always a possibility that a few microbes can survive long enough to get into the human body.

It seems that the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History violated the civil and constitutional rights of Dr. Richard Sternberg, in 2004.

Burke and Small have allowed NMNH officials to demote Dr. Sternberg to the position of Research Collaborator, despite past assurances from Burke that Dr. Sternberg was a “Research Associate in good standing” and would be given “full and fair consideration” for his request to renew his Research Associateship. The failure of Small and Burke to take any action against such discrimination raises serious questions about the Smithsonian’s willingness to protect the free speech and civil rights of scientists who may hold dissenting views on topics such as biological evolution.

This relates to a scientific article that Sternberg allowed to be published in a journal of which he was the editor. That article was friendly to the possibility that life on earth may have originated through some kind of intelligent design. It seems that this is hardly an isolated case, only existing at the Smithsonian. Across the United States, there is often great pressure to suppress any opinions that are friendly to the possibility of the existence of God. More than that, what is also attacked is any reference to the possibility that any intelligence may have been involved in the origin of life on earth.

Also about the Smithsonian:

Smithsonian Attacks Ropen “Myth”

This relates to reports that a flying creature in Papua New Guinea, called “ropen,” may be a living pterosaur. The writer with the Smithsonian, Brian Switek, in a blog post with that institution, severely criticized the opinion that there may be a living pterosaur.

Switek gives no evidence against any of this, apparently only mentioning the religious nature of Woetzel’s beliefs, as if that were enough to dismiss his ideas about living pterosaurs. I suspect Switek has never thought about Isaac Newton’s relationship to this, for Newton had religious beliefs similar to those of Woetzel.