How is traditional marriage threatened by redefining “marriage?” How can it not be harmed? How else could anyone destroy traditional marriage, without first taking away from our language any specific reference to the husband-wife relationship? Without Proposition 8, in California there would no longer be any word specifically for traditional marriage. Don’t we already have enough challenges in our marriages without changing our language to remove any specific reference to it?

In late 2006, only about three mountain ranges south of Cheesman’s observation location, Paul Nation (a cryptozoologist from Texas) videotaped two strange lights that the local natives call “indava.” They resembles the ropen lights of Umboi Island, where he had previously explored. Like the ropen, the indava is said to be a large nocturnal flying creature. The two are thought by some cryptozoologists to be at least related to each other and to be giant bioluminescent Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. How Cheesman would have been shocked!

See British Biologist Observes Strange Lights (later reported to be a bioluminescent flying creature)

Where Whitcomb got into trouble was in the possibility of circular reasoning, for other cryptozoologists seem to have taken him into account for his “1400″ eyewitnesses. On the other hand, what if he exaggerated, getting ten times too many? Then we would have 140 eyewitnesses of living pterosaurs in the United States. If Whitcomb is correct in his belief that these are nocturnal creatures, then 140 sightings would mean that many pterosaurs could be flying through our skies at night, every night. They would just not be seen every night, at least according to the thinking of that one cryptozoologist.

But regardless of whether there are 140 or 1400 American eyewitnesses of living pterosaurs, why are there so few Americans (or anyone else in the world) who are looking into this?

The Mekong River Lights, near the town of Nong Khai, attract hundreds of thousands of spectators, on the night of a full moon each October. One reports says that the fireballs ”ascend to heights of 30 to 300 metres for three to eight seconds each, then simply vanish.” For countless centuries this spectacle has filled local people with awe. It now is said by some to be one of the wonders of the world. Perhaps it is related to the glowing nocturnal kor of the Manus Island area.

The suspect pulled out a revolver and screamed for people to give him money. One brave bank customer grabbed the gunman and slammed him into the floor, where they struggled for half a minute. Many shots were fired, wounding the hero and one other customer; the suspect apparently accidentally also shot himself during the struggle. Jones came to assist the hero and three men eventually brought the suspect under control.

According to Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, some of the America ghost lights may be from bioluminescent pterosaurs, similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Those flying lights are sometimes seen above mountains, sometimes with a mountain background, and sometimes moving too fast to be from any human source; they are not from vehicle lights (especially where there are neither vehicles nor roads, especially in the sky), astonomical objects (with mountain background), or natives’ flashlights.

The British entomologist Evelyn Cheesman investigated the strange lights she saw deep in the mainland of New Guinea, in the 1930′s. She never was able to come to any conclusion about what caused the lights, although she was sure that they were not from any human origin.

See also “Pterosaur Interpretation of Chessman Sightings.”

The second largest island in the nation of Papua New Guinea, New Britain, covers 14,600 square miles, mostly tropical rain forest. Before the 20th Century, the interior of the island had been mostly unexplored by outsiders. But by 2009, several astonishing cryptozoological investigations had taken place.

The MonsterQuest Papua New Guinea expedition of 2009 (it was short)–that was not one of them, for it appeared practically a foregone conclusion that the expedition team would discover no pterosaur but only reaffirm their bat-explanation. According to one member of the team, they were there to make a show, not to do scientific research.

A more-enduring endeavor, a medical mission deep in the interior of the island, unintentionally gave cryptozoologists much more to talk about, for the eyewitnesses were focused on helping local natives rather than inspiring American cryptozoologists. Garth Guessman (who has explored in Papua New Guinea twice, searching for “living fossils”) interviewed the three eyewitnesses, in 2006, after they had returned to the Unites States. They described a featherless creature, with a head crest but without any long tail, “soaring” for up to half a mile in daylight; the Pterodactyloid-like creatures fly regularly over one valley, sometimes in a small group. It obviously differs from the nocturnal, solitary long-tailed ropen of Umboi Island.

Leaving the pterosaurs, what about a ten-foot-tall grey-colored creature with a head like a dog and a tail like a crocodile? This was not millions of years ago but in 2004. “Christine Samei told reporters she saw the ‘dinosaur‘ early on Wednesday in a marsh just outside . . . Kokopo . . . New Britain.” After hearing others talk about it, she went to see for herself; “very huge and ugly looking,” she said. Michael Tarawana, a local leader, told a newspaper reporter that the creature had eaten three dogs. That sounds like something a tyrannosaurus rex might do.

But near the coast of southwest New Britain, two different dinosaur-like creatures have been observed by natives. According to the Australia explorer Brian Irwin, Dililo Island (near Gasmata) has an apparent sauropod dinosaur, seen one afternoon late in 2005; the length was estimated at “about 20 metres” (over 60 feet). And Umbungi Island has an apparent Therizinosaurus, seen “occasionally,” and with length estimated at “10–15 metres” (about 40 feet).

New Britain Island deserves more scientific expeditions, even if only one of these creatures is officially discovered and verified a living fossil.

How does a quantum computer differ from a digital one? The foundation of digital computers is the on-off state, “0 or 1.” But in the world of quantum dynamics, everything is fuzzy, with probabilities ruling. What purpose could a fuzzy computer serve? Calculating the behavior of atomic or sub-atomic particles, for that is the way they behave: quantum dynamically.

One of the challenges for those pursuing cryptozoology (or those pursuing the cryptids themselves) is the possibility of a hoax. How do we know that a proclaimed eyewitness is not pulling a prank? Did a middle-aged couple in Scotland really see something slithering across the road one night, slipping back into Loch Ness? Did an American hunter really see something like a Big Foot in Oregon?

Frozen “Big Foot” in Georgia

It turned out to be just a Halloween costume. But the news media jumped on the report, for a deputy sheriff seemed to be putting his career on the line (why would he risk his career for a hoax?). Well, that deputy sheriff did have his career shot down, for the frozen “Big Foot” was a hoax.

Eyewitnesses of Living Pterosaurs

A press release seems to show an objective look at hoax possibilities with alleged pterosaur sightings in the United States. (See Reports of Live Pterosaurs) Three seperate factors were analyzed, with the conclusion that hoaxes could not have caused the majority of the sighting reports. To some skeptics, it seems to be too good to be true: living pterosaurs in the United States. But nobody seems to have come up with a reasonable response to the analysis of the statistics about wingspan, featherlessness details, and long-tail dominance.

A research team at the University of East Anglia (England) has found a better way to split water to obtain hydrogen, which can later be recombined with oxygen (like slow burning) to produce energy. Common visible light can be used as the original energy source (sunlight), but the system is more efficient, and no organic molecules are needed (as they are in present systems). “It may be a highly promising alternative for industrial hydrogen production.”

In the total picture, water will receive sunlight energy and be destroyed (no longer water). But that potential energy will later be used, creating new water: a clean green energy solution indeed!

Water Splitting by Visible Light: A Nanophotocathode for Hydrogen Production