"Teh Shuffel" refers to Apple's iPod Shuffle.
Summary
The iPod Shuffle has no screen, and is about the size of a pack of gum. It plays music through an earphone jack and connects to a PC or Mac to transfer music to it. You can play songs in order or on random.
Physical Description
The iPod Shuffle has 5 buttons: a play button in the top center, to the left and right are next and previous song buttons, and above and below the play button are volume controls. The back of the iPod Shuffle has a slider to switch between Off, Repeat and Shuffle. Repeat plays songs in order while shuffle, plays them in shuffle. There is also a button with a small light on it that enables you to check the status of the battery: press the button, and if the light is green, the battery is charged well, if it's orange, the status is mediocre, and if it's red, it needs recharge. If the light doesn't come on, the shuffle is completely dead. On the bottom is a USB port to connect the iPod Shuffle to the PC, and on the top is a simple headphone port.
Common Myths
One common myth about the iPod Shuffle is that you cannot choose the songs. This is entirely false. You can choose to play randomly, or play in order. You can scroll through songs, and you can jump to the beginning of the playlist (Play 3x). Another is that it sucks. This is inherently false. It rules. Also, with the included neckstrap, you can do exactly what the people in the commercials do with it (with it bouncing around)
Paranormal and Occult Hypotheses Regarding UFOs
There has been a fair amount of crossover between paranormal events and Unidentified Flying Objects. Both are sometimes seen as dubious fields of study by mainstream science, and generally, have seen little support. Still, they both have had a measure of influence on popular culture.
- In his 1758 book Earths in the Solar World, Emanuel Swedenborg reported a number of visions where he was escorted around various planets. He regarded these visions as genuine.
- Among Madame Blavatskys writings were her descriptions of The Lords of the Flame, who resided on Venus. Guy Ballard - one of Blavatskys disciples - popularised her teachings in the United States. He founded an offshoot, The Great I AM, which made contact with extraterrestrials a vital part of its teachings.
- Many early contactees spoke of extraterrestrial contact, but their accounts were quite similar to early Mystical accounts.
- John Keel and Brad Steiger promulgated various paranormal/UFO theories in a series of modestly successful paperback books in the 1960s.
Much mysticism has arisen around UFOs. Several religions have UFOs as a component of their mythology:
- Unarius Academy of Science: Founded in 1954 by Ernest Norman and Ruth Marian.
- Aetherians: A group founded by a British mystic who claimed to communicate with the Cosmic Master Aetherius
- Order of the Solar Temple: In order to move to somewhere near the star Sirius many believers committed [...] in Europe and Canada in the 90's
- Heaven's Gate: Believers committed [...] in California in 1997, believing they would be carried off in Comet Hale-Bopp.
- Raelians, who claimed they would clone their leader so he could live forever.
- Scientology: The higher-level beliefs of Scientology include the story of Xenu, a galactic ruler, who brought billions of people to Earth and killed them. A 1952 Scientology tape claims that a steady flow of flying saucers is still dropping off more entheta (malevolent) beings.
Some have common beliefs around UFOs mixed with Christian elements:
- Heaven: Lights that come from the sky.
- Faith: you have no evidence what UFOs are. You can only see by yourself or believe others.
- Saviour: Superior beings coming out of those lights.
- Apocalypse and redemption: Superior beings coming from the heavens to at the same time destroy civilization as we know and save those few who accept them by carrying those believers in their spacecraft.
- Voices: Many claim to hear voices that might be from spirits, angels or aliens from a distant galaxy.
An example of this overlap is the miracle at Fatima which occurred in Portugal in 1917. This involved over 70,000 witnesses observing strange aerial phenomena, which might well be considered as UFOs today.
Erich von Däniken goes the other way round and states that UFOs influenced certain ancient religions. He claims to have found evidence in old Aztec, Inca and ancient Egypt temples that phenomena identified as signs of Gods were the same as actual unidentified flying objects. In his book Were The Gods Astronauts, von Däniken goes farther and states that those objects were in fact alien visitors who landed on Earth a thousand years ago and influenced deeply the birth of civilizations.
Terence McKenna, in contrast, believed that UFOs are manifestations of the human soul, or collective spirit. He thought they appeared to individuals and groups in order to exert psychological influence over the course of history. He conjectured that in the year 2012 there might be a global UFO 'visitation'; a great manifestation that would convince humanity to adopt a UFO religion with precepts of universal love and ecologically sound culture.
Dr. Jacques Vallee, a French UFO researcher, has noted an almost exact parallel between UFO and "Alien" visitations and stories from folklore of Fairies and similar creatures. This was documented in his 1969 book "Passport to Magonia" and explored further in his later works. The significance of these parallels is disputed between mainstream scientists, who contend that they show both to be fanciful, and between Vallee and others who feel that some underlying, poorly understood, phenomenon is actually interacting with humans to cause both kinds of sightings. Incidentally, Vallee was the inspiration for the French scientist depicted by Steven Spielberg in his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, also felt that UFOs had a primarily spiritual and psychological basis. In his 1959 book "FLYING SAUCERS: A Modern Myth of Things Seen In The Sky", he pointed out that the round shape of most saucers corresponds to a mandala, a type of archetypal shape seen in religious images. He felt that saucers reflected a projection of the internal desires of viewers to see them. However, he did not out rightly label them a delusion or hallucination; it was more in the nature of a shared spiritual experience.
George Dance is a politician and political activist in Ontario, Canada. He has been a member of the Libertarian Party of Canada and the Libertarian Party of Ontario since the mid-1970s, and has served as interim leader of both parties.
Dance listed his occupation as stock clerk, layout artist, freelance typesetter and office manager on various occasions between 1979 and 1993. He has long published The Bulletin, the Ontario Libertarian Party's newsletter.
Like many others in his party, Dance has called for increased privatization and is an opponent of unionization. He is an opponent of anarchism, and describes himself as a "proper-government libertarian" (ie. supporting a government and recognizes and respects individual liberties). Dance is also an opponent of restrictions on public smoking.
Dance became leader of the Libertarian Party in 1991, after former leader Stanislaw Tyminski left Canada to form Party X in Poland. He held this position until May 1993, when Hilliard Cox was chosen to replace him. Dance also served as interim leader of the federal party from 1995 to 1996, and is currently the president of the federal party.
Provincially, Dance has served on the executive of the Ontario Libertarian Party since 1985, and is currently its chairman. He became the party's leader following the resignation of John Shadbolt on June 9, 1995, and held the position until Sam Apelbaum was selected at a delegated convention in late 1996. As party leader, Dance contested a 1996 by-election in York South.
In 1992, Dance indicted that his party might seek an electoral alliance with the Freedom Party of Ontario. The Freedom Party soon rejected this rumour.
In the fictional Stargate universe the Kull Disruptor is the only known energy weapon capable of disabling a Kull Warrior, Anubis' genetically-engineered super-soldier. The technology may be mounted on a number of different projectile weapons, including a Tok'ra transphase eradication rod (TER, used as a prototype for the Kull disruptor) and an Earth-made FN P90. In some cases, such as that of the P90, the user may fire both standard rounds and the blue Kull Disruptor blasts simultaneously.
The disruptor technology is based on the same Ancient healing device that Anubis used to animate the super-soldiers. Drs. Daniel Jackson and Bill Lee located the original Ancient device in Central America, allowing Earth and the Tok'ra to develop the disruptor weapon. The project was led by Jacob and Samantha Carter, who were barely able to complete the new technology before the Kull Warriors stormed the research lab.
The prototype weapon was only partially effective, usually requiring at least two shots to bring down one of the super-soliders.