WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Wednesday, October 20, 2010

ARI UP RIP

The Slits singer, born Ariane Forster, was 48 years old.
John Lydon, who is married to Forster's mother Nora, announced the following on his website:
John and Nora have asked us to let everyone know that Nora's daughter Arianna (aka Ari-Up) died today (Wednesday, October 20th) after a serious illness. She will be sadly missed.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOOD FOLKS AT www.bigfootforums.com

Dear friends,

Now the revived Bigfoot Forums have been up for some weeks, the dust has settled and to my great delight a large number of you have relocated from the old forums to the new ones, I think it is important for me to introduce myself and more importantly, the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ).

For those who have not heard of us, the CFZ is the international organisation I founded in the spring of 1992 to act as a clearing house for information on research into mystery animals across the board. Since 1994 we have been publishing books and magazines, since 1997 we have been carrying out a programme of expeditions across the globe, and since 2006 we have been making our own films and promulgating them for free through our YouTube channel CFZtv.

Until now we have not been particularly involved in Bigfoot research. It is not that we are not interested in man-beasts - quite the contrary - but until now most of our research has been in Asia. Since 2003 we have carried out three expeditions to the Indonesian island of Sumatra in search of the semi-legendary upright walking ape orang pendek. We brought back hair samples from the most recent expedition and preliminary testing implies that they are from a creature related to orangutans, which is pretty cool as there aren’t any orangutans in that region of the island and haven’t been in historic times.

When Paul Vella contacted me and suggested that we might like to take over hosting Bigfoot Forums I agreed because I think it is important for the good of the whole cryptozoological community that places like Bigfoot Forums continue to exist. This is not just because they provide forums for discussion and the sharing of ideas, but they are invaluable in fostering a sense of community and they also provide an invaluable archive for researchers across the world.

What is the CFZ going to do with Bigfoot Forums? Well, nothing really; it is doing pretty well without us and we are simply pleased that we are in the position to pay the hosting costs. However, we are also in a position to help. We can provide DNA analysis and hair analysis through our colleagues in Copenhagen, and would be happy to do so if an opportunity arose. We do not want to tread on anyone’s toes; merely to help in the quest to solve one of the most enduring mysteries on the planet.

Members of the forum are welcome to join in discussions on our daily interactive blog, and indeed we would welcome contributions for this or any of our hard copy publications.

If any of you want to get involved with CFZ activities please feel free and likewise, if there is anything we can do to help your researchers our resources are open to you.

Here’s to a long and happy relationship.


Jon Downes

SWALLOW SCIENCE

Richard Freeman has a habit of wandering about the Internet and sending me diverse URLs of things he thinks might interest me. This is a perfect example. Jonathan Corum writes:



'After spending some time last month trying to develop alternate graphic presentations for kinematic ratios in winged flight, I decided to try to answer one of the timeless questions of science: just what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?'


OUR CASSIE MUSES ON MOTHMAN AGAIN!

Hey Jon---did you notice there’s a part 2 to my Mothman piece on my Wordpress blog? http://shadowcass.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/more-mothman-less-gothman/



I’m also featuring a series of Old Time Radio programmes for Halloween if anyone is interested in grabbing those shows before I take them down in November.

LAKE MONSTER SNIPPETS

Athelstane1314 wrote to me via the CFZtv account on YouTube:


Many years ago I was in a pub on the shores of Loch Ness and there was a photo on the wall of a man on a row boat. By his dress I'd say this was early 20th century. He was standing holding an eel by the throat. He had the proportions of a big guy, a lot of Highlanders are and the fish was more than a foot thick and more than 12 feet long.



In 1995 I was comming out of a lough near Sligo after swimming and I met a German guy on the beach. He told me he used to swim in there often until one day he saw something under him swim past and he said [it was] about 7 meters [sic] long!

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1879 Thomas Edison tested the first electric lightbulb.
And now, the news:

Harry: a 175 year old survivor of the Beagle?
Leaping fish punctures lung of woman kayaking in K...
'Humans will need two Earths by 2030'
Bigfoot no-show at his special day
Cane toads are evolving into super-invaders
EL AL Israel Airlines stops transporting monkeys f...
Disco 'wallaby'

Not a disco wallaby but very sweet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OLD5Po97gk