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...




Monday, May 27, 2013

RICHARD FREEMAN ASKS: Will global warming doom mankind when the leviathan is free? JON ANSWERS: No!



Loch Ness Monster Discovered - In Antarctica?


Global mapping platforms like Google Earth, WikiSky and other contenders offer hours, even days of amusement. Some pretty freaky things have been found, including dead bodies, criminal activity, UFOs and even, ahem, couples enjoying intimate moments together.

Anomaly hunters pore over published maps, looking for weird things and, naturally, some of the attention is drawn to myths out of the pre-digital world. Is there a bigger, unsolved mystery than the Loch Ness Monster?

Mappers have studied Loch Ness inch by inch because finding "Nessie" would be the scoop of the century. But, maybe, they're looking in the wrong place?

A video on YouTube comes close to making the assertion that the Loch Ness Monster has been found. Not in Scotland, but near the bottom of the globe in Antarctica.

The screenshot above is a still frame from a YouTube video postulating that a mysterious, long-necked, hump-backed shape lying frozen in a vast expanse of the South Pole may actually be a fossilized Plesiosaurus, an extinct, reptilian dinosaur long suspected of having just one descendant left on Earth and plying her trade in the deep lakes of Scotland.





NATURAL WORLD: underwater photos show array of sea-life


Indonesian snapper Hengki Koentjoro's underwater photographs show an array of sea-life like as it's never been seen before.

He has pictured sharks, jellyfish, scuba divers and, perhaps most strikingly, a hard coral called the 'sunflower mushroom' which appears to be sporting a sinister grin.

Interestingly, he's chosen to use black-and-white film for the study.

Read on...

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN HAS TEMPORARILY LEFT THE BUILDING



Graham's occupying the blog-seat today, while Jon's on his travels...

...and the traditional Bank Holiday rain has arrived. So it's going to be an indoors day for me, today.
Blog work's an indoors task, and today's Gonzo items are:

The Gonzo Track of the Day - an oldie from Fairport Convention (with Judy Dyble)
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-gonzo-track-of-day-fairport.html

Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_27.html

Album review: solo shape-shifting from Cristiano Roversi...
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2013/05/cristiano-roversi-review.html

A somewhat belated look at an interview with Erik Norlander
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-2012-erik-norlander-interview-that-i.html

Daevid Allen - Magick Brothers, Birkenhead, 2013
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/daevid-allen-magick-brothers-birkenhead.html

Renaissance Carries On After Loss Of Lead Guitarist
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/renaissance-carries-on-after-loss-of.html

That's all for now
Cheers,
Graham

NICK REDFERN: Crop Circles and Official Secrets


In early 1941, Sir David Petrie was appointed Director General of the Security Service. MI5, and was given substantial resources to restructure the organization, whose origins date back to 1909. As a result, MI5 became one of the most efficient agencies of the War. After the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, it was learned that all of the Nazi agents targeted against Britain had been successfully identified, and in some cases recruited as double-agents, by MI5 – something that contributed to the success of the Allied Forces landing in Normandy on D-Day on 6 June 1944. 
A number of files pertaining to the wartime activities of MI5 have been declassified and are now available for public inspection at the National Archive, Kew, England. One deals with MI5 investigations of what are intriguingly described as “markings on the ground.” With hindsight, today, those markings may have been nothing less than Crop Circles!
cropcircleblurred
According to the report: “This account is not concerned with the activities of fifth columnists such as sabotage, capturing airfields and key points, and harassing the defending army, but in the methods used in communicating to each other and to the enemy. Reports from Poland, Holland, France and Belgium showed that they used ground markings for the guidance of bombers and paratroops (and of lights by night).”

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today


Yesterday’s News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1986 Dragon Quest was released in Japan, it is thought of as the first true turn-based JRPG.

And now the news:


  • Over 80% of Dogs Suffer from Hypothermia After Sur...
  • Tortuga Rising- A conservation success story - via...
  • British landfill transformed into nature reserve
  • Cumbria Tiger attack: Sarah McClay dies of her inj...
  • Coal ash heaps safe haven for endangered bees: stu...


  • The first action based WRPG was Adventure for the 2600 in 1979 and it also contained the first Easter Egg (this link contains spoilers btw):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS-HYWRdb2g

    FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

    In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.