Alien Contact within 20 years?

The creator of Seti. Dr Frank Drake, recently speculated that within two decades mankind will have some form of contact with extra-terrestrial life.
Deep space exploration methods are already being used on Gliese 581 d, the first extrasolar planet to seemingly be able to sustain life. Gliese is about 20 light years away, and belongs to Libra. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581

Some say that contact has already been made.
Whatever the case. things are going to get interesting, one way or another...

Dyatlov Pass Incident: Paranormal weirdness or legend?

Creepy wikipedia Article with links to an eerie incident involving 9 hikers on the Ural Mounteins, Russia in 1959.
Tents ripped from inside, grey hair, excessive trauma not from human origin and bright spheres reported in the area at the time. Wrap it all up with a communist government cover-up, and you have a case that will take lots of manpower to unravel, if that is possible..
Skeptics here: http://skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?t=8760

UPDATE: The link doesn't work but there's a movie out: The Devil's Pass (aka The Dyatlov Pass Incident) by none other than Renny Harlin!  Fairly good Cinematography and Effects, but the script contains everything from Government officials to Time Travel and Wormholes, all in a simplistic, Blair Witch Project context.. Nevertheless, interesting attempt..

Another Ufo Revelation with a twist

Ufocasebook has an interesting story from a letter received from an anonymous source, pertaining to his research during the eighties on some top-secret project involving Ufo technology. So far no big deal.
The interesting thing in his statement, which is quite large, is the theory that the symbols on ufos are actually a kind of active software, and when printed on the proper material and inside the proper field, they generate physical action, in this case antigravity.
The images are quite nice and intriguing, but what strikes me the most is the resemblance of the above statement with the fundamental principles of Magic, or Magick as it was called the past hundred years or so. The magicians of the Middle ages through the use of Seals, as the symbols where called, and the appropriate field, created through the use of Forbidden words, where said to be able to open portals and converse with beings said to be demons.
In the twentieth century, Austin Osman Spare preached the use of Sigils, as he called them, which where in essence your wishes and ideas crafted in a symbol or ideogram.
In the Ordo Templi Orientis, Kenneth Grant used symbols handed down to him by extra-dimensional entities, to open specific portals or gates to Elsewhere, or even achieve effects such as wheather phenomena and levitation (read: antigravity). Detailed instructions in his book Hecate's Fountain and some of his other books.
I have had a feeling for a very long time now, that magic, ufos and most realms of the paranormal where manifestations of the same phenomenon, and that they operate under the same mechanics. The only thing to be found now is the science behind them all.
Arthur Clarke was right after all..

British UFO Report

Recently, the British Ministry of Defence announced the disclosure of a report concerning Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (that is UFO’s for us, the untrained civilians that we are!). Many sightings reports were examined in order to determine their value to the Defence Intelligence and to estimate the potential threat or technical information that could be derived should the UAP be something more than natural atmospheric phenomena. The report of this study is in several .pdf files that can be found here.

Amorphous

Strange sighting by a couple in Shropshire, UK.
While driving along the A5, they saw something like:

“This shape was about 1ft wide by 3ft or 4ft long. It quickly glided up the side of the hedges, over the top and curled around a wide tree.

“Our initial thoughts were that it was a white fox because of the shape and size but the movement was too fast, it came off the ground and the movement was not animal-like.” They added: “The shape was also a solid white mass with no definable features of legs or tails or wings.”

What intrigues me about these reports is that they just don't fit into any categories. UFO? Cryptozoology? No.
Parallel realities? And what's with the shapelessness? Nothing except single cell organisms are shapeless on Earth, and we kind of expect the same to apply elsewhere..
This intrigues me not only because there is such a hotspot nearby where I live (Mount Pendeli), but because I have actually seen such a creature (or that's what I think). In a road famous for it's Mothman-like creature sightings and anti-gravity phenomena, a white shapeless mass in the side of the road moving quickly out of the headlights range is no small thing. But what can one do? Stop the car?
Yeah, right. The fear is all instinct, and the tingly feeling on the back of your neck that makes your hair stand upright is no thing to laugh at.
Yes, it could have been a fox combined with my tired eyes, but those hairs in the back of my neck tell me that was not the case..

Giant, GIANT cave on Mars

What at first appeared to be a black spot on the lava surface of Arsia Mons, turned out to be a giant hole leading to some underground abyss. Why not just a regular cave? Because according to the research team, the diffused light of the Martian atmosphere should be able to shed light inside a regular-sized or even large cave. Since there is NO LIGHT whatsoever in any of the pixels comprising the image, the hole is an opening to an underground abyss of immense proportions.
And although I shudder with delight thinking of the unspeakable secrets hidden down there, I cannot help but think of the unspeakable secrets hidden in the caves and tunnels of our own Earth, which for the most part remain unexplored, despite ample evidence of something strange goin' on down there. Why? Conspiracies come to mind, and then the usual culprit takes their place: Indifference and the inability to communicate fully with one's neurons, save for the usual textbook blabber that is the standard response to everything out of the ordinary. There is nothing down there but rock... Keep repeating that to yourselves.

Of calm seas and troubled minds

Follow the link to read about yet another boat found intact, without a soul onboard.
And although this kind of occurence is passe, especially to The Bermuda Triangle afficionados, it makes me wonder.
To anyone who has ever been out to sea, it does not take long to remember the loneliness, the power, the awe. You are in a Borderland of sorts, a land never truly conquered, never understood. Anything can happen when you are all alone, and, apparently, sometimes it does. And to pose the old quantum question: When a tree falls and there is noone there to hear, does it still make a sound?
Did pirates kill or abduct the crew, or something else entirely, like the edge of another world claim them? And which one is worse?
Read The House in the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. A bit of that feeling is in there.