“Ghosts are the mind’s way of interpreting how the body reacts to certain surroundings, say UK psychologists.

Dr Wiseman’s team used hundreds of volunteers

A chill in the air, low-light conditions and even magnetic fields may trigger feelings that “a presence” is in a room – but that is all they are, feelings.

This explanation of ghosts is the result of a large study in which researchers led hundreds of volunteers around two of the UK’s supposedly most haunted locations – Hampton Court Palace, England, and the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland.” BBC

[British psychologist Wiseman was also the one who recently reprised Stanley Milgram’s ‘six degrees of separation’ experiment, about which I wrote below.]

CamWorld Turns Six; one of my early weblogging inspirations. Many happy returns.

“A body is found in the frozen North Dakota woods. The cops say the dead Japanese woman was looking for the $1m she saw buried in the film Fargo. But the story didn’t end there.” Guardian/UK

But When?

“In a marriage of science and art, three astronomers have pinpointed the precise time and date of a painting by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh based on calculations of the moon’s position in the picture.

Van Gogh’s painting depicts a field of haystacks in Provence, France, with a bright orange orb partially showing over a bluff. The vivid picture was known to have been painted sometime in the summer of 1889, toward the end of the most productive, but troubled, period of the artist’s life.” Wired

“…(M)oves are afoot to redesign that most sacred of British hallmarks – the union flag.

A campaign is being launched to modernise the red, white and blue flag by adding a touch of black to reflect multicultural Britain in the 21st Century.

The proposed new flag (see above) is the work of Nigel Turner, an enthusiastic fan of the UK’s transformation into a multiracial society over the past 50 years.” BBC

“International Business Machines Corp. and German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG said they have made an important step toward developing a new kind of memory that could enable computers to boot up instantaneously.” CNN

“The idea that water retains a memory of substances once dissolved in it is generally ridiculed, but not in a new scientific paper …” New Scientist

In Gold Ink on a Chip, the World’s Tiniest Book: “Tiny writing has been an after-hours project of theirs since they were doctoral candidates at the M.I.T. artificial intelligence laboratory in the mid-1990’s. It was then that Mr. Sinha fell asleep during a conference and dreamed he was writing the Bhagavad Gita on a grain of rice. When he awoke, the feat seemed feasible, if he could employ the technology used to etch microchips.

In the next six years, he developed software that allowed him and Ms. Lipson to write in gold on a crystalline silicon chip, using a font with letters each four microns high — about the height of a red blood cell. They chose 24-karat gold because it not only resists oxidation but looks pretty, even under a microscope.

They started modestly, with a reproduction of the Lord’s Prayer, before setting to work on the 180,568 words of the King James version of the New Testament. (The Gita, a sacred Hindu text, was too short to be a real challenge.)”

Missing Weapons May Become Election Issue Washington Post

“America Online Inc. yesterday moved closer to turning its instant-messaging service into a profitable business by cutting a deal that would enable the company to earn money with the service in workplaces.” technews.com

Everyone is reporting this:

U.S. launches massive operation against Saddam loyalists, rounds up nearly 400 suspects.

Using jet fighters, tank-buster aircraft and patrol boats, the U.S. military launched a massive operation to crush opposition north of Baghdad and captured nearly 400 suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists in a bid to end daily attacks against American soldiers.

Code-named ”Operation Peninsula Strike” and involving thousands of American troops, the push began Tuesday and was centered on the Tigris River town of Thuluya 45 miles north of Baghdad, the Central Command said.

While the command did not mention Saddam, a leader of an Iraqi exile group said in New York Tuesday that the ousted leader was seen north of Baghdad as recently as three weeks ago.

Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, also claimed Saddam was paying a bounty for every American soldier killed, using $1.3 billion in cash taken from the Central Bank on March 18. Boston Globe

But FOX News‘ slant on it is just a little different:

Saddam Hussein has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every American soldier killed, the leader of an Iraqi exile group said Tuesday.

Saddam has $1.3 billion in cash taken from the Central Bank on March 18, is bent on revenge and believes he can “sit it out and get the Americans going,” said Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.

Says ‘lower level’ Bush officials smeared him: ‘President Bush’s case against Iraq came under growing scrutiny on Wednesday when chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix accused “lower level” administration officials of mounting a smear campaign to discredit him in the lead up to war.

Secretary of State Colin Powell denied the charges, made public in a London newspaper on Wednesday.’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“As the waters rise behind China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, the controversial project continues to stir fears and protests.

June 1, 22 sluice gates in Yichang were shut, blocking off the flow of the Yangtze River. Strengthened by summer storms, the waters have been swiftly mounting the towering walls of Three Gorges. Tuesday, the silt-laden waters had already risen more than 400 feet, submerging dozens of villages, towns, factories, temples, and tombs under a 365 mile-long reservoir.

The Three Gorges project has faced widespread protest – from those worried about the loss of ancient artifacts to those who question its feasibility. Yet the most difficult challenge facing Beijing has been the resettlement of some 1.2 million people by 2009 – the largest resettlement program ever attempted. Many of the 700,000 residents who have been moved so far remain dissatisfied, saying promises of better lives have not been kept.” Christian Science Monitor