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This week we are proud to bring you an interview with Daniel Knauf. You may remember Daniel as the creator of the hit HBO show Carnivàle. He is currently working to recreate the story telling genre with his Bxx internet format. Bxx presents a non-linear method of telling a story in which the viewer can follow the story from multiple angles, out of sequence, or even follow specific characters through the story.

[Research] "findings support historians' belief that ancient myths ... may be based, at least in part, on real communities and people." Researchers from Coventry University analysed the texts of three ancient stories and compared the complex web of characters' relationships with the type of "social networks" that occur in real life. The results showed that the societies depicted in the stories strongly mirrored real social networks that had been mapped out by others. But modern fiction differed from the ancient myths, as well as from real social networks, in telltale ways.

No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Mermaids — those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea — are legendary sea creatures chronicled in maritime cultures since time immemorial. The ancient Greek epic poet Homer wrote of them in The Odyssey. In the ancient Far East, mermaids were the wives of powerful sea-dragons, and served as trusted messengers between their spouses and the emperors on land. The aboriginal people of Australia call mermaids yawkyawks – a name that may refer to their mesmerizing songs. The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species. Magical...

Coyotes are champions of change and have evolved in clever ways to take advantage of a human-dominated landscape Near the dawn of time, the story goes, Coyote saved the creatures of Earth. According to the mythology of Idaho's Nez Perce people, the monster Kamiah had stalked into the region and was gobbling up the animals one by one. The crafty Coyote evaded Kamiah but didn't want to lose his friends, so he let himself be swallowed. From inside the beast, Coyote severed Kamiah's heart and freed his fellow animals. Then he chopped up Kamiah and threw the pieces to the...

Four men, one calling: To serve and protect. As law enforcement officers, Adam Mitchell, Nathan Hayes, David Thomson, and Shane Fuller are confident and focused. Yet at the end of the day, they face a challenge that none of them are truly prepared to tackle: fatherhood. While they consistently give their best on the job, good enough seems to be all they can muster as dads. But they're quickly discovering that their standard is missing the mark. When tragedy hits home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a newfound urgency...

….But temperance Chicago never created Capone…. To paint Prohibition as a failure is rather simplistic, because it was always a mixed bag. As author Daniel Okrent (no Prohibition lover) explained to Life.com, “People don't realize how much drinking there was in this country before Prohibition. We were awash in booze. In 1830, for example, the per capita consumption of alcohol was three times what it is today -- 90 bottles of booze per year per person over the age of 15. By 1933, drinking was around 70 percent of pre-Prohibition.” Change isn’t always a straight road. Again, Prohibition was a...

The Legend of Lord Obaama Obaama was, according to legend, a Lord in the Land of the Far West. Although his parentage and birth were suspect, he yet remained desirous of power and prestige. Being suave, clean-spoken, and glib of speech, particularly when speaking with the aid of his personal Oracle, he ascended quickly through the ranks of the People's Party. Following a lofty speech before a gathering of the Party, he saw it in his power to aspire to the highest office in the land, held by the evil king, στιβεύς. (*) But not all was smooth. In order...

Chupacabra Mystery Solved By Jennifer Viegas Halloween stories about the ghostly "chupacabra" circulate every year, but now scientists have solved the mystery surrounding this legendary animal. Instead of being vicious, fanged creatures that supposedly drink the blood of livestock, chupacabras turn out to be wild dogs inflicted with a deadly form of mange, according to University of Michigan biologist Barry OConnor. (Scientists believe legendary chupacabras monsters are actually coyotes with severe cases of mange, like the animal pictured here. Credit: Dan Pence) The myth about chupacabras, also known as goatsuckers, started after reports of livestock attacks in Puerto Rico and...

<p>Even for an actor who has played a vampire-hunter with a guilty conscience, a Baltimore crime lord with a taste for Adam Smith, and an asset manager with a stalker, the role of the Norse deity Heimdall – guardian of the burning rainbow bridge between the world of men and the world of gods – was always going to be a bit of a challenge.</p>

The origin of modern myths and legends is a side interest of mine, the birther myths among them. Now I understand why Obama being born in Kenya made it into your belief system, despite it being physically impluasible (requiring around 5 days and five flights, most on propeller planes) and financially impossible (it would have cost about a year of her parents' combined salaries) for Stanley Ann & Obama Sr. to travel there for her to give birth. After all, Obama's Father was from Kenya, so if you are going to make up a myth about Obama being born abroad,...

Rarely are currency exchange rates as good for the American dollar as that of Asian countries. In Asia, the American dollar carries a lot of clout and with the recent devaluation of the USD; it is a good thing that these countries offer an excellent trip for so little cost to Americans.

The field of biology has provided much support for a recent creation, and physical evidence of very young-looking biological materials from supposedly ancient fossils continues to accrue from around the world, and from various depths under the earth. In August of this year, paleontologists in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England, made a discovery that astounded the evolutionary community...

An old stone quarry on the Greek island of Crete which has a network of underground tunnels could be the original site of the ancient Labyrinth, the maze that housed the Minotaur of Greek legend, scholars believe. An Anglo-Greek team believes that the site, near the town of Gortyn, has just as much claim to be the place of the Labyrinth as the Minoan palace at Knossos 20 miles away, which has been synonymous with the Minotaur myth since its excavation a century ago. The 600,000 people a year who visit the ruins at Knossos are told the site was...

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils.If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome. And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story...

Hideous monsters devouring ships? Old map symbols, correctly showing storm fronts & dangerous currents I’ve always been fond of maps, from those antique ones showing sea serpents and hideous monsters devouring ships in the vast expanses of the ocean, to those showing what the world looked like in the distant, and not so distant, past. Maps have, of course, been with us in one form or another, for a long time. Jerusalem is in the center - from "Itinerarium Sacrae Scipturae", by Heinrich Bunting, 1545-1606 Here’s a world map according to Posidonius, from around 150-130 B.C. - Ptolemy's version of...

Mermaid fever sweeps Israel beach town of Krivat Yam as many report sightings of fabled creature BY Issie Lapowsky DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Wednesday, August 12th 2009 Are mermaids real? Dozens of people in Israel have reported sightings of the mythical half-woman, half-fish. Take our Poll Mermaid sightings? What do you think people are really seeing in the ocean in Israel? A dolphin or some kind of fish A woman dressed up as a mermaid Nothing, their eyes are playing tricks on them. A mermaid. If all those people say they've seen one, it must be true! Related News Articles...

At age 11, the keen student of mythology suggested naming the newly discovered planet after the Roman god of the underworld.Venetia Phair, who was 11 years old when she suggested Pluto as the name of the newly discovered planet, has died in England. She was 90. She died at home in Epsom, south of London, on April 30, her family said. The cause of death was not disclosed. Phair suggested the name to her grandfather at breakfast in 1930. "My grandfather, as usual, opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered....

‘But the New Testament does not make a big deal out of the Age of the Earth…’ by Peter Milford ... The issue of the age of the earth parallels circumcision. In my experience, the first response from Christians who do not accept the age of the earth that the Scriptures indicate, is to say something like “The New Testament does not make a big deal out of the age of the earth” or “It is not the purpose of the Bible to give the age of the earth”. Their point is that (1) the issue of the age of...

March 9, 2009 — The Permian extinction – one of the most dramatic events in the history of life on Earth, in which some 90% of species went extinct...is now being interpreted as a “nonevent” by four geologists. ... Robert Gastaldo and two geology colleagues from Colby College in Maine, and geologist Johann Neveling from Pretoria, studied the Permian-Triassic boundary in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and published a paper in Geology this month,1 titled, “The terrestrial Permian-Triassic boundary event bed is a nonevent.” ... Well, isn’t this an upset.  How much lag time will it take to change...

Terrible lizards trapped by terrible Flood Tas Walker A trail of fossilized claw marks found in northern Spain reveals the desperation of animals struggling to escape drowning in the Genesis Flood. ... That the footprints were preserved at all indicates the dinosaurs were engulfed by abnormal conditions. Today footprints are quickly obliterated, especially on a beach or in a strong current. But in the sandstone in Spain even the delicate features of the scratches were preserved, which means that sediment covered the tracks (and the ripple marks) soon after the dinosaur struggled past...