Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Who ya' gonna call?

LeAnne Miller: The monster in the closet is beating the door & is raging to come out. While downstairs all of the Poltergeists are crashing all about. When the voices and the scratches, scratches.... manifest inside the walls, And when dark, grim, shadows trail a sickening stench, Who will you think to call?..... Well, someone whom the Boogeyman and his night-marish, terrorizing, demonic denizens are hoping you DON'T think of calling-for certain-, is the objectively skeptic, investigative research team members who make up The Atlantic Paranormal Society; This team of researchers are more recognized by their shorter organizational initials of: T.A.P.S. Fast friends and co-workers, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are your normal, everyday "Joes," who work as plumbers for Roto-Rooters for their regular day jobs, while at night, and during 'off-job' hours, when not spending important quality time with their families, they travel to a variety of locations to investigate possible paranormal phenomena. Since the group was co-founded by friends--and Senior investigators, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, in 1990, TAPS has rapidly become a super popular group. In addition, due to their open-mindedness and objectivity-- and true concern for the people involved experiencing such ghostly (and sometimes demonic) anomoloies and experiences, all members of the TAPS team have earned much praise and respect from the families as well as peers in the Paranormal Investigatiions Communities nationwide.

TAPS has also had such a 'supernaturally' meteoric rise in popularity and highly credible respectability as a research team, that they have been featured prominently on the Scifi channel programming schedules for two past seasons, in the hour-long show titled: Ghost Hunters. Incidentally, this columnist/investigative reporter has discovered that Ghost Hunters WILL be returning on the Sci-fi Channel's Fall schedule of programming for a THIRD season, with all new creepy investigation cases and uber-haunting episodes. Plans for the Fall premiere currently (as of this writing) is stated to begin in October of 2006. http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters In an advising role, with TAPS growing popularity (and celebrity) among beginning-novice paranormal investigators, both individuals and groups, I strongly reccommend checking out the official TAPS website at: http://the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com

At the TAPS site, you can learn a wide variety of information on many subjects. In the FAQ section find answers to questions you have about the Paranormal. If you're interested in learning more about the process and basic equipment you'll need to start up your own paranormal investigative team, you can click a link and get all the expert advice froom Senior Investigator (and TAPS webmaster, himself; Grant Wilson). You can check out the "members" section, to access the email addresses of several listed TAPS members to ask the investigator of your choice questions you may have that the website can't answer--or doesn't address. You can also browse into the separate Department sections, to learn more about how Nature Spirits are very different than Demons, and learn more about Angels in the Angelology Department. And though his picture and email address is not available, you can do further research on the WWW about the TAPS Demonology experts, Carl and Keith Johnson. You can even keep up with current and past happenings in the 'ghost hunting' blogs of TAPS member, Dustin Pari. There is even a link titled, "Your Stories," where you can share to post real life experiences you have experienced yourself. Also, if you are seriously interested in learning all you can about TAPS and the cases they work on, they have a link to their own print publication, TAPS ParaMagazine; which you can click on the link to order separate monthly issues--or even order a yearly subscription. An already popular site, with MORE than 50,000 internet hits DAILY, it is probably safe to say that interest in the TAPS organization is sure to remain steady and strong---both currently, and definitely in the future as well. If you are more interested in learning even MORE about TAPS and/or Ghost Hunters, you can check out their adventures in paranormal investigations, by means of several special DVD Collector's disc sets. The Ghost Hunters DVD's can be found--reasonably priced--at: http://www.amazon.com .

### Ghost Hunters : Season 1 (a 3-dvd set) for $19.99 (plus shipping costs)
### Ghost Hunters : Part 1, Season 2 ( a 4-dvd set)
//(To be released on September 19, 2006)---for $18.98 (plus shipping costs)
### The Very best of Ghost Hunters, Volume 1. for $8.99 (plus shipping costs)

This Should be some very good beginning research for ANY one wanting to learn more about How the paranormal realm operates. So, Dig yourself in for a night, turn on the videos, turn down the lights, and.... Have yourself either some Happy Hauntings,..... or, ...............Pleasant Nightmares. :[

[Rasputin]

Cop hears voice of murder victim

A veteran city cop is convinced the voice of murdered prostitute Rachel Quinney was picked up on an audio recording as she spoke from beyond the grave. "I saw it. I heard it. I believe," said Const. Wayne Fermaniuk, who on June 26 accompanied a psychic to the spot where Quinney's body was discovered. "If (the psychic) was a phoney, I wanted to expose him. But he's got me. I'm convinced." Fermaniuk, a 25-year veteran of the Edmonton Police Service, was among a small group of people who ventured to the spot in Strathcona County where the body of 19-year-old Quinney was found June 11, 2004. Also there were Rachel's mother, Delia Quinney, and one of Rachel's sisters. They were led by psychic and spiritual medium Alan Hatfield, from Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia. Hatfield, who says he came to Alberta at the request of the Quinney family, set up an infrared camera and audio recorder at the site where Quinney's body was found.

Along with the voices of Fermaniuk and Quinney's mother and sister, who were all present, Rachel's voice could be heard on the tape's playback, said Hatfield. "It was clear and came in between other dialogue," he said. "Rachel came on, and her grandmom and granddad, who are Delia's mom and dad, they came on, too." Hatfield says he also captured images of "spiritual energies" flitting around the site. Neither Hatfield nor Fermaniuk would reveal what they heard Rachel say on the recorded audio of the approximately hour-long session, saying it could jeopardize the police investigation into her unsolved death.

[Rasputin]

Voodoo Day celebrated in Benin

Thousands of followers have gathered in Benin in the seaside town of Ouidah to celebrate National Voodoo Day. They met at a beach called the point of no return, where slaves left on ships for the Americas centuries ago, taking their religion with them. Followers of the once-banned religion have been dancing, drumming, praying as animals are slaughtered in ceremonies. Of Benin's seven million citizens, 65% believe in Voodoo. The day has been a national holiday for a decade. "There is little resembling the popular western imagination on show - no dolls with pins stuck in them and certainly no zombie-like creatures lumbering around," described the BBC's James Copnall, who is at the festival. "Instead there were speeches praising the religion, emphasising the positive impact it has on people's lives."

One of the many revellers who count their ancestors as slaves, Faith McDouglas, 37, a nurse from Nebraska in the US spoke of being, "very moved," explaining, "I've understood many things regarding my origins, because I'm a descendant of slaves." Voodoo followers believe that all life is driven by spiritual forces of natural phenomena such as water, fire, earth and air and that these should be honoured through rituals like animal sacrifices. Followers acknowledge the existence of both a supreme being and many smaller gods which can intercede with the supreme being on behalf of humans.

[Rasputin]

Electrical pioneer Tesla honoured

Serbian and Croatian officials have joined together to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of electricity pioneer and inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla, an ethnic Serb, was one of the pioneers of modern electrical engineering, and is recognised as one of the world's greatest inventors. Several hundred officials attended the ceremony in Smiljan village in Croatia. Among them were the Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and his Serbian counterpart, Boris Tadic. The Croatian premier, Ivo Sanader, also attended the ceremony along with the US ambassador to Croatia, Robert Anthony Bradke. "I am happy that we are here today to celebrate Tesla, a Serb, a son of Croatia and a citizen of the world," President Mesic said at a ceremony close to the house where the inventor was born.

A pioneer in the days when electricity was changing everyday life, Nikola Tesla patented more than 700 inventions including wireless communication, remote control and fluorescent lighting. His most famous work formed the basis of the modern alternating current (AC) electrical power system, which is used across the world. Most of the speeches emphasised the fact that Tesla symbolized Croatia's and Serbia's shared past before the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

[Rasputin]

Do we share neanderthal DNA ?

On a forest-choked expanse of land that will one day be called Germany, a herd of bison huddles together to ward off the cold. Hidden in the foliage nearby squats a man. Like the animals he’s hunting, he has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to cope with freezing temperatures. His massive jaw juts out, and his forehead slopes forward to form a heavy brow – providing a thick layer of bone that protects his sinuses and large brain from the icy air. His barrel-shaped body and short limbs help him retain heat. So do the furs he wears and the fires his family builds in the cave where they live.In one hand, he carries an object that represents the height of technology among his people: a knife-edged stone made by a skilled craftsman who strikes one rock with another, 40 or 50 times with absolute precision, flaking off tiny shards until an extremely sharp blade emerges.Technology isn’t enough to fell the bison, though. Gored and trampled, the man dies without bringing dinner home to his family. His people eventually die out, leaving behind only a few bones and fragments of stone. We don’t know why they became extinct or what they called themselves. We know them only by the name our species has given them: Homo neanderthalensis, the Neanderthals.Forty thousand years after the bison hunter went down, a tall, lanky man with disheveled white hair and scuffed hiking shoes is using one of his species’ own state-of-the art tools to pulverize the Neanderthal even further. On a warm spring day in Walnut Creek, California, geneticist Eddy Rubin stands surrounded by huge glass tanks.

Inside, robotic arms move with frenetic precision over plates holding genetic material, reducing the Neanderthal’s remains to tiny strings of nucleotides and producing the world’s first extended sequence of Neanderthal DNA.The data will help pinpoint when humans and Neanderthals diverged on the evolutionary tree and if they bore children together when they met again as separate species. The information may also help answer a profoundly human question: Are we the first and only intelligent species to walk the planet? If it turns out that we do share certain key genes with the Neanderthals, we’ll know more about whether their intellectual capacities matched our own, including whether they might have had a spoken language.

[Rasputin]

Mystery object found in Supernova

Embedded in the heart of a supernova remnant 10,000 light-years away is a stellar object the likes of which astronomers have never seen before in our galaxy. At first glance, the object looks like a densely packed stellar corpse known as a neutron star surrounded by a bubble of ejected stellar material, exactly what would be expected in the wake of a supernova explosion.However, a closer 24.5-hour examination with the European Space Agency's XMM Newton X-ray satellite reveals that the energetic X-ray emissions of the blue, point-like object cycles every 6.7 hours—tens of thousands of times longer than expected for a freshly created neutron star.It is behavior that's more commonly seen in neutron stars that have been around for several million years, researchers say."The behavior we see is especially puzzling in view of its young age, less than 2,000 years," said study leader Andrea De Luca of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Milan. "For years we have had a sense that the object is different, but we never knew how different until now," De Luca said.The finding is detailed in the July 7 issue of the journal Science.Called 1E161348-5055, or 1E for short, the object is embedded almost in the exact center of RCW103 remnant located 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Norma. Astronomers think that 1E and RCW103 were both born in the same catastrophic event.

Like other neutron stars, which form when a star at least eight times more massive than the Sun runs out of fuel and explodes as a supernova, 1E is estimated to be only about 12.5 miles (20 km) across.One explanation for the neutron star's strange behavior is that it might be a magnetar, an exotic subclass of highly magnetized neutron stars. Of the dozen or so magnetars that are known, however, most usually spin several times per minute—much faster than 1E.This explanation might still work, however, if the magnetar is surrounded by a debris disk that is helping to slow down the neutron star's spin. This scenario has never been observed before and would mark the discovery of a novel stage in neutron star evolution if confirmed.

[Rasputin]

Hawking seeks answers on humanity's future

Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking. The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded. Hawkings question: "In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?"Some of the answers were short — "get rid of nuclear weapons" — and others vague — "Somehow we will." Many were doubtful: "I don't think it is possible unless we expand into space," one user wrote.A number of people suggested thinking differently, ending bickering or fostering cooperation.Officials at the University of Cambridge, where Hawking is a mathematics professor, confirmed that Hawking wrote the message but said he would have no further comment.Hawking's groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe has made him one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation.

Author of the global best seller A Brief History of Time, Hawking is known for proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.Lately, he's been pondering about the fate of humans.In a June 13 speech in Hong Kong, Hawking said the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.He said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.Hawking is one of 10 celebrity questioners Yahoo solicited as part of its "Ask The Planet" campaign.

[Rasputin]

Climate change 'real and severe'

An expert panel convened by BBC News has concluded that climate change is "real and dangerous". Temperatures are likely to rise by 3C to 5C by the end of the century, with impacts likely to be "severe" but not "catastrophic", the panel said. It also concluded that politicians are unlikely to cut emissions sufficiently to prevent dangerous global heating. The panel's discussions were based on themes set by Professor James Lovelock in his latest book The Revenge of Gaia. The book argues that human society, through greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental degradation, has brought the natural world to the brink of a crisis. Temperatures will rise, Professor Lovelock warns, reliable supplies of water will be disrupted, life in the oceans will be compromised, food production will decline, and there will be mass migrations to areas of the planet's surface which remain habitable.

With fossil fuels currently the dominant source of energy, he sees a large-scale switch to nuclear power as vital if electricity supplies are to continue reliably and carbon dioxide emissions are to be brought down. After its publication earlier this year, The Revenge of Gaia was criticised by some scientists who felt it painted an overly apocalyptic vision and did not reflect uncertainties in scientific understanding.

[Rasputin]

The strange behaviour of Bob Lazar

Norio Hayakawa: I am not here to defend nor to put Bob Lazar down. The fact is that Bob Lazar has been categorized as a fraud by most so-called UFO researchers and the public-at-large, although there are still some who hold on to the belief that Bob Lazar was who he said he was and that he did everything that he claimed.One person that still totally and adamantly supports Bob Lazar's claims is KLAS-TV Eyewitness News anchorman, George Knapp, and of course, Bob's friend, Las Vegas real estate appraiser, Gene Huff.Is Bob Lazar a total fraud?I am still not sure on this. I still do have some unanswered questions.As for Bob Lazar's timeline, the whole world had already been familiar with Tom Mahood's timeline of Lazar, which he published in 1994.However, not everyone is familiar with Gene Huff's 1995 rebuttal of Tom Mahood's timeline of Lazar.But, thanks to Gary Sellani, Gene Huff's 1995 rebuttal of Tom Mahood's timeline was once again posted on the dreamlandresort.com recently.

As I said above, personally, I still have some unanswered questions on Bob Lazar:It was on February 21, 1990 that a crew of Nippon Television Network (NTV) of Japan and I (total of 7) had an opportunity to visit and interview Bob Lazar at his residence in Las Vegas. This was made possible through Bob's friend, real estate appraiser, Gene Huff.We arrived at Bob's residence around 11 a.m., or so, to the best of my recollection.They took us to the living room, which at that time did not seem to me to be fully furnished and "lived". They showed us Bob's study room, which also did not seem to me to be fully furnished. Yes, there were a few books on physics on the bookshelf and there were computers on his desk. In any case, the interview was conducted by a writer from a magazine and I was simply there as an interpreter.The interview lasted about two hours.When we arrived at his house, there were about 5 or 6 men in the house.At first I thought they were simply Bob's friends. But later on I notieced something unusual about some of those men. It seemed that throughout the interview, whether in the living room or in Bob's study room, two men were constantly on each side of Bob. One of them seemed to have a rectangular black communications equipment with him. Perhaps it could have been a cellphone (although this was in 1990).When we moved to the kitchen area, those two men also moved alongside Bob. When we moved to Bob's study room, those men also moved together with Bob.So we asked Bob, "who are these men?" Bob simply said that, "don't worry, these are just friends".Perhaps this was nothing. But I just thought to bring this up, because that's the one thing throughout the interview that impressed me the most.

[Rasputin]

iPod user struck by lightning

Jason Bunch was listening to Metallica on his iPod while mowing the lawn outside his Castle Rock home Sunday afternoon when lightning hit him. The last thing the 17-year-old remembers was that a storm was coming from the north and he had only about 15 minutes before he should go inside. Next thing he knew, he was in his bed, bleeding from his ears and vomiting. He was barefoot and had taken off his burned T-shirt and gym shorts. He doesn't know how he got back in the house. Bunch immediately called his mother, who was in Illinois visiting family."Mom, I think I was hit by lightning," he said. Kelly Risheill told her son to call 911, and she started the 14-hour drive home. About the same time, a neighbor saw Bunch's scorched green and white Reebok tennis shoes in the street, a few feet away from the lawn mower. She also called for help. Bunch was taken to Sky Ridge Medical Center and placed in intensive care. He was sent home Tuesday. "I'm alive, and that is what I am grateful for," Bunch said as he lay in bed Wednesday.

From the hospital, Bunch called a friend and told him he wasn't able to go bowling. Then, he called a girl he was supposed to meet for a date. "I said, 'I did not stand you up. I was struck by lightning."' Bunch's ears were burned on the inside, and he's lost some hearing, mostly on the right side. His hair was singed. His face, chest, hands and right leg have freckle-size welts on them as if buckshot had come from inside his body out. The wounds follow the line of his iPod, from his ears down his right side to his hip, where he was carrying the device. The iPod has a hole in the back, and the earbuds dissolved into green threads.

[jsmith]

bache ha ye soal daram...in doroste ke migan az nazare elmii sabet shode ke age ziad ghaza bokhori, del dard migiri va sangiin mishi, va taze khabet ham migire????....lol...jk...

[Rasputin]

High drama spacewalk ends in success

In a high-drama spacewalk on Monday, a pair of NASA astronauts overcame an issue with a loose jetpack to make crucial repairs to the International Space Station. The jetpacks are designed to whisk astronauts back to safety should they float away from the ISS and into space. But once Mike Fossum had helped his partner Piers Sellers secure the jetpack, the two completed their work preparing the ISS for the expansion planned during future shuttle missions.The astronauts replaced a key system that sends power and commands to a railcar attached to the station's truss. The truss acts like a backbone to the station and supports its power-generating solar arrays.The station's robot arm moves on the railcar to access hard-to-reach areas, making the railcar critical for the installation of more solar arrays and truss segments."If we didn't get this successfully changed and checked out, then we couldn't proceed with the next mission, which is right on our heels," says ISS lead flight director Rick LaBrode. The next shuttle is currently scheduled for a lift-off on 28 August.In December 2005, a cable was inadvertently cut on one of two systems and send commands to the railcar and power it.

The device can operate with just one system, but NASA prefers to move it only when both systems are working. On the mission's first spacewalk on Saturday, Sellers and Fossum installed a "blade-blocker" to ensure that the other system's cable cannot be inadvertently cut.But during the spacewalk on Monday, the latches attaching Sellers' jetpack to his spacesuit became loose. First, the astronauts noticed that the left hook had come unlocked, prompting Fossum to tie the jetpack to Sellers' spacesuit with a tether. Later, Discovery pilot Mark Kelly radioed from inside Discovery that it appeared Sellers' right latch had come loose as well.

[Rasputin]

Tim Field: Death of a spiritual seeker

Tim Field has died aged 53 from cancer. Once in a lifetime comes a man who turns over the stones of existing order with such force, that all the life forms underneath have to scurry away, such a man was Tim Field. A giant among men, whom bullies in the army, workplace, schools and the British mail system greatly fearedTim, a quietly spiritual British man became a world expert on the psychiatric injuries from bullying when in 1994 after 20 years working in industry he suffered a breakdown from work place harassment.His recovery meant in 1997 he published the groundbreaking book, “Bully in sight”This signalled a landslide in British cultural change, this was re-published in 30 countries.In 1998 Tim published David Kinchins book on Post Traumatic Stress disorder,“The invisible injury” and in 2001 co-authored with Neil Marr,“Bullycide, death at playtime” an expose of child suicide from bullying.Tim had a vision of a bully free world, and he campaigned tirelessly in schools, higher education and the workplace to achieve this goal.His website was deluged with bullying and harassment cases from all over the country, often with conflict and violence, the 5000 cases he worked on personally make truly awful reading.The current British media hubbub over youngsters carrying knives, does not ask the question, why do they feel the need ?

And the answer is wide spread bullying and intimidation, often dismissed as “peer pressure” Children as young as 6 are learning the killing skills of karate boxing and judo, and do not have the mental maturity and balance to have these abilities.The numbers for attacking others in schools and workplaces, on film in what are known as “slap-attacks” have gone through the roof, as have self harming cases.A recent study by police outside pubs at closing time in the chav capital of Britain, kings Lynn, says every style of martial arts was drunkenly displayed in the many fracas at closing time, unbelievably, most police stations are closed at night. So should we extend the ban from knives to cover martial arts training ?many think we should.Recognition of Tim Field’s work meant eventual policy changes from the C.B.I( Confederation of British Industry ) but with little acknowledgement from trade unions and government.The government policy of “Crown immunity meant that no one was responsible for the appalling series of deaths at Deepcut army Barracks,And the findings of Prof. Cary Cooper of Manchester Uni, of entrenched managerial institutional racial and sexual harassment at Britain’s Royal Mail, again no managers were held responsible, and in a similar case at the Royal Mint, a worker forced to work with condemned equipment was killed when it toppled over on him.Whistleblowers on harassment, at government institutions such as the N.H.SRoyal mail, Prisons, railways and schools were silenced and sacked.(look up Dr. Andrew Wakefield )Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, abandoned by the police, was forced to guard his own property, shot and killed a burglar in the dark, he given a long prison sentence, yet a police team followed and shot 7 times in the head, an unarmed Brazillian lad, told an incredible pack of lies about it and no one is deemed responsible because of “Crown Immunity.”

Many see a linkage between youngsters “taxing” children in the playground for their dinner money, as a microcosm of the national leader who decides to tax another nation for their oil deposits, we may put on trial such leaders as Saddham Hussein andSlobodan Milosevic for war crimes, yet Blair Bush and Sharon go free, having done the same.Many countries see this as, “victors justice” We are told all peoples are equal under British law, but casualties in Iraq do not count,only British and American numbers are important, now that’s real government racism,this caused the recent Asian riots in Britain an France.Crown immunity should go the way of the Dodo, no one should be above the law in the Britain of 2006, for we truly are in the global community,we are all our brothers keeper.We owe Tim Field a great debt, Tim moved mountains, yet there is still a way to go,His work on bullies is carried on by such organisations as the Andrea Adams trust.

[Rasputin]

Giant catfish protected in Thailand

In honor of the King of Thailand's 60th year on the throne, fishers in northern Thailand have promised to stop catching the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish. The largest freshwater fish in the world, the giant catfish can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weigh 650 pounds (300 kilograms). It is found only in the Mekong River system, which runs through China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. More than 60 fishers made the pledge to stop catching the giant fish at a ceremony held last month in the northern city of Chiang Kong. It was one of several events to celebrate Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej's reign. Fishers in neighboring Laos have also vowed to stop hunting the giant fish. "[This] is the most significant development in the conservation of the Mekong giant catfish in the last ten years," said Zeb Hogan, an associate research biologist at the Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Program.

Conservationists say that while the ban is an important step toward saving the giant catfish, more has to be done before the unique species is off the hook. As part of that effort, Hogan runs a tracking program in which he tags the fish to discover their spawning grounds and to study their migration patterns.

[Rasputin]

Climate change and civilization

One of archaeology’s "big questions" is explaining the origins of civilization. In anthropology, "civilization" has a technical definition. To qualify as a civilization, a society must have all or most of the following characteristics: cities with large populations; a hierarchical social organization, with a king, pharaoh or president at the top of the organizational chart; an economy based on agriculture; monumental architecture; and a system of record-keeping. The earliest civilizations arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and northern China. Based on this definition, there were no indigenous civilizations in the Ohio Valley. And the arrival of European civilization derailed any chance of one developing. Various theories have been proposed to explain how this social complexity developed and why it developed in some areas and not others, but archaeologists and historians have not formulated any one satisfying explanation. Nick Brooks, a climate-change researcher at the University of East Anglia in England, offers his idea in the latest issue of Quaternary International. "The emergence of complex societies coincided with or followed a period of increased aridity," which began 8,000 years ago but intensified periodically in subsequent millennia, he said.

In this view, global climate change caused the profound social changes that have been referred to as the "urban revolution." Brooks states that during large-scale droughts, people would have been forced to concentrate in places where water was available. The social consequences of this aggregation included the formation of managerial elites who controlled the distribution of resources and directed the construction of large monuments to represent and justify their authority. Brooks sees these worldwide social upheavals as ways societies adapted to changing environments. Most anthropologists reject such explanations as too simplistic. The environment, they say, cannot alone determine human responses. But when cultures worldwide adopt similar solutions to similar problems, perhaps it’s useful to view civilization as a successful, if not inevitable, response to global environmental changes.