M.J. Rose

Isaac Asimov was a true futurist —

For example, he predicted this:

“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth…”

We Live in the Future Nobody Predicted

(Mysterious Universe blog)

“Flash back to the 1964 World’s Fair. One of the greatest science fiction writers of your generation, someone who is also a well-respected science writer with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University, makes a series of relatively modest predictions about the year 2014. If there were, say, a Mysterious Universe radio show covering the fair, Isaac Asimov’s predictions would be among the top stories, and for good reason.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we look back on the article…and most of us agree that Isaac Asimov did incredibly well, because we’ve gotten so accustomed to off-the-wall predictions that Asimov’s stand out as reasonable…”

Read the rest here, at Mysterious Universe.

What do you think the world will be like in another fifty years? Please share your predictions below in the comments section. M.J. and The Museum of Mysteries would like to hear your ideas…

“Thumb” through a beautiful old book from The Public Domain Review…

Women painters of the world from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413-1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day; 1905; edited by Walter Shaw Sparrow; The Copp Clark Company Limited, Toronto.

“A heavily illustrated collection of essays, edited by British art critic Walter Shaw Sparrow, focusing on notable women painters from the 15th century to the beginning of the 20th. Of the eight essays only one is written by a woman, Helena Westermarck, a Finnish artist and women’s historian active in the suffragette movement. From the rather lavish preface by Sparrow :

What is genius? Is it not both masculine and feminine? Are not some of its qualities instinct with manhood, while others delight us with the most winning graces of a perfect womanhood? Does not genius make its appeal as a single creative agent with a two-fold sex?…”

See the rest here.

Plus, a video, below — “a 3-minute journey through 500 years of female portraits” —

Have you heard of the Hum? Or… have you actually HEARD the Hum?

A Mysterious Sound Is Driving People Insane — And Nobody Knows What’s Causing It

by Jared Keller

Dr. Glen MacPherson doesn’t remember the first time he heard the sound. It may have started at the beginning of 2012, a dull, steady droning like that of a diesel engine idling down the street from his house in the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. A lecturer at the University of British Columbia and high school teacher of physics, mathematics and biology, months passed before MacPherson realized that the noise, which he’d previously dismissed as some background nuisance like car traffic or an airplane passing overhead, was something abnormal.

“Once I realized that this wasn’t simply the ambient noise of living in my little corner of the world, I went through the typical stages and steps to try to isolate the sources,” MacPherson told Mic. “I assumed it may be an electrical problem, so I shut off the mains to the entire house. It got louder. I went driving around my neighborhood looking for the source, and I noticed it was louder at night.”

Exasperated, MacPherson turned his focus to scientific literature and pored over reports of the mysterious noise before coming across an article by University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to exploring topics outside of mainstream science. “I almost dropped my laptop,” says MacPherson. “I was sure that I was hearing the Hum.”…

For the complete article click here.