“In November of 1928, a truck pulled up to The Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia and unloaded the pieces of an interesting, complex, but totally ruined brass machine. Donated by the estate of John Penn Brock, a wealthy Philadelphian, the machine was studied and the museum began to realize the treasure it had been given.
This Automaton, known as the “Draughtsman-Writer” was built by Henri Maillardet, a Swiss mechanician of the 18th century who worked in London producing clocks and other mechanisms. It is believed that Maillardet built this extraordinary Automaton around 1800 and it has the largest “memory” of any such machine ever constructed…”
Read the rest and learn more about The Franklin Institute’s automaton here.
I was one of the lucky few who received a preview copy of M.J.’s new novel THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES due out in March of the new year – I drank in every word and luxuriated in the sensual storytelling that M.J. has by now completely perfected. In keeping with her themes of reincarnation and past lives, M.J. continues to explore the concept of “memory tools” for recalling former lifetimes. (It makes for incredibly fun reading across multiple centuries.) Remembering is something we all tend to do at the end of the year, around this time, as we simultaneously strive to envision a prosperous and happy year ahead. And remembering, or rather memory itself, may be something that is more universal and mysteriously meaningful than we ever thought possible. Consider the possibility that water may actually have memory. Could water be the ultimate memory tool?
New research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has a memory—a claim that could change our whole way of looking at the world.
A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra—and lost for 2,000 years. Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances—and of her mother’s suicide—she moves to America, leaving the company in the hands of her brother Robbie. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing—leaving a dead body in his wake—Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.
Back in Paris to investigate her brother’s disappearance, Jac discovers a secret the House of L’Etoile has been hiding since 1799: a scent that unlocks the mysteries of reincarnation. The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac’s quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past.
Welcome 2012! Happy New Year Everyone! May we have peace on earth and goodwill towards all.
“Fringe” researcher and author Lloyd Pye lectures on our origins as a species. If you’re interested in alternative science, ancient Sumerian cosmology, bigfoot, anthropology or E.T.s, you’re going to be riveted by this lecture. Mr. Pye covers just about everything here…