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Hello; I am the editor formerly known as Brain.
Update 2016: Wikipedia is improving. While it can still be aggravating to contribute articles written from a non-majority perspective, recently the stub article Fruity Pie was saved from a notability discussion by invoking the Countering systemic bias policy. This is completely appropriate: none of the parties soliciting for deletion were Taiwanese or even spoke Chinese.
Do You Wonder Why Wikipedia Is Slowing Down? edit
(written in 2007)
I used to edit Wikipedia a great deal... now not so much. I considered Wikipedia potentially the "last encyclopedia" - a reference that could contain all fact. However, overzealous editors have deleted a great deal of my text when they decided something wasn't "notable" enough. A performance-art group here, a television show there. Usually it was because the editor in question had simply never heard of the topic.
All the zany "Facts" in Mel's Hole are gone. I had summarized the complete saga, dozens of hours of radio. Now, due to editing, the only way to get that information is to listen to all the radio again. Everyone already knows Mel is a complete con artist... but that is what makes the story of Mel's Hole interesting. Now it's all gone. All these editors are doing is eliminating information sources that now people will have to find elsewhere. In this particular case, the "elsewhere" is the original radio shows!
My point: Notability is not a valid metric for a digital encyclopedia. With a print encyclopedia, sure-- paper costs money and takes up space. But for an encyclopedia that can have an article about everything without being more inconvenient to use? PUT IT ALL IN.
My other point: Wikipedia could be Google for organized topic summary. Google is great for finding all the pages about something. But it's still not good at giving a top-level summary of a given topic, or a context-based list of related topics. That is the niche Wikipedia can fill.
My last point: Competing with print Encyclopedias is a stupid goal. You know what is not a growing industry? Print encyclopedia publishing. Just as copying someone's startup is usally a huge waste of money (you can almost never implement an idea as well as the originator), trying to make a digital encyclopedia "just as good" as a print encyclopedia is an effort with a flawed premise.
To Do edit
Bored?
More directed:
- incorporate into Yo yo
- History: Seattle Times
- History: Links on Mr Yo
- History: AYYA Article
- History: Jennifer Baybrook
- For Duncan Toys Company: some Corporate History
- More Buddhist art, please
- clean up images in Bell Rocket Belt
- More Yokai
- images using 398th Bomb Group Combat Formations for Combat box and associated
Articles I referred to which do not (yet) exist:
Misc edit
There's an ongoing, very old joke amongst enthusiasts in broadcast technology (ham radio builders, television experimenters, radio and TV industry engineers) about the name of RKO- their films opened with the phrase "An RKO Radio Picture." This brings up the question, "what is a radio picture?" - the joke being, that "radio," being an audio medium, does not carry pictures. I have honestly no idea how to work that into any article, but there you have it. brain 14:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Deleted Material From Captain Harlock edit
UPDATE 2016: editors have rediscovered this information and put it into dedicated Captain Harlock sub pages. I only had to wait 10 years, but they came around.
(written in 2009)
I considered this material useful. When I needed this information, I had to do a lot of research, so I added the list to Wikipedia. It got deleted later.
- "Uchū Kaizoku Captain Harlock" (TV series) (42 episodes, 1978-1979) released as:
- 宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック (original Japanese title)
- Space Pirate Captain Harlock
- Albator 78
- Die Abenteuer des fantastischen Weltraumpiraten Captain Harlock
- Uchū Kaizoku Captain Harlock: Arcadia-gō no Nazo (featurette) (34 min, 1978)
- 宇宙海賊キャプテンハーロック アルカディア号の謎 (original Japanese title)
- Space Pirate Captain Harlock: Riddle of the Arcadia\
- Harlock Movie 1
- Waga Seishun no Arcadia (movie) ( 135 min, 1982 ) released as:
- わが青春のアルカディア (original Japanese title)
- Arcadia of my Youth
- My Youth in Arcadia
- Harlock Movie 2
- Vengeance of the Space Pirate
- Kaizoku Kikan Arcadia (Pirate Flagship Arcadia) (pilot) (4 minutes, 1982)
- 海賊旗艦アルカディア (original Japanese title)
- Waga Seishun no Arcadia: Mugen Kidō SSX (TV series) (22 episodes, 1982-1983) released as:
- わが青春のアルカディア無限軌道ＳＳＸ (original Japanese title)
- My Youth in Arcadia: Endless Road SSX
- Albator 84
- Arcadia of My Youth: Infinite Course SSX
- Harlock 84
- Queen Emeraldas (OAV) (4x 30min episodes, 1999)
- Nibelung no Yubiwa (pilot) (4 minutes, 1999)
- ニーベルングの指輪 (original Japanese title)
- Harlock Saga Nibelung no Yubiwa Rhine no Ōgon (OAV) (6x 30min episodes, 1999)
- Harlock Saga: The Ring of the Nibelung
- Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey/Outside Legend (OAV) (13x 30min episodes, 2002)
Deleted Material From Mel's Hole edit
I considered this material... not USEFUL exactly... but when I was LOOKING for this information, I had to do a lot of research, so I added all of it to Wikipedia. It got deleted later. Why? Other preposterous things are on wikipedia. There's a whole category on "paranormal" information. I never claimed any of this was real! But someone else did, and I thought that was interesting.
Anyway:
Mel's Hole is the name of an alleged infinitely deep hole with a retaining wall around it, featuring paranormal powers purportedly found on the property of Mel Waters, who publicised its existence on episodes of Coast to Coast with Art Bell airing between 1997 and 2002. The property is located near Ellensburg, Washington, near the Manastash Ridge. Although the existence of this hole and the events surrounding it have been doubted by many, Art Bell and many of his listeners believe in the existence of the hole and continue to search for it today.
Summary edit
According to the stories surrounding this, Mel Waters owned land outside of Ellensburg, which had a hole he plotted the depth (allegedly) to at least 80,000 feet deep. According to the Seattle Times, he claimed that "soldiers in yellow gear cordoned off his property and threatened to 'find' a drug lab on it if he didn't cooperate," and that "one neighbor claimed to have thrown a dead dog in the hole, only to see it later frolicking in the woods; how another saw a black beam emanating from the hole; how transistor radios brought to the hole play programs from the past." Search parties to this day routinely search the territory near Ellensburg for evidence of the hole.[1]
Hole History and Mel's Story edit
For years, locals had known about the "bottomless" nature of the hole, dumping garbage down the hole, including dead cattle, truckloads of old auto tires, and large appliances like refrigerators and TV tubes. When garbage was dumped in the hole, no sound of the object hitting the bottom were heard.
Mel began a series of experiments with the hole on his property, including one where he lowered a roll of Life Savers into the hole, to detect if any water was at the bottom of the hole, at the end of progressively longer lengths of fishing line, up to the 80,000 foot (over fifteen miles) length of the last attempt.
At that point, in 1997, Mel sent a Fax to the Coast to Coast AM show describing the hole, and shortly thereafter appeared on the show.
Shortly after the broadcasts, men identified by Mel as government agents told him that there was a plane-crash nearby and that he could not approach the hole. The government then offered to pay Mel a large monthly stipend to lease the land in perpetuity, on the order of $250,000 a month, or $3M a year. Mel used this money to move to Australia and found a wombat-rescue operation. The payments continued from March 1997 through the beginning of 2000.
In December 1999, Mel returned to the US. While on a bus to Olympia, Washington, Mel witnessed an altercation between police officers and another passenger. He was taken off the bus to sign a police statement- the next thing Mel remembers is walking around San Francisco, twelve days later. He had been physically beaten and his rear molars were extracted. An IV scar on his arm convinced him that he had been drugged. Upon his return to the hole, Mel was served with papers indicating that his ownership was now in question, due to modifications that had been made, presumably by the government tenants. Mel's assets were frozen for unstated reasons and his wombat rescue facility in Australia was dismantled.
Properties of the Hole edit
Mel Waters attributed numerous paranormal properties to the hole. As described on Coast to Coast:
- the hole was roughly nine feet across
- the hole was over 80,000 feet deep
- a dead hunting dog thrown into the hole by a local was seen much later running through the woods, as if hunting with somebody else.
1943 Roosevelt Dime edit
Mel Waters manufactures a particular folk art belt buckle, with a design which incorporates a silver fork and coins depicting Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Roosevelt portrait consisting of a US dime. When allegedly kidnapped by the government, Mel's own belt buckle had been removed.
According to Mel, a number of these belt buckles included a Roosevelt Dime with a 1943 mint date, with a "B" mint mark. This is odd because there is no mint using a "B" designation, and the first Rooselvelt dime was released in 1946, after Roosevelt's death in 1945. On Coast to Coast Mel and Art Bell speculate that the dime came from an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the war, with the "B" standing for "Berlin," which also implies the death of President Roosevelt prior to 1943.
Ten of these 1943 Roosevelt dimes were found by Mel near the Hole in a red envelope, as used for gift money at Chinese New Year. A 1943 Roosevelt dime given to a friend of Mel's was allegedly confiscated by agents of the US Treasury.
In a later interview, Mel claimed the 1943 dime could not be photographed, and would even become invisible from more than fifteen feet away.
Second Hole edit
After his appearance on Coast to Coast in 2000, Mel claimed on a subsequent appearance that he had found a second hole. This second hole is on public land in Nevada, under the management of the Federal Bureau of Land Management. The land nearby is used by Native Americans as well as "members of the Basque community" who were using the land for grazing sheep.
- As the first hole, the second hole itself is 9 feet in diameter.
- Unlike the first hole, the Nevada hole has a solid metal liner, or "collar" sticking out of the ground, 2 feet high, 2 feet "deep" (thick?). This collar has notches in it- Mel speculated on Coast to Coast, "in my estimation... it could possibly be a locking collar... something could be lowered onto it and locked into place."
- The collar around the second hole is of a substance with unusual paranormal properties:
- Mel dropped a box wrench on the metal collar- the wrench made no noise, implying that the collar absorbs the sound or energy
- the hole is "solidly lined" with this metal as far as one can see (into the hole)
- even in winter, the area around the metal collar is warm to the touch and will keep nearby tents warm.- however the metal collar is not hot to the touch.
- According to Mel, local Basques say the hole has been there, in its current state, for their community's entire experience, which dates back to the 1800s. One man had personal recollection of the hole since he was young, over 70 years ago at the time of the interview (since around the 1930s).
- the hole occaisionally emits a "Black beam" - Mel said- "this is a contradiction, but a black beam of light, okay? comes from the hole- it lasts a very short time, but it just goes directly up to the sky." "if you had a flashlight, and it was capable of throwing up a solid black... I have never personally witnessed the black beam."
- There is an ongoing Basque connection with the two holes Mel discovered- the shepherds living around the second, Nevada hole were all from the Basque community. In addition, a whale bone was found near the first hole which Mel implied could have Basque origins, due to what he asserts is a history of whaling in Basque culture.
Burning Ice edit
In an experiment with the Nevada hole, Mel and assorted Basque locals lowered a bucket of ice they bought from the grocery store. One bucket of ice was lowered 1500 feet into the hole, and the other bucket of ice was kept at the surface, as a control. By the time half the ice on the surface bucket had melted, the bucket in the hole was retrieved.
To their surprise, the ice in the lowered bucket had not melted, and additionally, was no longer cold to the touch. The ice had been changed in an undefined way, and was described by Mel as havng a texture like silica dessicant found in packaged food.
As a further experiment, the bucket of unmelted ice was placed on a cooking fire, and instead of melting, the ice began to "burn" - as described by Mel Waters, "it was not so much a flame, as kind of a... have you ever used a gas stove? it was like the barest turning of a gas stove on- it was like that last flicker before you turn it off," the former "ice" cubes burning slightly.
Additional trials of the same experiment have resulted in melted ice, unchanged ice, and occaisionally (about one out of three times) more of this Burning Ice.
The new substance could be used as a source of heat- "One guy took some stuff home, he put it in his wood stove... and the thing's been keeping his place warm" for over three months (september to january). This man reported to Mel that steam from a nearby kettle was absorbed by the burning ice, and that the area surrounding the burning ice was always very dry.
After a few months, for unknown reasons the stove with the burning ice crashed through the floor of the man's cabin. Weeks later, the man returned to find the entire cabin collapsed into "wood dust," which Mel attributed to all the moisture being sucked out of the wood by the burning ice. On a later visit, the stove with the burning ice had sunk 5 feet into the ground.
A team of unknown researchers, speculated by Mel as possibly being related to the government, appeared later at the site of the cabin and attempted to use construction equipment and metal chains to remove the stove. Upon pouring water into the hole created by the stove, the metal chains fused with the stove, and the stove was successfully lifted by multiple construction cranes. The stove was then loaded onto a large truck and driven away.
In a later appearance on Coast to Coast, Mel brings up the fictional substance Ice-9, invented by writer Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cat's Cradle. Mel compares the burning ice to Ice-9.
Sheep Experiment and Seal Entity edit
In an attempt to lower a living sheep to the 1500 foot level, a subject sheep was led to the hole- however when it got close, the sheep became very agitated and had to be stunned to get it into a crate. When the stunned sheep in the crate was placed over the hole, the sheep woke up again, and began making piercing "screaming" noises and thrashing around inside its crate.
The crate was lowered to about 700 feet, at which point the vibrations could no longer be felt. When the cable had been lowered to its full length of 1500 feet, the metal collar around the hole began to vibrate. The crated sheep was left for half an hour, and winched back up the surface, where it was found to be dead.
Externally, the dead sheep seemed to be the same as when lowered, but inside, "the sheep looked like it had been cooked." In addition, a gellied blob filled the body cavity where the internal organs normally would be, described by Mel as looking like a "huge tumor."
The "tumor" was removed, and the experimenters believed they saw some movement inside it. When cut open, the tumor released a "fetal seal," with human-looking eyes, connected to the tumor with an umbilical cord. The "seal" seemed to have a hold on those present, and it and the human experimenters viewed each other for over two hours.
According to Mel, the seal seemed to him to be a being "filled with compassion" and after nodding at the experimenters, it dove back into the hole. The tumor and sheep remains were bundled in a tarp and thrown back into the hole.
Mel Waters claims that he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer prior to his experience at the second hole- afterwards, the cancer was entirely gone, with no evidence it had ever existed. Mel feels that he was healed by the seal-like entity from the sheep carcass.
In a later interview, Mel claimed the seal entity was now making regular visits to the Basque shepherds camping around the surface of the Nevada hole. The seal was said to communicate with the shepherds through a portable radio, however when recorded, only a series of unintelligible sounds resulted, as one might hear in interference on a short-wave transmission.
Unfinished experiments edit
- A local Basque man volunteered to be lowered into the second hole- however he was convinced to reconsider by Mel and the other experimenters.
- Mel Waters expressed his wish to have his body thrown into the Nevada hole after his death.
Cultural References edit
The Handsome Family recorded a song inspired by Mel's hole called "The Bottomless Hole" on their 2003 CD Singing Bones.
Broadcast History edit
Mel Waters initially appeared on Coast to Coast on February 21st, 1997, and again on February 24th, 1997. His next appearance was in April of 2000, with additional appearance afterwards.