KTVU in Oakland is reporting that a Bay Area woman named Mariam l. Walton has come forward with apparently solid proof that the photographs were not taken by Ansel Adams but her Uncle Earl. She was watching KTVU report on the story Tuesday when she suddenly saw a photograph of the Jeffrey Pine on Sentinal Dome and recognized it as a print her uncle Earl Brooks made back in 1923.

Upon hearing this story, the fact that the clouds in the two photographs were different made me quite skeptical that the found photo was the same as Uncle Earl’s. However, I decided to investigate a bit further. Here’s a screenshot of Uncle Earl’s photograph shown in the segment:

Although the Jeffrey Pine that stood on Sentinal Dome was a well known landmark and often photographed, the fact that the lighting in the photographs match exactly seem to indicate that the two photos were in fact taken in the same session. Furthermore, notice how the branches and leaves in the two photos seem to match exactly. The uncanny similarity between the lighting and the trees seems to show that Norsigian’s photograph was indeed taken by Uncle Earl.

Keep in mind that we’re doing this comparison based on low resolution screenshots of the two photos. If we had access to the real things, this technique might reveal an even higher degree of similarity.

Oh… and did we mention Uncle Earl lived in Fresno (where the negatives were purchased) and often took photos in Yosemite?

“I feel extremely lucky considering the magnitude of the accident – Martin Baker is my new best friend!” said Capt. Brian Bews, 36, in his first public statement since Friday’s crash in Lethbridge, Alta.

Martin Baker is the brand name of the ejection seat in the CF-18 Hornet that Bews was piloting. He was making a low-speed pass at low altitude on a practice run for the Alberta International Airshow when he had to eject from the jet seconds before it smashed into the airstrip at the Lethbridge airport.

Bews suffered compression fractures in three vertebrae and will be wearing a back brace for a few months, the Department of National Defence said Monday.

“Given the incredible amount of force in the ejection sequence, this type of injury is very common in aircrew who eject,” said Maj. Rachel Morrell, a military surgeon. She said Bews will likely make a full recovery but there’s no timeline on when he will be able to return to flying duties.

“I will be concentrating on rest for the next while,” Bews said Monday. The pilot thanked first responders for their quick reaction after the crash and the staff at the Lethbridge hospital where he was taken.

I would also like to thank my family, friends, my demo team and my air show family for their amazing support since the accident,” said Bews, who is from Eatonia, Sask.

The pilot learned how to fly in Okotoks, Alta., and joined the Canadian Forces in 1999. Five years later, he achieved his dream of being assigned to fly a CF-18 Hornet, according to Bews’s military biography.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Bews was flying a CF-18 Hornet designated for air shows and demonstrations.

In a series of experiments where subjects viewed photographs of their opposite-sex parent or a photo morphed with their own face, researchers found that people are turned on by photographs of people who resemble their close genetic counterparts.

“People appear to be drawn to others who resemble their kin or themselves,” said psychologist R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois, lead author of the study published July 20 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “It is possible, therefore, as Freud suggested, that incest taboos exist to counter this primitive tendency.”

The debate about whether aversions against incest stem from a cultural adaptation to suppress biological urge or a psychological adaptation that evolved by natural selection dates back to the early 1900s. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud proposed the former explanation, and sociologist Edward Westermarck proposed the latter, arguing that there is a critical period while people are growing up during which if they are raised with someone they won’t find them attractive.

In recent years, Fraley says, contemporary scholars have concluded that Westermarck was right, and Freud was wrong. But based on his study, Fraley argues that the debate may have been settled prematurely.

“There is evidence on both sides now,” said psychologist David Schmitt from Bradley University. “There is some reason to think that there is something to Westermarck, that there is a critical period, but it may also be that we find and trust and align ourselves with people who have more common alleles.”

In the first experiment, people were shown a series of faces of strangers and asked to rank their sexual attractiveness. Before each of the faces were shown, half the subjects were subliminally exposed to photographs of their opposite-sex parent, by flashing the images so quickly that they couldn’t be processed consciously. The other half of the participants was shown photos of unrelated parents.

People who were primed with images of their own mom or dad were more likely to find the faces in the subsequent photo attractive than did people primed with a random image.

In the second experiment, participants were asked to rank the sexual attractiveness of another set of faces, but this time the faces were morphed to be composites of two different faces. Unaware that their own faces were part of the morph, half of the subjects were shown faces that were up to 45 percent their own, like an artificial sibling. The other half were shown morphs of faces that were not their own.

The people who saw faces morphed with their own found the images more sexually appealing.

In the third experiment, people were shown morphs that didn’t involve their own faces, but half were led to believe the morphs did contain their own faces.

In this case, the people who wrongly believed the morphs contained their own face ranked those pictures as less attractive.

All three experiments support the Freudian idea that we have subconscious mechanisms that make us attracted to features that remind us of our own, and that cultural taboos against incest exist to override that primitive drive.

Fermanova, 24, is the newest bombshell targeted by federal authorities. She is accused of attempting to smuggle high-tech night vision scopes from the United States to Russia.

An arrest affidavit obtained by Crimesider states that Fermanova, along with others, tried to “intentionally attempt to export” defense articles listed on the United States Munitions List without having the required license to do so.

The document says that when Fermanova attempted to board a plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Moscow on March 1, Customs & Border Protection seized her luggage, finding three night vision devices.

When Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents approached Fermanova regarding the cutting-edge devices, she claimed that she purchased the scopes online, stated the affidavit.

The scopes reportedly cost approximately $15,000 total, according to The Smoking Gun.

When ICE agents further questioned Fermanova, asking if she was aware of the regulations regarding such items she claimed that she “signed something about that,” but was “not really sure what she was signing.”

According to ICE special agent David Mondanaro, one of the devices found in Fermanova’s luggage was a Raptor 4X, which is considered a “generation 3″ night vision device that allows the user to locate a target in “low light conditions.” The Raptor 4X is engineered to be attached to a rifle, stated the affidavit.

Though Fermanova claimed she was unaware of such guidelines, the devices appeared to have “no visible identification stickers or markings” and several ID numbers “had been covered with black marker pen,” indicated Mondanaro.

The agents confiscated the three devices, but allowed Fermanova to board her scheduled flight, according to the affidavit. She returned to the U.S. and was arrested July 15 on a warrant signed by a federal magistrate in Brooklyn.

Scott Palmer, Fermanova’s lawyer, said the allegations were “really silly,” and claimed that Fermanova’s husband simply intended to resell the night vision scopes, possibly to hunters, according to The Smoking Gun.

The Smoking Gun reports that Fermanova divides her time between Russia and Texas, where her parents reside. Her Facebook page states that Fermanova graduated from Ogle School of Hair Skin and Nails in 2005. She reportedly has a cosmetology license that expires next August.

The seven members of this holy order of cyber security hail from around the world and recently received their keys while locked deep in a U.S. bunker. But the team isn’t military in nature. The Internet safety program is overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit watchdog group that has access to a security system designed to protect users from cyber fraud and cyber attacks.

Part of ICANN’s security scheme is the Domain Name System Security, a security protocol that ensures Web sites are registered and “signed” (this is the security measure built into the Web that ensures when you go to a URL you arrive at a real site and not an identical pirate site). Most major servers are a part of DNSSEC, as it’s known, and during a major international attack, the system might sever connections between important servers to contain the damage.

A minimum of five of the seven keyholders – one each from Britain, the U.S., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China, and the Czech Republic – would have to converge at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the system and connect eveything once again. We’re imagining a large medieval chamber filled with techno-religious imagery where these knights cyber must simultaneously turn hybrid thumb drive/skeleton keys in a massive router, filling the room with the blinking light of connectivity.