Top 7 Mistakes People Make on Dates

Top 7 Mistakes People Make on Dates - Paul Carrick Brunson left a successful career as an investment banking analyst to run his own nonprofits. Now he's a life coach and matchmaker.

Brunson, the author of "It's Complicated But It Doesn't Have to Be: A Modern Guide to Finding and Keeping Love," appeared on "Good Morning America" today to talk about "flow dating."

It's a style of speed dating created by Brunson in which daters use games and activities to break the ice and ease anxiety.

Brunson said he has found that people learn more about someone when they have to move and work on activities, rather than just talking over dinner.

Indeed, he said that dinner could be the worst first date. People learn about each other through action, but getting to know a prospective romantic partner at dinner can feel too much like an interrogation.

The most important thing to do on a first date is to learn whether the other person meets your most important criteria. For example, if one person wants children but the other person doesn't, that's a deal-breaker, Brunson said. And if one person smokes but the other is asthmatic, that, too, is a deal-breaker.

Top 7 Mistakes People Make on Dates

Brunson shared the top 7 mistakes he has seen people make when they're out on dates:

1. Showing up late without a call or a text

Now, if you're going to be later than five minutes for a date and don't call or text, it's a fail on your part. Showing up late starts the date off terribly and might even set the tone. It conveys a lack of importance on your part. We prioritize what's important in our lives by how much time (and money) we dedicate to it. That being said, either aim to arrive on time or just call the moment you realize that you're going to be late.

2. Dressing inappropriately

Underdressed, overdressed, or inappropriately dressed equals pretentious, not fun or easy. On a date, especially right after work, many women often forget to dress sexy. Your business causal outfit is not hot. Conversely, don't wear close to nothing. Just because he's salivating doesn't mean he "likes" your attire. Lastly, if the date is an activity like a hike, forgo the heels and mini-dress because you think they look cute. Always dress appropriately. This, like a lot of the things that I'm going to advise, also applies to men.

3. Having poor eye contact and a fake smile

Poor eye contact plus fake smile equals not confident and/or stalker alert. The saying goes, "Eyes are the windows to our souls." If you limit eye contact because you're looking away, you simply don't look confident. Also, fake smiles are fairly easy to spot. Too many inauthentic smiles and you enter the "looks like a stalker" category. Eye contact should be focused on the person with whom you're talking. Be sure to mix in a few nods and eye blinks. The rule of thumb is that short single nods are most effective, it shows that you're listening. Double or triple nods make it seem as if you're trying to speed the person up.

4. Using your cellphone on date

One of the biggest mistakes made on a date is using your cellphone or placing it on the table and glancing at it every time you get a message. This can show that you are disinterested in your date. When you're on a date, please keep your cellphone in your purse or pocket. Your date deserves your full attention.

5. Being rude to others

If you're rude to others, it shows that you have poor social skills and aren't nice. Nothing makes a date want to run away like a rude and impolite person. If you're on your date and the waiter forgot the extra lemon wedges ... and before the waiter is out of earshot, you shout "Stupid M****..." Hmmm ... that ain't nice. It will make your date wonder how you will treat him or her in a relationship. As in life, treat everyone the way you would want to be treated.

6. Talking about your ex

By making frequent mentions of your past relationships, you might be conveying that you're not over the ex. Living in the past is extremely dangerous. If you can't stop talking about how great the old flame was or how you enjoyed the things you both did, chances are you still wish you were in that moment. Do yourself (and your date) a favor by admitting you're not yet ready for a new relationship.

7. Not knowing BBR!

It's the B.B.R. - The Belly Button Rule. This is my favorite rule and one I talk about in-depth at my coaching sessions. It is the most telling and compelling of all body language tactics. The direction our belly button faces reflects our attitude and our emotional state. When we face our navel toward someone, we're subconsciously saying we're interested in the person or the conversation. Face your navel away, and you're saying "get me the hell out of this." Most people do not know this rule, so learn it, master it, and you'll be able to better read and control your interactions. Not listening shows disrespect and is the most passive-aggressive form of disrespect. Listen to your date.

Web-Extra Dating Tips From Paul Carrick Brunson

1. Start a Personal Ritual of Forgiveness

Many of us harbor past hurt and regrets. An effective way I've managed this is by not pushing these emotions away but harnessing them and moving on as a smarter person. Try writing a letter (you don't have to send it) to get out all your feelings. Or even a journal. Any way to give yourself a regular outlet for all your emotions, regrets and worries.

2. Create a Daily Mantra

Your belief system is everything so it's important to train it. Identify an inspirational quote or saying that you repeat to yourself each day. Here's one of my favorites: "I was born with potential, I was born with goodness and trust, I was born with ideals and dreams, I was born with greatness, I was born with wings, I am not meant to crawl so I won't, I have wings and I will use them and fly." -- Modified from Rumi

3. Commit to Befriending One Inspirational Person

Surrounding yourself with better people is the fastest way to change your life. The power of social media is that it allows us to connect like never before. Try dropping a line to your favorite blogger, pastor, author, etc. You might just find they respond.

4. Get a Love Mentor

Different from a friend, a mentor is a guide and a teacher. There are professionals you can hire but there are also many people in our communities qualified and willing to take this role in your life. Be diligent about your search, look for someone who shares your values and walks their talk. ( ABC News Blogs )

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Five facts about daylight saving time

Time to spring forward: Five facts about daylight saving time - Here's everything you wanted to know about the time change this weekend.

A clock hangs in Plantation, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

When is it?

The time change begins on Sunday, March 10, at 2 a.m., when clocks are moved forward by one hour.

Why 2 a.m.?

The time change is set for 2 a.m. because it was decided to be the least disruptive time of day. Moving time forward or back an hour at that time doesn’t change the date, which avoids confusion, and most people are asleep, or if people do work on a Sunday, it’s usually later than 2 a.m.

Do all states observe daylight saving time?

Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t observe the time change. U.S. territories that don’t go on daylight saving time include American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Why do we have it?

The idea is to save electricity because there are more hours of natural light. Studies have shown the savings to be fairly nominal—the time change leading people to switch on the lights earlier in the morning instead or cranking up the air conditioning, for example.

What is the history of daylight saving time?

Fun fact: The idea was first floated in 1784 by one Benjamin Franklin. While minister of France, he wrote the essay "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light."

The idea failed to see the light of day until 1883, when the U.S. railroads instituted a standardized time for their train schedules. That time change was imposed nationally during the First World War to conserve energy, but it was repealed after the war. It became the national time again during World War II.

After that, it was up to the states to decide if they wanted it, and when it would start and end. Congress finally enacted the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which standardized the beginning and end of daylight time for the states that observed it. In 1974 and 1975, the energy crisis moved Congress to enact earlier daylight start times, which were reversed when the crisis was over.

Daylight saving time since then had always been in April—until the Energy Policy Act of 2005 ordered the earlier start time to begin in March 2007. ( The Lookout )

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Five facts about sinkholes

Five facts about sinkholes - A gaping, 50-foot sinkhole that took the life of a Florida man, Jeff Bush, whose bedroom was swallowed up, made for scary headlines worldwide. But sinkholes, it turns out, are not as rare you would think. The phenomena, for instance, are common in Florida, if only occasionally deadly. Here, with help from sources including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Geological Survey, sinkholes explained:

 

Aerial view of the sinkhole in Seffner, Fla. (AP Photo/ABC Action News-WFTS TV)

How does a sinkhole form? 

"Cover-collapse" sinkholes occur when groundwater causes underground gaps that grow so big the ground above can’t support them. These can be dramatic events, since the holes can grow big enough to swallow a house, a road, a field or a swimming pool, even as those above ground go about their lives completely oblivious to the growing danger.

Are there other types of sinkholes? 

There are two other kinds: "solution" and "subsidence" sinkholes, which don't make the nightly news. That's because the changes to the topography happen slowly over time without catastrophic results.

Which states have sinkholes? 

The entire state of Florida is prone to sinkholes since it sits on top of a layer of limestone rock known as karst, which can be dissolved by acidic groundwater, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), other vulnerable states include Texas, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

Are sinkholes common? 

Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, sinkholes aren’t tracked. But CNN reports that from 2006 to 2010 in Florida alone, there were 24,671 insurance claims for sinkhole damage, totaling a whopping $1.4 billion.

Can humans cause sinkholes? 

Yes. According to an interview with Randall Orndorff a U.S. Geological Survey supervisory geologist, human activities like drilling for a well or mining, which lower water levels underground, can cause sinkholes. So can putting up buildings and parking lots, he added, which changes where water drains. “Instead of the water naturally soaking into the ground, it's now running off and being concentrated—being put into the ground at one point," he said.

The massive sinkhole in Guatemala that was created in June 2010 is an example of one that was probably caused by human activity. ( The Lookout )

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Giant Mars Crater Shows Evidence of Ancient Lake

Giant Mars Crater Shows Evidence of Ancient Lake - New photos of a huge crater on Mars suggest water may lurk in crevices under the planet's surface, hinting that life might have once lived there, and raising the possibility that it may live there still, researchers say.

Future research looking into the chances of life on Mars could shed light on the origins of life on Earth, scientists added.

 

This view of layered rocks on the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA'

The discovery came from a study of images by NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that revealed new evidence of a wet underground environment on the Red Planet. The images focused on the giant McLaughlin Crater, which is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) wide and so deep that underground water appears to have flowed into the crater at some point in the distant past.

Today, the crater is bone-dry but harbors clay minerals and other evidence that liquid water filled the area in the ancient past.

"Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside," study lead author Joseph Michalski, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and London's Natural History Museum, said in a statement.

A wet Mars underground

Space agencies have deployed many missions to Mars over the decades to explore how habitable its surface may have been or is today. However, the Martian surface has been extremely cold, arid and chemically hostile to life as we know it for most of the history of Mars.

Instead of scanning the surface of Mars for life, scientists have suggested the most viable habitat for ancient simple life may have been in Martian water hidden underground.

On Earth, microbes up to 3 miles (5 km) or more underground make up perhaps half of all of the planet's living matter. Most of these organisms represent some of the most primitive kinds of microbes known, hinting that life may actually have started underground, or at least survived there during a series of devastating cosmic impacts known as the Late Heavy Bombardment that Earth and the rest of the inner solar system endured about 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.

Since Mars has less gravity — a surface gravity of a little more than one-third Earth's — its crust is less dense and more porous than that of our planet, which means that more water can leak underground, researchers said. Wherever there is liquid water on Earth, there is virtually always life, and microbes underground on Mars could be sustained by energy sources and chemical reactions similar to those that support deep-dwelling organisms on Earth.

"The deep crust has always been the most habitable place on Mars, and would be a wise place to search for evidence for organic processes in the future," Michalski told SPACE.com.

Subterranean Mars

While researchers currently have no way to drill deep underground on the Red Planet, they can nevertheless spot hints of what subterranean Mars is like by analyzing deep rocks exhumed by erosion, asteroid impacts or materials generated by underground fluids that have welled up to the surface.

Such upwelling would first occur in deep basins like McLaughlin Crater — as the lowest points on the surface, they would be where underground water reserves would most likely get exposed.

Scientists focused on McLaughlin Crater because it is one of the deepest craters on Mars. McLaughlin is about 1.3 miles (2.2 km) deep and is located in Mars' northern hemisphere.

The mineral composition of the floor of McLaughlin Crater suggests there was a lake made of upwelled groundwater there. Channels seen on the crater's eastern wall about 1,650 feet (500 meters) above its floor also hint at the former presence of a lake surface.

Michalski was actually originally trying to disprove the idea that groundwater breached the surface in many locations on Mars.

"Lo and behold, there was strong evidence for that process in this crater," he said. "Science is special because we are allowed to change our minds."

An ancient groundwater lake

The researchers estimate that a lake existed at McLaughlin Crater for an unknown duration between 3.7 billion and 4 billion years ago. "That makes the deposits as old as or older than the oldest rocks known to exist on Earth," Michalski said.

Mounds seen on the crater floor may have come from landslides or subsequent meteor impacts. These are important because they may have rapidly buried crater floor sediments.

"That is really cool because rapid burial is the scenario that is most advantageous for preservation of organic material, if any was present at that time," Michalski said.

Since life on Earth may have begun underground, learning more about any underground life that might have lived — or may still live — on Mars could shed light on the origins of life on Earth, researchers said.

"We should give serious consideration to exploring rocks representing subsurface environments in future missions," Michalski said. "That doesn't mean drilling, but instead exploring rocks formed from upwelling groundwater, or rocks naturally exhumed from the subsurface by meteor impact."

Michalski noted that some people may ask, "'Why do I hear about the detection of water or possibility of life on Mars all the time?' The answer is because Mars is habitable in more ways than we ever realized for many years, and we are finding water in many forms and environments on Mars — many more than we predicted for a long time."

The ingredients for life the researchers describe, "including energy sources, would have been more available early in Mars' history, but it doesn't take too much imagination to picture a scenario in which the subsurface is habitable today," Michalski said. He cautioned, however, "that is much different from saying that life is there today." ( space.com )

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Grieving Parents Find Baby Alive in Morgue

Argentina: Grieving Parents Find Baby Alive in Morgue Five doctors at Perrando Hospital in northern Argentina have been suspended for declaring a baby stillborn, nailing her inside a coffin and placing her in a refrigerated room at the hospital morgue for 12 hours, Argentine media reported.

The child, who was named Luz Milagros, or "Light Miracle," was found inside a coffin at the hospital in Chaco, a half day after her April 3 birth.

"We were told that the baby had hypothermia and that this may have weakened her heartbeat, which would have been accentuated because [her] heart rate was already low before birth," the baby's father, Fabian Veron, 31, told newspaper Clarín.

A baby born three months premature and declared stillborn was found alive in her coffin by her grieving parents in Argentina.

The baby's mother, Analia Bouter, 29, who has four boys, said she never had a chance to say goodbye to her first daughter, since she'd been sedated during the birth, which came three months premature.

The grieving mother and father visited the hospital morgue 12 hours later. The couple was led into a refrigerated room and shown a tiny coffin that was nailed shut.

"[My husband] used a lever and opened the coffin," Bouter told the local newspaper, Diario, in Chaco.

The mother, expecting to find closure, instead came face-to-face with her daughter, who was wrapped in a white blanket and looked as though she was just waking up, said the mother. The baby stretched and let out a cry.

The mother of five said she fell to her knees.

"This is a message ... a miracle," she told Diario.

Rafael Sabatinelli, the undersecretary of health for Argentina's Chaco province, told the news site Chaco Día Por Día that his office had opened an investigation into the matter.

"Every member of the team that was involved has some responsibility, so they will have to answer for this," he said. ( abcnews.go.com )

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Everything you’ve been told about this exotic, royal, endangered species is wrong

Why White Tigers Should Go Extinct - Everything you’ve been told about this exotic, royal, endangered species is wrong.

A white tiger is a striking creature. Tigers are always impressive animals, but when you take away the orange, the result is a big cat that looks like a phantom out of a dream. They seem almost magical, and yet I firmly believe that the world would be a better place if there was not a single white tiger in it.

There are only about 4,000 tigers, at most, remaining in the wild. Yet there are probably tens of thousands of captive tigers around the world (there is no official census). This would appear to make a compelling case for the existence of zoos and private collections. If tigers can survive and breed well in captivity, then perhaps more can be introduced to the wild when safe habitat becomes available. Yet that system isn’t working the way we think it does. A huge number of the captive tigers are hybrids of various subspecies and are so inbred that they will never be suitable for reintroduction to the wild. No tigers are more emblematic of this problem than white tigers.

A white tiger from the Cincinnati Zoo.

I recently asked friends on Facebook to write down their thoughts about white tigers without searching for any new information. Some very intelligent people were under the impression that white tigers are a variety of Siberian tiger, camouflaged for a snowy climate. Others applauded zoos with white tigers for supporting conservation of white tigers while lamenting a lag in reintroduction efforts. Only one out of 27 respondents knew that white tigers are not a subspecies at all but rather the result of a mutant gene that has been artificially selected through massive inbreeding to produce oddball animals for human entertainment.

This level of misinformation should not come as a surprise. Many of the venues that display white tigers have a long history of shading the truth about their mutants. The Cincinnati Zoo, an otherwise respectable institution, labels their white tigers as a “species at risk!” Nowhere on the zoo’s website or at its tiger enclosures does it point out that this species at risk is in fact an ecologically useless hybrid of Bengal and Siberian strains, inbred at the zoo’s own facility for big money. The Cincinnati Zoo repeatedly bred closely related animals over the past few decades to produce more of the white tigers, which they sold for around $60,000 each.

One of the Cincinnati Zoo’s biggest sales was to the illusionists Siegfried and Roy. The Vegas duo bought three white tigers from the zoo in the early 1980s (along with stock from other sources) and quickly set up their own breeding program. Incorporating the white tigers into their act, Siegfried and Roy introduced the breed to millions of Americans. They referred to the cats as “royal white tigers” and, out of what was probably a good intention, gave the public the impression that this was an endangered species that they were helping to protect. Their famous Las Vegas show ended in 2003 when Roy Horn was mauled on stage in front of a horrified audience by one of his own white tigers. To date, Siegfried and Roy continue to claim on their website that their white tiger breeding program is part of a conservation effort aimed at saving “an endangered species.”

White tigers are white because they have two copies of an extremely rare recessive gene found in Bengal tigers (the gene has never been seen among pure Siberians or other subspecies). A very few white tigers were seen in the wild in the early 20th century. On the face of it, being a white object in the Bengal tigers’ tropical habitat of India and Southeast Asia can’t be good for a predator that needs to be camouflaged.

Other, more subtle problems that go along with the white coat would also prevent white tigers from ever becoming established as a wild population. The mutation (which is not albinism—white tigers can still produce melanin) also causes serious defects. White tigers in captivity tend to have problems with the way that their brains control their eyes and process visual stimulation. The animals are often cross-eyed in one or both eyes, bump into objects, and have trouble understanding spatial relationships when they are young. Animals with defects like these couldn’t survive for long in the wild, even though they have long lives in captivity. Other disorders, such as kidney problems, club feet, and shortened tendons, come from the severe inbreeding required to keep this recessive gene around.

Not all of the cubs produced in white tiger breeding schemes are white. Inbred, hybridized tiger cubs with an assortment of health problems aren’t good for much of anything except roadside attractions. Some are kept in hopes that they carry a copy of the white tiger gene that could be expressed in offspring. Carole Baskin, director of Big Cat Rescue, has taken in some breeding-project duds, including a cross-eyed white tiger born without an upper lip.

Every white tiger in a zoo is occupying an enclosure and a budget for food and veterinary care that could be used as part of a legitimate breeding program to protect the genetic diversity of endangered subspecies of tigers. There are fewer than 700 Sumatran tigers left on the planet, in captivity or in the wild. The Siberian tiger numbers no more than 1,000, at best. The survival of both subspecies is in jeopardy due to both habitat loss and a looming genetic bottleneck. We could safeguard the genetic diversity of both types of tigers with the cooperation of zoos and perhaps maintain them in captivity until the political issues that threaten their habitat can be alleviated. Some zoos, such as the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and the Minnesota Zoo, do this now as part of a broad species-protection plan. But every zoo that devotes an enclosure to white tigers under the cover of a lie about conservation represents one more place where a legitimately endangered tiger could be kept.

In 2011, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums banned member zoos from breeding white tigers, lions, and cheetahs . This ban should prevent top-tier zoos from continuing to breed white tigers, and the Cincinnati Zoo has recently stopped selling white tigers. But it doesn’t prevent member zoos from continuing to display the animals. And as long as there is demand, those top-tier zoos may still obtain white tigers from other sources. Meanwhile, the white-washing of white tigers by major institutions helps maintain not only ticket revenue from a misled public but also misguided support for the rescue of a nonexistent endangered species.

As William Conway, former director of the New York Zoological Association put it many years ago, "White tigers are freaks. It's not the role of a zoo to show two headed calves and white tigers."

A white tiger that has already been born does not have a vote in the matter and cannot apologize for existing. Humanity has a collective responsibility to care for the two-headed calves and white tigers that we create for our own entertainment, but do we really need to be creating more of the genetic disasters that pull resources away from truly endangered species? There is no good reason to breed another white tiger. We can choose to keep every remaining white tiger in comfortable isolation. Tigers are solitary in the wild (unlike lions, which are social animals that normally live in prides). They do not need the company of other tigers in order to lead happy lives either in the wild or in captivity. We can choose a future in which white tigers disappear into memory and hopefully one in which truly endangered subspecies of tigers maintain enough genetic diversity to be successfully reintroduced into a wild that can sustain them. ( slate.com )

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The Strangest Non-Stories of 2012

The Strangest Non-Stories of 2012 - A lot of things happened in 2012, including scientific breakthroughs, a presidential re-election, and a tragic school shooting. But a lot of things didn't happen this past year.

We realize it's a little strange to discuss things that never occurred — after all, countless things didn't happen in 2012, from an asteroid hitting Earth, to Justin Bieber marrying a supermodel, to Abraham Lincoln climbing out of his grave to praise Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" as being more historically accurate than "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

But there were a handful of stories that made the news, often with a splash, promising big news, and turned out to be non-stories, non-events. Here are a few.

Eagle Snatches Baby in Canadian Park

It was a bizarre, terrifying sight seen by millions of people: A large bird videotaped in the skies above a Canadian park suddenly swooping down and snatching a baby. The bird drops the child a few seconds later, flying away and leaving shocked bystanders. A day after the video went viral, students at an animation school, Centre NAD, admitted that they had created the hoaxed video. A statement issued by the school credited (or blamed) three of its students and explained, "both the eagle and the kid were created in 3D animation and integrated in to the film afterwards." As interesting — and scary — as the event was, it turned out to be a non-story.

Mayan Apocalypse

According to many, Dec. 21, 2012, was to be the end of times. Or the beginning of the best of times, depending on who you talked to. 2012-inspired folks tended to fall into one of two categories: The gloom-and-doomers expected global cataclysm involving death, fire, planetary collapse, pole shifting, and other unspecified natural (or even supernatural) disasters. The second kind were more optimistic, expecting Dec. 21 to usher in a new age of cosmic peace, harmony, and global enlightenment. Scholars patiently explained that despite dramatic claims to the contrary, the Mayans didn't actually hold much significance for the date, and they certainly didn't think the world would end on that date. Their calendar did not, as many assumed, "end" on that day; it was simply the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

Much of the hype and concern over the date originated not from ancient nor modern Mayas, but instead New Agers. Neither doomsday nor world peace broke out, leaving some people relieved, others confused, and many amused.

Bigfoot Proven Through DNA

This was also to be the year that genetic testing confirmed the existence of Bigfoot. According to a press release issued by a company called DNA Diagnostics detailing research by a Texas veterinarian, "A team of scientists ... confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called 'Bigfoot' or 'Sasquatch,' living in North America," the release reads.

Not only that, but Bigfoot is a half-human hybrid that had sex with human women approximately 15,000 years ago — or so the theory goes. If it all sounds a little dubious, it should: there was no evidence offered at all. The evidence, which has allegedly taken five years to collect and analyze, has yet to be published in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. Until and unless scientists are allowed to examine the evidence, Bigfoot DNA will remain a non-story.

UFOs Invade Denver

In November, an unusual video of mysterious dark objects moving very quickly and erratically over the skies of Denver, Colo., caused a national stir. An anonymous UFO buff showed KDVR Fox News reporter Heidi Hemmat home videos he had taken from an open field during the past summer of "strange objects ... nobody can explain."

The UFOs, it was claimed, seemed to be taking off and flying over the Mile High City at around Noon on many different occasions. The TV report featured an aviation expert named Steve Cowell who stated categorically that in his opinion the objects he saw in the video were not airplanes, helicopters, nor birds. Many people favored the flying saucer theory, though none were able to explain why no one in Denver had noticed the extraterrestrial spacecraft that repeatedly flew over their city at midday. Skeptics noted that the objects caught on film moved a lot like insects flying in the air, and that the cameraman probably simply recorded bugs. With no further evidence of aliens, the buzz about the Denver UFO finally faded away.

Denver wasn't the only city to have its skies lit up with alleged UFOs. A single week in December saw strange illuminated objects hovering in the sky above San Francisco and Brooklyn, N.Y. The dancing lights, it seems, were likely the usual UFO fare: some sort of floating object with a light. "It looks to me like it could have been balloons, carrying lights," Bing Quock, assistant director of the Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, told CBS San Francisco, of the San Francisco lights. Another idea: Chinese floating lanterns, which have spurred at least one other, now-debunked, UFO sighting.

A foursome of lights above Lebanon, Mo., in May, shown in a shaky night-vision video, also sparked a UFO report. While the videographer Jim Barnhill was sure the sight was of extraterrestrial origin, it seemed to have all the makings of an Earthly aircraft: blinking strobe lights characteristic of known aircraft; and a flight altitude, pattern and speed characteristic of known aircraft.

It would have been nice if Bigfoot had been proven or aliens had made their presence known (and not nice if an eagle had snatched a baby or the world ended). But there's always next year... ( LiveScience.com )

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