My guess is that he's going off of an account of a Shinto folk tale in which an Ofuda was used to move a stone.  He says it moved by six feet, which sounds to me like perhaps somebody in the story wanted to move a stone away from a cave entrance or something.

I've been searching for such a story, and have found a few where Ofuda's are used to create a magical effect, but I haven't found anything that looks like it might be Tsoukalos' source yet.

But while I don't know his exact source, I feel confident that this is what he was talking about.  This is the same guy, after all, who believed that the tale of King Solomon's flying carpet was actually a reference to an alien airship.

I found Tsoukalos' email address a couple of days ago and asked if he could clarify his statement.  I haven't gotten any response back yet.  My guess is that even he knows that this claim is weak, and doesn't want to talk about it.

If anybody knows of a folk tale that Tsoukalos could possibly be referring to, write a comment here and let me know.

I find it hilarious that this was his "only issue" with the show.  Apparently, even the believers who accept all the rest of the nonsense that I've been debunking are saying "Hey Tsoukalos... what the hell, man?"

There were some nice skeptical posts in there, which is refreshing to see:

(For more context, see my first three articles here, here, and here.  You can view the episode here.  Also see my follow up article on the golden flyer, and my recent article about mercury vortex engines)

The last three segments dealt mostly with flight, but we're finally moving away from that.  Now we're talking about construction techniques, and this is the topic that I see most frequently brought up in support of Ancient Aliens theory by theorists and laypeople alike.

Everybody knows that the pyramids are seriously big-ass buildings, made up of big, heavy stones.  Many people wonder, if the ancient Egyptians didn't have modern machinery, how the hell did they do it?

It provided me with some good blog material, such as the title story, and the story of the Ghost Cavalry.  It also provided me with an interesting story about a psychic detective that, in spite of having no details I could verify, was at least fun to talk about.

Many of the rest of the tales are even more nebulous than that, and don't have even as much substance to them to warrant a full blog post.  So I've decided to pick out a few of them to analyze here:

As I see it, Friedman falls into the mental trap of looking at history and seeing it's progression as inevitable.  With the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to see how historical events were really uncertain and chaotic, and how the outcome really could have been different than the one that history records.

From this misunderstanding he has looked through history for patterns, and whether they actually exist or not, has found them.  From these supposed patterns he's projected out into the future to try and understand the forces that will shape the next century.

This seems to me like a good case study to highlight the ways that smart people can fool themselves and build a case that sounds compelling, but when you examine it closely you see that it rests on very shaky ground.

I read this book last year and am working off notes from an online discussion I had at the time.  I want to make clear that even though I criticize the book, I did enjoy reading it.  Especially the narrative of the coming war in the 2050's.  He admits that the details of the war are more speculative than the other areas, though to me the rest of the book is almost as speculative.  But in spite of being better suited to science fiction than anything else, it's a fantastic story.

But let's look at the arguments that Mr. Friedman puts forth as the solid basis for his claims:

What I find fascinating about this image is how much of the resemblance to a human hand evaporates when you examine it closely.  Much of the distinguishing features of the hand are made up of very insubstantial mist, only giving the vague impression of the shape of a hand.

If you take the time to simply draw an outline around the clearest parts of the nebula, the illusion of a hand disappears altogether:

We might as well just label this segment "Ancient Flight Part 3", since they're just talking more about what they consider to be evidence for ancient flying ships.

You can view this episode here,  Each segment corresponds roughly to one of the ten minute YouTube entries.  So this third segment begins in the third YouTube video, beginning at 2:57.  The segment ends in the fourth video at 3:32.

You can see my reviews of the first two segments here and here.

So, let's get our hands dirty and look at the new claims being made here.