Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

End of the year woo-woo shorts

The year is rapidly drawing to a close, and here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're entering the lead-up to New Year's Eve by following a few breaking stories.

First, an Ottawa woman who identifies herself only as "Kayla" has reported seeing the ghost of her pet hamster.

In the story, reported in Paranormal Phenomena, Kayla states, "I've had my dwarf hamster for almost two years.  I went up to my room to put food into his little dish.  All of a sudden I saw a brown blurry 'thing' float upwards out of the cage opening.  I thought I should probably make sure he was okay. I checked under the shavings, where he usually sleeps, and found him motionless in the wheel.  I'm devastated, but this was the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me."

Of course, we here at WWW want to be the first to offer our condolences to Kayla on the loss of her beloved pet.  But it does bring up an interesting question.  If hamsters have immortal souls, do goldfish?  How about house flies?  How about tapeworms?  I don't know about you,  but I have a hard time imagine there being a "gray blurry 'thing'" floating up off my arm every time I slap a mosquito.  But maybe I'm just being narrow-minded.


But speaking of dead stuff, check out this story, wherein we find that researchers at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland have just completed DNA testing of a "Yeti finger" from Pangboche Monastery, Nepal.  You may recall the story of the finger; it had resided in the monastery since who-knows-when, but was procured for science when the aptly-named Tom Slick convinced the monks to allow him to take it.  It ended up in the Hunterian Museum in London, but a few months ago a sliver of it was sent to the RZS for analysis.  The conclusion?

The finger is human.  No doubt about it.  So as far as hard evidence of the Yeti goes, we're still waiting.


On the topic of the absence of hard evidence, we have the devastating prediction by noted wingnut Dan Green (no relation, so far as I know, to Dan Brown -- although Dan Green's ideas make The DaVinci Code seem simplistic by comparison).  The whole thing, outlined here, involves Lincoln Cathedral and the prophecy in Matthew 24 15-26: "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."  We have the following pieces of evidence:
  • The cathedral close houses the famous Lincoln Imp statue, a marble statue of a demon.
  • When the Brits won the World Cup in March 2010, the trophy was brought to nearby Sincil Bank Football Ground for a celebration.  The cup is like the Holy Grail, the blades of the helicopter are like a sword, and "Sincil" sounds a little like "sign, seal."  Like the signs and seals in the Book of Revelation.  Get it?
  • There's a mystical link between Lincoln Cathedral and Chartres Cathedral.
  • If you scramble the letters of "Chartres," you get "ratchets," which are gears that only turn one direction.
Conclusion: we're irreversibly heading toward fulfilling the prophecy in Matthew, not to mention Revelation, and pretty soon there will be a cataclysm that will result in the treasure of the Templars being found beneath Lincoln Cathedral.

C'mon, you knew the Templars had to show up, somehow.  They always do.  Every time you think they're safely tucked away, never to be seen again, they're back.  They're kind of the Britney Spears of secret societies.


And last, apropos of not much, we have a wonderful post called "Proving Atheists Wrong With Science."  Given that I'm sure that you want to preserve a few brain cells to kill with your favorite libation on New Year's Eve, let me just summarize this stunning argument:

If the average person drinks two liters of water a day, that's about 14 billion liters of water, give or take, consumed per day.  If, as the evolutionists claim, the Earth has hosted life for about three billion years, "we would have drunk about 9.5 times the amount of water on the planet."  Since the oceans aren't empty, this proves that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old.

The post ends with the statement, "Now what, atheists?"  (You'll have to imagine the threatening arm movements that go along with this.)  And we have to admit, the logic of this leaves us speechless, largely because it's hard to talk when you're face down on your keyboard.


So, that's a wrap, here at Worldwide Wacko Watch.  Hamster ghosts, Yeti finger disproved, Templar treasure in Lincoln Cathedral, and the presence of the oceans proves Young Earth Creationism.  We're always on the job, bringing the stories to your doorstep, even if occasionally we have to take a pause for a collective *facepalm.*

1 comment:

  1. I suspect that creationist water proof is a joke. It's hard to credit that someone could be that stupid and still put together a coherent sentence. It could be that some is deliberately trying for the world's record for number of logic holes per word.

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