Nikola Tesla vs. the Martians

I'd like to go on record as saying that claiming that a scientist said or did something crazy, which (s)he almost certainly did not say or do, is dirty pool.  Especially when said scientist is dead and cannot mount an effective counter-attack.

It's bad enough when (s)he's alive, as theoretical physicist and prominent science writer Lawrence Krauss found out, when some wackos who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe cherry-picked quotes from his talks to make it sound like he agreed with them.  (For Krauss's blistering response to the perpetrators, take a look at his article in Slate.)

But of course, one does not have that kind of recourse when one is dead.  Which explains why Einstein's quotes show up hither and yon to support all sorts of stuff, from theism to atheism to quantum-consciousness-frequency lunacy.  All of which makes me kind of hope that there's no afterlife, because it pains me to think of poor Einstein, watching his name being taken in vain by unscientific wingnuts, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

But lately, Einstein has been supplanted as the Most Misleadingly Quoted Scientist by a different man, whose work is cited by a different group of wackos for different reasons.  This scientist is mostly cherry-picked to prop up claims like Infinite Free Energy (and the conspiracy theories regarding government coverups thereof), UFO antigravity propulsion systems, and superpowerful directed energy weapons.  He allegedly had all of this stuff figured out, but depending on whom you believe, (1) his research was actively suppressed during his lifetime, (2) all of his relevant papers were mysteriously destroyed after he died in 1943, or (3) he forgot to write it down.  All of this explains his current surge in popularity (forgive the pun) -- because of course, I am referring to the brilliant electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla.

Tesla was certainly a genius, even if you only consider the things he actually did.  There's the Tesla coil that bears his name, not to mention his well-known work with alternating current, the induction motor, radio-controlled machines, wireless telegraphy, and a bladeless turbine.  He spoke eight languages fluently, had an eidetic ("photographic") memory, and was gifted with flashes of insight that would often result in his drawing diagrams from memory that would then guide his further pursuits.  He died in possession of 278 patents -- but died in debt and impoverished, which (of course) further adds to his mystique.

So it's no wonder that Tesla is a favorite amongst the woo-woos.  Which is why just yesterday, there was an article on the fantastically wacky website Exopolitics by our pal, Skeptophilia frequent flier Alfred Lambremont Webre, called, "Nikola Tesla Re-started Earth's Exopolitical Communication with an Intelligent Civilization on Mars in 1901."

Just the title makes so many ad hoc claims that it might be sufficient simply to analyze it, but we would be remiss in not looking at the text.  And it does not disappoint.  Webre doesn't beat around the bush:

There is substantial documentation of Nikola Tesla's role as an early pioneer in re-establishing in 1901 public exopolitical communications between our Earthling human civilization and an intelligent civilization on Mars, most probably our human cousins known as homo martis terris. Public Earth-Mars exopolitical communications had most probably been severed since the solar system catastrophe of 9500 BC that greatly damaged Mars atmosphere and its surface ecology, and destroyed Earth's great maritime civilization. 

Nikola Tesla's early work in re-establishing interactive communication with an intelligent Martian laid the foundation for the U.S. government's secret DARPA time travel and teleportation program 1968-73 that employed Tesla-based technologies, and ironically perhaps for the secret CIA Mars "jump room" program that was initiated in the early 1980s that reportedly employed grey extraterrestrial technologies.

The "great maritime civilization" is, of course, Atlantis, and the "jump room" is the teleportation chamber via which the CIA has been transporting people to Mars, beam-me-up-Scotty style.  These individuals apparently include President Obama, who Webre says was seen on Mars by Seattle lawyer and noted wackmobile Andrew Basiago.   But this is just the outer skin of the onion, because apparently there are intelligent creatures on Mars -- not just lots of dust and rocks, which is pretty much all the Mars Explorer has found, despite numerous claims to the contrary.

Now, apparently it's true that Tesla once made a claim that he'd received a radio signal from Mars.  The signal, Tesla said, contained the following message: "1...2...3...4."  Which doesn't seem like a very intelligent thing to say, considering all the other things that one could say.  I mean, if I was on Mars, and I realized that someone on Earth was listening, I'd probably say, "It is really dry and cold and dusty up here, please send a rescue ship RIGHT NOW."  But Tesla thought it might be from the Martians, and proceeded to send messages back, none of which were ever answered.  We now think that he'd picked up signals from the magnetic field fluctuations of Jupiter, and eventually even Tesla moved on to other stuff.

As proof of Tesla's involvement, and his communications with Martians, Webre has large quantities of quotes from Tesla that really don't prove much of anything except that Tesla seems to have wanted to communicate with Martians.  He also has the following advertisement:

So that cinches it, then.

And all of that is apparently enough for Webre et al.  After quoting Tesla ad nauseam, he goes on into even more rarefied air.  He devotes a large section of his article to the research of Gregory Hodowanec, who has received radio transmissions that were either from somewhere in the constellation Andromeda or else from a Martian named "AAAAAATTT."  I'm not making this up.  Hodowanec told Webre all about his communications, and ended by saying, "I would appreciate that you keep this info somewhat confidential now.  The Earth may not be ready for what I will have to say eventually.  Nothing dire, just fantastic and thus perhaps unbelievable!"

So Webre put the whole thing online, including Hodowanec's request, which I find kind of funny.

The problem is, of course, that Tesla may have been a visionary, but he wasn't insane (the jury is still out on Hodowanec).  So I have no doubt that he would have been swayed by the evidence, as any good scientist is.  Or in this case, the lack of it.  Mars is significantly uninhabited, and I don't think the situation was any different 113 years ago.  Quote-mining Tesla's papers to support some crackpot theory doesn't make it true, and it's really hardly fair, given that Tesla himself is not around to defend himself.

I hate to say it, but it's getting to the point that whenever I read anything online that has Tesla's name attached to it, I immediately put on my suspicious face.  Which is unfortunate because I know he did some really forward-thinking research, much of which I have yet to investigate, and it'd suck if I missed out on learning about something Tesla actually did because of loons like Webre.

So that's today's voyage through the stratosphere.  How Nikola Tesla definitely didn't talk to someone on Mars.  There's no one up there on the Red Planet, more's the pity.  If there was, NASA would know about it by now, and scientists would be trampling each other to death trying to get first dibs on studying the Martians, because how cool would that be?

I mean, really.

And just for the record: I would certainly need more than an early 20th century advertisement for soap to convince me otherwise.

There were giants in those days

My students, as a final projects, are required to perform an experiment of their choice, and report back the results of their research.  And one of the directions I give them is, "Beware of over-concluding."

It's an easy enough error to slip into.  If you test the effects of increasing concentration of nitrogen-based fertilizers on the growth of marigold plants, and you find that increasing amounts of soluble nitrogen make marigold seedlings grow faster, you cannot extrapolate that and assume that all plants will respond in the same fashion.  It is a difficulty that plagues medical researchers; a drug that has beneficial effects in test animals may not behave the same way in humans.

The woo-woos, however, raise over-conclusion to an art form.  They will take some anomalous observation, and run right off the cliff with it -- coming to some pronouncement that is so ridiculous that the word "unwarranted" doesn't even do it justice.  Take, for example, the conclusion the woo-woos are drawing from the announcement that Italian "anomalist" researcher Matteo Ianneo has discovered the ruins of an ancient city in the Saudi Arabian desert:

If you look carefully, you can see the ancient ruins next to it, even an old profile.  This is a sensational discovery that no one had noticed. In photographs from 2004, one can observe that there was nothing in this place, it was definitely covered by sand...  The strong winds and desert storms have brought to light this discovery that I think is very sensational.  Now archaeologists are to affirm this archaeological area.  Perhaps it is certainly ancient ruins belonging to an ancient and magnificent city, which dates back to a long time ago.  I hope I have given a contribution to science, in order to find a small piece that the story is all redone, and it’s hard to tell.

Well, so far, so good.  And so far, nothing too surprising.  The Saudi Arabian desert is full of ruins, many of them dating to a time when the climate there was far more congenial for human habitation:

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

First, though, it bears mention that Ianneo isn't the most credible witness himself.  He is, after all, the guy who announced last year that he'd found an alien base on Mars.  But even leaving that aside for a moment, take a look at what noted wingnut and Skeptophilia frequent flyer Alfred Lambremont Webre had to say about Ianneo's discovery:

Many who know of Matteo Ianneo's fantastic discoveries on the surface of Mars, other planets and earth, know how remarkable his findings are.  As a researcher and investigative journalist myself, I personally believe Matteo has surpassed all others involved with extraterrestrial geophysics... 

The lost cities that are spoken about in our earthly legends may be truth.  Gigantic monuments populate our Earth and it is my belief that they were created by actual giants who were moving in to leave a clear trace of their coming to our planet.  These giants were produced by continuous changes and an evolution in DNA.  It is also quite possible Giants were the very gods narrated in our remote history. The legends are from millions or perhaps billions of years ago.  Most of earth has suffered many cataclysms since then, and it is a misfortune that much of this history was destroyed. 

The gods of these legends existed long ago and at one time, they were very real to our ancestors, these beings of great intelligence and height were to be envied.  They were most likely our actual creators.  They built gigantic monuments so wondrous, many of the ruins still defy logic to this day.  Majestic pyramids and gigantic monuments were created for us, for our humanity.  Their technologies were able to model and mold the rock, to do with it whatever they wanted. 

Their technology had to have been very advanced.  Many of them were been able to save people to help them escape from their dying worlds, by bringing them here to our Earth.  The stories have all been redone and retold over and over throughout the years.  Many men of the earth chose to hide the truth a very long time ago, out of fear.  This history has already taught us.  The truth can have other implications, some truth that most humans cannot accept.

We have an observation: ruins of a city in Saudi Arabia.  Webre's conclusion: there used to be technologically advanced alien giants on the Earth, who created the human race, and whose existence is being systematically covered up by the powers-that-be.

It reminds me of the wonderful quote from Carl Sagan's Cosmos episode called "Heaven and Hell," wherein he describes the wild speculation people indulged in when it became obvious that the planet Venus was covered with a thick layer of clouds:

I can't see a thing on the surface of Venus.  Why not?   Because it's covered with a dense layer of clouds.  Well, what are clouds made of?  Water, of course.   Therefore, Venus must have an awful lot of water on it.  Therefore, the surface must be wet.   Well, if the surface is wet, it's probably a swamp.   If there's a swamp, there's ferns.   If there's ferns, maybe there's even dinosaurs.  Observation: I can't see anything.  Conclusion: dinosaurs.

But Webre has apparently one-upped even the "anomalists" that Sagan was parodying, with his wild talk of giant aliens and directed evolution and ancient gods.  He even goes on to tell us what the giant aliens felt like when humans turned out to be so difficult:

Atlantis and other cities have existed in the distant past, most of these great civilizations fell and these Gods probably view us with a great sadness.  Ancient peoples in the past were always power hungry, war crazed and violent in nature, some possibly even dealt with nuclear war. 

The possession of the planet was the only important thing to carry on.  But something went wrong. The suspicious and greedy nature of these peoples caused them to rebel and destroy all their knowledge. 

Today, I present my discovery that I’ve kept for a long time. I have made a very complex study of our Earth.  I have gathered images to prove the existence of gods in our past.  Beings who left their prints and pieces of their once great kingdoms behind here on our earth. 

I assure you that the legends are true.

Sure they are.

And there are probably alien bases on Mars, too, and NASA has decided that we naive humans couldn't deal with it if they came clean and told us about it.  Because Matteo Ianneo says so.

And accepting anything Webre and Ianneo say as correct can't be an over-conclusion, right?

Of course, right.

The trials and tribulations of Pope Francis

I have it on good authority that the new pope, Francis I, is either a spy in league with extraterrestrials, or else is an emissary of the Antichrist who will oversee the destruction of Rome.  Or possibly both at the same time.  It's hard to tell, frankly, because my source for this, an article called "Pope Francis: His Jesuitical, Extraterrestrial, 'False Prophet,' and Political Identities," doesn't seem all that certain itself.

And I have to admit that "good authority" may be a bit of an exaggeration, here.  This article was authored by none other than Alfred Lambremont Webre, who has previously claimed that President Obama has visited Mars, that the Earth would be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011 resulting in all of us being able to engage in "fourth dimensional sex," and that there is a brown dwarf star on the way that will reach its closest approach this year in July and which will trigger "massive electrical discharges" that will result in a catastrophic flood.  (None of us can see the approach of the star except for Alfred, apparently, because the government is hiding its approach from us with chemtrails.  He himself saw it using a "chronovisor," which is a machine that allows him to see the future.)

So, as you can see, he's not exactly the most credible witness right from the get-go.  Be that as it may, let's give him a chance, and hear what he has to say in his rambling diatribe.  Um, article.

Well, first, we have the obvious relevance of the date Pope Francis was elected:

March 13, 2013, the date of Pope Francis I nomination, was the 16th anniversary of the Phoenix Light, a massive space craft that overflew Phoenix, AZ. on March 13, 1997. March 13, 1997 is a significant event in the Exopolitical community that follows the Extraterrestrial presence on Earth.

Don't expect me to believe that's a coincidence.  Alfred either.  You just know that the College of Cardinals was sitting there, on the first day of the conclave, and one of them said, "Hang on... let's wait till tomorrow to decide.  Because then we'll be voting him in on the sixteenth anniversary of a random UFO sighting.  That will send a message, won't it?"  And all of the other cardinals said, "Amen, Your Holy Eminence, that sounds like a dandy idea."

Then, we have a bit about the "Prophecies of St. Malachy," about which I've previously written.  The last pope in the prophecies was one "Petrus Romanus" (Peter the Roman), who was supposed to be the Antichrist's right-hand man, and was going to be in charge of the church during the Tribulation.  So, there's lots of speculation as to whether Pope Francis is actually Petrus Romanus, even though he's not really Peter from Rome, he's Jorge from Argentina.  But hey, close enough, right?  After all, Alfred doesn't even touch on a much greater likelihood, which is that Pope Francis is actually George Bluth from Arrested Development:

Then we have a long, confusing bit about how Pope Francis, in his previous life as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was a Jesuit.  First of all, the Jesuits are somehow connected with research into extraterrestrials, so that's significant.  Don't ask me how.  Secondly, we all know how the Jesuits are an evil secret organization bent on world domination.  Alfred then tells us all about the "Jesuit Oath," which includes the following lovely passage:

[I] declare and swear that His Holiness, the Pope, is Christ's Vice-Regent and is the true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout the earth; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given to His Holiness by my Saviour, Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical Kings, Princes, States, Commonwealths, and Governments, and they may be safely destroyed. Therefore to the utmost of my power I will defend this doctrine and His Holiness's right and custom against all usurpers of the heretical or Protestant authority whatever, especially the Lutheran Church of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and the now pretended authority and Churches of England and Scotland, and the branches of same now established in Ireland and on the continent of America and elsewhere and all adherents in regard that they may be usurped and heretical, opposing the sacred Mother Church of Rome. I do now denounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince or State, named Protestant or Liberal, or obedience to any of their laws, magistrates or officers. I do further declare the doctrine of the Churches of England and Scotland of the Calvinists, Huguenots, and others of the name of Protestants or Masons to be damnable, and they themselves to be damned who will not forsake the same.

The problem is, the "Jesuit Oath" is a hoax.  It was a bit of anti-Catholic vitriol passed around by Protestant fear-mongers in the early 20th century (the same era that produced the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion).  So, really, these two pieces of nasty nonsense constitute two of the first-ever-recorded conspiracy theories.  The evil Catholics are trying to destroy the world!  No, wait, it's the Jews!  No, wait, its both!

In any case, the whole thing is wrapped up with aliens, somehow.  In a passage that should be enshrined forever in the Annals of WTF, Alfred writes:

One hermeneutical interpretation would have "the dragon" of the Book of Revelations identified as "Extraterrestrial civilizations that the False Prophet (putatively Pope Francis I) promotes to humanity. This role of a Jesuit Pope, promoting "Official ET Disclosure" along with other major institutions such as the United Nations and the major space-faring and extraterrestrial knowledgeable nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China, would certainly fulfill one dystopian view of extraterrestrial "Disclosure", that of a false flag extraterrestrial invasion such as was predicted by Dr. Wernher von Btraun [sic] on his death bed and related to Disclosure Project witness Dr. Carol Rosin.

Oh.  Okay.  What?

So.  Anyway.  I know that regular readers of this blog know me well enough to realize that I'm very far from a Catholic apologist.  I think a lot of the Vatican's policies are repressive, backwards, and medieval, and there's no indication that Pope Francis is anything but a party liner in this regard.  And there are, apparently, some questions to be asked about the new pope's past, especially his alleged complicity with abuses by the military junta that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983.  But other than that -- for cryin' in the sink, leave the poor guy alone.  He's barely had a chance to do anything yet, good or bad.  It seems a little premature to conclude that he's going to sell us out to the extraterrestrials.  Or the Antichrist.  Or the evil Jesuits.  Or whoever.  My guess is that he'll just continue the same policies of the last pope, pretty much, and things will go on in the church as they always have.

So, anyway, I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt for the time being.  And given that I'm an atheist, I think that's pretty generous, don't you?

Go Team Woo-Woo!

I love it when woo-woos team up.

It's a twist on the old maxim that two heads are better than one.  You get several wackos in the same room, all throwing around ideas, and what they come up with is a synergistic explosion of weirdness, far more wonderful than anything they could have come up with working independently.

Take, for example, this article, entitled "Brown Dwarf Star Flyby: Estimated Maximal Earth Impact June-July 2013," written by none other than Skeptophilia frequent flyer Alfred Lambremont Webre.  Webre, you may recall, is the one who said the Earth would be bombarded by "4th dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011.  This would cause the Earth's axis to shift by 90 degrees, meaning that we'd all evolve.  Apparently it would also mean that we'd have to get used to having "4th dimensional sex."

For the record, I'm not making any of this up.

Well, now Webre has teamed up with a variety of other contenders for the Nobel Prize in Wingnuttery, including:

• Andrew Basiago, who claims that he ran into President Obama on Mars
• Courtney Brown, an expert in remote viewing
• Marshall Masters, an "expert on Nibiru"

All we need is Diane Tessman there to add some Cosmic Quantum Vibrational Energy Frequencies, and we'd be all set.

But the foursome of Webre, Basiago, Brown, and Masters did pretty well without her, I have to admit.  Here are a few gems from the article I linked above:

• A brown dwarf star will make a close pass to Earth in summer of 2013, causing great distress to those few of us who survive the Mayan apocalypse.
• This brown dwarf star is also the Planet Nibiru, or, as the scientists refer to it in their scholarly papers, "The Lost Star of Time and Myth."
• Actual astronomers can't see this object coming, because the government has hidden it from sight using chemtrails.
• When the dwarf star passes by, it could be a hazard to Earth because of "electrical discharges between our Sun and the brown dwarf star."
• We have some idea of how bad this event is going to be because Basiago, Brown, and other remote viewers, using a device called a "chronovisor," looked into the future and saw that the Supreme Court building is going to be under 100 feet of water.
• However, other remote viewers said that we have only a 39% chance of our future timeline being "catastrophic."  A full 29% said it would be "non-catastrophic."  Presumably the other 32% just said, "Meh."
• The Global Seed Vault on the island of Svalbard is not a research facility devoted to preserving plant biodiversity; it's actually a huge underground shelter that will host two million Norwegians when Nibiru comes, leaving the rest of us to die horrible deaths.  Of course, given that then the two million survivors will then be stuck on a godforsaken island above the Arctic Circle, I kind of think I'd rather just let Nibiru take its best shot at me.
• Basiago, however, did say that these predictions might not come to pass.  The chronovisor, which was "developed by two Vatican scientists in conjunction with Enrico Fermi," might be showing "an alternate time line that does not show up on our timeline" coming from "somewhere else in the multiverse."  Which makes me think he's been spending too much time watching reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Webre, on the other hand, says that we can make sure we have a safe flyby if all of us work together to create an "intention vortex" to create "proactive consciousness" and keep the brown dwarf star from doing bad stuff.  Because of course we all know how much our thoughts and prayers alter the laws of physics.

 See?  Wasn't that amazing?  I told you it would be awesome.  Teamwork is so important.

But I think there are still some unexplored avenues, here.  Me, I think we should have the whole gang collaborate.  Dirk vander Ploeg and Nick Redfern could throw in some stuff about Bigfoot.  James van Praagh could get in touch with Great Aunt Mildred and find out if she can give us any advice from the afterlife.  Alex Collier and Paul Hellyer could call in some UFOs to pick up the survivors.  David Icke could wind it all up with a two-hour-long talk about how the government is covering the whole thing up.

It'd be a party!

Being nice to time-traveling lawyers

Much is made of how thoughtless our society has become, how we fail to help each other, ignore those in need, accept unkind behavior as simply how the world works.  I've no doubt that this can be true.  However, in some ways (and perhaps in reaction to the perception that we need to be nicer), we have become too accepting -- not of people, but of ideas.  Through our conviction that all people deserve respect (which is true) we have decided that all ideas deserve respect (which is nonsense).

In the media, this often plays out as pussyfooting around the purveyors of crazy ideas, calling their silly claims "alternative" or "unorthodox" or "non-mainstream" instead of simply "wrong."  It's why very seldom will you ever see creationism, astrology, or homeopathy flat-out labeled as false.  In our desperation to treat every idea "fairly," we have gotten so far away from scientific induction as the gold standard for thinking that we've lost the ability to tell a reasonable idea from an unreasonable claim.

I think this is insidious, because it leads one to the erroneous conclusion that stating that an idea is wrong is discourteous, or downright mean.  It robs us of clarity in that very realm where it is the most critical.

Let me illustrate what I mean by introducing you to the time-traveling lawyer of Seattle.

Last Friday, Huffington Post had an article about Andrew Basiago, a lawyer in Seattle who sounds to me like he could use some serious psychological help, or possibly horse tranquilizers.  He claims that there is a government program, "Operation Pegasus," that allows select individuals to time travel, and that using a machine invented by Nikola Tesla, he's had more trips through space-time than Marty McFly.

"The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about ten feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called 'radiant energy' was broadcast," Basiago told HuffPost reporters.  "Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space."  Travelers would then jump into the tunnel thus created, and "find themselves at their destination."

What evidence does Basiago have?  Well, he says he was photographed in a crowd... while listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg:

Basiago is the one on the left.  Yeah, the guy who conveniently has no recognizable facial features.

Basiago also claims to have been in Ford Theater when Lincoln was assassinated.

Time traveling, he says, does have its downsides.  For one thing, you take the chance of running into yourself, something that has happened to him twice, and is "disorienting."  Also, it can be difficult to stay put, rather like the problem that Christopher Reeve ran into in Somewhere in Time: "If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer," he explained, "the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles ... we would find ourselves back on the stage ... in the present."

Right.  Fields of super-charged particles.  I bet they look just like the transporter sparkle in Star Trek.

Then, we get the appeal to authority kicking in.  Basiago's claims are supported, the article says, by Alfred Lambremont Webre, a "lawyer who specializes in exopolitics."  Webre is, throughout the article, treated as a credible witness -- and nowhere does it mention the truth, which is that he is a raving wingnut who has merited mention in Skeptophilia twice -- once for claiming that the Earth was going to be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011, causing the Earth's rotational axis to shift by 90 degrees (see the post here), and then to claim that he'd met President Obama while visiting Mars (here).  So receiving support from this guy is not exactly going to earn you any validity points.

What gets me about this article is that except for the fact that it's filed under HuffPost's "Weird News" department, Basiago and his claims are treated with a fair degree of seriousness.  Never once is an actual scientist allowed to weigh in on the subject -- although many respected physicists, notably Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, have expounded upon the topic, and the general consensus is that if time travel is possible at all, it requires energy that is far beyond anything we currently have the capacity to create.  Never once did anyone say, "What you're claiming seems to be impossible.  Demonstrate, in some scientifically valid fashion, that you are telling the truth."  No, all that happens is an interview, with a couple of people at the end saying, "Well, it's an odd claim, but there are weird things in this world!" as if that somehow means that his claim merits consideration.

I find this all dreadfully frustrating.  For one thing, having this sort of thing show up in a respected news source lends it credibility it doesn't deserve.  For another, it leaves you with the impression that just because Basiago has a wild idea, we have to for some reason treat it with kid gloves -- to sit there and nod, listening to him ramble on about his to-ing and fro-ing through time as if what he was saying actually made sense.

Well, I'm sorry.  All claims are not created equal.  And Mr. Basiago, if you want anyone with a skeptical bent to take you seriously, you'd better have something more than a fuzzy photograph of a kid with big shoes to support your claim.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said.  And as that esteemed critical thinker also said:  "It is true that geniuses were often laughed at, but this does not mean that if they laugh at you, you must be a genius.  They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."