A galactic rabbit hole

It was over ten years ago that I ran into the bizarre claim that the Rh negative allele -- the gene that gives people type-negative blood -- comes from aliens.  According to Roberta Hill, who wrote a book about it, Rh-negative blood also comes along with a lot of other characteristics, such as a love of science, psychic abilities, unexplained scars on the body, and having an extra rib.

Since I only have one copy of the gene, maybe that's why I only hit one out of four, there.

Given that evolutionary genetics is kind of my thing, I happen to know that the actual origin of the Rh negative allele is a mutation that occurred something like fifteen thousand years ago in the Basque region of Spain, where the gene is still most common.  (My mom's ancestry is mostly from western France, so her being Rh-negative is no real surprise.)  

Anyhow, I proceeded to forget all about my alleged alien ancestry until yesterday, when a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to a site called Galactic Anthropology, which (1) expanded the alien blood type thing to include everyone with type O blood, and (2) launched me down a rabbit hole that it took me over an hour to escape from.

The post in question contains information from someone called "Myrah," who is supposedly a "Sirius B/Pleiadian hybrid" and who is "a medical specialist specializing in interdimensional implant technologies."  Whatever the fuck that means.  As far as her having ancestry from Sirius B, allow me to point out right here that Sirius B is a white dwarf star, the companion star to the (much) brighter Sirius A (from our perspective, the brightest star in the sky other than the Sun).  Being a white dwarf, it's the leftover core of a large-ish star that burned through its fuel and then went nova, so it's a little hard to figure how any inhabitants of planets orbiting it would have survived.

Maybe Myrah's family escaped because they're "interdimensional," I dunno.

Then, there's the problem that the other half of her ancestry is from the Pleiades, which is an entire cluster of stars, so I don't know how that'd work, either.

Anyhow, there's an illustration of Myrah on the site, and she looks a little like the love child of Uma Thurman and one of the aliens from Avatar:

What Myrah says is that the O blood type is extraterrestrial, and got into humanity because the Annunaki came here and had lots of sex with humans, but then they found out that O-type blood was "not compatible with other Terran blood types."  Notwithstanding that it's the most common blood type on Earth, and seems not to be associated with health issues of any kind.  But this didn't stop Myrah and her friends from engineering the Rh antigen, because supposedly that would stop people with O-type blood who mated with other types from having sterile children.

Which, of course, runs up against the minor difficulty that this never happens.

I'm a case in point, in fact.  My mom was O-negative, meaning she had O-type blood but lacked the Rh antigen.  My dad was A-positive.  If Myrah was right, I'd be sterile, and I have two boys who are completely normal except for the fact that they both look like me, which is unfortunate but not life-threatening.

Oh, and I also found out that if you are O-negative, you are less likely to be eaten by Reptilian aliens, because they "dislike consuming their own blood."  Probably accounting for how my mom made it to 84 without being eaten by Reptilians.

So because the whole blood type thing was kind of a non-starter, I decided to peruse the site a little more.  And that's when I vanished down a rabbit hole of weirdness that I still haven't recovered from.  Here are a few of the articles I found:

• How to be Reshuffled into a Higher-Density Avatar Body
• An Altean Ship as the Foundation of Atlantis
• Living Near Betelgeuse in the Orion Constellation
• Crystals As Bridges Between Densities
• An Atomic Toilet in Space

I swear I didn't make any of these up, even the last one, which includes the sentence, "After you’re done, some kind of haze comes up from below to make sure everything is very hygienic, and it leaves a nice smell behind, perhaps the smell of the Erran Oshksha flowers?"

Ha-ha, sure!  Erran Oshksha flowers!  Just like my grandma used to grow in her garden near Betelgeuse!

In any case, apparently O-type blood and Rh-negative blood both come from aliens.  Possibly explaining why my family is weird as fuck.  To the loyal reader who sent me the link, I just want to say thanks for convincing me that I understand my fellow humans even less than I thought I did.  But if "Myrah" has any more missives from Sirius B and/or the Pleiades, I'd just as soon not know about them.  I'm still going to have a while before I'm done processing what I learned about Atlantis, interdimensional implant technologies, and atomic space toilets.

****************************************

There were giants in the Earth

So our conspiracy theory of the day is: the US government is hiding living giant humanoids to create a race of hybrid super-soldiers.

This, at least, is the contention of one Steven Quayle, who in has created a video with the entertaining title "GIANT REPTILIAN MAN-EATING DEMONS IN A CITY NEAR YOU (part 1)" (capitalization his) that was sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia.  If you choose to watch it, please be aware that it's over two and a half hours long.  I made it through about fifteen minutes, which I think is pretty damn good, although by that time I felt like my brain had turned to cream-of-wheat and was leaking out of my ears.  The opening shows Quayle, interspersed with science fiction movie clips and backed up by atmospheric music, delivering the following scary lines:

I believe that the big lie that is going to be placed, hoist [sic] upon the world, is that the aliens created mankind...  Most people do not understand the evil.  Most people can't even embrace the fact that this isn't about old bones.  When I say mind-blowing, it will also be heart-freeing.  If I start talking about fallen angels having sex with Earth women, they snicker.  Well, that snicker tells me they've already made up their minds.  The super-soldier program is one of the most, well, almost unbelievable, yet so believable, programs that the US military is involved in.

Further along in the video, Quayle assures us that he doesn't believe in alien overlords.  Nope.  That would be ridiculous.  The Annunaki, he says, aren't aliens, they're fallen angels.

Which is ever so much more believable.

Worse yet, they're still around.  "They [the scientists] are starting from the premise that all of the giants are gone.  We're starting from the premise that there are modern-day giants now, and they're not suffering from acromegaly or some pituitary disorder, but they're literally going to fulfill the biblical statement of Matthew 24 where Jesus says, 'Just as in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.'"

The whole thing, Quayle says, is a "multi-thousand-year cover up."

Then, of course, the Smithsonian comes up, because no discussion of archaeological conspiracies would be complete without the Smithsonian being involved.

"It's interesting, Tim," Quayle said to the interviewer.  "There's evidence of the bias of the Smithsonian, and their contempt for out-of-place artifacts -- every time giant bones were found, it didn't matter if it was on the West Coast, the Arctic, the Antarctic believe it or not, the East Coast, the Ohio River Mounds, they always have a fabulous cutoff point, being once the Smithsonian is notified, and those bones are sent to the Smithsonian, they're never heard from again."

A giant skeleton in Brazil, or a clever example of Photoshop, depending on which version you go for

"The point has been to keep this biblically-relevant topic out of the minds of the people," Quayle adds.

Why, you might be asking, would the Smithsonian -- and other scientific research agencies -- go to all of this trouble?  After all, careers are made from spectacular discoveries like these.  If the bones were real, not to mention the Annunaki, you'd think that archeologists would be elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to publish these findings in a reputable journal.

The reason, of course, is that the government is intimidating the scientists into silence so that they can keep secret the fact that these giant dudes are still around, and are being used in sinister genetics experiments to create a race of human/giant super-soldiers.

Shoulda known.

Quayle also tells us that he won't appear on camera unless he gets the final say on video and audio edits, and that "No one has been willing to agree to that."  Which makes it kind of odd that he told us this while on camera.  And that he now has his own video production company and an entire YouTube channel of his own.

Of course, he might have been right to avoid the spotlight.  He says he's afraid for his life, that he's being followed by the Men in Black.

"I'll be lucky not to be killed one day.  People have disappeared, Tim.  People who know about this, who have evidence."

And once again, we could convince ourselves that all we have is a lone wacko with access to recording equipment -- until you start reading the comments, of which I will give you a mercifully short sampling:

• People say that it takes place in the future.  But I think it takes place in the past.  The year is 800 after all.  And it seems to have the message that you can't beat the titans without mixing with them.  Rendering man almost extinct.  No wonder Noah and his sons were the only real men left.
• Do you guys feel the Neanderthals are a creation of fallen angels?
• They are from the Nephilim thats why Neanderthal DNA has only entered the human gene pool through men and why Neanderthal DNA is the source of being white.  Enoch 105 says the children born to fallen angels were white.  Anakim were white blonde giants,  Amorites were white Red heads and some were giants, then the Horites were normal sized white hairy cave men with brow ridges.  Thats why Hitler thought if he just got enough blondes to have children, sooner or later they would get a superman.
• there's stones thousands of years old talking about the ANANANAKI

So there you have it. Giant Anananaki (if I've counted the "Na's" correctly) being hidden by the government so they can have lots of sex with Earth women, who will give birth to a race of immortal super-soldiers, as hath been prophesied in the scripture.

You'd think, though, that if the US has had this super-soldier program for decades (as Quayle alleges), they'd have brought 'em out by now.  Do not try to convince me that if Donald Trump had access to super-soldiers he wouldn't already have deployed them against the DNC headquarters.  This, of course, isn't the most powerful of the arguments against Quayle's contentions; but just based upon that, I think the likelihood of there being ferocious giant half-human, half-fallen-angel dudes is pretty slim.

I think it's much more likely that Quayle and his followers have a screw loose.

But that's just me.  And if I end up being taken prisoner by a troop of white hairy cave men with brow ridges and used in sinister scientific experiments, I suppose it'll serve me right.

******************************************

As a biologist, I've usually thought of myself as immune to being grossed out.  But I have to admit I was a little shocked to find out that the human microbiome -- the collection of bacteria and fungi that live in and on us -- outnumber actual human cells by a factor of ten.

You read that right: if you counted up all the cells in and on the surface of your body, for every one human cell with human DNA, there'd be ten cells of microorganisms, coming from over a thousand different species.

And that's in healthy humans.  This idea that "bacteria = bad" is profoundly wrong; not only do a lot of bacteria perform useful functions, producing products like yogurt, cheese, and the familiar flavor and aroma of chocolate, they directly contribute to good health.  Anyone who has been on an antibiotic long-term knows that wiping out the beneficial bacteria in your gut can lead to some pretty unpleasant side effects; most current treatments for bacterial infections kill the good guys along with the bad, leading to an imbalance in your microbiome that can persist for months afterward.

In The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life, microbiologist Rodney Dietert shows how a lot of debilitating diseases, from asthma to allergies to irritable bowel syndrome to the inflammation that is at the root of heart disease, might be attributable to disturbances in the body's microbiome.  His contention is that restoring the normal microbiome should be the first line of treatment for these diseases, not the medications that often throw the microbiome further out of whack.

His book is fascinating and controversial, but his reasoning (and the experimental research he draws upon) is stellar.  If you're interested in health-related topics, you should read The Human Superorganism.  You'll never look at your own body the same way again.

[Note:  if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Everything in this blog is true

Regular readers of this blog may remember that about a year ago, a student of mine attempted to kill me by sending me a video clip of an apparently pathologically stupid woman attempting to defend the practice of homeopathy via misquotes from Stephen Hawkings [sic], a claim implying that mass and volume are the same thing, and a bizarre quasi-analogy that involves throwing a bomb at your neighbor's house because his dog pooped in your yard.  This student, who by all appearances is a moral and upstanding young man, nevertheless induced me to watch something which he knew might well have the effect of making me choke on my own outrage and die in horrible agony.

Needless to say, I survived the first murder attempt.  Not satisfied with failure, however, this same student has tried again, this time sending me a link to a website called “Truthism.com.”

I must say that as murder attempts go, this one was pretty inspired.  The homeopathy clip was only about eight minutes long, while this website took a half-hour to read thoroughly – thirty minutes of my life that I will never again get back, and a half-hour during which I made many muffled snorting noises, rather like a bulldog with a sinus blockage.  In case you’re understandably reluctant to waste that amount of time, or possibly risk dying of Exploding Brain Syndrome, I present below a summary of the gist of the Truthism website.

1. Everything on this website is true. 
2. If you doubt anything on this website, you are at best asleep, and at worst a mindless sheep who is being led about by evil government disinformation specialists. 
3. Many things which turned out to be true were disbelieved, even laughed at, at first.  Therefore if you disbelieve and laugh at this website, it must be true. 
4. You do not have access to government Top Secret facilities and records.  Therefore, anything this website claims is in those facilities and records must be true, because you can’t disprove it. 
5. Science is just another means for the ruling elite to control the populace. 
6. The ruling elite also invented religion and morality as a way to control the populace.  The fact that science and religion are often in conflict is an indication that they are both wrong. 
7. The current ruling elite are the same individuals who created the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Nazca lines. 
8. These individuals, for good measure, also created humanity itself. 
9. Because the ruling elite aren’t actually people, but are super-intelligent reptiles from another planet. 
10. Called “Annunaki.” 
11. Did I mention that everything in this website is true? 
12. The fact that many ancient cultures depicted snakes in their art is proof that the earth is being ruled by reptiles from outer space. 
13. The caduceus, the symbol of medical science, is a pair of snakes coiled together.  It looks a little like a DNA molecule, which is the repository of all the genetic information in the cell. 
14. There you are, then. 
15. If that doesn’t prove it to you, then consider the following chain of logic: Crop Circles, Area 51, Ancient Astronauts, the Face on Mars, Freemasons, the Hollow Earth Theory! 
16. Ha. That sure showed YOU. 
17. And as a last piece of evidence; everything on this website is true.

I have to point out, at this juncture, how much it cost me to write all this out for you.  I can hear the pathetic little death screams of the neurons in my frontal cortex as I’m writing this.  But being the selfless reporter that I am, on the front lines of investigation, I’m willing to undergo significant risks to my own health, safety, and IQ in order to bring this story to your doorstep.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons SacroHelgo, 96ccb1 0c4b6a2ddbb4425f89f032a6f6ec9a19а, CC BY-SA 4.0]

And you know, it’s not as if I can’t see the attractiveness of this as a theory.  Think how positing the existence of evil, super-powerful cold-blooded reptilian alien propaganda specialists would explain, for example, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  But alas, it’s not enough simply to like a theory, it has to fit with the data, and at the moment, the lion’s share of the evidence is in the “against” column.  So, sad to say, we must conclude that despite the website’s repeated claims of being true, its domain name should probably be changed to “EgregiousBullshitism.com.”

And with that said, I think I should go lie down for a while and recover from this latest assassination attempt.  If this keeps happening, I may have to hire a bodyguard.

******************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: the late Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.  It's required reading for anyone who is interested in the inner workings of the human mind, and highlights how fragile our perceptual apparatus is -- and how even minor changes in our nervous systems can result in our interacting with the world in what appear from the outside to be completely bizarre ways.  Broken up into short vignettes about actual patients Sacks worked with, it's a quick and completely fascinating read.

Woo-woo casserole recipe

Today, I ran across a truly wonderful site, if by "wonderful" you mean "bizarre."  It is called Divinorum Psychonauticus, which loosely translated from sort-of Latin means "Spirit Sailor of the Divine," even though to my ears it sounds like a spell from Harry Potter.  The site is subtitled "Where science fears to tread, art staggereth."  Whatever the fuck that means.  Its creator, Erich Kuersten, seems to be a raving wingnut, although in his defense he's up front about that.  In his "About This Author" paragraph he calls himself "legally insane ten times over," although in his posts, he seems entirely serious; I saw none of the hallmarks of Divinorum Psychonauticus being a spoof site.  In any case, I bumped into the site because of the post, "The Bigfoot-Ancient Alien Connection: Solved!", whose title seemed to promise great things.

I was not disappointed.

The first thing I noticed was how deftly the article explains why we haven't seen Bigfoot.  It is not, as many think, because Bigfoot doesn't exist.  It is also not, as others explain, that Bigfoots are intelligent, wary primates who live in trackless wilderness with plenty of places to hide.

No, it's because Bigfoots have all of their junk DNA turned on, and that allows them to time travel.  In Kuersten's words:

Our DNA is tampered [sic] down, which is to say a lot of our 'junk DNA' is disconnected. We're like parrots with clipped wings, while Bigfoot's are unclipped. If we could access all 100% of our brain, 'turn on' the dormant DNA, we could do some of the things Bigfoot does, such us 'skipping' through time, being able to wink in and out of existence (and thus avoid capture).  In fact this is why they are so evasive... they're on the run if you will, from the castrating scissors of the Greys.

Well, I have to admit that if a gray alien with castrating scissors was chasing me, I'd try to avoid capture, too.

Kuersten then adds a nice seasoning of biblical "history" to the mix:

The story of the Great Flood and all that - the Annunaki went to wipe us all out and start again because they made us in their image and likeness and with many of their powers, their ability to tap into the higher dimensions of consciousness (there are nine total), to vibrate their Kundalini energy in and out of existence and forward and backwards through time, and into alternate dimensions.  So when the sasquatch /earlier race learned how to 'wink out' they no longer wanted to mine gold for their masters.  They had the power to hide, and went on the run.  The next wave of humans (the Annunaki/Greys spliced with early ape hominid DNA) had these aspects of the brain shut off, the wings clipped.  But the flood couldn't reach the high up mountains, which is why the bigfoot and yeti are often found there. 

Is that why that is?  I'd always wondered.  The Himalayas, for example, have always seemed to me to be a singularly inhospitable place, what with all that snow and ice and thin air.  If I were a primitive hominid, I would choose somewhere rather nicer to live.  Maui, for example.  But evidently the reason you never see sasquatches on the beach, wearing swim trunks and sipping drinks with little umbrellas, is because they got stranded up in the mountains after the Great Flood and now, 4,000-odd years later, they still haven't been able to find their way down.

But why, you might ask, are Bigfoots frequently seen getting in and out of UFOs?  I know I've asked that question myself, and usually my response has been, "hallucinogenic drugs."  But Kuersten disagrees:

The reason Bigfoots are sometimes found getting into and out of UFOs is explainable as either a kind of bigfoot terminator or traitor, working to infiltrate the bigfoot colonies, or various 'friendly' alien visitors--the equivalent of, say, Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. 

Okay, now I understand!  Some of the Bigfoots are in cahoots with evil aliens.  Or friendly aliens.  Or Kevin Costner.

Figure 1.  My expression while reading all of this.

And finally, how does Kuersten know all of this, as clearly there is no way you could get here via any of the more standard ways of thinking?  By this time, you will not be surprised to find out that the answer is: spirit animal guides.

I asked my 'channeled' guru panther animal spirit guide.  Believe it or not, that's what he 'told' me, in the weird non-linguistic way that spirit guides will.  Now, he's quite a trickster as I've learned on more than one occasion.  But this all makes a lot more sense than some of the daffy theories (I've heard), so I'm posting it here.  Make of it what you will, and remember, the truth is so strange no language can encompass it, so never be afraid to leave language at the door when entering the higher planes! 

Oh, I will, Erich.  I left language with baggage check, and am ready to be x-rayed by the TSA (Transcendental Safety Authority) before boarding my astral plane! 

If you're not satisfied with this selection from Divinorum Psychonauticus, there's also "Remembering my 2012 Galactic Alignment Euphoria, Non-Duality, Quetzlcoatl Visions, Cult Leadership, and Inevitable Fever," "The New Line of Alien-Human Hybrids - Wilkommen auf der Future!", and "Uma Thurman is From Venus."  And yes, in that last one, he is talking about the planet Venus, i.e., the place with an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, where the surface temperature averages 462 C.  (I've heard people say that Uma Thurman is hot, but I don't think that's what they meant.)

Figure 2: Uma Thurman's home world

So anyway.  That's our brief foray into the deep end of the pool for today.  It's kind of like a recipe for a woo-woo casserole, isn't it?

In a large mixing bowl, place 2 lbs. finely ground Bigfoot. Add:

• a chopped Annunaki
• biblical references to taste
• 3 tbsp. references to poorly-understood science
• 1 cup higher dimensions of consciousness
• 1 cracked UFO
• 1 pint time travel
• 1 spirit guide (preferably "panther," but "weasel" will do)  Mix well. Place in a greased baking dish, and bake at 350 F until well-done  Serve immediately.

Pairs excellently with most wines.  In fact, the more your guests drink, the more palatable the casserole will seem.

The new ninth planet

Sometimes I react differently to scientific discoveries than ordinary people do.

A few days ago, I read a press release from Caltech with some exciting news for astronomy buffs -- the discovery of good evidence of a ninth planet (a real ninth planet, sorry, Pluto) out in the Kuiper Belt, the region in the far reaches of the Solar System that was thought to be populated mostly with comets.

The planet has yet to be sighted, but the two researchers who found evidence of its existence, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, say their argument based in celestial mechanics is sound.  They got the idea when they discovered that six different distant objects with highly elliptical orbits all had their ellipses oriented the same way -- a highly unlikely arrangement to occur by chance, as the alignment of elliptical orbits precesses over time.

"It's almost like having six hands on a clock all moving at different rates, and when you happen to look up, they're all in exactly the same place,"  Brown said.  "The odds of having that happen are something like 1 in 100.  But on top of that, the orbits of the six objects are also all tilted in the same way -- pointing about 30 degrees downward in the same direction relative to the plane of the eight known planets. The probability of that happening is about 0.007 percent.  Basically it shouldn't happen randomly.  So we thought something else must be shaping these orbits."

So basically, they proposed that a new (and as yet, unnamed) ninth planet is locking those objects into their orbits.  Using that as their starting point, they ran a simulation -- and it matched the known objects' orbits perfectly.  "We plotted up the positions of those objects and their orbits, and they matched the simulations exactly," said Brown. "When we found that, my jaw sort of hit the floor."

Artist's conception of the new ninth planet.  The little yellow dot in the lower right is what the Sun would look like from out there.

Cool, no?  Which makes my reaction even weirder, because when I read this, instead of being excited by the new discovery, I did a facepalm and said, "Oh, dear lord, no.  This is going to bring all of the Nibiroonies howling out of their well-deserved obscurity."

If you are fortunate enough not to know about Nibiru, allow me to inform you that it is the fabled ninth planet that is the home of the Annunaki, better known as our Alien Overlords.  Nibiru supposedly only visits the inner solar system every few thousand years or so, which explains why you see so few Annunaki around these days despite the fact that our distant ancestors apparently knew all about them.

Evidently the "it's a myth" explanation never occurs to these people.

So you can see why I immediately thought, upon reading the Caltech press release, that the wingnuts who believe in Nibiru would latch onto this like a leech on a swimmer's ankle.  And sure enough, over at Area51.org, we had an article appear yesterday with the headline, "Did Caltech Researchers Just Find Planet X (Nibiru)?" 

Here's an excerpt:

A giant planet in a highly elongated orbit—that’s exactly what the fabled Planet X was supposed to be. Nibiru, as the ancient Sumerians called it, home of a race of aliens, the Anunnaki, that came here and genetically modified our ancestors. The planet described in these texts is giant, and only comes near Earth about every 3,600 years because of its, well, bizarre, highly elongated orbit... This hidden history, which is explained in detail in the books of Zecharia Sitchin, has been dismissed by skeptics in one simple stroke: where, pray tell, is this giant extra planet? 

It appears as though Caltech has just answered that question... 

Scientists have previously found evidence for a missing planet in the solar system, but this new finding is more substantial—and it’s the first time researchers have suggested that the planet is “giant”, just as foretold thousands of years ago.

Yes, well, that's all very nice, but there are just a few problems with all this.

First, Batygin and Brown's research indicates that the new planet is really far from the Sun.  It appears to have an average orbital distance of 600 AU -- one AU being the distance from the Earth to the Sun.  (By comparison, poor demoted Pluto has an average orbital distance of 39 AU.)  On closest approach, "Nibiru" might come 200 AU from the Sun -- which still puts it five time further out than Pluto is.

Second, the new planet is estimated to have an orbital period of 15,000 years, not 3,600, as the estimable Mr. Sitchin claims.  So even if it did come into the inner Solar System (which it doesn't), it would only be at 15,000 year intervals, which seems kind of inconvenient if you are acting as planetary overlords.  "You guys play nice!  If not, there'll be hell to pay!  We'll be back to check in... um... fifteen millennia."

As if that wasn't enough, we have the fact that third, the planet is estimated to be the size of Neptune, making it a gas giant with no solid surface.  Any Annunaki who were comfortable out there -- on an ice-cold planet, probably made largely of ammonia and methane, in perpetual darkness -- wouldn't do so well here on clement, solid Earth.

Oh, wait!  The Annunaki are super-powerful and magical!  Never mind.

So anyway.  These people never let little things like "facts" stand in their way, so I'm pretty sure that all of this will make exactly zero difference to the Nibiroonies.  Once you've accepted "no evidence except for a lot of self-contradictory ancient texts" as your basis of understanding, you really don't have much in the way of solid ground to stand on.

But at least you might now understand my reaction.  No insult intended to Batygin and Brown, who have done stellar work (*rimshot*), but given the woo-woos I contend with here on Skeptophilia on a daily basis, you can see why I greeted the Caltech press release with less than wild shouts of acclamation.

There were giants in the Earth

So our conspiracy theory of the day is: the US government is hiding living giant humanoids to create a race of hybrid super-soldiers.

This, at least, is the contention of one Steven Quayle, who in a video that (should you have fifteen minutes and are not otherwise occupied) you definitely should watch.  The opening shows Quayle, interspersed with science fiction movie clips and backed up by atmospheric music, delivering the following scary lines:

I believe that the big lie that is going to be placed, hoist [sic] upon the world, is that the aliens created mankind... Most people do not understand the evil.  Most people can't even embrace the fact that this isn't about old bones.  When I say mind-blowing, it will also be heart-freeing.  If I start talking about fallen angels having sex with Earth women, they snicker.  Well, that snicker tells me they've already made up their minds.  The super-soldier program is one of the most, well, almost unbelievable, yet so believable, programs that the US military is involved in.

Further along in the video, Quayle assures us that he doesn't believe in alien overlords.  Nope.  That would be ridiculous.  The Annunaki, he says, aren't aliens, they're fallen angels.

Which is ever so much more believable.

Worse yet, they're still around.  "They [the scientists] are starting from the premise that all of the giants are gone.  We're starting from the premise that there are modern-day giants now, and they're not suffering from acromegaly or some pituitary disorder, but they're literally going to fulfill the biblical statement of Matthew 24 where Jesus says, 'Just as in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.'"

The whole thing, Quayle says, is a "multi-thousand-year cover up."

Then, of course, the Smithsonian comes up, because no discussion of archaeological conspiracies would be complete without the Smithsonian being involved.

"It's interesting, Tim," Quayle said to the interviewer.  "There's evidence of the bias of the Smithsonian, and their contempt for out-of-place artifacts -- every time giant bones were found, it didn't matter if it was on the West Coast, the Arctic, the Antarctic believe it or not, the East Coast, the Ohio River Mounds, they always have a fabulous cutoff point, being once the Smithsonian is notified, and those bones are sent to the Smithsonian, they're never heard from again."

A giant skeleton in Brazil, or a clever example of Photoshop, depending on which version you go for

"The point has been to keep this biblically-relevant topic out of the minds of the people," Quayle adds.

Why, you might be asking, would the Smithsonian -- and other scientific research agencies -- go to all of this trouble?  After all, careers are made from spectacular discoveries like these.  If the bones were real, not to mention the Annunaki, you'd think that archeologists would be elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to publish these findings in a reputable journal.

The reason, of course, is that the government is intimidating the scientists into silence so that they can keep secret the fact that these giant dudes are still around, and are being used in sinister genetics experiments to create a race of human/giant super-soldiers.

Shoulda known.

Quayle also tells us that he won't appear on camera unless he gets the final say on video and audio edits, and that "No one has been willing to agree to that."  Which makes it kind of odd that he's on camera telling us that.  And that he now has his own video production company and has videos on YouTube.

Of course, he might have been right to avoid the spotlight.  He says he's afraid for his life, that he's being followed by the Men in Black.

"I'll be lucky not to be killed one day.  People have disappeared, Tim.  People who know about this, who have evidence."

And once again, we could convince ourselves that all we have is a lone wacko with access to recording equipment -- until you start reading the comments, of which I will give you a mercifully short sampling:

• People say that it takes place in the future. But I think it takes place in the past. The year is 800 after all. And it seems to have the message that you can't beat the titans without mixing with them. Rendering man almost extinct. No wonder Noah and his sons were the only real men left.
• Do you guys feel the Neanderthals are a creation of fallen angels?
• They are from the Nephilim thats why Neanderthal DNA has only entered the human gene pool through men and why Neanderthal DNA is the source of being white. Enoch 105 says the children born to fallen angels were white. Anakim were white blonde giants, Amorites were white Red heads and some were giants, then the Horites were normal sized white hairy cave men with brow ridges. Thats why Hitler thought if he just got enough blondes to have children, sooner or later they would get a superman. 
• there's stones thousands of years old talking about the ANANANAKI

So there you have it.  Giant Anananaki (if I've counted the "Na's" correctly) being hidden by the government so they can have lots of sex with Earth women, who will give birth to a race of immortal super-soldiers, as hath been prophesied in the scripture.

You'd think, though, that if the US has had this super-soldier program for decades (as Quayle alleges), they'd have brought 'em out by now.  Just think what a race of super-soldiers could do about, for example, ISIS.   So my scoffing doesn't mean that I don't think that ferocious giant half-human, half-fallen-angel dudes wouldn't be useful.

It's more that I think Quayle and his followers have a screw loose.

But that's just me.  And if I end up being taken prisoner by a troop of white hairy cave men with brow ridges and used in sinister scientific experiments, I suppose it'll serve me right.

A Comprehensive Field Guide to Aliens

That people believe all sorts of weird things without any hard evidence is so obvious as to barely merit saying.  What never fails to astound me, however, is how complex some of these beliefs are.

Witness the website that a loyal reader of Skeptophilia was kind enough to send me, which gives information about all of the different alien races that are currently visiting Earth.  Me, I thought there were only a couple -- the bug-eyed gray guys featured on various historical documentaries (for example, The X Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and the shapeshifting reptilian dudes called the Annunaki that are the favorites of conspiracy theorists.  These last have supposedly infiltrated world governments, and many prominent human leaders have been replaced by heartless, cold-blooded scaly extraterrestrials, bent on world domination.  Apparently the trained eye can still recognize which are the real humans, and which are the Annunaki replacements.  Personally, I'm suspicious about Arne Duncan.  Doesn't he look a little like someone who has only recently learned the rule, "when you smile, raise your lips and expose your teeth," and still can't quite manage to make it look authentic?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commona]

In any case, imagine my surprise when I learned that the bug-eyed gray aliens and the Annunaki are only two of a whole petting zoo's worth of different alien species.  And I'm not talking about your typical Star Trek type alien, who looks like a guy speaking in a fake Russian accent while wearing a rubber alien nose.  I'm talking some serious non-humans here.

For example, consider the Arcturians.  These guys are only three feet tall, but are super-powerful, telekinetic aliens with turquoise skin, enormous almond-shaped eyes that are entirely glossy black, and only three fingers per hand.  Visiting Earth is rough for the Arcturians because "Earth's vibrational energy is harmful to their fifth-dimensional frequency."  Whatever the fuck that means.  But that's apparently why you see so few of them around.

Then, there are the Dracos, who hail from, amazingly enough, the constellation Draco.  Even more coincidentally, they look kind of like dragons.  While I was reading this, I started talking to my computer.  "You... you can't be... from a CONSTELLATION!" I yelled, waking up my IQ-challenged hound, Lena, who gave me a head-tilt to communicate the one coherent thought she is capable of, namely, "Derp?"  "A constellation is a random assemblage of stars!  And Draco only looks vaguely like a dragon if you see it from this vantage point!  From somewhere else in space, it would look ENTIRELY DIFFERENT!"  Then I had to go get a cup of coffee and calm down for a while, and give Lena time for her lone functioning brain cell to go back to sleep.  So perhaps we should just move on.

Then there are the Els, or Anakim, which is a race of giant red-haired humanoids, who "ran the Garden of Eden" and built the pyramids.   And when I say "giant," I do mean seriously height-enhanced.  Some of them, this website claims, were 250 feet tall.  The description of the history of the Els on this website runs to several pages, and I won't even attempt to summarize it, except to mention that it involves Scotland, the Jews, the Templars, the Merovingians, L. Ron Hubbard, the Masons, J. R. R. Tolkien, the Three Wise Men, and clams.  It's worth reading.  I recommend doing it while drinking single-malt scotch, which would have the effect of making it a lot funnier if not substantially more sensible.

Then we have the Ikels, which are like little hairy humans with cloven feet.  The Ciakars, or Mothmen, one of whom was featured in the historical documentary Godzilla vs. Mothra.  The Pleaidians.  The Hyadeans.  The Cetians.  The Orions.  The Lyrans.   The Weasel-People of Wahoonie-3.

Okay, I made the last one up.  But really... it's no weirder than their actual claims.  The people who wrote this website obviously believe it all; it has none of the hallmarks of a spoof.  It's full of links to pages describing how various malevolent aliens are plotting to take over Earth, with intricate details of which alien races are in league with which, who might tentatively be on our side, which ones have already established bases on Earth, and so on.  You have to wonder if the people responsible for this are simply paranoid and delusional -- which, as a mental illness, I can have some sympathy for -- or if they are making the whole thing up to see how many people they can bamboozle.  (Speaking of L. Ron Hubbard...)

Sad to say, I've known people who actually believed in alien conspiracies, so the idea of someone falling for this nonsense is not as outlandish as it may seem.  And as I've commented before, once you've accepted that there's a Big Scary Evil Conspiracy, everything afterwards is seen through that lens.  My attempts to convince the alien believers that what they were claiming was complete horse waste were met with very little success.  In fact, afterwards, I sort of sensed that they acted a little suspicious of me -- as if my arguing with them just proved that I was in alliance with the aliens.

Or maybe... that I am an alien.  My AP Biology students are certainly suspicious in this regard, given that the summer reading assignment this year had to do with the possibility of life on other planets.  More than one of them speculated that I'd given the assignment only because I had a lot of knowledge base to work from, being an extraterrestrial myself.

I wonder which kind I am?   I don't want to be a little turquoise guy, and the reptilians are becoming a little passé, frankly.  Maybe I could be a Horlock, which are sort of like the Men in Black.  I look good in black.  Besides, they can disappear at will, and alter people's memories, which seem like pretty damn cool superpowers to have.

The extraterrestrial pantheon

One of the things that perplexes me about woo-woo beliefs is how specific they can get.

You don't just think there's an afterlife, you have intricate details about what heaven and hell are like.  You're not just superstitious, you think putting an acorn in your window will keep your house from getting struck by lightning. You don't just have a belief that the positions of the stars and planets control your life, you believe that people who were born when Mars is in Aquarius tend to like phone sex.  (I'm not making this up.)

So I'm left thinking, "How do they know all of this?"  I can understand being generally prone to goofy beliefs; it's amazing what a combination of confirmation bias and wishful thinking will do.  What I don't understand is how you get from generalized woo-woo to having access to minuscule details.

Take, for example, the website that I was sent a couple of days ago by a reader of Skeptophilia.  Accompanied by a note that said, "Bet you thought there was just one!", I was given a link to site called "The Six Alien Species Currently Fighting for Control Over Earth," in which we find out that Earth is apparently the prize in a six-way extraterrestrial game of "Risk."

First, we have the Sirians, who supposedly helped the Egyptians and Mayans build the pyramids, and were also in contact with the "Atlanteans."  Because, you know, there's nothing like bringing in a fictional civilization to beef up your claims that Earth has been visited by aliens.  The Sirians, we hear, are a highly technological civilization that comes from "the Sirius B star system."

You'd think the "highly technological" part would be obvious, right?  I mean, if they've come here from Sirius, 8.6 light years away, they're not traveling in a horse-and-buggy.  But there's a problem with a civilization coming from Sirius B; Sirius B is a white dwarf, meaning that it is a stellar remnant left behind after the calamitous death of a red giant star.  Any planets that orbited Sirius B were fried long ago, and the tiny star left behind is of low enough luminosity that there's no way it would warm a planet's surface enough to sustain life, even if any life survived the initial cataclysm.

But we won't let little things like facts interfere.  Let's find out about the five other alien species, shall we?

Next we have the "Short Grays," made famous in the historical documentary Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and which are also known as "Zeta Reticulums."  Evidently because that's the star system they come from.  They are "the authors of most alien abductions" and have "telepathic abilities (that) allow them to constitute a type of hive mind consciousness."

Then we have the "Tall Grays," who of course are more powerful than the "Short Grays," presumably because they're taller.  They are "the ambassadors of most meetings between human and alien forces" and "are keen on developing a stable human-gray hybrid race," which I'm hoping that they're doing by genetic manipulation, because otherwise we're talking hot human/Tall Gray sex, and as open-minded as I like to think I am, that's just creepy.

Next, there's the Reptilians, who come from Alpha Draconis, in the constellation of Draco the Dragon.  Of course.  Because what a group of stars looked like to a bunch of ancient Greeks who had been hitting the ouzo clearly would affect the kinds of life that would evolve on the planets orbiting those stars.  Be that as it may, the Alpha Draconians are "14 to 22 feet tall... (w)eighing an estimated 1,800 pounds."  Which is pretty badass.  Also, they have "tails, or even wings," which makes me wonder if the author has actually seen one.  Because you'd think you would be clear on that point, right?

Then there are the "Native Reptilians."  Here's where things get even more confusing, because apparently these are shape-shifting scaly dudes who "have infiltrated almost all aspects of human life and hold positions of power," and "built the financial system and influence all religions."  But if they're natives to Earth, then they're not aliens, right?

Cf. what I said earlier about not letting facts get in the way.

Lastly, we have the Annunaki, who come from a galaxy they call "Illyuwn."  They're the ones who created us, apparently; "through genetic manipulation and in vitro fertilization," we're told, "they upgraded the genus Homo to sapiens quality."

Well, all I can say is, they did a pretty piss-poor job.  If a super-powerful alien species altered our DNA to become a superior race, and as a result we still have Donald Trump running for president, I think the Annunaki should go back to Illyuwn and let someone more capable take over.

So there you have it.  Our alien overlords.  And if you were laughing while reading this, and thinking, "How does this person know all of this?", well, so was I.  But maybe your laugh will sound a little hollow when you ask the same question about how people know that god wants guys to grow beards and have sideburns (Leviticus 19:27).  Because a lot of the bible seems to me to be extremely detailed information about what's going on in the mind of a deity that no one has ever seen.

But that's religion, and that's different than believing in super-powerful beings who live in the sky and control our destiny, right?

Of course, right.

Stargates in my inbox

I get the weirdest emails sometimes.

I suppose it comes with the territory, given some of the stuff I blog about.  The problem is, not knowing anything about perhaps 80% of the people who email me with responses or comments, I often can't tell if the person was serious or not.

This leaves me in the awkward position of not being able to determine if an individual who has my email address is insane.  Take, for example, the email I got yesterday, from someone who signed it only as "A Devoted Reader:"

Dear Skeptophilia: 

Sometimes I like what you write but sometimes it just makes me mad.  Because I think you are determined not to see whats [sic] right under your nose.  I'm not calling it paranormal because that makes it sound made-up, infact [sic] it's science it's just science we humans don't know anything about.  That doesn't mean it's not real and there could be other civilizations that have that information and might be willing to share it with us if we would pull our heads out of the sand. 

Here are two websites that will hopefully make you think.  Keep an open mind when you read them and stop thinking that skeptic means a person who disbelieves everything and makes fun of what they don't understand. 

A Devoted Reader

The two websites turned out to be called "Saddam or Stargate?  What is Task Force 20's Main Objective?" and "2014 War for Men's Souls."   And I was going to say that these two websites read like a script for a movie on the Syfy channel, but that isn't entirely correct, because movies on the Syfy channel at least have to have some kind of plot.

Whereas these two websites make the random ravings of Alex Jones sound like a pinnacle of rationality.  Here are a couple of selections from "Saddam or Stargate?":

Imagine this scenario.  The U.S. government obtains intelligence that hidden somewhere in central Iraq is an actual stargate, placed there by the Anunnaki 'gods' of ancient Sumeria...  In this scenario, when Nibiru is closest to Earth, the Anunnaki will "take the opportunity to travel to Earth through that same stargate and will set up their encampment in Iraq." 

With time running out, President Bush invades Iraq.  American scientists raid the (Iraqi national) museum and close the stargate, thus frustrating the grandiose ambitions of the self-styled reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, Saddam Hussein, and making the world safe for the New World Order. 

Is this the sequel to the movie Stargate?  Is it a new episode of the TV series?  Is it a new Star Trek movie?  No, it is none of these.  According to Dr. Michael Salla, it is probably exactly what happened!

Probably exactly!  Spoken like a true scientist, Dr. Salla.  "We're probably almost kind of exactly sort of sure.  Maybe."

How do we know all of this for kind of definitely certain?  Our evidence includes seeing a soldier with wacky sunglasses in Baghdad:

As a U.S. soldier peered out of a passing tank, a young engineering student and a retired accountant contemplated one of the more common questions on the streets of Baghdad: Did the soldier's wraparound sunglasses give him X-ray vision? 

"With those sunglasses, he can definitely see through women's clothes," said the engineering student, Samer Hamid.  "It makes me angry. We are afraid to take our families out on the street."

So soldier with funny sunglasses = x-ray vision = being able to see what we look like naked = Saddam Hussein was in contact with aliens who gave him a magic stargate.

I can't see any flaw in the argument there, can you?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But that website reads like a treatise on formal logic when compared to the other one.  A brief passage will suffice:

Some orbs appear to be the manifestation of the human soul after we die; only visible to ultraviolet and infrared non-filtered cameras.  To days [sic] cameras pick them up because it is much cheaper to manufacture them without such filters.  This is why both UFOs (who the ancients said were “spirit” gods who could take human form-cloaked in the UV and IR) and ghosts can be captured by today’s technology, when not visible to the human eye.  The ancient Mesopotamia bible spoke of both spirits and the soul.  Nearly every ancient civilization makes reference to the soul; Egypt built a technological civilization around them.  They were quite obviously doing something with high voltage; Tesla coils and particle accelerators, to harness and launch the soul.  From the Zoroastrians, to Mesopotamia, even the Maya and pre-Columbians, all had this knowledge.

So there you are, then.  And I don't know about you, but having my soul launched by a particle accelerator seems like a cool idea.  I'd go for that as a sendoff when I die, except that I'd pretty much already decided that I want a Viking funeral.  Lay my body out on my canoe, set it on fire, and shove it out into my pond, and then all of my friends and family throw a huge party with lots of alcohol and music and debauchery.  More fun than your typical church funeral, don't you think?

But I digress.

I live in hope that the people who send me these emails aren't serious, but I fear that this one was.  It seemed awfully... sincere.  And to A Devoted Reader, a personal message:  I tried to keep my mind open, I honestly did.  But I still don't believe in stargates and Annunaki and spirit orbs and so on.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool if this stuff existed; hell, I'd love it if Bigfoot and aliens and so on were real.  But I'm just not seeing it.

So thanks for the emails, and do keep them coming, even though some of them make me a little worried that you people might know where I live.  Toward that end, allow me to mention, offhand and in-passing-like, that I recently moved to a small uncharted island off the coast of Mauritania.  The view is lovely, and it even has wifi.  Drop by to visit any time.

A Comprehensive Field Guide to Aliens

(One of a series of reposts, for your enjoyment while I'm on vacation.  First posted in May 2011.)

*****************************************

That people believe all sorts of weird things without any hard evidence is so obvious as to barely merit saying.  What never fails to astound me, however, is how complex some of these beliefs are.

Witness the website that a student of mine was kind enough to send me, which gives information about all of the different alien races that are currently visiting Earth.  Me, I thought there were only a couple -- the bug-eyed gray guys featured on various historical documentaries (for example, The X Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and the shapeshifting reptilian dudes called the Annunaki that are the favorites of conspiracy theorists.  These last have supposedly infiltrated world governments, and many prominent human leaders have been replaced by heartless, cold-blooded scaly extraterrestrials, bent on world domination.  Apparently the trained eye can still recognize which are the real humans, and which are the Annunaki replacements.  Personally, I'm suspicious about Dick Cheney.  Doesn't he look a little like someone who has only recently learned the rule, "when you smile, raise your lips and expose your teeth," and still can't quite manage to make it look authentic?

In any case, imagine my surprise when I learned that the bug-eyed gray aliens and the Annunaki are only two of a whole petting zoo's worth of different alien species.  And I'm not talking about your typical Star Trek type alien, who looks like a guy speaking in a fake Russian accent while wearing a rubber alien nose.  I'm talking some serious non-humans here.

For example, consider the Arcturians.  These guys are only three feet tall, but are super-powerful, telekinetic aliens with turquoise skin, enormous almond-shaped eyes that are entirely glossy black, and only three fingers per hand.  Visiting Earth is rough for the Arcturians because "Earth's vibrational energy is harmful to their fifth-dimensional frequency."  Whatever that means.  But that's apparently why you see so few of them around.

Then, there are the Dracos, who hail from, amazingly enough, the constellation Draco.  Even more coincidentally, they look kind of like dragons.  While I was reading this, I started talking to my computer.  "You... you can't be... from a CONSTELLATION!" I yelled, alarming my neurotic border collie, Doolin, who began to pace around and look for something to feel guilty about.  "A constellation is a random assemblage of stars!  And Draco only looks vaguely like a dragon if you see it from this vantage point!  From somewhere else in space, it would look ENTIRELY DIFFERENT!"  Then I had to go get a cup of coffee and calm down for a while.  So perhaps we should just move on.

Then there are the Els, or Anakim, which is a race of giant red-haired humanoids, who "ran the Garden of Eden" and built the pyramids.  And when I say "giant," I do mean seriously height-enhanced.  Some of them, this website claims, were 250 feet tall.  The description of the history of the Els on this website runs to several pages, and I won't even attempt to summarize it, except to mention that it involves Scotland, the Jews, the Templars, the Merovingians, L. Ron Hubbard, the Masons, J. R. R. Tolkien, the Three Wise Men, and clams.  It's worth reading.  I recommend doing it while drinking single-malt scotch.

Then we have the Ikels, which are like little hairy humans with cloven feet.  The Ciakars, or Mothmen, one of whom was featured in the historical documentary Godzilla vs. Mothra.  The Pleaidians.  The Hyadeans.  The Cetians.  The Orions.  The Lyrans.  The Weasel-People of Wahoonie-3.

Okay, I made the last one up.  But really... it's no weirder than their actual claims.  The people who wrote this website obviously believe it all; it has none of the hallmarks of a spoof.  It's full of links to pages describing how various malevolent aliens are plotting to take over Earth, with intricate details of which alien races are in league with which, who might tentatively be on our side, which ones have already established bases on Earth, and so on.  You  have to wonder if the people responsible for this are simply paranoid and delusional -- which, as a mental illness, I can have some sympathy for -- or if they are making the whole thing up to see how many people they can bamboozle.  (Speaking of L. Ron Hubbard...)

Sad to say, I've known people who actually believed in alien conspiracies, so the idea of someone falling for this nonsense is not as outlandish as it may seem.  And as I've commented before, once you've accepted that there's a Big Scary Evil Conspiracy, everything afterwards is seen through that lens.  My attempts to convince the alien believers that what they were claiming was complete horse waste were met with very little success.  In fact, afterwards, I sort of sensed that they acted a little suspicious of me -- as if my arguing with them just proved that I was in alliance with the aliens.

Or maybe... that I AM an alien!!!

I wonder which kind I am?  I don't want to be a little turquoise guy, and the reptilians are becoming a little passé, frankly.  Maybe I could be a Horlock, which are sort of like the Men in Black.  I look good in black.  Besides, they can disappear at will, and alter people's memories, which seem like pretty damn cool superpowers to have.

Ishtar vs. Easter vs. the truth

There has been a rather unfortunate upswing lately in sites that have names like "The Dark Truth About ____," and which try to put us all in a state of shock and dismay by informing us about the rather sketchy origins of some of our most cherished institutions and traditions.

Because, apparently, such institutions and traditions never change.  At all.  If you decide to participate in a May Day celebration next week, you are not just having a party to welcome in spring -- you are actively participating in a tradition that comes from the medieval witches' celebration of "Walpurgis Night" and are therefore you are directly guilty of paganism, devil worship, sacrificing virgins, and who knows what else.  (Actually, for the record, I like Jonathan Coulton's take on this tradition, as he describes in his song "First of May." WARNING: this is SERIOUSLY NSFW, and not for those who are easily offended.  But also funnier than hell.  You have been warned.)

It's not just religious traditions that evidently can't ever change.  Ann Coulter, that voluble purveyor of pretzel logic and ad hominems, has claimed outright that Democrats are all racists because the Democratic Party was a staunch supporter of the institution of slavery.

150 years ago.

Even worse, though, is when these claims tie a tradition to some dark origin... and then gets those origins completely wrong.

I.e., when people lie about stuff just to stir folks up.

All of this comes up because of a link that was sent to me by my pal and fellow blogger Andrew Butters, of the wonderful and entertaining Potato Chip Math.  Entitled "The Truth About Easter and the Secret Worship of the Annunaki," this site makes some rather astonishing claims.  Here, in a nutshell, is what the author says that you're doing when you celebrate Easter:

• Actually worshiping the goddess Ishtar, who was known to Germanic tribes as "Eastre," who was the goddess of sex and fertility.
• Revering Ishtar's grandfather Anu, who was a Babylonian god and also part of the Annunaki, who lunatics like the person who wrote this think are actual aliens who have visited the Earth in spaceships.
• Probably going to church services where ministers wear vestments, which are representations of the god Dagon's "scaly fish suit."  (For the record, I did not make that quote up.)
• Participating in an occult ritual (if all of the above wasn't enough).  All of the world's prevailing religions are actually run by Satanists.
• Hinting that you'd like to sacrifice children to the Phoenician god Moloch, and would do so if you had the chance.
• Taking part in "dark and gory rituals."

And here you probably just thought you were going to church, having Easter egg hunts, and coming home to a nice baked ham with mashed potatoes and steamed peas.

Okay.  So can we take a look at these claims, then?

First, there is no evidence that "Ishtar" and "Easter" are cognates, however they may sound a little bit alike.  Ishtar (and her Phoenician cousin, Astarte) seem to be names that have changed relatively little since their Proto-Indo-European roots.  To quote linguist Paul Collins on the subject:

The name of the goddess Eshtar (later Ishtar) occurs as elements in both Presargonic and Sargonic personal names.  It has been suggested that Eshtar derives from a form of 'Attar, a male deity know from Ugaritic and South Arabian inscriptions (Roberts, 1972: 39).  The corresponding female forms are 'Attart/'Ashtart.  The two names may have designated the planet Venus under its aspect of a male morning star ('Attar) and a female evening star ('Attart).  This would apparently account for the dual personality of Ishtar as a goddess of love (female) and of war (male).  In Mesopotamia the masculine form took over the functions of the female and a goddess developed contrary to its grammatical gender; perhaps under influence from the Sumerian Inanna who may have possessed similar attributes.

The origin of the word Easter comes from the name of a Germanic goddess of spring, Eostre, but her name has a different etymology, apparently completely unrelated to Ishtar.  The origin of the name is in the Proto-Indo-European root *aus-, meaning "shine."  (As such, the name is a cognate of the word "east.")

Okay, so maybe the Christians did adopt the bunnies and eggs and whatnot from a Germanic spring festival.  Can't see how that's a problem, really, if all of the Hoppin' Down The Bunny Trail nonsense floats your boat.  But it doesn't have anything to do with Ishtar -- and therefore neither has it any connection to Anu (and the Annunaki, who, by the way, are mythological figures, and therefore not real.  Cf. the definition of the word "mythological.").  Which means that any idea that Easter is secretly about sacrificing children to Moloch is three degrees removed from anything even resembling the truth.

And throwing in Dagon is just plain weird.  "Scaly fish suit," indeed.  I mean, all right, the pope's vestments are a little goofy-looking, if you regard them with an unbiased eye.  But I'm not seeing the "fish suit" thing.

The whole thing makes me nuts.  I mean, if you're going to dream up some ridiculous conspiracy theory, at least get the freakin' facts right.  Linguistics is not some kind of cross between free association and the Game of Telephone.

And don't claim that decent, ordinary people are actually participating in something they're not actually participating in.  You haven't scored any points in your favor by doing so, and you haven't proven anything except that you may be an asshole.

So to anyone who celebrates Easter, and who saw this floating around on the interwebz and was upset by it, you can relax.  Your festivities last Sunday were not somehow a thin veneer of good cheer over a "dark and gory ritual."  As for me, I'm waiting for next week.  The First of May sounds like more fun, all things considered.

Blond aliens, etheric bodies, and sentient spaceships

In the past few posts, we've dealt with issues like Siri predicting the Apocalypse, Noah's Ark has been found but the government is hiding it from us, elves are blocking a highway project in Iceland, and Catholic leaders determining that angels don't have wings.  Today, we look at an even more pressing issue:

Are tall blond aliens invading Australia?

The question comes up because of a post on the amazingly wacky site Pararational called, and I am not making this title up, "Albino Extraterrestrials in Australia."  In it, we hear about an encounter between a man in an undisclosed location in Australia and some aliens who were, to say the least, peculiar:

A few nights ago I was standing on my balcony at around 2:30 to 3 in the morning.  I usually go out there around that time each night just to look at the stars for a few minutes before going to bed.  That night however, out over the neighbourhood on a foresty mountain just a couple blocks away, I saw this light in the trees.  It was a very bright white sort of pulsing glow, not bright in that it was blinding but bright in that it seemed to light the trees like daylight but pulsing really slowly...  after a couple of minutes or so a glowing white ball looking thing started to slowly rise above the trees. it was very bright but not blinding like the sun or anything...

I got in my car and drove around the block down to where the forest starts and I got out and walked into the forest.  I couldn’t hear anything but I could see the general direction which the light was coming from.

I followed it until another of those balls came into view. I was probably about 30m away when I could suddenly see silhouettes walking around past the ball up ahead. I tried to get closer but I couldn’t will myself to move. A really kind sounding voice from behind me said “do not be afraid” and then suddenly I was able to move again which caused me to fall face first into the ground.

I rolled over and standing over me was a very tall man with long white blond hair and very pale skin wearing what looked like a white onesey, all fluffy looking...  He leaned over and helped me up and that’s when I noticed something really freaky. on either side of his neck was a small but long slit that moved when he breathed.  It kinda looked like gills on a fish but it was just one slit on each side. this man helped me up off the ground and lead me over to where this floating ball was.

So, let's see... thus far, we've got a tall albino alien, with gills, wearing what amounts to fluffy footed pajamas.  It couldn't get any weirder, right?

…around this ball were several smallish people wearing black hooded robes and holding long metal rods, sort of like a staff or walking stick. They sort of reminded me of grim reapers with a walking stick instead of a scythe.

The man was calming yet he looked really freaky, especially the gill things he had. The hooded people never showed their faces which was pretty scary looking. Made me think it was some sort of satanic cult or something but the tall man was able to paralyze me without touching me at all and I don’t know how he did that.

And the tall albino in pajamas was surrounded by midgets dressed up like the Grim Reaper.  Got it.

After receiving this report, the people over at Pararational decided to do what any sane individual would do, on reading a story like this; they immediately tried to figure out which race of aliens these assorted weirdos represent:

So the question now is what exactly what race of extraterrestrials did this man encounter in Australia?  What race was this alien, and what is up with the shorter minions?   Sounds reminiscent of the Grey Aliens and their taller and shorter members...  (A) “Very tall man with long white blond hair and very pale skin.”  This sounds very much like some descriptions of the Annunaki.  Are they back to check up on us?

If you're curious, the dude on the right is what the Mesopotamians meant by "Annunaki."  No gills, no long blond hair, and no (thank heaven) footed pajamas.  [image courtesy of George Lazenby and the Wikimedia Commons]

Which leads us to another story, this time from UFO Digest, called "Zeta Craft and Their Propulsion System," which tells us about contact with aliens called the "Zeta Race" that has resulted in a guy named Paul Hamden finding out all about their super-advanced technology.  We are told, in the opening paragraphs, that the authors are going to give us details about Zeta science and technology, but when you read further, you find out that the details aren't very... detailed:

The Zetas are physical beings who live in physical environments, but they also have the ability to extend their activities to a non-physical, energetic environment where different laws of nature apply.  The energetic realm holds templates, also known as etheric bodies, that define the properties of associated forms in the physical universe.  In these non-physical realms, consciousness has the ability to create with thoughts...

Our craft are of a nature that are able to support our biological framework.  These craft are living entities...  The craft behaves like a single-celled organism so that it is without doors or windows. 

I'm with you, so far.  I've never seen a cell with windows.  But do go on:

They (the craft) are grown from what was initially a hybrid framework designed by our best technical and scientific beings, so this explains why we have craft who can also "self-heal". The craft are generic, genetically modified structures. Not all craft have individual operators, but as there are certain parts of our DNA replicated, there is one standard craft for beings to use. There are specific craft for specific beings. These beings are utilized to move in different dimensional aspects of the non-physicality of this physical universe. 

Okay, non-physicality of the physical universe means... um... that some things are physical, and then other things aren't?  How can you have a non-physical thing?  I thought the word "thing," by definition, meant "physical."

This statement says that the craft are designed to respond to operators with Zeta DNA. There is a standard craft that can be used by any Zeta because the craft responds to certain segments of DNA shared by all Zetas. There are also specific craft that respond to unique sequences of DNA possessed by particular Zetas. The latter craft and operators are used to move to and from non-physical dimensions of the universe. 

So the spaceship recognizes your DNA, and then just makes the ship go where your DNA tells it to?

The Zeta adds that the craft, like all living things, needs sustenance or a source of energy to survive. He says, “There is a basic life force woven into the fabric of the universe. This energetic form, waveform, feeds and nourishes these cellular craft.” For the Zeta, the basic life force of the universe is the energy of consciousness. Everything that is and can be experienced is constructed from this fundamental substrate.

I... um...  "life force of the fabric of the universe..."  But...

The process of wave shifting involves interaction with the field that 'is and always is'; that is, the energy of source consciousness. So the craft's intention to move invokes the creative process at a particular level of this consciousness field to relocate its etheric body in the matrix. 

DANGER!  DANGER!  Sensors indicate that bullshit readings are reaching maximum allowable limits!  Shield breach imminent!

*Engaging warp drive*

Whew.  That was close.

Anyway.  I'm thinking that what we have, here, is just two cases of rampant hallucinogen use.  There's no reason to believe that there are Zetas, or Annunaki, or midgets in Grim Reaper suits, or tall pajama-clad gilled albino aliens hanging around the Earth.  And I think now I'm going to wrap this up, and then relocate my etheric body to the kitchen, where I can gain some sustenance from the life force of a second cup of coffee.