There were giants in the Earth

I remember reacting with honest bafflement when Barack Obama was running for his first term as president in 2008, and one of the criticisms levied against him was that he was part of the "academic elite."

I mean, don't you want your elected leaders to be smarter than you are?  I sure do.  I know I'm not smart enough to run an entire country.  Hell, I'm not smart enough to be mayor of my village, much less responsible for anything grander.  But strangely, that doesn't seem to be the way a lot of people think.  My first inkling that I was in the minority for wanting the president to be brilliant was when George W. Bush was running during the lead-up to the 2000 election, and I heard people say they were voting for him because he was "one of the common folk" and "someone you could sit down and have a beer with."

Never mind that in Bush's case, he was born into money, and his folksy aw-shucks demeanor was a sham; it worked.  He got elected (twice).  "Vote for Dubya, At Least He Won't Make You Feel Intellectually Inferior" apparently was a viable campaign slogan.

The result of this attitude, of course, is that we end up with leaders who are grossly incompetent.  Some of them are genuine lunatics.  And shockingly, for once I'm not talking about Donald Trump here.

Eric Burlison is a member of the House of Representatives from Missouri.  He made a name for himself in 2013 by taking a copy of a gun control bill and using it for target practice at a gun range, then posting a video of the event.  Prior to the Biden/Trump debate in 2019, he informed people in outraged tones that Biden was going to be "jacked up" -- on Mountain Dew.  Last year he was one of 26 Representatives -- all Republican -- who voted against a resolution condemning white supremacy.  He has repeatedly claimed that the January 6 riots weren't incited by Trump, whom Burlison idolizes, but by the FBI, as part of a plot to discredit Dear Leader.

So far, none of this is outside the norm for the GOP these days.  But just a few days ago, Burlison showed that he'd set up permanent residence in CrazyTown with a claim that has a long history,  but that I'd dearly hoped had gone the way of the dodo.

Burlison thinks that the Nephilim are real, and that the Smithsonian Institute has bones of giant humanoids from North America (fossils that are evidence of the truth of Genesis 6:4, "There were giants in the Earth in those days"), but is covering it up.  

For those of you who are neither (1) biblical scholars nor (2) people who frequent the dark corners of Woo-Woo Conspiracy World, the Nephilim are a race of big powerful dudes mentioned in a handful of places in the Bible, and who were supposedly the offspring of humans and fallen angels.  And when I say they were big, I mean abso-fucking-lutely enormous.  In Numbers 13:32-33, we read, "And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight verily as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."

I mean, I'm pretty much of average height and build, but even so it'd take someone mighty tall to make me feel verily as a grasshopper.

A couple of archaeologists in Brazil excavating some Nephilim bones, or possibly a clever use of PhotoShop

Long-time readers of Skeptophilia might recall that way back in 2015 I wrote about a guy named Steven Quayle, who did a series of YouTube videos about how not only were there giant bones in the Smithsonian, but there was a program being run by the Evil Deep State to use Nephilim DNA to create a race of giant super-soldiers.  So that'd be pretty fucking scary, except for the fact that to believe it, you'd have to have the IQ of a bowl of pudding.

Which brings me back to Eric Burlison, who is all in on the idea of the Nephilim.  He's so convinced that "giants are real" (direct quote) that he was asked to speak at a conference of true believers called "NephCon 2025," which I swear I am not making up.

And one of the things he promised to do, in his keynote speech at NephCon, was to launch an investigation into the Smithsonian and their nefarious coverup of enormous humanoid bones that came from the descendants of fallen angels.

Your tax dollars at work.

Oh, and I haven't yet mentioned that Burlison is a prominent member of the House Oversight Committee, the main investigative panel in Congress.  Because having a member of one of the most powerful committees in our government giving the impression that he thinks Lost in Space is a scientific documentary isn't scary at all.

Every new thing that comes out of the current administration prompts me to think that we are truly in the most idiotic timeline possible.  Then along comes another elected official who does or says something even more idiotic.  It brings to mind the quip by Albert Einstein, "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

There's probably nothing much that can be done about Burlison; he's pretty well entrenched as the Republican representative from one of the deepest red regions of the country.  In that part of Missouri, a hard-boiled egg could run against a qualified Democrat, and people would vote for the egg as long as there was an "R" after its name.  So I'm afraid we're stuck with him.  At least if he's wasting his time searching for giant bones in storerooms in basement of the Smithsonian, he'll have less time to work toward taking away civil rights from people who are the wrong color, religion, or sexuality, which seems to be the other favorite occupation of the GOP lately.

How people like Burlison get elected has always been a mystery to me, but I'm beginning to think that it's not a fluke, but a systemic problem with the way a great many Americans think.  It all brings to mind the rather terrifying quote from French lawyer and diplomat Joseph de Maistre; "Every country gets the government it deserves."

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The bellringer

Between December 16, 1811 and February 7, 1812, a series of four earthquakes -- each estimated to be above magnitude 7, with the first and last perhaps at magnitude 8 -- hit what you might think is one of the most unlikely places on Earth; southeastern Missouri.

The centers of continents are ordinarily thought to be tectonically stable, as they are generally far from any of the three typical sorts of faults -- divergences, or rifts, where plates are moving apart (e.g. the East African Rift Zone); convergences, or thrust faults, where plates are moving together (e.g. the Cascadia Subduction Zone); and strike-slip faults, where plates are moving in opposite directions parallel to the fault (e.g. the San Andreas Fault).  The Midwest is located in the middle of the North American Craton, an enormous block of what should, according to the conventional wisdom, be old, stable, geologically inactive rock. 

But the 1811-1812 earthquake series happened anyhow.  If they'd occurred today, it would likely have flattened the nearby city of Memphis, Tennessee.

So much for conventional wisdom.

The fault responsible was named the New Madrid Seismic Zone for the county right in the center of it, and its capacity for huge temblors is staggering.  The biggest (and final) earthquake of the four was powerful enough that it was felt thousands of kilometers away, and rang church bells in Charleston, South Carolina.  The shift in terrain changed the course of the Mississippi River, cutting off a meander and creating horseshoe-shaped Reelfoot Lake.

So what created a seismic zone where one shouldn't be?

[Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of the USGS]

The topic comes up because I just finished reading seismologist Susan Elizabeth Hough's excellent book Earthshaking Science: What We Know (and Don't Know) About Earthquakes, which is one of the best laypersons' introductions to plate tectonics and seismicity I've come across.  She devotes a good bit of space to the New Madrid earthquakes, and -- ultimately -- admits that the answer to this particular question is, "We're still not sure."  The problem is, the fault is deeply buried under layers of sediments; current estimates are that the hypocenter (the point directly underneath the epicenter where the fault rupture occurred) is between fifteen and thirty kilometers beneath the surface.  And since the quakes in question happened before seismometers were invented, we're going off inferences from written records, and such traces that were left on the surface (such as "sand blows," where compression forces subsurface sand upward through cracks in the stratum, and it explodes through the surface).

As far as the cause, Hough has a plausible explanation; the New Madrid Seismic Zone is an example of a failed rift, where a mantle plume (or hotspot) tried to crack the continent in half, but didn't succeed.  This stretched the plate and created a weak point -- called the Reelfoot Rift -- where any subsequent stresses were likely to trigger a rupture.  Since that time, the North American Plate has been continuously pushed by convection at the Mid Atlantic Rift, which is compressing the entire plate from east to west; those stresses cause buckling at vulnerable points, and may well have been the origin of the New Madrid earthquakes.

One puzzle, though, is what happened to the hotspot since then.  This is still a matter of speculation.  Some geologists think that friction with the rigid and (relatively) cold underside of the plate damped down the mantle plume and ultimately shut down convection.  Others think that as the North American Plate moved, it simply slid off the hotspot, making the plume appear to move eastward (when in actuality, the plate itself was moving westward).  This may be why another anomalous mid-plate earthquake zone is in coastal South Carolina, and it might also be the cause of the Bermuda Rise.

That point is still being debated.

Another open question is the current risk of the fault failing again.  There's paleoseismic data suggesting major earthquake sequences from the Reelfoot Rift/New Madrid Seismic Zone in around 900 and 1400 C.E., suggesting a timing between events of about four to five hundred years.  But these are estimates themselves, and I probably don't need to tell you that earthquake prediction is still far from precise.  Faults don't fail on a schedule -- which is why it annoys me every time I see someone say that an area is "overdue for an earthquake," as if they were on some kind of calendar.

Still, I can say with at least moderate confidence that it's unlikely to generate another big earthquake soon, which is kind of a relief.

So that's our geological curiosity of the day.  I have a curious family connection to the area; my wandering ancestor Sarah (Handsberry) Overby-Biles-Rulong (she married three times, had nine children, and outlived all three husbands) lived in the town of New Madrid in 1800, after traveling there from her home near Philadelphia as a single woman in the last decade of the eighteenth century.  I've never been able to discover what impelled her to leave her home and, with a group of relative strangers, cross what was then trackless wilderness to a remote outpost, and I've often wondered if she might have been either running away from something, or perhaps might have been a prostitute.  I'm not trying to malign her memory; it bears mention that a good eighty percent of my forebears were rogues, ne'er-do-wells, miscreants, and petty criminals, so it would hardly be a surprise to add prostitution to the mix.  And whatever else you can say about my family members, they were interesting.  I've often wished I could magically get a hold of Sarah's diary.

In any case, Sarah was in Lafayette, Louisiana by 1801, so she missed the New Madrid earthquakes by ten years.  But kind of interesting that she lived for a time in the little village that was about to be the epicenter of one of the biggest earthquakes ever to hit the continental United States, one that rang bells thousands of kilometers away, and which created a geological mystery the scientists are still trying to work out.

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A fight over decals

One of my guiding principles in life is "Don't be a dick."

I don't mind taking on battles when I need to, or when I think the outcome is sufficiently important; but I truly don't understand people who do choose to do things solely to piss others off.  What are they getting out of this?  At the end of the day, I do not judge how good a day I had, or how happy I am, based on the number of total strangers whose cages I rattled.

But to me, that seems like the only possible reason for the recent rash of police and fire departments slapping decals with crosses and "In God We Trust" all over their vehicles.  It's happened in Baytown, Texas; Youngsville, Louisiana; Covington, Louisiana; Cedartown, Georgia; Bay County, Florida; and Stone County, Missouri.

And those are only the ones in the last couple of months.  It's spreading like wildfire, and has generated more than one lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the most recent in Brewster County, Texas.

Most of the arguments you hear against the practice are that the decals imply two things.  First, that the decals are a sly way of hinting that anyone who is an agnostic or atheist (or a practitioner of another faith; no one's in any doubt about which god the slogan's referring to) is liable not to receive the same police protection as Christians do.  The second is to ask how non-Christian police officers might feel about having to ride around in a squad car with a Christian religious slogan on the side.  These are government-owned vehicles, and therefore paid for by taxpayers, Christian and non-Christian alike.  The idea that these vehicles are emblazoned with a decal promoting religion -- worse, one particular religion -- is an unfortunate reminder about policies regarding inclusion, tolerance, and equality.

[image from the Hutchinson County, Texas Sheriff's Department Facebook page]

And I certainly agree with all of that.  But the question no one seems to ask is why these decals should be on the vehicles in the first place.  What is the argument for why they're necessary?  If you claim that without the decal, god wouldn't protect the cops in the car, then all I can say is that you have a pretty odd conception of how a benevolent deity might be expected to behave.  If it's patriotism, there are many other patriotic slogans you could choose.  So what purpose do they serve?

What purpose, in fact, does "one nation, under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance serve?  Or "In God We Trust" printed on our money?  No one's saying you can't paint bible quotes on the roof of your privately-owned house if you want.  Or, like a farmer who lives near me, post signs with cheerful slogans like "The Wages Of Sin Are Death" along the highway.  But these are government-sponsored, government-endorsed declarations of religion.  Why do the religious feel compelled to promote religion on the sides of police cars and fire engines -- and on our money?  Why is it moral to require students in every public school in America to recite a Pledge every morning that forces non-Christian students either to refuse to say it (sometimes at the cost of punishment and humiliation), or to lie publicly about their beliefs?

The only good answer I've been able to come up with to this question is: the Christian majority, i.e. the people who make the laws in this country, do it simply because they can.  If it pisses people off -- well, that's just too bad.  In fact, some of the most vocal proponents of the religious decals on police cars seem to be happy that they're making people mad.  Take, for example, Police Chief Adrian Garcia of Childress, Texas, who was told he risked a lawsuit from the FFRF for his decision to put big decals saying "In God We Trust" on the backs of his squad cars.

"They can go fly a kite," Garcia said.

So it boils down to people who really don't care if what they do excludes, devalues, or angers other American citizens, doing something because they're in a position of power so formidable that no one can stop them.  Further evidence that the much-talked-about-on-Fox-News "war on Christianity" in the United States is complete horseshit.

But it's a position I really don't get.  Like anything, political correctness can get out of hand, and there will always be people who will get their knickers in a twist over nothing.  But deliberately setting out to marginalize a significant percentage of Americans for no good reason, at the public expense?

That is called "being a dick."

Science vs. indoctrination

Indoctrinate (v.) -- to teach someone to accept fully the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group, in an uncritical fashion; to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle.

Objective (adj.) -- based on facts rather than on feelings or opinions.

There.  I thought I'd get a couple of definitions out of the way right at the outset.  It's not that I think my readers are in any particular need of refreshing their memories on the meanings; it's more that I want to be completely clear about how asinine Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin is being.

My reason for saying this is that, yet again, we are seeing an attack on the teaching of evolution in science classrooms, this time by a lawmaker who not only has no apparent understanding of science, but could use a refresher on how to use the Concise Oxford.  He has introduced a bill into the Missouri House of Representatives that would mandate that schools notify parents if evolution is being taught in biology classrooms -- and allow parents to take their children out of those classes while the topic is being covered, with no grade penalty or loss of credit.

"Our schools basically mandate that we teach one side," Brattin said, in an interview with Kansas City's KCTV News.  "It is an indoctrination because it is not an objective approach.  It’s an absolute infringement on people’s beliefs.  What’s being taught is just as much faith and, you know, just as much pulled out of the air as, say, any religion."

Okay, let me get this straight, Rep. Brattin.  We have, on the one hand, teachers using a curriculum that is based on the work of countless scientists, is supported by every scrap of hard evidence that there is, and has the support of damn near 100% of working biologists.  On the other hand, we have the creation myth of a bunch of illiterate Bronze-Age sheepherders, who also thought that bats were birds (Leviticus 11:19) and that god created day and night before he created the sun (Genesis 1:5-14), and teaches a worldview that is only still around because it's hammered into children's heads incessantly along with the message that questioning the logic of the whole thing is equivalent to listening to Satan.

And the biologists are the ones who are guilty of indoctrination, and of not being objective?

Predictably, scientists are outraged at Brattin's bill.  Glenn Branch, of the National Center for Science Education, said, "The bill would eviscerate the teaching of biology in Missouri.  Evolution inextricably pervades the biological sciences; it therefore pervades, or at any rate ought to pervade, biology education at the K–12 level.  There simply is no alternative to learning about it; there is no substitute activity."

No.  No, there isn't.  Evolution is the founding principle of biology, the idea by which (along with genetics) all of the rest of the science is understood.  Just as chemistry is not comprehensible without atomic theory, and physics is not comprehensible without the concept of forces and energy, biology becomes a meaningless jumble of vocabulary and terminology without the unifying model of evolution through natural selection.  Allowing students to "opt out" of learning about evolution is denying them the opportunity to find out how science actually works -- in essence, allowing them to remain ignorant.  That Brattin thinks the evolutionary model is "faith" and "pulled out of the air" shows that he has no real understanding of the science of biology.

Nor, apparently, does he have all that solid a grasp of the English language.  Religion relies on indoctrination, and a faith-based, subjective approach; science is the opposite.  Scientific principles stand or fall solely on the evidence supporting them.  Calling science indoctrination is as ridiculous as... as...

... as thinking that the sky was solid and made of glass (Job 37:18).