A monumental change

You've probably heard the recent controversy about removing the statues of Confederate officers from prominent positions in the Deep South, with the anti-removal-crowd saying "It's our heritage" and the pro-removal-crowd saying "... but it's celebrating racism."  I don't intend to explore the reasoning behind either position, since I suspect that (1) we all know what our opinions on the issue are, and (2) it's unlikely anything I say would change anyone's mind.  But I do want to offer an alternative, which was (unfortunately) not my idea but the brainstorm of some folks in West Virginia.  They want to replace the statues celebrating the Confederacy with...

... statues of Mothman.

West Virginia high school teacher Jay Sisson explains:

To many West Virginians, Mothman carries more significance than any Confederate general.  In fact, the legend originated in the town of Point Pleasant, when locals spotted a “man-sized bird creature” prior to the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people.  Mothman was blamed and retroactively seen as a bad omen that foreshadowed the disaster.  From there, the story of the Mothman spread across the country and became an urban legend of sorts.

Twitter user Brenna (@HumanBrennapede) has an additional reason for preferring Mothman; unlike most Confederate generals, she says, Mothman has "a six-pack and an objectively good ass."  The statue of the creature in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, illustrates this:

And I have to admit she's right that he has quite a shapely posterior.  It does remind me, however, of my days teaching Ancient Greek to high schoolers.  One of my classes complained to me one day that they were sick of learning phrases of limited modern utility like "O Zeus, accept my sacrifice" and "Prometheus's liver is being devoured by an eagle."

"Well, what do you want to learn how to say?" I asked.

One boy said, "How about, 'You have a nice ass.'"

I shrugged and said, "Okay.  It'd be, 'kalein pygian ekheis.'"  (Transliterated roughly into English letters.)

They all laughed, and I added, "I guess if you know how to say, 'you have a nice ass,' you'd better learn how to say 'thank you.'"  So I had them repeat after me, 'sas eukharisto.'"

At this point, the class was in hysterics.  Something seemed off -- it wasn't that funny.  So I turned around...

... and the principal was standing in the doorway.

Fortunately, he has an awesome sense of humor, and joined in the laughter at my obvious discombobulation.  And the students used that as their greeting to each other in the hall for the rest of the school year: "Kalein pygian ekheis."  "Sas eukharisto!"

Never let it be said that I didn't make an impact as a teacher.

But I digress.

Anyhow, I think the Mothman statue idea is brilliant.  It could be applied to lots of other states, too, each of which has its own terrifying and inhuman monster.  Florida could have statues of the Skunk Ape.  Louisiana has the Grunch.  Arkansas has the Boggy Creek Monster.  Kentucky has Mitch McConnell.

You get the idea.

So that would solve the problem of injuring state pride, and focus people's attention away from a bunch of military leaders who (to be brutally frank) lost anyhow.

But I'm not expecting it to catch on.  Inspired ideas usually don't.  Even ones that involve making statues of a creature with "an objectively good ass."

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I know I sometimes wax rhapsodic about books that really are the province only of true science geeks like myself, and fling around phrases like "a must-read" perhaps a little more liberally than I should.  But this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is really a must-read.

No, I mean it this time.

Kathryn Schulz's book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error is something that everyone should read, because it points out the remarkable frailty of the human mind.  As wonderful as it is, we all (as Schulz puts it) "walk around in a comfortable little bubble of feeling like we're absolutely right about everything."  We accept that we're fallible, in a theoretical sense; yeah, we all make mistakes, blah blah blah.  But right now, right here, try to think of one think you might conceivably be wrong about.

Not as easy as it sounds.

She shocks the reader pretty much from the first chapter.  "What does it feel like to be wrong?" she asks.  Most of us would answer that it can be humiliating, horrifying, frightening, funny, revelatory, infuriating.  But she points out that these are actually answers to a different question: "what does it feel like to find out you're wrong?"

Actually, she tells us, being wrong doesn't feel like anything.  It feels exactly like being right.

Reading Schulz's book makes the reader profoundly aware of our own fallibility -- but it is far from a pessimistic book.  Error, Schulz says, is the window to discovery and the source of creativity.  It is only when we deny our capacity for error that the trouble starts -- when someone in power decides that (s)he is infallible.

Then we have big, big problems.

So right now, get this book.  I promise I won't say the same thing next week about some arcane tome describing the feeding habits of sea slugs.  You need to read Being Wrong.

Everyone does.

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

Monster detectives

With all of the anxiety over what's happening in the government, panic about climate change and its role in the horrible weather we've had lately, and crises of various kinds all around the world, I'm sure what you're all thinking is, "Yes, but what about all the monster sightings?"

Just as I mentioned last week with UFOs, it seems like cryptid sightings are on the rise.  First, let's look at a huge winged creature that was spotted in New Boston, Michigan (near Detroit), and reported to the Singular Fortean Society:

I have seen the winged creature. Location is near New Boston, Michigan.  About 25 miles southwest of Detroit.  I was driving to work at 3:10 am the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2018. I was going east on Sibley Rd.  All of a sudden this black winged creature comes up from the ditch on the right side of the road and takes off straight up.  No flapping.  Wing span looked to be 10 ft.  It had a smooth leather look on the wings.  I didn’t see a face because it happened so quick and I was focused on how big the wings were.  This happened in a matter of 3 seconds and then it was gone.  I tried to wrap my mind around what I just saw.  Also the location was near 2 metro parks.  If you google map New Boston and zoom into Sibley Rd and I-275 then scroll east and that was my path I was driving.  And questions or additional information please text me first because I don’t answer numbers I don’t know.

The individual left her phone number (obviously), but when a member of the SFS contacted her, she didn't answer -- and has steadfastly refused to respond to messages left for her inquiring about further information.

Apparently, Michiganders have been seeing a lot of winged cryptids lately (collectively called "Mothmen" after the seminal tale from West Virginia that gave rise to the phenomenally weird book The Mothman Prophecies, by John Keel, which has nothing whatsoever to do with prophecies and appears to have been written by free association.)  The SFS article linked above, by Tobias Wayland, gives more information:

[Sightings] generally take place in the evening or at night, often in or near a park, and around water.  Witnesses consistently describe a large, gray or black, bat or bird-like creature—although in a small number of cases the creature was described as insect-like—sometimes with glowing or reflective red, yellow, or orange eyes, and humanoid features such as arms and legs are often reported.  Some witnesses have reported feeling intense fear and an aura of evil emanating from the creature they encountered.

Speaking of monsters near water, next we have a group in British Columbia which is trying to locate a cryptid a bit like a sea-going version of Nessie, called "Cadborosaurus."

When I first saw "Cadborosaurus," my first thought was that it must be a cryptid that hatches from chocolate candy eggs, but it turns out it's named for Cadboro Bay, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.  A group called the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club is hot on Cadborosaurus's trail, and says that the animal they're looking for is "between thirty and seventy feet long" and has a "head like a horse."  Which you'd think would be hard to miss.

The BCSCC, however, admits that the evidence thus far is pretty tenuous.  "The only [actual remains] we’ve ever had possession of, including the 1937 Naden Harbour, Haida Gwaii carcass, has [sic] tended to look more mammal even though it’s rather serpentine in aspect," said John Kirk, BCSCC's founder.  "Cadborosaurus is a generic title that applies to all of them, but in recent years we’ve felt the mammal type found at Naden Harbour is what we’re going to call Cadborosaurus because it by far matches the description of the majority of witnesses."

Despite the previous lack of success in finding this beast, the members of BCSCC aren't giving up.  "We don’t want to prove this to anybody except for our own personal satisfaction, to ensure they are catalogued and their habitats are conserved," Kirk said.  "We certainly wouldn’t want the Cadborosaurus species to die off."

Last, we have a student named Sophie Jones at the Chicago Art Institute who is regretting choosing a project that involved making "Wanted, Dead or Alive" posters for various cryptids, and posting them all over -- along with her phone number.  She did it with the best of motives, she said, only intending for people to find it amusing.  "Being in a fine arts environment, a lot of the art you see is very heavy duty and painful or traumatic or political," Jones said.  "I wanted to do something that felt accessible and fun and friendly and engaged with an interest that I found really fascinating."

Predictably, a lot of the calls she got were tongue-in-cheek.  She even got one from someone claiming to be Mothman, but asking her out on a date.  (She politely declined.)  But some of the calls, Jones said, were serious, from people who really believe they've seen something otherworldly.  "I didn’t really ever consider that [the posters] would get noticed," she said.  "I didn’t expect that people would be seeing Mothman all over the city, for some reason."

She's tried to respond to the serious ones with helpful suggestions.  "I just don’t think the story should end there — you see a poster, you text it, no one responds," she said.  "That’s kind of a bummer.  They were so interested and willing to participate that I didn’t want to let them down."

So there you have it.  Mothman in Detroit, dinosaurs in Canada, and a well-meaning cryptid collector in Chicago.  The unfortunate part is now that I'm done here, I guess it's back to reality.  Which means reading the news.  And lately, my desire to stay well-informed has been at odds with my desire to stay sane.  All things considered, I'll stick with the monsters.

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In 1919, British mathematician Godfrey Hardy visited a young Indian man, Srinivasa Ramanujan, in his hospital room, and happened to remark offhand that he'd ridden in cab #1729.

"That's an interesting number," Ramanujan commented.

Hardy said, "Okay, and why is 1729 interesting?"

Ramanujan said, "Because it is the smallest number that is expressible by the sum of two integers cubed, two different ways."

After a moment of dumbfounded silence, Hardy said, "How do you know that?"

Ramanujan's response was that he just looked at the number, and it was obvious.

He was right, of course; 1729 is the sum of one cubed and twelve cubed, and also the sum of nine cubed and ten cubed.  (There are other such numbers that have been found since then, and because of this incident they were christened "taxicab numbers.")  What is most bizarre about this is that Ramanujan himself had no idea how he'd figured it out.  He wasn't simply a guy with a large repertoire of mathematical tricks; anyone can learn how to do quick mental math.  Ramanujan was something quite different.  He understood math intuitively, and on a deep level that completely defies explanation from what we know about how human brains work.

That's just one of nearly four thousand amazing discoveries he made in the field of mathematics, many of which opened hitherto-unexplored realms of knowledge.  If you want to read about one of the most amazing mathematical prodigies who's ever lived, The Man Who Knew Infinity by Thomas Kanigel is a must-read.  You'll come away with an appreciation for true genius -- and an awed awareness of how much we have yet to discover.

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

The Mothman cometh

In breaking news about creatures that almost certainly don't exist, today we have: Mothman Visits Chicago.

If you've heard of Mothman, it's probably because of the 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere, which had nothing to do with prophecies but did feature a large, dark creature whose only apparent similarity to a moth was having wings.  To me, it looks more like a cross between a spider monkey and a peregrine falcon, with the added feature of having glowing red eyes.

Here's an artist's conception of the Mothman:

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Tim Bertelink, Mothman Artist's Impression, CC BY-SA 4.0]

I'm a little mystified by the guy waving cheerily in the inset on the top right.  He looks perfectly at ease.  "Hey, y'all," he seems to be saying.  "I'm completely unconcerned by the fact that I'm standing next to a scarlet-eyed demon from the Ninth Circle of Hell."

Which brings up another point I've never understood -- the thing about glowing eyes, scarlet or otherwise.  Reflective eyes, yes; many animals, especially nocturnal ones, have something called the tapetum lucidum behind the retina, which reflects back any light that makes it past the retinal receptors, giving them a second chance to catch it.  This is why, for example, the eyes of deer glow in car headlights.  (Our eyes in a camera look red not because of a tapetum, nor because of being evil hell-beasts, but because a flash photograph in dim light bounces light through our dilated pupils and illuminates the blood vessels in the retina.)

But glowing eyes?  Where's the light coming from?  Is there a little man with a flashlight inside the Mothman's eyes, shining the beam out through the pupil?  In the usual course of things, light goes into the eye, not out of it.

But I digress.

Anyhow, the movie was based on the almost entirely unreadable book of the same name by John Keel, which wanders around aimlessly talking about aliens and UFOs and Men in Black and so on, for two hundred pages or so.  The part that is actually about the Mothman is regrettably brief, but I guess if that's all he'd published, it would have been called The Mothman Short Story.  The gist of it is that near the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966 and 1967, a number of people saw something big with wings at night, and the whole thing generated a lot of hysteria, especially after the Silver Bridge, which crosses the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, collapsed on December 15, 1967.  Forty-eight people died, and the cause was later found to be a corroded I-beam, which as far as I can see has absolutely nothing to do with a giant winged creature with red eyes.

The reason this all comes up is because of a friend and long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, who sent me a link two days ago about how people are now seeing Mothman in Chicago.  There have been no fewer than fifty-five sightings in the past year, and eyewitnesses describe it as a "large, black, bat-like being with glowing red eyes" and "something like a Gothic gargoyle."  More disturbing, some people haven't just seen it from a distance.  Apparently it has more than once dropped onto the hoods of cars, or peered into people's windows at night.

The phenomenon has come to the attention of cryptozoologist Lon Strickler, who runs the wonderful website Phantoms and Monsters.  Strickler seems to be pretty excited by the whole thing.  "This group of sightings is historical in cryptozoology terms," he said, in an interview in Vice (linked in the first paragraph).  "For one, it's happening in an urban area for the most part and that there are so many sightings in one period."

However, Strickler says we shouldn't panic.  "These beings are less aggressive than the one in Point Pleasant, for the most part," he said.  "I believe overall there was only one being in the Point Pleasant-area that was seen during that period, while there appear to be at least three here in Chicago...  I think they're flesh and blood beings that aren’t of this world."

Which, now that I come to think of it, really isn't all that comforting.

What this once again brings home is that frustration I have with the fact that these things never happen to me.  You'd think I'd have the ideal spot -- a large, rambling house on a wooded lot with a creek, out in the middle of nowhere.  Okay, I have two dogs, which might be discouraging to monsters who are considering showing up, but allow me to reassure any Beings That Aren't Of This World who might be reading Skeptophilia that as guard dogs, these two rank only slightly above stuffed toys in terms of viciousness.  If a Mothman showed up at my window, baleful red eyes glowing in my direction, I can almost guarantee that Lena would sleep right through it.  As for Guinness, if Mothman brought along a pocketful of dog treats, or better yet, a tennis ball, Guinness would be his friend for life.

So you'd think I'd be a sitting duck.  But never, not once, have I ever seen a UFO, alien, Bigfoot, poltergeist, ghost, demon, Mothman, or Sheepsquatch.

I bet you were expecting me to say "I made the last one up."  But no, there is a Sheepsquatch, or at least some people in Virginia claim there is, although looking at the artist's rendering from eyewitness accounts, I can't think of anything it looks less like than a sheep.

So some people have all the luck.  Maybe now that I've pointed out their omission, the Mothmen et al. will be kind enough to pay me a visit.  If so, you'll be the first to hear about it.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a wonderful read -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Henrietta Lacks was the wife of a poor farmer who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951, and underwent an operation to remove the tumor.  The operation was unsuccessful, and Lacks died later that year.

Her tumor cells are still alive.

The doctor who removed the tumor realized their potential for cancer research, and patented them, calling them HeLa cells.  It is no exaggeration to say they've been used in every medical research lab in the world.  The book not only puts a face on the woman whose cells were taken and used without her permission, but considers difficult questions about patient privacy and rights -- and it makes for a fascinating, sometimes disturbing, read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

The Mothman returneth

A loyal reader of Skeptophilia commented a few days ago that given the uproar currently happening in the United States and elsewhere, it'd been a while since I had the opportunity to comment upon important matters such as recent sightings of aliens and Bigfoot.  So just to show that I am not shirking in my duties in the wacko news department, today we have: a sighting of Mothman in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

What is interesting about this, besides the immediate "what the hell?  Mothman?" factor, is that Point Pleasant is the place where there was a rash of Mothman sightings exactly fifty years ago.  And I do mean exactly; the peak of sightings was in November and December of 1966, although sporadic reports did continue to occur until the following December, when the Point Pleasant Bridge collapsed, resulting in 46 deaths.  Structural engineers say that the bridge collapse was caused by the failure of an eyebar in the suspension chain, but those who are in the know about such matters tell us that it was clearly Mothman's final hurrah.

From there, the Man went into seclusion, with only widely scattered sightings over the following decades.  But it looks like things may be ramping up again, because just last week, a Point Pleasant man took a video from which the following still is excerpted:

The man claims that he had only "recently moved to Point Pleasant" and "didn't even know about the legend."  So that's all I need.  I think this constitutes what those of us in the Science Business call "airtight proof."

Yeah, yeah, okay, so maybe not so much.  As Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it, Photoshop these days probably comes equipped with an "add UFO" button.  And most serious analysts think that the original reports were the result of a combination of hoaxes, sightings of large birds (such as barn owls), and liberal amounts of alcohol.  But still, you should go to the original link (which is to Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News) and take a look at the video.  The video not only shows you the entire clip from the anonymous man who shot it, but some interviews with true believers in Point Pleasant, of which there are apparently quite a few, including Carolin Harris, who owns the "Mothman Diner" and Jeff Wamsley, who runs the "Mothman Museum."

So of course, I'm sure that this has nothing to do with tourism and publicity and attracting crowds to Point Pleasant on the fiftieth anniversary of the original Mothman craze.  Nothing whatsoever.  Nope.

Anway, other than this, I haven't been hearing much from the cryptozoological crowd.  My guess is that given the current political situation, Bigfoot might well be packing his bags and leaving the country to join his cousins in Nepal.  After all, given how precarious things are for actual people in the United States these days, I wouldn't want to be a hairy proto-hominid.  Even the plain old humans are worried enough about their rights.