The puppetmasters

Well, Tuesday came and went, and no one got Raptured.

Not that I was expecting to go myself.  If anything, it was more likely the ground would open up and swallow me, kind of like what happened in Numbers chapter 16, wherein three guys named Korah, Dathan, and Abiram told Moses they were sick and tired of wandering around in the desert, and where was the Land of Milk and Honey they'd been promised, and anyway, who the hell put Moses in charge?  So there was an earthquake or something and the ground swallowed up not only the three loudmouthed dudes but their wives and kids and friends and domestic animals, which seems like overkill.  Literally.  Not surprising, really, because the God of the Old Testament was pretty free with the "Smite" function.  By one estimate I saw, according to the Bible God killed over two million people to Satan's ten, so I'm thinking maybe we got the whole good vs. evil thing backwards.

In any case, even that didn't happen on Tuesday, because here I am, unswallowed, as well as my wife and three dogs.  I haven't heard from my sons in a couple of days, but I'm assuming they're okay, too.  So all in all, it was an uneventful Tuesday.

The batting-zero stats of Rapture predictions from the past didn't stop people from completely falling for it yet again.  One woman sold all her belongings because she was convinced she wouldn't need them any more.  Another gave away her house -- like, signed over the deed and everything -- and at the time of the article (immediately pre-Rapture) was looking for someone to give her car to.  Another one donated her life savings, quit her job, and confessed to her husband that she was having an affair with a member of her church so she could "get right with God" before the Rapture happened -- and now is devastated because she's broke, jobless, and her husband is divorcing her.

It's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for these people, but at the same time, I have to place some of the blame on the people who brainwashed them.  No one gets to this advanced stage of gullibility unaided, you know?  Somewhere along the line, they were convinced to cede their own understanding to others -- and after that happens, you are putty in the hands of the delusional, power-hungry, and unscrupulous.

Which brings us to Peter Thiel.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Peter Thiel by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0]

You probably know that Thiel is a wildly rich venture capitalist, the founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and was the first outside investor in Facebook.  His current net worth is over twenty billion dollars, but the current wealth inequity in the world is such that even so, he's still not in the top one hundred richest people.  But the fact remains that he's crazy wealthy, and has used that wealth to influence politics.

It will come as no shock that he's a big supporter of Donald Trump.  But what you might not know is that he is also a religious loony.

I'm not saying that just because Thiel is religious and I'm not.  I have lots of friends who belong to religions of various sorts, and we by and large respect each other and each other's beliefs.  Thiel, on the other hand, is in a different category altogether.  To give one example, just last week he gave a talk as part of his "ACTS 17 Collective" ("ACTS" stands for "Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society"), wherein he said that we can't regulate AI development and use because that's what Satan wants us to do -- "the Devil promises peace and safety by strangling technological progress with regulation."  Limiting AI, Thiel said, would "hasten the coming of the Antichrist."

Oh, and he's also said that environmental activist Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist.  Which is a little odd, because as far as I can tell she's already here, and has been for a while, and thus far hasn't done anything particularly Antichrist-ish.  But maybe there's some apocalyptic logic here that I'm not seeing.

Thiel is absolutely obsessed with one passage from the Bible, from 2 Thessalonians chapter 2:

Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.  He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?  And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.  For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.  And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.  The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works.  He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing.  They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.  For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

So what is that mysterious force that "holds back" the evil one, what St. Paul called the "κατέχων"?

Well, Thiel is, of course.  He and the techo-nirvana he is trying to create.  "[When the] Antichrist system collapses into Armageddon," religious commentator Michael Christensen writes, "only the few survive.  A techno-libertarian, [Thiel] entertains a kind of secular rapture: off-grid bunkers, floating cities or even planetary colonies.  In his apocalyptic vision, these survivalist escape hatches offer a way out of both collapse and tyranny—but only for the wealthy and well-prepared."

What's kind of terrifying about all this is how influential people like Thiel are.  His ACTS 17 Collective gatherings play to sold-out audiences.  His message, and that of others like him, then filters down to people like Pastor Joshua Mhlakela (the one who got the whole Rapture-Is-On-Tuesday thing started), and they then pass along their "repent or else!" fear-mongering to their followers.  It's why my lack of sympathy for the folks who bankrupted themselves because they figured they'd be Sitting At The Feet Of Jesus by Wednesday morning is tempered by, "... but was it really their fault?"  Sure, they should have learned some critical thinking skills, and been taught to sift fact from fiction.

But they weren't, for whatever reason.  And afterward, they were immersed in scary apocalyptic terror-talk day in, day out.  Who can blame them for eventually swallowing it whole?

It's easy for me, outside the system, to say the people who fell for Mhlakela's nonsense are just a bunch of fools.  But the truth is more nuanced than that, and a hell of a lot scarier.  Because brainwashing doesn't happen in a vacuum.

The puppetmasters behind it are almost always the powerful and rich -- who all too often not only get away with it, but profit mightily from it.  A terrified, brainwashed populace is easier to manipulate and extort.

Which exactly where people like Peter Thiel want us.

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Apocalypse not

Well, it was nice knowing you all.

I have it on good authority that today is the Rapture, wherein Jesus reappears on Earth, selects a few of the Righteous and Holy to ascend back into Heaven with him, and leaves the rest of us slobs down here to contend with the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, the Star Wormwood, the Beast With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, and various other special offers created for our edification by the God of Goodness and Mercy.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse, by Viktor Vasnetsov (1887) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Which brings up a question I've always wondered about: why did the Beast have seven heads, but ten crowns?  It seems like logically, the head:crown ratio should be 1:1.  Did he wear seven of them at a time, and kept three in his closet as spares?  Did he stand in front of the mirror each morning, deciding which seven he was going to wear that day?  I remember as a child, reading the Bible, picturing him as wearing one crown each on six of his heads and the remaining four stacked up on one head, and that mental image bothered the hell out of me.  It just seemed unnecessarily asymmetrical.  I recall trying to figure out if there was a way to make it work out better, and the best I could do was two crowns on heads one, four, and seven, and a single crown on each of the remaining ones.

I was kind of a neurotic child, which probably isn't a surprise to anyone.

Anyhow, I said that I found out today is the Rapture from good authority, but that may have been a slight exaggeration.  The place I read about it was the New York Post, which ranks only slightly above The Weekly World News in credibility.  The Post was quoting one Pastor Joshua Mhlakela, who made the announcement a couple of weeks ago.  "The Rapture is upon us, whether you are ready or not," Mhlakela said.  "I saw Jesus sitting on his throne, and I could hear him saying very loud and clear, 'I am coming soon.'  He said to me, 'On the 23rd and 24th of September, I will come back to Earth.'"

The optimists amongst us might expect that Mhlakela would immediately be dismissed by everyone, given that Wikipedia has a list of 162 "failed apocalypse predictions," along with dozens more that are supposed to happen in the future.  You would think after 162 times that people ran around with signs saying, "REPENT NOW, THE WORLD ENDS TODAY," and the next day came and the world just kept loping along as usual, people would shrug and laugh about any future prognostications of catastrophe.

You would be wrong.

Mhlakela's YouTube video has gotten millions of views, and the comments are, for the most part, favorable. 

"My 10yr daughter dreamt of the rupture [sic] recently,” one commenter wrote.

Another one posted, "Wow, I can read people and Joshua is 100% telling the truth.  I never even listen to videos claiming visions, but God told me to watch this."

Yet another commented, "Last month I also had a vision, I dreamt I was dreaming… and the Lord appeared, telling me He is coming soon."

Well, last night I dreamed that I looked out of my office window, and there were a bunch of pterodactyls roosting in the walnut trees in our front yard, and I was afraid to let my dogs out to pee because I didn't want the pterodactyls to attack them.  So I don't know that dreams are necessarily a good guide to reality.

Or at least mine aren't.

What comes to mind with all this is the biblical passage from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24, wherein we read, "Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.  And then all the peoples of the Earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.  And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other...  But about that day or hour when all these things will happen no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Note that the passage doesn't say, "... no one knows but only the Father and Pastor Joshua Mhlakela."

So I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that Wednesday will dawn and we'll all still be here.  Of course, there is a downside to this, and that's... that we'll all still be here.  Because if you consider *gestures around vaguely at everything* the current situation down here on Earth is really fucking awful.  Maybe I should be rooting for Mhlakela, I dunno.

You know, I gotta wonder what sanctimonious hypocrites like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson would do if Jesus actually did come back.  "Yo, Mike," I can hear the Lord saying.  "What about that whole 'feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give the poor wanderer shelter' thing I commanded?  'Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me,' I believe were my exact words?  And there's also that thing about not bearing false witness."  *grabs him by the ear*  "Come with me, buddy, I think we need to have a 'little talk.'"

My guess is that for all of Johnson's pious praise-Jesus-ing, if that happened, he would piss his pants and then have a stroke.

So, yeah, at this point, bring on the Horsepersons.  I know as someone who's generally speaking an unbeliever, I'm kind of screwed either way, but at least watching the evangelicals scramble around trying to figure out how to account for their behavior over the last ten years would be entertaining as I'm waiting to be smited.

Smote?  Smitten?  Smoted?  Smoot?  Smot?  Smut?  I've never been entirely sure of what the correct participle is.

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Apocalypse ongoing

A while back, I wrote about the strange and disheartening research by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, the upshot of which is that frequently when there is powerful evidence against a deeply-held belief, the result is that the belief gets stronger.

It's called the backfire effect.  The Festinger et al. study looked at a cult that centered around a belief that the world was going to end on a very specific date.  When the Big Day arrived, the cult members assembled at the leader's house to await the end.  Many were in severe emotional distress.  At 11:30 P.M., the leader -- perhaps sensing things weren't going the way he thought they would -- secluded himself to pray.  And at five minutes till midnight, he came out of his room with the amazing news that because of their faith and piety, God told him he'd decided to spare the world after all.

The astonishing part is that the followers didn't do what I would have done, which is to tell the leader, "You are either a liar or a complete loon, and I am done with you."  They became even more devoted to him.  Because, after all, without him instructing them to keep the vigil, God would have destroyed the world, right?

Of course right.

The peculiar fact-resistance a lot of people have can reach amazing lengths, as I found out when a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link a couple of days ago having to do with the fact that people are still blathering on about the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse.  Remember that?  Supposedly the Mayan Long Count Calendar indicated that one of their long time-cycles (b'ak'tuns) was going to end on December 21, 2012, and because of that there was going to be absolute chaos.  Some people thought it would be the literal end of the world; the more hopeful types thought it would be some kind of renewal or Celestial Ascension that would mark the beginning of a new spiritual regime filled with peace, love, and harmony.

The problem was -- well, amongst the many problems was -- the fact that if you talked to actual Mayan scholars, they told you that the interpretation of the Long Count Calendar was dependent not only on translations of uncertain accuracy, but an alignment of that calendar with our own that could have been off in either direction by as much as fifty years.  Plus, there was no truth to the claim that the passage into the next b'ak'tun was anything more than a benchmark, same as going from December 31 to January 1.

Mostly what I remember about the Mayan Apocalypse is that evening, my wife and I threw an End-of-the-World-themed costume party.

Although the party was a smashing success, what ended up happening apocalypse-wise was... nothing.  December 22, 2012 dawned, and everyone just kept loping along as usual.  There were no asteroid impacts, nuclear wars, or alien invasions, and the giant tsunami that crested over the Himalayas in the catastrophically bad movie 2012 never showed up.

Which is a shame, because I have to admit that was pretty cool-looking.

So -- huge wind-up, with thousands of people weighing in, and then bupkis.  What's an apocalyptoid to do, in the face of that?

Well, according to the article my friend sent -- their response has been sort of along the lines of Senator George Aiken's solution to the Vietnam War: "Declare victory and go home."  Apparently there is a slice of true believers who think that the answer to the apocalypse not happening back in 2012 is that...

... the apocalypse did too happen.

I find this kind of puzzling.  I mean, if the world ended, you'd think someone would have noticed.  But that, they say, is part of how we know it actually happened.  Otherwise, why would we all be so oblivious?

The parallels to Festinger et al. are a little alarming.

The mechanisms of how all this worked are, unsurprisingly, a little sketchy.  Some think we dropped past the event horizon of a black hole and are now in a separate universe from the one we inhabited pre-2012.  Others think that we got folded into a Matrix-style simulation, and this is an explanation for the Mandela effect.  A common theme is that it has something to do with the discovery by CERN of the Higgs boson, which also happened in 2012 and therefore can't be a coincidence.

Some say it's significant that ever since then, time seems to be moving faster, so we're hurtling ever more quickly toward... something.  They're a little fuzzy on this part.  My question, though, is if time did speed up, how could we tell?  The only way you'd notice is if time in one place sped up by comparison to time in a different place, which is not what they're claiming.  They say that time everywhere is getting faster, to which I ask: getting faster relative to what, exactly?

In any case, the whole thing makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.

So that's our dive in the deep end for the day.  No need to worry about the world ending, because it already did.  The good news is that we seem to be doing okay despite that, if you discount the possibility that we could be inside a black hole.

Me, I'm not going to fret about it.  I've had enough on my mind lately.  Besides, if the apocalypse happened eleven years ago, there's nothing more to be apprehensive about, right?

Of course right.

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It's the end of the world, if you notice

I have commented more than once about my incredulity with regards to end-of-the-world predictions.  Despite the fact that to date, they have had a 100% failure rate, people of various stripes (usually of either the ultra-religious persuasion or the woo-woo conspiracy one) continue to say that not only is the world doomed, they know exactly when, how, and why.  (If you don't believe me, take a look at the Wikipedia page for apocalyptic predictions, which have occurred so often they had to break it down by century.)  

As far as why this occurs -- why repeated failure doesn't make the true believers say, "Well, I guess that claim was a bunch of bullshit, then" -- there are a variety of reasons.  One is a sort of specialized version of the backfire effect, which occurs when evidence against a claim you believe strongly leaves you believing it even more strongly.  Way back in 1954 psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter infiltrated a doomsday cult, and in fact Festinger was with the cult on the day they'd claimed the world was going to end.  When 11:30 PM rolled around and nothing much was happening, the leader of the cult went into seclusion.  A little after midnight she returned with the joyous news that the cult's devotion and prayers had averted the disaster, and god had decided to spare the world, solely because of their fidelity.

Hallelujah!  We better keep praying, then!

(Note bene: The whole incident, and the analysis of the phenomenon by Festinger et al., is the subject of the fascinating book When Prophecy Fails.)

Despite this, the repeated failure of an apocalyptic prophecy can cause your followers to lose faith eventually, as evangelical preacher Harold Camping found out.  So the people who believe this stuff often have to engage in some fancy footwork after the appointed day and hour arrive, and nothing happens other than the usual nonsense.

Take, for example, the much-publicized "Mayan apocalypse" on December 21, 2012 that allegedly was predicted by ancient Mayan texts (it wasn't) and was going to herald worldwide natural disasters (it didn't).  The True Believers mostly retreated in disarray when December 22 dawned, as well they should have.  My wife and I threw a "Welcoming In The Apocalypse" costume party on the evening of December 21 (I went as a zombie, which I felt was fitting given the theme), and I have to admit to some disappointment when the hour of midnight struck and we were all still there.  But it turns out that not all of the Mayan apocalyptoids disappeared after the prediction failed; one of them, one Nick Hinton, says actually the end of the world did happen, as advertised...

... but no one noticed.

Hinton's argument, such as it is, starts with a bit of puzzling over why you never hear people talking about the 2012 apocalypse any more.  (Apparently "it didn't happen" isn't a sufficient reason.)  Hinton finds this highly peculiar, and points out that this was the year CERN fired up the Large Hadron Collider and discovered the Higgs boson, and that this can't possibly be a coincidence.  He wonders if this event destroyed the universe and/or created a black hole, and then "sucked us in" without our being aware of it.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Lucas Taylor / CERN, CMS Higgs-event, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Me, I think I'd notice if I got sucked into a black hole.  They're kind of violent places, as I described a recent post about Sagittarius A* and the unpleasant process called "spaghettification."   But Hinton isn't nearly done with his explanation.  He writes:

There's the old cliché argument that "nothing has felt right" since 2012.  I agree with this...  [E]ver since then the world seems to descend more and more into chaos each day.  Time even feels faster.  There's some sort of calamity happening almost daily.  Mass shootings only stay in the headlines for like 12 hours now.  Did we all die and go to Hell?...  Like I've said, I think we live in a series of simulations.  Perhaps the universe was destroyed by CERN and our collective consciousness was moved into a parallel universe next door.  It would be *almost* identical.

Of course, this is a brilliant opportunity to bring out the Mandela effect, about which I've written before.  The idea of the Mandela effect is that people remember various stuff differently (such as whether Nelson Mandela died in prison, whether it's "Looney Tunes" or "Loony Tunes" and "The Berenstein Bears" or "The Berenstain Bears," and so forth), and the reason for this is not that people's memories in general suck, but that there are alternate universes where these different versions occur and people slip back and forth between them.

All of which makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.

What I find intriguing about Hinton's explanation is not all the stuff about CERN, though, but his arguing that the prediction didn't fail because he was wrong, but that the world ended and seven-billion-plus people didn't even notice.  Having written here at Skeptophilia for over twelve years, I'm under no illusions about the general intelligence level of humanity, but for fuck's sake, we're not that unobservant.  And even if somehow CERN did create an alternate universe, why would it affect almost nothing except for things like the spelling of Saturday morning cartoon titles?

So this is taking the backfire effect and raising it to the level of performance art.  This is saying that it is more likely that the entire population of the Earth was unaware of a universe-ending catastrophe than it is that you're simply wrong.

Which is so hubristic that it's kind of impressive.

But I better wind this up, because I've got to prepare myself for the next end of the world, which (according to Messiah Foundation International, which I have to admit sounds pretty impressive) is going to occur in January of 2026.  This only gives us all a bit shy of three years to get ready, so I really should get cracking on my next novel.  And if that apocalypse doesn't pan out, evangelical Christian lunatic Kent Hovind says not to worry, the Rapture is happening in 2028, we're sure this time, cross our hearts and hope to be assumed bodily into heaven.

So many apocalypses, so little time.

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An apocalypse to remember

Hi!  Hope you're having a lovely day so far.  Enjoy what you can of it, because we're all gonna die today.

At least that's the contention of the Usual Suspects on the interwebz.  The whole thing started ten days ago, when a German politician named Friedrich Metz was giving a speech, and said, "Dear colleagues…September 24, 2022 will be remembered by all of us as a day which we will say, 'I remember exactly where I was…'"

Then (depending on who you believe) either the mic cut out or else he just refused to elaborate further.  Of course, this immediately caused multiple orgasms amongst the conspiracy theory types, who took Metz's statement and crafted it into what was basically a Mad Libs for wingnuts, of the form "[Choose one from column A] stopped Metz from talking because they don't want people finding out that [Choose one from column B] is going to happen."

Choices for A:

• The Bilderberg Group
• The Illuminati
• The Jews
• Scientists
• The Far Right
• The Far Left
• Gray aliens from Zeta Reticuli
• The Reptilians

Choices for B:

• a gigantic solar flare that will wipe out the electrical grid
• a massive engineered cyclone headed for the US Gulf Coast
• the complete collapse of the world economy
• a collision from a huge meteorite
• a deliberately-planned worldwide blackout
• an electromagnetic pulse that will turn anyone who has 5G into a mind-controlled zombie
• a supervolcano eruption
• the sudden takeover of major world governments by either the Far Left or the Far Right (depending on which one you went for before)
• an open alien invasion

As always, they're basing their conclusions (if I can even dignify them with that word) on evidence so slim that to call it wafer-thin would be an insult to wafer-makers.  One guy said one semi-alarmist thing, and all of a sudden, it's the end of the world.

Apocalypse by Albert Goodwin (1903) [Image is in the Public Domain]

It also conveniently ignores the fact that these wacko catastrophists have an exactly zero batting average.  There have been so many predictions of apocalyptic events that Wikipedia even has a page keeping track of them, headed by the wonderful phrase, "This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness."

So the apocalyptoids keep saying, "No, really!  It's really gonna happen this time, we promise!", and nothing continues to happen except the world kind of limping along the way it always has.  But who knows?  Maybe this time we'll finally, at long last, have a winner.  September 24, 2022, will be the day we'll all remember, except for those of us who died in the supervolcano eruption or megacyclone or whatnot.

At this point, I'm frankly rooting for the apocalypse.  I live in a part of the world so quiet that watching the farmer across the road running his hay baler is considered high entertainment.  I'd rather not be vaporized by a meteor strike, but honestly, some of the others sound at least like welcome reprieves from boredom.  Alien invasion?  Solar flares?  Hell, bring 'em on.  I'm ready.

Illuminati, do your worst.  And that goes double for you gray aliens from Zeta Reticuli.

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The title of this blog post is classified

I think we've all had moments when we were taken in by a prank or a hoax.  Some of them can be pretty clever, and after all, we're only human -- we can't call things correctly all the time.

And when it happens, most of us go, "Wow, what a goober I am!" and laugh a little, and move on -- with, one would hope, a resolution not to fall quite so quickly the next time.

Which is probably why the YouTube video link sent to me by a loyal reader had me torn between guffawing and crying.  Well, not the video itself; the video is a clip from The Onion, that awesome purveyor of satire, about a "Homeland Terrorism Preparedness Bill" (that doesn't exist) being reviewed by a Representative John Haller of Pennsylvania (who doesn't exist).

What had me twitching were the comments.

Yes, yes, I know, never read the comments section.  I broke the cardinal rule.  And now that I've done so, I'm even more worried about what might happen in the next election.  Because to put not too fine a point on it, the majority of the commenters appear to be walking, talking, computer-owning, voting Americans who have the IQ of a peach pit.

First, though, let's see what "Representative Haller" had to say:

Congress shall now vote for approval of HR 8791, the Homeland Terrorism Preparedness Bill, as said bill requests emergency response funding up to and including... I'm sorry, this section is classified ... dollars to prepare for a national level terrorist attack and/or attack from CLASSIFIED.  Funding for first responder personnel and vehicles would be doubled if said attack leads to more than 80% of national population being affected by CLASSIFIED.  This funding shall commence with the first attack on CLASSIFIED or the first large-scale outbreak of CLASSIFIED, dependent upon which comes first.  Civilian and military units shall be trained in containment and combat of CLASSIFIED including irradiated CLASSIFIED with possibility of CLASSIFIED airborne CLASSIFIED flesh-eating CLASSIFIED, and/or all of the above in such event as CLASSIFIED spewing CLASSIFIED escape, are released, or otherwise become uncontrollable.

Air Force units may also be directed to combat said CLASSIFIED due to their enormous size and other-worldly strengths.  Should event occur in urban areas... Jesus, that's... that's CLASSIFIED... far surpassing our darkest nightmares.  Should casualties exceed CLASSIFIED body disposal actions shall be halted and associated resources shall be reallocated to CLASSIFIED underground CLASSIFIED protected birthing centers.  A new Bill of Rights shall be drafted and approved by CLASSIFIED.

Having now reviewed the bill, I ask you to please cast your votes.

Okay, please reassure me; having heard that, you would immediately know that it was fake.  Right?  Right?

Apparently, "wrong."  Here's a comment that appears on the video link:

If you have any intelligence at all or if you are just "awake" you can easily enough fill in the blanks "classified"  Hmmm..  He is basically talking about radiation and disease(s) outbreak and containment, underground facilities and the general population which will evidently be gradually eradicated!  Better get your house in order, light your Lamp and have PLENTY of OIL this is going to be a long, tedious ride until Jesus comes back!  We don't know when, ONLY The Father knows so we should be ready AT ALL TIMES but these things happen FIRST, BEFORE He gets back, so you need to stay ready and "endure" with all you've got!  Remember Jesus IS The ONLY Way!  ~Heads UP!

Well, someone sensible responded to that, to wit:

This was a fake video made by The Onion.  Look at the logo in the lower right corner.  Get a grip on reality.

Remember my opening paragraph, about going, "Wow, how silly of me!  I got fooled!"  Apparently there are some folks whose motto is, "Evidence?  We don't need no stinkin' evidence."  Here's the followup comment.  Spelling and grammar are as written, because you can only add [sic] so many times:

It could be a fake, or maybe the onion logo is a replacement over the real logo.  Maybe somebody tampering with the video to make its seem like a fake and someone got their hands on it.  The onion logo could be a cover up scheme who knows...  But I will say this, all around us there is blood being shed, crazy earth quakes, murder, war, lies, the death toll is off the chain. muslims cut the heads off of little children and dance around with the corpses, evil media and music, promotion of violence adultery sexual immorality and greed.  Things are so bad it just is not funny anymore.  Rape is at an all time high and everywhere I turn I see gay people !!!  yo mad people are gay its freaking crazy.  yo we got dudes popping other dudes and little boys in the butt 24/7365.  the immorality these day is off the charts.  anybody who thinks things are ok today has a nothing in between the ear.  you gotta be real stupid not to see that something huge is going to happen.

So evidently I'm one of the ones who has a nothing in between the ear, because I am certain it's a fake.  Look up the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.  There is no Representative John Haller.  That alone should be enough, wouldn't you think?

At least one guy agrees with me:

Fuck's sake, people.  It's satire.  The Onion, you know?  Satire?  Meaning fake?  Hello? 

But he was immediately shouted down by the likes of the following rocket scientist:

I think it's quite funny that the majority of those saying this is fake all have blank profiles almost as if they were created just to argue the legitimacy of this video.

And the following:

Sounds like they have a plan if there's a biological outbreak they mite of created something that can be air born and something about flesh eating hmm and if this is true some one must of got their hands on it and preparing in chase they release it on the public for some reason zombie popping in my head head there experimenting rabbits on people and that there's a part in your brain that could make you so violent that your almost like a ghoul.

Yes!  That's it!  Zombie popping in your head head there experimenting rabbits on people!  Why didn't I think of that as an explanation?  It's brilliant!

So you see why I don't have a lot of trust in the citizenry of the United States, and their ability to vote in leaders who aren't batshit insane?

We have people here who, even when given repeated reassurances that a video that is obviously a fake is, well, obviously a fake, they still insist that it must all be a giant conspiracy to keep them in the dark about ghouls and radiation and diseases and underground facilities and the Second Coming of Christ.

Whenever I think I've plumbed the absolute depth of idiocy, I find that there are deeper wells that I have yet to explore.  As the quote attributed to Einstein puts it: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

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

Apocalypse yesterday

I find it simultaneously amusing and terrifying how steeped in self-delusion some folks are.

Now, it's not that I think I'm always right, or free from biases.  Those of you who are regular readers of Skeptophilia will no doubt be aware of my opinion of the accuracy with which our brains function; I'm no more immune to getting things wrong than anyone is.  But still, one thing the scientific, rationalistic point of view does have is a clear protocol for figuring out when you are wrong.  At that point, you have no choice but to reconsider the theory in question.

But some people work the whole thing backwards.  It brings to mind the wonderful quote from Doctor Who in the episode "The Hand of Fear," in which the Fourth Doctor says, "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views."

And at that point their altered facts, miraculously enough, always seem to support their model.  So without any apparent realization that they've just committed circular reasoning, they announce that their claim is vindicated.

Perhaps you remember the whole nonsense ten years ago about the Rapture, that came into the news largely because of the late Harold Camping, extremist religious wingnut extraordinaire.  Camping, you might recall, announced a date for the Rapture, and stated his case so vehemently that more than one of his followers sold all of their belongings and gave away the proceeds, or else used the money to purchase billboard space to warn the rest of us that the End Was Near.  The day before the Day, many of them bid tearful farewells to their loved ones, promising to say a good word in Jesus's ear on their behalf after all the dust settled.

Then, the next day, nothing happened.

So Camping revised his prediction to a new date, six months later.  This time he was right, he said, cross his heart and hope to vanish.  But once again, the faithful stayed put on Earth, and worse still, the Antichrist never showed.  So Camping closed up shop, and two years later, died of a stroke at the ripe old age of 92, disappointed to the last that he hadn't lived to see the Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of Unbelievers.  What fun that would have been!

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Viktor Vasnetsov (1887)  [Image is in the Public Domain]

You'd think that sort of failure record (100%) would be a little discouraging to the faithful, wouldn't you?  We keep having predictions of the End Times, and the world refuses to cooperate, and end already.  No Beasts appear, no Antichrist, no Seven Seals; everything just kind of keeps loping along as usual.  Eventually, you'd think people would say, "Hey, you know what?  Maybe we need to reconsider all of this apocalyptic stuff, because so far, it's running a zero batting average."

But no.  They'd never let a little thing like no results change their minds.  And now we have a guy who takes the alter-the-facts approach and pushes it to its ultimate endpoint: he says that the Rapture did too happen, and if you didn't notice, it was your own damn fault.

I'm not making this up.  According to the website Now the End Begins, the holy actually did get Raptured.  Millions are missing, the site says:

Well, we told you it was coming.  Perhaps you were a casual reader of this site, but never got really involved, "too many religious nuts" you said.  Maybe you had a family member who would plead with you night after night to "get right" with Jesus before His return.  "Nah, never happen", you said, "people been saying that for ever. Nonsense!".  But, it wasn't nonsense, was it?  Turns out the religious nuts were right after all.  The Rapture of the Church actually happened.  Now we are gone, and you remain.  Left behind.  I can only imagine the shock - terror - panic - and questions that must be running through your head right now.  My heart breaks for you, and that's why I made this page, to get you through what the Bible calls the time of Jacob's Trouble, the Great Tribulation, and it's moments away from starting.  Are YOU ready?

I... what?

What do you mean "we are gone?"  If you're gone, who is writing for and maintaining the site?  Are you suggesting that Heaven has WiFi and a fast internet connection?  Is the server hosted by the Lord of Hosts?  What do you do if Christ wants to use the Holy Computer while you're updating the website?  Do you tell him, "I'm sorry, Jesus, but you'll have to surf the web another time?"

But my main objection is, if all of those people really had disappeared, don't you think someone would have noticed by now?  Sure, the website tells us.  We all did notice.  And apparently, we're all pretty puzzled about it:

And that's exactly what just happened, and where we have now gone.  Oh, knowing the media as I do, I am sure that there are many attempts to explain it - UFO's, alien abductions, a harmonic convergence, a government program, FEMA camps, cosmic shift, worm holes, and the list goes on and on.  But none of those explainations [sic] really satisfy you, do they?  I mean, it's hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people, right?  Could any one government, no matter how corrupt, really process that many people in the "blink of an eye".  No, they could not.  You know better than that.

I do?  I mean, yes, of course I do.  I'd never fall for the media telling me that hundreds of millions of people were sucked into a wormhole!  That'd just be silly!  I'll believe instead that hundreds of millions of people vanished, and no one has mentioned it in the media at all!

Because, of course, the teensy little problem with all of this is that everyone seems to kind of... still be here.  While I understand that given the circles I travel in, it's understandable that none of my immediate friends and family were Bodily Assumed Into Heaven, you'd think that at least one or two casual acquaintances would be amongst the hundreds of millions who were holy enough to be Raptured.  Strange to say, I haven't noticed anyone in my community vanishing lately.  I really don't think that I'd have missed something like that.  There are even a few I can think of that I'd be happy enough to wave goodbye to, as they floated off into the sky, but no such luck.

The rest of the site consists of suggestions about what to do now that we've been Left Behind (number one piece of advice: don't accept the Mark of the Beast).  But all of that really pales by comparison to the opening bits, wherein they tell us that the Rapture happened while we were otherwise occupied, and we Ungodly Types have yet to notice.

I've said before about the extremely religious that they'll never let a little thing like facts stand in the way of their beliefs, but this may be the best example yet.  The whole thing reminded me of the words of George Aiken, Republican senator from Vermont, who said, when it became obvious that the United States was losing the Vietnam War, "The best policy is to declare victory and leave."  Or in this case, don't let the fact that the Rapture didn't happen interfere with your conviction that the Rapture has actually happened.

Bringing to mind a final quote, this one from George Orwell's 1984: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your own eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command."

Me, I'm just going to do what the world does, namely, keep moseying along and not worry about it.  Even if the UltraChristian crowd is right, I'm pretty certain to be Left Behind anyhow, a possibility that doesn't scare me much.  I've read the Book of Revelation more than once, and I have to point out that whatever else you can say about it, the apocalypse sounds interesting.  There's the Scarlet Whore of Babylon and the Beast with Seven Heads and the Star Wormwood and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons and various other special offers from the God of Love and Mercy, any one of which would certainly alleviate the boredom around here.  So if the Rapture really has already happened, let's get this apocalyptic ball rolling, okay, people?  The End Times are a-wastin'.

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

One of the most devastating psychological diagnoses is schizophrenia.  United by the common characteristic of "loss of touch with reality," this phrase belies how horrible the various kinds of schizophrenia are, both for the sufferers and their families.  Immersed in a pseudo-reality where the voices, hallucinations, and perceptions created by their minds seem as vivid as the actual reality around them, schizophrenics live in a terrifying world where they literally can't tell their own imaginings from what they're really seeing and hearing.

The origins of schizophrenia are still poorly understood, and largely because of a lack of knowledge of its causes, treatment and prognosis are iffy at best.  But much of what we know about this horrible disorder comes from families where it seems to be common -- where, apparently, there is a genetic predisposition for the psychosis that is schizophrenia's most frightening characteristic.

One of the first studies of this kind was of the Galvin family of Colorado, who had ten children born between 1945 and 1965 of whom six eventually were diagnosed as schizophrenic.  This tragic situation is the subject of the riveting book Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family, by Robert Kolker.  Kolker looks at the study done by the National Institute of Health of the Galvin family, which provided the first insight into the genetic basis of schizophrenia, but along the way gives us a touching and compassionate view of a family devastated by this mysterious disease.  It's brilliant reading, and leaves you with a greater understanding of the impact of psychiatric illness -- and hope for a future where this diagnosis has better options for treatment.

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

 

Preparing for the worst

I'm about halfway through the first draft of my current work-in-progress, a novel called In the Midst of Lions about a perfectly ordinary upper-middle-class guy who gets caught up in the fall of civilization.  By this point in the novel, order has pretty much collapsed, and he's in the ruins of downtown Seattle trying to find his way across the city and to a two-kilometer-long bridge and east into the mountains for safety (at least comparatively speaking).  He's taken some children under his wing, and in the harrowing scene I just wrote, is trying to get them away from a murderous warlord and his gang -- he himself barely escaped with his life after being captured and brutally beaten by them.

I hasten to interject at this point that In the Midst of Lions was in no way inspired by 2020.  I came up with idea decades ago -- in fact, I'd written a rough draft of the story back in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate.  (The current version bears little resemblance to the original, although the central idea is the same.)  I'd thought of returning to it many times, but always pushed it aside for other projects.  Then, late in 2019 -- pre-pandemic, and pre-Trump-breaking-the-Seventh-Seal-of-the-Apocalypse -- I decided to give it a go, and I'm quite pleased with the result, as dark as it is.

(If you're curious, the title comes from Psalm 56 -- "Have pity on me, O God, have pity on me... for I lie prostrate in the midst of lions that devour men.")

The reason this comes up is because of a paper in the journal Personality and Individual Differences that came out this week, and which looked at the correlation between people's ability to cope psychologically with the pandemic and governmental chaos, and their appreciation of zombie movies.  Entitled, "Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic," by Colton Scrivner of the University of Chicago, John Johnson of Pennsylvania State University, and Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Mathias Clasen of Aarhus University, the paper looks at how reading books or watching movies about civilization collapsing and people being killed in nasty ways might have prepared us for 2020.

The authors write;

One explanation for why people engage in frightening fictional experiences is that these experiences can act as simulations of actual experiences from which individuals can gather information and model possible worlds.  Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant media fictions, including horror and pandemic films, was associated with greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic.  Since morbid curiosity has previously been associated with horror media use during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also tested whether trait morbid curiosity was associated with pandemic preparedness and psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.  We found that fans of horror films exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic and that fans of “prepper” genres (alien-invasion, apocalyptic, and zombie films) exhibited both greater resilience and preparedness.  We also found that trait morbid curiosity was associated with positive resilience and interest in pandemic films during the pandemic.  Taken together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.

You have to wonder if it works the other way, though.  Maybe living through 2020 has blunted our appreciation for horror movies.  "Okay, maybe being eaten by the living dead is horrible, but do y'all remember what happened last November?" 

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons iluvrhinestones from seattle, oceania, upload by Herrick, Zombies 79201360, CC BY-SA 2.0]

"I'm not sure that watching such movies now would be helpful for our current situation," study co-author John Johnson said, in an interview with Science Daily.  "However, my understanding of pandemics and other life-challenging events is that similar future challenges are absolutely inevitable.  The past is often forgotten too easily.  Who remembered the Spanish flu epidemic until scientists brought up that piece of history during COVID-19?  This reinforces my belief that consuming stories from books, films and maybe even video games is not just an idle pastime, but a way for us to imagine simulated realities that help prepare us for future challenges."

So we writers of scary fiction are performing a public service.  Just getting people ready for how much worse it could get, or (conversely) getting them to think, "Things are bad now, but at least I'm not being vivisected by aliens."  Now, I gotta get to work on my novel.  The last thing that happened is that the main character just saw some graffiti spray-painted on a wall, left for him by the one of the warlord's evil henchmen, saying, "You'd better run, because if I see you again, you're a dead man."

I mean, getting my readers to prepare for a catastrophe is one thing, but leaving a nice guy in that situation is just cruel.

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

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!]

Post-apocalyptic pet care

The American public has quite a taste for the dire predictions from the Book of Revelation.  Consider, for example, the 2014 Rapture-based movie Left Behind starring Nicolas Cage.  Cage plays a character called "Rayford Steele," meaning that he is of course the action hero, similar to David Ryder in Space Mutiny, whose many names are chronicled in this not-to-be-missed montage courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  (You should watch this right now.  Seriously.  However, don't try to drink anything while doing so.  You have been warned.)

But unfortunately, the critics weren't exactly enamored of Left Behind.  It ran at an abysmal 2% approval rating at the site Rotten Tomatoes, which is the lowest I can ever recall seeing.  Here are a few of my favorite reviews:

• Left Behind is one of those films so deeply, fundamentally terrible that it feels unwittingly high-concept.
• Aside from [its] faulty conceit, the movie, on a pure thriller level, is a massive collection of awkward, poorly written character moments and supposedly spectacular set pieces that are stretched far too thin.
• Score one for Satan.

And the best one of all:

• I can't wait for Nic Cage to explain THIS one to God on Judgment Day.

But the fact remains that a sizable number of Americans believe that this movie is reflective of reality, and that it is accurate in concept if not in the exact details.  Sooner or later, probably sooner, the holy will be assumed bodily up into heaven, leaving the rest of us poor slobs to duke it out down here, not to mention contending with the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons, the Beast With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, and other special offers.

But this does raise certain inevitable theological quandaries.  What about innocents who are caught up, all unwary, in the whole end-of-the-world free-for-all?  It hardly seems fair that the sins of us Bad Guys should be visited upon individuals who don't really deserve it, like little infidel children and so on.

And it's not just the kids, you know.  What about the pets?  Well, at least that we can do something about, at least if you believe the efforts of Lansing, Michigan True Believer Sharon Moss and her unbelieving best friend Carol, who have founded a company called "After the Rapture Pet Care."

Guinness looks a little worried about the issue, doesn't he?  He shouldn't fret.  There's no chance his owners are gonna end up getting Raptured.

While I was reading this, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop -- for there to be some sort of "We're kidding!" announcement, or at least an admission that it was a money-making enterprise by some scheming atheists trying to bamboozle (and simultaneously make fun of) gullible Christians.  But apparently, this thing is for real.  For a "small fee" (I think a ten-dollar registration charge is all it takes, although I could be misreading the fine print), holy individuals will be paired up with "nice non-Christians" who are willing to take and care for any Left Behind Pets.  Right from their website:

When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be massive confusion.  However, the majority of people will still be on earth, and communications will be their first priority to maintain.  Therefore, I believe it will not be a problem to coordinate activities to rescue and care for your pets.  As far as the data about all registered pets, it is located on Google servers (the most secure servers in the world) as well as our own server in Lansing, Michigan (away from political and military hot spots to minimize chance of destruction if there is a post-Rapture war).  The non-Christian administrators assigned to coordinate our efforts after we’re gone are also located in multiple locations, all with log in information.

You can even purchase a stylish "After the Rapture Pet Care Volunteer Pet Caregiver" t-shirt for only $38.

Although the thought crosses my mind: wouldn't wearing such a t-shirt identify you as a sinner?  After all, if you sign up to take care of Raptured people's pets, it's pretty much equivalent to admitting you're one of the lost.  I'd wear one just for fun, and also because I don't think anyone has any particular questions about my status apropos of the Last Judgment, but I'm not forking over $38 to do it.

But if you're interested, you can also get mugs, bumper stickers, and totes.  Me, I'm gonna save my money.  Certain as I am that I'll still be around should the Rapture actually happen, I have no particular desire to look after pets left behind by the pious.  I already have two dogs whose capacity for bringing chaos and filth into the house is unparalleled, and frankly, that's about all I can handle.

On the other hand, if there's anyone who is wondering what will happen to their collection of classic sports cars After the Rapture, and wants someone to be ready to step in, I'm happy to help.  Selfless, that's me.

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

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is for people who are fascinated with the latest research on our universe, but are a little daunted by the technical aspects: Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time by Oxford University astrophysicist Becky Smethurst.

A whirlwind tour of the most recent discoveries from the depths of space -- and I do mean recent, because it was only released a couple of weeks ago -- Smethurst's book is a delightful voyage into the workings of some of the strangest objects we know of -- quasars, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, blazars, gamma-ray bursters, and many others.  Presented in a way that's scientifically accurate but still accessible to the layperson, it will give you an understanding of what we know about the events of the last 13.8 billion years, and the ultimate fate of the universe in the next few billions.  If you have a fascination for what's up there in the night sky, this book is for you!

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

Tempting fate

If five years ago I had turned in a manuscript to my publisher that was a recounting, to the last detail, of the events of the last six months, he would have rejected it out of hand as being completely implausible.

2020 has been surreal.  And frightening.  We've already had a pandemic, a recession, and the most intense and widespread protests in decades, leading one friend of mine to say that it's like we're experiencing the 1918 Spanish flu, the depression of the 1930s, and the civil unrest of the late 1960s, but all in the same three months.  In addition, in April we had record cold temperatures on one side of the country and record hot temperatures on the other on the same day; in May, the earliest start to the hurricane season I can remember; and an outbreak of 140 tornadoes in one 37 hour period -- that encompassed Easter Sunday.

Oh, and "murder hornets."  We can't forget the "murder hornets."

So a lot of us, even those of us who aren't superstitious, see the "Breaking News" symbol a little like this:

What I'd like to do today is to look at four stories that seem to me to be tempting fate, given the way the year's gone so far.  Let's see if any of these are the next square to check off on the Apocalypse 2020 Bingo Card.

First, we have:

REAPPEARANCE OF A DROWNED GHOST VILLAGE

In 1947, the residents of the Italian village of Fabbriche di Careggine were relocated by the government to make way for a hydroelectric dam that created a lake, submerging it completely.  But now, the company that owns the dam is considering draining the lake "to improve tourism."

The town is still substantially intact, including the church, streets, many buildings, and the cemetery.  It's this last bit that has me worried, because an invasion of pissed off, waterlogged Italian zombies seeking revenge would be completely on-brand for 2020.

Of course, the lake has been drained a couple of times before, for the purpose of doing maintenance on the dam, and nothing has happened.  To which I respond: yeah, but it wasn't 2020.  Try doing stuff like that now and you're just asking for trouble.

Next, we have:

THE DISCOVERY OF A 2000-YEAR-OLD BRONZE POT CONTAINING "AN UNKNOWN LIQUID"

Archaeologists working in the city of Sanmenxia, Henan Province, China have discovered a two-millennium-old spherical pot with a swan-like neck, made of bronze, which contains three liters of an "unknown liquid... yellowish-brown with impurities."  The pot was recovered from a tomb (of course) dating from the time marking the end of the Qin Dynasty and the beginning of the Han Dynasty, right around 200 B.C.E.  They're trying to analyze the liquid to figure out what it is, which makes me wonder if they've even heard about the Curse of the Pharaohs.

Okay, I know the whole Curse of the Pharaohs was hyped-up nonsense, but still.  Cf. what I said earlier about this being 2020.  If ever there was a year where some nitwit scientists say "let's open up this thing we found in a tomb!  It'll be fun!" and accidentally release an evil yellowish-brown liquid entity that then goes around and messily devours hundreds of innocent bystanders, this is it.

Third, we have:

A STRANGELY-COLORED POOL IN A CAVE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN TOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS

Lechuguilla Cave, in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, is one of the largest cave complexes in the world, and despite this wasn't even discovered until 1993.  A lot of it has never been explored, like the hundred-meter-long stretch of it investigated just last week, that ended in a pool that looked like it was filled with lime yogurt.

Geologist Max Wisshak, who led the expedition, said the color is "an optical illusion," that actually it's crystal clear.  My response: sure, it is.  He admits, however, that because it has been isolated in the depths of this cavern, it will contain microorganisms that have never been observed before and very likely have never encountered a terrestrial life form since being trapped there thousands, possibly millions, of years ago.

I see no way this could possibly go wrong, do you?

Oh, and Wisshak also said, "we found bat skeletons, thousands of years old, in some places in the cave."

Because that's not ominous at all.

Last, consider:

SCIENTISTS IN NEW YORK PROPOSE MAKING A LIQUID METAL ROBOT

This one's right down the road from me, at Binghamton University, where mechanical engineer Pu Zhang and his team have developed an alloy of indium, bismuth, and tin that melts at 62 C (so it could be melted with hot water).  But along with this, they have come up with a way of bonding it to a silicone matrix, so once it cools, the liquid metal will "remember" its original configuration and come back together into the shape it started with.

As I recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger made a movie about this.  It didn't end well.

"Normally, engineers use aluminum or steel to produce cushion structures," Zhang said.  "After you land on the Moon, the metal absorbs the energy and deforms.  It’s over – you can use it only once...  In contrast, a spacecraft with landing cushions built using a liquid metal lattice could be reused over and over again.  Using this Field’s alloy, you can crash into it like other metals, but then heat it up later to recover its shape."

Ultimately, Zhang says, he wants to create "a liquid metal robot."

Because of course he does.

So I'm taking bets.  Will it be ghostly hordes from a drowned village?  Something deadly released from a pot taken from a Chinese tomb?  A contagion from a pool of optical-illusion yogurt in a cave in New Mexico?  Or a shape-shifting liquid metal assassin going on a rampage?  Or something else that we haven't even thought about?

To find out, tune in next time for 2020: Hold My Beer!

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

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is for people who are fascinated with the latest research on our universe, but are a little daunted by the technical aspects: Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time by Oxford University astrophysicist Becky Smethurst.

A whirlwind tour of the most recent discoveries from the depths of space -- and I do mean recent, because it was only released a couple of weeks ago -- Smethurst's book is a delightful voyage into the workings of some of the strangest objects we know of -- quasars, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, blazars, gamma-ray bursters, and many others.  Presented in a way that's scientifically accurate but still accessible to the layperson, it will give you an understanding of what we know about the events of the last 13.8 billion years, and the ultimate fate of the universe in the next few billions.  If you have a fascination for what's up there in the night sky, this book is for you!

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