World War Woo

If you're wondering why the world seems to have lost its collective marbles lately, we now have an answer:

The Reptilians who control all of the governments in the world have realized that we're on to them, and they're trying to start World War III.

At least that's the contention of YouTube user "2CirclesArchive," who posted a video a couple of days ago that should win some kind of award for complete batshit lunacy.  In case you don't want to jeopardize valuable cells in your prefrontal cortex watching the thing, here are a few salient quotes:

The Reptilian parasites know that humanity is waking up to their existence and presence. That’s why the need the Third World War as a distraction.  That’s the sole reason for this irrational conflict.

Which of the many irrational conflicts are we talking about, here?  Because in the last few months, we seem to be having global-scale irrational conflicts on nearly a daily basis.  And I'm not entirely sure how starting a world war helps out the Reptilian parasites' goal of remaining undercover.  You'd think that'd kind of seal the deal, actually.

It’s Reptilians versus humans – not humans versus humans.  Not the West versus Russia...  Putin had been part of a group advised by reptiles.  Nordics made the counter offer to Putin.  The technology the Nordics are giving to Putin is on par with America.  The Nordics have told Putin he no longer has to toe the American line, hence his resistance.

The "Nordics" doesn't refer to Scandinavian people, here.  They're a race of sexy blond aliens, kind of like Liam Hemsworth only with superpowers.  So apparently the Nordics and the Reptilians are playing some kind of chess game with Putin as one of the pawns.  And since "2CirclesArchive" claims that the focal point of the unrest is going to be in the Ukraine, I suppose it makes some kind of bizarre sense that Putin would be involved.

Then we're told that at least one other human besides "2CirclesArchive" has figured it out.  This person is Simon Parkes, former councilor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, England.  Parkes has appeared in Skeptophilia before because of his claims that (1) his mother was a nine-foot-tall green alien with eight fingers on each hand, and (2) he's been abducted by an alien he calls "the Cat Queen," who screwed him silly and proceeded to give birth to a half-alien, half-human child named "Zarka."

So I think we can safely conclude that Parkes is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.  Nevertheless, "2CirclesArchive" thinks he is a credible witness, and finds it completely plausible that he has interacted with "aliens, shadow people, elementals and UFOs... Mantid (Mantis) beings, Draconis Reptilian, Feline, small and tall Grey creatures, Crystalline beings and other creatures that can’t be identified."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons CGP Grey, Roswell - Alien 4889611102, CC BY 2.0]

Okay, what do we do about all this?  "2CirclesArchive" has some advice:

Pass it on and tell everyone.  The internet is controlled.  Call people in Ukraine randomly.  Google for a phonebook of Ukraine and call people and businesses and tell them all politicians are Reptilians.  They want the Third World War.  Search on the internet.  I love you.  Hurry, time is running out.

So because the internet is controlled, we're supposed to... search on the internet?  And then... just call random people in Ukraine?

There's also the problem of the fact that even if I was inclined to do this, which I'm not, I don't speak Ukrainian.  I mean, anyone can look up how to say "All politicians are Reptilians" using Google Translate ("Vsi polityky ye reptiliyi"), but I should warn you that Google Translate isn't all that accurate.  Every year I have to advise my Latin and Greek students not to attempt cheating on their assignments by loading them into Google Translate, because what comes out is an often-hilarious hash.  As an example, take the simple and rather well-known quote from Petrarch, "Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio" ("There is nothing as hateful to wisdom as too much cleverness").  Here's what Google Translate did with it:

There is nothing more offensive to that wisdom of the sharpness of the excessive.

Right!  What?

So I'm not sure you should be all that confident of my translation into Ukrainian.  You might be better off hiring an actual Ukrainian person, although you'd have to choose carefully, or they'd just tell you, "ty absolyutno bozhevilʹna" ("you are absolutely insane," at least if you believe Google Translate).

Other than that, I'm not sure what to do.  I mean, I've done my part in passing the message along, but I'm not sure I'm going to push it much further.  I'm only willing to stretch the patience of my readers so far.  Beyond that, I think we'll have to take our chances with the Reptilians, shadow people, Mantids, and Liam Hemsworth.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia is Flim-Flam!, by the grand old man of skepticism and critical thinking, James Randi.  Randi was a stage magician before he devoted his career to unmasking charlatans, so he of all people knows how easy it is to fool the unwary.  His book is a highly entertaining exercise in learning not to believe what you see -- especially when someone is trying to sell you something.

Zombie cult feud

A Senegalese saying goes, "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."

I got an object lesson in this principle from a link sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia a few days ago, wherein I learned that two rival zombie apocalypse cults are currently embroiled in a feud.  The article, by Robyn Pennacchia over at Wonkette, is well worth reading in its entirety.  But my ears perked up instantly when I found out that one of the feuders is one Sherry Shriner.  I knew I'd seen her name before, but where?

A brief search was enough to determine why my memory was jogged.  Back in 2014, I did a post about how the Evil Shadow Government is outfitting us all with microchips in our dental fillings and implanted medical devices, not to mention through vaccination, with the ultimate aim of controlling our behavior in much the same fashion as a ten-year-old uses the remote control to steer his plastic car directly into a wall.

Fortunately, Shriner is one smart cookie, and found out a way to neutralize the chips, something so unexpected and technical and sophisticated there's no way the Evil Scientists would ever have thought of it: magnets. Apparently the chips kind of conk out when they're placed in a magnetic field.  So they turn out to be not such a threat after all, especially if you've ever had an MRI, which must cause the chips to short-circuit so badly that it causes Bad Guy Scientific Laboratories the world over to go up in flames.

But the failure of Shriner's microchip-implant claim apparently didn't discourage her in the least.  She is still around, and has come into the news lately through her alleged connection to a crime you might have heard about -- a woman in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania shot and killed her boyfriend, supposedly when he asked her to because he'd found out that the leader of the cult they belonged to was a "reptilian alien."

Because that makes total sense.

Anyhow, the leader of the cult, and alleged reptilian alien, is none other than Shriner herself.  Apparently Shriner tried to warn Steven Mineo, the victim of the shooting, that his girlfriend (Barbara Rogers) was a loon.  Not in so many words, of course; what Shriner said was that Rogers was a "Super Soldier."  From Shriner's Facebook page:

They're trying to spin it that I'm responsible for Steve's death?  No, Barb is.  I tried to protect Steve.  I tried to warn him about Barbara Rogers, but he wouldn't listen to me.  He thought I was insulting his 'wife'... when I was just trying to protect him from her!  I knew what she was!  He began to realize that what I said about her was true, and that's why she killed him, to protect her lies and keep her secrets.  They want to call me a cult leader?  No, I am just a humble servant and a Messenger of the Most High.  I spent my life serving HIM, and for that I get beat up by Cain's kids, libtards, Satanists, witches, and haters everywhere.  If you open your eyes it's clear to see she was involved with witchcraft and Satanism.  Steve didn't want to believe it and now he's dead from her hands.  Steve wasn't suicidal, it was her plan all along to destroy him.  So all the lies and garbage against me and others just needs to stop... 

I warned him she was a Super Soldier who would kill him and move on... but I'm the 'False Prophet'...  Perhaps he finally figured her out but it was too late for him.  It wasn't the 'online cult' that killed him, it was Barbara Rogers who they had all warned him about!  They always try to paint me as a cult... nice try libtards.

So yeah, that sounds like the pinnacle of rationality.  The picture becomes even more vivid when you add to that the fact that Pennacchia found out that Shriner also thinks she's Lucifer's sister, and that she's personally interviewed her brother (and in fact wrote a book about it, one review of which begins with the memorable line, "This woman is a delusional loon.").  Oh, and she also sells crystals called "Orgone Blasters," which supposedly will destroy chemtrails, and which are (this is a direct quote from her website) "the only thing that works against Alien-Demonic-Zombie-Vampire beings."

In case those are a problem in your neighborhood.

[image courtesy of photographer Bob Jagendorf and the Wikimedia Commons]

Interestingly, Shriner's "Orgone Blasters" are something I've also addressed here at Skeptophilia.  "Orgone," if you're curious, is a fantastically powerful kind of energy that is the force of "psychosexual release" that happens at orgasm.  How on earth you could use such an energy even if it exists is kind of a mystery, because when most folks have an orgasm they're thinking about other things than how to combat Alien-Demonic-Zombie-Vampire beings.

Or maybe that's just me.  I dunno.

You'd think that'd be enough to think about for today, but in the words of the infomercial: "Wait!  There's more!"  Shriner is currently engaged in a feud with another zombie apocalypse cult, which is called either "Amightywind" or "Almightywind" (even the cult itself seems to be unsure which is correct).  The leaders of this cult, Ezra and Elizabeth Elijah Nikomia, have come up with something even better than Shriner's use of magnets to defeat implanted microchips; they say you can defeat zombies by hitting them with a board:

I tell you this now so when you see these things come to pass you will not fear his army of ZOMBIES that will be slain by the POWER OF THE CROSS of YAHUSHUA ha MASHIACH!  Remember hit them with a board or wood that represents the CROSS.  The dead in YAHUSHUA (Christ) which shall walk and witness to MY Glory will walk as in times of old and testify of Heaven, not to take the MARK of the BEAST!  They shall prove there is life after death.  MY saints you will hear and see in Glorified Bodies that CAN NOT BE KILLED!

So anyhow, Shriner absolutely hates A(l)mightywind, almost as much as she hates "libtards."  Alleged boyfriend-killer Barbara Rogers, Shriner says, was an evil witch affiliated with the Nikomias' group, and there's been a years-long war between their rival cults of an intensity reminiscent of the Hatfields and McCoys:

So all the witches online seem to be rallying their covens and fake Christian ministries to protect fellow witch Barbara Rogers and come against me and paint the lie Steve wanted to die.  Almightywind Witch Cult is run by a woman who was a witch in the Great White Brotherhood of Indiana, broke off from them to begin her own “ministry’ online.  She’s been making hate videos about me for years.  Steve was well aware of them.

And apparently the idea is that the Nikomias talked Barbara into shooting Steve because Steve had allied himself with Sherry Shriner.  From here on it gets kind of confusing, however, so I'll simply direct you to Pennacchia's excellent article if you want more information.

Myself, I'm just glad that Shriner and the Nikomias all live in different states than I do.  I'm sure that New York has its share of wackos, but these three seem like they're in a class by themselves.  And the fact that they're feuding is honestly kind of scary, because when you have people whose grasp on sanity is so tenuous, you never know what they might do.

Or maybe I'm one of the Secret Reptilian Alien Zombie Vampire Libtards.  You can see how that would be just as likely.

That's no moon. It's a space station.

The whole subject of "book reviews" has been much on my mind lately, because being (as well as a blogger) a fiction writer, with several titles to my name on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I am constantly monitoring my links to see if I've gotten good reviews.  Or bad reviews.  Or any reviews.  Because, let's face it, Brendan Behan was on to something when he said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

On the other hand, you have to wonder how accurate reviews really are, and I mean no disrespect to the people who have reviewed my work.  Especially those who have given it five stars.

The subject comes up because I was doing some research for today's post, on a topic suggested by a student, to wit, the conjecture that the Moon is an artificial construct.  It seems like the first serious exploration of the claim was done by Christopher Knight in his 2007 book, Who Built The Moon?, but it has recently come back to light because the cause has been taken up by noted wingnut David Icke in his latest publication, Human Race, Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More.  And no, I'm not making that title up, and I wonder if you had the same reaction as I did when you read it, which is to hear deep voices in the background going, "A wimoweh, a wimoweh, a wimoweh."

Be that as it may, Icke is into the artificial-moon theory in a big way.  Here's a quote from his book:

I had that overwhelming feeling at my computer that the Moon was artificial and was being used to control life on this planet.  It is the Reptilians’ control system.  The placement of the Moon dictates the speed of Earth’s rotation and the angle at which it rotates – 22.5 degrees from vertical.  This angle creates the four seasons because of the way planet faces the Sun during its annual orbit.  The Moon has a major influence on the tides – far more than the Sun – and with the human body consisting of some 70 per cent water it is bound to have a fantastic influence on us, even on that level alone.  The Moon also dictates so much of our relationship with time, and the term ‘month’ is really Moonth, a period based on the cycles of the Moon.  The realisation that the Moon is a gigantic spacecraft is the strand that connects all the rest, not just in relation to Moon anomalies, but also to life on Earth and the conspiracy to enslave humanity.  The fact is that the Reptilians in the Moon and in underground bases on Mars depend on humans and the Earth for food – their very survival.   This is one key reason why they are desperate not to be exposed.  Water and other resources are constantly being taken from this planet to the Moon and Mars and this is not a new phenomena, either.  Ancient Zulu stories say the same.

Well, far be it from me to rely on the findings of science when they're contradicted by "ancient Zulu stories."  Even if it implies that because the human body is 70% water, we experience tides.

[image courtesy of photographer Luc Viatour and the Wikimedia Commons]

Anyway, Icke goes on like this for 690 pages, talking about how the Moon must be hollow, that it's older than the Earth is, and has "anomalous quantities" of "metals such as brass and mica" (for the non-geologists in the studio audience, let me point out that mica isn't a metal), that particles of metallic iron on the Moon's surface are "mysteriously resistant to rusting" (not a surprise given that rusting is oxidation, a process that is unlikely to occur in a place with no atmosphere), and that the maria ("seas") are places where meteorite collisions resulted in damage, which had to be repaired by the Reptilians using "an artificial cement-like substance."

690 pages of this. And it costs $25.84, plus shipping and handling, to purchase it from Amazon.

So anyway, I'm wading through all of this, and just shaking my head, but then I saw the thing that made me shake my head so much I looked like I had a severe disorder of the central nervous system -- that this book has received 110 reviews, of which 74 gave it five stars.  Here are a few selected phrases from these reviews:

• Icke is one of the very few conspiracy whistleblowers who has developed a relatively advanced spiritual awareness from which he can provide a useful context and understanding of the material he has uncovered.
• If you are sick of all this government crap then you should read this book because it really opens your eyes to the truth and makes you realize how stupid and fake this world really is.
• This could be the most important book EVER written. If you don't know where the world is headed, you need to find out and David Icke tells how we can return to freedom.
• Most informative book there is about what is happening in the world today and who is causing it. It also tells you what you can do to change it. 

All of which makes me, as a teacher of critical thinking, want to weep softly and bang my head on my desk.  However, there is one thought that gives me hope.

Reviews are, by their very nature, a skewed sample.  People who review this book have (one would hope) read it, which means that the presumably huge number of people in this world who would read the book's description, see its price, and then laugh and say "no freakin' way" are already eliminated from the pool.  Only once you have forked over your $25.84 (plus shipping and handling) are you going to be able to review the book, and this speaks to a certain level of, shall we say, credulity right from the starting gate.

So, anyway, I'm trying to be positive, here, which is sometimes difficult.  Wingnuts will always be out there trumpeting their theories; that is, after all, what wingnuts do.  And there will always be a small group of people who think that their nutty ideas make total sense, and I emphasize the words "small group" with every hopeful thought of which I am capable.  For right now, I'll just try to put the whole thing out of my mind, if only to stop the voices in my head from singing, "A wimoweh, a wimoweh, a wimoweh," which is getting a little annoying.

A Comprehensive Field Guide to Aliens

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

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

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commona]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't trust everyone

There's an odd tendency of conspiracy theorists to eat their young.

Not literally, of course.  I wouldn't want that to get out as some kind of meta-conspiracy-theory.  But I've noticed that although the conspiracy theories themselves never seem to die, the conspiracy theorists seem to have a relatively short half-life before they implode.

Again, not literally.  Don't get your hopes up.

I think the reason for this is that once you abandon logic and evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, you are out in some kind of netherworld of lies, suppositions, and paranoia, and it's only a matter of time before you become victim to the same foolishness you were perpetrating.  You give people the impression that no one is to be trusted, that anyone and everyone could be part of the conspiracy, and before you know it, your followers have decided that you're right... and include you in the assessment.

So it's with some degree of amusement that I report to you that it's finally happened to the archduke and court jester of the conspiracy theory world -- David Icke and Alex Jones.

Icke was outed, fittingly enough, in a YouTube video in which he is caught "shape-shifting into a Reptilian."  Odd, isn't it, that these Reptilian overlords of ours are brilliant enough to infiltrate themselves into every level of government, break into the sanctum sanctorum of military intelligence, and then can't remember to keep their costumes in place when they're on the air?  But yes, you heard it here first: Icke, who said that Reptilians are in control of everything from the CIA to the U.S. public education system, is himself a Reptilian.

Even more wryly amusing is the fact that Alex Jones had the whistle blown on the site Before It's News, because they're about the only website that is even more bizarrely paranoid than Jones's own site InfoWars.  Here's the exposé about Jones:

Skeptics at first, may think that the vertical slits in Alex Jones’ pupils, are caused by a blurring effect, when the video frame is frozen.  But the unedited video footage – that can easily be verified through the original InfoWars video that is posted on YouTube, reveals that THE VERTICAL SLITS IN ALEX JONES’ EYES ARE MOVING SIDE TO SIDE – AND SO WHY, WHY, WHY DO HORIZONTAL SLITS NEVER APPEAR?  It is also noteworthy when the reptilian eyes manifest through Jones, that the iris narrows significantly, and is then bordered on each side, with black lines.  This cannot be a blurring effect, as there is not enough black on the borders of his iris to do so.  And the “reptilian iris” effect also manifests when his eyes are moving side to side – and so, should the slits not be HORIZONTAL when this happens?  And so the blurring argument – the argument that the serpentine slits in Alex Jones’ eyes are caused by eye movement, is pure fantasy.  But the reality remains, Alex Jones is now manifesting, on multiple occasions, REPTILIAN SHAPESHIFTING EYES.

What's funnier than the article itself, though, is that they illustrate their contention with a picture of the "Gorn" from the Star Trek original series episode "Arena."

You may remember this episode because it contained the most ridiculous fight scene ever filmed, featuring Captain Kirk fighting a guy wearing a huge plastic dinosaur head.  But evidently the dinosaur head prevented the actor playing the Gorn from seeing very well, so he would lunge at Kirk, and miss him by about ten feet.  Kirk, of course, being Kirk, would pretend that he was in extreme danger, and he would immediately drop and roll, giving him ample opportunity to tear his shirt, because no episode of the original series was complete if you didn't get a chance to see at least one of William Shatner's nipples.  The Gorn, however, would go staggering off in some random direction until he happened by pure chance to locate Kirk again, and the whole scenario would replay.

It was a little like an extremely slow-moving two-person game of "Marco Polo."

But I digress.

Anyhow, there you have it.   Two alien infiltrators exposed, by people who evidently don't understand the concept of "video compression artifact."  But even stranger is that the conspiracy theorists themselves don't realize how they are setting themselves up to be knocked down.  David Icke and Alex Jones have been preaching to people for ages not to trust... well, everyone.

They, of all people, should be entirely unsurprised to find that some people are now beginning to realize that everyone includes them.

Biebs in space

Writing this blog sometimes puts me into very odd conversations.

Witness what happened yesterday, an exchange between myself and a friend that started out with the odd question, "Do you know what Justin Bieber is?"

I responded, "Of course I know who Justin Bieber is."

"Not who," my friend said.  "What."

"Um," I said, showing my usual articulateness when confronted with peculiar questions.  "Well, he's a pop singer whose songs make me want to remove my ears with a vegetable peeler.  He also, by his recent behavior, appears to be a spoiled rotten brat."

"Nope," my friend said.  "He's an alien."

At that point, the light dawned.  Like I said, sometimes I'm a magnet for bizarre claims, but that doesn't mean that I'm quick on the uptake about it.  "Lemme guess," I said.  "Someone found a photograph of him where he appears to have antennae, or something."

"Better than that.  Video footage, where his eyes seem to turn into reptile eyes."

"Marvy," I responded.  "Bieber's one of the reptilian overlords.  I shoulda known."

So my friend directed me to an article on Huffington Post amusingly titled, "Fox News Accidentally Reveals That Justin Bieber is a Reptile."

Apparently what happened is that an alert Fox News viewer, whose YouTube handle is RyGuyVA, was watching the footage showing the Biebs in court after his unfortunate run-in with marijuana, prescription medications, a Lamborghini, and a Miami Beach police officer (in that order).  And RyGuyVA notice that in one frame, Bieber's eyes appear to change.

"Boom," RyGuyVA says.  "I always though that stuff was BS. But come on."

Seriously, look into those eyes.  Don't they seem bent on world domination?

Of course, the easier explanation is that it's a "video compression artifact," a loss of video data as it is reduced to fit available storage space or transmission bandwidth.  And as we've seen before, you can turn grainy images into anything.  Take a look at the "unfocused gaze illusion" -- in which your brain takes a blurry image of a human face and makes a decision (wrong, as it turns out) about which way the eyes are pointing.  Even more startling is the effect of focusing a blurred image of Charles Allen Gilbert's painting "All is Vanity" -- pass your cursor over the fuzzy image and watch what it turns into!

But of course, there are people who would just love to belieb that Justin is an all-powerful alien.  And I have to admit that "reptilian overlord" has more gravitas than "drug-addled twit."  Given that there are conspiracy theorists like the wonderfully bizarre David Icke who think that bunches of famous people are reptilian aliens, including various pharaohs, kings and queens (including Queen Elizabeth II of England), 43 of the US Presidents (no word I could find on which ones were left out), the entirety of the Rockefeller and Rothschild families, and the late comedian Bob Hope, it's no real surprise that Justin Bieber should be on the list, too.  I guess they need someone to provide them with music, out there in Reptilian Command Central.

At this point, though, don't you think he's kind of overstayed his welcome here on Earth?  I mean, besides the annoying songs, he's now breaking the law and just generally making a nuisance of himself, to the point that there's now a "We The People" petition to deport him back to his native Canada.  But if he's really an alien, then why should we burden Canada with him?  Put him on a rocket and send him out into space, is what I suggest.  Let his reptilian buddies pick him up and bring him back to Zeta Reticuli, or wherever the hell they're supposed to be from.

That'd turn me into a belieber.

Smiting the unbelievers

One question I have for people who believe that there are powerful, invisible beings in control of the universe is why those beings don't seem to object more strenuously when they are disbelieved in or mocked outright.

I'm not just talking about deities here, as you'll see in a moment, although mythology does provide a great many examples of tales which, if true, should give scoffers pause.  The Greeks gods, in particular, were always smiting people for pretty much nothing.  Remember when Athena turned Arachne into a spider for claiming that she was the best weaver ever?  Or when King Salmoneus of Pylos was vaporized with a thunderbolt by Zeus when he claimed to be a god?  Then there was poor Actaeon, who was turned into a stag and then ripped limb from limb by his dogs just because he happened to catch a glimpse of the goddess Artemis naked.

Looks from the picture like Actaeon was naked at the time, too, which certainly ups the creepiness factor and makes it understandable why Artemis freaked out a little.  But it still seems like an overreaction to me.

The Norse gods were a little better in that regard, although not if you were a Frost Giant.  Odin and Thor were always smiting the crap out of the Frost Giants, which is probably why you see so few Frost Giants around now.

And look at Yahweh in the Old Testament.  Given how many of his own followers he slew for various minor offenses, it's a wonder there are any of them left, either.  He killed seventy people just for looking at the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 6:19, bringing up visual images of the melting Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  God also was not above using animals to do his dirty work -- remember how he sent bears to help out his pal Elisha in 2 Kings 2:23-24, and the bears ripped apart two dozen children who had teased Elisha about being bald?

And let's not even go into how Yahweh killed virtually the entire population of the Earth during the Great Flood, men, women and children, just for some unspecified "wickedness."

So, we have some serious precedent, here, that being a non-believer, or (worse) an outright scoffer, isn't a safe thing to do, inviting being turned into or eaten by various animals, struck with lightning, drowned, or just suffering a generic smiting.

And here I sit, healthy as ever.  Odd, that.

All of this comes up, however, not because of anything connected directly with religion.  You probably know about the Reptilians, a race of shapeshifting evil cold-blooded aliens who have infiltrated the political world for nefarious reasons.  We're talking about some serious bad guys, here, worse even than Ann Coulter.

Now, belief in the Reptilians does share some of the same characteristics as religion, in that it requires faith-based acceptance of powerful entities whose existence, by definition, can't be proven.  So it is perhaps unsurprising that this week, on the wonderfully weird blog Phantoms & Monsters, we found out that like Zeus and Artemis and Yahweh and the rest, the Reptilians do not take kindly to being taunted.

A man who gave his name only as "Matt R." was interviewed a week ago with Daniel Ott of The Edge Radio Show, a weekly broadcast that bills itself as "exciting interviews on topics such as 9/11, Angels, Near Death Experiences, Planetary Anomalies, Black Ops, to Alternative Science, Prophesies, Lost Continents, Aliens, Cryptozoology, Bio Warfare and much more!"  Matt R. was describing his various abductions by Reptilians (he's apparently had more than one), and Ott made some kind of wisecrack about Reptilians.  Here's what happened next:

In the last 10 minutes of the show, the host cracked a joke about killing reptilians.  What can only be described as an inhuman growl jumped into our conversation immediately after.  Apparently, whatever reptilian was on the line wanted to voice their displeasure with his joke.  During this conversation, I was sitting inside a parked car with the engine off. I was talking on my Skype app, over my phone's 4G connection.  There was no other radio or computer anywhere near me.  I can't think of anything that could have produced a growling noise that vivid.  That certainly didn't sound like line interference.  There are no audio files or ring tones on my Samsung S3 that sound like that.  There was a deep guttural quality to it, which made it similar to what I've heard from reptilians before.  Mr. Ott does not have a history of pranking people on his program.  And I know there is no possible explanation for generation of that noise on my end.

And I'm thinking, "that's it?  A nasty growl is the best that the ultrapowerful, black-hearted controllers of the Earth can do?  After crossing the galaxy in their faster-than-light spaceships, infiltrating the government and replacing world leaders by assuming human form, and engaging in all sorts of evil stuff from genetic engineering of alien/human hybrids to inducing Miley Cyrus to "twerk" at the Video Music Awards, the best they can manage when someone threatens to kill them is a 'guttural growl?'"

Maybe that's why supernatural entities get so little respect these days.  I mean, if a god appeared in my classroom and turned a mouthy student into an earthworm, I would definitely stand up and take notice.  Depending on who the student was, I might even sacrifice a sheep or something as a way of saying, "Thanks."  And just think of all of the people in the world who really deserve being vaporized by lightning bolts.

If Thor is up there with his hammer, I know we'd all appreciate it if he'd get up off his lazy ass and use the thing, preferably starting with someone like Bashar al-Assad.

But of course, that sort of thing never happens.  It's kind of inconvenient, the way we never get any direct evidence of all of these things we're supposed to believe in, isn't it?  I mean, I've scoffed at both Reptilians and various religious beliefs pretty much continuously for two decades, and I haven't even heard so much as a growl.

Of course, you never know what's around the corner, so it could be that I'll get struck by a meteorite or something on the way to work today.

If that happens, won't I feel silly?

Elements of style

When scientists this week at Lund University in Sweden confirmed the production of an atom of element 115, I thought it was just a story that would be of interest to physicists, chemists, and assorted science nerds.

The atom, like those of all "superheavy" elements, disintegrated almost instantaneously.  All of the high-atomic-weight atoms -- those on the bottom tiers of the periodic table -- are extremely unstable, and undergo radioactive decay within a fraction of a second after they're created in the lab.  None of them occur naturally.

This confirms a claim made by Russian scientists in 2004, and completes another row of the periodic table, bringing to 118 the number of confirmed elements.  Like its near neighbors with atomic numbers of 113, 117, and 118, it doesn't have an official permanent name yet, so it is called "ununpentium" (a placeholder name that simply means "115").

So far, only a story that would interest people who are fond of esoteric chemistry.  Thus my surprise when stories started popping up all over woo-woo websites with headlines like, "Element 115 proven to be real!  Bob Lazar was right!"

My first reaction was, "Who the hell is Bob Lazar?"  So I looked him up, and found that he's a pretty famous guy, even though I had never heard of him.  He even has a Wikipedia page.  And his story turned out to be quite interesting.

Lazar is (appropriate for our unofficial theme-of-the-week) a conspiracy theorist of the first water.  He claims to be a physicist with degrees from both the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; attempts to confirm this have turned up nothing, although he did once take an electronics course at Pierce Junior College.  Lazar says this is because the government tampered with his academic records to discredit him.

Why would the government do that?  Because Lazar worked at Area 51, of course.  And while at Area 51, he was allegedly the leader of a group of physicists who studied some downed extraterrestrial spaceships.  And guess what he claimed was the fuel that powered said flying saucers?

Got it in one.  Element 115.

Ununpentium, Lazar said, created "antigravity effects" when bombarded with protons.  Antimatter was also somehow involved.  Put 'em all together, says Lazar, and the "intense strong nuclear force of element 115's nucleus" would warp space and time, creating a way to cross interstellar space.

Oh, and he knows where these aliens came from.  Zeta Reticuli, the favorite star of conspiracy theorists everywhere, alleged home to both the Reptilians and the Greys.  Which ties in neatly with stories of government collaboration with extraterrestrials, and the replacement of various world figures by shapeshifting evil aliens.  This last allegation might be true, of course.  I myself am suspicious about recently-disgraced San Diego mayor Bob Filner.  Doesn't he look like someone trying to mimic a human, but who can't quite make it look authentic yet?

I think that is exactly the expression you'd see on the face of an alien who had just learned the rule, "When you smile, retract the lips and expose the teeth."

But I digress.  Let's return to our consideration of Bob #1.

Bob Lazar's ideas have achieved considerable buzz in the UFO community, and also in the world of the conspiracy theorists, being that his ideas combine the best from both.  And he was taken at least seriously enough to have an actual physicist, Dr. David L. Morgan, give a close look to his ideas.  And after careful consideration, Morgan has concluded that Lazar is a raving wingnut.

"After reading an account by Bob Lazar of the 'physics' of his Area 51 UFO propulsion system," Morgan stated, "my conclusion is this: Mr. Lazar presents a scenario which, if it is correct, violates a whole handful of currently accepted physical theories...  The presentation of the scenario by Lazar is troubling from a scientific standpoint.  Mr. Lazar on many occasions demonstrates an obvious lack of understanding of current physical theories."

Which is much nicer than I would have put it, but amounts to the same thing.

Any time someone comes up with a "theory" that will "destroy all of physics as we know it," I'm always inclined to give him the raspberry and walk away.  It might be narrow-minded of me, but think about it; what's the chance that the best brains the Earth has produced -- people like Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Lise Meitner, Murray Gell-Mann, and Peter Higgs -- are all wrong?  That they've missed the boat completely, and some new guy, with no particular access to research facilities or technical equipment, or possibly even a college degree, has figured it all out?  Okay, I guess it's possible, but I need more than just his word for it, especially when that word contains mention of "the Grey aliens from Zeta Reticuli."

The bottom line is: if you think that you've got a revolutionary idea, turn it over to peer review like the rest of the scientific world.  If it stands, I'll be happy to eat my words.

Anyway, this explains why the woo-woos all started jumping up and down and making excited little squeaking noises about element 115, in spite of the fact that the Swedish scientists only succeeded in making one atom of it, which would hardly be enough to power a spacecraft.  And the atom in question (1) decayed in less than a tenth of a second, and (2) showed no signs of generating an "anti-gravity field."

But I guess when you are resting your claims on no evidence, then any evidence is an improvement.

The Black Death, aliens, and the role of chaos in history

Yesterday's post, about the alien origins of humanity, generated a nice round of "you think that's a crazy belief, wait till you see this one!" from my readers.  The best contender in this game of Wingnut One-Upmanship came from another student, who found out that not only did aliens produce our species, they've been trying to kill us ever since.

I guess it's understandable, really.  Our stewardship of the globe hasn't exactly been praiseworthy.  It's no wonder that our superpowerful alien cousins, who still presumably live on our original homeworld (with its clement temperatures, 30-hour rotational period, and "no geomagnetic storms or glaciers"), would have some second thoughts about sending us here.  So it turns out that they've repeatedly tried to get rid of us.

This conclusion comes from a stellar piece of research entitled "Did Aliens Create the 'Black Death' and Other Diseases During the Middle Ages?  (And Are They Still Creating Diseases Today?)," which not only would win an award for the longest article title ever, but is yet another example of a piece of journalism that should say, in its entirety, "NO."  Unfortunately, the author doesn't take that route.  We're told that the 14th century plague has to be extraterrestrial in origin:

A great many people throughout Europe and other plague-stricken regions of the world were reporting that outbreaks of the plague were caused by foul-smelling “mists” and bright lights were reported far more frequently and in many more locations than were rodent infestations. The plague years were, in fact, a period of heavy UFO activity.

Well, I hate to be unimaginative, but the foul smells during the Middle Ages don't really require UFOs to explain them.  There was a fairly appalling lack of sanitation, particularly in the big cities.  Apparently just the amount of human waste lying around in heavily populated areas was enough to create a smell that would blow your hair back -- even 19th century London was a frightful-smelling place, according to Steven Johnson's wonderful book The Ghost Map (which chronicles the cholera epidemic of the 1850s, and how it led to the creation of an efficient city-wide sewer system).  And the fact that rodents weren't "reported frequently" is pretty certainly because of their ubiquity, not because they were absent.

But of course, it's not just the stinky mist and bright lights that are brought out as evidence:

A second phenomenon was sometimes reported: the appearance of frightening human-like figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately. It appears that the “scythes” may have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas. Strange men dressed in black, “demons’ and other terrifying figures were observed in other European communities. The frightening creatures were often observed carrying long “brooms,” “scythes,” or “swords” that were used to “sweep” or “knock” on the doors of people’s homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular image of “Death” as a skeleton or demon carrying a scythe. In looking at this haunting image of death, we may, in fact, be staring into the face of the UFO.”

Right.  Because we're not talking about a superstitious, credulous bunch of people here.  They can't possibly have made this up to explain a terrifying event that they didn't have the science to understand.

 Maybe it wasn't rats or aliens.  Maybe it was the "saaaalmon mooouuussse."

But then we find out that it wasn't all aliens who were impersonating Death; it was only the crazy homicidal aliens who were responsible:

This Awareness indicates that what in Medieval times were termed demons, and what many of the Christian faith considered to be demons, are in fact what entities refer today to as extraterrestrial aliens. The Greys from Zeta Reticuli today are not precisely the same invaders as those of the Medieval times. The Medieval aliens were both Reptoid and also of the Grey community that now is underground and known as the Deros. The Deros underground are demented forms of Zeta Greys, which have been here for many thousands of years, living underground to avoid sunlight and to avoid communication with humans except on those occasions where they seek to make contact for one reason or another.

Oh.  Okay.  Because that makes sense.

You know, I think that the problem here is that people are uncomfortable with the chaotic, random nature of much of life, especially the bad parts.  If something bad happens, the immediate impulse is to look for someone, or something, to blame.  This explains so much woo-woo thinking, doesn't it?  Without even trying hard, I found three examples that were linked on Reddit in the last two days -- an article on the website of the Institute for Natural Healing that attributes all cancer to eating meat, a claim that the government is covering up how dangerous vaccines are, and an allegation that WiFi in schools is causing headaches in children. 

Somehow, we just can't accept that people get sick, sometimes for no obvious reason.  It's not enough to celebrate the astonishing advances in medical science over the last hundred years, that have generated new records in the healthy human life span -- because, unfortunately, they haven't eliminated all disease and suffering.  The fact that we still get sick, we still grow old and die, must mean that there is some insidious plan behind it all.

It can't just be that we live in a world that's kind of a rough place, a world where bad things happen sometimes.  Not even in the case of the Black Death, where we (1) have identified the bacterium that causes it, (2) know the vector that transmitted it, (3) have evidence from medical records of the time that the symptoms are consistent with subsequent outbreaks, and even (4) have tissue samples (bones) that show evidence of Yersinia pestis infection.  No, that's not enough.  It has to be the evil demented aliens causing it all.

Anyhow, however understandable it is to want there to be some kind of overarching reason why stuff happens, rationality forces us to concede the role that chaos has in human history.  No extraterrestrial epidemics necessary.

And in case any of you were considering trying to one-up this story, I have to request, with all due respect: if you know of anything loonier than this claim, you probably shouldn't tell me about it.  I've done enough facepalms over this one to last me a while.

Adiós, Hugo

Well, Hugo Chávez is dead and buried.  This fact thrills the hell out of some people, who hated his bombastic style and anti-American rhetoric, and disappoints others, who saw Chávez in the David role against the Goliath of "American imperialism."

Whichever version you go for, I don't think that anyone can argue with the fact that he was an odd, odd man.  He would periodically go on long, rambling diatribes about... stuff.  Sometimes it was hard to tell what, exactly, he was talking about, such as the time he claimed that life on Mars was destroyed by "imperialist capitalism."  Then there was the time he mentioned "human beings who have human shape but are not" -- giving rise to speculations that he was talking about the Reptilians.  (Of course, many of these same people who speculate that Chávez had inside information about Reptilians also believe that Lady Gaga is a Reptilian, so perhaps it behooves us to take this with a grain of salt.)

Be that as it may, I think we can all agree that Chávez was quite a peculiar character.

So it should come as no surprise that we now have claims that (1) he was killed by the Illuminati, and (2) that aliens came to his funeral.

Yup.  Poor Chávez didn't die of ordinary liver cancer; he died of "weaponized cancer," and was killed by "by a special Satellite Weapon designed to deliver a wave of Radio Active [sic] Signal to the Body which delievers [sic] Tumors to the Body."  (Source)  Chávez was a hero, the author says, who was taken out because he "knew too much" and because he was standing up against the "New World Order."

What exactly Chávez "knew" is open to question.  He certainly seemed to have limited knowledge about Mars, for example.  As far as his standing up against the "New World Order," whatever the hell that actually is, it seems like mostly who he stood up to was George W. Bush (whom he referred to variously as a "birdie," a "donkey," and "the devil").  And, honestly, I can't fault him for that.  I'm not a particularly political person, but I have to admit to having questioned GWB's morals, ethics, and IQ on numerous occasions myself.

Other than that, Chávez seems to have been a bit of a rambling nutjob, but certainly not as bad as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Un in the Dangerous Wacko Department.  If the Illuminati are beaming tumors into world leaders, Chávez seems like an odd place to start.

But of course, we have additional corroboration of his importance in the Grand Scheme of Things from the fact that the aliens thought him worthy enough to attend his funeral.  Well, to be fair, they didn't actually walk in, enormous black eyes brimming over with tears, blowing their, um, nostril-holes on space hankies.  But they did send a spaceship to salute Chávez as he bid farewell to this planet:

What?  You don't find that convincing?  Just because we need a great big arrow even to see where the spaceship is in the photograph?  Just because it could be damn near anything, from a fleck of dust on the camera lens to a distant pigeon?  Just because if there really had been a spaceship, hovering over a heavily populated part of Caracas in broad daylight, someone would have seen it and gotten a better shot of it?

So, okay, maybe not.  But you have to admit that if anyone deserved having aliens pay their respects, it was Chávez.  Even if he wasn't right about life on Mars being wiped out by capitalism, and he wasn't done in by Death Rays From Space, he still was strange enough that his passing deserved some kind of spectacular gesture.  Especially given that at the time, Lady Gaga was in a Top Secret Meeting with the other scaly-skinned non-human Reptilians (I hear they include Hillary Clinton, John Boehner, and Keith Richards, the last-mentioned of which I can hardly argue with), and so she couldn't make it down to say goodbye.

So, anyway, farewell, Hugo.  I may not have liked your politics much, but I have to admit that you were always impressive in the inadvertent humor department.  And even if you died of a perfectly ordinary disease, and the aliens actually didn't show up for your funeral, you still were a colorful, memorable man, and in this strange and chaotic world, maybe that's the best you can hope for.

Everything in this blog is true

Regular readers of this blog may remember that about a year ago, a student of mine attempted to kill me by sending me a video clip of an apparently pathologically stupid woman attempting to defend the practice of homeopathy.  This student, who by all appearances is a moral and upstanding young man, nevertheless induced me to watch something which he knew might well have the effect of making me choke on my own outrage and die in horrible agony.

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

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

1) Everything on this website is true.

2) If you doubt anything on this website, you are at best asleep, and at worst a mindless sheep who is being led about by evil government disinformation specialists.

3) Many things which turned out to be true were disbelieved, even laughed at, at first. Therefore if you disbelieve and laugh at this website, it must be true.

4) You do not have access to government Top Secret facilities and records. Therefore, anything this website claims is in those facilities and records must be true, because you can’t disprove it.

5) Science is just another means for the ruling elite to control the populace.

6) The ruling elite also invented religion and morality as a way to control the populace. The fact that science and religion are often in conflict is an indication that they are both wrong.

7) The current ruling elite are the same individuals who created the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Nazca lines.

8) These individuals, for good measure, also created humanity itself.

9) Because the ruling elite aren’t actually people, but are super-intelligent reptiles from another planet.

10) Called “Annunaki.”

11) Did I mention that everything in this website is true?

12) The fact that many ancient cultures depicted snakes in their art is proof that the earth is being ruled by reptiles from outer space.

13) The caduceus, the symbol of medical science, is a pair of snakes coiled together. It looks a little like a DNA molecule, which is the repository of all the genetic information in the cell.

14) There you are, then.

15) If that doesn’t prove it to you, then consider the following chain of logic: Crop Circles, Area 51, Ancient Astronauts, the Face on Mars, Freemasons, the Hollow Earth Theory!

16) Ha. That sure showed YOU.

17) And as a last piece of evidence; everything on this website is true.

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

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

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