Total eclipse of the brain

As most of you undoubtedly know, on Monday, April 8, there's going to be a total solar eclipse visible in much of North America.  I've been looking forward to this one for years, because as luck would have it the path of totality is really close to where I live; we have our eclipse glasses at the ready and are going to head up to the lovely town of Canandaigua, New York to see it.  Best of all, it looks like we should have decent weather, never a guarantee in our cloudy, rainy climate.

It's a rare and spectacular event -- rare, at least, from the perspective of being convenient without a great deal of travel.  There are two or three solar eclipses every year, but if the path of totality is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, most of us won't be able to see it.  So you'd think their frequency would convince people that as striking as the phenomenon is, it's perfectly natural and nothing to freak out about.

You would be wrong.

Conspiracy theories have been popping up like toadstools after a rainstorm, most of them dire predictions about what the eclipse means.  Which is, of course, different from simply what it means; what it means is no more mysterious than an object casting a shadow, albeit a really big one.

What is means, though?  Well...  *cue dramatic music* it could mean damn near anything.  And none of it good.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons ESA/CESAR/Wouter van Reeven, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0, Total solar eclipse ESA425433, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO]

Let's start with the people who think it's significant that the path of totality for this eclipse crosses the path of totality for the 2017 solar eclipse, and where they cross is near New Madrid, Missouri.  Geology and/or history buffs probably recognize this place as the site of the massive 1811 earthquake that rang church bells as far away as Richmond, Virginia and changed the course of the Mississippi River.  Well, "X marks the spot," right?  Of course right.  When the shadow of the Moon crosses New Madrid, it's going to set off a superquake that will flatten everything for miles around.

Because apparently, that's how dangerous shadows are, especially when they cross where other shadows were seven years ago.

"This has never happened before, two eclipse paths crossing at a single point over one town," one commenter screeched, despite the fact that a quick look at a solar eclipse map should show him this is blatant nonsense.  It also illustrates that he didn't pay any attention in high school geometry class, because crossing at a single point is kind of what non-parallel lines always fucking do.

Then, there's the Twitter user (sorry, I refuse to call it "X" because it sounds idiotic) who posted the following, receiving tens of thousands of upvotes and thousands of retweets:

Elon Musk changes Twitter's name to X.  His baby's mother, Grimes, posted a strange image on instagram before covid that literally told us covid was going to happen, all the way down to the 3 injections.  In that same image, a few rows beneath the covid 'prediction' is a solar eclipse.  Under it, a flower between two dragons.  2024 is the year of the dragon.  The lotus flower begins blooming in China on April 8th.  The eclipse is happening on April 8th.  That is way too many coincidences for me to feel comfortable, along with the Deagel projection of a 225 Million person decrease in the US by 2025.  It would appear some massive sacrifice could possibly be in the works.

Right!  Sure!  What?

One TikToker made an entirely different claim -- this one that that eclipse isn't going to last for four minutes or so as we've been told, but for three to five days, and that during that time the entire Earth will be plunged into complete darkness.  "Photons and electromagnetic particles that travel at the speed of light and will act as a barrier or temporary shield around the Earth, preventing the light of the Sun or the stars from passing through it," the narrator tells us, because that's apparently how light works.  We're then told to avoid travel during that time, and that the astronomers aren't telling us the truth about the duration of the eclipse because "they don't want to cause mass panic."

And of course if there are conspiracies, you just know Alex Jones is going to get involved, and his contribution this time is noticing that the path of the eclipse passes near eight towns named Nineveh.  Because this is the name of a town in the Bible, it shows the eclipse is a sign from God.  (How an eclipse can be a sign from God meaning anything other than "Kepler and Newton were right," I have no idea.)  But Jones also believes that the Big Bad Government can't let this "biblical event" proceed as the Good Lord intended, and the Department of Homeland Security intends to "hijack the eclipse."

My expression while reading this

Then we have the people who think that the eclipse is a sign that the simulation we're all trapped in is breaking down, and therefore something something something biblical prophecies:

The computer simulation is ending, folks.  Say goodbye to the Matrix.  God says in the book of Luke that before he comes back, he will give us signs in the Sun and the Moon and the stars.  We also have the Moon that is turning to rust.  The Greek origin of that rust is hematite, which means blood.  He said the Moon will turn to blood before the terrible day of the war.  We have the Euphrates River drying up.  We have wars, we have rumors of wars, not to mention all the other biblical prophecies that have been fulfilled.  We are literally in the last seconds of the last days, y'all, and our God is so loving and kind he wants to warn us before he comes back...  This eclipse is not the Rapture, it is a direct warning from God...  We are watching a biblical prophecy play out.

Texas pastor Troy Brewer agrees, at least with the biblical part of it, but adds a nice ultranationalist christofascist spin on the whole thing:

Any time God Almighty speaks a word through the Sun, he’s talking to the nations.  Any time that the Lord would speak a word through the Moon, he is speaking to his covenant people prophetically.  That would either be Israel or it would be the bride of Christ.  Or any time that God Almighty is speaking through the stars, he is prophetically speaking to his children of inheritance...  Why would we call it the Great American Eclipse?  Because it's the first time since 1776 that an eclipse has only touched America.  Can anybody think of what happened in 1776?  Oh, I know.  It was the birth of our nation.  So this was definitely an American word from God.  And it was a word about the great nation of America...  The eclipse of 1776 was a one hour and 33 minute event from the second the shadow touched the United States to the second it left...  What is that?  Psalm 133.  "Oh, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."  It’s a call of unity for the body of Christ, whereas I want to tell you the warning of the second one is a call of civil war.  And then you have brother against brother in the second one.

Which conveniently ignores that (1) Monday's eclipse will also cross through Mexico and Canada; (2) there have been fifteen total solar eclipses on record that mostly affected the United States, most recently in 2017; and (3) how long the 1776 eclipse (or any solar eclipse) lasts depends on where you are relative to its path, so the whole Psalm 133 thing is idiotic.  But facts and reality just don't matter to these people, do they?  It's my considered opinion that Troy Brewer and his ilk have experienced a total eclipse of the brain, but one where the shadow is showing no sign of passing.

Anyhow, you get the picture.  Any time we have an interesting and uncommon astronomical event, it brings all the wackos yapping from the corners where they usually hide.  What never fails to astonish me, however, is that after the event is over, and nothing untoward takes place, it never discourages either them or their followers.  Doesn't that strike you as bizarre?  You make this grand and dire prediction, preach sermons about it or post it on Twitter or make TikTok videos (or whatever your preferred mode of communication to your devotees is), and then the big day comes, and... nothing happens.

If this was you, wouldn't you think, "Maybe I need to revise my worldview?"  I know I would.  But the weird thing is how that almost never happens.  I can damn near guarantee that Alex Jones and Troy Brewer and the TikTok anti-Matrix biblical apocalypse woman and the rest will not shift their opinions one iota when Monday comes and goes and there are no mass human sacrifices or Christian nationalist civil wars or megaquakes or three days of pitch darkness or computer simulation breakdowns or, heaven forbid, Moon rust.  They'll quiet down for a little, until we have another astronomical event, and then it'll be back to the yapping.

This time!  This is it!  We really mean it this time, you'll see!

Anyway, if you're able to get to the path of totality, I hope you enjoy the sky show.  Don't forget to wear proper eye protection (sunglasses are not enough).  Don't worry about the prophecies from the wingnuts.  We've made it through hundreds of ends-of-the-world already, we'll survive this one.

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Straw man induction

There's a general rule of debate, and it goes something like this: you don't score any points by picking out some absurdly weak line of reasoning, characterizing your opponents as holding that view, arguing against it, and claiming victory.

This is called the straw-man fallacy, and is all too common.  It's why we have conservatives arguing that all liberals want to give away America to illegal immigrants, lock, stock, and barrel.  It's why we have liberals arguing that all conservatives want to sell us out to big corporations, and along the way, deny rights to everyone but white Christian males.

The truth, of course, is more nuanced than that on both sides, but this requires (1) thought, and (2) an admission that your opponents' views, when represented fairly, are worthy at least of intelligent consideration.  And that seems to be beyond a lot of people these days.

To take two examples of this -- one from each side of the aisle, to demonstrate that straw man arguments are no respecter of political leanings -- let's take a look at two different views of yesterday's eclipse.  Neither, I hasten to state, appears to be a parody, although you'd certainly be justified in thinking they might be.

First, we have a group called "Kentuckians for Coal," who actually protested the eclipse, claiming that even freakin' astronomical objects were conspiring to take attention away from the plight of coal miners.  The protest took place in Hopkinsville, which was along the path of totality, something that struck the Kentuckians for Coal as not being a coincidence.

Here's their mission statement:

Kentuckians for Coal is an ad-hoc coalition of miners, union officials, family members and coal users created to defend the Kentucky coal industry against encroachment from renewable energy industries and from economic development initiatives aimed at lessening America's dependence on coal.  Kentuckians for Coal stands against the eclipse and those who worship it.

Well, I think the eclipse is pretty cool, but "worship" goes a bit far.  And it's hard to see how you could be against clean, renewable energy.  I get that we're talking about people's livelihoods, here; but at some point, there needs to be a choice made whether a particular industry is worth saving when it's balanced against the long-term habitability of the Earth.  (And, I might add, that a lot of this would be moot if the government would step in and fund retraining of these out-of-work miners, and guarantee them jobs in the renewable energy industry, which is one of the fastest-growing professions in the United States.)

A few of the signs carried at the protest read as follows:

• A Mine Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
• Climate Change Is a Hoax!
• You can count on coal 24/7. You can't always depend on the sun! 
• Still Think Solar Makes Sense?
• Coal Never Quits
• You Can Depend On Coal!
• The Solar Industry Is Modernizing Us Out of Jobs!
• Coal was good enough for my forefathers, it's good enough for me!
• This much time and money spent for 2 minutes and 40 seconds

To their credit, the person carrying the last-mentioned sign was followed by someone carrying a sign saying, "That's what she said."

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

But lest the liberals in the studio audience start crowing about how much smarter and more sensible they are than the silly ol' conservatives, allow me to direct your attention to an article in The Atlantic by Brooklyn Law School professor Alice Ristroph, entitled, "Racial History in the Solar Eclipse Path of Totality," which says basically that the path of yesterday's eclipse was inherently biased against minorities.

Don't believe me?  Here's a sample:

It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people...  [A]n eclipse chaser is always tempted to believe that the skies are relaying a message.  At a moment of deep disagreement about the nation’s best path forward, here comes a giant round shadow, drawing a line either to cut the country in two or to unite it as one.  Ancient peoples watched total eclipses with awe and often dread, seeing in the darkness omens of doom.  The Great American Eclipse may or may not tell us anything about our future, but its peculiar path could remind us of something about our past—what it was we meant to be doing, and what we actually did along the way.

No, Professor Ristroph, what the Great American Eclipse reminded us of is that when something gets in front of the Sun, it casts a shadow.  End of story.

But that doesn't stop her from telling us about how terrible it is that the path of totality excludes minorities; in fact, the Moon seems to have chosen its path with deliberate bigotry in mind:

About a third of Kansas City, Missouri, is black, but most of the city lies just south of the path of totality. To get the full show, eclipse chasers should go north to St. Joseph, almost 90 percent white and about 6 percent black...

Moving east, the eclipse will pass part of St. Louis, whose overall population is nearly half black. But the black residents are concentrated in the northern half of the metropolitan area, and the total eclipse crosses only the southern half.

Of course, even by her own admission, her whole argument kind of falls apart when the eclipse gets to South Carolina, but by this time, any credibility she might have had is down the toilet anyhow.  So even if you got that far -- and the article is a long one -- I doubt that'd salvage whatever it was she was trying to point out.

Now don't misunderstand me.  There are huge racial inequities in the United States, and those deserve serious attention.  Likewise, apropos of the Kentuckians for Coal, the issue of displaced workers, poor communities, and lost jobs is not one we should scoff at.

But claiming the eclipse has a damn thing to do with either one is pretty fucking ridiculous, and you're not doing your argument any good by claiming that it does.

So the take-home message is, "let's keep our eye on the ball, shall we?"  If you want to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed or the problems of race and privilege, have at it.  But saying the whole thing boils down to astronomy is idiotic.  And throwing together a straw-man argument is not going to convince anyone who wasn't already convinced.

Total eclipse of the brain

In ten days, people in the United States will get the best shot at seeing a total solar eclipse we've had in years.  The path of totality crosses the country diagonally from northwest to southeast, starting near the northern border of Oregon and ending in South Carolina.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Astronomy buffs and people who simply like an unusual spectacle have been excited about this for ages.  Motels in towns within the path of totality sold out months ago, especially in places like the Midwest where you're more likely to have clear skies.

The buzz about the eclipse prompted the eminent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to make the following observation:

Well, far be it from me to argue with someone of NdGT's stature, but just because people aren't denying the eclipse doesn't mean that they're viewing it with any kind of scientific eye.  We're already having the wingnuts putting their unique spin on the event, and you should watch for this sort of thing to increase exponentially as we approach August 21.

First, we have Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, who claims that the eclipse is a sign of the approach of the End Times.  Have you noticed how every damn time there's some interesting astronomical event, the religious nutjobs claim it's a sign of the End Times, and then the End Times kind of don't happen?

Well, a zero batting average doesn't discourage people like Lotz in the least.  It's interesting that the elder Graham, although we don't agree on much, always impressed me as a thoughtful and deeply compassionate man.  His kids, though... son Franklin is a virulently anti-LGBT firebrand, who has a real talent for ugly invective.  And now, his daughter... well, let me give it to you in her own words:

The warning is triggered by the total solar eclipse of August 21, nicknamed America's Eclipse. For the first time in almost a hundred years, a total solar eclipse will be seen from coast to coast in our nation.  People are preparing to mark this significant event with viewing parties at exclusive prime sites.  The celebratory nature regarding the eclipse brings to my mind the Babylonian King Belshazzar who threw a drunken feast the night the Medes and Persians crept under the city gate.  Belshazzar wound up dead the next day, and the Babylonian empire was destroyed...  Therefore, my perspective on the upcoming phenomenon is not celebratory.  While no one can know for sure if judgment is coming on America, it does seem that God is signaling us about something.  Time will tell what that something is.

As far as I can tell, what god seems to be signaling is that if something is in front of the sun, it creates a shadow.  End of story.

But the religious fringe aren't the only ones who are jumping up and down making excited little squeaking noises about August 21.  We also have the crypto-woo-woos, who warn us that the eclipse is going to be noticed by more than just humans:

Long-time readers of Skeptophilia might recall that I warned South Carolina residents about Lizard Man way back in 2011.  As far as Bigfoot, you may be questioning how there could be Bigfoot sightings down there in the Southeast -- after all, the real Sasquatch hotspot is the Pacific Northwest.  But just yesterday, an alert reader sent me an article about a sighting of Bigfoot last week in North Carolina, so it's evident that the cryptids are on the way.  The fact that they're converging on the path of totality is a little peculiar, as solar eclipses have no particular precursors that might warn an animal that one is imminent, and I generally don't think of Bigfoot as being particularly knowledgeable about astronomy.

Unless it's that Bigfoot is psychic, and is sensing oscillations in the quantum frequency dimensions.  You can see how that could happen.

In any case, I'm understandably not inclined to share NdGT's optimistic assessment of Americans' attitude toward the solar eclipse.  As I've observed before, there is no finding so solidly scientific, so evidence-based, that the woo-woos can't woo all over it.

So if you're going to head over to the path of totality in ten days, keep your eyes open, and make sure you drop me a line here at Skeptophilia headquarters if you see any Bigfoots, Lizard Men, or Apocalyptic Horsepersons.  I'll be happy to post an update, especially if you can take photographs.  As is required with such photographs, however, make sure you have your camera's settings on "AutoBlur."

There goes the sun

New from the "Oh, No, Here We Go Again" department, today we have: people flipping out over the fact that we're going to have a total eclipse this summer.

To be sure, it's a pretty cool event.  The path of totality will go from Oregon to the Carolinas, and at its widest will be 60 miles in width.  The last time a total eclipse of this magnitude happened in the United States was 99 years ago, so I suppose it's understandable that people are taking notice.  (In fact, I know more than one person who is making plans to visit the path of totality -- but if you're planning on joining them, you might well be too late.  Apparently hotels in cities in the eclipse's path started filling up a couple of years ago.)

But of course, there's nothing like a weird astronomical event to get woo-woos of all stripes all fired up.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Take, for example, the End Times cadre, who think that a completely explainable and predictable feature of the Earth's position in space -- no weirder, really, than standing in someone's shadow -- is a sign that the Rapture is upon us.  Never mind that the other 1,583,294 times these people have been absolutely certain that the Rapture was imminent, cross our hearts and hope to die, what actually happened was: nothing.

They're not going to let a little thing like a zero batting average discourage them.

"The Bible says a number of times that there’s going to be signs in the heavens before Jesus Christ returns to Earth," said Gary Ray, writer for the Christian publication Unsealed.  "We see this as possibly one of those...  We think it’s God signaling to us that he’s about to make his next move."

Ray, however, is ignoring the fact that even if you buy into his worldview, there's the inconvenient little scripture verse about how "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.  But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only," from Matthew 24, which is inconvenient because not only does it imply that people like Gary Ray are talking out of their asses, it also states outright that Jesus said he was going to return and the world would be destroyed (along with other special offers like the sun being darkened and the stars falling from heaven) before the people listening to him were dead, and that kind of didn't happen.

Ray, though, does not seem unduly bothered by this, and in fact says that the eclipse will be super-significant because the full moon will be near the constellation of Virgo the Virgin, which of course will make everyone think of the passage in Revelation 12, "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.  She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.  Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads," despite the fact that being a virgin and being pregnant are mutually exclusive conditions.

Unless you count the alleged Immaculate Conception, which frankly, still sounds a little sketchy to me.

Then, there's the fact that we won't have to wait another 99 years to see a total eclipse in the United States; there's going to be another one on April 8, 2024, which fortunately for me looks like it'll pass right over my house.  Ray, though, is excited not because of a second shot at seeing a stunningly beautiful astronomical event; he thinks it's significant because where the paths of the two eclipses cross, it makes a letter X.

*cue scary music*

So he's interpreting this to mean that god is warning us that he's going to X out the United States for our wickedness or something.

It also brings up the question of what shape Ray thinks two intersecting lines would create if this weren't an omen.

So what we have here is a deity who is warning us about the End Times using an event that astronomers predicted decades ago, despite the fact that previous astronomical events like lunar eclipses resulted in nothing special happening.  My advice: see if you can find a spot to view the solar eclipse on August 21, because it promises to be pretty cool.  And don't cancel any plans you might have for August 22.

Chances are, we'll all be here, un-Raptured, for some time to come.

Blocking the light

I'm not sure if it's troubling or reassuring that the United States isn't the only industrialized country who has problems with superstitious, hyperreligious wingnuts.

Over here, of course, it's usually about the fact that you can't say anything about evolution without it blowing up in your face.  The issue has become so contentious that a lot of politicians, especially those who are courting conservative voters, won't even go there.  Witness Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's response when someone at a question-and-answer session a couple of weeks ago asked him if he accepted evolution.

"For me, I'm going to punt on that one as well," Walker said.  "That's a question a politician shouldn't be involved in one way or the other.  So I'm going to leave that one up to you."

Saying that "a politician shouldn't be involved" in a discussion about science is diametrically opposed to good sense.  It's the anti-science sentiment that is rampant in the U.S. that has kept us in this mess over climate change, for example.  But Walker's response is disingenuous at best; even if he does accept evolution, he's afraid to say so for fear of alienating his religious voter base.

Other countries have been facing the same sort of thing, and have responded differently.  France has, for example, outlawed the hijab; women can face a 150 euro fine for being in public with a face veil, and possibly be forced to take "citizenship instruction" as well.  This has prompted half the country to laud the Sarkozy government's ruling for supporting French culture, and the other half to cry out against its legislating intolerance and über-nationalism.

Britain is having its problems, too.  Christianity has been on the decline in the UK for some time now; Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, went on record all the way back in 2001 as saying that "Christianity is almost vanquished in the UK."  Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, agrees, and said last year that "Britain is no longer a nation of believers...  We are a post-Christian nation."

Post-Christian, however, doesn't mean irreligious.  Immigrants now form the most religious sector in both France and Great Britain.  And as France found out, this means that the powers-that-be have to figure out how to respond to demands for acceptance and tolerance of all sorts of beliefs that we less-religious folks find pretty mystifying.  This is what led to the decision by a school in Southall, a suburb of London, to deny schoolchildren the opportunity to see yesterday's total solar eclipse, citing unspecified "religious and cultural reasons" for doing so.

Most people who are knowledgeable about the situation think this was out of deference to the school's large Hindu population.  Many devout Hindus apparently believe that seeing an eclipse makes you impure, and that the only way to combat this is to "bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of god in order to overcome the powers of darkness."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, I recognize my bias here.  But really, people, what century are we in?  A couple of days ago, I wrote about the contingent here in the United States who believe that the eclipse is a portent of the End Times.  Now we have a different bunch who think that the purely mechanical movements of the Sun, Moon, and Earth result in your having to take a shower and do a little chanting so you won't be "unclean."  I'm all for letting people believe what they want, but denying an entire school the opportunity to see a rare astronomical phenomenon because some of them believe in what is (let's be honest, here) a ridiculous superstition is taking political correctness too far.  It's blocking the light in an entirely different way.

And there were some parents who agreed.  Vehemently.  The Evening Standard interviewed Phil Belman, whose seven-year-old daughter attends the school.  Belman said:  "My child went in having spent an hour preparing and making up her pinhole camera.  This is an issue about scientific matters versus religious superstition.  I am outraged - is it going to be Darwin next? We will be like mid America."

Did any of my fellow Americans wince just now?  That's how the rest of the rationalistic, science-accepting world sees us.  If you're a superstitious wingnut, you're "like mid America."

So like I said, I've always been a pretty live-and-let-live kind of guy.  But at some point, don't we need to start calling out goofy superstitions for what they are?  No, I'm sorry, your belief that 666 is an evil number doesn't mean that you will be allowed to flout company policy.  You can't sue someone for calling creationism "superstitious nonsense," because that is, in fact, what it is.  No, you can't expect an employer to hire you even if you don't want to work on Sunday.

And for cryin' in the sink, you shouldn't deny kids the right to learn some astronomy because some of them will want to rid themselves of unclean forces of darkness afterwards.  The appropriate response is, "I'm sorry you believe that, but this is science.  Bathe when you get home.  And when you're a little older, you might want to have a chat with your parents about what possible evidence they have that these beliefs are true."