I know two people who are major conspiracy theorists.
One of them believes he's being persecuted by the folks at his place of employment, that they're getting together and deliberately making his life difficult because "they all" disagree with his political and religious beliefs. He seriously believes that the ordinary, average folks he works with are meeting in secret to try to find new and devious ways to make him miserable. "Why would they do that?" I ask. "Because of who I am," he answers, with no trace of irony.
The other one is more of a global conspiracy type -- there's this Shadow Government run by the CEOs of the Big Corporations, and they have Big Secret Plans for World Domination. (This guy always speaks in Capital Letters.) He's a major fan of "Zeitgeist," believes there are secret plans for a One World Government, thinks that the CIA is putting mind-control chemicals into jet fuel so we get zombified whenever there's a jet contrail, and thinks that there are Men in Black who make dissenters disappear. Say the words "New World Order" in his presence, and he gets really serious, and looks around to see if anyone overheard. And of course, when you point out that there's no evidence whatsoever for a Global Conspiracy, he just raises his eyebrow coyly and smiles, as if to say, "Of course there's no evidence. You don't think they'd just leave evidence hanging around, do you? These guys are good."
I'm willing to believe that the second guy has just watched too many episodes of The X Files, but it does make me wonder why conspiracy theories are so appealing. As strange as it sounds, there's a certain attraction to paranoia. People want there to be a huge master plan behind everything -- sinister or otherwise -- because, I think, it's more satisfying and reassuring that there is a plan. It's a little disconcerting to think that the universe is just kinda random, that things happen because they happen, and most people are just helpless dorks with no more intentionality than billiard balls bouncing off each other. I mean, I like The X Files as much as the next guy, but honestly I think the universe is much more like a cosmic Mr. Magoo episode.
Robert Heinlein said, "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be equally well explained by stupidity." I'd add to that that most people don't have the time or interest to conspire. Conspiracy takes so much effort. The first guy I mentioned -- the one thinks that his coworkers are out to get him -- would probably be appalled if he knew how little time and energy his coworkers actually spend thinking about him. Sorry, buddy, you're not the victim of a conspiracy -- "who you are" is just not that important. Most of your coworkers spend more time daily thinking about what to have for dinner that night than they do thinking about ways to make your life miserable.
Also, there's just the practical aspect of it. Conspiracies are hard to manage, because face it, people like to gossip. Plus, my own version of Murphy's Law is that the overall IQ and efficiency of a group is inversely proportional to the number of people in the group. Our government isn't so much evil as it is ridiculous -- Congress as 535 Keystone Kops running about, banging into each other, falling down, and having the occasional sex scandal, all overseen by President Magoo, whose job is to keep people believing the pleasant myth that the government has got a handle on everything.
It's not that the government, or corporations, don't do bad things. They do -- sometimes really bad ones. But there's nothing more behind it than simple human greed and power-hungriness and dumbassery, with the occasional plot that is usually about as successful as Watergate. The rest of the world just keeps going on, doing what people do, and rolling our eyes at how absurd it all is.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
I saw the light
We had a hellacious thunderstorm last night, the remnants of which are still growling their way to the east of us, which is probably why I was thinking this morning about the subject of Lights in the Sky.
The topic had also come up a few days ago in a conversation with a student, a young man who shares my skeptical outlook. He showed me a video montage he'd found on YouTube of recent UFO sightings, and laughingly described a conversation he'd had with a friend who evidently liked the "alien spacecraft" hypothesis so much that he needed some reminding of what the "U" in "UFO" stands for. In any case, I decided to do a little research regarding mysterious lights.
Now, allow me to state up front that although several of these are as-yet unexplained, I strongly believe that they all have perfectly natural explanations. The rush to attribute any odd phenomenon to the paranormal is a tendency I've blogged about before, and I wouldn't want anyone to interpret my love of a mystery as an unwarranted attribution of these occurrences to ghosts, demons, or Little Green Men.
That disclaimer made, here are a few examples of odd light phenomena that I found out about. I've included links for each of them that you should peruse if you want more information.
The Hessdalen Light has been seen since the 1940s in the valley of Hessdalen in Norway. It's a stationary, bright white or yellow light, floating above the ground, sometimes remaining visible for over an hour. With such a cooperative phenomenon, you would think it would be easily explained; but despite the efforts of scientists, who have been studying the Hessdalen Light for decades, there is yet to be a convincing explanation. Hypotheses abound: that it is the combustion of dust from the valley floor; that it is a stable plasma, ionized by the decay of radon from minerals in the valley; or even that it is an electrical discharge from piezoelectric compression of quartz crystals in the underlying rock. None of these is completely convincing, and the Hessdalen Light remains one of the most puzzling natural phenomena I know of.
Similarly peculiar are the Brown Mountain Lights, near Brown Mountain in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina. These brightly-colored lights have been seen since the early 20th century, usually hovering near the horizon, and skeptics have claimed that they are the headlights of a train or automobiles, as there is a highway and a train track fairly near to the site where the lights are most often seen. However, when a flood washed out the train overpass and rendered the highway impassable, the lights continued to be seen. They're still seen today, apparently most commonly between September and November.
Likely to be a combination of lights from a highway and an atmospheric condition are the Paulding Lights, of Paulding, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This phenomenon is the subject of a variety of YouTube videos (search for "Paulding Lights" and you'll find a bunch), and in fact became the topic of an episode of Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files on the Syfy Channel. The FOF people, as you might predict, concluded that it was "unexplained." However, after doing some digging myself, I found that researchers had concluded that the mysterious lights seen near Paulding were due to automobile headlights refracting through an inversion layer -- a layer of cool air near the ground bounded by warmer air above. So I will respectfully disagree with the investigators on FOF and place this one in the file labeled "Probably Solved."
The Gurdon Light, of Gurdon, Arkansas, is one that has a lot of supernatural folklore attached to it. It's a bobbing light seen in a wooded area near railroad tracks, and the legend is that it is a lantern held by a ghostly man who had been killed by a train. Needless to say, I'm not buying that, and the information I found indicates that this one is fairly poorly documented -- leading me to surmise that it can be explained by nothing more than the overactive imagination of the superstitious. Nonetheless, Gurdon remains a popular destination -- on Halloween.
Lastly, we return to Norway for what is in my opinion the best documented of these occurrences -- the Norwegian Spiral Anomaly of 2009. (Do check out this link, which has excellent photographs and video of this strange and beautiful phenomenon.) On the 9th of December in 2009, thousands of people all over central Norway took photographs and video footage of a spiral light in the sky, with a blue-green filament coming from its center, that opened out into a black hole. Naturally, there was a rush to explain it as visitation by aliens, or as a physics experiment gone very wrong that had resulted in the formation of an actual black hole. A more conventional explanation -- that it was a spiral vapor trail left by a failed flight of a Russian Bulava missile -- is only partially convincing; there was a missile test that day, and simulations of the pattern made by the ignited fuel from a spinning missile did form a spiral pattern, but the Spiral Anomaly looked essentially the same from all observation points, and this would not be true if it had been a missile vapor trail (some people would have seen it center-on, others from the side, etc.). In my mind, it's still a mystery, and remains one of the most recorded, and most perplexing, light phenomena I've ever heard of.
So, there you have it; some reasons to keep your eye on the sky. And even if I'm in no rush to attribute any of these to spirits or alien spacecraft, I have to admit that they are intriguing. And there's something in all of us that loves a good mystery, isn't there?
The topic had also come up a few days ago in a conversation with a student, a young man who shares my skeptical outlook. He showed me a video montage he'd found on YouTube of recent UFO sightings, and laughingly described a conversation he'd had with a friend who evidently liked the "alien spacecraft" hypothesis so much that he needed some reminding of what the "U" in "UFO" stands for. In any case, I decided to do a little research regarding mysterious lights.
Now, allow me to state up front that although several of these are as-yet unexplained, I strongly believe that they all have perfectly natural explanations. The rush to attribute any odd phenomenon to the paranormal is a tendency I've blogged about before, and I wouldn't want anyone to interpret my love of a mystery as an unwarranted attribution of these occurrences to ghosts, demons, or Little Green Men.
That disclaimer made, here are a few examples of odd light phenomena that I found out about. I've included links for each of them that you should peruse if you want more information.
The Hessdalen Light has been seen since the 1940s in the valley of Hessdalen in Norway. It's a stationary, bright white or yellow light, floating above the ground, sometimes remaining visible for over an hour. With such a cooperative phenomenon, you would think it would be easily explained; but despite the efforts of scientists, who have been studying the Hessdalen Light for decades, there is yet to be a convincing explanation. Hypotheses abound: that it is the combustion of dust from the valley floor; that it is a stable plasma, ionized by the decay of radon from minerals in the valley; or even that it is an electrical discharge from piezoelectric compression of quartz crystals in the underlying rock. None of these is completely convincing, and the Hessdalen Light remains one of the most puzzling natural phenomena I know of.
Similarly peculiar are the Brown Mountain Lights, near Brown Mountain in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina. These brightly-colored lights have been seen since the early 20th century, usually hovering near the horizon, and skeptics have claimed that they are the headlights of a train or automobiles, as there is a highway and a train track fairly near to the site where the lights are most often seen. However, when a flood washed out the train overpass and rendered the highway impassable, the lights continued to be seen. They're still seen today, apparently most commonly between September and November.
Likely to be a combination of lights from a highway and an atmospheric condition are the Paulding Lights, of Paulding, on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This phenomenon is the subject of a variety of YouTube videos (search for "Paulding Lights" and you'll find a bunch), and in fact became the topic of an episode of Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files on the Syfy Channel. The FOF people, as you might predict, concluded that it was "unexplained." However, after doing some digging myself, I found that researchers had concluded that the mysterious lights seen near Paulding were due to automobile headlights refracting through an inversion layer -- a layer of cool air near the ground bounded by warmer air above. So I will respectfully disagree with the investigators on FOF and place this one in the file labeled "Probably Solved."
The Gurdon Light, of Gurdon, Arkansas, is one that has a lot of supernatural folklore attached to it. It's a bobbing light seen in a wooded area near railroad tracks, and the legend is that it is a lantern held by a ghostly man who had been killed by a train. Needless to say, I'm not buying that, and the information I found indicates that this one is fairly poorly documented -- leading me to surmise that it can be explained by nothing more than the overactive imagination of the superstitious. Nonetheless, Gurdon remains a popular destination -- on Halloween.
Lastly, we return to Norway for what is in my opinion the best documented of these occurrences -- the Norwegian Spiral Anomaly of 2009. (Do check out this link, which has excellent photographs and video of this strange and beautiful phenomenon.) On the 9th of December in 2009, thousands of people all over central Norway took photographs and video footage of a spiral light in the sky, with a blue-green filament coming from its center, that opened out into a black hole. Naturally, there was a rush to explain it as visitation by aliens, or as a physics experiment gone very wrong that had resulted in the formation of an actual black hole. A more conventional explanation -- that it was a spiral vapor trail left by a failed flight of a Russian Bulava missile -- is only partially convincing; there was a missile test that day, and simulations of the pattern made by the ignited fuel from a spinning missile did form a spiral pattern, but the Spiral Anomaly looked essentially the same from all observation points, and this would not be true if it had been a missile vapor trail (some people would have seen it center-on, others from the side, etc.). In my mind, it's still a mystery, and remains one of the most recorded, and most perplexing, light phenomena I've ever heard of.
So, there you have it; some reasons to keep your eye on the sky. And even if I'm in no rush to attribute any of these to spirits or alien spacecraft, I have to admit that they are intriguing. And there's something in all of us that loves a good mystery, isn't there?
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Oh, look, it's Kate. "Squee."
I am puzzled by people who are attracted by celebrities. Now, don't get me wrong; I can appreciate a fine singer or actor, and enjoy his or her work greatly, but I can't really imagine jumping up and down and saying "squee" if (s)he walked into the room. (Those of my readers who know me well would, I suspect, have a hard time imagining my saying "squee" about anything.)
And yet, this seems to be a common reaction. Witness the current furor over the marriage of Prince William of England and Kate Middleton, an event about which I frankly don't give a flying... um, well, let's just leave it at "I don't care much." And yet, every time some earthshattering news release comes from the happy couple ("Kate reveals that on the morning of the wedding, she will breakfast on a cheese-and-onion omelet") it results in multiple orgasms among the members of the press. And before you say "well, that's just because the press is made up of a bunch of sensation-seeking paparazzi," remember that someone's got to be reading this stuff. If no one had an appetite for what the press was serving, they'd pretty quickly find something else to serve.
Then, just yesterday, we get the announcement that Levi Johnston has written a tell-all book about his relationship with his erstwhile future mother-in-law Sarah Palin, called A Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs. Well, "written" may be inaccurate -- I suspect this one will have a cover that will say,
BY LEVI JOHNSTON with a little bit of help from Reginald Hockinblatt
Levi Johnston, you will recall, is the young man who knocked up Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, and then became even more notorious when he displayed the equipment he'd used in the escapade in Playgirl magazine. Now, he has announced that he is publishing this book to tell the true story of his dealings with the Palin family, and that he is doing it for "his son... and his country."
This claim is, of course, absurd. Levi's son (whose name is Tripp, following the naming tradition for boys in the Palin family of starting with "t" and having one syllable; the others are Track, Trig, Tink, Toot, and Thud) is still a baby, and presumably cares even less than I do about his father's exposé. As far as his doing it for his country, I suppose that this is partially true; he's doing it so that his country will buy the book and give him money.
Once again, I'm not faulting Levi, nor even the press, for this; I more wonder who on earth will be willing to spend twenty bucks to buy this book. Our appetite for celebrities, even when the celebrity appears (as is the case with Levi Johnston) to have no particular skill at anything, is boundless, and to me, boundlessly perplexing.
Whatever drives this desire, it seems to be very strong in many people. As far as why the fixation on celebrities exists in the first place, I can only speculate that it may have something to do with our need to have heroes. I don't mean this in the all-powerful superhero sense; more, people who are somehow larger than life, who make us yearn for more than we have (even if that "something more" is merely money or fame). People care about what happens to famous figures because they represent our aspirations, our failed dreams about what we could have accomplished if we'd only had that big break.
I think it's only been in the past fifty years or so that the concept of "hero" has coalesced with the concept of "celebrity." Before the Age of Television, I think most people who had heroes looked up to someone smart, strong, courageous -- a leader, a historical or religious figure who inspired. Some people still have heroes of the older type, but many more people today look up to famous actors, musicians, or sports stars. And when they fall from grace -- witness the ongoing slow-motion train wreck that is Charlie Sheen -- people are dismayed, as if somehow being an actor also by necessity came along with being a decent person.
I've never been much of a hero worshiper. My heroes, such as they are, are people of simple and straightforward intellectual courage -- people like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins. But even with the people I admire, I have never expected them to be perfect. As an example, Sagan was a brilliant exponent of the importance of making science attractive to non-scientists, but by all accounts was personally an arrogant and aloof man. Why is this surprising? Aren't all people combinations of positive and negative personality traits? Does his arrogance devalue his contributions in other regards? Why would I even need him to be some kind of superhuman?
There is a deep human need -- stronger in some people than in others -- to have larger-than-life figures to follow. If they're rich, famous, and handsome or beautiful, then so much the better. We need them to be what we're not, I suppose. We're distressed when it comes out that they have faults, but no worries -- the media will provide others, hundreds of others, for us to read about and dream about and lust after. And if today we find out that Kate has decided that the Wedding Day Breakfast will include grapefruit juice, it will be sure to make a great many people say "squee."
And yet, this seems to be a common reaction. Witness the current furor over the marriage of Prince William of England and Kate Middleton, an event about which I frankly don't give a flying... um, well, let's just leave it at "I don't care much." And yet, every time some earthshattering news release comes from the happy couple ("Kate reveals that on the morning of the wedding, she will breakfast on a cheese-and-onion omelet") it results in multiple orgasms among the members of the press. And before you say "well, that's just because the press is made up of a bunch of sensation-seeking paparazzi," remember that someone's got to be reading this stuff. If no one had an appetite for what the press was serving, they'd pretty quickly find something else to serve.
Then, just yesterday, we get the announcement that Levi Johnston has written a tell-all book about his relationship with his erstwhile future mother-in-law Sarah Palin, called A Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs. Well, "written" may be inaccurate -- I suspect this one will have a cover that will say,
BY LEVI JOHNSTON with a little bit of help from Reginald Hockinblatt
Levi Johnston, you will recall, is the young man who knocked up Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol, and then became even more notorious when he displayed the equipment he'd used in the escapade in Playgirl magazine. Now, he has announced that he is publishing this book to tell the true story of his dealings with the Palin family, and that he is doing it for "his son... and his country."
This claim is, of course, absurd. Levi's son (whose name is Tripp, following the naming tradition for boys in the Palin family of starting with "t" and having one syllable; the others are Track, Trig, Tink, Toot, and Thud) is still a baby, and presumably cares even less than I do about his father's exposé. As far as his doing it for his country, I suppose that this is partially true; he's doing it so that his country will buy the book and give him money.
Once again, I'm not faulting Levi, nor even the press, for this; I more wonder who on earth will be willing to spend twenty bucks to buy this book. Our appetite for celebrities, even when the celebrity appears (as is the case with Levi Johnston) to have no particular skill at anything, is boundless, and to me, boundlessly perplexing.
Whatever drives this desire, it seems to be very strong in many people. As far as why the fixation on celebrities exists in the first place, I can only speculate that it may have something to do with our need to have heroes. I don't mean this in the all-powerful superhero sense; more, people who are somehow larger than life, who make us yearn for more than we have (even if that "something more" is merely money or fame). People care about what happens to famous figures because they represent our aspirations, our failed dreams about what we could have accomplished if we'd only had that big break.
I think it's only been in the past fifty years or so that the concept of "hero" has coalesced with the concept of "celebrity." Before the Age of Television, I think most people who had heroes looked up to someone smart, strong, courageous -- a leader, a historical or religious figure who inspired. Some people still have heroes of the older type, but many more people today look up to famous actors, musicians, or sports stars. And when they fall from grace -- witness the ongoing slow-motion train wreck that is Charlie Sheen -- people are dismayed, as if somehow being an actor also by necessity came along with being a decent person.
I've never been much of a hero worshiper. My heroes, such as they are, are people of simple and straightforward intellectual courage -- people like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins. But even with the people I admire, I have never expected them to be perfect. As an example, Sagan was a brilliant exponent of the importance of making science attractive to non-scientists, but by all accounts was personally an arrogant and aloof man. Why is this surprising? Aren't all people combinations of positive and negative personality traits? Does his arrogance devalue his contributions in other regards? Why would I even need him to be some kind of superhuman?
There is a deep human need -- stronger in some people than in others -- to have larger-than-life figures to follow. If they're rich, famous, and handsome or beautiful, then so much the better. We need them to be what we're not, I suppose. We're distressed when it comes out that they have faults, but no worries -- the media will provide others, hundreds of others, for us to read about and dream about and lust after. And if today we find out that Kate has decided that the Wedding Day Breakfast will include grapefruit juice, it will be sure to make a great many people say "squee."
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The "Don't Say Gay" bill
New from the "Let's Ignore Reality, Maybe It Will Go Away" department, Republicans in Tennessee are backing a bill that would prevent teachers up through ninth grade from mentioning homosexuality.
Because, after all, that's how that works, right? A kid in third grade hears someone say the word "gay." He says, "What's that mean?" A teacher says, "It's when a man is attracted to another man." Fast forward to eighth grade, and the kid is going through puberty, and suddenly remembers what the teacher said, and thinks, "Wow! Gay! I remember that! I think I'll be attracted to guys!" And suddenly, there he is, a flaming homosexual because of what a teacher said.
I am frequently appalled at how politics has become a fact-free zone. Let's look at the facts, okay? If the tacit assumption behind this bill is correct -- that kids exposed to information about homosexuals are more likely to be homosexuals themselves -- then you'd think that children raised by gay or lesbian parents would be the most likely to be homosexual, because not only do they know about it, they live with a couple who is openly expressing that orientation. And you know what, Bigoted Morons Of Tennessee United? That turns out to be untrue. Children of gay or lesbian parents have exactly the same likelihood of being gay or lesbian themselves as the background population.
But you don't really care, do you? Because that's not really what this is about. This is about marginalizing and dehumanizing a group that you really detest. The facts don't matter; this is the political version of "la-la-la-la, not listening." If you were forced to reconsider your basic assumption -- that homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality is -- then you would kind of have to revamp your whole position, wouldn't you? And there's no way you'll do that.
And they can't really come out and call it "The Marginalization of Homosexuality Bill." So it's been given a sanitized name; the "Family Life Curriculum Bill." Which is worse on a number of levels, because it implies that gays and lesbians can't be a family. It's like the "Defense of Marriage" Bills that continue to cause rancor in a number of states -- the implication is that we have to Defend Marriage, because if we allow homosexuals to marry, the entire institution will crumble, and pretty soon straight men will be rushing out, zombie-like, to marry other men, and eventually you'd have people tying the knot with various species of marine invertebrates.
Where does all of this anti-gay rhetoric come from? The bottom line for most of these folks is the biblical prohibition of a "man lying with another man," from Leviticus. Well, you know what? If you are getting your morality from the bible, you'd better read more carefully. How about the following examples of high-flung morality? Genocide, including the killing of children, pregnant women, and the elderly, as commanded by god (Joshua 6:21 is only one of a number of examples). A deity whose representative on earth, the "holy man" Elisha, summoned two bears to kill forty-two children who had teased him about being bald (2 Kings 2:23-24). A law commanding a woman who had been raped to marry the rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). A direct statement that women should not teach, nor have any authority over men, and in fact should be silent (1 Timothy 2:11-14). And so on and on.
So, to put it succinctly; what we have here is people using a document that, if it were actually followed to the letter, would sanction slavery, rape, genocide, and subjugation of women, being used as the justification for ignoring a group of people into nonexistence because of something that is entirely outside of their control. The people who use the bible to defend a political stance can't be consistent; when it comes to biblical laws that would allow the mistreatment of their own wives and daughters, when it comes to god sanctioning the cold-blooded murder of children, they just close their eyes to most of the uncomfortable passages. But the stuff about homosexuality? Gays and lesbians are already a minority, a group that is marginalized in many ways, so they make an easy target, and give the holier-than-thou crowd a way to indulge their bigotry while claiming that all they're doing is following god's word.
The elaborate game of Let's Pretend currently going on in Tennessee will have only one effect that I can see; further relegating gay and lesbian teens to the fringe. And speaking of ignorance of the facts; homosexual young adults have one of the highest risks of suicide of any demographic. If they are now to be subjected to the additional indignity of nine years of "You Don't Exist," I can't imagine that number will do anything but increase.
And the kicker? The whole thing is being cast as being about "moral behavior." All I can say is that if you think this legislation is moral, you have a far different definition of the word than I do.
Because, after all, that's how that works, right? A kid in third grade hears someone say the word "gay." He says, "What's that mean?" A teacher says, "It's when a man is attracted to another man." Fast forward to eighth grade, and the kid is going through puberty, and suddenly remembers what the teacher said, and thinks, "Wow! Gay! I remember that! I think I'll be attracted to guys!" And suddenly, there he is, a flaming homosexual because of what a teacher said.
I am frequently appalled at how politics has become a fact-free zone. Let's look at the facts, okay? If the tacit assumption behind this bill is correct -- that kids exposed to information about homosexuals are more likely to be homosexuals themselves -- then you'd think that children raised by gay or lesbian parents would be the most likely to be homosexual, because not only do they know about it, they live with a couple who is openly expressing that orientation. And you know what, Bigoted Morons Of Tennessee United? That turns out to be untrue. Children of gay or lesbian parents have exactly the same likelihood of being gay or lesbian themselves as the background population.
But you don't really care, do you? Because that's not really what this is about. This is about marginalizing and dehumanizing a group that you really detest. The facts don't matter; this is the political version of "la-la-la-la, not listening." If you were forced to reconsider your basic assumption -- that homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality is -- then you would kind of have to revamp your whole position, wouldn't you? And there's no way you'll do that.
And they can't really come out and call it "The Marginalization of Homosexuality Bill." So it's been given a sanitized name; the "Family Life Curriculum Bill." Which is worse on a number of levels, because it implies that gays and lesbians can't be a family. It's like the "Defense of Marriage" Bills that continue to cause rancor in a number of states -- the implication is that we have to Defend Marriage, because if we allow homosexuals to marry, the entire institution will crumble, and pretty soon straight men will be rushing out, zombie-like, to marry other men, and eventually you'd have people tying the knot with various species of marine invertebrates.
Where does all of this anti-gay rhetoric come from? The bottom line for most of these folks is the biblical prohibition of a "man lying with another man," from Leviticus. Well, you know what? If you are getting your morality from the bible, you'd better read more carefully. How about the following examples of high-flung morality? Genocide, including the killing of children, pregnant women, and the elderly, as commanded by god (Joshua 6:21 is only one of a number of examples). A deity whose representative on earth, the "holy man" Elisha, summoned two bears to kill forty-two children who had teased him about being bald (2 Kings 2:23-24). A law commanding a woman who had been raped to marry the rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). A direct statement that women should not teach, nor have any authority over men, and in fact should be silent (1 Timothy 2:11-14). And so on and on.
So, to put it succinctly; what we have here is people using a document that, if it were actually followed to the letter, would sanction slavery, rape, genocide, and subjugation of women, being used as the justification for ignoring a group of people into nonexistence because of something that is entirely outside of their control. The people who use the bible to defend a political stance can't be consistent; when it comes to biblical laws that would allow the mistreatment of their own wives and daughters, when it comes to god sanctioning the cold-blooded murder of children, they just close their eyes to most of the uncomfortable passages. But the stuff about homosexuality? Gays and lesbians are already a minority, a group that is marginalized in many ways, so they make an easy target, and give the holier-than-thou crowd a way to indulge their bigotry while claiming that all they're doing is following god's word.
The elaborate game of Let's Pretend currently going on in Tennessee will have only one effect that I can see; further relegating gay and lesbian teens to the fringe. And speaking of ignorance of the facts; homosexual young adults have one of the highest risks of suicide of any demographic. If they are now to be subjected to the additional indignity of nine years of "You Don't Exist," I can't imagine that number will do anything but increase.
And the kicker? The whole thing is being cast as being about "moral behavior." All I can say is that if you think this legislation is moral, you have a far different definition of the word than I do.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Good vibrations
My stance as a skeptic sometimes makes me something of a magnet for wackos. There are the earnest types who are driven nuts by the fact that I scoff at their favorite brand of nonsense (homeopathy, ghosts, and conspiracy theories seem to be favorites). And then there are the ones who find my blog because Google keyword searches seem to pick up on words like "psychic" and "haunting" and miss important words like "ridiculous" and "bullshit."
As an example of the latter, my blog was linked yesterday by Christie Marie Sheldon, who has a website called "Love or Above." With some trepidation I will include a link to her site (here), but for those of you who would prefer not to look at it and thereby murder scores of valuable brain cells, I will include a summary of its main points.
The headline says, "Are your vibrations helping or hurting you?" This is followed up by: "Your personal vibration frequency could be the ONE thing holding you back from abundance, happiness, and success. Discover how to raise it, so you can finally start living from the vibration of Love or Above."
Allow me to interject that in the interest of keeping this PG-13 rated, I will consider the obvious joke about "Personal Love Vibrations" to be already made, and we will move on.
Christie's website then goes on to say, "Ever notice how some uncannily lucky people can almost effortlessly attract good things into their lives?" These people, she claims, are leaders, have opportunities at work, good relationships, and a healthy attitude toward money. Myself, I just figured that people like this were smart and well-adjusted, but no: it's because they have a personal energy vibration score, not to mention probably a credit rating, of over 700.
All emotions, Christie explains, vibrate at a particular frequency. Shame, for example, vibrates at a frequency of 20. (At this point, I was shouting at the computer screen, "20 what? Hertz? Megahertz? Pounds per square inch? Fluid ounces? Fathoms per decade? Where are the damn units?" This caused my border collie, Doolin, who has the impression that she is personally responsible for the entire household, to slink around looking highly ashamed herself, and presumably "vibrating at a frequency of 20.") Apathy vibrates at 50, Desire at 125, Anger at 150. Then we move on to more positive emotions; Willingness is 310, Acceptance is 350, and so on. She says, if you vibrate at 1000, you are an "Enlightened Master." I guess that at that point, you're vibrating as fast as you possibly could. Any faster and you might just vanish in a flash of Psychic Aura Energy, or something.
She goes on to explain that the vibrational energy of the Earth, at the moment, registers at 207 on her Cosmic Vibration-o-Meter. This is somewhere between "Courage" and "Neutrality." So, basically, most people average out at somewhere between "Yes, I can!" and "Meh." Which seems about right, frankly. But then she says that we should all be vibrating at 500 or above, because 500 is the frequency of "Vibrations of Love."
As proof of how personal love vibrations work, she presents two experiments done by people we should automatically believe because they have "Dr." in front of their names. Dr. William Braud, of the "Mind-Science Foundation" in San Antonio, Texas, found that he could extend the life spans of red blood cells by having the owners of these red blood cells "think positive thoughts about them." And Dr. Masaru Emoto did an experiment in which he sent a variety of positive or negative emotional thoughts into glasses of water, and then froze the water, and he found that the happy water made pretty, symmetrical crystals, and the unhappy water made disorganized, ugly crystals. Christie then asks us a poignant question: since our body is full of red blood cells and water, what kind of damage could we be doing to ourselves with negative thoughts? The implications are staggering. I don't know about you, but if I ever froze to death, I would definitely want the water in my body to form attractive-looking crystals. Think of the humiliation if at my funeral, my friends and family said, "I guess it's just as well he died. Did you see those butt-ugly ice crystals? He must have been vibrating at 180 or lower."
She ends, of course, with a sales pitch for her program, the "Love or Above Energetic Breakthrough Kit." To show how awesome it is, she displays a photograph of herself at an event that I swear I am not making up: The Awesomeness Fest 2010. There are further details, including descriptions of a technique called "Space Cleansing," but at that point my remaining brain cells were crying for mercy so I had to stop looking at the website.
I suppose it's an occupational hazard, being a skeptic, that people want to convince you. After all, the word "skeptic" implies that there's a chance you might be swayed. This is, in fact, true; but the difficulty, of course, is that what sways a skeptic is empirical evidence, or failing that, at least a logical argument. When you have neither, all you have is a severe case of Doubt, which vibrates at a frequency of around 110.
As an example of the latter, my blog was linked yesterday by Christie Marie Sheldon, who has a website called "Love or Above." With some trepidation I will include a link to her site (here), but for those of you who would prefer not to look at it and thereby murder scores of valuable brain cells, I will include a summary of its main points.
The headline says, "Are your vibrations helping or hurting you?" This is followed up by: "Your personal vibration frequency could be the ONE thing holding you back from abundance, happiness, and success. Discover how to raise it, so you can finally start living from the vibration of Love or Above."
Allow me to interject that in the interest of keeping this PG-13 rated, I will consider the obvious joke about "Personal Love Vibrations" to be already made, and we will move on.
Christie's website then goes on to say, "Ever notice how some uncannily lucky people can almost effortlessly attract good things into their lives?" These people, she claims, are leaders, have opportunities at work, good relationships, and a healthy attitude toward money. Myself, I just figured that people like this were smart and well-adjusted, but no: it's because they have a personal energy vibration score, not to mention probably a credit rating, of over 700.
All emotions, Christie explains, vibrate at a particular frequency. Shame, for example, vibrates at a frequency of 20. (At this point, I was shouting at the computer screen, "20 what? Hertz? Megahertz? Pounds per square inch? Fluid ounces? Fathoms per decade? Where are the damn units?" This caused my border collie, Doolin, who has the impression that she is personally responsible for the entire household, to slink around looking highly ashamed herself, and presumably "vibrating at a frequency of 20.") Apathy vibrates at 50, Desire at 125, Anger at 150. Then we move on to more positive emotions; Willingness is 310, Acceptance is 350, and so on. She says, if you vibrate at 1000, you are an "Enlightened Master." I guess that at that point, you're vibrating as fast as you possibly could. Any faster and you might just vanish in a flash of Psychic Aura Energy, or something.
She goes on to explain that the vibrational energy of the Earth, at the moment, registers at 207 on her Cosmic Vibration-o-Meter. This is somewhere between "Courage" and "Neutrality." So, basically, most people average out at somewhere between "Yes, I can!" and "Meh." Which seems about right, frankly. But then she says that we should all be vibrating at 500 or above, because 500 is the frequency of "Vibrations of Love."
As proof of how personal love vibrations work, she presents two experiments done by people we should automatically believe because they have "Dr." in front of their names. Dr. William Braud, of the "Mind-Science Foundation" in San Antonio, Texas, found that he could extend the life spans of red blood cells by having the owners of these red blood cells "think positive thoughts about them." And Dr. Masaru Emoto did an experiment in which he sent a variety of positive or negative emotional thoughts into glasses of water, and then froze the water, and he found that the happy water made pretty, symmetrical crystals, and the unhappy water made disorganized, ugly crystals. Christie then asks us a poignant question: since our body is full of red blood cells and water, what kind of damage could we be doing to ourselves with negative thoughts? The implications are staggering. I don't know about you, but if I ever froze to death, I would definitely want the water in my body to form attractive-looking crystals. Think of the humiliation if at my funeral, my friends and family said, "I guess it's just as well he died. Did you see those butt-ugly ice crystals? He must have been vibrating at 180 or lower."
She ends, of course, with a sales pitch for her program, the "Love or Above Energetic Breakthrough Kit." To show how awesome it is, she displays a photograph of herself at an event that I swear I am not making up: The Awesomeness Fest 2010. There are further details, including descriptions of a technique called "Space Cleansing," but at that point my remaining brain cells were crying for mercy so I had to stop looking at the website.
I suppose it's an occupational hazard, being a skeptic, that people want to convince you. After all, the word "skeptic" implies that there's a chance you might be swayed. This is, in fact, true; but the difficulty, of course, is that what sways a skeptic is empirical evidence, or failing that, at least a logical argument. When you have neither, all you have is a severe case of Doubt, which vibrates at a frequency of around 110.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Who you gonna call?
One of my (many) pet peeves is people claiming a scientific basis for something, and then their explanation indicates that they really have no understanding of the science they're citing.
An oft-quoted example is the way purveyors of the woo-woo liberally drizzle words like "quantum" all over everything. I've seen ads for "quantum-activated bracelets," whatever the hell that means. They often follow it up with ridiculous pseudo-explanations about how quantum physics teaches us that nothing is certain, that anything is possible, and that energy fields exist, and therefore if you buy our bracelet ($39.99 US, plus shipping and handling), you can harness quantum energy fields to realize your true possibilities.
The problem is, if you don't have much scientific training, which unfortunately a great many Americans don't, you might actually be suckered in by something like this. Funny how people will spend their hard-earned cash to buy a useless item because of an advertisement that sounds "scientific," but when actual scientists present their actual conclusions based on actual logic and actual hard evidence, such as with evolution and climate change, many people just go, "Damn pointy-headed, pocket-protector-wearing nerds. Whadda they know?" And then they go back to watching advertisements for "quantum-activated bracelets" on the Shopping Channel.
I bring all of this up because of a recent feature article in our local newspaper, The Ithaca Journal. The article was written by Steven Brewer, founding member of Paranormal Investigators of Central New York, and was a thinly-disguised attempt to drum up business from the credulous. PICNY (visit their website here), based in Auburn, has as its mission "to help the people being effected [sic] by (a) haunting better understand what is happening to them and help them address it." Most of the article was what you'd expect -- anecdotal reports of lights being found on when the people in question "knew they'd been turned off," fuzzy voices on a recording made in an empty house, a ball rolling across a table "when no one had pushed it." (This last one happens to my wife and I all the time, but it's because our house was built in such a way that there is not a single straight line, level surface, or right angle anywhere. The words "square" and "plumb" were not in the vocabulary of the builders of this house.)
In any case, Brewer goes on to explain how scientific his operation is: "PICNY does approach the paranormal with a scientific mindset and we go into every investigation trying to debunk any claims of activity, we even try to debunk our own experiences inside the location. We do this mostly because there are many things that are believed to be paranormal in nature but are in fact natural such as the feeling of being watched. This is caused by EMF or Electro-Magnetic Fields which are given off by the Earth as well as old or improperly wired electronics. The claims and experiences that we cannot reasonably debunk are classified as being paranormal in nature."
It's a wonder he didn't throw in the word "quantum." Yes, the Earth has an electromagnetic field. Quite a large one, in fact. Without it, it would be damned hard to get a compass to work. Yes, electronic equipment generates an electromagnetic field. That's how they work; note the use of the word "electronic" in "electronic equipment." And from this he accounts for our "feeling of being watched?" If this explanation was correct, we'd constantly feel like we were being watched, because we're constantly immersed in the Earth's electromagnetic field, and most of us are around electrical equipment all the time. In fact, rather few of us feel watched all the time, and those few are generally referred to as "paranoid" and are referred for psychiatric evaluation.
You'd think that, given that the previous paragraph requires an understanding of physics equal to that of your average 7th grader, people would immediately frown upon reading these claims and say, "Well, these guys certainly sound like a bunch of nimrods." Sadly, that is not the case. I just looked at PICNY's Facebook page (of course they have a Facebook page) and since the article came out, it's been "liked" 214 times. I saw, in fact, a post on their page that said, "I just read the article about what you're doing, and I wanted to let you know that I'm a reporter who tags along on paranormal investigations for the field experience, contact me if you'd like to connect." There you have it, folks -- the true purpose of social media: to bring together wackos.
I would be remiss in not pointing out another, and subtler, problem with the paragraph I quoted above; and that's in the last sentence, where they state that anything they cannot "reasonably debunk" is classified as being paranormal. Now, the difficulty with an investigation like this is how prone it is to confirmation bias. Investigators who come in, billing themselves as "paranormal researchers," who clearly believe in the supernatural, and whose reputations rely on successfully finding ghosts and hauntings and so on, are going to have a clear bias toward interpreting whatever they see or hear as evidence of the paranormal. Anything that happens -- a noise, a movement of air, a "feeling of being watched" -- is very likely to be unquestioningly accepted as having a supernatural cause.
The whole idea of "if we can't explain it, it must be paranormal" is contrary to the scientific way of thinking right from the get-go, and yet it's a fairly common theme you hear from people who accept the supernatural. It is especially pervasive amongst the religious; Richard Dawkins calls it the "god of the gaps" approach. "If we can't explain it, then god must have done it." A scientist does not need to label the parts of nature (s)he hasn't yet explained as either "paranormal" or "spiritual." Science's approach is, "if we can't explain it, we can't explain it -- yet." You gain nothing in understanding by labeling everything we have yet to comprehend fully as supernatural.
And, for crying out loud, if you're going to try to use science to support your position, get the freakin' science right. If you get the science wrong, all you do is make yourself look like a dunderhead, even if you do manage to convince a few other dunderheads along the way. To once again quote Dawkins: "Ignorance of facts is not evidence of fiction."
An oft-quoted example is the way purveyors of the woo-woo liberally drizzle words like "quantum" all over everything. I've seen ads for "quantum-activated bracelets," whatever the hell that means. They often follow it up with ridiculous pseudo-explanations about how quantum physics teaches us that nothing is certain, that anything is possible, and that energy fields exist, and therefore if you buy our bracelet ($39.99 US, plus shipping and handling), you can harness quantum energy fields to realize your true possibilities.
The problem is, if you don't have much scientific training, which unfortunately a great many Americans don't, you might actually be suckered in by something like this. Funny how people will spend their hard-earned cash to buy a useless item because of an advertisement that sounds "scientific," but when actual scientists present their actual conclusions based on actual logic and actual hard evidence, such as with evolution and climate change, many people just go, "Damn pointy-headed, pocket-protector-wearing nerds. Whadda they know?" And then they go back to watching advertisements for "quantum-activated bracelets" on the Shopping Channel.
I bring all of this up because of a recent feature article in our local newspaper, The Ithaca Journal. The article was written by Steven Brewer, founding member of Paranormal Investigators of Central New York, and was a thinly-disguised attempt to drum up business from the credulous. PICNY (visit their website here), based in Auburn, has as its mission "to help the people being effected [sic] by (a) haunting better understand what is happening to them and help them address it." Most of the article was what you'd expect -- anecdotal reports of lights being found on when the people in question "knew they'd been turned off," fuzzy voices on a recording made in an empty house, a ball rolling across a table "when no one had pushed it." (This last one happens to my wife and I all the time, but it's because our house was built in such a way that there is not a single straight line, level surface, or right angle anywhere. The words "square" and "plumb" were not in the vocabulary of the builders of this house.)
In any case, Brewer goes on to explain how scientific his operation is: "PICNY does approach the paranormal with a scientific mindset and we go into every investigation trying to debunk any claims of activity, we even try to debunk our own experiences inside the location. We do this mostly because there are many things that are believed to be paranormal in nature but are in fact natural such as the feeling of being watched. This is caused by EMF or Electro-Magnetic Fields which are given off by the Earth as well as old or improperly wired electronics. The claims and experiences that we cannot reasonably debunk are classified as being paranormal in nature."
It's a wonder he didn't throw in the word "quantum." Yes, the Earth has an electromagnetic field. Quite a large one, in fact. Without it, it would be damned hard to get a compass to work. Yes, electronic equipment generates an electromagnetic field. That's how they work; note the use of the word "electronic" in "electronic equipment." And from this he accounts for our "feeling of being watched?" If this explanation was correct, we'd constantly feel like we were being watched, because we're constantly immersed in the Earth's electromagnetic field, and most of us are around electrical equipment all the time. In fact, rather few of us feel watched all the time, and those few are generally referred to as "paranoid" and are referred for psychiatric evaluation.
You'd think that, given that the previous paragraph requires an understanding of physics equal to that of your average 7th grader, people would immediately frown upon reading these claims and say, "Well, these guys certainly sound like a bunch of nimrods." Sadly, that is not the case. I just looked at PICNY's Facebook page (of course they have a Facebook page) and since the article came out, it's been "liked" 214 times. I saw, in fact, a post on their page that said, "I just read the article about what you're doing, and I wanted to let you know that I'm a reporter who tags along on paranormal investigations for the field experience, contact me if you'd like to connect." There you have it, folks -- the true purpose of social media: to bring together wackos.
I would be remiss in not pointing out another, and subtler, problem with the paragraph I quoted above; and that's in the last sentence, where they state that anything they cannot "reasonably debunk" is classified as being paranormal. Now, the difficulty with an investigation like this is how prone it is to confirmation bias. Investigators who come in, billing themselves as "paranormal researchers," who clearly believe in the supernatural, and whose reputations rely on successfully finding ghosts and hauntings and so on, are going to have a clear bias toward interpreting whatever they see or hear as evidence of the paranormal. Anything that happens -- a noise, a movement of air, a "feeling of being watched" -- is very likely to be unquestioningly accepted as having a supernatural cause.
The whole idea of "if we can't explain it, it must be paranormal" is contrary to the scientific way of thinking right from the get-go, and yet it's a fairly common theme you hear from people who accept the supernatural. It is especially pervasive amongst the religious; Richard Dawkins calls it the "god of the gaps" approach. "If we can't explain it, then god must have done it." A scientist does not need to label the parts of nature (s)he hasn't yet explained as either "paranormal" or "spiritual." Science's approach is, "if we can't explain it, we can't explain it -- yet." You gain nothing in understanding by labeling everything we have yet to comprehend fully as supernatural.
And, for crying out loud, if you're going to try to use science to support your position, get the freakin' science right. If you get the science wrong, all you do is make yourself look like a dunderhead, even if you do manage to convince a few other dunderheads along the way. To once again quote Dawkins: "Ignorance of facts is not evidence of fiction."
Saturday, April 23, 2011
ManBatPig
Reports are coming in from Steytlerville, a small town in the Karoo District of South Africa, of a shapeshifting monster terrorizing residents.
Local warrant officer Zandisile Nelani said, "The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it." He went on to say that the monster had started out as a man in a suit, but had changed to a pig and then to a bat. He hastened to add that although the creature had scared a number of residents, no people or livestock had been harmed by it.
Besides being reminded, against my will, of the "ManBearPig" episode of South Park, of course I started looking through my top-secret Cryptozoology Files to see if there's anything that could explain it other than (1) someone playing an elaborate prank, (2) the eyewitnesses having consumed large quantities of booze, or (3) both. And, lo and behold, there is.
There is a long-standing South African tradition of a creature called the Thokolozi (or Tokoloshe) which matches the description of our mysterious ManBatPig. On the surface, the resemblance seems slim, as the Thokolozi most often appears as a brown-skinned man, hairy all over, with only one buttock. This last feature seems a little odd, and makes me wonder if he only has a right butt cheek, only a left one, or just one huge symmetrically-placed butt cheek, the last-mentioned option bringing up other anatomical considerations that I would prefer not to think about. Another characteristic of the Thokolozi is that he is said to be very well-endowed in the reproductive equipment department. Without going into graphic detail, let's just say that he is well-endowed to the point that tighty-whities would be pretty much out of the question. Between that and having only one buttock, getting fitted at the tailor's must be a fairly humiliating experience, and possibly accounts for his legendary ill temper.
So we have here one very odd-looking dude. But the key feature that identifies our mystery creature at Steytlerville as the Thokolozi is his shapeshifting ability. The Thokolozi carries around with him a magic pebble that allows him to become invisible, but he is said to be able to take the shape of many different animals, and also to fly. So I think we have a definite match.
What should the inhabitants of Steytlerville do? One possibility is to make a Thokolozi Repellant, but the problem is that the recipe I found requires Thokolozi fat. Obtaining that would seem to be a bit of a stumbling block, although one site I looked at said that it might be purchased from a muti, or purveyor of traditional medicine. You can also appease the Thokolozi by putting out food for him, but you must remember not to put salt in it; he apparently shares with many European spirit creatures the characteristic of not liking salt. Sometimes witches subdue a Thokolozi, and keep him around for their own purposes, about which I will leave you to speculate. They do this by a combination of magic and luring him with food, and keep him docile by "trimming the hair over his eyes."
So the good news for the people of Steytlerville is that Thokolozis mostly seem fairly harmless, and just like to scare people but don't actually harm anyone. The bad news is that there doesn't seem to be much they can do about his presence. They only have two choices, as far as I can see: either to put out food to appease a magical spirit with large genitals and one buttock, or to lay off the booze and then do a house-to-house search for some prankster who has a suit, a pig costume, and large fake bat wings.
I know which one I think would be more effective.
Local warrant officer Zandisile Nelani said, "The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it." He went on to say that the monster had started out as a man in a suit, but had changed to a pig and then to a bat. He hastened to add that although the creature had scared a number of residents, no people or livestock had been harmed by it.
Besides being reminded, against my will, of the "ManBearPig" episode of South Park, of course I started looking through my top-secret Cryptozoology Files to see if there's anything that could explain it other than (1) someone playing an elaborate prank, (2) the eyewitnesses having consumed large quantities of booze, or (3) both. And, lo and behold, there is.
There is a long-standing South African tradition of a creature called the Thokolozi (or Tokoloshe) which matches the description of our mysterious ManBatPig. On the surface, the resemblance seems slim, as the Thokolozi most often appears as a brown-skinned man, hairy all over, with only one buttock. This last feature seems a little odd, and makes me wonder if he only has a right butt cheek, only a left one, or just one huge symmetrically-placed butt cheek, the last-mentioned option bringing up other anatomical considerations that I would prefer not to think about. Another characteristic of the Thokolozi is that he is said to be very well-endowed in the reproductive equipment department. Without going into graphic detail, let's just say that he is well-endowed to the point that tighty-whities would be pretty much out of the question. Between that and having only one buttock, getting fitted at the tailor's must be a fairly humiliating experience, and possibly accounts for his legendary ill temper.
So we have here one very odd-looking dude. But the key feature that identifies our mystery creature at Steytlerville as the Thokolozi is his shapeshifting ability. The Thokolozi carries around with him a magic pebble that allows him to become invisible, but he is said to be able to take the shape of many different animals, and also to fly. So I think we have a definite match.
What should the inhabitants of Steytlerville do? One possibility is to make a Thokolozi Repellant, but the problem is that the recipe I found requires Thokolozi fat. Obtaining that would seem to be a bit of a stumbling block, although one site I looked at said that it might be purchased from a muti, or purveyor of traditional medicine. You can also appease the Thokolozi by putting out food for him, but you must remember not to put salt in it; he apparently shares with many European spirit creatures the characteristic of not liking salt. Sometimes witches subdue a Thokolozi, and keep him around for their own purposes, about which I will leave you to speculate. They do this by a combination of magic and luring him with food, and keep him docile by "trimming the hair over his eyes."
So the good news for the people of Steytlerville is that Thokolozis mostly seem fairly harmless, and just like to scare people but don't actually harm anyone. The bad news is that there doesn't seem to be much they can do about his presence. They only have two choices, as far as I can see: either to put out food to appease a magical spirit with large genitals and one buttock, or to lay off the booze and then do a house-to-house search for some prankster who has a suit, a pig costume, and large fake bat wings.
I know which one I think would be more effective.
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