Exopolitical science

Are you a recent college graduate with a major in political science?  Are you looking for a job, but afraid of the wheeling and dealing, smoke-filled-room culture that still pervades the political scene?  Would you like to learn how to apply your skills to dealing with tense situations that don't, technically, exist?

Then a career in exopolitics may be for you.

This whole subject comes up because of a headline that popped up in my news feed, "Do Aliens Get a Fair Deal in the Media?"  It turns out that the article was about a conference coming up in August in Leeds, England, on the subject of exopolitics -- how governments, militaries, and so on should be handling interactions with extraterrestrials.  My first thought was that the opening keynote address would read, in its entirety, "Um.  Well.  There haven't been any.  Thank you very much."  But no, the conference is going to go on for three days (August 5 through August 7), so they must be planning to say more than that.

So I started looking into it, and it turns out that the Leeds conference is only the tip of the iceberg, exopolitically speaking.  There's an Exopolitics Institute, whose website states, "Exopolitics is defined as an interdisciplinary scientific field, with its roots in the political sciences, that focuses on research, education and public policy with regard to the actors, institutions and processes, associated with extraterrestrial life, as well as the wide range of implications this entails through public advocacy and newly emerging paradigms."  Okay, then, that explains that.  Any definition that has that many subordinate clauses, and includes the words "newly emerging paradigms," has got to be taken seriously.

Then, there's Exopolitics.com, which seems to act not only as a focus group for studying exopolitical issues, but also as a clearinghouse for wingnuts, to judge by the following graph that is featured prominently on their website:

What does it mean?  Damned if I know.  But supposedly it proves that March 9, 2011 through October 28, 2011 are going to be part of the "Ninth Wave" and are going to be "Days of Significance."  We're in the middle of that period right now, and I'm not seeing all that much Significance happening around me personally, but maybe that's just because of where I live.

We also have Exopolitics Radio, a weekly radio talk show with a nifty home page; the Exopolitics World Network; and an Exopolitics Wikipedia page, which of course proves that it's all real.

Upon looking at all of this stuff, my first question is: how do these people pay their mortgages?  I mean, if I decided to chuck teaching biology and move on to, say, founding the Unicorn Research Institute, it's not like I could actually bring in any big research grants.  Who is paying these people?  Is it supported by the National Endowment for Woo-woos, or something?

Secondly, I wondered how the whole thing could last longer than a few months, given that there's effectively nothing there to study.  But some of these folks have been in business for over a decade.  Michael Salla, who coined the term "exopolitics" and has been one of its most ardent supporters, has tried to influence political leaders (to little apparent effect, except in the case of Michele Bachmann, some of whose statements are clearly beamed in from Neptune).  But then I saw that the exopolitics nonsense is all wound up with various conspiracy theories (HAARP, the Reptilians, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati) and other kinds of wingnuttery (UFOs, psychics, cosmic convergences, and, heaven help us, the Mayan calendar).  So, I guess they have a lot of material out there.  In fact, when the Washington Post interviewed Michael Salla, they maneuvered him into admitting with some reluctance that he was getting his information solely "from the internet."

So, anyhow, if you're going to be in England in the first week of August, you should definitely plan on attending.  It could be entertaining.  I'm guessing that black trench coats and sunglasses will be de rigueur.  You might also want to consider bringing along a tinfoil hat.

After all, you can't be too careful.

Arguing with alpha dog

I don't think that there is anything that can stop me in my tracks like complete and utter irrationality.

I say that because of an encounter I had with a neighbor while Carol and I were walking the dogs yesterday evening.  To give a little background on this neighbor, this was the guy who let his own dog run loose all the time, and the dog kept getting into our (fenced) back yard and beating up our dog.  After this had happened three times, we finally called the police to get him to restrain his dog.  He was ticketed (twice), and the last time, came over and yelled at us, "Nice f***ing neighbors!"  That was the last we saw of him until last night.

We saw him drive up as we walked past his house.  We had gotten a little further away, and then heard him yell, "Hey!"  We turned.  He was walking up the road toward us, so we walked back to meet him.

"So, I saw you walking past with your dogs," he said.

"Yes?"

"My dog that used to run around.  He was kind of alpha dog of the neighborhood.  He died last year of an allergic reaction."

Thinking he might be ready to say, "It's over, let's just get along," I said, "Wow, that's terrible, I'm so sorry."

"You're the one who wanted to kill my dog."

I gaped at him.  "I didn't want to kill your dog, I wanted to keep him out of our yard."

He waved me off.  "That's not what the judge said.  The judge threatened to euthanize my dog.  Well, we now have two dogs, and I don't want you walking your dogs along the edge of my property, because they pee on the grass.  Out of respect, walk them on the other side of the road."  He then turned and stalked off.

Carol and I were speechless.  Well, not exactly speechless, because we both said a few words that, in the interest of keeping this family-friendly, I won't repeat.  My personal opinion was that he didn't like the fact that we'd challenged his status as alpha dog.  Be that as it may, the upshot of his argument, so far as I can discern, was:

1)  It was our fault that his dog came into our fenced back yard and beat up our dog, because his dog was "alpha dog."

2)  If he argued with the judge about whose fault it was, and the judge threatened him with euthanizing his dog, this was also our fault.

3)  Dog pee causes fatal allergic reactions.  In dogs.

4)  Because of #1-3, it would be "respectful" not to walk on his side of the road.

I know I'm not stupid.  I consider myself pretty quick-thinking under most circumstances -- I can argue well, I'm fairly articulate, and I have a decent working knowledge of a variety of topics.  But to watch me, confronted with this guy, you'd have thought I was a complete dunderhead.  I felt like all I did was react to what he said, and each time his next statement was such a complete non sequitur that it left me thinking, "But... but... what does that have to do with...?"  When he turned and left, I thought, "Well, I lost that argument."

Then I thought, "Argument?  This was an argument?"  To quote Monty Python, "An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition."  I think the key word here is "connected."  In order to make a connected series of statements, you have to understand what the words "logically connected" mean.  Which our neighbor obviously doesn't.  Our neighbor's responses were the adult version of a second grader's retort when faced with a taunt he can't answer:  "Oh, yeah?  Well,  you're a poopyhead!"

And unfortunately, facing such complete irrationality freezes me in place, because I labor under the obviously incorrect assumption that everyone is capable of rational thought.

I wish this were a unique circumstance, but unfortunately, the world seems to be rather thickly populated by irrational people.  Everywhere you look, there are people who arrive at their thoughts, beliefs, and actions by some pathway other than rational consideration.  Now, I'm not some sort of Spock type, admitting logic as the only valid impulse, and discounting emotion entirely; in fact, I'm a pretty emotional guy.  As I said to Carol on the way home, I'd have actually understood his actions better if he'd come up to me, and said, "I hate you people because you remind me of my dog, and my dog died, and I really miss him," and then he punched me in the face.  Acting on an emotional impulse has its own internal logic, even if it sometimes leads us to do things that we later regret.  It's not exactly rational, in the strict definition of the word, but it does on some level make sense.

What I don't get, however, is someone standing there and arguing, and the argument makes no sense whatsoever, and somehow he can't see that what he's saying is just a disconnected bunch of weird statements.  It's that kind of irrationality that leaves me standing there, mouth hanging open, unable to figure out what I could possibly say.

And since I've been rendered speechless by thinking about the whole incident, I'll end with an apt quote:

"Arguing with people who have renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."  -- Thomas Paine

Bias, lies, and the media

One point I make, over and over, to my Critical Thinking classes is that the media is inherently deceitful.

First, let me explain what I don't mean by that statement.  I don't mean that all reporters are lying to you, nor that you should disbelieve everything you see on television, hear on the radio, or read in newspapers or magazines.  I also don't mean that they're all setting out deliberately to mislead (although some certainly are).

What I mean by that statement is that media are inherently biased, and that bias even extends to what they choose not to consider as news.  That choice ("this story isn't worth covering") itself represents a bias.  Then, when they conduct (say) an interview, they obviously can't show the whole thing; pieces get cut, sometimes rearranged.  Where do the cuts happen?  Did cutting a particular comment change the connotation of the one that followed it?  Sometimes even such seeming trivia as background music can alter your perception of what you're seeing -- in a previous post I described my AP Biology students' final lab project which conclusively demonstrated that changing the background music in an ambiguous video clip changes both your cognitive understanding of what you watched and your emotional reaction to it.

If you add in a motive to deceive, you've got real problems.  It's easy enough to be misled by media by the simple fact of its inherent biases; but when the creators have a political agenda to push forward, or stand to gain financially, by hoodwinking you, it's all too easy to fall prey.

To illustrate how simple it is to deceive without lying, consider the following trailers for The Shining and Mary Poppins.  Neither one is "lying to you," in the sense of showing you a clip that wasn't in the original movie.  All that's been altered is the background music -- the rest is just cherry-picking which scenes to string together, the same as has been done in every interview you've ever watched.  (And for those of you who don't usually click links in blogs, these are must-sees.)

Which brings us to the subject of Reality TV.

Because it is actually Unreality TV, of course.  It's all a tangle of clever editing and outright deception.  Easy as pie -- hell, if they can make The Shining look like a chick flick, they can get you to believe anything.  This is why yesterday's revelation that Animal Planet's new reality show, Finding Bigfoot, is a big fat hoax, falls into the "Color Me Shocked" department.

About the only thing surprising about the announcement is that it came from... members of the cast.  Normally, cast members are the last ones likely to blow the whistle, because it pretty much means the end of the series.  Here, though, we have some people who seem to be honestly interested in tracking down cryptids, and they have become increasingly pissed off by the editing antics of the producers.  The team leader, Matt Moneymaker, has been one of the most vocal critics.  He told reporters, referring to one of the typical grainy, blurry video clips showing a bipedal something running away from the camera, "... the thing I ran after up the hill was a human — someone who was sneaking around us in the woods trying to watch the production in progress.  I said so repeatedly and vehemently at the time, for the cameras, but they edited out all of that in order to make it seem unclear what I was chasing after."

My response:  of course they did.  Given that Finding Bigfoot didn't, um, find Bigfoot, they had to do something, because otherwise all you'd have to show would be these people stomping around in the woods not finding anything.  This is not the sort of program that tends to generate high ratings.  So what did you think they would do?

The sad fact is that all media are biased, but where there's a profit motive, the bias can slide pretty quickly into outright deceit.  It's a shame that Moneymaker has gotten tangled up with the whole fiasco, because he seems genuinely interested in playing fair.  The take-home lesson is that with the media, playing fair is nearly impossible.

Magic tape

Have you seen people at the gym lately with brightly-colored pieces of tape stuck to their skin?  If so, it's not some kind of strange fashion statement, nor a new sort of method for closing surgical incisions; it's the latest way for people with genuine medical issues not to get any better.

Developed by Dr. Kenzo Kase -- at least he claims to be a doctor, but after some of the statements he makes, you have to wonder -- the technique, called "KinesioTaping," allegedly helps everything from sprains and strains to arthritis, herniated discs, tendonitis, whiplash, TMJ, Bell's palsy, migraines, and plantar fascitis.  (See his website, containing these claims, here.)  All that from pieces of tape.  Pretty impressive.

So, how does it work, you might ask?  The idea is that if you put a piece of tape on your skin, it lifts the layers of the skin and allows "blood and lymphatic fluid" to drain away.  Since the collected blood and lymphatic fluid were what was causing the pain, the pain goes away.  Right?  Of course right.  Let's demonstrate that with a little experiment.

Let's say that the layers of your skin are a little like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.  The jelly (raspberry jelly, of course) represents the accumulated fluid that is building up and causing the peanut butter to ache.  Now, get a piece of duct tape, since I doubt you want to pay $50 for a "KinesioTape Starter Pack" anyhow.  Put a piece of duct tape on the top slice of bread, and it should levitate and allow the raspberry jelly to drain away.  Um... keep watching, it should happen any moment now.  Um.  Look, I think the bread moved a little!  See, a little of the jelly dripped on the plate!  It's working!

Okay, maybe not so much.  But this hasn't stopped people like Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, Kerri Walsh, and David Beckham from sticking the stuff all over themselves, although in Beckham's case it may just have been so he had another excuse for taking his shirt off in front of his fans. 

So, what are Dr. Kase's credentials, then?  Hard to tell.  He's apparently a certified chiropractor in Japan, but whether he's actually studied medicine and merits the "Dr." in front of his name is a matter of conjecture.  I'm to be excused for asking the question, given a statement he made in an interview in the UK Guardian (here) in which he explains why he never has jet lag:

I will be 69 in October and I visit 15 countries for work; that is too much travel for an old man. The reason we get jet lag is because we are at very high altitude and that causes our body temperatures to go up – you notice that kids don't really suffer from it, because their fluid maintenance is much better than old people's. So the first thing I do after flying is jump into cold water, even during winter. That brings my body temperature down and I don't have jet lag.

 So, jet lag has nothing to do with changing time zones, sleep patterns, and the like, it has to do with your body temperature rising because of your "fluid maintenance."

Well, sorry, Dr. Kase, I'm not plastering tape all over myself next time I go lift weights, even as an experiment, and I can explain why in two words:  "body hair."  And I'm not going to jump into cold water after a long airplane flight, and I can explain why in one word:  "AIIIEEEEEE."  Your medical advice sounds like a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense to me, and throwing around names like "Lance Armstrong" and "Serena Williams" doesn't impress me, because I've found that there's no particular correlation between fame and brains.

However, I seem to be in the minority here, because Dr. Kase's magical tape has been selling like mad.  In what may become an epic Battle of the Bullshit, it's looking like it may outsell Power Bracelets.  (In fact, when I went to Dr. Kase's site to look up the price of a "starter pack," it stated that it was "Temporarily Out of Stock.")  And once again, we have the issue of people buying into a quack cure and very likely not seeking prompt, and legitimate, medical treatment -- making me question how this sort of thing is not both fraud and medical malpractice.

Be that as it may, you should start looking for people showing up at your local gym with tape all over their arms and legs, in lovely designer colors.  Resist the temptation to run up and rip it off, which is what I wanted to do to the grinning models on Dr. Kase's website. 

Apologies to rock-throwing elves

I visited Iceland in 2000 with my then-girlfriend (now wife), and we were both impressed by its natural beauty, fascinating history, and amazing geology.  We were also taken by the civility of its people, who pride themselves on a near 100% adult literacy rate, and one of the most conservative languages on Earth (its lexicon and grammar have barely changed in 1000 years -- sagas written in the 10th century are still required reading in the schools, in the original language).  I had a rather idealized picture of the place, an idea that the people were sensible, reasonable, and rational people, notwithstanding that their culture produced Björk.

Now I find that sadly, my opinion may need to be revised.

A couple of weeks ago, a hillside was dynamited as part of work being done to construct an anti-avalanche barrier near the town of Bolungarvík, in the northwest of Iceland.  This resulted in areas of the town being pelted with fist-sized rocks.  You would think that the obvious explanation -- that dynamite has a way of making things fly through the air -- would be obvious enough, and that someone would solve the problem by respectfully asking the construction workers not to use so damned much dynamite next time. 

You would be wrong.

Last week, the residents of Bolungarvík went to a meeting of the Town Council and demanded that action be taken, not against the people who blew up the hillside, but against... elves.  The rock barrage was not caused by the dynamite, they said; they were thrown by the huldufólk, a type of elf that lives in the hills.  The huldufólk, they claimed, were pissed off because they hadn't been consulted in the construction of the anti-avalanche barrier, and had responded by throwing rocks.

I would have thought that town officials would give this claim the response it deserved, namely, laughing in said residents' faces and then recommending that they lay off the brennivín.  This, sadly, did not happen.  The residents who brought the story about the irritated elves to the Bolungarvík Town Council were politely listened to.  The residents then demanded that the Council draft a resolution apologizing to the elves on behalf of the town, so as to forestall any further rock-throwing incidents.  The members of the Town Council voted, and the motion for a resolution failed, which initially gave me some hope that my perception of Iceland as a seat of rational skepticism was correct.  But then, the Town Council, in a move that should make skeptics the world over do a faceplant, encouraged the townsfolk to convene an appeasement ceremony of their own to apologize to the elves for building the barrier without consulting them.

So they did.  A local musician, Benedikt Sigurdsson, wrote a song for the occasion, and the people got together and offered prayers to the huldufólk.  Sigurdsson is quoted as saying, “I have now been asked by both elves and men to broker a compromise here, and I hope that this song will suffice."

The fact that Sigurdsson thinks that the elves have talked to him should be a cause for concern, but that notwithstanding, I suspect he's right.  For one thing, the dynamiting is over, and so any further rock incidents are unlikely.  For another, I'm guessing that subsequent construction will be done only after contacting the local authorities, obtaining a building permit, and talking to the elves.

And when the elves are propitiated, and no rocks are pelted, it will further convince everyone in Bolungarvík that you can't do anything without consulting, appeasing, and asking advice from supernatural beings for which there is no evidence whatsoever.  And here I will stop, and trust that you are perfectly capable of drawing your own parallels without my having to point them out to you.

The number game

Yesterday I was perusing a site whose apparent purpose is to make people Repent For The End Is Near, and I found that one of the latest things to get the Apocalypse Soon crowd in a lather is the fact that some time in May of this year, the world's population was 6,666,666,666.

Their alarm does not, of course, have anything to do with the fact that that's a pretty scary number of people.  No mention of "wow, maybe we can prevent the end of the world if we stop reproducing like bunnies and increase access to, and remove the stigma of, birth control."  No, the issue was the number itself.

It is such common knowledge that it is hardly worth noting that numbers with lots of sixes tend to put these people's knickers in a twist.  666 is the "Number of the Beast" in the Book of Revelation, so the fact that the Earth's population hit 6,666,666,666 seems like some sort of omen, despite the fact that passing 6,666,666,666 is the most convenient way to get from 6,666,666,665 to 6,666,666,667.

It's interesting that this showed up on a fundamentalist Christian website, because the whole idea of numbers having "significance" is called numerology, and is considered by most devout Christians to fall into the realm of witchcraft and divination, and therefore be a fairly major no-no.  Numerology hinges on the idea that there's something magical about numbers, and that certain numbers are bad and others are good.  Generally speaking, even numbers are considered bad, and odd ones are good -- witness "lucky number seven" -- with the number thirteen being an obvious exception to the rule.  Associations also make a difference -- one is good (there is one god), two is so-so (it represents man/woman or Adam/Eve, and lots of other dichotomies -- light/dark, good/evil), three is great (man/woman/child, the holy trinity), and so on.  Interestingly, six has bad connotations largely because it is one less than seven, which represents perfection (although ironically, mathematicians call six the first "perfect number," a number equal to the sum of its factors).

So, anyway, that's the idea, and I'm perhaps to be forgiven that I think it sounds like a lot of horse waste.  My skepticism notwithstanding, numerology is highly popular.  Numerologists are consulted much in the same was as astrologers are, and then go to great lengths to try to convert everything to numbers, and show that those numbers "mean something."  One of the most common ways is to convert each of the letters of the alphabet into a number (usually starting with a=1, b=2, and so on, up to i=9, then starting over again at j=1).  Then you add up the numbers of whatever you're interested in (most commonly,  your name).  So, for example, my name as I usually sign it, Gordon P. Bonnet, would be 7+6+9+4+6+5+7+2+6+5+5+5+2.  This gives 69, a number with an entirely different meaning, one I will refrain from going into in the interest of keeping this post PG-13 rated.  So, anyway, then you add the two digits together, 6+9 = 15.  Then you add those two together, and keep doing it till you're down to a single digit (1+5 = 6).

So, we can see that my name adds to six, the number of evil incarnate.  So maybe there's something to numerology, after all.

What I find amusing about all of this is the lengths to which people go to twist this technique to get the results they like.  Some people will decide to count (or not) their middle name, middle initial, or whatnot, if the original configuration wasn't giving them a "nice number."  According to one site I looked at, more than one person has actually changed his/her name in order to have a moniker with a "better number" (and the site claimed that immediately afterwards, the person's luck changed for the better).  People do numerological analyses of home addresses, pet names, names of prospective romantic involvements, names of businesses they're considering working for, and so on.

If all of this sounds like a lot of silly hocus-pocus to you, well, it does to me, too.  But the ancients went in for it in a big way -- there was a whole study of the subject amongst Jewish scholars, who would take passages from the Torah (or other writings) and do a Hebrew numerological analysis of it (called gematria) in order to find hidden meanings.  (This practice is why the same numbers keep coming up in the bible -- particularly numbers like 3, 7, 13, and 40 -- all numbers of significance in Hebrew gematria.)  And, of course, there always were hidden meanings, because if you (1) believe that everything has significance, (2) are willing to tweak things until you find the meaning you want, and (3) have lots and lots of free time, you can make anything into anything.

It's the same phenomenon, really, as the people who search for "coded messages" in everything from the bible to Shakespeare.  There are now computer programs being employed to decipher these alleged codes.  Most of what they turn up is gibberish, but every once in a while something meaningful seems to arise, which to me only proves that if you have a long enough string of characters, and no particular restrictions on how you're allowed to mess around with it, you'll eventually create what you're looking for.

So, anyway, I wouldn't get all bent out of shape because some time in May, we had 6,666,666,666 people on Earth.  For one thing, we added another person about two seconds later.  For another, numerology is a lot of bunk.  There's only one number that has much influence over my life, and that's my bank account balance, and the only meaning it conveys to me is "can I pay the mortgage this month?"  Which, now that I come to think of it, is pretty damned significant.

Gorn down south

Good news for all of you East Coast cryptozoology buffs who thought you'd have to take a trip all the way to the Pacific Northwest to see something that probably doesn't exist:  we now have a very intriguing report coming in from rural South Carolina.

Some residents of Lee County heard an odd noise at night during the July 4 weekend, and went out to investigate.  They found that the front bumper of their car had been "clawed and chewed."  Well, that can only mean one thing.

Lizard Man is back.

When the owners of the munched car notified local police, some old-timers on the force noted the similarity of the story to reports from 23 years ago.  During a five-week episode in the summer of 1988, several people had their car bumpers scratched and mauled, and there were reports that the perpetrator of the damage was not some drunken vandal, but a seven-foot-tall lizard-like creature with red eyes and three clawlike fingers on each hand.

"This part here is how it all started in 1988," said former Lee County Sheriff Liston Truesdale.  "We got a call to come and look at something that had mauled a car.  I went out there and looked at that damaged car, and I haven't seen anything like that before."

Below is an artist's rendition of the creature by one of the witnesses:

An especially nice touch is that the red eyes are labeled, because otherwise we very likely wouldn't have noticed them.

In any case, speculation is running rampant.  Who is this strange creature with scaly skin and a taste for chrome?  The two chief theories are that Lizard Man is (1) an alien, or (2) a dinosaur.  Of course, it could always be (3) an alien dinosaur.  As evidence, let's look at this picture of a Gorn from Star Trek:

That's pretty close, don't you think?  I remember this episode mostly because it had the clumsiest, most ridiculous fight scene in the entire series, and there was some serious competition in that regard.  The problem was, the actor playing the Gorn was wearing this big plastic dinosaur head and it seemed like he couldn't see where he was going very well.  He kept lunging at Captain Kirk with his knife, and Kirk would do a slow-motion dodge and roll, and the Gorn would miss him by about twelve feet.  The Gorn would then go staggering off blindly, take about five minutes to relocate Kirk, and the whole thing would begin again.  It was sort of like watching an extremely slow-moving two-person game of Marco Polo.

But even so, I think the similarity between the Gorn and the South Carolina Lizard Man is pretty striking.  Of course, I don't recall the Star Trek episode mentioning anything about the Gorn race liking to eat car bumpers, but that may be because the scriptwriters had to concentrate on more important things, such as giving Kirk an opportunity to get his shirt ripped off.

In any case, we'll be watching Lee County, South Carolina pretty closely in the coming days.  It's to be hoped that someone will get a photograph or video clip of this creepy chrome-crunching cryptid creature before he packs it in for another 23 years.  One bit of advice: if you decide to visit Lee County to try for a sighting yourself, you might want to rent a car.  Don't waive the comprehensive damage insurance.