Things have been busy here at Worldwide Wacko Watch.
From Chatham, Illinois we have a report of a Bigfoot print in a man's back yard. Michael Patrick, a resident of Chatham, was having his pool liner replaced one day when the workmen noticed a huge footprint underneath a nearby apple tree. The print turned out to be eighteen inches long, which is literally a Big Foot -- Shaquille O'Neil's size 23 shoes accommodate feet about fifteen inches long.
Apparently, the previous evening, Patrick had become aware of something bumping around outside.
“My neighbor has a German Shepherd, and it heard something that night that spooked him. The dog went outside to investigate, but came back cowering, now it won’t leave its owner’s side,” Patrick said.
Bigfoot expert Stan Courtney was called in, and said that Patrick wasn't the only person to have odd experiences in or near Chatham -- that there had been about a half-dozen reports of noises, including bumps, footsteps, and howling.
As far as why Bigfoot picked Patrick's back yard, Courtney speculates that it is because Bigfoot likes apples. "The apple tree might have somehow been interpreted as a gift of food," Courtney said. "A creature such a Bigfoot will usually return the favor if offered food, and present a gift of its own as a show of appreciation in the form of a dead animal or a strange arrangement of flowers."
So, Bigfoot's approach is kind of like that of the creepy guy in the apartment down the hall, when he asks you for a date. I'm not sure if that's reassuring, or just disturbing.
Next, we have a report in from Asia, that populations of geckos in the Philippines are crashing because poachers are catching them, drying their bodies, and selling them to purveyors of traditional medicines in Malaysia and Thailand as an aphrodisiac and a cure for impotence. Apparently, an 11-ounce gecko can bring in more than a thousand dollars.
Authorities are trying to do what they can to stop the trade, as geckos are valuable for keeping down populations of harmful insects. Environment Secretary Ramon Paje earlier warned that collecting and trading geckos without permit can be punishable by up to four years in jail and a fine of up to 300,000 pesos ($6,900).
So, if you have trouble in the romance department, you might want to think twice about snacking on local lizards. The same advice applies if you would like to save 15% on your automobile insurance.
And of course, we just couldn't call the day complete without an appearance of Jesus' face somewhere. The latest appearance of the Lord and Savior was on a Walmart receipt in Anderson County, South Carolina. Jacob Simmons and his fiancée, Gentry-Lee Sutherland, had just returned from a shopping trip to Walmart, and the receipt for their purchases fell to the floor. A couple of days later, after a church service, they happened to notice the receipt, and found that there were dark markings in the shape of a face on the slip of paper.
"The more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, breathtaking," Simmons said.
Sutherland agreed, and referenced the sermon they had heard at church that Sunday. "We had a message on knowing God, abiding in him," Sutherland said. "(The preacher asked) 'If you know God, would you recognize him if you saw him?'"
Evidently the answer is yes. See if you agree. Below is a photograph of the receipt:
Me, I'm not seeing Jesus here, but I do see a fairly strong resemblance to the character Torgo from the abysmally awful 60s horror movie Manos: The Hands of Fate. In fact, I keep expecting him to say, in a creaky voice, "Master... doesn't like... children."
So, anyway, that's the wrap-up for today from Worldwide Wacko Watch. Bigfoot in Illinois, geckos in Malaysian love pills, and Jesus on a Walmart receipt. As usual, our motto here is: All the news that's fit to guffaw at.
Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Sheep of unusual size
News has arrived here that there have been sightings of a new kind of cryptid in southern Virginia.
A woman identified only as "Teena" contacted Lon Strickler, owner of the website Phantoms & Monsters, with the following story:
Sheepsquatch.
I kid you not. I can barely type this word without guffawing. The best part was that the article had an artist's rendition of Sheepsquatch, which I will include here (apologies for not crediting the artist, but the source of the drawing was not given):
All I can say is, that's one freakin' scary-looking sheep. I'll bet he's a real baaaaadass. (ba-dump-bump-ksssh)
One person who posted a response to the original article suggested that Sheepsquatch could be a relic population of giant ground sloths. Well, I've seen giant ground sloth skeletons in museums, and artists' recreations of what they original animal looked like, and my impression is that one of the only things that Sheepsquatch looks less like than it does like a sheep is a giant ground sloth. To me, what Sheepsquatch looks like is one of the Rodents of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride.
I'm also wondering if adding "-squatch" after animal names is going to become a trend, the way adding "-gate" after the focal points of scandals has. You pick some real animal that your cryptid looks vaguely like (really vaguely, in the case of Sheepsquatch), and add "-squatch" at the end, and there's the name of your cryptid. For example, a long, slinky kind of cryptid with brown fur could be a Weaselsquatch. My dog Grendel, who looks like the result of a canine genetics experiment gone horribly wrong, will hereafter be referred to as a "Dogsquatch." I hope they don't extend the trend too far, however - if they ever found a giant flightless bird cryptid, they shouldn't call it Ostrichsquatch because it's impossible to say that without spitting all over yourself.
In any case, I encourage you all to go down to southern Virginia and see if you can find Sheepsquatch for yourself. Keep an eye out for other kinds of squatches while you're at it. Also be careful if you happen to see any Rodents of Unusual Size. I hear they have a nasty bite.
A woman identified only as "Teena" contacted Lon Strickler, owner of the website Phantoms & Monsters, with the following story:
I hope you can give me an idea of what I saw a few weeks ago while hiking with a friend in Fairy Stone State Park in Virginia. We had been on one of the trails for about an hour when we stopped for a brief rest and drink. This was my first visit to this park and I was pleased that the area we were in was secluded.Mr. Strickler's answer was that this animal has been seen in southern Virginia before, and is said to be "white and woolly," with "long, saber-like teeth and single-point horns," "a long and hairless tail," and "a smell like sulfur." The name of the beast?
After a few minutes of rest we continued to walk along the trail when my friend suddenly stopped and pointed towards the right at large group of rocks. Something was moving around but it was about 50 yards away so we didn't get a very good look. We could see that it was light in color and was quite bulky. We stood frozen wanting to know what this creature was though I was getting more frightened by the second. As we started to walk the creature moved onto a rock where we got a good look at it. It looked like a medium sized bear but the fur was very light in color, almost a yellowish gray. The head was very strange also. There was a snout like that of a bear but the dark round eyes were set lower on the head. It was looking in our direction and we had no intention on sticking around to see what it was going to do.
Sheepsquatch.
I kid you not. I can barely type this word without guffawing. The best part was that the article had an artist's rendition of Sheepsquatch, which I will include here (apologies for not crediting the artist, but the source of the drawing was not given):
All I can say is, that's one freakin' scary-looking sheep. I'll bet he's a real baaaaadass. (ba-dump-bump-ksssh)
One person who posted a response to the original article suggested that Sheepsquatch could be a relic population of giant ground sloths. Well, I've seen giant ground sloth skeletons in museums, and artists' recreations of what they original animal looked like, and my impression is that one of the only things that Sheepsquatch looks less like than it does like a sheep is a giant ground sloth. To me, what Sheepsquatch looks like is one of the Rodents of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride.
I'm also wondering if adding "-squatch" after animal names is going to become a trend, the way adding "-gate" after the focal points of scandals has. You pick some real animal that your cryptid looks vaguely like (really vaguely, in the case of Sheepsquatch), and add "-squatch" at the end, and there's the name of your cryptid. For example, a long, slinky kind of cryptid with brown fur could be a Weaselsquatch. My dog Grendel, who looks like the result of a canine genetics experiment gone horribly wrong, will hereafter be referred to as a "Dogsquatch." I hope they don't extend the trend too far, however - if they ever found a giant flightless bird cryptid, they shouldn't call it Ostrichsquatch because it's impossible to say that without spitting all over yourself.
In any case, I encourage you all to go down to southern Virginia and see if you can find Sheepsquatch for yourself. Keep an eye out for other kinds of squatches while you're at it. Also be careful if you happen to see any Rodents of Unusual Size. I hear they have a nasty bite.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Sealed with a kiss
In further inquiries into religions that I don't begin to understand, I'd like to relate the story of how I recently bumped up against the Mormon practice of "sealing" during some of my genealogical inquiries.
I'm somewhat obsessed with family history. I guess you could call it "collecting dead relatives." Those who know me well know that I rarely do things by half-measures -- my database is rapidly approaching 90,000 names of ancestors and cousins and cousins-by-marriage, collected over the past 30 years of research.
In any case, I was looking into one of my lines on my dad's side of the family last week. My dad, despite his French surname, had a good bit of Dutch and Scotch-Irish ancestry, and I was poking about in online records of one of his Dutch lines, the Bogards. The Bogards came from Holland in the early 1600s, settled in New Amsterdam, moved to Albany, and thence to West Virginia, and finally my dad's branch of the family tree made their way to Opelousas, Louisiana in the late 1700s. In any case, one of the Bogard cousins, one Cornelius Bogard of Hampshire County, West Virginia, showed up in an online database I was perusing. And there I saw something that made me frown, a bit.
On the webpage for old Cornelius, it showed him as married to Sarah Skidmore. Further, there was a note that said, "Sealed, Salt Lake City Temple," followed by a date.
What this means is that the Mormons, following their religious practices, have held a ceremony "sealing" Cornelius and Sarah in the afterlife. Without so much as asking the permission of the dear departed, or inquiring as to whether their marriage was a happy or an unhappy one, the Mormons have locked them together permanently.
There's only one tiny problem with this particular example of post-mortem wedded bliss; Sarah Skidmore didn't, in fact, marry Cornelius Bogard. This bit of so-called information was the result of a piece of spectacularly bad research carried out in the early 20th century, and which contained errors that have been accepted as fact, lo unto this very day, by genealogists who don't question their sources. After studying the primary records, however, more diligent researchers have come to the incontrovertible conclusion; the real Sarah Skidmore died as a child. As for Cornelius, he married a Sarah Something-Else (possibly Westfall).
So the dilemma is, if you believe in all of this Traditional Family Values In The Afterlife stuff, apparently Cornelius is now sealed to some poor ghostly child who probably never even met him, leaving his actual wife standing on the sidelines, probably jealous as hell. And I wish I could say this was the only error I've found in LDS-endorsed records, but the truth is, since these records were compiled by (fallible) researchers, largely from secondary sources written by other (fallible) researchers, there are thousands of errors in their files. I'm now visualizing the Mormon version of heaven as being filled with millions of very happy and very wealthy ghostly divorce lawyers, making tens of millions of dollars unhitching couples who were mistakenly sealed by well-meaning, but ill-informed, LDS researchers here on earth.
And I won't even get into how the Mormon practice of baptism of the dead has pissed off the Jews and the Catholics.
Now, I hasten to add that I don't actually believe any of this. Once I'm gone, if the Mormons want to baptize me, they can knock themselves out. If anything remotely close to the Christian god actually exists, I doubt it'll help much in any case, given how many years I've spent disbelieving. My actual question is, if you do believe in sealing of marriages for those already gone on to meet their maker (or not, as the case may be), how do you account for errors in research and people being sealed to the wrong person?
Now, I can imagine certain cases where such errors might be welcome. For example, if any LDS member wants to seal me in the afterlife to Penelope Cruz, I won't object too strenuously. However, for the record, I have never been, nor will ever be, romantically involved with Britney Spears, and if somehow I get hitched to her in the spirit world, I am going to be pissed.
Just so you know.
I'm somewhat obsessed with family history. I guess you could call it "collecting dead relatives." Those who know me well know that I rarely do things by half-measures -- my database is rapidly approaching 90,000 names of ancestors and cousins and cousins-by-marriage, collected over the past 30 years of research.
In any case, I was looking into one of my lines on my dad's side of the family last week. My dad, despite his French surname, had a good bit of Dutch and Scotch-Irish ancestry, and I was poking about in online records of one of his Dutch lines, the Bogards. The Bogards came from Holland in the early 1600s, settled in New Amsterdam, moved to Albany, and thence to West Virginia, and finally my dad's branch of the family tree made their way to Opelousas, Louisiana in the late 1700s. In any case, one of the Bogard cousins, one Cornelius Bogard of Hampshire County, West Virginia, showed up in an online database I was perusing. And there I saw something that made me frown, a bit.
On the webpage for old Cornelius, it showed him as married to Sarah Skidmore. Further, there was a note that said, "Sealed, Salt Lake City Temple," followed by a date.
What this means is that the Mormons, following their religious practices, have held a ceremony "sealing" Cornelius and Sarah in the afterlife. Without so much as asking the permission of the dear departed, or inquiring as to whether their marriage was a happy or an unhappy one, the Mormons have locked them together permanently.
There's only one tiny problem with this particular example of post-mortem wedded bliss; Sarah Skidmore didn't, in fact, marry Cornelius Bogard. This bit of so-called information was the result of a piece of spectacularly bad research carried out in the early 20th century, and which contained errors that have been accepted as fact, lo unto this very day, by genealogists who don't question their sources. After studying the primary records, however, more diligent researchers have come to the incontrovertible conclusion; the real Sarah Skidmore died as a child. As for Cornelius, he married a Sarah Something-Else (possibly Westfall).
So the dilemma is, if you believe in all of this Traditional Family Values In The Afterlife stuff, apparently Cornelius is now sealed to some poor ghostly child who probably never even met him, leaving his actual wife standing on the sidelines, probably jealous as hell. And I wish I could say this was the only error I've found in LDS-endorsed records, but the truth is, since these records were compiled by (fallible) researchers, largely from secondary sources written by other (fallible) researchers, there are thousands of errors in their files. I'm now visualizing the Mormon version of heaven as being filled with millions of very happy and very wealthy ghostly divorce lawyers, making tens of millions of dollars unhitching couples who were mistakenly sealed by well-meaning, but ill-informed, LDS researchers here on earth.
And I won't even get into how the Mormon practice of baptism of the dead has pissed off the Jews and the Catholics.
Now, I hasten to add that I don't actually believe any of this. Once I'm gone, if the Mormons want to baptize me, they can knock themselves out. If anything remotely close to the Christian god actually exists, I doubt it'll help much in any case, given how many years I've spent disbelieving. My actual question is, if you do believe in sealing of marriages for those already gone on to meet their maker (or not, as the case may be), how do you account for errors in research and people being sealed to the wrong person?
Now, I can imagine certain cases where such errors might be welcome. For example, if any LDS member wants to seal me in the afterlife to Penelope Cruz, I won't object too strenuously. However, for the record, I have never been, nor will ever be, romantically involved with Britney Spears, and if somehow I get hitched to her in the spirit world, I am going to be pissed.
Just so you know.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Time is running out
Today I was going to tell you about the conference of exorcists meeting in Poland to tackle the worldwide problem of vampires, but a much more pressing issue has arisen that I need to discuss while I have the time.
The issue is that time is speeding up. I'm sure we've all noticed this. It's becoming harder and harder to get everything done that needs doing, and there just seem not to be enough hours in the day. Well, according to a story that popped up in my news feed today... there aren't.
The article, entitled "Is Time Speeding Up?", begins with the following paragraph:
Then I decided to do a little research, and it turns out that this is only scratching the surface of the "accelerating time" theory. There was one article from a guy whose proof that time is speeding up was that all the clocks in his house are running fast. Another guy, Terrence McKenna, whose name keeps coming up in threads on this topic -- so he must be an expert -- says that the rate of increase in time is such that it will become on infinite on...
... wait for it...
December 21, 2012.
Admit it, you knew there'd be a Mayan calendar reference in here somewhere.
By far my favorite post I saw on the topic came from a guy who evidently thinks that time is like a giant cosmic game of tetherball. (You can read his entire post here. I recommend drinking a couple of shots of tequila first.) He gives this convoluted explanation of a ball hanging on a string tied to a rotating pole, and as the string winds around the pole, the ball spins faster (i.e. time speeds up), and the string gets shorter and shorter and the ball spins faster and faster and then finally SPLAT the ball hits the pole.
At that point, he says, "Weird shit happens."
Very scientifically put, and of course the poster thinks that the Great Temporal Tetherball Collision is going to occur in December 2012. Afterwards, he claims that the ball will start to spin the other way, and the universe will be reborn, and will be "nicer."
Well, that sounds like a happy thought.
Interestingly, the whole subject has even permeated discussions on physics forums. In one thread I looked at, once again titled "Is Time Speeding Up?", there were a bunch of woo-woos who blathered on for a while about the expansion of the universe and how time would have to speed up to "compensate" for the expansion of space, and so on, and finally one reputable physicist responded, in some exasperation, "Most of the responses above are gibberish. No one has even asked the question, 'Speeding up relative to what?' General Relativity established that time passes at different rates in different reference frames, but these posters seem to think that time as a whole is speeding up -- which is a meaningless proposition, since there is nothing outside of time against which you could detect such a change."
Well. I guess he told them. Of course, it won't make any difference, because people who think this way are never going to believe some dumb Ph.D. in physics when they've got the whole internet to rely on. Besides, this physicist is probably a reptilian alien Man-in-Black from the Planet Nibiru who is part of the Bilderberg Group and works for HAARP, and is trying to spread disinformation. You know how that goes.
So anyway, I guess that's today's heaping helping of pseudoscientific absurdity. I think I'll wrap this up, because (1) if I read any more websites like the ones I had to peruse to write this, my brain will turn into cream-of-wheat, and (2) I'm running short on time.
The issue is that time is speeding up. I'm sure we've all noticed this. It's becoming harder and harder to get everything done that needs doing, and there just seem not to be enough hours in the day. Well, according to a story that popped up in my news feed today... there aren't.
The article, entitled "Is Time Speeding Up?", begins with the following paragraph:
Time is actually speeding up (or collapsing). For thousands of years the Schumann Resonance or pulse (heartbeat) of the Earth has been 7.83 cycles per second. The military have used this as a very reliable reference. However, since 1980 this resonance has been slowly rising. It is now over 12 cycles per second! This means there is the equivalent of less than 16 hours per day instead of the old 24 hours!Okay. I mean, my only question would be, "What?" The Schumann resonance is an atmospheric phenomenon, an electromagnetic resonance caused by lightning discharges in the ionosphere. And even if the frequency of the resonance is increasing (which I could find no credible evidence of in any case), there's no way we could know if it's been stable "for thousands of years," because it was only discovered in 1952. And anyway, why would this have anything to do with how fast time is passing?
Then I decided to do a little research, and it turns out that this is only scratching the surface of the "accelerating time" theory. There was one article from a guy whose proof that time is speeding up was that all the clocks in his house are running fast. Another guy, Terrence McKenna, whose name keeps coming up in threads on this topic -- so he must be an expert -- says that the rate of increase in time is such that it will become on infinite on...
... wait for it...
December 21, 2012.
Admit it, you knew there'd be a Mayan calendar reference in here somewhere.
By far my favorite post I saw on the topic came from a guy who evidently thinks that time is like a giant cosmic game of tetherball. (You can read his entire post here. I recommend drinking a couple of shots of tequila first.) He gives this convoluted explanation of a ball hanging on a string tied to a rotating pole, and as the string winds around the pole, the ball spins faster (i.e. time speeds up), and the string gets shorter and shorter and the ball spins faster and faster and then finally SPLAT the ball hits the pole.
At that point, he says, "Weird shit happens."
Very scientifically put, and of course the poster thinks that the Great Temporal Tetherball Collision is going to occur in December 2012. Afterwards, he claims that the ball will start to spin the other way, and the universe will be reborn, and will be "nicer."
Well, that sounds like a happy thought.
Interestingly, the whole subject has even permeated discussions on physics forums. In one thread I looked at, once again titled "Is Time Speeding Up?", there were a bunch of woo-woos who blathered on for a while about the expansion of the universe and how time would have to speed up to "compensate" for the expansion of space, and so on, and finally one reputable physicist responded, in some exasperation, "Most of the responses above are gibberish. No one has even asked the question, 'Speeding up relative to what?' General Relativity established that time passes at different rates in different reference frames, but these posters seem to think that time as a whole is speeding up -- which is a meaningless proposition, since there is nothing outside of time against which you could detect such a change."
Well. I guess he told them. Of course, it won't make any difference, because people who think this way are never going to believe some dumb Ph.D. in physics when they've got the whole internet to rely on. Besides, this physicist is probably a reptilian alien Man-in-Black from the Planet Nibiru who is part of the Bilderberg Group and works for HAARP, and is trying to spread disinformation. You know how that goes.
So anyway, I guess that's today's heaping helping of pseudoscientific absurdity. I think I'll wrap this up, because (1) if I read any more websites like the ones I had to peruse to write this, my brain will turn into cream-of-wheat, and (2) I'm running short on time.
Friday, July 15, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
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
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
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
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.
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.
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