It is probably an occupational hazard of blogging on the topic of skepticism and gullibility that I occasionally have a hard time deciding if something is a prank.
The site Werewolf Cathedral is an excellent case in point. Here we have the following points arguing that no, these people are completely serious:
1) They claim to be a religion. People who use the r-word usually don't joke about it, with the exception of the dude in Austria who fought for three years for the right to wear a spaghetti-strainer on his head in his driver's license photo, because he was a Pastafarian.
2) They begin with a very grim sounding manifesto talking about how the Werewolf represents the merging of a person's base, animalistic nature with his/her human intelligence, using impressive words like "exemplar," "ideology," and "archetype."
3) They admit, up front, that the idea of transforming into a fanged, hairy, Lon Chaney-style werewolf is ridiculous.
4) They don't mention Twilight, or, god forbid, Team Jacob.
Arguing against their being serious is:
1) A Werewolf? Really?
2) They imply that since barbarians back in the Dark Ages didn't blow people up with nuclear weapons, they were actually way better than modern humans, conveniently ignoring such charming features as human sacrifice and the lack of general anesthesia and indoor plumbing.
3) Despite at first ridiculing the whole turning-into-a-wolf thing, they don't actually state that this doesn't happen, they just say that people who do this are "Pseudo-werewolves." Whatever that means.
4) Their leader, High Priest Christopher Belmont Johnson, appears in a YouTube video clip in which he looks more like a geeky computer programmer than he does like a werewolf.
Other interesting features, which could fall into either column, depending on how you see it, include:
1) To be a werewolf, you're supposed to hide it if you're smart. A direct quote from their doctrine: "The Werewolf knows that intelligence is not an asset but a liability in our modern society. The Werewolf learns to play dumb so he fits in with the common folk. Utter stupidity being the most common trait among all peoples of modern society. If the Werewolf possesses a truly superior intellect he will already know the dangers of allowing his brilliance to be seen by the stupids." So there you are, then. Some people around you who appear to be catastrophically dumb may actually be brilliant, but are hiding their brains from the rest of us because they're actually werewolves.
2) Science is wrong. Again, to quote their doctrine: "Science is merely a sub religion of the Stupidians. It tells everyone that unless they claim it is real then it isn't. The Ministers of this sub religion then go forth and speak of theories, aka fantasies with no proof, as if they are real." So, this means, um, that as a scientist, I'm telling people what is real, and then... no, wait. It means that you have to claim something is real before... no, that's not it, either. Okay, I honestly have no clue what the hell that means. Maybe he thinks that if we nosy-parker scientists would stop going around demanding that gravity be real, we'd all be able to levitate. I dunno.
3) They call themselves a "secret society" despite the fact that they have a website with photographs and contact information. Of course, the same is true of the Rosicrucians, Masons, and a variety of other groups. I guess if you're a secret society, you can't be so secret that no one can find you, or your secret society ends up only having one member. Plus, then no one can be suitably impressed at how amazingly scary and secret your society is, because no one knows about it.
Anyhow, I'm inclined to think that the Werewolf Cathedral is serious. But I'm not really sure. As I was reading through this stuff, I kept expecting the site to say, "Ha-ha! We're just joking. We're actually a bunch of bored software engineers in Oakland who were messing around on our coffee breaks and decided to pretend we were werewolves." But they didn't. These people seem pretty determined to express their animalistic nature, and to show no pity for those whom they Seduce With Their Magick. (That was clause #13 of the Werewolf Oath.)
I found myself wondering, as I read, how many werewolf wannabees they've inducted (or whatever it's called when you officially join the Pack). However, I couldn't find out how many members there are, because that was on the Members-Only page of the site, and I'm damned if I'm gonna join just to find out. (For one thing, I'd have a hard time reciting the Werewolf Oath without guffawing, and I have a feeling that would disqualify me. Plus, if I laughed at their oath, they'd probably be honor-bound to disembowel me, or something, which would be unpleasant.) So I don't know if there are branch offices and local sub-packs all over the world, or if maybe it really is just the four people who were listed as officers (High Priest Johnson, High Priestess AngelWolf, Reverend Yusuf Eisner, and a guy who calls himself Reverend Vargulf whose bio states that he is a retired army guy who is a "wolf of ancient lineage").
My suspicion, however, is that there are lots of members. This sort of thing appeals to a certain type of person ("delusional"). And there are lots of folks like that out there. So, anyway, I'll leave you to decide whether you think it's serious or not. If you decide that it is, and you end up joining the Pack, please don't tell me, I don't want to know. I would, however, prefer it if you didn't try to Seduce Me With Your Magick. My wife would object.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Dowsing and statistical significance
My wife and I and two friends were in a gift shop yesterday, and on a rack of books for sale I saw one called Dowsing for Beginners by Richard Craxe. I picked it up, and flipped through a bit of it. I was a bit surprised -- I never thought of dowsing as something anyone would write a how-to manual about.
Dowsing, for those of you (probably few) who don't know about this practice, is the use of a forked stick (or in some cases) a pair of bent wires to locate everything from sources of water to lost objects. The claim is that the dowsing rod exerts a pull on the dowser's hands, or actually turns and points toward the desired goal. As strange as this idea is, I find that of all the odd practices I hear about from students of mine, this one is the one that they will argue the most vociferously for. This, surprisingly, includes students whom I would normally think of as rationalistic skeptics -- students who scoff at other forms of woo-wooism.
You might wonder how this practice is supposed to work. Explanations, of course, vary. The use of willow branches for dowsing for underground water is sometimes explained, in all seriousness, as working because willow trees like growing near water, so the wood is magically attracted to sources of it. Other people believe that dowsers themselves are "sensitive," so that the dowsing rod itself is only acting as a tool to focus their mysterious ability. Dowsing for Beginners goes through some nonsense about there being a "universal mind" that everyone has access to, and it knows everything, and therefore when you practice dowsing, you're tapping into a source of knowledge that can provide you with information about where to drill for water or where you accidentally dropped your car keys.
The next question is, does it work? The simple answer, of course, is no. Controlled studies have shown no results whatsoever, an outcome discussed at length in James Randi's wonderful book Flim-Flam! The fact is, my students who know "an uncle of a friend" who successfully dowsed for water are being suckered in by the fact that there's hardly anywhere in eastern North America that you won't hit water if you dig deeply enough.
A subtler problem with practices like dowsing is that a lot of people don't understand the concept of statistical significance. A pro-dowsing site I looked at referenced a study done in 1988 by Hans-Dieter Betz, in which six dowsers were said to "[show] an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance." However, the Betz experimental protocol was highly suspect from the beginning -- Betz and his group evaluated 500 dowsers in a preliminary test, eliminated all but the most successful fifty, and then found that of those, six of them scored much better than you would expect from chance alone.
The flaw is not that Betz hand-picked the subjects -- if dowsing works, presumably some individuals would be better at it than others, being more in touch with the "universal mind," or whatever. The problem is that even if success at dowsing is pure probability -- i.e., it doesn't work at all except by chance -- some people will do astonishingly well, and that fact means exactly nothing at all. To explain this a little more simply, let's suppose that we had a thousand people take a random, hundred-question test consisting of four-choice multiple-choice items. There is no skill involved; you just fill in a paper with a hundred random A's, B's, C's, and D's, and it's graded against an equally random key. What's your likely score?
Well, 25%, of course, would be the likeliest outcome. You have a 1/4 chance of getting each question "right," so you would be expected to score somewhere around a 25%. The problem is, that's just the most likely score; that's not necessarily your score. In fact, you might score far better than that, or far worse; 25% is just the average score. In a large enough sample of test-takers, some people would seem to score amazingly well, and it's not that they're psychic, or brought their dowsing rods along to point at the correct answers, or anything; it's just a probabilistic effect.
Same with the dowsers. Jim Enright, a prominent skeptic, criticized the Betz study, and showed statistically that in a group of 500 dowsers, you'd expect that six or so of them would be high scorers, just by random chance. Enright described the Betz study not as proving that dowsing is a real phenomenon, but as "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim." Six above-average scorers out of a sample of 500 is simply not a statistically significant finding.
So, what we have here is a phenomenon that has (1) no empirical evidence in its favor, (2) no scientifically reasonable explanation about how it could work, and (3) a cogent argument that explains away cases where it has seemed to be successful. However, as usual, people are more convinced by a flashy practitioner of mystical arts than they are by talk of probability and scientifically controlled studies, so I've no real hope that dowsing will become any less popular. And I suppose if it resulted in your finding a good site for your well, or locating your car keys, then who am I to argue? As Alexandre Dumas famously quipped, "Nothing succeeds like success."
Dowsing, for those of you (probably few) who don't know about this practice, is the use of a forked stick (or in some cases) a pair of bent wires to locate everything from sources of water to lost objects. The claim is that the dowsing rod exerts a pull on the dowser's hands, or actually turns and points toward the desired goal. As strange as this idea is, I find that of all the odd practices I hear about from students of mine, this one is the one that they will argue the most vociferously for. This, surprisingly, includes students whom I would normally think of as rationalistic skeptics -- students who scoff at other forms of woo-wooism.
You might wonder how this practice is supposed to work. Explanations, of course, vary. The use of willow branches for dowsing for underground water is sometimes explained, in all seriousness, as working because willow trees like growing near water, so the wood is magically attracted to sources of it. Other people believe that dowsers themselves are "sensitive," so that the dowsing rod itself is only acting as a tool to focus their mysterious ability. Dowsing for Beginners goes through some nonsense about there being a "universal mind" that everyone has access to, and it knows everything, and therefore when you practice dowsing, you're tapping into a source of knowledge that can provide you with information about where to drill for water or where you accidentally dropped your car keys.
The next question is, does it work? The simple answer, of course, is no. Controlled studies have shown no results whatsoever, an outcome discussed at length in James Randi's wonderful book Flim-Flam! The fact is, my students who know "an uncle of a friend" who successfully dowsed for water are being suckered in by the fact that there's hardly anywhere in eastern North America that you won't hit water if you dig deeply enough.
A subtler problem with practices like dowsing is that a lot of people don't understand the concept of statistical significance. A pro-dowsing site I looked at referenced a study done in 1988 by Hans-Dieter Betz, in which six dowsers were said to "[show] an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance." However, the Betz experimental protocol was highly suspect from the beginning -- Betz and his group evaluated 500 dowsers in a preliminary test, eliminated all but the most successful fifty, and then found that of those, six of them scored much better than you would expect from chance alone.
The flaw is not that Betz hand-picked the subjects -- if dowsing works, presumably some individuals would be better at it than others, being more in touch with the "universal mind," or whatever. The problem is that even if success at dowsing is pure probability -- i.e., it doesn't work at all except by chance -- some people will do astonishingly well, and that fact means exactly nothing at all. To explain this a little more simply, let's suppose that we had a thousand people take a random, hundred-question test consisting of four-choice multiple-choice items. There is no skill involved; you just fill in a paper with a hundred random A's, B's, C's, and D's, and it's graded against an equally random key. What's your likely score?
Well, 25%, of course, would be the likeliest outcome. You have a 1/4 chance of getting each question "right," so you would be expected to score somewhere around a 25%. The problem is, that's just the most likely score; that's not necessarily your score. In fact, you might score far better than that, or far worse; 25% is just the average score. In a large enough sample of test-takers, some people would seem to score amazingly well, and it's not that they're psychic, or brought their dowsing rods along to point at the correct answers, or anything; it's just a probabilistic effect.
Same with the dowsers. Jim Enright, a prominent skeptic, criticized the Betz study, and showed statistically that in a group of 500 dowsers, you'd expect that six or so of them would be high scorers, just by random chance. Enright described the Betz study not as proving that dowsing is a real phenomenon, but as "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim." Six above-average scorers out of a sample of 500 is simply not a statistically significant finding.
So, what we have here is a phenomenon that has (1) no empirical evidence in its favor, (2) no scientifically reasonable explanation about how it could work, and (3) a cogent argument that explains away cases where it has seemed to be successful. However, as usual, people are more convinced by a flashy practitioner of mystical arts than they are by talk of probability and scientifically controlled studies, so I've no real hope that dowsing will become any less popular. And I suppose if it resulted in your finding a good site for your well, or locating your car keys, then who am I to argue? As Alexandre Dumas famously quipped, "Nothing succeeds like success."
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy
Ironic that yesterday's post was about aliens, because today we have a story of the discovery of a crashed UFO in the Baltic Sea.
Before we proceed further, let's take a look at the photograph, which was taken by the Swedish treasure-hunting group Ocean Explorers:
What I think is interesting about this is that every single site on this story that I looked at did exactly what I just did to you; the writer primed readers to interpret what they were looking at by telling them ahead of time what the subject of the photograph was. In fact, a good many sites had headlines such as "Swedish Team Finds Millennium Falcon in Baltic Sea," thereby not only telling you that you were going to be looking at a photograph of a spaceship, but telling you which spaceship it was.
Humans are pattern-finders. It's a very important skill. Our ability to make sense of the millions of visual inputs our eyes register daily -- to notice some, disregard others, and to focus on recognizable patterns -- is of obvious evolutionary significance. It is critical in most situations, however, to have some idea of what you're looking at ahead of time. Take the following random pattern of black dots and white spaces:
Unless you'd seen this rather famous photograph before, you probably didn't see a damn thing in it. Then, I used the word "photograph," and you very likely went, "Wait..." and looked again. Then, if I tell you it is a photograph of a dalmatian dog... suddenly it pops out.
The point is, when you already have a guess as to what you're looking at, it makes it much easier to see. This would have been pretty helpful to proto-hominids on the African savanna, where being able to pick out a lion's face from amongst the dried tufts of yellow grass would have been a major life-saver. However, like most things, this ability can backfire -- and make you see things that aren't there, simply because you were already convinced that you knew what you were looking at.
There are a great many examples of perfectly natural objects that have a peculiarity about them that might lead you to believe that they're manmade. Take the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland:
The sheer regularity of this structure -- thousands of hexagonal, smooth-sided pillars -- has led people to variously surmise that they were made by gods, giants, and the lost civilization of Atlantis. In fact, all they are is hexagonal cooling cracks in igneous rock -- a perfectly natural occurrence. Now that you know that (which you may have already), you notice that they're not perfectly regular, and they're packed too tightly to be anything likely to be made by humans. However, if I'd told you that these were pillars of an ancient temple before showing you the photograph, I wonder if that would have even occurred to you?
Back to our crashed spaceship. What makes it look like a spaceship? It's (1) vaguely oval in shape; (2) has long, parallel lines in it; and (3) there's a section of it (the "back end of the spaceship") that has a gap, right where we are accustomed to seeing the exhaust system of spaceships in movies. All right, could this be a spaceship? I suppose, but aren't there other explanations that are a tad more likely? It may not be a natural object -- its regularity supports that conjecture -- but maybe it's just a piece of a sunken ship (a gun turret, perhaps?). Alternately, it could just be a rock formation. Recall how convincingly face-like the "Face on Mars" looked -- until you saw it from another angle.
In any case, I'm not ready to accept that it's an alien spacecraft, based on one photograph, nor to warn divers to watch out if they approach it so they don't get infiltrated by the Black Oil (sorry for the X Files reference if you're not an aficionado). Given how easy it is to fool the human mind, especially if they're already primed to interpret what they're seeing in a particular way, I'm perfectly willing to delay my excitement until we get more information.
Before we proceed further, let's take a look at the photograph, which was taken by the Swedish treasure-hunting group Ocean Explorers:
What I think is interesting about this is that every single site on this story that I looked at did exactly what I just did to you; the writer primed readers to interpret what they were looking at by telling them ahead of time what the subject of the photograph was. In fact, a good many sites had headlines such as "Swedish Team Finds Millennium Falcon in Baltic Sea," thereby not only telling you that you were going to be looking at a photograph of a spaceship, but telling you which spaceship it was.
Humans are pattern-finders. It's a very important skill. Our ability to make sense of the millions of visual inputs our eyes register daily -- to notice some, disregard others, and to focus on recognizable patterns -- is of obvious evolutionary significance. It is critical in most situations, however, to have some idea of what you're looking at ahead of time. Take the following random pattern of black dots and white spaces:
Unless you'd seen this rather famous photograph before, you probably didn't see a damn thing in it. Then, I used the word "photograph," and you very likely went, "Wait..." and looked again. Then, if I tell you it is a photograph of a dalmatian dog... suddenly it pops out.
The point is, when you already have a guess as to what you're looking at, it makes it much easier to see. This would have been pretty helpful to proto-hominids on the African savanna, where being able to pick out a lion's face from amongst the dried tufts of yellow grass would have been a major life-saver. However, like most things, this ability can backfire -- and make you see things that aren't there, simply because you were already convinced that you knew what you were looking at.
There are a great many examples of perfectly natural objects that have a peculiarity about them that might lead you to believe that they're manmade. Take the Giant's Causeway, in Ireland:
The sheer regularity of this structure -- thousands of hexagonal, smooth-sided pillars -- has led people to variously surmise that they were made by gods, giants, and the lost civilization of Atlantis. In fact, all they are is hexagonal cooling cracks in igneous rock -- a perfectly natural occurrence. Now that you know that (which you may have already), you notice that they're not perfectly regular, and they're packed too tightly to be anything likely to be made by humans. However, if I'd told you that these were pillars of an ancient temple before showing you the photograph, I wonder if that would have even occurred to you?
Back to our crashed spaceship. What makes it look like a spaceship? It's (1) vaguely oval in shape; (2) has long, parallel lines in it; and (3) there's a section of it (the "back end of the spaceship") that has a gap, right where we are accustomed to seeing the exhaust system of spaceships in movies. All right, could this be a spaceship? I suppose, but aren't there other explanations that are a tad more likely? It may not be a natural object -- its regularity supports that conjecture -- but maybe it's just a piece of a sunken ship (a gun turret, perhaps?). Alternately, it could just be a rock formation. Recall how convincingly face-like the "Face on Mars" looked -- until you saw it from another angle.
In any case, I'm not ready to accept that it's an alien spacecraft, based on one photograph, nor to warn divers to watch out if they approach it so they don't get infiltrated by the Black Oil (sorry for the X Files reference if you're not an aficionado). Given how easy it is to fool the human mind, especially if they're already primed to interpret what they're seeing in a particular way, I'm perfectly willing to delay my excitement until we get more information.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Aliens, abductions, and ashtrays
The subject of alien abductions has come up a lot lately.
I'm currently writing from a beautiful house in the Adirondacks, which would be apropos of nothing whatsoever except that it has an outdoor hot tub, and we were in it last night with the friends we're vacationing with, and one of them looked up at the brilliant stars scattered through the sky and asked, "Do you think there's intelligent life on other planets?"
I was tempted to respond, "I'm sometimes in serious doubt that there's intelligent life on Earth," but for once I chose the Road Less Sarcastic and said, "I'm sure there is. I bet that one of those stars we're seeing has a planet around it that has intelligent life, and they may well be looking back at us and wondering the same thing."
Note that this is not, in any sense, a scientific conjecture. We have no evidence whatsoever that life of any kind exists anywhere but right here. We do, however, have two intriguing pieces of information -- the recent, and continuing, discovery of exoplanets (the current number of known exoplanets is 563, although the majority of them seem to be inhospitable to life as we know it), and the relative ease with which organic compounds can form, in the absence of life. The combination of these two facts leads me to the belief (because here we cross the line from what I know to what I am speculating about) that life is probably very common in the universe. And since a third fact -- the drive of organic evolution -- very likely works the same way on other planets as it does here, I see no reason to doubt that there could be a great many planets that harbor intelligence.
The next question my friend asked was, "Do you think that aliens have visited here?" My answer there is a fairly resounding "no." Again, this is not based on a theory in the scientific sense, but on two simple facts -- the absence of any credible evidence, and the seemingly insurmountable distances between the stars. Astronomer Neil de Grasse Tyson, who has spent a lot of time thinking about such matters, agrees. About the absence of evidence, he wonders why there has never been a single tangible piece of evidence of alien visitation, despite the fact that the number of UFO reports make it seem like Earth is some kind of Grand Central Station for Little Green Men. Tyson adjured an audience to take matters into their own hands, if they were ever abducted. "You'll be lying there on the table, waiting to be probed," he said, "because you know how aliens love to do that. Then, when the alien comes over to you, yell, 'Look at that!' and when the alien turns, grab the ashtray, and stick it in your pocket. Then, when you come back, you'll have something tangible. Because, you know, anything that's of alien manufacture is bound to be interesting."
The second part, the immensity of space, seems to me to be the real issue, though. It would take tens of thousands of years for us to reach the nearest star, if we were travelling in the fastest man-made vehicle currently available. Even if faster travel becomes possible, you run into the mind-bending relativistic effects on time; and unfortunately, there is no scientific support for the idea, popularized by science fiction shows such as Star Trek, of faster-than-light travel. "Warp Six, captain!" looks like it will remain an interesting, but impossible, fiction.
So, what about all of the alien abduction stories? I started this piece by mentioning abduction stories, and indeed the impetus for this post was the fact that the state of New Hampshire just put up a historical marker commemorating the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, who were two of the first (and still two of the most famous) alleged abductees. The marker says:
And the last reason I've been thinking a lot about alien abductions is that the novel I'm currently writing, Signal to Noise, is about a series of mysterious kidnappings in a small town in Oregon. I'm not going to tell you any more about the plot -- you'll just have to read it when it's done. But I'll end with a rather telling quote from my wife: "For someone who doesn't believe in all of this stuff, you spend an awful lot of time thinking about it."
Guilty as charged.
I'm currently writing from a beautiful house in the Adirondacks, which would be apropos of nothing whatsoever except that it has an outdoor hot tub, and we were in it last night with the friends we're vacationing with, and one of them looked up at the brilliant stars scattered through the sky and asked, "Do you think there's intelligent life on other planets?"
I was tempted to respond, "I'm sometimes in serious doubt that there's intelligent life on Earth," but for once I chose the Road Less Sarcastic and said, "I'm sure there is. I bet that one of those stars we're seeing has a planet around it that has intelligent life, and they may well be looking back at us and wondering the same thing."
Note that this is not, in any sense, a scientific conjecture. We have no evidence whatsoever that life of any kind exists anywhere but right here. We do, however, have two intriguing pieces of information -- the recent, and continuing, discovery of exoplanets (the current number of known exoplanets is 563, although the majority of them seem to be inhospitable to life as we know it), and the relative ease with which organic compounds can form, in the absence of life. The combination of these two facts leads me to the belief (because here we cross the line from what I know to what I am speculating about) that life is probably very common in the universe. And since a third fact -- the drive of organic evolution -- very likely works the same way on other planets as it does here, I see no reason to doubt that there could be a great many planets that harbor intelligence.
The next question my friend asked was, "Do you think that aliens have visited here?" My answer there is a fairly resounding "no." Again, this is not based on a theory in the scientific sense, but on two simple facts -- the absence of any credible evidence, and the seemingly insurmountable distances between the stars. Astronomer Neil de Grasse Tyson, who has spent a lot of time thinking about such matters, agrees. About the absence of evidence, he wonders why there has never been a single tangible piece of evidence of alien visitation, despite the fact that the number of UFO reports make it seem like Earth is some kind of Grand Central Station for Little Green Men. Tyson adjured an audience to take matters into their own hands, if they were ever abducted. "You'll be lying there on the table, waiting to be probed," he said, "because you know how aliens love to do that. Then, when the alien comes over to you, yell, 'Look at that!' and when the alien turns, grab the ashtray, and stick it in your pocket. Then, when you come back, you'll have something tangible. Because, you know, anything that's of alien manufacture is bound to be interesting."
The second part, the immensity of space, seems to me to be the real issue, though. It would take tens of thousands of years for us to reach the nearest star, if we were travelling in the fastest man-made vehicle currently available. Even if faster travel becomes possible, you run into the mind-bending relativistic effects on time; and unfortunately, there is no scientific support for the idea, popularized by science fiction shows such as Star Trek, of faster-than-light travel. "Warp Six, captain!" looks like it will remain an interesting, but impossible, fiction.
So, what about all of the alien abduction stories? I started this piece by mentioning abduction stories, and indeed the impetus for this post was the fact that the state of New Hampshire just put up a historical marker commemorating the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, who were two of the first (and still two of the most famous) alleged abductees. The marker says:
On the night of September 19-20, 1961, Portsmouth, NH couple Betty and Barney Hill experienced a close encounter with an unidentified flying object and two hours of “lost” time while driving south on Rte 3 near Lincoln. They filed an official Air Force Project Blue Book report of a brightly-lit cigar-shaped craft the next day, but were not public with their story until it was leaked in the Boston Traveler in 1965. This was the first widely-reported UFO abduction report in the United States.The story has all of the hallmarks of the classic abduction story -- the brightly-lit craft that followed the car down a lonely road, the interference with their radio, the gaps in their sense of time (and also in their memories). However, as much as I'd like to believe it, the complete lack of hard evidence leaves me skeptical. My answer, with this as with everything, is: if you want me to believe something, show me the goods. Otherwise all you have is a curious story, and I'm under no obligation to think you're telling the truth.
And the last reason I've been thinking a lot about alien abductions is that the novel I'm currently writing, Signal to Noise, is about a series of mysterious kidnappings in a small town in Oregon. I'm not going to tell you any more about the plot -- you'll just have to read it when it's done. But I'll end with a rather telling quote from my wife: "For someone who doesn't believe in all of this stuff, you spend an awful lot of time thinking about it."
Guilty as charged.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Pyramid scheme
Another of the stories that will never die is the ridiculous notion that aliens built the Egyptian pyramids.
I bring this up because of a story describing events that occurred late last year, which was nevertheless posted only a few days ago by some woo-woos connected with the site UFO Blogger. Titled "Egyptian Archaeologist Admits Pyramids Contain Alien Technology," it describes an alleged statement by Dr. Alaaeldin Shaheen, the Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology at Cairo University.
The story goes that in December of 2010, Dr. Shaheen was speaking to an audience about Egyptian archaeology, and stated, "there might be truth to the theory that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the oldest of pyramids, the Pyramids of Giza." A reporter from Poland, one Marek Novak, then questioned Shaheen further, asking if there might be evidence of alien technology within, or perhaps buried under, the pyramids. Dr. Shaheen responded with the mysterious pronouncement, "I cannot confirm or deny this, but there is something inside the pyramid that is 'not of this world'."
There are a variety of problems with this statement, besides the fact that anyone who believes it has been spending too much time watching Stargate-SG1.
The most important problem, and the one I'd like to analyze in this post, is that the event never happened.
Which apparently didn't matter, because nobody much bothered to check. The idea that a respected archaeologist would even waffle on the question of aliens being involved with the building of the pyramids caused multiple orgasms throughout the the woo-woo world, and began to spread through alien-conspiracy blogs without anyone even verifying the story. One of the first to make the claim was noted wingnut Andrew Collins. Collins has been into pyramid-lore for some time, and has also delved into the crop-circle nonsense, the Atlantis nonsense, and the Holy Grail nonsense. Not content to stop there, he has developed a whole new branch of nonsense all his own, the "Cygnus theory," which is that the constellation of Cygnus has been a "guiding force in human evolution" and will be the place where the "new sun" will be born following the events of 2012. He also thinks that the fact that Cygnus is vaguely cross-shaped is why the cross is an "important symbol in Christianity." (I can think of at least one other plausible reason, can't you?)
In any case, Collins did an extensive post on the Shaheen/pyramids/aliens story, basically claiming that this was the "smoking gun" of the alien conspiracy world. Then, however, the whole thing came to the ears of Dr. Shaheen himself. Shaheen wrote to Collins, and his response said, in toto, "Kindly be informed that I did not give such stupid statements about aliens and Pyramids. As I am an Egyptologist, I would not say such stupid words and ideas."
Well, that sounds pretty unequivocal, don't you think? Even Collins had no choice but to print a retraction, although he did end it by wistfully stating, "I would still love it if a super crystal of Atlantean or alien origin were to be found inside the Great Pyramid, or anywhere else on the plateau for that matter." Okay, Mr. Collins, if we find any "super crystals," you'll be the first to know.
Now, remember that this whole thing happened last December. You'd think that with one of the most prominent pyramid woo-woos backing down from the whole story, it would just fizzle.
You'd be wrong.
The claim is still popping up on sites today, and the amazing thing is that even now, hardly anyone bothers to check whether it's true or not. The UFO Blogger article referenced at the beginning of this post treated the story as if it were breaking news, and stated that it supported earlier allegations that the KGB had discovered an alien mummy inside the Great Pyramid.
It's a little ironic that, given that the motto of this crew is "The Truth Is Out There," they're so willing to play fast and loose with the facts. One site I looked at even went so far as to insinuate that Dr. Shaheen's exasperated email to Andrew Collins was a belated attempt to cover up for what had slipped out at the conference! Of course, the same site contained the following statement:
All of this serves to point out, once again, a few key concepts. First, most people believe what they want to believe, facts be damned. Second, the same people referenced in #1 generally prefer elaborate, mysterious nonsense over simple, prosaic, factual claims. Third, despite how simple it now is to check on the facts of a story, very few people bother to do so.
And fourth, once ridiculous claims become entrenched on the internet, they will never die.
I bring this up because of a story describing events that occurred late last year, which was nevertheless posted only a few days ago by some woo-woos connected with the site UFO Blogger. Titled "Egyptian Archaeologist Admits Pyramids Contain Alien Technology," it describes an alleged statement by Dr. Alaaeldin Shaheen, the Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology at Cairo University.
The story goes that in December of 2010, Dr. Shaheen was speaking to an audience about Egyptian archaeology, and stated, "there might be truth to the theory that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the oldest of pyramids, the Pyramids of Giza." A reporter from Poland, one Marek Novak, then questioned Shaheen further, asking if there might be evidence of alien technology within, or perhaps buried under, the pyramids. Dr. Shaheen responded with the mysterious pronouncement, "I cannot confirm or deny this, but there is something inside the pyramid that is 'not of this world'."
There are a variety of problems with this statement, besides the fact that anyone who believes it has been spending too much time watching Stargate-SG1.
The most important problem, and the one I'd like to analyze in this post, is that the event never happened.
Which apparently didn't matter, because nobody much bothered to check. The idea that a respected archaeologist would even waffle on the question of aliens being involved with the building of the pyramids caused multiple orgasms throughout the the woo-woo world, and began to spread through alien-conspiracy blogs without anyone even verifying the story. One of the first to make the claim was noted wingnut Andrew Collins. Collins has been into pyramid-lore for some time, and has also delved into the crop-circle nonsense, the Atlantis nonsense, and the Holy Grail nonsense. Not content to stop there, he has developed a whole new branch of nonsense all his own, the "Cygnus theory," which is that the constellation of Cygnus has been a "guiding force in human evolution" and will be the place where the "new sun" will be born following the events of 2012. He also thinks that the fact that Cygnus is vaguely cross-shaped is why the cross is an "important symbol in Christianity." (I can think of at least one other plausible reason, can't you?)
In any case, Collins did an extensive post on the Shaheen/pyramids/aliens story, basically claiming that this was the "smoking gun" of the alien conspiracy world. Then, however, the whole thing came to the ears of Dr. Shaheen himself. Shaheen wrote to Collins, and his response said, in toto, "Kindly be informed that I did not give such stupid statements about aliens and Pyramids. As I am an Egyptologist, I would not say such stupid words and ideas."
Well, that sounds pretty unequivocal, don't you think? Even Collins had no choice but to print a retraction, although he did end it by wistfully stating, "I would still love it if a super crystal of Atlantean or alien origin were to be found inside the Great Pyramid, or anywhere else on the plateau for that matter." Okay, Mr. Collins, if we find any "super crystals," you'll be the first to know.
Now, remember that this whole thing happened last December. You'd think that with one of the most prominent pyramid woo-woos backing down from the whole story, it would just fizzle.
You'd be wrong.
The claim is still popping up on sites today, and the amazing thing is that even now, hardly anyone bothers to check whether it's true or not. The UFO Blogger article referenced at the beginning of this post treated the story as if it were breaking news, and stated that it supported earlier allegations that the KGB had discovered an alien mummy inside the Great Pyramid.
It's a little ironic that, given that the motto of this crew is "The Truth Is Out There," they're so willing to play fast and loose with the facts. One site I looked at even went so far as to insinuate that Dr. Shaheen's exasperated email to Andrew Collins was a belated attempt to cover up for what had slipped out at the conference! Of course, the same site contained the following statement:
The Great Pyramid is a geophysical computer showing the half-life of our local universe within the geophysical foundations of the Earth’s biophysical, geophysical, and astrophysical meridians. It is connected with Orion which is the region for positive programming in our local universe. It is an amplifier for the natural energies of the earth that run along, inside, and celestially. The vibration of the King’s Chamber, in the key of F# (the fundamental mode of vibration in quantum mechanics physics and string theory) is meant to create an open channel with higher consciousness and the human soul. It is a model for the light continuum of the many universes connected with the earth. Think of a doorway for consciousness which allows it to connect with Orion and regions of higher intelligence.Which narrowly edges out J. Z. Knight's "What the Bleep Do We Know?" as being the most highly distilled example of bullshit I've ever heard.
All of this serves to point out, once again, a few key concepts. First, most people believe what they want to believe, facts be damned. Second, the same people referenced in #1 generally prefer elaborate, mysterious nonsense over simple, prosaic, factual claims. Third, despite how simple it now is to check on the facts of a story, very few people bother to do so.
And fourth, once ridiculous claims become entrenched on the internet, they will never die.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Airborne chihuahuas and missing tortoises
Today we have a story in from Kankakee, Illinois about someone who has allegedly gotten into psychic contact with a missing tortoise.
This is not the first time that psychics have come forward to try to help find a wayward pet. A while back, for example, we had the case of the chihuahua owned by Michigan couple Lavern and Dorothy Utley. The tiny dog was with its owners at a flea market, and was blown away by a windstorm. Note that I'm not using "blown away" to mean "landing, with bruised dignity, several feet away;" I mean, "blown away, in the fashion of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz."
I should mention at this juncture that the dog's name is "Tinker Bell."
In any case, it all ends happily, because a pet psychic got in contact with Tinker Bell, and assured the Utleys the she was fine. After some searching, the Utleys and the psychic found the bedraggled pooch in the woods over a mile away, shaken up but otherwise okay.
Of course, my question is why on earth anyone would even think of consulting a "pet psychic." I'm sure they don't work for free, and as far as I'm concerned, you'd be just as well off taking a stack of money and setting fire to it and hoping that your pet would be attracted to the smoke. But apparently such things are commonplace, judging by today's news from Illinois.
"Rex," a six-year-old, forty pound African spurred tortoise, has been missing for ten days, according to owner Charlotte Ramirez. Ramirez had contacted the local newspaper and asked them if they'd post a notice asking local residents to keep an eye out. Then, a couple of days ago, Ramirez got an interesting phone call.
A woman, identifying herself as "Sheri," stated that she had read the story and then had had a "vision" in which she got into psychic contact with Rex. She informed Ramirez that Rex was in a neighbor's yard, under a shed, and that nearby was a "pit bull-like dog with two different colors of tan on its coat." Sheri has now offered her services in helping Ramirez to locate her pet.
Instead of saying "you think you've been in psychic contact with a reptile?" and then guffawing and hanging up, Ramirez and her husband dutifully went searching the neighborhood for a shed and a pit bull. They haven't found one yet, but state that they are "still looking."
I wonder, if psychics can contact something as far down the intelligence scale as a tortoise, how much further down can they go? Could they get into psychic contact with a goldfish? A bug? A single ant in an ant farm? A jellyfish? How about plants? Samuel Butler famously said, "Even a potato... has a certain low cunning." I wonder if a psychic could sense that? I don't know about you, but I'd certainly like to watch a psychic attempt to establish some sort of Vulcan mind-meld with, say, a zucchini.
What strikes me about all of this is how unquestioningly people accept this kind of thing as the truth. Whenever some bizarre idea is proposed, my first question is, "how could that possibly work?" So, in cases like these, the relevant question is, "How could a tortoise's brain somehow send out a signal that then gets picked up by a random stranger?" Isn't it far more likely that Sheri simply read the story about the missing pet, and then either fabricated, or possibly dreamed, a scenario that seemed plausible?
In any case, I want to go on record as wishing Charlotte Ramirez well in locating her wandering tortoise. I can't say I have any confidence that Rex will show up anywhere near a tan pit bull, but that's just me. And it could be worse; at least tortoises don't get blown away in windstorms.
This is not the first time that psychics have come forward to try to help find a wayward pet. A while back, for example, we had the case of the chihuahua owned by Michigan couple Lavern and Dorothy Utley. The tiny dog was with its owners at a flea market, and was blown away by a windstorm. Note that I'm not using "blown away" to mean "landing, with bruised dignity, several feet away;" I mean, "blown away, in the fashion of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz."
I should mention at this juncture that the dog's name is "Tinker Bell."
In any case, it all ends happily, because a pet psychic got in contact with Tinker Bell, and assured the Utleys the she was fine. After some searching, the Utleys and the psychic found the bedraggled pooch in the woods over a mile away, shaken up but otherwise okay.
Of course, my question is why on earth anyone would even think of consulting a "pet psychic." I'm sure they don't work for free, and as far as I'm concerned, you'd be just as well off taking a stack of money and setting fire to it and hoping that your pet would be attracted to the smoke. But apparently such things are commonplace, judging by today's news from Illinois.
"Rex," a six-year-old, forty pound African spurred tortoise, has been missing for ten days, according to owner Charlotte Ramirez. Ramirez had contacted the local newspaper and asked them if they'd post a notice asking local residents to keep an eye out. Then, a couple of days ago, Ramirez got an interesting phone call.
A woman, identifying herself as "Sheri," stated that she had read the story and then had had a "vision" in which she got into psychic contact with Rex. She informed Ramirez that Rex was in a neighbor's yard, under a shed, and that nearby was a "pit bull-like dog with two different colors of tan on its coat." Sheri has now offered her services in helping Ramirez to locate her pet.
Instead of saying "you think you've been in psychic contact with a reptile?" and then guffawing and hanging up, Ramirez and her husband dutifully went searching the neighborhood for a shed and a pit bull. They haven't found one yet, but state that they are "still looking."
I wonder, if psychics can contact something as far down the intelligence scale as a tortoise, how much further down can they go? Could they get into psychic contact with a goldfish? A bug? A single ant in an ant farm? A jellyfish? How about plants? Samuel Butler famously said, "Even a potato... has a certain low cunning." I wonder if a psychic could sense that? I don't know about you, but I'd certainly like to watch a psychic attempt to establish some sort of Vulcan mind-meld with, say, a zucchini.
What strikes me about all of this is how unquestioningly people accept this kind of thing as the truth. Whenever some bizarre idea is proposed, my first question is, "how could that possibly work?" So, in cases like these, the relevant question is, "How could a tortoise's brain somehow send out a signal that then gets picked up by a random stranger?" Isn't it far more likely that Sheri simply read the story about the missing pet, and then either fabricated, or possibly dreamed, a scenario that seemed plausible?
In any case, I want to go on record as wishing Charlotte Ramirez well in locating her wandering tortoise. I can't say I have any confidence that Rex will show up anywhere near a tan pit bull, but that's just me. And it could be worse; at least tortoises don't get blown away in windstorms.
Friday, July 22, 2011
We're having a heat wave
Breaking news has come in from noted climatologist Rush Limbaugh, with regard to all of you people in the Midwest and on the East Coast who think it's been a bit hot out for the last week: you're wrong. If you think it's hot, you're falling prey to a government conspiracy. Here are his exact words, which I transcribed myself at the cost of uncounted millions of brain cells that I can ill afford to lose:
Which is why, so far, there have been 22 heat-related deaths from this heat wave that "happens every year."
What bothers me most about all of this is that science should not have a political agenda, either liberal or conservative, and the facts of climatology (such as the fact that this summer the Arctic pack ice is melting at the fastest rate ever recorded) get spun as having a political bias. Whatever your political beliefs, facts have no bias at all. The heat index comes from a calculation that anyone with sufficient brainpower can perform. The rate of the pack ice melt is something that anyone with access to the data could calculate. Limbaugh, and others like him, are playing the dangerous game of pretending that the facts themselves are suspect -- they have gone beyond accusing the scientists themselves of skewing their theories to forward a political agenda, they now have sunk to claiming that even the raw data is being cooked by the politicians.
For the record, I am well aware that scientific theories can have political ramifications, and that science itself is never free from biases of various kinds. I also understand the difference between climate and weather, a distinction that seems to escape people like Sean Hannity, who claimed last winter that the enormous snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast in February "buried the idea of global warming." And, for the record, I don't think that the warm-up we've seen to date (which is a fact) has been absolutely demonstrated to have a solely anthropogenic origin (which is a theory).
However, what bloviating blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity do is to pump up the distrust by the public of the facts generated by science, and call into question the scientific process itself. As I've commented before, I find it curious that people are perfectly willing to believe that the scientific process discerns the truth when it comes to things they'd like to trust (such as medicine, engineering, and materials science) and yet gives wildly wrong answers when it comes to things they wish weren't true (such as evolutionary biology and climate science). I'd like someone to explain to me how the same process, applied in the same way, can find the truth in certain instances and be crazily wrong in others -- especially when the times it's crazily wrong seem to fall coincidentally in line with the political agenda of the speaker.
And while you're explaining that, will someone get me a glass of iced tea? 'cause it's freakin' hot in here.
They're playing games with this heat wave again. It's gonna be 116 degrees in Washington DC... no, it's not, it's gonna be 100, maybe 99. The "heat index" is manufactured by the government. They tell you what it "feels like" when you add the humidity! When's the last time the heat index was reported as an actual temperature? It hasn't been, but it looks like they're trying to get away with doing that now... It's 100, maybe 97, it's gonna top out at 102, 103. It does this every year. We have this heat dome over half the country. It's in the Midwest, moving east, and it happens every summer.Well, sorry, Rush, but the heat index is not a "game," or an invention of the government. It's a number calculated based on the rate of heat loss by the human body, which is lower when the humidity is high (thus resulting in your feeling hotter). Even if you're equally hydrated, a temperature of 100 is more dangerous in Philadelphia than it is in Phoenix, because when it comes to health, what matters isn't the ambient air temperature, what matters is your core body temperature -- which rises faster if the humidity is high, because your body can't throw off excess heat as quickly.
Which is why, so far, there have been 22 heat-related deaths from this heat wave that "happens every year."
What bothers me most about all of this is that science should not have a political agenda, either liberal or conservative, and the facts of climatology (such as the fact that this summer the Arctic pack ice is melting at the fastest rate ever recorded) get spun as having a political bias. Whatever your political beliefs, facts have no bias at all. The heat index comes from a calculation that anyone with sufficient brainpower can perform. The rate of the pack ice melt is something that anyone with access to the data could calculate. Limbaugh, and others like him, are playing the dangerous game of pretending that the facts themselves are suspect -- they have gone beyond accusing the scientists themselves of skewing their theories to forward a political agenda, they now have sunk to claiming that even the raw data is being cooked by the politicians.
For the record, I am well aware that scientific theories can have political ramifications, and that science itself is never free from biases of various kinds. I also understand the difference between climate and weather, a distinction that seems to escape people like Sean Hannity, who claimed last winter that the enormous snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast in February "buried the idea of global warming." And, for the record, I don't think that the warm-up we've seen to date (which is a fact) has been absolutely demonstrated to have a solely anthropogenic origin (which is a theory).
However, what bloviating blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity do is to pump up the distrust by the public of the facts generated by science, and call into question the scientific process itself. As I've commented before, I find it curious that people are perfectly willing to believe that the scientific process discerns the truth when it comes to things they'd like to trust (such as medicine, engineering, and materials science) and yet gives wildly wrong answers when it comes to things they wish weren't true (such as evolutionary biology and climate science). I'd like someone to explain to me how the same process, applied in the same way, can find the truth in certain instances and be crazily wrong in others -- especially when the times it's crazily wrong seem to fall coincidentally in line with the political agenda of the speaker.
And while you're explaining that, will someone get me a glass of iced tea? 'cause it's freakin' hot in here.
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