Downward-facing dog

New from the Bizarre Ways To Spend Your Time And Money department, we have:  yoga classes for dogs.

Predictably named "doga," this trendy practice is apparently catching on like crazy.  Suzi Teitelman, a doga instructor from Florida, offers classes, DVDs, and a training manual, and has trained over a hundred people to be doga instructors themselves.

"We chant together to feel the vibrations, then we start moving into twists and turns," she said.  "The person takes dog deeper into a stretch, and the dog takes the person deeper.  If you have a dog on your arm in a standing posture it helps balance and strength."

Note the dog breeds in the above photograph.  All of the photos I've seen show people holding small port-a-dogs like miniature dachshunds, Pekinese, Pomeranians, and toy poodles.  No one ever seems to be holding, say, a rottweiler, which I think would be a much greater challenge to your balance and strength.

Teitelman believes that there are benefits to the practice for both human and dog.  "You're moving their body. They're getting touched, they're getting love," she explained, "and everybody needs to be hanging upside down."

And yes, that is a direct quote, the last part of which leaves me at a loss as to how to respond.

Dr. Robin Brennen, a New York City veterinarian, is an enthusiastic supporter of doga, and notes that in a class she attended, by the end of the class all the dogs were in savasana (the final resting pose).  I.e., they were asleep.  My dogs would probably fall asleep, too, if they were stuck for an hour in a room with a bunch of people chanting and stretching and assuming weird poses, and not engaging in any sensible kind of activity, such as throwing a frisbee or tennis ball or playing tug-of-war with a rope toy.

Teitelman states that the practice isn't just helpful for dogs, but can be applied to other kinds of pets, too. 

"It definitely works with cats," she said, "and when I do 'downward dog' my bird comes over."

I'm skeptical about the cats, frankly.  I've witnessed my own cats doing a special solo feline yoga pose, the Lick-Your-Own-Butt asana, but it's hard to imagine them cooperating with a human + cat yoga routine.  I can't see myself trying to hold on to one of them while, for example, standing on one leg.  And hanging one of my cats upside down would be a recipe for a trip to the emergency room for stitches. 

Please note that I have nothing whatsoever against yoga, per se.  It's a wonderful regimen for toning, stretching, and building stamina, even if I don't exactly subscribe to a lot of the spiritual trappings that tend to surround it.  But dogs?  Really?  It makes you wonder what the next pet-related woo-woo fad will be.  Homeopathy for dogs with illnesses?  Using crystals and flower essences to assuage your dog's anxieties?  Astrology for dogs?  I bet there are people out there who would happily buy into any or all of these.

The possibilities are limitless, as long as the money is.

The myth of certainty

Tropical Storm Emily is currently spinning in the Atlantic Ocean near the Grenadines, and in a few days may be a threat to the coastal United States.  The various computer models used to predict the formation and movement of storms show an uncertain forecast, both in trajectory and strengthening; landfall is predicted to be anywhere between North Carolina and south Florida, and in fact some models show it veering off into the open ocean and not hitting the mainland at all.  And depending on its path, it could weaken (especially if if makes a direct hit on the Dominican Republic) or strengthen (if it lingers over the warm waters of the Caribbean).

For some people, this kind of uncertainty is distressing.  A commenter on an online news story about Emily posted, "I should become a weather forecaster.  It's the only job where you can admit that you are as likely to be right as a flip of a coin (50% chance of rain) or talk on and on about the fact that you really don't know where a hurricane is going to go, and you still get paid."

Meteorology is especially open to these kinds of criticisms -- despite vast improvements in weather and climate modeling, the Earth's weather is a tremendously complex system, sensitive to large numbers of initial conditions, and models are still fraught with inaccuracies.  However, you hear the same kind of accusations levied against science in general.  I've had students ask me why we are bothering to learn science "when it could all be proven wrong ten years from now."  The findings of nutrition scientists are ridiculed as summing up to "everything you eat can kill you."  Evolutionary biologists are dismissed as not knowing what they're doing when a new discovery changes our understanding of the relationships between prehistoric species.  Physicists, especially those who study quantum phenomena, are the worst; their models, so counterintuitive to what we see in the macroscopic world, have generated comments such as the one I saw appended to an article on the Large Hadron Collider, that "these guys spend billions of taxpayer dollars to play around and then write science fiction."

All of this comes, I think, from three problems with the public perception of science.

The first is its portrayal in the media, an issue with which I dealt in a recent post, and which I will not go into any further here.

The second is how science is taught in public school.  It is regrettably uncommon to see science taught as a process; that it is a cumulative, and changing, way of understanding based upon the total mass of data we have at present.  Too often, science is taught as lists of vocabulary words and mathematical equations -- neither of which portray science accurately, as a fluid, responsive way of modeling the world.  Most people, therefore, grow up with the idea that scientific understanding shouldn't change, any more than the definition of "dog" should change, or the solution to an algebraic equation should change.

The third reason, however, is the one I want to look at more carefully.  It's the myth that science should provide certainty.  The resentment of people against weather forecasting comes, I think, from the idea that knowledge should be certain.  You either know something, or you don't, right?  Either Tropical Storm Emily will hit Charleston, South Carolina, or else it won't; and if you're smart enough, you should be able to figure that out.  And if you meteorologists can't figure that out, then what the hell are we paying you for?

It's this attitude that generates my student's frustration, that science could change enough that our current textbooks could be entirely wrong ten years from now.  And this brings me to the crux of the matter, which is that people don't understand the idea of "levels of confidence."

How confident are scientists in various models or theories?  Well, it varies, and it's not an either/or matter (either it's all right, or it's all wrong).  Some models have very high levels of confidence.  The atomic theory (the basis of chemistry) and evolutionary theory (the basis of biology) are supported by such vast mountains of data that their likelihood of being substantially wrong is nearly zero.  Any changes to be made to either of those models will be at the level of details.  Other models, such as climate modeling and weather forecasting, are still subject to considerable uncertainty even as to the rules by which the system interacts and responds; predictions made here are made with less confidence, and the rules of the science could well change as we gather more data.  Finally, some models, for example string theory, are still only interesting proposals, and there is not nearly enough data yet for a determination to be made.  In ten years, it could be that physics textbooks will include whole chapters on string theory and the studies that validate it, or it might have gone the way of the ether and be relegated to the scrap pile of ideas that went unsupported by the evidence.  It's simply too early to tell.

The problem is, that's not enough for a lot of people.  They want certainty, as if it's honestly even possible.  To them, even the uncertainties inherent in the best-supported models are unacceptable; if there are any questions left, then it means that "scientists don't really know."  And for the models lower on the confidence-level scale, the whole thing appears like nothing more than guesswork.  Never mind that our improved ability to forecast hurricane trajectories has saved thousands of lives -- compare our current knowledge of storm tracks to what happened in Galveston in 1900, when a hurricane barreled into the coast, seemingly out of nowhere, costing more than 8,000 lives.

Uncertainty at some level is built into science as a way of knowing; there's no escaping the fact that new data can trash old theories.  But "uncertainty" doesn't imply that scientists don't know what they're doing, or that tomorrow we'll be throwing away all the chemistry texts because they suddenly decided that the alchemists were right, after all.  As more data is collected, and models and theories are refined, the uncertainty diminishes.  And even though it can never reach zero, it can reach low enough levels that a model becomes "robust" -- able to make accurate predictions in almost all cases.

And even if meteorology hasn't quite gotten there yet, it's still a damn sight better than it was a hundred years ago, when hurricanes could hit coastlines before warnings could be issued.  The people who believe in the myth of certainty in science might do well to consider the difference between our understanding now and our understanding a century ago -- before they make proclamations about scientists not deserving to get paid for what they do.

Grin and bare it

Yesterday, a bunch of people in New York City took all their clothes off in front of the Stock Exchange Building as a protest/piece of performance art.

The naked protest was staged by artist Zefrey Throwell, who organized the event to make a point about "transparency in US financial dealings."  He was, he said, inspired by the plight of his mom, who had lost most of her retirement savings in the financial crash three years ago, and was forced to return to work.

The whole thing recalls the antics of Dutch animal rights activist Peter Janssen ("The Vegan Streaker") who a while back ran onto the set of live TV personality Paul de Leeuw wearing only a thong, and the words "Stop Animal Suffering" painted on his bare chest.  Under the fairly liberal laws for showing skin in the Netherlands, Janssen could not be charged with indecency, so he was charged (I couldn't possibly make anything this weird up) with carrying a concealed weapon, a thought that leaves me torn between guffawing and gagging.

It brings up the question, however, of what the point is to such theater.  If I'd been in New York City yesterday and witnessed the naked people walking around in front of the Stock Exchange, it's not like I would have suddenly said, "Wow!  This makes me realize that the US financial system seriously needs to be overhauled RIGHT NOW!"  It's much more likely that I would have said, "Dear god, why are all of those people naked?"  Or, given that it was New York City, maybe I would have just ignored it and continued to look around for the nearest Starbucks.

So, why?  Why do people do such things?  It may  be a facile explanation that they are simply attention seekers.  I know that must be part of it; heaven knows there can be little other explanation for someone stripping on the streets of New York City.  I'm forced to the conclusion, though, that people who engage in such behavior really think that they're accomplishing something.  They believe that their antics are somehow going to bring enlightenment to the masses, to bring their cause to the forefront, to create some sort of epiphany in the minds of the onlookers.

And it's not limited to the financial mess, nor to the animal-rights issue; the same arguments could be used for the pro-choice/pro-life debate, gay marriage, the anti-immigration controversy, the tax-reduction issue, and a variety of others.  How many people have honestly had their minds changed by someone waving a placard that says, "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?"  I suspect that the main effect of protests and controversial t-shirt slogans and bumper stickers (and naked people in public) is to make half of us go, "good job!  I agree completely!" and the other half to go, "wow, what a bunch of idiots."  In other words, all that it accomplishes is to crystallize the opinion we already had.  Which, when you think about it, is not all that useful.

In my more optimistic moments, I'd like to believe that the only way to change people's minds is through well-reasoned argument, but I suspect that's not true, either.  I think that large-scale, rapid changes -- those epiphany moments I mentioned earlier -- only come when something big happens.  Our whole view of the Middle East changed on 9/11.  Whatever our views of what came afterward, none of us wil ever look at that region in the same way.  My Lai did the same a generation earlier, and Pearl Harbor a generation before that.  Sea changes, for good or evil, don't come easily.

That's not to say that things can't change gradually.  Our view of race equality, gender equality, and (probably to a lesser extent) our attitudes toward homosexuality, have been improving slowly but steadily for several decades.  When I was in high school, it was unheard of for a mixed-race couple to date; now it's commonplace.  I can't think of a single gay or lesbian teenager in my high school who was out until years after graduation; there are several in last year's graduating class at the high school where I teach.  None of these changes came about with some kind of sudden shift, and none of them happened because of someone with a placard jumping about in front of the school screaming and shouting.  They were incremental, ground-level changes, which actually may be the only way to have any sort of long-lasting effect.

The flashy antics of some protest-types may make the news, but chances are, they and their causes will be forgotten within a week or two.  It might be entertaining to bare it all in public for the cause of your choice,  but you should be aware of the fact that other than being brought up on public indecency charges (and hopefully not concealed-weapon charges, as well) you will probably have negligible effects on anything.  Slow, dogged persistence by committed individuals, changing one mind at a time, is the only way to make any real headway in altering attitudes.  It may not make headlines, but if you're looking for deep, substantive shifts, it's the only game in town.

Arguing over Archaeopteryx

I have written before (perhaps ranted would be a better word) about the fact that the anti-evolution crowd claims to "disbelieve" in evolution, when amazingly few of them actually seem to understand the what it is exactly that they're disbelieving in.  This is why they are still launching the same pseudo-arguments that they were using fifty years ago, and generating the same weary responses on the part of the evolutionary biologists, leading me to speculate that whatever else you can say for the anti-evolutionists, they are not particularly good listeners:

• If humans came from apes, why are there still apes?  (My ancestors came from France.  Why are there still French people?)
• Why aren't there any transitional fossils?  (There are.  Thousands of them.)
• Organs like the eye are irreducibly complex; they won't work if all of the parts aren't created simultaneously.  (Actually, the evolution of the eye is quite well understood, and even in today's animals you can see a progression from the flatworm [which has a light-sensing membrane] to the chambered nautilus [in which the membrane has curved into a sphere with a hole in the front, acting like a pinhole camera] to the vertebrate eye [in which the sphere has closed and various types of lenses have evolved].)
• Radiometric data, such as carbon-14 dating, is inaccurate.  (Prove it.)
• Dinosaurs and humans coexisted.  (Prove it.)
• And anyway, evolution is only a theory.  (They call it "music theory," and that's not because they think that music may not exist.)

Another point I've made before is that the popular media, in their search for sensationalized headlines, don't help at all.  I found some particularly good examples of that this morning when I was perusing the headlines of the science section of Yahoo! News, and saw the following headlines all in a neat row:

"Famed Fossil Isn't a Bird After All, Analysis Says."
"Flap Flop: First Bird Isn't a Bird After All."
"Ancestor of All Birds Knocked From Its Perch."

It turns out that if you read the story, it has to do with the classification of Archaeopteryx, the famous proto-bird/feathered reptile whose fossil was discovered about 150 years ago.  The gist is that a group of Chinese scientists have used an analysis of Archaeopteryx and a related, and recently discovered, species (Xiaotingia) to support a fairly minor shift of Archaeopteryx from one branch of the bird/reptile clade to another.  Further along in the article, the writer quotes evolutionary biologist Julia Clarke (University of Texas - Austin), as saying, "moving it a couple of branches isn't a huge change, and whether it's considered a bird or not is mostly a semantic issue that doesn't greatly affect larger questions about the origin of flight."  Lawrence Witmer (Ohio University) states, "The proposed reclassification of Archaeopteryx wouldn't change the idea that birds arose from this part of the tree, but it could make scientists reevaluate what they think about evolution within the bird lineage itself."

And finally, the writer of the article states, "The Chinese scientists acknowledge they have only weak evidence to support their proposal."

Note that I take no issue with any of what the scientists have said; such questioning, reevaluation, and tentative proposals of new ways of thinking are what science is about.  Some of those weakly supported hypotheses have later gone on to win widespread support, and others have been disproven and shelved.  That's how the scientific process works.

What bothers me here is that the headlines give people who are uninformed about how evolution works more fodder for claiming that "those idiot scientists in their labs have no idea what they're doing."  If you only read the headlines (which, sadly, a lot of people do), what do you come away with?  "They've been telling us for years that this thing is a bird, and now they say it isn't!"

Never mind that the reality is, early birds basically were feathered reptiles; any distinction you make between them is semantics.  Many people never delve deeply enough, or think deeply enough, to realize this.

I know that it is not incumbent upon reporters to educate the ignorant, but I think they should at least take it as their responsibility not to deliberately mislead.  And such headlines are, by their nature, misleading.  I realize that a headline of "Archaeopteryx Classification Shifted Slightly" doesn't sound nearly as sexy as "The First Bird Wasn't Actually a Bird!"  But it sure as hell gives people a better idea of what is really going on - and I thought that was what the purpose of media was?

Alien abductee counseling services

You've probably noticed the targeted ads that show up on blogs and social networking sites, that are selected by keyword-recognition software.  In fact, a while back I posted on this phenomenon, particularly on the tendency of the software to pick up on words like "Astrology..." while conveniently missing critical words like "... is bullshit," and thereby plastering ads for horoscopes all over a blog that ridicules the practice as pseudoscientific nonsense.

This software is getting increasingly sophisticated, keeping track of the number of times that keywords are used, what the past history of the site was, and so on.  Which is why the ad that showed up on Skeptophilia yesterday is so screamingly funny.

Recent posts have been about (1) alien abductions, (2) religious fanatics, (3) demonic possession, (4) psychotherapeutic techniques based in wishful thinking, and (5) sites that sound like they are serious but whose content makes you think they must be a prank.  What would be the ideal ad to target for my blog, if you took keywords from not just one, but all five of those?

Yes, here we have it, folks:  an ad for PAAPSI, which is an evangelical Christian ministry founded to counsel people who have been abducted by aliens or are being pursued by demons, and whose website made me keep looking in vain for a little message that said, "Site sponsored by The Onion."

PAAPSI stands for "Paranormal and Alien Problem Solvers International."  They were originally called AACOA, "Alien Abduction Crisis Centers of America."  Their mission statement says:

We recognize that alien abduction is real, and while some question whether it is the action of actual physical manifestations of demonic or angelic beings, or some sort of mind manipulation by demonic forces the equation in this matter is that it is evil and Satanic.  We recognize that in these Last Days there is a great battle for the souls and spirits of all of mankind...  Even while the enemy is inundating our minds with images of aliens, flying saucers and a host of other paranormal things, the Holy Spirit is telling people that their abductions have been the workings of not supposed space brothers, but of insidious beings that are really the fallen angels and demons known of by so many past generations...  We have freely been given the gift of deliverance from aliens and demons and paranormal bondage, and now we offer that gift to you.

PAAPSI was founded by three evangelical Christians, Joe Jordan, Dave Ruffino, and Jim Wilhelmsen, after they met at the Ancient of Days Conference in Roswell, New Mexico.  They offer their counseling services to anyone who has been abducted by aliens, hoping to gain them "freedom from oppression" by the evil aliens.  Ruffino seems to believe that even fiction about aliens is evil; he relates growing up with a father who was a devotee of science fiction, and how the kids in the family were forbidden to speak when Star Trek was on.

"That gives you an idea of the spirits that my dad unknowingly invited into our house," Ruffino says, in all apparent seriousness.

He then goes on to describe how he became involved with using drugs, and had visions of the evil aliens trying to steal his soul, but then found religion and gave up Star Trek and cocaine all in one fell swoop, and now wants to help other folks to do the same.

My general reaction is that he might have wanted to give up the drugs before crafting his worldview.

While all of this seems pretty far out there, the scary thing is, I know that there are a lot of people out there who think like this.  I remember being cautioned by one of my high school teachers about reading horror fiction, because reading that stuff is a "stepping stone for powers that are trying to influence you."  I was tempted to remind her what the definition of the word "fiction" was, but I thought that might be imprudent at best, so for once I held my tongue. 

Now, I know that there are cases where obsession with violent books and movies has been correlated with a person becoming violent in real life; but that's a far cry from claiming that watching Star Trek will open your soul to demonic possession.  (I have to admit, however, that some of the scenes where Captain Kirk gets his shirt ripped off have resulted in my having persistent nightmares, so maybe there's something to this after all.)

I think what bothers me most about all of this is how convinced people like this are that their worldview is unequivocally correct.  Those of us who disbelieve in Satan and demons and the whole shebang are ourselves being deluded by Satan -- that's why we disbelieve.  If we demand proof -- what, besides your own anecdotal reports of demonic and angelic visions, do you have as evidence that all this is true? -- we're quoted passages from the bible, and told that we only doubt because mankind's nature is inherently sinful.  With that kind of evidence-free circular reasoning, there's no possibility of arguing.  Their criteria for what constitutes a reasonable proposition is so drastically different than mine that there doesn't even seem to be any point in discussion.

So, anyhow, there you have it; the result of targeted-ad software taking my last months' posts, and putting them in a blender.  Perusing the PAAPSI website in preparation for writing this post left me feeling more than a little dazed, probably because of the repeated facepalms I kept doing while reading it.  But that's okay; what are a few thousand valuable brain cells as compared to the importance of bringing this kind of thing to the attention of my readers?  If it weren't for me, you wouldn't be aware that watching Star Trek is providing a gateway for Satan into your soul, and I just couldn't have forgiven myself if I'd chosen not to post this, and then you'd become possessed after watching "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Monster round-up

It's been a busy few days for those of us who like to keep track of the activities of monsters that probably don't exist.

First, we have a report from Auckland, New Zealand, where a swamp monster is threatening a multi-million dollar railway tunnel project.

Apparently, the site of the tunnel was the home of the Horotiu, a dreadful monster that could cause the trains to crash if the tunnel project is completed.  Glenn Wilcox, a member of the Maori Statutory Board, objected to the fact that the siting of the tunnel was done without consideration of the feelings of the Horotiu.  "After all," Wilcox said,  "the Horotiu was here first."

So Wilcox and others have proposed to the City Planning Board that they have ceremonies to placate the Taniwha, which are local deities who (if they are happy) might intercede with the Horotiu and prevent him from wrecking the trains.

So, what we have here is that city administrators are being asked to placate invisible, mythical entities, so that they will intercede for them with another invisible, mythical entity.  I'd go further into this, but I'm sensing some thin ice here, given that my grandmother used to pray all the time to St. Jude, asking him to pass along her messages to Jesus.  So I'll just move along to...

... El Chupacabra taking a vacation in Siberia.

Evidently deciding that the summer heat in Texas and New Mexico was just too much, our friend EC has decided to pack his bags and head to cooler climes.  And true to his name ("Chupacabra" means "goat sucker") he has begun to exsanguinate Siberian goats, which are three words I bet you've never seen used in the same sentence.

The English language version of Moscow News reports that livestock owners near Novosibirsk have found numerous goats dead, and drained of blood through puncture marks in the neck.  No one has seen the wily creature, but of course parallels to alleged attacks in the United States were immediately drawn.

“If this creature is not stopped it could make its way to Novosibirsk! Only our police force are doing jack-diddly about it,” complaining locals told reporters for Komsomolskaya Pravda.  “They say that there is no Chupacabra. Come if you will journalists, have a look at what is happening to us.”

The most remarkable thing about this, in my opinion, is the use of the word "jack-diddly" in a Russian news report.  I wonder what the Russian word for "jack-diddly" is?

The people of the village of Tolmochevskoye, where the attacks took place, decided that an appropriate course of action was to ring all the church bells, and organize night patrols.  So far, the approach seems to have worked, and there have been no more reports of dead goats.  The Moscow News concludes by saying that at least "the beast has turned out to be a boon to troubled parents, presenting a very useful threat for naughty children."

So, there you have it.  New Russian parenting strategy:  "Eat your borscht, or I'll throw you outside and El Chupacabra will get you."

From the chilly tundra of Siberia, we move along to the even chillier oceans surrounding Antarctica, where we have reports of an aquatic humanoid called a "Ningen."  Supposedly, the Ningen is all white, with huge eyes and a torso that ends in a mermaid-like tail.  Below we have what is alleged to be a photograph of a Ningen:

Interestingly, the whole Ningen thing apparently started much the way that Slender Man did, with some posts on an internet forum.  People read them and reposted them and elaborated on them (and did some fancy Photoshop work on their own accord), and now we have Ningen reports coming in from as far away as coastal Namibia.  (These being undoubtedly sightings of the rare African Crested Ningen.)

A YouTube video (here) goes into the photos and video clips that are alleged to be Ningens.  What strikes me as curious is how bored the narrator sounds, which is kind of weird given that he evidently believes they exist.  Myself, if I discovered evidence of scary mermaid-things in the ocean, I'd actually be excited enough to have at least some minor vocal inflections.

In any case, I have to admit, real or not, they're kind of creepy-looking, with the giant eyes, and pasty white skin.  I think they'd make excellent minions for Cthulhu, don't you?

And that's the Monster Round-Up for today: albino mermaids, swamp monsters, and El Chupacabra visits Siberia.  As always, we'll be waiting for hard evidence confirming these reports to turn up.

Unfortunately, thus far there's been "jack-diddly."

Cryptonetworking

First we had Friendster.  Then we had MySpace.  Then we had Facebook.  Then we had Twitter.  Recently, we have added Google+.

And now, we have... CryptoZoocial.

In a move certain to shake up the world of social networking, the founders of Cryptomundo (motto:  "It's a Cryptid World") have put together their own social networking site.  (You can check it out, or even sign up, here.)  Its stated goal is to allow the cryptozoological community to "have a way to interact with each other on a personal level."  Features include an interactive map where you can post your sightings, a companion iPhone app, a place to post events (the most recently posted was the 2011 Pennsylvania UFO and Bigfoot Conference), a "Groups" function that allows you to start special-interest groups (catering to cryptozoological specialists), and a competition for Top User (you get points for posting photos, signing in daily, making comments, and inviting friends).

For a few moments, I actually considered signing up.  Besides the fact that it could well be fertile ground for material for this blog, it could also just be fun.  A good many people interested in cryptozoology don't take themselves especially seriously, and have much the same attitude that I do -- skeptical but intrigued.  As I've commented before, I'd be beyond delighted if Bigfoot (or a variety of other cryptids) actually existed.  Being a biologist, I'm deeply curious about nature, and am quite convinced that there is plenty out there that we haven't discovered yet.  Bigfoot may well be one of those things.  And I have no issue with anyone who wants to hunt around in the woods for evidence, as long as they follow some reasonable code of scientific ethics and are honest about what they do, or do not, find.

My hesitation, of course, is that these sorts of things often attract wingnuts, and they're often far more vocal than the aforementioned cheerful skeptics.  Wingnuts have a zeal about them that can surpass the intensity of many of the religious.  They believe in their Big Idea with a wild, clinging desperation, and will let no challenge pass unmet.  A criticism of their dogma elicits a furious, stinging attack.  How dare you question me?  What are your sources?  What are your facts?  How can you justify your criticisms?  And every answer you give prompts a further rebuttal, because the truth is, they are holding their critics to a far higher standard of evidence than they hold themselves.

If you've never met people like this, it may sound like an extreme characterization, but I can say with some authority that they exist because I've encountered them on more than one occasion.  As a writer on the topic of skepticism and critical thinking, I have often been in the position of criticizing views of the world that are considered specious by most of the scientific community, but are espoused vehemently by a few True Believers.  And when I add my voice to the chorus of critics, I open myself up to attack.  Note that I don't especially mind defending myself (nor apologizing when I find that I have been unwarrantedly harsh in my criticisms), but I have found that arguing with zealots is (1) unpleasant and (2) generally pointless, because they almost always believe in their dogma because of some reason other than logic and factual evidence.

So I'm probably not going to sign up for CryptoZoocial.  Honestly, I'm not eager to seek out more venues to rub shoulders with people who are High Priests of the Church of Wingnuttery.  I've no doubt that most of the members of CryptoZoocial are probably very nice, sane people, but it's that 1% who are attracted to it for other reasons who worry me.  So I think I'll stick to the more prosaic awkwardness of running into old high school classmates on Facebook.  At least there, the worst I have to worry about is that they'll remember that back then I wore really thick glasses and had a dorky bowl haircut.