The wrath of Pat

Last week, I commented that politics was the only venue where you could make a statement that was demonstrably false, continue to defend it, and not lose your credibility.  It may therefore not be a coincidence that in the job of political commentator, you can make statements that are neither true nor false, but completely insane, and people will keep listening to you.

I'm referring, of course, to Reverend Pat Robertson, who is wildly popular despite being crazy as a bedbug.  And I don't think that people are listening to him for the humor value, either, the way people will sometimes read Ann Coulter just because they can't wait to hear what she's going to blame liberals for next (I have money that eventually she'll find out a way to blame liberals for the Black Death).  With Pat, though, I have a feeling that the people who listen to him mostly agree with what he's saying, which is a scary thing, given that he's said the following:

• The Haitian earthquake was a "blessing from god" because the Haitians had sworn a pact with the devil during the French Revolution.
• Be careful about studying martial arts, because in some martial arts traditions the practitioners "inhale demon spirits" prior to working out.
• Hurricane Katrina was sent by god to "teach a lesson to the American people" because they support laws that allow abortion.
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke because god was punishing him for his negotiating with the Palestinians.
• We should nuke the US Department of State and send in covert operatives to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

So you have to wonder why we would expect anything he says to make sense, but only after spending a lot more time wondering why anyone listens to someone who seems to have a giant wad of Laffy Taffy where most of us have a brain.

Be that as it may, Pat's latest pronouncements are still making news, and this time he's turned his Roving Rant Machine onto the subject of Halloween.  Halloween is often a sticky subject with evangelicals, who don't like its occult origins.  You'd think, however, that sooner or later they'd relax about it, now that it's turned into little more than a day for kids to wear plastic Buzz Lightyear masks with eyeholes that don't line up, wander around in the dark being followed by parents who would really much rather be home watching television, and collect enough candy to meet the diabetes needs of the nation for another ten years.  All pretty innocent, no?

No.  Christians shouldn't participate in Halloween, Pat says, because "Halloween is Satan's night.  It's the night for the devil."  He goes on to say that, "we (Christians) don't believe in hauntings, we don't believe in ghosts, we don't believe in all that stuff," and then in the same breath follows it up with, "(Halloween) is skeletons, it's like, it's the dead rising."

So, let me get this straight; you don't believe in ghosts, but you do believe in the dead rising?

Of course, it's not the first time that a prominent evangelical has spoken vehemently against Halloween.  Two years ago, Kimberley Daniels of the Christian Broadcasting Network implied that not only was Satan abroad on Halloween, even the candy wasn't safe:

During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed.  A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure ... During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities.  These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings.  For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.  I do not buy candy during the Halloween season.  Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store.  The demons cannot tell the difference.

Given the volume of candy sold during October, I wonder how the candy manufacturers manage to curse it all. They must employ thousands of witches, working round the clock, saying satanic prayers like mad over moving conveyor belts. I guess the witches have to pray quickly, or they'll back up the whole process, and end up flinging un-cursed candy about in the manner of Lucille Ball.

In any case, I find it baffling that people listen to these people, and downright astonishing that anyone believes it.  On the other hand, is it really so inconsistent with what the bible actually says?  One thing you have to say for people like Robertson and Daniels: they walk the talk.  The bible is full of stories of people, and sometimes entire cities, who did something naughty in god's eyes and got the crap smitten out of them.  God had no problem with the righteous killing the unrighteous, including unrighteous infants ("Happy the man who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock!" [Psalm 137:9])  Natural disasters were always attributed to "god's will."  Demons and evil spirits were everywhere.

So, honestly, once you decide that the bible is literally true, it's a reasonable result that you'll believe all of this sort of stuff.  Reverend Pat is just the furthest reaches of the logical chain that begins with the assumption, "the bible is god's revealed truth."  It is perhaps the rest of the Christians that have some 'splainin' to do.

A rip in Canadian space-time

I know it's kind of ridiculous to make generalizations about a whole country, but I'd always had this feeling that Canadians were, on the whole, pretty sensible folks.  Oh, you had your odd crank like Dennis Markuze ("Mabus"), sending out 458 gazillion emails per week to anyone who publicly identified him/herself as a skeptic, but that was the exception.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I ran across the publication The Canadian.  From the name, you'd expect the main stories to revolve around hockey, how to avoid grizzly bears, and other essentials of Canadian life.  Instead, I find therein headlines such as the following:

"Global Economy and Human Evolution Don't Go Together"
"Scientists Find Extraterrestrial Genes in DNA"
"9/11 Hijackers Miraculously Brought Back to Life, Says Japanese Democratic Party"
"The Romantic Striptease!"

So, I guess what this turns out to be is sort of a Canadian version of The Weekly World News. 

I'd like to look at one article from The Canadian more closely, and no, don't get your hopes up, it's not going to be "The Romantic Striptease!"  For one thing, this is a PG-13 rated blog.  For another, between the blackflies and mosquitoes and the fact that in most parts of Canada is seldom gets over 50 degrees, I would think that a Canadian version of a romantic striptease would be fast, involve large quantities of insect repellent, and end with both parties huddled under a quilt shivering.

The one I want to look at is, "Extraterrestrial War of the 1930s Altered Human Consciousness Of Itself Into A Destructive Timeline."  (You can read the whole article here.)  I didn't know about any extraterrestrial war in the 1930s, did you?  There certainly doesn't seem to be much about it in the history books.  That's to be expected, says Alex Collier, the originator of this idea; the Great War of the 1930s resulted in our being pushed into some kind of alternate dimension, and the aliens wiped our memory of the event, so now our history is proceeding in a way that it was never intended to do.  It's kind of like the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation wherein the Starship Enterprise enters a rip in the space-time continuum.  Space-time seems to have an awful lot of these rips, given the fact that the Starship Enterprise ran smack into one every couple of weeks or so.  Each time, though, they acted as if it was a great big surprise, as if this had never ever happened before, and it always seemed to take Geordi LaForge until the third commercial break to figure it out despite the fact ordinary non-Starfleet members like myself had it figured out in the first five minutes.  Anyway, in this particular episode, they ended up in a universe where the Klingons and the Federation had never become allies, and they were in a terrible war, blowing each other up right and left.  It turned out that the only way to make it all better was if Tasha Yar died again, an event that happened only slightly less often than running into rips in the space-time continuum.

But I digress.

Anyhow, Collier is convinced that the aliens who perpetrated this atrocity need to be exposed, so he's written a book called Defending Sacred Ground which describes how most of what we're told about aliens is disinformation spread by the aliens themselves.  Also, by the bye, he believes that both creationism and evolution are alien propaganda.  He knows all this, he says, because he was contacted by "Ethical Extraterrestrials" from the Andromeda Galaxy, and they want us to show up the bad aliens for being the villains they are, so they told Collier how to tell the alien propaganda from the truth.  If we can just get enough people to understand what's happened, he says, it will allow us to get back into our proper time line without even having to kill Tasha Yar.  We can do this,  he says, because we're on the "Eleventh Density" (whatever the hell that means), and we are capable of "a very large area of spiritual evolvement."

All of which makes perfect sense, as long as you've spent the last half-hour doing sit-ups underneath parked cars.

The whole thing leaves me feeling a little dazed, and wondering if I might not have been better off analyzing "The Romantic Striptease!" after all.

In any case, I guess it's just as well to find out that Canada has its share of wingnuts.  I was all too aware of our American assortment, and it really was a little ridiculous of me to think that the USA had cornered the market.  I'm quite sure, however, that just like here in the States, the majority of Canadian citizens are reasonably smart, rational, and sensible people, so I won't judge you based on people like Collier and Markuze if you'll promise not to judge us based on people like Michele Bachmann and Alex Jones.

Deal?

Death cauldrons and aerial dogfights

There are certain pieces of terrain that are just peculiar.  We tend to give them evocative names, because they are evocative; and this often leads people to attribute their formation to some seriously crazy causes.

Take the Mima Mounds, in Thurston County, Washington.

They're a little creepy-looking, no?  The mounds average about twenty to thirty feet across, and are roughly circular -- and there are hundreds of them.  It's a seriously atmospheric place, conducive to all sorts of woo-woo explanations -- some people believe that the Mima Prairie, where the mounds are located, is haunted, presumably by ghosts who are obsessive-compulsive landscapers.

There are other features which seem too regular to be natural -- take the glacial feature called a cirque, which takes the form of an often perfectly-circular lake:

Cirques form because they are at the origins of glaciers, so experience pressure and consequent erosive forces radiating out from a central point - if the contour of the land will allow it, it results in a nearly perfectly circular depression.

Arches, pinnacles, balancing rocks, channeled scablands... natural forces can result in some amazingly cool, and sometimes bafflingly symmetrical, structures.  No need to conjure up any kind of woo-woo explanation.

Of course, this doesn't mean that humans can't be involved, too.  When I was in Iceland, I visited a place called "Viti."  Viti is a beautiful, circular blue lake, which would have been peaceful had it not been for the jet-engine roar of a steam vent nearby.  The vent was surrounded by a high fence, and had a sign on it, in various languages, which said (as near as I can recall the wording):

Get the hell away from this vent, you stupid tourist.  This vent produces superheated steam, and if for some reason the machinery controlling its release were to fail, you would be cooked by a jet of steam before you could even turn to your wife and say, "Hey, Blanche, come take a picture of me next to this sign!"

The reason for all the caution was, I discovered, because the machinery had failed, about ten years before we went there, and the resulting explosion had thrown a piece of the rigging with such force that it landed a kilometer away.  Apparently the crater left behind by the explosion of the vent machinery was a circular hole in the ground, out of which came water vapor at about 3,000 C.  At that point, Icelandic geologists decided to leave well enough alone, and simply put a diverter over the hole, so that the steam is vented high enough in the air that it won't cook the tourists.

I bring all this up because of a recent article (read the whole thing here) about the Siberian "death cauldrons."  Speaking of evocative names.  It turns out that there are circular depressions in the ground in many places in Siberia, and legends about those places being "evil," and various stories about people going there and dying horrible deaths.  There is talk of metal debris and mysterious underground bunkers.

What, pray tell, is the cause of all of this mayhem?  We have the following proposals:

1)  It was an area used for nuclear testing during the Soviet era.

2)  It is the pock-marked battlefield left behind when two hostile alien species had an aerial battle in spaceships.

Well.  I know it's hard for me to decide, given the fact that both theories are both pretty darned persuasive.  The proponents of the alien theory have going for them that the natives of the area claim that they've seen powerful, fire-wielding beings coming from the sky for centuries, and as I was mentioning to Thor just yesterday, you know how accurate the such myths and legends tend to be.  The other thing they point out is that it has to be aliens, because it was right next door in the province of Krasnoyarsk Krai that they had the Tunguska Event, where an alien spacecraft blew up in 1908 and flattened trees radially for miles around.

Well, okay, technically it's only "right next door" if by that phrase you mean "1,500 km away," and almost everyone who's studied the Tunguska Event thinks that it was a small fragment of a comet that hit the Earth.  But still!  Alien spacecraft!  Aerial dogfights!  Crash landings, leaving circular depressions in the ground, and scattered radioactive debris that poisons the landscape and anyone foolish enough to visit!  C'mon, don't you think so?  Don't you?

Okay, maybe not.  But you have to admit that as an explanation, it does have more panache than "the Soviets blew up some nuclear bombs there, and never cleaned up their mess or even admitted that they'd done it."

If looks could kill

New from the Why Didn't I Think Of That First department, we have a guy who performs psychic healing just by looking at people.

Here I thought you had to at least do something to affect a woo-woo cure -- swing some crystals around, say a chant or two, give your patient a homeopathic pill that doesn't contain any medicine -- at least something. 

Enter the Croat healer known only as "Braco."  Braco, now touring the United States, gets paid big bucks to sit on a stage for a half hour and stare at the audience.  He doesn't say a word -- just stares, then gets up and leaves, and goes backstage to collect his paycheck.  His gaze is said to have "healing powers."  "People aren't even sure what they're feeling," devotee Sahaja Coventry told a reporter at Braco's latest appearance, at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland.  "But it is a sweetness, it is a loving energy and some people get physical healing, some just feel a sense of peace."

If I had to sit there for a half hour in a dimly-lit room in total silence for a half-hour, I bet I'd feel a sense of peace, too -- I'd probably fall asleep.  But of course, that's not what Coventry et al. are talking about.  Neither do they think they're being hypnotized, which is another possibility.  They really think that Braco is doing something with his eyes, somehow affecting "energy levels" in the room.  Braco, of course, does everything he can to beef up this claim; children and pregnant women are not allowed to attend, because the "energies could be too strong," and he does not let his face be broadcast on television for more than seven-second clips, presumably to prevent some sort of electronically-transmitted overdose of Braco Stare.

My objections, of course, are the usual ones.  First, show me the mechanism.  If you think this guy's gaze can cure your chronic headaches, show me how that could work in such a way that it eliminates the possibility of auto-suggestion.  Another of his followers who attended the session at Cleveland hinted at the problem when she said, "You have to have an open mind and an open heart, more or less to get this feeling."  Why on earth should this be so?  If the guy is doing something real, how could my attitude make any difference?  You'd think it'd be even more impressive if Braco cured someone who thought he was a fraud.

Second, of course, there's the fact that the whole thing flies in the face of how vision actually works; because when you see, it's not because something's going out from your eyes, it's because something's going into your eyes (namely, light reflected from the object you're looking at).  Vision is receptive, not productive.  The ancients didn't get this, and we see this in some relic expressions like to "throw a glance" at someone, and in holdover beliefs such as the "evil eye."  Certainly, the eyes and face can communicate information; a lot of work has been done on the ease with which the human brain can pick up on subtle "microexpressions," and how that effects social interaction.  But that's not what Braco's followers think is happening, here -- they really think that some "force" is leaving his body through his eyes, and traveling to you, and changing your mental and/or physical condition.  To which I say: I seriously doubt it.

In any case, if you'd like to see him (or, actually, to have him see you), you can check out his tour schedule at Braco.net.  Be warned, however -- on his website there's a giant photograph of him, and it will look out of the monitor at you in a highly scary fashion.  I suggest putting on eye protection before clicking the link, and whatever you do, don't leave it staring at you for more than seven seconds!  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Honestly, though, like I said initially, I kind of wish I'd thought of it first.  It seems an easier way to make a living than to do what I do, which is to stand in front of bunches of high school students talking all day long.  If I could make a living just by staring at people from a stage for a half-hour every few nights, I'd could ditch all the lesson plans and paper grading and so on, and have a great deal more free time than I currently have.  But Braco seems to have cornered the Psychic Stare market, so I'll have to come up with a different angle.  Hey, I know!  Maybe you could just send me a check for a hundred dollars, and I'll stare lovingly at your signature for five minutes.  It will communicate healing energy through the psychic link established through your signature.  You'll feel better immediately.  Trust me.

Witches, vampires, and irrationality

My mom, although she was generous to a fault with her friends and family, was very suspicious of strangers.  I blame this in part on the fact that during the last ten years of her life, she watched the show Cops every night.  If you expose yourself, even willingly, to a continual parade of thieves, arsonists, murderers, and other no-goods, you're bound to come away with the view that the world is a pretty shady place, and most of humanity unscrupulous at best and dangerous at worst.

It is perhaps an occupational hazard of writing a blog such as this one that I often find myself wondering if humans are honestly capable of any shred of rationality.  I realize that, like my mom, I'm deliberately opening myself to a skewed viewpoint -- every day I seek out examples of weird beliefs and bizarre behavior, so I shouldn't be surprised that I come away with the jaundiced attitude that my fellow humans are, by and large, a bunch of wingnuts.  Still, some of the stories I ran into this morning leave me shaking my head and wondering how natural selection hasn't replaced us with a more sensible, intelligent dominant species.  I think that dolphins, for example, might well make better Lords of the Earth, given some of our behavior.

For example, we have a murder case in Florida, in which 18-year-old Stephanie Pistey is accused of killing 16-year-old Jacob Hendershot.  All of which would be tragic but not relevant to today's topic, except that Pistey maintains that she killed Hendershot because she's "a vampire-werewolf hybrid."  According to the reports, Pistey "talked calmly and rationally" about her beliefs, which included the fact that "bloodlust is just part of who we are."

Of course, I'm sure that when Pistey comes to trial, her defense will try to prove that she's mentally unbalanced.  Which is clearly a true statement, but then, how mentally unbalanced do you have to be before you're honestly not responsible for your actions?  It's hard to believe that anyone who had not completely lost touch with reality (and there's apparently no evidence that Pistey is schizophrenic) would be so convinced that she was part vampire, part werewolf that she would kill someone.  But that's evidently exactly what happened here.  Clearly Pistey believes that vampires and werewolves are real, and it's to be assumed that she didn't come by that belief on her own.

Just yesterday, we had news that a couple in Oregon were found guilty two days ago of second-degree manslaughter for allowing their premature newborn to die.  The couple believed that praying for the child, and anointing him with "blessed oil," would cause god to save his life -- teachings promoted by their church, the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City.  Amazingly, the judge agreed to a "religious exemption" -- meaning that the couple will likely spend less than 18 months in jail for the offense.  One has to wonder what other homicidal lunacy might become excusable as long as it's based on religious grounds.

Speaking of which, we have the cheery story that our allies in Saudi Arabia have beheaded a Sudanese man for witchcraft.  The man, Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al-Fakki, was arrested in 2005 for "casting a spell to reconcile his divorced parents," and found guilty of sorcery, which is a capital offense in Islamic religious law.  He was executed by beheading last week.  And lest we think that such medieval beliefs are limited to the Middle East, we have a story from Uganda that four people were banished from their village for witchcraft, and a businessman in Indonesia is currently awaiting trial for using "dark magic" to harm his competitors in the marketplace.  Apparently, the fact that there's no such thing as Black Magic doesn't mean that you can't be convicted of it in a court of law.

I think I'll end with a story about an archaeological dig in Piombino, Italy.  Archaeologists searching for the tomb of St. Cerbonius, alleged to be in the vicinity, came upon the bones of a woman, who was between 25 and 30 years old at her death, which occurred in about 1200 C.E.  What caught the attention of the researchers was the fashion in which she was buried -- she had several nails driven into her jawbone, and there were more nails struck into the ground near her body.  (The cause of death is as yet undetermined, and it's to be hoped the nails were hammered into her after she'd died -- but that's not certain, unfortunately.)  The archaeologists stated that according to writings from the time, this was the way the bodies of witches, warlocks, and vampires were treated -- the nails were intended to keep them from coming back from the dead and harming the living.

How far we've come in 800 years.

Voodoo, dragonflies, Planet X, and sex with evil spirits

New from the Be Careful What You Wish For Department, in yesterday's post I asked my loyal readers to send me links to stories of woo-wooism worldwide, and within a couple of hours I received four stories which, although I appreciated the gesture, left me wondering how much weirder people can get.

First, we have a story from Telford, Shropshire, England, about a teacher who used some very unorthodox methods to get her students to behave.

Roslyn Holloway, now an ex-employee of the Lord Silkin Trust Secondary School, was a teacher of special education for kids aged 13, and her tenure at the school was marked by abusive behavior (she smacked one misbehaving kid with the heel of her hand, and pulled another by the hair so hard that a hunk of it came out), racial epithets, and general verbal harassment.  However, what makes this story merit a mention in Skeptophilia is what finally got her fired.  (As if all of the above weren't enough.)

During a social studies lesson, she took a doll out of a bag, and wrapped a student's hair around the doll's leg, and threatened to drop the doll to "make his leg hurt."  Then, she said that she was planning on dropping the doll into a bucket of water if the student didn't stop talking in class, and if she did, he would "be found, mysteriously drowned."

What I find most disturbing about this whole incident is that this nutjob was allowed to teach for eight years before the voodoo incident finally got her canned.

Holloway upped stakes after her dismissal, and moved to the Shetland Islands, where, it is to be hoped, she will never be allowed around children again.  Or anyone else, for that matter.


On a lighter note, we have a report from London regarding a dragonfly that is actually a remote-controlled drone operated by an alien parasite.

The report, made by a man who identifies himself only as SpaceCowboy1954, appeared in a YouTube video (which you can watch here).  The video, which is approximately as interesting as watching your fenders rust, features eight minutes of footage of what appears to be an ordinary dragonfly zooming around, accompanied by an annoying, monotonous syntho-pop soundtrack evidently performed by a musician who has not yet mastered the concept of "changing chords."  For those of you who would like to cut to the chase, the punch line of the whole thing comes at 6:02, at which point the dragonfly's head appears to split, allowing an "alien head to peek out, just like a Transformer."

After watching the video, wasting eight valuable minutes of my life that I'll never see again, I've come to the conclusion that the guy has been engaged in some creative video editing, as the shots with the "alien" are far blurrier than most of the shots of the plain old dragonfly.  Be that as it may, you should definitely be on the lookout for alien insects next time you're outside, because who knows what they may be up to?  This one was certainly involved in some very sinister circling of the park bench, and we all know what that means.  Next step, world domination.


Speaking of world domination, no roundup of recent weird news would be complete without an update on what Nibiru is doing.

Nibiru, of course, is the mysterious tenth planet, that either is in a highly elliptical orbit extending beyond Pluto, and only visits the inner solar system every few thousand years, or else is in a stable circular orbit exactly on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, either of which would explain why we never see any sign of it.  This recent Nibiru news takes the second view, and claims that further, (1) it was somehow known to the Hopi, who called it the "Blue Katchina," (2) has no atmosphere or water, but still (3) is the home of the alien race called Annunaki, who (3) were the gods mentioned in the Old Testament, and who were (4) mining gold there until things got screwed up by the fact that (5) Planet X is approaching, which may or may not be the Comet Elenin, and Planet X has (6) pushed Venus further from the sun, which will (7) cause the Earth's magnetic pole to flip, resulting in (8) seriously bad stuff that will of course peak on December 21, 2012.

I wish I was making all this up.  So that I can at least maintain some credibility with my readers, here's a link to the webpage that gives all the details on the upcoming catastrophe.

There's more, of course, but my brain cells were screaming for mercy as it was, so I'll leave you to look at the article on your own if you're interested.  And if major sectors of your brain die in agony from reading this stuff, don't say I didn't warn you.


Last, we have a story from Malaysia, where a man called police claiming that he wife was having sex every night with an "evil spirit."

The unnamed man, in his 20s, described to police that his wife would go to bed in the normal fashion, and then wake him up in the middle of the night moaning.  A "professional medium" hired by the man told him that an evil spirit was coming to her at night and proceeding to have its way with her, and if he didn't take action, she could end up conceiving a "spirit child."

The police "listened patiently" to the man's story, but finally told him that they were not able to arrest the "invisible man," because he was, well, invisible, which would make him kind of difficult to handcuff.

If I'd been the policeman on duty, I'd have told the guy, "Look, buddy, like I don't have enough to worry about, with robotic alien-controlled dragonflies, teachers threatening students with voodoo curses, and the fact that the world's going to end soon."  But I doubt that'd have worked, anyhow, given that most guys are pretty picky about their significant others not cheating on them, even if the significant others are cheating with someone who doesn't, technically, exist.


So, folks, keep those cards and letters coming.  We here at Worldwide Wacko Watch just love the attention, and even if it means facing the fact that a significant percentage of humans are total loons, we're willing to deal with our pessimism about humanity in general to bring these stories to your doorstep.

Woo-woo news briefs

Things are hopping down here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, and this week we have three stories sent to me by faithful readers of Skeptophilia.

First, we have a story regarding a theoretical physicist, Henry Sapp, who claims that there is nothing incompatible between quantum mechanics and ghosts.  Here's a quote from his writing on the subject:

I do not see any compelling theoretical reason why this idea could not be reconciled with the precepts of quantum mechanics. Such an elaboration of quantum mechanics would both allow our conscious efforts to influence our own bodily actions, and also allow certain purported phenomena such as “possession”, “mediumship”, and “reincarnation” to be reconciled with the basic precepts of contemporary physics.

Hmmm.  Okay.  As far as I can tell, this is a little like saying that there is nothing incompatible between organic chemistry and federal tax law.  It's a true statement, but it doesn't really tell you anything.  Quantum mechanics has nothing whatsoever to say about "survival of the spirit," being that it is about the behavior of matter and energy at the submicroscopic scale.  Being a theoretical physicist, you'd think he'd know this.  As for the rest of the woo-woo world, I really wish they'd give the whole quantum mechanics thing a rest, as I've seen it used to support crystal healing, telepathy, and homeopathy, usually accompanied by some statement that "quantum theory shows that reality isn't like we think it is" and therefore we should all accept whatever bizarre version of reality is currently on display.  They really need to find a new subject to attribute all of their mystical stuff to.  I suggest organic chemistry.

Then we've got a story that there is a direct relationship between the number of UFO sightings and global warming, and that the increase in global temperatures is causing aliens to visit us in progressively greater numbers.  The author of this article speculates that the aliens are coming here with good intentions, to warn us that our behavior is destroying our biosphere, and that we should take heed and stop burning fossil fuels and so on.

You'd think, being superpowerful aliens who can come here in spacecrafts, that if that was their message they would be a little more direct about it, rather than just flying "silver orbs" around and hoping that we'd look up and say, "Wow, did you just see that big silver orb zoom across the sky!  It's an alien spacecraft!  I'm going to run out and buy a Prius right now!"  You'd think that they'd just tie a big banner to the back of one of their orbs that said, "Hey, Earth people!  Stop burning fossil fuels!  We mean it!"

You'd be wrong, evidently.  It's the same thing as with all the crop circles; they're supposed to be alien communiqués, but if so they're pretty obscure ones.

Last, speaking of aliens, we have a report from a guy named Paul Schroeder that he's had reptilian aliens visit him while he was taking a shower.

By his own description, Schroeder once was a confirmed atheist but he changed his tune when he saw aliens float him out of his bed, because apparently he was convinced that the aliens were trying to steal his soul and for that to be true he had to have a soul in the first place.  Since his abduction, he's had a variety of contacts with aliens of several races, including "Grays," "Darks," and "Reptilians."  It's a member of the last-mentioned species that came and joined him in the shower.

He said he knew something was wrong when the shower, instead of energizing him, was "draining him."  Showers are supposed to be an "ethereal cleansing," and not just get the grease and dirt off, but wash all the schmutz off your aura or something.  And evidently this one wasn't doing the trick.  Then, suddenly, he felt a burning sensation on his skin, and had "sudden, unprovoked sexual urges and negative ideations," and he knew there was an alien with him in the shower.

For the record, I'm not making any of this up.

Then, suddenly, the alien was able to draw enough energy from him and from the shower, not to mention from all of the unprovoked sexual urges that were happening, and it materialized!  "It stood under five feet upright, had catlike slit eyes, and closely resembled a scaled monitor lizard, in both aspect and facial structure," Schroeder writes.  "That reptilian viewed me with its head tilted, cocked sideways, birdlike; it had piercingly studied me with an alert intelligence that had radiated curiosity.  After just a few seconds, the creature vanished."

Schroeder is worried that now the alien has seen him naked, it will be stalking him, which seems a little conceited, frankly.  "Post abduction, alien abductee predation is done both through implant energy drains and by inserting alien astral attachments, within the layered human psyche towards a goal of eventual possession," he writes.  "These bizarre beings, highly technological and equally interdimensional and intergalactic, use us as we ride horses."

Right.  That's believable.  Implant drains and aliens as spirit equestrians.  This is only slightly less ludicrous than the guy who wanted to transmute base metals into gold using the Philosopher's Stone he'd made from his own urine.

In any case, there you have it.  Quantum mechanics and soul survival, global warming and UFOs, and alien soul-suckers in the shower.  I hope you've found this week's News In Brief enlightening, and trust that you'll continue to send me links to webpages by wingnuts.  As usual, our motto here is: All the News That's Fit to Guffaw At.