For sale: One haunted lighthouse

Looking for a great property to purchase?  Strutt & Parker, LLP, of London, has the place for you.

Upsides:

(1) Awesome ocean view.
(2) Two acres of private beach.
(3) Picturesque.
(4) Ready to occupy immediately.

Downsides:

(1) It's a lighthouse.
(2) It's haunted.

Of course, (2) under the "downsides" might actually deserve to be (5) under the "upsides," depending on your attitude toward ghosts.  Me, I think that'd be a selling point.  I've always wanted to live in a haunted house, or at least stay in one for a while.  For one thing, it would allow me finally to check out the whole phenomenon first-hand, without having to rely on evidence of such dubious provenance as "My Uncle Fred's ex-wife saw a ghost in this room!"  Of course, being (to put not too fine a point on it) a wuss, if a ghost really did appear to me, I'd probably wet my pants and then have a stroke.  Especially if it was of the gruesome, blood-streaked kind, the sort made popular by movies like The Sixth Sense.  Just watching that movie made me want to hide under the bed, except that's where the little girl that her stepmom poisoned was hanging out, and she's not exactly the sort of company you want in those circumstances.

But I digress.

The property in question is the Point of Ayr Lighthouse in Wales, and looks like a pretty cool place.  (See a photograph here.)  It has that lonely, windswept ambiance that definitely lends itself to ghostly occupation, and is a steal at £ 100,000.  However, you might want to hear something about your potential roommate before you lock in a downpayment.

The ghost in question has been seen on the balcony and also on the lower floors, and is usually dressed in work clothes.  There have been voices heard, calling out someone's name, and more than one instance of "spectral laughter."  Dogs apparently routinely refuse to go into the lighthouse.  One witness, Adam Corkill of Stockport, reports seeing a man up on the top of the tower who "appeared to be fixing equipment," but upon investigation the place was locked and empty.

I don't know about you, but having someone fix stuff in my house for free would be welcome, even if he was a ghost.  And that goes double if he's willing to mow the lawn.

However, before you jump you might want to consider the testimony of one Neil Hayden, of Birkenhead:

When I was 16 me and my best mate used to go and visit a relative of his in Talacre.

The occasion that sticks out is one day while on the beach, we saw what we can only describe as one massive footprint, like nothing human size.  The footprint was pointing towards the lighthouse, and as we stared at each other and panicked, there was an almighty bang on the inside of the lighthouse door, we ran back towards the dunes, and turned round to see someone shining a torch at us, this was about eight o’clock at night, just going dusk. 

Not only did the torch business frighten us but the footprint too, which believe it or not disappeared within the 15 minutes it took us to go get a witness.  No high tide, no one on the beach and no sign of the footprint being rubbed out.

So, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty creepy.  Fixing the equipment and hanging around in jeans and blue chambray work shirts is one thing; making gigantic mysterious disappearing footprints and larking around with flashlights is another one entirely.

So, on the whole, it seems like a mixed bag.  Unfortunately for a variety of reasons, I don't have £ 100,000 just hanging around, or I'd consider it.  It'd be nice to have a vacation property in Wales, which is a lovely place, and I like being near the ocean.  I'd also like to have a chance to see if someone who is as generally skeptical as I am would have any sorts of paranormal experiences there, and also to see if my dogs would "refuse to enter."  I happen to know that one of my dogs, whose name (Grendel) and junkyard dog appearance mask a personality that is best described as "Cream Puff," is a bigger wuss than I am, and if he sensed anything weird about the place we'd have to drag him inside bodily.  So he'd be a pretty good gauge of the general atmosphere.

On the other hand, it's not the most practical of properties.  For one thing, it very much gives the impression of not having central heating, which would be a serious disadvantage in a climate such as that of coastal Wales.  For another, I'm not sure we're ready for the upkeep, even with a ghostly workman assisting us.  We have enough trouble with light housekeeping -- I don't think we're ready for lighthouse keeping.

Star Drek: On the nature of change

Prompted by my son, who seems to have a never-ending appetite for goofy science fiction flicks, we started a while back rewatching the original Star Trek series on Netflix.  I remember these well from watching them when I was a kid, first as a regular series when I was about seven years old, and then in (seemingly infinite) reruns.  I also remember loving them.  For the record, I never was a "Trekkie," filling my room with memorabilia, action figures, "Making Of" books, posters, and the like, but I did find the show a lot of fun.  Like many boys my age, I liked Mr. Spock best of all -- with his super-human strength, faster-than-light brain, and ability to subdue an opponent with a well-aimed shoulder pinch.

Watching them again forty years later, however, I was immediately struck with how poorly the show has aged.  Shatner's overacting is painful to watch; the plots are contrived and predictable; and the portrayal of women -- which, I suppose, was fairly progressive when the show was filmed, back in the late 60s -- is cringe-worthy.  Even some of the little touches -- Yeoman Rand's miniskirt and conehead-combover hair style, for example -- are more funny than futuristic.

So, this has me wondering about our perceptions of media, and why shows like Star Trek have not held up so well against the ravages of time.   On the surface, the aforementioned highly dated treatment of women pegs it as a product of the Cold War era.  The "technology," too, is fairly amusing in its attempts to be "24th century."  The communicators look like cellphones (Nathan commented that when Kirk flipped his open, he kept expecting the Captain to type in "kthxbai.")  On one episode we watched, "Bones" McCoy was repairing a patient's abdominal wound with what appeared to be a crème brûlée torch.

But I think it's more than that.  I think our expectations have changed.  When you compare some of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the old classic version, it's evident that we don't see drama in the same way. The old Star Trek, even the better episodes (and there were a few that weren't too bad) were moralistic, giving you an answer to the crew's ethical-dilemma-of-the-week that in the end was virtually rammed down your throat.  The ship's crew provided a touchstone for ethical purity -- Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and the rest were never in the wrong, were always on the side of Truth, Justice, and The American Way.  (And in a few, completely ridiculous episodes, they really were fighting for the American Way, out there in space.)

Contrast The Next Generation.  That series was full of ethical gray areas, questions without answers, clashes between cultures in which there was no clear Good Side and Bad Side.  Captain Picard wasn't always the hero figure -- he had weaknesses, made wrong decisions, was forced to take the lesser of two evils.  Even the Federation -- the stand-in in the original series for the American Government -- sometimes acted immorally.

I wonder if this is a reflection of our view of reality.  Art, after all, usually mirrors life.  In the 60s, most of us were heavily invested in seeing our government as the arbiter of morality in a dangerous world, filled with Bad Guys who were determined to do us (the Good Guys, of course) in.  When it became obvious -- although the transition was gradual, over the next two decades -- that our own beloved American government had done some things that would put the purported Bad Guys to shame, we were left anchorless.  Most of us have by now accustomed ourselves to the thought that governments in general are no better than the people we elect to run them, and that the world is really one gigantic gray area, but that was not the view of the majority in the 60s.

So The Next Generation, no less than the original series, is a product of its time -- filled with conspiracies, alliances that form and then dissolve through treachery, and moral ambiguity.  I suspect that its view of life in general is more realistic than that of the old series -- myself, I tend to think the world is fairly absurd and confusing, and that there really isn't a single, comprehensible pattern that will make sense of it all -- but who knows?  It would be interesting to fast forward (through a rip in the space-time continuum, no doubt) to 2050 and see the series through the eyes of someone from that time period.  They might well view it as being as ridiculous as we now see Captain Kirk's patriarchal, Federation Über Alles universe.

Time marches on. As Scotty has been known to point out, ye canna alter the laws of physics. Nor, it seems, can you stop change in its tracks. We like to think that our generation has a bead on reality, but I doubt this is true, any more than it has ever been true, back to the earliest times our ancestors pondered such notions.

Yoga and demonic possession

I bet you thought that yoga was a great way to improve flexibility, stretch and tone your muscles, and relax?  Little did you know that by practicing yoga, you're risking your immortal soul.

This from Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, who in a long, rambling directive to his flock, says,

Giving sound teaching on yoga is important because there is increasing adoption of yoga by our culture, with over 15.8 million people practicing yoga and nearly every store you go into selling all kinds of yoga products.  It’s gone mainstream.  As such, Christians are also adopting it as a healthy aspect of exercise and lifestyle—complete with things like “Holy Yoga,” which is an oxymoron.  Saying yoga can be Christian because you do it for Jesus is a bit like going into a mosque, going through the worship practices, and then saying you’re not a Muslim because you’re doing it for Jesus.  They don’t mix.

He said about Christians trying to inject Christian beliefs into yoga that "you cannot redeem such a thing... (it is) unchristian, against scripture, and thus demonic in nature."

So, I wonder where you draw the line?  If you do a "downward dog" pose to stretch before a run, are the demons ready to pounce?  Does the lotus position somehow invite Satan to attack me because my feet are asleep, so I won't be able to run away?  (At least that's what always happens to me when I go into the lotus position.)  Is my wife's yoga mat infused with Demonic Energy?  What will happen if our cat sleeps on the yoga mat?  Will he become possessed by evil spirits?  (Actually, possession by evil spirits might actually be an improvement on this cat's current personality.)

What I find astounding about all of this is not that some wingnut has made a bizarre pronouncement.  That, after all, is what wingnuts do.  What I find amazing is that people still continue to attend his church and believe what he has to say afterwards.  If in my classroom, I started claiming that the Earth's mantle was composed of cherry pie filling, and that lava is red because of the cherry juice, my credibility would be compromised, to put it mildly.  But this guy can babble away about how practicing yoga is inviting demonic possession, and his congregation just kind of sits there nodding and mumbling "Amen, brother," instead of guffawing directly in his face and walking out, which is what I would do.

I guess that's the power of personality.  Driscoll is fairly well known as a charismatic speaker, and his views are labeled in virtually every source I looked at as "controversial."  And, of course, some people are easily led and don't question what they're told by an authority figure.  You put all of those things together, and you have a recipe for belief in crazy stuff, which to me is seriously scary.  Maybe all we have here is a group of worshipers who have been convinced to stop watching Lilias, Yoga, and You, and will have to find some other way to work out -- but in another context, this same human tendency creates a Jim Jones, a Mark Koresh, an Al Qaeda.  The only difference is scale and content.

To his ghostly mistress

One of my favorite poems is Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."  The poem is a plea from a man to his lover to stop playing so hard to get.  It has some stunningly beautiful imagery, and a good message -- carpe diem, and don't miss chances, and all that sort of thing.  (Although a more prosaic English major friend summed it up as "Life's short, let's fuck," and said, "Of course you like it.  You're male.")

Near the end of the poem are the famous lines, "The grave's a fine and private place/ But none, I think, do there embrace."  However, we have a recent report from a woman in Ohio who might beg to differ.

Dianne Carlisle, of Euclid, claims that her four-year-old daughter Kimora was playing with her cellphone camera, and snapped a photograph of what appear to be two ghosts having sex.  (You can see a video clip that includes the image here; and for those of you who are concerned about such things, the clip is PG-13 or better, and was actually deemed appropriate to show on the local news.)

The spectral bow-chicka-bow-wow has aroused the interest of several local paranormal researchers.  David Jones, an Ohio-based ghost hunter, says that if the story checks out, this would be an "extraordinary development in paranormal research," and wonders, amongst other things, "how long it has been going on."

I think that's kind of a personal question, don't you?

Amy Allan, of The Travel Channel's "The Dead Files," says she's "skeptical."  "I've never seen two dead people who were conscious entities have intercourse," Allan told reporters.  "I have heard of people having sex with ghosts, but not this."

So, let me get this straight; you're doubtful that ghosts could have sex with each other, but willing to accept that a ghost could have sex with a living person?  All I can say is that your definition of "skeptical" and mine have a good many differences.

In any case, this is not the only experience that Carlisle and her family have had with her horny spectral roommates.  Her daughter saw "a girl standing in the living room, staring," on one occasion, and a photograph in a mirror shows another person besides the one holding the camera, despite the fact that there was supposedly only one person in the room at the time.  And Carlisle plays for the news report (if you watch the clip, you'll hear this as well) a voicemail that is allegedly from her deceased sister.  To me, the supposed message from the dead woman sounds like a bunch of static, but maybe more discerning ears than mine can make it out (Carlisle says the message is "I love you.").

In any case, Carlisle ends with a plea to to ghosts to keep the haunting G-rated, in consideration of the kids.  I dunno, think about it from the ghosts' point of view.  They're sharing living space, and sometimes they're gonna do what adults do, right?  I mean, here's this kid in the bedroom blundering around with a camera, snapping random photographs.  It's as much her fault as the ghosts, if you ask me.

So, anyway, that's today's story.  If it's true, it should be a cheering notion, that in the afterlife we won't be limited to rattling chains and going "Woooooo."  Much as I love Andrew Marvell's poem, I have to admit that the whole "... your quaint honor turn to dust/ And into ashes all my lust" thing is a little on the depressing side.

Today's news briefs

We here at Worldwide Wacko Watch are following several interesting stories this morning.

First, we have news that a poltergeist in Harborne, Birmingham, England is apparently showing himself to be a serious wine snob.

Anne Tyler, manager of the Court Oak Pub, has reported that once again, there was damage to a number of wine bottles on Halloween night, and that this has happened every Halloween for the past few years.  Nuala Gallagher, spokesperson for Sizzling Pubs (the chain that includes Court Oak), says that both staff and patrons have seen the figure of a fifty-something man behind the bar, and that these appearances are often followed by bottles of wine getting smashed.  "It's always the house red and house white," Gallagher said.  "If the pub has a house wine that is not to his liking, he makes his feelings known by smashing bottle after bottle of it in the cellar until it is changed for a wine he approves of."

As a result, the poltergeist has been named "Corky."  If I were him, I think that alone would make me want to break something.


Next, from the "Third Time's The Charm" department, we have news that Harold Camping has retired.

The evangelical minister and owner of Family Life Radio, Inc., made headlines for not one, nor two, but three failed predictions of the Rapture.  When the Rapture once again did not occur on October 21, Camping was dismayed that the Righteous hadn't been assumed into heaven and the rest of us left behind to suffer indescribable torments as Satan turned us into Human McNuggets.

Ultimately, Camping still hedged about the non-event, saying that the postponement of the Rapture was because it was "God's will."  "He could have halted the whole thing if He had wanted to," Camping said in a prepared statement issued last week.  The disappointment comes through loud and clear, doesn't it?  If you've spent all these years looking forward to Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of The Unrighteous, it's kind of a letdown when there's nothing in the rivers but plain old water, day after day.


Now that we've made it past October 21, however, we can look forward to yet another forecast of planet-wide destruction next Friday, on November 11.  This prediction comes from Uri Geller, who is probably the only person in the world who would beat Harold Camping in a People Who Just Don't Know When To Quit Contest.  Geller, you might recall, is the Israeli "psychokinetic" who conspicuously failed to bend any spoons on the Johnny Carson Show, and who was the first fake psychic to trot out the "Your Disbelief Is Interfering With The Mystical Energies" argument.  Geller is still going strong, decades later, and now has left behind bending spoons and moved on to bigger things, namely, the destruction of the planet.

Geller has posted a rambling, incoherent article on his website (read it if you dare, here) about how magical things will happen on 11/11/11, perhaps at 11:11 AM.  All those ones have to mean something, right?  It can't just be that passing through 11/11 happens to be the most convenient way to get to 11/12.  Don't be silly.  And note that all of these numbers made of ones can also be read in binary!  And string theory proposes that space contains eleven dimensions!  And prominent physicists Brian Greene, John Schwartz, and Isaac Newton all have eleven letters in their names!  And 1111 x 1111 = 1234321, which is kind of like a pyramid, which means that the ancient Egyptians are somehow involved!  Well, I think we can all agree that this can only lead to one conclusion:

On November 11, a portal to another universe will open, and the Earth will be sucked in.  This will, depending on how we react, destroy civilization as we know it, or else will lead to a "spiral of evolution."  Whatever the hell that means.

All I can say is, the guy's got balls even to show his face in public, after what happened on Carson, much less to go around prognosticating about cosmic death portals.


Speaking of balls, our final story comes from Glasgow, where The Telegraph reports that a man with a testicular tumor generated a stir when he went in to the hospital to have the thing examined.  The doctors performing the ultrasound were alarmed when they saw, on the ultrasound, the following image:

The doctors proceeded to have a brief consultation to determine if this was a message from an evil spirit, similar to the way Jesus likes to communicate with the faithful by appearing on tortillas.  They decided that no, it wasn't some kind of screaming testicle demon, and they removed it.  (As a brief aside, weren't "The Screaming Testicle Demons" a 90s death metal band?  If not, they should have been.)  Fortunately for the patient, the tumor turned out to be benign, and he's recovering nicely.


So that's it for today's news briefs: snobbish poltergeists, two separate predictions of the end of the world, and Edvard Munch's The Scream shows up on some Scottish guy's balls.  As always, our motto here is "All The News That's Fit To Guffaw At."

A political mandate to trust in god

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted on a measure reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto of the United States.  The measure, crafted by Republican Randy Forbes of Virginia, was intended (in his words) to prevent "rogue court challenges" to religion in public venues.

The measure passed 396-9.

Okay, I can come up with a great many cogent arguments regarding why this is a bad idea.  Can anyone give me an argument why it is a good one?

How does having a national motto that implies a belief in god serve any purpose whatsoever?  Similarly, what earthly reason can there be for mandating that the Pledge of Allegiance -- spoken by millions of schoolchildren daily, and by countless public officials every time a meeting is held -- contain the words "one nation, under god?"  If you believe in god, well and good; you're free to affirm that belief whenever and however you want to.  On the other hand, what if you don't believe in god?  How does "In God We Trust" being printed on every piece of currency printed in the US, how does reciting "one nation, under god" every day, have any positive effect whatsoever on the 18% of Americans who self-identify as non-religious?  In my experience, students who are atheists or agnostics have made one of two choices; to skip the words "under god" when they're recited, or to say the Pledge of Allegiance as-is, i.e., just to go along with it and not rock the boat.

When the subject came up a couple of years ago in a discussion before school, I asked one atheist student who was in my homeroom what he did, and he said that he said the Pledge because he supported his country.  As for the "under god" part -- he said, and this is a direct quote, "That part is meaningless to me, but it doesn't hurt me to say it."

I didn't argue with him -- the touchiness of parents and many students about religion requires that I watch my step when this topic comes up -- but consider the implication of what he said.

"I'm mandated to say words I don't believe in, and rather than questioning it I'm willing to lie publicly about my beliefs every morning of my thirteen years in public school."

I suspect you're feeling pretty smug now, you members of the Religious Right.  And to the 396 Representatives who voted for the measure, I hope you recognize what you've actually accomplished here.  You've given lip service to a national motto whose ultimate aim is impossible unless we turn into the kind of top-down theocracy that is found in Iran and Saudi Arabia; once again showed blatant disregard for the separation of church and state; and in the end, accomplished nothing toward your unspoken goal, which is to turn we godless folks into good Christians.  Handling dollar bills with "In God We Trust" inscribed on them is not going to turn me into a theist, any more than handling currency with no religious message on it would damage your own faith.  You've done nothing here but show how out of touch you are with the real needs of your constituencies -- job creation, economic fixes, smart energy policy -- along with pissing off the growing minority of Americans who are willing to state publicly that they are atheists.

The Religious Right makes much of the alleged religiosity of the Founding Fathers, and some have gone so far as to claim that they never intended a separation of church and state in the first place -- that we are "a Christian nation."  Thus, I'll conclude with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia:

Is uniformity (in religious belief) attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.  What has been the effect of coercion?  To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

Riding a Triceratops into the sunset

Recently, the Creation Museum of Louisville, Kentucky logged its one millionth visitor, and its fourth year in business.

Dan Phelps, of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, said, "We're depressed, I think."

So am I, Dan, so am I.

The level of bad science that the Creation Museum presents as fact is staggering.  To take the most famous example, this museum features exhibits illustrating humans cohabiting with dinosaurs.  A placard states further that prior to Adam's fall, all dinosaurs were peaceful herbivores.  Evidently all the big nasty pointy teeth in the Velociraptor were used for nothing more dangerous than munching carrots, and we can only assume that Adam and Eve rode around on a Triceratops when they weren't having conversations with talking snakes.  A recent guest speaker, Dr. Gary Parker (the museum's website doesn't say what Dr. Parker's Ph.D. is in; I assume it's nothing to do with science), states that he became a creationist after examining the bible, then examining evolutionary theory, and deciding that compared with the biblical account, "it was evolution that had holes in it."

This statement would be funny if I weren't absolutely convinced that he's dead serious.  He has apparently carefully studied the account in Genesis, and finds it more plausible than the past 150 years of scientific research.  I can only regard such a stance as so completely mystifying to me that I can almost not comprehend it.

Now, my question is: why should I really be concerned?  If a few people (or even a million) believe that the earth is 7000 years old (give or take), why should I care?  People believe in all sorts of weird stuff -- crystal energies, auras, homeopathy, fairies, astrology -- and honestly, it doesn't really bother me all that much.  This one, however, gets under my skin.  Why?  What's the harm?

Well, first, my background is in evolutionary biology.  I care because it's a fundamental denial of a subject I've spent many years studying and in which I am passionately interested.  But I think it's more than that.  To me, the central problem is the determination with which certain creationists try to push their mythology into public schools, and these same people's hatred of anyone who tries to present a cogent case for the opposite viewpoint.  I am a high school biology teacher in a relatively liberal village in upstate New York, and I have gotten death threats because I am "twisting children's minds."  (This is a direct quote from a note that was left in my mailbox three years ago.)  I have been the target of harrassing letters, and even once had someone show up at my doorstep and tell me that I was going to be meeting god face-to-face "soon," and boy, then I'd be one sorry so-and-so.  (I'm paraphrasing.)  I doubt that any refusal by our physics teacher to teach astrology, or by our chemistry teacher to teach alchemy, would elicit such a strong reaction.

So the homeopaths and the crystal-energy people are wrong, but at the same time, they're not going around threatening people who don't agree with them.  While I'm not exactly expecting that I'm one day going to be assassinated by some nutjob creationist who happens to own a gun, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility -- given what's already happened.

I don't, however, think that somehow the Creation Museum should be forced to close.  The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, and if these folks believe that there are no more dinosaurs because they missed getting on the ark, then that's certainly their right.  (I do wonder how the creationists explain how polar bears, kangaroos, and penguins showed up in Palestine in time to get on the ark, however, and how afterwards they got back to the Arctic, Australia, and the Antarctic, respectively.  But I digress.)   Everyone is entitled to believe whatever (s)he wants to, even if it is contradicted by a veritable Mount Everest of evidence.

It does, however, sadden me to see the number of children who are being indoctrinated to believe that this twaddle is on a par with peer-reviewed science.  There is little that anyone can do about it -- parents will of course teach their children whatever version of reality they themselves believe to be true.  But I don't have to be happy about it.

A friend of mine once sent me a bumper sticker that said, "We have the fossils. We win."  If only it were that simple.