Why is politics the only field in which you can admit to hearing voices and people don't immediately assume you've lost your mind?
Thus far, we've had Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who've told cheering crowds that god wanted them to pursue the presidency. The latest presumptive Joan of Arc is Herman Cain, who told a meeting of Young Republicans in Atlanta yesterday that god had told him personally to run for president, and in fact had compared him to Moses.
"That's when I prayed and prayed and prayed," Cain told the assembled crowd. "I'm a man of faith — I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I've ever done before in my life. And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. 'You've got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'"
And instead of backing away slowly, keeping their eyes on Cain the entire time, which is what I would have done, the Young Republicans ate it up. Apparently the comment got a wild round of applause.
Myself, I think that whether or not you believe in god, you should always be suspicious of people who claim that god is speaking to them. For one thing, I'm hard pressed to see how you'd figure out if it was really god, or if you were just having a psychotic break. For another, don't you find it a little curious that god has given his personal stamp of approval to Perry, Bachmann, and Cain? Is god having a hard time making up his mind? Or does he just like tight races?
And, of course, you have the broader problem that the cheering Christians who are thrilled to find out that god is involved in the 2012 presidential election are the same ones who are shocked and horrified to hear that many Muslim terrorists do what they do because they claim that "Allah told them to." Ridiculous, they say. There is no Allah, you people are loons. On the other hand, when Oral Roberts said in 1987 that god had told him that if he didn't raise eight million dollars in three months, god would "call him home," the money poured in.
He raised nine million dollars in three months. And didn't die. Hallelujah!
I find the whole thing baffling and not a little troubling. Being an atheist, I would, of course. But even if you're religious, isn't it a little worrisome? I would think that the long, nasty history of people doing horrible things while claiming that god had directed their actions would scare even the most devout. Then, how do you know which, if any, of the three current candidates are telling the truth, so you know which one god wants you to vote for? In the end, most people probably will do their own version of asking what god wants them to do, and cast their votes for the one whose politics most closely align with their own -- resulting in the rather amusing conjecture that god has an opinion on whether we should dismantle the Department of Education, Department of Commerce, and one other department that will come to me in a minute.
So, anyway, that's the news from the American political scene, which once again is providing ample fodder for eye-rolling. But I think I'll wrap this up, because I think god is telling me that the coffee is ready.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Allahu akbar! Or maybe not.
Once again, the fervently religious of our world have shown themselves capable of following the Red Queen's dictum of holding several contradictory thoughts in their heads at once. In this case, it's Egyptian Muslims, who have sentenced a man to three years in jail at hard labor for "criticizing Islam." (See the news story if you're interested in reading more about this travesty.)
The radical Muslim element in Egypt has been quick to speak out against the sentence. It was too lenient, they say -- the man should have been executed.
It's a little perplexing how these folks, and their spiritual brethren the Fundamentalist Christians, can't see the contradiction implicit in their stance. On the one hand, they are continuously chanting, singing, and shouting from the rooftops about how God is Great and All-Powerful and Omnipotent and Omniscient and Omnipresent and Omni-Various-Other-Stuff, and on the other hand they are so terrified that a brief passage written by a guy on Facebook will destroy Allah's kingdom on earth that they are ready to hang him from the nearest flagpole.
The same was true of the witch-hunters in the 17th century, who seemed to believe that the unshakable, self-evident, rock-solid truth of god's word was under serious threat from illiterate, eccentric little old ladies.
Come on, people. You can't have it both ways. Either god is powerful, or he's not. If he's powerful, you have no reason to persecute people for bad-mouthing him; presumably god is capable of handling his own battles, and doesn't need patriarchal, humorless, puritanical bastards like the Shari'a courts to deal with his enemies. If he's not so powerful -- if, in fact, his revealed truth could be demolished by a couple of paragraphs of mild criticism -- then I have to wonder why you think he's worthy of worship. Either way, both can't be true simultaneously.
Oh, wait, perhaps there's a third option? Maybe all of this stuff was made up by power-hungry patriarchs to keep the power structure intact, the money flowing in, and the women in line, and in actuality there is no god! Gotta wonder.
In any case, you also have to wonder why so few people are willing to stand up and say this. Lots of folks are willing to address the human rights aspects (torturing and executing people isn't nice) but very few people are willing to deal with the larger issue, which is that these people are morally bankrupt. A religion, or a system of ethics (so to speak), which is based upon coercion (mental or physical), is simply an excuse for the powerful to remain powerful. It isn't true, it isn't worthy of respect, and it isn't a reflection of the divine. It is simply an embodiment of all that is bad about human nature -- the desire to dominate solely because we're in a position where we can.
It's the same with a lot of the issues between the Christians and politicians these days, isn't it? You hear that heterosexual marriage is "under attack" by people who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. The ranting you hear from the pulpits seems to claim that if gay marriage is legalized, then all of these straight people will suddenly run right out and tie the knot with someone of the same sex, and will open the door for heaven knows what. In a year or two you'd probably have people marrying various marine invertebrates. You know, if you think that sexual preference is really that fluid, you have to question why your god would have made it that way. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that if your worldview is based upon fear, then any amount of rationality won't get in the way of your adopting moronic stances to shore up your beliefs.
Of course, some people believe that there's god's evil twin, Satan or Lucifer or whatever, who is actively trying to corrupt people by using others to spread wrong belief. Even if you think that's true, however, isn't it still supposedly the case that god is stronger than Satan, and correct beliefs are inherently more attractive and virtuous than incorrect ones? If so, then once again, what the hell are you so worried about?
So once more, we have the devoutly religious of the world adopting a stance which is so patently ridiculous that if it were fiction, no one would believe it was plausible; and most of the world's political leaders doing nothing but tsk-tsking in their direction for "not being nice." It would be wonderful if one, just one, of them would stand up and say, "You know what, Egyptian leaders? We are no longer in the Middle Ages. We stopped burning witches three hundred years ago. That's because doing that sort of thing was based upon stupid, backward superstition. Grow up, you idiotic bastards, and join the 21st century. If criticism is really such a threat to your beliefs, it probably means that your beliefs are simply wrong."
But no one will, of course.
The radical Muslim element in Egypt has been quick to speak out against the sentence. It was too lenient, they say -- the man should have been executed.
It's a little perplexing how these folks, and their spiritual brethren the Fundamentalist Christians, can't see the contradiction implicit in their stance. On the one hand, they are continuously chanting, singing, and shouting from the rooftops about how God is Great and All-Powerful and Omnipotent and Omniscient and Omnipresent and Omni-Various-Other-Stuff, and on the other hand they are so terrified that a brief passage written by a guy on Facebook will destroy Allah's kingdom on earth that they are ready to hang him from the nearest flagpole.
The same was true of the witch-hunters in the 17th century, who seemed to believe that the unshakable, self-evident, rock-solid truth of god's word was under serious threat from illiterate, eccentric little old ladies.
Come on, people. You can't have it both ways. Either god is powerful, or he's not. If he's powerful, you have no reason to persecute people for bad-mouthing him; presumably god is capable of handling his own battles, and doesn't need patriarchal, humorless, puritanical bastards like the Shari'a courts to deal with his enemies. If he's not so powerful -- if, in fact, his revealed truth could be demolished by a couple of paragraphs of mild criticism -- then I have to wonder why you think he's worthy of worship. Either way, both can't be true simultaneously.
Oh, wait, perhaps there's a third option? Maybe all of this stuff was made up by power-hungry patriarchs to keep the power structure intact, the money flowing in, and the women in line, and in actuality there is no god! Gotta wonder.
In any case, you also have to wonder why so few people are willing to stand up and say this. Lots of folks are willing to address the human rights aspects (torturing and executing people isn't nice) but very few people are willing to deal with the larger issue, which is that these people are morally bankrupt. A religion, or a system of ethics (so to speak), which is based upon coercion (mental or physical), is simply an excuse for the powerful to remain powerful. It isn't true, it isn't worthy of respect, and it isn't a reflection of the divine. It is simply an embodiment of all that is bad about human nature -- the desire to dominate solely because we're in a position where we can.
It's the same with a lot of the issues between the Christians and politicians these days, isn't it? You hear that heterosexual marriage is "under attack" by people who are in favor of legalizing gay marriage. The ranting you hear from the pulpits seems to claim that if gay marriage is legalized, then all of these straight people will suddenly run right out and tie the knot with someone of the same sex, and will open the door for heaven knows what. In a year or two you'd probably have people marrying various marine invertebrates. You know, if you think that sexual preference is really that fluid, you have to question why your god would have made it that way. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that if your worldview is based upon fear, then any amount of rationality won't get in the way of your adopting moronic stances to shore up your beliefs.
Of course, some people believe that there's god's evil twin, Satan or Lucifer or whatever, who is actively trying to corrupt people by using others to spread wrong belief. Even if you think that's true, however, isn't it still supposedly the case that god is stronger than Satan, and correct beliefs are inherently more attractive and virtuous than incorrect ones? If so, then once again, what the hell are you so worried about?
So once more, we have the devoutly religious of the world adopting a stance which is so patently ridiculous that if it were fiction, no one would believe it was plausible; and most of the world's political leaders doing nothing but tsk-tsking in their direction for "not being nice." It would be wonderful if one, just one, of them would stand up and say, "You know what, Egyptian leaders? We are no longer in the Middle Ages. We stopped burning witches three hundred years ago. That's because doing that sort of thing was based upon stupid, backward superstition. Grow up, you idiotic bastards, and join the 21st century. If criticism is really such a threat to your beliefs, it probably means that your beliefs are simply wrong."
But no one will, of course.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The dial goes all the way to eleven
Well, it's finally 11/11. Happy Veterans' Day to all of you who have served your country, which I think is a much better way to mark the day than to succumb to all of the numerological hoopla that is happening regarding the confluence of ones in today's date.
I just read, for example, that the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities is closing the Pyramids today, ostensibly because of a need for "maintenance following a busy period during Muslim holidays." The real reason, as confirmed by Atef Abu Zahab, the director of the Department of Pharaonic Archeology and a member of the Council, was that they wanted to avoid any "strange rituals that were going to be held within the walls of the pyramid on November 11, 2011."
Apparently, the internet has been full of people making plans to hold ceremonial dances, meditation sessions, and ritual casting of magic spells in a variety of so-called sacred places, such as the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor, and so on. Egypt, being a country not known for its quick acceptance of alternative belief systems, basically said, "Not on our watch, buddy." But if you happens to live near a site that has any woo-woo significance, you might want to keep an eye out today -- especially as the clock approaches 11:11 AM.
I've never understood why people go for numerology. Whenever there's any unusual confluence of numbers in (for example) a date, there are news articles that babble about how amazing it is, and how long it's been since a similar arrangement has happened, and so on, conveniently neglecting the fact that my last birthday (10/26/2011) is also a completely unique number string -- that particular set of numbers will never occur in that order in a date again! To which most people, understandably, respond, *yawn*.
But when there's some kind of apparent pattern, it makes everyone think that there's some sort of significance. Of course, this conveniently ignores that the calendar is a human construct, and quite arbitrary in many ways. For example, November 2, 2011 was a palindromic date (11/02/2011) - but only if you live in the US. Other countries, which put the day first and the month second, already had their Palindrome Day on February 11. Does the universe take that sort of thing into account when it schedules its Cosmic Convergences? As far as 11/11/11 at 11:11 AM, we have to ask: what time zone? Will the amazing events that are supposed to be in the offing going to be operating on Eastern Standard Time? I hope so, because if it's Greenwich Mean Time, 11:11 already passed, and as far as I can tell nothing interesting happened.
So, anyway, my general thought is that playing these kind of number games is a little silly, even if unsurprising. Human brains are wired to detect patterns; and the result is that sometimes we will attribute meaning to patterns that are actually meaningless coincidences. Harmless, actually, unless you were planning on visiting the Pyramids today.
I just read, for example, that the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities is closing the Pyramids today, ostensibly because of a need for "maintenance following a busy period during Muslim holidays." The real reason, as confirmed by Atef Abu Zahab, the director of the Department of Pharaonic Archeology and a member of the Council, was that they wanted to avoid any "strange rituals that were going to be held within the walls of the pyramid on November 11, 2011."
Apparently, the internet has been full of people making plans to hold ceremonial dances, meditation sessions, and ritual casting of magic spells in a variety of so-called sacred places, such as the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor, and so on. Egypt, being a country not known for its quick acceptance of alternative belief systems, basically said, "Not on our watch, buddy." But if you happens to live near a site that has any woo-woo significance, you might want to keep an eye out today -- especially as the clock approaches 11:11 AM.
I've never understood why people go for numerology. Whenever there's any unusual confluence of numbers in (for example) a date, there are news articles that babble about how amazing it is, and how long it's been since a similar arrangement has happened, and so on, conveniently neglecting the fact that my last birthday (10/26/2011) is also a completely unique number string -- that particular set of numbers will never occur in that order in a date again! To which most people, understandably, respond, *yawn*.
But when there's some kind of apparent pattern, it makes everyone think that there's some sort of significance. Of course, this conveniently ignores that the calendar is a human construct, and quite arbitrary in many ways. For example, November 2, 2011 was a palindromic date (11/02/2011) - but only if you live in the US. Other countries, which put the day first and the month second, already had their Palindrome Day on February 11. Does the universe take that sort of thing into account when it schedules its Cosmic Convergences? As far as 11/11/11 at 11:11 AM, we have to ask: what time zone? Will the amazing events that are supposed to be in the offing going to be operating on Eastern Standard Time? I hope so, because if it's Greenwich Mean Time, 11:11 already passed, and as far as I can tell nothing interesting happened.
So, anyway, my general thought is that playing these kind of number games is a little silly, even if unsurprising. Human brains are wired to detect patterns; and the result is that sometimes we will attribute meaning to patterns that are actually meaningless coincidences. Harmless, actually, unless you were planning on visiting the Pyramids today.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Tut tut
Most of you are probably familiar with the famous "King Tut's Curse."
The story goes that when British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the hitherto undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamen, the "Boy King" of Egypt during the 18th dynasty, it unleashed a curse on the men who had desecrated it -- resulting in the deaths of (by some claims) twenty of the expedition members.
Tutankhamen was the son of the famous "Heretic King" Akhenaten, and died at the age of eighteen in 1341 BCE. Some archaeologist speculate that he was murdered, but current forensic anthropology seems to indicate that he died of a combination of malaria and complications from a badly broken leg.
Be that as it may, shortly after Tut's tomb was opened, people associated with the expedition began to die. The first was Lord Carnarvon, who had funded Carter's expedition, who cut himself badly while shaving and died shortly thereafter of sepsis from an infection. While it's easy enough to explain a death from infection in Egypt prior to the advent of modern antibiotics, the deaths continued after the members of the expedition returned to London:
Still, that leaves some decidedly odd deaths to explain. And now historian Mark Benyon thinks he's figured out how to explain them.
In his soon-to-be-released book, London's Curse: Murder Black Magic, and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End (available for pre-order here), Benyon lays the deaths of Carter's associates in London -- especially Bethell, Westbury, Herbert, and Budge, all of which were deaths by foul play -- at the feet of none other than Aleister Crowley.
Crowley, the self-proclaimed "Wickedest Man on Earth," was a sex-obsessed heroin addict who had founded a society called "Thelema." Thelema's motto was "Do what thou wilt," which narrowly edged out Crowley's second favorite, which was "Screw anything or anyone that will hold still long enough." His rituals were notorious all over London for drunken debauchery, and few doubted then (and fewer doubt now) that there was any activity so depraved that Crowley wouldn't happily indulge in it.
One of Crowley's obsessions was Jack the Ripper. He believed that the Ripper murders had been accomplished through occult means, and frequently was heard to speak of Jack the Ripper with reverence. Benyon believes that when Crowley heard about Howard Carter's discoveries, he was outraged -- many of Thelema's rituals and beliefs were derived from Egyptian mythology -- and he came up with the idea of a series of copycat murders to get even with the men who had (in his mind) desecrated Tutankhamen's tomb.
It's an interesting hypothesis. Surely all of the expedition members knew of Crowley -- almost everyone in London at the time did -- and at least one (Budge) was an occultist who ran in the same circles as Crowley. That Crowley was capable of such a thing is hardly to be questioned. Whether Benyon has proved the case or not remains to be seen, but even at first glance it certainly makes better sense than the Pharaoh's Curse malarkey. I will definitely read Benyon's book with interest when it comes out, and may have more to say about it after that -- and until then, we'll just file this under "Another woo-woo claim plausibly explained by logic and rationality."
The story goes that when British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the hitherto undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamen, the "Boy King" of Egypt during the 18th dynasty, it unleashed a curse on the men who had desecrated it -- resulting in the deaths of (by some claims) twenty of the expedition members.
Tutankhamen was the son of the famous "Heretic King" Akhenaten, and died at the age of eighteen in 1341 BCE. Some archaeologist speculate that he was murdered, but current forensic anthropology seems to indicate that he died of a combination of malaria and complications from a badly broken leg.
Be that as it may, shortly after Tut's tomb was opened, people associated with the expedition began to die. The first was Lord Carnarvon, who had funded Carter's expedition, who cut himself badly while shaving and died shortly thereafter of sepsis from an infection. While it's easy enough to explain a death from infection in Egypt prior to the advent of modern antibiotics, the deaths continued after the members of the expedition returned to London:
- Richard Bethell, Carter's personal secretary, was found smothered in a Mayfair club.
- Bethell's father, Lord Westbury, fell to his death from his seventh-floor flat -- where he had kept artifacts from the tomb his son had given him.
- Aubrey Herbert, half-brother of the first victim Lord Carnarvon, died in a London hospital "of mysterious symptoms."
- Ernest Wallis Budge, of the British Museum, was found dead in his home shortly after arranging for the first public show of King Tut's sarcophagus.
Still, that leaves some decidedly odd deaths to explain. And now historian Mark Benyon thinks he's figured out how to explain them.
In his soon-to-be-released book, London's Curse: Murder Black Magic, and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End (available for pre-order here), Benyon lays the deaths of Carter's associates in London -- especially Bethell, Westbury, Herbert, and Budge, all of which were deaths by foul play -- at the feet of none other than Aleister Crowley.
Crowley, the self-proclaimed "Wickedest Man on Earth," was a sex-obsessed heroin addict who had founded a society called "Thelema." Thelema's motto was "Do what thou wilt," which narrowly edged out Crowley's second favorite, which was "Screw anything or anyone that will hold still long enough." His rituals were notorious all over London for drunken debauchery, and few doubted then (and fewer doubt now) that there was any activity so depraved that Crowley wouldn't happily indulge in it.
One of Crowley's obsessions was Jack the Ripper. He believed that the Ripper murders had been accomplished through occult means, and frequently was heard to speak of Jack the Ripper with reverence. Benyon believes that when Crowley heard about Howard Carter's discoveries, he was outraged -- many of Thelema's rituals and beliefs were derived from Egyptian mythology -- and he came up with the idea of a series of copycat murders to get even with the men who had (in his mind) desecrated Tutankhamen's tomb.
It's an interesting hypothesis. Surely all of the expedition members knew of Crowley -- almost everyone in London at the time did -- and at least one (Budge) was an occultist who ran in the same circles as Crowley. That Crowley was capable of such a thing is hardly to be questioned. Whether Benyon has proved the case or not remains to be seen, but even at first glance it certainly makes better sense than the Pharaoh's Curse malarkey. I will definitely read Benyon's book with interest when it comes out, and may have more to say about it after that -- and until then, we'll just file this under "Another woo-woo claim plausibly explained by logic and rationality."
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Coming soon to a catastrophe near you
As part of my ongoing inquiry into Reasons To Spend Your Life Quivering In Mortal Fear, today's topic is: Death Meteorites.
Astronomers have recently generated some serious buzz on this topic by reporting that the euphoniously-named asteroid 2005YU55 was going to be making a near pass, which it did without incident last night. At its closest approach, the 400-meter-wide block of rock was 324,600 km from Earth, and traveling at 29,000 mph -- which is pretty impressive. And even if 324,600 km seems like a long way away, in astronomical terms it's a close enough shave that there have been several fairly hysterical articles recently describing the havoc that could ensue if one of these things hit the earth.
To be sure, the Earth does get hit regularly. On June 30, 1908, a stony meteorite estimated to be only 50 meters in diameter hit the earth in the Tunguska region of Siberia, creating a tremendous fireball and radially flattening trees for miles around the impact site; it registered on seismographs in London. Artist's renditions of the event, reconstructed from eyewitness accounts, show a brilliant streak across the sky ending in an enormous explosion that for a moment outshone the sun. It was fortunate that it landed in a fairly unpopulated area, and not in a city or even in the ocean, where it would have raised a tsunami that would have dwarfed the December 2007 Indonesian catastrophe.
A 1.2 kilometer wide rock slammed into the earth around 15,000 years ago, leaving a large pockmark in the Arizona desert aptly named Meteor Crater. Given that this is already high desert, it's a little hard to imagine how the area could be any more desolate than it already is, but a collision of this scale must have devastated thousands of square miles.
This, of course, is nowhere near the 10 to 20 kilometer wide meteor that left Chicxulub Crater north of the Yucatan, ending the Cretaceous Era with a (literal) bang and leaving a layer of dust to mark the event in sedimentary rocks worldwide. The devastation that caused is of an unimaginable scale, to me at least, but once again artists have attempted to paint the event as it might have appeared (from a safe distance). This seems to have been the final death knell of the majority of dinosaur clades, with the exception of the one that includes birds. (Yes, birds are dinosaurs. That point is literally beyond question now, since proteins from Tyrannosaurus rex fossils have been successfully sequenced and shown to be unequivocally related to bird proteins. Whether they tasted like chicken remains to be seen, but evidence from bone homology has pointed toward a relationship between birds and deinonychid dinosaurs for years; this is just the final nail. Give that some thought next time you're feeding the chickadees.)
Anyhow, the open question is how soon will another collision will occur, and how big the collision will be. One the size of Tunguska apparently strikes once every century or so. Meteor Crater sized rocks are less frequent, on the order of one every 10,000 years (meaning that we're overdue, not that these events work on any sort of predictable timetable). Era-ending rocks the size of the one that created Chicxulub strike only once every 100 million years.
All of this, however, is only talking about average strike intervals, and you know the problem with averages; if you have one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other encased in ice, on the average you're comfortable. Averages really tell you nothing about actualities, and the reality is that a meteor could strike downtown Detroit tomorrow (undoubtedly doing millions of dollars' worth of improvements), or we might not have one strike for another million years. No way to tell. How's that for a cheery thought?
And to make your day even happier, two questions remain: (1) Will we see a potentially devastating meteor coming? and (2) if we do see it, will we be able to do anything to deflect or destroy it? The answer seems to be no to both. Given that the asteroid that played chicken with the Earth last night is 400 meters wide, and the one that struck Tunguska was only 50 meters wide, you can see that it doesn't take a particularly huge piece of rock to wreak havoc. It's entirely possible that a Tunguska-sized meteor would be missed until it was only days away from striking, and maybe not even then. Given that kind of lead time, there's no way we could send any kind of rocket up to meet it, deflect it, blow it up, whatever. With a bigger rock, we'd see it sooner, and might have more time to react, but the problem is that in that case it's... a bigger rock. Even if we successfully shattered it, the fragments would still pose a hazard, and they would continue on largely the same course as the original rock had (Newton's First Law being strictly enforced in most jurisdictions). Deflecting it using a retrorocket-like device is at least a possibility, but I wonder if we're technologically capable of doing such a thing.
In any case, it's not likely, certainly not soon. Astronomers have most of the near-earth asteroids of any size catalogued, their trajectories predicted for several centuries hence, and they have assured us that no collisions are imminent. There's really no reason to lose any sleep over the fact that there might well be a Cosmic Death Asteroid Hurtling Toward Your Village, and There's Nothing You Or Anyone Else Can Do To Stop It.
Have a nice day.
Astronomers have recently generated some serious buzz on this topic by reporting that the euphoniously-named asteroid 2005YU55 was going to be making a near pass, which it did without incident last night. At its closest approach, the 400-meter-wide block of rock was 324,600 km from Earth, and traveling at 29,000 mph -- which is pretty impressive. And even if 324,600 km seems like a long way away, in astronomical terms it's a close enough shave that there have been several fairly hysterical articles recently describing the havoc that could ensue if one of these things hit the earth.
To be sure, the Earth does get hit regularly. On June 30, 1908, a stony meteorite estimated to be only 50 meters in diameter hit the earth in the Tunguska region of Siberia, creating a tremendous fireball and radially flattening trees for miles around the impact site; it registered on seismographs in London. Artist's renditions of the event, reconstructed from eyewitness accounts, show a brilliant streak across the sky ending in an enormous explosion that for a moment outshone the sun. It was fortunate that it landed in a fairly unpopulated area, and not in a city or even in the ocean, where it would have raised a tsunami that would have dwarfed the December 2007 Indonesian catastrophe.
A 1.2 kilometer wide rock slammed into the earth around 15,000 years ago, leaving a large pockmark in the Arizona desert aptly named Meteor Crater. Given that this is already high desert, it's a little hard to imagine how the area could be any more desolate than it already is, but a collision of this scale must have devastated thousands of square miles.
This, of course, is nowhere near the 10 to 20 kilometer wide meteor that left Chicxulub Crater north of the Yucatan, ending the Cretaceous Era with a (literal) bang and leaving a layer of dust to mark the event in sedimentary rocks worldwide. The devastation that caused is of an unimaginable scale, to me at least, but once again artists have attempted to paint the event as it might have appeared (from a safe distance). This seems to have been the final death knell of the majority of dinosaur clades, with the exception of the one that includes birds. (Yes, birds are dinosaurs. That point is literally beyond question now, since proteins from Tyrannosaurus rex fossils have been successfully sequenced and shown to be unequivocally related to bird proteins. Whether they tasted like chicken remains to be seen, but evidence from bone homology has pointed toward a relationship between birds and deinonychid dinosaurs for years; this is just the final nail. Give that some thought next time you're feeding the chickadees.)
Anyhow, the open question is how soon will another collision will occur, and how big the collision will be. One the size of Tunguska apparently strikes once every century or so. Meteor Crater sized rocks are less frequent, on the order of one every 10,000 years (meaning that we're overdue, not that these events work on any sort of predictable timetable). Era-ending rocks the size of the one that created Chicxulub strike only once every 100 million years.
All of this, however, is only talking about average strike intervals, and you know the problem with averages; if you have one foot in a pot of boiling water and the other encased in ice, on the average you're comfortable. Averages really tell you nothing about actualities, and the reality is that a meteor could strike downtown Detroit tomorrow (undoubtedly doing millions of dollars' worth of improvements), or we might not have one strike for another million years. No way to tell. How's that for a cheery thought?
And to make your day even happier, two questions remain: (1) Will we see a potentially devastating meteor coming? and (2) if we do see it, will we be able to do anything to deflect or destroy it? The answer seems to be no to both. Given that the asteroid that played chicken with the Earth last night is 400 meters wide, and the one that struck Tunguska was only 50 meters wide, you can see that it doesn't take a particularly huge piece of rock to wreak havoc. It's entirely possible that a Tunguska-sized meteor would be missed until it was only days away from striking, and maybe not even then. Given that kind of lead time, there's no way we could send any kind of rocket up to meet it, deflect it, blow it up, whatever. With a bigger rock, we'd see it sooner, and might have more time to react, but the problem is that in that case it's... a bigger rock. Even if we successfully shattered it, the fragments would still pose a hazard, and they would continue on largely the same course as the original rock had (Newton's First Law being strictly enforced in most jurisdictions). Deflecting it using a retrorocket-like device is at least a possibility, but I wonder if we're technologically capable of doing such a thing.
In any case, it's not likely, certainly not soon. Astronomers have most of the near-earth asteroids of any size catalogued, their trajectories predicted for several centuries hence, and they have assured us that no collisions are imminent. There's really no reason to lose any sleep over the fact that there might well be a Cosmic Death Asteroid Hurtling Toward Your Village, and There's Nothing You Or Anyone Else Can Do To Stop It.
Have a nice day.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Full disclosure
So now, a bunch of conspiracy theorists calling themselves the Paradigm Research Group have presented the White House with a petition containing 17,000 signatures demanding that the USA come clean about its knowledge of aliens.
The petition said that its signatories were asking that the government "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."
Well, if I were a government official, and I received such a petition, I can tell you that my immediate response would have been: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I almost always have that reaction to people who think that X-Files: The Movie was a historical documentary. It doesn't help that the name of their organization includes the word "paradigm," which I've found almost always indicates that the people involved either (1) have a tenuous grasp on reality, or (2) are involved in educational research, which frequently (3) go together.
But I digress.
What's interesting is that the petition garnered 17,000 signatures. On their website, the PRG seems to feel that this is some kind of point in their favor, following the truth-by-consensus model - that the more people that believe something, the more likely it is to be correct. You'll hear creationists using the same sort of argument, as if the fact that they have successfully convinced a significant percentage of Americans with their specious fairy tales means anything other than that people can be awfully gullible at times. The PRG goes on and on about how the American people are demanding "full disclosure" -- in fact, there is a ticker on their homepage that says how long President Obama has gone without disclosing our contact with extraterrestrials.
And now the White House has responded.
Phil Larson, senior space policy and communications advisor to the president, sent the PRG a reply considerably more courteous than mine would have been:
If I'd been the president, I'd have just told my senior space advisor to ignore the petition and advise me about something else, such as reassuring me that the asteroid that's making a near pass of the Earth today is not, in fact, going to play a cosmic game of Whack-a-Mole with Baltimore. And then I'd tell him to pop the movie Contact in the DVD player, and get me a beer. That's the kind of space advisor I'd hire, if I was president.
The petition said that its signatories were asking that the government "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."
Well, if I were a government official, and I received such a petition, I can tell you that my immediate response would have been: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I almost always have that reaction to people who think that X-Files: The Movie was a historical documentary. It doesn't help that the name of their organization includes the word "paradigm," which I've found almost always indicates that the people involved either (1) have a tenuous grasp on reality, or (2) are involved in educational research, which frequently (3) go together.
But I digress.
What's interesting is that the petition garnered 17,000 signatures. On their website, the PRG seems to feel that this is some kind of point in their favor, following the truth-by-consensus model - that the more people that believe something, the more likely it is to be correct. You'll hear creationists using the same sort of argument, as if the fact that they have successfully convinced a significant percentage of Americans with their specious fairy tales means anything other than that people can be awfully gullible at times. The PRG goes on and on about how the American people are demanding "full disclosure" -- in fact, there is a ticker on their homepage that says how long President Obama has gone without disclosing our contact with extraterrestrials.
And now the White House has responded.
Phil Larson, senior space policy and communications advisor to the president, sent the PRG a reply considerably more courteous than mine would have been:
An AFP reporter who commented upon Larson's response wrote that this was a "blow to conspiracy theorists everywhere." My feeling is: not really. It's not like the "full disclosure" people are going to read this and go, "Oh. Okay, then," and find another hobby. That's not how conspiracy theorists operate. Denial by the government is what they expected. That a senior space advisor would respond at all means that he's hiding something. And of course, there's always the tactic of picking apart what he said, looking for hidden information: how do we know the distances involved, if we haven't been contacted? If there's no "credible evidence," might there not be incredible evidence? Ha! We knew something was going on!The US government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.
Many scientists and mathematicians have ... come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life. Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them -- especially any intelligent ones -- are extremely small, given the distances involved.
But that's all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
If I'd been the president, I'd have just told my senior space advisor to ignore the petition and advise me about something else, such as reassuring me that the asteroid that's making a near pass of the Earth today is not, in fact, going to play a cosmic game of Whack-a-Mole with Baltimore. And then I'd tell him to pop the movie Contact in the DVD player, and get me a beer. That's the kind of space advisor I'd hire, if I was president.
Monday, November 7, 2011
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:
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.
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.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.
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, 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.
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