Book Report of the Gods

Just when you thought it was safe to go into Barnes & Noble, now we have news that Erich von Däniken has released a new book.

Von Däniken, you may remember, is the bestselling author of Chariots of the Gods, Gold of the Gods, Signs of the Gods, The Return of the Gods, The Arrival of the Gods, The Miracles of the Gods, Twilight of the Gods, and Home Repair Tips of the Gods.

Okay, I made the last one up.  I doubt The Gods know anything much about home repair, given that most of the ancient temples I've seen are pretty much ruins, and very few have flush toilets.  You'd think, being The Gods and all, they'd have seen fit to equip their houses with a few simple amenities, but generally, they seem to have been content with the Large Chunks Of Rock Piled Up style of architecture.

In any case, the new release by von Däniken isn't exactly new, it's a revised edition of his earlier book Odyssey of the Gods.  However, given that we're talking von Däniken here, it probably doesn't matter.  It's not like he's notorious for new ideas, or anything.  In this particular book, von Däniken argues that the Greek gods were real, and were extraterrestrials.  However, you probably remember that this was basically what he argued about Ra, Osiris, Kuan Yin, Quetzalcoatl, Thor, Shiva, and virtually every other deity that humans have ever come up with.  So my general reaction was:  *yawn*

Until, that is, I read an interview with Philip Coppens, who has himself released a new book (The Ancient Alien Question) and was interviewed by Linda Moulton Howe about his ideas, which largely were inspired by von Däniken.  The interview is itself worth reading, because it's hilarious.  For one thing, Howe's questions are PRINTED ALL IN CAPS, and Coppens' answers aren't, so it sounds like the interview went like this:

Howe (shouting at the top of her lungs): SO, PHILIP, TELL US ABOUT YOUR NEW BOOK.

Coppens (meekly):  Well, Linda, it's about the idea that extraterrestrials...

Howe:  YOU GOT A LOT OF YOUR IDEAS FROM ERICH VON DANIKEN, DIDN'T YOU?

Coppens: ... actually, that's what I was just about to say to you, that Erich and I...

Howe:  YOU THINK THE GREEK GODS WERE ALL ALIENS, RIGHT?

Coppens:  ... there is considerable evidence that the deities worshiped in Ancient Greece were...

Howe:  LIKE ZEUS?  AND POSEIDON?  AND ALL OF THOSE OTHER GUYS?

Coppens:  ... yes, those are the ones.  We believe that they may have been...

Howe:  WELL, THAT'S VERY INTERESTING.  MY GUEST HAS BEEN PHILIP COPPENS.


The other thing that strikes me is that Coppens goes to great lengths to state (in between Howe's screaming at him) that he doesn't believe that Plato and Aristotle and so on were extraterrestrials; no, that would be ridiculous.  He believes that Zeus and Hera and all were extraterrestrials, and they were the ancestors of the Greeks, including Plato and Aristotle.  As proof of this conjecture, he points out that the royal lineages of many of the ancient Greek kingdoms lead back to some god or another, and when you look at the ancient Egyptian lineages, they do too.  And so, in fact, do the Celtic royal genealogies, and the Japanese ones!  

Well, q.e.d., as far as I can tell.  

You might be asking yourself at this juncture, what about the fact that each of these mythologies are different, and therefore mutually contradictory, and therefore presumably couldn't all be true simultaneously?  Well, neither Coppens nor von Däniken ever answers that directly, but they are clearly pointing at the idea that ancient humans saw these extraterrestrials in their ships, and the extraterrestrials accomplished a few things, namely:  (1) building lots of big stone monuments without running water; (2) convincing the humans that they were gods; and (3) having lots of sex with human women, thereby "improving" the pathetic human gene pool and giving rise to the Golden Age of Civilization.  Then the extraterrestrials took off, and haven't been back much since, not even to pay child support.  And the humans then told stories about their noble godlike alien ancestors, and human memory being what it is, they variously misremembered what they'd seen as a half-naked guy with a trident (Poseidon), a one-eyed giant who rides an eight-legged horse (Odin), or a giant feathered snake (Quetzalcoatl).  

You can see how that confusion could occur.

And based on this, we are supposed to buy that everything the archaeologists have said is wrong.  In Coppens' words:

I think the most important thing and what Erich would like everyone to take with them is that history as we know it is wrong! We have compressed way too much into an all-too-short timeline and also we have excluded so many things from our history books because we felt they were anomalous and we assumed they were made up, science fiction.

In fact, one of von Däniken's books is called History is Wrong, which is notable not only for the immense chutzpah evidenced in the title, but also for being the only book he ever wrote whose title doesn't mention The Gods.

Anyhow, that's our book report for the day.  Myself, I think I'm going to pass on the second edition of Odyssey of the Gods.  For one thing, I'm waiting for my copy of von Däniken's 2010 release Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials, which is due out in paperback soon.  For another, I'm more concerned about the impending attack by aliens from the planet Gootan, which you can read about here.  You'd think that if Zeus was real, he'd at least give some thought to protecting his progeny from angry Gootanians.  It's the least a parent can do.

Woo-woo news updates

There has been quite a flurry of activity of late here at Worldwide Wacko Watch.

First, we have a report from Hong Kong about a growing market for haunted apartments.

Apparently, there is a widespread superstition (certainly not limited to China) about living in places where violence has occurred.  In China, buildings like this are called hongza (from the Cantonese hong, meaning "calamity," and za, meaning "residence").  The housing market in Hong Kong has cooled significantly in the last few years, leaving investors looking for any way they can to make money.  So, the idea is to purchase hongza property at a discount (up to 20% in some cases) and then rent the apartments at full price to people who don't share the superstitions -- often foreigners.

This has led to advertisements such as the following:

For sale: Yuen Long apartment building.  36-year-old female secondary school teacher faced a marriage crisis, jumped off the building after sending a text message to her husband.  Call for price range.

Apparently, the belief is that hongza only lasts so long; the bad vibes eventually wear off.  So presumably, you could buy at a discount, rent it for a while to unsuspecting foreigners who don't mind being tormented by ghosts of falling secondary school teachers, and then sell the building once the hongza has gone away.

You have to wonder how long it takes.  Five years?  Ten?  Twenty?  Do the ghosts eventually get tired and move on to greener pastures?


If so, that's more than you can say for the Irish fairies, who apparently have a shelf life of over 4,000 years.

Just ask Sean Quinn.  Quinn, a businessman who was once Ireland's wealthiest citizen (with a net worth of eight billion dollars) is down to $15,000 in his bank account.  Most folks think that Quinn's downfall was due to speculation in doomed Anglo-Irish Bank shares, but Quinn's neighbor, pub owner Toirbhealach Lyons, begs to differ.

Quinn's problems, Lyons says, began when he was expanding a quarry owned by Quinn Concrete, and applied for (and got) permission to move a Megalithic monument called the Aughrim Wedge Tomb.  The tomb was moved, stone by stone, to Quinn's Slieve Russell Hotel.  That action, Lyons said, seriously pissed off the fairies, who responded by destroying Quinn's empire.

“I’m a big supporter of Sean Quinn because of what he has done for this area but that tomb should never have been moved,” Lyons, the owner of Molly Maguire’s Pub in Ballyconnell, told the Irish Independent.

One has to wonder if Quinn agrees, or if he agrees with his more prosaic neighbor, butcher Gerard Crowe, who told the Independent that Lyons' beliefs were "a load of auld rubbish."  And it also makes me wonder if Crowe should be a little more careful about labeling himself a non-believer, given what happened to Quinn.


On the topic of labeling, we will conclude today with Georgia factory worker Billy E. Hyatt, who was fired from the Pliant Corporation plant near Dalton for refusing to wear the Mark of the Beast on his shirt.

At least, that's his side of it.  The company has a long-standing tradition of having its workers each day wear stickers proclaiming how long it's been since the factory has had a lost-time accident.  As the number of days since the last accident got into the 600s, Hyatt began to worry.

When Hyatt approached a manager, telling him he wouldn't wear a sticker saying "666" because it would mean he would go to hell, the manager said that of course he wouldn't have to.  But when the day of the Festival of Satanic Worship and Workplace Safety arrived, company officials changed their minds -- and Hyatt was given a three-day suspension.  When Hyatt objected (loudly), he was fired.

Hyatt sued, claiming his religious beliefs were not being respected.

Okay, on the one hand, I can say: it was a sticker.  What was the big deal about letting the guy not have to wear the sticker for one day?  It seems to fall clearly into the "choose your battles" department.  On the other hand, to what extent are business owners required to "respect" the wacky beliefs of their employees?  If I told my principal that I belonged to the Church of the Sacred Chicken, and every Thursday was required by my religion to walk around with a live rooster on my head, would he be violating my rights by telling me I couldn't?  We have the (true) case of the Pastafarian in Austria who petitioned for years to have his drivers' license photo taken with a spaghetti strainer on his head -- and finally won.

All of which is well and good, and I know that the Pastafarians are a parody group (devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster), and he was just trying to make a point.  But really -- at what point does common sense and rationality prevail?

Evidently never.  Pliant Corporation is now in a legal battle, with a lawsuit pending that asks for damages and back pay for Hyatt, who was faced with a decision to "comply or abandon his religious beliefs."  I strongly suspect Hyatt will win.

Which leaves me with one final thought: what sort of rooster should I wear on my head?  I'm thinking Buff Orpington.  They're kind of stylish, and the tan color match my skin tone and hair color, don't you think?

Your verbal recognition system in love

Looking for a potential romantic interest, but maybe a little scared of making the wrong decision?  Have you been burned in the past by falling for someone who has turned out to be a poor match?

Fear no longer.  Science has stepped in to help.

It's been known for some time that the brain's chemistry changes profoundly when you fall in love.  Levels of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and oxytocin, make dramatic surges; the latter is sometimes called the "cuddle hormone" because it is released in large quantities when you kiss, snuggle, or have sex.  The whole thing seems to prime us for pair bonding.  But how do we know if our brain is fixating on the right person?

Allow me to introduce you to BrainDesire.  This site claims, by a simple test, to be able to tell you if the person you're considering is the right one for you.  The idea is that your brain's detection of emotional content in verbal information will change how that verbal information is perceived -- and measuring that perception can give an important clue as to how powerful the emotional content is.  In practice, what BrainDesire does is to flash the name of a potential partner at you, and then a group of letters.  Your task is to click the left arrow key if it's an English word, and the right arrow key if it's nonsense.

Intrigued, I took the test, using my wife's name.  I noticed that a lot of the words were ones associated with romance; "passion," "kiss," "love," "intimacy."  A few seemed random (like "shop" -- although that one elicits in me feelings of anxiety).  After clicking through about a hundred words and non-words, I got the following result:

At this moment in time, Carol hasn’t left a mark on your brain that is significant enough to be detected here and reported as an absolute intensity. It can however be compared with someone else’s mark on your brain, thereby offering you insight for choosing the right partner. For instance, the test could reveal that although Carol’s lasting mark on your brain is too mild for being reliably quantified yet, it is already double as intense as someone else’s mark on your brain.

So, I decided to compare my response from Carol's name to that from my ex-wife's.

Now, without going into unpleasant details that my reading public probably does not want to know in any case, my relationship with my ex-wife was not a good one.  It was, to put not too fine a point on it, sixteen years that I would be extremely reluctant to repeat.  So I did the test with the two names...

... and BrainDesire still couldn't detect a difference.

Me, I'm becoming skeptical.  Either my ability to tell the difference between English words and phonetic blobs like "psourghed" isn't what it should be, or else the test doesn't work on me.  Because if this thing can't tell the difference between two people, one of whom I am happily married to and the other of whom is a major contributory factor to my being on high blood pressure medication, then I think that the test is patent horse waste.

This, of course, is just my experience with it, and hardly qualifies as a rigorous scientific test.  And maybe I should have had a cup of coffee between trying to tell the difference between "passion" and "thnirks;" heaven knows that I need caffeine infusions to do anything even moderately useful in the morning.  But I think that if you want to figure out which of your two current romantic interests is The One, you're going to have to get the information a different way other than BrainDesire.  Given my results, it seems like tossing a coin might be an equally accurate way to proceed.

Do not adjust your set

One of the more interesting responses I got to yesterday's post was the following:

In arguing against Dinesh D'Souza's claims that physics suggests the existence of an afterlife, you bring up yet another thing that supports belief in God. That is the fine-tuning of the conditions of the universe to support life. You mentioned Martin Rees' book Just Six Numbers, about the way physical constants are set perfectly to make the universe hospitable.  Don't you find this at all suspicious?  To me this is one of the strongest proofs of God's existence -- that if any one of these constants was just a little different, we wouldn't be here.

I've heard this claim before.  It's called the Strong Anthropic Principle -- that the "fine-tuning" of the physical constants of the universe implies a Fine Tuner.  Far from finding this "suspicious," I simply respond that it's hardly surprising that we live in a universe that has hospitable conditions; without them we would never have come to be.  (This is called the Weak Anthropic Principle -- that human existence is contingent on benevolent values for a variety of physical constants, not the other way around.)

Think, for example, of going outside on a warm, June day, and a friend of yours asks, "Why is the weather perfectly comfortable for humans today?"  There are a variety of possible answers:

1)  Because god wants to be happy, so he made today's weather nice.
2)  Because a divine being fine-tuned the conditions on Earth to mostly create weather which humans will find congenial.
3)  Because if the conditions on Earth were outside of a reasonable range of temperatures and chemical compositions, life could never have arisen here.

These three answers correspond to the three most common responses to the same question writ large (Why does the universe have conditions that support life?):  (1) god as micromanager; (2) the Strong Anthropic Principle; and (3) the Weak Anthropic Principle.  I find it interesting that no one seems to find it very odd that the Earth has (mostly) human-friendly climates, and most people see no need to ascribe that to god's direct intervention -- while Christians with a scientific bent go gaga when they find out that if (for example) the amount of energy released by hydrogen fusion was 5% less, stars would not exist, and therefore neither would we.  The fact that there are many such initial conditions (Rees identifies six, but there are probably others) is seen as admitting only one possibility; god made the universe with us in mind.

Well, I'm not convinced.  There is no underlying reason that physicists have found for why the fine structure constant is equal to 1/137 -- yet.  The big deal Rees makes over the "six numbers" in the title is that they can't be derived from first principles; they seem arbitrary, empirically measured, to have no particular reason that they are what they are.  I wonder very much, however, if this is necessarily true.  It is entirely possible that all of the universal constants will turn out to be derivable, and therefore consistent with an overarching theory that simply hasn't been discovered yet.

However, my arguing from the standpoint of a Grand Unified Theory that may not exist is weak at best, and I'm not going to put too much weight on it.  To me, the only thing that is proven by the values of the universal constants is how dependent the universe's existence is on physical conditions I barely understand.  The Weak Anthropic Principle is fine by me; just as no one wonders why the weather is pleasanter on the Earth than on the surface of the sun, it's no great wonder why we live in a universe that has conditions congenial to the formation of matter, stars, complex compounds, and life.  If any one of those conditions didn't exist, we wouldn't be here to ask the question.

In any case, I highly recommend Rees' book.  It's well-written, and if not exactly an easy read, is at least approachable by the layperson.  And even if the deliberate fine-tuning of the Strong Anthropic Principle doesn't appeal to me, I am still in awe at the delicate sensitivity of matter and energy to the settings on dials we have just begun to understand.

Dinesh vs. the Giant Weasel God

This morning I came across an article describing a book called Life After Death: The Evidence.   When I saw that, I clicked on the link with considerably more eagerness than my pre-coffee state would normally allow.

It wasn't, honestly, that I was expecting anything like a fair and balanced (to borrow a phrase) treatment of the subject.  I doubt that anyone is really completely unbiased on the topic.  However, it wasn't until the end that I realized that the article, and the book, were written by conservative author and Christian apologist Dinesh D'Souza, whose views certainly don't represent the skepticism I would hope to find in writing that claims in its title to be evidence-based.

The main claims of D'Souza's arguments seem to be based upon near-death experiences.  He emphasizes the commonality between different people's accounts of near-death experiences, and discounts the claims of psychologist Susan Blackmore, who first put forth the hypothesis that the similarity of NDEs (such as the well-known "tunnel of white light") come from the effects of brain shutdown as the person dies.

Now, before I proceed, let me state outright that I don't know whether there is life after death or not.  To me, the jury is still out on that one, and frankly, I expect it still to be out until the point when I take that final leap into the dark myself.  At that point I will know, or not (because there will no longer be any "me" left to know anything).  NDEs are intriguing (as are stories about ghosts and hauntings and so on), but at this point, as evidence they strike me as pretty thin.  Still, it's an interesting idea, and should good evidence come my way, I would certainly be willing to reconsider my position -- as befits the attitude of any true skeptic.

After that, however, D'Souza jumps right into the kind of pseudoscientific blather that is so often used to give apparent support to tenuous theories. To wit:

For the Christian conception of life after death to be viable, there have to be realms beyond the physical universe that are quite literally outside space and time. This is what the Christian concept of "eternity" means. God is eternal and heaven is His eternal realm. But in Newtonian physics these concepts made no sense, because time was presumed to extend indefinitely into the past and the future, and space was presumed to stretch unendingly in all directions.

Today, however, you just have to wander into an introductory college science class to see how 21st-century physics has greatly widened our horizons. Today scientists routinely speak of hidden dimensions, multiple realms, and even multiple universes. What do we know about multiple universes? Not a lot, but we know that if they do exist they would have laws radically different from those in our universe.

One of the direct implications of the Big Bang is that not only did the physical universe have a beginning, but space and time also had a beginning. Space and time are properties of our universe. This means that in realms beyond our universe, if such realms exist, there might be no space and no time. Suddenly the Christian idea of eternity is rendered intelligible.

The first thing that is apparent to me from the preceding paragraphs is that D'Souza himself hasn't wandered into any introductory science classes himself lately.  To pick out only the most egregiously false statements from this passage:

• Newtonian physics has nothing in particular to say about god one way or the other.  It doesn't claim that time or space was/is unending, it simply describes how objects in this space move and interact.

• The "hidden dimensions" he refers to probably come from the concepts of string theory, which is based in mathematics of (at my last reading) up to eleven spatial dimensions.  Most string theorists believe that all but three of those spatial dimensions are "curled up" into a space far smaller than the volume of an atom; it's hard to see what those submicroscopic dimensions could affect on the macroscopic scale, far less what bearing they might have on life after death.

• Ditto the "multiple universes."  Both string theory and the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics (which he seems to be referencing) are as yet unsupported by experimental evidence.  Plus, his final statement, that multiple universes, if they exist, are known to have radically different laws, is simply false.  The fact is, we neither know if multiple universes exist, nor if they exist, what kinds of physical laws they might have.  The book Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees explores the idea of what the universe would be like if the physical constants that shape it (such as the strength of gravity) were different.  But given that we don't know why the current universe has its constants set the way they are, it's hard to draw any conclusions about the likelihood of other universes having other laws.  And once again, I'm hard pressed to see what relevance it would have to an afterlife, in any case.

Last, he does a good bit of atheist-bashing, implying that atheists are either blundering about with blinders on, ignoring the "preponderance of evidence," or else are engaging in wishful thinking because they're afraid of being held accountable in the next life for their own misdeeds.  In his words:

I began by leveling the playing field between atheists and believers.  Sure, the believer hasn't been to the other side or questioned any dead people, but the atheist hasn't either.  So what information does the atheist have that the believer doesn't?  None.  The absence of proof is not proof of absence, so the atheist's denial of life after death, like the believer's affirmation of it, is ultimately a faith-based position.

Naturally, I take exception to this stance.  The only "faith-based" part of my own thinking is that I usually try to rely on hard evidence before adopting a stance one way or another; my "faith," if you can call it that, is that reasoning and evidence are the best way to understand the universe.  And while he is correct that "absence of proof is not proof of absence," that well-worn statement becomes a little specious when you apply it to particular situations. Let's try:

• I believe that Bigfoot exists; you don't.  Because belief and disbelief are equivalent, "faith-based" positions, it's up to you to prove to me that Bigfoot doesn't exist.

• There are thousands of first-hand accounts of UFOs, which amounts to a preponderance of evidence. If you can't prove that these people are lying, or deluded, UFOs exist.

And so on.  To me, whether belief and disbelief are equivalent depends entirely on what you're expecting me to believe in.  If you want me to believe that there is a Giant Weasel God who lives at the top of Mt. St. Helens and that He was directly responsible for the 1980 volcanic eruption, then I think that the burden of proof is on you.  On the other hand, if I disbelieve in the existence of the sun, then it's beholden upon me to find evidence to support my relatively non-intuitive viewpoint.  As always, Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.

Despite my criticisms of D'Souza's claims, no one would be more thrilled than me if there really was hard evidence of an afterlife.  I'm not really all that excited about the concept of Ceasing To Be.  However, to quote Carl Sagan, "It is far better to grasp the universe as it is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying or reassuring."

Weekend wrap-up

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're keeping an eye on a trio of developing stories.

First, from Peru, we have a report that anthropologist Renato Dávila Riquelme has discovered the skeleton of a twenty-inch-tall "mysterious being" whose "odd, triangular skull is nearly as long as it is."  Here's a photograph of the skull (photo courtesy of Peruvian news agency RPP):

Dávila Riquelme isn't talking, but RPP has interviewed several anonymous Spanish and Russian scientists, who have identified the skull as having belonged to an alien:

It has a non-human appearance because the head is triangular and big, almost the same size as the body. At first we believed it to be a child's body until... doctors came and confirmed that, yes, it's an extraterrestrial being.

Because, obviously, doctors have a great deal of experience with extraterrestrials, and are qualified to identify an alien skull when they see one.

Me, I'm not so sure.  Given the range of peculiar birth defects out there, I'm banking on it belonging to a child with a severe skeletal abnormality, who died very young.  Tragic, but not evidence of spaceships.


All of which will come as a grave disappointment to a Ukranian man who appeared at city hall in Odessa, dressed up as Darth Vader and demanding a plot of land on which he could park his spaceship. 

"I am Darth Vader," he told three guards, who looked at him as if he had lost his mind, which given the circumstances was probably pretty accurate.  "I heard that land is being carved up in the city of Odessa, and that many deputies, city administration, and the mayor have joined the Dark Side.  I have come for my parcel of land for the spaceship."

Lord Vader's appearance seems to have been triggered by Odessa mayor Eduard Hurvits' controversial decision to offer plots of land in the area to citizens of Odessa for free as long as they agree to build houses.  Evidently the policy created a Strong Disturbance In The Force, and Lord Vader had no choice but to come to Earth to kick ass, requiring him to find a place to park his space shuttle.

Odessa City Hall spokesperson Anna Osipchuk was not amused.  "We are not on the Dark Side," Osipchuk said.  "There are only Princess Leias here."  Which is almost as baffling a statement as Lord Vader's was.  Maybe she was referring to the peculiar hairstyles favored by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko:

Which, to my eye, is still better than the Earmuff Braids worn by Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie.

Our last story will undoubtedly cheer up Lord Vader after his being rebuffed in the Ukraine.  Scientists at CERN have reaffirmed the findings from earlier this year, that neutrinos appear to be capable of traveling faster than the speed of light.  Scientists are still being cautious, however, as well they should be.  Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, said:

A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication [for] physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny.  The experiment OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus), thanks to a specially adapted CERN beam, has made an important test of consistency of its result. The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although the final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world.

At this point, I'm sure you have the same question I do, namely: why is it "OPERA" and not "OPETA?"  It turns out that every time I've seen this experiment written, they write it as Oscillation Project with Emulsion tRacking Apparatus, which puts me in mind of Calvin & Hobbes' anti-girl club GROSS (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS).  Be that as it may, this reconfirmation of the earlier measurements came as a surprise to me -- as soon as I heard about how this finding was going to demolish relativity, my immediate reaction was, "I doubt it."  But physicists are doing exactly what they should do -- carefully reexamining the experiment and its findings -- and so far, OPERA (or OPETA) has held up to scrutiny.

This, hopefully, should give some much-needed encouragement to Darth Vader, and reassure him that his spaceship can, in fact, achieve hyperdrive when he returns to the Death Star.  And when he goes, I'd like him to take that alien baby skull along with him, because that thing is creeping me out.

An anthrope considers the strange case of couth and ruth

I noticed last week that the spine was torn on my Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.  It's a case of simple overuse.  Some people will wear out a beloved book from childhood; others will love to death a cherished novel, or memoir, or the bible.  Me, I wear out the ODEE.  It's kind of pathetic, really.

What led me to this unfortunate discovery was a student, predictably, who had asked me why "ruthless" was a word but there was no word for its opposite condition ("ruthful," presumably?).  I didn't know, but it did put me in mind of the following couplet:

We rode in my convertible, my girlfriend Ruth and me,
I hit a bump doing 95, and I went on, ruthlessly. 

 So I went to look it up.  It turns out that the "ruth" in "ruthless" is a cognate of "to rue," meaning "to afflict with contrition or sorrow."  So "ruthless" originally meant "lacking contrition."  The word "rue" only remains in English in the construct "to rue the day," as in, "you'll rue the day you ever double-crossed me, you dastardly and uncouth villain!"

Which brings us to "uncouth."  There's no such word as "couth," however people joke about it.  The current meaning of "uncouth" as "wild-looking, dirty, scary," is because the last part of the word comes from the Indo-European root "kynths," meaning "known."  So "uncouth" really means -- and is a cognate to -- "unknown," not "unkempt" (whose meaning it resembles more closely today).  And, by the way, the "kempt" part of "unkempt" comes from Old Norse, "kembr," meaning "combed."  So as that goes, "unkempt" and "dishevelled" were cousins a millenium ago, and still are; "shevelled" comes from Old French "chevel," meaning "hair."  Both, essentially, meant "having a bad hair day," a narrower meaning than today, when both of them usually simply mean "untidy, rumpled-looking."  (And in case you are wondering, I am both kempt and shevelled today, not to mention highly couth.)

"Disgruntled" is kind of a funny one, because here "dis" is not used in its most common meaning of a negative, but in its far less frequent role of an intensifier -- the only other example I could find was the obscure "disannul."  The "gruntled" part is a cognate of "to grunt" in its old sense of "to complain."  So really, it means "feeling like complaining really loudly."  But it's a pity that it's not one of the opposite-words, like the previous examples.  I think that having "gruntled" mean "cheerful" would just be wonderful.

"Nonchalant," and its noun form "nonchalance," are predictably from French, and were only adopted into English in the 18th century.  The last part of the words comes from "chaloir," meaning "to worry, to be concerned with," so "nonchalant" hasn't changed much in meaning since that time.  Still, you have to wonder why we can't be "chalant."  I certainly am, sometimes.

A lot of "mis" words have no opposites.  You can be a misanthrope, but not an anthrope; a miscreant but not a creant; you can commit a misdemeanor, but not a demeanor.  A mishap occurs when you are unlucky, but only the hapless among us would describe winning the lottery as a "hap."

So anyway, you get the picture.  As usual, the answer to my student's question about why such things happen in languages was "damned if I know."  I doubt much of this was new to you -- probably most of these examples were both toward and heard-of -- but perhaps you had never really stopped to think about the question before, so I hope this post was called-for, and that you were able to make both heads and tails out of it.