Yesterday the Saudis beheaded a woman for sorcery.
I kid you not; read the story here. And while you're reading it, don’t forget that (1) we are the Saudis’ friends and allies; (2) Islam is the religion of peace, and deserves to be taken seriously as a worldview; and (3) it is the responsibility of governments to protect the souls of its citizens from the evil actions of people in league with Satan.
I’m (almost) speechless. Every time I think that humans have plumbed the lowest depths of medieval zealotry, I find out that I’m wrong. What’s worse, I’m quite certain that American Christians will be outraged at the bloodthirstiness of the Muslim judges who sent this woman to the sword, while simultaneously not batting an eye when people like Rick Perry tell them that gays in loving, committed relationships are going to be tortured in horrific agony for all eternity by direct orders from The God of Love.
A while back one of my coworkers sent me an article on the history of witches. This article was about how when the weather turned fairly miserable during the Little Ice Age (1350-ish through 1650-ish), it was a trigger to a rash of witch-burnings. Apparently first the Catholics, but then (and especially) the Lutherans in Germany, took the climatic alterations as a sign that the locals were selling their souls to Satan, who was making it rain on the parades of the holy. Of course, the only way to fix the weather was to torture and kill anyone who was odd or ill-tempered or mildly mentally retarded, so they put thousands of said individuals on "trial" (not that these were legal proceedings in any sense of the word, as the verdict was "guilty" as soon as the accusation was made), and the majority were burned at the stake.
Now, am I missing some part of the logical sequence here? There's a bad storm; roofs leak, trees fall down, maybe even a few people get killed. And your response is to toast old Mrs. Hassenpfeffer? This is supposed to take care of the problem?
Of course, all of this would just be a historical tragedy, a crazy and regrettable thing that our distant ancestors did, except for the fact that I'm not all that sure that your average modern day human is thinking much more clearly. There are the aforementioned Saudis, whose so-called religion is deserving of about as much respect as the Ku Klux Klan. But wait, they're from the Middle East, and everyone knows what a hotbed of craziness that is, right? We're Americans; we are more rational than that.
Right. Sure. So explain Pat Robertson. The fact that his skull seems to be filled with cobwebs and dead insects has unfortunately not disabled his mouth; remember when he said that Hurricane Katrina was caused by "god sending his wrath upon the godless people of New Orleans" (never mind that Louisiana is one of the most heavily Christian states in the US), asked god to "smite Dover" (the town in Pennsylvania that voted creationism out of the science curriculum -- fortunately for the people of Dover, apparently god was otherwise occupied that day), and claimed that he can leg press an automobile? Okay, the last part was harmless; but tens of thousands of people listen to him, and I don't think it's just for the entertainment value. So you've got a guy who's a certifiable fruit loop, and there are people in the United States who believe whatever comes out of his mouth.
Remember when John McCain came under fire during the 2008 election for calling the late Jerry Falwell an "agent of intolerance?" Now, I'm not a big McCain fan, but he nailed it that time. Of course, the Republican base cried bloody murder, and McCain had to backpedal like mad and finally make nicey-nicey with Falwell. Intolerant? No, not Falwell, leader of the former "Moral Majority," who stated, "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." By far my favorite Falwell quote, however, is, "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" Well, Jerry, I'm glad you thought you'd enjoy it. Me, I'll be living in Ecuador. And lest you think that Falwell's views died with him, allow me to point out that at least two of the current presidential candidates -- Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann -- are Jerry Falwell's spiritual children, openly espousing Dominionism and a collapse of the church/state barrier.
And we’re supposed to give these people respect, to treat them as if their views were somehow reflective of reality, to handle their religious ideologies with kid gloves? Bullshit. If the Saudis' bloodthirsty, medieval zealotry is worthy of scorn, then so is the nonsense spouted by the likes of Robertson, Falwell, and those who follow them. Why is one of them a travesty, but the other a glorious religion? If my Invisible Friend tells me what to do, it’s perfectly reasonable; if your Invisible friend tells you what to do, it’s ridiculous, a pagan superstition, possibly blasphemous. Maybe it’s even inspired by Satan -- just in case you felt the need to supplement your Invisible Friend with an Invisible Enemy.
Okay, so I sound hostile and cynical. Maybe I am, although I really do try to avoid cynicism if I can. I just am constantly astonished at how, despite our veneer of technology and civilization, most of us are still not much further along than Ogg and Thak, sacrificing mammoths on the altar of the Thunder God, and bashing the other cavemen on the heads with clubs when they say the words of the Mammoth Sacrifice Rite in the wrong order.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Death by urban legend
A recent article on LiveScience, the science blurb news site, asks the question, “Can You Really Die in Your Nightmares?”
The answer is “probably, but how on earth would anyone know?” It’s a little like the urban legend that if you dream you’re falling, and you hit the ground in your dream, you’ll die. Okay, that could be true, but the only way to verify it would be to chat with people who’ve had it happen, which would be a little hard to do because they'd all be dead.
The article goes on to describe SUNDS, or Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome. This rare disorder, affecting for some reason mostly Southeast Asian males, basically is exactly what it sounds like – in the middle of sleep, these people simply die because their heart stops. The article implies that the disorder could arise from an abnormality in the neural circuitry between the brain and the heart. However, a headline saying, “A Few People Die Because The Nerves To The Heart Stop Working” doesn’t have nearly the cachet as implying that the affected individuals died in the midst of a scary dream, à la Nightmare on Elm Street.
I have some issues with sensational headlines and pointless speculation. It may seem like harmless entertainment, but think about it from the standpoint of a science teacher. I spend enough time in class trying to disabuse people of “facts” they learned from various sources of dubious credibility without having sites like LiveScience make it worse. Besides the dying-if-you-dream-you-hit-the-ground thing, here are a few other urban legends that retain currency despite repeated debunking:
1) Daddy-longlegs have a really horrible venom, enough to kill you INSTANTLY, except that fortunately their fangs are too weak to penetrate human skin. But if they could, they’d be the deadliest spider in the world.
2) Don’t throw rice at weddings, because if birds ate it, it would expand in their stomachs and they would explode like little feathery grenades.
3) The appearance of a “dark circle” around the moon means that we are going to have a period of acid rain. Being caught in acid rain will give you skin cancer.
4) Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners cause lupus erythematosis and multiple sclerosis, and there is a systematic government cover-up to keep the public from knowing about it.
5) Pepperoni, and other salted/preserved meats, contain ground-up earthworms, and it SAYS SO RIGHT ON THE LABEL.
Okay, I’m hopeful that none of my readers actually believed any of these, even prior to this post, but in the interest of taking no chances, here are my standard responses to students who make these claims:
1) Apparently the whole daddy-longlegs thing apparently came about because there is a mildly toxic spider native to western Europe that is called the daddy-longlegs, and its superficial resemblance to the North American daddy-longlegs (actually not even a true spider, more accurately a harvestman) led to the confusion. North American daddy-longlegs are harmless to anything larger than a mosquito.
2) Seed-eating birds in their natural environment eat all sorts of grains, including rice; in fact, in Asia, birds are a major pest in rice fields. I have yet to hear of a single one exploding messily in mid-air.
3) I have also yet to hear of the moon at night not having a dark circle around it. The night sky is, more often than not, dark. There’s no connection between it being dark at night, and an incoming bout of acid rain. Nor does acid rain cause skin cancer. Lemonade, for example, is far more acidic than most acid rain, and I have never heard of anyone getting skin cancer from being splashed with lemonade.
4) Some people consume aspartame and get lupus or MS. Some people consume aspartame and don’t get either. Some people don’t consume aspartame and get lupus or MS. Some people don’t consume aspartame and don’t get either. There you are. Also, I seriously doubt that the government is involved in some massive artificial-sweetener conspiracy. They have much better things to do with their time and the public’s money, such as holding a Senate hearing to determine whether the pace of the economic recovery is "dismaying," "distressing," or just "disappointing."
5) The only explanation I’ve heard for the earthworms-in-pepperoni thing is that some semi-literate or another thought that sodium erythrorbate, a preservative, was the chemical name for earthworms. My general opinion is that if you think that sodium erythrorbate is the chemical name for earthworms because “erythrorbate” and “earthworms” contain some of the same letters, you are dumb enough that my feeble attempt herein to combat your ignorance is doomed to failure.
Anyway. I realize that I’m coming off as a grumpy curmudgeon here. This is partly because I am a grumpy curmudgeon. It is also because I feel like I spend enough time in class attempting to remedy ignorance without the media making it worse. So if you have ever been guilty of forwarding a link to a website which implies that spiders will explode if they eat artificially-sweetened ground-up earthworms when there’s a dark circle around the moon, I’d appreciate it if you’d just cease and desist. Thank you.
The answer is “probably, but how on earth would anyone know?” It’s a little like the urban legend that if you dream you’re falling, and you hit the ground in your dream, you’ll die. Okay, that could be true, but the only way to verify it would be to chat with people who’ve had it happen, which would be a little hard to do because they'd all be dead.
The article goes on to describe SUNDS, or Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome. This rare disorder, affecting for some reason mostly Southeast Asian males, basically is exactly what it sounds like – in the middle of sleep, these people simply die because their heart stops. The article implies that the disorder could arise from an abnormality in the neural circuitry between the brain and the heart. However, a headline saying, “A Few People Die Because The Nerves To The Heart Stop Working” doesn’t have nearly the cachet as implying that the affected individuals died in the midst of a scary dream, à la Nightmare on Elm Street.
I have some issues with sensational headlines and pointless speculation. It may seem like harmless entertainment, but think about it from the standpoint of a science teacher. I spend enough time in class trying to disabuse people of “facts” they learned from various sources of dubious credibility without having sites like LiveScience make it worse. Besides the dying-if-you-dream-you-hit-the-ground thing, here are a few other urban legends that retain currency despite repeated debunking:
1) Daddy-longlegs have a really horrible venom, enough to kill you INSTANTLY, except that fortunately their fangs are too weak to penetrate human skin. But if they could, they’d be the deadliest spider in the world.
2) Don’t throw rice at weddings, because if birds ate it, it would expand in their stomachs and they would explode like little feathery grenades.
3) The appearance of a “dark circle” around the moon means that we are going to have a period of acid rain. Being caught in acid rain will give you skin cancer.
4) Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners cause lupus erythematosis and multiple sclerosis, and there is a systematic government cover-up to keep the public from knowing about it.
5) Pepperoni, and other salted/preserved meats, contain ground-up earthworms, and it SAYS SO RIGHT ON THE LABEL.
Okay, I’m hopeful that none of my readers actually believed any of these, even prior to this post, but in the interest of taking no chances, here are my standard responses to students who make these claims:
1) Apparently the whole daddy-longlegs thing apparently came about because there is a mildly toxic spider native to western Europe that is called the daddy-longlegs, and its superficial resemblance to the North American daddy-longlegs (actually not even a true spider, more accurately a harvestman) led to the confusion. North American daddy-longlegs are harmless to anything larger than a mosquito.
2) Seed-eating birds in their natural environment eat all sorts of grains, including rice; in fact, in Asia, birds are a major pest in rice fields. I have yet to hear of a single one exploding messily in mid-air.
3) I have also yet to hear of the moon at night not having a dark circle around it. The night sky is, more often than not, dark. There’s no connection between it being dark at night, and an incoming bout of acid rain. Nor does acid rain cause skin cancer. Lemonade, for example, is far more acidic than most acid rain, and I have never heard of anyone getting skin cancer from being splashed with lemonade.
4) Some people consume aspartame and get lupus or MS. Some people consume aspartame and don’t get either. Some people don’t consume aspartame and get lupus or MS. Some people don’t consume aspartame and don’t get either. There you are. Also, I seriously doubt that the government is involved in some massive artificial-sweetener conspiracy. They have much better things to do with their time and the public’s money, such as holding a Senate hearing to determine whether the pace of the economic recovery is "dismaying," "distressing," or just "disappointing."
5) The only explanation I’ve heard for the earthworms-in-pepperoni thing is that some semi-literate or another thought that sodium erythrorbate, a preservative, was the chemical name for earthworms. My general opinion is that if you think that sodium erythrorbate is the chemical name for earthworms because “erythrorbate” and “earthworms” contain some of the same letters, you are dumb enough that my feeble attempt herein to combat your ignorance is doomed to failure.
Anyway. I realize that I’m coming off as a grumpy curmudgeon here. This is partly because I am a grumpy curmudgeon. It is also because I feel like I spend enough time in class attempting to remedy ignorance without the media making it worse. So if you have ever been guilty of forwarding a link to a website which implies that spiders will explode if they eat artificially-sweetened ground-up earthworms when there’s a dark circle around the moon, I’d appreciate it if you’d just cease and desist. Thank you.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Woo-woo weekend shorts
Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch it's shaping up to be a busy weekend.
First, we have a report from Quebec of a UFO abducting someone's dog. The report, which was filed with MUFON (The Mutual UFO Network) yesterday, reads as follows:
To be fair, (s)he goes on to give more details, including a "coppery, golden color" and "flashing red lights." But the fun part is when the dog gets abducted. I think that if aliens ever came to our house, they might well decide that our Border Collie, Doolin, was in fact the Resident Intelligent Life Form, because she spends most of her time herding the rest of us around and looking extremely worried that she may have Forgotten Something Important. Doolin doesn't have OCD; she has CDO, because if she had OCD she'd worry because the letters weren't in alphabetical order. It would be truly terrifying if aliens actually abducted her, though, because within minutes she'd have all the aliens corralled into a corner of the spaceship, and would be handling the controls herself. The next thing you know, we'd have reports of flocks of sheep being herded from the air by a dog flying a spacecraft, and the Air Force would have to be called out to stop her.
Which, now that I think of it, sounds like a great plot for a movie, if any of my readers are scriptwriters.
Next, we have a report from Phu Yen province in Vietnam, where students in a school dorm are complaining about a haunted toilet.
Phan Van Tho, headmaster of the Son Hoa Ethnic Boarding High School in Son Hoa District. has reported that one of the dorm toilets is causing students to act oddly if they use it. The first victim, a student named Pa Ho Luon, was coming back to his room after using the toilet, and suddenly fell down, started scratching at the wall, and "spoke in a nonsense language no one could understand." Then he fainted. After being taken to the hospital, Luon recovered, and told authorities that his strange behavior was because he had "seen a ghost in the toilet."
Since Luon's experience, twelve other students have had similar symptoms after using the "haunted toilet."
Well. First, I have to say that if I was a ghost, I can't imagine why I would hang around in a toilet. Presumably being a ghost, you have a choice of where to haunt, and I certainly can think of better places to park yourself. But given that I'm not really an expert regarding the criteria by which ghosts choose sites to haunt, I'll let that go. A more interesting question is to consider what would have happened in the US had a student babbled incoherently and then passed out, and then woke up with a story of meeting a ghost; we'd have guffawed in his face and then said, "No, really, what kind of drugs were you on?" But being that this is Vietnam, where drug use is frowned upon (and by "frowned upon" I mean "something you can get hanged for doing") it's no real wonder that the students and the schoolmaster were all eager to jump at the "ghost in the toilet" theory.
If you think I'm wrong about how people would react to this kind of thing in the US, just ask Mount Gilead (Ohio) police officer Joseph Hughes, who was arrested for stealing public property, including an air conditioner that said "Auditor's Office" on it. When put on trial for the thefts, he mounted a novel defense; the basement where the stolen goods were found had a "paranormal presence," and that "paranormal presence" had "forced him to take the items unconsciously, and bring them back to the basement." (Read the whole story here.)
I think the whole contention is screamingly funny. So, a specter told this guy, "Bring me... an AIR CONDITIONER," and the guy went and did it, coming back to the basement carrying it like some kind of sacrificial offering. "Here is the air conditioner you requested, O Great Paranormal Presence. What else do you require?" "Bring me... a COFFEE MAKER. And not one of those pathetic little two-cup jobs, either. Let it be... A TEN-CUP PROGRAMMABLE MR. COFFEE. And hurry up, because I need a cup and I'm getting kind of cranky."
Not surprisingly, the jury wasn't buying it, and Hughes was found guilty, and is currently serving time in the Mount Gilead Jail.
It's no surprise that they caught the guy, honestly. If you looked at the story, you saw that he's bald, and bald people simply don't have the intuition that the rest of us hairier folk have. At least that's the contention of the United Truth Seekers, who believe that long hair helps us to "channel psychic energy" and acts as "exteriorized nerves," that relay "vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex." This, they say, is why the Native Americans used to let their hair grow long, and is what gave rise to the story of Samson and Delilah. (Read the whole story here.)
Well, from my own personal experience, I can say that I have had more than one bout of long hair. I am blessed with unusually thick hair, so when I say I had long hair, you shouldn't think "neat ponytail;" you should more think "lion's mane." And I can unequivocally say that when I had long hair I felt younger, stronger, and healthier than I do now, so I think we can check off this theory as proven.
What I found especially wonderful about this article was the series of comments from readers that followed. I'll excerpt several of the better ones below:
So anyway, there we have it... the weekend wrap-up from Worldwide Wacko Watch. Canine abductions, haunted toilets, spirit-prompted thefts, and the hair as a psychic antenna. Thanks to the faithful readers who sent me the links to those stories... keep those cards and letters coming. As for me, I think I'm going to go make sure my dog is still asleep in her bed. My hair just picked up a disturbance in The Force. Of course, that may just be the ghost in the upstairs bathroom demanding that I bring him an air conditioner.
First, we have a report from Quebec of a UFO abducting someone's dog. The report, which was filed with MUFON (The Mutual UFO Network) yesterday, reads as follows:
I was outside shoveling snow when I heard a weird sound. That's when i looked in the air and saw something hovering above my house. It was clearly a UFO because it was too close to be anything else. It was a coppery, golden color with flashing red lights. I felt privileged that I was witnessing this rare event. Then my dog went around front and the UFO took it up through a beam and dropped it backed down about a half hour later. Weirdly my dog was completely unharmed and shortly after the UFO left leaving a tail as it flew away.I find a few things interesting about this report. First, isn't it interesting how "UFO" has ceased being an acronym and has become a word? The eyewitness states that the "something" seen hovering above the house was "clearly a UFO," as if (s)he has forgotten what the "U" in "UFO" stands for. It's as if I saw something sitting in my front yard, and I called the police, and when asked to describe it I said, "It was clearly something sitting in my front yard."
To be fair, (s)he goes on to give more details, including a "coppery, golden color" and "flashing red lights." But the fun part is when the dog gets abducted. I think that if aliens ever came to our house, they might well decide that our Border Collie, Doolin, was in fact the Resident Intelligent Life Form, because she spends most of her time herding the rest of us around and looking extremely worried that she may have Forgotten Something Important. Doolin doesn't have OCD; she has CDO, because if she had OCD she'd worry because the letters weren't in alphabetical order. It would be truly terrifying if aliens actually abducted her, though, because within minutes she'd have all the aliens corralled into a corner of the spaceship, and would be handling the controls herself. The next thing you know, we'd have reports of flocks of sheep being herded from the air by a dog flying a spacecraft, and the Air Force would have to be called out to stop her.
Which, now that I think of it, sounds like a great plot for a movie, if any of my readers are scriptwriters.
Next, we have a report from Phu Yen province in Vietnam, where students in a school dorm are complaining about a haunted toilet.
Phan Van Tho, headmaster of the Son Hoa Ethnic Boarding High School in Son Hoa District. has reported that one of the dorm toilets is causing students to act oddly if they use it. The first victim, a student named Pa Ho Luon, was coming back to his room after using the toilet, and suddenly fell down, started scratching at the wall, and "spoke in a nonsense language no one could understand." Then he fainted. After being taken to the hospital, Luon recovered, and told authorities that his strange behavior was because he had "seen a ghost in the toilet."
Since Luon's experience, twelve other students have had similar symptoms after using the "haunted toilet."
Well. First, I have to say that if I was a ghost, I can't imagine why I would hang around in a toilet. Presumably being a ghost, you have a choice of where to haunt, and I certainly can think of better places to park yourself. But given that I'm not really an expert regarding the criteria by which ghosts choose sites to haunt, I'll let that go. A more interesting question is to consider what would have happened in the US had a student babbled incoherently and then passed out, and then woke up with a story of meeting a ghost; we'd have guffawed in his face and then said, "No, really, what kind of drugs were you on?" But being that this is Vietnam, where drug use is frowned upon (and by "frowned upon" I mean "something you can get hanged for doing") it's no real wonder that the students and the schoolmaster were all eager to jump at the "ghost in the toilet" theory.
If you think I'm wrong about how people would react to this kind of thing in the US, just ask Mount Gilead (Ohio) police officer Joseph Hughes, who was arrested for stealing public property, including an air conditioner that said "Auditor's Office" on it. When put on trial for the thefts, he mounted a novel defense; the basement where the stolen goods were found had a "paranormal presence," and that "paranormal presence" had "forced him to take the items unconsciously, and bring them back to the basement." (Read the whole story here.)
I think the whole contention is screamingly funny. So, a specter told this guy, "Bring me... an AIR CONDITIONER," and the guy went and did it, coming back to the basement carrying it like some kind of sacrificial offering. "Here is the air conditioner you requested, O Great Paranormal Presence. What else do you require?" "Bring me... a COFFEE MAKER. And not one of those pathetic little two-cup jobs, either. Let it be... A TEN-CUP PROGRAMMABLE MR. COFFEE. And hurry up, because I need a cup and I'm getting kind of cranky."
Not surprisingly, the jury wasn't buying it, and Hughes was found guilty, and is currently serving time in the Mount Gilead Jail.
It's no surprise that they caught the guy, honestly. If you looked at the story, you saw that he's bald, and bald people simply don't have the intuition that the rest of us hairier folk have. At least that's the contention of the United Truth Seekers, who believe that long hair helps us to "channel psychic energy" and acts as "exteriorized nerves," that relay "vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex." This, they say, is why the Native Americans used to let their hair grow long, and is what gave rise to the story of Samson and Delilah. (Read the whole story here.)
Well, from my own personal experience, I can say that I have had more than one bout of long hair. I am blessed with unusually thick hair, so when I say I had long hair, you shouldn't think "neat ponytail;" you should more think "lion's mane." And I can unequivocally say that when I had long hair I felt younger, stronger, and healthier than I do now, so I think we can check off this theory as proven.
What I found especially wonderful about this article was the series of comments from readers that followed. I'll excerpt several of the better ones below:
Much food for thought here. Such as a study on the fashion of haircuts through the ages and how it impacted on the enlightenment or otherwise of that particular society? For instance, in these days of short haircuts for men and covered hair for women, how many wars are we involved in at the moment?So, you can acquire from all of this a number of take-home lessons, the most important of which is, "You people are wingnuts. Please don't reproduce."
Maybe this explains why women are more intuitive than men... Also, when cutting the hair of female beings became widespread, a proportionate increase was observed everywhere in what they call 'women's diseases,' that is, various sorts of inflammation of the sexual organs, such as 'vaginitis,' 'uteritis,' 'ovaritis,' as well as 'fibrous tumors' and 'cancer.'
Cutting of hair is a contributing factor to unawareness of environmental distress in local ecosystems. It is also a contributing factor to insensitivity in relationships of all kinds. It contributes to sexual frustration.
Bald guys would seem to be at a disadvantage here, but bald guys have more body hair, so it all evens out in the gene pool.
I'm a mind body and spirit teacher and would like to add that the human hair is also where we store surplus energy or chi for our body. When you reach great states of peace/enlightenment the body starts to secrete what Taoist masters call the golden elixir. This is literally the fountain of youth in spirituality.
So anyway, there we have it... the weekend wrap-up from Worldwide Wacko Watch. Canine abductions, haunted toilets, spirit-prompted thefts, and the hair as a psychic antenna. Thanks to the faithful readers who sent me the links to those stories... keep those cards and letters coming. As for me, I think I'm going to go make sure my dog is still asleep in her bed. My hair just picked up a disturbance in The Force. Of course, that may just be the ghost in the upstairs bathroom demanding that I bring him an air conditioner.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Uncivil discourse
A few months ago, I was friended on Facebook by a gentleman whom I didn't know, but who shared with me an interest in history and genealogy. I accepted his request, figuring that in this day of electronic social media this could be a way to meet new friends. (And in fact, there are Facebook friends of mine that I've never met in person, and who over time have become friends in the older, conventional definition of the word.)
A couple of days ago, this gentleman posted a photograph of a sign that said, "Merry Christmas! One Nation Under God. Disagree? Don't Let The Border Hit You On The Ass On Your Way Out." I posted a comment underneath saying, "Seriously? We atheists should just leave?"
He responded only by making the photograph his profile picture.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to this. "Unfriending" him seems justified, but doesn't that just make it even less likely that he'll ever see what the problem is? His seeming unwillingness to engage -- the fact that he didn't even respond to my comment -- is probably indicative of the fact that had he responded, it probably would have only been to tell me to go to hell in any case.
I find it disturbing how hard it can be for people of all stripes to remain civil these days. Maybe it's always been this way, I don't know; but it seems, although admittedly I have no factual basis for this, to be getting worse and worse. My general feeling is that most Christians are tolerant and moderate, and have no particular wish to dictate other people's beliefs; and most agnostics and atheists would respond to a hearty "Merry Christmas!" from a store clerk with a smile and a thank you, giving back the kindness based on its intention and taking no offense at some imagined assumption of religiosity. A small but growing minority, on the other hand, seem determined to make this into some sort of war, and everyone is getting increasingly skittish.
Much has been made about whether the United States was founded as a "Christian nation," and with amazing facility people dredge up quotes from the Founding Fathers supporting their contention that clearly George Washington and the rest intended the USA to be a theocracy. Or didn't. Or didn't have any intention of addressing it at all. In my opinion, however, all of this historiography misses the point; it's largely irrelevant what the Founding Fathers believed regarding this issue. Consider some of the other things that the Founding Fathers believed -- that women should not be allowed to vote, that slavery was acceptable (and that slaves, for census purposes, counted as "3/5 of a person"), and that it was justified to appropriate land from the Native Americans. We have abandoned all of those beliefs as unethical, immoral, and inappropriate for our day and age, with no yammering on about the fact that "the USA was founded as a nation where women couldn't vote!" (Ladies, don't let the border hit you in the ass on your way out!)
The relevant question, here, is only whether the USA should be run as a theocracy now. Should there, given the diversity of beliefs (and non-belief) we currently have, be prayer in schools? A religious test for holding public office? Should we be expecting that public officials mention their relationship with Jesus at every opportunity? Or should we accept the fact that we are now, and have been for quite some time, a patchwork quilt of Christians (of denominations liberal to conservative), Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and probably a hundred others, where to mandate belief, even tacitly, would be not only unjust but an impossibility?
How about this instead: let's focus on tolerance. Despite my reputation as a militant atheist, I honestly don't have a problem with what you believe or don't believe -- until you start using those beliefs to change public policy, to create laws that force those beliefs on others, or to justify acting like a boor. Diversity of thought should enrich, not impoverish, a nation, and the War on Christmas foolishness only further divides us, cementing the "if you're not one of us, screw you" mentality that has done us nothing but harm in the past.
As far as my Facebook "friend:" I think I'll just let him be. Maybe after reading this, he'll unfriend me -- who knows? But until that point, I'll wish a Merry Christmas to all of my readers who celebrate it, a Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends, Happy Holidays to anyone who prefers that mode of address, and to the rest of you, a simple wish for Peace on Earth, and Good Will Toward... Everyone.
A couple of days ago, this gentleman posted a photograph of a sign that said, "Merry Christmas! One Nation Under God. Disagree? Don't Let The Border Hit You On The Ass On Your Way Out." I posted a comment underneath saying, "Seriously? We atheists should just leave?"
He responded only by making the photograph his profile picture.
I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to this. "Unfriending" him seems justified, but doesn't that just make it even less likely that he'll ever see what the problem is? His seeming unwillingness to engage -- the fact that he didn't even respond to my comment -- is probably indicative of the fact that had he responded, it probably would have only been to tell me to go to hell in any case.
I find it disturbing how hard it can be for people of all stripes to remain civil these days. Maybe it's always been this way, I don't know; but it seems, although admittedly I have no factual basis for this, to be getting worse and worse. My general feeling is that most Christians are tolerant and moderate, and have no particular wish to dictate other people's beliefs; and most agnostics and atheists would respond to a hearty "Merry Christmas!" from a store clerk with a smile and a thank you, giving back the kindness based on its intention and taking no offense at some imagined assumption of religiosity. A small but growing minority, on the other hand, seem determined to make this into some sort of war, and everyone is getting increasingly skittish.
Much has been made about whether the United States was founded as a "Christian nation," and with amazing facility people dredge up quotes from the Founding Fathers supporting their contention that clearly George Washington and the rest intended the USA to be a theocracy. Or didn't. Or didn't have any intention of addressing it at all. In my opinion, however, all of this historiography misses the point; it's largely irrelevant what the Founding Fathers believed regarding this issue. Consider some of the other things that the Founding Fathers believed -- that women should not be allowed to vote, that slavery was acceptable (and that slaves, for census purposes, counted as "3/5 of a person"), and that it was justified to appropriate land from the Native Americans. We have abandoned all of those beliefs as unethical, immoral, and inappropriate for our day and age, with no yammering on about the fact that "the USA was founded as a nation where women couldn't vote!" (Ladies, don't let the border hit you in the ass on your way out!)
The relevant question, here, is only whether the USA should be run as a theocracy now. Should there, given the diversity of beliefs (and non-belief) we currently have, be prayer in schools? A religious test for holding public office? Should we be expecting that public officials mention their relationship with Jesus at every opportunity? Or should we accept the fact that we are now, and have been for quite some time, a patchwork quilt of Christians (of denominations liberal to conservative), Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and probably a hundred others, where to mandate belief, even tacitly, would be not only unjust but an impossibility?
How about this instead: let's focus on tolerance. Despite my reputation as a militant atheist, I honestly don't have a problem with what you believe or don't believe -- until you start using those beliefs to change public policy, to create laws that force those beliefs on others, or to justify acting like a boor. Diversity of thought should enrich, not impoverish, a nation, and the War on Christmas foolishness only further divides us, cementing the "if you're not one of us, screw you" mentality that has done us nothing but harm in the past.
As far as my Facebook "friend:" I think I'll just let him be. Maybe after reading this, he'll unfriend me -- who knows? But until that point, I'll wish a Merry Christmas to all of my readers who celebrate it, a Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends, Happy Holidays to anyone who prefers that mode of address, and to the rest of you, a simple wish for Peace on Earth, and Good Will Toward... Everyone.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Cloaked Romulan spacecraft and the strength of Ockham's Razor
It is an inevitable danger of being a self-styled rationalist skeptic that I may not recognize credible evidence for something bizarre when I see it, because I'd already be looking for ways to dismiss it before the dust even settled.
It's a charge that's been levied at me with some regularity. You don't believe in ghosts, eh? All of the photographs, videos, and eyewitness accounts are just natural anomalies and human senses being fooled? You wouldn't accept a ghost as real if one bit you on the ass. How about Bigfoot? All of the accounts of Bigfoot are fakes? Seriously? And the psychics... just because some psychics have turned out to be frauds, you have decided that all of them are?
"Skeptic? Pfft. You're just as stuck in your own worldview as the rest of us."
I have to admit that these comments do give me some pause, every time I receive one. I lean pretty hard on the ECREE principle -- Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. But what, then, constitutes "extraordinary" evidence? Suppose something really, truly paranormal was going on -- would I even recognize it as such?
Take, for example, the claim that's been all over the news -- that NASA released a photo of the planet Mercury that contained the faint image of a giant cloaked spaceship. (You can read an article about this, and see images, here.) The individual who found the image, a YouTube poster with the handle "siniXster," states that NASA's STEREO imaging satellite took a photograph of a coronal mass ejection, and that the particles emitted by the CME washed over Mercury -- catching in its wake an object of equal size that was hovering, invisible, nearby. This disrupted the CME and rendered the object temporarily visible.
"It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," siniXster said in his YouTube video about the image.
Okay. All Star Trek references aside, my first reaction was, "An invisible spaceship as big as a planet? Really?" But then I thought, "Well, I've always said that it was entirely possible that there was life out there in the universe... what if there was a superpowerful alien species, with a giant ship, out near Mercury watching us, and they'd rendered their ship invisible to us using some advanced technology. Might I just be overdoing the rationalist skeptic thing, and missing something amazing?"
Well, that possibility does exist, and I'd be a pretty poor skeptic if I didn't realize that my perceptual apparatus and brain are just as flawed as the next guy's, and my capacity for such inherent problems with inference as dart-thrower's bias is just as great. How, then, do I decide for sure if they've stumbled upon something earthshattering?
Besides ECREE, a rule of thumb I tend to trust more often than not is Ockham's Razor; that all other things being equal, the explanation that requires you to make the least ad hoc assumptions is probably the correct one. In this case, is there a simpler explanation that addresses all of the evidence?
Unfortunately for siniXster and others who think that we're being monitored by the Romulans, the answer is yes. Russ Howard, head researcher in solar physics at the Naval Research Laboratory provided a nice little explanation of the photograph. The Mercury-sized object hovering in Mercury's orbit isn't a cloaked spacecraft, Howard says. Actually... it's Mercury:
Answering that question as honestly as I know how, I think I still have to say "no." Being a skeptic doesn't mean that you reject paranormal explanations out of hand just because they're paranormal; but it does mean that you have to evaluate the evidence as best you can, and accept the best explanation that's out there on the market. My frequent critics notwithstanding, I do think I'm open-minded enough that I wouldn't be blind to evidence of something weird should it eventually happen along. I just don't think that this is it. Ockham's Razor is a statement about how the universe behaves, and how we can come to understand it; and in my experience, it works pretty damn well, even if it does preclude a huge cloaked Romulan spaceship, which honestly would be kind of cool if it were true.
Ockham's Razor is not a law, however; convoluted and wildly improbable events do occur, and it may well be that there are phenomena out there that lie outside the purview of our conventional scientific explanations. If this is true, I would love to experience some of them first hand, and I hope that I would be accepting of their veracity despite my preconceived conviction that they don't exist. Perhaps Mark Twain was right when he said, "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable."
It's a charge that's been levied at me with some regularity. You don't believe in ghosts, eh? All of the photographs, videos, and eyewitness accounts are just natural anomalies and human senses being fooled? You wouldn't accept a ghost as real if one bit you on the ass. How about Bigfoot? All of the accounts of Bigfoot are fakes? Seriously? And the psychics... just because some psychics have turned out to be frauds, you have decided that all of them are?
"Skeptic? Pfft. You're just as stuck in your own worldview as the rest of us."
I have to admit that these comments do give me some pause, every time I receive one. I lean pretty hard on the ECREE principle -- Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. But what, then, constitutes "extraordinary" evidence? Suppose something really, truly paranormal was going on -- would I even recognize it as such?
Take, for example, the claim that's been all over the news -- that NASA released a photo of the planet Mercury that contained the faint image of a giant cloaked spaceship. (You can read an article about this, and see images, here.) The individual who found the image, a YouTube poster with the handle "siniXster," states that NASA's STEREO imaging satellite took a photograph of a coronal mass ejection, and that the particles emitted by the CME washed over Mercury -- catching in its wake an object of equal size that was hovering, invisible, nearby. This disrupted the CME and rendered the object temporarily visible.
"It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," siniXster said in his YouTube video about the image.
Okay. All Star Trek references aside, my first reaction was, "An invisible spaceship as big as a planet? Really?" But then I thought, "Well, I've always said that it was entirely possible that there was life out there in the universe... what if there was a superpowerful alien species, with a giant ship, out near Mercury watching us, and they'd rendered their ship invisible to us using some advanced technology. Might I just be overdoing the rationalist skeptic thing, and missing something amazing?"
Well, that possibility does exist, and I'd be a pretty poor skeptic if I didn't realize that my perceptual apparatus and brain are just as flawed as the next guy's, and my capacity for such inherent problems with inference as dart-thrower's bias is just as great. How, then, do I decide for sure if they've stumbled upon something earthshattering?
Besides ECREE, a rule of thumb I tend to trust more often than not is Ockham's Razor; that all other things being equal, the explanation that requires you to make the least ad hoc assumptions is probably the correct one. In this case, is there a simpler explanation that addresses all of the evidence?
Unfortunately for siniXster and others who think that we're being monitored by the Romulans, the answer is yes. Russ Howard, head researcher in solar physics at the Naval Research Laboratory provided a nice little explanation of the photograph. The Mercury-sized object hovering in Mercury's orbit isn't a cloaked spacecraft, Howard says. Actually... it's Mercury:
To make the relatively faint glow of a coronal mass ejection stand out against the bright glare of space—caused by interplanetary dust and the stellar/galactic background—the NRL scientists must remove as much background light as possible. They explained that they determine what light is background light, and thus can be subtracted out, by calculating the average amount of light that entered each camera pixel on the day of the CME event and on the previous day. Light appearing in the pixels on both days is considered to be background light and is removed from the footage of the CME. The remaining light is then enhanced. When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image.But... how do I know that this is right? Am I just trying to be superskeptic here, and leaping at the Official Explanation because it means I don't have to revise my worldview?
Answering that question as honestly as I know how, I think I still have to say "no." Being a skeptic doesn't mean that you reject paranormal explanations out of hand just because they're paranormal; but it does mean that you have to evaluate the evidence as best you can, and accept the best explanation that's out there on the market. My frequent critics notwithstanding, I do think I'm open-minded enough that I wouldn't be blind to evidence of something weird should it eventually happen along. I just don't think that this is it. Ockham's Razor is a statement about how the universe behaves, and how we can come to understand it; and in my experience, it works pretty damn well, even if it does preclude a huge cloaked Romulan spaceship, which honestly would be kind of cool if it were true.
Ockham's Razor is not a law, however; convoluted and wildly improbable events do occur, and it may well be that there are phenomena out there that lie outside the purview of our conventional scientific explanations. If this is true, I would love to experience some of them first hand, and I hope that I would be accepting of their veracity despite my preconceived conviction that they don't exist. Perhaps Mark Twain was right when he said, "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable."
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Don we now our gay apparel
I am constantly amazed at the capacity of the human mind to engage in wishful thinking, even when contrary to fact -- to conveniently explain away, or ignore, mountains of evidence in favor of a cherished (but wrong) idea.
Today's example of willful self-delusion comes from Traverse City, Michigan, where a music instructor at Cherry Knolls Elementary School took exception to the words of the Christmas carol "Deck the Halls." In particular, the teacher was bothered by the third line of the first verse:
This isn't an isolated incident. Schools in Tennessee earlier this year passed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, which makes it illegal to mention any sexual orientation other than heterosexuality in public schools prior to ninth grade. The unspoken assumption here is that if we can just get kids to hit puberty without ever having heard about homosexuality, it will never occur to the kids to be attracted to the same sex, and homosexuality will go away.
Well, I'm sorry. That isn't how it works. Thirteen-year-olds don't sit down one evening, and think, "Hmm, let's see... shall I be attracted to boys or girls? Oh, wait... I remember back in third grade, singing about 'gay apparel.' That gives me a great idea...!" While we still have an incomplete understanding of where sexual orientation comes from, it is clearly a question to be resolved by the developmental geneticists -- not psychologists, and certainly not teachers, politicians, or ministers. Homosexuality is a naturally occurring construct of human genes, and is not produced by a timely suggestion. Homosexuality can no more be prevented by ignoring it than you could change a person's blood type by pretending that everyone was AB+.
And neither, for the record, can anyone be "cured" of homosexuality, despite the repeated claims by Michele Bachmann and her husband.
What these homophobic efforts accomplish, then, is only to marginalize further a group of teenagers who already have a staggeringly high incidence of depression, victimization by bullies, and suicide. Being that the motivation for these actions can't be that they're based in the truth -- they're not -- they can only be explained as a desire on the part of bigots, whether from fear or simple cruelty, to repress a group of people they would eliminate if they could.
And given that the vast majority of these people are motivated by their religion, it kind of makes you wonder how they reconcile this with the concept of "Christian charity."
Not to mention with the phrase, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
Today's example of willful self-delusion comes from Traverse City, Michigan, where a music instructor at Cherry Knolls Elementary School took exception to the words of the Christmas carol "Deck the Halls." In particular, the teacher was bothered by the third line of the first verse:
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la laThe teacher was evidently repulsed by the idea of a bunch of little kids singing about people putting on "gay apparel," and so she changed it to "don we now our bright apparel." Apparently she seriously thought that the third line would be construed as encouraging an approval of the "gay lifestyle," as if singing a Christmas carol would somehow induce all the little kids to consider being gay when they grew up. Maybe she really felt like this line would make all of the little boys go home after the Christmas concert with homosexual inclinations, and late that night the parents would get up and find their sons dressed in leather pants and watching Queer as Folk.
'Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la, la la la la
Don we now our gay apparel, fa la la la la, la la la la
Troll the ancient yuletide carol, fa la la la la, la la la la.
This isn't an isolated incident. Schools in Tennessee earlier this year passed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, which makes it illegal to mention any sexual orientation other than heterosexuality in public schools prior to ninth grade. The unspoken assumption here is that if we can just get kids to hit puberty without ever having heard about homosexuality, it will never occur to the kids to be attracted to the same sex, and homosexuality will go away.
Well, I'm sorry. That isn't how it works. Thirteen-year-olds don't sit down one evening, and think, "Hmm, let's see... shall I be attracted to boys or girls? Oh, wait... I remember back in third grade, singing about 'gay apparel.' That gives me a great idea...!" While we still have an incomplete understanding of where sexual orientation comes from, it is clearly a question to be resolved by the developmental geneticists -- not psychologists, and certainly not teachers, politicians, or ministers. Homosexuality is a naturally occurring construct of human genes, and is not produced by a timely suggestion. Homosexuality can no more be prevented by ignoring it than you could change a person's blood type by pretending that everyone was AB+.
And neither, for the record, can anyone be "cured" of homosexuality, despite the repeated claims by Michele Bachmann and her husband.
What these homophobic efforts accomplish, then, is only to marginalize further a group of teenagers who already have a staggeringly high incidence of depression, victimization by bullies, and suicide. Being that the motivation for these actions can't be that they're based in the truth -- they're not -- they can only be explained as a desire on the part of bigots, whether from fear or simple cruelty, to repress a group of people they would eliminate if they could.
And given that the vast majority of these people are motivated by their religion, it kind of makes you wonder how they reconcile this with the concept of "Christian charity."
Not to mention with the phrase, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
A city on Mars, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Borg cube
Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we are closely watching three stories this morning, all sent to us by faithful readers of Skeptophilia.
The first one is an article written by frequent flyer Dirk Vanderploeg, and tells us that NASA scientists have discovered (and are covering up) a city on Mars.
The alleged alien city is located in Tithonium Chasma, a valley at 89.62 W longitude and 4.96 S latitude, and is visible in the Google Earth maps of Mars. It's so easy to identify as an artificial construct, Vanderploeg says, that "even children can spot them on photographs immediately." The video link provided states that there are "parallel lines, rectangles, and virtual squares," and that several of the buildings have "flying buttresses." There's also a "huge monument, shaped like a reclining human with its arms folded." Thus, we have evidence that there's an extraterrestrial colony on Mars.
Or, possibly, we have the same thing we've dealt with here many times; the tendency of people to superimpose structure on natural objects that have an accidental resemblance to human constructs. Often, those similarities turn out not even to be as striking as they'd appeared at first when the light is coming from the other direction -- our minds were tricked by patterns of light and shadow. (Remember the "Face on Mars?")
So, we'll leave Mars behind, and head back to nice comfortable Earth, where things are about to get a whole lot scarier, to judge by the other two stories we're following.
The first of these (read it in its entirety here) is that some monks are about to risk a repeat of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, wherein several Nazis were variously melted and/or batter-fried to a deep golden brown for messing with the Ark of the Covenant. Much to my surprise, the article claims that Indiana Jones did not, in fact, find the Ark, and then chase the Nazis via submarine to an island in the Indian Ocean; the Ark has all along been in a church in Ethiopia. Who knew?
In any case, some monks in Ethiopia have apparently claimed for years that the Ark, along with the original Ten Commandments, reside in the Chapel of the Tablet in Aksum. But now the chapel roof has started to leak, and the monks don't want to take the chance of the Ark getting damaged by rain. The Old Testament god was always smiting the crap out of people for stuff like that, as I recall, so I understand their concern. In any case, they need to move the Ark, which will be problematic because only the head monk is ever allowed to look at it, and he can't lift it alone.
So, it's a quandary. The devout are thrilled because this will necessitate bringing the Ark out of the chapel, and it will give them the chance to take a look at what's been hidden for all of these years. Skeptics are excited for much the same reason. In any case, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
That is, if we don't get assimilated by the Borg first.
This is the concern of Alex Collier, noted Canadian wingnut who has appeared in Skeptophilia before. You may recall that he was the originator of the theory that there was a giant human/alien war in the 1930s, but we don't recall it because we've somehow gotten pushed into an alternate timeline, and we need to try to get back through the rip in the space-time continuum to return home.
If the whole thing sounds a little like a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Because now Collier is claiming that Comet Elenin, which even most of the world's woo-woos have already forgotten about, is still heading toward us (won't this damned comet ever give up and go away?), and furthermore, it is shaped exactly like the Borg cube from TNG. (Read the whole story here.)
Not only that, but this cube, which Collier calls a "Galactic Obliteration Device" -- or "G.O.D." -- is the god of the Old Testament. This thing is heading toward us, with the intent to destroy life on Earth, as predicted in such prophetic holy texts as the Book of Revelation and the script for the TNG episode Best of Both Worlds. I guess that after that we'll have the Second Coming of Locutus, or something.
As far as when all this is supposed to happen, Collier hasn't said. Maybe of that day and hour knoweth no man, not even the angels of heaven. Me, I'm not going to worry about it. I've heard that resistance is futile, and in any case, it's so often cloudy where I live that I probably wouldn't see them coming.
So, that's our news for today: a city on Mars, the Ark of the Covenant to make a public appearance, and the Borg ship is coming to town, as revealed in the scripture. And keep those cards and letters coming, folks. Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're always interested in any new developments out there, even ones that put us at risk of being melted, fried, or assimilated.
The first one is an article written by frequent flyer Dirk Vanderploeg, and tells us that NASA scientists have discovered (and are covering up) a city on Mars.
The alleged alien city is located in Tithonium Chasma, a valley at 89.62 W longitude and 4.96 S latitude, and is visible in the Google Earth maps of Mars. It's so easy to identify as an artificial construct, Vanderploeg says, that "even children can spot them on photographs immediately." The video link provided states that there are "parallel lines, rectangles, and virtual squares," and that several of the buildings have "flying buttresses." There's also a "huge monument, shaped like a reclining human with its arms folded." Thus, we have evidence that there's an extraterrestrial colony on Mars.
Or, possibly, we have the same thing we've dealt with here many times; the tendency of people to superimpose structure on natural objects that have an accidental resemblance to human constructs. Often, those similarities turn out not even to be as striking as they'd appeared at first when the light is coming from the other direction -- our minds were tricked by patterns of light and shadow. (Remember the "Face on Mars?")
So, we'll leave Mars behind, and head back to nice comfortable Earth, where things are about to get a whole lot scarier, to judge by the other two stories we're following.
The first of these (read it in its entirety here) is that some monks are about to risk a repeat of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, wherein several Nazis were variously melted and/or batter-fried to a deep golden brown for messing with the Ark of the Covenant. Much to my surprise, the article claims that Indiana Jones did not, in fact, find the Ark, and then chase the Nazis via submarine to an island in the Indian Ocean; the Ark has all along been in a church in Ethiopia. Who knew?
In any case, some monks in Ethiopia have apparently claimed for years that the Ark, along with the original Ten Commandments, reside in the Chapel of the Tablet in Aksum. But now the chapel roof has started to leak, and the monks don't want to take the chance of the Ark getting damaged by rain. The Old Testament god was always smiting the crap out of people for stuff like that, as I recall, so I understand their concern. In any case, they need to move the Ark, which will be problematic because only the head monk is ever allowed to look at it, and he can't lift it alone.
So, it's a quandary. The devout are thrilled because this will necessitate bringing the Ark out of the chapel, and it will give them the chance to take a look at what's been hidden for all of these years. Skeptics are excited for much the same reason. In any case, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
That is, if we don't get assimilated by the Borg first.
This is the concern of Alex Collier, noted Canadian wingnut who has appeared in Skeptophilia before. You may recall that he was the originator of the theory that there was a giant human/alien war in the 1930s, but we don't recall it because we've somehow gotten pushed into an alternate timeline, and we need to try to get back through the rip in the space-time continuum to return home.
If the whole thing sounds a little like a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Because now Collier is claiming that Comet Elenin, which even most of the world's woo-woos have already forgotten about, is still heading toward us (won't this damned comet ever give up and go away?), and furthermore, it is shaped exactly like the Borg cube from TNG. (Read the whole story here.)
Not only that, but this cube, which Collier calls a "Galactic Obliteration Device" -- or "G.O.D." -- is the god of the Old Testament. This thing is heading toward us, with the intent to destroy life on Earth, as predicted in such prophetic holy texts as the Book of Revelation and the script for the TNG episode Best of Both Worlds. I guess that after that we'll have the Second Coming of Locutus, or something.
As far as when all this is supposed to happen, Collier hasn't said. Maybe of that day and hour knoweth no man, not even the angels of heaven. Me, I'm not going to worry about it. I've heard that resistance is futile, and in any case, it's so often cloudy where I live that I probably wouldn't see them coming.
So, that's our news for today: a city on Mars, the Ark of the Covenant to make a public appearance, and the Borg ship is coming to town, as revealed in the scripture. And keep those cards and letters coming, folks. Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're always interested in any new developments out there, even ones that put us at risk of being melted, fried, or assimilated.
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