Twinkle, twinkle, little Starseed

Regular readers of Skeptophilia may remember that a few months ago, I posted about the phenomenon wherein various people with a fairly tenuous grasp on reality become convinced that they are aliens.  (See my post here.)  They prefer the term "Starseed," however, so that they will not be confused with the more prosaic kind of illegal aliens, which could result in their being arrested by INS and deported to Alpha Centauri or something.

One of my criticisms of the whole Starseed thing was that it relied entirely on "feeling;" you determined that you were a Starseed because you "felt like you were," and even what star system you were from was ascertained from looking at a star map and seeing which one "felt right."  My conclusion was that the entire thing seemed predicated on a lot of wishful thinking.

Well, I'm happy to say that I now have come across research (even if I am twitching a little just from calling it that) that approaches the issue a little more analytically.  (Source)  However, if you are understandably reluctant to read the article itself, for fear that your brain will turn to Armour Potted Meat Food Product, I will summarize its main points for you below.

In its opening paragraphs, the article makes a good point, an objection that I wish I had thought of in my first post; if Starseeds are really superpowerful aliens in human form, sent here on a mission to improve humanity and heal the Earth, why don't they just go ahead and do it?  It's not like we see humanity showing much sign of improvement most days, such as might be evidenced by a drop in the ratings for Jersey Shore.  And as far as healing the Earth, I don't think I have a whole lot of confidence that's happening either, however you might define the word "healing."  And you'd think that the author might conclude from this that the people who claim to be Starseeds are actually just regular humans who might profit from some antipsychotic meds.

But no:  the actual answer, he says, is that Starseeds are alien losers:

I personally think that all Starseeds are actually outcasts are social rejects, prisoners are whatever part of their society they wanted to remove. The idea is that aliens vastly outlive us and they know the soul is immortal, so to punish or remove someone they find unpleasant to say the least, they must erase their memories and trick them into thinking they are on a mission to save Earth. Even when a Starseed remembers who they are, the aliens they last were, will return to contact that person and tell them they have a mission to keep them from wanting to return home. When a Starseed like myself doesn't do this mission and completely reject the idea and finds out what actually happened, the aliens will go as far as to threaten violence to keep them trapped on Earth.

Oh!  That makes perfect sense to me now.  Earth is actually like an intergalactic prison colony, and aliens are sent here for punishment.  I suppose there's some logic to this, especially if you've spent much time in Newark.

But by far the best part of the article is when the author quotes some facts and figures from Brad Steiger's highly scientific book, The Star People, which allows you to figure out the likelihood of your being a Starseed in a more statistically sound fashion than just closing your eyes and pointing to a random place in a star atlas.  According to Steiger, you may be a Starseed if you:

• Have compelling eyes.
• Have lower than normal body temperature.
• Were an unexpected child.
• Have chronic sinusitis.
• Have hypersensitivity to electricity or electromagnetic force fields.
• Experience buzzing or audio tone prior to a psychic-spiritual event or warning of danger.
• Have "flying" dreams.
• Feel that children and animals are attracted to you, and form strong attachments to pets.
• Felt Earth mother/father not real parents.

Well, personally, I think that I have drop-dead sexy eyes, although I will admit that I might be a little biased in that regard.  I am very sensitive to the cold, I was definitely an unexpected child, and I have pretty frequent sinus problems.  The next two are "nos," but I did have flying dreams as a child, and dogs and cats both seem to be magnetically attracted to me.  As far as my parents not really being my parents, I look exactly like my dad, so I think it's a big no on that one.  So all in all, my own results are a little equivocal.  But Streiger goes on to quote some statistics, obtained heaven-alone-knows-how:

• 88-92% have lower body temperature than the norm
• 92% feel a tremendous sense of urgency to fulfill their missions
• 65% are female: 35% are male
• 90% have experienced a sense of oneness with the universe
• 83-94% have chronic sinusitis
• 32-34% have extra or transitional vertebra
• 97% have hypersensitivity to sound, light, odors
• 70-87% have swollen or painful joints
• 93% have pain in the back of the neck
• 84% adversely affected by high humidity
• 71% have difficulty dealing with/or expressing emotions
• 74% report out of body experiences
• 57% perceive auras
• 63% have experienced a white light during meditation
• 50% believe that they receive some form of communication from a higher source
• 50% have accomplished dramatic healings on themselves and others
• 38% practice automatic writing
• 60% have perceived spirit guides
• 75% have experienced clairvoyance, clairaudience
• 57% have made prophetic statements or experienced prophetic dreams or visions that have come to pass
• 38% have been visited by an angel
• 37% reveal the manifestation of a Light Being
• 35% feel that they have been blessed by the appearance of a holy figure
• 50% are convinced that they have a spirit guide or angel
• 40% admit to having had an invisible playmate as a child
• 20% once spotted an elf or "wee person"
• 34% are certain that they have encountered alien entities of an extraterrestrial or multidimensional level
• 55% report an intense religious experience
• 72% claim an illumination experience
• 90% have experienced telepathic communication with another entity, physical or non-physical from another realm.
• 48% have seen a ghost
• 42% have connected with a deceased loved one
• 76% believe in reincarnation and have past life memories
• 37% have survived a life-threatening illness
• 34% have been involved in a severe accident or trauma
• 55% have had near death experiences
• 78% believe that have lived on another planet and can tell you about it
• Some are aware of parallel existence at this time in other worlds
• 86% believe in miracles
• Most believe in a God or creator energy source
• All believe in life on other planets

The majority of these seem to me to be ample qualifications for being fitted out for a jacket with extra-long sleeves, in my opinion, although a few of them are just weird.  Especially, what's the thing with the arthritis, sinus problems, and dislike of high humidity?  Are Starseeds actually elderly retired aliens from Planet Scottsdale, or something?  Of course, I didn't see any mention of golf, driving Buicks, or wearing plaid shorts with loafers and knee socks, so maybe that isn't right, either.

Be that as it may, there's our handy checklist to see if you're from another planet.  Given the author's surmise that Starseeds are alien convicts, if you are one, it's probably best if you don't tell me about it.  If you did, and the Intergalactic Police showed up at my door and threatened to vaporize my pets if I didn't tell them everything I know, I probably would rat you out rather than let that happen.  No offense, but I Form Very Strong Attachments To Pets, if you get my drift.  Wink wink nudge nudge.

A face from the dark side

It has frequently struck me as odd how circuitously news travels.  I had a rather disturbing example of this occur yesterday, and it has led my mind onto a fairly grim track.  But let me begin at the beginning.

Readers of this blog may remember that one of my interests is family history.  I've been collecting names of dead relatives for over thirty years, and have an online genealogical database I maintain that now has over 85,000 names of relatives.  As I began this research while I was still married to my first wife, I have also kept a fairly detailed record of her family, and yesterday I received an email asking me about some information regarding one of her relatives.

Wishing to check the data I had, I did a quick online search.  Google, faithful as always, popped up a link to my ex's relative's obituary in the city newspaper.  But it popped up something else, too.

My ex's relative (whom I am not naming for reasons which will be apparent momentarily) had a fairly unusual married name.  I only know of one other person with that name -- a fellow I'll call Frank, who went to my high school.  He was two years older than me, but I knew him because he was in my church's youth group.  Frank was the all-American boy; handsome, athletic, outgoing.  He was devout but not in a pushy way, and became the ad hoc leader of the youth group without even trying.  The girls were wowed by his smile, the boys by his magnetic personality.  I knew no one who disliked Frank -- although I'll bet that a lot of us were pretty jealous of him.

The second link -- the one right beneath my ex's aunt's obit -- was a link that identified Frank as a registered sex offender in Florida.

My mouth hanging open a bit, I clicked the link, wondering if there could possibly be two people with that name.  But no, there was a photograph of Frank, his face set and grim, his eyes without their customary sparkle.  In 1989, the link said, Frank had been convicted of lewd and/or lascivious conduct with a minor.  He would have been 31 or 32 at the time.

No other details were listed.

Out of a combination of morbid curiosity and sheer astonishment, I tried to find out more details.  Fortunately or unfortunately, the fact that the event occurred prior to the Internet seems to have prevented the details of the case from making their way online, at least as far as a fifteen minute search could show.  So I was left, still in shock, with no further information, and simply an image of his transformed face burned into my mind, and nothing other than that besides questions.

Of course, the first one was, what on earth could have driven that smiling boy, that natural born leader who had it all, to do something like that?  I know people say that pedophilia is a disease, and as such is no respecter of personality and upbringing.  I don't know enough psychology to argue that point, but it is so difficult for me to reconcile my image of Frank as a teenager, and the photograph of him as a graying, grim looking man of 53 that I can't even begin to figure out how to do it.

It's brought up other memories, too.  Because Frank isn't the first pedophile I've met.  Some of you who are old enough may recognize the name Gilbert Gauthé.  Gauthé was the first Catholic priest convicted and jailed for pedophilia in the United States.  He was from southern Louisiana, and during his early career he was the assistant pastor in Broussard, Louisiana, where I spent much of my childhood.  He, like Frank, was charming, handsome, and charismatic -- and, apparently, a predator on young boys.  I have to interject that he never once approached me in anything but an appropriate fashion, but during the time that I knew him he molested over 20 children under the age of 15.  By the time he was caught and convicted I was already in my twenties, living in Seattle, Washington, and I found out about it when I saw his face in Time magazine.  I asked my parents why they hadn't told me -- my mom, in a mournful voice, said, "I'm sorry, Gordon.  We knew you thought highly of him, and we thought it was better not to mention it, better if you didn't know."

Once again, I won't debate that point; my mom, I know, withheld the information because she was trying to protect me from the heartache of having to reconcile what I had thought a person was, and what he truly turned out to be.  She did it because she knew, having gone through it herself, that it is a painful process, and one that can leave you disillusioned.  And now, once again, I'm having to come to terms with the question of how someone's façade and someone's reality can be so drastically different.  I don't have any answers.  I'm simply left with looking into the face of the darkest side of human nature -- a face that this time wears the visage of a smiling, clear-eyed, handsome boy I knew in school.

Men in black, men in brown

It is a curious feature of woo-woo that the purveyors of such ideas feel driven to add layer upon layer of complexity to their theories, as if slathering more craziness upon an idea that was kind of ridiculous to begin with will make people sit up and say, "dear god, you're right!"  It's almost like some kind of strange parody of the scientific process, where experimentation, analysis, and insight lead to clarification.  Here, there's a sense of adding more mud to already muddy waters.

Our first example of this comes from the world of the conspiracy theorists.  I've devoted a number of posts to such issues as the Illuminati, HAARP, the Bilderberg Group, and secret societies, and how some subset of the above is responsible for (1) controlling world governments, (2) spying on innocent citizens with nefarious ends in mind, and (3) causing natural disasters.  The individuals running the conspiracy are always portrayed as evil, superpowerful arch-villains, who are untouchable by normal means, and who pull everyone else's strings for their own mysterious purposes.

Basically, the worldview is that we live inside a David Lynch movie.

In any case, it's kind of a dismal way to look at life.  So, it is not any real surprise to me that there has now been a revelation of a new conspiracy, a nice conspiracy, that will sweep down and get rid of the old, nasty, evil conspiracy.  (Source)

This claim states that "very soon" there will be a mass arrest of banking executives by a group of world leaders who are fed up with corporate corruption, removing the "Illuminati banking cartel" and returning "power back to the people."  Plans are already in place to "cut off... international calling" and stop international travel; at that point, "the pro-humanity forces will sweep through and arrest MASS AMOUNTS of bankers and corrupt financial execs as they complete their task to bring freedom to the world from these financial terrorists."

Well, that sounds hopeful enough, as far as it goes, but how do we know it's true?  The writer states:

The part of this story that makes it believable is that it is actually backed by Real Names and Real People who can be researched. The majority of the information comes from Benjamin Fulford.  Benjamin Fulford was Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Forbes magazine for seven years, until 2005 when he quit because of the "extensive corporate censorship and mingling of advertising and editorial at the magazine."

Oh.  Benjamin Fulford, eh?  The originator of the HAARP conspiracy theory?  The man who claimed that "the American government, in cooperation with [the] Federal Reserve, the Rockefellers, and other powerful groups" were going to cause Mt. Fuji to erupt on April 11, 2011, and who has continued to pontificate undaunted despite the lack of cooperation by the actual volcano?  The guy who says Bill Gates is going to be arrested as one of the lead conspirators, and that the pope is going to resign on April 15?  We're supposed to consider this guy a credible source?

It's not only the conspiracy nuts that have this regrettable tendency to elaborate themselves to death; the same is true of other branches of woo-woo.  Take, for example, this recent story from the world of aliens and crop circles.

In case you are understandably reluctant to read the article itself, the whole thing adds a new dimension to the idea that aliens are responsible for crop circles; the author claims that aliens are now being spotted hanging around the crop circles, as if waiting for something significant to happen.  And these are not easily identifiable aliens, i.e little gray guys with enormous eyes; no, these aliens are smarter than that.  They are cleverly disguised as tall blond guys wearing brown clothes.

There are several accounts of contact with these dudes recounted in the article, but the following is my favorite:

(A)n anonymous woman called the operator to the Air Force in the UK... in Suffolk and reported a strange episode that occurred when she was walking with his dog.  She saw a man dressed in a light brown suit... who spoke with a “Scandinavian accent.”  He asked if she had not heard about the large flat circles that appear on the wheat fields.  During the ten-minute conversation the man told me that he was from another planet similar to the Earth, and that his relatives have visited Earth, and made such education.  Guests arrived here on a friendly target, but “they were told not to come into contact with people for fear that their visit can be regarded as a threat.”  Apparently, he did not say who told them not to come into contact with us.  The woman was “very scared”, and while she ran to the house, she heard of a “loud buzzing sound,” and saw the trees soared a large spherical object, glowing orange-white light. BBC statement said the woman told me about an hour and had no doubt that she wrote about a real event.

So, now we not only have the crop circles to puzzle over, we have blond guys with Swedish accents coming up to innocent dog-walkers and saying, "Say, how about that crop circle over there?  Pretty nice one, eh?   Oh, by the way, I'm an alien, but don't be afraid.  Later."  And then they take off in their spaceships.

Then, to make matters worse, the author throws in his two favorite theories for what the crop circles are for.  I reproduce those here, verbatim:

(T)he location of crop circles – referencing a crop circle ‘database’ – near ancient formations indicate a connection between ancient extraterrestrial visitors and modern day crop circles. Crop circles that contain messages that will “help usher mankind into the Golden Age.”  ... Also, crop circles can be used as a reference point for time travel in the source field.  They often appear right next to the ancient monuments of the vortex points, and that to this day can serve as portals for time travel in space.

Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense.  Vortex points and time travel in the source field.  And also, don't forget frequency resonant vibration energy dimensions!  In space!

In any case, that's our dose of woo-woo lunacy for today.  Men in black (or brown, as the case may be), and how they either will be taken down by the People's Revolution or else use messages in corn fields to usher us into the Golden Age.  Either way, I suppose I should be happy that the outlook is good.  It certainly is preferable to some previous forecasts, such as a massive eruption of Mt. Fuji.  That would have sucked.

Saturday morning shorts

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we've got our eyes on three stories.

First, there's a story out of Nigeria that should be highly alarming to my male readers; sorcerers may be trying to steal your genitals.  (Source)

Four young men were walking along a road near Rumuola and came across a disabled gentleman who was sitting in a wheelchair hoping for a handout from passersby.  One of the four young men came up to give the beggar a few coins, and as he dropped coins into the man's hand he suddenly realized that his penis was missing.

Alarmed, the young man started to beat up the poor guy in the wheelchair, and when his three friends came up  to see what was going on, they realized that their penises were missing, too.  So they joined in, shouting (this is a direct quote from the article), "Help!  He has stolen our pricks!"

Fortunately for the poor man in the wheelchair, who by this time had been knocked to the ground, some policemen came onto the scene and stopped the younger men.  (The young men had apparently been ready to lynch the man.)  When the policement heard the young men's story, he ordered them to drop trou, and lo!  There were their wangs, after all!  "Ha ha," the young men said.  "Now don't we feel foolish!"

No, not really.  Superstitious morons never give up this easily.  The young men did reluctantly admit that their penises were still in the customary location, but they claimed that the beggar had bewitched them and now they didn't work.  As a demonstration of this, one of the young men tried to take a piss and couldn't.  So the policemen sent all four of the young men to a hospital to be checked, and (it is to be hoped) the beggar got himself right the hell out of there before they could return and finish what they started.  After examination, doctors said that there was nothing wrong with the young men's equipment, although their brains could certainly do with some looking after.


Next, we have an interview with Tony Wright, author of the 2008 blockbuster Left in the Dark, in which the claim is made that humans are losing touch with the spirit world because we like to eat fruit.  (Source)

Fruit, Wright claims, is a "highly advanced molecular engineering cocktail" that affects our hormone levels and causes our brains to shrink.  Additionally, the "DNA transcription factors" in fruits are gradually taking over our bodies, shifting us "from a typical mammalian developmental environment to more of a plant developmental environment."  Wright says this has caused problems:

This has severely limited our perception and compromised many abilities. The evidence suggests those abilities as well as a wholly different sense of self lie dormant in the right side of our brain and is only occasionally glimpsed by a tiny minority of people. Unfortunately this also creates a paradox. The dominant side of the brain is assessing itself and so while the concept of specialist abilities appears initially to make some sense on further investigation all is not as it appears and this doesn’t hold up. I have proposed that the abilities and perception facilitated by the left side of our brain are a more primitive and greatly reduced or distorted version of what still remains locked away in the right. Instead of separate senses a unified and highly advanced system that perceives everything all at once without any problems was the norm.

 How can we access this lost ability to see Everything All At Once?  It's simple, Wright says, and takes only two steps:

1. Stop eating fruit.
2. Take hallucinogenic drugs.

He particularly favors ayahuasca, he says:

Psychedelics like ayahuasca seem to be a powerful means of re-accessing these lost perceptual abilities (any wonder our left brained society has made these things illegal?). It’s been said that shamans for example who work with it enough can eventually bring in an altered state of consciousness willingly, without even drinking the brew. The beta-carbolines in ayahuasca alone are powerful MAO inhibitors with psychoactive properties by themselves (along with many other beneficial effects). We’re chronically deficient in not only a complex cocktail of plant MAO inhibitors but also the ones that our pineal glands would have produced in much higher amounts as well, given that flavonoids stimulate this gland. Pinoline is just one example. 

Oh, okay, I will dump out my fruit smoothie and go take some hallucinogens right away.

One last note about Wright; his book costs $30 from Amazon.  Myself, I think you could find better uses for $30, which would include taking three ten-dollar bills and setting fire to them.


Last, we have a story out of Arkansas, where a guy leading a search for the Boggy Creek Monster got fined for forgetting to apply for a park pass.  (Source)

Matt Pruitt, a team leader with the Bigfoot Field Researchers' Organization, was on an expedition with 31 other squatchers, trying to find some relatives of the stars of the truly atrocious movies The Legend of Boggy Creek and Return to Boggy Creek.  The only hominid he ran into, however, was an annoyed park ranger, who informed Pruitt that in order to take a group into the park, he needed to apply for (and pay for) a permit.  Pruitt was given a ticket and ultimately had to pay a fine of $525.

It was, Pruitt said, "an innocent mistake," which is undoubtedly true.  And I think he could well afford the fine, because each of the prospective Bigfoot hunters had paid him between $300 and $500 for the privilege of wandering around in the woods and not seeing any monsters.  So Pruitt still came out ahead to the tune of about $12,000, even taking the fine into consideration.  So it could have been worse.

Way worse, actually.  He could have had a banana with his breakfast, and had his brain shrink.  Worse yet, he could have passed a guy in a wheelchair on the trail, and had his penis stolen.  So it's all a matter of perspective, and I think we can all agree that by comparison, Pruitt was pretty lucky.

Public schools, alien overlords, and banned words

I am happy to be able to tell you that we finally have figured out what is wrong with the public education system in the United States: it is being turned into a factory for brainwashing children by our elite alien overlords.

If by now the name "David Icke" comes to mind, you have evidently escaped brainwashing yourself, possibly by going to private school.  David Icke is the conspiracy theorist's conspiracy theorist.  His ideas are so bizarre and abstruse that they probably are secrets even from himself, and his book The Greatest Secret has been called "the Rosetta Stone of conspiracy theories."  This seems fairly generous, frankly, because most of what I've read by Icke is patent horse waste.  My favorite example is that various public figures are actually reptilian aliens masquerading as humans, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

I bet you thought I was going to say "Okay, I made the last one up."  Nope.  That is the level of conspiracy theory that David Icke has reached -- he says even the world of washed-up folk singers has been infiltrated.  Next thing you know, we'll find out that Snooki is actually a reptilian alien.  And then all of a sudden the fact that her baby is due on December 21, 2012 will make terrible, terrible sense.

In any case, David Icke has now come forth with a new claim -- that the American public school system exists solely to turn children into obedient little automatons, because that's what the Archons want.  (Source)  You really should watch the video clip attached, which contains quotes such as, "These guys, the manipulators (the Archons) know it's an illusion, know reality is all in our minds, so they know that if they program our minds with the right illusion, we'll create it physically.  The educational system is massively, massively part of that."

All I can say is, if I was creating an illusion with my mind, it wouldn't be this one.  The illusion I want to have is me on the beach in Costa Rica, clad in nothing but swim trunks, holding a margarita.  But maybe I wasn't programmed properly, so what I got was upstate New York in March.

Be that as it may, we will leave behind David Icke for a different sort of wingnuttery -- the kind that comes out of the actual educational system.  Perhaps you haven't heard about it, but a story broke a couple of days ago about a policy by the New York City Education Department regarding fifty words that are banned from appearing on standardized tests.  (Source)

If you immediately thought of George Carlin, so did I; but interestingly, only one of the banned words is even vaguely naughty, and that's "sex."  Mustn't find out if children understand how humans procreate!  The other words fall into a few loose classes:

• Words that someone, somewhere might take exception to, on religious grounds: dinosaurs, evolution, Halloween, the occult, fortunetelling, parapsychology, witchcraft
• Words describing things we'd like to pretend that children don't know exist: alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, junk food, pornography, rap music
• Words that get people emotionally stirred up: abuse, cancer, catastrophes (tsunamis/hurricanes), crime, death, homelessness, poverty, slavery, terrorism, war

Yes -- in New York City schools, standardized tests can't mention slavery, terrorism, or war.

I wish I was making this up.  The powers-that-be in the New York City School District think that it is somehow acceptable to give children tests, and (worse) use those test scores to evaluate not only the children themselves, but their teachers, school administrators, and schools as a whole -- and never once ask a single question regarding war or sex, which are the two biggest drivers for human history I can think of.  We are successfully creating a school system that is so bland, mechanized, and PC that it merely labeling a word as "controversial" can get it banned from appearing on the test.  Did you know that "hunting" can't appear on standardized tests in New York City?

And don't even start with me about eliminating any mention of evolution.

You know, it pains me to say so, but I'm beginning to wonder if David Icke might have a point.  Not about the Archons; why would we need reptilian overlords to destroy public education, when the people we've elected to oversee it seem to be doing a damn good job of it without any alien intervention?

An evening with Dr. Eugenie C. Scott

Last night I had the privilege of attending a lecture by one of my heroes, and getting to meet her and chat with her afterwards.  Her name is Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education.

The subject of the talk was the relationship between science and religion, a topic that is of great interest both to Dr. Scott and myself.  Dr. Scott has been a passionate exponent of keeping religion out of the science classroom, and her efforts have been instrumental in the overturning of state mandates that high school biology teachers "teach the controversy" regarding evolution (amongst scientists, there is none) or include "alternate explanations" (most often intelligent design, which is a fundamentally non-scientific stance).

Dr. Scott's talk last night revolved around what she called "three ways of knowing" -- authority, personal experience/insight, and science.  Each of them, she said, has its limitations, and is useful in different situations.  Science's limitations in particular include the fact that it only addresses natural processes and natural explanations -- it is silent on issues of the supernatural, and even in the realm of the natural world stops short of giving meaning to what is out there.  In particular, she took exception with statements such as the following by Richard Dawkins (from River Out of Eden): "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."  Her objection was not that she didn't agree with it -- she is, she said, a philosophical materialist -- but that it is not a scientific statement.

I thought it was an interesting argument, but after letting it bubble about in my brain for twelve hours, I'm not sure I actually agree with it.  Science does attach meaning to things; rightly or wrongly, scientists do more than what she claims, which is to draw inferences from data about relationships between variables.  When a scientist in my favorite discipline, which is evolutionary biology, states that stripes in zebras serve the function of breaking up the animals' profile when the herd is in flight, making it harder for predators to single out one particular individual, (s)he has crossed the line into an unprovable assertion -- albeit a logical, and fairly benign, one.  That stripes are selected for is obvious; zebras have stripes.  What the ultimate purpose of stripes is, is another matter entirely.  And science does often have a lot to say on such matters, although careful scientists are rightly cautious about granting such statements too much weight.

And as far as the difference between natural and supernatural, I wonder very much if that is not itself an artificial distinction.  If things we consider supernatural (gods, spirits, ghosts, demons, and so on) actually exist, it points to some pretty fundamental truths about the universe, and says a lot about how the world around us is put together.  The existence of such entities should leave traces -- evidence -- and that evidence should be accessible to evaluation by scientists.  Dr. Scott's claim that the supernatural (should it exist) is the sole provenance of non-scientific ways of study is, I think, drawing a false dichotomy.  We cannot (as she said) detect god in a test tube; "we have no theometer."  But evidence of a spiritual world's existence would, I think, be detectable in other ways than the notoriously unreliable appeals to authority and mystical insight.  The lack of such evidence drives us to the most parsimonious explanation, namely, that such entities do not exist.

In any case, it was a brilliant lecture, and it was an honor to meet finally someone whose work I have admired for years.  And personally, Dr. Scott is a gracious, funny, and highly articulate woman.  After the lecture, when I went up to shake her hand and thank her for coming to Ithaca, I told her that I had a t-shirt captioned "Skeptical Squares," with wonderful caricatures of nine prominent skeptics.  (If you want one, go here -- you can choose from amongst dozens of scientists and philosophers.)  And one of my nine favorite skeptics was her.

"My goodness," she said, laughing.  "I am overwhelmed by my own fame.  I barely know what to say."  If so, it was the first time that evening that she was at a loss for words.

Weird news out of Whitby

In what is probably nothing more than a coincidence, but might have to do with hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply, today we have three stories from Whitby, England.

I remember Whitby as a lovely town, and one that I was mighty glad to see when I visited England, because it represented the end of my 110 mile solo hike across England, which had begun three weeks earlier at the Irish Sea in Blackpool.  The last part of the hike was across steep moorland country, and I still remember my relief when I saw the North Sea glittering in the distance, under virtually the only sunshine I'd enjoyed during the entire trip -- Britain was, according to a news report I saw, experiencing the rainiest summer since 1865, and I spent a good bit of the hike soaked to the skin.

So, anyway, my associations with Whitby are pleasant ones, and nothing odd or unexplained happened during my visit there.  But in the last few weeks, there has been a sudden spate of weirdness that makes me wish I could go there and investigate in person.

First we have two stories (source) regarding strange sightings.  In the first, Whitby resident Caroline Russell reports seeing an animal she describes as a huge, jet-black "cat-like creature" on February 29.

"It was my dog that flushed it out of next door’s garden," Russell told reporters.  "It flushed out a pheasant and at the same time it flushed out this black creature.  Where this had come from and why my dog didn’t chase it I’m not sure – my dog could have been scared of it.  I’ve never seen anything like it before."

The sighting, Russell said, occurred at two o'clock in the afternoon, and there's no way she's mistaken about what she saw.

"Whatever it was it disappeared.  It just shot up into the woods and it was jet black.  If it was a cat we would have heard it hissing but it was really, really quiet."

This is not the first time that there have been sightings of large black panther-like animals in the Whitby area.  In fact, the RAF base at nearby Fylingdales is rumored to be the site of a Roswell-style UFO conspiracy, but instead of bodies of aliens, the British military is alleged to be storing "the carcass of a puma-like creature."

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

Russell, however, isn't saying whether she believes what she saw is an Alien Space Kitty.  "I’ve heard people talk about them and I’ve heard previously of someone walking through Mulgrave Woods and actually seeing a cat- like creature," she said.  "I walk along the ridge with my dogs and I’ve never seen it before or since."


It was only a day later that another Whitby resident saw a UFO in the skies above Port Mulgrave.

"I was coming out of Boulby Potash last night and had just pulled up at the junction," she told reporters, on the condition that her name not be released.  "I saw orange lights going round in a circle and I said to my daughter in the back of the car, ‘Blimey that’s a UFO’.  I did a big U-turn in the middle of the road and it had gone.  I looked into it and there was a young chap in 2007 who had seen something round about the same place on the second of March.  This was the first of March, but it was a leap year so it would have actually been the same day.  It was not an aeroplane and not a helicopter and there were about six big orange lights around it...  I got a tingle down my spine."


Myself, I wonder if what she saw was a Close Encounter of the Third Kind between Whitby councillor Simon Parkes and (literally) the Mother Ship.  This past Monday, Parkes stunned his colleagues on the Whitby Town Council by publicly stating that his mother was a nine-foot tall green alien with eight fingers on each hand.  (Source)

Parkes said he first saw his alien mum when  he was only eight months old.  Despite being only a wee baby, he recalls “a traditional kite-shaped face”, with huge eyes, tiny nostrils and a thin mouth appearing over his crib.

“Two green stick things came in," he said, in a YouTube video that you should all definitely watch.  "I was aware of some movement over my head.  I thought, ‘they’re not mummy’s hands, mummy’s hands are pink’."

He then said, "I was looking straight into its face. It enters my mind through my eyes and it sends a message down my optic nerve into my brain.  It says ‘I am your real mother, I am your more important mother’."

He also stated that he's seen his alien family many times since then, and in fact was taken for a tour of a UFO when he was eleven years old.  But, he stated reassuringly, and probably because anyone in the room at the time was inching their way toward the door by this point, no one should be worried that his mother is an alien.

"It’s a personal matter and it doesn’t affect my work. I’m more interested in fixing someone’s leaking roof or potholes.  People don’t want me to talk about aliens.  I get more common sense out of the aliens than out of Scarborough Town Hall.  The aliens are far more aware of stuff.  People in the Town Hall seem not to be aware of the needs of Whitby."

Myself, I think that a flying saucer would be handy thing to have if you were trying to fix a leaking roof.  You could simply hover over the house, and lower yourself down from a ladder.  Or possibly just fix the leak by materializing tar paper and sealant in place over the spot and fusing it with a ray gun.  So maybe it'd be useful to have alien connections on your town council.

Not that this is any comfort for the residents of Whitby, who apparently are reacting with some horror that the guy they elected is babbling like a loon.  And as for the rest of the town councillors, they seem a bit at a loss as to how to react.  There has been no official statement from the town council regarding the matter, although Parkes' fellow councillor Terry Jennison did tell reporters that he had no idea what Parkes was going on about.

"I'm completely in the dark about this," Jennison said.

So, anyway, that's the news today from lovely Whitby.  Giant extraterrestrial space pumas, orange UFOs, and aliens on the town council.  Hearing all of this makes me want to go back for a visit.  I would, however, make sure to drink only bottled water while I was there.