It is an interesting distinction, and one many people seem to be unable to recognize -- that there is a difference between being victimized and simply being told that you're demonstrably wrong.
I remember, for example, a former student of mine, a young African American woman who had a chip on her shoulder so big she could have used a visit to a chiropractor, who was in one of my math classes. She routinely failed exams -- whether from lack of effort or from lack of ability was hard to tell -- but her low grades finally resulted in a parent conference. During the conference, her mother said that her low grades in math were due to one thing: the fact that I was a racist. I was giving her daughter low grades, she said, because I was prejudiced against African Americans, and considered them "less intelligent."
I tried (unsuccessfully) to point out that my attitudes toward people of other races had little relevance, especially given that this was a math class -- the girl was seemingly incapable of solving algebra problems correctly. My marking a problem wrong had nothing to do with her race; anyone who had tried to solve the problem that way would have been marked wrong.
Of course, it made no difference. People who make a career out of being victims have remarkably little respect for facts and logic. Whether she thought that her daughter's wrong answers would have magically become right if her math teacher had had darker skin is a matter of conjecture, but that's certainly what it sounded like.
Which brings us to the case of the Weeping Cross of India. (Source)
In the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni, in Mumbai, there is a cross that began to drip water one day, resulting in a steady trickle that collected at the feet of the figure of Jesus. Devout Catholics pronounced it a miracle, and began to show up by the hundreds to collect the "tears" in vials, stating that it was "holy water" and could heal people who were anointed with it. Local church leaders jumped right on the bandwagon, circulating photographs of the miraculous statue, and encouraging everyone to come and witness the phenomenon.
One of the people who did is Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International. He came to Mumbai on March 10, and after a brief investigation he discovered what was happening; a water pipe in an adjoining washroom had sprung a leak, saturating the wall behind the crucifix. The water was being wicked up through the porous material of the cross, eventually seeping out and dripping onto Jesus' feet.
You'd think that the Catholic leaders would have a good laugh at themselves, and then hired a plumber, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. Five church leaders, including Father Augustine Palett, the pastor of the church that houses the crucifix, were interviewed by a local news program and demanded that Edamaruku apologize for his "hostility." He refused, and held his own news conference in which he explained his position, and described how the phenomenon had a purely natural explanation. The priests responded by demanding that local law enforcement officials arrest Edamaruku for blasphemy, under a clause of Indian penal code that one may not "hurt the sentiments of a particular religious community." As of this writing, the police are trying to locate and arrest Edamaruku, so far without success, so I'm uncertain as to how this story will end.
What occurs to me is, can these people really not see that there's a difference between being harassed and simply being wrong? Edamaruku didn't say that the Catholics were bad people, or that they should be discriminated against; he simply said that they had made a mistake. This is no more blasphemy than my marking my long-ago student's algebra problems wrong was racism.
And as far as India's anti-blasphemy law, under which Edamaruku may well soon be arrested; is it really reasonable that anyone should be able to claim anything, without challenge, simply by the expedient of adding, "and that's my religious belief?" A statement that is factual in nature can presumably be verified, and its correctness determined by some means that is the same for everyone. (This is called science, by the way.) The water in the crucifix either is appearing by miraculous means, or it is not. Edamaruku determined that it was not. You do not suddenly turn the claim of its being a miracle into a factual statement by saying, "Oh, but it is my religious belief that the water isn't coming from a leaky pipe!" -- any more than 2 + 2 = 5 as long as you aren't a racist.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Spring break
My dear Skeptophiliacs,
This coming week I will be taking a few days of R & R, and resting my poor fevered brain from the stress of battling the world of woo-woo. I will, however, take that time to continue my research, and when I resume posting on Monday, April 16, I hope to have a variety of new weird and irrational beliefs to tell you about.
Of course, "hope" may be the wrong word. What I'd really like is if, all of a sudden, the entire human race woke up and said, "Wow! We see the error of our ways! Logic, science, and rationalism really makes sense after all! Gordon was right the whole time!" And I would be forced to stop writing Skeptophilia for lack of material. But frankly, I'm not that hopeful.
Be that as it may, Skeptophilia will be on hiatus for a few days. If you've not read some of my older posts, this is a chance to go back through the archives (links are on the right side of the page). Also, here are a few wonderful skeptical blogs that you should check out in my absence:
Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking
James Randi Educational Foundation
Pharyngula
SkepChick
The Skeptic's Dictionary
The Call of Troythulu
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason
Friendly Atheist
Quackwatch
Bad Archaeology
Bad Astronomy
There, that should give you more than enough reading material for the week. But if that's still not enough to whet your thirst, now is as good a time as ever to announce that in late May or early June, I will be e-publishing a collection of the best of Skeptophilia. You can have all of the most outrageous assaults against human rationality in one place, right on your Kindle or Nook. Wouldn't that be nice? Plus, the cover illustration will, according to informed sources, feature me wearing a kick-ass wizard's hat. That alone should be worth the price, don't you think?
Anyway, I will sign off for a week, and will look forward to being refreshed and ready to engage battle when I return on April 16. If in the meantime any good stories from the world of woo-woo come up, leave a comment (and a link to the source) on this post, and I'll have a whole new pile of potential posts to sift through when I come back. Until then, keep hoisting the banner of logic!
This coming week I will be taking a few days of R & R, and resting my poor fevered brain from the stress of battling the world of woo-woo. I will, however, take that time to continue my research, and when I resume posting on Monday, April 16, I hope to have a variety of new weird and irrational beliefs to tell you about.
Of course, "hope" may be the wrong word. What I'd really like is if, all of a sudden, the entire human race woke up and said, "Wow! We see the error of our ways! Logic, science, and rationalism really makes sense after all! Gordon was right the whole time!" And I would be forced to stop writing Skeptophilia for lack of material. But frankly, I'm not that hopeful.
Be that as it may, Skeptophilia will be on hiatus for a few days. If you've not read some of my older posts, this is a chance to go back through the archives (links are on the right side of the page). Also, here are a few wonderful skeptical blogs that you should check out in my absence:
Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking
James Randi Educational Foundation
Pharyngula
SkepChick
The Skeptic's Dictionary
The Call of Troythulu
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason
Friendly Atheist
Quackwatch
Bad Archaeology
Bad Astronomy
There, that should give you more than enough reading material for the week. But if that's still not enough to whet your thirst, now is as good a time as ever to announce that in late May or early June, I will be e-publishing a collection of the best of Skeptophilia. You can have all of the most outrageous assaults against human rationality in one place, right on your Kindle or Nook. Wouldn't that be nice? Plus, the cover illustration will, according to informed sources, feature me wearing a kick-ass wizard's hat. That alone should be worth the price, don't you think?
Anyway, I will sign off for a week, and will look forward to being refreshed and ready to engage battle when I return on April 16. If in the meantime any good stories from the world of woo-woo come up, leave a comment (and a link to the source) on this post, and I'll have a whole new pile of potential posts to sift through when I come back. Until then, keep hoisting the banner of logic!
Friday, April 6, 2012
Buddhism, anagrams, and amino acids
In today's news, we have a new revelation from noted wingnut Dan Green. Dan Green, you might recall, is the one who smooshed together biblical prophecies, the Templars, the World Cup, and Lincoln Cathedral and found that if you looked at the resulting mash-up just right you found out that Britain was going to experience a devastating earthquake.
There was only one teensy problem with this theory, and that was that the earthquake never happened. But such a lack of results never discourages people like Green. "I will come up with something even more abstruse and ridiculous next time!" they always say. "And this time, it will be right! You'll see!"
So even if the earthquake refused to show up on schedule, Green has, coming out with this new outpouring of nonsense, which uses accidental similarities between various scientific words (such as the names of the amino acids) and words from ordinary English and words from the Buddhist tradition to claim that science is actually Buddhism in disguise. Or vice versa. Who the hell can tell? Most of Green's claims are so outlandish that at first it is tempting to believe that he's joking; but he delivers it all with such ponderous gravity that I am very much afraid he's serious, that he thinks he's really on to something, here. Here are a couple of examples:
However, it crosses my mind that two can play at that game. So, with a little help from the Internet Anagram Server, I came up with the following.
If you rearrange "Daniel Green," you get "eagle dinner." The eagle is the national symbol of the United States, along with the Stars and Stripes. The middle of "StarS AND STRIPes" says "sand strip," which is another name for a beach, such as the beach at Normandy where the Allied troops swarmed ashore during World War II, a move that proved to be the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler, whose name can be rearranged to spell "Harlot Field." The Harlot is another name for the Scarlet Woman of Babylon in the prophesies of the Book of Revelation, and if you take letters from the phrase "sCARlet woMAN of BABYLon," you get "Car Man Babyl (babble)," a clear reference to Click and Clack, the guys on Car Talk. Click and Clack are actually Tom and Ray Magliozzi, and if you rearrange "Tom and Ray Magliozzi" you get "dizzying amoral atom," which obviously is referring to nuclear weapons. Therefore you'd better take Dan Green's prophecies seriously, because otherwise someone's gonna get nuked.
I could keep doing this all day, but I'd better not, because I'm afraid I'd start believing it. That's the problem with this sort of thing, isn't it? As the cynical book editors discovered in my all-time favorite novel, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, there are seeming correspondences everywhere, and if you know enough you can make anything plausibly link to anything. Well, "plausibly" if you're willing to suspend disbelief indefinitely -- cherry-picking your examples, and ignoring any data that doesn't fit. And, of course, if you start from the belief that there is no such thing as meaningless coincidence. With that as your foundation, you can fashion the world into whatever you please.
There was only one teensy problem with this theory, and that was that the earthquake never happened. But such a lack of results never discourages people like Green. "I will come up with something even more abstruse and ridiculous next time!" they always say. "And this time, it will be right! You'll see!"
So even if the earthquake refused to show up on schedule, Green has, coming out with this new outpouring of nonsense, which uses accidental similarities between various scientific words (such as the names of the amino acids) and words from ordinary English and words from the Buddhist tradition to claim that science is actually Buddhism in disguise. Or vice versa. Who the hell can tell? Most of Green's claims are so outlandish that at first it is tempting to believe that he's joking; but he delivers it all with such ponderous gravity that I am very much afraid he's serious, that he thinks he's really on to something, here. Here are a couple of examples:
This cosmic neurological connection continues. The original and enforcedly relinquished seat of power in the Tibetan hierarchy was held by the now exiled Dalai Lama, an actual throne at his now abandoned and empty exquisite Pothala Palace, also known as Summer Palace, in the capital city of Lhasa. Summer Palace is also called Norbulinka, and our code reveals it as an anagram containing 'Brain link'. We will find the Pothala hiding in the word 'Hypothalamus' - 'hy POTHALA mus', a tiny cluster of cells in the brain and an essential link between the brain and the pituitary gland, which is sometimes called the 'Master Gland', as in the Masters of both Tibetan and Indian Buddhism. 'Hypothalamus' also locates 'Summer Palace' - 'Hypothal AMUS .......''Amus' reversed as 'SUMA'.....'Hy P ot HAL am US'...'PHALUS' = phonetic 'Palace'. Furthermore we find more significance in this crucial word, the very origin of the High Lamas of Tibet.....again, 'Hypothalamus' - 'HY potha LAMUS' = phonetic 'High Lamas'.Well, first of all, "palace" was not what I thought of when I saw "PHALUS." But maybe I just have a dirty mind. And further on:
The Four Noble Truths and the 8-Fold Path, in concise form are as follows;Really, I'm torn between laughing and crying, here. "AHSIDDS?" And when he went on to say that a healthy diet was 2,500 calories because the Buddha was born in 2,500 B.C.E., and that if you took the last part of "carbohydrate" and rearranged it you got "bodhy trae," which sounds like "bodhi tree," the place where the Buddha obtained enlightenment, I gave up.
Truth number one - Individualized existence is suffering,
Truth number two - The three poisons; ignorance, attachment and hatred are the cause of suffering,
Truth number three - Suffering ceases when desire ceases,
Truth number four - release can be reached by the 8-Fold Path :
1. Right Seeing
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Contemplation.
1. Isoleucine = Right seeing
IS o LEUCINE to read as phonetic 'Eyes looking'
2. Leusine = Right thought
LEUS ine to read as phonetic 'Loose' i.e. lacking a sense of restraint or responsibility : also licentious, unchaste, immoral
3. Lysine = Right speech
LYS ine to be read as phonetic 'Lies', false statements or pieces of information deliberately presented as being true.
4. Methionine = Right action.
To conceal phonetics 'Me', 'Thee' (Thi) and 'Thine' (Thion). Concern for all, regarding our actions.
5. Phenylalanine = Right livelihood.
To be read as phonetic 'Penny' (Pheny) a line (L an INE). A penny, in UK currency, was a coin originally silver, later copper, bronze from 1860, formerly worth 1/240 of £1, now equal to a hundredth part of £1. There is also the term 'bread line', meaning to be living at subsistence level, a modern day epithet to describe the original state of Buddhist living. People living in the UK will be reminded of the weekly 'football pool coupon', a mainstay of British national existence primarily before the advent of the National Lottery, whereby nominal stakes to attempt to win a fortune were staked at a 'penny a line'.
6. Threonine = Right effort.
To be read as phonetic 'Thrown in' (THREON ine = Throne). To put quickly into use or place, the colloquialism to 'throw in' as in colloquialism 'throw in the towel', to accept personal defeat, to give in, to oppose selfish, incorrect effort.
7. Tryptophan = Right mindfulness.
Concealing phonetic 'tripped' (TRYPT), colloquialism to 'trip up', meaning a mistake, slip up or blunder, to go wrong.
8. Valine = Right contemplation.
From vulgar Latin 'Valiente' (VALIEN te), to be strong, to possess, act with or show valour.
These then, are the revealed references, the eight amino acids for healthy growth and their relationship with approved Buddhist thought, until now phonetically veiled in the 8-Fold Path by Prince Siddhartha....SIDDHA rtha
SIDDHA = AHSIDDS = phonetic 'acids'
However, it crosses my mind that two can play at that game. So, with a little help from the Internet Anagram Server, I came up with the following.
If you rearrange "Daniel Green," you get "eagle dinner." The eagle is the national symbol of the United States, along with the Stars and Stripes. The middle of "StarS AND STRIPes" says "sand strip," which is another name for a beach, such as the beach at Normandy where the Allied troops swarmed ashore during World War II, a move that proved to be the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler, whose name can be rearranged to spell "Harlot Field." The Harlot is another name for the Scarlet Woman of Babylon in the prophesies of the Book of Revelation, and if you take letters from the phrase "sCARlet woMAN of BABYLon," you get "Car Man Babyl (babble)," a clear reference to Click and Clack, the guys on Car Talk. Click and Clack are actually Tom and Ray Magliozzi, and if you rearrange "Tom and Ray Magliozzi" you get "dizzying amoral atom," which obviously is referring to nuclear weapons. Therefore you'd better take Dan Green's prophecies seriously, because otherwise someone's gonna get nuked.
I could keep doing this all day, but I'd better not, because I'm afraid I'd start believing it. That's the problem with this sort of thing, isn't it? As the cynical book editors discovered in my all-time favorite novel, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, there are seeming correspondences everywhere, and if you know enough you can make anything plausibly link to anything. Well, "plausibly" if you're willing to suspend disbelief indefinitely -- cherry-picking your examples, and ignoring any data that doesn't fit. And, of course, if you start from the belief that there is no such thing as meaningless coincidence. With that as your foundation, you can fashion the world into whatever you please.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Whist, muslin, and bumble-puppy
It's been a while since I've posted on anything of a linguistic nature, which is kind of a shame. I'm a bit of a fanatic for words, especially odd words with curious origins. This has the result that a trip to a dictionary or encyclopedia is never quick for me. I go to look something up, get distracted by another entry, and then that reminds me of something else to look up, and I'm off on a two-hour birdwalk when I had intended to spend five minutes looking up a definition. Ah, the pain of being a language nerd.
A couple of days ago, I referred to an individual as being a "muckety-muck," and I was asked by one of my students whether I made that up, or if not, where did it come from. I didn't know -- I've heard the expression "high muckety-muck" since I was a kid, it was one of my mom's pet expressions for someone who was in charge and whose assumption of the mantle of responsibility had turned him/her into a puffed up, arrogant twit. As far as I knew, my mom made it up. So I went to the Linguists' Bible -- the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology -- and lo and behold, she didn't.
The term apparently comes from the trade language Chinook, which was a composite pidgin used by members of various tribes in the Pacific Northwest to communicate, since their home languages were mutually unintelligible. The Chinook phrase "hiu mukamuk," meaning "a man with plenty to eat," got brought into English as "high muckety-muck" with the overtones of someone using his affluence or influence for self-aggrandizement.
I've always found such things fascinating, and so I have become something of a collector for obscure word origins. I still haven't lived down with my family members the fact that I knew that "juggernaut" came from the name of a god in Hindi (Jaganath), and therefore is not a half-cognate to "astronaut" (which comes from Latin words meaning "star sailor"). The fact that "ignorant" and "agnostic" are cognates always makes me smile a little, and probably would bring an outright laugh from any religious folks -- "i" and "a" both mean "not," and "gnosis" means "knowledge." To fire a salvo in the other direction, however, remember that the stock phrase of the stage magician, "hocus pocus" (originally "hocus pocus dominocus"), comes from the Latin phrase hoc est corpus domini -- "this is the body of the lord," the words used during the Catholic mass before communion. Ha. Take that.
My tendency to lose focus as soon as I open up the ODEE means, however, that looking up a word origin never proceeds in a straight line. During my recent zigzag path through the Oxford, for example, I discovered another type of cloth that comes from a Middle Eastern city name. I knew that "gauze" comes from Gaza, and "damask" comes from Damascus, but who knew that "muslin" came from Mosul? Not me, or not until this week.
And then, there's my favorite new word, which I will find a way to work into a conversation soon. "Ingurgitate." Meaning "to swallow greedily." From the Latin gurges, meaning "whirlpool." That one also makes me strangely happy.
I also stumbled upon "bumble-puppy." This charming word doesn't refer to a particularly clumsy dog, but (and I quote), "an unscientific game of whist." This then necessitated looking up what "whist" was, and I gather from the definition of that word that it's a kind of card game (whose name, apparently, comes from Old Norse). Card games generally make as much sense to me as integral calculus does to a second grader, so I doubt I'd be able to tell a scientific from an unscientific game of whist in any case. ("Bumble-puppy" itself, I hasten to add, was marked "origin unknown.")
Then I found that "coracle" -- a little round boat -- wasn't a Latin word, as I expected from the "-acle" ending -- it's from the Welsh cwrwgl, meaning, of all things, "a little round boat." I guess when the Welsh were out in their cwrwgls, there was a storm, and all of their vowels washed overboard. Pity, that.
And last -- the first recorded use of the word "meringue" was in an English manuscript in 1706. Sounds French, doesn't it? I'd have thought so. I guess not. The ODEE puts it in with "bumble-puppy" as "origin unknown."
Honestly, none of this information is of the slightest use, but it's amusing and curious, and that's enough for me any day. Can't be deathly serious all the time, or even most of the time. Remember that next time you're playing a fast-moving game of bumble-puppy while ingurgitating meringue.
A couple of days ago, I referred to an individual as being a "muckety-muck," and I was asked by one of my students whether I made that up, or if not, where did it come from. I didn't know -- I've heard the expression "high muckety-muck" since I was a kid, it was one of my mom's pet expressions for someone who was in charge and whose assumption of the mantle of responsibility had turned him/her into a puffed up, arrogant twit. As far as I knew, my mom made it up. So I went to the Linguists' Bible -- the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology -- and lo and behold, she didn't.
The term apparently comes from the trade language Chinook, which was a composite pidgin used by members of various tribes in the Pacific Northwest to communicate, since their home languages were mutually unintelligible. The Chinook phrase "hiu mukamuk," meaning "a man with plenty to eat," got brought into English as "high muckety-muck" with the overtones of someone using his affluence or influence for self-aggrandizement.
I've always found such things fascinating, and so I have become something of a collector for obscure word origins. I still haven't lived down with my family members the fact that I knew that "juggernaut" came from the name of a god in Hindi (Jaganath), and therefore is not a half-cognate to "astronaut" (which comes from Latin words meaning "star sailor"). The fact that "ignorant" and "agnostic" are cognates always makes me smile a little, and probably would bring an outright laugh from any religious folks -- "i" and "a" both mean "not," and "gnosis" means "knowledge." To fire a salvo in the other direction, however, remember that the stock phrase of the stage magician, "hocus pocus" (originally "hocus pocus dominocus"), comes from the Latin phrase hoc est corpus domini -- "this is the body of the lord," the words used during the Catholic mass before communion. Ha. Take that.
My tendency to lose focus as soon as I open up the ODEE means, however, that looking up a word origin never proceeds in a straight line. During my recent zigzag path through the Oxford, for example, I discovered another type of cloth that comes from a Middle Eastern city name. I knew that "gauze" comes from Gaza, and "damask" comes from Damascus, but who knew that "muslin" came from Mosul? Not me, or not until this week.
And then, there's my favorite new word, which I will find a way to work into a conversation soon. "Ingurgitate." Meaning "to swallow greedily." From the Latin gurges, meaning "whirlpool." That one also makes me strangely happy.
I also stumbled upon "bumble-puppy." This charming word doesn't refer to a particularly clumsy dog, but (and I quote), "an unscientific game of whist." This then necessitated looking up what "whist" was, and I gather from the definition of that word that it's a kind of card game (whose name, apparently, comes from Old Norse). Card games generally make as much sense to me as integral calculus does to a second grader, so I doubt I'd be able to tell a scientific from an unscientific game of whist in any case. ("Bumble-puppy" itself, I hasten to add, was marked "origin unknown.")
Then I found that "coracle" -- a little round boat -- wasn't a Latin word, as I expected from the "-acle" ending -- it's from the Welsh cwrwgl, meaning, of all things, "a little round boat." I guess when the Welsh were out in their cwrwgls, there was a storm, and all of their vowels washed overboard. Pity, that.
And last -- the first recorded use of the word "meringue" was in an English manuscript in 1706. Sounds French, doesn't it? I'd have thought so. I guess not. The ODEE puts it in with "bumble-puppy" as "origin unknown."
Honestly, none of this information is of the slightest use, but it's amusing and curious, and that's enough for me any day. Can't be deathly serious all the time, or even most of the time. Remember that next time you're playing a fast-moving game of bumble-puppy while ingurgitating meringue.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
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:
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:
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.
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.
- 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
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.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, April 2, 2012
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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