Accentuate the negative

I just found out why I (1) love astronomy, (2) have a fascination for UFOs, and (3) like Star Trek: The Next Generation:  My mother had Rh negative blood.

At least, that's the claim of an online book called The Rh Negative Factor, by Roberta Hill.  (You can read it in its entirety here.)

Hill's conjecture, which she claims to analyze in an "unbias" [sic] way, is that people with Rh negative blood have some pretty odd characteristics.  These include:

1. predominance of green or hazel eyes that change color like a chameleon, but also blue eyes.
2. true red or reddish hair
3. low pulse rate
4. low blood pressure and/or high blood pressure
5. keen sight or hearing
6. ESP
7. extra rib or vertebrae
8. UFO connections
9. love of space and science
10. a sense of not belonging to the human race
11. piercing eyes
12. para-normal occurrences
13. physic [sic] dreams
14. truth seekers
15. desire for higher wisdom
16. empathetic illnesses
17. deep compassion for fate of mankind
18. a sense of a 'mission' in life
19. physic [sic again] abilities
20. unexplained scars on body
21. capability to disrupt electrical appliances
22. alien contacts

Well.  My mom certainly was Rh negative; so are a good many people who have ancestry in southwestern France and northeastern Spain (and thus are likely to have Basque ancestry, amongst whom the allele for Rh negative blood is 65-70%).  It is responsible for Rh incompatibility syndrome, which killed my older sister and would have killed me but for the wonders of modern medicine and the RhoGAM shot, which suppresses an Rh negative mother's immune reaction against her Rh positive fetus.  My understanding was that the gene responsible for the condition was the result of a mutation that occurred amongst the ancestors of the Basques, probably something like 15,000 years ago.  But other than that, Rh negative doesn't seem to do much; people with two copies of the allele (like my mom) just don't have the Rh antigenic protein, and I thought that was pretty much that.

Little I know.

It turns out that besides all of the abilities and characteristics listed above, being Rh negative means that we are descended from some combination of: (1) the Merovingian kings; (2) fallen angels; (3) the Nephilim; (4) aliens; or (5) Jesus.

According to Hill, there's all sorts of evidence for this.  For example, let's look at my favorite paragraph from her book:

I can only offer theories as to how this gene deletion could benefit mankind. Perhaps this particular protein that the RHD gene encodes for is a problem somehow and prevents people from receiving hyperdimensional information from the spiritual realm, and that could be why people are saying that RH negatives (& RH negative recessive people +/-) are more psychic. The RHD gene could have been a mutation or could have been put there by the fallen angels (aliens) to control us and keep us from accessing information from God and the spiritual realm. As we know, Jesus proclaimed that he was the new temple, and his body was acting like the Ark of the Covenant and therefore his Pineal gland was acting as a receiver and transmitter of hyperdimensional communication. It has been proven that the Pineal gland has tiny microcrystals that could act much like a radio receiver, or just like a crystal radio. Jesus Christ bloodline could represent a race of people that can act as messengers for God or as beacons of the light, therefore a new race of shepherds to guide souls back to Eden. Perhaps this bloodline could be Magdalene towers of the flock, and thus they emit a higher frequency which actually helps to raise all energy forms into a higher dimension. This would work with the scientific principle of resonance, as towers set the higher frequency tone for the rest of the people, then everyone would start to resonate with higher frequencies. Eventually as more people with the RH negative blood type are born, then they could help to raise the frequencies. This would create the effect of a net that people would start getting caught up within for the harvest or the ascension of the human race. That would explain the mysterious fish story in John 21, because we would be the net that the apostles, under Jesus direction, throw into the cosmic sea to catch fish. That would also explain the Basque marker of R-M153, which is the number of fish that they caught in the story. The number 153 actually is representative of the net, rather than how many fish/people will be caught for the harvest of the souls.

Oh.  Okay.  I mean, my only question would be, "What?"  After reading this (and this is, unfortunately, only one of many passages in this book that left my eyes spinning), I found myself wondering whether she can possibly be serious.  "Catching fish in the cosmic sea?"  "Crystals in Jesus' pineal gland resonating to higher frequencies and allowing hyperdimensional communication?"  The whole thing makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.

I always find it simultaneously maddening and amusing when people with (apparently) a slim understanding of science try to use scientific information to explain their favorite slice of the woo-woo pie.  (Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics is a good example, although I have to admit in Capra's defense that his understanding of quantum physics seems to be a good bit better than Hill's understanding of biology; I disagree with his conclusions, however, which are that quantum physics shows that the Zen Buddhists are right.)  Here, we have someone who has bought into the whole weird quasi-biblical Nephilim/aliens thing, and has latched onto a piece of biological research, and used it to support her conjecture that she's a descendent of superpowerful angelic beings.  (Because of course Hill herself is Rh negative; did I even need to tell you that?)

Anyhow, that's today's journey into the deep end of the pool.  I really recommend that you read Hill's book -- it's available free, online, at the site I linked above.  For the record, it reads much better after a liberal consumption of whatever your favorite libation is.  I found that after three pints of beer, it actually was beginning to make sense, which is one of the strongest arguments against consuming alcohol that I can think of.

Caveat rentor

Yesterday we considered the question of whether stating your disbelief in a religious "miracle" (despite evidence that it is a purely natural phenomenon) is blasphemy; today we consider the question of whether a supernatural belief (with no hard evidence at all) engenders any sort of financial responsibility on the part of others.

The whole thing comes up because of a story out of New Jersey (source) in which a couple, Michele Callan and the rather unfortunately named Josue Chinchilla, are claiming that they are entitled to break their lease and receive a refund of their security deposit because their rental home is haunted.

According to Callan and Chinchilla, they knew something was wrong almost from the first day they moved into the house they'd rented in Tom's River, on March 1.  The couple, and also Callan's children, began to experience taps on the shoulder, which (this is a direct quote from the article), "they chalked up to the adjustment period of moving into a new home."

You have to wonder about this a little.  I mean, I've moved a bunch of times, and had to adjust to a variety of things, from leaky plumbing to noisy neighbors to (I'm not making this up) an apartment that had an oven with a door that expanded and stuck shut when it heated up.  In all of those moves, one thing I have never had the need to adjust to was spectral taps on the shoulder.  This is fortunate, because if I got tapped on the shoulder when no one was around, I would scream like a little girl and then run out of the house.  I'm just that brave.

In any case, Callan and Chinchilla (will you please stop snickering every time I write the guy's name?) were in for worse.  Doors opened and closed on their own, clothes flew out of closets, and there were menacing voices including one that said, "Let it burn."  After 13 days they could take no more and moved into a hotel room, where they have been ever since.  They demanded to be released from the lease and filed suit to have their $2,250 security deposit back.  Understandably, their landlord, Richard Lopez, said no, and has filed a countersuit, alleging that the couple changed their mind about the lease for financial reasons, and is trying to concoct a story so that they can be released from the agreement they signed.

The problem is, of course, no one except the couple (and possibly their children) has heard the voices, seen the flying clothes and self-opening doors and all.  They apparently have zero hard evidence that their story is true.  I suppose it could be; as befits a skeptic, I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand, being that I also have no evidence that they're lying.  My inclination is that it is more likely that they're trying to weasel their way out of the lease, being that despite all of the thousands of claims for hauntings I've read about or heard described, I've never seen a single one that generated evidence that met my minimum standard for scientific validity.

But who knows?  Maybe this is the real deal.  I certainly wouldn't want to be the judge in this case.  How do you evaluate a case that hinges on a claim of the supernatural without your own beliefs being the determining factor?  I suspect that the case will ultimately be decided on the written terms of the lease -- most leases have a list of conditions under which the contract can be considered null and void, and the majority of them end with something like, "And no other reason will be considered valid."  As far as I've ever seen, none of them include, "This contract is considered invalid in cases of haunting that result in creepy voices and clothes being flung about."  So that will be that, and Callan and Chinchilla will be out on their ears without their $2,250.  Caveat rentor.

Of course, I've been wrong before.  With a sympathetic judge, it might go the other way -- which would certainly set an interesting precedent, and one that would be distinctly unfavorable for landlords.  In the end, it could become far easier for renters who discovered things they didn't like to get out of leases.  I might have even had a case regarding the oven door, which resulted in a perfectly nice batch of biscuits being turned into little disc-shaped charcoal briquets.

Blasphemy, leaky plumbing, and the Weeping Cross of India

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.

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!

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:

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;

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'

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.

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.

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.

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.