Cosmic spiritual quantum evolution, and the wisdom of staying silent if you're ignorant

I may have a good many faults, but one thing I try to avoid like the plague is spouting off about a topic of which I am ignorant.  In fact, I recall with the greatest humiliation the times that I've posted on Skeptophilia only to have someone who was more knowledgeable on the topic comment, "Um, no, you've got it completely wrong, and here's why."  Even in the classroom, I would rather admit to a student, "I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll see if I can find out" than to make something up and later be found to be in error.

There are, however, a good many people who don't share my reluctance to bloviate despite their own sad lack of knowledge, and I'm not just talking about our political figures, many of whom seem to feel the need to weigh in upon everything without any particular regard for the facts.  No, this tendency extends to many far outside the realm of politics.

Let's look at one particularly egregious example of this that I found just yesterday, entitled "What Events Occur When A Species Is On The Cusp Of Evolving?."

When I first opened this link, I was tentatively encouraged by the photograph of proto-hominid skulls, and there was no immediate howling about how evolution is false.  Then I looked at the name and photograph of the author (Diane Tessman), and I thought, "I recognize her.  In fact, I think I've written about her before."  And after a brief search, I found my post from last November in which I described her contention that clouds are not formed by water vapor condensing and so on -- they're actually camouflage for UFOs (read the post here).

But I thought: okay, maybe even if she is off the beam with regard to meteorology, she might still have something interesting to say about evolutionary biology.  So I started reading.  And right away, she leaps into the deep end of the pool with an anchor around her feet:

The process of evolution is not in conflict with religious teachings such as intelligent design, when you think about it. Evolution is at its heart, a mysterious process which insures that the life force will continue in one kind of life-form, and will be snuffed out in another species of life-form. If the life-form is chosen to continue, it is also “promised” that it will change (evolve), thus having a chance at future survival, too.

Actually, evolution and intelligent design are in complete opposition to each other -- beginning with the fact that intelligent design isn't science, because it makes no testable assertions.  And evolution doesn't promise anyone anything; current survival is no guarantee of future survival.

But she goes on to elaborate further, unfortunately:

The question: What events occur in the perception of a species which is about to evolve? I assume that hundreds of years before the evolutionary change became established, a few members of the species would perceive events and perhaps beings, which the old species in general could not perceive.

As the years moved along, thousands of the old species would begin perceiving in this new way. Finally, in, say, 1947, there would be a flying saucer flap. Yes, I am proposing that perhaps we perceive UFOs and their occupants because we are creating them, or at least beginning to perceive them, because we are evolving into a new hominid species. Again!

Frankly, I doubt that a population of plants sits there and thinks, "Wow!  I suddenly am perceiving events!  And beings!  Look at that stupid clump of crabgrass over there... it's not perceiving anything.  I bet I'm about to evolve!  Whooppeee!"

With regards to our perception of UFOs, it does demand the question of how perceiving something that isn't there could possibly be considered evolutionarily advantageous.  But she explains:

So, for thousands of years, a few of us have suddenly perceived more than the starry skies. By “us” I don’t mean that those who spot UFOs are superior to the rest of us, because human consciousness is probably a mass morphic EM field, so most times it is a random glitch in the EM field which allows a more complete (higher) perception of the skies than most humans see as they still march to the old human consciousness.

 Oh!  Okay!  Now I get it!  I mean, my only question would be, "What?"

But she goes on to state that evolution isn't, after all, about selective advantage and survival of the fittest and gene frequency shifts; no, it's about moving to a higher spiritual plane:

It seems all the natural world has this prime directive to Evolve or Die! However, humans are strange because of our advanced intellect and spiritual needs. The animal world has wonderful intelligence too and spirituality, but it is in balance, whereas humans are restless, aggressive beings who seem out of balance with their own planet.

I realize many hominid species disappeared and do not seem to be the actual fore-bearers of Homo sapiens, but others were our ancestors, and my point is, do we know what/who each hominid species began to perceive once the pressure of evolution set in?

Apparently, as each humanoid species evolves over millions of years, it begins to have “access” to a more complicated perception available within the EM morphic field. Thus Homo sapiens has the where-with-all to develop computers, and rockets to the moon, whereas earlier humanoid forms just couldn’t perceive these things. He/she could not dream of them, thus bring them into being.

Whether evolution allows a species to perceive more of the cosmos, or the species actually creates “more” within the cosmos, who knows?

Sorry, Ms. Tessman, actually evolution in the real world has nothing to do with species rising to a higher plane and acquiring advanced powers.  I believe you're thinking of Pokémon.

But what, you might ask, is making all of this happen?  I know I wondered, because she has long since stopped talking about anything remotely recognizable as science.  But she tells us that astonishingly, evolution is caused by the same thing that results in UFOs and ghosts:

I wrote an article http://www.ufodigest.com/article/does-earth-herself-create-ufos-ghosts-and-fairies asking if the planet Earth herself creates UFO occupants, fairies, and ghosts, perhaps in her subconscious or dream state. That theory can be blended in with this one: Gaia creates her various life forms. The dynamic, irresistible process of evolution begins to happen to them, because their creator is a living, breathing entity herself.

As millions of years roll on, these life forms come into new fields of perception which are actually the multiple layers of reality of the planet herself. Or, as a variation: These are the layers of the cosmic onion of quantum perception.

C'mon, admit it -- you knew she'd work the word "quantum" in there somehow.

At this point, you might be thinking, "Well, she is just talking about humans, right?  A lot of very advanced thinkers have had the opinion that there is something unique about humans, that sets us apart from the rest of nature -- a soul."  But no, she really is talking about everything, all nature, as evolving because the Earth somehow wants it to:

What makes a wolf – a wolf? What makes a blue jay – a blue jay? Yes, there are physical characteristics but each species has a different “hum” which cannot be completely defined or fully encapsulated by looking at the physical structure of the life-form.

Okay, if you want me to believe this, then build a hum-o-meter and show me how a wolf measures 6.8 on the hum-o-meter but a blue jay only measures 4.2.  (I would assume that a hummingbird would peg the needle.)

Right after this, she said, "This is only a theory, of course," and at that point I stopped reading, but not before screaming at my computer, "No!  This isn't a theory!  A theory is a testable framework based on evidence and data!  This is a random collection of brain spew and wishful thinking!"  But all I succeeded in doing is waking up my dog, who glared at me, sighed heavily, and then went back to sleep.  I doubt Ms. Tessman heard, frankly.

Anyhow.  I return to my initial statement; if you are ignorant on a topic, then you are well advised just to keep your mouth shut.  And Ms. Tessman, do go back to blathering on about UFOs and cosmic harmonic dimensional vibrational frequencies, because whenever you do venture into the ocean of scientific knowledge, you seem to sink so fast we can't even see any bubbles.

Jill-the-Ripper and dinosaur farts

For all of my love of science, I do get frustrated with academia sometimes.  There seems to be a regrettable tendency with some researchers to do nothing more than come up with an idea, and reevaluate the data we already had in light of that idea, and then pretend that they've broken new ground -- when in reality, nothing is new but the concept.

Now, I'm not saying that approach can't be fruitful on occasion.  After all, that's basically how Einstein came up with relativity; by taking what other scientists had already found (that light always seemed to travel at the same speed) and saying, "Maybe we should just start from assuming that light always travels at the same speed, and see where that leads."  And lo, he ended up revolutionizing physics.

Sometimes, though, these conceptual studies just seem to me to be arguing in a near-vacuum.  There are two examples of that in the news right now.

First, we have this story, entitled "British Author Claims Serial Killer Jack the Ripper Was A Woman."  A British lawyer, author, and historian, John Morris, has written a new book claiming that the notorious London murderer was not only female, but he identifies her as Lizzie Williams, wife of royal physician John Williams, and that she was motivated by fury over her inability to have children.

That Jack the Ripper may have been Jill the Ripper isn't a new idea, of course; a few years ago an Australian forensic scientist, Ian Findlay, tried to support exactly the same conjecture by extracting DNA from a stamp on one of the letters Jack the Ripper sent to the police, but results were "inconclusive."  Otherwise, all we have is the same evidence that people have been poring over for years -- the police reports of the murders, the letters, and what is known about people who were associated with the victims.

In other words, all Morris is doing is playing "what if?"  From what I've read, the evidence in the case could point in one of several different directions, and I've seen cogent arguments made for the guilty party being one of a variety of people (one of which is Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, Queen Victoria's grandson).  Speculation about which one actually committed the crimes is as pointless as arguing over who wrote Shakespeare's plays -- it keeps the academics busy but doesn't really advance our knowledge a whole lot.

Another example of this phenomenon comes from the field of paleontology and paleoclimatology, and hit the news in the form of an article entitled "Excuse Me: Gassy Dinosaurs May Have Warmed The Earth."  This one takes what we know about methane production in cows and scales it up to herbivores the size of dinosaurs -- and then tries to estimate the effect that methane had on the Earth's climate.

The paper, which appeared in Current Biology and was authored by David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University in England, suggests that herbivorous dinosaurs might have produced 570 million tons of methane annually -- equivalent to the output from all domestic livestock currently.  If so, he argues, it could have significantly warmed the planet, as methane is known to be a greenhouse gas with a more powerful warming capacity than carbon dioxide.

One thing that seems certain is that the world was warmer back then -- by some estimates, 18 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average.  But it very much remains to be seen if dinosaur farts had all that much to do with it.  For one thing, we don't have a particularly good idea of how large dinosaur populations were back then; and even if we did, drawing a comparison between digestive processes in cows and those in dinosaurs is a conjecture in the first place.  Even the information we have on what the climate was doing a hundred million years ago is based upon inference from a variety of proxy records that don't always agree with each other.  So to estimate the effect that unknown numbers of dinosaurs emitting unknown numbers of farts had on a climate eons ago whose behavior is understood only in broad-brush terms is kind of an exercise in futility.

I suppose this sort of thing is harmless enough, really, and I'm not of the opinion that all science needs to be deadly serious; but you have to wonder if "studies" like this exist mainly to result in new publication credits for the authors.  As such, they're a little like masturbation -- they keep your hands busy for a while, and you feel a nice warm satisfied glow afterwards, but in the long haul, they don't really accomplish much.

Pavlov's curse

I'm sure many of you know about classical conditioning, a feature of learned behavior in which an individual learns to associate two things because of an accidental relationship.  Dogs can be classically conditioned; this was demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in his famous experiment wherein he trained a dog to associate the sound of a bell ringing with being fed.  (That dogs are so readily conditioned this way is why many dog trainers are now recommending "clicker training" as a quick and reliable method for teaching dogs to obey simple commands.)

Of course, it's not just dogs.  People can be classically conditioned.  One day in my school, the bells malfunctioned, and rang at the wrong time -- and several students started packing up their books, even though we'd only been in class for ten minutes.  It's all too easy to turn off the higher brain and let conditioning take over -- because classical conditioning, after all, does not sit very high on the ladder of intelligence, whatever its utility in training dogs (and children).

This tendency to shut off the prefrontal cortex and let ourselves turn into Pavlov's dog is the source of a lot of superstitious behavior.  You go to watch the Minnesota Twins play, wearing your Twins hat, and amazingly enough, they lose -- so you decide that your hat is unlucky.  You've formed an association in your brain between two things that have no real functional connection, instead of recognizing the truth, which is that the Twins suck.

This, of course, is the origin of curses.  All sorts of things have been thought to hold curses; the pyramids, the Hope Diamond, James Dean's Porsche.  Accidental patterns also create the same response in our brains -- thus the "27 Club" (the superstition that holds that famous rock musicians are likely to die in their 27th year, citing examples such as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and conveniently ignoring all of the thousands of musicians who safely make it to 28) and "Tecumseh's Curse" (alleging that because of William Henry Harrison's mistreatment of Native Americans, all American presidents elected in a "zero year" would die in office -- a pattern broken by Ronald Reagan in 1980).

And now we have another instance of that phenomenon, in the news yesterday -- a billionaire who is determined to flout "the Curse of the Titanic."

Clive Palmer, a phenomenally rich Australian mining magnate, has for some reason become convinced that he should rebuild the Titanic.  And, of course, being that money talks, the project looks like it's going ahead, with the Titanic II scheduled to take its maiden voyage in 2016.  This, of course, has woo-woos bleating all sorts of warnings, about how the name is cursed and how the ship is going to sink, and how no one in his right mind should consider traveling on it.  One rather hysterical article about the endeavor (here) says, with apparent relief, that at least Palmer "has not called his ship unsinkable."  Because that, obviously, would be the last straw, fate-wise.

Oh, c'mon, people.  Really?  From what I recall of the story, the original Titanic wasn't sunk by a curse, it was sunk by a great big iceberg.  And as far as I can tell, the only other thing that might possibly be attributable to a Titanic-related curse is the fact that radio stations are still for some reason playing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On."

All I can say is: if I had the money and opportunity, and it was going somewhere cool, I would without hesitation book a trip on the Titanic II, as long as I could be guaranteed that Leonardo DiCaprio was not scheduled to be on board.  There is no such thing as "the Curse of the Titanic," any more than the Hindenburg blew up because of its name, or Janis Joplin died because she was 27, or the JFK was assassinated because he was elected in 1960... or the Twins lost because of your hat.

It's kind of scary, really, when you realize how easy humans are to condition.  Part of becoming a critical thinker is rising above our conditioning, and actually learning the principles of scientific induction -- which remains our best tool for discerning which connections are coincidences, which are correlations, and which represent actual causation.  So there's no need to ascribe luck (or lack thereof) to some random circumstance -- there are always other reasons for the patterns you see.  Such as the fact that icebergs can sink ships, hydrogen is explosive, heroin can kill you (as can a gun in the hands of an assassin)... and the Twins still suck.

Reconciling the irreconcilable

It's interesting to consider what happens when acceptance of a particular set of religious beliefs runs you headlong into conflict with evidence from personal experience.

For some people, it can be agonizing.  I remember one student, a devout (and recently converted) born-again Christian, who was taking my AP Biology class.  His mental acuity made it impossible to dismiss evolution and the antiquity of the Earth as "flawed science" (as so many of the creationists claim); yet it flew right in the face of what he was being told at church, and what he had heartily embraced for other reasons.  The whole thing was a cause of considerable pain, and I don't know how it ended, as he graduated (and has since gone on to pursue a medical career) and I haven't been in contact with him.  But I still recall his expressing his anguish to me over the impossibility of reconciling two ideas that he very much wanted to believe, for different reasons, but which were mutually incompatible.

Just recently, I saw two other attempts to bring together beliefs with experience, in some rather odd realms, and I thought those might be interesting to consider. 

First, we have an article (here) in which a devout Christian tries to frame his experience of having seen a UFO in terms of biblical prophecy.

What I find interesting about this article is not the questionable messing-about with numerology and kabbalistic nonsense, but the part in which the author describes having seen a UFO (he refers to the object he saw as the "Moon of Memphis"), and wondering if this was heralding the Second Coming:

The “Moon of Memphis” was possibly the same object as the “Star of Bethlehem” but at a much lower altitude. The Book of Mormon states that a bright light appeared in the sky over Bethlehem. Was this the Star of Bethlehem at a much lower altitude like the “Moon of Memphis”? The “Moon of Memphis” ascended and appeared as a bright star until it ascended out of sight. The symbol of Islam is the moon and star. Was the “Moon of Memphis” trying to send a meaning to Islamic believers? At high altitude it appeared like a bright star reminding me of the “Star of David” or the “Star of Bethlehem”. It seems that the “Moon of Memphis” was trying to relay meaning to all of the religions of Zion; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This event also suggest that the "Star of Bethlehem" appeared as a very bright star from a distance but appeared as a full white moon to the people directly under it giving a moon-like light to the community below and baptizing the people with the Holy light of God.

Was the “Moon of Memphis” a sign to tell the believers of all religions that they have a common God who is known by many names? Was it a sign of peace or the return of the messiah? Much change in the human condition have occurred since 1964 suggesting that it meant both a sign of the living God and his commitment to the earth to improve the world.

I don't want to get into the veracity of the sighting -- the article gave nothing in the way of evidence other than the author's word -- but it is interesting to consider how such an experience would shake a person of belief.  And now that scientists are getting closer and closer to having the tools to find life on other worlds, how long will it be before Christians worldwide are forced to reconsider humanity's place within the cosmos, when we find out that we're not alone?

Next, we have a new blog (here) that the author is hopeful will generate a book -- on the topic of "the Christian perspective on Bigfoot."

"This will be the title of a new book, written by….you….and me….and other Christians who’s lives have been forever changed by an encounter with the creature called 'Bigfoot or Sasquatch'," the author writes in his introduction.  "As Christians in this situation, we are uniquely challenged in our faith, in our relationships with family and friends and particularly other Christians...  What have been your spiritual struggles because of your experiences?"

While once again I won't get into the question of Bigfoot's actual existence, as I've debated that topic in enough other posts, one has to wonder how someone who believes that humans are god's special creations would deal with receiving direct proof of the existence of a large, intelligent proto-hominid.

Or alien life.  Or anything else that, like science, further reinforces the idea that Homo sapiens aren't the center of the universe, we're just another animal species on a little globe spinning in the immensity of space.  That concept doesn't bother me -- I guess I'm too awestruck by the beauty and complexity of the universe to be much put off by our insignificant place in it.  But you can see how someone who was heavily invested in the centrality of humanity and the Earth -- as the place where god's truth was revealed, and as the species god chose to invest with immortal souls -- would be blown away by the revelation that there was something more out there, something outside the realm of biblical writ, something not explainable from within the paradigm.  It would take a lot of reevaluation -- and as with my long-ago student, it couldn't help but be painful.

Saturday shorts

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're currently following four stories.  Burning the midnight oil, burning the candle at both ends, and burning rubber in pursuit of truth.

And we are pleased to report that a criminal court in Zimbabwe apparently has the same goal, because they have found three prostitutes innocent of witchcraft.  (Source)  The prostitutes had been accused of "aggravated indecent assault" on the prompting of seventeen men, who claimed that they had been forcibly raped by the women.  This by itself seems pretty implausible, but the implausibility crosses a line into the realm of "just plain crazy" when you hear why the men said they were raped:

To collect their semen in order to perform black magic.

It's scary to think that in this day and age that claim would even make it as far as a criminal trial, but at least the women were found innocent.  After all, in some parts of the world, superstition still rules -- there have been other cases of alleged witchcraft, notably in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where charges of sorcery have resulted in a death sentence.  But in Zimbabwe, wiser heads have prevailed, and the seventeen accusers have to come up with a different excuse to explain to their wives why they were visiting a prostitute, now that "She made me do it in order to steal my semen!" has been ruled out by a court of law.  Rationality triumphs again.


Which is more than I can say for the people at Nepal Airlines, who have fixed a mechanical problem in a troublesome airplane by sacrificing two goats.  (Source)

Apparently, there was a technical issue with one of the airline's Boeing 757s, and after repeatedly attempting to repair it using conventional techniques, someone came up with the novel solution of sacrificing two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab.   The problem, said Raju K. C., a senior airline official, was solved by this approach.

You have to wonder how this was explained to passengers facing delays because of the mechanical trouble.  "We're sorry, but Flight 1488 from Kathmandu to Hong Kong has been delayed.  Please be assured that your flight will board as soon as the captain and flight crew have finished sacrificing a goat on the runway.  We apologize for the inconvenience." 

I don't know about you, but if I heard something like this, I would elect to get from Kathmandu to Hong Kong by some other method, such as walking the entire way.


Next, we have a report that El Chupacabra might have left his desert home and be vacationing in England.  (Source)

Sue Langham, a mother of two from Hale, England, was up early one day last week to catch a train, and saw sitting on her back doorstep a creature "with the head of a fox and a muscly body that was making a noise that sounded like a strangled wolf."

"I was shocked by what I saw," Langham told reporters.  "We sometimes see foxes in the back garden and this was nothing like that." 

Myself, I think this sounds like a clear report of El Chupacabra.  Okay, I know that most of the sightings of that creepy cryptid are from the American Southwest.  I also know that all the reports of El Chupacabra that have resulted in tangible evidence have turned out to be coyotes, foxes, or dogs with mange, but still.  Why couldn't the mysterious bloodsucking fiend make its way to England?  I know that given the number of people with guns in England as compared to, say, Texas, if I were a Terrifying Carnivorous Beast From Hell, I would prefer to take my chances with the Brits.


And this is doubly so now that a senior official with Texas Parks and Wildlife's Law Enforcement Division has publicly stated that it's legal to kill Bigfoot.  (Source)

John Lloyd Scharf, of Cryptomundo, wrote to Parks and Wildlife to ask the question, given the number of recent Sasquatch sightings in the Lone Star State.  He got the following response from L. David Sinclair, the Law Enforcement Division's Chief of Staff:

Mr. Scharf:

The statute that you cite (Section 61.021) refers only to game birds, game animals, fish, marine animals or other aquatic life. Generally speaking, other nongame wildlife is listed in Chapter 67 (nongame and threatened species) and Chapter 68 (nongame endangered species). “Nongame” means those species of vertebrate and invertebrate wildlife indigenous to Texas that are not classified as game animals, game birds, game fish, fur-bearing animals, endangered species, alligators, marine penaeid shrimp, or oysters. The Parks and Wildlife Commission may adopt regulations to allow a person to take, possess, buy, sell, transport, import, export or propagate nongame wildlife. If the Commission does not specifically list an indigenous, nongame species, then the species is considered non-protected nongame wildlife, e.g., coyote, bobcat, mountain lion, cotton-tailed rabbit, etc. A non-protected nongame animal may be hunted on private property with landowner consent by any means, at any time and there is no bag limit or possession limit.

If you have any questions, please contact Assistant Chief Scott Vaca. I have included his e-mail address. I will be out of the office and in Houston on Friday.

Best,

L. David Sinclair
Chief of Staff – Division Director I
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Law Enforcement Division
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744

So listen up, Bigfoot: you're on notice.  If you go messin' around with anyone in Texas, you're likely to find yourself in a world o' hurt, and the law ain't gonna protect you.  You might just want to get outta Dodge now.  Try England, I hear it's really nice this time of year.  But I don't recommend trying to get there on Nepal Airlines.

Ouija wisdom

It's interesting how woo-woo trends come and go.  Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage, especially amongst people who think our government is way more evil, and also way more intelligent, than it actually is.  On the other hand, interest  in Bigfoot and other cryptids seems to be on the wane, with the current spate of television shows about monster hunters ("squatchers") now played more for laughs than anything else.

Of course, interest can rekindle, and that seems to be the case with the Ouija board.  I remember these things from when I was a kid -- a flat board, with letters and numbers and a few words ("yes," "no," and sometimes "goodbye"), and a little piece of lightweight wood resting on three legs called a "planchette" that had a pointer.  The players lightly rest their fingers on the planchette, and "invite the spirit world to communicate with them," and if the spirits are in an obliging mood they shove the planchette around to spell out messages.

Ouija boards kind of went out of fashion for a while, but they're coming back... in fact, Universal Studios has a movie (creatively called Ouija) in production, and if it's halfway successful, you can expect a sudden upsurge in interest in the divination tool.  Not to mention a sudden upsurge in religious folks telling you how dangerous it is, how it is the handiwork of the devil and not to be taken lightly.

All of this is pretty funny, because the Ouija board is a fairly recent invention, and not by Aleister Crowley or anyone of that ilk -- it was invented in 1890 by a trio of parlor game designers, E. C. Reiche, Elijah Bond, and Charles Kennard.  Of course, they wanted it to appear mystical; they said, for example, that the word "Ouija" is the Egyptian word for "good luck," which is patently false.  When Kennard lost control of the company to his foreman, William Fuld, Fuld was interviewed and admitted that the whole mystique around the board was his own creation-- there was nothing occult about it, and in fact the name "Ouija" was coined simply by splicing together the French and German words for "yes."  And the ability of the board to spell out messages is adequately explained by the ideomotor effect, the ability of the mind to subconsciously guide actions such as small motions of the fingers.  Controlled studies of Ouija boards using blindfolded people resulted in the production of gibberish -- given that it wasn't the spirits wearing the blindfolds, you'd think it wouldn't matter.  (Actually, if there really were spirits making people's hands move, you have to wonder why the spirits can't just make the planchette itself move, and eliminate the middle man.)

Of course, a rational explanation doesn't discourage most woo-woos, and there are lots of alleged psychics who still love the Ouija board, and lots of conservative Christians who still think it's a tool of Satan.  Hasbro, who has the marketing rights for the game, is the recipient of frequent requests from church leaders to discontinue sales of Ouija boards, because they're "encouraging children to call up demons."  In 2001, a bunch of religious folks got together in Alamogordo, New Mexico and burned a pile of Ouija boards -- but they also added a bunch of Harry Potter books to the bonfire, so I'm not sure their ability to discriminate fact from fiction was all that sharp to begin with.

I remember messing with a Ouija board once when I was a kid -- a neighbor of mine had one.  We sat there, lights turned down, fingertips on the board, trying to get into a mystical frame of mind... and then... suddenly... nothing happened.  We waited for a while, but evidently most of the more helpful spirits were vacationing in Maui that day, because neither of us felt any ice-cold fingers pushing our hands around.  Eventually the planchette did move a little (I still suspect the neighbor kid may have had something to do with it.)  But after spelling out some highly important messages from the Other Side, such as "You smell bad," the spirits became balky and refused to cooperate, and we got bored and went outside to play.  And the latter, frankly, is what both the psychics and the Christians should do.

Myself, I think as divination tools go, we should go back to the tried-and-true Magic Eight Ball.  It's simple, direct, and gives you answers to any question you might have.  But of course, you have to ask yourself, is it accurate?  Is it actually accessing hidden knowledge to give you wisdom, or is it just random?  Let's see what it has to say about that.

*shakes up Magic Eight Ball*

Um... "Reply hazy, try again later."  Okay, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Googling "Gootans"

I'll be honest, I have no idea how Google works.  In fact, computers in general baffle me.  I can do a few basic things, enough to get by on, but I really haven't the first clue about how it all works.  And the whole search engine concept -- whatever its amazing utility -- seems to me like magic.

The "magic" analogy is pretty apt, because it shares with that dubious practice the characteristic of unpredictability.  I discovered this when I started checking the statistics on my blog, and looking at how readers had found Skeptophilia.  Predictably, many folks found me through Twitter and through the Networked Blogs feature on Facebook, being that I post links to my site on both of those social media platforms.  But as my hit rate went up, an increasing number of folks found my blog via Google searches.  What was fascinating and mystifying, however, was the search parameters they had entered that got them here.

Some were logical; my post on the alleged monolith on Mars was tracked down by googling, surprisingly enough, "Mars monolith."  But apparently six people have found me by googling "panda apostasy."  What?  I am baffled as to how those words would end up in the same search to start with, much less how that got them to my site.  I tried googling those words together myself, and the first three pages of hits had no links to Skeptophilia, so I still haven't explained that one.  The same applies to the three people who found me by googling "scary German shepherd."

Sometimes, however, there's a connection, even if it takes me a while to figure out what it is.  I saw two days ago that five people found my blog by googling "gootan."  My reaction was, "What the hell is a 'gootan?'  It sounds like some kind of obscure Chinese food."  So I googled "gootan" myself, and I found not only my link, but a whole bunch of other stuff, as well.

It turns out that last year, I wrote a post about the writings of noted wingnut Erich von Däniken, and at the end I made a passing comment that if von Däniken was right, and the Greek gods were real (albeit extraterrestrial) superpowerful entities, they might want to protect us from the impending invasion by aliens from the planet Gootan.  And I posted a link to a site that said we're about to be so invaded.  And then I proceeded to forget all about it.  But there's apparently a whole wacky mythology developing about Gootan, and its sister planet Zeeba, and how there's this gigantic fleet of spaceships on the way to invade Earth.  Mentions of invasion by Gootanians (Gootanese? Gootanoids?  Who the hell knows?) have made it into hundreds of sites about UFOs, aliens, and conspiracy theories, countless blogs... and most notably, the Korea Times (check out their story here).

So, I started doing some digging, to see if I could figure out where it all started.  And in an eerie repetition of a previous attempt to find the origin of a weird news story (this one in Pravda, regarding an alien mass burial in Uganda -- read my post about it here), I found out that the whole Gootan and Zeeba thing began four years ago in...

... wait for it...

... The Weekly World News.

And I'm thinking: does every ridiculous story in the world start with these people?  It's like they're the living embodiment of "All Roads Lead To Rome," except that it's "All Bullshit Leads To The Weekly World News."  (Yesterday's headline:  "Bat Boy to be Romney's VP")  And as I commented about the whole Ugandan alien thing, what never fails to get me is how using the wonderful cut-and-paste ability computers have, stories get lifted in toto and posted elsewhere, and depending on where the posts end up, a ridiculous claim can end up garnering unwarranted credibility simply by virtue of moving around the internet for long enough.

So anyway, that's this morning's jaunt through the world of the woo-woo, along with some musings about how weird search engines are.  At least I figured out how I got connected to the Gootan invasion -- it was my own fault, predictably enough.  And now by doing a whole post on the Gootans I'm just going to make it worse.  I still, however, am at a loss with regards to "panda apostasy."