Ten days till book release!

I'm going to take a brief diversion from our regularly-scheduled analysis of irrational nonsense to do a public service announcement (or shameless self-promotion, depending on how you see it).  I will be publishing (for Kindle [Amazon] and Nook [Barnes & Noble]) a collection of essays, the best of Skeptophilia, ten days from now -- it will be available on Friday, June 30, Lord willin' an' the creek don't rise.

Reasons you will want to buy this book:

• It will be an opportunity to have all of your favorite essays from this blog in one place.
• It contains lovely photographs of UFOs, spirits, and animals that probably don't exist, the latter including Bownessie, Japanese Sky Jellyfish, the Beast of Gévaudun, and Florida Skunk Apes.
• You will find out why I still occasionally get hate mail from a bunch of irate British ghost hunters.
• You will hear why a pissed off Young-Earth Creationist sent me a three-page long screed in which he referred to me as a "worthless wanker."
• The cover photograph, which was designed and shot by the phenomenal Alex Solla, features me wearing a kickass sequined turban, to wit:

The collection contains 120 essays, each of them a wry, humorous, and occasionally incredulous look at why people believe crazy, counterfactual nonsense.

I hope you'll support my ongoing mission to foster critical thinking, rationalism, and skepticism -- both by continuing to read this blog, and also by buying this book (and reviewing it and recommending it to all of your friends).

Okay, that's it for the advertisement, at least for now.  Tomorrow, we'll be back to our regularly-scheduled hijinks. 

Baltic Sea UFO redux

One of the most mysterious things to me about the aficionados of woo-woo is their ability to suspend disbelief indefinitely.  Psychic Sally is proven to be a fake every which way from Sunday?  No, she's still "Britain's Favorite Medium."  Homeopathy fails every last controlled medical test for efficacy?  No, it's still "a scientifically supported modality for treating and curing human disease."  Young-Earth creationism is demonstrably false?  A recent poll suggests that 51% of Americans believe that "evolution is incorrect/unsupported by fact."

Contrast this to science, where information contrary to the hypothesis being tested is usually sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of your idea -- and forces you to question your original assumptions.

The latest indication of this inclination was our old friend the Baltic Sea UFO, which has reappeared in the news recently because the expedition to find it was relaunched from Sweden earlier this month.  You might remember when it was first spotted, back in July of 2011 (read my post about it here).  My own prediction was that any resemblance to the Millennium Falcon was pure coincidence, and that it would turn out in the end to be a weird-looking rock formation.

Well, at the beginning of this month, the group that found the "UFO" in the first place (Ocean Explorer) began to generate press releases that they were returning to the site now that summer was approaching and the weather up north was improving.  Reports came in that they had relocated the thing, confirmed that it was still there and that the original images were correct.  Mysterious, one line notes began to appear on the Ocean Explorer website:  "THE TREASURE HUNTERS, OCEAN X TEAM, DISCOVERED SOMETHING UNIQUE WHEN THEY DOVE DOWN TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIRCLE-SHAPED OBJECT IN THE BALTIC SEA."  "Treasure hunters confirm they have found something abnormal in the seabed."  Woo-woos worldwide held their breath, waiting for the final release of the bizarre object's identity, which (the Ocean Explorer team said) would come in a week or two.  Tension mounted.

And just yesterday, the Ocean Explorer team released the final, earthshattering results of their expedition:  the Baltic Sea UFO is...

... wait for it...

... a weird-looking rock formation.

But, of course, they couldn't just say that.  No, we must at all costs cling to the woo-woo explanation, that what they found is mysterious and inexplicable and mind-blowing.  Here's a direct quote from their press release:

The Ocean X Team dove down to the circle-shaped object in the Baltic Sea and met something they never experienced before. First they thought it was just stone or a rock cliff, but after further observations the object appeared more as a huge mushroom, rising 3-4 meters/10-13 feet from the seabed, with rounded sides and rugged edges. The object had an egg shaped hole leading into it from the top, as an opening. On top of the object they also found strange stone circle formations, almost looking like small fireplaces. The stones were covered in something resembling soot.
“During my 20-year diving career, including 6000 dives, I have never seen anything like this. Normally stones don’t burn. I can’t explain what we saw, and I went down there to answer questions, but I came up with even more questions," says Stefan Hogeborn, one of the divers at Ocean X Team.
The path to the object itself can be described as a runway or a downhill path that is flattened at the seabed with the object at the end of it.
“First we thought this was only stone, but this is something else. And since no volcanic activity has ever been reported in the Baltic Sea the find becomes even stranger. As laymen we can only speculate how this is made by nature, but this is the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a professional diver“, continues Peter Lindberg, one of the founder Ocean X Team.

Other news stories about this non-event call it "the oldest structure on Earth" (whatever that means), and "a find that will revolutionize geology and archeology."  Me, I kind of doubt it, given that thus far, the scientific community has looked at it, and their general response has been:  *silence*

So okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants, you may be saying; what do you think it is, then?  Well, some have suggested that it is the remains of a human settlement of some sort -- thus the "soot marks" and "fireplaces."  This is certainly a possibility, given that the sea level was a lot lower 18,000 years ago, during the last ice age (the object itself is currently under 275 feet of water, and current estimates are that the sea level has risen since then by about 400 feet -- so the site of the object would have been on dry land at the time).  There is still a possibility that it is a natural rock formation -- there are a lot of reasons that rocks could be black other than "soot."  As my previous post described, there are a great many natural structures that appear man-made at first glance, because of their regularity; but upon examination, they turn out to be from entirely natural, non-human origins.

Of course, this hasn't stopped the woo-woos from leaping up and down and making little squeaking noises about how bizarre the "Baltic Sea Anomaly" is, in an apparent desperate desire to hang on to their original claim that it was the result of extraterrestrial visitation.  Unfortunately, though, even the Ocean Explorer people are now saying that the object is made of rock.  And whatever else you might conjecture about aliens, I doubt seriously whether they have stone spaceships.  So myself, I would consider that idea shot down.

My guess, though, is that most of the people who have been following this story won't see it that way.  The Ocean Explorer expedition will continue to garner attention, and will one day be the subject of a documentary on the We're More Interested In Woo-Woo Nonsense Than History Channel.  And almost no one will say, "Rats.  It was just a bunch of rocks.  Let's just move on, folks... nothing to see here."

Hollowed ground

Do you want to support a unique research project whose goal is to prove a theory hitherto only considered a myth?  A theory for which there is no evidence whatsoever?  A theory which, to believe in it, you'd have to have the IQ of library paste?

Then check out the webpage for the North Pole Inner Earth Expedition, intended to prove the contention that the Earth is hollow.  Under the link for "Science," the authors of the page write the following:

Geologists have been aided by Internet linking of seismographic accelerometers to conduct a CAT Scan of the Earth each time there is an earthquake. Of course, like most modern scientists, they mold the data to fit their current paradigm. The more than 600,000 seismograms have been recently analyzed by Dr. Michael Wysessions and revealed an entire ocean underneath the Atlantic Ocean. Jan Lambrecht authored a reanalysis of the seismographic data and revealed an Earth that looks quite different than the one being taught to geological students today. One with a hollow core.

They then present the following diagram to support this, because everyone knows that if you draw a fancy-looking picture of something, it must be true:

The interesting thing -- although not unsurprising, given that this is the sort of things that woo-woos do all the time -- is that they then go on to quote extensively two actual, legitimate geologists, Xiaodong Song and Xinlei Sun of the University of Illinois, who have researched the composition, structure, and magnetic field of the Earth's core -- but then they claim that this research supports the Earth being hollow!  It's a little like someone quoting from a scholarly paper by Stephen Hawking about quantum mechanics, and then simply saying, "And therefore telepathy exists.  Q.E.D."

"The science is real," the website claims.  "The story is more than 5,000 years old. The legend says that at a certain place above the Arctic Circle, there exists an oceanic depression or an entrance into the Earth. It's a place where the maritime legend claims sea level isn't level anymore."

Because if there was a hole through the Hollow Earth at the North Pole, there would be a giant aquatic dimple.  Because the ocean would be... um, depressed, because the center of gravity is actually not at the center of the Earth, it's a concentric sphere just a little bit under the surface of the Earth.

Okay, now I'm depressed.

The hole, they say, is where the auroras come out of, because after all, it's not like we know what causes auroras, or anything.  Maybe they're not caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere.  Maybe they're, like, the light from the Central Sun shining out through the Polar Holes.

And, needless to say, there's a link on the site that allows you to donate to this groundbreaking expedition.  Allegedly a "Park Avenue documentary producer" has already pledged $1.5 million in support.  So I'm sure that when the expedition happens, and they go up to the Arctic and discover nothing but lots of ice, and no Polar Dimples whatsoever, they still will act like the "theory" was vindicated, because that kind of money does not allow for failure.  And the film chronicling the expedition will end up on The This Is Not Really History Channel, where it can join other valuable scientific studies such as Nostradamus, MonsterQuest, and The Bible Code: Predicting Armageddon.

All of this makes me think that I should come up with my own ridiculous theory, and propose an expedition to prove it.  If I was to do that, though, I'd want to have an expedition to somewhere rather warmer than the North Pole, because I'm really not into potentially freezing off valuable body parts.  So, okay, here goes:  Ancient legends claim that the Earth isn't a rocky sphere with a liquid mantle and an iron/nickel core, it's actually a crispy crust over a huge sphere of butterscotch pudding.  This is supported by geological studies of the Earth's composition, because nowhere in the literature will you find anyone specifically ruling out the Butterscotch Pudding Model.  Actually, the fact that they haven't addressed this theory means that the dull, hidebound scientific establishment is trying to suppress the truth!  So in order to prove this model is correct, I will be leading an expedition to Hawaii, because that is the spot where the crispy crust is the thinnest, and also because I can spend a lot of time clad in nothing but swim trunks and drinking margaritas.  In the end, the research (which will consist of a visit to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and several scuba diving trips) will unfortunately turn up no evidence of butterscotch pudding, a finding that I will label as "inconclusive."

Interested?  Please forward your check for $1.5 million to me at your earliest convenience.

End of the week wrap-up

Well, it's Friday, and TGIF, which I am allowed to say even though technically, I don't believe in G.  Be that as it may, we're going to end the work week with three stories we're carefully following here at Skeptophilia's main offices, nestled in the lovely hills of upstate New York.

The first story comes from the nearby state of West Virginia, where a Pentecostal pastor famous for handling poisonous snakes during his sermons as evidence that god was looking over him has died from a bite from a poisonous snake.  (Source)

Pastor Mark Wolford, 44, was a popular preacher on the revival circuit, drawing large crowds to his outdoor services.  Shortly before what was to be his last Hallelujah, Wolford posted on his Facebook page, "I am looking for a great time this Sunday.  It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good 'ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers."

Wolford's trademark was handling live rattlesnakes during his sermons, because of Mark 16:17-18:  "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

"Anybody can do it that believes it," Wolford said, in an interview in The Washington Post in 2011. "Jesus said, 'These signs shall follow them which believe.' This is a sign to show people that God has the power."

Well, I'm thinking that the rattlesnake might have had a say in the matter, too, because at a service last week, he put one of his snakes down, and it bit him on the leg.  Recalling the part about "they shall recover" from the bible passage quoted above, Wolford refused medical treatment, but was taken to a family member's house, where he died shortly afterwards.

Interestingly, Wolford's father, who was also a Pentecostal preacher, died at the age of 39 of snakebite in exactly the same circumstances.

"(H)e died for what he believed in," the younger Wolford said about his father's death in the interview in The Washington Post.  "I know it's real; it is the power of God.  If I didn't do it, if I'd never gotten back involved, it'd be the same as denying the power and saying it was not real."

Mmmm, okay.  We'll just leave that last statement as is, and move on to our next story.


We next have a story from far-away Zimbabwe, where two witches failed at flying their brooms under the radar.  (Source)

In Shackleton compound, a small mining village near Chinhoyi, a ruckus was raised when two women, Rosemary Kamanga and Esnath Madoza, were found dancing around naked after informing a neighbor that they needed some human flesh for a ritual.

The neighbor, Eneresi Mufunga, was awakened at 4 AM from a sound sleep, and got up to investigate.  She found Kamanga and Madoza running about without any clothes on, and (according to the article) "quizzed them on their mission."

I suspect this latter is just a quaint Zimbabwean way of saying, "what the hell is wrong with you two?", or some stronger variant, but in any case Kamanga and Madoza informed them that they were trying to find some human flesh, and wondered if Mufunga might have any she'd be willing to part with.  "It's a subtle, cunning approach," they were heard to say, earlier.  "It might just work!"

Understandably, Mufunga informed them that, as missions go, this one was a non-starter, and proceeded to raise the camp.  A crowd gathered, including the two unsuccessful witches' husbands, who "whisked them away home" where they were later found by the police.  At that point, they had decided to put on clothes, but they did confess to being witches, so they were then whisked away to a different place, namely jail, and charged with breaking Section 98, Chapter 9:23 of the Zimbabwean Criminal Law Code, wherein it is declared that it is illegal to practice witchcraft, caper about naked, and ask your neighbors for some human flesh.


Our last story hails from New Brunswick, where a farmer named Werner Bock has been charged with animal neglect after losing nearly 250 cattle over the past ten years.  (Source)

Police claim that Bock failed to feed the cattle, so they died of the effects of malnutrition.  Bock, on the other hand, says that the cattle were killed by "alien death rays."

"At least 250 head of cattle have died from what we call a death beam," Bock said on a YouTube video posted in May 2011. "Where the atmospheric air is manipulated into a death beam, focused on the noses of the animals."  The animals "breathe in the death beam" and then slowly die.

Veterinarians in the case have said that there are no signs of burns on the cattle, but that Bock might have been a little more successful with his ranching enterprise had he taken the step of providing his livestock with food.  Bock, who intends to be his own legal defense in the case, has already subpoenaed three veterinarians and one police officer to provide evidence.

Besides the general rule of "animals need to be fed," someone might want to explain to Bock about the concept that a subpoena for the defense only works if the people being subpoenaed can actually provide information that supports the accused's claims.  All three veterinarians have stated that they saw no evidence of "death beams," and the police officer, who was supposed to verify Bock's claims of seeing UFOs hovering over the farm, has said that he knows about no such thing.

So Bock might want to reconsider his legal strategy.  And also find a new career that doesn't involve anything that's alive.


And that's our end-of-the-week wrap-up, here at Skeptophilia.  We'll wish you a lovely Friday, and hope that your weekend is pleasant, and free from snakebite, naked witches after your flesh, or alien cow-killing death beams.  Because all three of those could put a damper on things.

My cup runneth over

As a slightly-past-fifty-year-old, it will come as no surprise to you to hear that I'm seeing some gray hair, and a few more laugh lines than I had ten years ago.  Myself, I'd always thought of this as a natural consequence of reaching this venerated age.  Imagine my surprise when I learned this morning that gray hair and wrinkles are not caused by the death of melanin-producing cells in the hair follicles, and a decrease in the elasticity of the skin, respectively; no, both of these phenomena are caused by an imbalance of energy flow through your kidneys, and can be fixed by applying suction cups to your skin.

I wish I was making this up, but here's the source for this bit of medical wisdom, which comes from the tenets of a practice called "cupping."  The idea is that whatever ails you -- and I do mean whatever, because practitioners claim that cupping can cure everything from sciatica to constipation -- it is due to a combination of improper energy flow and pooling of toxins in the tissues, and it can all be set right by allowing a glass cup attached to a suction pump to give you a giant hickey.

At this site, we get some of our Frequently-Asked Questions answered.  Only "some," because my most frequently-asked questions while I was researching all this were, "Are you people kidding?  Or what?"  But we do find out, for example, that cupping is a "powerful detoxifying, pain relieving and energy building modality that people all over the world use for health maintenance" and can be used to treat "a huge number of conditions," including colds, abscesses, arthritis, insomnia, vertigo, high blood pressure, asthma, and hemorrhoids.  It works because it "drains stagnation."  And also, we shouldn't be worried about any bruising that occurs, because bruising is caused by "tissue compression/injury" and "(t)here is no compression in properly applied suction cup therapy."

No, you morons, of course there isn't.  Compression is the opposite of suction.  And both can cause bruising, which is localized rupture of capillaries.  But not to worry: the site linked above says that the greater the discoloration you see after the procedure, the more you needed it and the better it worked, because "the more (discoloration) is visible, the greater the level of stagnation and toxicity...  This is clearly the result of having internal unwanted toxins systematically purged."

But wait, you might be saying; how can this be drawing out "stagnation" from your body, when there's nothing actually crossing your skin and being sucked away by the suction cup, given that when you take the cup off the "patient's" skin, it's empty?  Well, someone thought of that, too, and they developed "wet cupping," in which they do the whole cupping procedure, but they cut your skin first.

Yes, folks, the cuppers have basically rediscovered bloodletting, a practice that was generally discontinued back in the 18th century, when it was discovered that an unfortunate side-effect was frequently the death of the patient.  But a little historical tragedy like that isn't going to stop these folks.  No way, not when cupping can have benefits like "facilitating the movement of Qi," "promoting the flow of lymphatic fluid," "breaking up and expelling congestion," and "balancing pH."

Now, of course, we've run into the phenomenon before that there's no woo-woo idea so ridiculous that someone can't improve it to make it even more ridiculous, so allow me to introduce you to the idea of "fire cupping."  In fire cupping, instead of being attached to a suction pump, the glass cup has a cotton ball saturated with rubbing alcohol placed into it and ignited, and then the hot cup is placed on the person's skin.  As the air cools, it contracts, and that creates the suction that pulls out the stagnant Qi energy lymph, or whatever the fuck they claim it's doing.  The problem is, hot things have an unfortunate side effect, namely burns, and there have been several cases of victims... oops, sorry, patients... having to be treated for circular burns after being "fire cupped."

Okay.  Let's just get a few things straight, here.  Disease is not caused by "energy stagnation."  If you apply a suction cup to your skin, you are accomplishing nothing but bursting a few capillaries and giving yourself a nice, symmetrical bruise.  Any "toxins" in your body are capable of being handled just fine by your kidneys, which incidentally have nothing whatsoever to do with gray hair.  There is no such thing as "qi."  And if you allow anyone with a glass cup containing a flaming cotton ball anywhere near you, you deserve everything you get.

So that's today's pseudoscience -- an idea which, in every sense of the word, sucks.  Amazing how after three years of writing daily on this blog, I'm still running into goofy ideas I'd never heard of before.  It's really kind of a depressing thought, isn't it?  Oh, wait -- depression is something that can be cured by cupping!  Yay!  If I show up later today with a giant circular bruise on the side of my head, don't worry -- it's just that I had all of those stagnant toxic thoughts removed by attaching a suction cup to my temple.

Staking a claim

Last week, it was zombies all over the news, what with guys biting each other's faces off, and cutting up  former lovers, and committing various other antisocial, body-part-related atrocities.  And I observed that once one person mentions a woo-woo explanation for something (we're having a zombie apocalypse), every possibly-related story gets cast in that light, and the whole thing sort of develops a life of its own.

Given that these conjectures have no basis in reality, it's no surprise that most of them are short-lived.  Once enough people look around them, and acknowledge that no, the people on the bus and at work are not, in fact, turning into zombies, then they're forced to conclude that the whole thing was rather a non-starter from the beginning.  (Although I will add, in the interest of fairness, that a few nutty ideas seem to be in the Undead Immortal category themselves, such as the Rebecca Black/JFK assassination thing, and the Baltic Sea UFO thing.)

But most woo-woo crazes are just that -- fads -- and as such, they have a limited life-span.  So last week, it was zombies; and this week, we have moved on to another terrifying, immortal, soulless being that doesn't exist...

... vampires.

Things got rolling this weekend, when some archaeologists working in Bulgaria found two medieval skeletons at a dig site in Sozopol, and were shocked to find that the skeletons had metal rods driven through them.  (Source)

Of course, the only reason to do this to a dead body is to make it dead again, because it had risen up from the grave, sharpened its canine teeth, and was prowling around the village looking for beautiful young women dressed in gauzy white garments to terrorize.  And the fact that people in Eastern Europe used to believe this was possible is never cast in the light of, "Wow, people sure were superstitious, back then."  The article states, "The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.   People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood."  Unfortunately, the writers of the article didn't add, "... although this never actually happens."

I say "unfortunately," because there are people with rather tenuous grips on reality who periodically forget the definition of "fiction."  Some of these people then act on those ideas, and it seldom ends well.

Witness the unnamed man "with vampire teeth" who attacked a homeless guy in San Diego a couple of days ago.  (Source)  Police in La Jolla were called when passersby saw someone assaulting a man near a shopping center, and once they arrived, they found a 55-year-old transient bleeding from bites inflicted by a man whose canine teeth were filed to points.  The Dracula wannabee was arrested and charged with assault.  (You should go to the site and look at the attacker's photograph, which gives lie to the claim that vampires were supposed to look sultry and devastatingly sexy, and also that they seldom ever wear baseball caps.)

Now, lest you think that this is just one deluded, possibly high, individual, consider another story that just popped up -- about a Texas inmate who sued the state prison system for preventing his carrying out ritual religious beliefs related to his being a vampire.

Courtney Royal, who is serving a life sentence for aggravated assault and robbery, filed the suit (in which he refers to himself as "Vampsh Black Sheep League of Doom Gardamun Family Circle Master Vampire High Priest") claiming that he had beliefs that stem from West African and "18th century Catholicism" practices.  These beliefs are "marked by prayer to Africans reincarnated by blood."

The most entertaining part of the whole story is that Vampsh Black Sheep etc. stated that his beliefs were no different from Christianity, given that both are "unproven."  In which, I have to admit, he has a point.

In the end, Courtney/Vampsh's lawsuit was denied on the basis of its being "frivolous," which would seem to indicate that the judge thought that he wasn't serious.  Myself, I'm not so sure.  It certainly wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've ever heard people claim to believe (that award would have to go to the members of Werewolf Cathedral).  But just like with the zombies last week, I suspect that we haven't heard the last of the vampire stories.  Now that some archaeologists found a few skeletons with stakes driven through them, proving the existence of vampires to the scientific world, and we've had not just one, but two, instances of real-life vampires show up in the news, we are clearly facing an outbreak.  It's time to get all of your supplies ready, including garlic, crucifixes, and guns with silver bullets (wait, is that werewolves?  I think I'm getting my nonsense mixed up.  Crap.  I hate it when that happens).  Spot checks of your coworkers are recommended ("Excuse me, can I see your teeth?")  Keep it up until the furor dies down next Tuesday, at which point we can all start freaking out about the next craze involving a mythological creature.  I hope this one is about centaurs.  We haven't had a good centaur outbreak in a long time.

Repeat offenders

If there's anyone I owe a debt of gratitude to, here at Skeptophilia headquarters, it's the woo-woo frequent flyers.  Where would I be without Dirk Vander Ploeg's pronouncements about psychic telepathic alien Bigfoots, and how Lord of the Rings was actually a historical document?  Or Alfred Lambremont Webre's claims that President Obama has visited Mars, and that the US government has already developed long-distance space and time travel?  Or Diane Tessman's missives to the world about the Celestial Convergence, which she claims are the musings of a super-intelligent alien named Tibus?

None of the repeat offenders, however, has provided me with quite so much wonderful material as Alex Collier, the Canadian woo-woo extraordinaire who claimed last year that the Earth was about to be attacked by the Borg (apparently they changed their Collective Mind), and also that there was a huge alien/human war in the 1930s, which none of us know about because during the war we were summarily catapulted through a rip in the space/time continuum into another timeline, and now we have to get back, which will be difficult without the assistance of Geordi LaForge.

Well, once again we have evidence that Collier has been using his Netflix membership to watch old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, because now he's claiming that we're being bombarded by "alien orbs" whose pilots are "demonic hyperdimensional entities" who have "artificially engineered... our current space-time continuum." (Source)

As evidence, Collier produces a scrolling set of images, the majority of which are photographs of the sky with fuzzy spots of light.  One, however, is just baffling, and shows Adam and Eve (or possibly another naked couple, it's hard to be certain) being sternly lectured by something that looks like a figure from a painting by Picasso.  I suppose this represents something profound, but I'm damned if I can figure out what.

In any case, Collier says that there have been large numbers of sightings lately of UFOs in groups of three, and this is highly significant, because three is such a special number, having a great deal of emphasis in the woo-woo world because of its inherent magic, and also because it's the most convenient way to get from two to four.  The "Pagan Gnostics," Collier said, believed in the Archons, who were "demonic interdimensional and artificial life forms who appeared in threes," and after all, we know what authoritative sources on science the Pagan Gnostics are.  "To hell with Einstein," you frequently hear physicists say.  "Let's find out what the Pagan Gnostics have to say about the General Theory of Relativity."

Of course, Collier doesn't just use "Pagan Gnostics" as sources; he also calls upon that trifecta of credibility, Alex Jones, David Icke, and Jesse Ventura.  Yup, I'm convinced.

The best part of the whole article, however, and in my mind the kind of thing that places Collier in a higher tier of woo-woo than the other recidivists mentioned above, is when he starts going into why the number three is so significant:

(N)umerous researchers have presented that “3” has been a recurring theme in a path of apocalyptical destruction.  A distinctive pattern of disasters, has occurred on days, months or years which are either perfectly dividable by “3” or when divided by three produce a perfectly recurring decimal of “3”, ie 646.333333.

Fukushima occurred on 3/11; hence ‘3’.

The War on Terrorism was launched on 9/11, henceforth 9 divided by three equals ‘3’.

“Battle Los Angeles” was a movie on an alien invasion which also precisely coincided by the very day that Fukushima occurred -- 3/11.

World War I began in 1914, which is perfectly dividable by “3”.

World War II began in 1939, which results in a repeated decimal of “3”, I.e. 646.33333

If we conclude that “3” is a significant number in apocalyptical events including World War, we therefore need to look at dates in which “3” become a prominent theme.

As a result, 15 June 2012, or “6/15” becomes at least a candidate for an apocalyptical event, and would represent a “Day of Symmetry” for the archon mind; and 2012 also produces a recurring decimal of “.666” which is the “Number of the Beast”.

When I read all of this, I was torn between laughing and crying -- and of course, you've already seen what the problem is.  If you take any number and divide it by 3, a third of them will divide evenly, and a third of them will leave a repeating decimal .333....  And the remaining third will leave a repeating decimal of .666...., the "Number of the Beast."  So any date that Collier picks will work!

That, of course, is the difficulty with woo-woos in general, isn't it?  They have a totally different definition of the word "evidence" than the rest of us do.  Couple that with a general disdain for the kind of rigorous self-questioning that is the hallmark of good science -- are the correlations we see relevant?  Do they indicate a causation?  If so, what is the correct model to explain that causation? -- and you have a recipe for egregious bullshit.  And, now that the "Information Age" has arrived, they have a more effective venue for disseminating their views to the world than ever before.

Of course, one has to hope that the same mechanisms that allow quick transfer of idiotic nonsense like Collier's aforementioned numerological musings can also act to spread reliable information.  The key is to train people to recognize the difference, so they don't get suckered by wingnuts, hoaxers, liars, and charlatans... which is about as powerful an argument for teaching critical thinking in public schools as any I can come up with.