Saturday shorts

Well, it's Saturday, the beginning of the weekend, and here at Skeptophilia we're hard at work following three stories for your facepalming enjoyment.

First, we have an update from the bible-is-literally-true crowd.  Long-time readers of this blog may remember that back in 2011 we had an announcement from Donna D'Errico, former star of Baywatch, that she was going to be spearheading an expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey to try to find Noah's Ark.  D'Errico's qualifications for leading the mission seem to be twofold: (1) she has dreamed of finding Noah's Ark since she was ten; and (2) she likes people to take videos of her.  The climb went off without a hitch, unless you count the fact that they didn't find Noah's Ark because it basically doesn't exist.

Of course, you shouldn't let a little thing like reality stand in the way of pursuing your dream, so D'Errico and her team are trying to launch another expedition, this time using a Kickstarter project to fund it.

Even if she gets the money -- and when I looked, she'd raised $2,900 of the $10,000 she's asking for -- she'll still have a rough time ahead, she says.

In a quote I swear I am not making up, D'Errico wrote on her Kickstarter page, "To get to the area where we believe the ark is located, we will have to climb using ropes, traverse cliffs, circumvent rock slides, avoid mountain rebels, survive blinding blizzards, and fend off vicious sheepdogs."

As far as objections to the entire Great Flood story, and how anyone could believe it was true unless they had the IQ of a grapefruit, D'Errico says that it's completely logical.

"If you do the math, the total cubic volume inside the ark would have been roughly 1.5 million cubic feet," she told The Huffington Post by email. "That’s the equivalent of 569 modern railroad stock cars. The average stock car can accommodate 240 sheep, which would have been the average size animal on the ark.  Keep in mind that the Bible did not say two of every species, but rather two of every kind. That means that one feline kind, rather than every species of feline, would have been taken aboard the ark.  Smaller animals would have been kept in cages that could stack on top of each other. As few as 2,000 animal kinds could have been taken aboard the ark, which would have resulted in all of the species we have today."

Right.  2,000 "animal kinds" resulting in 15 million species in 5,000 years (give or take).  Not to mention the fact that the entire Earth being covered in salt water would have killed all of the plants.  Not to mention the wee problem of bringing, for example, the wombats back to Australia after the waters receded.  Nor the problem of where exactly the waters receded to.

But other than that, it's completely logical.


Speaking of not being in touch with reality, we have a story in from Poland that there is going to be a meeting of exorcists soon.  On the agenda: discussing the threat of Madonna.

You would think that, given that these people apparently believe that the world is being besieged by evil supernatural emissaries of Satan who are trying to destroy our souls, they would have more pressing issues to discuss than a 54-year-old has-been pop star.

You would be wrong.

"Part of the conference is dedicated to the hidden subliminal message in communication, and the choice of this subject was inspired by the woman who dares to call herself Madonna," said Father Andrzej Grefkowic, a trained exorcist who is one of the organisers of the conference.  "We've been worried about her concerts."

Well, one of the reasons that Madonna dares to call herself that is that it's her actual name.  And I don't know how "subliminal" you can call her message, given that she once staged a mock crucifixion at one of her shows.  But okay, I can grant them that she pisses off Catholics with great regularity.

Other things that Grefkowic et al. will be discussing are how the increasing popularity of tattoos and body piercings represent a means of ingress for the devil into people's lives.  But as I've discussed before, this is rather thin ice for me personally, so perhaps I'd better just move on.


If you're not in the mood for discussing the evils of pop stars, but you'd still like to find out about the bizarre side of religion, perhaps you should sign up for the "Defending the Faith" cruise sponsored by Catholic Answers.  This holy voyage will be from November 2 - November 9 of this year, and besides some of the usual shipboard activities (a pool, a rock-climbing wall, an ice skating rink, a spa, a nightclub, and several bars) there will be talks, lectures, and panel discussions on Catholic apologetics, not to mention daily Mass.

In particular -- and they must feel it's important because it was quoted on the front page -- Catholic Answers Director of Development Christopher Check will be giving an interesting talk.  "On the cruise, I’ll be defending the Church against the charges that the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition are events for which we Catholics need to apologize," Check writes.

Now, I'm a staunch believer in the idea that no one is responsible for bad things his or her ancestors did (or should bask in the glory of good things they did, either, for that matter).  But the Catholic Church, which just recently issued a 400-year-too-late apology for placing Galileo under house arrest for the remainder of his life for publicly stating that the Earth went around the Sun, really does have a lot to answer for as an institution.  And it's reprehensible that Check and his comrades seem to be claiming that the Catholic Church at the time was acting within its rights to launch people off to "reclaim the Holy Land" from innocent people who had lived there for generations, and to torture and execute thousands for heresy and witchcraft.

But if that sort of thing is your cup of tea, have at it.  Failing that, you can go to Poland and discuss the most recent depredations of Madonna.  Or go to Turkey and join Donna D'Errico in an expedition to once again not find Noah's Ark.  If you believe this stuff, there are thousands of pointless activities you can participate in!  Me, I think I'll stay home and weed the garden.  And frankly, it seems like in doing so I'll accomplish a great deal more toward improving the world.

Poe's Law, chemtrails, and dying angels

Yesterday I ran into a site that is either the most extreme example of conspiracy theory insanity I've seen, or else one of the best examples of Poe's Law ever created.  I'm leaning toward the latter, especially given that the site's name is Hard Dawn (say it fast and you'll get it; a hint is that one of their links is titled, "How Should I Punish My Son for Masturbating?").

But an even better story is one titled "Are Militant Atheists Using Chemtrails to Poison the Angels in Heaven?"

In it, readers find out that we militant atheists have another agenda, besides seducing your women and bewitching your children (those are givens, after all):

Yet another theory that has been gaining traction and deserves serious consideration is that America’s massive science-industrial complex is attempting a most dangerous experiment. Since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, we have seen a grave movement towards science-based strategic thinking in all forms of national policy. Whole swathes of government have been taken over by academic PhDs with an intense obsession with scientism. From the National Science Board to the Department of Education, from NASA to the National Institute of Standards, a powerful cadre of elite intellectuals is seizing control. A common thread amongst these activist bureaucrats is a love of science over God...

So what is at the heart of this secret society of globalist atheism? One of their most significant concerns is the power of Faith. They despise the Glory of Jesus and the hope that He brings to countless Americans. The atheists are so insanely dedicated to their obscene cult they will try just about anything to destroy every remnant of Christian Love on this earth. As this sickening obsession was wed to advances in aerial spraying technology in the last century, one can surmise the evil compound that resulted. In this formula, it seems quite logical that the atheist’s next step would be to attempt the widespread murder of Jesus’s very Heavenly Agents of Love.

Angels. They are much more than a Christian bedtime story. They are much more than the sweet flutterings in the ears of believers. Angels are quite literally the factory workers of faith. They are tireless and everywhere. They accomplish innumerable feats, from minor pangs of guilt to the throbbing passions of love. The angels are there to guide us, to inspire us and, ultimately, to remind us of our obligation to Jesus. The fly through the air at His beckoning. They are gentle and ever willing. We would be far less human and humane were it not for the angels. And that is exactly why atheists fear the power of angels.

Atheists shake with contempt at the thought of love and decency. Their whole lives are dedicated to nothingness, to the gaping void of pain that nihilism defines. Indeed, atheists love pain. They love pain in their sexual rituals, in their drug addictions and in their secret globalist power schemes. Why do we have war? It’s the atheists who spread contempt of God and invite such reckless notions of communism and Islam.

Will Atheistic Science Annihilate Love and Prayer?

As secret atheist scientists in government pursue their goals of undermining Jesus in America, it only stands to reason that they would take their battle to the skies. The aerial dogfight is likely a vicious one. Who knows what advances they have made since the days of DDT and Agent Orange. Yet fight on they do, every single day! Our heavens are coated in a thick aerosol haze of spiritual hate and this nation’s faith is sinking.

 I have only one thing to add to all of this:

BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

Now, let me be up front that I think this is satire.  It's damn good satire, but still.  However, what makes my laughter ring a little hollow is the fact that this post had, when I looked at it, over three hundred comments... and most of those strike me as serious.

Really serious.  Like they believe this article.  Like they believe it vehemently enough to take action.  Here's a sampler, or at least as many as I could copy before I felt my IQ dropping down toward a level more commonly associated with shoe sizes.  Spelling and grammar are as written:

It would be just like Obama and his Nazi Muslim agenda to try to do soemthing like this.  When they elected him all thereal Americans with any sense knew what he was.  Now we're seeing the results.

Its going to be war in Heaven and war on earth.  Gods time is at hand.  Trust your soul to Jesus or die in agony!

Weather modification has been practiced for decades.  How do you think Katrina came about?  And Sandy?  You think those are NATURAL EVENTS?  Wake up!

The whole government is in secret run by the Illuminati with their atheist agenda to replace worshiping GOD with worshiping a manmade institution.  This is the Beast that was fortold in the Book of Revelation.  We have created the Beast.  It runs on money and spews out poison.  Is it any wonder that their trying to take away our guns?  The first step is disarm the citizens.  After that you can do anything you want and no one can stop you.

You will know them by their works.  Jesus weeps to see what you have done!

I... um... yeah.  Please reassure me that none of these people know where I live?

I guess that's the danger with satire, as I've pointed out before.  Even broad-brush satire, from a source that is well known to be satirical (such as The Onion), has fooled people (Xinhua and Pravda have both been bitten on the ass by Poe's Law, not once but several times).

But what's frightening is to think that there are people who are so angry, fearful, and indoctrinated that they would read an article like this, and think it was true.  Makes you wonder what else they're capable of, doesn't it?  It's a dangerous combination: a belief that the word of god is being subverted, a feeling of being in mortal danger, and a target group whom they have been brainwashed into thinking is responsible.  Not so far off from what the Nazis convinced people of, is it?

So, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for this morning, which started out being funny and ended up being not so funny after all.  As for me, I'm going to get myself together and go canoeing.  I am not, for the record, going to attend any Secret Atheist Global Domination Meetings or engage in any Depraved Sexual Pain Rituals.  Canoeing, frankly, sounds more fun than either one of these.

UPDATE:  Apparently since last night, the Hard Dawn site has changed to being password-protected.  The site had been linked on the r/atheism subreddit, and perhaps the traffic was becoming too high.  But isn't that a little odd, if it is satire?  Wouldn't the writers of a satirical website be thrilled to have a sudden jump in their hit rate?  Hmmm.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  The site not only made r/atheism, it also made P. Z. Myers' wonderful blog Pharyngula.  Check out Myers' take on the website here.

The crypto zoo

This morning I was perusing my usual round of woo-woo websites when I came across a story called "Is this the Ohio Grassman?"  It featured the following photograph:

Turns out some guys from The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings recently caught the image on a game camera, and it became the subject of an episode of Destination America: Mountain Monsters.

Well, first, I'd never heard of the television series, which isn't all that odd, because (1) I don't watch television, and (2) new series about paranormal stuff crop up every week, sort of like crabgrass in my garden only less appealing.  But more surprising was that I hadn't heard of the Grassman either, despite my rather guilty fascination with cryptozoology since I was a teenager.

So I decided to do some research on the Grassman, which led me to his Wikipedia page, wherein I learned that the Grassman is basically a shaggy subspecies of Bigfoot that lives near Akron, Ohio, and whose "main food source is wheat grass" but who "also enjoys eating small dogs such as poodles."

I guess you have to get your protein somewhere.

So while I was on the Grassman's Wikipedia page, I scrolled down, and found a link that said "List of Cryptids."   Naturally, I had to go there, figuring that if I'd missed the Ohio Grassman I might have missed others.

Boy, did that turn out to be an understatement.

Turns out there's a whole petting zoo's worth of cryptids that I didn't know about.  Here's a sampler:

• The Adjule of North Africa, a giant type of wild dog
• The Agogwe of East Africa, a small bipedal forest hominin
• The Ahool of Indonesia, a giant flying pterodactyloid cryptid
• The Akkorokamul of Thailand, a giant squidlike thing (sort of a Southeast Asian Cthulhu clone)
• The Almas of the Caucasus Mountains, a Sasquatch sort
• The Altamahaha of Georgia (the American Georgia), an enormous river monster
• The Amomongo of the Philippines, a huge forest ape
• The Aswang of the Philippines, a vampiric shape-shifting beast
• The Arica Monster of Chile, a velociraptor
• The Ayia Napa Sea Monster of Cyprus, a sea serpent

I hadn't heard of any of those, and those are just the A's.  And each one has its own Wikipedia page, wherein you can find out about its habits, range, behavior, and natural history.  (I found it amusing that the "status" for each of these was listed as "unconfirmed."  Well, duh.  Once it's confirmed, it's no longer a "cryptid," just an "animal.")

All of this just highlights some things that I've noted before: 

(1) Humans have excellent imaginations. 

(2) It's easy to mistake one thing for another -- for example, a bat for a pterodactyl.  Especially at night, and especially when you've been drinking. 

(3) There are some odd critters out there, and it is possible that some of these things are real.  But to accept that, I would need better evidence than a blurry photograph.  I know how to take blurry photographs myself, and I know how easily they can be digitally manipulated -- i.e., faked.  However, it must be said that the sheer number of different cryptid claims is so high that it seems unlikely in the extreme that all, or even most, of them are true.

So, anyway, that's our cryptozoological report for the day, along with a suggestion of further reading.  If you go through all the Wikipedia links for all of the cryptids, it'll take you a while, so I suggest you get yourself a nice big cup of coffee and get right on that.   Let me know which ones strike your fancy -- there are some real contenders, here, such as the "Flatwoods Monster" of Braxton County, West Virginia, which is described as follows:

Most agree that it was at least 10 feet tall and that it had a red face which appeared to glow from within, and a green body. Witnesses described the creature's head as having bulging, non-human eyes and as either being shaped like a heart, or as having a large heart shaped cowling behind it. The creature's body was described as being man-shaped and clad in a dark pleated skirt; later described as being green. Some accounts record that the creature had no visible arms, while others describe it as having short, stubby arms; ending in long, claw-like fingers, which protruded from the front of its body.

I don't know how you can beat a ten-foot-tall red-faced bulgy-eyed monster with claws, wearing a pleated skirt.  But that's just me.

See the violence inherent in the system!

Yesterday I ran across an article on the bizarre website The Mind Unleashed that is mostly interesting for what it says about scientists.

Called "Suppressed Scientific Evidence Proves Free Energy Source Dating Back 25,000 Years," the majority of the article is just the usual tired old claptrap about pyramids concentrating Quantum Wave Frequency Vibration Oscillation Resonance Energies, or something like that.  As usual, it's hard to tell exactly what they are saying, because rigorous analysis is something woo-woos avoid like the plague.  We're not given any actual evidence, of course; we're just treated to passages like this one:

[Author Phillip Coppens said,] “The pyramids are proof that our ancestors knew and worked with an energy technology that we are now finally able to measure, but are still short of fully understanding.” Coppens along with Klaus Dona of Austria and dozens of speakers attended the International Conference Bosnia Pyramid in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina which is held annually to release findings to the public.

[Archaeologist Dr. Sam] Osmanagich has had a host of experts in various fields come to see his Bosnian pyramids, and measure anomalies associated with them. They have included the noted British scientist and inventor Harry Oldfield, who used a special camera system to photograph alleged electromagnetic (EM) waves in the vicinity of Visocica Hill.

So there's nothing really new here in terms of actual data.  But what caught my attention was the way the author claimed that scientists are suppressing this information, out of some sort of misplaced loyalty to the status quo:

Overwhelming evidence, supported by scientific research from all over the archaeological community proves that our recorded history is wrong concerning turn changes [sic] religion, science and academics... Prominent archaeologists have attempted smear campaigns on Dr. Osmanagich’s work out of fear of how the impact of his discoveries will make on their own work...

Is it possible that the fossil fuel based energy system we now rely on could have been prevented if inventor Nikola Tesla’s work on free energy hadn’t been suppressed? Why did the FBI seize his papers upon his death? Tesla’s (1856-1943) patented free energy methods were rejected due to their inability to be metered and monetized. “We urgently need to change our mistaken point of view that our ancestors were stupid and accept that they had an advanced understanding of the fabric of nature and the universe, just like Nikola Tesla, whose ideas were suppressed as they did not and do not fit in the reigning model,” states Phillip Coppens, author and investigative journalist.

My first thought upon reading this was: do you know any actual scientists?  Because it sure as hell sounds like you've never met one.

Let's consider the following scenario.  A physicist, working in a lab, runs an experiment and finds that her data seems to indicate that there are exceptions to the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics -- that you can, in fact, create energy from nothing.  Such a finding, if verified, would overturn all of physics as we know it.  So said physicist shows a few of her colleagues, the experiment is repeated, and lo and behold, it seems to be true.  What does she do?

1)  She writes a paper on it, urging other physicists to test her results and see if it can be explained.

2)  She doesn't tell anyone, because the Laws of Thermodynamics are laws, dammit.  You get in serious trouble for breaking laws.  Besides, we can't have any challenges to the pre-existing paradigm!  This is science!

I hope the answer is obvious.  If there really was evidence that any of the hitherto-accepted laws of physics were wrong, scientists would be trampling each other to death trying to get to the grant money first.  Doing groundbreaking research is how careers are made.  It's how Nobel Prizes are won.  The idea that scientists would avoid doing something edgy because they love the theories they already have is ridiculous.

Consider what happened when the scientists at CERN found what appeared to be a neutrino traveling faster than the speed of light.  Did they suppress the evidence, because (after all) you can't challenge Einstein?  Of course not.  They wrote a paper, issued a press release, and asked all of the qualified physicists in the world to try to explain the data.  As it turned out, the analysis seems to support a flaw in the data.  Einstein was vindicated again, not because anyone was engaged in a repressive campaign of Silence the Dissenters, but because the original analysis was wrong.

That's the problem here, isn't it?  There's no actual evidence that "Free Energy" exists (at least not in the sense that these people mean; "free energy," lower case, is a real scientific term, but it doesn't mean the something-for-nothing nonsense that the woo-woos are so fond of).  Throwing around Nikola Tesla's name isn't going to make these claims correct.  It's much easier to rant about a hidebound and oppressive scientific establishment than it is to do any actual science.  And as for the scientists who are criticizing the work of people like Sam Osmanagich as unscientific, hand-waving, poorly-executed rubbish, I'm sorry -- they're simply right.

Having your ideas criticized does not mean you're being repressed.  That's how science works.  And as for the researchers mentioned in this article, who claim that no one believes them -- if you can't deal with being challenged, with being asked for hard evidence for your claims, you're probably in the wrong field.

The grave's a fine and private place...

This morning we have a story in from the lovely country of Thailand, where a woman from Phuket wants someone to get rid of ghosts who insist on having sex in her house.

46-year-old Onanong Waltham made a public appeal for help at the Phuket Press Club last week.  Accompanied by her housemate, Sujitraporn Tephabutra, Ms. Waltham told the story of what she's been enduring from her horny spectral neighbors.

"I keep hearing moaning sounds in my house.  It sounds like people making love," she said.  "Also, late at night, my phone rings and I answer it, but all I hear is a man’s voice saying he wants to make love to me. When I call back the number, I get some guy in Rayong province."

Understandably perturbed by all of this, Ms. Waltham filed a complaint with the Chalong Police.  "They came to my house and even heard the same noises, but they couldn’t find where the sounds were coming from.  I don't know what to do."

Not knowing what to do didn't stop her from seeking out help from local woo-woos, however.  "I have even seen a mor doo [a local soothsayer] and a spirit medium for advice, but nothing seems to have helped. I now think that someone is using black magic on me," she said.  "If anyone thinks they can make the noises stop, please contact the Press Club at 076-244 047 or email phuketreporter@gmail.com."

Well, I must say that I've heard a lot of weird stories, but this is a new one.  While I've heard many claims of ghostly voices, and even listened to a few recordings alleged to be spectral speech (for the record, none of which convinced me), I've never heard of anyone complaining of ghosts making sex noises.  So I decided to Google "ghosts having sex" to see if I could find any other instances of phantoms fooling around.

This may have been a mistake.

Of course there are other instances of this.  Lots of them.  You'd think, after years of writing this blog, that I'd have figured out that if you come up with a ridiculous idea, so ridiculous that you think, "No one could possibly believe this," there will not only be people who believe it fervently, there will be a Facebook page devoted to it.  There will be a Wikipedia page on the topic.  There will be an entirely serious article by a "spiritual intuitive" that explores the question of why ghosts still, apparently, need to get off every once in a while.  There will be an interview with an Ohio woman who claims that not only has she seen ghosts having sex, she has the photographs to prove it.  There will be a pop star who will one-up that by saying that she has actually had sex with a ghost herself.  ("I don't know his name," she said.)  There will be a how-to page if you'd like to find out how to summon a ghost to have sex with.

All of this leaves me wanting to weep softly and bang my head on my desk.

I mean, really.  There's nothing whatsoever wrong with enjoying a nice roll in the hay.  I'm hardly a prude, or anything.  And if you believe in the afterlife, well, I guess there's also nothing wrong with some speculation regarding whether that particular part of life will continue once you've shuffled off this mortal coil.  But I have the feeling that for some of these folks, this speculation has crossed the line from idle curiosity to a mild mental illness.

The 17th century English poet Andrew Marvell wrote a lovely poem called "To His Coy Mistress," which was summed up by a friend of mine as (pardon the obscenity) "Life's short, let's fuck."  (It really is a beautiful poem, despite its being one long plea for a hot hook-up.)  In it, he penned the lines, "The grave's a fine and private place/ But none, I think, do there embrace."  I guess Marvell might have reconsidered his position had he met some of the people involved in the links I posted above.  If you're horny, maybe there's no rush.

Maybe there's a lot of time.  Maybe an eternity.

Or maybe these people are just loons.  I know that's my vote.

Grandpa the pig

It bears mention that having a Ph.D. (or other advanced credentials) is no guarantee against being a complete wingnut.  This topic comes up because of a website link sent to me by a regular reader of Skeptophilia that was authored by Eugene McCarthy, Ph.D. in genetics, and author of Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World.

It starts off reasonably enough; McCarthy describes the fact that, contrary to our perception of species as being little watertight compartments, hybridization (and thus gene flow between species) is rather common.  Not all hybrids are sterile, like the familiar example of the mule; a lot of them are back-fertile to either parental species (an example is the "Brewster's Warbler," which was once thought to be a separate species and is now known to be a hybrid between the Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warblers).

So McCarthy asks an interesting question: are humans a hybrid?  The answer, apparently, is yes; recent studies have shown that most human populations show the genetic signature of three ancestral populations -- modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.  (Biologists disagree, however, as to whether these three represent different species -- a distinction that, in reality, probably doesn't mean very much.  The concept of species is one of the hardest-to-pin-down terms in all of biological science.)

But, unfortunately, it isn't this intermixing between three proto-hominins that McCarthy is talking about.  He thinks we're a much more interesting hybrid than that.  He gives his evidence first: humans have low fertility, and males produce a great many abnormal sperm (kind of a surprise given our reproductive success -- you have to wonder, if this is true, how there can be seven billion of us).

What?  You want more evidence than that?  Sorry, that's it.  Guys produce lots of abnormal sperm, and allegedly we have low fertility.  So we're hybrids.  That's enough, right?

Of course right.  So now, if we're hybrids, we have to figure out which two species gave rise to humans.  One of them, McCarthy says, was clearly something like a chimp.  But he states, in all apparent seriousness, "Many characteristics that clearly distinguish humans from chimps have been noted by various authorities over the years."  Can't argue with that.  But then he goes right off the edge of the cliff:

One fact, however, suggests the need for an open mind: as it turns out, many features that distinguish humans from chimpanzees also distinguish them from all other primates. Features found in human beings, but not in other primates, cannot be accounted for by hybridization of a primate with some other primate. If hybridization is to explain such features, the cross will have to be between a chimpanzee and a nonprimate — an unusual, distant cross to create an unusual creature.

If this sets alarm bells off, good -- because this would require a fertile hybrid being produced from a mating of animals not just from two different genera, or two different families, but two different orders.  Entirely possible, McCarthy says, despite the fact that there is not a single example -- not one -- of an interordinal hybrid known from nature.  Anywhere.  That includes animals, plants, fungi, and so on.

Nevertheless, that doesn't stop McCarthy:

Looking at a subset of the listed traits [unique features of humans are listed in the sidebar on page two of his website; there are too many to list here], however, it's clear that the other parent in this hypothetical cross that produced the first human would be an intelligent animal with a protrusive, cartilaginous nose, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, short digits, and a naked skin. It would be terrestrial, not arboreal, and adaptable to a wide range of foods and environments. 

So, let's not dillydally any more; if a chimp is one of our parental species, what's the other?

What is this other animal that has all these traits? The answer is Sus scrofa, the ordinary pig. What are we to think of this fact? If we conclude that pigs did in fact cross with apes to produce the human race, then an avalanche of old ideas must crash to the earth. But, of course, the usual response to any new perspective is "That can't be right, because I don't already believe it." This is the very response that many people had when Darwin first proposed that humans might be descended from apes, an idea that was perceived as ridiculous, or even as subversive and dangerous. And yet, today this exact viewpoint is widely entertained. Its wide acceptance can be attributed primarily to the established fact that humans hold many traits in common with primates. That's what made it convincing... Let us take it as our hypothesis, then, that humans are the product of ancient hybridization between pig and chimpanzee.

So, basically, the logic is, "people laughed at Darwin, and he turned out to be right, so if people laugh at me, I must be right?"

But I don't want to be accused of jumping to conclusions ("That can't be right, because I don't already believe it"), so I took what I think is a critical look at the list of allegedly unique features of humans -- ones that, in McCarthy's view, must have come from our other, non-primate parental species.  And most of them have to do with quantities and sizes -- "sparse" hair, "large amounts" of elastic fiber in the skin, "richly" vascularized dermis, "narrow" eye opening, "heavy" eyelashes, and so on.  Traits involving quantities and sizes are highly responsive to selective pressures, the idea being once you have genes for the production of a feature, it is relatively straightforward to evolve to produce more or less of it.

Of the features he claims are found only in humans and pigs, it appears that in several cases, he is simply wrong.  Take multipyramidal kidneys -- he is correct that only humans have this feature amongst primates, but it is hardly unique in the mammalian world.  Besides humans and pigs, elephants have multipyramidal kidneys, as do bears, rhinoceroses, bison, and "nearly all marine mammals," according to a paper by M. F. Williams (available here).  Williams' contention is that multipyramidal kidneys evolved in animals that lived in coastal or marine environments in order to deal with high levels of salt -- and that each of these lineages evolved it independently, as it represents a unique feature on separate, distantly related branches of the phylogenetic tree (evolutionary biologists call these features "apomorphies").

Then, of course, he has some things on the list of allegedly unique human characteristics that are simply weird.  "Particular about place of defecation?"  (Has he ever owned a cat?)  "Snuggling?"  "Extended male copulation time?"  "Good swimmer?"

I'm sorry, Dr. McCarthy, but I'm calling bullshit on this.

Now, please understand; it's not like I have any particular problem with our having a checkered ancestry.  I'm an evolutionary biologist by training, for cryin' in the sink, I know we're animals.  But the idea that Homo sapiens arose when a chimp had sex with a pig... that stretches credulity too far.

Even if you do have a Ph.D.

Human/alien sex and impossible blood types

As I have mentioned before, my commitment to a rationalist approach is not because I think that odd explanations are impossible.  Ockham's Razor, after all, is a rule of thumb, not an unbreakable law.  Sometimes nature is weird and messy; sometimes it is counterintuitive; sometimes the convoluted explanation turns out to be correct.

Still, it's frustrating to see the ease with which some people jump to a bizarre conclusion.  Witness the contention, currently making the round of social media such as Facebook, that you should have your blood type checked and do a little standard genetic analysis, because you may have an "impossible blood type" -- one that is impossible, given the blood types of your parents.

Which means that you were actually sired by an alien from another planet.

Okay, let's just step back from this claim for a moment.

First, here's a short statistical genetics lesson to refresh the basics with folks who may not remember high school biology too well.

Let's say we have a couple who has just conceived a baby.  The man is AB- and the woman O-.  The ABO antigen group and the Rh (negative or positive) antigen inherit independently, so we can consider them separately.  The fact that the man is AB and the woman O means that, given Mendel's Law of Inheritance, the baby will have gotten one allele from each parent.  The dad can pass on an A or a B (but not both); the mom can only pass on an O (O is recessive, so she has two copies of the O allele).  The baby therefore could have a blood type of A or B, and in fact has a 50% likelihood of one versus the other.  As the Rh negative allele is recessive, we know each parent has two copies of the Rh negative allele; the baby can only be Rh negative him (or her) self.  Thus, the baby could be A- or B-; all other blood types are impossible.

Recently, though, we have a claim spinning its way around the internet that there are folks out there who do have "impossible blood types" -- children with blood types that could not occur, according to standard statistical genetics, from the pair of parents who produced them.  And these children, the claim says, are the results of aliens abducting, and then impregnating, human women.

And my response is:  Really?

There are two much better explanations as to why a child may have an "impossible blood type" (or any other "impossible" combination of genetic traits) than assuming that the mother of the child was beamed up to a waiting spaceship to engage in some hot human/alien sex.

The first is that there is a perfectly natural, albeit rather peculiar, genetic explanation for the odd result.  I know of two genetic conditions that result in abnormal blood type inheritance -- Bombay syndrome (in which another gene "cancels" the blood type the child inherited, causing an aberrant type O) and cis-AB (in which because of an improper crossover event, the child inherits both the A and the B antigen from the same parent -- so the child is an AB regardless of what the other parent contributed).  Both of these conditions are rather rare, but each certainly gives a natural explanation for the odd results in the claim.

The other explanation is even more likely, but is one I hesitate to bring up -- and that is that the child might not be the biological offspring of that father.  Euphemistically-named "non-paternity events" -- cases where a child is not the biological offspring of the man who thinks he sired it -- are more common than you'd think.  Genetic testing in America, Canada, and western Europe give amazingly consistent results, averaging 1% of the children tested being the result of extramarital sex -- and that's excluding children who are adopted or who are known to be the product of a previous relationship.

So one child out of a hundred isn't the genetic offspring of the man who claims to have done the deed.  No aliens necessary, although an explanation from the mother may be.

So, anyhow, it's not that I think that aliens are impossible.  It's not even that I think that it's impossible that they've visited the Earth, although I do think it's unlikely.  Even more unlikely is that the aliens are so out-of-control horny that the first thing they do upon arrival is to look around for some human women to hook up with.  So as an explanation of why some children have unexpected blood types, it kind of sucks.  Why the people who made this claim -- and those who are now forwarding it endlessly around the internet -- think this makes better sense than some perfectly natural explanation, such as a genetic aberration or the baby being sired by the mailman -- makes no sense to me at all.  Unless, perhaps, these people would fancy having an illicit liaison with Mr. Spock themselves, and think that if they wish upon a star, their dream will come true.