Attack of the teenage exorcists

In previous posts I've described a lot of examples of Poe's Law -- a rule that states that it is impossible to tell the difference between a sufficiently well done satire and the real thing.  Today, I want to look at a different phenomenon -- the difficulty of determining when someone is making a claim because (s)he actually believes it to be true, or simply because it has the potential to generate a lot of money and notoriety.

It's the problem with psychics, isn't it?  Given the human capacity to lie convincingly, you can see that it would be difficult to determine if people like Psychic Sally Morgan sincerely believe that they can "see what's hidden," or if they are simply hoaxers and charlatans, in it to make money from the gullible.  (Note that even if the first is the case -- Morgan et al. actually do believe that they are psychic -- it has no relevance to the additional question of whether they are right.  There are lots of people who sincerely believe lots of things, and who are simply wrong or delusional.)

Which brings us to the trio of teenage exorcists who are currently embarked upon a quest to eliminate demons from England.

An upcoming documentary, filmed by Dan Murdoch and airing tomorrow on BBC3, chronicles the efforts of sisters Tess and Savannah Scherkenback and their friend Brynne Larson to exorcise the evil spirits that are currently troubling Great Britain.  These bad guys, the three say, were always kind of oozing around the place, but really gained a foothold recently...

... because of Harry Potter.

"It has been centuries in the making, but I believe it came to a pinnacle with the Harry Potter books," Savannah told reporters for The Daily Mail.  Her sister Tess agreed, adding, "The spells you are reading about are not made up.  They are real and come from witchcraft."

Funny, then, how when I shouted "Petrificus totalus!" at a student in my class who wouldn't stop talking, nothing happened.  Maybe the demon who is helping me was taking a nap, or something.

Be that as it may, these girls have gone all over the world with their dog-and-pony show, Casting Out Unclean Spirits and making Satan Get Thee Behind, um, Them, and raking in lots of money at each appearance.  It's clear that a lot of the audience members believe they're for real; there's the usual screaming and rolling-back-of-eyes and so on that accompanies exorcisms, followed by hallelujahs and praising of Jesus when the all-powerful Evil One is once again, surprisingly enough, vanquished.  But the question remains:  do the Weird Sisters themselves think that they're banishing demons -- or are they just charlatans who are in it for the money and publicity?

One thing that would argue for the former is that Brynne Larson is the daughter of Reverend Bob Larson, who is an evangelical wingnut of some proportion.  He's been around for a while; I remember listening to his radio program, Talk Back, in the 1980s when I lived in Seattle.  His major theme -- harped on in just about every single show -- was how the music industry was infested by demons, and how listening to rock-and-roll was going to endanger your soul.  He's written several books on the topic, including Rock & Roll: The Devil's Diversion, Hippies, Hindus, and Rock & Roll, Rock & the Church, and Rock, Practical Help for Those Who Listen to the Words and Don't like What They Hear, as well as the more general titles Larson's New Book of Cults and In The Name of Satan: How the Forces of Evil Work and What You Can Do to Defeat Them.  So it's pretty clear that Larson himself believes what he's saying, even though most of the rest of us think he should see a doctor about getting some antipsychotic meds.

Actually, my most vivid memory of Larson's radio show is that he was notoriously slow on the five-second delay button when people would call up to harass him, which happened with clock-like regularity.  On one extremely memorable occasion, a woman called up, asked a couple of misleading questions about how to invite Jesus as her personal savior to get Larson off his guard, and then said, "I'm just curious to ask, Reverend, can god get it up?"

Larson, clearly not understanding, said, "I beg your pardon?"

She said, "Can god get it up?  You know?  Because after all, man was created in god's image, and my boyfriend has a hard-on pretty much constantly.  And god made the Virgin Mary pregnant, and all, so I was just wondering..."

*click*

Then followed a fifteen-minute rant about how the forces of Satan were constantly attacking him, and how evil and twisted and depraved they were, and how that woman must have been possessed by a devil to call him and say such a thing.  No mention was made about how his (human) tech crew should be doing a better job of screening his calls, which is the reaction I would have had.

But I digress.

My guess, about the teenage exorcists, is that they probably are at least nominal Christians, but that they know full well that what they're doing isn't real.  "Reality" is the last thing that "Reality TV" turns out to be, and I suspect that that this is no exception.  I also suspect that the British, who are in general considerably less religious than Americans, will simply roll their eyes at the documentary and then proceed to forget all about it.  And the trio will have to take their Malleus Maleficarum roadshow elsewhere.

I'm sure, however, that this isn't the last "documentary" of this sort that we'll see.  Because, after all, the exorcists aren't the only ones who are motivated by profit.  If Teenage Exorcists is successful in garnering anything approaching high ratings, it will probably be only the first of many such shows.

All of which makes me glad that we don't watch television.

Microchipping Napoleon

When one of my loyal readers sent me an email asking if I'd heard about the alien microchip implanted in Napoleon's skull, I knew this was gonna be good.

I mean, you don't just combine the mortal remains of major historical figures with alien supertechnology, and not get something fantastic.

So I did a search for it, and man... well, let's just put it this way: I don't know how the hell I missed this one.  There were hits all over the place, a bunch of them just recently on conspiracy-type sites.  Here's a typical one, from earlier this year, courtesy of Bubblews, wherein we get the gist of the story:

While working on a grant from the French government to determine if a pituitary gland problem was the cause of Napoleon Bonaparte's small stature, one Dr. Andre DuBois claims to have discovered a half-inch long microchip implanted in the deceased ruler's skull...  DuBois suggests that, due to the bone growth around the chip, he believes it was implanted when he was very young.  Furthermore Dr. DuBois is quoted as saying, "Napoleon vanished from sight for a period of several days in July 1794, when he was 25.  He later claimed he’d been held prisoner during the Themidorian coup – but no record of that arrest exists.  I believe that is when the abduction took place."

So, we have a pretty amazing claim here, and a possible explanation for why Napoleon liked to stick his hand inside his shirt.  He was clearly adjusting the controls on bionic implants in his belly button.

Anyhow, I started trying to backtrack, and figure out where the story originated.  I found an earlier version (September of 2011) that had more information:

Scientists examining the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte admit they are "deeply puzzled" by the discovery of a half-inch long microchip embedded in his skull.  They say the mysterious object could be an alien implant — suggesting that the French emperor was once abducted by a UFO!

"The possible ramifications of this discovery are almost too enormous to comprehend," declared Dr. Andre Dubois, who made the astonishing revelation in a French medical journal.  "Until now, every indication has been that victims of alien abduction are ordinary people who play no role in world events.  Now we have compelling evidence that extraterrestrials acted in the past to influence human history – and may continue to do so!"

Dr. Dubois made the amazing find while studying Napoleon’s exhumed skeleton on a $140,000 grant from the French government.

"I was hoping to learn whether he suffered from a pituitary disorder that contributed to his small stature," he explained.  But instead the researcher found something far more extraordinary: "As I examined the interior of the skull, my hand brushed across a tiny protrusion. “I then looked at the area under a magnifying glass – and was stunned to find that the object was some kind of super-advanced microchip."

Righty-o, then.  A doctor is given $140,000 by the French government to determine whether Napoleon, who was five-foot-seven, was a pituitary dwarf, and instead the doctor finds that the Emperor had an alien implant.

That's... believable.

So, I tried to track it further back.  Both "Andre" and "Dubois" are common French names, so it was nearly impossible to narrow it down that way.  But I found a version of the story from 2010, and followed the lead from there, and ultimately it led back...

... to The Weekly World News.

 You'd think by this time I would just assume that this was the case.  After all, the same thing happened with the story of the alien burial site in Kigali, Rwanda, the story about how the Earth was about to be invaded by aliens from the planet Gootan, and the story about how there are glass pyramids under the Atlantic Ocean.  Apparently, there is an "all roads lead to Rome" rule about this phenomenon that goes something like, "all bullshit leads to The Weekly World News."

(By the way, for readers who check links -- the link I posted to The Weekly World News story on Napoleon is dated March of 2012, but that must have been an update or repost, because some of the comments on that link go back to 2009.  This really does appear to be the earliest iteration of the story available online.)

So, anyhow, there you have it: Napoleon is highly unlikely to have been an alien abductee.  A pity, really.  That sort of thing would make history class so much more interesting.  But I guess we'll just have to settle for the Peninsular War and the Battle of Leipzig, and try to make do with that.

Go away, atheists. We're tired of you.

Many of you have undoubtedly heard about the lawsuit currently making its way through the courts in Massachusetts, in which the state's Equal Rights Amendment is being used to argue that the words "under God" should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.

I realize that this is a hot-button topic on both sides of the issue.  Christians argue that our nation was founded by Christian men (a claim that has its own problems -- but which, as a non-historian, I am unqualified to weigh).  Atheists and agnostics object to a statement being read in public schools and at the beginning of government meetings of all sorts that asserts the existence of a deity, and which attendees are expected to recite.

Now, far be it from Fox News to refrain from throwing gasoline on the fire.

Dana Perino, Fox News commentator and former press secretary to President George W. Bush, was asked about the lawsuit last week, and had some fairly strong words to say about it.

"I’m tired of [atheists]," Perino said, in a discussion of the lawsuit with co-host Bob Beckel.  "I remember working at the Justice Department years ago when I first started right after 9/11 and a lawsuit like this came through, and before the day had finished, the United States Senate and the House of Representatives had both passed resolutions saying that they were for keeping 'under God' in the pledge.  If these people really don’t like it, they don’t have to live here."

Excuse me?

But, of course, instead of saying, "What the hell are you talking about?", Beckel simpered back at her, "Yeah, that's a good point."

"If you don't believe, then why do you care?" Perino added.  "It's just, like, some guy's name."

Is it really?  So, Ms. Perino, would you have no problem with saying, "One nation, under Ralph?"  After all, it's just some guy's name, and you don't believe that Ralph is a deity, so why do you care?

You know, what gets me about all of this is that no one seems to be able to come up with a cogent reason as to why the "under God" thing should be retained in the Pledge.  Nor, for that matter, why "In God We Trust" should be on our currency.  Christians are free to pray in their churches; they're free to pray in their homes; Christian children are, contrary to popular opinion, free to pray in public schools as long as (1) it is not a mandated, school-sponsored activity, (2) they don't disrupt class by doing so, and (3) they don't coerce other children into praying along with them.  (I've known more than one teenager, in our relatively liberal school, who has quietly said grace before eating lunch -- and never noticed anyone giving them any trouble over it.)

Why must we include statements that imply that in order to be an American, you have to be Christian?

Or, for that matter, religious at all?

The tacit assumption here -- that I, as an atheist, can't be a "real American," that I am somehow unpatriotic and unfaithful to the values on which this nation was founded -- is profoundly insulting to me.  My political views, and my loyalty to this country, are entirely unrelated to my belief or disbelief in a deity.  (Cf. "Separation of Church and State.")

So, Ms. Perino, what do you suggest for me, an American citizen and an atheist, as an option?  When I stand for the Pledge during my first period class, when I recite it when I attend school board meetings, that I just say "under God" even though I don't believe it?  In other words, that I should lie outright, in public?  Or that I should just skip that part -- inviting questioning looks and (occasionally) disapproving frowns?

Can you honestly tell me why any mention of a deity should be on our currency and in our public statements of allegiance?

And I'm very sorry, Ms. Perino, that you're "tired" of people like me, but you know what?  I think you're gonna have to take a couple of No-Doz, put your big girl pants on, and deal with it.  Because atheists, rationalists, agnostics, and the like -- the sort of people who put "none" under "religious affiliation" on official forms -- now make up 20% of the American population, according to a Pew Research study done late last year.  And we are no less likely than Christians are to be loyal, law-abiding citizens.

So unless you seriously want 1 in 5 Americans to leave the country, you might want to reconsider your rhetoric.

Not that what you think makes any difference.  Because I don't believe that atheists are planning on going anywhere -- and I suspect that, given current trends, we're only going to become more numerous.

Thinking with both sides of the brain

One of the reasons I love science is that it challenges our preconceived notions about the way the world works.

We are data-gatherers and pattern-noticers, we humans.  Even as babies we are watching and learning, and trying to make generalizations about the world based on what we've experienced.  And while many of those generalizations turn out to be correct -- we wouldn't have lasted long as a species if they weren't -- we sometimes draw incorrect conclusions.

And when we do, we tend to hang onto them like grim death.  Once people have settled on a model, for whatever reason -- be it that "it seems like common sense" or that it has gained currency as some kind of "urban legend" -- it becomes extremely hard to undo, even when the science is unequivocal that our beliefs are wrong.

I ran across a particularly good example of that this week.  I teach an introductory neurology class, and when we start talking about brain physiology and its role in personality, inevitably someone brings up the phenomenon of brain lateralization -- the fact that, as we develop, one side of the brain exerts more influence over us physically than the other does.  This is why most of us have a dominant hand, foot, eye, and so forth.

Most common biological traits can be explained based upon some kind of evolutionary advantage they provide, but the jury's still out on this one.  Halpern et al. concluded, in 2005 in The Journal of Neuroscience, in their paper "Lateralization of the Vertebrate Brain: Taking the Side of Model Systems," that the evolutionary advantage of allowing one side of the brain to dominate the motor activity of the body is that it allows the other, non-dominant side to do other things -- something they call "parallel processing."  But even they admitted that this was speculation.

One claim that gained a lot of currency, beginning in the 1960s, was that people who were right brain dominant were artistic, creative, and saw things holistically, and that people who were left brain dominant were logical, verbal, mathematical, and sequential.

Now, there may be some truth to the claim that the sensory-processing centers on the two sides of the brain do see the word differently -- studies done on people who have had strokes in the cerebrum, and those with "split brains" (who have had the corpus callosum cut, preventing cross-talk between the two cerebral hemispheres), do seem to support that there is a dramatic difference in how the two sides of the brain interpret what you see.   (For an amazing personal account that supports this view, check out Jill Bolte Taylor's talk "A Stroke of Insight.")

The idea that people with intact brains are either artistic right-brainers or logical left-brainers has led to a whole slew of "therapies" meant to allow people to "balance their brains."  It has been especially targeted at the left-brainers, who are sometimes seen as cold and calculating.

Many of these treatments require such things as forcing people to write or perform actions with their non-dominant hands, or patching their dominant eye -- the claim being that this will force the poor, subjugated non-dominant side of the brain to feel free to express itself, resulting in an enlightened, fully-realized personality.

All of this, apparently, is pseudoscience.

I've suspected this for a while, frankly.  In my neurology class, we do a physical brain dominance test, and someone always asks about brain lateralization's role in personality.  When this happens, I have had to do something I am always reluctant to do, which is to say, "Well, I haven't seen any research, but this seems to me to be bogus."

I don't have to say that any more. 

Two weeks ago, the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-One published a paper by Jared A. Nielsen, Brandon A. Zielinski, Michael A. Ferguson, Janet E. Lainhart, and Jeffrey S. Anderson entitled, "An Evaluation of the Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Hypothesis with Resting State Functional Connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging."  In this paper they describe a series of experiments that looked at the actual structure of the brain, and its connectivity -- and they found that there's no such thing as a "right-brain" personality and "left-brain" personality based upon anything real that is present in the brain wiring.  Here's what they said in their discussion section:

In popular reports, “left-brained” and “right-brained” have become terms associated with both personality traits and cognitive strategies, with a “left-brained” individual or cognitive style typically associated with a logical, methodical approach and “right-brained” with a more creative, fluid, and intuitive approach. Based on the brain regions we identified as hubs in the broader left-dominant and right-dominant connectivity networks, a more consistent schema might include left-dominant connections associated with language and perception of internal stimuli, and right-dominant connections associated with attention to external stimuli.

Yet our analyses suggest that an individual brain is not “left-brained” or “right-brained” as a global property, but that asymmetric lateralization is a property of individual nodes or local subnetworks, and that different aspects of the left-dominant network and right-dominant network may show relatively greater or lesser lateralization within an individual.

So the truth turns out to be more complicated, but more interesting, than the commonly-accepted model.  We tend to do that a lot, don't we?  After all, what is much of pseudoscience but an attempt to impress order upon nature, to make it fit in neat little packages, to make it work the way we'd like it to?  Astrology, for example, would have you believe that there are twelve personality types, and that anything about your behavior that needs explanation can be filed under the heading of, "Oh, but of course I'm like that.  I'm a Scorpio."

But the world is complex and messy, and doesn't care about our desire for order.  However, it is also beautiful and mysterious and fascinating, and ultimately, understandable.  And science remains our best lens for doing so, for blowing away the dust and cobwebs of our preconceived notions, and helping us to comprehend the world as it is.

And it works regardless of which side of the brain you're thinking with.

Sparkly happy people

In yesterday's post, I described how several loyal readers are contributing to my ongoing progress toward insanity by sending me links to bizarre websites, accompanied by innocent-sounding messages like "I thought you'd find this interesting."

Never dangle bait like that in front of people who are as smart as these folks are.

Only an hour later, I got an email from one of them with the subject line, "I thought you'd find this interesting."  The body of the email contained only the single word, "Enjoy!" -- and a link to the website for the Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy.

Well, like Rudyard Kipling's character Elephant's Child, one of my besetting sins is insatiable curiosity.  Knowing as I was doing so that I would probably regret it, I clicked the link.

A while back, I did a piece about Poe's Law, the general rule of thumb that a sufficiently well-done parody is indistinguishable from the thing it is parodying.  And looking at the website for Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy, my first thought was, "Poe's Law.  This can't be real."

I mean, consider the following paragraph, that appears on the home page:

This is the place where the Crystal Hotties come to learn about the art & science of crystal healing.  We enjoy sharing all the wonders of working with healing crystals and exploring the physics & metaphysics behind how they work all while having lots of FUN.  The academy is taught by Hibiscus Moon, best-selling author of the book Crystal Grids: How and Why They Work.  Not sure where to begin?  No worries, Jelly Bean!  Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to ease you in and you’ll also receive a FREE Creating Sacred Space with Crystals eKit to get you started on your sparkly journey with crystal energy healing!

"Crystal Hotties?"  "Jelly Bean?"  "Crystal Grids?"  "Sparkly journey?"

I... what?

But I spent the better part of an hour, at the cost not only of time but of countless innocent neurons in my prefrontal cortex who died agonizing deaths, looking at this website, and I have come away convinced.

These people are serious.

For example, consider the following passage:

I want to make sure that we attract the right kind of student here at the HMCA. I love you all but we’re not all cut out to do the same things, you know?

• First & foremost, I totally get that not everyone is cut out to do this light healer or crystal healer type of work. Sometimes there are other things that need to get worked on first. No judgments there at all.
• That being said, I know that many get intimidated thinking “Who am I to be healing anyone?” Here at the HMCA, we realize & teach that we can all heal each other & that healing is a 2-way street…both the facilitator & the “heal-ee” exchange & receive. If we waited for all the healers to be PERFECT before they did any “healing” for anyone else….we’d all be waiting a LONG TIME!
• Next, if you’re looking for a course that simply spews out crystal properties for you to memorize then this is not the course for you. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that but there are other courses out there for you if that’s more of what you resonate with. Our method teaches you to really get to know your crystals & we take a more personal approach to that.

That just doesn't have the sound of a parody, does it?

There are all sorts of books, videos, and products for sale, including a "Sparkly Space Clearing e-Kit," whatever the hell that is.  There are testimonials.  Their Facebook page has been "liked" almost 57,000 times.  They have, apparently, been endorsed by Massage & Bodywork magazine.  But then, "Hibiscus Moon" blathers on like this:

What does it mean when your crystal cracks or breaks?

Sometimes it doesn’t mean anything at all. It could be just plain ole’ science & physics that did it like a heavy impact or thermal shock: extreme hot to cold or cold to hot.

But sometimes a stone or crystal just breaks…with no explanation.

So then we have to look at energy.

Think of it as the singer & wine glass shattering scenario. What causes that to happen?

The frequencies of the wine glass were perfectly pitched or perfectly oscillated with the sound frequency of the note that the singer was holding. This created a 3rd resonant field of greater energy & that cracks the wine glass.

The same scenario may be taking place when our crystal cracks. The vibrational frequency  of the crystal may be synchronizing with a frequency in its environment & BOOM! Crack.

Keep in mind…crystals do not die or stop working b/c they’ve cracked or broken. Please continue to work with them. They are still there for you.

What if this happens more than once with a particular crystal? Well, in that case, its work with  you may be done. Perhaps this is a sign to gift this piece on to whoever needs it more than you. Its work isn’t done, perhaps, it just needs to move on to someone else.

Now, the intense energy that caused the stone or crystal to crack, whether a physical impact or energetic impact was intense (especially if we’re talking about a quartz crystal)…& that my have temporarily altered the crystal’s normal vibrational frequency. So you’ll want to give that crystal a little break for a bit. A little spa vacation with a nice cleansing. But after about a month, it should be rarin’ to go again.

How do you do that? You can do a meditation with the cracked/broken crystal & thank it for the work it has been doing for/with you. Then since this a high amplitude energy that caused it to crack, you can do a good crystal re-tuning. Then, I recommend giving it a little rest or retreat for a month buried in Mother Earth. Ahhhh. Be sure to mark the spot well so you can find it again!

So I hope that puts some of you at ease when a crystal cracks or breaks!  If you have any stories to share, we'd all love to hear!

Sparkles and Glittery Blessings,

Hibiscus Moon

Yup!  It could be plain "ole" science and physics!  Or maybe your crystal might need a "little spa vacation with a nice cleansing" so that it's "rarin' to go again!"

I don't know about you, but I'm going with the science and physics.

One of the problems I had, while reading all this, is not just that it seems to be composed of complete nonsense, but that the writer of the website (who I assume is "Hibiscus Moon") exhibits a perkiness level usually only seen in employees of Disneyland.  She keeps calling the readers "crystal hotties" and "sparkly friends" and "party people" and "crystalline cohorts," which I think was intended to be encouraging and friendly even though the last one sounds like a villain from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  All of her signoffs are something like "Oceans of Sparkly Blessings!"  Overall, her writing sounds like she could use a good sedative, or possibly just spending some time watching C-Span.

Now, don't get me wrong.  These people sound like lovely human beings, and honestly, I would much rather see folks cheerfully playing with their crystals than hurting each other.  It could well be that many of the world's problems could be solved if people like Kim Jong-Un and Bashar al-Assad would just stop what they're doing every once in a while and contemplate healing their spiritual angst with a nice emerald (which, we find out on the site, is the Crystal of the Year.)

But as far as having anything to do with "ole" science and physics... this doesn't.  It's harmless enough to anything but your bank account, but any resemblance between "crystal healing" and an experimentally-supported medical modality is purely coincidence, or possibly the placebo effect.

And to the friend who sent me the link: you win this round.  You "crystal hottie," you.

The strange world of the Sovereign Citizens

One of the features of writing this blog that turns out to be a mixed blessing is that I frequently am sent suggestions by readers for topics for future posts.  I say it's a "mixed blessing" because while some people who read Skeptophilia are fellow skeptics and rationalists who are acting as a team of free-lance (and unpaid) investigative reporters on my behalf, there are some of them who are (to put not too fine a point on it) batshit crazy.  Thus, for example, the person who joined in with me in chuckling about how silly the people are who believe in the power of crystal-infused wands to mitigate chronic pain, but only because she'd found some crystals that really worked, because they were magical rocks that came from the sky.

I considered writing back and explaining to her the definition of the words "sky," "meteorite," and "planet," but decided that it probably was better to leave well enough alone.

There's a more insidious downside to writing this blog, though, and it usually comes about because of the good intentions of my most faithful readers.  There are about a half-dozen folks who send me topics with great regularity, and although I don't think any of them know the others, you would think (by looking at their submissions) that they are in cahoots and are engaging in some sort of Loony Topic One-Upmanship Contest.  Each time I get an email with a link from one of them, it should come with a message, "You think what the others sent you was insane -- wait till you see this!"  Mostly, though, they are just accompanied by some innocent-sounding text, like, "I thought you'd find this interesting."

So, of course, I have to click the link, meaning that I spend the next half-hour with an expression like this:

Which brings me to my friend Peter.

Peter is a skeptic and rationalist par excellence, and a frequent reader and contributor to Skeptophilia.  For which, I will say up front, I am very grateful.  But last week, he sent me an email in which he asked a seemingly innocent question, which was, "Have you ever heard of the 'Sovereign Citizens' movement?"

I said that I hadn't.  In response, he sent me a link to the following video clip.  (Note: by posting this, I am in no way suggesting that you should watch it.  In fact, when I watched it, the only thing that persuaded me not to slam my head face-first into the wall was that I didn't want to have to explain a broken nose and missing front teeth to my wife.  You should only watch this video if you have a strong tolerance for music from 50s informational video shorts and narrators who sound like June Cleaver on Prozac.  Don't say you haven't been warned.)

The gist, for those of you who took my advice and didn't watch the video, is that the government owns you because of your birth certificate, and that any time you register something, it belongs to the government because "regis" means "king."  (Nota bene:  do not fuck around with a linguist.  "Register" comes from the Latin verb regerere, meaning "to record" -- from re-, again, and gerere, to carry or bear.  It has nothing to do with the Latin word for "king," which is rex, and comes from a Proto-Indo European root "*reg-" meaning "right" or "rule.")

Be that as it may, the video goes on to inform you that at birth, your existence was recorded by the government and that has created a "straw man," which is dead.  Or maybe that you're dead and the straw man is alive.  It's a little hard to tell, frankly.  The gist of it seems to be that by paying taxes and signing your name and following laws, you're creating this "fake you" that the government owns, and that the "real you" needs to just stop doing all of that stuff.

So, I was watching this, and wondering if this was some kind of parody, and increasingly it dawned on me: these people are serious.  They really want you to "destroy your straw man" by tearing up your birth certificate, car registration, marriage license, and so on.  Which is how this all connects to the "Sovereign Citizen" movement.

The idea of the Sovereign Citizen movement is that we sheep-like ordinary folk are willingly handing over our rights, money, and freedom to governments, and that we should just stand up and take 'em all back.  Stop paying taxes, stop going along with things like registering children, cars, homes, and so on, stop going along with military draft registration.  In fact, just stop having anything whatsoever to do with the government.  This movement has apparently gained a lot of traction up in Canada, where an estimated 30,000 people consider themselves "sovereign citizens" who have severed all ties with the Canadian government -- including, in some cases, following the law.

In one sense, the Sovereign Citizen movement has a point; when you think about it, it is kind of silly that we've drawn some arbitrary lines all over the Earth and said, "If you are inside this set of invisible lines, you have national health care, gays can marry, you have free public education through college, and you're expected to pay 50% income tax rates; a mile away, across that invisible line, none of that is true."

Can you imagine trying to explain that to an intelligent alien species?

The problem, of course, is that however much you go around saying you're a sovereign citizen and you don't have to pay taxes and all, the government still has a considerable power to compel you, or at least make your life miserable if you don't cooperate.  And the reality is that however strange the idea might seem, governments do provide us with some reasonably nice benefits (e.g. police, fire departments, roads, and public schools).  So even if they curtail our rights some, and require us to do jury duty and file for marriage licenses and the rest, on the balance, I'll still take this over anarchy.

So the "sovereign citizens" end up coming across a little bit like the people who have founded "micronations" by semi-officially seceding their houses from the country in which they reside.  The general response by the powers-that-be is, "Okay, have fun playing in your pillow fort, but when the time comes to do your chores, you still have to do them.  Or else."

Anyhow, my thanks to Peter for telling me about all this, even if it started out with a link that had me wearing my "horrified expression" for six minutes straight.  And I don't want to discourage people from sending me topics -- I honestly love hearing from my faithful readers.  I will continue to look at all the links you send, I promise, whatever the cost to my poor aching facial muscles.  And you can continue to read what I write, free of charge.

You don't even have to register.

Smiting the unbelievers

One question I have for people who believe that there are powerful, invisible beings in control of the universe is why those beings don't seem to object more strenuously when they are disbelieved in or mocked outright.

I'm not just talking about deities here, as you'll see in a moment, although mythology does provide a great many examples of tales which, if true, should give scoffers pause.  The Greeks gods, in particular, were always smiting people for pretty much nothing.  Remember when Athena turned Arachne into a spider for claiming that she was the best weaver ever?  Or when King Salmoneus of Pylos was vaporized with a thunderbolt by Zeus when he claimed to be a god?  Then there was poor Actaeon, who was turned into a stag and then ripped limb from limb by his dogs just because he happened to catch a glimpse of the goddess Artemis naked.

Looks from the picture like Actaeon was naked at the time, too, which certainly ups the creepiness factor and makes it understandable why Artemis freaked out a little.  But it still seems like an overreaction to me.

The Norse gods were a little better in that regard, although not if you were a Frost Giant.  Odin and Thor were always smiting the crap out of the Frost Giants, which is probably why you see so few Frost Giants around now.

And look at Yahweh in the Old Testament.  Given how many of his own followers he slew for various minor offenses, it's a wonder there are any of them left, either.  He killed seventy people just for looking at the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Samuel 6:19, bringing up visual images of the melting Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  God also was not above using animals to do his dirty work -- remember how he sent bears to help out his pal Elisha in 2 Kings 2:23-24, and the bears ripped apart two dozen children who had teased Elisha about being bald?

And let's not even go into how Yahweh killed virtually the entire population of the Earth during the Great Flood, men, women and children, just for some unspecified "wickedness."

So, we have some serious precedent, here, that being a non-believer, or (worse) an outright scoffer, isn't a safe thing to do, inviting being turned into or eaten by various animals, struck with lightning, drowned, or just suffering a generic smiting.

And here I sit, healthy as ever.  Odd, that.

All of this comes up, however, not because of anything connected directly with religion.  You probably know about the Reptilians, a race of shapeshifting evil cold-blooded aliens who have infiltrated the political world for nefarious reasons.  We're talking about some serious bad guys, here, worse even than Ann Coulter.

Now, belief in the Reptilians does share some of the same characteristics as religion, in that it requires faith-based acceptance of powerful entities whose existence, by definition, can't be proven.  So it is perhaps unsurprising that this week, on the wonderfully weird blog Phantoms & Monsters, we found out that like Zeus and Artemis and Yahweh and the rest, the Reptilians do not take kindly to being taunted.

A man who gave his name only as "Matt R." was interviewed a week ago with Daniel Ott of The Edge Radio Show, a weekly broadcast that bills itself as "exciting interviews on topics such as 9/11, Angels, Near Death Experiences, Planetary Anomalies, Black Ops, to Alternative Science, Prophesies, Lost Continents, Aliens, Cryptozoology, Bio Warfare and much more!"  Matt R. was describing his various abductions by Reptilians (he's apparently had more than one), and Ott made some kind of wisecrack about Reptilians.  Here's what happened next:

In the last 10 minutes of the show, the host cracked a joke about killing reptilians.  What can only be described as an inhuman growl jumped into our conversation immediately after.  Apparently, whatever reptilian was on the line wanted to voice their displeasure with his joke.  During this conversation, I was sitting inside a parked car with the engine off. I was talking on my Skype app, over my phone's 4G connection.  There was no other radio or computer anywhere near me.  I can't think of anything that could have produced a growling noise that vivid.  That certainly didn't sound like line interference.  There are no audio files or ring tones on my Samsung S3 that sound like that.  There was a deep guttural quality to it, which made it similar to what I've heard from reptilians before.  Mr. Ott does not have a history of pranking people on his program.  And I know there is no possible explanation for generation of that noise on my end.

And I'm thinking, "that's it?  A nasty growl is the best that the ultrapowerful, black-hearted controllers of the Earth can do?  After crossing the galaxy in their faster-than-light spaceships, infiltrating the government and replacing world leaders by assuming human form, and engaging in all sorts of evil stuff from genetic engineering of alien/human hybrids to inducing Miley Cyrus to "twerk" at the Video Music Awards, the best they can manage when someone threatens to kill them is a 'guttural growl?'"

Maybe that's why supernatural entities get so little respect these days.  I mean, if a god appeared in my classroom and turned a mouthy student into an earthworm, I would definitely stand up and take notice.  Depending on who the student was, I might even sacrifice a sheep or something as a way of saying, "Thanks."  And just think of all of the people in the world who really deserve being vaporized by lightning bolts.

If Thor is up there with his hammer, I know we'd all appreciate it if he'd get up off his lazy ass and use the thing, preferably starting with someone like Bashar al-Assad.

But of course, that sort of thing never happens.  It's kind of inconvenient, the way we never get any direct evidence of all of these things we're supposed to believe in, isn't it?  I mean, I've scoffed at both Reptilians and various religious beliefs pretty much continuously for two decades, and I haven't even heard so much as a growl.

Of course, you never know what's around the corner, so it could be that I'll get struck by a meteorite or something on the way to work today.

If that happens, won't I feel silly?