God particle jewelry

It's simultaneously amusing and frustrating to see the woo-woos trying to incorporate the latest scientific findings into their wooism.

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, there was a great deal of babbling about "etheric bodies" -- basically, their conception of the soul, which could project through time and space and which survived the physical body after death.  The "etheric body" was, supposedly, made of "ether," the mysterious substance suggested by scientists as the medium through which light waves propagated in the depths of space.

Because, after all, if the "etheric body" is made of "ether," then if the scientists say that the "ether" exists, the "etheric body" must, too.  Right?

Of course right.

But then the Michelson-Morley experiment and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity demonstrated conclusively that the "ether" didn't exist, and unfortunately, the woo-woos of the time didn't use the reverse logic, and conclude that souls didn't, either.  They just changed the name to "astral body" and kept right on blathering.

Bait-and-switch, that's the ticket.

The master of this technique these days is the inimitable Diane Tessman, who uses scientific words incorrectly so often that someone should design a drinking game based on her writings.  (It is not recommended that you take a shot whenever she uses the word "quantum," however.  I'd prefer not to have any of my readers end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.)

Yesterday, though, I ran into the pinnacle, the epitome, the crowning glory of this technique.  If you know of a better one, I don't want to hear about it, because this one caused so many faceplants that I'm already going to have to go to school this morning with an icepack strapped to my forehead.

Most of you probably have heard of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle whose existence was proposed by Peter Higgs way back in 1964 as the manifestation of the Higgs field, which permeates space, interacting with matter and giving it the property of mass.  Higgs, now age 84, was fortunate enough to live to see his theory vindicated.  In March of 2013 an experiment in CERN generated traces of a high-energy particle that most physicists believe was the Higgs.

Unfortunately, twenty years earlier, physicist Leon Lederman had given the elusive particle the nickname "the God Particle" -- apparently because his publisher wouldn't let him use his first choice for a nickname, which was "the goddamned particle."

But far be it from the woo-woos to let an objection like "it's just the nickname, for cryin' in the sink!" stand in their way.  Because now we have someone is selling jewelry made from ball bearings pilfered from CERN...

... and claiming that they are infused with God Particles, and that wearing it will bring you divine guidance.

Here's the pitch:

The God Particle, which was recently discovered by our colleagues in CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory, forever the Holy Grail of particle physics and nuclear research. The God particle is regarded as one of the fundamental forces of the cosmos. Many religious philosophers believe it constitutes the very ground of being, while others assert that it is the fabric of creation upon which the tapestry of the universe is woven. There are some who refer to the God particle as the clay of existence, whereas the Shaivites of India know it as Brahman and regard it quite reverently as sacred supreme Consciousness.

We still don't know if one of these theories is true, or maybe they all are. What we do know is that you are on the verge of a once in a lifetime opportunity of letting this infinite power into your life.

You deserve God's help, you deserve God's particle.

So these people apparently pilfered bits of scrap from CERN -- although frankly, they could just as well be steel ball bearings they picked up from Home Depot for $0.99 each, there's no way to tell for certain -- and made them into jewelry.

And are selling them for two hundred bucks each.

But the bullshit doesn't end there.  Oh, no.  These people are way more sophisticated than those "etheric body" yokels from the 19th century.  Read on, and be amazed:

Samples from the parts exposed to the surge of energy which showed substantial evidence of having the God Particle were sent to the leading universities and research centers in the world.

According to preliminary evidence found thus far by researches in the medical field, the energy of the God Particle has some amazing effects on migraine prevention, on treating different kinds of skin conditions, up to a surprising improvement among those who ailing from sexual dysfunction disorders. All those among a long list of other medical conditions.

The effects of the God Particle is also tested in the field of mental health and in this field the patients are also getting some surprising improvements in a wide range of medical cases, for example treating phobias and depressions of different kinds.

One of the theories being researched by the scientists is that the God Particle doesn't really cure the listed conditions but provides the human body with the energy needed to normalize and cure itself.

All those researches are performed in scientific methods demanding them to comply with a strict criteria before publication.

Therefore all the above should not be taken as a scientific fact, but should only be understood the way it is, a positive influence of material exposed to the God Particle on treating and preventing a wide range of medical problems.

The results of the researches are still censored. But there is an increasing assumption in the scientific community that in the future, when it becomes less expensive to produce the particle, it will completely change the face of modern medicine.

I especially love the penultimate paragraph, which to my ears reads like the woo-woo alternative-medicine's "Not intended to treat, cure, or diagnose human illness" that appears in microscopic print on things like herbal remedies.

And how did these folks come by chunks of one of the most famous pieces of scientific apparatus in the world, you might ask?

We are a part of a maintenance team in CERN. Among our responsibilities is to replace some of the worn out parts inside the collider.

We notices that something amazing was happening to many people during those days, and when we were summoned for tests by the research groups we realized that we were not the only ones who felt that way.

When the moment came to replace some of the parts around the center of the collision, we felt that we cannot dispose this material as waste. Instead, we started collecting the remaining bearings from the section which is under our responsibility. This material was exposed to the most powerful energy.

After the remaining bearings are collected, we remove them from the compound and later from the country, back to our countries of origin. Initially we gave small spheres which came from the collected bearings to our relatives and friends. In a short period of time the spheres started to leave their mark, and along with great responses we were flooded with requests from other acquaintances who heard about the amazing experience.

Which is either an outright lie, or else illegal, since profiting off of materials taken secretly from a scientific research facility is usually considered theft.  Of course, given that they are also making fraudulent claims about what said ball bearings can do, there are so many ethical angles from which you could attack this website that I almost wouldn't know where to begin.

So I think, instead, that I'm just going to stop here and leave it up to your consideration.  For one thing, in doing the research for this post, I did such a colossal headdesk that I think I jarred a Higgs boson loose from my skull, and my etheric body needs some time to recover before I go to work.

Sylphs to the rescue!

So, I have good news for those of you who are afraid of chemtrails.

I've posted more than once recently about the increasingly widespread claim that the government is lacing jet fuel with a variety of bad stuff, so that when the fuel goes through the engine, the bad stuff comes out in the exhaust and then settles out on us unsuspecting sheeple.  Some bad stuff that is supposedly thus dispersed:

• toxic chemicals containing barium, aluminum, and manganese
• pathogenic viruses
• hallucinogenic and/or mind-controlling drugs
• dessicated blood

If you are asking yourself how any of these things could (1) survive the combustion process in the engine, and be (2) in sufficiently high concentrations afterwards even to be detectable, much less to cause health effects, all that shows is that you have already been exposed to the mind-controlling drugs and are now a helpless pawn of the Illuminati.

However, all hope is not lost for you, my dazed, glassy-eyed friend.  Because the dirty work of the Evil Government Chemtrailers is now being counteracted and cleaned up...

... by benevolent spirits called "Sylphs."

As with many of the topics I stumble across, at first I thought this was a joke, intended to ridicule the people who believe in chemtrails, or perhaps just to calm them down and get them to go back inside and take their meds.  Sadly, it is not.  There is a whole subset of the chemtrail people who now believe that "Air Elementals" -- i.e., good fairies -- are getting up there and taking care of the evil nasty chemtrails for us.

Because clearly there is nothing like a nonexistent supernatural being for dealing with nonexistent bad guys.

As an example from the site I linked above, we have the following letter excerpt from a woman in Las Vegas, identified only as "Sarah C.:"

This morning I woke up hacking horribly and my daughter came to me and said she couldn't breath [sic] very well. So I went outside and sure enough they were spraying all over the place...  They made a huge mess of the sky.  When I first went out it was a clear day with blue skys [sic].  After 30 min of spraying the sky was covered in chemtrails.  I decided to use the power of intention and call on some Sylphs.  I don't think my intention alone was enough, but I think some of them came and did some clean up. In one of my pictures I think there is a Sylph in the shape of a bird...

I think there are some Sylphs cleaning the mess up.  It's been about an hour and a half and the sky is still blue but you can still see the remnants of the chemtrails, they look like smooshed cirrus clouds.   I also took a quick video of the spraying in progress.  I am really horrified that this is going on and no one is pitching a fit.

As proof, Sarah C. includes the following photograph:

 See the Sylph right there in the middle?  See it?

No, neither do I, but it's probably because of all of the mind-altering drugs I've inhaled from jet fuel.  You know how that goes.

Another person, "Bram," wrote in to say that he's helping things along because he built a machine that makes Sylphs:

I built a cloud-buster a couple years, ago....and have been enjoying Sylphs big-time, on a regular basis.  I was on the beach (a few blocks away) yesterday, and just happened to looked up. The sky was filled with these Friends.  It was very heartening.

Oh, I'm sure it was.  And I hope you and your "Friends" are very happy together.

A writer from Edinburgh, Scotland named "Ruth" also said that she'd photographed a Sylph.  Here's the original picture:

This looks to me less like a "Sylph" than it does like a "cloud."  But once she started editing, cropping, and otherwise monkeying around with the photograph, Ruth found out that what looks like a cloud to the rest of us is actually a Sylph who has shown up to clean up air pollution.  Ready for the edited version that proves her point?

To me, this doesn't look like a benevolent Air Elemental, this looks like Lord Voldemort.  But what do I know?

Not much, apparently, according to Ruth.  Here's what she has to say about it:

Today, for a brief spell, the clouds above us cleared away and I spotted a fingerlike sylph pushing back the clouds, quite literally.  This was after I'd asked them to come and clear away a heavy black cloud over my garden!!

Shortly after this I was indooors [sic] and spotted a face in one of the remaing [sic] clouds, but it was a bit like some of your ghostlike faces, which I find quite alarming (my camera battery was low and so I also didn't get a picture).  Because of this, I asked it to smile and I sent it a smile and as I did so, the mouth space immediately turned upwards and the eye holes narrowed as they would when you smile!!  However, the face faded away almost immediatley [sic] after, as though I had hurt its feelings!!  How bizarre.... all very intriguing!!

Ha ha!  Yes, very intriguing!  Now please excuse me, while I back away slowly, keeping my eyes on you the whole time!

So, this once again indicates the truth of something I've commented on before, namely, that there is no claim so ridiculous that someone can't modify it so as to make it way more ridiculous.  Now, excuse me, but I have to go focus my attention on calling up some Fire Elementals, because it's cold in here.

The power of "only"

Today, I ran into a story that got me thinking about how powerful a single word can be in changing the gist of a claim.

An article in Online Medical Daily entitled "'Seeds Of Life' Collected During Perseid Meteor Shower: Scientists Say Algae 'Can Only Have Come From Space'," writer John Ericson describes an unusual find on the (formerly) sterile sides of a British research balloon.

In a study described at the Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology conference in San Diego, British biologist Chandra Wickramasinghe told attendees about a discovery, that (if true) revolutionizes what we know about the origins of life on Earth.  Wickramasinghe and his colleagues launched a balloon into the stratosphere during the annual Perseid meteor shower, and upon retrieval, found that the surface had a microscopic blob of microorganisms stuck to it.  "The entities varied from a presumptive colony of ultra-small bacteria to two unusual individual organisms - part of a diatom frustule and a 200 micron-sized particle mass interlaced with biofilm and biological filaments," Wickramasinghe said, in an interview with The Daily Mail.

Diatom frustules (skeletons)

"By our current understanding of the means by which such particles can be transferred from Earth to the stratosphere they could not - in the absence of a violent volcanic eruption occurring within a day of the sampling event - make such a journey," Wickramasinghe explained.  "If there is no mechanism by which these biological entities could be elevated from Earth to the stratosphere then it must have arrived from above the stratosphere and have been incoming to Earth...  They can only have come from space."

What Wickramasinghe is claiming is not a new idea.  Called panspermia, the speculation is that the ancestors of all terrestrial species was a microorganism (probably an extremeophile) that rode in on a meteorite or on cometary debris.  Chemist Svante Arrhenius was fond of the claim, as was astronomer Fred Hoyle; but it's not much in vogue these days, largely due to slim evidence supporting the contention.  Wickramasinghe himself is kind of a fringe figure in the minds of much of the scientific community -- not only has he championed panspermia with a single-mindedness that approaches obsession, but he also testified for the defense in a 1981 McLean vs. the Arkansas State Board of Education trial, one of many cases that considered the constitutionality of teaching creationism in public schools.  During the trial, he referred to the famous fossil of Archaeopteryx as a "hoax."

None of this wins him any points in my book.

Of course, to be fair, you have to consider a claim separate from the person making it; even complete wingnuts can land on correct ideas sometimes.  And here, we have at least some sort of hard evidence -- traces of microorganisms on a sterile balloon that had taken a trip into the stratosphere during a meteor shower.  Has Wickramasinghe been vindicated?

There's the problem here, and it revolves around the use of the word "only."  Wickramasinghe said that his algae blob "can only have come from space."  Take out the word "only," and I'm with him 100%.  The blob could have come from space.  Its presence on the balloon is certainly suggestive.  But to say that it only can have come from space requires a great deal more than that.

Stratospheric dust collection is a notoriously difficult task.  Contamination is a constant hazard, especially if you are trying to obtain a pure sample of interplanetary dust -- i.e., material that did not originate on Earth.  Terrestrial dust, made up of windblown sediments, volcanic ash, and more prosaic materials such as pollen, can reach amazing heights in the atmosphere, and travel extraordinary distances.  A recent study found that dust from the Sahara can reach stratospheric heights -- and affect weather in western North America.

So even if Wickramasinghe's group was careful -- and I am not trying to imply that they weren't -- the possibility of contamination has to be weighed into any argument about the origin of the microorganisms on the balloon.  As NASA's page on "Cosmic Dust" puts it, "Once in the stratosphere this ‘cosmic dust’ and spacecraft debris joins terrestrial particles such as volcanic ash, windborne desert dust and pollen grains."

But of course, Wickramasinghe has a dog in this race, and once you take out the word "only," you don't have much of a story left.  Debris, some containing organic compounds or even microorganisms, has been found before and been alleged to have an extraterrestrial origin.  Thus far, none of these claims has been conclusively supported, so (to be fair) we have to consider the jury to be still out on the idea of panspermia.

Now, don't get me wrong.  No one would be more delighted than me if extraterrestrial life was discovered, even if it turned out just to be single-celled organisms.  I've long suspected that we're not alone in the universe -- what I know about evolutionary biology suggests to me that life is probably plentiful out there in space.  But if you make a claim to have discovered aliens, even microscopic ones, you have to be held to a higher standard of evidence than suspicions and suggestions.  And your case isn't made more watertight simply because of a judicious use of the word "only."

There's this thing called "reality." You might want to check it out.

As a blogger who focuses continually on the crazy ideas people have, you'd think that after a while, I'd either (1) become cynical, (2) give up, or (3) devolve into what Robert Chazz Chute, the interviewer who chatted with me on the Cool People Podcasts, called "being a dick to dumb people."

I'd like to think that I avoid that trilemma most of the time.  But every once in a while, I run into something that makes me want to jump up and down and scream, "How in the hell can you believe this?  Are you a moron?  Or what?"  But I refrain from doing this, because usually I write in the early morning, and I don't want to wake up my wife.  Also, I own a nervous, neurotic border collie, who reacts to any stressful situations by peeing on the floor, so I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

Just today, though, I ran into not one, but two stories that had that effect on me.

Now, note in each case, it's not the originator of the story that I want to yell at.  There are many loony people in the world, and it's well within their rights to publish their loony ideas online.  However, it is (in my opinion) beholden upon the rest of us to say, in as gentle a fashion as possible, "There, there, now.  Don't get yourself all worked up.  Just have a nice cup of cocoa and take a nap, and you'll feel better."

That is, of course, not what happened.  In each of these cases, the "comments" section filled up immediately with people who not only didn't argue with the person in question, they agreed.  They considered the wingnut's ideas logical.  They praised the courage of the originators for taking such a controversial stance.

Not one comment -- not one -- said, "Hey.  Reality.  It's over here.  You might want to give it a look."

Let's start with Starre Vartan, a writer for the Mother Nature Network, who wrote an opinion piece decrying public schools' abandonment of teaching children cursive.  Now, I myself am very much in favor of getting rid of cursive, largely because I never really managed well with cursive myself.  My cursive writing looks a little like the Elvish script from The Lord of the Rings, as written by an Elf with a severe disorder of the central nervous system.  I can't read my own cursive writing.  I don't know how anyone else would manage.

But Ms. Vartan is all up in arms over losing cursive.  Why, you might ask?  Is it because it's a valuable skill having to do with improving hand/eye coordination?  Is it because it's a fine old tradition that deserves to be continued?  Is it because, done properly, it is beautiful and artistic?

Nope.  None of the above.  Ms. Vartan believes that cursive is being abandoned...

... because there is some sort of a conspiracy to render children incapable of reading the Constitution.

She states, "It's near-impossible to read cursive if you can't write it," which certainly isn't true in my case, and honestly, is almost certainly untrue in general.  Generating script (productive language) and deciphering script (receptive language) aren't even done in the same parts of the brain, for cryin' in the sink; there's no reason to believe that even a person who has never written cursive in his life wouldn't be perfectly capable of being taught to read it.  As far as the governmental connection, she quotes Michael Sull: "There are so many children today who can't even read cursive writing, let alone write it.  They'll never be able to read anything that was written in the 19th century.  They won't be able to read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or anything written during the Civil War.  They're missing an entire portion of our country's history."

Because, of course, those documents don't exist in any other forms besides the cursive original.  Like, online, or in high school history texts, or anything.

Now, as I said, Ms. Vartan is perfectly within her rights to post her opinion, just as I do here in my blog.  But what I found appalling was that no one in the comments section even points out what were, to me, completely obvious broken links in the logical chain.  The comments virtually all began with phrases like, "What a good point!"  (There were two, in fact, that stated that the commenters had gone to school in Italy and Romania, respectively, and that they had learned cursive in grade school, and how much better the schools were there because of that.)

The second example came from none other than Alex Jones, who is so far gone on the wingnut spectrum that I am frankly stunned when he can say anything more coherent than "woogie woogie woogie pfththtptptptptptppt."  Jones has had a lot to say about Syria lately, most of which has contained the words "false flag" and has made no sense whatsoever, not that anyone should really find that surprising.  But he really outdid himself yesterday.  Here's what he said:

But it’s the globalists here running my life, that’s why they’re my front-and-center problem.  Because they are the biggest, most organized, eugenics-based, scientific dictatorship, trans-humanists at the top that plan the extinction of almost everybody and a new species to rise up or humans merged with machines.

That’s their religion, and no one’s discussing that.  Everyone is going to be deindustrialized, everyone is going to be put back into the Stone Age and controlled.  And Obama and the globalists and the robber barons, they’re going to fly around in their jetcopters and their Air Forces Ones and their red carpets, like gods above us.  And they’re going to get the life-extension technologies.

So the contention is that President Obama is in cahoots with various corporate leaders to kill most of us and return the rest of us to "the Stone Age," while they become immortal cyborgs who ride around on red carpets.

You know, it's an amazing day when someone can make the writings of L. Ron Hubbard appear sane.

And once again, how did people respond, on Jones' site InfoWars?  Here is a sampling (spelling and grammar are as written):

I've said it before and I'll say it again; How can we blame our government for supporting terrorists when WE are still supporting terrorists IN OUR GOVERNMENT??

I know people are afraid to believe, REFUSE to believe we've already been overthrown, but its true. There is no risk of it happening, it already has. We are wading through the changes one decade at a time. Changes happen slowly for a reason. Hitler did what he did overnight, and almost didnt fail.. Youre going to tell me people with the same ideas dont exist today? That your going to wake up and be in a completely different country one morning? They are going as slow as they have to to make it work, and I assure you all of their players are in place. There are thousands of people who do nothing with their lives but figure out how to implement a unified luciferian control over the globe. And MILLIONS who are indirectly doing work for said goal and dont even realize it.

These fckrs are planning more evil, something big too. Ya'll think they are just going to roll over and admit their defeat and wrongdoings? When most wake up, their pants will be around their ankles wondering WTF happened.

Alex Jones the Illuminati owned and run shill designed to discredit the Patriot Movement and keep it in the dark as to the real and obvious cause of their oppression.

Okay.  Give me a moment, here, to get my blood pressure back down.

There.  Somewhat better now.  In my calmer moments, I am willing to consider that the people who respond to stories like these do not represent a good sampling of the American public.  For one thing, most clear-thinking people probably wouldn't bother to take the time to register on a site so they can comment on a story that is obviously ridiculous; said clear-thinkers probably have better things to do, such as actually having jobs and families and lives.  Also, there's the possibility -- certain, I think, in Jones' case -- that dissenters, especially those like myself who would be likely to refer to Jones as a "raving whackjob," would be blocked from posting on the site in short order.

So I live in hope that what we're seeing in these comments is not a representative sampling of the opinions, and intelligence level, of the American citizenry.  And that hope will keep me posting here.  Cynicism is, after all, not a happy spot.  As my dad used to say: "I'd rather be an optimist who is wrong than a pessimist who is right."

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.