Avoiding female storms

There's a danger in being a skeptic, and that is that you stand the risk of becoming a cynic -- moving from the stance of "show me why you believe that" into "oh, c'mon, I don't believe that."  I know I have to fight that tendency, myself.  When I see a claim that appears, on its surface, to be ridiculous, some internal bullshitometer starts to ping.

When that happens, it takes some effort on my part to hold back, and to look at the claim itself with as much of an unbiased an eye as I can manage -- an absolutely essential skill, I think, for anyone who wants to keep the critical lens squarely in front of his or her eyes.

This comes up because of a link sent to me by a friend, called "Hurricanes With Female Names Are Deadlier Than Masculine Ones."  The first thing I always look for -- the source of the claim -- made me frown a little, because this isn't a story from some wild-eyed blog, it comes from none other than the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was written up in Discover magazine.

Here's the claim, as laid out in the Discover article linked above:

According to the multi-part study, the more feminine the name assigned to a severe hurricane, the higher its death toll. Researchers believe implicit gender stereotypes — women are less violent than men, for example — skew the public’s expectation of how dangerous an approaching storm really is and whether they need to take emergency measures, such as evacuation. Basically, people would be more likely to choose to ride out Hurricane Britney than Hurricane Brutus... 

The study’s conclusions were based on a series of reviews and experiments. Researchers compiled fatalities and other statistics, such as amount of damage, from the 94 Atlantic hurricanes that made landfall in the U.S. from 1950 through 2012. To avoid skewing their results with outliers, they removed the two deadliest hurricanes — 2005′s Katrina and 1957′s Audrey, both of which happen to have female names.

On first glance, this is a fairly eye-opening result, especially given that they eliminated two extremely deadly hurricanes that had female names (and thus would have strengthened their results).  But even so, I have to admit that my initial reaction was disbelief.

 Yup.  Guilty as charged.  I'm a bisbelieving blogem.

I grew up on the Gulf Coast, and I can say with some authority that no one much cared what a hurricane's name was -- we pretty much just boarded the place up and stocked up on food and water, and, if need be, got the hell out.  The idea that anyone would alter his or her behavior based on the name of the storm seemed ludicrous.  So given my experience, I was forced to consider what else could explain this trend.

And I did find something that may explain the data's skew.  I'd like to have the opportunity to sit down with the paper's authors and crunch the numbers and see if I'm right -- but for now, I'll just run this up the flagpole and see who salutes.

According to the site Weather Underground, the number of Atlantic tropical storms per decade has increased significantly, perhaps due to the effects of anthropogenic climate change:

• 1941-1950 - 96 named storms
• 1951-1960 - 98 named storms
• 1961-1970 - 98 named storms
• 1971-1980 - 96 named storms
• 1981-1990 - 94 named storms
• 1991-2000 - 111 named storms
• 2001-2010 - 159 named storms

So you would expect that the death rate would go up from that alone.  But in fact, according to a paper by Indur Goklany (2009), the death rate from storms has actually declined significantly during the past century:

In fact, even though reporting of such events is more complete than in the past, morbidity and mortality attributed to them has declined globally by 93%–98% since the 1920s.  In the U.S., morbidity and mortality from extreme weather events peaked decades ago.  Depending on the category of extreme weather event, average annual mortality is 59%–81% lower than at its peak, while mortality rates declined 72%–94%, despite large increases in the population at risk.  Today, extreme weather events contribute only 0.06% to global and U.S. mortality...  (M)ortality from extreme weather events has declined even as all-cause mortality has increased, indicating that humanity is coping better with extreme weather events than it is with far more important health and safety problems.

So what this means is that the data is skewed -- the further back in time you go, the higher were the mortality rates from big storms, most likely due to poorer forecasting and preparation for such events.    And (more deaths) divided by (fewer storms) gives you a higher average number of deaths per storm.  This means that if you look prior to 1979 -- when all tropical storms had female names -- you'll find more deaths per decade, even though the number of storms per decade was less.

In short, I think this is a statistical artifact.  It certainly seems like it should be, given any reasonable expectation of human behavior (I see no reason why the morons who decide to ride out storms, and end up getting killed by them, would have any particular bias against throwing hurricane parties when the storm has a man's name).  But like I said: I haven't done a rigorous analysis of the numbers, and would encourage any statistically-adept readers to do so, and correct me if I'm wrong.

So my recommendation: if there is a category five hurricane bearing down on your home town, I'd get the hell out even if it's named Hurricane Princess Rainbow Sparkle-pants.

Unbearable

I remembering going to visit my parents during the Christmas season in the mid-1980s, and there was this new thing on the market for kids called "Teddy Ruxpin."  Teddy Ruxpin was a talking teddy bear that would move his eyes and mouth while "saying" pre-recorded lines, first on a cassette tape, and (in later models) on a digital device.

Teddy Ruxpin was a massive hit, largely due to an equally massive advertising campaign.  They flew off the shelves.  Toy stores couldn't keep them in stock.  Desperate parents of spoiled children paid huge amounts for black market Teddies Ruxpin.

I remember this primarily, though, for a different reason than crass commercialism, a phenomenon so deeply entrenched in American culture that it'd be hardly worth commenting on.  What I mostly remember about Teddy Ruxpin was that during the height of the craze, a batch of the toys went out that had defective playback devices.  They played the recordings slowly, with a lower pitch, with the result that Teddy Ruxpin's voice sounded like a cross between Morgan Freeman and Satan.

I still recall the news broadcast where a reporter, trying heroically to keep a straight face, talked about the recall, and activated one of the defective bears.  "I WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU," Teddy said in a sepulchral voice, all the while smiling cheerfully.  "HA HA HA HA HA HA."  Apparently the voice was scary enough that several children had already been traumatized when they activated their bear, expecting a cheerful cartoon-character voice, and instead got something that sounded like the soundtrack from The Exorcist.

My dad and I took about 45 minutes to stop laughing.  Over dinner, one of us would say, "PASS THE KETCHUP," in a Darth Vader voice, adding, "HA HA HA HA HA."  And then we'd both crack up again, much to the chagrin of my poor, long-suffering mother, who had many fine qualities but was born without a sense of humor.

This all comes up because of a new talking teddy bear, also designed for children, but with a special twist.

This teddy bear is supposed to be appealing to dead children.

I wish I was kidding about this, but I'm not.  I heard about it on the Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News, and she has an excellent reputation for veracity.  Apparently the idea is that the bear, who is named (I kid you not) "Boo Buddy," says things that might be attractive or interesting to the spirits of dead children, who then will approach the bear and activate an EMF detector, making LEDs on his paws light up.

Here's the sales pitch, from Ghost Stop, the site that is selling Boo Buddy:

Not your average bear! BooBuddy is cute as a button and so much more. This ghost hunting trigger object responds to environmental changes and even asks EVP questions to initiate interaction and potential evidence. 

BooBuddy is not a toy - he's an investigator! 

Within the ghost hunting and paranormal investigations field, some theories suggest that using an object familiar and attractive to an entity may entice them to interact. This is called a 'trigger object'. BooBuddy is just that and more allowing us the ability to 'see' changes in the environment and initiate communication on it's [sic] own. 

Set BooBuddy and turn it on to detect environment changes and start asking questions. Make sure to set a recorder or camcorder near the doll to document any potential responses. That, and BooBuddy loves being on camera!

Sure he does.

I'm not at all sure what I could say about this, other than that I would buy one for the novelty value alone, if they weren't $99.95.  I guess if you believe all of this stuff about trigger objects and EMF fluctuations and so on, Boo Buddy is as sensible as anything else out there.  And if anyone does conduct any... um, empirical research using the teddy bear, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know the results.

Unless it says something like "HEY CHILDREN...  DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?  HA HA HA HA HA HA."  And then winks at you.  Because that would be scary as hell.

Spirals and ice ages

New from the One Thing Leads To Another department, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia was spurred by yesterday's post to send me a link that spells out why we're headed to another ice age.

Yesterday, you may recall, we learned that the sun is going to go out because solar panels actively suck energy from the sun, in the fashion of giant photonic vacuum cleaners.  Today, we're going to take a look at another problem, which is that we're headed for an ice age regardless, because the current model of the Solar System is "not only boring, but incorrect."

This startling revelation came from a post on the r/Conspiracy subreddit that could be used as an advertisement about why it's critical to take high school physics.  It starts with a video on YouTube called "The Helical Model: Our Solar System is a Vortex," wherein we find out that because the sun is traveling in a (more-or-less) circular path around the center of the galaxy, the planets aren't traveling in circles, they travel instead in a "vortex."  "The Sun is like a comet," the video tells us, "dragging planets in its wake."

Because, apparently, comets do that.  Who knew?

"Rotational motion" and "vortex motion" are, we are told, "completely different things."  Then we're shown all sorts of pretty pictures of spiral stuff like ammonite shells and fern fiddleheads.

But so far, what we've been shown is hardly startling, if you know any physics at all.  Of course the motion of the planets looks different if you're viewing it from a different perspective.  Physicists call this a reference frame, and they know all about them -- the idea of reference frames is what gave Einstein the idea for the Theories of Relativity.  So it's not some kind of earthshattering idea to point out that if you're traveling with the sun, the planets move in ellipses, and if you're not -- if you're at a fixed point above the center of the Milky Way, watching the stars zoom around in circles -- the planets will travel in a spiral-ish fashion.  The motion isn't different; what has changed is your reference frame.

But that's only the beginning.  We're then shown two drawings of "energy fields," one around a human and one around... um, something.  I'm not sure what.  The first one is marked "copyrighted," so out of respect for intellectual property rights (although this may be stretching the definition of the word "intellectual"), I'll just post a link to it.  The second, though, I'll reproduce here:

The original poster on r/Conspiracy called these "Taurus fields."  And I sat there for some time, wondering, "Why Taurus?  Why not Scorpio or Aquarius, or, for that matter, Camelopardalis?"  And then it came to me:  he means "torus."  As in, a donut-shaped thing.  Although I do think that "Taurus" is correct in one sense, in that this seems to me to be a lot of bull.

In any case, this sets us up for the punch line, which I present here in toto:

...we are just on the outside of the Iron Age (the shaded in cone), and entering the Bronze Age. Being we are still in the cone, this is causing us to travel in a spiral, but the spiral is widening. This is causing us to gain speed, like a sling. 

This gain in speed is causing our sun to produce longer solar flares. This will cause our planet to rise in temperature, causing our polar caps to melt. This, of course, will cause major flooding. We've yet to see the worst, and the worst will last about a month to a month and a half. This will flood most of the world. 

And the sun progresses to increase, the planets will pull away (think of gravity like a bungee cord), and this will then cause global cooling, which will introduce us into a new ice age. 

The ice age will take about 300 years to fully manifest, but it will last between 12,000 - 16,000 years. 

This explains all the black projects costing trillions of dollars. This explains all the underground bunkers being built. This explains all the camps, all the militarization of police, all the crack down on rights. This explains why people that seem to have all the money they need seem to need more money.

Wowza.  This may be one of the most concentrated samples of bullshit I've ever seen.  We have: a total lack of understanding of basic physics, apocalyptic stuff, "global cooling," government conspiracy theories, and underground bunkers, all in the space of just five short paragraphs.

We are then directed to two websites for further information.  The first is Half Past Human, which seems to be some kind of conspiracy site (although I did see references to "swirlies in the sky" and "spacegoat farts" on the top couple of entries, both of which I would prefer not to investigate).  The second is DJSadhu.com, which is a blog with lots of videos and articles about how everything we know about physics is wrong.  Oh, and chemtrails and Cliven Bundy and pyramids.

It's a general rule of thumb that whenever some n00b comes down the pike, without any scientific training whatsoever, and claims to have discovered a Grand Theory of Life, the Universe, and Everything, (s)he is (1) probably insane, and (2) definitely wrong.  Scientists do make mistakes; as British science historian James Burke put it, in the episode "Worlds Without End" from his amazing series The Day the Universe Changed, "The so-called voyage of discovery has, as often as not, made landfall for reasons little to do with the search for knowledge."  Science sometimes backtracks, makes missteps, pursues what ultimately turn out to be dead ends.

But scientists do understand the method by which you achieve understanding, and because of that, the overall body of science becomes better refined, and closer to grasping the actual truth, as time goes on.  The bottom line: we may not understand everything, but we have a pretty good idea of how to explain a lot of what we see.  The likelihood of anyone finding anything that completely overturns our understanding of any branch of science is slim indeed.

The solar vacuum cleaner

Poe's Law has claimed another victim.

Well, more than one.  Lots more than one, to judge by Facebook and Twitter over the last couple of days.  This particular iteration of the rule that any sufficiently well-done satire is indistinguishable from the real thing comes at the hands of The National Report, which shares the stage with The Onion as a hysterically funny source for completely fake news.

This time, The National Report has taken aim at the solar power industry with a stunning exposé called "Solar Panels Drain the Sun's Energy, Experts Say."  In the article, we find out about a study done at the Wyoming Institute of Technology that showed that solar panels suck energy from the sun in the fashion of giant leeches:

Scientists at the Wyoming Institute of Technology, a privately-owned think tank located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, discovered that energy radiated from the sun isn’t merely captured in solar panels, but that energy is directly physically drawn from the sun by those panels, in a process they refer to as "forced photovoltaic drainage." 

"Put into laymen’s terms, the solar panels capture the sun’s energy, but pull on the sun over time, forcing more energy to be released than the sun is actually producing," WIT claims in a scientific white paper published on Wednesday.  "Imagine a waterfall, dumping water.  But you aren’t catching the water in buckets, but rather sucking it in with a vacuum cleaner.  Eventually, you’re going to suck in so much water that you drain the river above that waterfall completely."

WIT is adamant that there’s no immediate danger, however.  "Currently, solar panels are an energy niche, and do not pose a serious risk to the sun.  But if we converted our grids to solar energy in a big way, with panels on domestic homes and commercial businesses, and paving our parking lots with panels, we’d start seeing very serious problems over time.  If every home in the world had solar panels on their roofs, global temperatures would drop by as much as thirty degrees over twenty years, and the sun could die out within three hundred to four hundred years."

And to make the article even funnier, the study was supposedly commissioned by none other than Halliburton:

"Solar panels destroying the sun could potentially be the worst man-made climate disaster in the history of the world, and Halliburton will not be taking part in that," the company stated in a press release issued Friday morning.  "It’s obvious, based on the findings of this neutral scientific research group, that humans needs to become more dependent on fossil fuels like oil and coal, not less."

My mirth over this story dwindled, however, when I noticed that almost every person who posted this story had done so because... they thought it was true.

[image courtesy of photographer M. O. Stevens and the Wikimedia Commons]

I wish I were making this up.  Here's a selection of the comments that I saw appended to the link.  You may want to put a pillow on your desk for the inevitable faceplant:

Green technology my ass.  The liberal pseudo-environmentalists are selling us out as usual. 

Pass this link along!  Don't let this get swept under the rug! 

Just another way they're going to make money off the fake climate change agenda. 

Alot [sic] more believable than what you hear about the "greenhouse effect" bullshit. 

I wonder how long it will take for the warmists to suppress this.

*sits, hands over face, sobbing softly*

I don't know, folks.  I think that this one may have pushed me over the edge.  "Warmists?"  "Liberal pseudo-environmentalists?"

What, because we have the brainpower to recognize that you can't suck up sunlight with a fucking vacuum cleaner?

And even if light did work this way, we'd have a slightly larger problem than solar panels, you know?  Namely: plants.  As light-suckers go, the plants are a hell of a lot more efficient than solar panels, and there are a great many more of them.  So, what should our slogan be?  "Down with photosynthesis?"  "Pave the forest, save the planet?"

I know all too well, first hand, the state of science education in the United States.  And this is despite teaching in a pretty good school system, where there are a great many opportunities for in-depth study in science.  I know that between school budgets cutting staffing to the bone, and the purely ideological hacking of science education standards to remove controversial topics like climate change and evolution, it's a wonder kids don't graduate thinking that all matter is composed of the four elements Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  (And interesting, too, that according to the article I linked, the first state to reject public school science standards explicitly because of the issue of climate change was the state of Wyoming -- a point that no doubt the writers of the satire in The National Report were trying to make by siting the fake "study" in Cheyenne.)

But really, people.  How ignorant about the world around you can you get?  This goes way past "dopeslap" territory, right into "please don't breed."

And to the people over at The National Report:  I'm uncertain whether to applaud, or ask you to publish a retraction.  Poe's Law notwithstanding, we really don't need more people voting against clean energy.

The woo-woos go to Wales

Some of you may remember that three years ago, just as the Mayan Apocalypse nonsense was beginning to get some traction, a cadre of nutjobs associated with J. Z. Knight's "Ramtha School of Enlightenment" descended on the little village of Bugarach in the southwest of France because they had somehow become convinced that it was the only place on Earth that wasn't going to be destroyed.  The mayor of Bugarach was understandably dismayed when thousands of dubiously sane apocalyptoids showed up and started camping out all around the village.  They were, they explained, expecting that when the End Times came, the nearby mountain (the Pic de Bugarach) was going to pop open in the fashion of a jack-in-the-box, and an alien spacecraft was going to come out and bring all of the assembled woo-woos to their new home in outer space.

Except, of course, that none of this happened, and the woo-woos eventually gave up and went home.  Same as the Harmonic Convergence people and the Rajneeshees did a generation earlier.  As mystifying as it seems, repeatedly failing in every single prediction they make never discourages the loyal following.  They disperse temporarily, but always resurface later, once again holding hands and chanting while barefoot and wearing daisy chains...

... and this time Wales is the lucky winner.

Our most recent iteration of this story comes to us courtesy of the "Aetherius Society," which hales back to 1958, when London cab driver George King was instructed by an "alien intelligence" to become a religious leader.  "Prepare yourself!" the voice told him.  "You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament."  The alien intelligence said his name was "Aetherius" and that he lived on the planet Venus, despite the fact that Venus is basically a cross between an acid bath and a blast furnace, with a surface hot enough to melt lead.  Be that as it may, Aetherius did a lot of talking to and through King, delivering messages that included a cautionary note that if people didn't listen to the "Cosmic Masters," evil space guys were going to destroy the Earth.  However, with the help of Aetherius and others (including the same Krishna that the Hindus worship, except that the Aetherius people say that Krishna is from Saturn), everything would be just hunky-dory.

Oh, yeah, and Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tse were aliens, too.  Just to be clear on that.

But then, there's also this fixation on mountains, which is how Wales comes into the picture.  George King/Aetherius said that there were nineteen mountains around the world that were "holy places" that were "charged with spiritual energy," and these include Pen-y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons and Carnedd Llewelyn in Snowdonia.  And it is to the latter that the Aetherius Society members are going to be heading in August.

"Carnedd Llewelyn is one of nineteen mountains around the world that the Aetherius Society revere as holy," society member Richard Lawrence said.  "On August 23 we are arranging a pilgrimage...  The purpose of going up is to send out spiritual energy for world peace and to pray for the betterment of humanity.  The climbs are quite demanding, I find, and then at the top we raise our hands and join in prayer.  When I feel a burst of energy it could be strong heat in the palms or a tingling sensation throughout the body."

I don't know about you, but I would not consider a "tingling sensation" an adequate reward for busting my ass climbing a mountain.  But that's just me.  And at least, unlike the Pic de Bugarach, Carnedd Llewelyn isn't all that near any towns whose inhabitants the "pilgrims" will bother.  The nearest good-sized village is Bethesda, fourteen kilometers distant, which is quite a hike.  Plus, Bethesda is said by Wikipedia to be "infamous for its pubs," so maybe our pilgrims might oughta think about other accommodations in any case.

I suppose that the whole thing is harmless enough, but you have to wonder how it keeps happening.  I mean, if I were considering becoming an Aetherian, or whatever the hell they call themselves, I'd do some research first.  I'd start by looking up "alien UFO fringe groups" online, and after the first ten articles about the Heaven's Gate Cult and the Raëlians and (it must be said) the Scientologists, I'd pretty much go, "Well, fuck that."

So I won't be joining them in Wales, much as I think it's a lovely place that I'd like to visit again.  I'm not much for daisy chains and chanting.  Instead, I think I'll see what I can do in the way of achieving "tingling sensations" in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

Ebenezer's shame

Coming right on the heels of yesterday's post, wherein I mused over the question of whether the woo-woos are actually just kidding, and are seeing how outlandish their claims can become before we skeptics catch on, we have a story today that makes me ask the same question about the creationists.

It will probably come as no great shock that the latest bizarre salvo from the biblical literalists has come from none other than Ken Ham, whose trouncing by Bill Nye the Science Guy in a debate that brought to mind the phrase "having a battle of wits with an unarmed man" seems not to have dampened his convictions.  Now, according to a story that I first saw in (of all places) the Pakistan Daily Times, Ham is claiming that an extraordinarily well-preserved Allosaurus specimen is concrete proof of the biblical creation story.

Yes, I know that Ham et al. believe that everything is proof of the biblical creation story.  But does it seem to you that deliberately choosing a 150 million year old fossil as proof of their mythology is a little... crazy?  They're on shaky enough ground with all of the "look at the pretty butterflies and fascinating fish, god musta did it" stuff that the Creation Museum excels at; why would they deliberately pick a Jurassic-era dinosaur?

[image courtesy of photographer Andy Tang and the Wikimedia Commons]

And it's not like it came cheap, either.  According to Ham's own site, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum shelled out $1.5 million for the privilege of displaying something that conclusively disproves their entire raison d'être.  Not that that's the way they put it, of course.  Ham was quoted in the article as saying that the allosaurus skeleton "fulfills a dream I’ve had for quite some time. For decades I’ve walked through many leading secular museums, like the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and have seen their impressive dinosaur skeletons.  But they were used for evolution.  Now we have one of that class, and it will help us defend the book of Genesis and expose the scientific problems with evolution."

I read that entire passage with the following expression on my face:

But it only got worse from there, because then Michael Peroutka weighed in.  Peroutka is the guy who sold Ham the skeleton, and he said that the allosaurus "is a testimony to the creative power of God in designing dinosaurs, and that it also lends evidence to the truth of a worldwide catastrophic flooding of the earth in Noah’s time."  Dr. Andrew Snelling, the Creation Museum's staff geologist, said that "Ebenezer" (as they're calling the allosaurus) "most likely died in Noah’s Flood, over 4,300 years ago.  In fleeing the rising waters... Ebenezer was swept away in a debris flow and buried rapidly under massive amounts of sediment, preserving many of its bones," adding that the whole story "will be published in AiG’s peer-reviewed Answers Research Journal."

I think that this was the point that I said, "... wait a minute."  "Peer-reviewed?"  By whom?  By other bible-toting, science-ignoring creationists?  I suppose, to be fair, that's what "peer" means in this context, as in telling a kindergartner that he needs to "interact with his peers" even though they are peers mainly in the sense that they aren't reliably avoiding wetting their pants on a daily basis.

Yet the AiG people do have scientists.  There is the aforementioned Andrew Snelling, who has a Ph.D. in applied geology from the University of Sydney.  Even more mystifying is Georgia Purdom, whose Ph.D. in molecular biology has not stopped her from making bafflingly wacky statements like "From the creation perspective, all bacteria were created 'good,'" presumably only becoming evil pathogens after the Fall of Adam.

And this, I have to admit, is the point when I am overtaken by incredulity.  How could people become sufficiently knowledgeable in geology and molecular biology (respectively) to receive doctorates, and simultaneously hold the belief that the entire universe is 6,000 years old?  And, furthermore, the belief that the science itself supports that view?  The whole thing is a little like my pursuing a medical degree while claiming that diagnosis and treatment should be based on the "Four Humors" model of human health. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Finkwhistle, but your stomach pains are clearly caused by an imbalance between your phlegm and black bile.  We're going to fix it by cutting your arm to let some blood out."

The sad fact, of course, is that like our crop circle "astronomologer" in yesterday's post, these people are serious.  So as much as I'd like to think that Ham and Co. are playing some kind of elaborate prank, not only on us skeptics but upon their tens of thousands of followers in the United States and elsewhere, it appears that they're sincere.  Hard though it is to fathom, they will now have a $1.5 million allosaurus skeleton with which to make their point to the gullible public.  And I can't help but think that Ebenezer the allosaurus would be ashamed if he knew his bones were being used for such a purpose.

Fooling the astronomologers

There are times that I think the woo-woos are engaging in an elaborate game of self-parody, just to see how far they can push us skeptics before we realize that it's all a huge joke.

Or at least, I live in that hope, because it's better than the alternative, which is that these people are serious whackjobs.  Take, for example, the case of the astrologer who recently commented on a crop circle that occurred in 2011 near Stonehenge.

Those of you are are aficionados of punk rock may recognize this as the logo of Crass, a punk rock band formed in the 1970s that was involved in the anarchic/political end of the punk spectrum, and which produced several albums, including the memorable Penis Envy.  For reference, here's their actual logo, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Not much doubt, is there?  Some wag with a taste for punk and way too much free time decided to make a crop circle as an homage to his (or her) favorite band.  As we've seen before, crop circles can be generated in short order as long as you have some kind of device to orient yourself and a piece of plywood with which to flatten the crops.  No other explanation necessary, not that we'd be likely to look for one given that it'd be an odd alien race that would come all the light years to Earth and leave behind a punk rock logo as their only communiqué.

That point, however, apparently flew past astrologer Donna Provancher so quickly that it didn't even ruffle her hair.  Excuse me, though; Provancher isn't an astrologer, she says she's an "astronomologer."  What, exactly, is an "astronomologer," you may be asking?  In her words, "astronomology is the practice of astrology using astronomy to build the chart and supply new insights."

Which doesn't sound that different from astrology, frankly.  It's as if I decided to open a practice doing Tarot card readings and started calling it "Tarothematics" because the Tarot cards have numbers on them, and expected that people should take me more seriously than the ordinary Tarot card readers because of it.

Be that as it may, Provancher was just enthralled by the crop circle, and had a wonderful explanation of what it meant.  None of which, I hasten to say, had anything to do with punk rock.  Here's Provancher's explanation, courtesy of the wonderful site Dangerous Minds:

You know those pictures of the Gods and Goddesses with eight or eighteen or a thousand arms? That’s what we are when we work together. You can tack thousands of pairs of eyes and ears to that image while you’re at it. Nothing escapes our notice. 

Roving Astronomologer eyes and ears (thanks again Solar Ophiuchus Raya King—that makes two Gold Stars for you) directed my attention early this morning to a crop circle reported June 20, 2011 near Stonehenge.Crop Circle Connector is calling this area “Stonehenge (1)” whatever that means. I have a Facebook Wall ping out to Philip Peake (visit his blog Thoughtsoftheguru.com) my longtime Friend (with a capital F), Web Host and Webmaster who is from the U.K. Maybe he can tell me where this is in relation to the megaliths. The map wasn’t revealing of that little detail...

She then goes on to explain what the crop circle means, as follows:

—As Above, So Below (opening greeting) 

—An equal-armed or Tau-Cross (the balancing of Earth’s energies) 

—A double-headed serpent wrapped around one of the axial poles of the planet — we’ll have to assume it’s the poles of the planet since East-West doesn’t have an axial pole. The piece on top (the double-headed serpent) is bolted to the Tau-Cross, so at this point, Raya’s vision of the Staff of Asclepius is partially correct; she just didn’t finish it. 

The 2-headed King-snakes I used to see at the San Diego zoo had tails. This one isn’t like that. But then it’s not imitating a snake, it’s picturing a new concept. The new Planetary Caduceus. It needs to be finished. This is something else I haven’t discussed yet but it looks like this is one more Agenda Item on the Table I’ll put this on my To-Do list to discuss.

Well, I don't know about you, but my little heart is just going thumpety-thump in anticipation of more discussion of the "planetary caduceus."  Whatever that is.

All the while I was reading this, I kept thinking... "come on.  When is the other shoe going to drop?  Surely she doesn't think this is really some kind of mystical symbol... like, aliens?  Or Gaea communicating with us?  Or... or...  No, merciful heavens above, she really doesn't realize it's a prank."

Anyhow, I'd like to thank Dangerous Minds for the best laugh I've had in days, and Donna Provancher for inadvertently being the cause.  I guess she's really not engaging in self-parody, as comforting an answer as that would be -- she really does believe what she's saying.  And now, I need to wrap this up -- I need to go study.  Pretty soon I'll be taking my licensing exam, after which I'll be a certified homeopathophysiolomedicopsychic-ologist.

Beat that.