Ebola, epidemics, and the danger of making decisions out of fear

The news has been filled in the last couple of weeks with stories about the ongoing epidemic of Ebola fever in west Africa.  And certainly, there's a lot here that's newsworthy.  An emerging virus, long known for lightning-fast outbreaks that killed whole villages deep in the jungle and then disappeared as fast as it came, has finally appeared in two large cities, Conakry, Guinea and Monrovia, Liberia.  The disease itself is terrifying; it has a mortality rate of between 60% and 90%, depending on the strain, and kills victims when their blood stops clotting, causing them to "bleed out."

Which, unfortunately, is exactly what it sounds like, and about which I won't say anything further out of respect for my more sensitive readers.

The Ebola virus [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

This epidemic has two of the features that tend to make people overestimate risk: (1) it's gruesome; and (2) it's novel.  We react most strongly to things that are new, unfamiliar, and scary, and Ebola certainly qualifies.  And it is a regrettable feature of human nature that when our fear centers are engaged, we make dumb decisions.

Let's start with the desperate desire on the part of people who are scared by the virus to protect themselves against it, although the current state of affairs is that there is no vaccine, and no way to prevent catching it except by avoiding close contact with ill individuals.  This hasn't stopped the hucksters from seeing this as an opportunity to extract money from the gullible.  Starting with the site Essential Oils For the Win!, which makes the bizarre claim that we "shouldn't be scared of Ebola" because "it can be treated with the proper essential oil."

Well, it's true that there's probably no real reason to be scared of Ebola unless you're planning on a visit to west Africa, but I would invite the owner of this website to go there himself armed only with a vial of lavender oil, and see how confident he feels then.  That the author of the website has a slim grasp of science, and probably reality as well, is reinforced by the diagram wherein we're shown that essential oils work because unlike conventional medicines, they are good at "penetrating cell walls."

So it's reassuring to know that your tomato plants and petunias won't get Ebola.  As for us, being animals, our cells don't even have cell walls, so I'm thinking that I'd rather see what the actual scientists come up with.

Which definitely does not include the homeopaths, who are also weighing in.  No worries, they say... according to an article at The Daily Kos, they already have their "remedies" at the ready!

Dr. Gail Derin studied the symptoms of Ebola Zaire, the most deadly of the three that can infect human beings. Dr. Vickie Menear, M.D. and homeopath, found that the remedy that most closely fit the symptoms of the 1914 "flu" virus, Crolatus horridus, also fits the Ebola virus nearly 95% symptom-wise! Thanks go to these doctors for coming up with the following remedies:
1. Crolatus horridus (rattlesnake venom) 2. Bothrops (yellow viper) 3. Lachesis (bushmaster snake) 4. Phosphorus 5. Mercurius Corrosivus

Yup.  Here's their logic: because the venom of "Crolatus horridus" is 95% fatal, and so was the Spanish flu, and so is Ebola Zaire, the venom must be useful for treating Ebola.  Only, of course, if you dilute it until all the venom is gone.

I only have three objections to this:

1. I'm assuming you're talking about the timber rattlesnake, which is in the genus "Crotalus," not "Crolatus."  And the Spanish flu occurred in 1918, not 1914.  But those may be minor points.
2. Many other things have a very high fatality rate, including gunshots to the head.  Does this mean you could also add a sixth "remedy" for Ebola, Essentius Leadus Bulletus, made by shaking up bullets in water and diluting it a gazillion times?
3. Are you people insane?

 The fear tactics didn't stop with loony cures, though; the politicians began to weigh in, and (of course) attempt use the whole thing to score political capital.  And once again, they are targeting people who are thinking with their adrenal glands rather than their brains.  No one is as good at that as the inimitable Michele Bachmann, who instead of fading into richly-deserved obscurity, has kept herself center stage with commentary like this:

People from Yemen, Iran, Iraq and other terrorist nations are making their way up through America’s southern border because they see that it’s a green light, they can easily get in.  Not only people with potentially terrorist activities, but also very dangerous weapons are going to cross our border in addition to very dangerous drugs, and also life-threatening diseases, potentially including Ebola and other diseases like that... 

Now President Obama is trying to bring all of those foreign nationals, those illegal aliens to the country and he has said that he will put them in the foster care system.  That's more kids that you can see how - we can't imagine doing this, but if you have a hospital and they are going to get millions of dollars in government grants if they can conduct medical research on somebody, and a Ward of the state can't say 'no,' a little kid can't say 'no' if they're a Ward of the state; so here you could have this institution getting millions of dollars from our government to do medical experimentation and a kid can't even say 'no.'  It's sick.

So, let's see if we can parse this.  People from the Middle East are coming in across the border between the United States in Mexico, and they did so by coming via Liberia, where they picked up Ebola, and they're going to pass that disease along to innocent Americans, but some of the kids got infected along the way, and now President Obama is going to place them in medical facilities where they will be experimented upon in unimaginably cruel ways.

Is it just me, or does Michele Bachmann seem to have a quarter-cup of PopRocks where the rest of us have a brain?

 What I find ironic, here, is that people are flying into a panic over a disease that (1) is rather hard to catch, and (2) has caused only 500 deaths thus far.  I say "only" to highlight the contrast with another disease, measles -- which according to the World Health Organization, killed 122,000 people in 2012 and is set to break that record this year, despite the fact that it is completely preventable by a safe and effective vaccine.

Oh, but we've all heard of measles.  So it can't be that bad, right?

And if you are still unconvinced that vaccination is the best way to go -- swayed, perhaps, by claims that the most recent measles outbreaks in the United States were among the vaccinated -- take a look at this brilliant explanation over at The LymphoSite, which explains why even if vaccines have some side effects and sometimes do not work, we still should all be vaccinated.

All of which re-emphasizes that we're better off considering actual facts, and listening to actual scientists, rather than falling prey to hucksters or listening to loons like Michele Bachmann.  Which means engaging our brains, and trying to think past our fears.

The last gasp

I have a question this morning: is it a good sign when people defending counterfactual or morally reprehensible claims start resorting to idiotic arguments?

I kind of think the answer is "yes."  If you look at our history, there are many examples of humanity shedding prejudices, oppression, and cruelty.  At first, those things are taken for granted, and are so entrenched that no one questions them (publicly, at least).  Opposition builds, but at first is quelled by "don't be foolish, we've always done it this way."  Once the people favoring the bad old system realize the opposition isn't backing down -- i.e., the system status quo is losing -- they become desperate, sometimes violent.

And toward the end, all that is left is a few wacko extremists, spouting off ridiculous nonsense that would only appeal to other wacko extremists.  After that, the bubble bursts, and lo!  Social sea-change has occurred.

I'm neither a historian nor a social scientist, so I can't say this with any kind of academic certainty, but from what I've read, many of the biggest social changes -- the breaking of the church's control over governments in Europe, the improvement in race relations and civil rights in the United States and elsewhere, our acceptance of the science as a way of knowing -- have followed this pattern.

If I'm right, we are on the cusp of a change in our attitudes toward homosexuality.

I say this because when you consider what has been written and said recently on the topic, most of it boils down on analysis to bizarre paranoia.  Take, for example, what Renew America columnist A. J. Castellitto wrote this week:

If one were determined to take down America; if it were not possible by force; the secret weapon would come from a surprising place.... 

From out of the closet... 

Based on the expressed concerns and priorities of the current administration, it's almost as if they are living in an alternate universe.  In fact, one could argue that both the media and our president have been willfully negligent (considering alternative media reports of increased persecution and hostility against Christians worldwide).  Meanwhile, religious conservatives, especially those of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, have been experiencing a hostility of a different sort, pertaining to their reluctance to embrace non-traditional marriage. 

However, if we take it back to the "hypothetical," it would seem as if the same-sex marriage phenomenon has proven an exceptionally effective tool in uprooting our fundamental foundations. 

When applied to the "takeover" agenda, it could be perceived that American homosexuals are merely commie pawns unknowingly being used for the hat-trick trifecta destruction of freedom, faith, family..... 

What if individuals with same sex desires are merely being held up and exploited as objects of intolerance? What if they are just the means to a much greater and darker end-game agenda.....?

Yeah.  Right.  What?

Now we're supposed to be against gay marriage because all gay people are secretly communists?  Or, maybe, that they're being manipulated by communists?  It's hard to tell what he's talking about, frankly.  It sounds a bit like he's run out of any reasonable arguments (not that there were many to start with), and just figured that it was time for some shock tactics.  "I know!  Let's link the gays to the communists!  That'll get people's hackles raised!"

Then, of course, we have Rick Santorum, who can always be counted on for a loony commentary:  "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.  You have the right to anything...  In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality.  That's not to pick on homosexuality.  It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.  It is one thing."

Sure.  Because two consenting adults having sex is exactly the same as cheating on your spouse, or victimizing a child or an animal, and will lead to having "the right to anything."

Just two days ago, Santorum said what may be his most mystifying pronouncement on the issue yet, with the claim that legalizing gay marriage will lead to more single mothers raising children.  Yeah, Rick?  How's that supposed to work?  Because, you know, gay sex has a 100% success rate in not leading to conception.

Maybe he never took biology in high school.  Probably trying to avoid that uncomfortable unit on evolution, but he missed the chapter on human reproduction as well.

In all seriousness, though, I think a lot of this furor harkens back to the Puritan days:

For some reason, these people can't stand it that folks might be having sex because it's fun, and that therefore there might be other valid expressions of our sex drive than making babies.  And not only do they feel that this should apply to their own lives -- to which I say, well, okay, if you want to live like that, fine, but kind of sucks to be you -- but they feel the desperate need to force everyone else to conform to the same rigid standards.

But my hope is that this last, bizarre outpouring of lunacy might signal the fact that we are on the verge of a cultural shift.  A Gallup poll found in May that American support of gay marriage had reached a new high of 55%.  This certainly seems like a foundational change to me, and one that might well be unstoppable.

And high time.  What consenting adults do in their bedrooms is absolutely no business of mine, nor of A. J. Castellitto's or Rick Santorum's.  It does not devalue my marriage to my wife; it does not increase the likelihood of pedophilia or bestiality; it does not alter people's political beliefs; it does not rip up the fabric of society.

All it does is give loving adults the right to express that love publicly without fear of repercussion, and have the social benefits that have been conferred to married straight people since the dawn of the institution.

And there honestly is no rational argument against that.

Burn your way to better health

At what point does a publication become so filled with dangerous misinformation that the powers-that-be should step in and shut it down?

I'm all for freedom of speech, and everything, and definitely in favor of people educating themselves sufficiently that they won't fall for ridiculous bullshit.  But still: the media has a responsibility to police themselves, and failing that, to have the rug pulled out from under them.

If such a line does exist -- and I am no expert in jurisprudence who could state the legality of such a move -- then the site Natural News has surely crossed it.  They have become the prime source of bogus "health news," promoting every form of medically-related lunacy, from detox to homeopathy to herbal cures for everything from cancer to depression.

Take a look at their latest salvo, entitled, "What They Won't Tell You: The Sun Is a Full-Spectrum Medicine That Can Heal Cancer."  In it, author Paul Fassa tells us that contrary to conventional wisdom, you are not putting yourself at risk by exposing your skin to the sun; you are giving yourself "healing medicine."  "Truth is," Fassa writes, "we've been systematically lied to about the sun and skin cancer for years...  How many know that there is no definitive proof that the sun alone causes skin cancer?"

Other than, of course, this exhaustive report from the National Cancer Institute.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

He quotes a "naturopathic doctor," David Mihalovic, as support:  "Those that have attempted to convince the world that the Sun, the Earth's primary source of energy and life causes cancer, have done so with malicious intent to deceive the masses into retreating from the one thing that can prevent disease."  Righty-o.  So let me respond with a quote of my own, from the Wikipedia page on "naturopathy:" "Naturopathic medicine is replete with pseudoscientific, ineffective, unethical, and possibly dangerous practices...  Naturopathy lacks an adequate scientific basis, and it is rejected by the medical community...  The scope of practice varies widely between jurisdictions, and naturopaths in some unregulated jurisdictions may use the Naturopathic Doctor designation or other titles regardless of level of education."

Which might seem like an ad hominem, but I don't really care.

What is as certain as anything can be in science is the connection between blistering sunburns, especially in children, and later incidence of melanoma, the most deadly kind of skin cancer.  (Here's one source that lays it out pretty explicitly.)  Instead, Natural News is promoting a combination of misinformation, outright error, and paranoia so extreme that as I read the article I kept wondering if I was reading something from The Onion.  "The reality is that the vast majority of people, including doctors, have been duped into believing the myth that the sun is toxic, carcinogenic and a deadly health hazard," Fassa writes.  "That's why most people slavishly and lavishly slather toxic sunscreens on their skin whenever they anticipate direct contact with the sun's rays.  But in fact, most conventional sunscreens are cancer-causing biohazards.  Meanwhile, the multi-billion-dollar cancer industry and the billion-dollar toxic sunscreen industry are making hay with this hoax."

I think this was the point that my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels, because I am absolutely sick unto death of people yammering about the evils of Big Pharma and Big Medicine as if they were some kind of Illuminati-based death cult.  Could the medical system in the United States be reformed and improved?  Of course.  Is it an evil institution that is trying to make us all sick so as to keep itself in business?  Come on.  We are, right now, one of the healthiest societies the world have ever seen.  Our longevity and quality of life have risen steadily.  On a more personal level, I owe my life to "Big Pharma;" if my mother had not been given the RhoGAM injection when she was pregnant with me, I would almost certainly be dead of Rh-incompatibility syndrome...

... like my older sister, who was born before "Big Pharma" developed the injection, and who only lived ten days.

On some level, of course, this all falls under caveat emptor.  If you are sufficiently ignorant, gullible, or paranoid that you buy what sites like Natural News are selling, then sucks to be you.  The government, I suppose, is not in the business of protecting people from their own stupidity.  But at the same time, that isn't honestly a very ethical position, and there's part of me -- free speech be damned -- that would love it if there was a way for some kind of media watchdog to step in, and shut down what has become a conduit not only for bullshit, but for dangerous (possibly deadly) misinformation.

Ecological micro-management

Even if I sometimes present a rather cynical front, I really have a deep belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature.  Most of us, most of the time, mean well.  All we want is to have our basic needs met; food, shelter, companionship, security.  Despite what you see on the nightly news -- news that has been selected deliberately to be eye-catching, i.e., usually violent or upsetting -- the vast majority of the human race is peaceful, caring, and kind.

That said, we do have a regrettable tendency to suffer from hubris, mainly with respect to the rest of the inhabitants on Earth.  We often feel like we have the right to twist the environment and its non-human inhabitants to our own desires, and expect that because of our big brains we should be able to predict all outcomes (and avoid any negative ones).  Burn fossil fuels, increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?  Pshaw, how could that cause a problem?  Overhunt, overfish, feed the world with big industrial farms that require millions of tons of fertilizer each year just to remain productive?  No problem.  We have to eat, right?

Of course, right.

Few people think all that deeply about how interlocked the ecosystem is, and how complex.  You cannot affect one piece of it without affecting them all, often in unpredictable ways.  We are dealing with multi-variable analysis of a system we only partly understand, and acting as though we should be able to control it, acting as though we are somehow outside the system ourselves.

A vivid demonstration of this came in the early 1990s with the inauguration of Biosphere 2, the fascinating (and forward-thinking) ecology project in the Arizona desert, which consisted of a huge dome housing a variety of ecosystems.  It was constructed, and populated with plants and animals, so as to be self-sustaining, just as the Earth's system ("Biosphere 1") is.  Chemists, biologists, and ecologists combined their knowledge in the planning process, trying to get the initial balance exactly correct.  Then, in 1991, eight human scientists agreed to be locked inside the dome for two years, with no access to anything that wasn't locked in there with them.

Biosphere 2 experienced problems right from the get-go, and eventually the mission had to be cancelled:

Biosphere 2 suffered from CO2 levels that "fluctuated wildly" and most of the vertebrate species and all of the pollinating insects died.  Insect pests, like cockroaches, boomed.  In practice, ants, a companion to one of the tree species (Cecropia) in the Rain Forest, had been introduced.  By 1993 the tramp ant species Paratrechina longicornis, local to the area, had been unintentionally sealed in and had come to dominate...  [A] number of pollinating insects were lost to ant predation and several bird species were lost.

The oxygen inside the facility, which began at 20.9%, fell at a steady pace and after 16 months was down to 14.5%.  This is equivalent to the oxygen availability at an elevation of 4,080 meters (13,400 ft)...  A mystery accompanied the oxygen decline: the corresponding increase in carbon dioxide did not appear. This concealed the underlying process until an investigation by Jeff Severinghaus and Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory using isotopic analysis showed that carbon dioxide was reacting with exposed concrete inside Biosphere 2 to form calcium carbonate, thereby sequestering both carbon and oxygen.

Now, I'm not criticizing the experiment, mind you; we learned a tremendous amount from it.  It's just that I think it serves primarily as an illustration that we don't know nearly enough to undertake ecomanagement on a large scale.

All of this is simply a preamble to my thoughts about an article sent to me by a friend, called "The Radical Plan to Eliminate Earth's Predatory Species."  In it, we hear the proposal by a British philosopher, David Pearce, who believes that because predation of all sorts causes suffering to sentient beings, we have a moral obligation to eliminate predators if we can.

[image courtesy of photographer Colin M. L. Burnett and the Wikimedia Commons]

Pretty radical.  Pearce says:

Sentient beings shouldn't harm each other.  This utopian-sounding vision is ancient.  Gautama Buddha said "May all that have life be delivered from suffering".  The Bible prophesies that the wolf and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.  Today, Jains sweep the ground in front of their feet rather than unwittingly tread on an insect. 

My own conceptual framework and ethics are secular — more Bentham than Buddha.  I think we should use biotechnology to rewrite our genetic source code; recalibrate the hedonic treadmill; shut down factory farms and slaughterhouses; and systematically help sentient beings rather than harm them... 

Humans already massively "interfere" with Nature in countless ways ranging from uncontrolled habitat-destruction to captive breeding programs for big cats to "rewilding".  Within the next few decades, every cubic metre of the planet will be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control.  On current trends, large nonhuman terrestrial vertebrates will be extinct outside our wildlife parks by mid-century.  So the question arises.  What principle(s) should govern our stewardship of the rest of the living world?  How many of the traditional horrors of "Nature, red in tooth and claw" should we promote and perpetuate?  Alternatively, insofar we want to preserve traditional forms of Darwinian life, should we aim for an ethic of compassionate stewardship instead.  Cognitively, nonhuman animals are akin to small children.  They need caring for as such.

In answer to the inevitable charge of hubris, Pearce responds:

Inevitably, critics talk of "hubris".  Humans shouldn't "play God."  What right have humans to impose our values on members of another race or species?  The charge is seductive but misplaced.  There is no anthropomorphism here, no imposition of human values on alien minds.  Human and nonhuman animals are alike in an ethically critical respect.  The pleasure-pain axis is universal to sentient life.  No sentient being wants to be harmed — to be asphyxiated, dismembered, or eaten alive.  The wishes of a terrified toddler or a fleeing zebra to flourish unmolested are not open to doubt even in the absence of the verbal capacity to say so.

My criticism of Pearce's proposal -- which, he says, should be accomplished by genetic manipulation, selective breeding, and monitoring of animal populations with microchips -- does not rest on any high-flown philosophy.  It has, in fact, little to do with morals or values.  He is correct that we are already "playing god," and have been for millennia, with our selective breeding and large-scale ecological manipulation for food production and living space.  What I question is purely pragmatic; if we don't know enough to manage even a three-acre simulated biosphere, using the skills, insight, and planning of the world's best ecologists, how in the hell do we think we're smart enough to micromanage the entire globe?

Pearce's motivation, and ultimate goal -- eliminating pain and suffering, even from less-cognitively-developed animals like insects -- is, on one level, laudable.  I've been a biologist long enough that I can consider an incident like a cheetah killing an antelope as positive in the larger sense of keeping the eco-community in balance.  At the same time, I'm compassionate enough that I feel sorry for the antelope, and pity the victim for the fear and pain that it experienced as its life ended.  That emotional reaction is not sufficient, however, to fool me into thinking that we as a species know enough to overturn the predator-prey interaction, evolved for billions of years, in some sort of misguided attempt to make things better.

Pearce says, "A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents — for reasons unknown — will have chosen to preserve it.
"  I think this is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong.  The hubris of his position is not that presumes human moral superiority; it is that it presumes a far greater comprehension of this planet's systems than we have, or are likely to have in the foreseeable future, even considering the expansion of our scientific understanding over the last couple of centuries.

Our ecological management of the world is rife with examples of actions undertaken with the best of intentions, and which had drastic and unexpected consequences.  Pearce might well label me as immoral for accepting the inevitability of predation, and therefore suffering, in the world; but his position -- that we could use our scientific and technological capacities to eliminate it -- isn't just the words of an optimist who makes Pollyanna look like a cynic.  It exemplifies the attitude that got us to the disastrous place where we currently are -- in the beginning of the Sixth Great Extinction, facing radical climate change, facing the collapse of the ocean's fisheries -- all resulting from the stance that "we know what we're doing."

Only Pearce's vision, of micromanagement of the whole world, goes one step beyond blind eco-optimism; it puts us in the position of pulling all of the Earth's strings.  And, I believe, it opens up the possibility of fucking things up on a scale the likes of which we've never seen before.

Floating naked ghoul alert

It's been a long while since we've had a good report of cryptid activity, so I'm pleased to bring you a doozy today.  This one comes from the town of Lithia (near Tampa), Florida, so if you come from near there, you might want to be on the lookout.

The (unnamed) source of this peculiar story, which appeared yesterday on the phenomenally wacky site Phantoms and Monsters, says he was out walking his dog late one night last week, when he saw (and smelled) something pretty peculiar:

I was walking late one night with my German Shepherd, when I smelled an overwhelming stench of road kill.  I looked over into the woods near my home and saw a naked pale white man-like thing crawling in the woods.  It was on its hands, feet and knees about 3 inches above the ground.

So, we're already put on notice that this is going to be a pretty bizarre story.  I mean, look at the features of this thing we've already had thrown at us, in the first three sentences:

• naked
• pale
• crawling on all fours
• floating three inches off the ground
• smells like roadkill

Let's do a little thought experiment here.  Picture yourself walking a backroad in Florida late one summer night.  Heavy, humid, still air, thick underbrush on both sides of the road.  Crickets singing, a stray mosquito whining in your ear.  The only other sound is your footsteps, and your dog's panting.  You see a naked white ghoulish creature floating in the woods, and it smells like decomposing flesh.

What do you do?

I'll bet you my next month's salary it's not what this guy did.  To wit:

I changed hands with my flashlight which my dog's leash prevented me from immediately shining it in that direction.  In the 2 seconds it took to change hands and shine the light on this thing, it had moved 20 feet to near a tree it was trying to hide behind.  It saw my light as it was swinging towards it and quickly crunched into a cannon ball like posture, and balanced on its toes & balls of its feet, hiding its face and held perfectly still.

So, let's add two more charming characteristics to our cryptic-of-the-week:

• can move twenty feet in under two seconds
• freezes and hides its face whenever you look at it

What we have here sounds like the love child of a zombie and a Weeping Angel.  If you needed something else to populate your nightmares.

But to me, the most amazing thing isn't what the guy reports he saw, but what he thought upon seeing it.  Not only did he not do what I would have done when he first spotted the thing, namely, piss his pants and then have a stroke, he calmly aimed his flashlight at it, and decided... that it must be a mime:

I got a overwhelming feeling that if I kept shining the light on it, that it would look up at me with glowing eyes and a weird face. So I continued on with my walk. I thought maybe it was a teenager doing a mime, but there was no one taking a picture and this thing had a oddly pronounced spine and was absolutely hairless.

Again, "Oh, hey, I bet that's a naked teenage mime" would have to be the very last thing I'd think of, in his situation.  Be that as it may, he thought that was a serious enough possibility that he calmly finished his walk with his dog (both of them got home unscathed), and proceeded to do an internet search:

I went home and looked on the internet to see if this is something kids are doing now (painting themselves white, shaving all hair off, rolling around in road kill and crawling around late at night in woods).

I teach teenagers, and I can say with some authority that no, this is not something that teenagers do.

But he did find a photograph from a cryptid report in Louisiana three years ago that looked like what he'd seen:

Then he asks if this may have been a cryptid called a "Rake," and if anyone knows more about it.

I didn't, so I did a bit of searching, and in short order, I found out that the Rake is yet another fictional entity of the same origin as Slender Man -- the site Creepypasta (here's their page on the Rake).  So whatever the guy saw, I can say with some authority that it wasn't the Rake, given that the Rake doesn't exist.

Of course, my suspicion is that the Lithia Floating Naked Ghoul probably doesn't, either.  Starting with the guy's bizarre reaction to an apparition that would have most of us screaming like a little girl and running for home so fast you couldn't see our feet, in the fashion of a Looney Tunes character.  Also, what about his dog?  I don't know about your dog, but if my dog scented a creature that smelled like roadkill, he'd be frantic to go make friends, because roadkill is basically doggie cologne.

So I sort of doubt the entire account.  But I would, of course.  Actually, I'm strongly suspecting that there were some mind-altering chemicals involved.  But if I'm wrong, and you're down near Tampa, keep your eyes peeled.  If you see any stinking naked ghoul mimes, be sure to let me know.

Demonic texting

It's an increasingly technological world out there, and it's to be expected that computers and all of their associated trappings are even infiltrating the world of wacko superstition.

About a year ago, we had a new iPhone app for hunting ghosts, called the "Spirit Story Box."  Early this year, there was even a report of a fundamentalist preacher who was doing exorcisms... via Skype.  So I suppose it's not surprising that if humans now can use technology to contact supernatural entities of various sorts, the supernatural entities can turn the tables and use our technology against us.

At least, that's the claim of a Roman Catholic priest from Jaroslaw, Poland, named Father Marian Rajchel.  According to a story in Metro, Rajchel is a trained exorcist, whatever that means.  Which brings up a question: how do you train an exorcist?  It's not like there's any way to practice your skills, sort of like working on the dummy dude when you're learning to perform CPR.  Do they show instructional videos, using simulations with actors?  Do they start the exorcist with something easier, like expelling the forces of evil from, say, a stuffed toy, and then they gradually work their way up to pets and finally to humans?  (If exorcists work on pets, I have a cat that one of those guys should really take a look at.  Being around this cat, whose name is Geronimo, is almost enough to make me believe in Satan Incarnate.  Sometimes Geronimo will sit there for no obvious reason, staring at me with his big yellow eyes, all the while wearing an expression that says, "I will disembowel you while you sleep, puny mortal.")

But I digress.

Father Rajchel was called a while back to perform an exorcism on a young girl, and the exorcism was successful (at least according to him).  The girl, understandably, is much better for having her soul freed from a Minion of the Lord of Evil.  But the Minion itself apparently was pissed at Rajchel for prying it away from its host, and has turned its attention not on its former victim, but on the unfortunate priest himself.

Apparently such a thing is not unprecedented.  According to an article about exorcism over at Ghost Village, being an exorcist is not without its risks:

[John] Zaffis [founder of the Paranormal and Demonology Research Society of New England] said, "You don't know what the outcome of the exorcism is going to be - it's very strong, it's very powerful. You don't know if that person's going to gain an enormous amount of strength, what is going to come through that individual, and being involved, you will also end up paying a price." 

Many times the demon will try to attack and attach itself to the priest or minister administering the exorcism. According to Father Martin's book, the exorcist may get physically hurt by an out-of-control victim, could literally lose his sanity, and even death is possible.

So there you are, then.  Rajchel, hopefully, knew what he was getting into.  But I haven't yet told you how the demon is getting even with Father Rajchel:

It's sending him evil text messages on his cellphone.

According to Rajchel, ever since the exorcism, the demon has been texting him regularly sending him messages like, "Shut up, preacher.  You cannot save yourself.  Idiot.  You pathetic old preacher."  On another occasion, he got the message, "She will not come out of this hell.  She’s mine.  Anyone who prays for her will die."

Which of course brings up the question of how a demon got a cellphone.  Did it just walk into the Verizon store and purchase one?  You'd think the clerk would have noticed, what with the horns and tail and all.  Probably, all things considered, more likely that the demon stole someone's cellphone, although it still does raise the question of how it's paying to keep the cell service going.

It also raises the much more pragmatic question of why Rajchel doesn't just see what number the texts are coming from, and report it to the police.  Odds are it's the girl that he exorcised, and she's not possessed with anything but being a kid and enjoying pranking a gullible old man.

Of course, that's not how the true believers see it, and once you believe in demons and the rest it's a short step to deciding that they can just magically manipulate your machinery.  So I doubt that all of my practical objections would call any of those beliefs into question.

But it does bring up a different issue, which is, if demons can infest cellphones, can they infest other sorts of equipment, too?  Because if so, I strongly suspect that my lawnmower is possessed.  It seems to realize just when my lawn needs to be mowed, and chooses that time to suffer some kind of mysterious breakdown that necessitates my calling Brian the Lawn Mower Repair Guy.  Given how often this happens, maybe Brian is in cahoots with the demon.  Something in the way of a business partnership.  Although you do have to wonder what the demon gets out of it, other than the pure joy of listening to me swear.

The enemy of my enemy is... wait.

I'm sure that most of you have heard of Boko Haram, the group of Nigerian extremist Muslim nutjobs who hate the secular west's culture so much that they have started preying on their own people.  These are the loons who have, according to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, killed over 12,000 people, and who were responsible for the kidnapping earlier this year of 234 girls who were students at a government-run girls' school.  As of the writing of this post, the girls have not been returned to their families; Boko Haram leaders promised that they would be married off to devout Muslims.  The "Save Our Girls" campaign, which attracted international attention, accomplished (unfortunately) nothing but allowing Boko Haram to gain a spot on the world stage.

Even the name "Boko Haram" means "Western education is a sin."

So these people are, by any conventional definition of the word, evil.  And anyone who opposes them, by whatever means, is to be lauded.

Even if it's...

The Association of Nigerian Witches and Wizards.

According to an article on the site Bella Naija, the Association (called, from its name in Yoruba, "WITZAN") has issued an ultimatum to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau; knock it off or face the magical consequences.

"Witches and wizards in Nigeria are deeply worried by what is going on in the country, especially Boko Haram insurgency," said WITZAN spokesperson Dr. Okhue Iboi.  "As stakeholders in the Nigerian project, we can no longer afford to fold our hands while the nation burns.  Enough is enough."  He added that "our fellow brothers and sisters from the three northeastern states pleaded for the emergency meeting, to help cage Shekau and his blood-thirsty lieutenants."

And now that the magicians have gotten involved, Shekau's days are numbered.  He will be captured before December, Iboi said, and will be "paraded on the streets of Abuja and Maiduguri for the world to see."  As for the missing girls, their parents should smile, because "those girls are coming back home.  They will be rescued."

So... yeah.  This puts me in the odd position of being in support of a wizard and his woo-woo pals.  I mean, the WITZAN folks clearly aren't in very solid touch with reality themselves, but for pete's sake, they're preferable to Boko Haram.

On the other hand, maybe this is the right way to go about it.  The Boko Haram folks are themselves deeply superstitious.  The Nigerian government has been fighting these lunatics since at least 2002, using conventional tactics, without much success.  If anything, the radicals have gained strength and confidence; there have been 43 deadly attacks in 2014 alone, and over 2,000 dead.  Maybe if WITZAN can convince the members of Boko Haram that they're being ritually cursed, enough of them will get spooked that they'll desert.

Fight fire with fire, you know?  Maybe they should give it a try.  Nothing else has seemed to work.