Hiring a crew for the ark

I've written before about "Ark Encounter," the biblical theme park currently under construction in Williamston, Kentucky.  The centerpiece, a giant replica of Noah's Ark, is scheduled to open for visitors in 2016, and the park has received promises of millions of dollars in state tax breaks as an incentive.

Simon de Myle, Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat (1570) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It is this last-mentioned bit that has created controversy, because as a clearly religious attraction, to have what amounts to government financial support for something like Ark Encounter raises serious issues of the separation of church and state.  But no more, really, than the fact that churches themselves are exempt from property tax, a practice that I find frankly baffling.

But now the Ark has ended up in further hot water because Ark Encounter's executive president, Mike Zovath, has begun looking for employees for the park, and has issued a statement that any applicants need to sign a statement that they believe in biblical inerrancy in general, and the veracity of the Great Flood in particular.

Gil Lawson, communications director for the Kentucky Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet, said that such a practice would run counter to the law, and would result in Zovath's enterprise losing its tax breaks.  "We expect all of the companies that get tax incentives to obey the law," Lawson said, which seems unequivocal enough.

It does raise a couple of questions, though.  The first is, why would anyone who doesn't believe in the Great Flood even want to work there?  I certainly wouldn't, mostly because it would require my keeping both my temper and a straight face when talking to people who believe that somehow one dude from Palestine rounded up pairs of every species on Earth, including musk ox from the Yukon, and put them all on a single boat.

Not to mention believing that a six-hundred-year-old man and his four-hundred-year-old sons built said boat in less than a year, despite the fact that huge crews of construction workers, using modern tools, started working on an ark four years ago and still aren't done.  Good thing we're not counting on them to save us from a Divine Flood, isn't it?

But that's not the only problem.  In one sense, isn't Zovath in the right for expecting that his employees will support the mission of the company for which they work?  Recall the hue and cry over Martin Gaskell's disqualification for a directorship at the University of (guess where) Kentucky's astronomical observatory back in 2010 because he was a biblical literalist, who therefore disbelieved in not only the Big Bang but in the size and age of the observable universe.  Secularists, including myself, said, "Well, duh.  Of course he's not qualified.  He doesn't believe in the fundamentals of the field he's representing."

The problem is, the knife cuts both ways, and in fact in the piece I wrote about Gaskell (linked above), I even used the example of an atheist who applies for a position as a minister of a Christian church, and then complains when he doesn't get hired.  Isn't that what's happening here?

Zovath, of course, is a little panicked, because the loss of the tax credits could cost his company an average of 1.8 million dollars a year.  And it's not like they haven't already had their money woes; they've had repeated delays because of funding issues.  "We’re hoping the state takes a hard look at their position, and changes their position so it doesn’t go further than this," Zovath told reporters, when the state's objecting to his hiring practices hit the news.

So I find myself unexpectedly on Zovath's side, here.  On the other hand, the whole thing would never have become an issue if the state of Kentucky hadn't flouted separation of church and state laws by giving them tax incentives in the first place.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out.  If I can indulge in a moment of schadenfreude, I have to admit that no one will be happier than me if the whole Ark Encounter capsizes; the last thing we need is more glitzy opportunities to pass off Bronze Age mythology as science to children.  But it does place the state of Kentucky in a peculiar quandary.  Either they have to push Ark Encounter into a hiring practice that might result in their having employees who think what they're doing is idiotic, or they have to admit that they were wrong to give a purely religious enterprise government-funded tax incentives.

Which, I believe, is called "the chickens coming home to roost."

Shooting down the false flag

I'm frequently asked how I can write daily on this blog without losing my marbles.  Deliberately immersing myself in the silly things some people believe, you'd think, would be a recipe for cynicism and/or despair.

The truth is, I'm still generally an optimist.  When you think about it, it'd be kind of silly to have a blog like this if I thought gullibility was incurable.  I'm confident that people can adopt a skeptical outlook, and can choose to look at the world through the lens of evidence and logic.

But it doesn't mean I don't sometimes get angry.

The thing that pushes the rage button the hardest is the combination of stubborn ignorance and lack of compassion.  When someone makes a claim that not only flies in the face of rationality, but dehumanizes and demeans, that makes me see red.

Like the claim that is popping up all over conspiracy websites, that the whole Ebola epidemic is being faked by "crisis actors."

Scientists working at the site of an Ebola outbreak [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I've dealt with this topic before, but from the standpoint of actors staging school shootings -- a heinous enough claim.  But now, we have people saying that there's no such thing as Ebola.  The whole thing, they say, was invented so as to give world leaders (especially President Obama) the leverage to declare martial law and turn the United States into a dictatorship.

There's been buzz about this on the r/conspiracy subreddit, which is hardly surprising given that this is where the whole "crisis actors" nonsense gained traction after the Sandy Hook massacre.  Here's how it's being framed:

You have them in Africa, in New York, San Francisco, Haiti, and other places. Yes, they are sick and they are dying. But that doesn’t make an epidemic, because the tiny virus that was supposed to be at the bottom of all this is missing from the equation. 

This tells you how to invent a fake epidemic. You take many sick and dying people, and you claim there is one germ that is causing all the trouble. You promote a few diagnostic tests that ‘will confirm the presence of the germ’ and you tell people they must be tested. 

But the tests don’t really confirm the presence of the germ. They’re deceptive and useless. Of course, the test will register positive in many cases. These positive people are said to be victims of the one germ that is at the root of the epidemic. 

You tie together and link together people who are sick and dying for various reasons, and you claim they’re all dying because of the One Germ. That gives you a powerful psychological ploy, because people are always looking for the one unified thing that explains a whole host of disturbing facts. You give them what they want.

This is from a blog post from Jon Rappoport, who (by the way) also claims that there's no such thing as SARS, and that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

Mad yet?  Wait till you see the piece that showed up over at UFO Blogger yesterday -- that hospitals are hiring actors to feign symptoms of Ebola, for some undisclosed purpose.  The author of the post includes the following quote from New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation's chief medical officer, Dr. Ross Wilson: "If those patients have symptoms and a travel history we would expect them to be isolated within a few minutes in that emergency room.  Then we would call the Department of Health and complete a further work-up with the patient being isolated."

My guess is that the reason (assuming the story isn't an out-and-out lie) is to train hospital staff in proper protocol for dealing with a dangerous virus, but that isn't the implication.  The implication is that the whole thing is fake, that what the CDC is saying is nothing more than a smokescreen.

A "false flag."  Oh, how I hate that phrase.  And no, I'm not going to present the evidence to the contrary, because a simple online search for scientific papers about this disease will turn up so much information that I wouldn't have room to fit it in this post.

The degree to which this kind of claim is irresponsible is staggering, but so is the lack of simple compassion.  There have been 4,000 deaths from this hideous disease to date, with every indication that we haven't even neared the peak.  There are five suspected and one confirmed cases in Spain, and another couple of suspected cases here in the United States besides the one man who died two days ago -- pointing to the possibility that we may have a bigger problem than anyone thought at first.  To demean the suffering of the victims, and the efforts of the medical establishment to combat this virus, is disrespectful at best and ugly, belittling propaganda at worst.

So yeah, sometimes I do get angry.  Like this morning.  I will admit to having yelled, "Are you fucking kidding me?" at my computer when I discovered this story.  But I remain confident that the good guys -- the compassionate, rational, kind, honorable people -- still far outnumber the bad.

And as for the bottom-feeders who are currently claiming that the Ebola epidemic is fake; I'd like to suggest that you crawl back in your holes, and get out of the way of the people who are actually doing something to help the people who are suffering from this very real, and very dangerous, virus.

Hamster balls to Bermuda

Some of you have probably heard about Reza Baluchi, extreme sports enthusiast and marathon runner who was attempting to travel the 1,033 miles from Miami to Bermuda in what amounted to a giant amphibious hamster ball.  Baluchi had been training for the event for months, and took donations from sponsors that were to be given to a needy children's charity.  His plan, he said, was to run until he got tired, cool off by taking dunks in the ocean, and to live off protein bars and bottled water.  For sleeping, he had a hammock, and was going to navigate with a GPS.

Things didn't turn out so well.  Baluchi got fatigued and disoriented, and finally was spotted simply bobbing in the waves seventy miles offshore from St. Augustine.  (You gotta give him credit, though; that's 69 more miles than I'd have gotten.)  He basically asked the Coast Guard vessel that came upon him, "Which way to Bermuda?", and after a back-and-forth in which he initially refused to leave his craft, they persuaded him to abandon ship.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So far, all we have is an odd, if well-intentioned, effort by an athlete to accomplish something no one has ever done before.  But far be it from the woo-woo contingent to take something like this, and accept it on face value -- that a guy overreached a little, bit off more than he could chew, and is honestly damn lucky someone came across him, because (face it) the Atlantic is fucking huge.

But no, it can't be that simple.  Especially since the terminus of his voyage was supposed to be... *cue scary music*

... Bermuda.

If you're thinking, "Oh, no, don't tell me that they think this has something to do with the Bermuda Triangle," you're way ahead of me, and you also have an excellent sense of the way woo-woo minds work.  (Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll leave it to you to decide.)  Of course they think it's the Bermuda Triangle, despite the fact that the whole thing has been debunked over and over (for a good summary of the argument against, check out what The Skeptic's Dictionary has to say about it).

So poor Reza Baluchi launched off all unawares into the midst of a scary triangular vortex of negative vibrational quantum energies.  Or whatever they think explains this non-existent Danger Spot.  Listen to what Mysterious Universe had to say about Baluchi's failure:

What could possibly go wrong?  When dealing with the Bermuda Triangle, just about anything... We all know that the Bermuda Triangle eats ships and planes like they’re candy.  So when it sees something in the shape of a giant ball with something soft inside, it’s probably thinking “Cadbury Egg!”  That could explain why a man trying to run around the entire Bermuda Triangle inside a homemade floating human hamster ball failed only three days into his trek.

Right!  Because we need some kind of paranormal force to explain why a guy failed on a thousand-mile solo voyage over the ocean in a hamster ball!

You know, sometimes it strikes me that lately the woo-woos aren't even trying very hard.  If something happens in New Mexico, they kind of wave their hands in a listless fashion, and say, "Meh.  It's aliens."  Someone sees an ugly dog in Texas?  "Must be El Chupacabra."  Here, just the fact that the guy was in the western Atlantic made it inevitable that someone was going to bring up the Bermuda Triangle.  If he'd succeeded, the article would have been about how lucky he was to have escaped its evil snares.

So I'm gonna issue a challenge, here.  Come on, woo-meisters, give it all you've got.  I'm sure you can come up with something more interesting than the same tired old schtick.  At least in the fine old days of the Weekly World News, we could look forward to hearing periodically about how BatBoy's presidential campaign was coming along.

But now?  Same old, same old.  So I'm challenging you woo-woos to really knock our socks off.  Give us something we haven't heard before.  I know you've got it in you, you've just gotten complacent, and maybe we skeptics have, too.  We're like two old cats who just hiss a little and swat, more for show than anything else.

So go ahead, give me your best shot.  I can take it.  Let's see if we can spice things up around here.

'cuz lord knows, the Bermuda Triangle sinking this dude's hamster ball is not doing it for me.

You're a mean one, Mr. Grunch

I grew up in Bayou Country, the Cajun heartland south of Lafayette, Louisiana.  My mom's family was Cajun to the bone, descended from a group of exiled Nova Scotia French who had been there in those swamps for over 200 years.

Cajun folklore is fascinating, and the tales and legends preserve a memory of times long past.  My maternal uncle, who was a fine storyteller, used to scare the hell out of us kids with stories (told in French) of the loup-garou (the Louisiana answer to werewolves) and the feu follet, or "crazy fire," a forest spirit that would lure you in with dancing lights and then steal your soul.  (The only way to escape was to run away and jump across a creek -- the feu follet was unable to cross running water.)

I grew up well-versed in the terrifying legends of the swamps, having not only the family background but a taste for such paranormal scary stuff.  So imagine my surprise when just yesterday I found about a south Louisiana cryptid that I'd never heard of before:

The "grunch."

[image courtesy of artist Alvin Padayachee and the Wikimedia Commons]

Yes, I know, "grunch" doesn't sound all that authentic south-Louisiana-French.  At least it should be "grunché," or something.  But no, it's the "grunch," and apparently it's sort of a Deep South version of El Chupacabra.  Here's what "Gina Lanier, Paranormal Investigator" has to say about it:

As a principal port, New Orleans had the major role of any city during the antebellum era in the slave trade.  Its port handled huge quantities of goods for export from the interior and import from other countries to be traded up the Mississippi River.  The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships.  At the same time, it had the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South. Many old stories from people who's [sic] family were around at the time have passed many oral traditions down to us concerning the Grunch.  Legend has it that the Grunch dates back to the days of New Orlean's [sic] early settlement and that its name ''Grunch'' comes from the name of a road.

So where did the the creature come from?  Was it always there, grunching about in the swamp?  No, Lanier said.  The grunch was created by the Voodoo Queen cutting off Satan's son's balls:

This Southern cryptid has been called The Vampire of Farbourgh [sic: she means Faubourg] Marigny, and Bywater area dating back to the early 1800's.  The Legend of Marie Laveau tells of how some believe this form of chupacabra came into existence. 

An old Voodoo Hoodoo story says Marie Laveau castrated the Devil Baby when he was born.  Because she wanted him to produce no more of his evil kind.  The two bloody testicles fell to the floor as she used a very sharp hoodoo voodoo blade.  Immediately they turned into a male and female grunch, who it is said actually attacked the great Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.  The grunch are said to have almost killed her with their fierce bites and punching.  The dark evil terror the old Voodoo Queen must have been unbearable as she struggled under their great strength before she fainted.  When she awoke the Grunch and the Devil Baby were gone.  Laveau was near death after this and many have said this is when Marie Laveau gave up her Voodoo Hoodoo ways and went back to being a good Catholic woman.

Well, it's a good story, but all that voodoo hoodoo stuff sounds like doodoo to me.  As you probably figured I'd say.  Marie Laveau was a real person, though; her tomb is in the historic St. Louis Cemetery in the French Quarter, and is a tourist attraction (especially given the fact that devotees still place gifts on her grave).

But the rest of it sounds like your usual silliness.  Of course, this hasn't stopped (un)reality TV from latching onto it, as they are wont to do.  The very first episode of the Destination: America series "Swamp Monsters," in fact, is called "The Grunch."  Here's the description of the episode:

In the mystical lagoons, marshes and swamps of Louisiana’s bayou, Elliot Guidry and his team of BEAST (the Bayou Enforcement Agency on Supernatural Threats) battle the elements while tracking down a pack of the infamous Grunch.  Born of the Devil himself, the Grunch have been terrorizing Louisiana residents for centuries.  These skin and bones, dog-like creatures have ridged backs, stand three feet tall and emit a horrible screech. After following these monsters into the middle of the swamp,  BEAST realizes that the hunter has become the hunted as they’re surrounded by a hungry pack of Grunch.

I commented, in a previous post, that if ever I founded a punk band, I was gonna call it "Government Death Plague."  Now I can add that if I ever found an alternative band, I'm gonna call it "Pack of Grunch."

(You can watch the entire episode for free here, if you don't mind giving BEAST forty minutes of your life that you'll never, ever get back.)

Anyhow.  Predictably, I think the whole thing is easily explained by wild dogs and wilder imaginations.  No need for voodoo hoodoo and devil baby balls.  I still am kind of surprised I never heard about this, growing up; I certainly had an ear for such tales, and more than one family member who was willing to pass along anything that was useful for scaring kids to the near bedwetting stage.  The fact that I grew up down there and never got wind of grunches is a little like the fact that it wasn't until I moved to Seattle that I first heard of cooking "blackened pork chops" and "blackened fish" and so on, a culinary technique that allegedly comes from southern Louisiana.  The only time my mom served anything blackened was when she put a chicken in the oven to roast and got distracted by a neighbor, and only took it out when it was somewhere between overdone and charcoal.  (My dad teased her for weeks about having created a new gourmet dish, "poulet noir.")

But who knows?  I may just have missed that one.  In any case, if you're down in the bayou, you now have an additional thing to worry about, over and above cottonmouths and alligators, not to mention the feu follet and loup-garou.  I wouldn't let it stop me from going there, though.  It's a beautiful place, with great music and even better food, and if I lived there for over twenty years without being attacked by a pack of grunch, I'm guessing you're safe enough.

Post-apocalyptic pet care

The American public still apparently has a taste for the apocalyptic, considering the recent appearance of the Rapture-based movie Left Behind starring Nicolas Cage.  Cage plays a character called "Rayford Steele," meaning that he is of course the action hero, similar to David Ryder in Space Mutiny, whose many names are chronicled in this not-to-be-missed montage courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But unfortunately, the critics aren't exactly enamored of Left Behind.  It's currently running at an abysmal 2% approval rating at the site Rotten Tomatoes.  Here are a few of my favorite reviews:

Left Behind is one of those films so deeply, fundamentally terrible that it feels unwittingly high-concept. 

Aside from [its] faulty conceit, the movie, on a pure thriller level, is a massive collection of awkward, poorly written character moments and supposedly spectacular set pieces that are stretched far too thin. 

Score one for Satan.

And the best one of all:

I can't wait for Nic Cage to explain THIS one to God on Judgment Day.

But the fact remains that a sizable number of Americans believe that this movie is reflective of reality, and that it is accurate in concept if not in the exact details.  Sooner or later, probably sooner, the holy will be assumed bodily up into heaven, leaving the rest of us poor slobs to duke it out here, not to mention contending with the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons, the Beast With Seven Heads, and other special offers.

But this does raise certain inevitable theological quandaries.  What about innocents who are caught up, all unwary, in the whole end-of-the-world free-for-all?  It hardly seems fair that the sins of us Bad Guys should be visited upon individuals who don't really deserve it, like little infidel children and so on.

And it's not just the kids, you know.  What about the pets?  Well, at least that we can do something about, at least if you believe the efforts of Lansing, Michigan True Believer Sharon Moss and her unbelieving best friend Carol, who have founded a company called "After the Rapture Pet Care."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

While I was reading this, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop -- for there to be some sort of "We're kidding!" announcement, or at least an admission that it was a money-making enterprise by some scheming atheists trying to bamboozle (and simultaneously make fun of) gullible Christians.  But apparently, this thing is for real.  For a "small fee" (I think a ten-dollar registration charge is all it takes, although I could be misreading the fine print), holy individuals will be paired up with "nice non-Christians" who are willing to take and care for any Left Behind Pets.  Right from their website:

When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be massive confusion.  However, the majority of people will still be on earth, and communications will be their first priority to maintain.  Therefore, I believe it will not be a problem to coordinate activities to rescue and care for your pets.  As far as the data about all registered pets, it is located on Google servers (the most secure servers in the world) as well as our own server in Lansing, Michigan (away from political and military hot spots to minimize chance of destruction if there is a post-Rapture war).  The non-Christian administrators assigned to coordinate our efforts after we’re gone are also located in multiple locations, all with log in information.

You can even purchase a stylish "After the Rapture Pet Care Volunteer Pet Caregiver" t-shirt for only $38.

Although the thought crosses my mind: wouldn't wearing such a t-shirt identify you as a sinner?  After all, if you are planning on taking care of Raptured people's pets, it's pretty much equivalent to admitting you're one of the lost.  I'd wear one just for fun, and also because I don't think anyone has any particular questions about my status apropos of the Last Judgment, but I'm not forking over $38 to do it.

But if you're interested, you can also get mugs, bumper stickers, and totes.  Me, I'm gonna save my money.  Certain as I am that I'll still be around should the Rapture actually happen, I have no particular desire to look after pets left behind by the pious.  I already have two dogs, not to mention a cat who has the temperament of the Antichrist, and frankly, that's about all I can handle.

On the other hand, if there's anyone who is wondering what will happen to their collection of classic sports cars After the Rapture, and wants someone to be ready to step in, I'm happy to help.  Selfless, that's me.

Worldviews, conspiracies, and Ebola

Sometimes I don't think that skeptics and conspiracy theorists speak the same language.

Oh, we're both saying words that the other understands; but there's a fundamental disconnect.  The worldviews are so incompatible that what one says makes no sense whatsoever to the other.

Take, for example, the change in the language in a statement on Ebola from the Public Health Agency of Canada.  Here's the original statement, with the relevant passage highlighted:

MODE OF TRANSMISSION: In an outbreak, it is hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected as a result of contact with an infected animal. Person-to-person transmission occurs via close personal contact with an infected individual or their body fluids during the late stages of infection or after death. Nosocomial infections can occur through contact with infected body fluids due to the reuse of unsterilized syringes, needles, or other medical equipment contaminated with these fluids. Humans may be infected by handling sick or dead non-human primates and are also at risk when handling the bodies of deceased humans in preparation for funerals, suggesting possible transmission through aerosol droplets. In the laboratory, infection through small-particle aerosols has been demonstrated in primates, and airborne spread among humans is strongly suspected, although it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. The importance of this route of transmission is not clear. Poor hygienic conditions can aid the spread of the virus.

And the new statement, as of August 2014:

MODE OF TRANSMISSION: In an outbreak, it is hypothesized that the first patient becomes infected as a result of contact with an infected animal. Person-to-person transmission occurs via close personal contact with an infected individual or their body fluids during the late stages of infection or after death. Nosocomial infections can occur through contact with infected body fluids for example due to the reuse of unsterilized syringes, needles, or other medical equipment contaminated with these fluids. Humans may be infected by handling sick or dead non-human primates and are also at risk when handling the bodies of deceased humans in preparation for funerals.

In laboratory settings, non-human primates exposed to aerosolized ebolavirus from pigs have become infected, however, airborne transmission has not been demonstrated between non-human primates. Viral shedding has been observed in nasopharyngeal secretions and rectal swabs of pigs following experimental inoculation.

So what did I immediately think, upon finding out about this?  That the agency realized the information in the original statement was erroneous, and updated it to reflect the most recent research.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What did the conspiracy theorists think?  Do I even need to tell you?  Here's a variety of responses, collected from a variety of conspiracy sites, commenting on the change:

They're pulling the wool over our eyes.  They've known that ebola can be transmitted airborne for years, but they don't want the public to know, because the panic will bring down government.  I'm surprised they let it slip that long. 

Any time there's a change in official government policy, be suspicious. 

If you people don't wake up to what the government is doing, it will be too late to stop a pandemic. 

They never want you to have any real information, so they keep shifting their ground.  It's a classic bait-and-switch, so you never see the catastrophe coming.

And my favorite one:

If you let yourself get this government death plague, you have only yourself to blame.

I must say, if I ever start a punk band, I'm going to call it "Government Death Plague."

Not that that's likely.  But still.

So anyway.  Two things about this strike me: (1) that presented with exactly the same facts, I came up with an entirely different conclusion than the conspiracy theorists did; and (2) that there is very likely no argument on either side that would convince the other that they were wrong.

That's what I mean about speaking different languages.  And I wonder where these radically different perspectives come from?  Is it as simple as optimism versus pessimism?  Or is it something more complicated than that?  It'd be interesting to do a comparative personality study on skeptics and conspiracy theorists.

But the conspiracy theorists would never go for that, of course.  They'd think the Illuminati were collecting background information on them so as to make it easier to round them up into FEMA camps.

You can't win.

Day off...

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Skeptophilia will not be posted today.  I hope to be back up and running tomorrow, Saturday, October 4, 2014.

Sorry about that!