Spaceships on ice

I love science, and am delighted with the progress we've made in understanding the universe.  This has come along with a lightning-fast improvement in the quality of our technology, and although most of my friends consider me a Luddite, I'm actually in favor of that, too.

However, there are times when our technology gets ahead of our good sense.  When, in fact, it becomes apparent that in some ways, our devices are smarter than we are.  And one of those instances has to do with the geographical close-mapping project, Google Earth.

As our ability to create detailed aerial photographic maps of our planet has improved, so has our knowledge about places that are inaccessible to conventional human exploration.  But the problem is, the photographs are becoming detailed enough that we're falling prey to our perceptual biases, and coming up with some pretty wacky explanations for what we're seeing.  Here are a few examples:

• The discovery of a peculiar pattern of lines in the deserts of western China, that some people believed were mimicking the streets around the White House, in preparation for an attack.
• A digital artifact that made it look like there was a grid of giant squares on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to claims that the Google Earth people had discovered, and then covered up, evidence of the Lost Civilization of Atlantis.
• A five-pointed star in Russia that was variously described as a training camp for children of the Illuminati, a refuge for Satanists, an alien landing site, or a sign from Mother Earth that she's not happy with us, and actually turned out to be the remnants of a Soviet-era lakeside campground.

So you can see that we don't have a very good track record of interpreting what Google Earth is finding.  Add to that all of the misidentifications made by people pawing through NASA photographs from Mars (where various wingnuts have found "evidence" of a thigh bone, a flip-flop, a skull, a fossilized gopher, and a vicious-looking Martian bunny), and it's understandable that I'm not ready to lend much credence to the latest "discovery"...

... which is a crashed spaceship in Antarctica.

The UFO enthusiasts are leaping about making excited little squeaking noises over an image from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, more specifically from 80°34’08.4″S 30°05’19.3″W, which showed the following:

See that diagonal mark in the middle of the image?  That, we find out, is no geographic feature.

It's a downed spaceship.

What evidence do they have?  Well, you're looking at it.  Everything else is just taking the above image, magnifying it until it gets really blurry, and finding bits of that blurred image that look like metallic reflections or spacecraft windows or hatches or whatever.  Next thing you know, they'll be claiming that this is rising up out of the snow:

As long as no one expects me to get on my Tauntaun and ride out to investigate.  I'm not taking a chance of freezing my ass off and then having to get shoved inside some smelly animal's abdominal cavity just in order to survive, all in the name of exploration.

But the guy who discovered the image, Russian UFO hunter Valentin Degterev, is adamant that we doubters are wrong. "I think there is very large disc-shaped flying machine amongst the frozen ice," Degterev said.  "It is definitely not a polar station, nor a plane (as there aren’t any airplanes or helicopters this big in the world).  There also aren’t any ships lost in Antarctica. It seems this is an artificial object from the distant cosmos."

Because, apparently, that's the only other option.  British UFO hunter Nigel Watson thought Degterev was spot-on, however. "It’s hard to tell if this ‘classic’ saucer sticking out of the ice, or whether it is a break in the ice," Watson said.  "Antarctica has a long tradition of being the resting place of crashed saucers or a base for their operations."

How convenient, given that Antarctica is so inaccessible to conventional exploration -- and verification of your claims. 

Pretty sneaky guys, those aliens.  Never crash-landing their saucers in places that are thickly inhabited.  Can't you see the discussion, as the ship is going down?

Alien 1:  "Our guidance system is failing!  The inertial dampers are offline!  We're going to crash!" 

Alien 2:  "No!  We can't crash here!  We're over Newark, New Jersey!  If we crashed here, then everyone would find out about our existence!  We can't have that!" 

Alien 1:  "I have it!  We'll stay aloft for another ten thousand kilometers, and then dive headfirst into an ice sheet in Antarctica." 

Alien 2:  "Brilliant!"

So if the mark on the ground in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet isn't an alien spaceship, nor an Imperial Probe Droid, what is it?

Easy.  It's a crevasse.

The movement of glaciers frequently opens up cracks, and the overlying snow cover collapses inwards, forming a slot-like hole.  (Sometimes it takes a while for the snow cover to fall, which is why hiking over glaciers is so dangerous -- what looks like solid ice can be a thin crust of snow over a hundred-foot-deep plunge.)

So sorry to burst your bubble, UFOlogists, but if you're looking for the smoking gun, alien-wise, this isn't it.  Just as the Chinese lines weren't a mock-up of Washington, DC, the seafloor anomaly wasn't Atlantis, and the star wasn't an Illuminati summer camp, this isn't a downed spaceship.  You'll just have to keep looking.

Back to scanning Google Earth images.  Make sure to tell us what you find.  As long as it isn't vicious alien bunnies.  If you find one of those, I'd rather not know.

Love wins

I'm sure that most of you know by now that in a landmark 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal across the nation.

When I got up this morning, I noticed a few things that bear mention.

• The world still exists.
• God did not smite America.  No meteorites, no volcanic eruptions, no earthquakes.  Nothing.
• My marriage to Carol has continued, unaltered, since yesterday.
• Texas pastor Rick Scarborough has yet to set himself on fire.
• The bible-thumpers who threatened to move to Canada are still here.

I find the last-mentioned especially amusing, given that Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005.  If you people are looking for a place to move, a country where religion trumps the rule of law, homosexuality is a punishable offense, and everyone is expected to run their lives by the precepts of a holy book, I think Syria or Iraq might fit the bill better than Canada.

What gets me most about all of these people is that they're not just content to live their lives by their own religious precepts; they expect everyone else to follow those precepts, too.  Not satisfied with simply practicing their own religion to the best of their ability, they demand that the entire country has to do so as well.

It's not that hard.  If you want to marry someone of the same gender, do so.  If you don't, then don't.  

End of story.

Or would be, except for the likes of Glenn Beck, who thinks that giving people rights they've been denied amounts to persecuting everyone else.  Beck, who really needs to up the dosage on his anti-psychotic meds, had the following to say:

Persecution is coming. If this goes through, persecution is coming.  I mean serious prosecution.  Mark my words. …  If gay marriage goes through the Supreme Court and gay marriage becomes fine and they can put teeth in it, so now they can go after the churches, 50 percent of our churches will fall away, meaning the congregations.  Within five years, the congregations, 50 percent of the congregants will fall away from their church because they won’t be able to take the persecution.

Further, he says that there are tens of thousands of ministers who are going to face martyrdom because of the decision:

The number in the Black Robe Regiment [a group of conservative Christians Beck likes to talk about] is about 70,000 now.  The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000.  That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Because that's likely.  I think the Black Robe Regiment is going to be pretty frustrated over the next few months, wandering around looking in vain for someone to kill them:

[member of the Black Robe Regiment shows up at a gay couple's wedding reception] 

Black Robe dude:  "Aha!  Here we go!"  (throws his arms open)  "Go ahead!  Oppress me, torture me, and kill me!  I'm ready to die!" 

Guy at wedding reception (puzzled):  "Why would I do that?  This is a celebration.  Here, have some cake." 

Black Robe dude (triumphantly):  "I thought so.  This cake is poisoned, isn't it?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "No, sorry.  It's lemon cake with rainbow frosting."  (takes a bite)  "See? Delicious."

Black Robe dude:  "So you're not going to murder me for my beliefs?" 

Guy at wedding reception:  "Nope." 

Black Robe dude:  "Rats."  (slinks off, looking for persecution elsewhere)

Beck, of course, wasn't the only one.  Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's less compassionate son, was grim yesterday evening.  "I pray God will spare America from His judgment," Graham said.  "Though, by our actions as a nation, we give Him less and less reason to do so."

Mike Huckabee, of course, was considerably more verbose in his reaction, not to mention considerably less coherent:

The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do-redefine marriage.  I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. 

This ruling is not about marriage equality, it's about marriage redefinition.  This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many.  The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny. 

The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature's God on marriage than it can the law of gravity.  Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court.  If accepted by Congress and this President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.

Right.  Because that's what the Supreme Court is supposed to be doing; passing "god's law."

But no one was more butthurt than Justice Antonin Scalia, who said in his dissent, "Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms?" he wrote.  "And if intimacy is, one would think that Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage.  Ask the nearest hippie."

And the result was not what Scalia hoped, which was for people to sit up and amazement and say, "Good heavens, you're right!"  Instead, #AskTheNearestHippie has become a trending hashtag on Twitter, along with a brilliant new Twitter account to follow... @TheNearestHippie.

Because, Justice Scalia, mocking a ridiculous statement is a freedom.  It's called freedom of speech.

But despite all of this, the lion's share of the responses I saw yesterday were positive.  Facebook positively erupted in rainbows.  Even a conservative buddy of mine posted, "Let gays get married.  Let the rednecks have their guns.  Let atheists be atheists, and let Christians be Christians.  Because America is about freedom.  Freedom to live how you please, and be happy with your life.  So smoke a bowl, shoot your guns, cuss a lot, praise Jesus, and wish those two fellas next door a happy honeymoon."

To which I responded, "Amen, brother."

So there you are.  The law of the land.  And to my LGBT friends and their allies who have fought this battle for decades, I can only say:

Congratulations.  Love won.

Plan of attack

The time has come to ask what exactly the people in charge of overseeing public education are trying to accomplish.

And I'm sorry, "Improving public education" isn't a good enough answer.  Nor is "making sure we have teacher accountability."  I want to know, specifically, why our elected officials and educational leaders are moving in the direction they are, along with evidence of how their decisions will work to accomplish their goals.

Because at the moment, a lot of it looks like a carefully-designed program to tear down the entire edifice.

[image courtesy of photographer Svetlana Miljkovic and the Wikimedia Commons]

Here are a couple of the latest salvos.  So let me tell you about those, and see if you agree with me.

Let's start, as so many attacks on education do, in the state of Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has appointed Donna Bahorich as the chairperson of the State Board of Education.

Bahorich is an ultraconservative who backed last year's decision to approve history texts that claimed that the United States Constitution is based on the bible, and that the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses.  She is strongly in favor of using money from taxpayers to support private religious schools.  Her qualifications?  She was a manager of a telephone company, campaign treasurer for Senator Dan Patrick (who himself has gone on record as stating that creationism should be taught in public schools), and a member of the pastor's council at Houston's Vineyard Church.  Her M.A. is in counseling from Jerry Falwell's fundamentalist bastion, Liberty University.

She chose to homeschool her own children.

So to summarize: Texas now has a woman in charge of their educational system who has never taught, did not send her own children to public school, seems to have no qualifications for the position whatsoever, and has shown herself to be an ideologue who would love to see free secular public education replaced by publicly-funded religious schools.

Even some of Abbott's Republican supporters think this is a misstep.  State Board member Thomas Ratliff said, "Public school isn’t for everybody, but when 94 percent of our students in Texas attend public schools I think it ought to be a baseline requirement that the chair of the State Board of Education have at least some experience in that realm, as a parent, teacher, something."

Yeah.  You'd think so.  But Texas isn't the only one.  Right here in my home state of New York, we have Merryl Tisch as chancellor of the State Department of Education, a woman whose sole experience with teaching was seven years in two wealthy private Jewish schools.

Is it becoming a requirement that in order to lead public education, you need to have no experience with public education?

Then, we have the ongoing attacks on teachers via the reliance on standardized tests to measure not only student progress, but teacher competence.  So given how much is resting on the outcome of those tests, you'd think that there'd be a great deal of emphasis on having qualified scorers, right?

But according to an exposé in The New York Times, the high-stakes exams from Pearson Education and other testing-for-profit corporations are being graded by people who not only have no teaching experience, but no background in pedagogy whatsoever:

There was a onetime wedding planner, a retired medical technologist and a former Pearson saleswoman with a master’s degree in marital counseling.  To get the job, like other scorers nationwide, they needed a four-year college degree with relevant coursework, but no teaching experience.  They earned $12 to $14 an hour, with the possibility of small bonuses if they hit daily quality and volume targets.

Bob Sanders, vice president for Content and Scoring Management at Pearson, said that none of that mattered.  "From the standpoint of comparing us to a Starbucks or McDonald’s, where you go into those places you know exactly what you’re going to get.  McDonald’s has a process in place to make sure they put two patties on that Big Mac.  We do that exact same thing. We have processes to oversee our processes, and to make sure they are being followed."

You know, Mr. Sanders, if you're trying to make an argument that you're dedicated to quality, comparing yourself to McDonalds might not be your best choice.

And then, we've got the more fundamental problem that the evaluation system itself is faulty.  Let's take my own situation as a case-in-point, because I just got my "final grade" for this school year yesterday.  The numerical grading system in New York has been in place for three years.  Two years ago, I scored a 92.  Last year, I scored a 91, missing the "highly effective" designation by one point.

This year, I scored an 80.

So according to New York State, I became 11% worse at teaching between last year and this one.  Good thing I didn't drop more than that; another 5% downward, and I'll be classified as "Developing," which is kind of funny given that I've taught for 28 years.  If I haven't "Developed" by now, I don't think it's gonna happen.

And the tailspin in my score is, of course, being laid at my feet, because there can't be any other contributing causes, right?  It couldn't be because of things like differences in student effort and work ethic from year to year, changes in the exam scaling, or the fact that 50% of one of the classes I was evaluated on this year were special needs students, including two tenth-graders who read at a fourth-grade level.

Nope, the drop in scores was clearly my fault.

What the hell is going on here?

Elected officials are appointing people to leadership roles in education who have little to no experience in public education.  A teacher evaluation system has been put in place that is not only so faulty that a student in a freshman statistics class could see the flaws, but has been handed over to for-profit corporations who farm out the actual scoring to people who have never spent a day working in a classroom.

You know, I don't tend to buy into conspiracy theories, but this is more and more looking like a well thought out strategy to destroy public education from the ground up.

I hope I'm wrong.  Incompetence and mismanagement are easier to forgive than deliberate, calculated malfeasance.  But as the problems pile up, and the solutions appear designed to make things worse, and the people appointed to be in charge continue to be selected from the ranks of anti-education demagoguery, my confidence that we're not seeing some kind of coordinated attack is becoming weaker and weaker.

Alien spiritual copyright infringement

"Channeling" is a practice that goes back millennia.  The idea that a powerful being could take over a human's body, use it as a vehicle, and thereby dispense wisdom upon the rest of us slobs has a history that extends from the Oracle of Delphi and the Witch of Endor, through the divine visions of Hildegard von Bingen and Joan of Arc, to the spiritualist mediums of the 19th century and more recent New Age channels like Jane Roberts and J. Z. Knight.

A curious current case is that of Darryl Anka, who claims to channel an alien being named "Bashar" from the planet "Essassani."  Anka goes into a trance, and then speaks in a peculiar, stilted voice (evidently that's the accent people have, over on Essassani), and gives us enlightened messages such as the following:

There is only the understanding of the thing that needs to be taught to every child on the planet, and that is the knowledge that every single individual on this planet is already powerful as he or she needs to be to create any reality desired, without having to hurt yourself, or anyone else, to get it.  That’s how powerful you are.

Whoo.  That's one deep message, right there.  Which, of course, is my problem with all of these people; you never really get any specifics.  The ones who claim to channel people from the past (like J. Z. Knight) dodge any questions about the culture and languages spoken by the people from 25,000 years ago, labeling these things as "unimportant."  People like Anka/Bashar can't give us any information about the technology on this purportedly advanced planet, only tell us useful things like "you're already as powerful as you need to be."

Me, I'd rather blueprints for a working warp drive, holodeck, tricorder, replicator, and phaser than I would vacuous messages about how much inner power I have at my disposal.  But maybe I'm just too shallow for enlightened beings like "Bashar."

[image courtesy of NASA]

Add that to the fact that Bashar claims to come from "300 light years in the future," thereby demonstrating that a super-advanced alien doesn't know the difference between a measure of distance and a measure of time, and I think we have a pretty good case that Anka's pulling a fast one on us.

Fortunately, there are a lot of people who agree with me.  Skeptoid did a piece on him that's nothing short of scathing.  Here's what they have to say about him over at Generally Thinking, along with a video clip so you can see for yourself what a middle-aged bald guy looks like when he's channeling an alien from the future.  Hell, they even shot him down over at Above Top Secret, and that takes some doing.  Bashar, however, was undaunted, and fired back with a video series called "Debunking the Debunkers."

So he sure showed us.

But now Anka/Bashar has taken it one step further.  He's filed a bunch of grievances against users of Tumblr under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that protects the intellectual property of individuals distributed electronically, claiming that hundreds of images and gifs are actually Bashar's...

... or will be in the future.

The evidence provided was as follows:

Description: Copyrighted Work: Bashar channeled by Darryl Anka. Copyright 1984-2015. All Rights Reserved. From multiple event productions presented by Darryl Anka on dates ranging from 1984-2014. The copyrighted works can be found at www.basharstore.com/. [sic]

One furious blogger responded:

The claim is that my work is in fact copyrighted by “Bashar channeled by Darryl Anka.”  What?  I looked it up.  Darryl Anka believes that he is channeling information from a space alien from the future named Bashar that lives on a planet called Essassani via telepathy.  

Cool story bro.

What exactly is the legal basis for their claim? Maybe it has something to do with “ ” ?  Is that some kind of alien code?  Or did Tumblr just auto copy and paste the email they got including stray HTML garbage characters?

Now, are you ready for the punchline of all of this?

Tumblr complied with Bashar's request and took down the images and gifs.

Yes, you got it; a man who many believe to be either a swindler or a lunatic, who channels a platitude-spewing alien spirit from "300 light years in the future," is successfully launching a copyright infringement claim against people who have posted their own work, stating that it actually belongs to "Bashar."

I'm trying to think of something to say other than "What the actual fuck?", and failing entirely.

On the other hand, maybe Anka is on to something.  So allow me to make an announcement:

I am channeling an alien spirit, too.  His name is Gleebnorg, and he comes from the planet Thwonk in the third spiral arm of the Andromeda Galaxy.  And Gleebnorg is here to say that he gave Bill Gates the idea for Microsoft back in 1975, and is coming back to demand halvsies.  I mean, fair is fair.

Oh, and Gleebnorg says to tell you all that you're beautiful spirits, and have everything you need in your life to be happy.  More than you need, in fact, so you can unload some of the excess in his direction.

He takes cash, check, or electronic transfer.  Have a nice day.

The rising stars of American politics

I'm sure that many of you are wondering what's going to happen in the 2016 presidential election, likely to be a race between either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (for the Democrats) and whichever of the 2,781 people who have declared they're seeking the Republican nomination manages to come out ahead.  I can't get all that worked up about it, myself.  I've been through this process enough times that to me, most politics seems to boil down to "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."  And every time someone is elected and there are dire predictions by the opposition about what's going to result, what ends up happening is...

... pretty much what always happens in government.  Namely, bureaucratic gridlock.  For example, take all the hoopla about how Obama is going to repeal the Second Amendment and steal everyone's guns.  This has been a running theme of the anti-Obama cadre for what, seven years now?  And if you look around you, you'll find that everyone is as heavily armed as ever, and the Second Amendment is still firmly in place.

If Obama wants our guns, dude better get his ass in gear.  He's only got a little over a year left.

Now, I won't say that politics doesn't matter.  You can definitely see the situation in the Middle East having gone a different direction had the Bush administration not launched a war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, for example.  Whether it would have been better or worse is a matter of contention, but I don't think anyone can argue that it made a difference.

But that's the thing, isn't it?  Whoever gets elected, we still have the chaotic nature of world events to deal with, and the inherent unpredictability of how everyone's going to respond.  Add that to the treacle-like speed of progress in the halls of government, and it's no wonder that politics, when viewed from above, looks like a giant, extremely slow-moving pinball game.

[image courtesy of photographer Tom Arthur and the Wikimedia Commons]

Of course, that doesn't stop people from being curious about where things are going.  And I'm here to tell you today that you can relax.  It's all settled.  We know who's going to win in 2016.

Because the psychics have weighed in.

Three psychics were interviewed in The Washington Post, and gave their prognostications about the outcome of the election.  And because at this point they've got as much chance of being right as anyone else, I present to you: the results of the 2016 American presidential election.

First, we have the wisdom of "Angel Eyedealism," who has pink hair and says that astrology is "pseudoscience based upon two exact sciences."  Which should give you confidence right there that she knows what she's talking about.  And Ms. Eyedealism says that she drew up "natal charts" for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump, and in her opinion, Clinton is a shoo-in.

"Hillary has Jupiter in the ninth house, the house of politics, now, and it is heading to conjunct her M.C. [medium coeli, or "middle of the sky"]," Eyedealism said. "I'm getting goosebumps."

Ooh, me too!  I always feel that way when I get conjuncted by Jupiter!

Clinton's looking good in other respects, too.  "Jupiter has already conjuncted Pluto, so she has luck and power behind her, and it will conjunct Saturn, so she's serious...  She has luck and a motherfucking plan."

So that's pretty unequivocal.

Bush, on the other hand, doesn't have much going for him except that he got conjuncted by an asteroid, or something, which sounds kind of painful.  And Uranus is in his Eighth House, which apparently means people will be giving him money.  But otherwise, he's not showing up very well, astrologically.  Trump, on the other hand has a "trine," which means three planets making an equilateral triangle.  This is good, for some reason, but she still thinks he won't win.

And what about all of the other people who were born in New York City on the same day as Trump? the interviewer asked.  Why aren't they all filthy rich, running for president, and sporting a hairstyle that looks like they're wearing a roadkill possum on their heads?

"Remember, not everyone lives out the potential of their chart," Eyedealism said.  "We have choices.  Some people who could have been Donald Trump made choices not to be."

Which certainly seems like a good choice to me.

Then, we turn to Angelia Johnson, a numerologist.  "I have been a psychic professional healer and adviser for over 25 years," Johnson told the reporter, "and have now graduated to psychic matchmaking."

So you can see right away that she's completely qualified to select the next president of the United States.

And Johnson's also going for Clinton, even though Jeb Bush's "number is a three."  "Because he's a three, he's connecting with people mind, body and spirit," Johnson said.  "His heart chakra is viving."

Which sounds like maybe he should see a doctor.  

Chris Christie, on the other hand, has a third-eye chakra, and his number is a four.  Don't ask me why that's important, but Johnson would like to see a Clinton/Christie combo, not that that's likely.

Last, the reporter spoke with a Tarot card reader, Angela Lucy, who not only reads cards but is guided by the Archangel Michael.  "He's a big truth-sayer," Lucy says.  "No B.S. from Archangel Michael."

So right away, we're off to an authoritative start.  She did the Republican hopefuls first, or at least the top few, and found out that Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Donald Trump were "contenders," that Ben Carson was going to do "okay," and that there's something going on with Scott Walker's wife.  She didn't say what.  As far as the Democrats, she said that Clinton was in for some kind of emotional upset, and Sanders doesn't have the cojones (direct quote) to win.

So let's cut to the chase... who will win?  Lucy drew the "Wheel of Fortune" card, upside down.  Which means, "I get only a 10 percent chance and this card came upside down ... it means turning in reverse."

Whatever the fuck that means.

So in the end, we had two votes for Clinton, and one for things being up in the air.  I think we can all agree that this is a pretty definitive result, especially given that we cross-checked our results using not just one but two other methodologies.  That's how the scientific method works, right?

Me, I'm longing for the days when Pat Paulsen used to run for president.  Anyone my age will probably remember Paulsen, a comedian who threw his hat into the ring every presidential election between 1968 and 1996, and actually got votes every time from people whose attitude was "I'll vote for anyone but the clowns who are actually running."  We need someone with Paulsen's commitment to the process.  Someone with cojones.  Someone whose heart chakra is viving.  Someone who has trines in all of their asteroid conjunctions.

Someone who has a vision, who is clear-minded, and who knows exactly how to give us four more years of the same bureaucratic gridlock that has made America great since its founding.

Magical amulets vs. prayer beads

Back in 2012, the spells-and-charms crowd got their knickers in a twist over a decision by eBay to discontinue the selling of "paranormal services."

Even skeptics gave the policy change a wry eye, because although they prohibited the sale of spell-casting, they continued to allow the sale of spell books, crystal balls, amulets, and so on.  So the whole thing had more to do with potential wrangling over the return policy than it did with critical thinking, or frankly, with reality.

And just this week, another company has followed suit, putting in place a different curious double standard.  Etsy has declared a change in policy that prohibits the sale of items with purported magical powers.  The policy states:

In general, services are not allowed to be listed or sold on Etsy. There are a few exceptions noted below that are allowed as they produce a new, tangible, physical item.... Any metaphysical service that promises or suggests it will effect a physical change (e.g., weight loss) or other outcome (e.g., love, revenge) is not allowed, even if it delivers a tangible item.

Already, purveyors of crystals and candles for spells have been told that they can't sell their magical wares.  And vendors of such stuff are pretty pissed off.  One wrote:

The entire point of buying stones/herbs/oils is for their metaphysical effects in my community!  If I can't list these correspondences, then why would any witch/pagan buy them from my shop?  Witches and Pagans want to buy stones from people with knowledge about their magickal properties.

Righty-o.  Magick.  Which is, of course, different from magic.  I'm sure you can hear the significance of that final "k."

[image courtesy of photographer Thierry Baubet and the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, you may be wondering why a rationalist like myself isn't fist-pumping and saying "right on, Etsy!"  Seems like I'd be behind this 100%, doesn't it?  But I have to admit to some hesitation, because the new policy disallows goods that claim to have magical powers...

... while continuing to allow goods that claim to have Christian magical powers.

For example, take a look at the page for this St. Christopher medal, that can be yours for only $10, and which states the following:

This is a beautiful St. Christopher pendant that will look wonderful on your favorite necklace and will comfort you knowing that the Patron Saint of Safe Travels is taking care of your safety.  The medal measures 1" x 1" and reads "Saint Christopher Protect Us".  Backside is blank.  Chain is not included.

Okay, can someone explain to me how this is any different than selling an amethyst crystal whose quantum vibrational frequencies are supposed to bring you success in the romance department?  And making it clear that this wasn't just an oversight, consider what happened to one vendor of magic... um, magick:

I give the example of the seller who just this week was told to change the title of her listing from "Archangel Protection Spell Kit" to "Archangel Protection PRAYER Kit" by an Etsy rep.  A spell and a prayer are basically the same thing, putting an intention out into the Universe.

They're also basically the same thing in the sense that neither one works.  But of course, adding that to the policy would put Etsy directly in the firing line of Fox News, who are always casting about for more ammunition for their "war on Christianity" trope that they flog every single night.  So you can understand why the Etsy Board of Directors are taking a pass on this one.

But even so, I'm finding myself in the awkward position of siding with the witches.  Until someone can show me how a rosary is any different from a magic wand, I find it hard to defend selling one and prohibiting the other on the basis of its being a "tangible object... suggest(ing) a physical change or other outcome."

Anyhow, if you're selling your mystical charms and potions via Etsy, you might want to think about moving to a different outlet.  Or, conversely, you could simply cast a spell on the Board of Directors and get them to change their policy.  That'd sure show them.

The extraterrestrial pantheon

One of the things that perplexes me about woo-woo beliefs is how specific they can get.

You don't just think there's an afterlife, you have intricate details about what heaven and hell are like.  You're not just superstitious, you think putting an acorn in your window will keep your house from getting struck by lightning. You don't just have a belief that the positions of the stars and planets control your life, you believe that people who were born when Mars is in Aquarius tend to like phone sex.  (I'm not making this up.)

So I'm left thinking, "How do they know all of this?"  I can understand being generally prone to goofy beliefs; it's amazing what a combination of confirmation bias and wishful thinking will do.  What I don't understand is how you get from generalized woo-woo to having access to minuscule details.

Take, for example, the website that I was sent a couple of days ago by a reader of Skeptophilia.  Accompanied by a note that said, "Bet you thought there was just one!", I was given a link to site called "The Six Alien Species Currently Fighting for Control Over Earth," in which we find out that Earth is apparently the prize in a six-way extraterrestrial game of "Risk."

First, we have the Sirians, who supposedly helped the Egyptians and Mayans build the pyramids, and were also in contact with the "Atlanteans."  Because, you know, there's nothing like bringing in a fictional civilization to beef up your claims that Earth has been visited by aliens.  The Sirians, we hear, are a highly technological civilization that comes from "the Sirius B star system."

You'd think the "highly technological" part would be obvious, right?  I mean, if they've come here from Sirius, 8.6 light years away, they're not traveling in a horse-and-buggy.  But there's a problem with a civilization coming from Sirius B; Sirius B is a white dwarf, meaning that it is a stellar remnant left behind after the calamitous death of a red giant star.  Any planets that orbited Sirius B were fried long ago, and the tiny star left behind is of low enough luminosity that there's no way it would warm a planet's surface enough to sustain life, even if any life survived the initial cataclysm.

But we won't let little things like facts interfere.  Let's find out about the five other alien species, shall we?

Next we have the "Short Grays," made famous in the historical documentary Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and which are also known as "Zeta Reticulums."  Evidently because that's the star system they come from.  They are "the authors of most alien abductions" and have "telepathic abilities (that) allow them to constitute a type of hive mind consciousness."

Then we have the "Tall Grays," who of course are more powerful than the "Short Grays," presumably because they're taller.  They are "the ambassadors of most meetings between human and alien forces" and "are keen on developing a stable human-gray hybrid race," which I'm hoping that they're doing by genetic manipulation, because otherwise we're talking hot human/Tall Gray sex, and as open-minded as I like to think I am, that's just creepy.

Next, there's the Reptilians, who come from Alpha Draconis, in the constellation of Draco the Dragon.  Of course.  Because what a group of stars looked like to a bunch of ancient Greeks who had been hitting the ouzo clearly would affect the kinds of life that would evolve on the planets orbiting those stars.  Be that as it may, the Alpha Draconians are "14 to 22 feet tall... (w)eighing an estimated 1,800 pounds."  Which is pretty badass.  Also, they have "tails, or even wings," which makes me wonder if the author has actually seen one.  Because you'd think you would be clear on that point, right?

Then there are the "Native Reptilians."  Here's where things get even more confusing, because apparently these are shape-shifting scaly dudes who "have infiltrated almost all aspects of human life and hold positions of power," and "built the financial system and influence all religions."  But if they're natives to Earth, then they're not aliens, right?

Cf. what I said earlier about not letting facts get in the way.

Lastly, we have the Annunaki, who come from a galaxy they call "Illyuwn."  They're the ones who created us, apparently; "through genetic manipulation and in vitro fertilization," we're told, "they upgraded the genus Homo to sapiens quality."

Well, all I can say is, they did a pretty piss-poor job.  If a super-powerful alien species altered our DNA to become a superior race, and as a result we still have Donald Trump running for president, I think the Annunaki should go back to Illyuwn and let someone more capable take over.

So there you have it.  Our alien overlords.  And if you were laughing while reading this, and thinking, "How does this person know all of this?", well, so was I.  But maybe your laugh will sound a little hollow when you ask the same question about how people know that god wants guys to grow beards and have sideburns (Leviticus 19:27).  Because a lot of the bible seems to me to be extremely detailed information about what's going on in the mind of a deity that no one has ever seen.

But that's religion, and that's different than believing in super-powerful beings who live in the sky and control our destiny, right?

Of course, right.