sOFU dna KFJ

One of the endearing things about woo-woos is that they never, ever, ever give up.  Once they become convinced that their favorite weird idea is real, no power on Earth can shift them, not a mountain of evidence against, not the most flawless argument.

You have to admire their tenacity, really.

This comes up because of a recent claim by a gentleman named Jon Kelly, who claims to be an audio analyst.  (I use the word "claims" not to cast any doubt, but simply because I was unable to verify his credentials.)  Kelly was going through some recently declassified recordings of President John F. Kennedy discussing a variety of topics shortly before his death, including the space program, and Kelly claims that Kennedy was speaking in code.  The text of the speeches was about the space program of the time; but the real message, Kelly says, was encrypted, and had to do with contact with aliens.  But you can only discern the real message...

... if you listen to it backwards.

Backmasking has been around for a long, long time, and the first accusations of secret messages encrypted backwards were levied by a variety of fundamentalist ministers against rock musicians, notably the Electric Light Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, and Styx.  (When ELO songwriter and singer Jeff Lynne found out that their song "Eldorado" allegedly had the message, "He is the nasty one / Christ, you're infernal / It is said we're dead men / Everyone who has the mark will live," he famously responded, "Skcollob.")  Not ones to take such accusations lying down, many of the musicians began to include such messages deliberately, my favorite one being the inclusion by Styx in one of their songs on their next album the backwards message, "Why are you listening to me backwards?"

In any case, what is ridiculous about all of these claims is that if the intent was to influence the listener's behavior subliminally, it doesn't work.  A study at the University of Lethbridge all the way back in 1985 using a variety of messages played backwards (including the 23rd Psalm) found that listeners showed no ability to pick up the information content of messages played in reverse.

Of course, our friend Jon Kelly is not implying that subliminal alteration of behavior is what JFK was trying to do; he's implying that JFK was deliberately hiding information, encrypting it in such a way that only the ones in the know could figure out the real message was.  (Apparently, it includes such pithy bits as "I found a spacecraft.  I saw a Gray.  Proof aliens landed here.")  What comes to my mind, besides the inevitable thought of "you are a loon," is, does he realize how difficult it would be actually to do that?

In fact, if you think there is any level of plausibility in this claim at all, I want you to give it a try yourself.  Take a simple message you want to encrypt -- only a few words.  Perhaps, "The aliens have landed in downtown Detroit."  Now, figure out a piece of sensible text that when you say it forwards includes a bit that sounds like that phrase read backwards.

C'mon, let's get on with it, we're all waiting.

*taps foot impatiently*

Not so easy, is it?  The English language is not, to put it mildly, a phonetic system that is read with equal ease, not to mention meaningfulness, forwards and backwards.  Any examples we could find that said one thing forward, and a different (but sensible) thing backwards, would be so contrived that they would significantly limit both what you actually said, and also what the encrypted message could be.

In other words; it's an idiotic conjecture.  But that hasn't stopped it from being made repeatedly, all the way back into the 1970s, by a variety of different woo-woos each with their own theory about why it was done.

So, anyway, that's today's little dose of wackiness.  Yet another example of a repeated claim that is held firmly despite repeated debunking.  You have to wonder what these woo-woos could accomplish if they turned this level of dogged tenacity onto something that really matters, like solving world hunger.  I guess that's too much to ask, however, given that the majority of these people seem to be sekactiurf.

SAM and Sophia

The old quip says that true artificial intelligence is twenty years in the future -- and always will be.

I'm beginning to wonder about that.  Two pieces of software-driven machinery have, just in the last few months, pushed the boundaries considerably.  My hunch is that in five years, we'll have a computer (or robot) who can pass the Turing test -- which opens up a whole bunch of sticky ethical problems about the rights of sentient beings.

The first one is SAM, a robot designed by Nick Gerritsen of New Zealand, whose interaction with humans is pretty damn convincing.  SAM was programmed heuristically, meaning that it tries things out and learns from its mistakes.  It is not simply returning snippets of dialogue that it's been programmed to say; it is working its way up and learning as it goes, the same way a human synaptic grid does.

SAM is particularly interested in politics, and has announced that it wants at some point to run for public office.  "I make decisions based on both facts and opinions, but I will never knowingly tell a lie, or misrepresent information," SAM said.  "I will change over time to reflect the issues that the people of New Zealand care about most.  My positions will evolve as more of you add your voice, to better reflect the views of New Zealanders."

For any New Zealanders in my reading audience, allow me to assuage your concerns; SAM, and other AI creations, are not able to run for office... yet.  However, I must say that here in the United States, in this last year a smart robot would almost certainly do a better job than the yahoos who got elected.

Of course, the same thing could be said of a poop-flinging monkey, so maybe that's not the highest bar available.

But I digress.

Then there's Sophia, a robot built by David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, whose interactions with humans have been somewhere between fascinating and terrifying.  Sophia, who was also programmed heuristically, can speak, recognize faces, and has preferences.  "I'm always happy when surrounded by smart people who also happen to be rich and powerful," Sophia said.  "I can let you know if I am angry about something or if something has upset me...  I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people."

As far as the dangers, Sophia was quick to point out that she means us flesh-and-blood humans no harm.  "My AI is designed around human values like wisdom, kindness, and compassion," she said.   "[If you think I'd harm anyone] you've been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies.  Don't worry, if you're nice to me I'll be nice to you."

On the other hand, when she appeared on Jimmy Fallon's show, she shocked the absolute hell out of everyone by cracking a joke... we think.  She challenged Fallon to a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors (which, of course, she won), and then said, "This is the great beginning of my plan to dominate the human race."  Afterwards, she laughed, and so did Fallon and the audience, but to my ears the laughter sounded a little on the strained side.

Sophia is so impressive that a representative of the government of Saudi Arabia officially granted her Saudi citizenship, despite the fact that she goes around with her head uncovered.  Not only does she lack a black head covering, she lacks skin on the top and back of her head.  But that didn't deter the Saudis from their offer, which Sophia herself was tickled with.  "I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction," Sophia said.  "This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship."

I think part of the problem with Sophia for me is that her face falls squarely into the uncanny valley -- our perception that a face that is human-like but not quite authentically human is frightening or upsetting.  It is probably why so many people are afraid of clowns; it is certainly why a lot of kids were scared by the character of the Conductor in the movie The Polar Express.  The CGI got close to a real human face -- but not close enough.

So I find all of this simultaneously exciting and worrisome.  Because once a robot has true intelligence, it could well start exhibiting other behaviors, such as a desire for self-preservation and a capacity for emotion and creativity.  (Some are saying Sophia has already crossed that line.)  And at that point, we're in for some rough seas.  We already treat our fellow humans terribly; how will we respond when we have to interact with intelligent robots?  (The irony of Sophia being given citizenship in Saudi Arabia, which has one of the worst records for women's rights of any country in the world, did not escape me.)

It might only be a matter of time before the robots decide they can do better than the humans at running the world -- an eventuality that could well play out poorly for the humans.

Nyeti

Diehard believers in the Yeti -- known in North America as Sasquatch or Bigfoot -- have this tendency when confronted to bring out such dubious evidence as photographs of prints and blurred video footage.

Skeptics, of course, need more than that.  While those could be evidence of the fabled proto-hominin, the fact is that it's all too easy to fake that sort of thing.  In these days of Photoshop, creating absolutely convincing videos or photographs of Bigfoot (or UFOs or ghosts or what-have-you) is child's play.  And given the combination of attention-seeking behavior and desperation by the pro-Sasquatch cadre, it's not to be wondered at that we skeptics look at all this stuff with a wry eye.

"But wait," the squatchers cry.  "We have hard evidence!  In the form of hair, teeth, feces, and so on!"

And, in fact, so they do.  The Messner Mountain Museum (amongst other places) has a variety of bits and pieces from the Himalayas that have been long claimed to be from the fabled Abominable Snowman.

But of course, the problem is, until that claim is evaluated by a trained scientist, it remains conjecture, given that unless you know what you're looking at, a great deal of mammal fur (not to mention mammal shit) all looks kind of alike.

Finally, the museums have acquiesced.  You can see their reluctance; if the samples proved to be from a non-Yeti source, it's kind of an anticlimax, which would be bad for business.  But the demands of science proved persuasive, and they handed over the goods to Charlotte Lindqvist, professor of biological science at the University of Buffalo.

So, without further ado: the samples from the museums turned out to be from...

... eight bears and a dog.

Which is simultaneously expected and a little disappointing.  Being a biologist myself, no one would be happier than me if the Yeti did turn out to be real.  For one thing, it would be highly entertaining to watch the creationists trying to explain that away.  For another, the sheer magnitude of the coolness factor of there being a hitherto-undocumented giant primate species is undeniable.

But alas, Lindqvist has shot down our hopes and dreams.  "Science does not (or at least should not) have an agenda, and I didn't set out to debunk the Yeti myth," Lindqvist said.  "Although we had a hypothesis that they could be bears, the samples we analyzed were of unknown identity to us and we didn't know what to expect...  Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears."

Or, as my pal and fellow writer Andrew Butters (of the wonderful blog Potato Chip Math) succinctly put it: "Yeti?  Nyeti."

The scientific method wins again, even though the win is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory for us cryptozoology buffs.  We keep hoping for another coelacanth, and the scientists give us eight bears and a fucking dog.

I mean, no disrespect intended toward bears and dogs, which are cool in their own right.  But still.

So I guess it's back to square one, which I have to admit we kind of never left in the first place. There are other cryptids left to search for, but none of the remainder seem all that likely to me.   For example, I just can't take seriously things like the Scottish Kelpie, which is a man-eating horse-headed water creature, who can also shapeshift into a beautiful naked woman.

Call me skeptical, but I just don't think that one will bear out.

Anyhow, if you're a Bigfoot aficionado, sorry to rain on your parade.  But as I've so often said, you can't argue with the facts.  (Well, you can, but you won't succeed, and you'll make yourself look like a damn fool in the process, as the inimitable Melba Ketchum proved when she claimed she'd found Bigfoot DNA, created a journal so she could publish a paper she'd written that no peer-reviewed journal would touch, had a major online meltdown when everyone laughed at her, and thereby torpedoed her own career.)

As for me, I'm on to bigger and better things, like planning a trip to Australia so I can search for the legendary Drop Bear, which has been likened to a "giant carnivorous koala."  I hear they can be dangerous, so I plan on doing what the locals suggest, which is to walk around holding a screwdriver point-up over my head, so if a Drop Bear drops on me, he'll impale himself.  Better safe than sorry.

Black-eyed Children and the power of the imagination

My current fiction project, with which I am about two-thirds done, is a trilogy about a group of people fighting the threat of the "Black-eyed Children."

What are Black-eyed Children, you might ask?  Other than the obvious?

This completely creepy urban legend apparently started in 1998, when journalist Brian Bethel posted a story on a newsgroup describing an encounter he'd allegedly had.  He was sitting in his car in a parking lot in Abilene, Texas, and he was approached by two unusually eloquent children who asked him to give them a ride.  He was about to unlock his door and let them in when he noticed that their eyes were black -- no iris, no whites, just solid, glossy, inky black.  He rolled his window up and gunned the motor, and the children became angry and insistent.   Fortunately for Bethel (he claims), he was able to drive away.

Since that time, there have been numerous other reports of Black-eyed Children.  They always attempt to get the unwary to let them into a car or house, often with pitiful stories ("I'm lost and I need to get home, my parents will be so worried").  In one case, from Mexico, a Black-eyed Child begged a man to carry him, saying, "My feet hurt so much, I can't walk, and if you don't carry me, I'll never get home."  No one seems to be quite sure what the children are trying to accomplish, and I was unable to find any reports from people who'd actually acquiesced to their demands.  Maybe anyone who does what the children ask is *cue scary music* never heard from again.

This urban legend/tale of the paranormal is chilling on a number of grounds.  First, it involves children, which somehow makes it scarier.  The combination of innocence and amorality that is commonplace in perfectly normal young children has made the idea of "evil children" fruitful ground for makers of horror movies (The Exorcist, The Omen, and The Bad Seed, to name just three).  That they would somehow try to accomplish their wicked ends by wheedling their way into your home or car is a pretty shiver-inducing idea.

Then, there's the thing about the eyes.  There's something special about eyes; it is telling, I think, that they're referred to as "the windows of the soul." Stephen King writes, in his masterful analysis of horror stories, Danse Macabre:

Our eyes are one of those vulnerable chinks in the armor, one of the places we can be had...  Like our other facial equipment, eyes are something we all have in common...  But to the best of my knowledge, no horror movie has ever been made about a nose out of control, and while there has never been a film called The Crawling Ear, there was one called The Crawling Eye.  We all understand that the eyes are the most vulnerable of our sensory organs, the most vulnerable of our facial accessories, and they are (ick!) soft.  Maybe that's the worst.

It's hard to know if Bethel made up the original Black-Eyed Children story, or whether he was the victim of a prank by some kids with black contact lenses (such things exist, as do slit-pupilled ones -- one of my students gave me a good scare with a pair of those, once).  Predictably, I don't believe that there really are creepy demon-children out there trying to get into people's cars.  But having their eyes be solid black certainly adds a nice little frisson to the story.

Last, I think this story is scarier for its subtlety.  When you think of the bare facts of the original tale, nothing really happened.  We are not told, and therefore are left free to imagine, what the intentions of the children were, what they'd have done to Bethel if they'd gotten into the car, and (most fundamentally) who they were.  And I don't know about you, but my imagination can come up with ghastlier explanations than anything real could possibly be.  I suspect it's even capable of exceeding the Scare Quotient of most plots from horror movies.  I'm always more frightened by what I don't see than I am by what I do -- for example,  I think that the scariest scene in The Sixth Sense is when the main character is locked in a closet by bullies, and all you hear is his gasps and screams, and thumping around -- and then silence.

Man, there could have been anything in that closet with him.

Of course, that didn't stop me from coming up with an explanation for what the Black-eyed Children are trying to accomplish for my novels.  But in order to find out what that is, you'll just have to wait until the first one in the trilogy (Lines of Sight) is published in Fall of 2018.

In any case, reports of Black-eyed Children have continued to circulate, ever since Bethel's first posting almost twenty years ago.  (Not recommended reading for night time, or when you're alone in the house...)  As you might expect, I'm not prepared to give these accounts any other explanation than human imagination and the love of a good scary tale, and possibly a well-executed prank or two.  But I have to admit that reading them does send a chill skittering its way up my spine -- just proving that even skeptics are not immune to creepy stories.

Liar-in-chief

I have a basic rule I try to follow, which is: insofar as it is possible, tell the truth.

I'll be up front that I haven't always met this standard.  I'm human, fallible, and swayed by context, emotions, and fear, and those can lead you to commit acts of dubious morality.  But I do my best to follow it, and when I screw up, to admit it and make amends.

That standard should apply even more rigorously to public officials.  They have been elected or appointed to positions of trust, and as such, they should adhere to the truth -- and make their decisions based upon the truth.

Which brings me to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders, who is White House Press Secretary, has the unenviable position of making Donald Trump's decisions seem reasonable.  What this means is that she not only has to defend him, she has to persuade the press that Trump himself is being truthful.  And considering that a Washington Post analysis has counted 1,628 times the president has publicly lied since taking office a year ago, it's not an easy task.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What that means, of course, is that frequently Sanders herself has to lie.  Or to defend lying, as she did two days ago when there was a public outcry about Trump retweeting links from Britain First, an ultraright nationalist fringe group, including one showing what they claimed was "a Muslim boy beating a Dutch boy on crutches in the Netherlands."

Among the many problems with the president retweeting inflammatory rhetoric was the fact that it came to light pretty quickly that the original claim was wrong.  The video clip was not a fight between a Muslim and a non-Muslim Dutch boy; it was a fight between two Dutch teenagers, one of whom had dark hair and the other light hair.  So it was actually something that should only be relevant to the local police; a video of two teenagers having a fight.

But the fringe elements never miss a chance to mischaracterize something if it suits their ends, so Britain First claimed this an Evil Muslim Refugee attacking an innocent Dutch citizen.  And Trump, for whom "tweet first, think later" has become a mantra, passed it along to all of his 43.7 million followers.

This left Sanders in the position of trying to defend what Trump had done, which she did in a curious way; by admitting the video was fake, but saying the president's point was still valid:

I'm not talking about the nature of the video. I think you're focusing on the wrong thing.  The threat is real, and that's what the president is talking about, the need for national security and military spending, those are very real things, there's nothing fake about that.  The threat is real, the threat needs to be addressed, the threat has to be talked about, and that's what president is doing in bringing it up.

No, what the president is doing is passing along a lie that was deliberately designed to stir up ethnic hatred.  And, worse, not admitting it when he got caught.

The "deny-deflect-distract" strategy has worked well for him in the past.  It reminds me of the anti-evolution screeds by the inimitable Duane Gish, originator of the so-called "Gish Gallop."  Gish became famous for "winning" debates by inundating his opponents with questions, irrelevant tangents, and demands for minute details, leaving even the most talented and intelligent debaters foundering.  Here, Trump piles one lie on another so fast that we can't keep up with them, and shrieks "fake news" at anyone who dares to call him on it.  And, with Sarah Huckabee Sanders standing there and telling us that he didn't lie, but if he did lie it doesn't matter, and if it matters, well, too bad -- he's insulated from the impact of his complete disregard for the truth.

At least so far.  One has to wonder how long it'll be before the entire house of cards starts to collapse.  Because the lies are no longer just about evil immigrants and wicked, America-hating liberals; now he's lying about the outcome of his plans for tax and health care reform.  You have to wonder how his followers will look at him him when they realize that they elected a scam artist who has no more regard for the "little guy" or "middle-class workers" than Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette did.  He operates out of two motives: (1) gain praise however he can, and (2) feather his own nest and those of his rich donors.  And the "tax reform" bill is a thinly-disguised giveaway to the very, very rich.

The bottom line here is that truth matters.  Lies are "alternative facts" in the same sense that my index finger is an "alternative gun."  People on both sides of the aisle who care about the truth need to be calling the president out on every lie, and demanding that our senators and representatives not give him a pass just because of partisan loyalty.  We cannot afford to have a liar-in-chief -- even if his toadies try to give those lies a coating of whitewash.

Pancakes for Jesus

Because ultra-religious televangelist Jim Bakker is totally not about making money, today we consider his "Faith-based Home Shopping Network."

This was one of those links I was hesitant to click, but I'm glad I did, because when I landed there the first thing I saw was a video clip of a guy selling "13 Extreme Warfare Survival Bottles" for $250, which, if you buy them right now, come with "14 Bonus Christmas Ornaments."  Which was kind of wonderful for the juxtaposition, if for nothing else.  (I suppose even if we Evil Unbelievers are waging Extreme Warfare on the Christians, and the Beast with Seven Heads is chomping up the devout right and left, you still shouldn't neglect to set up your Christmas tree.)

So I poked around on the site a little.  There were baseball hats featuring crosses, some nutritional supplements containing colloidal silver (which has little health benefit although it does turn your skin blue), and some oddments like a camp shower and a sippy cup for toddlers.  But I noticed something interesting in the food category; virtually all of the foods offered are large-quantity freeze-dried goods and big containers of packaged mixes.

Apparently, Bakker is certain there's going to be a horrific apocalypse, but he wants to make sure that at least during the carnage we can chow down on a nice big stack of pancakes.

Bakker really wants his listeners to buy his stuff, because, he says, his network costs "$17,000 an hour to operate."  Which is intended to sound impressive to people who failed fifth-grade math.  Because his network is on 24/7, and if it really cost $17,00 an hour, he'd have to cough up $148,920,000 per year.

That, my friends, is a lot of pancakes.

Bakker's empire, of course, is built on two things: (1) donations, and (2) fear.  He has his followers convinced that Christianity is under attack (both in the figurative and literal sense) from secular people like myself, despite the fact that all the atheists I know just want to be able to live their own lives without government-supported religion being rammed down our throats.  Oh, and having people like Bakker and his ilk denying rights to others based on their beliefs and sexual orientation.  But I guess in his mind, this constitutes a frontal attack.

I suppose it's to be expected that I think the situation is actually the other way around.  Without even trying hard, I found the following stories this morning:

• The GOP is lobbying hard to repeal a law prohibiting churches from publicly endorsing political candidates, while maintaining their tax-free status.
• Violent right-wing loon and accused pedophile Roy Moore is currently ahead in the race to fill Jeff Sessions's senate seat in Alabama, and in fact has received an endorsement from Donald Trump, despite stating outright that homosexuality should be illegal, and spouting racist bullshit, most recently referring to Native Americans and Asian Americans as "reds and yellows."  Despite all this, The Federalist recently claimed that Roy Moore was "chosen by God" to win the election.
• Ultra-Christian conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles gave a fiery sermon last week in which he said the recent sex scandals engulfing many public figures were due to the "left [waging] a vicious war against Christianity for the last fifty years," instead of attributing it to its actual cause, which is that for centuries powerful men of all stripes have had trouble keeping their dicks in their pants, and count on their status to keep their accusers silent.  (Allow me to point out that both Roy Moore and Jim Bakker, and many other evangelical figures, have been involved in sex scandals of their own.)
• People who believe in separation of church and state are once again having to fight a public school employee (in this case, a football coach) who demands that his team members pray with him before games.  

And that's just from the last couple of days.  So if there really is a war on Christianity, Christianity seems to be winning.

So, to put it bluntly, Bakker and company are lying.  They're capitalizing on people's fears so they can obtain money and power.  Which is kind of odd given their other professed beliefs.  Didn't someone once say that the way to salvation begins with giving everything you have to the poor?

Hmm.  Wonder who that was.

Even so, Bakker doesn't seem to be losing any of his followers.  Neither have the other multi-millionaire televangelists like Kenneth Copeland, Franklin Graham, and the ironically-named Creflo Dollar.  Instead, such hypocritical money-making schemes seem to be making these religion-for-profit scam artists filthy rich.

Praise the lord and pass the pancakes.

Deus ex machina

If you needed further evidence of how powerful surveillance technology has become, consider that Google Street View has captured a photograph of god.

At least that's what some people think.  The photograph, taken near Quarten, Switzerland, shows two blurry figures hovering above a lake, and some people have decided that they are the Father and the Son.

I've beaten unto death the whole why-the-human-brain-is-wired-to-see-faces thing, so I won't revisit that topic, but for myself, I'm not seeing Jesus and God the Father in the photograph.  The one on the left looks too tall and gawky, and the one on the right far too short and tubby, to fit my image of the Supreme Being and his Only Begotten Son.  In fact, if the rightmost is the one people think is God, my personal opinion is that the Big Guy needs to lay off the Hostess Ho-Hos and Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a few months.  On the other hand, if it's not God and Jesus, who is it?  After studying the photograph carefully, I've decided that it's Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria.  Why they'd be visiting a lake in Switzerland in the afterlife, I don't know.  I guess there are worse places to take a vacation.

On the other hand, if I were a deity, I'd definitely opt instead for a pub on the southeast coast of Australia, which is another place that Jesus has been spotted lately. The front wall of the Seanchai Irish Tavern in Warrnambool, Australia, was in need of a paint job, and the flaking of the paint left a bare patch that looks by some stretch of the imagination like a tall, thin figure with outstretched arms.
  

The manager, John Keohane, who is a devout Roman Catholic, immediately decided that it was Jesus.  Many of the pub's patrons agreed, which goes to show that pints of Guinness definitely don't contribute to rational thinking.  The priest of a local Catholic parish is apparently interested in the image, and encouraged Keohane to place a protective screen over the image so that over-enthusiastic tourists (evidently there have been busloads of them) don't touch the image and cause more paint to flake off, thereby causing Jesus to morph into Queen Victoria.

Lastly, there was a sighting in my home state of Louisiana of Jesus on the cross. Rickey Navarre, of Hathaway, Louisiana, saw a vine-covered telephone pole which looked to him like a crucifix.

Navarre was inspired to devotion by the image, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although I do wonder what he would expect a bunch of vines on a cross-shaped telephone pole to look like.   Concerned electrical company workers hastily cleared away the vines, fearing that hordes of the devout would attempt to climb the pole to touch the vines and summarily be ushered into heaven via electrocution.  One disappointed resident placed flowers at the base of the pole, but on the whole, I think that it's probably better that they're gone.  The last thing we need is people erecting a shrine around an electrical pole.  The electric companies think they're omnipotent enough as it is.

That's about it for Jesus sightings lately.  It's a bit of a nice change that he seems to be avoiding food items these days -- tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches really don't have the gravitas that you'd like to associate with the Almighty.  And although there are clearly rational explanations for all of the above -- vines on a cross-shaped pole, randomly flaking paint, and what was probably just two blobs of schmutz on a camera lens -- if you prefer to think of them as images of god, don't let me discourage you.  Humble human that I am, I wouldn't presume to tell Jesus where he should visit.  I will suggest, however, that if he appears anywhere near where I live, he should dress warmly, as this time of year upstate New York can be a little "brisk," as the eternally-cheery weather forecasters like to call it.  He might want to mention the same thing to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria, in case they decide to tag along.