Time's up

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about some people who allegedly time traveled back here from as far away as the 95th century, which is pretty impressive until you listen to what they actually say (my post includes links to YouTube videos, if you're interested), at which point you are driven to the conclusion that the whole lot of them are loons.

That assessment, of course, is insufficient to get said loons to shut up and sit down, nor apparently to get people to stop believing them.  So today we have:

A time traveler who says another time traveler is responsible for 9/11.

I ran into the story over at Mysterious Universe, in an article by Paul Seaburn.  Seaburn, fortunately, seems as simultaneously amused and mystified by the claim as I am, which is reassuring.  But the guy in the YouTube video (of course he's also in a YouTube video), who says his name is Michael Phillips (born in 2043), is pretty unequivocal about the foul-ups, potential and otherwise, that have been caused by people leaping into the past and messing about with things.  Phillips says:

Another time traveller from, I think it was 2038, he came back, his name was Titor.  He came back to 2000, I do believe, and he thankfully stopped a civil war in America which was supposed to kick off in 2008…  It was decided that America needed a single unifying event to bring the country together and to revert a civil war – and that event was 9/11…  He did change the timeline so the civil war in 2008 didn’t happen.

The person he's referring to is John Titor, a name that showed up on various online sites in 2000 and 2001, and who claimed to be a US soldier from Tampa, Florida, who had jumped back here from the year 2036.  So at least Phillips is citing a real time travel claim, which is one up from what most of these wingnuts do.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But citing a claim is a far cry from showing that it's the truth.  And in the case of Titor, there were a variety of problems that cropped up, problems that Phillips decided it wasn't prudent to mention, so I will:

• None of Titor's predictions came true.  He, for example, said there was going to be a civil war on US soil in 2004, and I remember 2004 quite clearly and do not recall a war.  I'm pretty sure I would have been aware of it had it happened.
• He was pretty dismissive of the people back then.  "Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret.  No one likes you in the future.  This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep.  Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that."  Of course, I really can't find much to argue with about this statement. 
• Also in his favor, he said, "I did not come back here expecting to be believed."  So at least he had that part taken care of.
• The biggest problem, though, was that research by investigative reporters in 2009 showed pretty conclusively that Titor was a hoax perpetrated by two brothers, Larry and John Haber.  So the fact that Titor seems not to exist kind of punches a hole into the claim that Michael Phillips came back here to protect us from him.

Be that as it may, Phillips has his own dire predictions about our future:

I do want to tell you about North Korea because they do attempt to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States – that happens later on this year in late 2018.  Hopefully we can change the timeline so it doesn’t happen.  That’s a partial reason for creating this video...  North Korea does attempt to attack a US territory – that’s what I’ll call it – in response the US sends two cruise missiles laden with nuclear tips.  Two of those to Pyongyang.  Unfortunately what happens as a result of this nuclear exchange, in 2019 World War Three does happen.  It kicks off.  It wasn’t an unlimited war – nowhere near the scale of World War One or World War Two, however, I have to try and stop it from happening. I don’t want people to die.

So then why doesn't he time-travel back to before Kim Jong-Un was born and give his dad a condom, or something?  Isn't that kind of thing supposed to be what time travelers are good at?

If that wasn't bad enough news, Phillips also said that Donald Trump would be reelected in 2020, and would be succeeded in 2024 by someone named "Michael McIntosh."  Whoever that is.  Oh, in 2022 an earthquake measuring 10.2 on the Richter Scale will hit Los Angeles and level it completely.  Then California will sink into the ocean or something.  Honestly, at that point I kind of stopped listening.

Anyway, there you have it.  Time travelers trying to foil other time travelers.  I probably shouldn't criticize; that's the basic idea of my novel Lock & Key.

Of course, it bears mentioned that there's that little word posted on the spine:

"Fiction."

Vinegar cure

There's a single question that can keep us honest with respect to many aspects of life, and that question is: "How do I know this is true?"

It only works, of course, if you answer it honestly, and are willing to consider the possibility that you could be wrong.  If all you do is say, "Because of _____" (fill in the blank with your favorite combination of: the bible, Fox News, a political commentator, a famous actor or actress, a claim I ran into on the internet), and forthwith cease thinking about it, you haven't gotten very far.

A friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link that was a good illustration of this principle, or more accurately, the kind of nonsense you can fall for if you don't apply it.  The link was to an article over at the site The Limitless Minds, called, "Leave A Glass Of Salt Water And Vinegar To Detect Negative Energies In Your Home."

Starting out with my pet peeve over the way woo-woos use words like "energy" (and frequency, and quantum, and resonance, and vibration, and on and on ad nauseam).  But fortunately for us, the author, Matteo Light, defines what he means right away:

This may seem a little weird at first, but it’s possible to have a reservoir of negative energy trapped in your home.  And by negative energy, I mean emotional energy that comes from humans.  It could be there from past tenants or homeowners, or from a year ago when you and your spouse were fighting a lot.

Once again, the principle applies: how do you know this "negative energy" exists?  Have you detected it on a Negative Energy-o-Meter?

No, apparently not.  In fact, the next thing Light does is criticize the scientists who would even expect such a thing:

Traditionally, science doesn’t like things it can’t touch, measure, or put into a tiny jar on the shelf to examine. 

Eventually, scientists discovered forces that exist in the world that are invisible.  One of those things is energy in its many expressions.  We usually can’t see it, but sometimes we can feel it.

How ridiculous, only believing in things for which you have evidence.  If you can imagine.

But Light says we do have evidence; a "feeling."  All you need, I suppose.

Then we're given the one fleeting nod to any kind of experimental support -- but he pulls out the tired old "nice words -- pretty ice crystals, mean words -- ugly ice crystals" research by Dr. Masaru Emoto, that has become the basis of every Quantum Resonant Vibrations of Love claim ever since.  I won't do a takedown of Emoto's claims here -- Dr. Steven Novella over at NeuroLogica did a thorough job of that in November of last year -- but I will mention two relevant points:

• Emoto could only claim to be a doctor because he got a Ph.D. from the Open International University of Alternative Medicine, a known diploma mill that requires no coursework whatsoever.
• His ice crystals experiments have been replicated dozens, possibly hundreds, of times, and in every case where there were appropriate controls, have generated uniformly negative results.

So we're already on mighty shaky ground, but Light soldiers on ahead to tell us what we can do to combat these invisible, undetectable "negative energies," presumably so that the ice cubes in our freezer don't form ugly shapes or something.

We are, he says, to put two tablespoons of white vinegar and two teaspoons of granulated salt into sixteen ounces of filtered water, mix it together, and put it somewhere that you'll be near.  Leave it for a day.  Once the salt has "stopped rising," it's collected all the negative energy it can, and you should move it to somewhere else in the house to de-negativize that room, too.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And I'm thinking: that's it?  How do you know that?  Did you look at the water, vinegar, and salt mixture after sitting there for a day, and decide that it seemed unhappy?  Did getting near the negative-energy-saturated water give you quantum fluctuations in your chakras or something?  But of course, we're never told why we should believe this works, or even what specifically it supposedly accomplishes.  All we're told is that we should rely on our feelings, and that'll be enough.

Well, I'm sorry, but that isn't enough in science.  Scoffing about how scientists like to be able to measure stuff (or put it in a tiny jar on the shelf, as the mood strikes) ignores the fact that when it comes to establishing the truth of a claim, science is kind of the only game in town.

Of course, the claim also raises some more prosaic questions, such as: does it have to be a particular, dedicated salt-vinegar-water mixture, or will any old salt-vinegar-water mixture do?  If the latter, then why don't our houses get de-negativized by, say, a jar of pickles?  This'd be a little worrisome, though, because the contention is that the negative energies get absorbed by the liquid, so there you'd be, raiding the refrigerator hoping for a nice half-sour, and instead you'd get the Fearsome Negative Pickle Spear of Doom.

So predictably, I'm unimpressed.  I'll just stick with whatever negative energies are hanging around my house.  Thus far, they haven't bothered me any.  Also, I have a container of salt and a bottle of white vinegar in a cabinet in my kitchen, and there's no reason they can't do their thing as is.

A vote for fraud

Yesterday morning when I was reading the news, I saw a story that induced me to use say some very bad words, that for the benefit of my more sensitive readers I will leave to your imagination.

The story that generated that result appeared in The Guardian, and the gist is that disgraced British doctor and anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield is campaigning hard for an anti-vaxxer running for the Republican nomination for a seat in the Texas State House of Representatives.

Wakefield, you may remember, is the man who is virtually solely responsible for the completely unfounded claim that there is a link between vaccines and autism.  The British Medical Journal posted an editorial in 2011 that did not mince words; the title is, "Wakefield’s Article Linking MMR Vaccine and Autism Was Fraudulent."  If that's not unequivocal enough, the editorial begins with the line, "Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare."

That should have been that.  That would have been that if it weren't for the fact that being caught red-handed engaging in scientific fraud didn't induce Wakefield to do what a normal human being would do in that situation, namely to admit what he'd done and retreat in disarray.  No, after the release of the paper calling him out on his fraudulent pseudo-research, Wakefield and his followers denied it -- and claimed that the doctors who wrote the paper were shills being paid by Big Pharma (which is up there with Monsanto as a stand-in for Satan) to shut down his research to protect their profits.

And the anti-vaxxer movement is still growing.  As is recurrence of dangerous and completely preventable diseases, such as the measles outbreak that happened in Wakefield's adopted home state of Texas this January.  But Wakefield evidently decided that this wasn't damage on a sufficiently large scale, so he's trying to ramrod his foolish and discredited ideas into the state legislature, so he can enshrine his false claims into law.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Wakefield is completely up front on what he's trying to do, and how he's trying to do it.  Rather than believe the scientists and the peer-reviewed studies, he says, you should trust social media instead:

Social media has evolved, as a general comment, has evolved beautifully.  It has provided an alternative to the failings of mainstream media...  In this country, it’s become so polarized now… No one knows quite what to believe.  So, people are turning increasingly to social media.

To say this makes me furious is something of an understatement.  Distrust of intellectuals in general and scientists in particular is widespread, and that is reflected in the people we've elected.  We already have a president who is a climate change denier and more than one governor and congressperson who believe that the six-day biblical creation story is supported by science and therefore should be taught in public school classrooms.  The last thing we need is more people in positions of power who deny science in favor of their own biases and/or delusions -- and who rely on getting their information from Facebook and Twitter.

Jinny Suh, an Austin mom and activist who is attempting to counter Wakefield's message, highlights how difficult this approach is to fight.  "The biggest challenge we face is," Suh said, "if you go onto Facebook or Google and you do a search for vaccines – and we can imagine a lot of new moms do this… the anti-vaxx stuff out there outnumbers the pro-vaxx stuff by quite a bit.  It doesn’t matter how you started out thinking about the topic, when a person is inundated with that much misinformation a person can’t help but start to think it’s true."

Which is why it's so important to get the message out there, and speak plainly.  Wakefield is a proven fraud.  He continues to lie about this and to claim that the evidence against him was falsified or cherry-picked or means something other than it does.  There is zero evidence that vaccination causes autism or any of the other horrible side-effects that he and others like him claim.  Admittedly, there have been side-effects from vaccines; no medical treatment is completely risk-free.  But they are extremely infrequent, usually mild, and temporary.

And what you get in exchange is immunity against diseases that as little as 75 years ago, used to kill huge numbers of children and young adults.  I've related before that my paternal grandfather's two eldest sisters -- Aimée-Marie and Anne-Désée -- died at the ages of 21 and 18, respectively, of complications from measles, after being completely healthy up until that time.

Wakefield is not just wrong, he's dangerous.  We do not need more anti-science voices amongst our leaders.  I don't know what the chances are for his candidate to win the nomination, but I fear that this kind of unfounded rhetoric has still not reached its peak.

Tying god's hands

Today, for what must be the tenth time, I saw the following image posted on social media:

The people who posted it apparently decided for some reason that it was acceptable to use the tragic murder of seventeen innocent people to lob some snark at the atheists, secularists, and others who believe in the separation of church and state.  But what I want to address here is the toxicity of the mindset behind the message -- apart from what would spur someone to think that this is an appropriate time to post it (and truthfully, I can't think of an appropriate time to post it).

First, I thought y'all were the ones who believed that god was everywhere, was omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and omni-what-have-you.  What you're implying here is that a handful of people who think religion has no place in a public, taxpayer-funded institution have somehow overpowered an all-powerful god's ability to do anything to stop a crazed gunman.  (Probably explaining why the Florida State Legislature, having decided to do fuck-all about gun law reform, has decided instead to pursue a bill requiring "In God We Trust" to be posted in public schools statewide.)

So we're already on some shaky theological grounds, but it gets worse.  What the above message suggests is that somehow, god's attitude is, "if you won't pray in schools, innocent children deserve to die."  That given the choice of using his Miraculous God Powers to stop a massacre, he just stood there smirking and afterwards said, "See?  Told you something like this would happen if you didn't worship me all the time and everywhere.  Sorry, but my hands were tied."

Me, I think any deity that acts like this is a monster, not an all-loving beneficent creator.  That said, it's entirely consistent with the depiction of the Lord of Hosts in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament God was constantly smiting people left and right for such heinous crimes as gathering firewood on the sabbath, and when the Chosen People of Israel conquered a place, the word from above was "kill everyone, including children."

Don't believe me?  There are plenty of instances, but my favorite is 1 Samuel 15:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.  Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."  So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah.

Long story short, Saul did as told, killing everyone up to and including the donkeys, but the Lord was still pissed off for some reason, and the Prophet Samuel told him so.  Apparently it had to do with the fact that Saul had spared the Amalekite King, Agag (like I said before, to hell with the children).  So Saul executed Agag, but the Lord still wasn't happy with him.

So what this shows is by posting bullshit like the above image, the people who think this kind of deity deserves worship are simply walking their talk.

The whole thing brings to memory a quote from Richard Dawkins.  I know his very name raises hackles, but it's so germane to this topic that I would be remiss in not including it:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

To which I can only say: touché.

The deepest problem, though, is the one the people who post this nonsense would be the least likely to admit; when they advocate tearing down the wall between church and state, they're absolutely adamant that it can only be for the benefit of one church.  Start talking about having Jewish prayers or quotes from the Qu'ran or some of the Ten Thousand Sayings of Buddha festooned about the walls of classrooms, and you'll have these same people screaming bloody murder.

So as usual, what we're talking about is a combination of ugly theology and complete hypocrisy.  And it would be hardly worth commenting on if it weren't for the power that these attitudes still have, and the degree to which they still influence policy in the United States.

Other than railing about it here on Skeptophilia, I'm not sure what to do.  Anyone who really believes this -- anyone, in other words, who wasn't just trying to score some points off the atheists -- has subscribed to a belief system that is very close to the definition of evil.

And people talk about us atheists being amoral.

An explosion of understanding

One of the reasons I love science is its capacity for inducing wonder.

Albert Einstein said it best: "Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift."  Being able to look around you and think, "Okay, now I understand a little bit more of the universe" is nothing short of a thrill.

I recall having that feeling when I first learned about the Cambrian Explosion, a sudden increase in biodiversity that occurred about 540 million years ago, and which produced virtually all the animal phyla we currently have today.  I think it struck me that way because it was so contrary to the picture I'd had, of evolution slowly plodding along, from something like a jellyfish to something like a worm to something like a fish, through amphibians and reptiles and mammals, finally leading to us as (of course) the Pinnacle of Creation.  That view, it seems, is substantially wrong.  While there has been great change on many branches of the family tree of life, all of the basic branches diverged right about the same time.

Fascinating, too, that there were also a variety of branches that left no living descendants, that are so bizarre to our eyes that they look more like something from a science fiction movie.  There's Dickinsonia:

[Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

... and Anomalocaris, shown here as a model of what it might have looked like when alive:

[Image is in the Public Domain]

... and the aptly named Hallucigenia, which could be straight out of a fever-dream:

[Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

... and my personal favorite, five-eyed, vacuum-cleaner-hose-equipped Opabinia:

[Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

If you'd like to find out more, I encourage you to read Stephen Jay Gould's awesome book Wonderful Life, which will tell you about these four creatures and a great many more besides.

The reason I bring this up is that some new research out of Oxford University has elucidated not only the structure of these odd creatures, but the environment in which they lived.  Having fossils from 540 million years ago that were sufficiently intact to determine what they'd looked like while alive is amazing enough; but being able to determine anything about the conditions under which they lived is downright astonishing.  But that's just what Ross Anderson and Nicholas Tosca, of the Department of Sedimentary Geology at Oxford, and their team have done.

Their paper, which appeared in the journal Geology last week, described microscopic mineralogical analysis of the Burgess Shale of Canada and the Ediacaran Assemblage of Australia, two of the finest deposits of Cambrian Explosion fossils in the world.  And what the geologists found allowed them to make a guess at where the likes of Opabinia and the rest lived: warm, shallow ocean ecosystems that had water rich in iron.

The iron content allowed the formation of the mineral berthierine, which is not only distinctive in its origins, but has an anti-bacterial effect that halted decomposition and prevented decomposition.  This resulted in the phenomenally well-preserved fossils both sites are known for.

"Berthierine is an interesting mineral because it forms in tropical settings when the sediments contain elevated concentrations of iron," Anderson said.  "This means that Burgess Shale-type fossils are likely confined to rocks which were formed at tropical latitudes and which come from locations or time periods that have enhanced iron.  This observation is exciting because it means for the first time we can more accurately interpret the geographic and temporal distribution of these iconic fossils, crucial if we want to understand their biology and ecology."

The whole thing is tremendously exciting.  To not only have an idea of the appearance of these animals, but to be able to picture them in something like their actual habitat, gives us a glimpse of a world five times older than it was during the heyday of the dinosaurs.  It's breathtaking to think about.  

I'll end with a quote from another scientist -- Brian Greene, the physicist whose lucid writing about modern physics in his book The Fabric of the Cosmos inspired an equally brilliant NOVA series.  Greene says: "Science is a way of life.  Science is a perspective.  Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional."

Dog days

I've always felt like I grok dog behavior better than I grok human behavior.

I can't tell you the number of times I've looked at something my fellow humans have done and thought, "Who does that?"  Or, more to the point, "What the hell is wrong with you?"  Whereas with dogs, I usually (1) can tell from their body language what they're thinking and feeling, and (2) understand why they did what they did.

Even when they are aggressive, bite or attack people, their behavior is almost always consistent and explainable -- and predictable if you can read dog body language.

Angie Johnston, a Ph.D. candidate who works at the Canine Cognition Center at Yale University, agrees.  Her doctoral research has to do with the human/dog bond, and using facial and body language cues to understand what dogs are thinking.  She's working with Kathy Shae, of the Paws-n-Effect Canine Training Center, to work with and observe dogs interacting with strangers, their owners, and each other, in an effort to parse the mysteries of the canine personality.

"People love their dogs and want to know what they’re thinking, but we can’t ask them," Johnston said.  "The only way we can find out what they’re thinking is by getting these different studies to try to get inside their head."

Her studies and those of her colleagues have found that dogs release oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and love, when they're with their owners.  "When you see the same hormone released in dogs and families that are released in humans and infants, it suggests that some really similar things are going on," she said.  "So, I think dogs do love us...  It’s something dogs have developed and as they have lived with us, it has grown into true love."

Shae highlighted the uniqueness of the human/canine bond.  "It’s intuitive for them, it’s nonverbal and it’s empathetic in its purest sense," she said.  "Historically, humans and dogs have been partnered for tens of thousands of years, and of the 20,000-plus species on the Earth, dogs and humans have had a unique relationship...  There’s some connection there that’s incredibly, incredibly deep.  I think we’ve lost empathy and they’ve gained empathy in an evolutionary sense, and that’s why we’re partnered."

The fact that this study, which is still incomplete and has not yet been published, was the subject of a news story this week is timely.  In the last couple of weeks, my wife and I have been perusing the listings over at PetFinder, a wonderful service that acts as a clearinghouse for animals who are available for adoption at various shelters in your area.  We met some dogs who were clearly wrong for completely prosaic reasons -- a couple of boisterous puppies who played a little too roughly for our sweet, gray-around-the-muzzle coonhound Lena, for example.  There was one tragic pit bull mix, gorgeous, but so afraid of people that he couldn't be trusted not to bite -- we had to meet him through a chain link fence, and even then he snarled and snapped at us.

Most interesting was a beautiful, blue-eyed cattle dog mix who wasn't aggressive at all, but just -- disconnected, uninterested in interacting with us.  Out on a leash, he was focused on smelling everything in our path (not that unusual), but there was something about his body language that was off.  He paid no attention at all to either of us, not just in the sense of obeying commands (that stuff can be taught), but as far as any curiosity about us.  My doggie intuition said, "No, he's not going to work out well."

Then we met a big, loping black lab/Akita mix.

He was, we were told, a little shy, especially around men.  They let him out into the meet-and-greet room, and he walked right up to me and gave me a big lick in the face.  The trainer's eyebrows went up.

"Or maybe not so much," he said.

Then we brought in Lena, so she and Big Black Dog could see if they liked each other.  They did the obligatory mutual butt sniff, and both tails started wagging.  Second box checked off.

Best of all, he was clearly focused on us, and very curious about these two strangers who were leading him around.  It didn't take us long to come to a decision.  There was something about him that just clicked.  My second sense about dogs said, "He's the one."

So without further ado, allow me to introduce:  Guinness.

We've had him for less than 24 hours, and already he's played a rollicking game of chase in the back yard with Lena (she's been in a positive depressive state since her buddy, our adorable rescue mutt Grendel, died a couple of months ago; this is the happiest I've seen her since that happened).  He's chased squeaky tennis balls 17,839 times across the living room floor (and counting).  He's already learning a few commands -- we're signing him up for obedience training soon, and hoping that brain-wise, he's inherited more from his Akita ancestry than his black lab.  He is a little skittish, still -- the shelter manager didn't give us details about his past (probably a good thing) but just said he "wasn't treated very well" by his former owners.  He startles if you reach for him suddenly, but that's another thing I can tell he'll learn to get past with some love, affection, and a safe warm home.

So I think my doggie intuition has chalked up another win.  He's a good 'un, as my grandma used to say.

But now I need to go, because he just walked into my office with a squeaky tennis ball.  Some things take priority, you know?

Great balls of ice

A famous skit from the early days of Saturday Night Live had a stereotypical married couple (played by Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner) arguing over whether a particular product was a floor wax or a dessert topping.  After a moment, Chevy Chase steps in and says, "No need to argue!  New Shimmer is a floor wax and a dessert topping."

The couple gives the camera a big smile.  "Tastes great!" one of them says, and the other adds, "And look at that shine!"

I thought about New Shimmer a couple of days ago when my younger son, who has a fantastic eye for wacko ideas, found a claim online that resolves the Flat Earth/Oblate Spheroid Earth controversy by saying no need to argue... it's both flat and a sphere.

How can that be, you might be asking?  That's certainly what I asked.  I mean, the whole raison d'être of the Flerfs (as I have come to call the Flat Earthers) is that the Earth is a flat disc with no curvature whatsoever, in many iterations bounded by an ice wall that the rest of us call the continent of Antarctica (and which the Flerfs apparently believe is what keeps the ocean from pouring off the edge).

But no, says this new claim.  The reason that the Earth looks flat to the Flerfs is that we are only living on a tiny bit of it, and a tiny bit of a sphere looks, for all intents and purposes, flat.  But in reality, we're on a sphere -- just a much larger sphere than any of us, including the astronomers, realize.

If you're having a hard time picturing this, so was I, until Nathan sent me a diagram.  So without further ado, I unveil to you the latest version of the Flat Earth Theory:

The Great Ice Ball Earth Theory.

That, my friends, is one huge ball of ice.  But it all makes sense, they say -- don't get all technical on us and claim that such a huge planet would have an enormous gravitational pull, comparable at least to Jupiter's -- because, as the diagram clearly tells you, the ice ball is "possibly hollow."

And I realize that the inset in the lower left hand corner is probably too small for you to see clearly, so allow me to elaborate.  The Earth, it claims, might be just one of many "ponds" in the ice ball.  So this could account for all sorts of things, like UFOs, which wouldn't have to cross interstellar space, they'd just have to sail around the ice ball until they found a hospitable looking "pond."

And given that this is upstate New York in February, it has actually looked a bit like we're sitting on a giant ice ball lately.  So maybe there's something to this after all.

In either case, I suppose this ends the Flat Earth/Oblate Spheroid Earth argument.  It's kind of a shame, because there were parts of it I was rather enjoying.

In any case, that's the latest from FlerfLand.  Now y'all will have to excuse me, because I'm gonna go get a bowl of ice cream.  I sure hope I have some floor wax left.  It's just not the same without it.