A face in the underpass

As part of my research for Skeptophilia, I spend way too much time perusing questionable websites.

Not that kind of questionable.  Get your mind out of the gutter.  I'm talking about fringe-y sites dealing with Bigfoot, and UFOs, and hauntings, and paranormal phenomena of all sorts.  One of the most useful -- from the standpoint of someone who needs material for six blog posts a week -- is The Anomalist, which acts as a news aggregate for the World of the Weird.  (To his credit, the guy who runs The Anomalist is a pretty good skeptic, and unhesitatingly calls out ridiculous claims for what they are.  He's inclined to give some of them more credence than I would, but I admire his commitment to applying at least some of the tools of skeptical logic to claims of the paranormal.)

One of the links that popped up on The Anomalist last week came from Coast to Coast with George Noory.  Coast to Coast became prominent under the late Art Bell, who interviewed hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of people on the topic of the supernatural, conspiracy theories, and so on.  One of the most famous is the so-called "Frantic Caller" who back in 1998 phoned in to the show and proceeded to tell a fantastic story -- that he was a worker in Area 51 and had found out stuff he shouldn't have, and now the government was chasing him with the intent to silence him permanently.  The guy was either telling the truth or was a hell of an actor -- he legitimately sounded terrified.  (Interesting side note: the transmission from Coast to Coast cut out in the middle of the call, and Art Bell acted genuinely baffled as to why.  The whole thing has become a famous story amongst the conspiracy theorists, lo unto this very day.)

But I digress.

Anyhow, I was on The Anomalist, looking for ideas, and I saw one from Coast to Coast about people seeing a spooky face in a pedestrian underpass.  These sorts of things are almost always cases of pareidolia -- the tendency of the human mind to pick up face-like patterns in things like coarse-grained wood, rust patches, and grilled-cheese sandwiches.  But I thought I'd take a look, and when I did, the first thing I noticed was not a face -- in fact, I'm having a hard time seeing a face in the clip even when I look for it -- but that the underpass looked awfully familiar to me.

Then, with a sudden shock, I realized that it was a photo from the Cayuga Waterfront Trail, only ten miles from where I live.

I've often complained about the fact that things like UFO and Bigfoot sightings never happen near enough to me to justify a road trip.  So when I found out how close I was to the mysterious face, I thought, "Oh, hell yes.  I'm gonna check this one out myself."

So on Saturday I drove down to Cass Park, just north of the underpass in question, and struck off toward it.  I arrived there and started snapping photographs and poking around the place -- and for the record, I didn't see anything even remotely facelike.

After about five minutes of this, I was startled by a voice nearby, and turned to see an obviously stoned guy sitting on the rocks with his back against the cement buttresses of the underpass.  The following conversation ensued:

Stoned guy:  Dude.  Why are you taking pictures of that? 

Me:  Because people have been seeing a face up in the I-beams.  I read about it, and thought I'd take a look. 

*long pause to let that settle in.*  

Stoned guy:  Whoa. 

Me:  I don't see anything, though.  Have you seen anything weird down here? 

Stoned guy:  No, man.  Not a face, anyhow.  But why are you interested in this? 

Me:  I'm a paranormal researcher.  [Yes, I got this phrase out without laughing.] 

Stoned guy: [reverently]  That is so fuckin' cool.  I've never met an actual paranormal researcher. 

Me:  I've been interested in the paranormal for years.  [That much at least was true.]  When I found out this was happening close by, I figured I'd better check it out. 

Stoned guy:  [suddenly brightening up]  Dude, I haven't seen any faces, but there is some creepy fuckin' graffiti over there.  *points*

I was immediately reminded of the graffiti saying, "Duck, Sally Sparrow!  Duck NOW!" from the brilliant Dr. Who episode "Blink."  So I thought I'd ask the Stoned Guy what he thought.

Me:  What does "Don't Go Into the Light" mean? 

Stoned guy:  No idea, man.  All I know is if I see any weird lights, I'm hauling ass right out of here. 

Me:  That sounds like a good idea.  Thanks for your help. 

Stoned guy:  Rock on, dude.  Hope you catch a fuckin' ghost, or whatever. 

Me:  Me too.

So my first opportunity to investigate an actual paranormal claim near where I live kind of was a bust.  Unfortunate, but I suppose it's to be expected.

But it was kind of fun to go check out some place local, and I hope it's not the last.  I'm hereby putting in my request to any aliens, Bigfoots, ghosts, and such-like who may be reading this that I would be much obliged if they'd make an appearance somewhere in, say, a twenty-mile radius of my house.  Because I may be a paranormal researcher, but I also like staying close to home.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a little on the dark side; Jared Diamond's riveting book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.  Starting with societies that sowed the seeds of their own destruction -- such as the Easter Islanders, whose denuding of the landscape led to island-wide ecological collapse -- he focuses the lens on the United States and western Europe, whose rampant resource use, apparent disregard for curbing pollution, and choice of short-term expediency over long-term wisdom seem to be pushing us in the direction of disaster.

It's not a cheerful book, but it's a very necessary one, and is even more pertinent now than when it was written in 2005.  Diamond highlights the problems we face, and warns of that threshold we're approaching toward catastrophe -- a threshold that is so subtle that we may well not notice it until it's too late to reverse course.

[If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

End of an era

Today is my last day as a classroom teacher.

We still have finals week yet to go, but for all intents and purposes, this is it.  The last day of class.  This year, when I say goodbye to my students, it's really goodbye.

I'm of two minds about retirement, which I suppose is only natural.

First, I've taught biology (and various other subjects) for 32 years, and I am seriously ready to do something different.  While I love my subject -- I still get ridiculously excited when I get to teach genetics and evolutionary biology -- there are parts of it that I will not miss.  Over three decades, and I still haven't figured out how to make The Parts of the Cell interesting.  And while I personally love biochemistry, it doesn't seem to be a Fan Favorite.

And that's putting it mildly.

I also am rather notorious in my school for my antipathy toward Staff Development.  I detest bureaucracy, and the increasing motion in New York -- and, I suspect, elsewhere in the United States -- toward micromanagement and a standardized-tests-über-alles approach to education absolutely infuriates me.  So I won't miss curriculum mapping and high-stakes exams and administrative b-b stackers who don't have the slightest clue what makes teaching vital and relevant and interesting.

But.  I still love the students.  The relationships I've formed over the years have meant a great deal to me, and the trust and interest and friendship the students have shown me are something I value more than I can put into words.  Also, that "Aha!" moment you see in kids' eyes when something finally makes sense, when suddenly some piece of the universe becomes clear to them -- there's nothing like that in the world.

The room where I spent a significant chunk of the last 27 years

I also have been privileged to work with a truly incomparable staff.  Our school district is very, very lucky, from the leadership on down to the rank-and-filers like myself.  In particular, the science department in our school is made up of incredibly talented, caring, and smart individuals, who have exactly the right attitudes toward education and have been, one and all, a delight to work with.  I'll truly miss the camaraderie.

The science department's yearbook photo this year.  We were supposed to include in the photo something that was important to us, and "make it memorable."  We nailed the latter part, at least.

There are also more specific, personal memories that I'll cherish forever.

• The moment in my Critical Thinking class a few years ago, when I was talking about how (or if) we can establish knowledge in the absence of hard evidence.  I said, "I want you right now, with what you have right here, to prove to me that pandas exist!"  And a student silently reached into her backpack... and pulled out a stuffed panda.  After we stopped laughing, I said, "You win this round."  At the end of the semester, she gave me the panda, which still sits on my desk.
• Superintendent's Conference Days.  This may come as a surprise, given my general hatred of staff development as described above -- but I always know that on conference days, the physics teacher and I get fried chicken from the village grocery store for lunch, and that chicken is damn tasty.
• My first day of teaching in Trumansburg High School, when I was teaching in three different classrooms, and second period accidentally went to the wrong one.  I started calling roll, and (of course) no one answered.  After three tries of getting someone, anyone, to answer "Here," one of the students said, in a small voice, "I think the kids you're looking for are next door."  Thereby establishing myself as slightly daffy, a reputation that still haunts me for some reason.
• The student who asked me, in complete seriousness, if Friday the 13th ever fell on a Sunday.
• The incredibly talented artist who, as part of a senior project focused on human faces, did an amazing portrait of me, which I still cherish.
• Finding out that despite my having moved here 27 years ago knowing no one, I've met two students who are distant cousins of mine.
• All the times students have asked me questions that made me step back and say, "Whoa.  I've never thought about that" -- resulting in my learning something along with them.

So all in all, it's been a good run, and retirement was a really hard decision to make.  But it's the right one at the right time.  I've got a lot of things I want to do -- writing, mostly, although I'm sure that a large part of my retirement will be occupied with "let dogs in, let dogs out, let dogs in, let dogs out" -- and I'm content with turning over the reins to a new teacher.  (Really new, in my case.  I know the person who was hired to replace me, and she's a first-year teacher, right out of the starting gate -- and is incredibly talented, dedicated, enthusiastic, and smart.  I have to admit to feeling better about leaving given that I know the students are in good hands.)

So this is it.  In a few hours, the last bell will ring on my teaching career, and that'll be that.  I'm gonna try not to cry, but we'll see how long that determination holds.

***********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a little on the dark side; Jared Diamond's riveting book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.  Starting with societies that sowed the seeds of their own destruction -- such as the Easter Islanders, whose denuding of the landscape led to island-wide ecological collapse -- he focuses the lens on the United States and western Europe, whose rampant resource use, apparent disregard for curbing pollution, and choice of short-term expediency over long-term wisdom seem to be pushing us in the direction of disaster.

It's not a cheerful book, but it's a very necessary one, and is even more pertinent now than when it was written in 2005.  Diamond highlights the problems we face, and warns of that threshold we're approaching toward catastrophe -- a threshold that is so subtle that we may well not notice it until it's too late to reverse course.

[If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Building the Rockies

I recently re-read John McPhee's wonderful quartet of books on geology, Basin and Range, Rising from the Plains, In Suspect Terrain, and Assembling California.  His lucid prose and capacity for focusing on the human stories connected with the subject while teaching us some fascinating science brought me back to these books, which I first read perhaps twenty years ago.

The first two, in particular, describe something that is quite surprising -- or at least was to me when I first learned about it.  The biggest mountain range in the United States, the Rockies, is actually quite poorly understood, and contains some features that are still yet to be satisfactorily explained.  A good part of the Rocky Mountain range is non-volcanic, and although there are some areas that have igneous rocks the vast majority is made up of sedimentary and metamorphosed sedimentary rock -- sandstone, limestone, shale, slate, quartzite, and marble.  Even some of the igneous rocks only show at the surface because the overlayment of sedimentary rock that once was present has eroded away.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Self, Rocky Mountain National Park, CC BY-SA 2.5]

As McPhee describes it, the current thought is that most of what is west of Colorado and Wyoming is probably the result of accretion -- the huge North American Plate overriding smaller plates to the west and gathering up microcontinents and island arcs they carried, cementing them onto the coastline.  It's certain that this is how California formed -- the boundaries between the different "suspect terranes" (the alternate spelling is used when referring to these chunks of land that end up in a very different place from where they were formed) are pretty well established.  Also, the subduction process that brought them to North America is still ongoing, as the small Explorer, Juan de Fuca, and Gorda Plates (in order from north to south) are pulled underneath -- giving rise to the Cascade Volcanoes such as Mount Lassen, Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, and Mount Saint Helens.

We got another piece added to the puzzle with a paper this week in Nature, out of the University of Alberta, by Yunfeng Chen, Yu Jeffrey Gu, Claire A. Currie, Stephen T. Johnston, Shu-Huei Hung, Andrew J. Schaeffer, and Pascal Audet.  Entitled, "Seismic Evidence for a Mantle Suture and Implications for the Origin of the Canadian Cordillera," the paper describes research that found a sharp boundary in the mantle of the Earth between the "craton" -- the central, oldest piece of the North American continent, encompassing what is now the Midwest -- and a long, narrow microcontinent that slammed into the North American Plate as a primordial sea closed -- moving the coastline hundreds of miles further west.

"This research provides new evidence that the Canadian section of this mountain range was formed by two continents colliding," said Jeffrey Gu, professor in the Department of Physics and co-author on the study, in an interview with Science Daily.  "The proposed mechanism for mountain building may not apply to other parts of the Rocky Mountains due to highly variable boundary geometries and characteristics from north to south."

The cool part is that the research was done by looking deep into the Earth's mantle -- not just by studying the surface features.  And this collision, which is estimated to have occurred a hundred million years ago, has left a scar that is still detectable.  "This study highlights how deep Earth images from geophysical methods can help us to understand the evolution of mountains, one of the most magnificent processes of plate tectonics observed at the Earth's surface," said study co-author Yunfeng Chen.

And this technique could be applied elsewhere, as the Rockies are far from the only mountain range in the world that were created by accretion rather than volcanism.  (The obvious examples are the Alps and the Himalayas -- the latter of which are still rising as the Indian Plate continues to plow into the Eurasian Plate.)  "There are other mountain belts around the world where a similar model may apply," said Claire Currie, associate professor of physics and co-author on the study.  "Our data could be important for understanding mountain belts elsewhere, as well as building our understanding of the evolution of western North America."

So we're piecing together the picture of how the Rockies formed -- ironic, as they seem to have been assembled from pieces themselves.  In the process, we're learning more about the processes that move the tectonic plates, and create the landscape we see around us.  It reminds me of the haunting lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which seem like a fitting way to end:

O Earth, what changes hast thou seen?
There where the long road roars has been
The stillness of the central sea;
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands,
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds, they shape themselves, and go.

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Aptly enough, considering Monday's post about deciphering scripts, this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Steven Pinker's brilliant The Stuff of Thought.  Here, experimental psychologist Pinker looks at what our use of language tells us about our behavior and neural wiring -- what, in fact, our choice of words has to do with human nature as a whole.

Along the way, he throws out some fascinating examples -- my favorite of which is his section on the syntax of swearing.  I have to admit, the question, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?" is something I've never thought about before, although it probably should have given that I'm guilty of using the f-word a lot more than is generally considered acceptable.

So if you're interested in language, the human mind, or both, this is a must-read.  Although I'll warn you -- if you're like me, it'll leave you thinking, "Why did I just say that?" several times a day.

The power of identity

It's a strange thing, identity.  How we see ourselves, how others see us -- and the parts of us we deny, sometimes even to ourselves.

I'm a writer.  I'm a musician.  I'm a white man of western European descent.  I'm a Louisianian by birth, a New Yorker by choice.  I'm a dog lover.  I'm left of center politically.  I'm a tattoo enthusiast.  I'm a runner even though I've been benched for the last few months from a back injury. I'm a teacher even though I'm soon to retire.  I'm a Francophone even though I haven't spoken French in years and am pretty rusty.

I am bisexual.

This last one might come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.  I have been happily married, in a cis/hetero relationship, for almost seventeen years.  I have only had cis/hetero relationships my entire life, in fact, but that's probably due to my being so shy it's a wonder I've had any romantic liaisons at all.

Nevertheless, I'm bisexual and always have been, and always will be.  I first realized it when I was a teenager, and when I went to the public swimming pool I would look at swimsuit-clad girls and go, "Whoa."  And then... had the same reaction when I looked at swimsuit-clad guys.

But I was raised in a traditional, conservative, strictly Roman Catholic family.  At that point, I didn't know the word "bisexual" existed.  Even if I had, I probably would never have admitted it.  I still recall being herded into a room in the church at age fourteen or so -- separated by gender, of course -- and being given "the talk" about sexual morality, wherein I learned that lust was a sin, sex outside of marriage was a sin, and masturbation was a sin.  (At that last statement, the guy next to me leaned over and said, sotto voce, "We're all fucked, aren't we?")

But being turned on by another guy, or worse still, acting on that impulse?  That was a mortal sin.  That was one that you might not get absolution for even if you asked for it.

That was fiery furnace material, dude.

So I squelched that side of me.  Squelched it so completely, in fact, that even when I moved to a much more liberal part of the country (Seattle, Washington), I didn't come out, and would have heatedly denied my orientation had anyone asked.

But in the last few years a few things have cracked my determination to keep that part of me hidden.  First, a few years ago I had a student tell me (apropos of the International Day of Silence), "I guess I can understand homosexuals, but I don't believe anyone can be bisexual.  How can you be attracted to both men and women?"  I did my usual fallback on the science -- bisexuality is well established as a real phenomenon, and isn't just a case of someone not being able to make up his/her mind -- but the kid still said, "I just don't believe it."

And I thought, "She's talking about me.  She's denying that people like me even exist. "

Pride Months came and went.  Coming Out Days came and went.  I still vociferously argued for LGBTQ rights and equality, and still stayed silent about myself.  A few years ago, I came out to a few folks, including my wife (who is a completely amazing person and was entirely cool with it.).  A few selected responses, which should cheer you up about the potential for goodness in humanity:

"C'mon, I live in Ithaca.  Half the people I know are LGBTQ.  Rock on." 

"No questions, no comments.  Only love." 

"Thank you so much for trusting me enough to say this to me.  I know it must have been hard." 

"I have no idea why anyone would look at you differently because of this.  You are who you are, and you're a beautiful person.  Kudos for having the courage to speak your truth aloud." 

"Really?  So am I." 

"You have my love and support no matter what.  Nothing has changed that, and nothing will change that."

The funniest one, though, was my dear friend and writing partner, the inimitable Cly Boehs (whose recently-released novel Back Then is a must-read), who smiled and said in her Okie drawl, "Honey, you think I didn't know that?  Every one of your novels has a scene with a gorgeous shirtless man in it."

It took me a good five minutes to stop laughing.  That'll teach me to take myself so damn seriously.

This year, the clamor I've seen about Pride Month has left me feeling angry and hurt -- the demands for a "Straight Pride Parade," the claims that heterosexuals are a persecuted minority, Tomi Lahren's bizarre comment that it's "open season on straight white men."  And the feeling has been rising in me that I couldn't continue to strike back against this sort of bigoted nonsense while still being afraid to admit who I am.

So that has brought me here.

Let me clarify a few things, which (in a sensible world) I shouldn't have to clarify.

First, my coming out as bisexual does not mean anything is going to change between myself and my wife.  This announcement is not a prelude to anything else, merely a statement of what is.

Second, it doesn't mean that I'm looking for a relationship with a guy on the side.  "Bisexual" doesn't mean "unfaithful" or "disloyal."  I'm deeply in love with my wife and would never, will never, betray that.

Third -- it doesn't mean anything else about me.  I did not become an ally and advocate for LGBTQ issues because I'm bisexual, but because I am a caring, moral person who believes that your rights should not depend on who you're attracted to.  I would still be an ally and advocate if I was 100% straight.

Last, and listen closely if you have any doubt on this point: this was not a choice I made.  I did not sit back at age fourteen and think, "Let's see... guys, girls?  Guys, girls?  How about... both?"  Wherever sexual orientation comes from, I was built this way.  And as a trans student of mine put it to me, "Why would anyone think that I would choose this?  To face prejudice, ridicule, denial of who I am, on a daily basis?  Who in their right mind would choose that?"

So there you have it.  My only wish is that I'd come out sooner (like, when I realized it as a teenager), rather than denying such a fundamental part of me for decades.  I wish that, not only because of what it would have done for me personally, but because of the role model I would have been for students -- "Look, here's who I am.  You can be who you are, too.  I understand."

But you can't reverse time, nor undo decisions you made in the past; all you can do is act now.  As Maya Angelou put it, "Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better."

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Aptly enough, considering Monday's post about deciphering scripts, this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Steven Pinker's brilliant The Stuff of Thought.  Here, experimental psychologist Pinker looks at what our use of language tells us about our behavior and neural wiring -- what, in fact, our choice of words has to do with human nature as a whole.

Along the way, he throws out some fascinating examples -- my favorite of which is his section on the syntax of swearing.  I have to admit, the question, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?" is something I've never thought about before, although it probably should have given that I'm guilty of using the f-word a lot more than is generally considered acceptable.

So if you're interested in language, the human mind, or both, this is a must-read.  Although I'll warn you -- if you're like me, it'll leave you thinking, "Why did I just say that?" several times a day.

Knotty problem

As a language geek, the loss of our ability to understand communication from past civilizations always strikes me as tragic.

It's worse when that loss was the deliberate work of people trying to silence a culture.  This is the case with the strange and fascinating khipus (also spelled quipus), a set of strings with knots that the Incas used to encode something -- we're not sure what -- and which were systematically destroyed in the 17th century by the Spanish, who were suspicious of a system of communication they couldn't understand, and worried about how it might be used against them.

It's probable that they served more than one purpose -- as most written languages do -- one of which was enumeration.  There are current Andean societies that make at least limited use of khipus for keeping track of numbers of livestock,  But it's far from clear that this was their only use; after all, the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals can be used for everything from shopping lists to censuses to history texts to telling a story.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Claus Ableiter nur hochgeladen aus enWiki, Inca Quipu, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Part of the problem with decoding them, however, is the same difficulty faced by anyone trying to decipher the Plougastel-Daoulas inscription that I wrote about a few days ago; there simply aren't many of them left.  The Spanish priests who gathered up and burned every khipu they could find simply did their job too well.

The other problem is the one I referenced in the same post, in connection to Linear B and the Voynich Manuscript; we don't even know how the knots correspond to units of language.  The type of knot seems as significant as the spacing, as does the color of the thread, but what any of those features mean is at this point speculation at best.

Another piece of the puzzle was added this week, however, in a paper authored by Alejandro Chu and Gary Urton in the journal Latin American Antiquity.  Chu has discovered 29 khipus at a site called Qolqawasi, and each one was found with quantities of edibles -- chili peppers, peanuts, and other regional crops.  This has led Chu and Urton to theorize that the khipus represented quantities of produce -- and, perhaps, the amount of taxes to be collected on it.  The authors write:

These khipus contain a formulaic arrangement of numerical values not encountered on khipus from elsewhere in Tawantinsuyu (the Inka Empire).  The formula includes first, a large number, hypothesized to record the sum total of produce included in a deposit, followed by a “fixed number,” and then one or more additional numbers.  The fixed number plus the additional number(s) sum to the original large number.  It is hypothesized that the fixed number represents an amount deducted from the deposit to support storage facility personnel.  As such, it represented a tax assessed on deposits, the first evidence we have for a system of taxation on goods in the Inka Empire.  It is proposed that the size and complexity of the storage facility at Inkawasi prompted the “invention” of a kind of financing instrument—taxation—not known previously from Inka administration. 

Their interpretation is not certain -- witness the number of times they use the word "hypothesized" and "proposed" -- but it's an intriguing possibility.  Whether the khipus were used for other purposes, such as in place of a written language, is still worth considering.  It's to be hoped that there will be additional discoveries of these odd artifacts, and that at some point the work of archaeologists such as Chu and Urton will lead to a complete decipherment -- and these voices from the past won't turn out to have been silenced completely.

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Aptly enough, considering Monday's post about deciphering scripts, this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Steven Pinker's brilliant The Stuff of Thought.  Here, experimental psychologist Pinker looks at what our use of language tells us about our behavior and neural wiring -- what, in fact, our choice of words has to do with human nature as a whole.

Along the way, he throws out some fascinating examples -- my favorite of which is his section on the syntax of swearing.  I have to admit, the question, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?" is something I've never thought about before, although it probably should have given that I'm guilty of using the f-word a lot more than is generally considered acceptable.

So if you're interested in language, the human mind, or both, this is a must-read.  Although I'll warn you -- if you're like me, it'll leave you thinking, "Why did I just say that?" several times a day.

The naked and the dead

Do you believe in ghosts?  Would you rather not wear any clothes?

Do you want to combine the two?

Apparently there's a subset of ghost hunters who think that's a great idea.

You might wonder what on earth could generate this idea.  Here's how Paul Cagle, writing for The Aenigma Project, describes it:

Some people believe that certain spirits feed on negative emotions and therefore when you are scared you give them more power to manifest.  Could this be part of the reason?  Being naked in a dark place, unable to see anything around you and searching for ghosts could certainly create feelings of uncertainty and perhaps inadequacy.  But is that enough negative juju to cause something to manifest?  Does feeling vulnerable and embarrassed generate the same energy as being anxious and scared?  Is enough negative energy generated no matter the emotion?

This strikes me as a little weird, even if you accept the fundamental proposition that there are spirits of the dead still hanging around.  Isn't the point that they appear where they want to, for their own reasons?  I always thought the idea was that ghosts tended to hang around where they died, or places they liked when they were alive, and so forth.  If they were attracted to naked people, you'd think that nudist colonies would be rife with ghosts.

It would also make me much less likely to use my hot tub.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gallowglass, Medieval ghost, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Now, it's not that I have anything against nudity per se.  I've always been pretty comfortable with skin showing, and in my twenties, I would have been captain of the Coed Skinnydipping Team.  Even now, I tend to wear the legally permissible minimum amount of clothing.  I remember the subject of my running around all summer without a shirt came up while we were chatting with friends, and I said, "I guess I'm kind of a closet nudist."  My wife gave me the slow single-eyebrow lift, and said, "Closet?  Kind of?  You guess?"

On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel about prowling around a graveyard in the middle of the night without any clothes on.  I'm not so much worried about scandalizing the inhabitants, given that by definition, they're dead.  My general opinion is that the evidence for hauntings and the afterlife is fairly slim, although I have an open mind on the subject -- and in any case, if ghosts want to kind of ooze around the place and appear unexpectedly, they can't reasonably expect not to be shocked at what they see on occasion.  I'm more concerned by the fact that most ghost hunting seems to occur at night, for what reason I have no idea, and around upstate New York the nights are either (1) cold enough to freeze off body parts you might still have a use for, or (2) warm and muggy and buzzing with mosquitoes.  Not very enticing either way.

It also brings up the question of whether ghosts themselves are naked.  You usually don't hear about naked ghosts -- they seem to favor antiquated and/or filmy garments that swirl about in a dramatic fashion -- but it's a little strange to consider why that is.  Do they appear in the clothes they died in?  If so, I'm going to be a hell of a lot more careful about what I wear, because I don't want to take the chance of spending eternity in a ratty tank-top and a worn pair of cargo shorts.  Or are ghosts clothed in the garments they liked best?

If that's the case, I'm putting in my request for a kilt in the afterlife.  I've never owned a kilt but I think they're wicked cool.  If I could have a claymore to go with it, that'd be even better.  Then I could really scare the shit out of any naked ghost hunters who showed up.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has a better perspective on naked ghost hunting.  I'm pretty curious about the afterlife, and while the skeptical part of me figures that at some point I'll find out one way or the other, it'd be nice to hear from experts.  Clothed or not.

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Aptly enough, considering Monday's post about deciphering scripts, this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Steven Pinker's brilliant The Stuff of Thought.  Here, experimental psychologist Pinker looks at what our use of language tells us about our behavior and neural wiring -- what, in fact, our choice of words has to do with human nature as a whole.

Along the way, he throws out some fascinating examples -- my favorite of which is his section on the syntax of swearing.  I have to admit, the question, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?" is something I've never thought about before, although it probably should have given that I'm guilty of using the f-word a lot more than is generally considered acceptable.

So if you're interested in language, the human mind, or both, this is a must-read.  Although I'll warn you -- if you're like me, it'll leave you thinking, "Why did I just say that?" several times a day.

Paleo-walkabout

The classic account of the origins of Native Americans is that during the last Ice Age, the seas were lower, and what is now the floor of the Bering Sea was a broad, flat valley.  This allowed people to cross from Siberia into Alaska, and when the weather warmed and the seas rose, this cut off the "land bridge" and left the migrants North Americans for good.

Some cool new research out of the University of Copenhagen has shown that this story is a vast oversimplification, and that what actually happened is considerably more complex than a one-way hike from west to east.

In a paper in Nature called "The Population History of Northeastern Siberia Since the Pleistocene," by lead author Martin Sikora and no less than 53 co-authors, we find out that there wasn't just a single wave of migrants, and there was considerable back-and-forth, even after the seas flooded in and cut Alaska off from Siberia.  Sikora's team analyzed the DNA extracted from teeth from 34 different burials, from Finland all the way across to northeastern Siberia, and compared this to genetic material from Native American populations in northwestern North America.

What Sikora found is that there were several surges of migration across the "Bering Land Bridge," starting over thirty thousand years ago.  Each new wave of travelers mixed and mated with the preceding group of settlers -- and then some of them went back the other direction, settling in northeastern Siberia (where many of their descendants still live).  The authors write:

Northeastern Siberia has been inhabited by humans for more than 40,000 years but its deep population history remains poorly understood.  Here we investigate the late Pleistocene population history of northeastern Siberia through analyses of 34 newly recovered ancient genomes that date to between 31,000 and 600 years ago.  We document complex population dynamics during this period, including at least three major migration events: an initial peopling by a previously unknown Palaeolithic population of ‘Ancient North Siberians’ who are distantly related to early West Eurasian hunter-gatherers; the arrival of East Asian-related peoples, which gave rise to ‘Ancient Palaeo-Siberians’ who are closely related to contemporary communities from far-northeastern Siberia (such as the Koryaks), as well as Native Americans; and a Holocene migration of other East Asian-related peoples, who we name ‘Neo-Siberians’, and from whom many contemporary Siberians are descended.  Each of these population expansions largely replaced the earlier inhabitants, and ultimately generated the mosaic genetic make-up of contemporary peoples who inhabit a vast area across northern Eurasia and the Americas.

This study adds to some earlier work, published late last year, that found that the movement of those migrants once they got to North America was equally complex, going in (at least) three waves as they colonized the continent southward and eastward, with the second wave carrying people all the way to Tierra del Fuego.  This blows a neat hole into the idea that "Native American" is some kind of monolithic race of people all of whom are closely related -- which anyone who knows about the very disparate groups of Native American languages would find completely unbelievable anyhow.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons 맛좋은망고, Langs N.Amer, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So as usual, reality turns out to be both more complicated and more interesting than the accounts you usually hear.  The walkabout taken by the ancestors of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas was like most patterns of human movement; messy, unpredictable, with new groups mixing with old and the blended groups backcrossing and mixing with the ones who were left behind.  But this is what makes population genetics fascinating, isn't it?  It gives us a lens through which to view our own origins, and causes us to question the definition of terms like "race" that a lot of us think we understand -- but which, on analysis, turn out not to mean anything even vaguely scientific.

********************************

Aptly enough, considering Monday's post about deciphering scripts, this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is Steven Pinker's brilliant The Stuff of Thought.  Here, experimental psychologist Pinker looks at what our use of language tells us about our behavior and neural wiring -- what, in fact, our choice of words has to do with human nature as a whole.

Along the way, he throws out some fascinating examples -- my favorite of which is his section on the syntax of swearing.  I have to admit, the question, "Just what does the 'fuck' in 'fuck you' actually mean?" is something I've never thought about before, although it probably should have given that I'm guilty of using the f-word a lot more than is generally considered acceptable.

So if you're interested in language, the human mind, or both, this is a must-read.  Although I'll warn you -- if you're like me, it'll leave you thinking, "Why did I just say that?" several times a day.