Psychic Bigfoot

Bigfoot/Nessie in 08!

2008-10-07T07:09:00.001-07:00

A real (or unreal) ticket, for real (or unreal) Americans!

Crystal Skull Vodka

2008-10-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the abscence, friends! Field work and all that. We'll start..slowly...to ramp back up to an actual posting schedule. BUT FIRST! BEHOLD:

What the hell!?! Take a closer look here.

McCain - Starchild?

2008-09-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently McCain is on record saying that the Phoenix Lights were "UFOs". Take a peek.

I'm hoping that he gets the wolloped, just like Kucinich did for his UFO deal.

Apocolypse Never

2008-09-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph, an English Newspaper, has a list of 10 Doomsdays that came and went. In honor of us surviving the LHC on-switching, I thought I'd share. Interestingly (or not...) all of the World Enders on the Telegraph's list are crazy cults or nutball religious sects. It's a good list for that sort of thing, but I wonder about the more "secular" apolypsemongers, like the anti-LHCers out there.

Anybody out in the blogosphere know of some non-religious or non-cultish Doomsayers who came and went?

SWEET JESUS WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!

2008-09-10T06:21:00.001-07:00

Or not. Check it out!

The LHC has finished cooling down, and is up and running; today, early in the European morning (which has a funny accent and drinks more expensive coffee than our bumpkin-y American mornins) particles were accelerated to 99.99% the speed of light, and sent hurdling around the 17 mile track in hopes of recreating the conditions that existed in the first few seconds after the Big Bang.

AND they did it without blowing up the universe, or creating hellish vortexes for Cthulhu to crawl through, or whatever else doomsday scenarios the nutjob anti-LHCers were talking about. Maybe those scientists knew what they were talkin' about after all, huh?

Anyway, it is an exciting day in the world of particle physics (specifically) and for humanity (more generally). Here's to learning more about our amazing universe!

And better luck next time, insane anti-science kooks!

UFO Tours

2008-09-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Following in the proud, capitalist tradition of creating tourist-trap hellholes for people to visit in otherwise beautiful parts of the world, the town of San Clemente, Chile, has recently opened up it's very own "UFO Trail", complete with it's very own UFO Landing site and, I'm sure, souvenir giftshops full of gaudy alien stuff.

The trail is a 30 km-long stretch that includes El Enladrillado, a flat stretch of basaltic volcanic rock that is a landing site for UFOs.

See, its a landing site, because its so flat; nothing in nature is EVER flat on its own, ergo, it was obviously made by aliens for use as a landing pad. Additionally, this part of Chile was known for a saucer flap that took place between 95 and 96, with hundreds of reported sightings.

Hell, it has to be better than visiting Roswell, right?

Large Hadron Collider is O.G.

2008-09-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

The LHC, bringin' it old school style!

Ten Arguments against Bigfoot

2008-09-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

Discovery news has a feature up entitled "10 Reasons Bigfoot is a Bust", most likely in response to the GA hoax fiasco and all the press is generated. The list was compiled by Benjamin Radford, the managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and is a fairly brief rundown of some of the major "problems with Bigfoot". Anyway, I though I'd take a look at each of the reasons, and offer some comments of my own.

1) Lack of Fossil Evidence for Bigfoot: Radford's primary point here is that there ain't no bigfoot-esque fossils to be found, ergo, no Bigfoot. This is a problematic line of argument, for a couple of reasons.
The first and foremost of these is called TAPHONOMY, which is the study of the hows and whys of fossilization and preservation. Briefly, some places on the Earth's surface are more conducive to the preservation of organism remains, while other locations are more hostile to preservation. So, places with lots of sediment available for burial and relatively little opportunity for disturbance by other animals (scavengers, etc) are better places for preserving animals. A classic of example of this are the various lake deposits of the Eocene Green River Formation in Wyoming, or in various floodplain deposits (where there is a lot of sediment being deposited). An example of a setting where there is poor preservational potential is the forest, where low sediment production and high biological activity conspire to rapidly (on the geological scale) breakdown and redistribute remains, making fossilization impossible (or nearly so).
An additional problem (and one that the bigfoot buffs out there probably thought of immediately) is that A) not knowing the exact phylogenetic position of "Bigfoot" makes it difficult to identify ancestors, and B) if it is a hominid (or hominoid, or whatever), then we may have some fossilized ancestors in the form of Old World fossils, and the taphonomic effect may explain their absence in the record.
That being said, it would STILL be nice to have evidence of a large, relatively recent non-human ape in the rock record.

2) The Lack of Modern Remains: This is a big one, frankly, and the strongest argument against the existence of a large unknown animal in North America. Folks spend a lot of time in the woods, you'd think they'd have found evidence of something out there.
Now, some bigfooters out there will counter with the argument that maybe these organisms possess a distinct, "human-like" culture of waste removal and burial of bodies, etc. These activities, however, would result in considerable disturbance as well, however; I mean, a bigfoot colony is going to produce a lot of shit, you know? And a 250 lb+ corpse needs a big hole if you're going to bury it.
Of all the arguments against Bigfoot, this one is the most damning.

3) Breeding Population: Radford contends that, in order to account for the large number of sightings, a large number of Bigfoot are required. It's an old axiom in the intelligence services that the risk of exposure of a group increases by the square of the number of individuals added (so that if you add 2 individuals, the risk of exposure goes up four-fold). So #3 is really a corollary to #2. Of course, maybe only 1 out of 1000 bigfoot sightings is real, which therefore results in a much smaller "required" bigfoot population.

4) Reliance of Eyewitness Accounts: Radford (rightly, in my mind) states the fact that most of the Bigfoot evidence out there are eyewitness accounts, which are notoriously untrustworthy. These are anecdotes, and shouldn't be tossed aside (which Radford agrees with), but they are a VERY weak line of evidence.

5) Blobsquatch: a funny word, but #5 is really rehashed #4, but with pictures.

6) No Academics: a legitimate point, though for a different reason than Radford states. The problem is that there is a general absence of academic rigor in Bigfootology and Yeticological Research, which means that there is no really well-documented, methodologically sound biological or ecology study out there. If you aren't doing research, then it's a hobby, pal.

7) Scientists haven't seen one: By this, Radford means that in the course of other detailed studies (as in the search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker), scientists haven't run across evidence for a Bigfoot. This is sort of tied to #2 above, really, with the general paucity of evidence being pretty grim for old Bigfoot.

8) New Species: The important point in number 8 is Radford's quote:

"The last large animal to be found was probably the giant panda, and that was
100 years ago," said Radford. "There has not been a single new creature that
doesn't fit the recognized taxonomy discovered in the last century, there just
simply hasn't."

The second sentence is the important part; evolutionary theory is predictive, and we can use the fossil record, genetic studies, and phylogenies to predict the occurrence of certain organisms in areas. The fact that primates went extinct in North America some 45 million years ago (or so), and the fact that apes (which, presumably, Bigfoot is supposed to be) evolved in the Old World, makes an endemic New World Ape problematic. That's not to say it couldn't be here, but it would require and explanation and further evidence to account for it.

9) Hoaxes: The fact of the matter is, there are a LOT of hoaxes out there (re: GA). So many, that the field is sullied by them, such that anyone making a claim not only has to deal with the extraordinary nature of the claim, but ALSO has to overcome the stigma of a possible hoax. The way to remedy this, of course, is to undertake rigorous, peer-reviewed research, with the level of scientific transparency present in real studies.

10) Nonuniform Prints: This goes back to number 9, and undoubtedly, many of these prints (with their multiple toe-counts) are probably hoaxes.

There is some redundancy on the list, and some problems here and there with reasoning, but all in all, I think Radford has a pretty reasonable list here. Any thing I've missed, or any points anyone else wants to make?

UPDATE 09/02/08: Loren Coleman discusses point number 8 on his cryptomundo blog.

Lost Towns of the Xingu

2008-08-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

Human culture and civilization is markedly resilient, and we've been able to spread to practically every corner of the globe, putting us up there with rats and cockroaches on the survivability scale of things. What is so amazing, of course, is how modern day researchers have really just scratched the surface of the whole history of human societies and migrations, often finding evidence for human habitation in surprising places.

Resent work from the University of Florida has shown that, in the area of the Upper Xingu in the Amazon Basin (in Brazil), humans had created elaborate urban settlements in the heart of the modern day rain forest. These urban centers were laid out in grid-like patterns, centered around large plazas, and connected by extensive roadways. A summary of the recent find is available at the BBC Science headline site.

The researchers used satellite imagery and good ol' fashioned field work (identifying pottery shards and "black earth", where farming or waste dumping occurred) to identify the settlements. Evidence for dams and extensive earthworks were also found. Additionally, and most importantly, the ruins were identified by the Kuikoro tribe, were are believed to be descendants of the Xingu settlement folks.

The Upper Xingu people are believed to have been wiped out by European diseases brought by colonists, sometime in the 15th Century.

Bigfoot Trackin'

2008-08-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

The quintessential bigfoot evidence (and, I reckon, Yeti evidence too) always seems to be the footprints left after the crypto-apes have, supposedly, stomped around a bit. The various researchers seem fairly meticulous in taking width and length measures, depths, spacing, etc. All in all, it seems that stompin'-prints are the big line of evidence most people look for and report.

Anyway, I was wondering, do any bigfoot researchers out there employ actual tracking techniques. There are several wildlife and wilderness tracking schools and workshops (in the States, at least) that offer some exceptionally training in tracking methodology and interpretation. Any bigfoot folks out there use these resources, or have taken any of these classes?

Any publicity is good publicity, right?

2008-08-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not. The Sasquatch detectives have been put squarely in the crosshairs of The Onion. Go forth, my brothers and sisters, and enjoy the humor.

Cryptozoology Hoaxes

2008-08-19T15:51:00.001-07:00

With the GA Bigfoot fiasco shown to be what it is (i.e., Bullshit), and the completely ridiculous obfuscation, lies, and downright sneakiness of the squatchdetective radioshow (available here, courtesy Bigfoot on Ice; if you ARE going to listen to it, fast forward to around 70 minutes or so...everything before there is powerfully boring filler that serves as a powerful, sleep-inducing narcotic), it might pay for people to think about WHY people perpetrate hoaxes.

Loren Coleman, on his Cryptomundo site, has an (old) post regarding the 10 Reasons Why People Commit Hoaxes. It is a pretty straightforward list, with all the ole standbys there (i.e., money, fame, etc).

I think it is important, however, to recognize that the reason why people CAN perpetrate these hoaxes is because the cryptozoology community has a bizarrely credulous nature. I think that a big part of this is the fact that these crypto-folks have dangerously misinterpreted the scientific method, perhaps in an attempt to present themselves as rigorous. The philosophy of cryptozoology seems to be one of blunt, literal objectivism, treating all claims equally until proven differently (as evidenced by this GA Bigfoot episode).

I'll let everyone in on a little secret...scientist DO NOT treat all claims with equal weight, which is why we always want to see careful documentation of the observation and data related to any problem. Scientists make their living by being SKEPTICAL about claims, including (and especially) their own.

Cryptozoology needs to discard this willingness to sit back and observe, but instead needs to begin acting like the respectable field they claim to be: start evaluating claims skeptically and rigorously, with the recognition that extraordinary claims require extraordinary support.

Rainbows...OF DOOM

2008-08-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

Jumpin' Cats:

I reckon she's not a Radiohead fan...

Dixie Bigfoot

2008-08-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

Man, you turn your back on the Internets for one measly little week, and the ol' GA Bigfoot thing dies with a whimper, huh? Bigfoot On Ice, of course has kept up on all the news, and that news is sadly (but not entirely unpredictably) that the whole thing is one big ol' hoax.

Furthermore, it seems that the DNA results are bullshit as well. According to this Discovery News post, a University of Minnesota scientist has determined that the DNA from the samples represent two sources: one sample was human, and one sample was from an opossum. Of course, I suspect that Tom Biscardi and his bi-coastal curious lawyers will remain undaunted by the facts, and press on with the whole sham.

Now, the fact that Tom Biscardi (AND his bi-coastal lawyers) is associated with a Hoax is nothing surprising; he's kinda famous for being a, how do you say, money-grubbing shyster asshole. What IS surprising, of course, is how the cryptozoology community payed any attention to this sideshow nonsense. If folks with a history of playing fast and loose with the truth starts shooting their mouth off about their dead, frozen bigfoot, your natural skeptic-o-meter (located in the hypothalamus) should start buzzing.

Hopefully, the cryptozoological community will FINALLY learn the lesson of these silly little episodes: until the evidence is made public, all anybody ever has is a story.

The Large Hadron Collider and the End of the World

2008-08-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

Let us take a break from bi-coastal lawyers and frozen bigfoots, and look to the world of legitimate science (and VERY LONG POSTS).

MAD SCIENCE, that is!!!

On September 10, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 km long particle accelerator located on the Franco-Swiss border, is set to begin the first of what are hoped to be many fundamental experiments into the nature of matter. Current efforts by workers at the structure have included circulating superfluid helium around the structure, lowering the LHC’s temperature temperature to 1.9 K (about -271 °C, or “Fuckin’ Cold”, as Physicists would say), these low temperatures being necessary for the upcoming experimental phase of the research.

What is the LHC, and more to the point, WHY is the LHC?

To answer the first question, the LHC was commissioned by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (which somehow, comes out to the acronym CERN, probably because they’re speaking europeanese or somethin’. Damn ferners, acceleratin’ OUR particles…). The LHC is a big ass particle accelerator, which pretty much does what it says; it accelerates particles. However, the special thing about the LHC is HOW fast it accelerates those particles. By the time the little bastards have circled through the tubes in the LHC, they will be travelling at around 0.99999c or so. That c, on the end of that 0.99999 is the same c as in the ol’ E = mc2 equation, that is, c is the speed of light. So this particle accelerator will, um, accelerate a particle to ALMOST the speed of the light (or, as Physicists would term it, “Fuckin’ Fast”).

The picture below was nabbed from Google Earth, and shows the extensive research facilities maintained by CERN, including the underground LHC, located in the middle of the picture. Nice digs, for sure.

Anyway, WHY would we want to chuck particles around that fast, you ask? Well, why don’t we let the good people at CERN tell us that? The following text was gleaned from the CERN LHC website:

The LHC was built to help scientists to answer key unresolved questions in
particle physics. The unprecedented energy it achieves may even reveal some
unexpected results that no one has ever thought of!
For the past few decades, physicists have been able to describe with increasing detail the fundamental particles that make up the Universe and the interactions between
them. This understanding is encapsulated in the Standard Model of particle
physics, but it contains gaps and cannot tell us the whole story. To fill in
the missing knowledge requires experimental data, and the next big step to
achieving this is with LHC.

More specifically, the LHC has been built to try to understand what makes “Mass” by trying to identify the Higgs Boson, a predicted but hitherto unobserved fundamental particle. Additional research will try t o understand what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are (which together make up 96% of the known universe), what happened during the first few seconds of the universe after the Big Bang, and why there is antimatter but no or very little antimatter left. These are lofty, if somewhat obscure and heady, goals, right. Human knowledge and understanding march on unimpeded, right?

Well, not entirely.

There are some out there who seem to think that the operation of the LHC will result in the destruction of the Earth. Among these, a group calling themselves Citizens Against The Large Hardon Collider seem to have the slickest website. I pulled the following statement from their front page:

Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider is a non-profit organization
established for the purpose of using legal action to prevent the operation of
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) until further safety tests are conducted.

The LHC is a particle accelerator located on the France/Switzerland
border; it has been dubbed the largest, most expensive, most powerful experiment
ever attempted, certainly dwarfing all particle colliders ever built before,
both in terms of size and power.

Some experts fear that the risk of operating the LHC disproportionately outweighs anything science might gain from this experiment. It is not possible to know what the outcome of the experiment will be, but even CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) scientists concede that there is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets, and deSitter paces transitions. These events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter and destroy our planet.

So, two points on the ol’ Anti-LHCer’s statement here. Point 1) “experts” is a pretty meaningless phrase. Experts in what? World Destructology? Doomographers? Particle Physics? Who knows? The statement doesn’t really cite anything, so we are left to mentally fill-in-the blanks on the whole “experts fear…” line. A perusal through their website shows that they have a “WHAT EXPERTS SAY” link, which mostly seems to reiterate the position of Anti-LHC group member/founder, Walter Wagner (and also states nobel-prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek as suggesting a similar doomsday scenario; more on this falsehood later), as well as letters, some from journalists, some from “concerned citizens.”

And as a second bit of nonsense, Point the Second): CERN does NOT acknowledge a “real possibility” of blowing up the universe. In fact, CERN’s LHC Safety link makes their position VERY clear: there is no danger from the LHC. So that is a falsehood, in fact, and just one of numerous half-truths and outright lies in the LHCdefenders website.

Beyond that statement, what are the Anti-LHC guys worried about, exactly? Well, they tell you at their risk link, which states micro black holes and strangelets as their big concerns. Of course, the LHC Safety site explains how those things, as well as many other possibilities are not in fact a threat to the Earth.

The anti-LHC crowd seems to be pinning much of their arguments against the LHC on the fact that the energy involved in the operation of these experiments is greater than any experiment previously attempted. In other words, the scale of the LHC experiments are what make them dangerous; the energy involved is such that the possibility of a catastrophic “oops” is that much greater than that ever attempted by humans before!

How does the LHC respond to this concern? By pointing out that, YES, the LHC is the biggest, best, and most energetic particle collider humans have ever made; HOWEVER, it is MUCH LESS powerful than the NATURALLY OCCURING phenomena they are trying to emulate. Cosmic ray collisions in space occur that involve higher energy, more matter, and with much greater frequency than the piddly-little LHC experiments. If the products of these processes were destructive to planets, stars, or galaxies, THEN THERE WOULD NOT BE ANY STARS, PLANETS, OR GALAXIES around for us to see! What the LHC is going to do is nothing new; nature has been doing it for billions and billions of years. What is new is that humans are finally going to be able to see it happen, and therefore gain some understanding of how these processes work. Just to reiterate, I’ll link to the LHC safety site once again. Read it, and see that everything is A-OK.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE “EXPERTS FEAR”?

Indeed, what about the experts fear? Let’s start off by looking at the founder of the Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider, one Walter L. Wagner. According to the bio link posted at the Coast to Coast AM site (where ol’ Walt has been a guest), Wagner has some interesting but obscure credentials. For instance, he refers to himself as a Doctor, but apparently never went to graduate school (at least, not in physics, which sort of limits his credentials in that area).

Oh, and he also had the exact same concerns regarding the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Last time I checked, the world hadn’t exploded when they were running that machine.

Another prominent name listed on the LHC website, under their Expert link, is Dr. Frank Wilczek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. So I guess he’s sort of a big deal. His name is mentioned in the same breath as ol Walt Wagner there (interestingly, AFTER Walt’s own name. Feel a little vain, much?). Anyway, I was shocked to see his name there. Afterall, Wilczek is a real-live MIT physicist, and one who won the Free Trip to Stockholm, no less. Mighty powerful credentials!

However, through the power of the internets, I was able to find out that the inclusion of his name with the anti-LHC folks is an ignorant mistake at best, and an outright distortion of the truth at worst.

According to Dr. Wilczek’s own website, the LHC will not blow up the universe. Additionally, in this link, we learn that the Scientific American letter attributed to Wilczek was actually a heavily edited work that Wilczek wrote IN RESPONSE to a letter about a particle collider blowing up the world. What Wilczek was trying to say was that there is no cause for concern regarding micro-black holes killing us all. So either Wagner doesn’t understand enough of physics to realize that this is what Wilczek was saying, or he is just lying and is willfully misrepresenting a Nobel Laureate’s position. Which is it Wagner, are you stupid, or just a liar?

The LHC is an unprecedented opportunity to study in controlled conditions, albeit at lower energies, some of the fundamental processes in the universe. Hopefully, this will allow us to gain a better understanding of the basic nature of matter, and how the initial moments of the Big Bang helped to shape the universe as we see it today.

The anti-intellectualism of the Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider, most likely born out of ignorance and the prideful assumption that the rest of the world doesn’t understand things as well as they do, will not stop fundamental research. The true tragedy, of course, is that the scientific community has done such a poor job of representing themselves, their work, and its importance, that this anti-intellectualism has been able to thrive. The LHC is not going to destroy the world; rather, it will clarify our view of the world, and let us develop a better understanding of how the universe works.

Litigious Bigfoots!

2008-08-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

Check out some totally crazy sabre rattling from Tom Biscardi, courtesy of the inestimable bigfoot news machine that is Bigfoot On Ice. Do it right now, it is so good oh it is so good!

Bi-coastal lawyers?

Bi-coastal lawyers!

Am I the only one who thinks that "Bi-Coastal Lawyers" would be one of the greatest band names ever! What the hell does that even mean? You do know, Tom Biscardi, that you don't have to be in the same vicinity of a person to sue them, right? It's not an issue of range; lawyers aren't classified by their distance-to-target, nor do they have killzones, Tom Biscardi.

More importantly, what the heck is the point of saying that you have "bi-coastal lawyers"? Are you going to sue someone, Tom Biscardi, because they say mean things about some guys who claim to have a bigfoot on ice in GA? Are you going to sue them because some people are asking for some proof of these claims?

Once again, I have to say this...these things, right here? That is why no one in academia takes cryptozoology seriously. It is not because scientists don't like controversy. Hell, we thrive on it (I know, because I am one). It is not because scientist don't get in ragging arguments (because we do). The reason, gentle readers, that crytpozoology can't get any respect from anyone in authority is because of stunts like this whole GA bigfoot thing. If you find something, do up the required work, then release your findings, period, making your data (i.e., the body) and your interpretations available to the harsh light of peer-review.

Lemme break it down for everyone, in a series of vignettes:

Cryptozoologist 1: Hey, I found a bigfoot!

Skeptic: Oh yeah, where is your proof, wiseguy?

Cryptozoologist 1: Right here! (hands body, pictures, notes, and all interpretations to scientist).

Skeptic:...(reading). A bigfoot! This is an interesting and useful contribution to the field of biology and zoology. Good work! When is the Nature article coming out?

(end scene)

I promise you, it would be JUST THAT EASY! Instead, we get situations like this:

Cryptozoologist 1: We have found a Bigfoot!

Skeptic: Oh yeah, where is your proof, wiseguy?

Cryptozoologist 1: Oh, we've got it, all right. Lots of proof. Yep. Got us a bigfoot on ICE!

Skeptic: Well, may I see it, please?

Cryptozoologist 1: No, of course not. Don't be silly. We'll show it to you in sept- I mean in October, yeah, that's the ticket. October.

Skeptic: I think you guys are full of shit.

Cryptozoologist 2: I WILL SUE YOU FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE COUNTRY! I HAVE BI-COASTAL LAWYERS!

Skeptic: ...what?

(end scene)

Can you spot the difference in these little scenes? In the first one, everybody acted like adults who actually wanted to learn and advance human knowledge and understanding. In the second one, the cryptozoologists acted like douchebags. It's not that people are hostile to the IDEA of a Bigfoot from Georgia; it's that people are hostile to the idea of dissembling assholes who make cryptic claims regarding "amazing new finds", then yell and pout about people asking "where's the beef".

I am the David Mamet of the one-scene, bigfoot-themed play.

Bigfoot Corpse*

2008-08-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

The dread asterisk is never a good a sign; the inclusion of one at the end of a phrase tends to let you know that there are some caveats, here and there, that may change a meaning or two. So it seems with the supposed Bigfoot on Ice from North Georgia. Both Cryptozoology and the Bigfoot On Ice blog have made it known that the Bigfoot Trackers have recently put a tiny little italicized "for entertainment purposes only" on the bottom of their website.

As I said in a previous post, just another day in the the totally awesome and completely respectable field of cryptozoology!

Al-Qaeda and the UFOs

2008-07-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

An op-ed piece in the New York Times, written by UFO researcher Nick Pope and found on-line here, seems to be suggesting that a major reorganization of funding and monitoring efforts needs to be made in the U.S. And what should we be monitoring more closely?

Why, reports of UFOs, of course.

Pope seems to be trying to make the point that, despite people reporting seeing UFOs in American (and, presumably, secure) airspace, the US Gov't hasn't investigated UFO reports since the late 60s. According to Pope, this is an unconscionable breach in security that the government isn't taking seriously.

I'm not quite sure that the logic comes through for ol' Pope there. He seems to be trying to make the following argument: "we all like security right? Well, UFOs that some folks claim to see don't show up on radar, right? That means we can't track em with radar, so we need to take these reports seriously, since it would be dangerous to ignore them".

Why would it be dangerous to ignore them, exactly? Have the Nazis on the Moon been replaced by Al-Qaeda on the Moon? Or are we fearing an imminent invasion from the stars? The piece isn't clear about the "why", of course, merely extolling us to start paying UFO claims more attention, particularly at the official, government level.

Of Astronauts and Aliens

2008-07-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon Dr. Edgar Mitchell has been in the news recently for his assertion that a UFO/ET conspiracy has been going-on for the last 60 years, perpetrated by NASA and the Gov't in order to hide the fact that aliens have been hittin' up the Earth for a while. The Daily Mail has the story here.

According to Mitchell, Roswell pretty much conforms to the stories told about it, and there have subsequently been "many" UFO visits to ol' Terra Prime here, each one nefariously covered up by NASA (and, presumably, Cancer Man). During the radio interview that started all the news stories a-spinning, Mitchell said that the aliens were "little people who look strange to us"; in other words, your standard issue Gray. Mitchell also seems to imply that the aliens are at least non-hostile, since their amazing space technology is supposed to be so far beyond ours that turning our little dirt ball to so many ionized particles wouldn't tax them in the least.

Of course, NASA has refuted the claims, saying that they don't track UFOs, and that we haven't been visited by Beings from Somewhere Else. Of course, seeing as how they've been blamed for the conspiracy, I doubt that folks will take the offical NASA line seriously.

Which sort of makes you wonder about credibility, doesn't it. All these stories have been awfully flattering to Dr. Mitchell. He's always identified early on as "6th man on the moon", his Apollo record is brought up, and his quotes and ideas are passed on without any comment or editorializing.

It seems that having been in space makes him an authority on everything about space, including speculative topics like alien intelligence and visitation. That often seems to be the case in the world of the "true believer." It's an argument from authority of course, and false authority at that. I mean, I've been in hospitals; does that make me an expert of surgery? What does an astronaut know about UFOs, or aliens, or secret government plots to obscure those things? No one seems to be asking what Mitchell's credentials are in regards to his knowledge regarding the vast UFO-conspiracy.

A quick look at NASAs bio for Mitchell is a little interesting, actually. If you scroll down to the "business experience" section, it turns out that Mitchell was one of the founders of the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS)!

The IONS is a group that describes itself thusly:

We are a nonprofit membership organization located in Northern California
that conducts and sponsors leading-edge research into the potentials and powers
of consciousness—including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention, and
intuition. The Institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit
conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific
rigor.

That last bit is interesting; IONS effectively says that the scientific method doesn't work for what they look at. That means that they DON'T do SCIENCE when investigating all their brainy-wainy, mindy-windy, psychic stuff.

Sort of puts ol' Mitchell and his claims into perspective, don't it? He's not really into the whole "scientific method" or "evidence-based claims" side of things. And yet, when he goes around claiming that their are aliens, they've visited the Earth, and there is a heinous conspiracy to hide all that from the common folk, no one bothers to bring up the fact that he's ALSO associated with a group who eschews science and the peer-review process when making its claims about the paranormal.

IF his credibility is being derived from what he once did (i.e., astronaut stuff), then shouldn't it also include his affiliation with the IONS and his obvious interest in the world of explicitly non-scientific fringe ideas?

Bigfoot Corpse?

2008-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

HAS A BIGFOOT BODY BEEN FOUND!?!

Probably not, and even if it were, I doubt that it would warrent all-caps.

Anyway, some salt-of-the-earth types in North Georgia have recently made the claim that they have found the corpse of a male bigfoot (see the story on the Fayetteville, GA, newspaper website right here). These guys, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, are obviously very serious and credible, since they chose to make their claims known via that bastion of reasoned thought and careful documentation, YouTube.

These two guys run a website, bigfoottracker.com, which apparently sells spots on bigfoot searching expeditions in the hill country in North Georgia. I might also mention that the hill country of North Georgia is where Deliverance was set, so interested parties might wanna prepare accordingly.

The two "researchers" put up further videos with a "pathology prof" and his shock at the frozen Bigfoot body. Turns out, though, the "prof" was actually the brother of Whitton. But despite the hoaxed professor thing, these guys STILL claim that they have a bigfoot body, and are willing to sell it to the highest bidder.

Just another day in the totally awesome and completely respectable field of cryptozoology, I guess.

...Inconclusive

2008-07-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

"Yeti Hair" from the Garo Hills in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, India, have been undergoing "extensive" microscopy in the UK, as per this news story from the BBC. Using some of the "most powerful" microscopes in England, the researchers can only say that the visual comparison of the hairs to other hairs has resulted in an "inconclusive" finding, and have now been sent on for DNA testing.

First thing first, the story should really have said "most powerful OPTICAL" microscopes, as Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopes (FESEM) can magnify things many many many many times (easily reaching 100,000 X, in many cases). These "most powerful" microscopes in the story magnified the hairs up to 200x; so they were probably just confocal optical microscopes.

Secondly, the "inconclusive" bit is a little misleading. These guys were just visually comparing hair samples with the possible "yeti" hair. Who knows how long these things have been out in the humid air, weathering away and getting worn out?

Still, keep your ears to the ground for the DNA results from the Garo Hills sample!

Elvis Rex!

2008-07-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

How appropriate that, for our first foray into the world of the weird, we run into Elvis Presley. As described on Mysterytopia and the Daily Mail, an 1800-year old bust (called an acroterion) and meant as an ornament to a sarcophagus, , has recently come up for auction. The funny thing is, this acroterion bears a striking similarity to the King of Rock and Roll (picture nabbed from the Daily Mail story, linked above):

More importantly, this statue definitively proves the unique importance of the pompadour, and its impact on human culture.

Psychic Bigfoot Lives!

2008-07-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Psychic Bigfoot, weary blog-o-nauts!

This blog is designed as a clearing house for all the Fortean-esque things that I, a simple, psychically gifted crypto-hominid living in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, come across. I hope that, together, we can come to understand the intricacies of the secret, hidden universe of psuedo-science.

And maybe, just maybe, learn a little something about love.