Empire of the Odd | I'm just visiting this planet. Deal with it!

Apocalypse, Eventually

Posted on October 31, 2010 by oddemperor

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1130-apocalypse-eventually.html

Written by Sean Sturgeon

Friday, 29 October 2010 10:56

This is a day for all of humanity to breathe a collective sigh of relief.The ABC News website ‘ABC.go’ recently posted an article explaining that the meme-worthy and oft-referenced Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 appears to have been postponed. It seems that a misinterpretation of the Mayan system of calculating dates may have bumped the destruction of everything back by one hundred years.

The internet can wait while your jubilations are exhausted.

A reader merely skimming the text may feel better as a result, but it seems equally likely that a torrent of drool ought to have shorted out their netbook. This could be, a more tolerant reader might add, just news fluff and of no harm at all. This is possible, but there is something about the piece that is just not right. A quality persists, like an ephemeral scent in the air. The text seems innocuous enough albeit silly, but the nostrils of this particular analogy still flare at the hint of that scent. That’s the smell of stupid.

The ABC, GO! story states that the Mayan Apocalypse may not warrant much concern but for no other reason than the math might be off by a smidge.

First off, it seems a shame that someone used actual math – numbers that might have been used instead for inventing better telescopes and waffle irons – on the nerdly details of a premise so faulty that it mistakes the pages of a calendar for the destruction of all human life.

Secondly, the author must have dislocated a lobe or a cortex in the fierce mental contortions needed to smear this text onto your monitor and avoid even accidentally passing on the thinnest scintilla of meaningful fact. Despite words, sentences and a serious, almost-a-newspaper font, the piece seems designed to actually leave the world with less knowledge than had previously existed.

Rather than even attempt to address the frivolity of the 2012 Doomsday scenario, ABC News reports the matter as they would the cancellation of a pie-eating contest. To their credit, they do deploy quotation marks when using words like “end-of-days” and since they posted the thing, that effort alone must cut the mustard as their measure of editorial responsibility.

The ABC News article is precisely the kind of mushy, brain-stalling, stupor-inducing pseudo fact that is anathema to critical thinking and bars the way to serious contemplation of the silliest of notions, up to and including, “my gazebo is a spacecraft piloted by gnomes”.

This may seem like exaggeration, but the common denominator of the information we are given has not just been lowered, it’s been traumatized. The common denominator is lying in bed right now amid a debris field of empty ice cream tubs, crying like Lindsay Lohan at trial.

There is no Mayan Apocalypse and ABC “News” never hints at this. The Mayan Long Count calendar is built in great long ages and the last one they really bothered with just happens to end (maybe) in December of 2012. They never got any further because they were too busy having their culture wiped out, a topic that would make a much better story than the last page of the Farmer’s Almanac bringing on Universal Armageddon.

Any calendar is as germane to the fate of the world as the fact that phonebooks are published annually. When the new phone book comes out it’s not as if someone shows up at the door and motions for you to enter a big garbage truck; it is not your time to be replaced by the new crop of humans.

ABC News must know all of this, but they don’t want to upset anybody. So, the quotation marks do the journalism.

Among the boils of brain puss that have been built around apocalypticism, dates are very common cysts. It meant no more in the year 1000 than it did in 2000 or than it will in 2012. All such numerology is false; even if nature could care about our days and years, it would not. Every human calendar is just that – human – and no more predicts the end of planets, stars and civilizations than the lyrics to MacArthur Park.

In the year 1000, when despair was one of the four food groups and the guy who could almost count to six was the smartest person in his village, you could at least make an argument that they didn’t know any better.

We ought to know better now. The story has shown up on Yahoo, the bewildering Huffington Post and a wad of other sources. People will read it and may never think of the underlying foolishness. If anyone ever asks why critical thinking is so important, show them that article, and the thousands like it. We’re swimming in hollow noise posing as information.

Thanks, ABC “News”.

[[FROM]]

[

1 Comment

Colorado Flying-Saucer Believers Have Ghost Hunters in Their Sights

Posted on October 30, 2010 by oddemperor

Denver May Not Be Big Enough for Both; Earthlings to Decide on UFO Haven

Chris Schneider for the Wall Street JournalJeff Peckman is pushing Initiative 300, which would create an extraterrestrial affairs commission in Denver

By STEPHANIE SIMON

DENVER—There has been plenty of partisan rancor across Colorado as Election Day approaches. Here in the capital, it’s out of this world.

Ballot Initiative 300 would require the city to set up an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission, stocked with Ph.D. scientists, to “ensure the health, safety and cultural awareness of Denver residents” when it comes to future contact “with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles.”

View Full Image

Chris Schneider for the Wall Street Journal

Jeff Peckman is pushing Initiative 300, which would create an extraterrestrial affairs commission in Denver

Audio

Listen: Stephanie Simon reports on Colorado’s out-of-this-world initiative.

Promoting the initiative: Jeff Peckman, a silver-haired entrepreneur who lives with his parents. “Low overhead,” he explains. Mr. Peckman is a firm believer in intergalactic life, though he has never been personally contacted by an alien. That gives him more credibility, he says; it’s harder to dismiss him as biased.

Mr. Peckman has recruited about 20 volunteers for his campaign.

They face an impassioned opposition led by Bryan Bonner, who dismisses the unidentified-flying-object buffs as delusional if not outright frauds.

One thing about Mr. Bonner: He spends his spare time crawling through spooky spaces, deploying remote digital thermometers, seismographs, infrared cameras, electromagnetic field detectors and Nerf balls in pursuit of evidence of the paranormal. He is, in short, a ghost hunter.

And he has rallied his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society to fight Initiative 300 as an embarrassment to science—and to Denver.

“This is about the reputation of the city,” Mr. Bonner says.

[[[MORE]]]

2 Comments

http://oddempire.org/weblog/?p…

Posted on October 29, 2010 by oddemperor

http://oddempire.org/weblog/?p=1482

Leave a comment

How fast can Bigfoot run?

Posted on October 28, 2010 by oddemperor

The big new Bigfoot buzz is none other than Todd Standing and his (drum roll) Sylvanic Bigfoot!

http://www.sylvanic.com/

The story goes a bit like this. Todd Standing was a sketic but unlike myself he was not a lazy bastard skeptic, so he went into the woods to PROVE Bigfoot was a myth…

Now , let’s not allow logic to spoil a good story, most of us understand that you can’t really prove a negative. (Translated for people like Moonbat, nobody can disprove Bigfoot, all you can do is gather evidence or debunk and dismiss the so-called evidence.) Hopefully, if there is enough real evidence (which cannot be debunked,) one can finally say that criptez like Bigfoot are real beasts and the whole mess is turned over to the Zoological people.The Cripzologists happily go back to searching for thunder lizards or some other damn thing after getting the super-slam at Denny’s.

But Todd Standing is no ordinary skeptic! He’s not a skeptic all! Not any more anyway. He found the very beast that he was trying to disprove by not finding -it. Shocking I know! With his trusty Indian guide, a biologist an a paramedic they marched into the deep and spooky undisclosed woods, found a sekrit heretofore undiscovered tunnel under an undisclosed mountain, and found…. they found…….(wait for it.)

EVIDENCE OF BIGFOOT!!!!!

They even brought back spine tingling films of the furry guy. This is not Harry and the Hendersons folks this is the real, smelly thing! He even found a “domicile,” as apposed to “nests” or habitat like those other “researchers” find.

Our goal is to carefully gather as much information about this species while adhering to our first priority, which is to ensure we do not compromise the research site in any way. This species has zero tolerance for any sustained human presence. When a habitat is compromised, not only do we lose a valuable research site, these animals lose their home. Loss of a habitat means loss of life. Our priority now and always will be the welfare of this species. If we feel our work in any way leads to the detriment of these animals our work will stop immediately.

We all know that homeless bigfoot would really suck! They might end up gifting in Los Vegas, nobody wants to see that!

If I would have had a gun (either tranquilizer or bullet projectile) we were well within range of successfully taking a shot. Therefore, one might conclude that the animal you see in video 2 is vulnerable. You could not be more mistaken. The day after we shot video 2 we found definitive evidence that there had been another animal standing no more than 10 feet away from us.

Now friends and funnseekers, how would any animal (or primitive human for that matter) think that pointing a gun was an aggressive move? Heck they were point cameras the entire time and had they even shot one of the beasts, how would it know that the gun could hurt them. They would have no idea unless they are really not beast at all. But wait, there’s more!

Conclusion: The sound we heard just after shooting video 2 was the rock crashing to the ground. That sound was a diversion. The animal that was standing behind the tree ripped the rock out of the earth and threw it precisely when the animal in video 2 required a diversion. This would have required an unfathomable feet of strength to throw such a large rock that distance. More importantly, the timing indicates a level of intelligence that would put this species into a category of intelligence that would exceed that of any other primate (excluding humans).

Hmmm, it’s “unfathomably strong, super-strong in fact. Todd Standing talks about being continuously outwitted by the invisible monsters that he was sure were all around him. According to this video it’s way fast. It can run over 40 miles per hour over rough terrine. It must have superior eyesight and keen hearing. The entire tribe of Bigfoot knew instantly when humans were around because they posted sententials which could see them coming, day or night for miles.

You can even download and watch spine tingeing vids of the hairy beast, (for a nominal fee.)

In all seriousness, I don’t necessarily think that the idea of a manlike mega fauna might live unknown in uninhabited areas is total ka-ka. There are still huge swatches of forest that have been hardly explored. It’s possible (although unlikely) that there are species that we know nothing about. Bigfoot and animals like him are prevalent in the lore of, not only this country but just about every society that has ever existed.

But this one sounds kind of familiar…

Let’s see, really strong, super intelligent, super acute hearing, telescopic vision, runs very fast.. where have I heard all of that before?