The Hunt for the Elusive Giant Beaver
February 5th, 2010 6:52 pm by Jonathan
Bigfoot. Champy. Mothman. Apart from being the topics of myriad documentaries on television that only serve to reaffirm my faith in reading books, these creatures have yet to be caught or leave plausible proof of their existences.
One John Warms, of Canada, is such a person who has taken up the gauntlet to investigate the claims of people who have seen monsters and other unexplained creatures. The author and retired teacher has been traveling all over to listen to first, second, and third-hand accounts of everything from an underwater moose to sasquatch, as he compiles information for an upcoming book.
Living in Manitoba, he grew up with tales of giant serpents, huge frogs, and even bigfoot. But the one creature he hopes to find is the giant prehistoric beaver. Scientifically named Castoroides ohioensis and reaching lengths of about 9 feet, these beavers are believed to have been extinct for roughly 10,000 years. However, John believes these creatures to still be alive, and is avidly seeking proof that they still roam the wilds of Canada.
"I have encountered people in northern Manitoba and along the Alaska Highway who claim to have seen the bear-sized creature," John Warms said. "I saw one in southern Manitoba, swimming, and the head was about basketball size. They seldom come ashore; that is why we don't know about them."
I am a skeptic by nature, though I keep an open mind about these things. I always try to remind myself that we often do not see that which we aren't seeking. To say that giant beavers still roam the countryside implies that there is more than one, and that they are capable to reproducing. However, the fact that one one has caught one on camera, or a corpse hasn't washed ashore (or part of one, given the size), or evidence of their impact on the immediate surroundings of their habitat, leads me to believe that the chase for the wild giant beaver may end up being nothing more than a sasquatch chase. I am however willing to consider any evidence that Mr. Warms finds and brings to light.
If you would like to know more about John Warms and his various endeavors, you can read an interview he did in Utah when he was looking for evidence of a Loch Ness monster of sorts in Bear Lake, or you can visit his site, Creatures Seldom Seen.
Finally, real solid evidence of…
January 22nd, 2010 1:14 pm by Shane
a hoax. Observe:
Ironically, while the perpetrator brags about recording in HD, it is the high quality of the video that makes it pretty clear it's a man in a suit with a terribly fake looking mask on.
The world awaits Tom Biscardi's news conference.
Red Herring On A Red Planet
December 5th, 2009 2:11 pm by Jonathan
In case you missed it last week, NASA released photographs from the Mars Spirit Rover that were taken between May and June of this year. One shot, in particular, looks as though it may be debris of an unknown origin, partially buried by the terrain of the red planet.
A German news site got a hold of this image, and now speculation has begun as to whether this object is extraterrestrial in nature. According to the site, this debris may be part of a wing, or even a drive unit (if anyone actually knows what this is, please tell us).
Wing? Drive unit? Gigantic mouth harp? YOU MAKE THE CALL!
Now, I do not work for a major news site. I don't even know what the journalistic standards are in Germany. However, I do know that when trying to report things that seem sensational, one should have some facts that, while they may not directly support your claims, will at least mislead the readers to connect the dots in the way you desire.
The closest this article comes is with two statements:
"It is uncertain exactly what the pictures show, but it is not the first discovery suggesting the planet had a lost civilisation - what could be buildings, a hominid skull and even a strange creature have all been spotted in earlier photos beamed from Mars."
In the above, it would be helpful to have links or citations so that the reader can formulate ideas and discuss them with a little more than hearsay to back it up. A strange creature? Oh do tell! Think about it. You're at the watercooler because you are either ducking work or your pink slip, and you try to start a conversation about this debris. The person you're talking with says something like, "Really? A drive unit? Like to create a localized wormhole or a sub-light speed engine?" Or, they ask more about the "creature" and the hominid skull. What do you do? Do you have a more credible response than, "Well, I read it on-line," while you wish you had just done your work or cleaned out your desk rather than look like a complete jackass?
Pictured Above: Marsquatch
The second statement in the article really has nothing to do with the topic of the article at all:
"Expert and author Hartwig Hausdorf (53, ‘Encounters with the Incomprehensible’) said: 'I can imagine that Mars was once inhabited. The last NASA probes found water, a key requirement for life.'"
He's an expert and author! Actually, when looking up his biography, his areas of expertise seem to be all over the place, with such titles as, "Close Encounters of the 5th Type: The Darkest Side of the UFO Phenomenon," "The Return of the Dragon: The Last Living Dinosaurs," and "Not of this world: The Stargate in the Andes."
However, he can imagine that Mars was once inhabited. Hell, I can imagine that my neighbor has pieces of The Amber Room in his basement, but guess what happens when I start making those wild claims and investigate his home late at night in the name of sound Internet Journalism?
But we're deviating. You want to know what I really think it is? It's the remnants of the sound stage we used to fake the moon landing.
One small step for man. One giant leap for credulity.
If you have any ideas as to what this image is of, please let us know. We'd be more than happy to have input and theories as to what's really happened on Mars.
The Fourth Kind…Better After A Fifth
November 18th, 2009 4:51 pm by Jonathan
Last night, I had a chance to watch The Fourth Kind. Growing up in the Hudson Valley (a hotbed for UFO activity); moving to New Hampshire and constantly visiting Exeter and driving the same route Betty and Barney Hill were on when they had their first experience; to moving to Arizona and reading up on their fair share of extraterrestrial phenomenon, it's safe to say I have a great deal of interest in UFOs, aliens, and other related incidents, including my own experiences.
The owl is a lie.
The Fourth Kind starts off as a really good movie. There are people coming to the realization that they've had experiences that undeniably smack of alien abduction. The owl they keep remembering outside of their bedroom windows is a safety device their minds conjure to keep them from having to deal with the unfathomable experiences that they had, which were so traumatic, that when they go under hypnosis, they are shaken into hysterics by the realization of what truly happened to them, driving some to be unable to cope, and committing suicide. This is all understandable, as the human mind can only take so much revelation, especially when it's personal.
The psychiatrist in this movie, Dr. Abigail (Jovovich), soon realizes she may also have had strange experiences, as evidenced on a recording on her dictation device. She calls in an expert in the field of ancient civilizations and alien contact (a very specific area of expertise), and finds out that the voice that is not her screaming is speaking Sumerian. This (and we are asked to make this leap, as viewers) tries very blatantly to not-so-subtly hint that these aliens have been in contact with our species since the dawn of civilization, and that we may be their experiment.
This theory is nothing new, and certainly the movie should have balanced that out more with the experiences people were having in this small Alaskan town. However, the movie then scatters too much in too short of a period of time to resolve anything or see it through in any way.
This is the problem I have with this movie, and almost any movie like it. To expose certain topics in a movie, the world in which the movie exists presupposes that the subject matter has either never been thought of in the first place, or that so few know about it that the idea is almost preposterous. Some examples include:
Paranormal: People refuse to believe that there's anything wrong happening and that there is nothing that can't be explained away or destroyed
Transformers: That, even in a world where the Transformers franchise doesn't exist, that no one has thought of vehicles that could change into robots, even as toys. (This also presumes that the country of Japan does not exist, by logical extension.)
The upcoming remake of The Third Man: This presupposes that anyone could reinvent gold and turn it into something that isn't going to be an utter insult to movie history.
Anyway, to get back to the film, Dr. Abigail's patients are dropping after hypnotherapy causes them to go over the edge, either because they can't cope with what's happened to them, or because the aliens have set up certain psychological triggers so that the bigger picture is never discovered.
The small town sheriff in this movie thinks that hypnotherapy is utter bunk and wants to arrest Dr. Abigail on charges that what occurred after putting her patients under makes her an accessory. Her house is put under 24 hour police surveillance, and this is where the movie goes all to hell, in my opinion.
During the first night of the police watching the house, one of the officers sees “something” happening. Something entering the house or hovering above the house. He is so aware of this, mind you, that he calls for backup (while the video surveillance in the police car records the event and is horribly distorted, there's no denying that something caused the officer to radio for help). The police arrive, only to find that Dr. Abigail's daughter is missing. The sheriff thinks the doctor hid her own daughter. The doctor says she saw a light and then her daughter was gone. No one bothers to review the tape or ask the officer who reported the incident what he saw. Ever. Not even once for the rest of the whole movie.
After this incident, Dr. Abigail decides to be hypnotized as a means of contacting or understanding the aliens and where her daughter might be. She has a friend and colleague put her under, while the expert in ancient civilizations holds a camera to record the event. Everything goes haywire. The recording is distorted, there is the doctor's voice and some entity speaking ominously in Sumerian. Then the recording ends.
What we are left with is Dr. Abigail, talking to someone on a show about her experiences, her colleague who put her under who isn't saying anything, and the expert in ancient civilization being nowhere to be found.
Maybe that's what the film intended – to have everything be as much an unknown to the audience as it is for the people who experienced the abductions. However, I doubt this movie will become a series, and it was (unfortunately) portrayed in a fashion no better than a dramatization on the Discovery Channel or old episodes of “In Search Of...” The Fourth Kind leaves no resolution whatsoever, and doesn't even bother to explore any of the mysteries it created. It would have been great as a late night movie in the 1960s or even 1970s, but right now, its portrayal just left me cold and unable to relate to a subject I know is much different (or rather, the film exaggerated the subject matter in the wrong areas) in my world, and in the experiences of others.
Shaking It Up In East Texas
November 5th, 2009 12:14 am by Shane
Last week, KLTV in East Texas posted a story here with some of the least impressive UFO footage I have seen since the last time I watched any of Billy Meier's awful fakes. When I watched the interview on the website (which I will post below), something reminded me of the recent Balloon Boy incident. In the modern age of communications, with so many media outlets and the distance between story and broadcast so short now, I expect to see more and more people trying to create their own stories around them. To me, this video is such an obvious fake.
It's pretty clear to me, that what we see here is nothing more than a digital video camera aimed a single bright source of light and purposely shaken to give the light the appearance of motion. The light, being so bright against a dark sky, leaves a ghost image as the camera is quickly jerked back and forth. I don't think it's any coincidence that the light streaks are longer during the time when the camera is more violently shaken and vice versa. While I can't be sure, the time frame, 6pm in the evening good be the planen Jupiter, which would stand out in the western sky during the evening hours. In the end, this is nothing more than a poorly executed hoax.
These are fun to check out and I'd like to look at more.
Who Ya Gonna Call?
October 28th, 2009 8:26 pm by Shane
In 1984, the world of the paranormal was changed forever by a documentary ingeniously disguised as an Ivan Reitman comedy. I am of course talking about Ghost Busters:
This movie spurred on the technological revolution within the ghost hunting community. No longer satisfied with blurry photographs or fading memories, ghost hunters got serious with the tech. I'd like to take a moment, just days away from Halloween, to highlight some of the amazing gadgets being used in the field of ghost hunting.
EMF Detector
No one knows for sure if ghosts have any sort of electro-magnetic field, but they might. Other sources of EMF include the Earth, electronic devices, solar rays, and electrical wiring. It can be difficult to separate false readings from true readings from honest to god spectres. When it doubt, determine how you feel. That's as objective as one can get when it comes to EMF.
Voice Recorder
It's been well established (I think) that electronic recording devices (unshielded of course) are hundreds of times better at detecting the voices and nosies of ghosts. EVP, which stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, is when you come back and listen to hours and hours and hours and hours of sound recording and pick up a couple seconds that kind-of-sort-of-if-you-squint-real-hard sound like people talking. If you're really lucky, you can make out words.
Audio Enhancement Software
EVP's don't make themselves. You need to process, clean up, and enhance your sound recordings to make them sound as close to voices as possible. The more digital manipulation applied to as little audio data as possible the better. Some people have been known to be so skilled at audio enhancement, ghosts have been heard doing karaoke.
Red LED Flashligh
It's a well established fact that ghosts only come out at night when we have trouble seeing and when our instincts cause us to go into a kind of fight or flight mode where the slightest movement or sound sends our hearts thumping. Red LED flashlights are the best because they keep your night vision intact and don't scare the ghosts away.
Geiger Counter
Never mind that there is no reason to think ghosts give off radiation, geiger counters make clicky sounds when near decaying isotopes. If you see a ghost that is glowing, suffering from radiation sickness, and containing a large amount of mass in our dimension, you might want to point the old geiger counter at it.
Infrared thermometers
In addition to having electromagnetic fields and tons of radiation, ghosts are known to not give off a lot of energy in the infrared range. Hence, you need infrared thermometers to detect these cold spots. Any temperature differential of greater than 0.5 degrees could be proof of a ghostly apparition.
These are just a few items that the modern, technologically advanced ghost hunter is using out in the field. Some of this technology is so cutting edge, you can get it here: http://theghosthunterstore.com/
For some demonstrations on how to use this modern technology, I pass on these instructional and informative videos:
How Far We’ve Come, Some of Us Anyway
October 14th, 2009 10:05 pm by Shane
The following video has been going around the skeptic blogosphere the last few days:
It's amazing to me that someone who could be so rational about religion and the (non-)existence of God, could be such a twit about the rock solid science of vaccines. Vaccines are the single greatest achievement of human medicine. Nothing has changed and improved the lives of so many. I'm not a gifted enough writer to explain with words of how amazing vaccines have been, so here is a little handy chart, based data from the US.
| Disease | Deaths Before Vax | Deaths in 2007 | Lives saved by Alternative Medicine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smallpox | 48,164 | 0 | 0 |
| Measles | 503,282 | 43 | 0 |
| Mumps | 152,209 | 800 | 0 |
| Pertussis | 147,271 | 10,454 | 0 |
Note the column "Lives saved by Alternative Medicine", each row tallying up a big fat zero. Of course, I did a small little trick here. There is no such thing as "Alternative Medicine." If something works better than a placebo in double blind tests over and over again, it's just medicine. Otherwise, it's just untested, unproven folk tales. This is what Bill Maher's view on vaccinations did to kids one hundred years ago:
Horrible thing to happen to a child, and it will happen a lot more children if vaccination rates plummet. This next picture might be shocking to some. It's a picture of a child, who has been stricken with a disease that effects the mind, and so far is incurable. Symptoms include narcissism, asininity, and ignorance.
I don't want to add too much more to this post. I think the numbers speak for themselves. Vaccinate your kids, vaccinate yourself, and if you're in a risk group, get the flu vaccines. Don't waste money on homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractics, or anything claiming to be "natural" or "eastern" medicine. And remember the face of the child in this post. That's how far we've come.
It’s A Goat, See?
October 14th, 2009 7:33 pm by Jonathan
I am slowly finding myself drawn to bild.de as the source for all of my international news. This site is to the (now defunct) Weekly World News what The Weekly World News was to The New York Times.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a small article circulating around the web about a still-born cryptid. I'm not talking about an alien hybrid or some sort of sasquatch. What the article reported was something of mythic proportions! It was a Pan, a satyr, or whatever you would like to call a creature that appears to be half-man and half-goat. The village of Maboleni in Zimbabwe was shaken when one of their goats gave birth to this:
Can you believe I found this image at abovetopsecret.com?
As I have discussed in previous posts, humans are very rational beings when faced with the unknown. Some study what they do not understand. Some appeal to a higher authority when confronted with notions or tangible things that challenge existing scientific axioms and social beliefs. Others give in to more primal reactions.
Instead of destroying this creature on sight, the villagers called in government officials to study the dead animal and get some sort of official ruling as to what it was. After what I am certain was a thorough autopsy, the official declaration by Governor Jason Machaya was that (to quote the article), “The head belonged to a human but the body belonged to a goat!”
The miscarriage (of both goat and science) has since been cremated, leaving those who witnessed the creature with theories and speculations ranging from witchcraft to secret government experiments. I am, admittedly, not a scientist. I do not practice sorcery. I don't even have clearance of any sort to confirm or deny what biological programs any government agency has in play. However, I am intrigued by abnormalities and the prospect of hybrids and cryptids. I did a little (VERY little) research, and looked back on things I witnessed growing up on a farm, and was able to find a couple of images. When you look at the following pictures, I want you to ask yourselves the following series of questions:
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Is this a goat or a person?
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Is this not a goat? Explain.
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Is this not a person? Explain.
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Is there a rational explanation for its existence?
Example 1
Do you have your answers? Then let's move on.
Example 2
This is fairly easy when approached with an analytical mind, isn't it?
And finally:
Example 3
Close your books and pass your responses to the front of the class.
Now that you have finished, feel free to post your answers or share your own experiences with animal oddities, cryptids, or anything else you fancy.
Rust on the Tin Ear
October 7th, 2009 10:36 pm by Shane
The health care debate "raging" in Washington is one reason I stopped doing a political podcast. I don't want to rehash the arguments, because it just rots my soul. I try as hard as I can, often failing, to not talk about it with anyone. However, no matter what side of the debate you're on, any time you hear ads for homeopathic treatments, you should get a little angry. Here we are, as a nation, deciding how much real money we went to dedicate to public health insurance, and we have to contend with nonsense like homeopathy. Americans spend around $34B a year on homeopathic remedies which have no therapeutic effect. Considering that the health care bills are estimated to cost anywhere from $75B to $110B a year for the next ten years, the homeopathic spending isn't insignificant.
So what got me annoyed today? Not more than ten minutes after listening to a caller to the Dave Ramsey Show announce that he had $118K in student loan debt for going to college to learn chiropractics, I hear a commercial for "Quietus", a "natural" cure for tinnitus. When it comes to medicine commercials with the word "natural" in them, my BS detector immediately goes off. The commercial was as lame as you would expect. A bunch of "testimonials" were interspersed with claims of how "natural" the medication was. I was driving in my car at the time, so I had to wait a little bit to check out their website, and oh was it worth the wait.
First off, let's define tinnitus. Most people would instantly associate it with "ringing in the ears." That is exactly correct, but the causes are varied. Infections, side effects from medication, wax build up and loud music can all cause tinnitus. Most importantly, almost all cases of tinnitus are measured subjectively. In fact, most cases are called "subjective tinnitus". "Objective tinnitus" is pretty rare. One very important point to make, is that people who have tinnitus do hear a ringing or buzz, and are unable to focus on anything else.
I won't say that tinnitus isn't uncomfortable and a real quality of life issue. It definitely is. It's just that we can't leave out how people with tinnitus focus their attention on the noise. Imagine sitting in a room watching a TV show, focusing intently on the action on the screen (I suggest The Mentalist btw). You may not notice a beeping sound from a smoke detector with a weak battery, or in my case, my wife asking me a question. Once our attention focuses on the new sound, though, we may not be able to stop hearing it (in my case, I should). There is a distinct subjective almost psychosomatic quality to tinnitus that can't be ignored.
Now back to "Quietus". Googling "quietus" brings up a bunch of pages that have nothing to do with the homeopathic medicine. They obviously didn't do their homework on that one. "Quietus" apparently is the name of the suicide kit in the movie "Children of Men". The website is extremely hard to find from the name of the product. I did eventually find it, but I won't link to it from here.
The website is lacking any real information. No ingredients, no testimonials with names attached, nothing. You can't order from the website; the only way to order is to call as far as I can tell. Not sure if it could come off more like a scam, short of saying that a Nigerian Prince has decided to bequeath his family secret for curing tinnitus if only you would send them your bank account number. It's just ridiculous.
Conclusion? We have a subjective symptom (literally named "subjective tinnitus") that is difficult to measure. We have a "medication" made up of homeopathic ingredients (water). My strongly educated guess is that Quietus is a scam and depends on the placebo effect and subjective self reporting to have any effect. Save your dollars.
Five not so scary cryptids
October 4th, 2009 11:04 am by Shane
I've been interested in cryptozoology since I was a kid when I would find every book I could in the library on Bigfoot, Nessie, or the Yeti and read them voraciously. I was too young to be able to separate the totally bogus books from the somewhat bogus books. I watched any "In Search Of..." I could, and any "Bigfoot" special that came on. As I got older, though, I learned that much of what I read was exaggerated bunk. However, no matter what, in the back of my mind I'd like to think it's possible in the remote parts of the Himalayas to be some undiscovered primate. I'm not hopeful, but I'd like to think it's possible.
Today, cryptozoology includes a lot of cryptids that I never heard of until I started listening to Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM show about a decade ago. At this point, all it takes is one report from someone really scared to create a new cryptid. Recently on Coast to Coast AM, George Noory had a paranormal investigator named Joshua Warren on for a segment to talk about the "Five Scariest Cryptids", cryptids you would never want to meet (in real life? ). The list, taken from here, http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2009/09/22:
* 5) Devil Dragons-- seen in South Carolina, these huge pterodactyl-like creatures have piercing eyes and flapping wings.
* 4) Batsquatch-- with glowing yellow eyes, this flying creature reportedly caused a truck's engine to shut off near Mount Rainier.
* 3) Wendigo-- according to Native American lore, this hairy shape-shifting giant was once a human, but after performing acts of cannibalism, it turned into a shaggy monster.
* 2) Hellhounds-- Dating back hundreds of years, reports detail hulking Rottweiler-like dogs that suddenly appear and tear people to shreds.
* 1) Popobawa-- A 7 ft. tall black-winged demonic entity that is said to brutally molest men in Zanzibar.
On the show, both George and Joshua referred to photographs of a Devil Dragon that were supposedly very intriguing. If you look at these pictures, though, you should be less than impressed. Here are links to the pictures themselves:
* http://shadowboxent.brinkster.net/devildragon1.jpg
* http://shadowboxent.brinkster.net/devildragon2.jpg
Have you ever seen less convincing photographs of anything? It's pretty obvious that what's being photographed is the reflection off of some sort of mist or smoke. These are awful pictures. I can't believe anyone would believe they are "Devil Dragons".
In all seriousness, I believe Joshua Warren wants his work to be taken serious, but how do you when he takes pictures of smoke or mist and passes them off as "Devil Dragons." It's a symptom of what has ruined the magic of cryptozoology for me and for so many skeptics. It's too mysticall now. Cryptozoology used to be stories about people in the woods observing animals and substances animals leave behind. Sure, most of the time (if not all the time) it comes down to misidentification of known animals, but at least there is something physically there.
The other things on the list? Batsquatch? Really? Are we to take serious Wendigos, Hellhounds and Popobawas? They're just legends, that's all. It's almost certain that Sasquatch and the Yeti are too, but at least people try to find something physical that can be tested. To be accurate, Joshua Warren call these cryptids "phantimals", which means they appear and disappear from our world, but seem physical when they're in it. In other words, more new age junk.
I know it sounds silly to hear a skeptic complain about cryptozoology not being about real enough creatures, but the pursuit of previously unknown creatures is a valid science. Examining local legends to see if they have a kernel of truth is sound work. What Joshua Warren is promoting, though, is the uncritical acceptance of any and all claims that sound spooky. That's my complaint. I'm less than credulous.