On Cryptozoology

Crypto - Prefix taken from the Ancient Greek word meaning secret or hidden.

Zoology - The study of animals.

Cryptozoology - The study of animals not yet proven to exist... wait, how the hell do you study something you can't prove exists?

I love dinosaurs and have done since I was very young.  Like many kids, giant monsters that are safely dead and buried hold a great deal of interest for us.  Unfortunately, some of us don't pay very good attention in science class* and miss certain key details.  We also watch movies like The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park which color our perception of what is real and what is not.  This leads the more adventurous of us to go looking for dinosaurs that are still alive and, amazingly, if you look hard enough, you can find examples of people believing dinosaurs are still on Earth**, hiding in lakes and forests the world over.

Cryptozoology is unique among science fields in that, should they ever discover something provable (which they haven't) it would immediately be out of their field of study.  It's also not recognized as an official field of study by any reputable scientific organization and is commonly referred to as a pseudoscience.  Cryptozoologists spend their time in search of mythic animals, things like Nessie, Bigfoot, the Chupacabra and other such creatures.  Most of their "proof" can be seen below and doesn't really add up to much.

Wabbits, wabbits, wabbits...

On your left, you will see the Jackalope, a frequently faked internet meme.  Real rabbits occasionally suffer from Shope Papilloma Virus (SPV) which causes bony tumors to grow on certain parts of their heads, which may have started the myth.  Looks pretty realistic though, huh?  Amazing what you can do with some fake antlers and a tame/stuffed rabbit.  Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, thank you... Do not feed the mythical, nonexistent beasts.

You seen any Hendersons around?

On your right, the famous Bigfoot, which in this case is a man in a costume in a grainy picture.  Grainy pictures or, on rare occasions, grainy video are a common theme among "cryptids," as cryptozoologists call their quarry.  Maybe Bigfoot is just out of focus in reality.  However, there is overwhelming evidence that he is largely a hoax.  No bodies of dead Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) have ever been discovered and most of the "proof" has either been faked videos or faked (Big)foot prints.

Here is the famous "Surgeon's Photo" of the Loch Ness Monster, which was also revealed as a hoax.  It is nothing more than a toy submarine with a vaguely dinosaur shaped head on its con tower, sculpted out of clay.  While it did wonders for Loch Nessian tourism, it's also led to a lot of bad thinking about the lakes of the United Kingdom.  If there is a plesiosaur in the waters of Loch Ness, and I wish there was more than anyone, it'd be either millions of years old or it'd have to be one of a group of them.  If there's a group, there's nowhere near enough food in Loch Ness to keep them alive.  Also, no remains of one have ever floated to the surface, washed ashore or been discovered by the sonar sweeps that have gone through the loch over the past century.  Still, the belief in Nessie exists...

Nessie made a messie

See the picture on the right?  The one that looks like a floating turd or log?  This is being hailed as the best picture so far of an animal living in England's Lake Windermere*** which has eluded the echo locators installed in the lake for many years.  The photo, taken by an IT professional on a team building exercise (so a credible source?), follows the basic rules of cryptozoology "proof": It's grainy, it's from a huge distance away and it really doesn't show off much detail.  Here's the full article for the curious...

Full Telegraph article

Best yet?  This is the BEST you can do on a completely new animal no one has any other proof of?  I also love the guy's first reaction to seeing a huge, undiscovered creature in the lake: He ran away.  I quote...

• "It was petrifying and we paddled back to the shore straight away" - Tom Pickles, 24

Straight away from the new species of animal... Good thinking Tom.  At least you had your camera phone to take a shitty picture.  I also notice your picture didn't have any ripples from you furiously paddling the kayak you were supposedly in at the time.  My problem with this is how much credibility stories like this are lent by the press.  This is front page news on Yahoo at time of writing and is not written in a skeptical way.  The scientific facts are put at the bottom of the article and aren't used to call a skeptical point of view to a "discovery" like this.  Would it be amazing to find a giant monster living the lakes of England?  Of course, but a crummy photo in today's era of photoshopped images doesn't come remotely close to scientific proof of anything.  For instance...

I've been everywhere, man.  Also, moo.

Pretty cool, huh?  Of course it is, it's a fake picture, but it looks pretty convincing.  The day that they find an actual, verifiable "monster" living in the lakes of the world, I'll be the first to dance with joy.  Until then, I'm sick of finding stories like this in digital print.  All it serves to do is give people bad ideas about this ever changing world in which we're living and qualifies as sensationalist media in the worst sense.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave feedback below.

* As a note, I did get a C in chemistry, but this is more about biology, which I got an A in.
** Or hijacking research about soft tissue in fossils and trying to prove that The Flintstones was a documentary film... but that's more of a religious issue.  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html
*** And really, could we have asked for a more British sounding name for a lake?  That sounds like a lake that does everything in a smoking jacket while having tea and crumpets.

Injustice in Fort Wayne

If you know me, you probably know that February is my least favorite month of the year.  It contains 3 family birthdays including my own (4 if you count pets), but it also contains Valentine's Day, a day that, no matter your relationship situation, sucks.  Either you're single and depressed or you're with someone and pressured to do something involving the color pink and flowers.  Also, it's usually gray, foggy and teases you with glimpses of the spring to come before pelting you with more inclement weather thanks to that goddamn groundhog.*

If you know me really well, you know that this February has been particularly unlucky, what with dog attacks, plumbing issues and my debt card being finicky.  This blog is not about any of that... we'll wait until March 1st to do an anti-February edition (because it's not over yet, it might hear me...).  No, today's post is about something I feel is an important, serious, meaningful... dah, just kidding, it's just funny.

Fort Wayne, Indiana recently held an internet voting contest to name their new government center.  The winning vote, with more than 23,000 votes (more than ten times the votes of the next contender), is being contested by the local government officials.  The name chosen is that of Fort Wayne's 24th mayor, who served his city with distinction from 1934-1947 and a non consecutive term from 1951 until his untimely death in 1954 of a kidney infection at the age of 67.

By all accounts, this man was a great leader and did much for the city of Fort Wayne, including breaking ground on Baer Field, now the current site of Fort Wayne International Airport**, directing war material drives throughout WWII, upgrading his citizen's living conditions and opening up northern parts of the city to improvement by getting the Nickel Plate Railroad to run in that part of town.  Truly a public servant, this man already has a street named after him in Fort Wayne.  Why then are local officials refusing to put his name on a new government center?  Possibly because of his name.

Harry Baals.

Read it again.  Harry.  Baals.

No, I'm not making this up. Harry William Baals, Fort Wayne's 24th mayor, namesake of H.W. Baals Drive is being blocked by local officials who do not think a man who gave so much to the city of Fort Wayne deserves a government center to be named after him.

What message does this send to other amusingly named citizens of this great country?  That you can be a public servant, serve your city/county/state/country well, die in office but if your name makes the general populace chuckle*** you won't be given the honors you rightly deserve?  Is this fair?!

I make this stand for decency not just for the memory of Harry Baals, but also for all the upcoming politicians with amusing names across this country that may, one day, find themselves in a similar predicament.  People like John A. Boehner (Speaker of the House and by all acounts, a stand up guy, rigid in his beliefs, a solid Republican), Richard "Dick" Swett (Former New Hampshire representative), Monica G. Moorehead (Sounds like a James Bond character, but whatever.  And before you ask the G stands for Gail, not Gives, but how awesome would that be?), Young Boozer (Currently the incumbent for the position of Alabama State Treasurer, so no surprise there), Krystal Ball (Yeah.  That's her name.  Deal with it.) and, of course, the dual ticket of George BUSH and DICK Cheney.

Join me in the fight to get hairy balls... I mean Harry Baals his rightful place, emblazoned in huge letters on the Fort Wayne Government Center... then laugh at it with me later on.  As a note, I think any of these names would be fantastic names to have.  JUST NOT IN ELECTED OFFICIALS.

That is all.

* Bill Murray and I are going to get a truck next year and kidnap that little fucker.  We're coming for you, Phil... Count on it.
** Which reminds me, Boise has an international airport?  What the hell man?  You can't call yourself that if you're just going to Canada and Mexico.  That's Boise Intercontinental Airport.  You've at least got to go to Europe or South America directly to get that title.
*** Or, in my case, laugh uproariously for a solid 10 minutes.

Atheism: My Reasoning

Author's note:  Please, for the love of (insert deity, belief structure or candy of choice here) remember that what you read below is ENTIRELY MY OPINION.  If you believe in something that contradicts my beliefs, feel free to post a comment, I will respond in kind.


...In the beginning, there was nothing.  Which exploded.
-Terry Pratchett


I've often told people I don't believe in God, which is true.  I've also qualified that with the statement that I don't believe in Han Solo either, but a lot of people seem to think he exists too.  Both are fictional characters (and Han's ship is cooler), they've just managed to get really popular.  But my mindset goes further than that, I don't believe in God or gods because there aren't any.  There are no psychics, there are no prophecies and there's nothing supernatural about the planet I inhabit.  The world that I see is unique, beautiful, ever changing, mind-numbingly strange and completely explainable, it just takes a long time to do so.

It's said that a god or gods can only exist in the margins.  This means that anything that isn't explained by modern science or human knowledge must be God.  Lightning once came from Zeus on Olympus, the sun was formerly the domain of Ra, fire was stolen from the gods in countless folk tales and myths.  This boundary has been getting pushed back for centuries, ever since we learned that the Earth is not the center of the universe or even our own solar system.  Since the Renaissance, human knowledge has advanced to frightening levels, extending human life, learning a great deal about our world and even how to make peanut butter M & Ms.*

The neat thing about all that is humans figured it all out.  We had no help, no divine inspiration, no etherial cheat sheet.  I've heard theories that aliens must have assisted ancient cultures build their structures; The measurements are too precise, they say.  I think this is honestly insulting to say about the race of beings to which you belong.  Maybe we were a little more anal retentive about stones back in the day, maybe we actually spent a fuck-ton** of time trying to get things right or maybe people are actually smarter than people give people credit for being (if you've worked out what this sentence means, add 3 IQ points to your score).

Saying that science doesn't have all the answers is completely true.  We don't.  Ask any scientist, he'll admit that he doesn't have all the answers.  "But," he'll come back with, "we're learning more all the time."  Then go ask a priest.  He'll hold up a millennia old book and claim the answer is God.  Religion hinders science by taking away the need to explore.  If you have faith, you have the answer to all of the following questions:

• How did we get here?
• Why are there so many different kinds of animals?
• Where did these massive bones buried in the ground come from?
• What made me think of this new invention?

Believe it or not, they all have the same answer: "God did it."  You're done!  No need to study, learn or try to figure things out.  Thanks for playing, go persecute/convert some heretics.

The world is confusing enough as it is, do we really need something spiritual to keep us all in check?  Ask a Bible thumper, next time you see one, why the damn book is so important.  They'll tell you it's the divine word of God, that it teaches you how to be a good person, that it is the foundation of our law and order.***  If they're REALLY crazy, they'll tell you that if it wasn't for the damn Bible, they'd go around raping and stealing and killing.  Run from these people.  Quickly.  They're saying that, if not for their invisible friend telling them "NO," they wouldn't care about other people's suffering or pain.

I'm a moral person, so I think.  I've never believed in a god, I've never felt anything I couldn't explain and I've never needed an imaginary friend to guide me.  Despite my Atheism, I've never fired a gun, never had a drop of alcohol or other mind altering drug, never intentionally hit anyone in my life.****  I don't believe in God, but then I also don't believe in Satan, demons, angels or the Loch Ness Monster.  You're responsible for your actions, choices and morality.  Attributing anything to a higher power lessens the thing being attributed.  God didn't help you get a touchdown or beat cancer or get over your dangerous habits; YOU did, and the people around you probably helped.

Planet Earth is amazing.  It's a one in a million lucky shot that we're here at all, which makes us feel very special and makes us think there MUST be a plan, some divine idea or reason for our existence.  Consider the possibility that there isn't.  The world is still beautiful and tomorrow the sun will still rise and set (unless you're reading this at the South Pole currently).  What is lost by saying the world is godless and purposeless, that it's just HERE and nothing more?  Roses still smell lovely, ice cream still tastes great and a sunset is still a sight to behold.

Finally, all cultures since the dawn of time have wondered if there is such a thing as a soul and what happens to it when you die.  Deep down, most people think the answer is, at the very least, something rather than nothing.  In a spiritual sense, everybody is living for the afterlife.  In my view, the soul is something that is created by the sum of your experience.  It is everything you've seen, done and been that has made you the person you are today.  It's also a fairly brief thing to have, a soul.  When you die, it ends.  There is no where for it to escape to, it resides in the neurons that fire in your brain.  Without blood and oxygen, it stops working and ceases to be.  Some would view this as a hopeless statement, but I see it in this way...

• There is no afterlife, there is no reincarnation.  THIS is all we get.  When your gone, the only things you leave behind are the memories of the people who knew you.  All you can do is try to make some good ones.

Hope this wasn't too heavy a post.  Thanks for reading, hope I kept it entertaining up until that last bit.

*Peanut butter AND chocolate all in a candy shell?!?!?! Simply amazing...
**This is not profanity for profanity's sake, a fuck-ton is a technical term.  It's larger than an ass-load, but is smaller than a shit-load.  Above that you get things like a fucking ass-load, a shit-ton and a metric fuck-ton.
***Refer them to Exodus, the book of Job and most of the rest of the book where people are killing each other and God is smiting the innocent.
****At least, not with the intention of causing pain; Everyone does playful jabs.