You ever have one of those headlines on a news aggregator that just cries out to be clicked? I can ignore the latest Jamie-Lynn Sigler née DiScala breakup report, but a headline like Penis theft panic hits city calls out, nay, demands to be clicked.
At the very least I felt I needed to know which city. Guy up the road from me ate his girlfriend after all. OK allegedly. Case hasn't gone to trial.
Turns out the penis theft reports are from Kinshasa, which apparently stands alone in datelines at least in the Reuters stylebook. Fortunately I have Wikipedia.
It's in the Congo, where superstition is still strong. Word in that neck of the world has it that witchdoctors are using ¢0¢|<-shortening spells.
The rumor was touched off in the 8-million member city-- :-) OK the population is 8 million. I guess thear are give or take four million members.
So, the the rumor got started and people believed it, and it was DISCUSSED ON RADIO CALL-IN SHOWS. !?
Aliens in the outfield
To me, at first, that seemed kind of a weird juxtaposition. Belief in a strange superstition discussed via the miracle of 20th century technology. I guess even if it were being discussed via podcast that would still be 20th century, right? Because that's when we got the Internet. And radio. Or when did Guglielmo Marconi unveil his work?
Anyway, seemed a little strange, but then again in this country we have Art Bell and we believe that aliens with big heads and large eyes abducted Whitley Strieber.
Superstition persists though it may take on a slightly more scientific form, I suppose. Used to be it was faeiries that would abduct your loved ones and replace them with an exact duplicate. Now it's grey aliens.
I guess we haven't really gone through an age of enlightenment in all circles. I have a friends anecdote to prove it.
Dialing 666
My friend reported a conversation overheard in a restaurant the other day:
Two guys at separate tables started talking about Obama. I'm not sure what sparked the discussion, but one guy revealed to the other guy that he harbored a secret supposition that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. The big one, upper case in the Associated Press Stylebook, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, moon turns to blood.
"I've been thinking that too," said the other guy. "But I thought I was the only one. I want to shake your hand."
How many copies did 88 Reasons the Rapture Will Occur in 1988 sell back in the day?
Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Friday, October 21, 2005
What about ghosts?
As Halloween approaches, water cooler conversation inevitably turns to ghosts and spirits and more "Do you believe?" queries like I mentioned yesterday.
I failed to touch on that in my dissertation on not believing in Bigfoot any more.
Do I believe in ghosts?
Well on ghosts, I'm willing to say: "I don't know."
Publishers divide writing into categories. Fantasy and horror are built on magic and the supernatural. Science fiction and suspense and grounded more in--as the narrator on the fabulous old Tales from the Darkside series used to put it--what we "perceive to be reality."
Of course magic is only magic until someone develops a scientific explanation for it, whether it's fiction of folklore. The fairy abductions of which our ancestors whispered would get categorized as fantasy. Alien abductions, to which we more rational minded folk today might at least give a tip of the anxiety hat, would be classified as science fiction, if written as say a novel and not a personal experience, in which case it's Communion.
Back to ghosts
Anyway, back from that ramble -- ghosts. Right now, we don't know. Are they spirits of lost relatives or hallucinations, folk tales or phenomenon.
I've never seen one, but the newspaper where I wasted my young life was housed in an old J.C. Penny's department store building. The photography department was on the second floor. I'm not sure what it once had been. The executive offices were where my mother once browsed spring fashions and I pissed off sales clerks by playing hide-and-seek in the aisles.
On the way to the dark room
A long flight of steps led up to the dark room. I'd get winded in my twenties climbing them.
Reporters working late at night to fill column inches swore disembodies footsteps moved up and down the steps, perhaps looking for lost dressing rooms or bargain racks.
The offices of the library where I worked were in an old family home, probably a mansion back in the day. People working there swore the home's original owner breezed through the living room every now and then.
The restless departed? Tricks of the eye? The ex-J.C. Penny's settling?
I don't know. With Bigfoot, the absencse of a corpse, skull, legitmate footprint or, as biologists might put it, scat, it's pretty much a no.
Ghosts, well, they're not corporeal. Not leaving physical traces is pretty much their job.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter that much. If we get it figured out that's fine. We'll still tell ghost stories for the same reason, as I mentioned yesterday, I still read accounts of Bigfoot sightings even though I've pretty much let that one go.
It's about mystery and wonder and to borrow a cliche "What if..."
I can live as a pragmatist, a skeptic, but I can also suspend my disbelief to write and to be read to. It's fun, it's escape and it's Halloween time. As Ray Bradbury tagged it - The October Country.
I failed to touch on that in my dissertation on not believing in Bigfoot any more.
Do I believe in ghosts?
Well on ghosts, I'm willing to say: "I don't know."
Publishers divide writing into categories. Fantasy and horror are built on magic and the supernatural. Science fiction and suspense and grounded more in--as the narrator on the fabulous old Tales from the Darkside series used to put it--what we "perceive to be reality."
Of course magic is only magic until someone develops a scientific explanation for it, whether it's fiction of folklore. The fairy abductions of which our ancestors whispered would get categorized as fantasy. Alien abductions, to which we more rational minded folk today might at least give a tip of the anxiety hat, would be classified as science fiction, if written as say a novel and not a personal experience, in which case it's Communion.
Back to ghosts
Anyway, back from that ramble -- ghosts. Right now, we don't know. Are they spirits of lost relatives or hallucinations, folk tales or phenomenon.
I've never seen one, but the newspaper where I wasted my young life was housed in an old J.C. Penny's department store building. The photography department was on the second floor. I'm not sure what it once had been. The executive offices were where my mother once browsed spring fashions and I pissed off sales clerks by playing hide-and-seek in the aisles.
On the way to the dark room
A long flight of steps led up to the dark room. I'd get winded in my twenties climbing them.
Reporters working late at night to fill column inches swore disembodies footsteps moved up and down the steps, perhaps looking for lost dressing rooms or bargain racks.
The offices of the library where I worked were in an old family home, probably a mansion back in the day. People working there swore the home's original owner breezed through the living room every now and then.
The restless departed? Tricks of the eye? The ex-J.C. Penny's settling?
I don't know. With Bigfoot, the absencse of a corpse, skull, legitmate footprint or, as biologists might put it, scat, it's pretty much a no.
Ghosts, well, they're not corporeal. Not leaving physical traces is pretty much their job.
But ultimately, it doesn't matter that much. If we get it figured out that's fine. We'll still tell ghost stories for the same reason, as I mentioned yesterday, I still read accounts of Bigfoot sightings even though I've pretty much let that one go.
It's about mystery and wonder and to borrow a cliche "What if..."
I can live as a pragmatist, a skeptic, but I can also suspend my disbelief to write and to be read to. It's fun, it's escape and it's Halloween time. As Ray Bradbury tagged it - The October Country.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Bigfoot: But it would be really cool
A friend dropped by my desk the other day to ask about Bigfoot. "Is it true you're a fan of Bigfoot?" she asked.
"Fan's kind of a strong word," I countered. "I'm interested in Bigfoot."
"Do you think it's real?"
"Maybe once upon a time, but now, no," I answered. "But, I think it would be really cool if it were."
Then I pulled up photos of the Florida Skunk Ape on the web. They looked a little less like an orangutan in a full body wig than the last time I checked.
In the mid-'70s the U.S. had what paranormal writer John Keel called a UFO flap, tons and tons of sightings. Our local paper had an article every day, which provided great fodder for current events reports.
Bigfoot was in the news now and then also, and in some UFO magazines, and on The Six Million Dollar Man, was linked to flying saucers. Just like Mothman was.
In those days, I wasn't a skeptic. I poured over information and wondered when answers would finally emerge.
Fate today
I still read Fate Magazine from time to time and scan the Fortean Times, but I have more of an open mind not to believe. I was a newspaper reporter a long time, and then I worked in a library where I looked up things for people like the Philadelpia Experiment. Makes you cynical.
The mystery often lasts longer than the solution, but once the Internet came along and I discovered the truth behind Gray Barker, or the smear campaign against him depending on your level of paranoia, it was all sort of downhill.
Aaron Elkins novel The Dark Place includes a pretty good argument against the likelihood of Bigfoot, and The Skeptic's Dictionary pretty much states nothing cool probably ever happened.
No Cottingley Fairies.
Mothman? An owl.
Roswell? Well there's no attribution in that original press release.
Oak Island - overactive imaginations based on a few misinterpretations.
Too bad.
But all that doesn't keep me from reading new reports and perusing new material. Because like I said, it would be fun if it were real.
"Fan's kind of a strong word," I countered. "I'm interested in Bigfoot."
"Do you think it's real?"
"Maybe once upon a time, but now, no," I answered. "But, I think it would be really cool if it were."
Then I pulled up photos of the Florida Skunk Ape on the web. They looked a little less like an orangutan in a full body wig than the last time I checked.
In the mid-'70s the U.S. had what paranormal writer John Keel called a UFO flap, tons and tons of sightings. Our local paper had an article every day, which provided great fodder for current events reports.
Bigfoot was in the news now and then also, and in some UFO magazines, and on The Six Million Dollar Man, was linked to flying saucers. Just like Mothman was.
In those days, I wasn't a skeptic. I poured over information and wondered when answers would finally emerge.
Fate today
I still read Fate Magazine from time to time and scan the Fortean Times, but I have more of an open mind not to believe. I was a newspaper reporter a long time, and then I worked in a library where I looked up things for people like the Philadelpia Experiment. Makes you cynical.
The mystery often lasts longer than the solution, but once the Internet came along and I discovered the truth behind Gray Barker, or the smear campaign against him depending on your level of paranoia, it was all sort of downhill.
Aaron Elkins novel The Dark Place includes a pretty good argument against the likelihood of Bigfoot, and The Skeptic's Dictionary pretty much states nothing cool probably ever happened.
No Cottingley Fairies.
Mothman? An owl.
Roswell? Well there's no attribution in that original press release.
Oak Island - overactive imaginations based on a few misinterpretations.
Too bad.
But all that doesn't keep me from reading new reports and perusing new material. Because like I said, it would be fun if it were real.
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