Raging pareidolia strikes again

This is just kind of sad, but it’s something I’ve seen several times (Ed “Old As Coal” Conrad, the Seazoria guy): someone sees random clutter in some collections of rocks, perceives a pattern, and charges off, convinced that they have discovered amazing fossils of improbable creatures. In this case, the fellow has found mottled patterns in seashore rocks, and a few old bones, and has decided that he has uncovered a treasure trove of pterodactyl skeletons. He has also decided that these nondescript lumps must be worth a lot of money: $100,000.

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Pterodactyl with Tail’s, Pterodactyl’s,Pterodactyl fossil’s, Ramphamorph fossil’s, Dinosaur Fossil’s, Sea Shell and Pearl’s, Pterodactyl Fossil’s for sale, Fossil!

These Fossils Are Formed By Volcanic Activity Brought On By Meteorites Impacting The California Coastline Millions Of Years Ago. When The Impacts Hit The Coastline, Sand And Sea Shells Where Subsiquintly Deposited Inland , Forty Feet Of Sand In Some Area’s! Basicly Cooking These Fossil’s Before They Could Change There Facial Expressions! These fossils are also from the Franciscan formation.

There Are More Than Ten Heads On The Ramphamorph Nest Piece! Named Ramphamorph Obviously For The Funny Snorkle “Gill Ram” On The Right Side Of Their Head’s For Breathing under water while chasing pre-historic salmon. The Hatchlings Have Tails, That Have Detail Better Then Any Other I Have Ever Seen. On The Under Side Is Mom, An Egg And A Little Baby That has It’s Eye Open !Bottom Row Middle jpg. This Fossil provides endless study oppertunity. I’m Asking $100,000. O.B.O.

The Pterodactyl Upper Row Middle Has Different Toes More Like A Claw And His Tail Is A Little Different, He is also Holding His Mom’s Eyebrow As Well As Half Of A Prehistoric Mouse! It Look’s Like This Pterodactyl Earns His Name! $100,000. O.B.O

I don’t think so. He could probably make more money trying to sell those surplus apostrophes than these things.

He does at least have a rich fantasy life, though.

I thought Iceland was more rational than this

The town of Bolungarvik, Iceland has been engaged in a lot of public works construction projects, like a new road and building a barrier to protect them from avalanches. Unfortunately, there have been delays and accidents, and they’ve decided what’s causing the problem: Elves. Pissed-off, cranky elves.

Some people pointed the finger of blame on angry elves who had finally snapped. The dynamiting for the town’s new avalanche defence barrier comes less than a year after a new road tunnel through the Oshlid hill was completed — neither of which with the prior blessing of the hidden people.

Seers requested the Bolungarvik municipal government make a full apology to the hidden people and elves for the disturbance the avalanche barrier and tunnel have caused them. The council failed to see the potential quirky PR value and refused to co-operate — saying that there must be logical explanations for the recent spate of accidents and breakdowns. Some locals then took matters into their own hands; making up their own peace offering.

This is crazy. Propitiating elves for random accidents? Madness.

I recommend a true New Atheist solution, using the practical tools at hand. Dynamite the elves. Let’s have none of this silly accommodationist nonsense with agents of superstition.

I guess I’ll never get a retail job at Harrods

There goes another dream. The department store has a very strict dress code for its employees.

Full makeup at all time: base, blusher, full eyes (not too heavy), lipstick, lip liner and gloss are worn at all time and maintained discreetly (please take into account the store display lighting which has a ‘washing out’ effect).

I don’t even know how to do that! I could try, I suppose, but my only role models lead me to suspect I couldn’t pull off the ‘discreet’ part.

Oh, wait…only the female employees have to cover up their natural hideousness with artificial cover-ups. I guess we men are just prettier without it, a fact that is confirmed by that sensible, objective source, the Daily Mail:

Women who feel no compunction to improve what nature bestowed upon them are, in my experience, arrogant, lazy or deluded, and frequently all three … Why does a young woman think her desire to show us her open pores and ruddy complexion outweighs the wishes of her employer to present a polished face to the customer?

Now I’m confused — is she suggesting that we make-up-less men lack those open pores and ruddy complexions and other such scars and flaws, or is she just suggesting that men are arrogant, lazy or deluded? Because I don’t even know what “blusher” and “full eyes” are, and I couldn’t tell you the difference between the three things you’re supposed to paint your lips with, so I’m hoping it’s the former.

Man, there’s a lot of bullshit involved in being a Proper Woman, I guess.

Stop me if this sounds familiar

I got an email from someone requesting advice. I can’t imagine how he thought of me when in this situation.

There’s a group of geocentrists — specifically, these guys — who are trying to film a documentary, and they want to interview my advisor, Dragan Huterer. A couple of months ago, they contacted Dragan under false pretenses: they said they were filming a documentary on modern cosmology. They were interested in coming to a conference and interviewing Dragan. We had no reason to suspect anything strange until just before the conference, when one of the people running the film company made some strange remarks about some of Dragan’s previous research, which set off an alarm bell in my head. Unfortunately, by that point, Dragan had already signed a release form granting these people the legal right to film him and to use that footage in a publicly-released documentary. We did manage to stop them from getting the right to film on the UM campus, so they didn’t come to the conference. We didn’t hear from them for six weeks, so we thought they were gone, but now they’re asking if they can come to town simply to film an interview with Dragan.

(Incidentally, we haven’t told them that we know that they’re geocentrists. We only found out that they were geocentrists 36 hours before they were originally scheduled to arrive at the conference, so we had neither the time nor the inclination to get into a confrontation with them. We told them that the chair of the Physics Department wasn’t comfortable with filming the conference, and that they should take the issue up with him.)

Crazy dingbat pseudoscientists trying to film a biased, anti-science documentary by flim-flamming legitimate scientists into sitting for filming? It’s somehow familiar.

As for advice, maybe some of the commenters will have some, but I do have a few suggestions.

A release is not the same as a contract obligating him to perform. It just means they can use any footage they can get, so don’t give them any. Unless there is some kind of contractual requirement that he has signed, he can just tell them to leave him alone. No problem.

Otherwise, and this will come as no surprise from me, go on the offensive. Contact your school and local newspaper, and make it a public joke. Annoy the heck out them, which ought to be easy, because they’re freakin’ geocentrists, crazy people who think the sun and stars and planets all revolve around the Earth. Turn the tables on them if they come to campus and interview them.

And if they do get a documentary made, and if they do use recordings of anyone rational, try to get kicked out of the movie premiere.

I know! How about if we redefine homophobia as a disease?

Sadly, an Indian health minister has gone on record calling homosexuality a “disease”.

For the Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, men having sex with men (MSMs) is not only “unnatural” but also a “disease.”

According to Azad, “this disease has come to India from foreign shores”, and Indian society needs to be prepared to face it. Unfortunately, he said, the number of “such people” is increasing by the day.

All gay people are alien immigrants from Gaydonia, I guess, and no natives of the subcontinent could possibly be gay. Unless maybe they’re from Pakistan.

I think we could make a legitimate case for calling homophobia a disease or mental illness, though. All you have to do is browse this sampling of homophobic comic books to see that there is something just wrong with those people. The bizarre, crude work of politician Brent Rinehart alone makes a disturbing case for institutionalizing the wackaloon.

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I had no idea that gayness gave you superspeed and that rainbows trailed behind you wherever you went, but if it were actually true, it would be awesome. Except for the children of the corn who’d be pursuing you all the time.

The fascinating logic of Cosmic Pluralism

Weird ideas can flourish if enough people share a false preconception, and here’s a marvelous article on the history and philosophy of widely held certainty that other planets were inhabited by people. Not just any people, either: good Christian people.

By the 1700s, there could no longer be any doubt. Earth was just one of many worlds orbiting the Sun, which forced scientists and theologians alike to ponder a tricky question. Would God really have bothered to create empty worlds?

To many thinkers, the answer was an emphatic “no,” and so cosmic pluralism – the idea that every world is inhabited, often including the Sun – was born. And this was no fringe theory. Many of the preeminent astronomers of the 18th and 19th century, including Uranus discoverer Sir William Herschel, believed in it wholeheartedly, as did other legendary thinkers like John Locke and Benjamin Franklin. How could so many geniuses believe in something so silly?

It’s a good read. The key idea that was leading everyone to this patently false conclusion was teleology, the notion that everything in the universe had a purpose, coupled to another belief, that that purpose had to be us.

Lest you think this is just ancient history and that we’ve moved beyond it, here’s a story about a contemporary crank with peculiar ideas about alien life.

Speaking at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, Finkelstein said 10 percent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth.

If water can be found there, then so can life, he said, adding that aliens would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head.

“They may have different color skin, but even we have that,” he said.

Andrei Finkelstein runs a program that resembles SETI — and if I wanted to start a real argument here I’d tell you that SETI is about as quaintly absurd as Herschel’s belief that people lived on the moon. So I won’t tell you that. Yet.