Skepticism

You have to give these guys credit for persistence, if nothing else.

Two men who claim to have stumbled across a Bigfoot corpse in the woods of northern Georgia indignantly stood by their story at a news conference in Palo Alto during which they offered an e-mail from a scientist as evidence and acknowledged they wouldn’t mind making a few bucks from the “find” they have kept stuffed in a freezer for over a month.

“Everyone who has talked down to us is going to eat their words,” predicted Matt Whitton, an officer on medical leave from the Clayton County Police Department.

Whitton and Rick Dyer, a former corrections officer, announced the discovery in early July on YouTube videos and their Web site. Although they did not consider themselves devoted Bigfoot trackers before then, they have since started offering weekend search expeditions in Georgia for $499. The specimen they bagged, the men say, was one of several ape-like creatures they spotted cavorting in the woods.

I’m not sure which video is theirs, but you can certainly find plenty of them on YouTube, including some pretty funny spoofs.

As they faced a skeptical audience of several hundred journalists and Bigfoot fans that included one curiosity seeker in a Chewbacca suit, the pair were joined Friday by Tom Biscardi, head of a group called Searching for Bigfoot. Other Bigfoot hunters call Biscardi a huckster looking for media attention.

Biscardi fielded most of the questions. Among them: Why should anyone accept the men’s tale when they weren’t willing to display their frozen artifact or pinpoint where they allegedly found it? How come bushwhackers aren’t constantly tripping over primate remains if there are as many as 7,000 Bigfoots roaming the United States, as Biscardi claimed?

“I understand where you are coming from, but how many real Bigfoot researchers are out there trekking 140,000 miles a year?” Biscardi said.

Sorry, but explanations for why no one has found convincing evidence of a Bigfoot are as weak and pathetic as ever. Plenty of dinosaur remains have been found by amateur enthusiasts. If they’re out there to be found, someone will find them. Until then, they don’t exist. Sorry, fellas.

From the “Headlines That Write Themselves” Department last week: Lack of evidence stalls investigation of UFO sightings. Never would have seen that one coming!

Whether a UFO visited two Central Texas towns will remain a mystery – at least for now.

“All the video that we’ve analyzed hasn’t provided substantial proof,” Ken Cherry, Texas state director of the Mutual UFO Network, said [last] Sunday. “Without definite evidence, we’re left with the word of our witnesses.”

I don’t think I can add anything to that.

As Kevin Drum says, this is yet another reason to hate the DMCA.

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s probably remember a popular psychic named Uri Geller, who was always on TV back then, bending spoons with his brain, correctly guessing the content of people’s doodles and generally blowing the audience’s mind. But who could have guessed that his powers would eventually warp free speech and copyright law in the 21st century?

Geller got rich insisting that his supernatural abilities were real, so a number of magicians and skeptics — most notably James “The Amazing” Randi — mounted a campaign to discredit the performer. Randi exposed Geller during numerous TV appearances, demonstrating that his mental feats were nothing more than trickery. These old clips, including a NOVA program called “Secrets of the Psychics,” have recently begun appearing on YouTube and other video-sharing websites.

This has gotten the alleged psychic, well, all bent out of shape.

Over the last year, he and his business associate have successfully removed many of these clips from the Web by charging that they violate his copyrights. In the 13-minute NOVA program, Geller only claims ownership of eight seconds, yet that was enough for him to file a “takedown” demand with YouTube, using — or abusing, depending on how you view it — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

The DMCA protects sites like YouTube from copyright infringement claims if, and only if, they quickly comply with takedown requests from copyright holders. These sites have an itchy trigger finger when pressured, often not even asking for proof of ownership. The NOVA program most certainly isn’t owned by Geller, nor has he provided proof that he controls the eight seconds in question. He just said that he did.

Using the DMCA, aggressive litigants like Geller and such copyright-hoarding companies as Viacom and Disney can simply make your work disappear if they do not like what you have to say, something that was much more difficult in the pre-digital world.

I know it’s naive of me to even ask the question, but if we get a Democrat in the White House to go along with the presumed Democratic House and Senate, can we please fix this abomination? The DMCA happened on President Clinton’s watch. Maybe the next President Clinton can atone for that sin. (Yeah, yeah, I know. I can dream, can’t I?)

Happy Fourth of July on behalf of myself and I’m sure Kuff as well. This week, my feed reader has been full of calls for impeachment and a general lack of patriotism. I know a lot of us have a difficult time being proud of what’s going on in Washington (or Austin, or downtown), but this post by Rick Overton at Huffington Post caught my eye because it offered a slightly different perspective:

I love my little Honda Civic. If out of nowhere a psycho steals my car and rams an outdoor café, killing innocent people, I’ll be devastated to have been in any way connected to such a horrible thing. But of the many emotions I will feel, one of them won’t be a sudden hatred of my car. Someone evil took it and did harm.

I’m not sure that I really agree with Rick, but it’s food for thought while you eat hot dogs and watch fireworks. Have a delightful, safe (and hopefully dry) holiday, everyone!

Well, I don’t know what this footage of something in Loch Ness shows, but until I see a huge red eye and a long sharp tooth, I’m not conceding anything.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45-feet (15 meters) long, moving fairly fast in the water,” said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video this past Saturday.

He said it moved at about 6 mph (10 kph) and kept a fairly straight course.

“My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.”

[…]

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake, viewed the video and hopes to properly analyze it in the coming months.

“I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen,” Shine said.

He said the video is particularly useful because Holmes panned back to get the background shore into the shot. That means it was less likely to be a fake and provided geographical bearings allowing one to calculate how big the creature was and how fast it was traveling.

[…]

[T]here have been more than 4,000 purported Nessie sightings since she was first caught on camera by a surgeon on vacation in the 1930s.

Since then, the faithful have speculated whether it is a completely unknown species, a sturgeon — even though they have not been native to Scotland’s waters for many years — or even a last surviving dinosaur.

Shine doubts that last explanation.

“There are a number of possible explanations to the sightings in the loch. It could be some biological creature, it could just be the waves of the loch or it could be some psychological phenomenon in as much as we see what we want to see,” he said.

Maybe it was just Bigfoot doing the backstroke.

You all know how I feel about claims regarding Bigfoot. Am I about to be proven wrong?

When the foot turned up at the Spotsylvania County, Va., landfill, the first thought was that someone had committed a brutal crime. Deputies began sorting through mounds of trash in a grim search for body parts.

Now, the foot is a phenomenon.

The hairless 8-inch appendage isn’t human after all. But no one knows yet what species — known or undiscovered — it is. And that has led to some wild conjecture.

Spotsylvania sheriff’s officials have said the foot might have come from an “ape-like species,” leaving Bigfoot-believers across the country wondering if there might finally be proof of the creature.

Bob Hagan, president of the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, said speculation about the owner of this left foot has become a game.

“We did see a suggestion that it might be a Yeti or a Sasquatch, and that might be why they call it Bigfoot instead of Bigfeet,” Hagan joked.

Tom Biscardi, who runs Searching for Bigfoot Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., posted an image of the foot on his Web site, www.searchingforbigfoot.com. Biscardi doesn’t know if this foot is a Bigfoot’s foot, but he is certain the creatures are real.

“I have no doubts in my mind,” Biscardi said. “I’ve had six encounters over the past 34 years. Not in my dreams. Up close and personal.”

He supports DNA testing to find out one way or another.

It’s not always clear how much lag time there is on these wire stories the Chron prints – this one has a WaPo dateline on it. A little time with Google News quickly reveals that this is much ado about nothing.

Russell Tuttle, a University of Chicago anthropologist who specializes in primate locomotion, thinks the appendage is the skinned hind foot of a bear. He said the quest for Bigfoot is “an escape from the realities of life, like focusing on soap operas and the personal life of often-pathetic celebrities.”

He added: “I pray this does not start an armed search for Bigfoot in the area. One is more likely to shoot a person in disguise, a person hunting, oneself, someone’s farm animal.”

But Bigfoot hunters consider themselves realists. William Dranginan of Manassas, who heads the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization, admits that his heart fluttered at the possibility the foot belonged to a Bigfoot. But he also thinks it’s a bear’s foot.

Matt Moneymaker, president of the California-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, said one of his group’s 200 members is a world-class hunter who has skinned more than 200 black bears.

“That hunter, in British Columbia, is certain that this is the skinned left hind foot of an Ursus americana,” or North American black bear, said Moneymaker, whose quest for Bigfoot has been documented by National Geographic.

Jeffrey Meldrum, an Idaho State University anthropologist who is a proponent of Bigfoot’s existence, said bear remains are commonly mistaken for humans. Like others who have seen photos of the foot, he said it appears the ends of the toes, including the claws, were probably removed and remain with the pelt.

[…]

Idaho State’s Meldrum said officials should have publicly cleared up the matter by now. “The handling of the situation, as it’s been portrayed in the press, has been extremely clumsy,” he said.

Yeah, you could say that. Better luck next time, fellas.

James Randi’s Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural is now available online. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about hokum and its hucksters, complete with Randi’s snarkery. Check it out. Via Jim Henley.

Anyone catch “Primetime Live” this past Wednesday, when they did an hourlong story on a so-called “faith healer” in Brazil called “John of God”? You want a non-political example of how our “bad not biased” media (tm, Greg Wythe) fails utterly to serve the purpose of truth? Listen to radio host Paul Harris as he interviews magician, debunker, and all-around smart guy James Randi and find out entertainment won out in this story. Randi will have more on his website this Friday. Via Mark Evanier.

You know, I’m not actually sure whether the new TV show about the psychic who fights crime will have a higher gobbledygook quotient than the new TV show about the mathematician who fights crime, but doesn’t it just give you a warm fuzzy to know that there’s finally a show that portrays the psychic community in a positive light?

Laurie McQuary of Lake Oswego, Ore., appreciates Court TV’s approach to featuring the psychic as another investigation tool. “It’s being presented as not only credible, but also accepted by law enforcement,” she said. McQuary is often featured on Court TV’s Psychic Detectives, and tonight’s episode, “Hollywood Mystery,” details her work on a Los Angeles case of a missing model. She has made 61 TV appearances, and after her last chat with Larry King, her workload tripled.

“I am absolutely ecstatic every time I find a missing person, or if I even make a confirmation in a case and where I know I made a difference.”

DuBois, the woman upon whom Medium is based, seems pleased with the NBC series because it helps break the stereotype that psychics are nutty.

“The story rings true to my life and how I experience it,” she said. “The best part is that other people will be able to have a glimpse at my life from my perspective. Hopefully it will help people to relate to what I do and that there really is another side after we leave this world.”

How nice for you. And how nice for us that a leading local psychic has given some of her predictions for 2005:

• An increased coupling of western medicine and holistic treatments will begin eradicating many forms of cancer.
• Osama Bin Laden will be found dead and much of the terrorist movement will disintegrate.
• U.S. fighting in Iraq will continue all through 2005.
• Discovering that Iran does have nuclear weapons and is developing biological and chemical weapons, the U.S. is likely to begin military operations there.
• Boxer Muhammad Ali and Monaco’s Prince Rainier III will die.
• Several hurricanes will hit Florida, but with less damage than in 2004. Texas will not see any hurricanes, but will see heavy summer rains.
• Moderate earthquakes will shake California in January or February, and a level 3 quake will shake up Los Angeles in the spring.
• The stock market will get stronger, especially in energy fields. Interest rates will rise.

Heavy summer rains in Texas? The stock market will go up? She really goes out on a limb, doesn’t she? Maybe she just wants to do better than the other leading psychics did in 2004. I’ll check back in a year and see.

UPDATE: For what it’s worth, leading psychicbusiness columnist Shannon Buggs thinks the picture is a bit murkier for energy stocks in 2005.

This article about the IRS taking the fight to tax evaders contains one of the best bits of unintentional comedy you’ll see this year:

Also last month, a federal court in Nevada held Irwin Schiff, a well-known promoter of what the Justice Department called “frivolous tax evasion excuses,” liable for more than $2 million in taxes and penalties in a case involving unpaid taxes for 1979 through 1985.

Schiff argued that penalties shouldn’t apply on the grounds that he suffers from a “chronic and severe delusional disorder” that resulted in his irrational and incorrect beliefs about to the federal income tax system. The court rejected that.

This is the tax-avoider’s version of the guy who killed his parents and then begged the court for mercy on the grounds that he’s an orphan. You’ve got to hand it to these guys, they don’t know the meaning of the word “quit”. (Or the word “shame”, or the word “chutzpah”, or the word “bogus”, or…you get the idea.)

Good grief. I had no idea about this. Read it and be amazed.

Here’s a new variant on malevolent email that I at least haven’t seen before:

Dear user of “Offthekuff.com” mailing system,

Your e-mail account has been temporary disabled because of unauthorized access.

Advanced details can be found in attached file.

Have a good day,

The Offthekuff.com team

Now, obviously, if my email account had been disabled, I wouldn’t be able to log in and see this message. Plus, all the stuff from my webhost is very clearly identifiable as coming from them, and more specifically from their domain. Still, it took me a second because the message is a bit shocking, and it’s not like I’ve never experienced mail issues before.

The attachment is a PIF file, which those of you who don’t remember the Win 3.1/DOS days may not realize is basically a command file for DOS. I didn’t bother looking too closely, but it probably does something pleasant like delete a bunch of files or some such. Many corporate email servers block PIFs because of this.

So consider this a public service warning. You’ve probably heard it often enough to block it out completely, but never open an attachment in email unless you know what it is and why it was sent to you. Don’t be the cause of your PC’s implosion.

The History Channel has asked three historians to review the credibility of a documentary that claims LBJ was behind the assassination of JFK.

The History Channel aired the documentary, The Guilty Men, in November as one of several programs exploring conspiracy theories surrounding President Kennedy’s death. Johnson was Kennedy’s vice president.

Former aides to Johnson, along with former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird Johnson, sought an independent probe of the claims in The Guilty Men.

Meeting last week with executives from the TV station were Larry Temple, special counsel in the Johnson White House and president of The LBJ Foundation; journalist Bill Moyers; Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America; and Tom Johnson.

After the meeting, Tom Johnson said the executives expressed concern that the issue had been “ratcheted up” by letters from Ford, Carter and Lady Bird Johnson to the chief executives of NBC, Hearst Corp. and The Walt Disney Corp., which own A&E Networks.

“Nothing is more important to The History Channel than the integrity of our programming,” Dan Davids, executive vice president and general manager of The History Channel, said in a statement. “We take their concerns about historical accuracy and fairness very seriously and are taking appropriate action.”

That’s nice. Here’s a thought: Maybe the next time they bat around the possibility of airing something like that, they might get the historians on board with it before the actual broadcast, instead of after it. You know, what with them being the History channel and all.

Temple, who now works as an Austin attorney, said he was inclined to act when viewers began calling and sending e-mails and letters to the LBJ Library.

“Unfortunately, many of them were from kids who believed what they saw on TV,” Temple said.

“The theme was always: ‘Why do we have this memorial for murder?’ and ‘Why do we have this library to honor a man who killed a former president?’ It was such an egregious distortion of anything that is right or fair, we had to do something about it.”

Well, kids, at least you learned something from all this, even if it wasn’t what the History Channel intended for you to learn.

Not really on point but worth your time to read: Columbia Journalism Review’s Campaign Desk on defining conspiracy theories down.

When I first glanced at the headline of this Chron op-ed piece, which reads “Why should hospital district cover illegals?”, I figured it would be the standard-issue ignorant nativist rant, and I started to prepare some responses as I read through it. About midway through, I realized there was no point in arguing with it, because it was such a poorly written muddle that I had no idea what author Eric Yollick was actually talking about.

Then I got to this paragraph, which stopped me dead in my tracks:

The real beneficiaries of illegal immigration are the businesses that employ them illegally. You and I pay approximately 72 percent of our disposable income to taxes — local, state and federal — in many different forms — income, ad valorem, sales and use. Illegal immigrants do not pay nearly those amounts. Employers get the benefit of these employees. Why, then, should they not bear the burden instead of spreading that burden across all taxpayers, rich and poor alike (which is what we do through the ad valorem taxes that MCHD assesses)?

Emphasis mine. Seventy-two percent? Of disposable income, which to my mind means the money you have after you pay for the things you have to pay for? Jumping Jehosaphat, what planet do you live on? Even the guy who draws “Mallard Fillmore” only claimed he was paying “more than 50%” of his income in taxes.

I’ve seen statistics pulled out of the air before, but this one takes the cake. Eric Yollick, if you’re reading this, I officially triple-dog dare you to document that 72% figure. Feel free to drop me a note or leave me a comment. In return, I’ll recommend a few good accountants for you so you can bring that burden down a tad. It’s the least I can do for you.

I see from my referral log that this post about Michael Drosnin and his moronic Bible Code has served as a starting point for this longer and more elegant post about the persistent belief that Francis Bacon was the actual author of Shakespeare’s plays. Take a moment and check it out, it’s well worth it.