Skepticism
Skepchick Quickies 10.7
Skeptics gather at TAMLondon and the BBC takes notice. Thanks, Dave.
Sydney sends us a story about underground folk medicine among the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Also from Sydney: Bring your pet to mass day
New info on the science behind near-death experiences, from ZenMonkey.
“It’s not like a couple of yahoos sitting in their van.” Middleman says, “yeah, right.”
Did they kill off the dinosaurs because they didn’t want any other advanced reptiles horning in on their turf?
Maybe they WERE the advanced reptiles, and they moved on to other, better worlds, using the earth as a testing ground for all sorts of weird experiments, like anal probing.
“Reptilians have manipulated perceptions of world history and hold power over humankind …”
— And are smart enough to make everyone think it’s really the mice, who are in charge. (Alude to Douglas Adams’ HHG)
I was going make some kind of sarcastic comment about this “Galactic Gathering”, but damn… it’s just way too easy.
My head hurt while reading that article. Most of those people sounded like they were playing a game of Mad-Libs(tm) with David Icke…
” But the sceptics are also using the internet to organise loose networks of informal meetings. ”
I was on a loose network dedicated to informal meetings once, but all the girls were adbots so I quit.
From the underground folk medicine article:
What a coincidence; that’s the same motion you make with the Wii remote when you dispatch a ghost in Cursed Mountain.
@Peregrine: Wait. Back and to the left? That sounds awfully familiar… I smell a conspiracy!
Damn, that was a lot of stupid crammed into a few articles. The faith healers…I guess memorizing some old German prayers is easier than Med school, and as since it has the same effect…
But the UFO/Lizard Overlords? If they can run the whole damn world from behind the scenes, including every government on Earth, why can’t they stop a small group of nut jobs from gathering in a motel and revealing their secrets? Also, they can’t stop a small town newspaper (with terrible editors) from publishing their secrets?
Evil Galactic Empires just ain’t what they used to be…
@DataJack: “If they can run the whole damn world from behind the scenes, including every government on Earth, why can’t they stop a small group of nut jobs from gathering in a motel and revealing their secrets?”
It’s that damned aluminum foil. I mean, you go through all the trouble of taking over a planet and then get stymied by something that cheap and easy to acquire. Just typical! If only they controlled the world economy, then they could restrict the availability of aluminum foil…
@Imrryr: Maybe it’s the aliens! :o
You are all missing the important point about the reptile aliens: no matter how hard it is for us to believe, it is irrefutable that they are among us.
From those wacky alternative healers:
Actually, the static discharge was just trying to tell him that the humidity was rather low that day, but unfortunately, it’s words got muddled when they were translated from Electronese to English.
@Peregrine: D:
What I get a kick out of is how all these alien species name themselves after the names we assigned the stars (Sirians from Sirius, Pleiadeans from the Pleiades). That’s really considerate of them. The reptiloids even go as far as being from Alpha Draconis, the brightest star in the constellation shaped like a dragon. Reptiloid/dragon – get it? Makes it so much easier to keep your craziness straight when you’ve got such convenient mnemonics.
Okay, I would like the opinion of any mental health professionals. Would Dr. Horn be displaying late onset schzophrenia or has he always been a nutjob?
@Gabrielbrawley:
NOTA. I think he did it for the nookie.
I am a Hedge
@Gabrielbrawley: A pretty good diagnosis I’d say. However, as a mental health “professional” (and arm-chair Jedi master), I would have to use the technical definition, taken straight from the DSM-IV, of “bat-shit crazy”
Also, I tend to agree with @Im a Hedge: He did it for the nookie, or the cookie.
mmmm…cookie
@Garrison22:
The DSM-IV actually has the phrase capitalized:
“Bat-Shit Crazy”. I guess it’s for maximum impact.
@Skept-artist: Yeah. These days Schizophrenia is so overused they’re considering BSC instead.
It’s funny, because the first thing that came into my head when I read the first few paragraphs of the article was: This guy’s suffering from late onset schizophrenia, but then I read about his “lovely” wife. Wow. I hope these two didn’t breed.
Largely unavoidable.
I’m from a different world used to profess
Look into these eyes
Then you’ll see the size of this mess
Dwellin on the past
Its burnin’ up my brain
Everyone that’s learned best agree that I’m insane
Hey I think about the day
My girlie led me away from my pay
When fellas come to play
No she stuck we looked for bigfoot and I’m fucked
And I’m just a sucker with a lump in my throat
Hey, like a chump
Should I be feelin’ bad? No
Should I be feelin good? No
Its kinda sad I’m the laughin’ stock of the neighborhood
You would think that I’d be movin’ on
But I’m a sucker like I said
Fucked up in the head, not!!
Maybe she just made a mistake
I should give her a break
My heart will ache either way
Hey, what the hell
Watcha want me to say
I wont lie that I cant deny
[Chorus]
I did it all for the nookie
C’mon
The nookie
C’mon
While looking for a wookie
Reptiles made us, yeah!!
Reptiles made us, yeah!!
Reptiles made us, yeah!!
Why did it take so long?
Why did I wait so long, huh
To figure it out? but I did it
And I’m the only one underneath the sun who didn’t get it
I cant believe you all can be deceived
But not my so called girl, but in reality
Had hidden agenda
She put my job at CSU in a blender
And still I surrendered
Hey, like a chump
So, Cartesian demons are really aliens?
Of most interest to me was the spike in brainwave activity immediately before death; the others are about ignorance, that one is about learning something.
@Mark Hall: Indeed. And it was one of those discoveries where they initially thought they had a malfunction, then investigated further and had a “Huh, that’s funny” moment, and finally concluded they’d really discovered something.
Rather than concluding first and finding out you’re wrong, as more often happens.
@exarch: And, as we know, big discoveries don’t go “EUREKA!” they tend to go “Huh, that’s funny.”
EDIT: Damn BB code.
@Mark Hall: That Assimov quote was my signature on the JREF forums for several years.