Ketchum and Company, At It Again

Last week a news item made the rounds on the Internet regarding the Paracas skulls, a collection of unusually elongated skulls discovered in Peru in 1928. The skulls are something of a scientific curiosity due to both their shape and size. In some ancient cultures elongated skulls were produced by binding the head from early childhood, but the Paracas skulls are larger in volume and weight than normal human skulls and likely could not have been produced by binding alone. One possibility is binding combined with a condition such as hydrocephalus, which is known to enlarge the skull if untreated.

Obviously, obtaining the genetic code from these skulls would provide some insight into whether or not the size of the skulls might be due to some underlying medical condition. Unfortunately, the first group to look into DNA from the skulls includes Dr. Melba Ketchum, one of the founders of the De Novo Scientific Journal, a sham publication apparently created to showcase her work on sequencing Bigfoot DNA. You know, the same DNA that an independent, reputable geneticist identifed as possum. Now DeNovo has never published another article, so I imagine that a paper on the Paracas skulls would be welcome.

What the group apparently discovered is that the Paracas skulls contain mitochondrial DNA that identify them as an entirely new sort of human, distinct from modern humans, Neanderthals, and the recently identified Denisovans. The problem is that team involved has so many credibility issues it's hard to accept those findings. While Ketchum is not the only geneticist involved, it's a mystery to me why anyone would work with her at all. Conflating Bigfoot and possum is a pretty serious error - unless, I suppose, the sasquatch turns out to be a half-ape, half-possum horror straight out of a B-movie.

Is Nessie Dead?

In July of 2012 I posted an article suggesting that the Loch Ness Monster might be a very large sturgeon. Even bigger than the sturgeon shown in my lake monster article, the common or European sturgeon can grow to a length of 20 feet and live for more than 100 years. It also is critically endangered, its numbers suffering from pollution and habitat loss. Like the salmon, it is a seagoing fish that returns to rivers to spawn, and as a result is adapted to both salt and fresh water. And the monster has to be a fish if it's a real animal at all. An air-breather like a seal, cetacean, or even a plesiosaur would have to surface often enough that it would be seen all the time, and photographed nearly as often with cell-phone cameras everywhere.

The earliest confirmed modern sightings of Nessie took place in the 1930's. The oldest story of a "water beast" in the River Ness dates all the way back to the 6th century, but as similar stories were not uncommon in that period all over Europe it's hard to see a connection to modern sightings. As such, the monster has only been observed for about the last 80 years. As astonishing as it may seem, if the creature is a sturgeon witnesses might have been observing the same fish this whole time. At least, that is, up until now. As an article from USA Today notes, during the last 18 months there have no confirmed sightings of the monster.

"It's very upsetting news and we don't know where she's gone," Gary Campbell tells the BBC. "The number of sightings has been reducing since the turn of the century but this is the first time in almost 90 years that Nessie wasn't seen at all." Three purported photos of the beast from last year turned out to be a wave, a duck, and a picture not even taken on Loch Ness. But Campbell, who cites a total of 1,036 sightings, thinks the monster is just taking a break.

Anti-Witchcraft Squad Versus Twitter

Saudi Arabia's anti-witchcraft squad, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, is back in the news declaring war on Twitter. The religious police have announced a crackdown on the popular social media site, targeting accounts that "promote sorcery and witchcraft." And as I just added Augoeides to Twitter in January, I suppose that includes bloggers like me, so I won't be visiting Saudi Arabia any time soon. Not that I had any such plans.

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police authority has decided to launch a war against what it described as vice and sorcery accounts on Twitter inside the conservative Gulf kingdom, saying it aims to destroy all those accounts.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it had formed special teams to track those accounts and arrest those who are behind them.

Quoted by the Saudi news network Al Arabiya, the Commission’s spokesman Ahmed Al Jardan said its members are watching those accounts which “are spreading vice and witchcraft” through the country’s society.

“We will track down all those who are behind these accounts whether they are men or women…we are determined to eliminate these accounts before they become widespread and out of control,” he said.

Twitter played an important role in organizing the "Arab Spring" revolutions in the Middle East, a bullet that Saudi Arabia has so far managed to dodge. The religious authority's motive here is clearly political, and I imagine that to them "sorcery and witchcraft" will look a lot like political activism. After all, it's pretty unclear how tweets about magical practices could "become widespread and out of control." Political protests, on the other hand, can topple governments if they become large enough. Witchcraft is just a convenient excuse for hunting enemies, as it has been for centuries.

Wizard Snow

Last week snow fell all over the country, including some areas in the south and west that rarely get any. As a Minnesotan I cope with lots of snow every year, but some of the cities hit were caught completely unprepared. It makes little sense, after all, to maintain a Twin Cities-sized fleet of snowplows and mountains of sand and salt for snow that only hits every twenty or thirty years, and that means even an inch of snow can shut down an entire metropolitan area. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's just basic resource allocation.

Some theorists, though, see a sinister hand behind the recent snowfalls. YouTube videos claiming to prove that the snow was "geo-engineered" have popped up all over the Internet. The evidence? Supposedly, the snow does not melt normally when exposed to a flame, so it must be of a different chemical composition than water and therefore created by evil government scientists. Essentially, it's wizard snow - at least to anyone who doesn't understand basic physics.

WTVR Meteorologist Mike Stone explains in the video how the heat applied to the snowball is making the snow vaporize. The snow is disappearing and not melting.

According to Stone, this is known as sublimation, and the US Geologic Survey defines it as “the conversion between the solid and the gaseous phases of matter, with no intermediate liquid stage.”

According to WTVR, The black marks on the snow are caused by the butane in the lighter that is released when the flame is held close to the snow. If you dropped the snow in a saucepan, the snow would melt.

The Great Creationism Debate

On Tuesday night the Creationism debate between science educator Bill Nye and Creation Museum founder Ken Ham took place. It pretty much went as expected, with Nye presenting facts and Ham insisting that since none of us were there are the beginning of the world we can't really know anything besides what the Bible tells us. Some commentators were of the opinion that the debate should never have happened because it made Creationism look more credible, but I disagree. The debate made Creationism look ridiculous, and laid out that their supposed "scientific" critiques of evolution are nothing more than hollow literalism. The more people who realize this, the better.

Unsurprisingly, the predictable set-up gave way to predictable results. Nye referenced wide swaths of research on rocks, landforms, trees, and ice; Ham produced alternative explanations for some of Nye’s claims and not others, all the while roundly declaring that the past is essentially unknowable to us. From time to time, Ham refused to engage with Nye or the opposing side altogether; when presented with an audience question asking how he would respond to a hypothetical world in which evolution was proven to be true, Ham merely replied that such a thing could never happen.

It would be easy enough here to call Ham’s intelligence into question and berate him for so thoroughly and publicly missing the point of a hypothetical. But this evasion was only one of many refusals of engagement, which calls into question why, if Ham is convinced of the shoddiness of evolutionary science, he would avoid delving into the particulars of its problems. Indeed, the two men talked past each other for the entire evening: if Ham were really crusading to reveal the utter bankruptcy of evolutionary science, why would he let that happen?

Voynich Manuscript Decoded?

The Voynich Manuscript is a mystery that cryptographers have studied for more than a century. The book contains many illustrations accompanied by text in an unknown language. While some analysts have concluded that the book is gibberish and was written as some sort of a hoax, the system of writing does appear to have characteristics of a natural language - which nonetheless does not seem to match any known cipher. I even made a fictional mention of it in my novel Arcana, as an encoded grimoire that once belonged to John Dee. It supposedly did belong to Emperor Rudolph II, in whose court John Dee and Edward Kelly resided for a number of years.

Now a new idea has been presented by botanist Arthur Tucker. He claims that many of the plant illustrations in the text resemble plants from the Americas, and that the unknown language might be a classical form of Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire. Given what went on with the Mayans, this isn't as strange a suggestion as you might think. In the sixteenth century missionaries attempting to convert the Maya taught them a form of European script that went on to replace their original pictographic writing system. The pictographs were only recently decoded, by comparing a sixteenth-century glossary of syllables with the modern Maya language, which is still spoken in Mexico and Central America. It's possible that the Spanish could have tried something similar with the Aztec language.

Previously, many researchers assumed that the manuscript must have originated in Europe, where it was found. But botanist Arthur Tucker of Delaware State University in Dover noticed similarities between certain plants in the manuscript and illustrations of plants in 16th century records from Mexico.

Super Bowl a Disaster for Psychic Animals

This year's Super Bowl wasn't just a disaster for Denver's top-rated offense, which was shut down by Seattle's top-rated defense. Most analysts had predicted a close game, but in fact Seattle won one of the most lopsided Super Bowl victories in a long time with a final score of 43-8. The game was also a disaster for psychic animals, most of whom picked Denver to win. Ever since Paul the psychic octopus successfully predicted the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, there's been something of a psychic animal craze going on. The usual method is to offer psychic animals two pieces of food, with one representing each team. The piece eaten first then represents the winner - except that most of the psychic animals out there picked Denver to come out on top.

• Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl players decided a Denver cake looked more delicious than a treat representing Seattle, choosing incorrectly for the second year in a row.
• More puppies, this time on Jimmy Fallon, also foresaw a Broncos win.
• Tyke the raccoon was all over a Denver Bronco’s box.
• After 45 minutes of intense pondering, Pepper the Octopus decided on Denver.
• Thanks to Kiano, a 3-year-old rhino who favored the Broncos, the Blank Point Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa, ended its four-year streak of correct predictions.
• ZooMontana’s Ozzy the grizzly bear almost went for a banana cake with a Seahawks logo made of Nutella, but ended up devouring the Broncos cake instead.
• Two komodo dragons, new to Moody Gardens in Texas, agreed that the Broncos had the game in the bag.
• Orange, a harbor seal at the Maritime Aquarium in Connecticut, was given a chance for a “best of three” prediction — and went for the Broncos twice in a row.
• Le Le, a panda at the Memphis Zoo, was so excited about the Broncos’ chances that he rolled around in the team’s banner for a while after making his pick.
• After six years of correct predictions, Buffett the manatee failed big-time with a Broncos prediction. (His half-brother Hugh, despite his less accurate record, managed to get it right this time.)

Groundhog Predicts Early Spring

That is, famous prognosticating groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today. Now I know what you're thinking - that's supposed to mean we won't get an early spring, right? Well, I wrote a post awhile back noting that Phil is only right 39% of the time, which makes him a terrible divination tool. But then a commenter set me straight:

If he gets it wrong 39% of the time, then he is a pretty good divination tool, they are just interpreting him wrong. If they said "If the groundhog sees his shadow we'll have an early spring" they would be right 61% of the time, which is better than guessing.

So what that means is if you want a better than 60% chance of predicting an early spring, you want to go with the exact opposite of what the groundhog says, every time. And this year, Phil predicted six more weeks of winter.

At 7:25 a.m.Sunday, a raw, cloudy morning, Groundhog Phil saw his shadow in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pa. The appearance of Phil’s shadow means winter will extend well into March according to folklore. Had Phil seen his shadow, it would have meant spring is around the corner.

This winter has been a difficult one for much of the United States, and a pretty normal one here in Minnesota after many years of a warming trend that's produced milder weather. So I say bring on the early spring! I'm certainly ready for it, and a know a lot of other folks are as well.