Off the Kuff: Skepticism Archives

Still searching for Bigfoot

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.

08/19/08 | permalink | comments [2]

And in other news, water is wet

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.

05/27/08 | permalink | comments [0]

Uri Geller bends copyright law with his mind!

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?)

09/21/07 | permalink | comments [0]

Happy Fourth!

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 cafÃ©, 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!

07/04/07 | permalink | comments [0]

Loch Ness Monster

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.

06/03/07 | permalink | comments [0]

Is that a Bigfoot foot?

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.

02/19/07 | permalink | comments [0] | trackbacks [0]

The new face of reform

which, I'm sure you must have read, is a major concern for House Republicans these days

House Republicans Try to Get Back on Course
Boehner seen as face of change in house
GOP picks a â€˜fresherâ€™ face
House GOP's new face
Going beyond damage control
Post-Abramoff Mood Shaped Vote for DeLay's Successor
News Analysis A Cry of Concern by Republicans at Voter Unease
Boehner chosen to lead House GOP in break with DeLay era
Reformer in upset win as Republican leader in US House
Ethics at heart of GOP leadership race

No, not the reform. The new face.

And there they've chosen well, because Mr. Boehner is one of the few remaining members of the leadership that enacted damage control without any real reform when their criminally unethical leadership derailed the revolution before this one,* and he wasn't too fastidious about it back then either.

02/04/06 | permalink | comments [0] | trackbacks [0]

Randi's Encyclopedia

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.

08/03/05 | permalink | comments [1] | trackbacks [1]

Randi versus John

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.

02/13/05 | permalink | comments [0] | trackbacks [0]

Psyche!

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 ~~psychic~~business columnist Shannon Buggs thinks the picture is a bit murkier for energy stocks in 2005.