The Four Ages Of Sand

Comet Hale-Bopp, Chuck Shramek, Heaven's Gate and all the other mad people

Alan sent in a link about the comet Hale-Bopp (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/halebopp/esp_halebopp2.htm)

Somehow I missed out on on the mad stuff going on at the time so here's a brief summary if you did too. A very dodgy astronomer Chuck Shramek took a photo of the comet and it showed a star in the background. Mad people then went on to claim that this was a er spaceship alongside the comet. The Heaven's Gate cult took this particularly seriously and commited mass suicide.

This is from the above site:

The most prominent story about the comet is the Shramek photo (right). In the middle of November, Chuck Shramek of Houston took a photo of the comet that shows a bright, Saturn-like object near the comet. Mr. Shramek claimed that this was a large object moving along with the comet. Soon others came forward making even more astonishing statements; that the object was actually an enormous space ship, that it was emitting radio signals, and that there was a government conspiracy to hide the fact that this ship was moving towards the Earth. Some have even claimed that the comet has changed course due to the influence of extra-terrestrial forces.

Copies of the Shramek photo have cropped up all over the Internet, and every professional astronomer who has seen it has said the same thing, that the Saturn-like image is just a star surrounded by diffraction spikes or some defect in the telescope’s optics. I’m an amateur astronomer myself, and I’m familiar with the way images can be distorted by flaws in optics and obstructions in the light paths of telescopes. I have to admit that it does look like a distorted star image. However, the only star in that position is a 9th magnitude star that should appear only as a pinpoint of light, while the object in this image is nearly as large as the comet. If the object is indeed caused by a defect in the telescope or diffraction spikes, would that also have caused the object to appear this large?

Other claims simply don’t seem to make much sense. According to one, the government is involved in a massive attempt to prevent the public from gaining any information about the comet, and is suppressing all photos made of the comet, and that no new images of the comet have been published since May.

The problem with the government suppressing information is that it would be impossible for it to suppress everything. There are literally tens of thousands of amateur astronomers out there, and many of them are equipped with telescopes, cameras and CCD imaging systems that rival low end professional equipment. Since Hale-Bopp is one of the brightest comets to come along in recent years, almost all of those amateurs have been pointing their equipment at the comet. There is simply no way the government could suppress information from all of these sources.

And as for there having been no images of the comet published since May, that simply is not true. A brief search of the Internet turned up almost two hundred images of the comet that have been taken since August, with the most recent that I’ve seen having been taken on December 6.

One of the more recent claims I’ve heard is that Hale-Bopp has changed course, and was being influenced by an external agency, usually some sort of extra-terrestrial force. Astronomers say this is not the case. They say that scientists have simply refined the orbital path of the comet as more accurate information about its position has been made available to them, and that some people have misinterpreted the changes in the projected orbits.

The indications from all mainstream scientific sources is that Hale-Bopp is simply another comet.

And here's more on the story about the suicides from the excellent site, Bad Astronomy:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/news/heavens_gate.html 

And if you can face Fruitcake this early in the morning, here's the Heaven's Gate site:

http://www.heavensgate.com/

These pseudo science types really get on my thruppnies:

Here's a great quote for the boffins:

The core of the Hale-Bopp Comet Enigma is the unwillingness of the scientific community to entertain any notion outside of a pathetically narrow scope, and one which is established on a foundation of egocentric self-interest. When science is no longer in the hands of true explorers, it's time to consider alternative sources of information.

And here's the link if you want your blood pressure raised:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/hbenig.html 

Debunking Gaius Petronius Arbiter Quote

I was looking around for a quote to descibe what is happened to our college (10% cuts, redundancies, restructuring etc.) and  remembered an old quote from Petronius Arbiter, a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero, which I first saw on our notice board in the sociology department at Newcastle Poly 20 years ago.

We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

I've since seen this quote in various places over the years. How amazing that something written 2200 years ago can have such resonance for us today. In fact it's a little TOO amazing, and a quick search on Google reveals it to be a fake, though it appears on hundreds of websites, quoted as being for real. Most quote it as being written in 210 BC, which would have been tricky for ol' Petronius because he wasn't born for another 237 years! (ca. 27–66 AD)

Who started it? Nobody is sure but this website  http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/petronius.html has some ideas:

 The following appears on page 162 of Robert Townsend's Up the Organization (New York: Knopf, 1970):

I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

Townsend cites ``Petronius Arbiter (circa A.D. 60).'' Another quote from Townsend (page 7):

``And God created the Organization and gave it dominion over man.''

... Genesis 1, 30A, Subparagraph VIII

which tells us how reliable Townsend is.

Is Townsend the sought-for perpetrator? Many think so, but it seems more likely he is simply an early continuator into print of a long-standing bulletin-board joke. Many correspondents, most notably Richard Dengrove, have told me about a note by J. P. Sullivan in the May 1981 Petronian Society Newsletter (12(1), p.1) addressing this important question. Quoting (without permission):

... let me give my tentative account, which I hope other readers can correct, of its provenance. Some disgruntled soldier of a literary bent, whether commissioned or noncommissioned I do not know, pinned this ``quotation'' to a bulletin board in one of the camps of the armies occupying Germany sometime after 1945 (the style suggests a British occupying force). Since the sentiment is impeccable, whether applied to military, governmental, or academic administration, it has enjoyed a cachet borrowed from Petronius ever since.

(To which I might add, sometimes I think it applies to administration in the business world, too.)

(Thanks to the STUMPERS list for the Townsend reference, and to Dengrove and others for the Sullivan one.)

I like this guy's style:

Comments from our readers

Many people send in email letters, asking similar questions:

1. Why do I think the quote is a fake?
2. Was there really such a person as Petronius Arbiter?
3. Don't I agree that even if the quote is a fake the sentiment it expresses is so true that it ought not be a fake?

My answers would be (if I bothered to reply to the masses of email I receive on this topic):

1. Why do you think it is genuine? Because you read it somewhere on some computer?
2. Yes. Look him up in the encyclopedia.
3. After a while it becomes a bit tedious.

(The answers I should give, if I wanted to be a responsible netizen -- or should I say webster? -- are:

1. I've read all the surviving works of Petronius, and the quote just ain't there.
2. Yes, he was a courtier of the emperor Nero's. His famous book, the Satyricon was the basis of a Fellini movie. Its structure is loosely modelled on Homer's episodic epic, the Odyssey. In Homer's work, every time the hero is about to reach home, the god Poseidon (because of a previous insult) thwarts him with a storm. In Petronius's, every time the hero is about to have sex, the god Priapus (because of a previous insult) thwarts him with impotence.
3. Such wry sentiments are commonplaces in the ``how to conduct yourself in business'' genre of writing, a debased modern branch of the ever-popular ``conduct literature.'' If mankind lost the Petronius quote we could repair the damage by clipping out Dilbert cartoons.

Don't tell anybody.)

 

   Again from:   http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/petronius.html 

 Nicely put!

As he himself says, however, don't trust something just because you see it on a computer screen. The site lists erroneous uses of the quote, and includes:

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood (speaking in the [British] House of Lords, 18 Feb 1997, as reported in Hansards in column 82 for that day).

But a check of the Hansard records for that day reveals no such reference. The plot thickens! However, further check confirms the reference is correct but the date is a mistake. For the full text see here: 

22 Strand Activation revisited: The DNA of Jesus.

Great, we've got Psi Wavefunction on board with DNA Activation :-)

"maybe we could find 22-stranded DNA in Arabidopsis as well"

But there's more to come. I googled the subject and got just under 3 MILLION results!

It turns out that:

"It has been written that Jesus had 12 strands of DNA activated."

And that's definitely true because it says so here:

http://www.dnaperfection.com/ 

Joking apart, what really fascinates me about DNA Activation - and it's exactly what fascinates me about the Creationists - is speculating on to what extent they actually BELIEVE what they are saying. Surely no sane person could really be taken in by "facts" about Jesus' DNA can they?

How about this, from the same site:

Scientists acknowledge that we currently only use 3% of our current 2 strand DNA.

Of course it's nonsense, but it's a special kind of nonsense because presumably some people DO actually believe it (even, conceivably, the person saying it) and surely this tells us something profound - and to my mind deeply depressing - about human beings generally.

Sorry, I try to stay upbeat, but sometimes it's tough!

"NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN."

Every August, well-meaning friends and colleagues who know I'm into astronomy send me an email that claims Mars be very close to the earth on 27 August, close enough to be as big as the moon with the naked eye. 

It's complete rubbish of course, no planet could ever appear to us as anything but a point of light to the naked eye, but it's interesting how these stories take on a life of their own.

Full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8184351.stm 

Debunking numerology

Alan sent me this link to a numerology site,

http://www.numerologist.com/?gclid=CLTNk9DUopsCFU0B4wodklxWBg

so I sent off my details and guess what? It turns out that I'm a really special person!

Here's what Blair Gorman - Master Numerologist - has to say about me:

Based on your date of birth (April 23, 1963), along
with your name as given at birth (Iain Keith Petrie),
your numerology chart tells you that:

- Your 'Life Path' is *1*
- Your 'Expression' is *6*
- Your 'Soul Urge' is *7*

"This is indeed a very unique combination of numbers! You are a very special person Iain. I get the feeling that you are a highly evolved person, as if you have lived many times before. In time you will have much to offer the rest of us."

Ha! See? It's uncanny what can be deduced about me just from a few numbers, and it's all so true:

"You will bend over backwards to make others happy"

Well you only have to ask Uni M to find out that he's right on the money with that one

 "You are capable of rising to great heights when it comes to career or athletics"

Yes, I've always felt that I could have done amazing things in my career (except for the handicap of not being bothered and difficulties getting up in the morning)

"you might also feel as if you face more challenges or obstacles in life than others do"

Ooo, God knows, I've suffered...

"You are of above average intelligence"

Well I've always FELT that, but to have it confirmed by the numbers is wonderful.

"Honesty is very important in your relationships"

OMG! How does he know this stuff?? I HATE it when Uni M lies to me.

"Your life path number is number 1, and so you are probably also blessed with a great drive and burning desire to be "number one" at whatever you do"

Er, well, he can't be expected to get it right ALL the time...

"Being a number 1, you are also likely to achieve some measure of fame in your life. "

4AoS of course! David, that's the definititve proof that numerology works!

"You aspire to have brains that are the equivalent of Alexandrian libraries."

I do, I do! Or at least to be able to remember my PIN number

"As you are not that concerned with sex, your libido which is often badly suppressed may also express itself in odd ways. It may manifest as a mania about a topic"

Ah microscopy...what more could a man want?

"Your brilliance makes you forgetful"

You see? Forgetting where I've put the car keys is actually a sign of my brilliance.

"you have had a few worries recently about money,"

Oh this is getting spooky.

"Romantically, it has not always been easy"

I mean: could he BE more right?

"you have sometimes wondered if you have made the right decisions at times"

Wow, he's never even met me but he knows me so well. 

 

 So come on 4AoSers; send off for your personalised chart now (David this means you too) and tell us what Blair Gorman says about you. It's free, and as he says:

 "people have both laughed out loud and cried tears of joy when they identify with characteristics they have never shared with a single soul"

 

 

Doctors told to give priority to gypsies

Ooo I'm thinking of starting a new 4AoS category called Daily Mail Reader Rant

When Jack told me he'd heard this on the radio, I refused to believe it till I saw it in black and white myself.

Imaging sitting in the doctor's waiting room, you've already been waiting half an hour, the surgery is full and they are obviously running behind. It's frustrating but you are calm in the knowledge that you have an appointment, and you just have to wait your turn in the queue.  Then a gypsy comes in with his family. Even though he has no appointment, according to new government guidance, he must be seen first, and must be given twice the amount of time allocated for your appointment. If not the sugery could be breaking human rights law and the Race Relations Act of 2000.

Full story here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5566262/Doctors-told-to-give-priority-to-gypsies.html

Debunking the unzipped mechanic

My mate Jack sent me this:

From the Daily News comes this story of a Leicester couple who drove their car to ASDA, only to have their car break down in the car park. The man told his wife to carry on with the shopping while he fixed the car. The wife returned later to see a small group of people near the car. On closer inspection, she saw a pair of hairy legs protruding from under the chassis. Unfortunately, although the man was in shorts, his lack of underpants turned his private parts into glaringly public ones. Unable to stand the embarrassment, she dutifully stepped forward, quickly put her hand UP his shorts, and tucked everything back into place.  On regaining her feet, she looked across the bonnet and found herself staring at her husband who was standing idly by. The AA mechanic, however, had to have three stitches in his forehead. True Story. 
 

True story? That a red rag to the 4AoS bull. Looking into it, it's not true of course. What's interesting is that the story appears in many different forms, all over the world  - Australia, America -  and has been around for at least 60 years!

http://www.snopes.com/risque/mistaken/unzipped.asp 

Debunking The Science of Ghosts

Oh dear oh dear...

This was on the news the other day; the public has voted for the most convincing ghost photographs. Want to see the winner?

The full story is here:  Spooky! Haunting Photo Baffles Ghost Busters

Er isn't it just an old person wearing a scarf? If people think this is a ghost, they should get themselves down to Bournemouth on a cold afternoon; they'll be in for a real treat!

This is the BEST one remember. Take a look at the runners up:

http://www.richardwiseman.com/hauntings2/experiments

Here's my favourite:

 

Ninth place: Ghost on the path (19%). The photographer saw what appeared to be a mist moving along his path and took this shot. Skeptics argue that it is a long exposure of someone walking up the path.
Photographer: Michael Dunbar.

SKEPTICS argue?! Surely anyone who's ever seen or taken a long exposure photo can see what this is in an instant! Apparently not; a sizeable percentage of the GBP (Great British Public) think this is a real ghost...

Debunking the Monogamous Mandarin

Mandarin in Enfield park. Such a beautiful duck. Not a native of Britain of course:

Aix galericulata

One of the most ornate of all waterfowl species the Mandarin Duck has been revered in Far Eastern culture since at least the fifth century. As Mandarins were thought to be monogamous, and therefore a symbol of fidelity, pairs were presented as wedding gifts to Japanese newly-weds.

(http://www.wwt.org.uk/text/526/mandarin_duck.html)

Monogamous? That's what they all say. Don't believe a word of it:

primarily monogamous pair bond; male can be promiscuous while female incubating or bigamous; bond temporarily broken while incubating, re-join in moult flock

(http://www.environmental-entomology.co.uk/birdsam4.html)

Debunking "Did you know?" emails: Beware of Netymology

I was sent this by a friend. Very interesting but as usual, much of it is incorrect!

If you Google "origin" and "honeymoon" you will get many alternative explanations for the term, and many entomologists are adamant that it has nothing to do with honey.  Also the suggestion that Golf comes from Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden is completely incorrect,  like almost all Acronym based explanations, eg Posh, Wog etc (They are in fact Backronyms)

The explanation for "Wet your Whistle" is:

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 'Wet your whistle' is the phrase inspired by this practice.

Google it and you get hundreds of sites claiming that this is the explanation.  The problem is that they all use exactly the same wording! This means people are cutting and pasting something which is in fact.....wrong:

You may see it put about that 'wet your whistle' derives from the practice of using a whistle in the taverns of Olde Englande to summon the landlord with more drinks. This is complete tosh. The Internet makes it easy to circulate information; unfortunately it isn't discriminating and stories like that tend to gain a foothold quite quickly. That form of digitally enhanced folk etymology is called netymology. As French wine growers used to say when complaining of inferior wines that were labelled as the prestigious Appelation Controllé - "the paper never refuses the ink". If you would like to dispel some popular fallacies you could try life in the 1500s or the Nonsense Nine.

(http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/625719)

 

Even the "Rule of Thumb" explanation has been discredited:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/ruleofthumb.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb 

VERY INTERESTING STUFF

In the 1400's a law was set forth in

England

that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule of thumb.

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Many years ago in

Scotland

, a new game was invented. It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only....Ladies Forbidden'...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

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The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

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Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the

U.S.

Treasury.

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Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

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Coca-Cola was originally green.

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It is impossible to lick your elbow.

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Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

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The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

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The

San Francisco

Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

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Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades - King David

Hearts - Charlemagne 

Clubs -Alexander, the Great

Diamonds - Julius Caesar

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111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

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If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

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Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested?

A. Obsession

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Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter 'A'?

A. One thousand

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Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?

A. All were invented by women.

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Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?

A. Honey

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In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... 'goodnight, sleep tight.'

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It was the accepted practice in

Babylon

4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

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In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old

England

, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them 'Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down.' It's where we get the phrase 'mind your P's and Q's'

--------------------------------------------

Many years ago in

England

, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 'Wet your whistle' is the phrase inspired by this practice.