Mythusmage Opines

Posted By mythusmage on February 8, 2010

In the post just below I point out a failing PZ Myers shares with other people, his tendency to see people he hates in a very bad light.

You might think that Dr. Myers is reprehensible soul with no redeeming qualities, but then you encounter a post like It Isn’t an Exclusionary Fiter, It’s a Standard of Quality and you find yourself reading something that teaches truth to prevaricating twits.

The post is a look at how science works, and why certain things cannot be considered scientific or part of the scientific method. It’s a summary of why some people won’t consider science as the only real way to learn about the world, largely because what we learn through science often comes to contradict dearly held beliefs, and removes us from some mythical exalted  position in God’s esteem.

PZ also considers the words of one Maarten Boudry as quoted by Laurence A. Moran in Methodological Naturalism. From what Boudry says in the abstract Moran quotes in his post, I think it save to say that Boudry doesn’t really understand science. He understands how one reasons in the humanities, but hasn’t gotten the memo that science don’t work that way.

This is one of those areas where I agree with PZ Myers, science works best when it considers the natural world, because by it’s very nature the supernatural cannot be studied and tested as the natural world is. Maybe one day we’ll be able to study and test the supernatural much as we study and test the natural, but we don’t yet have the tools.

For those of you interested in hearing the conversation between Professor Myers and a certain Belfast creationist, you can listen to it here. Warning: There is a lot of background noise, so if you have trouble distinguishing voices like I do please listen carefully. One thing you’ll note first off is that the creationist has trouble organizing his thoughts. Maybe he needs to write down his points before presenting them.

Category: Opining, Science | No Comments »
Tags: Philosophy of Science, PZ Myers 2 views

Posted By mythusmage on February 8, 2010

Palin Derangement Disorder that is. Like BDS and ODS, PDS is the belief that whatever a person does or believes is ipso facto a bad thing. Even when the target of the syndrome is doing what somebody the victim of the xDS admires.

In the case of Sarah Palin what PZ Myers of Pharyngula goes about in Ms. Palin, You Fail is the fact the woman used mnemonics in her speech at a  recentTea Party convention. Yet when President Obama uses a teleprompter it raises not a stir.

Barack Obama is not comfortable speaking extemporaneously, but prefers to get his thoughts down where he can read them off. Sarah Palin is more comfortable speaking extemporaneously, and uses words as mnemonics to remind her of what she wants to talk about. To say that Obama’s written speeches are good things, but Palin’s off the cuff (with some assistance from the back of her hand) are signs of the apocalypse is rather two faced. What I get from this is that Paul is envious of Palin’s comfort in her own skin, and uncomfortable with Obama’s reliance on putting what he wants to say in writing.

The President feels more comfortable reading his speeches off  a teleprompter. That says nothing about the validity of what he’s saying. Palin uses mnemonics to remind her of what she means to say. That says nothing about the validity of what she’s saying. To say the opposite shows that the person in question is more concerned with his impression of another than it does of that other person. It is short sighted and counter productive.

Dr. Myers is human, and his post on Ms. Palin shows this in no uncertain terms. In that he is like everybody else, so if you get tempted to view him as some sort of prophet of God, keep in mind that the Prophet Mohammed was a product of his times and culture, and may have had epilepsy besides. Which is to say that no one is perfect, for God — in my experience — works with the flawed in preference to any other type of person. Read Pharyngula by all means, but remember that PZ Myers has his blind spots and short comings.

Category: Opining, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: PZ Myers, Sarah Palin 5 views

Posted By mythusmage on February 4, 2010

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Sasquatch

Part Eight: Aren’t You a Little Short to be a Sasquatch?

Bob Heirronimous gets a little write up here. His height is noted as 6′, and he is said to be muscular. He has also said that he was an active participant in the alleged fraud, and that he wore the infamous ape suit during the filming.

A side note here, earlier in this series I said that Patty was variously estimated to be 7, 3″ or 7′ 6″, when the actual estimates were 7′ 6″ or 8′ tall. Keep this in mind as you read this post.

With the earlier mistake corrected we can now go on to note a few salient facts. First, 6′ is rather shorter than 7′ 6″. Noticeably shorter as a matter of fact. Second, Patty’s proportions don’t match Bob’s. That is to say, Bob’s arms and legs are shorter in proportion to his body, while his lower legs are longer in proportion to his upper legs.

And lets not forget the head. Now over all Bob does have a smaller head, but he also has a larger brain case. He also has smaller jaws then are evident with Patty. Bob’s lack of a sagittal crest doesn’t help matters any.

His purported recreation of the costume he says he wore doesn’t help his case any. For one thing, he looks like a man in an ape suit. For another, the suit he wore for the infamous recreation has orange hair. Patty in the original film had distinctly brown hair. So wrong height, wrong proportions, wrong hair color; and some people take this clown seriously.

There is a mash-up showing the costumed Bob Heironimous superimposed on Patty. A few have claimed that this proved that Bob was the man wearing the suit. Based on what I know, the mash-up was produced to show that Bob could not be Patty. Because he was too small, wrongly proportioned, and his costume sucked creamy peanut butter from dessicated kumquats compared to what it would take to reproduce Patty’s look.

The fact people take Bob Heironimous seriously shows how desperate those people are to deny any possibility sasquatch exist. It is a fear of being wrong, and being caught out as a fool by their friends. Which is the point of this entire series, but I thought I’d emphasis it in this installment.

Going off on a tangent now, I saw the NatGeo documentary on sasquatch again over the weekend, and this time around I noticed a huge mistake the producers made.

They forgot to compare a 7′6″ human with the 7′6″ Patty. Would have illustrated the differences in proportion much better than what they did do.

When next I post on this subject: Some Final Thoughts on the Man in an Ape Suit Scenario

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Tags: Ray Wallace, Sasquatch 17 views

Posted By mythusmage on February 4, 2010

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Sasquatch

Part Seven: Ya try to take a dump…

In our previous post in this series , Defending the Non-Existent (Yet Again). we had a look at the humans’ reaction to Patty. (And the horses’ reactions as well.) Here now we’ll take a look at Patty’s reaction.

And what was Patty’s reaction? I don’t know about you, but she looked annoyed to me. Pissed because the dang humans were pestering her. She gave no sign that she knew them, no sign she had any idea what a camera or a rifle was. This is an ignorance so profound it amounts to utter.

This is not a human reaction. Humans for one thing react much differently to other humans. As far as Patty is concerned, Roger and Bob are just strange creatures doing strange and threatening things. Roger is running towards her with this rock in his hands, while Bob is pointing a stick at her. Patty shows no sign she recognizes the camera or the firearm, much less knows what they do.

If Patty was played by a human in an ape suit, then that person was profoundly retarded. Folks, I don’t think even Bob Heironemous is that stupid. I mean, there is profoundly clueless and there is utterly clueless. Patty was utterly clueless.

And before anybody can point out the possibility; nobody’s that good an actor.

Patty’s response is just wrong for a human. Especially for a human who has presumably been raised in the United States, and has some basic familiarity with the technology of the time. It is fairly obvious to any one who isn’t blinded by their own bigotry that she has no idea what she’s dealing with. All she knows as that a pair of strange creatures are looking at her with a certain lean and hungry look. And one is even advancing on her, while the other one is shaking a stick at her. Folks, in a similar situation I should think you would all be a little hostile and defensive too.

You don’t get that sort of reaction from people who know you. Even when they’re pretending to be startled by strangers it has a studied, practiced look to it. For part of a conspiracy Patty, whoever she was in real life, is acting all wrong. If she was hired by Patterson to play a sasquatch, then Roger hired a paranoiac with a bad memory.

And that’s it; Patty was a very tall mental patient with advanced Alzheimers and odd proportions. Gosh, how have they kept her hidden for so long?

No, Patty acted like an animal who knew just enough about humans to not trust them. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet her opinion of humans and their nefarious ways was drawn on her great ignorance of the animals. Patty, in short, acts as if she thinks Patterson and Gimlin are some sort of mutant Sasquatch, a parody of the sasquatch ideal and so not to be trusted. To her the men were just wrong.

I’ve got news for people, humans behave towards other humans in a similar way. They act with familiarity; familiarity with humans, and familiarity with human tools. Patty shows no such familiarity. She doesn’t know humans, she doesn’t trust humans. Finding a human being with that deep a level of ignorance and distrust of her own species, with such an odd morphology and such a height, stretches coincidence to the breaking point.

Which leads to my final point in this post. Why Patty? Why that particular person to play Patty. Why anyone with such obvious problems, and such a distinctive appearance. Did Roger Patterson hire Patty from her dad or care taker in order to hoax people? Or are we taking this whole hoax thing a little too far?

What are we really seeing in the Patterson-Gimlin Film? We’re seeing a sasquatch behave in normal sasquatch fashion during an unexpected encounter with strange, and rather off-putting, creatures.

Coming Soon…

Bob Heironemous, Skin Walker.

Category: Opining, Science | No Comments »
Tags: Ray Wallace, Sasquatch 16 views

Posted By mythusmage on February 1, 2010

If you haven’t heard, over the weekend Amazon and Macmillan had a tiff. Macmillan said, “We want you to raise the prices you charge for ebooks of our titles.” and Amazon said “Neener, neener, make us.”

John Scalzi has a few words to say about this, and he gets down and dirty. By all means read what he has to say, and marvel at his erudition. No invective whatsoever, just John’s command of the English language and a well applied insight into human behavior.

To sum up, John Scalzi reads Amazon the riot act. Does it thoroughly, does it succinctly, does it with insight and a deadly wit. His post on the subject has the potential to become a classic among blog posts, repeated on numerous sites and reproduced in various media. I’m expecting an expanded version by John in a magazine somewhere in the very near future.

So read, be amused, be dismayed, and be outraged by Amazon’s behavior during their pissy fit. John Scalzi has them pegged, and pegged with a well placed peg.

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Tags: Amazon/Macmillin tiff, John Scalzi 23 views

Posted By mythusmage on January 31, 2010

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Sasquatch

Part Six: Eeek, A Bigfoot!

Going on from our previous post we come now to the matter of what the four members of the expedition did when they encountered the sasquatch. “Four?” I can hear you ask. The two humans and their two horses I reply.

From all indications Gimlin remained calm and steady. Not so his friend Patterson and their horses. When Patty comes “on-screen” Roger’s shooting became unsteady, as though he had had a shock, become excited. He steadies again later, but still the viewer is left with the impression Roger Patterson is agitated by the event. Indeed, the problem with evaluating the film as it was shot lies in the fact Roger Patterson was not entirely in control of himself, of his emotions.

The impression one gets is that Roger Patterson got excited, as though he was experiencing an unexpected event. As if the sudden appearance of Patty had not been planned for. It could be acting, but his reaction has none of the studied response that marks acting, none of the rehearsed quality. It is a natural reaction, as occurs in a natural situation. Patterson wasn’t expecting this.

“What of Gimlin?” I can hear you ask.

What of Gimlin? The fact he kept his head means nothing. Some people are naturally cool and collected. From all I’ve heard of the man, Bob Gimlin was the Sancho Panza to Roger Patterson’s Don Quioxte. The calm center to Roger’s storm. ‘Sides, he had a job to do, and that was protect Patterson from harm. Thus armed with a responsibility Bob Gimlin kept his cool.

But what about the horses? We tend to forget the other members of the expedition, the men’s mounts. People who work with horses will tell you that the horse is not the brightest light in the chandelier. At the same time, horses are skittish things with an overactive imagination. Horses are prey animals cursed with vision that has severe limitations. That is, a horse’s vision is blurry, best suited to spotting motion. Combine this bad eyesight with an active imagination, and you get a flighty animal ready to assume the worst in any unexpected event.

However, once a horse gets used to something, it doesn’t bother him any more. A thing known, a thing a horse has seen before and gotten used to is no longer a threat. So the horses’ reaction to Patty presents problems, if you assume the Patterson-Gimlin Film is a hoax.

Why is the horses’ reaction a problem? Because they act as if they had never seen Patty before. That is, as if they had never seen, never experienced the man in an ape suit before. If Patterson and Gimlin had set the whole thing up, when it came time to film the bogus sasquatch you would think the horses would be used to the man wearing the costume, and to the costume itself.

There are many other problems with the hoax hypothesis, but this is one of the bigger ones to me. Man and horse, the animals encounter the sasquatch just act wrong for creatures meeting someone they already knew. Could it have been a fake concocted by other parties? That possibility is argued against by the fact that Patterson and Gimlin had no set itinerary, they set out to see what they could find. Pulling off such a stunt, while not impossible, requires a good deal of planning, and a lot of persistence. Knowing where your victim’s going to be helps a lot. Even then, the fact nobody reliable has ever come forth to detail how the hoax was pulled off argues against fraud.

And that leads us up to our next installment, how Patty reacted.

Next: Fuck, Tourists, and Me in This Ratty Old Thing

Category: Opining, Science | 1 Comment »
Tags: Ray Wallace, Sasquatch 29 views

Posted By mythusmage on January 31, 2010

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Sasquatch

Part Five: Keeping the Story Straight

Continuing on from this post we come to a sticking point for a number of people, a certain inconsistency in Roger’s story. Patterson’s account of the encounter is noted as having certain discrepencies. For one thing, Roger tended to guess at greater weight estimates as time went by. according to Greg Long the purportedly extraordinary nature of Patterson’s claim means we must be especially wary of errors in the account.

The matter of just how extraordinary the claims of a great ape native to North America are is a matter for a later post. Where Roger Patterson’s and Bob Gimlin’s stories are concerned we need to keep one thing in mind; memories are not perfect.

We all make mistakes, we all misremember. When interviewed about an event we tend to change our stories depending on what we remember, and what we’ve forgotten. Naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson reported the encounter as occurring at 3:30 pm, in other accounts Patterson said it happened about 1:30 pm. This is said to be a sign that Patterson was lying about the event, but it is more likely an honest mistake on Roger’s part, or an error by Sanderson. Even so, a mistake as to when something happened does not, in and of itself, mean the event never happened at all. What the two men showed in their recollections is that they are human. They made mistakes, they forgot details, then recalled them again later. This is how people operate. In the field of criminal investigation the one thing detectives watch out for is stories that are too perfect, too consistent. Studies done on people being interviewed has also shown that stories will differ depending on the question asked, and as the interviewee remembers details he’d forgotten before. What Patterson showed in his interviews is that sort of thing, changing certain details as he remembered or mis-remembered them. Keep this in mind as this series continues.

With that unplanned detour out of the way we’ll go on to the curious thing Patterson’s horse did during the encounter. Curious that is, if you assume Patty was a man in an ape suit.

Next up: Short Term Memory Problems in Equines.

Category: Opining, Science | 1 Comment »
Tags: Ray Wallace, Sasquatch 36 views

Posted By mythusmage on January 28, 2010

The device is called the Twin Draft Guard. The Twin Draft Guard consists of two foam tubes inserted into a cloth designed so the tubes can be placed on either side of the bottom of a door. The aim is to block drafts and keep air inside and/or outside of an area. A building for instance. I think you can see the potential here.

Let’s say a home owner gets Twin Draft Guards for each door in his house. plus the same sort of thing for his windows etc. Now the TDG is made to keep air from passing through, as the ad says, to make the door airtight. Which means that air can’t circulate. Guess what happens when air can’t circulate.

You got it, bad air accumulates. Say you and your family are sitting watching tv in a room with doors set with TDGs. As you watch the show or movie or videos your CO2 builds up, unable to escape and be replaced by fresh air. You become another statistic in a rash of CO2 poisonings suddenly striking the country.

Yes, I am being gleefully morbid, air circulates throughout a building through more than doors and windows. But, in a weatherproofed home something like the TDG might restrict air circulation to the point the air in the house becomes rather stale. Who knows, with some homes built for energy efficiency the scenario I outlined above might happen. So keep your eyes open for stories about people killed mysteriously in their own homes, the only thing in common being unusually high levels of CO2.

Neat ideas and unintended consequences, a deadly combination.

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Tags: Death by CO2, Twin Draft Guard 25 views

Posted By mythusmage on January 27, 2010

Apple has a new device for people to play with. They call it the iPad, and it has a bunch of neat features. Go ahead and take a look, then come back to read what I think of this.

You’re back? Cool.

As you’ve seen it already has accessories such as a keyboard, a power adapter and even a stand (called a dock here) available. As with the iPhone it even has a virtual keyboard for when you’re using messaging, texting, or email. Given that it comes with wi fi and Bluetooth installed, additional accessories are possible. Additional storage, a printer, a scanner, speakers. The only thing that’ll stop me from getting one in late March is the fact I doubt I’ll have the money for it.

There are some things the iPad portends. One is the adaptation of flash memory for data storage in place of hard drives. Right now the iPad itself will come with 64 gigs of memory in the high end version. Expect external flash storage upwards of 1 terabyte or more.

It also foreshadows the application of the touch screen technology to Apple displays. Your monitor capable of the same tricks as an iPad. This means one thing, the end of the mouse. Instead of clicking on a link or app you’ll tap it. The technology will also be applied to the keyboard. You’ll tap on graphic representations of letters and symbols, with the layout changing when you tap “shift”, “option” and “option-shift”. Changing keyboard layout, font, and style will also change keyboard appearance, so you’ll be able to see exactly what you’re typing into a text field.

The ultimate development of this will be the elimination of a separate keyboard, with a keyboard display being incorporated into the display itself. And we’re talking about 24″ widescreen displays and larger.

And this means a change in computer furniture as well. Stands you can sit before with the keyboard display close to hand, and the graphic display just above it.  So the stands will present the display so your hands will be raised to shoulder level, which is supposedly more ergonomically sensible than the current situation.

The iPad means that in a few years all Apple computers will be true all in ones. It also means that in a few years computer stands, workstations, and desks will be designed so the display will be at eye level, and the user’s hands will be at shoulder level in order to use the keyboard.

Also expect handwriting recognition tech to be added, if it isn’t there already. So that, if you wish, you’ll be able to hand write your document, draw on the display, or maybe even “sculpt”3d models.

What’s next in the computer world? The adoption of Apple’s technology, or something like it, throughout the computer world. This has the potential of changing the look of computers and computing for years to come.

Yes, I’m excited about this, and I hope to have the money for a low end iPad by the middle of the year. If you’d like to help, go ahead and click on the PayPal button in the right side bar. If it aint there when you read this, I’ll have it up as soon as I can.

Category: Neat Stuff | No Comments »
Tags: Drooling Fan Boy, iPad 32 views

Posted By mythusmage on January 27, 2010

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Sasquatch

Part Four: Finding What You’re Looking For

In our last installment we saw how the Patterson-Gimlin Film happened to get made, with a look at how the stories of it being faked just don’t hold up. In this installment we’ll be looking at those claims of fraud based on Patterson’s attempts to raise money for a sasquatch film.

According to this section of this page Patterson wanted to do a film on the sasquatch, what we would call a docudrama. Patterson’s intent was to dramatize the various sasquatch stories coming out of the Bluff Creek area in the hopes of sparking interest in the scientific study of the animal. So he obtained loans from various people. Unfortunately, as things turned out, he was not able to repay those loans. Naturally this alienated people, who became inclined to view the man in an unfavorable light.

When sasquatch denier Greg Long went to interview people he was able to find a number who had convinced themselves that Roger Patterson was deliberately hoaxing people. Being convinced already that the Patterson-Gimlin Film was fraudulent, Mr. Long preferentially selected those stories that agreed with his beliefs.

At this moment let us take a look at a priori reasoning.

When the researcher engages in a priori reasoning he is taking a predetermined conclusion and looking for evidence to support it. This can lead to the researcher to discard evidence that points away from his conclusion. An honest researcher will accept what contrary evidence is telling him and so alter or discard his original conclusion. A dishonest researcher will disregard evidence that says he is wrong. From his behavior, Greg Long acted more as a dishonest researcher.

Roger Patterson?

Yes, he believed in the sasquatch. Yes, he was doing a film on the sasquatch. Yes, the temptation to fake evidence was there. But, that alone does nothing to prove the Patterson-Gimlin Film was faked. Sometimes when a researcher goes out to prove his point he actually finds evidence supporting it.

That, according to the footage, is what Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin found at Bluff Creek. Using a rented camera, and forgetting to note vital details, they filmed a sasquatch walking along a part of Bluff Creek. In our next installment we’ll take a look at the men’s reaction, especially Patterson’s.

Up next: “I Told You We Needed To Acclimate That Horse to the Costume”

Category: Opining, Science | 1 Comment »
Tags: Ray Wallace, Sasquatch 46 views