The Strange American Vampire Panics

According to an article by the Smithsonian Institution, a little over 100 years ago, people who lived in  Rhode Island, New England, USA, dug up the dead bodies of relatives they suspected of being vampires. The dead were then desecrated in various ways and hearts were cut from the decaying bodies in the mistaken belief that they were safeguarding the living.

According to this article, "vampire panics" historically, mostly coincided with contagious diseases and in New England at this time, this was tuberculosis (TB). People in this period did not know about bacteria and so, jumped to supernatural entities as being the root cause of the death and sickness plaguing the area and its people. 

When the overwrought New Englanders would dig up their dead, they would be met with corpses bloated and leaking blood, these natural signs of decay would, however, be interpreted as confirming their vampire suspicions. And so, there would follow, burning at the stake, beheading and other such horrors.

Books To Read

The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber -an English pastor is sent to the planet of Oasis to teach its reclusive native inhabitants about Christianity.


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This Fish Has a Strange Way to Do It!

The anglerfish has a really strange way of doing the deed, i.e. reproducing. At first, scientists who studied anglerfish were puzzled as to why most of the specimens that they found were females; soon, however, a gruesome story was revealed after it was noted that many female anglerfish had what looked like parasites attached to them.

Male anglerfish have one aim in life and that is to use their olfactory senses to find a female anglerfish to attach to, as they are much smaller and have problems finding food. If that is not enough to deal with, the male anglerfish often, also, has a severely stunted gut (alimentary canal) and so can't eat anyway.

When the male anglerfish finally locates a female, he bites into her skin which releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body. The romantic pair then, become fused together, down to the blood vessel level. The male then slowly wastes away (atrophy) leaving only a pair of gonads ( testes).

When the female anglerfish is ready to reproduce she releases a hormone and sperm is released. Multiple males can attach and be incorporated into a single female.

Flickr Gary Robson 

Books To Read


Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, by Anthony A. Long.  

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Nazi Ufos and Other Crazy Claims

It sounds too crazy for words, but there is actually a collection of claims and anecdotes connecting Hitler and the Nazi's with successfully developing super-advanced spacecraft during World War II.

Early claims relate to the many reports by allied aircraft pilots about mysterious aerial phenomena from around the world. These reports came to be known as "foo fighter" phenomena; although initially, this term applied to a specific UFO reported and named by the U.S, as 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Foo fighters were assumed, by most witnesses to be secret weaponry used by their enemies.

Flying Saucers

After 1947, there were a series of flying saucer reports and in 1950, Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist asserted that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden also remarked that the Germans were working on a number of very unusual aeronautical projects and that if the war had gone on only months longer, there would have been some very "deadly developments".

Later in 1960, Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels alleged the existence of a secret society called the Vril-Society, which was supposedly searching for the energy force called, Vril, an “all-permeating fluid” of limitless power. In their book, The Morning of the Magicians, Bergier and Pauwels claimed that the Nazi Party, together with the Vril society, had actually developed a series of flying disc prototypes. When the Nazi's were defeated, the Vril society allegedly retreated to a base in Antarctica and vanished into hollow Earth, to meet up with the leaders of an advanced race inhabiting the inner Earth.

Bulgarian engineer, Vladimir Terziski, has also made a few startling claims, such as alleging that the Nazi's had the ability to land on the moon in 1942 and that, "there is atmosphere, water and vegetation on the Moon," which is concealed by NASA to exclude the third world from moon exploration.

Tin-Foil Territory

German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel claimed that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons, launched from an underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer the world and possibly the planets. But would you believe the ideas a chap who advertised an expedition to Antarctica to find these bases and wanted to charge $9,999 for an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the hollow earth?

The final piece of UFO/Nazi craziness relates to  Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat who claimed that Adolf Hitler was an Avatar of the popular Hindu god Vishnu who was communing with Hyperborean gods of  Greek mythology, in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia. Serrano also predicted that Hitler would lead a fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich. Ahhhhhhh crazy!!!


Books To Read

Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, by James Randi -ESP, psychokinesis, psychic detectives, levitation, psychic surgery, UFOs and more.

Going Bananas and Smoking Bananas

Most people have heard the claim that you can get high from smoking banana peel. The Anarchist Cookbook also believing this to be possible, published information about bananadine, the supposed psychoactive substance in bananas, in their 1970's book.

The hoax recipe was lifted from the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper from California, founded by Max Scherr in 1965. Scherr had a mischievous sense of humour and had the rascally idea that he could get the authorities to ban bananas. So the magazine went ahead and printed a story detailing how bananas contained a substance called "bananadine", which could induce a psychedelic high similar to opium and psilocybin.

Amazingly, this tall-tale was widely believed and not only did it inspire a generation of teens to get into smoking banana skins, but the absurd manufactured anecdote was mentioned in a New York Times article on illicit drugs by Donald Louria.

Despite New York University's finding, that bananas contain no intoxicating chemicals, the bananadine idea was reinforced by such songs as Mellow Yellow by Donovan (who was actually thinking about ladies' vibrators), and the punk rock band The Dead Milkmen, who sang a song about "Smokin' Banana Peels".

Sorry guys, but the only effect you will get is a placebo.

Books To Read

The Spider Network, by David Enrich - about con artists and fraud cases.

How the Eyes can Trick the Brain

We can't always trust what we think we see. Remember, our brain is stuck in the enclosed darkness of our skull and it must try to interpret the messages that come via the eyes. The information that our eyes gather can, due to such reasons as competing stimuli as excessive colour, movement, tilt or brightness, create a visual picture which differs from the objective, measurable reality.

How we see things often depends on our perspective, or, how we see things as a whole. For example, what do you see below? A duck or a rabbit?

And is the dancer below, spinning clock-wise or anti-clockwise?

Our brain has to make sense of the incoming visual perceptions by organising them in certain ways, putting information together like a jigsaw and filling in missing parts. Notice how your brain creates an impression of triangles, that are not really there?

With some things our brain completely fails. For example, the impossible 2 dimensional drawings which are interpreted by our brains as being 3 dimensional, even though viewing the object for a few minutes makes us realise that it is impossible for the object to exist.

The the Dutch artist M. C. Escher used many impossible paradox illusions in his art works.

Ascending and Descending by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher

 


Books To read


The Ultimate Book of Optical Illusions, by Al Seckel. Wonderful trickery!

Seeing the Face of Jesus on a Piece of Toast

Most people have heard of cases where people supposedly, see the face of Jesus on a piece of toast; this kind of perception is called Pareidolia. The human brain is a pattern maker and humans are especially inclined to see faces in random patterns, especially, anything that appears to have 2 dots and a line. : D

Despite not bearing much resemblance to a real face, most people will identify the above picture as a face.

Seeing religious figures on toast and other food items has spawned a bit of an industry, with few stopping to even consider that they don't know what Jesus may have actually looked like. It is highly unlikely that he would have looked like an Italian youth with blonde hair and blue eyes, as many Italian painters of the Renaissance seemed to think. And it is equally unlikely that a picture of him would appear on a piece of factory-produced bread.

A rock that appears like a face 

The word pareidolia comes from Greek and essentially, it describes the human tendency to see pictures in random patterns.

Carl Sagan saw pareidolia as providing an evolutionary advantage related to differentiating a friend from enemy. Psychology has made use of pareidolia with the Rorschach inkblot test, where the patient is asked to interpret "ambiguous designs" and the psychologist accesses the personality of the patient based on what the patient claims to see. Thankfully, this flunky practice is dying out.

Some extremely wacky and embarrassing things have also resulted from paradolia. For example, Chonosuke Okamura, a twentieth-century Japanese palaeontologist claimed that he had discovered ancient fossils showing "mini-species" of animals ranging from humans to dinosaurs, which were each less than 0.25 mm in length. He then claimed that: "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period ... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm."[6][7]. Okamura had looked at his fossil specimens under the microscope and also seen, "Two totally naked homos, facing each other, are moving their hands and feet harmoniously. We can only think of dancing in a present-day style."

Oh my! Some people will simply believe anything!

Books To Read


The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan - learn critical and skeptical thinking.

The Virgin Priestesses of Ancient Rome

Vestal Virgins were priestesses of ancient Rome dedicated to the goddess Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the holy fire of Rome and the Vestal Virgins were selected by casting of lots. This process was believed to be a form of divination but resembled random chance. The Vestal Virgins were very influential and powerful and charged with the important job of tending the sacred fire, which was considered integral to the security and survival of Rome.

Originally there were two Vestal Virgins, but over time the number grew to six women, who would take vows of chastity. The Virgins were considered important to Rome; their major duty was to ensure that the sacred fire never went out and this was considered a life purpose, so these women could never marry or have children.

Unlike many major religions, the Vestal Virgins had respect, privileges and powers. For example, when on their way to public ceremonies in their covered two-wheeled carriage, they had right of way on the road. And when at various public ceremonies, they sat in reserved places of honour. Unlike most women of Rome, they could own property, make a will and vote. They also had the power to free condemned prisoners, simply by touching them.

There was a College of Vestals but the Christian Emperor Theodosius, ordered the college discontinued and the sacred fire extinguished in 394. Interestingly, the Roman Empire did indeed fall into decline after this and finally dissolved on September 4, 476, when  the last Emperor, Romulus Augustus was deposed by a Germanic chieftain.

 

Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton Wikipedia