Nimoy

I’m in the north woods on the border between Wisconsin and Michigan and I think I just saw a sasquatch outside my window. I might be wrong, It could have simply been a trick of the wind and trees fooling my mind. Or maybe it was a bear. Whatever the case, if John Lithgow shows up in a dented station wagon I’m getting the freak out of here.

I used to be really into cryptozoological creatures. That seemed like a viable career interest for a brief period. Specifically, I thought I could spend several months a year living in Scotland capturing evidence and exploring Loch Ness. I had numerous books with the same 5 or 6 pictures from Loch Ness claiming to be nessies flipper or head or tail or even just its wake. Usually these books were very inclusive and would have chapters about the Bermuda triangle, Easter Island, and several other allegedly unexplained phenomena.

It never occurred to me that not only were the explanations for people’s stories and the mythology of these creatures not the most straightforward and obvious answers but that there were actual provable reasons behind most of the alleged cryptozoological creatures and unusual phenomena.

There are academic books studying Easter Island and how the inhabitants literally cut down every tree on their island until they could no longer support the inhabitants just so they could move and raise these enormous monuments.

The likelihood of a creature like the Loch Ness monster, with the various sizes reported, in a body of water as small as Loch Ness is teeny. The lake is very deep and there are a bunch of odd under water caves, but it’s so cold and there have been so many research boats (of varying professional levels) that almost any other explanation of large dinosaur-like animal sightings is more likely. The folks living around the lake are now so dependent on tourism that the legend has to live.

It’s an entertaining and also troubling aspect of being human that we want answers so badly for some questions that we create supernatural explantions rather than leave questions yet we also so crave stories, myths, fantasy that we take things that have concrete answers and create fantastical explanations. There’s a draw to the amazing coupled with laziness that leads to the creation of unbelievable stories rather than noticing the crazy reality that is this world.

I love science and I really like thinking through something and finding the most reasonable and sensible solution, but I also really want to hold on to that kid part of me that is fascinated by the possibility that a large human-like creature is lurking in the woods just outside my window, just waiting to be discovered. Suddently I can’t decide if I should go get a flashlight and brave the mosquitoes in search of fame or if I should pull the covers over my head and hope that Harry thinks I’m sleeping and thus boring.

LW

Magic and science

There is an awesome article in Nature online about magic and the neural underpinnings of what magicians do to audiences. It then extrapolates to how that can be used to do neurological research.

Read it – here

This paper has a lot of correlations to live theater that doesn’t involve magic or illusions. I’m going to write more about this later today.

Levi