'Tis the season of misinformation

Here is a quiz about things Christmas taken from The Museum of Hoaxes website. See how many of them you get correct. 

True or false:

1. The word 'mistletoe' means 'dung on a twig' in Anglo-Saxon.
2. It was illegal to celebrate Christmas in Puritan New England.
3. The modern image of a fat, red-suited Santa Claus was invented by the Coca-Cola Company.
4. The bones of the original Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) are preserved in a church in Italy.
5. Jesus Christ was born on December 25.
6. Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair campaigned to ban all Christmas programs, songs, and carols from public schools.
7. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) tracks Santa and his sleigh every year on radar.
8. The Bible tells us that three wise men visited the infant Jesus as he lay asleep in a manger.
9. The suicide rate rises dramatically around Christmas.
10. Christmas only became a legal holiday in England and America late in the nineteenth century. Before then people were expected to go to work on Christmas Day.
11. The Canadian Post Office has given Santa Claus his own official postal code at the North Pole.
12. Abbreviating Christmas as Xmas is [intentionally] disrespectful.

The Christmas
Gullibility Test Answers

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1) The word 'mistletoe' means 'dung on a twig' in Anglo-Saxon

TRUE
Apparently the ancient belief was that mistletoe grew in trees where birds had left droppings. Thus the origin of the name which comes from the Anglo-Saxon word 'mistel' (meaning dung) and 'tan' (meaning twig). Read more about the history of mistletoe in this informative article written by Sara Williams.

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2) It was illegal to celebrate Christmas in Puritan New England.

TRUE
The Puritans were sticklers for taking the Bible, and nothing else, as their guide for how to live a good, Christian life. And since the Bible never indicates exactly when the anniversary of the Nativity should be observed, they reasoned that God must not have intended for it to be observed at all. Otherwise a date would have been provided. So they banned its celebration. Between 1659 and 1681 it was actually a criminal offense, punishable by a fine of five shillings, to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts.

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3) The modern image of a fat, red-suited Santa Claus was invented by the Coca-Cola Company.

FALSE
In 1931 Coca-Cola commissioned the artist Haddon Sundblom to create images of Santa Claus drinking from a bottle of Coke. Sundblom's depictions of Santa became very, very popular, but it's not accurate to say that Sundblom actually invented the modern image of Santa. By the early twentieth century Santa was already commonly being depicted as a fat, jolly, red-suited, long-bearded old man. For instance, a greeting card drawn by Louis Prang in 1885 shows a Santa essentially identical to the one we know today. But the claim that Coca-Cola invented the modern Santa Claus has by now become very widely disseminated, and is even repeated as fact by Coca-Cola itself, although you'd think Coca-Cola would know better. Who knows, maybe Coca-Cola is trying some kind of stealth campaign to establish a claim of copyright over the image of Santa.

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4) The bones of the original Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) are preserved in a church in Italy.

TRUE
St. Nicholas was a fourth-century bishop who lived in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). Upon his death his bones were preserved in the town of Myra, but in 1087 these bones were stolen and moved to the town of Bari in Italy. They remain there to this day, located in the church of San Nicola. It is said that his bones exude a sweet-smelling oily substance which is prized for its healing powers. In the United States and some parts of Europe St. Nicholas has come to be associated with Santa Claus.

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5) Jesus Christ was born on December 25.

FALSE
The Bible, which can be taken as the only authoritative source on the matter, contains no indication of exactly which day of the year the birth of Jesus occurred. But it does contain evidence that the birth could not have occurred in December. The Gospel of Luke notes that shepherds were tending their flocks in the field at night when an angel appeared to them announcing the birth of Christ, but shepherds would not have been outside with their flocks at night in the middle of winter. December 25 was only chosen as the date to celebrate Christmas in the fourth century because this date corresponded to existing pagan celebrations, a fact which the Puritans (who objected to the celebration of Christmas) often pointed out.

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6) Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair campaigned to ban all christmas programs, songs, and carols from public schools.

FALSE
Madalyn Murray O'Hair never campaigned to ban the celebration of Christmas from schools. Nor did she petition the FCC to ban religious broadcasting. This rumor traces back to 1974 when the FCC briefly considered measures that would have prevented religious organizations from taking over broadcasting channels reserved for educational purposes. But Madalyn Murray O'Hair never had anything to do with the FCC's deliberations, and Christmas in schools was never threatened.

[Damien's note: This rumor is so persistent that I suspect you may have trouble believing it to be false.]

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7) NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) tracks Santa and his sleigh every year on radar.

TRUE
They've been doing it for the past 40 years. Check out their website.

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8) The Bible tells us that three wise men visited the infant Jesus as he lay asleep in a manger.

FALSE
The Book of Matthew states that wise men came from the east to Jerusalem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the Christ child, but it never specifies how many wise men. Nor does it specify that they visited Jesus while he lay sleeping in a manger.

[Damien's note: Matthew 2:11 says, "On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh." Matthew's version has Jesus in a house, does not mention a manger at all, nor does it say anything about Joseph and Mary coming to Bethlehem from Nazareth. {If you only read Matthew's account, you would probably think Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem and only moved to Nazareth after they fled to Egypt because of Herod's anger.} Those details about the census and the overcrowded inn are found in Luke's account, which is also where the shepherds come from. Matthew had magi, Luke had shepherds. I know they show up at the same time in Nativity scenes around the world, but it they were both around, they were not there at the same time. Read the texts and you will see why. There are a number of details in the two accounts that are hard to reconcile, but we always overlook that. Just like we overlook the fact that each of those gospels gives a genealogy for Jesus and that they do not match one another. There have been all sorts of explanations for it, but you can study up on that for yourself if it interests you. I have rambled on long enough.]

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9) The suicide rate rises dramatically around Christmas.

FALSE
The media likes to dwell on the possibility of an increase in suicides during the holiday season, but the public stubbornly refuses to play along by actually committing suicide more often during this time of year. In fact, suicide rates tend to peak during the spring and fall. Check out this study for more info.

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10) Christmas only became a legal holiday in England and America late in the nineteenth century. Before then people were expected to go to work on Christmas Day.

TRUE
19th-century factory owners didn't like having to give their employees a day off work, so they long lobbied against having to treat Christmas as anything but a regular working day. But apparently some kindly factory owners would generously let their workers start work at 5 am on Christmas Day, thus allowing them to get off work early and go to church.


[Damien's note: So apparently we are returning to the good old Christmas traditions by making people work on Christmas Day.]

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11) The Canadian Post Office has given Santa Claus his own official postal code at the North Pole.

TRUE
Yes, Santa's address, according to the Canadian post office is: Santa Claus, North Pole, HOH OHO, CANADA. So he has his own postal code (HO HO HO). The post office even promises that you can write to Santa there and he'll reply. Check out their website for more info.

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12) Abbreviating Christmas as Xmas is disrespectful.

FALSE
While many people have been taught that it is disrespectful to abbreviate Christmas as Xmas, there's no logical reason why it should be. The 'X' is simply a shorthand for the Greek word for Christ, "Xristos." Hardly a sign of disrespect. Of course, some people will continue to insist on taking offense at the abbreviation, but that's probably because they're not aware of the abbreviation was derived.

[Damien's note:  This is one of those things that people get upset about because (1) they do not know their history or (2) they think it disrespectful to abbreviate the name of Jesus Christ anyway. But again if we know our history, we know that abbreviations of this nature were very common in manuscripts of the Bible itself, perhaps more understandable when books had to be written out by hand. Because we are accustomed to abbreviating Mr., for example, we think nothing of it. And when we see it, we pronounce it "Mister" not "mrrr."And we have abbreviated Mrs. for so long that we essentially created the word "Missus" because mistress had taken on another meaning entirely. When we see Xmas, the way to pronounce that is the way that spelling was originally intended -- Christmas. This is somewhat akin to the way devout Jews, when encountering the unpronounced Name of God in the Torah, pronounce the word Adonai -- meaning Lord -- instead of the word represented by the four Hebrew letters in the text. I remember a Jewish friend at Midwestern  State Megaversity insisting that the letters may look one way, but that every good Jew knows that the way you say those letters when encountered in the Torah is Adonai. He was very annoyed at those who insisted that they should be pronounced as Yahweh or, even worse, as Jehovah.]
I am a bit amused that people who get all upset about keeping Christ in Christmas never seem to want to keep Mass in Christmas -- because that is what the word means -- Christ-Mass.

And you always thought it was the six beers, right?

A friend who is a missionary in Kenya recently told me that studies show that gay porn sites in Africa are visited most often (taking into account population density, etc.) from Kenyan computers than any other. My friend found this interesting because Kenya, like most of Africa, is vehemently homophobic. And there seems to be no evidence that Kenya has a higher percentage of gay men than other nations in the area.

I thought of that when I ran across this queer bit of news: 

Science Explains Why So Many Straight Dudes Fantasize About Having Gay Sex Together

 

We already know that straight guys are a lot more bisexual than people think. We also know that they secretly get off on watching gay porn. But we never knew exactly why. Until now.

A new study out of the University of Portsmouth in England has uncovered why some straight dudes have gay sex fantasies, and it all boils down to a little thing called progesterone.

Progesterone is a hormone that appears in both males and females and contributes to the formation of social bonds. Researchers found that when hetero guys are reminded of the importance of forging male friendships, they report an increased willingness to engage in sexual behavior with other guys.

The levels of progesterone were measured in the saliva of 59 males. Then, each men was randomly assigned to one of three groups and asked to complete word puzzles: one using friendship words, one using sexual words, and a third using neutral words.

Afterwards, men who were asked to complete the friendship word puzzle showed 26 percent greater homoerotic motivation than men given the sexual or neutral puzzles. Moreover, men with the highest progesterone levels who were given the friendship puzzle showed 41 percent greater homoerotic motivation compared to men with the highest progesterone levels in the other two groups.

Researchers concluded that gay thoughts go hand in hand with the need to create alliances with members of the same sex, which can be traced all the way back to the teamwork mentalities of the earliest hunter-gatherers.

“From an evolutionary perspective we tend to think of sexual behavior as a means to an end for reproduction,” Dr. Diana Fleischman, the report’s author, said. “However, because sexual behavior is intimate and pleasurable, it is also used in many species, including non-human primates, to help form and maintain social bonds. We can all see this in romantic couples who bond by engaging in sexual behavior even when reproduction is not possible.”

Fleischman continued: “Having some degree of attraction to the opposite sex is a type of adaptive behavior, and in any adaptive behavior you will see extremes of the spectrum, hence some people will only be attracted to members of the same sex.”

Ultimately, Fleischman said, “the research suggests that having exclusively heterosexual thoughts is a disadvantage — it’s better to be a little bit attracted to the opposite sex.”

Damien's note: I realize this doesn't solve the conundrum of the Kenyan gay porn site visits. But it does show that things are a bit more complicated than one might think ...

Happy Thanksgiving Day! Useless facts to make you thankful you have better things to do.

Of The Three Utensils We Use To Eat (Fork, Spoon and Knife) Which Was Not Present At The First Thanksgiving Feast? 

 The fork. 

What did they use to eat their meal with? A knife, a spoon and their fingers. 

The fork was not brought by the pilgrims. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts introduced it 10 years later, but it did not really catch on until the 18th century. 

Apparently, part of the reason that Swanson started creating T.V. dinners in 1953 was because it needed to find something to do with the massive amount of leftover frozen Thanksgiving turkeys.  

Damien's note: This last bit interests me because my family never had turkey on Thanksgiving when I was a kid down south. We had chicken with cornbread dressing. The only time I remember eating turkey at home as a kid was in Swanson T.V. dinners. It seemed like such a treat.

Governor William Bradford's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Around this time of year, you may see or hear the text of Governor Bradford’s proclamation calling for the First Thanksgiving:

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.
Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
 William Bradford
Ye Governor of Ye Colony

Whether you find this inspiring or insipid, all that really matters is that it is a hoax.  The proclamation gives the wrong year for the celebration, to begin with. According to the only contemporary account of the traditional founding event, which was itself clearly prepared as propaganda to be sent back to the investors in England to make the situation in the colony sound far rosier than it actually was, the year was 1621.  There was a day of thanksgiving proclaimed in 1623, but the date of that celebration was  in the summer, most probably the end of July. It celebrated two events - the end of a drought, and the news that a ship carrying new colonists, feared sunk, was safe and in transit. It had nothing to do with the harvest, activities of Native Americans, pestilence or the establishment of the church.

The proclamation refers to the colony’s “pastor,” although they didn’t have one for many years after settling in New England. At the time of the alleged proclamation, religious duties were handled by an Elder, William Brewster.

It uses language and concepts unknown to the Pilgrims, most notably the reference to the dictates of conscience, an 18^th-century Enlightenment concept that the Pilgrims would have roundly rejected.  Comically, it alludes to “ye Pilgrim Rock,” a landmark unknown to the Pilgrims themselves and not mentioned for 120 years after they landed. In fact, according to the website of Plimoth Plantation itself, the very term Pilgrims is anachronistic, as is the use of the word vegetables.

This obvious fabrication has been circulating in the United States for at least three decades, if not longer, and despite its glaring flaws it continues to be cited authoritatively.  The earliest allusion to it seems to be from 1985, when a White House speechwriter quoted from it in one of Ronald Reagan’s presidential Thanksgiving proclamations.  This in itself is not surprising, the Gipper having famously taken great liberties with the facts for the sake of what he perceived to be a good story. Since that time it has appeared (in whole or in part) in at least three books published by reputable presses, and it literally thrives on the internet, where it is reproduced ad infinitum.

As I have done by posting it here, but at least with a caveat.

Pardon me, do you have the time?

The story of Rudolph Fentz was for many decades considered to be an unsolved mystery, as well as a case of possible time travel. 

According to the story, in June 1950 a man suddenly appeared in the center of New York City’s Times Square, as if from out of the blue. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes and sported the kind of mutton-chop sideburns that had gone out of fashion decades ago. Glancing about himself, a look first of astonishment and then of panic flashed across his face. He began to sprint forwards, and was then struck down and killed by a car.
 
When police examined the man, they found nineteenth-century money in his pockets as well as business cards identifying him as Rudolph Fentz. But they couldn’t locate records of a man named Fentz anywhere until they came across the old widow of a Rudolph Fentz Jr. The widow told them that her father-in-law, Rudolph Fentz Sr., had disappeared one day without a trace in 1876. 

Intriguingly, the address of her father-in-law matched the address on the mysterious stranger’s business cards. So the police were left with an enigma. 

Rudolph Fentz appeared to have vanished in 1876, only to reappear in 1950. Had he somehow fallen into a time-hole that had sucked him seventy-four years through time?

Debunked

For decades this tale was popular among members of Europe’s paranormal research community, and it was generally accepted as true—an example of a genuine mystery—until 2005 when researcher Chris Aubeck investigated its history.

Aubeck discovered that the tale had begun life as a science-fiction story penned by Jack Finney and published in a 1951 anthology. Two years later a writer named Ralph Holland reprinted the story in a booklet, but he did so without permission and removed all indication that the story was fiction. Holland was a member of a group called Borderland that was committed to promoting belief in the existence of a ‘fourth dimension.' The Fentz story, when presented as fact, ably served this agenda. Through Holland’s booklet, the tale of the accidental time traveler made its way to Europe, where it soon took root and circulated for decades within the European paranormal research community. 

Source: Museum of Hoaxes 

Damien's note: Much in the manner of true believers in Roswell's UFOs, those who believe in the Rudolph Fentz mystery are not daunted. Check this site, for an example of skeptics who are skeptical about the debunking. 

The photo above is alleged to be of the real Rudolph Fentz, and it may indeed be of a man of that name. Other photos of other real Rudolphs can be found online.  

Mxyzptlk

"Mx was created on the model of the other personal titles Mr, Mrs and Ms for a person who doesn’t identify themselves as either male or female or doesn’t want their gender to be known.

An article in the Guardian on 17 November — prompted by the news that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was considering introducing it — noted the quiet rise in the use of Mx as a gender-neutral title, particularly in the UK. Mx is accepted as a valid title by a number of organisations, mostly in the public sector. The Post Office was first in 2009; it has since been joined by several governmental bodies, including the National Health Service, HM Revenue and Customs and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. But other than those, acceptance is patchy and uncommon; the proposal by RBS marks a potential shift into the private sector, though RBS is 80% owned by the government.

Research by Nat Titman shows that Mx was created in online discussion groups in the early 1980s as a way to avoid identifying oneself as male or female or avoid specifying one’s marital status. It’s hard to say how often it was employed in real life in the following two decades but its sporadic appearances online argue for its being very rare. Around 2000 Mx began to be discussed by transgender and androgynous people, who have since led efforts to gain recognition for it.

This is the earliest example I can find in a British newspaper:

Official forms in Brighton and Hove will include the title “Mx” to cater for the city’s transgender community after a review of services. Brighton and Hove Council’s trans-equality scrutiny panel recommended removing the need for people to identify themselves as male or female at GP surgeries and introducing gender-neutral lavatories and changing rooms.

The Times, 4 May 2013."

It’s said as mix or mux , sometimes mixter.

Source: Michael Quinion's WorldWideWords

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Damien's note: What about the interdimensional imp from Superman, Mxyzptlk?

 
He first appeared in Superman #30 (September 1944). He is usually presented as a trickster, in the classical mythological sense, in that he enjoys tormenting Superman. In most of his appearances in DC Comics, he can be stopped only by tricking him into saying or spelling his own name backwards (Kltpzyxm - "kel-tip-zix-um"), which will return him to his home in the 5th dimension and keep him there for a minimum of 90 days.

Now for a serious note

When I was a seminarian -- something I never mention myself -- I was blessed to have a wise and experienced priest as my spiritual director. At one point, I went to him in much confusion and sorrow as I struggled with a situation that I did not know how to handle. 

I was gay and had fallen in love.  

After some discussion, much of which centered on my need to accept things that I could not change, he sent me home with this instruction: “Take fifteen minutes of your prayer time this evening thanking God for creating you as a gay man who is able to know what it is to love.” 

I add that, of course, he was not advocating that I act on my feelings!
   
I assure you that it struck me as the most foolish advice I had ever been given! But I went home and did it.
  
I began to thank God. At first it was hard not to drift into complaining, but I stuck to it. Gradually I began to discover hidden blessings in that situation, things I had overlooked before or discounted. And then, I began to see that being gay was not a merely tolerable situation. It was a great gift that had enriched my life already in unexpected and unappreciated ways. Even more, it would continue to do so if I would open myself to receive the gift.

That fifteen minutes changed my life. 

So you might want to consider this. At the end of every day, look back and give thanks. Thanks for the obvious blessings, thanks for the small and the large, thanks especially for the hidden ones.They may be the biggest ones of all.

Here endeth the lesson.

Norwegian Curling Team

The best sense of humor in sports!

This one speaks for itself.

No semi-bare bears, please

You probably saw this ...

Officials in a Polish town have opposed a proposition to name a playground after Winnie-the-Pooh due to the bear's unclear gender and immodest clothing.

The matter was debated in a closed-door meeting weeks ago in the central Polish town of Tuszyn, but didn't get much media attention in Poland until recent days.

Voice recordings of the meeting were leaked to the media in which officials complained that Pooh Bear is immodestly dressed and also lacks a clear gender. One called the bear a "hermaphrodite."

Some said a fully clothed Polish cartoon bear named Uszatek would be a better choice.

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Damien's note: Does that Polish bear look like it has a clear gender identity to you? I hate to mention it, but his (yes, he is a male) name is "Miś Uszatek" -- sounds like a mixed message to me. (Miś is the Polish word for bear.)

The complaint about Pooh's clothing apparently was that he/she only wears a top, no pants. It reminds me of this old question: 

 

Too much drama!

On this date, November 23, in 534 B.C.E, Thespis of Icaria became the first actor (known to history) to play a character onstage according to Aristotle. (Other ancient sources make similar, though somewhat different, claims.)

Thespis was a singer of dithyrambs (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrains). He is credited with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks. This new style was called tragedy, and Thespis was the most popular exponent of it. Eventually, in 534 BC competitions to find the best tragedy were instituted at the City Dionysia in Athens, and Thespis won the first documented competition. 

He is said to have traveled from town to town, carrying his props and masks with him in a cart.
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It is generally believed that there were others prior to Thespis who had performed as individuals, but no names have come down to us. Perhaps the real import of this tradition is that Thespis was the first successful self-promoter in the world of drama. Or that there is another unknown first in the background-- a publicist!

There really is no there there.

The White Pine Monograph Series was a series of carefully researched, high quality brochures, paid for by Weyerhaeuser mills and edited by Russell Whitehead, that collected together photographs, drawings, and descriptions of early American buildings built with white pine. It was published bimonthly between 1915 and 1940, and sent to architects, with the goal of encouraging them to use white pine as a building material. Many architects preserved bound copies of the monographs in their offices and copies can still be found in many architectural libraries today.
  

The April 1920 issue (vol. VI, No. 2) contained an article, written by Hubert G. Ripley, about the town of Stotham, Massachusetts. It contained many photographs of houses and buildings in the town.

For over two decades no one questioned Ripley's article about the idyllic town of Stotham. It was only when Leicester B. Holland, head of the Fine Arts Department of the Library of Congress, asked his staff to catalog all the material in the White Pine Series, that anyone realized something was amiss.

 
Holland's staff reported back to him that they had successfully cataloged everything in the series, but that they had encountered a problem when they came to the article about Stotham. Try as they might, they couldn't find any evidence of the town's existence, despite having pored over maps and histories of Massachusetts. Nor could they find references to any of the people mentioned in the article.


Holland chanced to run into Whitehead, the original editor of the monograph series, and asked for assistance.


An article that appeared in the May 1964 issue of The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, described what happened next.

There was a short silence during which Whitehead maintained a completely expressionless face, and then a sly smile passed across it. Finally he told this story. As the early numbers had been assembled, about Quincy, the Boston Post Road, the Wooden Architecture of the Lower Delaware Valley, etc., the most appropriate photographs of whole buildings or of details were chosen for publication. Always a few were left over, as not being quite as good, or simply because there was not sufficient room. These were put in a big drawer. After a while the drawer was quite full. He and Hubert Ripley were looking through it one day; they were of the opinion many of the photographs were too good to be wasted, and they felt the public to which the White Pine Series was addressed was being deprived of some charming documents that would surely serve a purpose to the avid users of the data, many of them architects proud of their 'Early American' work. And so the plan was formed to create a village.

In other words, although Stotham would have been a charming place to visit, it unfortunately didn't exist. 

The above photograph, identified in the article as the Meeting House of the Stotham Congregational Society, is in fact of  the North Congregational Church Parish House in Woodbury, Connecticut. 

For another story about a town that isn't there (or is it?), Agloe, NY, click here.

Moore’s Beach Monster

 

 

In the summer of 1925, the carcass of a large ocean creature washed up onto Moore's Beach in the California town of Santa Cruz. The creature had a strange duck-like head and what looked like a long neck. Interest in the carcass grew when it was examined on the beach by one E.L. Wallace, who described himself as the president of the Natural History Society of British Columbia, and he declared that it was the remains of a plesiosaur — a species long extinct. He speculated that the animal had died back in the age of the dinosaurs, some 65 million years ago, and its body had then been preserved in the ice of a glacier. But the glacier must have recently melted as it floated south, releasing its long-held occupant, which then washed up on the California beach.

The story of a plesiosaur find was reported widely in contemporary newspapers. But what was less widely reported was that when the carcass was taken to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the plesiosaur story was quickly debunked. Scientists there immediately identified it as the decomposing carcass of a Baird's Beaked Whale. The long neck was actually just a twisted strand of blubber still attached to the neck.

The real mystery was, who was this 'E.L. Wallace' who had claimed the animal was a plesiosaur? Douglas Long, a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, recently told the story of the Moore's Beach Monster in an article posted at Deep Sea News, and he notes that E.L. Wallace was the real hoax, since no record of this man's existence can be found outside of his brief appearance on the beach at Santa Cruz. Long writes:

"Either some scientist impersonator dubbed 'E. L. Wallace' ordained himself 'noted naturalist' in an attention-grabbing act of grandstanding and duping local press and public alike, or the name and association was a post-facto fabrication in later writings intended to instill some sense of authority to the plesiosaur claim."

Back in the 1920s, the California Academy of Sciences researchers published their findings about the creature in the Journal of Mammalogy. However, it should be no surprise that their findings never received the press that the initial claim of a plesiosaur find did. [Damien's note: After all, dead whale is not an interesting story, whereas dead plesiosuar is a winner.]

 

And so the story of a Santa Cruz plesiosaur lingered on in popular culture. To this day, many cryptozoology books and sites still claim that the remains of a plesiosaur washed up on Moore's Beach back in 1925. 

 

Source: Museum of Hoaxes 

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Damien's note: Winston Churchill famously said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

That stings!

Jamie Brown, 29, stole a fish tank from a hardware store in Leeds, England, in August (thus violating a previous hardware-store stay-away order) and made a run for it, but had to be rescued by police and emergency personnel after he stopped to urinate in a bush -- and, inadvertently, directly onto a wasps' nest. 

Police said he later spent six very unpleasant hours at Leeds General Infirmary. 

Source: Daily Mirror (London), 8-12-2014

Fractious fractals

Today, November 20, is the birthday of Benoît B. Mandelbrot (November 20, 1924 – October 14, 2010). He was a Polish-born, French and American mathematician, noted for developing a "theory of roughness" and "self-similarity" in nature and the field of fractal geometry to help prove it, which included coining the word "fractal". He later discovered the Mandelbrot set of intricate, never-ending fractal shapes, named in his honor.

I enjoy fractals, those engaging images in which the design repeats endlessly at every scale with a sort of kaleidoscopic beauty. They may be found in nature or be generated by complex mathematical formulae.

I confess that I first learned of Mandlebrot while reading a series of novels based on Isaac Asimov's robot stories. Madlebrot was the name of a robot character in the novels.

Our pasta, who are in colander, draining be thy noodles

"Guess who became the very first official Pastafarian in the very conservative state of Utah today???" Asia Lemmon wrote on her Facebook page next to the photo you see on the left. "This is just my temporary license. I will get the official one in full color glory in 2-3 weeks. They tried to argue with me, but I brought in neatly stapled packets with all the information needed. One point for the Flying Spaghetti Monster!!" 

If you are not familiar with the wearing of cookware or the "religion" known as FSM - for "Flying Spaghetti Monster" - Asia Lemmon probably seems to you like a candidate for Lithium. But Asia is just the latest in a long list of non-believers who are making a point about religion.

"I’m a really proud, outspoken atheist,” explained Asia Lemmon. “I am proud of Utah for allowing freedom of all religions in what is considered by many to be a one-religion state."

The wearing of kitchen paraphernalia in government photos has become a common protest vehicle for atheists in the last few years. A Texas man was the first American to known to have donned a spaghetti strainer in driver’s license photo in August of last year. A woman in Oklahoma persuaded her local DMV be photographed with a head colander last September. DMV workers in New Jersey called the cops on a man who refused to remove a spaghetti strainer from his head while taking his driver's license photo. And in January, Christopher Schaeffer, who was elected to Pomfret Town Board in New York, wore a colander on his head while he was sworn into office.

The genesis of the pasta strainers as religious headgear is a letter written in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, who was at the time a physics student who objected to confusing religion and science. Henderson wrote to protest the decision of a Kansas school board to allow the faith-based theory of intelligent design to be taught alongside evolution. Henderson reasoned if teaching intelligent design was done to appease creationist Christians, equal respect should also be given to those who hold “the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

"FSM" - for Flying Spaghetti Monster - soon became not only the war cry for atheists striving to make government respect the separation of church and state, but a pseudo-religion that allows followers to poke fun at religious beliefs. For instance, Pastafarians celebrate Ramendan, when they eat nothing but Ramen noodles for several days, and Pastover when all prayers are ended with “Ramen.” 

Although DMV officials at first objected when Asia Lemmon plopped the colander on her head for her driver’s license photo, when she presented her paperwork showing it was part of her religion - FSM - they relented and snapped the photo. 

“It’s just funny,” Lemmon told The Spectrum, referring to the FSM. “The church is purely satirical. (My daughter) Catty learned about it online before I did. She’s been an atheist since she was 5, and that’s how I learned about it.”

One small victory for the non-believer.

America's obesity problem spreads

Eating ham has never been more expensive than this year, partly because U.S. pigs are too fat. 

Hogs in the U.S. weigh the most ever after farmers fed them longer to make up for losses caused by a virus that killed millions of piglets. While heavier hogs means more pork per animal, their hind legs exceed the size used for producing the 7-pound spiral-cut, half hams that are the most popular for family meals during year-end holidays. 

Half of annual ham consumption by Americans occurs at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and retail prices through October were up 26 percent this year to a record $3.433 a pound, government data show. The increase was fueled by the virus, which shrank the domestic herd and reduced the number of hogs slaughtered this year by 5.2 percent, boosting costs for meat buyers.

“This year has been a struggle for people that sell half hams because heavier hogs are coming to market,” Brian Mariuz, chief financial officer of HoneyBaked Ham Co.’s Michigan division, said by telephone from Troy, Michigan. The unit runs 74 of HoneyBaked’s more than 400 U.S. stores. “Seven-pound hams are in the highest demand and in the lowest supply.” 

Meat processors slaughtered 92.09 million hogs this year through Nov. 15, down from 97.17 million in the same period a year earlier, after outbreaks of the deadly porcine epidemic diarrhea virus shrank domestic herds, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Even with hogs weighing a record 215.5 pounds (97.8 kilograms) each on average, pork output through September was down 1.2 percent to 16.71 billion pounds. 

 Through yesterday, hog futures on Chicago Mercantile Exchange advanced 7.3 percent this year, heading for the biggest annual increase since 2010. 


Pork’s price gains have contributed to higher meat costs, which the government forecasts will rise more than any other food group this year. The Consumer Price Index for meat, poultry, fish and eggs increased 8.3 percent in the year through October. 

Around the holidays, U.S. consumers favor spiral-cut half hams, created by slicing the meat in one continuous coil around the bone, according to Urner Barry, a food-industry publisher in Bayville, New Jersey. A typical light ham weighs 17 pounds to 20 pounds and yields two half hams. The wholesale price of that cut more than doubled this year, USDA data show. HoneyBaked’s hams fetch $7.59 a pound this year, up 30 cents from a year ago, while the cost is up 50 cents, CFO Mariuz said. 

With about 5 million fewer hogs slaughtered so far this year, that’s reduced the number of hind legs used for hams by more than 10 million. At the same time, there has been an increase in hams weighing 23 pounds to 27 pounds, which is too big for most consumers interested in buying half a ham. 
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Damien's note: When I first saw the headline on this story on Bloomberg -- "American Pigs are Too Fat for Holiday Ham" -- I thought they were talking about consumers. I know this time of year is hard on my healthy-eating plan.

 

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