PERUVIAN SNAKE UPDATE

For those of you waiting for today's update from Mike and Greg Warner re. their expedition to Peru in search of the giant anaconda... There isn't one (and the picture on the left was pinched from Wikipedia just to make the page look pretty). I received nothing this morning or yesterday evening and my emails to see if everything is alright remain unanswered. I expect that nothing is wrong and that the daily trials and tribulations of life have just got in the way, and that we will hear from them again tomorrow.

However, it has to be said that the vast majority of comments on their findings have been negative ones. Greg asked me the other day why there were relatively few comments considering the number of hits they had received and I hadn't the heart to tell him that this was because I had not posted over half of them which were purely abusive or libellous. Postings that go "Wot da f*** is this f****** s***? F*** off!" have no place on this bloggo except to illustrate the calibre of some of our recent visitors.

There are a couple of little points that I would like to make at this point. I have been publishing the Warners' data on the bloggo for one reason and one reason only. I do not agree with their findings. I think that they are nice, sincere people who are mistaken in what they believe that they have found but the CFZ was always intended as an open forum where researchers from all walks of life and adherents of a wide range of belief systems can share their data and discuss their findings in a civilised and neutral environment.

With very few exceptions (those being people whose belief systems are ones that the people who set up and run the CFZ - i.e. me - find morally reprehensible, or whose belief systems are based entirely on superstitious tenets and have no scientific base for their existence, and those which only exist to further a religious or political ideology) anyone can contribute to the CFZ melting pot and I will defend their right so to do to the death.

I have received quite a lot of abusive mail on the subject of the Warner expedition. This happens regularly and often from the same coterie of people who make no secret of the fact that they dislike me, my philosophy and what I stand for.

Once and for all:

1. I do not know Mike and Greg Warner

2. I am not financially involved with them

3. I am not intending to publish their book (because as far as I know they haven't written one)

4. I am not being paid by the BBC to examine their evidence

5. I am not an employee of the British (or indeed any other) government

6. I was not drunk when I made the decision to publish this material

All this sorry affair goes to prove is that the cryptozoological commuinity still has a few particularly unpleasant people in it.