CRYPTOZOOLOGY ONLINE: Still on the Track: 11/20/14

Thursday, November 20, 2014

WEIRD WEEKEND 2014: Saturday Part Three

CRYPTOLINK: Lies, Damned Lies, and Cryptozoology

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet,

despite what cryptozoologists may be telling you.

Plesiosaurs, like mermaids and Megalodon, don't really exist, but Baird's Beaked Whales do, and you're looking at one.

Plesiosaurs, like mermaids, Megalodon, and a representative democracy, don’t really exist anymore, but Baird’s Beaked Whales do, and you’re looking at one.

The internet is a double-edged sword of enlightenment and ignorance. It has the capacity to educate millions in ways never before possible, making science accessible, understandable, and relevant. At the same time it infects the public with idiocy, lies, pseudoscience, and the malevolent intention to mislead (kind of like Discovery Channel). Disinformation is a zombie. It is the resurrected body of mysteries solved, arguments settled, and bad science disproved, marching through half-baked websites and ‘shared’ by newly-infected readers not yet schooled in the truth, spreading fabrications and misinterpretations that eat away at the integrity of science and numb the brains of the masses.

Among the many internet zombies gnawing on science and pseudoscience blogs, the one I’ve battled is the “mystery’ of the “Moore’s Beach Monster” (sometimes called the “Santa Cruz Sea Serpent”), touted as a living plesiosaur in the modern world, a remnant of the age of dinosaurs in the 20th Century, and proof that ancient beasts still live among us. It has become a perennial icon for conspiracy-paranoid cryptozoologists and fundamentalist creationists. In fact, there never was a plesiosaur, and even upon its discovery, the remains of a decomposing beached carcass was shown most definitively not to be a plesiosaur, but dozens of internet sites still push the plesiosaur hoax. I get enough inquiries about the reptilian validity of the Moore’s Beach Monster every year that even the Travel Channel tried to help me debunk it in an episode of Mysteries at the Museum.

Dinosaur hunters of the Victorian era exhumed what many contemporary 'sea serpents' are modeled after.

Victorian dinosaur hunters exhumed what many contemporary ‘sea serpents’ are modeled after.

From the time humans walked on two legs between the beach and the tides, and after the first of our ancestors took to the ocean, “sea serpents” were commonly observed at sea or cast upon beaches, celebrated locally and later ingrained into regional lore. During the 1800s and 1900s, the advent of cameras recorded these events in grainy sepia-toned images, some real, some retouched. The immediacy and broadcast of newspapers brought these sea monster sensations to a wider audience and heightened celebration of such mysterious beasts. These were the grotesque remains of otherwise normal animals that fear, ignorance and imagination transformed into nightmarish beasts.

Read on...

BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF:

Alberta Bigfoot researcher plans to petition U.S. Congress for species protection

MetroNews Canada

But Alberta's highly controversial Bigfoot researcher is now primed for what may be his greatest challenge: taking on U.S. Congress. “I'm tired of all the ...

Bigfoot Interview: Tyler Huggins

blogspot.com

In my latest bigfooter interview I had the pleasure of asking fellow Alberta bigfoot researcher Tyler Huggins a few questions. Tyler has been interested ...

Bigfoot News November 19, 2014

Beyond Highbrow - Robert Lindsay - WordPress.com

Randy insists it is another hoax, and indeed, every time Rick claims to have killed a Bigfoot, it ends up being a hoax. The best predictor of present

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

Well, everything actually!

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in.

TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject.

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in.

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking.

NEWSLINK: Milwaukee Zoo reports death of jaguar c...

NEWSLINK: Cats disappearing in Aptos neighborhood...

NEWSLINK: Scientists Discover Genes That Helped T...

THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN DEVIATES FROM THE NORM

The Gonzo Daily - Thursday

www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/about.html

It is not often that you hear me say I am lucky. Whilst I wasn't exactly born under a bad sign, "if it wasn't for bad luck, I would have no luck at all", it does appear to me sometimes, that I am one of those people that things happen to. However, yesterday I went to the Podiatry Department at Bideford and District Hospital. As always, my paranoid visions (if I can coin an ignorant pun - bloody hell I'm on form today) had taken over and I was convinced that diabetes would have screwed up my circulation to the point that I would have to have my toes, feet or even legs amputated. But the pretty chiropodist, who was very sweet to me all the way through the proceedings, told me that my circulation was excellent for a man of 55. And this is despite drinking, smoking, and for a time in my younger days ingesting all sorts of other things. Like I said, I am a very lucky man.

GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: Delired Cameleon Family
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/gonzo-track-of-day-delired-cameleon.html
THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_20.html
Pre-Yes outfit announce album A New Way Of Life
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/pre-yes-outfit-announce-album-new-way.html
ATKINS MAY PROJECT: Belgium review translated
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/atkins-may-project-belgium-review.html
Hugh Hopper: Vol 2 German review translated
http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/hugh-hopper-vol-2-german-review.html

The Gonzo Weekly #104
www.gonzomultimedia.co.uk/about.html

Pink Fairies, Rocket Scientists, Blodwyn Pig, Mick Abrahams, Pink Floyd, Jon Anderson, Yes, Nick Redfern, John Lennon, Hawkwind, and Daevid Allen fans had better look out! The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#104) will soon be available to read at www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/.

It has The Pink Fairies on the cover, and features an interview with Andy Colquhoun about the current and future plans of the band including the long hoped for studio material. Rob Ayling visits legendary blues guitarist Mick Abrahams in his studio and find out about his exciting new album made with some very A-List sparring partners. Erik Norlander is very cagey about the new album from Rocket Scientists. But there's more! There is news about Daevid Allen, Doug Harr goes to see America and also gets hitched, Jon waxes lyrical about the new Pink Floyd album and then gets all existential. Xtul are still in the deep woods, and Corinna finds some real Beatles tat. Jon looks at a peculiar book about John Lennon and we send the mighty John Ellis (ex Vibrators and Stranglers and sidesman to Peter Gabriel and Peter Hammill to a desert island. There are also new shows from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the massively talented Jaki and Tim are back with their submarine and Maisie the cow. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and turtles having a snooze (OK, no soporific chelonians, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!

Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:

All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!

You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/

* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…

* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 55 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile orange cat?

NEWS FROM NOWHERE - Thursday

ON THIS DAY IN 1945 - 24 Nazi leaders went before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

Photos: A Green Glow Worm from the Amazon

As elephants go, so go the trees

Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor is a Transmissible Ca...

Ancient New Zealand 'dawn whale' identified

New coral species discovered off the coast of Cali...

Man seriously injured in Whipsnade Zoo 'rhino inci...

Restaurateur pleads guilty to serving whale meat

Japan plans to restart whaling despite ICJ ruling

France's wild boar hunting condemned as a 'bloody ...

AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK... (Music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day)