Monday, January 06, 2014

DALE DRINNON: Bigfoot, Lake Merrit Monster, Top 10 Cryptids That Turned Out to be Real, Cedar and Willow, Benny's Blogs

Dale actually sent these on Saturday, but for some reason they didn't arrive until after the blogs were posted yesterday.

I am making another stab at posting links. If these do not work and the photos start disappearing again after publication, then we shall have to try something else different

New at the Frontiers of Zoology

New at Cedar and Willow:
New at Benny's Blog for Thelma Todd,
Three new posfings for January

New on Benny's Other Blog, the Ominous Octopus  Omnibus,
Fifteen  Short Postings in January.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

TODAY'S BIG CAT ROUND UP



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 which 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. 

  • AUSTRALIA SIGHTINGS: Where the wild things aren't
  • UK SIGHTINGS: Freedom of Information request leads...
  • UK SIGHTINGS: Nearly one big cat sighting a WEEK r...

  • NEWSLINK: Locals beat leopard to death in Ramkot
  • CRYPTOLINK: Has North Muirton found a Bigfoot in time to first foot? (No. It is from Pennsylvania and was probably a fake anyway)

    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. 

    A dog walker has sparked a lively discussion in Perth after spotting a “sinister figure” in woods by North Muirton.
    Community councillor Gary Mcteague took a photograph of the figure, already dubbed the North Muirton Sasquatch.
    “My dog is usually quite timid but it started going mental,” Mr Mcteague said after posting a picture online showing a Bigfoot-like creature.
    “I managed to grab a quick snap on my phone before “it” ran off. Has anyone else seen this or know what it is?”
    On the community council’s Facebook page, posters described the image as a sasquatch, the bogey man and “a man in a hoodie”.

    Are the very mental shortcuts our brain has evolved for efficiency working against the acceptance of evolution?

    Somewhere, something went terribly wrong ... Is evolution itself behind the modern Science v Creationism debate?
    Somewhere, something went terribly wrong ... Is evolution itself behind the modern Science v Creationism debate? Source: Supplied
    IS evolution itself driving America's growing rejection of modern biology? New studies suggest this very thing.
    Today's revelation that one-third of the US population rejects the idea of evolution and instead believes we were created through intelligent intervention is nothing new.
    The fact that only a third of us accept that "natural processes such as natural selection" are behind our existence has had science thinking for some time.
    Creationism is growing into a powerful political force. But the strength of their arguments and the forcefulness of their campaign does not entirely explain its growing success.
    The debate has heated up in recent years as and a so-called "culture war" is being waged across a deepening partisan divide.
    So why does the concept of evolution cause so much upset in an era overwhelmed with science - be it in medicine, transport, communication and calculation?
    "Natural selection is like quantum physics ... we might intellectually grasp it, with considerable effort, but it will never feel right to us," writes the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom.
    It's about the nature of our brain. It's an amazing device at finding new and successful ways to adapting to an ever-changing world - with the minimum of effort.

    FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES

    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. 

    So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.







    THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN CLIMBS THE WATER TOWER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE VILLAGE

    The Gonzo Daily - Monday
    Today has a vague feeling of unreality about it and I am not sure why. The Internet is still insanely sluggish, NatWest online banking isn't working and the confirmation e-mail from BT about their engineer visit later in the week, (which had better sort out my internet access or else) had them going to the wrong address. But I am not even slightly cross. Why? Normally, by this stage I would be in the mental state of one of those disaffected postal workers who, so I am told, climb the water tower in the middle of the town with a high-powered rifle and start taking pot-shots at random strangers. But I am not. I am calm and happy, and have just eaten a steaming hot bowl of Singapore noodles. OK, there isn't a water tower in the middle of Woolsery, and no-one is stupid enough to let me have a firearm of any description....
    Another visit to our old friend Thom the World Poet
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_6.html
    and, by the way, like an idiot I missed the link for yesterday's poem off my notifications...
    http://gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2014/01/thom-world-poet-daily-poem_5.html
    *  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/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html

    * 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 54 who - together with his orange cat (who is currently on sick leave in Staffordshire) and two very small kittens (one of whom is also orange) - 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 orange cat?