Thursday, August 8, 2013

I know, let's blame the aliens!

There's lots to blog about from the past 24 hours, but I'm not quite up to writing about any of it just yet.  I took my biodiversity students out to do an ecology lab in the outdoors (until last week, I had no idea there were 70+ acres of beech-maple forest only a mile and a half from where I teach), and all that walking around in the fresh air tired me out.  So, instead of writing about the Detroit mayoral primary elections, the kickoff event of Dream Cruise, finding another climate change story, or writing about one of the three special programming weeks (Geek Week on YouTube, Hurricane Week on The Weather Channel, or Shark Week on Discovery Channel), I present the following pair of odd stories from Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (One year of Curiosity on Mars) that aren't hot, but connect.

Discovery News: Why We Blame Everything on Aliens

Why when something weird or unexplained happens do we immediately blame aliens?! From crop circles, missing persons, even animal mutilations--ET's been blamed for 'em all! Trace explores why we're so quick to hop on the "aliens did it" bandwagon.
BBC: Wiltshire crop circle numbers 'almost halve' in a year
A crowd-funding scheme is attempting to raise money to compensate farmers
August 2, 2013
Crop circle appearances in Wiltshire have dropped by almost half in a year, according to researchers.

The county's Crop Circle Information and Coordination Centre (CICC) said they had only seen 25 so far this year - 15 fewer than usual for the period.

A decline in the man-made act and a late harvest have both been blamed.
Looks like crop circles aren't hot anymore.

I promise to write about all the topics that I mentioned above later, although one of them might be redundant.  It's always Geek Week here at Crazy Eddie's Motie News.

4 comments:

  1. Hello?!!? McFly!

    Even though Narb is a dedicated techno-pagan (lightning bolts are best thrown from high-earth orbit, you know), he takes offense with the implication that this year's decline in crop circle creation is due to a decrease in alien activities on this particular planet, and perhaps also due to some level of alien disenchantment with our lovely little orb.

    Frankly, Narb don't see any evidence to support this, and he's thus going to have to label it *BAD SCIENCE*!

    Narb's research (unpublished at present, but soon to appear in both Nature and Science) clearly shows that the temporary decline in alien-created crop circles is actually due to global warming. It's a well known fact that high levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is correlated with inefficient reflections of lolligo-tachyonic communications from the galactic core. This is turn makes it hard to guide spacecraft to designated positions in Britain, and has thus caused a 47% decrease in missions to abduct buxom women from farmhouses and suburban mini-malls. It has also led to a staggering 87% decline in cattle mutilations world-wide.

    Narb thought you should know...

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    Replies
    1. "*BAD SCIENCE*!"

      So you're swatting it with a rolled up newspaper?

      "missions to abduct buxom women from farmhouses and suburban mini-malls."

      Hey, Narb, that's my alter-ego/unaltered id's schtick, although I'm not surprised you'd fantasize about it, too.

      Delete
  2. Narb will not hesitate to inform you that it is well know that Earth-Girls are the hottest galactic commodity going. They're worth their weight in Syrian Panther Sweat, and are a treasured delicacy on the Kzin homeworld.

    And Narb is not an alter-ego, he's as real as Alcatrez and artichokes and Sun Myung Moon.

    Gentle Uknip, we separate the wheat from the chaff by spelling our names sdrawkcab.

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  3. "A treasured delicacy on the Kzin homeworld"

    Narb, I'm Pinku-Sensei, not Kchula Rrit. I haven't assumed the identity of the Patriarch in 20 years.

    ReplyDelete