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Weirdness

Something to talk about

I've been painting this weekend, which is always a bad idea. And while I've been painting -- when KEXP hasn't been occupying my mind -- I've been thinking about this question:

Imagine that you've been contacted by aliens. You're satisfied that you're not insane, didn't hallucinate it, etc. -- that it really, truly happened. However, you have no objective proof to show anyone to convince them -- no artifacts, no mysterious tattoos, no burn patterns on the ground, no impossible knowledge, nothing. Not even a damn crop circle.

How would you convince people it really happened? Say you had a message to deliver, for example, so there's a reason you need to convince people. How would you get people to believe that you're not insane?

Remember:
1) You know it's true.
2) You have no evidence to show anyone else.
3) You need to convince people it happened.

Um... maybe you should practice on something smaller, grasshopper.

Kung fu fan tries to stop train

He was taken into custody for breaking railway rules and said he wanted to test whether or not he could use kung fu to stop the train. Liang is a great fan of swordsman fiction and has also learnt martial arts.

Creationists gone wild

Well, this was only a matter of time:

Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back

ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.

They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.

After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."

That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.

Similar efforts are under way or planned around the country as science museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges to the theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes aggressive.

One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions.

So officials like Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, are trying to meet such challenges head-on.

Dr. Diamond is working on evolution exhibitions financed by the National Science Foundation that will go on long-term display at six museums of natural history from Minnesota to Texas. The program includes training for docents and staff members.

"The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able to handle them as they come up," she said. "Museums, as a field, have recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education."

Maybe it's because I'm mean-spirited, but I think that training docents better isn't exactly what I was looking for in a head-on response.

Instead, we should gather people together, go to the churches that are participating in this stupidity, and challenge them to their face on doctrinal matters that conflict with settled precepts of science, or that are internally inconsistent.

Possible subjects (and yes, some of these are low-hanging fruit):

• Adam and Eve. We're all descended from them? Who did Cain marry, then? Why aren't we all inbred?
• Lot. Sleeps with his daughters. This is the one good man saved from Sodom?
• Leviticus. So, what's with the meat and cheese in the after-church casserole?

I'm sure y'all can come up with other examples. Who's with me? As Miz Becky likes to say, "oh, it's ON."

One point to the spontaneous combustion theorists!

At least in Australia, it seems it could actually happen.

Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker," Clewer told Australian radio Friday.

"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt."

Employees, unsure of the cause of the mysterious burning smell, telephoned firefighters who evacuated the building.

"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise -- a bit like a whip -- both inside and outside the building," said fire official Henry Barton.

Firefighters cut electricity to the building thinking the burns might have been caused by a power surge.

Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.

Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current.

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