Ghost Images

Like Fox Mulder on the X-Files, I want to believe. Unfortunately, the evidence is very weak.

Most of the photographic evidence is obviously fake or just as obviously optical illusions. One of the easy keys to a fake is that the real things in the photo are blurry too.

For example, this photo taken in a cemetery outside Chicago in 1991 is considered one of the best ghost photos around. However the very real stone slab the ghost is sitting on is as ethereal as the ghost. Granted, ghosts rarely show up under studio lighting for a photo shoot. Most modern images are taken in the dark using infrared light. Still, if you are going to modify a photo using computers or an air brush, it is easier if the image is already muddy.

The illusion called matrixing where people see faces where none exist is responsible for people seeing Jesus on a burned fish stick, a monkey-faced monument on Mars, and dead sailors in roiling sea foam.

Even very believable photos can turn out to be fake. A photo taken of the Wem Town Hall in Shropshire, England as it was burning in a fire showed a ghostly little girl standing by a railing.

She's not centered in the frame (unseen spirits appearing in the middle of a photo is another dead, so to speak, giveaway of a fake) and she looks spectrally genuine. But research shows it was only an elaborate hoax.

But I still want to believe. I'm not sure of the deep psychological reasons for wanting to believe in ghosts because it's not like I plan to hang around after death whispering in people's ears at midnight. Or worse, have Zach Bagins taunting my afterlife, that would truly be hell.

Don't get me started on UFOs.

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Thoughts on Sandy

Hurricane Sandy was a monster yet she was totally consumed, eaten alive if you will, by the Nor'easter that mated with her. When a monster eats a monster you know the shit will be deep.

This was not a "Storm of the Century" event. It was the storm of the millennium. Not in the recorded history of the Atlantic coast has there been a storm like this and records go back almost 400 years.

The flooding in lower Manhattan exceeds the worst in history, which was recorded 201 years ago.

The chances are between the sea level rising and global climate change we'll see a repeat performance within the next 20 years.


What do you want to bet that Donald Trump will demand no-interest federal loans and bailouts to repair his Atlantic City casino?

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Gateways to Hell

I was surprised to discover that there is a gateway to hell in Stull, Kansas. Although that would explain all of Kansas history from Quantrill's Raiders to Sam Brownback.

According to legend (or maybe the bible or Quran) there are seven (or six) portals to hell located on Earth. According to the internet the planet is pockmarked with dozens of entrances to the devil's domain with an inordinate number in the US alone. Excluding Stull, here are my seven choices.

New Jersey Sewer

It may or may not have something to do with Chris Christie's enormous bowels but the story is that a storm drain in Passasic County, NJ is a portal to hell. Apparently there is an entire catacomb of rooms and tunnels where satanic rituals are commonly performed.

York, PA

This is sort of a seventh son of the seventh son kind of gateway. On the site of an abandoned insane asylum there are seven gates, all but one are only visible at night. If you pass through all seven in the proper order you will be transported to hell. But be careful, the land is private property and if you don't get to hell you may end up in jail for trespassing.

Siberia

I love this one. In the 1980's Soviet scientists drilled 14.4 kilometers into the earth and broke through to hell itself. They could hear the cries and moans of the condemned souls emanating from the hole. Christian fundamentalists have been spreading this story enthusiastically.

Danakil, Ethiopia

In the African Great Rift Valley the earth is literally being torn apart as two geologic plates move apart. The Danakil Desert is a hellish place of volcanoes, sulfur vents, and extreme temperatures. Hell is quite the tourist attraction.

Xibalba, Belize

The Mayans declared these caverns were the entrance to the underworld. There is no known evil attached to these caverns except, of course, for the whole Mayan human sacrifice thing.

Lake Avernus, Italy

The Romans thought the same as the Mayans only their entrance to Hades was via a crater lake. This is by far the most beautiful portal to hell you'll find.

Darvaza, Turkmenistan

Whoopsie! Forty-one years ago Soviet (them again) engineers drilling for natural gas hit a huge pocket. The roof collapsed threatening the nearby villagers with death by poisonous gas fumes. Someone got the bright idea to set the open crater on fire and burn off the gas. They figured it might take a couple of days and they could resume drilling. The fire is still burning. It makes sense that the petroleum extraction business would open up a gateway to hell what with all their signed contracts with Satan.

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Texas Threatens Foreign Poll Watchers

It used to be Americans considered their country a shining beacon of democracy. We loved to show off our free and fair elections. Now, Republicans generally and Texas Republicans specifically are sent into spasms of terror at the thought of some foreigner watching us vote.

The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe is sending people to observe next month's election. It's something I would expect to be greeted with a hearty "Welcome, y'all, come on down!" The Texas Attorney General has threatened to arrest any foreigners watching the vote in his state. Even though the poll watchers have been granted diplomatic immunity.

It's like he's trying to hide something. Oh wait, he is. A Texas law requiring people "show their papers" before being allowed to vote was overturned by a federal court. Yet the Tea Party is planning to aggressively harass Hispanic voters. It's the kind of anti-American activity that Texas Republican would prefer to practice in private.

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Romney, Rape and Women

Like most radical Republicans, Mitt Romney's view of women is biblically defined. They are vessels, mere containers for the seed of men. They are also temptresses, the ultimate evil corrupting righteous men.

giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel ~ 1 Peter 3:7

Do you know that you [women] are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserters of the divine law; you are she who persuades him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert-that is death-even the Son of God had to die. ~ St. Tertullian

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence. ~ St. Thomas Aquinas

If they [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth, that's why they are there. ~ Martin Luther

Make dads the godly leaders with the women in submission, raising kids for the glory of God. ~ Randall Terry, Operation Rescue

But we should not forget that Mormons have had, from the founding of their religion, a unique view of women. 

Sisters, do you wish to make yourselves happy? Then what is your duty? It is for you to bear children. ~ Brigham Young

I think no more of taking a wife than I do of buying a cow. ~ Heber Kimball, one of the original apostles of the Mormon church, he had 43 wives.

I have no wife whom I love so well that I would not put a javelin through her heart, and I would do it with clean hands. ~ Brigham Young on the concept of "blood atonement" for sins. He had 55 wives.

To radical Republicans, a pregnant woman is merely a jar containing the gift of a man's sperm. Whether or not the sperm was placed there by violence is immaterial. The woman of no more concern than a glass beaker.

As for rape? The sin is for a woman to survive rape. Death is the only proof a woman has that she didn't "ask for it."

It is better to die in defending one’s virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle. ~ Spencer W. Kimball, President of the Mormon Church until 1985.

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Five Creepiest Places on Earth

There are a lot of scary places on this planet, such as the mind of Michelle Bachmann. Here are some bad places.

Helltown, OH

Officially, the community of Boston Mills was bought up by the federal government in the 1970's to be made part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Property was taken by eminent domain and people kicked out. The speed in which this happened and the fact that now, forty years later, derelict buildings still remain has led people to speculate the rapid evacuation of the township was due to a chemical spill or demonic activity. Ghostly apparitions are common, especially of children.

Stull, KS

The story is that when Pope John Paul II was touring the United States he gave specific instruction that his plane not fly over eastern Kansas. The cemetery in Stull is said to be a Gateway to Hell. (That would actually explain a lot about Kansas.) It is said that the Devil himself walks the streets of Stull on the vernal equinox. The ruins of the old church, pictured above, stood unmolested for eighty years because residents were afraid to touch a brick of the cursed building.

Aokigahara Forest, Japan

Located at the base of Mount Fuji, this forest is eerily quiet because of an absence of wildlife. It is also eerie because if you hike its trails you will likely come across a dead body dangling from the trees. Aokigahara is a suicide forest. People enter the forest and kill themselves. Hundreds have committed suicide, dozens every year. And because of the thickness of the forest bodies may hang from the trees for weeks and months before authorities get around to cutting them down.

Poveglia, Italy

During the Dark Ages living victims of the Black Plague were exiled to this island in the Venetian lagoon where they would die retched deaths. Later an insane asylum was built on the island. There have been a couple of attempts by rich Italians to build villas in the island, both were abandoned because of violent and terrifying supernatural events. The island is now off-limits to visitors, Venetian fishermen even refuse to bring their boats near this island of death.

Prypiat, Ukraine

Not a ghost town but a ghost city. One moment 50,000 people lived here, the next moment they were all gone because of Chernobyl. The buildings still stand as does the amusement park, but everything is abandoned. Tour buses now visit the city but people are forbidden to live there.

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Romney and Iran Stupidity

The WTF moment of the final debate came in two parts. On the stage Mitt Romney said the World Court should indicting the Iran president for "incitement to genocide." Then in the spin room a Romney aide suggest that a UN arrest of the Iran president would naturally follow.

"Incitement to genocide" is a real crime in international law. The first time it was used was against Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher at the Nuremburg war crimes trials. He was executed. Hutu propagandists were convicted following the Rwanda genocide of the Tutsi. Israelis have been urging an Iranian indictment for incitement to genocide for six years now. 

Anyone can suggest a nation's president should be indicted for war crimes. I even proposed George W. Bush be indicted for violating the Geneva Convention on torture. Arresting a nation's president is something else. To arrest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would require invading Iran and overthrowing its government. It requires war.

The only countries in the world interested in war with Iran are the Republican half of the United States and Israel. And Israel only wants a war with Iran if the United States does all the actual fighting and dying.

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