All Your Axioms are Postulates: Pseudoscience vs. Pseudometaphysics
“I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief …
Tag Archives: anomalies
The Enchanted Universe and Its Enemies
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” – Friedrich Nietzsche Two nihilists …
Eternalism vs. Presentism: How Soon is Now?
“Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations” ― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels I have a …
Peter Plogojovitz: Barefoot Vampire or Shoeless Ghost?
“They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes” – Imelda …
Captain Yount’s Mountain Rescue Dream Team
“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters” ― Henry David Thoreau Hartford, Connecticut’s Congregationalist pastor Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) was a …
Close Encounters of the Puritan Kind
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” ― H.L. Mencken We know that 17th Century New England …
What Dreams May Come from Herr Wesermann?
“New roads; new ruts” – Gilbert K. Chesterton Sigmund Freud once referred to dreams as the “royal road to the …
Release the Calamari: Hans Egede and the Greenland Kraken
“Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty” – Brian Greene On the internet, nobody can hear you scream. Unless you use …
If It Weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, We’d Still be Eating Frozen Radio Dinners
Veteran anomalist Seriah Azkath and I spend an hour discussing the vagaries of strange history, the War between the Pygmies …
The Ecstasy of Error: Green Cards in Magonia
“It is then that ceasing to take the natural, the spiritual view of the world and its waywardness, he takes …
Quantum Entangled Escargot: Sympathy for the Snail Telegraph
“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question …
Lies, Damn Lies, and Anomalies: Fake News and Skeptical Schadenfreude
“Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearranged to fit” – R. A. Lafferty Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet …
Outsourced Morality: The Conscience-Formed Phantom Drums for You
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not …
Prosecuting a Poltergeist: The Defamation Trial of the Curé of Cideville
“These days, there are angry ghosts all around us – dead from wars, sickness, starvation – and nobody cares. So …
EsoterX: Podcasts are the Retina of the Mind’s Eye
The inimitable Greg Bishop and I discuss folklore as an early warning system, skeptics vs. believers (who often have the …
I Left My Heart in the Vanished Kingdom of Chicora
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started …
Where the Wild Things Are: Anomalies and the Poverty of Critical Thinking
“People tend to say ‘I like independent thinkers but they must think what I want them to think independently’” – …
Charlemagne: Frank Encounters with UFOs
“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But …
Eternal Love and Other Supernatural Phenomena
“We have a love affair with the idea of the ‘natural,’ even though we, as a species, are about as …
Sympathetic Empiricism and the Palatine Lights
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response” – Arthur M. Schlesinger How many …
Wooden Ships, Iron Men, and Occasional Sea Serpents
“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness” – Werner Herzog A …
Skepticism and the Post-Human Economy
“Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism” – Louis Pasteur I’ll take a true believer over a …
Perish, then Publish: Jacopo Alighieri and the 13 Missing Cantos
“Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live anymore” – Carlos …
The Headless Hitchhiker of St. Leonard’s Forest
“We live in a cult of the upgrade right now. There’s always something around the corner that will make whatever …
Our Xenomorph Who Art in Heaven
“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult” – Rita Rudner That darned Enlightenment. …
No One Suspected the Hantu Batu: Sumatran Poltergeists Throwing Stones
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself …
Anomalistic Beer Goggles: The Consequences of Doubt
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge” – Abraham Joshua Heschel Some days I wake up on …
EsoterX: It’s Not True I Had Nothing On, I Had the Radio On
Saturday night, I spent two hours with the Dark Wizards of Podcasting Roejen Razorwire and Lobo on their Project Archivist …
The Danmar Experiments: Chasing Ghosts to the Tail of the Earth
“Empiricism and idealism alike are faced with a problem to which, so far, philosophy has found no satisfactory solution. This …
Nunne’hi Nights: Party with the People Who Live Anywhere
“It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door” – Publilius Syrus An old Cherokee …
Philosophical Monsters Ship in Black Boxes
“Not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth the read” ― Cassia Leo, Black Box …
Dude, Where’s My Spaceship?
“I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so” – Stephen Hawking In …
Deliberate Human Combustion and its Spontaneous Explanations
“Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating” – Carl von Clausewitz It’s …
The Best Speech Never Given: Phantom of the Continental Congress
“Bad literature is a form of treason” – Joseph Brodsky I don’t know about you, but when I’m plotting treason …
Clowning Around: At Play in the Uncanny Valley
“I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one …
Gallipoli Dowsing: When Falling from a Great Height, Try Flapping Your Arms
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water” – W. H. Auden World War I’s Gallipoli campaign pretty much …
Jabberwocky in the House of Uncommons: The Honorable Apparition of Sir Carne Rasch
“I work for myself, which is fun. Except when I call in sick, I know I’m lying” – Rita Rudner …
Everyone’s a Little Bit Crazy: Schizotypy and Strange Phenomena
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re …
Training Wheels of the Gods: João Vaz Corte-Real and the New Land of Codfish
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it” – Winston Churchill Should you decide to become …
How to Measure Useful Fictions: Science, Anomalistics, and “As if” Philosophy
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if …
