Did you see PZ Myers’s recent blog posting about the problems with skepticism? It was an interesting read, and one that seemed to reflect criticism I have myself received on more than one occasion. In sum, Myers disapproves of skepticism because it does not generate new knowledge and instead suggests that the positive knowledge generation of science is the most effective weapons against falsehood. He uses the example of Bigfoot:
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Yesterday I began discussing Hyde Clarke’s 1885 paper on Atlantis, and today we’ll turn from some of his more general ideas about ancient history to his specific claims about Atlantis. These begin, as all Atlantis theories must, by trying to establish which parts of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias to accept and which to reject, since it is universally acknowledged that nothing matches the description Plato gave in those fictional dialogues.
If you have not yet seen, I was quoted in an article on Discovery News on the alleged tomb of Dracula in Italy. The author credits me with figuring out whose tomb it really is.
Today I thought it might be fun to look at a Victorian anticipation of modern fringe history claims. I came across this article in doing some research, and it is a doozy! In 1868 the British engineer and philologist Hyde Clarke was expelled from the Anthropological Society of London for exposing financial improprieties. Thereafter, he continued his anthropological researches but chose instead to publicize them through other channels. In 1885 he read a 46-page paper before the Royal Historical Society comprising an “Examination of the Legend of Atlantis in Reference to Proto-Historic Communication with America.” It was published in the Society’s Transactions the following year and also reprinted as a book. Have you ever wondered about the architecture of Atlantis? Have you ever stopped to ask what style of decoration adorned the temples of Plato’s fictional continent? If so, you’re like Scott Ogburn, a professor of landscape engineering in the Mechanical Engineering department at Temple University. Ogburn, who holds a PhD in “sacred architecture,” will be presenting a lecture to the Mutual UFO Network group in Strafford, Pennsylvania next week to share his views about the principles of sacred architecture he believes are at work in Atlantis.
The good news is that this week’s episode of Penny Dreadful, S01E06 “What Death Can Join Together,” makes a much-appreciated reference to the classic penny dreadful serial Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, which Dr. Van Helsing tells Frankenstein is really a good, if popular, introduction to the vampire. One might think that the scholarly Van Helsing might have referenced more serious works on vampires, like Voltaire’s essay or Antoine Augustin Calmet’s Treaty on the Apparitions of Spirits and Vampires, or Ghosts of Hungary, Moravia, &c., but whatever. Although Frankenstein feigns ignorance of vampires, and Van Helsing agrees that they are unknown except to horror fans, this was most certainly not the case in the late nineteenth century. Across the Pond, for example, New Englanders of the nineteenth century were still desecrating corpses to prevent “vampire” attacks, as H. P. Lovecraft alludes to in “The Shunned House” and archaeologists discovered through excavation of so-called vampire graves. Heck, vampires were mentioned in decidedly non-horror work like Dickens’s Bleak House, where a lawyer figuratively “has something of the Vampire in him.”
I can’t believe I missed the story about the alleged discovery of Dracula’s tomb—in Italy! What a crock. The supposed discovery was made by a student researcher named Erika Stella as part of her thesis work and supported by so-called medievalist Raffaello Glinni. Glinni is in fact a lawyer and an amateur historian with a conspiratorial view of the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, and all the usual subjects. But of course! It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an amateur historian in possession of a conspiracy theory, must be in want of Knights Templar.
In Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, the student of unhallowed arts stitches together pieces of various dead bodies to make a composite man. In the stage version of the novel, Presumption, he jolts it to life with electricity, and the patchwork corpse rises and begins to rave and rage. Ancient Aliens: Special Edition (technically S06E20) “Alien Transports” is something like the Frankenstein’s Monster. It is a patchwork stitched together from pieces of earlier episodes and jolted to life through the resurrection machine that is cable television. Even the dead come back to life: Philip Coppens, gone 18 months, speaks to us from beyond the grave.
What’s more interesting, though, is that while the title card announces that this is a “Special Edition,” no one ever says what that’s supposed to mean. If it weren’t for me having stumbled across a press release announcing the clip show nature of the special edition episodes, I would never have known. I would have loved to do this review entirely from clips of my earlier reviews, but sadly, the special edition episode includes much material from the before I started reviewing the show in the middle of season three. You might have seen that the H2 channel is repackaging old episodes of Ancient Aliens as Ancient Aliens: Special Edition. The producers seem to have discovered that the show’s segments are repetitive and also largely unrelated to each other. Therefore, rather than pay the ancient astronaut theorists to restate the same material, they have instead opted to simply chop up old episodes and reassemble the parts based on new themes.
I kid, of course; the producers are currently assembling Season 7 of Ancient Aliens, but H2 apparently wanted some extra material to fill the long gap between seasons. Tonight’s clip show is entitled “Alien Transports“ and will cover Ezekiel’s vision of the divine throne, King Solomon’s flying carpet, and Chinese dragons, all of which Ancient Aliens has considered space craft at one time or another. I can’t decide whether I should review the show, or whether I should assemble a “special edition“ review out of clips from earlier reviews. Before we begin today, I thought I’d share this depressing fact: Last night I downloaded the new Pluto TV app, which promises to offer 100 channels of live streaming television. Among those channels is an entire (nonfiction) channel devoted to “Conspiracies and Myths.” At least they had the good sense to put it in the entertainment tier rather than the education tier, but it’s still disturbing that the newest competitor to traditional television is running The Moon Landing Was a Hoax and other paranoid programming on an entire channel devoted to conspiracy theories.
Contact in the Desert II: "Ancient Aliens" Stars Are "Experts" Because of the History Channel6/11/2014 Last year the ancient astronaut community held a get-together called “Contact in the Desert,” and apparently the event was enough of a success that a second edition is in the works. The organizers of the event sent out an email press release last night announcing the upcoming lineup for the gathering, which is set to take place from August 8 to August 11, 2014. I think you’ll notice that there is an interesting emphasis in the opening lines.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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