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International Bigfoot Symposium
DaytonCIM writes "Yup, that's right the creature that took on Steve Austin (no, not the drunk and bloated pro wrastler, but the REAL Six Million Dollar Man) has legions who gather to debate and discuss his furriness. The International Bigfoot Symposium is going on right now.
SFGate also has a nice article on the grand meeting."
On The Sixe Million Dollar Man, wasn't Bigfoot played by a drunk and bloated wrastler?
Now you've made it way too confusing...
I, for one, welcome our new hyperpodiatric overlords!
Sam & Max Hit the Road references are not allowed.
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
Well, the only one I ever read. My parents had it when I was a toddler, but I think it's as relevant today as it was in the 1960's.
On the Track of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
.... a sexy, available, female nerd. We would all like it to exist. The fairy-tale aspect of it is too grand to not want, but sooner or later we come to terms with the truth.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
If only the /. editors had posted this before the weekend, I could've presented my research on big feet at the conference. :(
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Having recently purchased the Season 1 dvd set of "The Simpsons," I can't help but mention that some good material for the symposium to focus on would be Simpsons, season one, episode 7 (7G09)...
It's the episode where the simpsons get stuck in the woods and towards the end, Homer is mistaken for Bigfoot. Here's the SNPP link.
"This specimen is either a below-average human being or a brilliant beast.
"
- German Scientist discussing Homer
The anti-salmon
This makes me think... I can see both way's points of view. I see that there is a LOT of evidence for Bigfoot' existence and that some of it might be hard to fake, but we must wonder: why haven't we got more than 1-2 pieces of video footage of the damn thing? We really should just thouroughly comb the woods where it is supposed to be. Even if we don't find it, we'll probably find some drug caches and convicted felons on the run... It's worth a try
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
...if there really is such a thing as Bigfoot? I'd rather have the only real-world furries be a mink, or a skunk, or a vixen. :)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I would check records for:
People over ten feet tall AND
who pay more than $20,000/year for Brazilian waxes AND
who request penis REDUCTION surgery
[root@kgutwin
msdos.sys: fsav (linux) virus (17518-87)
Can we please have some articles about real science, and not hoaxes, lies, and scientific blunders?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
That's just about all there is to it.
I have a relative who is really into the Bigfoot scene. The Bigfoot believers are quite committed. They make a lot of mistakes because of that, though. What is really interesting to me is how so many of the same thought errors get made in radically different areas of human belief.
Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is an interesting investigation of the entire phenomenon.
It is a terribly complex mental exercise to absorb all of the information in modern life and make intelligent decisions. The fact is that there are far too many claims to investigate for anybody to examine all of them with the necessary care. So we have to rely on the consensus of experts to make decisions. And the organizations necessary for consensus have the same flaws as all human hierarchal bodies.
Here are some of the various brands of kooky ideas that I have come across:
The AIDS Myth The medical analysis is surprisingly deep. A lot of qualified people have weighed in on this idea.
Carbohydrates not calories. They claim that our genes are still adapting to the modern high-carbohydrate diet, and that is why so many of us are so fat. (Enter Atkins.)
Democracy is not good government
Global Warming. Discussed on Slashdot a number of times
Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare Joe Sobran thinks that the Earl of Oxford wrote everything attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon.
Race and IQ Probably true, but kooky nonetheless.
Multiregional Evolution You can find most of Wolpoff's papers that are cited here somewhere online. I recommend "Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution" and "Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory." Wolpoff is kooky because there are very few anthropoligists left who will side with the Multiregional theory over the Out of Africa theory. (Wolpoff technically supports an Out of Africa theory, but that is how everyone refers to the debate.)
And here is one that I will actually advocate: Bohmian Mechanics It is about as kooky as you can get for a physicist, but I am convinced that it beats QM on the merits.
...just some fat, naked, hair canadian like in that one episode of 'angry beavers'
You know what they say about primates with big feet...
"yet absolutely not one iota of compelling evidence to prove it." please inform us of how much evidence you have reviewed in order to deem it not "compelling", as well as your background to warrant your opinion to be credible. if you could cite the interviews, lab testing of scat, and foot/finger print forensics that you base this on, that'd be great. Thanks.
Bigfoot refers to the legendary beast, not the destructive big foot in Monty Python. Do not let the choice of category icon confuse you.
Our local newspaper published that there are no chipmunks in our county. I called a reporter out to see and photograph the chipmunks on our property in said county.
(Unfortunately, a couple of months after that, our 3 cats wiped out the entire population. We buried their little celebrity bodies with full honors. True story.)
My point is, it's virtually impossible to prove non-existence -- trivial to prove existence.
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
The foot icon for this article needs to be bigger, and hairy-er..
Please direct all bug reports to
You're missing the point. It's not up to the skeptic to "disprove" anything. The burden of proof is on those who claim these things exist.
It's people like you who would say something like "I can fly, you know. All I have to do is flap my arms, and I can fly. Now, disprove it!"
Bill Gates could buy himself both bionic legs, and *both* bionic arms. He could attach it to a bionic torso, leaving only his head organic.
Killer Robots Storm Home of Bill Gates' Childhood Bully
SEATTLE, WA -- Walter Conrad, a 46-year old sporting-goods retail manager, was assaulted in his home by an army of killer Microsoft robots yesterday.
Conrad, who had tormented and teased Microsoft CEO Bill Gates when the two were in junior high school together, suffered minor injuries in the attack. He sustained an estimated $120,000 in property damage.
According to a Seattle Police Department report, at approximately 8:20 p.m., six robots wielding large iron fists and saw-blade hands entered Conrad's home and relentlessly pursued him. He only managed to escape death, police said, because of the robots "lumbering pace". The robots where later traced to a secret, subterranean compound in nearby Redmond.
"He will not escape my armies next time," Gates said in a multimedia announcement, in which his image was broadcast on thousand of 40-foot-high closed-circuit screens across the U.S. "He will not escape."
(from: The Onion Presents: Our Dumb Century , p. 163)
Wrong. You've really got your debating principles screwed up. In any debate, the burden of proof is placed on the affirmative team.
The affirmative team (in this case, the person who claims he can fly by flapping his wings) is obligated to provide evidence for his claim. It is then up to the opposite team (in this case, the skeptic) to debunk the claims, one at a time.
A true skeptic never claims "they do not exist", but instead provides examples of why it's highly probable they don't exist. The skeptic should always be ready to accept proof, but the proof that is presented is often full of holes and logicall fallacies.
Actually, no. There is very much credible evidence that the giant ape 'Gigantopithecus blacki', which once flourished in Asia, made its way to North America, and this is the main theory that the scientists, yes, _real_ scientists, have been going on.
At the same time period, Homo Sapiens crossed the land bridge from Asia, as did thousands of other species. Many primate anthropologists agree that is very possible that the Gigantopithecus made it to North America, and some say that it's almost unlikely that they *didn't* make it here.
The existence of hoaxes does not make all other claims invalid.
Harry and the Hendersons(1987) with John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon with a guest spot by Don Ameche. That Lithgow phone call to the cops ranks as one of the funniest scenes of '80s Hollywood (well before his 3rd Rock thing) - and "...nip it in the bud..." has new meaning for me now.
One reviewer here calls it the "Best Movie Ever Made" but I think that's a stretch...
some thoughts:
there are MANY species of animals, who have been discovered, by cryptozoologists, just in the past 100 years, and their existence was suspected many years before the evidence was 'captured' or skeletal remains were found. Let me know if you'd like for me to cite examples.
as to your questions about "why none have been captured" is basically a question of funding. There's a reason why no one has done a full, high-resolution sonar scan of LochNess, too. it's because for an issue so wrought with hoaxes, no one in their right mind would fund such an expensive venture.
"nor are there any skeletons of such. Despite all of the searching for such."
yeah ? by who ? WHO has done all this searching ?
the people at this conference, whose budgets are made in their spare time because their universities won't fund the searches ? the fact is, NO major search for evidence has EVER taken place, because of opinions like yours.
"Having a theory about why something could have happened is worthless."
I'm sure that Historians, Anthropologists, and Paleontologists would love to hear your theories on that, as would the governments and universities who put money into all of those pursuits.
A friend of mine wears size 14. Is that big enough? I think we can all say for certain that people with big feet do exist, so what's all the debate about?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Bigfoot - with the number of traps used in the last three centuries for other game at least one should have been caught. So methinks not likely.
Loch Ness is an entirely different matter:
Some of the high res sonar footage made there in the 80-es is very suspicious. With the advance of data processing it is quite time to repeat the sonar surveys, but it has such bad publicity that no scientific outfit is willing to sponsor this.
Still, Loch Ness is similar to legends and sightings of something big and unknown in other Scottish Lochs and many lakes in Norway and Sweden. It is not just Loch Ness. There are a few other places worth going with a good sonar kit. So I hope that someone does a tour with new equipment.
Also, the likelyhood of a relict beast of any description surviving in the ocean and waters once connected to it is much higher then on earth. There is a long list of sightings and even kills of beasts that resemble plesiousaurs, ichtiosaurs and some long extinct wales. Most of them are from the 19th century conflicts as well as the first and second world war when ships strayed far away from the usual trade paths. During those times hoaxes was one of the last things to interest people. Considering that we sail in less then 1% of the oceans during peace time and the rest is visited only in time of war the evidence becomes quite compelling.
This argument along with exact dates and ship names can all be found in a several books which unfortunately I do not have around at the moment (they are left where I used to live). I would not say that I believe in it 100%, but I think that the Loch Ness and the case of the "Sea Monster" in general still has its benefit of doubt.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
it's true that Bigfoot fans don't restrict themselves to evidence, but scientists do. Tom Swift's budget for his "search" is a drop in the bucket when compared to REAL (even NSF-based) grantee's budgets over years, for say, looking for new species in the Antarctic.
...the list can go on.
New species are found quite often, and many of those species start with anecdotal evidence, not skeletal remains happened upon by accident.
some cryptozoological successes:
-Acionyx rex, a giant cheetah, in 1873
-Tratratratra, a giant lemur, in the 1800s
-Chacoan peccary
-Vu Quang ox, an ox with antelope antlers, 1993
Just google 'cryptozoology' and 'new species' and you'll see the same. The people researching new species are scientists, indeed, but like I said before, the ones who involve themselves in pursuits that have had hoaxes in the media run the risk of losing credibility. But that has nothing to do with whether the animal exists or not.
The theory that scientists propose strongly support the idea of a native North American ape is the real and accepted evidence of the giant ape 'Gigantopithecus blacki', which once flourished in Asia, made its way to North America, and this is the main theory that the scientists, yes, _real_ scientists, have been going on.
In the same time period, Homo Sapiens crossed the land bridge from Asia, as did thousands of other species. Many primate anthropologists agree that is very possible that the Gigantopithecus made it to North America, and some say that it's almost unlikely that they *didn't* make it here.
p.s.
this is a digression, but:
about the scientific method having basis in faith, I suggest you read something excellent on the subject, "Galileo's Mistake"...the gist is that the scientific method assumes that once a hypothesis is reproducible, by other scientists, many times, is that it is "enough" to prove that the hypothesis will be true forever (i.e. become "law"). That requires, by definition, faith, and further underscores that science provides, however more or less accurate, a model, and only a model, of reality. Most subatomic physicists and cosmologists will also agree that faith plays quite a large role in their respective fields.
The one problem (well one of the problems) with the Loch Ness story is that there is barely enough nutrients in the Loch to feed a school of salmon all year round let alone a family of huge predators that needs to eat those salmon.
And given that this thing (if it is a plesiosaur) needs to breath - I would expect a lot more frightened fishermen when it sticks its head out of the water right next to their boat.
Siggy Sig Sig? Where is the sig?
read my above post about faith.
let's be clear, shall we ?
1 - I never said I believed in bigfoot. That's your assumption. Neither about the loch ness monster.
2 - yes, ironically, it's exactly 'faith' is what sub-atomics is based on, at its lowermost level.
3 - 'science' in the 1600s brought us to think that Newton's Laws were the de-facto, universal models on which mechanistic principles rely on. We now believe MUCH differently, when it comes to, well, things like nuclear power. The fact of the matter is neither you or I know if there's a new species of animal somewhere in Northen Canada or Sri Lanka, for that matter.
what I have been arguing is that logically following, hoaxes don't make a theory invalid, and faith has plenty of place in the scientific method. I'm not talking about "GOD", I'm talking about belief in something you cannot measure, or detect. That's all.
Even if Gigantopithecus did make it to North America, what exactly does that prove? It's mainly of interest to paleontologists. I would like to see more convincing proof that Gigantopithy even existed and that he really was a biped and very very big. How about at least a femur or a even a skull?
We would all love to find evidence that such a creature was still around, but despite quite a few dedicated expeditions in Nepal and the US, there hasn't been even the slightest bit of real evidence.
The most convincing account I have ever read of these creatures was from Slavomir Rawicz's tale: The Long Walk. He recounts a somewhat close and extended meeting with two yetis who were just "shuffling around" for a while while high up in the Himalayas. The fact that it's recounted merely as a small piece of a much larger tale makes it more convincing than the normal eyewitness accounts. He was with a couple of other people at the time, but no one has ever been able to trace their whereabouts.
Obviously the most damning argument of their non-existence is that, after all these years, a viable breeding population with animals of that size would certainly have been noticed. They would be at the top of the food chain anywhere in North America and, if anything, their numbers should be growing.
There is of course always the possibility that there really were a few of these giant apes left early in this century but that they have since become truly extinct due to a lack of numbers.
An analogy could be made to the Tasmanian wolf in Australia, but that animal was well known up until it was hunted to extinction.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
you obviously haven't read "Galileo's Mistake". have you ?
Ivan T. Sanderson cameout with one titled Abominable Snowmen which was at the most comprehensive discussion available. Heuvelman's is interesting because it really cover a range of very interesting possibilities in as yet undescribed large animals. Heuvelmans includes photographs of the skin of a spotted lion (African) and the photograph of the body a large, female ape from South America.
One of the more interesting points of Sanderson's study was a large number of footprint-cast illustrations. One of the ready hypotheses that could be framed after looking at those casts, is that if there are such critters, the "Yeti" and the "Sasquatch" are different genera. The Himalayan prints resemble a large primate's prints, but the N.A. prints are Hominid.
Its always kind of entertaining to watch the true believers and the true unbelievers hack at each other.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I believe that there is at least a possibility of bigfoot existing, and unless your name happens to be God, I doubt you have the qualifications to disprove its existence. There is plenty of evidence: hair, scat, pictures, video, footprints, and other casts that show this is a mystery worthy of further scientific investigation. To disprove bigfoot's existence requires the simultaneous examination of every square foot of millions of acres of dense forest, so let me know when you can accomplish this. Otherwise save your absolute judgements for things you can know absolutely.
what sig?
Remains of a 10 to 12 foot tall primate have been discovered in Asia. Gigantopithecus supposedly lived up until 100,000 years ago. Maybe this is where the myth of bigfoot and the yeti came from?
If gigantopithecus was around up until 100,000 years, then both Homo erectus (2 mya - 60,000) and Gigantopithecus were contemporary to each other, in the same region. Anatomically modern humans would have been living toward the end of Gigantopithecus' reign, although probably not in the same region.
When I was a young boy growing up on the Oregon coast, I personally met and chatted with one of the two guys whose hoax could be credited with starting the whole Bigfoot scare. Their "Bigfoot tracks" were the first to make the papers, and were the subject of investigation by many "qualified" anthropologists, etc., who pronounced them genuine.
They later were implicated in the hoax and confessed. Apparently, it all happened just like you'd expect. They cut giant feet out of plywood, strapped them to their shoes, and went clomping around (in the snow? don't recall), then brought their friend to see the tracks they'd "found", as a gag. When the friend got the papers to come look at the tracks, they decided they might get in trouble if they confessed, so they hid the plywood feet and kept mum. They thought the anthropologists were hilarious.
Let me reiterate. They eventually confessed. Freely. In the newspaper. To this day, some folks still believe those tracks were real.