Happy Halloween!!

Tom Biscardi, Sasquatch, and Silliness

Stop me if you've heard this one: Around this time last year, a couple of pranksters convinced the self-proclaimed "world's greatest Bigfoot hunter" Tom Biscardi that they had slayed a Sasquatch and had its carcass preserved in a deep freezer.¹ Ever the trusting soul, Biscardi hacked up an undisclosed (apparently large) sum of money to buy the corpse and called a huge press conference touting the "discovery" before actually bothering to examine it. Then, to absolutely no one's surprise but Biscardi's, the "corpse" proved to be a Halloween costume stuffed with animal entrails and the hoaxers disappeared with his cash.

So why the history lesson?

Well, Biscardi's back. This time he claims to have a Sasquatch toenail that he got from a guy named Larry Jenkins out in Arizona. Call me a cynic, but after the corpse thing last year and the Bigfoot webcam fiasco in 2005, he'd better have some damned convincing evidence this time.² Luckily the toenail has already been put through a battery of tests in an attempt to determine its origins. Even more luckily, Search For Bigfoot has an article up breathlessly describing the toenail and detailing an exchange between one of Biscardi's associates (referred to as "SL") and a nameless researcher from an unknown university who secretly ran the genetic tests on the nail.

Wait a second. Nameless researcher? Unknown university? Secret testing? That sounds more than a little sketchy, but for now we'll that slide and get to the meat of the matter: What did all these tests say? Unfortunately the article on the tests is a bit convoluted - Two Bigfoot hunters are writing about what was reported to them by this SL person, who was in contact with the folks from the mysterious University. Still, here's what was said about the magic toenail:

From the "1st response to SL from the university": The primate part seems to be right, but not the non-human part...it came back 99% homo sapien or human...

The original email from SL to the researcher doing the testing isn't posted, but the wording of the response is telling. I rather suspect the first e-mail from the Bigfoot folks might have gone a little something like "We found a nail that we think came from a non-human primate". Thus, the reply of "The primate part seems to be right, but not the non-human part..." seems to mean that "you're right that it's a primate nail, but not that it's non-human." I can't know that for sure, but that's certainly how it looks to me.

The SFB folks seem to read it differently, though: They assert that it means that the nail has 99% human DNA but 1% "non-human DNA". That's an odd reading of the text, and from it inexorably comes a leap of logic from the Bigfoot folks: "How many creatures are walking around the North American forest with 99% human DNA and 1% unknown primate? What else could it be..."

My interpretation and the SFB interpretation couldn't be more different. One means that Biscardi has once again been played for a sap, this time by a dude who mailed him a nasty old toenail, while the other means that (holy shit!) Bigfoot is real. It seems we're at a loggerheads. If only there was some kind of clarification available so we'd know what the 99% bit meant. Oh wait, there is:

From "the next correspondence from the University": What the 99% means is that we are confident to that percentage that it is human...³

From SL, reporting on an e-mail from the University that was not posted in its entirety: She [the researcher] said that the lab had also compared the nail to primate nail photos...[and] concluded it was likely human in origin.

That seems pretty open-and-shut, but the folks at Search For Bigfoot seem to have been reading different e-mails than the ones that they posted on their site. They claim towards the end of the article that "they [the researchers] have told us that the DNA and the physical properties of the nail indicate that it is not human."

WHAT?!?

The researchers said that they're 99% certain the nail is human! The genetic material taken from the nail, as well as its morphology compared to the nails of known non-human primates, led them to conclude that "it was likely of human origins". The lab itself, at least according to the e-mails posted, never says that the DNA is "99% human, 1% non-human". That was flatly made up by the Bigfoot hunters because, to all appearances, they can't freakin' read. They've somehow twisted "We're 99% sure it's human" into "it's 99% human and 1% monster". Amazing! Even more amazingly, the author of the article then tries to end with a zinger:

I guess "science" doesn't mean that much to scientists if it makes them question the work they've done in the past.

I think a better wrap-up would be that science doesn't mean that much to Sasquatch hunters with low reading comprehension.

1.) Remember?
2.) Take a look at the title of the article linked here. Apparently even the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization thinks of Tom as a "notorious huckster".
3.) Italics mine.

Bill Donohue's Mad...Again...

October is a pretty busy time for me what with all the...wait, what was that? I thought I heard some rustling over there in the bushes...there it is again! Hand me the flashlight and we'll find out what it is. Probably just the wind, or some kind of animal, or...

YIKES!!!

It's Bill Donohue, hiding in the shrubs and laying in wait so he can jump out and be offended.

Okay, so that was a (bad) attempt at humor, but I'm hardly exaggerating. Bill Donohue and his friends at the Angry Pansy Patrol Catholic League are hopping mad again, this time about something they saw on The Simpsons. Check out their press release. See, one of the stories on this year's "Treehouse of Horror" episode involved Bart being the only hope for humanity after a zombie plague, but only if people ate him to gain his immunity ffrom the zombie virus. So what? Well, it also included the line "What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their savior?” According to Billy, pointing out the grisly absurdity of Christianity's obsession with cannibalism/vampirism is "crossing the line" because it's "mocking the heart" of his religion.

All in all the "incident" has provoked a pretty stock response from Bill. Ranting and raving, followed by the e-mail address of some guy at FOX for the faithful to harass. (Though I note that Bill's e-mail address is nowhere to be found on the Catholic League site. Hmm...)

There's one thing I've never understood though. Bill claims to have a personal relationship with the Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, but somehow feels that this same all-powerful being needs a bunch of letter-writing ninnies to leap to its defense whenever a cartoon makes an off-color crack. Still, I suppose an angry e-mail campaign in preferable to going Old Testament on the rest of us.

I Thought These Days Were Behind Us...

The battle over "traditional marriage" is flaring up again, but in an unexpected way. See, I thought the current culture war was supposed to be about gay marriage, but Keith Bardwell, a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana, is going retro by refusing to grant interracial marriage licenses. Interracial marriage is, of course, legal in all fifty states and Bardwell is breaking the law by refusing to issue licenses to interracial couples, but he claims that he's actually helping society. How so, you ask? Bardwell says he doing the potential children of such couple a favor because society doesn't accept interracial folks. According to the AP article linked above, Bardwell went on to state that "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."

Astounding. Utterly astounding. Bardwell's apparently a Republican, which is hardly surprising. It's constantly amusing to me that for all their complaints about "nanny government" meddling in people's business, conservatives are all too happy to inflict their 19th century values on the rest of us under the guise of "protecting traditional values". Jeeze.

Kentucky vs. the Amish: A Study in Religious Accommodation

Peter Smith, a religion blogger affiliated with the local Courier Journal newspaper, recently published a blog post dealing with a minor controversy brewing here in Kentucky. At issue is whether or not the Swartzentruber Amish sect should be required to adorn their horse-drawn buggies with orange safety reflectors as per Kentucky law.¹ Specifically, a group of Amish is claiming in a case before the Kentucky Court of Appeals that, among other things, the free exercise of their religion and their freedom of association are being impinged upon by the law. This is based on the Amish preference for modesty and their contention that the wearing of brightly covered clothes (and apparently plastic reflectors) is too worldly and immodest.² They further reject the use of the reflectors on the grounds that displaying such a "symbol" would undermine their implicit trust that God will keep them safe from harm. Similarly, the freedom of association claim is based on their contention that other Amish folks would shun them if they agreed to use the reflectors.

The Amish are making two other claims as well: That the reflector law is being unevenly and inequitably applied and that their right to free speech is being violated by the law. The final claim is based on their contention that the vehicle one chooses to drive constitutes a form of expression because it makes a statement about the driver. Therefore, they claim, compelling the driver to display a safety reflector represents an infringement of their right to free speech.

Over the years, Amish sects all around the country have had success in suing their way out of laws they don't care for. In one such case, Yoder v Wisconsin (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court found that Amish children are not necessarily bound by laws requiring compulsory school attendance if such school attendance is counter to the "sincerely held religious beliefs" of their parents, thereby helping to lay the groundwork for the modern homeschooling movement and numerous other free exercise rulings.³ In other cases, they've claimed religious exemptions from various other legal necessities, such as building codes requiring the installation of smoke detectors.⁴ The ACLU often tends to side with the Amish in these cases, as it has in the current case going on here in Kentucky.

The issue of unfair and uneven application of the reflector law would, in my opinion, be the most pressing matter in the case. After all, given that the law applies not only to Amish buggies but also to vehicle incapable of traveling over 25 mph, if the plaintiffs were able to show a disproportionately high number of buggies being ticketed (as opposed to tractors, etc.) then they could plausibly claim to be the victims of discrimination. As for the claims of undue burdens on religious exercise and free speech, I think precedent may not work entirely in the favor of the Amish. Previous rulings have found that in some cases both free speech and religious expression may be subordinate to broader concerns of public safety.⁵ Even under the now-defunct Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which sorely narrowed the the ability of the government to burden free exercise, Congress held that laws existing for "furtherance of a compelling government interest" could curtail free exercise so long as such laws work towards this interest in the least restrictive way possible.⁶

Surely the enactment and enforcement of traffic laws in order to provide for the safety of motorists represents a "compelling government interest". After all, there were 39,800 traffic-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2008, and although Amish buggies no doubt accounted for an infinitesimally small percentage of these deaths, the principle behind the use slow moving vehicle reflectors is easy to understand.⁷ The question, in my mind, is not whether laws mandating the use of SMV placards serve a compelling government interest, but rather whether these laws are unduly burdensome to the Amish.

Freedom of conscience and the freedom to practice one's religion are rightly held in high esteem in the United States. The ascetic lifestyle of the Amish represents a normally harmless personal choice that does not, in general, disrupt society at large. It is clearly not the aim of the government of Kentucky in general or the SMV placard law in particular to attack the Amish way of life. Rather, the SMV placard law is meant to protect the lives of the Amish and other Kentucky motorists. Doing away with the SMV placards entirely seems like an untenable proposition, given that they serve a specific, necessary purpose that extends beyond their use on Amish buggies. Creating an exception in state law whereby all slow moving vehicles except those operated by the Amish would likewise create problems. After all, if we have two identical horse-drawn carts, but one is driven by a Amish man and the other is not, mightn't the non-Amish driver feel unduly burdened to have to purchase and mount an SMV while his fellow driver does not? Clearly mandating the use of some sort of warning device for slow moving vehicles is prudent. Perhaps if we look specifically at the objections of the Swartzenruber Amish to the SMV reflectors, a solution will become more readily apparent.

According to the legal brief filed on the behalf of the Swartzentruber Amish, their primary objection to the SMV placards is that they are "garish" in appearance & coloration and that they represent secular symbols to which the Amish are opposed.⁸ Kentucky's government is at least nominally secular, and therefore I can't fathom any reasonable jurisprudence that would suggest that "trust in God", no matter how sincere, is an adequate argument for failing to display the SMV placard, any more so than trust in God would constitute plausible grounds for disabling a motor vehicle's running lights. That being said, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to suggest that a compromise be reached in which Amish buggies could be adorned with somewhat less "garish", but nonetheless effective, reflective materials.

This was in fact the outcome of a virtually identical case in Ebensburgh, PA just a few years ago that involved the same Amish sect and made essentially the same hybrid free expression/free speech claim.⁹ In this case, an appellate court in Pennsylvania found that there are equally effective pieces of safety equipment (e.g. gray/white retroflective tape)that do not run counter to Amish customs that can serve an alternative to the orange SMV placard. Why such a compromise has not immediately been suggested by the Commonwealth's Attorney in the Kentucky case is beyond me.

It was just such middle ground - the balance between freedom of conscience and the rule of law - that underpinned the governmental philosophy of the Founders. In the current national climate of vitriol and polemic, we should strive more than ever towards these noble ideals.

__________
1. See KRS 189.810-830. (Kentucky Criminal Law Manual, pp. 340-341). The reflector law does not apply solely to Amish buggies, but rather to any vehicle other than bicycles which is incapable of exceeding 25 miles per hour.

2. The full legal brief can be found online here. To quote the brief, the Amish claim that the use of the orange reflectors is "completely antithetical and antagonistic to their religious values."

3. The Yoder case dealt specifically with laws requiring school attendance beyond the eighth grade. A brief summary of the case can be found online here. A longer discussion of Yoder can be found in the excellent book God vs. the Gavel - Religion and the Rule of Law by Marci Hamilton, especially pp 216-225

4. This is the subject of the ongoing Yoder v. Morristown suit in New York State.

5. For example, male members of the Sikh religion are required by their faith to wear a sacred dagger, called a kirpan, at all times. Courts in some states, such as New York and California, have found that while the kirpan cannot be banned outright, restrictions on their wearing can nonetheless be imposed. In New York, for example, Sikh boys can wear a kirpan at school only if it has been bolted into its sheath such that it cannot be drawn, and no Sikh in the U.S. can wear a kirpan inside a federal building. See pp 114-117 of Hamilton's God vs. the Gavel for a further discussion of this issue.

6. City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) partially overturned the RFRA on the grounds that, by enacting the RFRA, Congress overstepped its power to enforce as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment. The logic behind this decision is that the RFRA altered the Freedom of Exercise clause when Congress had no right to do so. To quote Justice Anthony Kennedy, "Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is."

7. Figures are from a National Safety Council press release. It should be noted, however, that traffic fatalities in the U.S. are trending downward.

8. Refer to the complaint brief, esp. pp 9-12.

9. The ruling in the Ebensburgh case can be found here.

I Love Highbrow Entertainment...

In case anyone is wondering about my weekend plans (and I'm sure you all are), I'm taking The Girlfriend to the theater tomorrow night to see a musical adaptation of one of the great works of modern film. Oh yes, that's right: We're going to see Evil Dead: The Musical. I have a sneaking suspicion that tomorrow's night at the theater is going to have a slightly different feel to it than the time we saw Cats.

The Most Dangerous Justice EVER...

I remember when I was a little poli-sci tadpole taking POLS 201 - American Civil Liberties under Dr. Paul Weber. On one of our exams there was a gag bonus question: "Who is the most dangerous justices on the U.S. Supreme Court?" The correct answer was Anthony Kennedy (because he's kind of unpredictable as a swing voter at times), but I put down, simply, "Scalia".

I stand by that to this day.

Check out this post over on Pharyngula that discusses Scalia's head-in-the-sand approach to separation of church and state in the ongoing Salazar v. Buono case. See, here's a WWI memorial in the middle of the Mojave National Reserve. The problem? It's a huge freakin' latin cross, has nothing on or around it to distinguish it as a war memorial (or anything else but a whopping big cross), and its current incarnation was installed by a private citizen without permission from the National Parks Service. The Court is currently being asked to consider whether having a big cross on federal land as a war memorial constitutes an illegal endorsement of a specific religion on the part of the government. Inasmuch as any case before the Supreme Court is uncomplicated, Salazar v Buono is relatively straightforward...

...except that Scalia apparently doesn't think that a latin cross is a Christian symbol. Seriously. Get a load of this exchange between Scalia and ACLU lawyer Peter Eliasberg:

"The cross doesn't honor non-Christians who fought in the war?" Scalia asks, stunned.

"A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins," replies Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

"It's erected as a war memorial!" replies Scalia. "I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of ... of ... of the resting place of the dead."

Eliasberg dares to correct him: "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."

"I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead," thunders Scalia. "I think that's an outrageous conclusion!"

That's. Freaking. Assinine.

Is the hubris of religious folks really such that they think their specific religious symbols are so universal and meaningful that they have an intrinsic spiritual value to people outside of their faith as well as within? Actually, I guess we already know the answer to that question.

Turns Out Animals Are Dangerous...

I saw a weird article on Cryptomundo today to the tune of "Hmm, seems like there's been lots of animal attacks in the news lately. Maybe it's because of the full moon."

Right.

The article points out five animal attacks that have made the national news between September 27th and October 5th:

1. 1.) A guy got mauled by a grizzly bear after climbing into its cage at the zoo.
2. 2.) An old lady got badly bitten by big pile of raccoons while chasing them off her porch.
3. 3.) Another lady got kicked by an emu she was trying to subdue for transport to an animal sanctuary.
4. 4.) A third lady was killed by her pet bear while cleaning its cage while the bear was still inside.
   
5. 5.) Some Canadian fella' was mauled by a tiger after climbing into its cage at the zoo.

Now is it just me, or are none of those things particularly surprising? See, it turns out that bears, tigers, raccoons, and emus are all dangerous. They all have pointy parts and don't especially like hanging out with human beings. Therefore, I'm not at all stunned that five people who initiated contact with wild animals got injured for their troubles. All of these animals are doing exactly what they could be expected to do.

But wait! What about the "clustering" of these events around the full moon? Surely that means something!

No, wait, it doesn't. Animals, adorable though they may be, bite people all month long regardless of the phase of the moon. According to a website that specializes in dog bite laws (aptly named DogBiteLaw.com), domestic dog bites send an estimated 1,000 Americans to the emergency room daily. Read that again so it sinks in. 1,000 dog bites requiring emergency room visits per day. And dogs are man's best friend! Bears, tigers and emus are -at best- man's casual acquaintances from the office.

Though round and fuzzy at first glance,
raccoons have numerous sharp bits.

Odds are that someone, somewhere is getting mauled by something pretty much every hour of every day. With that in mind, our friend at Cryptomundo pointing out five newsworthy maulings in an 8-day span hardly seems to prove that the moon has mysterious, mind-altering powers.