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You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit in the wind, and you don’t sue if you get hit by a train.

11 Mar

March 11, 2011

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger
You don’t walk on train tracks
And you don’t mess around with Jim, da do da do…
                -Jim Croce, with additional lyrics by the Bar Association

OK, that isn’t quite the song but it probably should be.

I’ve covered stupid lawsuits before. They’ve been around since the dawn of time.

Take the Judgment of Paris. Paris, (a Trojan citizen, not the city) was chosen by Zeus to pick the most beautiful goddess. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite each claimed to be the fairest. This was not Athena’s finest moment. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and thus generally accounted the most beautiful goddess. As Zeus’ wife, Hera was the Queen of the Gods of Olympus and also Athena’s step-mother. As the goddess of wisdom you have to wonder what Athena was thinking. It seems like a pretty bone-headed idea to get in that contest. And for what? A golden apple. It was probably just gold-plated anyway.

Paris wasn’t too swift either. The safe pick was probably Hera. However, he let himself be swayed by Aphrodite. That’s not hard to believe when you consider that she bribed him by offering him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. Don’t judge either of them too harshly as cheating was to the Greek Pantheon as chubby teenage girls are to Justin Bieber. Hera offered to make him king of most of the known world and Athena offered him unbeatable wisdom in warfare. Again, what was Athena thinking? If he was King of the world and had Hera on his side, he wouldn’t need help from Athena. And again, Paris was not very quick on the upswing. As king of the world I bet he could have easily gotten the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. I’m not saying Helen of Troy was a gold digger but you never saw her with a broke… you know what I mean.

And if you consider how this was all orchestrated behind the scenes by Eris the goddess of discord as revenge for a party snub then they all look like stooges.

This led to the Trojan War.

The moral of the story? Like lawsuits, common sense has been lacking since the dawn of time. And a lack of common sense and stupid lawsuits go hand in hand.

For example, the article above suggests a pressing need for signs like this:

Of course, that is hardly original. For example, this warning sign was found just inside the walls of Troy attached to some wooden ship beams that had been made into the shape of a horse:

That Odysseus was one clever fellow. When he wasn’t dressing as a woman and pretending to farm on the beach to dodge the draft he was a pretty shrewd fellow. He knew the one thing those warning signs do: Absolutely nothing. But it did keep him indemnified from all the lawsuits brought by the families of all the Trojans he slaughtered.

But shrewd as he was, Odysseus could never have been licensed as a barber in California:

Want more fun with Jim Croce? Check out this video:

By the way, doesn’t “Jim Croce and the Bar Association” sound like a good name for band?

“You get a lot of whack jobs at conferences like this.”

7 Mar

March 7, 2011

The field of UFOlogy is too broad for its own good. While there is much that is unexplained, and many people who are sane and rational with usual claims, there is a fringe element that sets them three steps back for every single step taken forward. For every Stanton Freidman there are three guys with tinfoil hats to block beams shot at them by Zord, Emperor of Zeta Reticuli.

The following is an article from The Sun, a newspaper in England. I reprint it in its entirety.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/3441009/I-came-from-a-government-experiment.html

AN EXPECTANT hush descends over the audience in the darkened room as the woman up front begins to twitch.

As she curls her toes inside her worn grey socks, Cathy Star Eagle’s head falls forward and she talks in a low, monotone voice: “Greetings to all who have gathered seeking knowledge and universal truth.”

We’re clearly not at a conference for insurance salesmen.

The bizarre event is an extraterrestrial channelling session at the world’s largest UFO conference, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Each year thousands of flying saucer fans from the UK and all over the world descend on the five-day event – which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary – to hear from a range of wackos. Sorry, speakers.

The Sun has bagged a spot at Cathy’s much-anticipated sideshow – despite a ban on the Press – where she claims to pass on messages from The Ambassador telepathically

Not surprisingly The Ambassador turns out to be an alien, otherwise known as Loran, from the planet M42 in the Orion star system. But to sceptics, Cathy’s description of her ET pal doesn’t really help her case.

She says: “Loran is about 4ft tall, copper in colour, with an Asian appearance. He has a little bit of hair, but not a lot.

“Be careful what you ask because he doesn’t hold back – although he’s always respectful and discreet.”

Cathy, a somewhat overweight woman from nearby Tucson, is now in a trance-like state as she answers one question each from those present.

But rather than seize the chance to ask a real-life alien about intergalactic space travel, the audience are more interested in the mundane, quizzing agony uncle Loran on their house moves, career worries or relationship troubles.

One elderly man asks about his granddaughter, who is battling cancer.

Slowly Cathy, alias Loran, replies: “We do feel this situation is more positive than first thought. The malignancy is not as advanced as feared. Nutrition will be key to overcoming the disease.”

Then she blinks back into consciousness with all the theatrics of a pantomime actor.

Ironically, after telling the man his granddaughter needs a better diet, we spot her later in the restaurant with an equally overweight friend tucking into mammoth-sized hamburgers and fries.

Meanwhile, the conference’s vendor room is abuzz with activity as self-professed UFO experts flog all manner of merchandise. One book catches my attention – We Are Among You Already – and I approach the table for a look.

Author Jujuolui Kuita, 40, starts to chat and when I ask where she’s from, she says cryptically: “From where here on Earth?”

She is in fact from Concord, California, although she insists she is a hybrid, with part-human, part-alien DNA.

She says: “My planet is Faqui in the Andromeda galaxy. Since birth I’ve known I was from another place. I felt isolated and different, that this wasn’t my home.

“I am half reptilian and can shape-shift into another species called Fajan.” I can’t wait to see this.

“It’s scary when it happens in public.”

I really can’t wait.

“Although other people don’t necessarily notice because it happens at a higher frequency than they can see.”

Just my luck.

Elsewhere in the vendor room Cynthia Crawford is doing a roaring trade in scary-looking alien sculptures.

The 61-year-old claims her £115 creations promote contact with extra-terrestrials.

Then Cynthia, of Apache Junction, Arizona, starkly states: “I came from a government experiment. My father told me about it. He had operated with the government in Korea and experimented with alien devices found in their crashed ships.

“My mom was drugged as part of a programme and impregnated with me. For that reason my DNA is only 34 per cent human and I’ve got very porous bones, which are typical of my alien family. There are many races – Zuma Zeta, Tall White Zeta and Blue Archturian. I love them all. I channel their energies into my sculptures.”

Further along the hall Stan Romanek, one of the conference’s main speakers and a famous “alien abductee”, is selling his book, Messages.

The 48-year-old Colorado IT worker was a UFO sceptic until 2000 – when he says he saw his first flying saucer. Since then he claims to have been abducted several times and maintains his story is the most scientifically documented case ever.

Last year his footage of an alien apparently peering in the window of his home caused a media storm. It can be viewed on YouTube.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, he says: “You get a lot of whack jobs at conferences like this.”

I like him already.

But he insists: “I’m just a regular guy who came into this community with no clue about UFOs. My first abduction occurred in 2001 when there was a knock on my door at 2am. There were three odd-looking creatures with abnormally large, almond-shaped eyes. They started leading me to the balcony and I felt a tap on the back of my head. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in bed with holes all over my back.”

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about his case is a series of equations he produced under hypnosis.

He says: “I’m not from a maths background and I’m dyslexic, so the symbols look like gibberish to me. One of the equations ended up being the structure of an element we didn’t even have at the time, element 115.

“Dr Claude Swanson, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has confirmed my equations are way above my level of comprehension.

“In fact, he believes they contain clues about the direction that physics is going to take and are beyond current theories in the field.”

 By DAVID LOWE
 d.lowe@the-sun.co.uk