No surprise: bigfoot story a(nother) hoax

You weren't expecting anything else, were you? Before the press conference, I saw a larger picture of the head over at the WorldNutDaily (who else who pay this much attention to such a ridiculous story?) and it looked like a gorilla mask. I read somewhere that someone had said that he had or had seen a similar mask.

But then there's the news conference.


As this news story notes, the DNA test was of two different well known creatures: a human and an oppossum (well, 96% of an oppossum's DNA):

One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 percent from an opossum, according to Curt Nelson, a scientist at the University of Minnesota who performed the DNA analysis.

Missing from the press conference -- and par for the course for hoaxes -- evidence.

They didn't show the body. They didn't even say they could (or would) show the body. They said they would perform an autopsy.

I'm not sure whey the mainstream media even covered the story; they must have been short on "off beat" news.
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Good day for conspiracy theorists

Yesterday was a banner day for fans of conspiracy theorists as news broke of two different legendary creatures: bigfoot and chupacabra. You all know the bigfoot story: a very tall, big, and hairy ape-like upright walking creature. The chupacabra is a said to be a creature that kills animals -- apparently first goats (hence the name). Its killing method is a bit odd -- it literally sucks the blood of the animal (the name chupacabra means literally goat sucker -- one that sucks goats -- in Spanish).


There's a video of a dog- or wolf-like creature along the US border with Mexico here. While the animal is perhaps a bit odd-looking, I don't see any reason to see it as the fabled chupacabra. Besides, the stories of the chupacabra range from Puerto Rico to Central America, Mexico, and the border with the United States. How did it get across the Gulf of Mexico to Puerto Rico -- or vise versa? The animal in question is larger than the rats or mice that have spread throughout the world as unwelcome passengers on ships. I am very skeptical -- plus the video looks like it could have been altered; I do not trust the closeups in particular.

One of the problems with the bigfoot myth is the lack of a cadaver. If such a creature exists, why haven't people ever come across a carcass? (The same applies to the Loch Ness monster; apparently the famous photo has been revealed to be that of a bathing elephant from a circus.) But this story is the finding of such a carcass. While I am skeptical of bigfoot stories in general, the discovery of a cadaver and the apparent running of DNA tests to prove that it is something that we have never seen before could be smoking gun evidence. I suspect it is an elaborate hoax, but am willing to examine the evidence (especially when others are doing the hard part). This website has details on the finding and a press conference has been scheduled for this coming Friday (August 15) at noon (PDT; 3pm EDT). I'll be happy to hear what they have to say; but I won't be watching the press conference -- I'm too much of a skeptic.
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barack's birth certificate forgery myth busted

Someone mentioned a new layer to the urban legend filling people's emails saying that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president because he wasn't a natural-born citizen. Snopes.com puts an end to the issue citing his birth in Hawaii as closing the discussion. Except now a supposed expert claims that his birth certificate is a forgery (read about the forgery here.).

But that post was published Sunday, July 20. As I write, it is late Thursday, July 31. Almost two weeks have passed and not one major news source has covered this alleged smoking gun. A search of CNN and Fox News websites turned up no hits. The only hits I found about the forgery were on the internet, primarily in the blogsphere. Why is there no coverage of an issue that could make the candidate leading in the polls ineligible for the office?

I could only find a couple websites that questioned the report on Atlas Shrugs. One site mentioned simply that an Obama spokesman confirmed that it was his (Obama's) birth certificate. Not a credible denial. A poster there altered me to a website that addressed the issue.

This site investigated the claims made by Atlas Shrugs. Among other actions, they "e-mailed it [Obama's birth certificate] to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. This site also questions the claims of forgery.

"'It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,' spokesman Janice Okubo told us."

The research raised a lot of questions, so they kept digging and they also "circled back to the Department of Health, [and] had a newsroom colleague bring in her own Hawaii birth certificate to see if it looks the same (it’s identical)."

So far we have: Barack's birth certificate is identical to another birth certificate from the state, and a spokesman for the state confirms this.

They kept asking questions, and finally concluded: "If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies."

That's at least five different government sites that would have to be complicit in the forgery for it to be successful -- and the number is probably double that. Considering the mainstream media -- with an opportunity to break a huge story (a political scandal along the lines of Watergate and Monicagate, not to mention the drama of The Manchurian Candidate) -- have remained completely silent. If there's a conspiracy here, it's how some people have far too much time on their hands and don't just fall down more often.
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