Once upon a time there were a couple of guys in Texas with an interest in Bigfoot reports from their state who started an organization called the Texas Bigfoot Research Center. Over time the organization grew. They began investigating reports. They began organizing field expeditions and conducting long-term camera trap surveys. Their dedication to detail gained the discrete support of many scientists and academics, and the open support of notable researchers and authors such as Dr. Jeff Meldrum and Loren Coleman. Eventually the group gained non-profit status and changed their name to the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy.

And now they have a new web address. After a long period of stasis, the new TBRC site is up and active at www.texasbigfoot.org. The old address, texasbigfoot.com, is still active and will redirect to the new site, so if you’re already familiar with the organization but are too lazy to update your links, you’re fine. There is still good reason to check out the new site though. Besides the new look there are a number of newly updated Incident Reports (many of which have been setting in queue waiting for the new site to be finished) and new features, including an RSS feed option for receiving updates when those new Incident Reports are entered and an easy to use search function for locating Incident Reports by State and County. Other features include a News page, details of TBRC Research Methodology, details of current and past Research Projects, and image after image of amazing landscape and wildlife photography. Even if you have no interest in Bigfoot, it’s worth checking out just to see some of the amazing shots captured by their camera traps.

In the medieval era most parishioners did not speak Latin. Mass, however, was delivered in Latin (sometimes, undoubtedly, by illiterate priests who were simply reciting by rote). In the highly organized structure of the Catholic Church the fact that the laity could not understand Latin did not matter. It was not their lot to truly understand, but to accept on faith. There were priests to act as intermediaries in absolving their sins. There were Bishops and Cardinals whose jobs were to pour over esoteric texts and pages filled with strange symbols and letters, to unravel and understand the workings of God’s Universe and to dole out that knowledge in spoonfuls and dollops as they saw fit.

Jump forward thirteen centuries and although the players have changed, the game has stayed pretty much the same. Today it isn’t God’s Universe but a universe ruled by laws of physics and complex mathematics that only professors (cum-priests) can decipher. As with the medieval parishioners and their Latin mass, the average person today doesn’t understand the mathematics used to calculate the redshift in a star, they simply take it on faith that the calculations are correct and that Star X is Y light years away. Read more »